The Dauphiness, with whom he lived on the best terms, he had, however, no fondness for: his first wife had been far more dear to him. The second was morose and ungracious; and, dying in a year after her husband, was not at all regretted. In her last moments, having sharply reprimanded the Duchesse de Lauragais, the latter, turning to another lady, said, “Cette Princesse est si bonne, qu’elle veut que personne ne la regrette.”[198]
The Duc de Choiseul, the Prime Minister, was a man of excellent parts, but of a levity and indiscretion, which most of that nation divest themselves of before his age, or when they enter into business. Except the hours which he spent with the King, the rest of his life was dissipation, pleasure, profuseness, and bons mots. Rash, daring, and presumptuous; good-humoured, but neither good nor ill-natured; frank, gay, and thoughtless, he seemed the Sovereign more than the Minister of a mighty kingdom. Scorning, rather than fearing, his enemies, he seldom undermined and seldom punished them. He dissipated the nation’s wealth and his own; but did not repair the latter by plunder of the former. Mr. Pitt’s superiority he could never digest nor forgive; and though he was incapable of little mischief in his own country, great crimes had rather a charm for him. He excited the war between the Russians and Turks, to be revenged on the Czarina; and I saw him exult childishly in his own house on her first defeats. At last he descended to the mean and cruel oppression of Corsica, for the sake of gathering a diminutive laurel, after being baffled in the large war. Gallantry without delicacy was his constant pursuit. His wife, the most perfect character of her sex, loved him to idolatry;[199] but, though a civil husband, he spared her no mortification that his carelessness could inflict. His sister, the Duchesse de Grammont, too openly connected with him by more ties than of blood, had absolute influence over him, and exerted it cruelly and grossly to insult the Duchesse de Choiseul, who, more than once, was on the point of retiring into a convent, though without the least belief of the doctrines held there. Madame de Grammont, who had none of the accomplishments that graced the small but harmonious figure of the Duchesse de Choiseul, had masculine sense, and almost masculine manners. She was wonderfully agreeable when she pleased, a vehement friend, a rude and insolent enemy. The nation revered and neglected the wife; detested and bowed to the sister. The Minister had crushed the Jesuits, for he loved sudden strokes of éclat; and, to carry that measure, had countenanced the Parliaments till they grew almost too ungovernable. But as he seldom acted on deep system, he sometimes took up a tone of authority, and as quickly relaxed it—a conduct that confounded the nation and a little the Parliaments; but that war from thoughtlessness, or to ruin a rival, the Duc d’Aiguillon, he chiefly left to the latter; and he could not have left it to worse hands. Proud, ambitious, vindictive, and void of honour or principle, the Duc d’Aiguillon, with very moderate parts, aimed at power with the Crown, by being the Minister of its tyranny.[200] The infamous oppression exercised on that undaunted man, M. de la Chalotais,[201] flowed from the revenge of this Duc, who, to carry his point, lent himself even to the exploded Jesuits: and though that connection could be no secret to the Duc de Choiseul, he suffered rather than encouraged a plan that clashed so much with the service he had rendered to his country by abolishing the Order. Nor was it to his honour that shame and the outcry of mankind rescued M. de la Chalotais, rather than the justice of the Prime Minister.[202]
The Parliaments of France were filled with many great, able, and steady magistrates. The philosophy and studies of the age had opened their eyes on the rights of mankind; and they attempted with heroic firmness to shake off the chains that galled their country. Yet a distinction should be made between the magistrates and the men called or calling themselves philosophers. The latter were really a set of authors and beaux esprits, who, aping the sentiments of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire, especially of the latter, endeavoured to raise themselves to an independent rank, to a kind of legislation in the community. After attacking and throwing off Christianity, they