Sir Jeffery Amherst, the most wrong-headed of men, would not hear of Yorke’s peerage, unless his own was granted too. Mr. Conway showed him the necessity of a Chancellor’s peerage, and that all who had promises of peerages had acquiesced. It did not satisfy him: he had resented Lord Camden’s peerage before; and now went into the King to resign—but was again pacified.
Conway himself was on the point of receiving a more real insult. The Duke of Grafton talked to him of destining the Mastership of the Ordnance to some great peer, not below him in the army. This pointed either at Lord Halifax or Lord Sandwich, neither of whom had ever served, but ranked as Lieutenant-Generals by having had commissions to raise regiments, which they never raised during the rebellion. Conway started, and declared firmly he would resign if such a person should be put over him. I doubt, however, whether it would not have been tried, if greater troubles had not intervened. Both the Earls were poor and impatient: the Bedfords, who had now most weight with Grafton, favoured them—at least, preferred them to Conway. It was not thought safe to send so unpopular a man as Sandwich to Ireland. Thither Lord Gower wanted to dispatch Lord Hertford once more, that he might himself recover the Chamberlain’s staff, the best introduction to personal familiarity with the King—but he could compass no one of his plans.
Lord Chatham had stooped in the meantime to visit Lord Rockingham; in consequence of which interview, and driven on by his friends who were ashamed of their attachment to a mute, the Marquis moved the Lords to go into the state of the nation; delivering his proposal with all the ungracious hesitation of terrified spirits, and hobbling through the grievances of the nation, which he imputed to the Court’s design of governing by Ministers unwelcome to the people. Lord Chatham made one of his highest coloured orations, inflaming Lord Rockingham, whom he complimented largely, to pursue the recovery of the Constitution, and advising him to carry the pursuit even to extremes, the democratic part of the Constitution having been, he said, intentionally oppressed. In his own wild and indigested manner he threw out, that the House of Commons, wanted alteration; and to deliver it from the influence of the Crown by the power of the latter over the rotten part, the venal boroughs and burgage-tenures, he should advise the addition of a third member for every county. With his usual versatility, and with more meaning, he chanted next the sacredness of prerogative, and thence blamed the Crown’s yielding to bind itself not to recall the additional troops newly granted in Ireland thence, (by which concession alone that very requisite increase had been obtained); for himself, he declared he would never touch prerogative, he would not come near it, he would not pull a feather from that master-wing of the eagle. Of Corsica, he said, France had gained more in that pacific campaign than she had done in the most belligerent of the last war. He concluded with recommending union to the Opposition for the present purpose of redress of grievances. What might happen afterwards he did not know—an intimation that he had not been able to persuade Lord Rockingham to cede to Mr. Grenville his pretensions to the Treasury. The 25th was named for considering the state of the nation; but when the day came, Lord Rockingham moved to adjourn the debate for ten days, which was allowed. The motive was, Lord Chatham’s having the gout in his hand. This was the more indecent and absurd in that some of the Opposition had the very day before protested against adjourning that very question for a week till a new Chancellor could be chosen. Lord Sandwich ridiculed their not being able to go on without Lord Chatham—which, he might have added, was saying that the little finger of Lord Chatham was heavier than the loins of the law.
A more important officer was wanting than even a Chancellor. Mr. Conway had sent for me on the evening of the 22nd. It was to tell me that the Duke of Grafton had announced to him in the morning that he could not get a Chancellor; that his head turned, that he could not bear it, that he was determined to resign: that he should not have one great lawyer in the Cabinet to advise him; that Lord Mansfield had been pressed to accept it and had refused: that he could not fill up the empty places, so many persons had resigned. The posts of Chancellor, Privy Seal, Master of the Ordnance, Attorney and Solicitor to the Queen, a Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, and two Lords of the Bedchamber, were vacant; that he had told his resolution to nobody but to Lord Gower, Lord Weymouth, and Lord Jersey, and to his own two Secretaries, Stonhewer and Bradshaw. The two last, the Duke said, approved his resolution; Lord Jersey did not. Lord Gower and Lord Weymouth had offered to stand against the storm with him, if he would venture. Conway had represented against the confusion into which his Grace would throw the kingdom—but in vain: he would hear no reasons. From the Duke Conway had gone to the King, whom he found in the utmost distress (or at least pretending to be), and persuaded that the Duke was inflexible, who, his Majesty said, had told him, his head turned. Conway hinted at trying Lord Rockingham, but the King said, he knew the disposition of Lord Rockingham and his friends, and would not hear of them. He was as thoroughly averse to Lord Chatham: both, he said, were engaged to dissolve the Parliament; but he would abdicate his Crown sooner. “Yes,” continued the King, laying his hand on his sword, “I will have recourse to this sooner than yield to a dissolution.” He talked of trying to go on, if Lord North would put himself at the head of the Treasury. Conway left me to go again to the Duke, to whom he hinted at the want of spirit in not standing his ground; but the resolution was too strongly taken, and he was deaf to all remonstrances.
