On the 18th a meeting of the Opposition was held at Sir George Saville’s, to consult whether they should bring on, or defer for some time longer, a renewal of the question on General Warrants. The doubt was raised by the ill health of Mr. Pitt. James Grenville and a nephew of Lord Chief Justice Pratt, who attended the meeting, would not say that Mr. Pitt desired the motion should be deferred. The company squabbled till two in the morning, and then agreed to adjourn the measure. Sir William Meredith wrote to acquaint George Grenville with this procrastination—a ridiculous piece of candour, and received properly by Grenville, who made no answer. These assemblies I seldom or never attended; they were childish imitations of Parliaments, rarely produced any good, and only taught a party to quarrel and split into less factions. Many who cannot utter in the House of Commons can prattle in a private room. Business can never be reduced to too few heads. There should, in party as well as in Government, be one man who should consult others separately, and act as he finds best from the result of that advice, and of his own judgment: but he should let the rest know as little as possible that they are almost all probably of different opinions.
On the 21st, Dowdeswell proposed to reduce the sixteen thousand seamen to eleven thousand, but without effect. On the contrary, Charles Townshend spoke for the larger number in warm terms, and declared he had always approved the peace. This desertion did not surprise me: nor was it owing solely to his fickleness. He was now influenced by Lord George Sackville, who, dissatisfied with Lord Bute for not supporting him, had joined the Opposition: Oppositions are always great whitewashers. But the declining state of the Opposition, by deaths and other causes which I have mentioned, had alarmed Lord George, and he began to look towards Grenville, who would want all manner of strength to support himself against the Favourite.
On Jan. 23rd, the day of voting the army for the year, there happened a very spirited debate.[45] Beckford began it, by declaring that if any man would second him, he would oppose so large a number as 16,000 men, because we were in no danger of being attacked by surprise; and because he apprehended there was an intention of modelling the army, which he concluded from the dismission of General Conway. He mentioned, too, an expression dropped by Charles Townshend, which he said had made his ears tingle; it was that the Colonies were not to be emancipated. The Colonies, said Beckford, are more free than Ireland, for America had not been conquered: on the contrary, it was inhabited by the conquerors. Townshend ridiculed Beckford’s alarm, affirming he had only meant that the Colonies were not to be emancipated from their dependence on the supremacy of this country. Beckford told him he had expressed a single idea by a multitude of circumlocutions, and was troubled with a diarrhœa of words—an expression with which Townshend was much hurt.
Nicholson Calvert and George Onslow opened on the dismission of Conway in very strong terms. The former said, Grenville[46] had avowed it was for parliamentary conduct when he owned he had thought himself turned out for a similar cause. Onslow called the Ministers profligate and abandoned; and Lord Strange attempting to defend them, was so roughly handled on his own tergiversations by Onslow, Sir George Saville, and Thomas Townshend, that he who was wont to be all spirit, quickness, and fire, was quite abashed, and showed at least the sensibility of virtue. Thomas Townshend went farther, mentioned a list of sixteen officers, carried into the closet for dismission by Lord Sandwich: and seeing the latter sitting under the gallery, he turned towards him, and said he would tell that Minister to his face in any private company, that he was a profligate Minister. Onslow added, that they had been so cowardly as to wait for the end of the session, and skulk behind the recess.
Rigby said the Opponents had quoted all the reigns to the last, but had stopped short there, and had not mentioned Sir Robert Walpole, who had said it must be a pitiful Minister that would not dare to turn out a man that voted against him. For himself, he said he did not believe the question of Mr. Conway’s dismission would be brought on; which Lord John Cavendish assured him it would be.
Lord Harry Poulet[47] told Grenville that he would be ashamed to show his face, if he could be ashamed of anything, if his uncle Lord Cobham[48] could rise from the dead—Grenville stopped him, and said if his Lordship had a mind to use such language, he knew where to find him.—Others interposing to reconcile them, Grenville acknowledged he had thrown out a challenge; but at last explained it away, and the matter ended. Ellis indiscreetly affirmed that the army was necessary to support the civil magistrate. Beckford replied, that at the late riot on burning the North Briton, the magistrates of the City had secured one of the rioters without military force.
