About this time, Lord Bute[19] obtained by the means of Pitt the place of Commissioner of Excise for Scott, the late Preceptor, to whom it had been promised. It was even wrested from a young Pelham, to whom Newcastle had actually given it. Lord Bute thought this service to Scott necessary, and had insisted warmly—otherwise Pitt shunned all interfering in the disposal of employments.
The King, on the death of Princess Caroline, had voluntarily promised to continue her allowance to Princess Emily, who handsomely engaged to pay the same pensions and the same grants to the prisons that her sister Caroline had done. She had even desired to impart a large portion of it to her sister Mary of Hesse; but the King, while the vapour of munificence lasted, said he should take care of Mary. In a month’s time, the Duke of Newcastle was sent in form to notify to Princess Emily that the King retracted his promise, and should not continue to her the allowance of Princess Caroline.
An affair was now opened, which having once been deemed the most important point to English liberty, would seem to demand large discussion. But having been so much agitated formerly, and so well explained in our parliamentary books, and now ending without any alteration—rather without any improvement, of the ancient system, I would willingly be very brief in relating what passed. That I mention it at all with any detail, when hastening to the conclusion of my work, is only to mark how much the modes of thinking change, and that fundamentals themselves can make no impression, if apprehensions of arbitrary power are not in fashion. If a passion for freedom is not in vogue, patriots may sound the alarm till they are weary.
The Act of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners may insist on being brought to trial within a limited time, is the corner-stone of our liberty. The power of pressing, and some other cases, seemed to clash with this invaluable privilege, or that with the utility of pressing; for if soldiers or mariners, impressed and carried to any distant quarters or ports, might demand their habeas corpus, and claim to be brought to the capital to have it examined whether they were properly subject to the violence laid on them, sudden emergencies would be deprived of their service, and a thousand accidents might happen to facilitate their total escape, though ever so fit for the intended destination of them. It was a doubt, too, whether all the twelve Judges could or were obliged to grant the writ in time of vacation. These doubts, which many prudent men thought it best to leave in suspense or overwhelm in silence, others, if warmer, not worse-intentioned, held necessary to be ascertained the moment they had come into question: and they had come into question, and a man, too apt to decide peremptorily when his decisions could strengthen prerogative, had affected to pronounce against that universal immunity from uncertain detention of their persons, which the English, with so much reason, think their birthright. This was the Chief Justice Mansfield. He had a bitter antagonist in the Attorney-General Pratt, who had not only entered into employment on a popular foot, but personally hated the Chief Justice, and was himself steady, warm, sullen,[20] stained with no reproach, and an uniform Whig. He declared himself with impetuosity for the utmost latitude of the Habeas Corpus; and it reflected no small honour on him, that the first advocate of the Crown should appear the firmest champion against prerogative. Nor should we deem less highly of him, because private motives spurred him on to the contest—alas! how cold would public virtue be, if it never glowed but with public heat! So seldom, too, it is that any considerations can bias a man to run counter to the colour of his office and the interests of his profession, that the world should not be too scrupulous about accepting the service as a merit, but should honour it at least for the sake of the precedent.
Pratt prepared a Bill for explaining and extending the Habeas Corpus, and ascertaining its full operation. It was brought into the House of Commons, where Pitt and the Speaker supported it with firmness, and the majority cheerfully promoted it. Yet even in that House it met with avowed foes. The authority of Lord Mansfield had weight with some; the influence of Lord Hardwicke with more; and the lawyers, who easily overlooked the essence of a thing on which there was enough said in their books to enchant them with sounds and cavils, laid themselves out in such a profusion of jargon, that nothing but the nonsense they talked prevented all the world from seeing how much they contradicted both themselves and one another. They made the plainest thing in the world, the right to freedom, the most obscure; and yet while any hope of their becoming intelligible remained, men listened to know through what genealogy of terms this blessing had been derived to them: a common error that I willingly censure, as if precedents brought in support of, did not weaken liberty. Can ages of ancestors submitting to tyranny impeach my freedom? Have I not a right to be free the moment I have the power of being so? If we hold our liberties but by Magna Charta, we hold them by an extorted piece of parchment. If the Crown had a right to enslave us before, it has a right still, for then that struggle was Rebellion; and what right can Rebellion give? Magna Charta was but the King’s confession of his usurpation; as taking up arms against oppression is only doing justice on the oppressor. I have ever found that such grave personages as affect to authenticate our liberties by history and precedent, are no better than those foppish tools the Heralds, who hoard long rolls of nobility, but are ready to forge a pedigree for the first pretender to birth.
The Bill passed easily, though tediously, through the Commons. Before I proceed to its fate among the Lords, I must touch upon the other events of the season.
The campaign was opened on our part with great success. Prince Ferdinand and that gallant boy, his nephew, drove the French out of Hanover, by a plan, like that of Turenne in Alsace, of attacking them in four different quarters at once. The Count de Clermont, who had succeeded Richelieu, behaved with a politeness that sufficiently indicated how much the French were humbled;—he gave a pass to a Courier, to come and acquaint the King that he was again master of his dominions. But the virtuous humanity of the Duc de Randan must not be confounded with the humiliation of his countrymen: Governor of Hanover, he had treated the conquered with amiable lenity; and when he was obliged to quit his post, and had full time to destroy his magazines, he nobly abandoned them to the magistrates, and marched himself the last out of the city, to prevent his troops from committing any revengeful outrage.
George Grenville took advantage of the triumphant situation of his connexion, and renewed his Navy Bill, which had been thrown out the last year. And here Mr. Pitt had an opportunity of showing that if he had submitted to unite with the very men he had persecuted, the depression fell to them. The Duke of Newcastle, Lord Hardwicke, and Lord Anson were all obliged to vote for this very Bill, which they had rejected last year. Some pretended that this shifting conduct was but a compromise, and that their intention of flinging out the new Habeas Corpus was to be overlooked, in consideration of their facilitating the Navy Bill; a bargain about laws, not the more incredible for its being shameful; and considering for what trifling acts Mr. Pitt has stickled, while he acquiesced in the loss of such an invaluable Bill, his patriotism will lie under the suspicion of being more specious than real. Lord Winchelsea, Lord Lyttelton, Lord Marchmont, and the adherents of the Duke and Fox, still opposed the Navy Bill; but it was carried on the first division by 74 to 14. At the third reading, Lord Bath spoke upon it,—a speech so miscellaneous and rambling, that it resembled his ancient orations, except that in this he much commended Sir Robert Walpole. Lord Denbigh attacked Lord Marchmont, and said, he remembered when that Lord had been connected with a man of very different principles. Lord Marchmont, thinking Lord Bolingbroke was the person alluded to, treated his memory with great severity—though, by the way, Lord Bolingbroke had died in friendship with him. Lord Denbigh, without rising, said aloud, “He mistakes; I meant Sir William Windham.” Marchmont was disconcerted. The other, after the debate, went up to Lord Hardwicke, and said, “Sir William Windham put me under Lord Marchmont in politics; and one day, in warm conversation, the latter clapped his hand on my knee, and said, ‘Young man, remember I tell you, this country will never be in a better situation while one of this family is on the Throne.’” The Bill passed.