Lord George Sackville was now rising to a principal figure. His abilities in the House of Commons and his interest with Pitt gave him great weight in Government, and everything seemed to promise him the first rank in the Army, where, since the depression of Conway, he stood without a rival. The Duke, who hated him, was removed; Marshal Ligonier was very old, and was governed by him; and by his seat in the Ordnance, and his own address, he began to balance Fox in the direction of the Duke of Marlborough. But his imperious temper was not to be restrained; and at this very period he wantonly started an enemy, under whose lash he had reason afterwards to wish he had not fallen.
A considerable officer was Lord Tyrawley, too old to give jealousy to Lord George, and who having been neglected by the Duke of Newcastle, had treated the latter with a contempt which, besides his attaching himself to Fox, had assured an entire stop to his own further advancement. Lord Tyrawley had a thorough knowledge of the world, though less of his own country than of others. He had long been Minister in Portugal, where he grew into such favour, that the late King, to keep him there, would have appointed him his general. He had a great deal of humour, and occasional good breeding, but not to the prejudice of his natural temper, which was imperiously blunt, haughty, and contemptuous, with an undaunted portion of spirit. Accustomed to the despotism of Portugal, Muscovy, and the Army, he had little reverence for Parliaments, and always spoke of them as the French do of the long-robe. He even affected not to know where the House of Commons was. He was just returned from Gibraltar, where he had ordered great additions to the works, with no more economy than Governors are apt to do, who think themselves above being responsible. Lord George Sackville caught at this dissipation, and privately instigated Sir John Philipps to censure the expense. To their great surprise Lord Tyrawley demanded to be heard at the bar of the House in his own defence. A day was named. Lord Tyrawley drew up a memorial, which he proposed to read to the House; and which in the meantime he did read to everybody else. It was conceived in bitter terms against Lord George, and attacked him roundly on having avoided all foreign command. This alarmed. Lord George got the day of hearing adjourned for near a fortnight; but Lord Tyrawley was not a man to recede from his point; and Lord George having underhand procured the report of Skinner, who surveyed the works at Gibraltar to be brought before the House, without mentioning what it was, Mr. Fox laid open the unhandsome darkness of this conduct, and Lord Tyrawley himself appeared at the bar. As the hearing was before the Committee, high words were avoided, which must have ensued had the Speaker, who was not wont to suffer disrespect to the House, been in the chair; for Lord Tyrawley made good by his behaviour all that had been taken for vapour before he appeared there. He treated the House with great freedom, their forms with still greater; and leaning on the bar (though he was allowed a chair), he browbeat Skinner his censor, who stood on his left hand, with such arrogant humour, that the very lawyers thought themselves outdone in their own style of worrying a culprit. He read his memorial, which was well drawn and somewhat softened, with great art and frankness, and assumed more merit to himself than he had been charged with blame. Such tough game tempted few hunters. Lord George was glad to wave the sport; and the House dismissed the affair with perfect satisfaction in the innocence of a man who dared to do wrong more than they dared to censure him.
Hitherto the King of Prussia had lain quiet. Suspicions had even been entertained that he was meditating or concluding a separate peace. At last a new subsidiary treaty was concluded with him, and Colonel Yorke was dispatched from the Hague to fix that essential man. Luckily, Kniphausen was on the road, with his assent to the treaty, before Yorke arrived; otherwise the vainglory of Lord Hardwicke could not have imagined a more impolitic step for his country or his son. Every attempt of our sending men of parts to circumvent him had succeeded ill. The King of Prussia was so far a little genius, that he dreaded trying himself against talents. For this reason, he used Legge and Sir Charles Williams in the most ungracious manner. Lord Hyndford, Mr. Villiers, and Mitchell, were the men that suited him—and had he known him, he would not have feared Yorke. But the King made Mitchell introduce him, would talk to him on no business, and entertained him with nothing but a panegyric on Mitchell.
The treaty was laid before the Houses, and approved. Lord Denbigh commended it, and said, he was glad the Elector of Hanover was included in it, that he might not desert the King of England. He entered a claim against any Hanoverian neutrality, and rejoiced that we had another General; censuring the Duke for the convention of Closter Seven. This unjust bitterness was received with marks of approbation by the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Lincoln, and Lord Temple, and was ill retorted by Lord Sandwich. Lord Lyttelton spoke well, distinguishing between the two parts of the Administration, and too ridiculously ascribing whatever had been done well to the Duke of Newcastle. Lord Temple answered him with vehement abuse, and applied to him a passage out of Tully, which Lord Lyttelton had formerly inscribed on a temple at Stowe; the gentle conclusion of it was to call him “Hominem detestabilem, imbecillum, caducum.” Lord Lyttelton, as usual, replied with firmness, but with too little asperity, considering how unrelenting towards him was the malice of that faction.
The grant of money for the treaty was followed by the Ways and Means for the year. The new taxes were laid on houses and windows, and on places; a poor tribute to popularity offered by Legge.