The moment was indeed serious; yet, had not the King been so thoroughly averse to the Opposition, he would not have found them obdurate. Burke owned to me that his friends would be content without a dissolution, provided an Act of Parliament were passed to take from the House of Commons the power of incapacitation. The Duke of Richmond confessed the same to Mr. Conway. Lord Chatham was never inflexible towards prerogative; but the subservience of Lord North was more tempting; and on him the King fixed. Lord North owned to Conway that the King had pressed him to accept the Treasury, professed he did not desire it, but would undertake it rather than expose the country to confusion.
Whether Lord North’s readiness to be his successor awakened the Duke of Grafton’s jealousy, on the 25th his Grace talked of going on if the Attorney-General De Grey would accept the Great Seal, as the Duke expected he would. He told Conway that he was extremely pressed to fill up the vacancies; that Lord Sandwich teazed him to be made Privy Seal, or Master of the Ordnance, since Mr. Conway would not take it. Conway, who had offered to give it up, to make Amherst easy, said, the King had consented he should remain Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance; and that, in any case, he would not act under a man of so bad a character as Sandwich, nor would see anybody else put over his head. He was glad, he said, to hear his Grace talk of continuing; for himself, he would take no part, unless his Grace remained. He had no objection to Lord North, but had never had any connexion with him; for the Bedfords, he knew they were his enemies. The Duke made no reply; and Conway and I concluded the wayward fit was gone, as, to our knowledge, it had done so often before.
On January the 25th, the Commons went into a committee on the state of the nation, when Dowdeswell moved to resolve, that the House of Commons is bound to follow the laws of the land and the usage of Parliament, which is part thereof.[44] Conway said, this was a very needless declaration; it was a truism, and admitted by everybody; the House might as well vote that Magna Charta was the law of the land; but he supposed this was meant as a foundation for other questions, and therefore he called on Dowdeswell’s candour to state what he intended should follow. Dowdeswell refused; and therefore Lord North said, as he supposed the motion alluded to the case of Wilkes, he would add the words “and had been so followed in the case of the late election for the county of Middlesex.” Grenville said this was unfair; and that, in a complicated question, any member had a right to separate the parts, and call for each distinctly. Conway replied, that he had known questions made complicated on purpose to destroy them; and reminded Grenville of Dr. Hay’s and Wedderburne’s long and absurd addition to the question on general warrants, which did destroy that question. Wedderburne said, if the motion was a truism, was that a reason for not allowing it? Would any man begin to refuse paying a bill, by denying that two and two make four? He went into the law part of the question; and his position that there had been no question exactly in point, made great impression on the House, no man being a more acute or more accurate speaker. Young Charles Fox, of age but the day before, started up, and entirely confuted Wedderburne, even in law, producing a case decided in the courts below but the last year, and exactly similar to that of Wilkes. “The court,” he said, “had had no precedent, but had gone on analogy.” The House roared with applause. Sir W. Meredith said rudely, he wished Mr. Conway acted then with the same patriotic spirit that he had shown on general warrants, when he had gained the hearts of the nation. Conway replied with fire that he hoped his character was as good as ever, or as that gentleman’s. Had nobody any integrity but those who called themselves patriots? Lord Coke, the oracle of the law, quoted the case of Hall, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, and called it the ancient usage of Parliament. Selden and Maynard held the same doctrine. Who would dare to affirm, that those were not the greatest constitutional lawyers? What was set against them but two or three pamphlets (meaning those written by Dowdeswell and Meredith), ingenious, indeed, but were they of weight to be opposed to Coke, Selden, and Maynard? Sir William Meredith was unlucky in addressing his censure to Conway, who was in reality what Sir William wished or affected to be, a most conscientious man. Conway’s virtue was firm, and not to be shaken by interest or caprice. He persisted in uniform integrity, supported the Court when he thought it in the right, but disdained its temptations. He sometimes fluctuated and refined too minutely; but if he yielded to his scruples, they never were infused by a glimpse of self-advantage. Sir William was not long after this gained to the Court by a White Stick; and though he again relinquished it, as he said, on principle, he lost more on the side of judgment than he recovered on that of conscience; and left it more doubtful whether he was an upright than a very unsettled man. In an age wherein honesty could boast few genuine martyrs, Conway was certainly the most distinguished. He never ceased to attest his attachment to virtue, at the risk of a most precarious fortune; and he had one merit that added to the beauty of his character, and in which he was singular, that he never mixed party or faction with his line of conduct. The Duke of Richmond, Sir George Saville, and Lord John Cavendish, were, undoubtedly, of as unblemished virtue as Conway; but they had all three independent fortunes, and had no opportunities of making equal sacrifices. All three, too, were devoted to their party, and from that point of honour, which did little to their judgment, remained inflexibly attached to that poor creature, Lord Rockingham. The debate, whence I have digressed, lasted till three in the morning, when Lord North’s amendment was carried but by 224 to 180—a threatening diminution to the Administration, who saw their majority on the first day of the session sunk from 116 to 44.
