On the day for fixing hearings of contested elections, Sir George Maccartney, who was returned from Russia, and had married Lord Bute’s second daughter, spoke for the first time, and with very bad success, though his parts had been much cried up. He was a young and handsome Irishman, attached to Lord Holland, with whose eldest son he had travelled as a kind of governor. He was an amiable man, with various knowledge, and singular memory, but no other extraordinary talents. He was now Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, in the room of Lord Frederic Campbell, than whom there were few men who had more grievously offended the King; but the humiliations which his Majesty had brought on himself, obliged him at one time or other to employ or reward those most obnoxious to him.
On the 14th, Sir Joseph Mawbey, formerly in Opposition, and made a baronet by the Whigs, presented a petition from Wilkes, complaining of the hard usage he had received, and couched in warm and offensive terms. Mawbey declared he had been enjoined by his constituents of Southwark to present the petition, intimating that his delivery of it was not a voluntary act. The man was vain, noisy, and foolish, and soon grew a hearty partisan of his client.[139] The House ordered the petition to lie on the table—a mark of dislike; and Lord Strange called for the record to show the commitment of Wilkes had been just. The step in his favour was thought injudicious, and likely to advance his expulsion.[140] Grenville, who by Lord Temple’s injunction was to be against that expulsion, knew not how to digest the petition; while the Opposition, with more reason, were for rescinding the iniquitous vote that had taken away Wilkes’s privilege.
CHAPTER IX.
War between Russia and Turkey.—The King of France’s new Mistress.—Death of the Duke of Newcastle.—Affairs of Corsica.—Quarrel between the Duke of Grafton and Lord Hertford.—Commencement of the Debate on Wilkes’s Case.—Ayliffe, a Solicitor, sent to Prison by the Lords.—Dispute concerning the Appearance of three Lords as Witnesses for Wilkes.—Riots at the Middlesex Election.—Characters of James Townshend, Sawbridge, and Colonel Onslow.—Publication of a Letter of Lord Weymouth.—Resolution Passed by the Lords on American Affairs.—The Cumberland Election.—Wilkes demands to be heard at the Bar of the House of Lords.—Ridiculous Importance given to this Person.
1768.
It was at this period that advice came of the Grand Signor having declared war against Russia, in consequence of the intrigues of the Duc de Choiseul at the Porte. France and the Czarina had long been on ill terms. She had thwarted the influence of that Court over the Northern Crowns, and mutual haughtiness had begotten mutual hatred. Choiseul, who, with the ambition of Richelieu, wanted his coolness and some of his art,—and who, though greater than the Cardinal by disdaining little revenge, thought great revenge spoke a great Minister, had conjured up this tempest, and soon had cause to lament his own work.[141] The arms of the Czarina, who had two hundred thousand of the best disciplined troops in Europe, ample provision of military stores, and a yearly saving of a fifth of her revenues, were not unlikely to miscarry against an unwieldy shattered empire, sunk in sloth and ignorance, and new to war from long disuse. It was not luxurious Bachas, the sudden weeds which shoot up to power in a seraglio, that Richelieu let loose on the Empire: it was Gustavus and his hardy Swedes. The event in both cases was suitable to the concoction. Catherine triumphed over the star of Choiseul, as Mr. Pitt had done. Even the rocks of little Corsica for some time kept at bay the armies of France. A still more contemptible enemy was undermining that enterprising Minister. Old Marshal Richelieu, who had preserved none of his faculties but that last talent of a decayed Frenchman—a spirit of backstairs intrigue, had contrived to give to his master at near sixty, what at twenty the King would not take from his recommendation,—a new mistress. On the death of Madame de Pompadour, his Majesty had declared that he was grown too old to expect love to his person, and therefore would have no more a favourite sultana. But, as if men only declare they know what is sensible in order to mark their folly in stronger colours, he now ran headlong into an amour that every circumstance attending it stamped with ridicule. The nymph was past twenty-six, and her charms, which were not striking, had lost more than their bloom. Nor had she ever risen to any distinction in her profession, but ranked with those wretched women who are the sport of the loosest debauchees, and the objects of the most casual amours. She had been entertained, not for his own pleasure, but to draw to his house young travelling Englishmen, by a Comte du Barry, who kept a gaming table, and who had exercised the same laudable industry in taverns here. Mademoiselle Lange was pitched upon by the Cabal of Choiseul’s enemies as the instrument of their plot, and of his downfall. To dignify this Helen with a title[142]—for Du Barry was a man of quality—his brother was ordered to marry her; and the other, from having been a pimp to Richelieu, ascended to be his associate in politics. Belle, first valet-de-chambre to the King, and who exercised the same function for his master as Du Barry for Richelieu, was prevailed on or bribed to present the new Countess to the Monarch.
On the 17th of November died the Duke of Newcastle at the age of seventy-five. He had had a stroke of palsy some months before; and then, and not till then, had totally abandoned politics. His life had been a proof that even in a free country great abilities are not necessary to govern it. Industry, perseverance, and intrigue, gave him that duration of power which shining talents and the favour of the Crown could not secure to Lord Granville, nor the first rank in eloquence and the most brilliant services to Lord Chatham. Adventitious cunning repaired Newcastle’s folly, rashness overset Lord Granville’s parts, and presumptuous impracticability Lord Chatham.
