Other trials of note there were at that time. Lord Chatham lost a cause against one of Sir William Pynsent’s relations to the value of 15,000l, a sum he could ill spare after his ungovernable waste, and which but sharpened his appetite for recovery of power.
A criminal trial made more noise. Two Kennedys, young Irishmen, had been charged with, and one of them had been condemned for, the murder of a watchman in a drunken riot. They had a handsome sister, who was kept by two young men of quality. Out of friendship to them, Mr. George Selwyn had prevailed on six or seven of the jury to make an affidavit that, if some circumstances, which had really been neglected by the counsel for the prisoners, had appeared on the trial, they would not have brought in their verdict murder. Mr. Selwyn applied for mercy, and the young convict was reprieved; but when the report was made in Council, Lord Mansfield prevailed to have him ordered for execution. Mr. Selwyn, whose constant flow of exquisite wit made him generally acceptable, applied in person to the King, and represented that Lord Rochford, the Secretary of State, had under his hand assured the pardon; that such an act had always been deemed pardon, and that the prisoner had been made acquainted with it. The King immediately renewed his promise, the criminal was ordered for transportation, and was actually on board the vessel bound for the plantations, when Horne, the clergyman, and other discontented persons complained of the pardon, and not only complained of it to blacken the King, but, horrible spirit of faction! instigated the watchman’s widow to appeal against it, which, if sentence should again follow, would bar all pardon; nor could the King do more than reprieve from time to time. The woman did prosecute; and the young man was again remanded to his gaol and terrors, a second punishment, unjustly inflicted; for, though probably guilty, he had satisfied the law. Nothing, however, being more difficult than to effectuate such appeal, errors were continually found, the prisoner was remanded to prison as often as brought to trial, and the widow at last yielded to a compensation,[104] notwithstanding the unwearied endeavours of the merciless priest. That turbulent divine was soon afterwards found guilty himself of defaming Mr. Onslow, and fined 500l. He was one of the principal incendiaries and promoter of all libels, and, in truth, their excess was shocking, and in nothing more condemnable than in the dangers they brought on the liberty of the press, which it was difficult for its warmest friend to defend. It was in every man’s mouth, that the evil was grown past sufferance. Every man trembled, expecting, what almost every man experienced, abuse. The good name, the credit, the character of all were at the mercy of anonymous malice and a mercenary printer. The universal language, that abuse was too general to be regarded, was not an adequate answer. Abuse spreads further than vindication, nor does it even die by neglect; it takes root in the country and makes lasting impressions. Two answers, indeed, there were; first, the difficulty of drawing the line. Ministers are and ought to be lawful game, yet the law could not except them as proper to be abused. The other was the spirit of the Court, which aimed at despotism, and the daring attempts of Lord Mansfield to stifle the liberty of the press, without authority of the law, and without any new restrictions made by the legislature. He had, indeed, effected an aggravation of the excess, for his innovations had given such an alarm, that scarce a jury would find the rankest satire libellous; and that indemnity encouraged the printers to go to the most envenomed and unwarrantable lengths, of which, to prove my impartiality, I will quote some flagrant examples. I have mentioned the embittered licentiousness of Junius, particularly on the Dukes of Bedford and Grafton, reproached with misfortunes in their families. Another paper, containing severe reflections on the latter Duke, was published, affecting to be written by the Duke of Richmond. A second paper, attributed, in like manner, to the Duke of Grafton, threatened to kick the Duke of Richmond,—infamous, though unsuccessful attempts to excite a duel between those adverse lords!
The other instance, of a blacker, because of a more extensive dye, as it might have proved, was at least distinguished by the novelty and singularity of its humour. It was a very ludicrous and ironic satire on the King of Spain, though many of the facts were borrowed or by mistake adapted to him from his mad brother, the late King Ferdinand.[105] A second letter was promised on the King of France; but three French officers went to the printer and stopped it, by vowing they would murder him, if any invective against their master should appear. Some Spaniards were disposed to execute what the French had threatened, but were with difficulty prevented by their Ambassador, the Prince of Masserano, who told them they would infallibly be hanged. They said they could not die in a better cause. That Prince was inexpressibly hurt, and told our Ministers he did not know how to write the account to his Court; he wished the insult might not cause a war. This attempt was the more flagitious, by being calculated to blow into a flame a quarrel of a serious nature then in agitation between the two Courts. Despairing faction grounded its last hopes on blood and a rupture between the two nations.
