[10] The following more friendly account of this singular scene is transcribed from Sir George Colebrooke’s Memoirs.
“Mr. Townshend loved good living, but had not a strong stomach. He committed therefore frequent excesses, considering his constitution, which would not have been intemperance in another. He was supposed, for instance, to have made a speech in the heat of wine, when that was really not the case. It was a speech in which he treated with great levity, but with wonderful art, the characters of the Duke of Grafton and Lord Shelburne, whom, though his colleagues in office, he entertained a sovereign contempt for, and heartily wished to get rid of. He had a black ribbon over one of his eyes that day, having tumbled out of bed, probably in a fit of epilepsy, and this added to the impression made on his auditors that he was tipsy, whereas it was a speech he had meditated a great while upon, and it was only by accident that it found utterance that day. I write with certainty, because Sir George Yonge and I were the only persons who dined with him, and we had but one bottle of champagne after dinner, General Conway having repeatedly sent messengers to press his return to the House.”—E.
[11] Francis Bernard, Esq. He had been Governor of New Jersey from 1758 to 1760 when he was promoted to Massachusets. He is praised by the writers unfavourable to the Americans for his zeal in maintaining the authority of the mother country.—(Stedman’s History of the American War, vol. i. p. 58.) Unhappily this zeal was not tempered by judgment. He has been justly censured by Mr. Burke. He was made a Baronet in 1769, died in 1779. The late benevolent Sir John Bernard was his second son.—E.
[12] This speech will long be memorable, as it again opened the wounds scarce skinned over by the repeal of the Stamp Act. The loss of the land-tax occasioned this speech and the ensuing taxes; those taxes produced opposition; that opposition gave a handle to the friends of prerogative to attempt despotism in America; and that attempt has caused a civil war in America, whence is just arrived notice of the first bloodshed, as I transcribe these Memoirs—in June, 1775.
At this later period (when thirteen provinces are actually lost) the leading steps may be summed up thus: Grenville (who had adopted from Lord Bute a plan of taxation formed by Jenkinson) had provoked America to resist. The Rockingham Administration had endeavoured to remedy that mischief by repealing the Stamp Act; and perhaps might have prevented a farther breach, though ambitious leaders, and perhaps some true republican patriots, might have entertained hopes of separating the Colonies from Great Britain; and France had certainly fomented those designs. The pernicious mischief of lowering the land-tax gave a handle to Charles Townshend to propose his new taxes (instigated, as was supposed, by the secret cabal at Court, or officiously to make his court there.) Thus the ambition of the Court began the quarrel; Grenville was a second time, though then without foreseeing it, an instrument of renewing it; and the Crown, that delighted in the mischief, ended with being the great sufferer, and America happily became perfectly free.—W.
[It is not unlikely, as Sir George Colebrooke observes, “that as the Court had never intended to abandon the principle of taxation. Mr. Townshend was not sorry to have an opportunity of ingratiating himself at St. James’s, by proposing taxes which, though levied in America, were not laid on American growth, or American industry, and so far he hoped they would find admittance into the Colonies.”—(Sir George Colebrooke’s MS. Memoirs.) Many of the Americans attached to the British connexion were also of that opinion, and told Mr. Townshend “Only let the tax bear the appearance of port duties, and it will not be objected to.”—(Cavendish’s Debates, vol. i. p. 213.) At home the measure was opposed by a very slender minority in Parliament representing no powerful interests exclusive of the merchants engaged in the American trade, whose fears for the debts owing to them in the Colonies made them so tremblingly apprehensive, that their remonstrances carried less weight with the Government than would otherwise have been due to their intelligence and wealth. The country also had taken umbrage at the intemperate language of the Colonists, and regarded with some distrust the moderate policy of the Government; so that Mr. Townshend had to contend with the taunts of the Opposition, the popular voice, and the wishes of the Court—a combination far too strong for a statesman of his temperament to resist.]—E.
[13] The third resolution was, “That until provision shall have been made by the Assembly for furnishing the King’s troops with all the necessaries required by the said Act (of 5 Geo. III.) the Government, and Council, and Assembly be restrained and prohibited from passing or assenting to any act of Assembly, &c.” It was opposed at considerable length by Mr. Pownall, late Governor of Massachusets, on the ground that the provisions of the Act were incompatible with the nature of the people and the circumstances of many parts of the country, and that its object might be effectually obtained by a colonial act, such as the Assembly of Massachusets had passed at his recommendation some time before. Governor Pownall’s speech is reported, probably by himself, in Parl. Hist. vol. xvi. p. 331.—E.
[14] The previous discussions of the East India question are noticed in the Second Volume pp. 394, 427, 449. They convey no exalted notion of the sagacity or virtue of the parties concerned in them. The sole object of the Ministers appears to have been to extort the largest possible sum of money from the Company, without regard to the prosperity of our commercial relations with India, the proper administration of the territories of the Company, or the welfare of the Indian population. The Company in like manner, directors and proprietors, displayed an utter unfitness for the discharge of the vast jurisdiction to which they laid claim. The venality and rapacity of their officers in India almost found a parallel in the disgraceful trafficking for votes and patronage in the Court of Proprietors, and the speculations and maladministration of the directors. Their affairs had fallen into great disorder,—the natural result of these practices on such a vicious system as the annual election of the directors and the low amount of the franchise of the proprietors. It was no wonder that all sought to escape any interference or control on the part of the Government. Strange to say, these crying evils were regarded with indifference by the public, and every effort made by Government to repress them met with determined resistance from the great mercantile interests of the City of London. Indeed the cause of the Company became so popular that many of the leading Whigs very inconsistently yielded to the general feeling, and were found among its warmest advocates. Conway wanted firmness to oppose this delusion. Of all the Ministers, Lord Chatham alone did not entirely forget that he was a statesman. He protested throughout against the rights claimed by the Company over the conquered provinces, and he did not disguise his contempt for that body. Indistinctly as his views are expressed, and extravagant as may have been his belief of the extent of the revenues of the Company, he appears to have carried his views for their appropriation beyond those of mere revenue considerations to this country, and if his health had admitted of his entering further into the controversy, and he had been assisted in matters of detail, it is not unlikely that he would have struck out a scheme worthy of his genius for the government of this vast empire.—E.
[15] William Fitzherbert, of Tissington, M. P. for Derby, and a Lord of Trade, an amiable man, whose intimate friendship with Burke, Johnson, Cumberland, and other eminent literary men of his day, has been gratefully recorded in their works. Dr. Johnson’s exquisite description of him has often been quoted. He committed suicide in a fit of phrenzy, in 1772. The late Lord St. Helens was his son.—E.
[16] Thomas Nuthall, appointed Solicitor of the Treasury, through Lord Chatham’s interest, and his lordship’s intimate friend and law adviser. Many letters to and from him are contained in the Chatham Correspondence. He was shot by a highwayman on Hounslow Heath, and expired a few hours afterwards, in March, 1775.—E.