It appeared that these professions were not empty words. The King continued to distinguish Conway by favour, confidence, and benefits. He was constantly called to the most secret counsels of State, and remained, as much as he would, a leader in the House of Commons. The Queen, too, told him, she had seen many kiss hands, but wished to see him soon kiss hands again. But this favour was no recommendation to Grafton and his new allies, though Conway, who bore no rancour to them, behaved with cordiality; and to introduce Lord Weymouth to the succession he left him, made a dinner for him to meet the foreign Ministers. But Grafton’s countenance grew so changed to him, that even the Chancellor, who was but half a politician, perceived it at Council, where the Duke paid no deference to Conway’s opinion. But though this estrangement was probably owing to Rigby’s machination, joined to the Duke’s fickleness, the secret lay deeper, and will appear hereafter, should I continue these Memoirs, of which I am weary, and fear the reader must be more so; though, as I was not engaged in the ensuing transactions, and having quitted Parliament, am not able to detail the debates there, my narrative will be less prolix, and the events lie in a narrower compass. At present I mean to close this part with the dissolution of the first Parliament of this reign.
The same day that Conway resigned the Seals, Lord Weymouth was declared Secretary of State. At the same time Lord Hillsborough kissed hands for the American department; but nominally retaining the Post Office, the salary of which he paid to Lord Sandwich till the elections should be over,—there being so strict a disqualifying clause in the bill for prohibiting the Postmasters from interfering in elections, which Sandwich was determined to do to the utmost, that he did not dare to accept the office in his own name till he had incurred the guilt.
Another affair of a private nature became politics, though of little consequence. Lord Bottetort, of the Bedchamber, and a kind of second-rate favourite, had engaged in an adventure with a company of copper-workers at Warmley. They broke. Lord Bottetort, in order to cover his estate from the creditors, begged a privy seal, to incorporate the Company, as private estates would not then be answerable. The King granted his request, but Lord Chatham, aware of the deception, honestly refused to affix the Seal to the Patent, pleading that he was not able. Lord Bottetort, outrageous at the disappointment, threatened to petition the House of Lords to address for the removal of Lord Chatham, as incapable of executing his office. The Earl would not yield, but in the middle of the next month, did acquiesce in resigning the Seal for a short time, that, being put into commission, it might be set to the grant;[69] after which he resumed it again,—to as little purpose as he had held it before. Lord Bottetort, not able to retrieve his losses, obtained the Government of Virginia in the following summer, and repaired thither, where he died.
The bill for restraining the Dividends of the East India Company was renewed, and after great debates carried by 130 to 41. Wedderburn opposed it strongly, and took occasion to ask, Who was the Minister of the House of Commons, now General Conway had resigned? He complained, too, of the erection of a third Secretary of State.
The nearness of a general election had now turned the attention of all men that way; and such a scene of profligacy and corruption began to display itself, that even the expiring House of Commons thought it became the modesty of their last moments to show indignation, if they showed no repentance: and while they were separately pursuing the same traffic, much of their public time was consumed in stigmatizing the practice. Beckford, on the 26th of January, moved for leave to bring in a bill to oblige the members to swear that they had not bribed their electors—a horrid bill, likely to produce nothing but a multiplication of perjury! It came out now, that the city of Oxford had acquainted Sir Thomas Stapylton[70] and Mr. Lee,[71] that they should be chosen for that town if they would contribute 7500l. towards paying the debts of the Corporation. The two gentlemen refused, and Oxford sold itself to the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Abingdon. Lord Strange took up the matter with zeal, and Sir Thomas was ordered to produce to the House the letter by which the offer had been made. It is not worth returning to this subject, and therefore I will conclude it briefly here. The Mayor of Oxford, and ten more of the Corporation, appearing at the Bar, confessing their crime, and asking pardon, Lord Strange moved to commit them to Newgate for a short time. This, after a debate, was agreed to. Beckford proposed an address to the Crown, that the Attorney-General might be ordered to prosecute them; but the House did not come into it, and they were discharged after confinement for five days. Dowdeswell proposed that Sir Thomas Stapylton should be thanked for rejecting the offer, and for telling the Corporation, that, as he did not intend to sell them, he could not afford to buy them; but Conway objecting that a mere rejection of corruption did not deserve the thanks of the House, which ought not to be rendered too common, the motion was dropped. The Duke and Earl not having been so scrupulous, and their agreement with the town having been entered into the book of the Corporation, the town-clerk was sent off with it to Calais; and Lord Strange was prevailed upon to absent himself from the House till the matter was hushed up.[72]