Grenville entered into a long discussion of the Crown’s prerogative of dismission; and confounded civil and military officers, without making the necessary distinction, that the latter lose a profession. He himself, he said, had not inquired formerly why he was turned out. Should he be turned out to-morrow, he would not inquire, though if he did his duty and was approved by his country, he should think it extraordinary. This sentence, seemingly incoherent with, nay, contradictory to, the rest of his speech, was, no doubt, levelled at Lord Bute, and dictated by the uneasiness of Grenville’s situation, then not generally known. He proceeded to say on the dismissed officers that some might think one meritorious, some another; others might see cause of blame. This invidious hint called up General Conway, who with exceeding warmth and spirit made one of his most admired speeches. He had asked, he said, for a court-martial, that, if anything had been thought defective in his conduct, he might be questioned on it. The refusal had proved that his dismission had flowed from no military offence. Even in the days of Charles II. the Lords Clarendon and Southampton had, though requested by the King to forbear, spoken against his measures, and yet had not been dismissed.[49] The situation of officers was grievous; called on by conscience and by honour, they were chastised if not obedient. Another profession was more fortunate; Bishops were made for life; and, indeed, were piously obsequious; they might be preferred for their behaviour in Parliament, but could not be dismissed for it. He himself had received intimations to take care what he did—Grenville started!—yet he should not say from what quarter; he would not reveal what was not proper; but he had been bid to take care what he did. He had despised those menaces, had done his duty, and had been punished. He knew the threats had not come from the King, who had restored Sir Henry Erskine. He had made, he said, a declaration that he was attached to no party, yet that allegiance, it seemed, had not been thought sufficient. He concluded with strongly exhorting his brother officers not to be made slaves—he might as well have called on the Bishops.
This debate was doubly mortifying to the Ministers, who were at once so rudely tasked by the Opposition, and unsupported by every man of the Favourite’s faction—a tacit method of disavowing them; and an encouragement to those who might be tempted to oppose them.
On the 26th Mr. Chaworth, a private gentleman of fair character, was killed at a tavern by Lord Byron in a duel, to which the latter had been driven by the undisguised contempt with which the former had treated his want of honour and spirit at a club where they had just dined together. Lord Byron was formally tried by his Peers,[50] and escaped punishment, in consideration of the provocation he had received.
On the 29th the question of General Warrants was again renewed in the House of Commons by Sir William Meredith,[51] more agreeably, indeed, to principle than to prudence. I had endeavoured to divert the attempt and had the concurrence of the Lord Chief Justice Pratt’s opinion, we both apprehending, from the great diminution of our party since the preceding winter, that, as we should make a much more inconsiderable figure on a division in Parliament than we had done before on the same question, the merits of the cause would suffer more from that defeat than we should gain by reviving the memory of it. Though the event in the House proved what we had foreseen, we found, however, strength enough to support a battle till between four and five in the morning. Sir W. Meredith, with great force and severity, exposed the conduct of Lord Halifax, who shamefully to that hour (and indeed for some years afterwards) defeated all prosecutions against him at Wilkes’s suit, by standing on the privilege of his peerage. If they, said Sir William, who issued the warrants, had put themselves on the justice of their country, it would have alleviated their guilt; but while the privilege of the House of Commons was given up, the privilege of the other House had interfered to stop justice. He then moved that General Warrants were not consonant to law or to the liberty of the subject; and in a second question, if against a Member. Lord Strafford himself, he said, had issued but one, had pleaded that it was according to practice, and yet had recalled it. Charles II. had applied to Parliament for leave to do it by the Licensing Act. Application had been made in King William’s reign to renew that act, but it was refused. Some said the illegality was decided by the law; others that it was not. Some would say that the House of Commons was not to declare what was law. Who could bring it to an issue? Dryden Leach and other printers were ruined, and could not carry on the suit! Wilkes expelled, outlawed, banished, had no longer any interest in the question: the Secretaries of State did not desire to brine it to any issue; the House of Commons alone could do it. Sir Edward Coke declared, that, when courts of law would not decide on a clear question, the House of Commons ought. Sir Alexander Gilmour added, that not one lawyer, last year, had defended the legality of General Warrants, but had given assurances that they would be decided in the Courts below; and yet that decision had been postponed till Wilkes had been outlawed.