Lord Cholmondeley got a pension to make way for Potter: Lord Thomond had Lord Bateman’s White Stick, who, the Duke of Newcastle said arrogantly enough, should not carry his messages. Tennison was removed with a pension from the Buck-Hounds, ceding them to Lord Bateman. Pitt insisted that Pratt, a favourite lawyer at the bar of the House of Commons, should be Attorney-General. Sir Robert Henley, who could not decently be disgraced without any reason, was so lucky to find that that reason (and certainly there could be no other) was sufficient to promote him: he was made Lord Keeper. The Seals had been offered to Murray, and to the Master of the Rolls, who refused them, and to Willes, who proposed to be bribed by a Peerage, to be at the head of his profession, but could not obtain it. Henley, however, who saw it was the mode of the times to be paid by one favour for receiving another, demanded a Tellership of the Exchequer for his son, which was granted, with a pension of 1500l. a-year till it should drop; and, as if heaping rewards on him would disguise his slender pretensions, Lord Hardwicke told him he must be Speaker of the House of Lords too, for Westminster-Hall would never forgive him (Lord Hardwicke) if he suffered those offices to be disjoined. Sandys and his son were both laid aside. Hardwicke himself took no employment; the Seals, which it was plain from his not resuming them, he had not resigned from mere friendship to Newcastle, were too great a fatigue; and no other of the great offices was vacant.
It was no small mischief flowing from these disgraceful revolutions, the additional charge entailed on the public. Here were new pensions, of 3000l. a-year to Dorset, near as much to Cholmondeley, 1500l. to Henley, 1200l. to Tennison; besides others more secret. Yet all this profusion of grants and concessions could not satisfy everybody. The Townshends were furious: George, at any amnesty for Fox; Charles, at not being promoted himself. Lord Halifax, who demanded to be Secretary of State for the West Indies, a theatre on which Pitt meditated to shine himself, threw up on being refused; but, having outlived his income, was forced to re-accept, what, unless he had persisted, he had done more wisely to retain. The Duke of Bedford was warm against the new system, but was soon composed. The City, too, was indignant at the re-establishment of Lord Anson: but when the chiefs are accorded, the mob of a faction are little regarded. Men could not but smile observing Pitt return to Court, the moment he had been made free of so many cities for quitting it, exactly as he accepted an employment there before old Marlborough was scarce cold, who had left him 10,000l. as a reward for his patriotism.
The King gave the Garter to Lord Waldegrave, an almost unprecedented favour, as it was given alone—but he deserved it—and this act of royalty, almost the only flower of the Crown unviolated, gave the King double satisfaction, for he had before given hopes of it to Lord Holderness, who being, like Lord Harrington, the mere creature of his Majesty’s bounty, had, like Lord Harrington, been the first to insult his master with an offensive resignation.
I here close the scene on these Court squabbles; and perhaps have described them too minutely. Passages, in which one has been conversant, often appear too interesting. I can only say, that I have preferred offending in this extreme to the contrary. Nothing is more easy than to pass over what is too diffuse—but, as many men love these details, their curiosity would be unsatisfied with abridgments. Probably these anecdotes will amuse for some years, till they are lost in the mass of books, and when the affairs of this little spot, which we call Britain, shall appear of no more importance than our island itself in a geographic picture. To be read for a few years is immortality enough for such a writer as me!
A greater field was now opened. That formidable confederacy of France, Austria, Russia, and Sweden, seemed determined to enclose and crush the King of Prussia. The Duke of Cumberland, with the forlorn Hanoverian army, was a slight barrier against such alarming advances. Coloredo, the Austrian Minister at London, was ordered to retire without taking leave; and as a further earnest of their hostile intentions to England, Ostend and Nieuport were resigned into the hands of France. Count Daun, the Austrian Fabius, was sent with 45,000 men to raise the siege of Prague. The King of Prussia, too impetuous to await their cautious approach, flew with about 30,000 men to meet them; and finding Daun strongly entrenched on a hill, thought ardour and his name sufficient to dislodge them. He returned seven times to the attack after as many repulses, performed actions of extravagant bravery himself; and when forced at last, by an impregnable situation, by superior numbers, and by equal valour, to abandon his purpose, he crowned the splendour of the enterprise by modestly confessing how unadvisedly he had undertaken it. He raised the siege of Prague, and retired to Leutmeritz. Daun had the good sense to know that his country was not to be saved by the rules of romance. Rashness might immortalize a Monarch whose crown and life were at stake, and were at the same time less objects than his glory: a subject would be unpardonable, and of all subjects an Austrian had the least chance of pardon, who should suffer his fame to weigh one moment against his duty.