In the account of Lord Anson’s voyage round the world, there is dropped a hint that a settlement in the South Sea would be of great advantage to England in time of war. Lord Egmont, when at the head of the Admiralty, had adopted that idea, and caused possession to be taken for us of one of the Falkland Islands, a desolate rock near the straits of Magellan. According to the received code of European usurpation, prior occupancy or discovery implies right. To have taken nominal possession of another country, not before known to any of us invaders, constitutes property among Christian potentates, or robbers, and by that piratic jurisprudence, the Falkland Islands belonged to, though abandoned by, Spain. Our breach of this iniquitous seniority of claim was highly resented by the King of Spain, personally a hater of England ever since he had trembled before our navies, when only King of Naples, and had been humbled in the last war. The Governor of Buenos Ayres, within whose district lay the desert in question, was ordered (underhand) to dispossess us, and did. That intention had been known to our Administration some months before the Duke of Grafton quitted the reins; but, according to his custom, he had neglected the notice, or, with equal indifference, had intended to slubber over the quarrel in tame conferences with the Spanish ambassador here; and there the affair had dozed, till the “Favourite” sloop, arriving in the month of June, brought advice that our colony had been expelled from the island, and, by rousing the nation, awakened the Administration. Whether we had been the aggressors or not, was not a consideration to have weight with the people, much less with Opposition. Nothing was in the mouths of either but the insult; and whatever the Ministers thought, or whatever they proposed to bear, it was not openly that they dared to talk any language but war, or at least resentment. Orders were given to fit out fleets and to impress men, and a messenger set off for Madrid to demand immediate restitution of the island. The answer was very indefinite, and too unsatisfactory to bear publication. A categoric answer was then said to be demanded, but no such answer arrived. France talked peace; her finances were greatly in disorder; we trusted to their language or their situation; Spain behaved as depending on their support, or as resolved to extort it; but I must not too much anticipate events. A fire in the magazines at Portsmouth, to a considerable amount, and the authors of which were not discovered, was imputed rather to our friends the French than to Spain our enemy, and looked like a return for a discovery the former had made of some such design from hence. A young Irish officer of some birth, Gordon by name, who had fled for a duel, had been beheaded at Brest, and had been proved to have been in the pay of our Ambassador, Lord Harcourt.
Wilkes still kept up a flame: he was chosen Master of the Joiner’s Company, procured a remonstrance from the county of Surrey, and Richard Oliver, an unknown young citizen, but a member of the Bill of Rights, was chosen unanimously to represent the City of London in the room of Beckford. Eyre, the Recorder, an able man and spirited, offended the City by refusing to attend their remonstrance, which he affirmed was a libel. All the prejudice they could do to him was to refuse to consult him on points of law, by which he lost about 200l. a year.[106] They had a longer contest with the Adams, Scottish brethren and architects, who had bought Durham Yard, and erected a large pile of building with dwellings and warehouses, under the affected name of the Adelphi. These men, of great taste in their profession, were attached particularly to Lord Bute and Lord Mansfield, and thus by public and private nationality, zealous politicians. The citizens, on whose rights over the river they had encroached, went to law with them, and applied to Parliament, where Court partiality on one side, and party malice on the other, considered nothing but their several prejudices: the influence of the Crown decided, accordingly, in favour of the Adams. But the circumstance which makes that contest history, was, its giving date to a new subdivision of factions. Debates for and against the Adams had run very high amongst the Aldermen and Common Council. Their speeches, or rather their personal abuse, were printed in the public parades with the parade of Parliamentary orations. Alderman Harley said, he rejoiced at any disgrace that fell on the City; and that the Aldermen had been very indulgent to suffer Wilkes to stand candidate for the City when he was outlawed. Wilkes with equal modesty replied, that in so doing they had acted very illegally. But the person who took the lead in those wrangles was Alderman Townshend, the agent of Lord Shelburne, who, it now came out, was tampering to wrest the City out of Wilkes’s hands. He had even gained over Parson Horne, the publisher of those vulgar debates; and who, to serve his new friends, constantly gave the advantage to Townshend over Wilkes,—sources of a quarrel that blazed much higher afterwards, and ruined the Opposition in the City.
