“I don’t know how it is,” continued he, “when I had something to do in advising, there were always three hundred gentlemen ready to be of my opinion—I don’t know how it came about—perhaps it was their modesty—I wish they would not be quite so modest. Indeed there was one person who is now gone to the House of Lords, and sits there by an old barony,[222] who was honest enough to disagree with me, and called it my German war: I have loved him ever since for being so honest to speak his mind; I see his employment is taken from him; had I been employed, he is one of the first persons I should have endeavoured to keep in, for no other reason but because he had differed with me. When I was in power, I do not doubt but I had friends who would have advised me to burn my fingers, and would have recommended such a tax as this. Look at past Ministers, and see what they thought of it. Lord Halifax,[223] educated in this House, Lord Oxford,[224] Lord Orford,[225] a great revenue minister, never thought of THIS. If you had the right, it would be a fatal policy; for will not that people, if they share your taxes, claim the right of manufactures, of free trade, of every other privilege of the mother-country? An honourable gentleman talked of a barleycorn; I say this tax is but a barleycorn—fifty thousand pounds are but a barleycorn. Will you have your Treasury look big at the expense of two millions? My ideas and knowledge of America have been chiefly learnt from gentlemen of the army. There is not the captain of a company of foot that is not fit to be a Governor of North America. How can you depend upon Spain after the treatment she has shown to that brave and gallant officer,[226] who has suffered for his lenity towards them at the Manillas, and now feels their perfidy? It were to be wished that the heart of every grandee in Spain beat as high as his! In the situation things are, nobody can trade in North America but a lawyer. I hate distinctions; I do not consider the soil or the cradle where a man is nursed; I look for sense and wisdom, if he has it. I have done all in my power to show I hate distinctions. Before this war it was a measure not to trust the sword in the hands of the northern part of his Majesty’s subjects; but the late war convinced everybody what just praise they deserved for their conduct.” Here he was called to order by Mr. Grenville, who said, “This is not the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth time that the honourable gentleman has mistaken or misrepresented. I have also been misrepresented upon other subjects, particularly with regard to the Spanish trade. I call upon gentlemen now in power to prove I gave any orders to prevent that trade, or any other, but at the request of the merchants themselves.” Here Mr. Grenville himself was called to order by Lord Strange, who observed, how much Pitt and Grenville had led the House astray from the debate; which Onslow excused by saying, that the first day of a Session, when the King’s speech is debated, is always understood to be a day of free conversation. Still much confusion ensued; and at last the Chancellor of the Exchequer[227] said, in answer to Grenville, that when accounts relative to trade should be produced, they would prove to be in a melancholy state. Mr. Conway said, that the explanation which Mr. Pitt had been pleased to give, had relieved his mind; he considered from how high a drop fell that fell from him, and what an effect it had upon the rest of the world. He assured Mr. Pitt how ready he was, he would not say, to act with him, but under him, and declared he knew at present of no hidden influence. The Address passed without a negative.
Mr. Conway, then, by order of his Majesty, presented at the bar the letters and different intelligence to and from America, and moved to have them taken into consideration on the Thursday sevennight following.[228] Mr. Rigby proposed to have them printed. Mr. Conway observed, that those papers mentioned particular names of men and their transactions, and therefore objected to the printing. Mr. Nugent said, Too much had been done now to leave any room for secrecy; and Mr. Conway gave it up. Huske[229] told the House very properly, that, if they printed the names, they would never have any more intelligence: on which the Attorney-General proposed, as was done on the inquiry into the loss of Minorca, to print the papers, but omit names. It passed, however, for printing all. The next day Sir George Saville, who had been absent, and the Speaker,[230] who had been uneasy at the order for printing the names, prevailed to have the order for the names revoked, and the Speaker was entrusted with the supervisal.
Mr. Pitt’s speech, as I have said, gave great offence, and even to the Scotch, though he had endeavoured to distinguish them from Lord Bute. It was a greater disappointment to the late Ministers, who had not expected that he would prove so favourable to their successors. Lord Sandwich, so recently a persecutor of Wilkes and the press, had now set up a most virulent and scurrilous paper, called Anti-Sejanus,[231] written by one Scott, an hireling parson, and chiefly levelled at Lord Bute. Concluding that Mr. Pitt did not approve of any men who enjoyed the power at which he himself aimed, the new daily libel set out with profuse encomiums on him. It now took a short turn, and involved Mr. Pitt, too, in a medley of scurrility; but what with want of talents, what with want of decency, this paper was one of those few vehicles of ribaldry which was forced to put itself to death before the object of its patron was answered.
On the 27th of January, Mr. Cooke, of Middlesex, presented a petition from some of the North American provinces assembled in Congress, against the Stamp Act. Jenkinson and Dyson, placemen, but creatures of Lord Bute, opposed receiving it; as did Nugent and Ellis, who called it a dangerous federal union. Dowdeswell, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, agreed with them, as there was nothing, he said, in the petition, but what had been already received in others from the separate provinces, and therefore he wished Cooke to withdraw what he had offered. Mr. Pitt warmly undertook the protection of the petition, which he affirmed was innocent, dutiful, and respectful. He did not know the time, he said, when he had been counsellor to timid councils; but on this occasion should have thought it happy to have made this the first act of harmony. He painted the Americans as people who, in an ill-fated hour, had left this country to fly from the Star Chamber and High Commission Courts. The desert smiled upon them in comparison of this country. It was the evil genius of this country that had riveted amongst them this union, now called dangerous and federal. He did not see but honest Wildman’s[232] or Newmarket might be talked of in the same strain. This country upon occasion has its meetings, and nobody objects to them; but the names of six or eight Americans are to be big with danger. He could not guess, by the turn of the debate, whether the Administration intended lenity or not. To him lenity was recommended by every argument. He would emphatically hear the Colonies upon this their petition. The right of representation and taxation always went together and should never be separated. Except for the principles of Government, records were out of the question. “You have broken,” continued he, “the original compact, if you have not a right of taxation.” The repeal of the Stamp Act was an inferior consideration to receiving this petition.