ran wildly into the fondest and most absurd doctrines of the old Greek philosophers; and, with the lightness of their own nation, and prompted by arrogance and love of pre-eminent singularity, they wrote atheism with little reserve, and talked it without any. The chief of these vain and loquacious witlings were D’Alembert,[203] Diderot, and that puny writer Marmontel. I am sorry to add to the list the name of a far more amiable and more profound man, M. Buffon, though, except in their indecent petulance, he too much resembled the rest of his cotemporaries in his sentiments. The women, who hurry into any new fashion, and then lead it, talked of matter and metaphysics with as little caution and as much ignorance as their directors. The magistrates of the Parliaments were very different men. Sober on the religion of their country, they meddled with it no farther than as it interfered with liberty; and few of them were so audacious in their most private conversation as to adopt the abominable licentiousness of the men I have been describing. But if they were decent on religion, they had not the same prudence in the conduct of their civil views. Heated by the term Parliament, they chose to believe, at least to inculcate the belief, that they were possessed of the rights of a British Senate. Nothing could be more meritorious than a struggle for such a system. But the Parliaments of France were not only nothing but courts of judicature, but the pretension was too early and too untimely to be yet pushed. As I had some friends in the Parliament of Paris, I remonstrated to them on the danger they ran of over-turning an excellent cause by their precipitation. To obtain solidly and step by step some material concessions, was the conduct they should have pursued. Whatever little they should so attain would be a benefit to the nation; time and precedent might add more. A minority or national distress would have opened a wider door; but by setting out with unbounded pretensions, unfounded in their Constitution, they warned the Crown to be on its guard; and, what was worse, they could depend on no support but in their own courage and in that uncertain resource, patriotic martyrdom. The Crown, popular in France whenever it pleases, and almost in any country, and powerful without popularity in that country, could not but regard their pretensions with the eye of jealousy. The nobility, ignorant, haughty, and willing to be tyrannized over by one that they might be authorized to tyrannize over thousands, were, and must be, disinclined to the extension of subordinate jurisdiction. The clergy were the natural and now the provoked enemies of the Parliaments. The military are seldom captivated by any franchises but their own; are devoted to the Crown, and led by, and composed of, the nobility: nor did the Parliaments take any pains to make a schism in the soldiery. Even the people, who would taste most benefit from acquisitions to liberty, were disinclined to the Parliaments. The Presidents purchase their charges, and enjoy them with a[204] state and haughtiness that is ill-relished by the commonalty. Able manifestos were slight arms against such a combination of prejudices. While I staid in France I had an opportunity of seeing with what a momentary breath the Crown could puff away a cloud and tempest of remonstrances. Being pushed too home, the King, suddenly and very early in the morning, appeared in the Chamber of Parliament. The Magistrates were in bed, were summoned, and found the King surrounded with his guards, and with all the apparatus of majesty. He commanded four of his Ministers to take their seats at his feet in a place where they had no right. He called for the registers, tore out their remonstrances, enjoined silence to the Parliament, and departed. In the street he met the Sacrament, alighted from his coach, knelt in the dirt, and received the blessings of all the old beggar-women. By night the consternation was universal; no man dropped a word, unless in commendation of the King’s firmness. The Magistrates sighed, but respectfully. The philosophers were frightened out of their senses. In a few months the Parliaments recovered their spirit, and the Court again temporized. Yet when their memorials had been read, and had their vogue in common with the poems and operas of the week, the sensation ceased, and lettres de cachet lost nothing of their vigour.