The Court, as if to balance the advantages they reaped by the feuds in the Opposition, gave a new handle to clamour by raising their desperate tool, Colonel Lutterell, to be Adjutant-General in Ireland, obliging Colonel Cunningham, who had distinguished himself by restoring the discipline and model of the Irish army, to exchange that post for a government which they forced from Colonel Gisburne for a large pension, and the promise of the next good government. Cunningham abandoned them the next year in their distress. The gratitude of the Lutterells was of another kind, and will have its place.[107] The Middlesex election was still the favourite grievance. A meeting of the freeholders of Yorkshire was advertized, in order to remonstrate, for the 26th of August, but the High Sheriff refused to summon the county; on which Lord John Cavendish and twenty-seven more, advertized a meeting for the 25th of September. When that day arrived, Charles Turner proposed a new remonstrance; but to the surprise of the most zealous, Sir George Saville talked with much moderation; and Lord John occasioned greater astonishment by advising the assembly to expect, by decency, redress from the King. The assembly, not knowing how to decipher that change of language, broke up perplexed, and content with thanking their representatives, Sir George Saville and Lascelles.
The key to this mystery, never publicly divulged, was, that Lord Mansfield had opened a negotiation with Lord Rockingham, whose aunt he had married, and the Court had offered to make sacrifices of two or three of its most specious friends: but as the Marquis, who had come to town on purpose to conclude the bargain, found it by no means intended to reinstate him in the first place, the treaty broke off, after the leaders had shown how ready both sides were to give up their second-rate friends.
While discord and interest thus tore in pieces the Opposition, fate was preparing to deprive them of their most important centurians. Beckford was already gone. The next was the Marquis of Granby, the idol of the army and of the populace. He died at Scarborough, October 20th: in so few months did Lord Chatham lose his tribune and his General, and was reduced to his ill-content friend, Chancellor Camden, his ill-connected brother, Lord Temple, and his worse-reconciled brother, Mr. Grenville!
Were there any reality in the idea that noble blood diffuses an air of superior excellence over the outward form, and refines the qualities of the mind; and were that idea not refuted by the majority of examples to the contrary, Lord Granby would have appeared a shining instance of both effects. His large and open countenance, its manly and pure colours glowing with health, his robust and commanding person, and a proportion of florid beauty so great, that the baldness of his head, which he carried totally bare, was rather an addition to its comely roundness than a defect, and a singularity more than an affectation,—all distinguished him without any extrinsic ornament, and pointed out his rank when he walked without attendance, and was mixed with the lowest people, who followed him to beg his charity, or to bless him for it. His mind was as rich in the qualities that became his elevated situation. Intrepidity, sincerity, humanity, and generosity, were not only innate in his breast, but were never corrupted there. His courage and his tenderness were never disunited. He was dauntless on every occasion, but when it was necessary to surmount his bashfulness. His nerves trembled like a woman’s, when it was requisite that he should speak in public. His modesty was incapable of ostentation.[108] His rank, his services, and the idolatry of the people could inspire him with no pride,—a sensation his nature knew not. Of money he seemed to conceive no use but in giving it away: but that profusion was so indiscriminate, that compassion or solicitation, and consequently imposture, were equally the masters of his purse. Thus his benevolence checked itself, and wasted on unworthy objects the sums he often wanted to bestow on real distress.[109] Nor was it less fatal to his own honour, but plunged him in difficulties from which some discretion in his bounty would have secured him. As his understanding was by no means proportioned to his virtues, he was always obnoxious to the interested designs of those who governed him; and between his own want of judgment and the ascendant of those who hampered him in their toils, by supplying his necessities with money at exorbitant interest, he was bought and sold by successive Administrations and different parties; and generally, when the former fell, he abandoned those he had attached himself and been obliged to, and lent himself to measures which his principles disapproved, and then reverted to those principles against his inclination. No man meant to feel more patriotism, or to be more warmly attached to the constitution of his country; yet his unsuspicious nature suffered him to be easily made the tool of its enemies; and when he sacrificed his darling command of the army in a convulsion of integrity, he neither acted with grace nor firmness, nor showed a knowledge of the question for which he devoted himself, nor made the stand so soon as he ought to have done; and, what was worse, he was forced upon the step he took unwillingly by a man[110] who had not the reputation of common honesty, or pretended to be actuated by any principle but self-interest and revenge.
In an age more simple, Lord Granby had been a perfect hero. In a rude age he would probably have been a successful general from his own valour, and the enthusiasm of attachment which his soldiers felt for him; but in times wherein military knowledge is so much improved, it was perhaps fortunate for his country that the sole command was never entrusted to him on any capital emergency. Yet they must have been the many solid virtues which he possessed, that could make him so greatly respected in a corrupt age, when talents are more esteemed than merit, or when hypocrisy alone runs away with the character and rewards of virtue.