[128] Parliamentary History, vol. xvi p. 1321.—E.
[129] I suspect that Lord Rockingham, whose aunt Lord Mansfield had married, and to whom Lord Mansfield always paid court, meant to save him, though through this whole reign Lord Mansfield had constantly laboured to sap that great palladium of our liberties, juries. As the House of Lords would probably have protected Lord Mansfield, perhaps his panic was a curb to him; whereas an exculpation might have encouraged him. Still the trimming conduct of Lord Rockingham, and Lord Camden, and Lord Chatham was inexcusable.
[130] Lord Camden, with more apparent firmness than Lord Mansfield, was neither a brave nor a steady man; though having taken the better side, the defence of the Constitution, he was not reduced to the artifices and terrors of the Chief Justice. It was but rarely that Lord Camden took a warm and active part, but often absented himself from the House when he should have stood forth. He told me himself that he forbore attending private causes in the House lest he should hurt the side he supported by Lord Mansfield’s carrying the majority against the party defended by Lord Camden, merely from enmity to him. If this tenderness was well founded, how iniquitous was his antagonist! I do believe that though their hatred was reciprocal, Lord Camden feared the abilities and superior knowledge of his antagonist; and as Lord Camden was a proud man, he could not bear inferiority. As even Lord Chatham did not retain the deference for him he expected and deserved, their friendship declined almost to annihilation. The Duke of Grafton and Lord Shelburne, though still much more unjustifiably, slighted him too; and a series of those neglects concurred to throw Lord Camden, towards the end of his life, into a situation that did not raise his character, nor was even agreeable to his opinion, for the moment before he joined Mr. Pitt in 1784, he had declared his sentiments of Mr. Fox’s predominant abilities.
[131] This was the case of Tothill v. Pitt, of which the details are given in Maddock’s Reports, vol. i. p. 488; Dicken’s Reports, p. 431; Brown’s Parliamentary Cases, p. 453. It related to the property of a Mr. Tothill, which had come to Sir William Pynsent, as the legatee and executor of his daughter, to whom it had been bequeathed by Mr. Tothill. The decision of the Lords was right, and it restored the decree of Sir Thomas Sewell, the Master of the Rolls, a lawyer whose authority stood much higher than that of the Lord Commissioners.—E.
[132] The debate on Lord George Germaine’s motion is reported in Cavendish, vol. ii. p. 160–172. One result of the quarrel between the Houses was the exclusion of strangers from both, during the remainder of the session. The public, therefore, was kept in ignorance of all parliamentary proceedings that were not made known by the members of either House.—E.
[133] Governor Johnstone’s subsequent actions were far from setting his character in a better light. During half the American war he voted in Parliament as condemning it, and in private paid great court to the Duke of Richmond as a principal opponent; not without the Duke’s being cautioned by his friends, who suspected Johnstone for an allowed spy of the Court,—a jealousy that seemed well founded, as Johnstone on a sudden was appointed by the Minister one of the commissioners to treat for peace with America. In that department he augmented the suspicion of his double-dealing, but without adding any credit to his judgment. Soon after he was entrusted, as Commodore, with five ships, which he boasted should effect the most desperate service—but effected nothing; and he terminated his naval campaign with such flagrant tyranny and injustice to one of his captains, whom he also despatched to the East Indies in hopes of his complaints, that a court of law, on the poor gentleman’s return, gave him damages to the amount of some thousand pounds; and Johnstone appealing from the verdict, all he obtained was an increase of his fine: however, on another appeal, the sentence was set aside.
[134] As these Memoirs will not be continued, it may be worth while to give a short abstract of the rest of Lord George’s life. Though in Opposition, he kept a door open for his return to Court without his associates, by not joining them against the American war. When that war grew more and more hopeless, Lord George was offered to undertake that province, and most injudiciously accepted it. This was the more surprising to me, as, besides his having retrieved his character by the affair with Johnstone, and acquired a large fortune from Lady Elizabeth Germaine, with the additional favourable circumstance of changing his name, whence his sons, if dropping that of Sackville, might avoid great part of the disgrace that had fallen on their father, he himself not three years before, in a conversation, in which he had given me many instances of the King’s duplicity, had said to me, “Sir, whoever lives to see the end of this reign, will see one of the most unfortunate that ever was in England!” The position of the American war certainly countenanced his prediction. Yet his native ambition, or the vanity of supposing that he could give a new turn to affairs, overpowered his judgment, and shut his eyes on the torrent of abuse that would again be let loose against him—and was. He did recommence his career with great spirit and activity, but with no success at all; and it was only in his deportment that he did show spirit. In Parliament he was browbeaten by daily insults; and his former parts so entirely forsook him, that younger men, who had not seen his outset, would not believe what was attested to them of his precedent abilities. Disappointed of the glory he had promised to himself, and quarrelling with Lord Sandwich, the head of the Admiralty, who counteracted or would not concur in his plans, Lord George relaxed, and finding his associates inclined to sacrifice him as a scapegoat (though they could not save their own places), he yielded to the storm, and was so far fortunate, that being the first victim before the general crash, he made terms for himself, and retired into the House of Lords with a Viscount’s coronet; yet even that lucky retreat could not be obtained without a new, and most cruel, and unprecedented insult. The Marquis of Caermarthen objected to his admission into the House of Lords on the old sentence of the court martial. What heightened the flagrancy of that attack on the foundation of so almost obsolete a stigma was, that Lord Caermarthen had actually been in the King’s service with Lord George while recently Secretary of State. Lord Caermarthen made himself odious; and Lord George found at least that mankind were not so abandoned as to enjoy such wanton malevolence.
Lord George, become Viscount Sackville, died in the autumn of 1785, of a short illness, and in a manner that once more did him honour. He spoke of the bitter scenes through which he had passed, and with great firmness declared how resigned he was to death. Of Prince Ferdinand he spoke with singular candour; said his Highness had undone him from resentment; yet was so great a man, that he not only forgave but admired him. General Sloper, his enemy, he said, was a very black man; for Lord Caermarthen, he was so weak, that he felt nothing for him but contempt. It was remarkable that Lord Caermarthen, moderate as his abilities were, disgustful as his assault on Lord Sackville had been, and though disliked by the King, was by the last collision of parties become at that very moment Secretary of State.
[A long note on the character of Lord George Sackville is also given by Walpole in the Memoirs of George the Second (vol. ii. p. 432). He evidently bore that nobleman no good will, and falls in the course of his remarks into some inconsistencies, which, as Lord Holland remarks, “it would be difficult to explain, if it were any part of the duty of an editor to explain the contradictions of an author.” A well-written and interesting, though partial, account of Lord George is contained in the Memoirs of his friend and secretary, Richard Cumberland. Many additional and curious particulars have been collected by Mr. Coventry in that ingenious work, “Critical Enquiry regarding the real Author of Junius, proving them to have been written by Lord Viscount Sackville.”—E.]
[135] He ran away with a natural daughter of Lord Baltimore, supposed to be of weak understanding, and who, besides, was almost a child.—E.