The Irish Parliament, which it was not so easy for the Crown to gratify, was consequently less tractable; and since the tax on places and pensions had sent over a bill for making their Parliaments, which lasted during the life of each reigning King, septennial,—this, in truth, had been a grievous concession made by the members to popularity, and in which both Houses had again trusted to the negative of the Crown. The Members of the House of Commons, who might look on themselves, under so young a Prince, as seated for life, could not taste a measure that rendered those seats precarious, or, if renewed, expensive. To their surprise and grief, the Council here advised the King to pass the bill—but with these alterations: instead of septennial, they made those Parliaments octennial, that both kingdoms might not be in tumult and confusion at the same time every seven years: and whereas the bill, as sent over, was not to take place under seven years; to punish those who had sent it, it was to operate immediately. If accepted on its return to Ireland, the Members would suffer for their promptitude in passing it; if rejected, they would lose their popularity—or should they start any method of rejection hostile to the Court, it would still be in the power of the Court to dissolve them. Lord Camden was the principal adviser of the King’s assent being given, from his affection to liberty and a free constitution—laudable motives, but productive afterwards of much inconvenience; for the Irish, who were pushing to throw off all dependence on England, looked on the concession as a symptom of weakness, and consequently hurried farther from that union which was necessary to both kingdoms. Scotland had been averse to union, but reaped the fullest benefits from it; and it was likely to confer many on Ireland, and to remove that narrow spirit by which we had been influenced to treat them with injustice. Mr. Grenville’s imprudence and rash economy had drawn such another line of separation between Great Britain and America; and he and Lord George Sackville Germaine[73] will long be remembered as the authors or causes of those divisions which have embroiled the mother-country and its members. The King’s assent to the Octennial Bill was received with such transports of joy all over Ireland, that the Parliament did not dare but pass it with its corrections, and were obliged to thank his Majesty for having passed it.
Marshal Sir Robert Rich[74] dying on the 1st of February, the King, who learnt the news on coming from Richmond, would not dine till he had written to Mr. Conway that he gave him the vacant regiment, and intended him a better—meaning the Blues, after Lord Ligonier.
On the 4th of January, the bill to regulate dividends was carried in the House of Lords by 70 to 30. Lord Weymouth apologized for himself, the Duke of Bedford, and their friends, saying, “that to be consistent, they must vote against the Court, as they had warmly opposed the same bill the last year.” Lord Temple told them they were pitifully silent now.
On the second reading of Beckford’s Bribery-bill, Dowdeswell and Burke opposed it for multiplying oaths, and while it restrained the Commons, left a power of corruption in the Crown and nobility. By the clause to disqualify those who bribed, it would subject the rights of elections, they said, to the courts below. The bill, however, was committed. But before the day came, the House went on new matter of the same species. Boroughs had been publicly advertized for sale in the newspapers; and there was a set of attorneys who rode the country and negotiated seats in the most indecent manner. Reynolds and Hickey, two of them, were taken up by order of the House, and some of those borough-brokers were sent to Newgate.
When the Bribery-bill was read in the committee, the oath appeared horrid to everybody, and was so rigorously worded, that it would have excluded every neighbourly act of kindness or charity. This was universally disapproved. The disqualifying clause met with not much better success. It would have encouraged informers without being a check on the Crown and Treasury. Dowdeswell proposed a clause to take away their votes at elections from all officers of the revenue. Upon this, one Fonnereau, a peevish man, who had all his life been a Court tool, complained that Chauncy Townshend,[75] a brother-dependant, but more favoured, had so much interest with the Ministers, that one Bennet, parson of Aldborough, and attached to Townshend, had vaunted that he could obtain the dismission of any officer of the revenue who should vote for Fonnereau.[76] Grenville caught artfully at this complaint, and with Blackstone and Dowdeswell insisted on inquiring into the affair. The Ministry made but a bad figure, though Lord North shone greatly, and was ably supported by Dyson. But the House was empty, few of the new courtiers were there, and of them Rigby took no part, till Grenville had left the House. Conway added to their distress by threatening to pursue up the affair of Fonnereau’s complaint.