The French in the meantime advanced in such formidable numbers, that the Duke of Cumberland was obliged to retire and leave Hanover at their mercy. However, they came up with him at Hastenbecke, and a battle ensued. The Duke never showed himself so able a General, and though exceedingly inferior in force, disputed his ground till the French, who had great difficulty to carry up their men to the charge, despaired of the victory. But fresh squadrons pouring in upon him, and more approaching, his Royal Highness, apprehensive of being enclosed, resigned the success, though not the glory, of the day to D’Etrées, who was happy to find his enemy take a step that he was deliberating whether it would not be prudent for him to take himself. The Hanoverian statesmen, in the wildness of their despair for the destruction of their country and of their fortunes, not caring whom they charged, accused that Prince of timidity, whom all England had all his life accused of rash and German appetite for fighting; and the French with no less injustice decried their own victorious General, till Madame Pompadour and the Courtiers took advantage to supplant him; and Richelieu was sent to become those laurels which had been earned by the best officer in their service.
The King almost sunk under this weight of misfortunes. That country, which with so much patriotism and so little prudence he had made the point in which his whole policy centred—that country now felt all the bitterness of desolation! Hanover, which so long had tasted the felicity of being conjoined to England, was now ravaged in an English quarrel. And unless we will suppose that his Majesty hoped to hire out his Electoral troops to his Crown in a contest which he flattered himself would never be agitated in Germany, one cannot conceive why with such improvident facility he had permitted the Chancellor and Newcastle to bound into a war with France; a war undertaken from some provocation, with no preparation; and discussed with no more solidity, than the mob, whom it was made to captivate, could have employed. The French had aimed at and proceeded to invade our settlements. We returned hostilities with as slight a force as if we had only sent a herald to denounce war. We then seized their ships—and did nothing more; yes, we engaged some German mercenaries, as if the Duke of Newcastle had thought that the Rhine and the Ohio were the same river. Had we, like the French, waved expressions of war, till we had mustered a mighty force in America, where our superiority is exceedingly great; had we increased our Navy before we seized theirs; had we at least imitated their arts as well as their invasions, we might have dictated in the new world, and lived without hostilities in the old. No wonder the King was overwhelmed with the explosion of such calamities and blunders—still he had deserved compassion; had he not shown that, whatever his reflection suggested, his heart had no generous feelings—But of this anon.
The Court at Leicester House was very differently employed during these serious transactions. Hanover was lost; in North America our affairs went ill; England itself was in no flourishing condition. How did the Princess occupy the heir of all these domains? She was not Spartan enough to buckle on his armour with her own hands, and send him to save or reconquer what he was to govern. The light of the Gospel has emancipated mothers from such robust sensations. The Prince was instructed to commit the care of the temporal concerns of his subjects to Providence; and therefore, instead of sending men, arms, ammunition to the invaded frontiers of our colonies,[8] with more patriarchal vigilance his Royal Highness sent them an hundred pounds’ worth of Leland’s polemic writings against the Deists. The Princess herself bestowed an annuity of one hundred pounds on a young Scotch[9] clergyman, who having been persecuted by the kirk for writing a tragedy called Douglas, threw himself and his piece on the protection of the Earl of Bute.
I have said our affairs in North America went ill; it is very true. About this time came letters from the Earl of Loudun, the Commander-in-Chief there, who said, he found the French were 21,000 strong; he had not so many; could not attack Louisbourg; should return to Halifax. Admiral Holbourn, one of the sternest condemners of Byng, wrote at the same time, that he having but seventeen ships, and the French nineteen, he dared not attack them. These disappointments gave great disgust. Lord Loudun had been selected by the Duke and Fox for this command, and our expectations had been raised high of what he would perform. Here was another summer lost! Pitt expressed himself with great vehemence against the Earl—and we naturally have too lofty ideas of our naval strength to suppose that seventeen of our ships are not a match for any nineteen others.
At home there were great disturbances on the new Militia Bill. Lord Hardwicke and the Lords, meaning to defeat it, had clogged it with impracticabilities, absurdities, and hardships; particularly by obliging every poor man to pay ten pounds, or find a substitute, or go for a soldier; and yet he would be liable to serve again at the end of three years. This was a tax of above three pounds a year. Nor was any fund provided for the expenses of carrying the Act into execution. These objections gave sufficient handle to the disaffected to decry the system. The Tory gentlemen in particular, apprehending that the Whigs would acquire influence in their counties by the articles of clothing, &c., used their utmost endeavours to prepossess the country against the Bill. They inculcated into the people a belief that they would be trepanned to Gibraltar, like the two Somersetshire regiments that I formerly mentioned; and that whoever should give in his name, would to all intents and purposes become a soldier for life.