This arrangement had nothing in it but what was to be expected. That a man, the very reverse of all those who were in favour at Court, should have been admitted into this junto, was real matter of surprise; and can only be accounted for by the security of the King and his Cabal, in having blocked up the chief avenues to the Prince. One Jackson, an ingenious young man, recommended by Lady Charlotte Finch, governess of the royal children,[179] was named sub-preceptor;[180] but the person at whom I hinted, and who was appointed sub-governor, was Mr. Leonard Smelt, whose singular virtues and character deserve to be recorded independently of his office. He was younger son of a gentleman in Yorkshire, and had a commission in the Office of Ordnance, which he threw up, finding no attention paid by his superiors to his representation of many abuses there. He fell in love with the niece of General Guest in Scotland, but retired thence to avoid her, as he had not fortune sufficient to maintain her. Another young lady, heiress to great wealth, conceived a passion for him, and obtained her father’s consent before she acquainted Mr. Smelt with her passion, which he had not suspected;—so far from it, he swooned away with surprise and concern, when the father offered him his daughter. Mr. Smelt confessed his former engagement, refused the lady, and again retired. Soon after this his father died, and disinheriting his elder son, who had disobliged him, bequeathed his whole fortune to Leonard. The first act of this excellent young man was to marry his beloved first mistress; the second to settle half his fortune on his brother’s children. His principles in public life were as generous as in private; a steady friend to the constitution of his country, he had signed the Yorkshire remonstrance to the King against the intrusion of Lutterell into the House of Commons. His next introduction to his Majesty was as sub-preceptor to his son: happy for the Prince had he had no other governor—at least, no other director of his morals and opinions of government! But Mr. Smelt had neither authority to instruct his pupil in matters of state, nor perhaps discernment enough to baffle the insidious lessons of his associates, for he was ignorant of the world as well as of its depravity.[181] Being a neighbour of Lord Holderness, the latter introduced him, and he was received, notwithstanding his disqualification as a patriot. The principles of a subaltern were believed to be pliant. Lord Holderness himself owed his preferment to his insignificance and to his wife, a lady of the bedchamber to the Queen, as she did hers to her daughter’s governess, whom the Queen had seduced from her to the great vexation of Lady Holderness. The governess, a French Protestant,[182] ingratiated her late mistress with the Queen, and her mistress soon became a favourite next to the German women.
While this new seminary of favourites was arranging, those of the King were the objects of the Opposition’s reproaches. In a debate on the 11th, in which they were attacked, Sir Gilbert Elliot defending them, gave occasion to an admired speech of T. Townshend,[183] who, taking for his text that line of Pope:—
“As Selkirk,[184] if he lives, will love the Prince,”
drew a severe picture of the Scotch favourites under the character of Lord Selkirk, and applied to them a still more bitter story of Lockart, Cromwell’s Ambassador in France, who having acted in that province under the Parliament and Oliver, and being at last employed on a like commission by Charles the Second, Cardinal Mazarin taunting him with this versatility, and asking him from whom he came then, he replied he was le serviteur des évènemens.[185] The King’s friends, said Townshend, should not wear that title, but ought to call themselves, les serviteurs des évènemens. Sir Gilbert Elliot took up the defence of the King’s friends, and said, though all parties abused them, all had courted them; and that Mr. Dowdeswell and his connection on coming into power, had pressed them to keep their places. Dowdeswell, with spirit not usual to him, denied the fact, and told this anecdote. When Lord Rockingham had meditated the plan of a free port, Elliot, Dyson, and the King’s friends declared against it. Still the Ministers had persisted, and Cooper, Secretary of the Treasury, was ordered to move it, but came in a fright, and said the friends would oppose it. Dowdeswell said he had snatched the bill from Cooper, and had added, he would be damned if they dared. He had moved it; they had not opened their lips for or against it, but had voted for it, and so they always would if the Ministers had courage; but Lord North, he saw, would not take enough upon him.
On the other side, Wilkes declared his intention of standing for Sheriff of Middlesex the following year, and applied to Alderman Oliver to join him in that pursuit. Oliver declined the offer, saying that his and Wilkes’s principles did not agree; and added that himself and his brother had contributed a tenth of the subscriptions for the payment of Wilkes’s debts, which he thought sufficient, and as the expense of the Shrievalty was a burthen in common between both Sheriffs, he would not subject himself to pay what Wilkes could not pay. This was a new blow on the latter, and not balanced by a gleam of applause paid to his imprisoned Lord Mayor. The Burgesses of Newcastle addressed him, and Bedford complimented him with the freedom of their town. Worcester, Stafford, Caermarthen, Pembroke, and Cardigan, addressed both him and Alderman Oliver. The Lord Mayor was carried by habeas corpus to the Court of Common Pleas, but was remanded, the Chief Justice, De Grey, declaring that the House of Commons had authority over their own members. Alderman Oliver was, at the end of the same month, carried in like manner before the Barons of the Exchequer, who remanded him for the same reason.