Sir Fletcher Norton rose with great heat, and said, He could hardly keep his temper at some words that had fallen from the right honourable gentleman. He had said, that the original compact had been broken between us and America, if the House had not the right of taxation. Pitt rose to explain—Norton continued; “The gentleman now says, I mistook his words; I do not now understand them.” Pitt interrupted him angrily, and said, “I did say the Colony compact would be broken—and what then?” Norton replied, “The gentleman speaks out now, and I understand him; and if the House go along with me, the gentleman will go to another place.”[233] Pitt at this looked with the utmost contempt, tossed up his chin, and cried, “Oh! oh!—oh! oh!” “I will bear that from no man,” said Norton: “changing their place, did not make Englishmen change their allegiance. I say the gentleman sounds the trumpet to rebellion; or would he have the strangers in the gallery go away with these his opinions? He has chilled my blood at the idea.” “The gentleman,” rejoined Pitt, “says I have chilled his blood: I shall be glad to meet him in any place with the same opinions, when his blood is warmer.”
Hussey, Colonel Barré, Thurlow, and, of the Ministerial people, Lord Howe and Onslow, only were for hearing the petition; but Conway objected, as it came from the Congress, and said, if the separate petitions had been heard last year, this would not have happened now. He wished to have the petition withdrawn, as he should be sorry to have a negative put upon it. George Grenville insisted on the House deciding as the question had been proposed. Burke, who maintained that the very presentation of the petition was an acknowledgment of the right of the House, declared for receiving it; but Lord John Cavendish and Alderman Baker declaring they thought it of little importance; and the former moving for the orders of the day, that motion was carried without a division.
There appeared in this debate a new speaker, whose fame for eloquence soon rose high above the ordinary pitch. His name was Edmund Burke, (whom I have just mentioned,) an Irishman, of a Roman Catholic family, and actually married to one of that persuasion.[234] He had been known to the public for a few years by his “Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful,” and other ingenious works; but the narrowness of his fortune had kept him down, and his best revenue had arisen from writing for booksellers. Lord Rockingham, on being raised to the head of the Treasury, had taken Burke for his private Secretary, as Mr. Conway had his cousin William. Edmund immediately proved a bitter scourge to George Grenville, whose tedious harangues he ridiculed with infinite wit, and answered with equal argument. Grenville himself was not more copious; but, with unexhausted fertility, Burke had an imagination that poured out new ideas, metaphors, and allusions, which came forth ready dressed in the most ornamental and yet the most correct language. In truth, he was so fond of flowers, that he snatched them, if they presented themselves, even from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. His wit, though prepared, seldom failed him; his judgment often. Aiming always at the brilliant, and rarely concise, it appeared that he felt nothing really but the lust of applause. His knowledge was infinite, but vanity had the only key to it; and though no doubt he aspired highly, he seemed content when he had satisfied the glory of the day, whatever proved the event of the debate. This kind of eloquence contented himself, and often his party; but the House grew weary at length of so many essays. Having come too late into public life, and being too conceited to study men whom he thought his inferiors in ability, he proved a very indifferent politician—the case of many men I have known, who have dealt too much in books or a profession: they apply their knowledge to objects to which it does not belong, and think it as easy to govern men, when they rise above them, as they found when themselves were lower and led their superiors by flattery. It is perhaps more expedient for a man of mean birth to be humble after his exaltation than before. Insolence is more easily tolerated in an inferior, than in an inferior mounted above his superiors.[235]
William Burke, the cousin of Edmund, wrote with ingenuity and sharpness; and both of them were serviceable to the new Administration, by party papers. But William, as an orator, had neither manner nor talents, and yet wanted little of his cousin’s presumption.[236] Edmund, though the idol of his party, had nothing of the pathetic and imposing dignity of Pitt, though possessed of far more knowledge, and more reasoning abilities. But Pitt could awe those whom he could no longer lead, and never seemed greater than when abandoned by all. Charles Townshend, who had studied nothing accurately or with attention, had parts that embraced all knowledge with such quickness, that he seemed to create knowledge instead of searching for it; and, ready as Burke’s wit was, it appeared artificial when set by that of Charles Townshend, which was so abundant, that in him it seemed a loss of time to think. He had but to speak, and all he said was new, natural, and yet uncommon. If Burke replied extempore, his very answers, that sprang from what had been said by others, were so painted and artfully arranged, that they wore the appearance of study and preparation: like beautiful translations, they seemed to want the soul of the original author. Townshend’s speeches, like the Satires of Pope, had a thousand times more sense and meaning than the majestic blank verse of Pitt; and yet, the latter, like Milton, stalked with a conscious dignity of pre-eminence, and fascinated his audience with that respect which always attends the pompous but often hollow idea of the sublime.