CHAPTER IV.
Bills introduced by Mr. Herbert and Mr. Grenville.—Conversation on Secret Influence.—Remarks.—City Dinner to the Opposition.—Curious Phrase employed by Lord Chatham.—Termination of Wilkes’s Imprisonment.—Riot at Boston.—Debate on the Prorogation of the Irish Parliament.—Lord Chatham moves a Censure on Ministers.—Observations on the State of Parties.—Publication of Burke’s Thoughts on the Present Discontents.—Criticism of it.—Influence of Lord Bute.—Character of the Pelham Administration.—New Party.—Their Aristocratic Tendencies.—Diminution of the Privileges of Peers and Commoners with regard to their Creditors.—Desultory Discussions on American Affairs, and the Middlesex Election.
1770.
These debates were tedious and unentertaining, and willingly I abridge them: totally omitted they could not be; they were the constituent ingredients of an inglorious reign, in which many of the most solemn questions that compose or touch the essence of our constitution were agitated—questions that will live in our law-books, when omitted in polished histories written for entertainment. These pages, therefore, will serve for a clue to writers on the laws, though they may not be so fortunate as to please the idle. I shall slightly mention some other bills that were discussed about the same time.
Mr. Herbert,[78] a near relation of the Earl of Pembroke, and a young man of great fortune and good principles, proposed a bill to declare that expulsion did not imply incapacitation unless for certain crimes infamous by law. Doubts were started on what those crimes were. The House was strongly inclined to the bill: the Ministers pretended not to discountenance it—but the Jesuits of the Treasury, Dyson and Jenkinson, undermined it indirectly: the latter went so far as to engraft a clause on that bill calculated to secure the rights of freeholders, which would have made it an instrument of tyranny, and would have made expulsion or imprisonment total incapacity. Lord North affected to be struck by and to approve that juggle; but Lord Beauchamp, General Conway, and even the smooth courtier Lord Barrington, resisting, and the latter declaring that it was necessary to quiet the minds of the people, Lord North gave it up. The Cabal however clogged the bill with so many subtleties and contradictions, that Mr. Herbert abandoned it with indignation, and it was lost.[79]
Mr. George Grenville was more successful with a bill that the profligacy of the times loudly demanded, and which even that profligacy could not defeat. It was to take the trials of contested elections from the judicatory of the House, and vest them in a smaller number of examiners to be chosen by ballot. Important as the nature of elections is, and sacred as the property of legal votes, of the right of counties and boroughs to choose their representatives, and of the elected to his seat, yet all was overlooked, and petitions were heard and decided solely by favour or party. Nor was this accidental, but constant and universal. Grenville’s bill was generally liked. Rigby and Dyson opposed it, and at last Lord North, who endeavoured to put it off for two months; but he was defeated by 185 to 133.[80] The resistance of the House to the power of the Administration on those two bills, proved, with some instances I have mentioned, that that House of Commons was not implicitly servile on all occasions like the last. Grenville’s bill passed on the 2nd of April, but not without a remarkable conversation rather than a debate on political creeds and secret influence. Grenville and Dowdeswell declared they had been under none when they were in place. Samuel Martin desired the House to take notice of that declaration. It was evidence, he said, that Lord Bute was falsely accused; and that such rumours were raised to excite the mob against him on his return from abroad. Colonel Barré said the two gentlemen had only declared they had not been influenced themselves: but Lord Chatham had solemnly affirmed to the Lords that even in six weeks his schemes had been controlled; and it was evident where the secret influence lay, when Martin and Jenkinson, the servants of the Princess of Wales, and when Dyson and Sir Gilbert Elliot, were so much consulted. That was the cabinet that governed the Cabinet.[81] Lord North declared that he would be nominal no longer than he was real Minister. There wanted no better proof of the secret influence than that Lord Bute had the credit to maintain Oswald, Elliot, Dyson, and Jenkinson, or some of them, in the Treasury through every Administration subsequent to his own, by which he might be master of all the secrets of that important board which influences the whole Government,—at least they were agents whom he had recommended to the King; and if the Earl himself did not preserve the same degree of credit with his Majesty, the King acted on the plan in which he had been initiated, and had cunning enough, as most Princes have, to employ and trust those only who were disposed to sacrifice the interest of the country to the partial and selfish views of the Crown; views to which his Majesty so steadily adhered on every opportunity which presented itself, that, not having sense enough to discover how much the glory and power of the King is augmented by the flourishing state of the country he governs, he not only preferred his personal influence to that of England, but risked, exposed, and lost a most important portion of his dominions by endeavouring to submit that mighty portion to a more immediate dependence on the royal will. Mystery, insincerity, and duplicity were the engines of his reign. They sometimes procured success to his purposes, oftener subjected him to grievous insults and mortifications, and never obtained his object without forfeiting some share of his character, and exposing his dignity to affronts and reproach from his subjects, and his authority to contempt from foreign nations. He seemed to have derived from his relations the Stuarts, all their perseverance in crooked and ill-judged policy without profiting by their experience, or recollecting that his branch had owed the Crown to the attempts made by the former Princes at extending the prerogative beyond the bounds set to it by the constitution. Nor does a sovereign, imbued with such fatal ambition, ever want a Jefferies or a Mansfield, or such less ostensible tools as the Dysons and Jenkinsons, who for present emolument are ready to gibbet themselves to immortal infamy by seconding the infatuation of their masters.
