Though this affair had on the whole been carried through with success, there had been a certain quantity of opposition in London, showing the unpopular character of the Government. Murmurs against the press warrants had been heard, and opposition to them had been overruled chiefly by Chatham's influence. But the feeling of discontent broke out in full force the following year. Great jealousy had always been felt in Parliament as to reports of the The liberty of reporting Parliamentary debates. debates held there, and such meagre accounts as had been published, from the memory of hearers or other private sources, had habitually been brought out under some disguise and with an affectation of secrecy. In 1770 this habit had passed into disuse. The Commons, already angry with the House of Lords for having excluded strangers, and indignant that, while the Lords secured secrecy their own debates were publicly reported, resolved to enforce the existing orders against some of the printers of reports. Among others, one Miller was summoned to be reprimanded. He however refused to come, saying he was a livery-man of the City. A messenger sent to fetch him was himself apprehended and taken before the Lord Mayor, Brass Crosby, and Aldermen Oliver and Wilkes. These magistrates supported the arrest and held the messenger to bail. The House was very indignant. As the Mayor and Oliver were members, they justified in their places in Parliament what they had done, and were committed to the Tower. This was a sign for a renewal of the riots attending the Wilkite difficulties. Mobs filled the streets, and Lord North was ill used. The City took up the part of its members, who lived in prison at the public expense; and although the law courts held that the City was in the wrong, appearances became so threatening that the House let the matter quietly drop; and on the prorogation in May the prisoners were allowed to leave their confinement in triumphal procession, and the question was not again raised. This secured for ever the liberty of reporting.
Lord North's ministry gathers strength.
In spite of this victory the popular party in the City was losing ground, and Wilkes was not the name of power it once had been; while within the walls of Parliament the ministry was constantly acquiring strength and the Opposition becoming more and more broken up. Grafton had again consented to return to office; Lord Sandwich, a follower of the Duke of Bedford, accepted the Admiralty. Lord Suffolk, the leader of what was left of Grenville's party, became Secretary of State. The Opposition was thus reduced to the party of Rockingham and such few followers as consistently clung to Lord Chatham, but these two sections could never work well together, and the three Whig propositions of the year were all lost by want of union. The want of harmony between the Parliament and the country, and the consequent need of some reform, had been shown by the late quarrels in the City. Chatham brought in a Bill with that object, embodying his old plan of increased county representation. This, as it seemed the only manner of securing an addition of independent members, and as there was not yet in existence an important manufacturing and industrial element unrepresented, was probably the best measure that could have been taken. But it did not find favour with the Rockingham party, and was put aside. The same fate attended an effort on the part of the Rockingham party to define the law of libel, and to give the jury in such cases the right of settling not only the fact of publication, but the character of the libel. Chatham thought that measure should have been left for him, and a ridiculous struggle between the two Whig sections in the House was the result. On the third question, the dissolution of the present Parliament, which had been the favourite object of all the City opposition and addresses, Chatham found himself almost alone. While thus all effective opposition disappeared, Lord North found his chief parliamentary support in his law officers. Thurlow, his Attorney-General, and Wedderburn, his Solicitor, afterwards Lord Loughborough, brought—the one the weight of great legal knowledge, very strong sense, a wonderful power of invective, and a determination of character almost brutal; the other a time-serving readiness and facile elegant eloquence which was always at the service of his chief.