The Bill for explaining and extending the Act of Habeas Corpus was now got into the House of Lords, where it produced a new scene, and showed how the feelings of men differ from their professions. The constitution, as settled at present, is in a King elected by the voice of the people, without any right of succession, in opposition to an arbitrary family, and tied down from acts of violence against the liberty of individuals by that peculiar fundamental law, the act of Habeas Corpus. The House of Lords is the next branch of the Legislature. It is composed of the ancient Peerage, who have expelled their ancient Kings for the innovations of the latter, and of modern Peers, created under the new establishment by the favour of the Prince, or selected from the sages of the Law for their integrity, wisdom, and knowledge of the true rights of their country. In this House, too, sit the Bishops, who cannot be too tender of those laws, which secure the exercise of their holy religion. In this House sit the Cavendishes and Russels, renowned for their vigorous defence of the Habeas Corpus; and with them the Duke of Newcastle, the ring-leader of the mob of Whigs on the accession of the present family. The third estate is the House of Commons.
Let us, before we pass to the discussion of the Bill, anticipate the behaviour of all these persons and bodies of men, all engaged by common interest and common honour to support the charter, for which they had violated other inferior ties; but almost all swayed by private and separate interests to abandon the cause. The King talked openly at his Levee against the Bill; and it was understood to be offensive to him to vote for the extension of it. He was King; he did not desire to reduce the prerogative lower than it had been delivered to him. The Lords were become so much more considerable than they had been before the Revolution, that they were in no danger from the Crown; and when they do not fear it, they will always be ready to uphold it. They look on themselves as distinct from the rest of the nation; and at best, leave the people to be taken care of by their representatives, the Commons. As jealous of, and as fond of their privileges, as the King of his prerogative, they are attentive to maintain them, and deem the rights of the people rather encroachments than a common interest. Added to this general description, they were, at the time I write of, a tame, subservient, incapable set of men, governed entirely by the Duke of Newcastle, and the two lawyers, Hardwicke and Mansfield. Those lawyers were instances of the discrimination that ought to be made between the spirit of the laws and the profession of them. Nobody better read in them, nobody more warm to enforce them, nobody less actuated by the essence of them. If either of them ever took the side of liberty, or the side of mildness, I am willing to be thought to asperse them. The conduct of the Prelates had for so many years been so uniformly supple, that no man expected anything from them but complaisance for the Court—and they deceived no man! The Hierarchy behaved so nobly in the reign of James the Second, and has behaved so poorly ever since, that they seem to know no medium between a mitre and a crown of martyrdom. If the clergy are not called to the latter, they never deviate from the pursuit of the former. One would think their motto was, Canterbury or Smithfield.
The heir of the house of Russel was silent, and at last acquiesced in rejection of the Bill. His compeer, the Duke of Devonshire, who did not love Murray, and who had set out with approving the Bill, became even an emissary to procure votes against it. He wrote to Lord Hertford, to press him to come to town and oppose it; and begged him, if he had any scruples, to come to him for the clearing of them. A Cavendish soliciting against the Habeas Corpus was a phenomenon; that Cavendish supposing himself qualified for a casuist was the height of burlesque. For the other Whig Duke, Newcastle, he was the most pardonable of all. There had not been an hour of his life that laid him under the least obligation of acting consistently. The House of Commons maintained their character.
If this survey appears severe, let the motives be considered and weighed. The Bill rejected was of the most national concern; if rejected conscientiously, the grounds were those of convenience preferred to those of immutable right—and with what arms do tyrants begin to combat liberty but with those of necessity and convenience? But in the present case I cannot allow conscience to the House of Lords. The House of Commons,[21] almost to a man, approved the Bill. Five hundred men are probably as conscientious as two hundred. But it was evidently an affair of faction; and was rejected in compliment to Lord Mansfield, to mark whom it had been designed, and to gratify the private pique and public authority of the family of Yorke, the head of which always considered what was the law, never on what grounds a law had been made.
On May 9th, the Bill was read by the Lords. Lord Hardwicke, after chicaning upon it, rather than attacking it openly, proposed to ask the opinions of the Judges. Lord Temple answered him with spirit, and reproached his Peers with being so long governed by one Law Lord, now by two. He read the strong introduction of the Earl of Devonshire to the conference with the Commons on the former Bill, and concluded with showing how improper it was to take the opinions of the Judges, which must be biassed, as the new Bill inflicted penalties on them if they refused the writ. This drew on more altercation between them, and much haughtiness from Lord Hardwicke, who urged that it was an improper time to press the Bill, when civil authority wanted the utmost support: an argument that suits the worst times and the worst Ministers; and never advanced with less truth, for no man living could say in what instance civil authority had wanted assistance. Lord Granville spoke for the Bill; but discovering afterwards how unwelcome it was at St. James’s, he attended it no more. Lord Mansfield opposed the Bill, and was seconded by the Duke of Newcastle, who, though approaching to seventy, still appeared in the full vigour of his nonsense.