Rigby had an advantageous and manly person, recommended by a spirited jollity that was very pleasing, though sometimes roughened into brutality: of most insinuating good-breeding when he wished to be agreeable. His passions were turbulent and overbearing; his courage bold and fond of exerting itself. His parts strong and quick, but totally uncultivated; and so much had he trusted to unaffected common sense, that he could never afterwards acquire the necessary temperament of art in his public speaking. He had been a pupil of Winnington, and owed the chief errors of his life to that man’s maxims, perniciously witty. Winnington had unluckily lived when all virtue had been set to notorious sale, and in ridicule of false pretences had affected an honesty in avowing whatever was dishonourable. Rigby, whose heart was naturally good, grew to think it sensible to laugh at the shackles of morality; and having early encumbered his fortune by gaming, he found his patron’s maxims but too well adapted to retrieve his desperate fortunes. He placed his honour in steady addiction to whatever faction he was united with: and from the gaiety of his temper, having indulged himself in profuse drinking, (for in private few men were more temperate,) he was often hurried beyond the bounds of that interest which he meant should govern all his actions, and which his generous extravagance for ever combated. In short, he was a man who was seldom loved or hated with moderation; yet he himself, though a violent opponent, was never a bitter enemy. His amiable qualities were all natural; his faults acquired, or fatally linked to him by the chain of some other failings.
In a Court of such a complexion as I have described, no wonder the reign of virtue was violated in the outset. The Queen-Dowager of Prussia, the King’s sister, was lately dead: during the parsimonious barbarity of her husband, a pension of 800l. a year, on Ireland, had been privately transmitted to her; and she retained it to her death. The Duke of Bedford was persuaded to ask this for the Duchess’s sister, Lady Betty Waldegrave, and obtained it. His impartiality was as ill-observed as his maxims of frugality. Rigby, sacrificing to what he concluded Mr. Fox’s inclination, hurried the Lord-Lieutenant into flagrant partiality to Lord Kildare. The Primate was neglected; but he knew how to make himself of consequence. The prostitution of his opponents had raised his character, and he omitted no address to conciliate popularity. Malone had at length accepted the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer; and being the last renegade, was the most obnoxious. Being regarded as Minister in the House of Commons, the storm was intended to fall on him, for Rigby was not known as a man of business; and till Lord George Sackville affected the active part of power, and after him Mr. Conway, the Lord-Lieutenant’s secretary had been no character in Parliament.
The factions existing were, the Primate’s, Lord Kildare’s, those attached to the Speaker Ponsonby, and who in truth were a defection from Kildare; and a flying squadron of patriots, the smallest body of the four, and composed as is usual, of the discontented—that is, of those who had been too insignificant to be bought off, or whose demands had been too high—and of a few well-meaning men. Lord Kildare had still the greatest number of dependents, though inferior to those of the Primate and Ponsonby, if united; a point[11] now eagerly pursued by the Archbishop, while at the same time he underhand inflamed the patriots against the Castle: and had sufficient success. The Session no sooner opened, than French, a lawyer, proposed a trifling amendment to the Address, but with indirect reflections on Malone, whom they endeavoured to make rise, and take the Minister upon him; but he avoided it, and suffered the amendment. The next day, one Upton, a warm and obstinate Patriot, formerly a friend of Malone, moved for the list of Pensions, on which Lady Betty Waldegrave’s name must have appeared. Malone at last rose, and said, the Motion was premature, for the list would be given in with the Estimates. Upton, not being content with this answer, Malone moved to adjourn, the other threatening to renew his Motion at their next meeting. And when he did repeat it, it was rejected but by a majority of five; an advantage so slender, that the Castle did not venture to stem a torrent of violent resolutions, which the House passed a few days afterwards against pensions, absentees, and other grievances, of which they demanded redress, desiring the Lord-Lieutenant to transmit them to his Majesty in their very words. This heat was led by one Perry, a bold, troublesome, and corrupt lawyer, who had been vexatious to Mr. Conway, and between whom and Rigby there soon passed such warm altercations, that they were with difficulty prevented from going greater lengths.