Beckford, the Lord Mayor, gave a great dinner to the lords and gentlemen of the Opposition: a cavalcade of the Livery fetched and escorted the company from the Thatched House Tavern in St. James’s Street; and at night many houses were illuminated, and a few had their windows broken for not being lighted. Lord Chatham had, by earnest entreaties, engaged Lord Granby to carry him to the Mansion House in his chariot, but was prevented by the gout from joining in the procession, which his pressing a popular general to head, did not seem calculated to promote tranquillity. In fact, no efforts were spared to keep up the spirit. The freeholders of Westminster met and voted a remonstrance, which, omitting the most exceptionable parts of that from the City, was immediately presented to the King. Another was voted by the freeholders of Middlesex; but no answer was given by his Majesty to either.
A few of the Opposition, who acted with decency and impartiality, condemned the violences of their party. Sir William Meredith complained of the letters of Junius, of The Whisperer, and of The Parliamentary Spy. Thurlow, the new Solicitor-General, in the room of Dunning, said a prosecution was commenced against the first. General Howard again complained of The Whisperer; and a conference being desired with the Lords, it was voted an infamous and seditious paper.
Lord Chatham, who seemed to imbibe faction from disappointment, desired the Lords might be summoned for after the holidays, as he intended to propose a bill to endeavour to repair the mischief done by the iniquitous decision of the House of Commons on the Middlesex election; nor was he less intent on raising jealousies of the designs of France. He pronounced, in the month of March, that by that very day on which he was speaking, the French had somewhere struck a hostile stroke. This asseveration making great noise, alarmed the merchants, who sent a deputation to him, to inquire where the blow was struck. He denied having said so; and some who were present, declared they had not heard him say it. This was merely negative and personal to themselves, for, in general, his audience were positive as to the words; and it was not less remarkable, that a year afterwards, when the seizure of Falkland’s Island by the Spaniards became public, Lord Chatham’s partisans affirmed that he had made such a declaration, but had accused Spain, not France, of having committed hostilities. He did not even spare the King, but accused him of duplicity. The Duke of Grafton defended the royal accused. The King soon afterwards asked General Conway if he ever saw the Duke, and where he lived? Conway said he knew nothing of him: “Nor I,” said his Majesty; “he has not come near me these six weeks; nay, when I heard of his defending me against Lord Chatham, I wrote a letter of thanks to the Duke; he not only did not answer my letter, but has taken no notice of it since.”
On the 17th of April ended the imprisonment of Wilkes, and he was discharged from the King’s Bench, whence he retired privately into the country, affecting to decline the congratulations of his fellow citizens. The next night many houses of the lower rank were illuminated, but without any tumult. The Court had taken care to prevent any disturbance, by stationing numbers of constables, and by holding the Guards and Light Horse in readiness. Beckford had affected like solicitude, giving out orders for peaceable behaviour, but on pretence of the Easter holidays; while his own house in Soho Square was decorated with the word Liberty, in ample capitals. Wilkes, now entering again on the scene, published an address of thanks to the county of Middlesex, and another to the ward of Farringdon. In those and former addresses, he had the assurance to talk of protecting our religious as well as civil liberties. When Lord Sandwich informed against the “Essay on Woman,” he too talked religion. It was impossible to decide which was the more impudent, the persecutor or the martyr! The release of Wilkes was celebrated at Lynn, Norwich, Swaffham, Bristol, and a few other towns, but not universally. At the end of the month, he was sworn in Alderman of Farringdon ward. The solid retribution was the work of the Society of the Bill of Rights. They paid or compromised a great part of his debts, disbursing seven thousand pounds for him.