There was scarce a man of quality in France above the rank of president that countenanced the cause. There was one of the blood royal that affected to be their protector; but too much despised by the Court, too inconsiderable and too half-witted to hurt anybody but himself. This was the Prince of Conti. Handsome and royal in his figure, gracious at times, but arrogant and overbearing, luxurious and expensive, he had gathered together a sort of Court of those who had no hopes at the King’s, but without the power of giving or receiving any support. Confused in his ideas, yet clear in his opinion of superior intelligence, he was at once diffuse and incomprehensible. The little tyrant of a puny circle, he gave himself for the patron of liberty. No man would have carried his own privileges farther. The Court took no umbrage at such a foe.[205]
It could not but be a singular satisfaction to me to find in so adverse a nation so few men whose abilities were formidable. One or two of the subordinate Ministers were men of domestic and civil address. The Prince de Soubise, a sensible man of fair character, who enjoyed the most personal favour with the King, and, it was thought, might be Minister if he pleased, had no ambition.[206] The Maréchal d’Estrèes was a good-humoured old nurse;[207] the Maréchal de Broglie[208] as empty a man, except in the theory of discipline, as ever I knew. The Comte, his brother, who had more parts, had not enough to make them useful;[209] and both brothers were in disgrace. The Marquess de Castries,[210] a good officer, was not on any terms with Choiseul, and was no deep genius. The Duc de Praslin, the Minister’s cousin, was ill-tempered and disagreeable, and far from possessing superior abilities.[211] The clergy were at a low ebb. The Archbishop of Toulouse, reckoned the most rising of the order, was aspiring and artful, but absorbed in his own attention to intrigue, which gave him an air of absence. He was only considerable by comparison.[212] He and many of his order did not disguise their contempt for their own religion. As the women who had most sway were Freethinkers, a fashionable clergyman was by consequence an infidel. The ablest man I knew, and he as indiscreet as the Duc de Choiseul, was the old Comte de Maurepas. Lively, gay, and agreeable, he seemed to feel no regret for his disgrace, though he ought to have blushed at the imprudence that occasioned it. He had not only caused to be written, but himself, at his own table at Versailles, before a large company, had sung, a severe ballad on Madame de Pompadour. His fall and a long exile were the consequence. To make his ruin irrecoverable, she persuaded the King that he had poisoned a former mistress, the Duchesse de Chateauroux. From the same animosity, Madame de Pompadour had diverted a large sum that Maurepas had destined to re-establish their marine. Knowing his enmity to this country, I told him, and the compliment was true, that it was fortunate for England that he had been so long divested of power.[213]
CHAPTER XII.
Death of the Pretender.—Intrigues against the Ministry.—Debates on the Stamp Act, and the Petition from America.—First Speech of Mr. Edmund Burke.—Character of his Oratory.—Mr. William Burke.
On the first day of the year died at Albano that sport of fortune, the Chevalier de St. George, better known by the appellation of the Old Pretender. He had not only outlived his hopes, but almost all those who had given him any hopes. His party was dwindled to scarce any but Catholics; and though he left two sons, his line was verging to extinction. The second son was actually a Cardinal; the elder, sunk in drunkenness, despair, and neglect at Bouillon.[214] His father’s death seemed a little to reanimate him: but that revival was but waking to new mortification. The Court of France did not even put on mourning for the father; and when Prince Charles determined to set out for Rome, the Pope despatched a courier to prevent him. The Roman nobility were not fond of being preceded even by a phantom of royalty; and both they and the College of Cardinals were apprehensive of the sottishness and rashness of the young man. The Pope dreaded the resentment of England, and feared an order to prohibit English travellers from visiting Rome; a mighty source of wealth to that city. And he,[215] who had so obstinately protected the Jesuits against the threats of France and Spain, and who at last sacrificed part of his dominions[216] to his zeal for the Order, had the timidity to renounce the most meritorious martyr of the Church, rather than expose himself to the very uncertain vengeance of a heretic Court. The Young Pretender persisted in his journey: the Pope as pertinaciously refused to acknowledge him for King of England; yet with the additional absurdity of continuing to style him Prince of Wales—though he could not be the latter without becoming the former. To such complete humiliation was reduced that ever unfortunate house of Stuart, now at last denied that empty sound of royalty by that Church and Court for which they had sacrificed three kingdoms! Pathetically might the Prince have exclaimed,
“Hic pietatis honos! sic nos in sceptra reponis!”