The same day Lord Dartmouth resigned the Board of Trade, and Charles Yorke his post of Attorney-General. Dowdeswell was asked what he should like: he replied, the King had placed him above what he had pretensions to, but having been there he could take nothing lower. Though in straitened circumstances and burthened with a numerous offspring, he adhered to his party, and refused to be First Lord of Trade, or Half-Paymaster. His character was exceedingly fair; but among many examples of that time, he had been raised above his abilities, and was more respected for his fall than for his exaltation.[278]
A pension of 4000l. a year was offered to, and rejected by, the Duke of Newcastle, who with all his faults and weaknesses was never stained with avarice and rapaciousness. The deepest tinge of that dirty vice blotted the late Chancellor Northington, who sold the Seals for the President’s place, augmented by 5000l. a year, with the contingency of 2000l. a year if he should quit the place of President, and for the reversion of the Hanaper for two lives.[279] Grants so exorbitant, and so void of any colour of merit in the fool on whom they were showered, that if they cast a shade on the dawn of Mr. Pitt’s new Administration, or recalled the memory of his former waste, they reflected lustre on the fallen Ministry, who had been beyond example sparing of such shameless profusion. It was not lessened by another contingent pension to Lord Camden in case he should lose the Seals: yet as he quitted the place of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas for life, the boon was far more justifiable; especially in an age when men were paid alike for merit and demerit, for accepting or losing employments.
The services of the discarded Ministers were set forth in a small, well written tract, called “A Short History of a late Short Administration.” It did justice to their integrity, and it could not do too much.[280] The nation felt and allowed their merit. Some counties and corporations complimented them in addresses. The Parliament followed the Court, and supported whoever was the actual Minister; uniform in its way of voting, though its votes of every year were inconsistent with those of the preceding.
The glory with which the late Ministers retired was half of it plucked from the laurels of the new Earl of Chatham. That fatal title blasted all the affection which his country had borne to him, and which he had deserved so well. Had he been as sordid as Lord Northington, he could not have sunk lower in the public esteem. The people, though he had done no act to occasion reproach, thought he had sold them for a title, and, as words fascinate or enrage them, their idol Mr. Pitt was forgotten in their detestation of the Lord Chatham. He was paralleled with Lord Bath, and became the object at which were shot all the arrows of calumny. He had borne his head above the obloquy that attended his former pension—not a mouth was opened now in defence of his title; as innocent as his pension, since neither betrayed him into any deed of servility to prerogative and despotism. Both were injudicious; the last irrecoverably so. The blow was more ruinous to his country than to himself. While he held the love of the people, nothing was so formidable in Europe as his name. The talons of the lion were drawn, when he was no longer awful in his own forests.
The City of London had intended to celebrate Mr. Pitt’s return to employment, and lamps for an illumination had been placed round the Monument. But no sooner did they hear of his new dignity, than the festival was counter-ordered. The great engine of this dissatisfaction was Lord Temple, who was so shameless as to publish the history of their breach, in which he betrayed every private passage that Mr. Pitt had dropped in their negotiation and quarrel, which could tend to inflame the public or private persons against him.[281] This malignant man worked in the mines of successive factions for near thirty years together. To relate them is writing his life.
The next month was spent in changes and preferments, which I shall recapitulate as briefly as I can. Sir Charles Saunders, instigated by Lord Albemarle, resigned his seat at the Admiralty, on pretence of disliking Lord Egmont, the first Commissioner. Lord Albemarle had been refused the Rangership of the Parks at Windsor. John Yorke[282] retired from the same board. Within a few days Lord Egmont himself resigned, telling the King he disapproved of Lord Chatham’s foreign system, and should be afraid of embarrassing his Majesty’s affairs. If they were to be debated in Council, he could submit to the majority; but as he found one man was to have more weight than six,[283] he begged to be unemployed.
Lord Chatham was hurt at losing Saunders, one of his favourite and most successful admirals in the last war. Keppel,[284] too, intimated a like design of retiring. To prevent the one and recover the other, Lord Chatham, though sorely unwilling to raise Sir Charles Saunders above Sir Edward Hawke and Sir George Pocock, at last put the Admiralty into the hands of Saunders. Lord Granby was appointed Commander-in-chief, and Lord Ligonier quieted with an earldom—at near ninety, and with a reversion to his nephew of fifteen hundred pounds a year of his pension. Even the promotion of Lord Granby was a portion of another bargain, the price of his father, the Duke of Rutland’s, quitting Master of the Horse, which was given to Lord Hertford, that he might cede the government of Ireland to Lord Bristol. Nor was the post of Master of the Horse sufficient: the King promised Lord Hertford should have the Chamberlain’s staff on the next vacancy, which his Majesty added, he wished was then—a confirmation of his dislike of the Duke of Portland. Lord Hertford was too good a courtier not to acquiesce, or to be satisfied. He prevailed to have the borough of Orford, then dependant on the Crown, where Lord Hertford had an estate, ceded to him,—a boon unprecedented, and that made much noise. The ill-conduct of the Court had reduced the Crown to little more than to be able to make changes; for it could scarce make an Administration, though both Houses were ready to support any that was made.
I ought to have mentioned, that, in consequence of the Duke of Bedford’s offers, the Admiralty, on Lord Egmont’s demission, was offered to Lord Gower; Lord Chatham still deluding himself with the thought that he could detach any separate man from any connection. But if men were grown more venal, they were grown, too, to understand their own interests better than to loosen their strength by separating themselves from powerful bodies; a single and temporary emolument could not compensate for the support of their friends. Lord Gower answered that he could not stand alone in so responsible a place, and was connected with none of the present Ministry.
Lord Frederick Campbell was removed, and Mr. Mackenzie restored to his ancient place.
However alert and peremptory Lord Chatham was in offending or promoting, domestic power by no means occupied his thoughts. The stocks had fallen on his accession, from the apprehension entertained that he would hurry into war. Had his views succeeded, one cannot tell how soon it might have been his measure. I know certainly that he despatched emissaries to visit the frontier towns in France. His immediate and avowed purpose was to cement an union between England, Russia, and Prussia.