[1] The pamphlet alluded to was intituled “A Letter to his Grace the Duke of Grafton, First Commissioner of his Majesty’s Treasury.” Editions were printed at London, Paris, and Berlin. It bears with less severity on the Duke than on Lord Chatham, who is held up to public ridicule and scorn as an apostate to the cause of liberty, and “the abject crouching deputy of the proud Scot,” whom he is represented as having previously persecuted and insulted. This virulent and tedious invective concludes thus:—“But I have done with Lord Chatham; I leave him to the poor consolation of a place, a pension, and a peerage, for which he has sold the confidence of a great nation. Pity shall find and weep over him.” It is altogether a poor performance. The only part now of any interest, is the narrative it contains of Wilkes’s arrest and examination for the publication of the North Briton, in 1763.—(Almon’s Life of Wilkes, vol. iii. p. 184.—Biographical Anecdotes, vol. i. p. 6.)—E.
[2] Walpole must have meant weeks. The Pope declined receiving them on account of the expenses attending the support of so large a body. Subsequently the miserable pittance of a franc per diem was assigned to each of them.—E.
[3] M de Mello afterwards became Minister of Marine in Portugal, under the Marquis of Pombal, and held that post several years with great reputation. His ability and experience in business, obliged the Court to retain him in the Government after the disgrace of Pombal, notwithstanding his connexions with that statesman, and the known liberality of his opinions.—(Dispatch from Mr. Walpole, minister at Lisbon, in Smith’s Life of Pombal, vol. ii. p. 301.)—E.
[4] The exchange to which Walpole refers was not accomplished without serious difficulty, the Indian Militia raised by the Jesuits having long successfully resisted the Spanish and Portuguese forces employed to carry the treaty into effect. The transaction has generally been ascribed to the intrigues of the Dominicans, the ancient enemies of the Jesuits, and their competitors for spiritual dominion in the New World. The conspiracy of Tavora quickly followed, and furnished Pombal with the ostensible pretext he so ardently desired, for the expulsion of the order from Portugal (in 1759), and it also shook their influence throughout Europe. They lingered on in France, proscribed by the Parliaments, and odious to the great majority of the people, until 1764, when the edict against them was wrung from Louis XV. by the importunities of Choiseul. The same minister has been supposed to have determined the Court of Spain to pursue a similar course; and no doubt his influence and that of his master were used for that purpose. But the real author of the bold and statesmanlike measure described in the text, was Don Pedro D’Aranda, the Captain-General, and President of the Council of Castile. During a lengthened absence from Spain, he had formed in the society of Montesquieu, D’Alembert, and Diderot, as well as of Frederic the Great, plans of national reform, which he knew to be incompatible with the existence of the Jesuits; and from the moment of his accession to power he seems to have been bent on their destruction. His manly and persuasive eloquence, a mind full of resources, and a character indomitably resolute, gained him an extraordinary sway over the divided councils of an ignorant and imbecile Court. The Jesuits had irritated Charles by their intrigues, both at Rome and Madrid, during the reign of his predecessor. Their interference with the various departments of the State had gradually identified them, in the opinion of the people, with the grievous abuses under which the country suffered, and all the rising talent of Spain was secretly opposed to them. D’Aranda boldly arraigned them as the instigators of the insurrection against Squillaci, which, for some hours, had placed the royal family and the capital at the mercy of the mob. He availed himself of the influence he had acquired by quelling that insurrection to press the charge with his characteristic impetuosity. The alarm of the King, and the confidence of the accuser, supplied the deficiency of conclusive proofs, and D’Aranda prevailed.
No sooner was the edict obtained, than it appeared that the most minute arrangements had been made throughout Spain for its immediate execution by Campomanes, then a young man, and lately appointed to the ministry; and the skill with which this was accomplished is still cited by the native historians as the masterpiece of that statesman, high as his reputation deservedly stands in his own country as an economist, a writer, and a minister. See the Supplementary Chapter by Muriel to the French translation of Coxe’s History of the Spanish Bourbons, vol. v. p. 65; one of the most valuable of that work.—E.
[5] Sebastian Joseph de Carvalho a Mello Count D’Ocyras, and Marquis of Pombal, was born in 1699, and died in 1782, in his 83rd year. He had been Minister and master of Portugal for twenty-seven years—a period rendered interesting by his vigorous efforts for the regeneration of his country. This was an undertaking, however, beyond the power of any individual, however eminent or able, to accomplish; and the harsh and often unprincipled means he employed to attain his ends made his reforms odious to a large portion of the community, and precipitated their decline from the moment that he had fallen into disgrace.—E.
[6] Jane Warburton, widow of John Duke of Argyle, and mother of Caroline Countess Dowager of Dalkeith, who had married for her second husband Charles Townshend, and inherited a great fortune on her mother’s death.
[7] See Lord Bristol’s letter to Lord Chatham of the 5th of April, conveying the King’s kind message and the King’s own letter to Lord Chatham of the 30th of April, to the same effect.—Chat. Corresp. vol. iii. pp. 240. 252. His Majesty appears to have acted most considerately and handsomely towards Lord Chatham throughout his illness.—E.
[8] Henry Crabb Boulton, M.P. for Worcester, died in 1773. He was chairman of the East India Company, in the same year. He also presided over the Committee appointed by the General Court of Proprietors to oppose Lord North’s Bill for the better regulation of the Company, and exerted himself most actively to defeat that measure. It was at his instigation that the Corporation of the City of London, moved by the important consideration that 1000 freemen were interested in the question, made common cause with the Company, and petitioned Parliament on its behalf.—E.
[9] Mr. Townshend had not many months before entertained a very different opinion of this great man, as appears from the following passage in the Duke of Grafton’s MS. Memoirs. “On the night preceding Lord Chatham’s first journey to Bath, Mr. Charles Townshend was for the first time summoned to the Cabinet. The business was on a general view and statement of the actual situation and interests of the various powers in Europe. Lord Chatham had taken the lead in this consideration in so masterly a manner, as to raise the admiration and desire of us all to co-operate with him in forwarding his views. Mr. Townshend was particularly astonished, and owned to me, as I was carrying him in my carriage home, that Lord Chatham had just shown to us what inferior animals we were, and that as much as he had seen of him before, he did not conceive till that night his superiority to be so very transcendent.”—E.