The Duke, in answer to their resolutions, told them they were couched in such extraordinary terms, and aimed so high, that he should take time to consider whether he would transmit them to England; and this answer Rigby moved to have entered in the Journals, but desisted, on finding great opposition. Both the Duke and he acted with incredible intemperance; and intending to establish their authority by the weight of power, his Grace sent to England for assistance, and demanded to be invested with a latitude of rewards and punishments. The absentees were sent over to strengthen his party in the House of Commons; but the English Council meeting upon his other demand, and not being composed of many of his friends, Mr. Pitt wrote him a civil excuse, with a refusal of full powers; if his Grace would name whom he wished to displace or prefer, he should be supported; on the whole, he was advised to compose the heats that had arisen. The Primate no doubt had early intelligence from Lord George of the little attention paid to the Lord Lieutenant’s remonstrance; but being disposed to govern the Castle rather than overturn them, he retired to his country seat at Leixlip, declaring his disapprobation of the violence of the Commons; and the next day sent two of his creatures to the Duke to disavow any connexions with the Speaker, and to profess his aversion to disturbing the Government; in elections only against Lord Kildare and Malone he proposed to interfere. On the other hand, Lord Kildare protested that if the Primate was left of the Regency, he would not be of it. A menace most indifferent to the Prelate, who could forgive anything but exclusion from power, and who on his former disgrace had much resented the part his brother had acted in consenting to his being laid aside; and when it was notified to him, he broke out, “Now will my wise brother write me four sides to tell me it is all for the better.”
The dissimulation of the Primate was soon detected: the Duke of Bedford, to oblige him, had preferred Cunningham in rank, who, however, voted against the Court in the strongest questions. Yet continuing to frequent the assemblies at the Castle, the Duke took him aside, reproached him with his behaviour, and told him, the bread he eat was the King’s. The young man replied honestly, he had such obligations to the Primate and Lord George, that though he should be reduced to his pristine indigence, he would act in all things as they ordered him. Some days afterwards, the Opposition calling in question the great powers exercised by the Privy Council of Ireland, and Malone sitting silent, the Solicitor-General, a friend of the Primate, said, that, as an officer of the Crown, he could not sit still and see the prerogative attacked, without marking his disapprobation. He was joined by all the Primate’s friends, and the motion for abridging those powers was rejected by 140 to 40. This more civil way of displaying to the Castle the Primate’s interest in the House was not calculated to inspire them with less awe of his strength.
Lord Kildare (who had no talents for governing, and yet would not unite with anybody that had,) declined Mr. Fox’s advice of joining with the Speaker, by which he might have balanced the efforts of the Primate. The Earl thought of repelling the war by carrying it into the quarters of the enemy, and the Castle weakly concurred in this silly project. They determined to move for an inquiry into the conduct of the Commissioners of the Revenue for the last twenty years, in which the principal retrospect would involve the partizans of the House of Dorset. The execution of the measure was delegated to Sir Archibald Atcheson, a man so insignificant, that, having acquainted the House that he had a Motion of consequence to propose on the following Monday, he was so little regarded, that when the day came, the House was remarkably empty. The Courtiers opposed the question, till Rigby rose and said, a Motion from so respectable a person must be of consequence; the gentleman, he supposed, had some mismanagement to lay open. A secret Committee was immediately proposed and elected by ballot, when, to the great confusion of the Ministers, they carried but three out of thirty-one; the other twenty-eight were all elected from the creatures of the Primate and Speaker. The Castle had no more success in the popularity they expected from this inquisition, than they had in the choice of the inquisitors. The Lord-Lieutenant, too, increased the offence by his ungracious reception of the Commissioners of the Revenue, who waiting on him to disculpate themselves, as they feared they had been misrepresented to his Grace, he answered them dryly, if anything was wrong, he supposed it would come out; if innocent, they would clear themselves.
These transactions, which reached to the end of the year, I have chosen to throw together, as they would be little intelligible, if broken into the precise order in which they happened. I shall use the same method on the sequel of the expedition to Rochfort.
As soon as the Fleet was returned, Sir John Mordaunt was ordered to town to give an account of his conduct; and Mr. Pitt inserted in the Gazette his letter to the General and Admiral, empowering them to stay out longer if they should find it necessary. This did not allay the ill-humour in the City, where they coupled the fruitlessness of the expedition with the Hanoverian neutrality; and concluded that both flowed from the same attention to the preservation of the favourite Electorate. The Ministers affected to distinguish the naval commanders. The Generals were coldly received, particularly by the King, though he did speak to Conway, who, however, was so sensible of the injustice done to him, that, if he had not been overpersuaded by his friends, who foresaw that his resignation would be represented as a dismission, he would have immediately quitted his post in the King’s Bed-chamber.
His Majesty had at first been indifferent to the plan; then ridiculed it to all who came near him. Now, being in a humour of heroism and criticism, he took it up in the bitterest terms, and did the Generals the honour of treating them as ill as his own son, the Duke, seizing every opportunity of casting reflections on the one and the others; and on the news of the King of Prussia’s success, the Monarch said, “Yes, people may beat, if they do not always retreat; but there are so many cowards, I am almost afraid of growing one myself.” Pitt, though really more hurt, and apt enough to take any step to illustrate his own measures, behaved with greater decency. He pressed no violent resolutions against the officers; he prevented the City from addressing against them; and only took the more sensible, though not less severe style of punishing the miscarriage, by raising Wolfe at once over the heads of a great number of officers.[12]