The same day Mr. Seymour moved for all papers that had passed between this Court and whatever other Power, relating to Corsica—a proposal so absurd, that he was forced to correct and restrict it to our correspondence with France on that subject: yet even thus it was little tasted. Grenville himself supported the motion coldly, and owned, that if he was pressed to decide, he should disapprove a war, if Corsica alone were the object.[143] Burke said, many would subscribe to the support of the Corsicans, if the Ministers would recall the proclamation issued when Lord Bute was at the head of affairs, to prohibit any aid being sent to those rebels—for so that unhappy people had been denominated by another free island! The young Duke of Devonshire, at that time at Florence, had given 400l., and with the other English there had raised a sum of 2000l., and sent it to Paoli.[144] But at home, the tone of monarchy prevailed in the senate. The Tories retired or voted with the Court; and by ten at night, the motion was rejected by 230 to 84—a day of fortunate omen to the Court at the opening of Parliament, and equally propitious to the Duc de Choiseul; but humiliating to this country, and fatal to the Corsicans! It was telling France we did not dare to interfere with her usurpations. Remarkable too it was, that the King seldom obtained a Parliamentary triumph that did not disgrace his Crown.
Yet was this confirmation of his power on the point of being overset by the moody and capricious temper of Grafton himself. The very next day, as I was going through Pall-Mall, I met that Duke, driving rapidly to St. James’s. As he passed my chariot, he threw himself almost out of his own, with a countenance so inflamed with rage, that I thought him distracted, as I knew of no offence I had given to him. In the evening, going to inquire after the Queen, who lay in, Lady Hertford, then in waiting to give answers to the company, ran up to me in the utmost disorder of tears and consternation, and begged I would that instant go to her lord, as she did not know what might happen between him and her nephew. This was more and more mysterious to me; but, after she had told me a few words on the subject, and I had prevailed on her to compose herself a little in so public a place, I went to Lord Hertford, and learned the whole story. Their son, Lord Beauchamp, who was ambitious of establishing a great power in his family, both by income and parliamentary interest, had by a favourable opportunity secured, as he thought, the borough of Coventry, where the late Duke of Grafton, Lady Hertford’s father, had had the principal weight. The present Duke had beheld that progress with uneasiness, and was not without jealousy of Lord Hertford’s favour with the King, and even of his aspiring to the Treasury. A vacancy happening, the Duke had rudely refused his interest (for the Crown has much influence there) to Lord Hertford for a Mr. Nash, whom the latter supported against Sir Richard Glynn; the Earl, who had one son already member there, declining, from fear of envy, to set up another of his family. At the same time that he asked the Duke of Grafton’s interest, he had solicited the Secretary at War, Lord Barrington, Sir Edward Hawke, First Lord of the Admiralty, and General Howard, Governor of Chelsea College, to influence some soldiers and sailors, who had votes at Coventry, in favour of Mr. Nash. Rigby had learned this detail from Mr. Bradshaw or Sir Richard Glynn, who had purchased the interest of one Waring in that place, the latter of whom had been ill-used by Lord Beauchamp, and had married a natural daughter of Ranby the surgeon, one of the flatterers of Mrs. Haughton. She and Rigby inflamed the Duke against Lord Hertford, representing it as an attack on the Treasury, and had painted me as the adviser, though no man living had so rooted an aversion to electioneering; nor did I, till the quarrel broke out, know one syllable of the detail, nor even who were the parties concerned. But what was my astonishment when Lord Hertford told me, that that very morning, when I met the Duke in his raging fever, he had gone to the King, and told him he would resign! He had declared the same intention to Lord Granby, and had sought the Chancellor to notify it to him likewise. From thence, with unparalleled insolence, he had repaired to Lord Hertford, and charged him with assuming the powers of the Minister. Lord Hertford allowed he had been in the wrong in soliciting the interest of the Crown, without his Grace’s approbation; but offered to repair all, by releasing the votes he had obtained of that sort. No; this would not satisfy. Sir Richard Glynn must also be satisfied; must declare he did not think the Duke, who had promised him his interest, had broken his word. So outrageous was the Duke’s behaviour, that Lady Hertford, who was present, at last broke out, and told him, she would not hear her husband thus injuriously treated by her nephew. Mr. Conway, too, interposed; and the King writing a very obliging letter to the Earl, reminding him of the fable of the bundle of sticks, and Lord Hertford quitting all pretensions to the vacant seat, though with hearty discontent on his part, and with greater reluctance on his son’s, a plausible pacification ensued, and the wayward chief consented to resume the reins. As I laughed at his frowardness, and had had no hand in the measure, I took care not to be included in the treaty, though I had advised the Earl not to push it to a rupture (which I needed not to fear he would), as he had not been strictly regular in the formality of proceeding. The story were not worth remembering, if it did not exemplify the Duke’s touchy humour, which converted trifles into tempests, and his Administration into a scene of private animosities.