If the Duke of Grafton was alarmed before, his panic was augmented by this decrease of forces. He again declared to the King he would resign, yet still desired his friends to keep the secret.
The next day Mr. Conway related to me two extraordinary conversations that he had had,—the first with the Duke himself, the other with his secretary, Stonhewer. Conway had again tried to encourage the Duke to be firm and surmount his dejection; bidding him beware that there were no Treasury secrets that might endanger him. The Duke broke out, said he was determined to resign immediately, for—he was betrayed. “There is no man, Mr. Conway,” continued he, “on whom I can depend but you.” Conway was amazed. “No,” continued the Duke, “there is no dependence on connections. I am betrayed by my own confidential secretary, Bradshaw. I will go to Lord North, and press him to accept directly.” Farther, he would not open himself. From the Duke, Conway went to Stonhewer. The latter was a modest man of perfect integrity, invariably attached to Grafton from his childhood.[45] He having approved the Duke’s intention of resigning, it was probably from being but too well acquainted with his patron’s unfitness for the first post in the State, or from having silently observed how dangerous it was for the Duke to remain in so responsible an employment, surrounded by traitors. Stonhewer told Conway that the Bedfords had taken little or no pains to persuade the Duke to retain his power. They had made him believe, through Bradshaw, through whom the negotiation passed, that the Attorney-General was more averse to take the Seals than the Duke found him—and Stonhewer owned that he thought Bradshaw a villain. The King, he said, had used the Duke ill, and was not disinclined to his resigning. Mr. Conway had had the same suspicion.
The truth, I believe, of this plot and these intrigues, was this. The King, worn out by Grafton’s negligence, and impracticability, had wished to get rid of him. It was known afterwards, that Bradshaw was secretly the tool of the King and Lord Bute, and had probably engaged Rigby to facilitate his Majesty’s plan of suffering the Duke to resign,—which, however, he was so unjust as to resent for a long time after. Rigby, Lord Gower, and Lord Weymouth, all feared that the Duke’s irrational conduct would involve them in his fall, and Lord Gower particularly hoped, by betraying him, to stand nearer to the chief post. Thus they dissuaded his resignation so faintly as rather to encourage it. The rich reversion obtained by Bradshaw, by or for his treachery, confirmed his share in the transaction. The Duke and Duchess of Bedford were far from being counsel to the resignation; in truth it was entirely concealed from them. That the Duke should not communicate it to them, was most extraordinary. That Lord Gower did not, confirmed his share in the plot. Of all the set, Rigby’s part was the most dark. His concealing the Duke of Grafton’s intention from the Duke of Bedford, was unjustifiable: yet he could not trust the Duchess with it, as her ambition was infinitely gratified by having her niece, the Duchess of Grafton, wife to the Prime Minister; and as her attachment to Rigby was cooled, she would not have bent to his secret views. Thus they did not hear a syllable of Grafton’s purpose till the very last day, and then Bedford vehemently urged him not to resign: but it was too late. Yet, if Grafton had opened half an eye, he soon closed it, continuing his intimacy with Lord Gower and Rigby, and his confidence even to Bradshaw.[46] Had not the Duke himself dropped his suspicions to Conway, and had they not been confirmed by the immaculate honesty of Stonhewer, I should almost doubt the fact, though treachery was so notoriously the characteristic of the Bedford faction.