The reverse of fortune was falling on the Parliaments of France, where their resistance on one hand, and the bold despotism of the Chancellor Maupeou on the other, had brought things to extremities. Maréchal Richelieu in the King’s name dissolved the Cour des Aides; fifty mousquetaires had been sent to the members of that court with lettres de cachet, ordering them to be assembled in their court by seven o’clock the next morning, with injunctions not to debate or protest, but to await in silence his Majesty’s commands. Ordinarily, the princes of the blood were charged with those commands; but forms were not observed when fundamentals were annihilated. Richelieu was selected, and arriving, would have placed himself in the seat of the First President, but the members opposed, and said none but princes of the blood had a right to that place. He insisted; they declared they would withdraw; he gave it up and took a lower seat. A counsellor who had accompanied the Maréchal then harangued on the King’s power, and on what did not appear quite so self-evident—on the King’s goodness; and then read an edict suppressing that council, become useless, he said, by the new establishment of six superior councils. This was palliated by a declaration that the King did not propose to lay aside men of their merit; on the contrary, he invited them to enter into his new Parliament. The Advocate-General replied to this fine harangue, urging that none of his brethren could take a part in a Parliament that must always be illegal, as he proved by the laws and constitutions of the kingdom. The Maréchal, then rising, ordered the members to retire, which they refused to do; he threatened to force their obedience. They replied, it was not their profession to fight, that they must submit to force, and withdrew. Ten of them were banished ten leagues from Paris. The King then held a bed of justice at Versailles, to which were summoned the Princes of the Blood, the Dukes and Peers, and the Grand Council. The Princes disobeyed and would not attend,—all but the Comte de la Marche, only son of the Prince de Conti, who, being at variance with his father, adhered to the King. The Grand Council were reinstated and converted into a Parliament in the place of that dissolved. The King declared this was his will, and that he should never change it. Twelve Dukes, among whom were even Maréchal Richelieu’s own son, Fronsac, and the courtly Nivernois, protested against this proceeding. The Princes of the Blood were forbidden the Court for their disobedience; the twelve Dukes were only frowned upon.[186] I shall resume this subject again before the end of the year.
The Court of Spain now notified to us that they were satisfied of our pacific intentions, and should disarm. Orders were immediately given for our doing the same. Thus the distractions in France prevented a war for which the King of Spain was personally eager.
On the 23rd of April the bill for raising an East Indian regiment was, after many and long debates, rejected. Lord North had taken no part in it, but the officers had raised great objections to it, as preventive of their recruiting; and General Harvey, a favourite, had instilled those prejudices into the King, heightened a little, probably, by Harvey’s jealousy of Conway, who favoured the plan. Many good men approved it likewise, as a method of putting a stop to the infamous practice of kidnapping, which was much used by the East India Company.
Two days after this, Serjeant Glynn presented a petition to the House from Allen, the father of the young man killed in St. George’s Fields, praying an inquiry might be made into that murder. Burke and Dowdeswell supported the petition. Alderman Townshend reflected on Sir William Meredith for having interfered in behalf of the condemned chairmen, and called it false lenity to murderers. Meredith said, he hoped such lenity was allowable; that it was at least as excusable as going about to stir up murder on the score of party. Townshend said in answer, that neither did he decline challenges—alluding to Meredith’s not having answered a challenge from Captain Allen. Lord Barrington excused himself on the orders he had given to the soldiers; and Colonel Onslow said the petition was calculated to tell the people that they might mob the Parliament. The motion was so stale, and the charge of so ancient a date, that it was rejected by 158 to 32, though the House sat till eleven at night.
On the 28th Alderman Sawbridge proposed a bill for triennial Parliaments, but no attention was paid to it, nor answer made by the Ministers. It was rejected by 105 to 54, the Rockingham party not liking the measure. Mr. Cornwall moved for a prohibition of dispensing lottery-tickets to Members of Parliament (a list of the receivers of which was published); but this, as a decenter species of corruption, was maintained by 118 to 31.