Excellent as the King's domestic life was, he did not escape the family discomforts which so constantly attended the house of Hanover. Two of his brothers gave him much displeasure by their marriages. The Duke of Cumberland,[10] a man of libertine life, after scandalizing the world by appearing as defendant in a case of criminal conversation, married Mrs. Horton, a sister of that Colonel Luttrell who had been forced upon the electors of Middlesex; while the Duke of Gloucester now declared his marriage with Lady Waldegrave, an illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole. To guard against such marriages in future, the Royal Marriage Bill was passed, which forbids any member of the Royal Family, unless children of princesses married abroad, to marry before the age of twenty-five without the King's consent. After that age they must give a twelvemonth's notice of their intended marriage, which may be completed unless it be petitioned against by both Fate of the Queen of Denmark. Houses of Parliament. A more real disgrace than these marriages was the fate of George's sister, Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark. Her husband was a disgusting and licentious sot, whose villanous conduct so changed her naturally good disposition, that it was not found difficult for her enemies to gain credence for a story which connected her name in a disreputable manner with a certain Struensee, at that time favourite and Prime Minister in Denmark. This man, a physician by profession, had acquired absolute control over the King's mind, and had speedily risen to power. His enemies were of course numerous, and the opportunity offered them by the Queen's conduct only too favourable. Struensee and the Queen were suddenly apprehended by night, and the Queen, after some remonstrance from King George, allowed to retire to Zell, where she died after a few years, protesting her innocence. Struensee, however, was executed, and confessed the crime with which he and the Queen were charged.
Division of Poland.
From such comparatively trivial matters as royal marriages and misconduct it is necessary to turn to what forms one of the darkest passages in the political history of Europe. England, under the guidance of a ministry bound to support the selfish policy of a King whose real aim was solely the aggrandizement of the Crown, had held selfishly aloof from foreign affairs. France had just disgraced the last capable and vigorous minister she possessed, and lay supine under the hands of the King's scandalous mistress. So these two great countries, to their eternal disgrace, looked calmly on while the Eastern powers, without reason or plea of reason, dismembered an old kingdom and reduced a noble people to slavery. The institutions of Poland were very different from those of the rest of Europe, and such as lent themselves easily to the plans of encroaching neighbours. Since the failure of the house of Jagellon Constitution of Poland. (1572) the monarchy had been elective. So great a prize had naturally attracted the notice of foreign powers, who sought to secure the advancement of their own interests by obtaining the election of some favourite candidate of their own. Faction within the country was the inevitable consequence, and the arrangements of the constitution made faction permanent. There was no middle class. The nation had not gone through the same processes as other Western people. Nobility was easily obtained, and Its peculiar institutions. each member of the nobility ranked as the peer of all the rest. Below the ranks of the nobility came the serfs. Political power, and also most of the executive, was vested in this wide aristocratical democracy. Usually delegates of the nobles constituted a governing house. Sometimes the whole body could, and did, claim the right of legislating. In the delegates' house one veto could check the progress of any law. If to this is added that the nation was divided by fierce differences in religion, it will be seen that no fairer field for foreign intrigue can be conceived. Nor, in spite of their individual bravery, were the Poles in a position to withstand force; the nobility still clung to their old habit of fighting on horseback, so that, at a time when modern warfare had fairly begun, there was no infantry but such as consisted of serfs. The strength of the army still consisted in an irregular body of light horse. Well might the Czarina Catherine say that anything might be had from Poland for the trouble of picking it up. She had made the experiment. On the death of Augustus of Saxony, in 1764, Russia had compelled the Poles to elect a late favourite of the Empress, Stanislas Poniatowsky, and from the time of his election had in fact treated Poland as her own property. It had been the hereditary policy of France to withstand Russian influence in Poland, and during Choiseul's ministry this policy was continued. The Turks were induced to make a war with Russia, which, though disastrous to them, no doubt somewhat lengthened the dying agonies of Poland. The confederates, who opposed in arms the reigning king and the Russian party, chiefly on the ground that they had insisted on the rights of the dissidents or dissenters in opposition to the orthodox Catholics, received constant though secret help from France. The conduct of Austria also was as yet ambiguous, and, judging by its natural interests, should have been opposed to that of Russia. On such hopes the confederates rested. Occasional success lured them on more rapidly to inevitable ruin. But France was too far away to give real help. Choiseul fell before the intrigues of the Dubarry party, and neither nation nor ministry was in a temper or position to pursue with energy a distant and unselfish policy. On the other hand, Austria speedily began to see more advantage in joining the prosperous and rising powers of Eastern Europe than in trying to prop up against them a falling cause. It became evident that Russia would soon be absolute master of the kingdom. Frederick of Prussia could not see such an accession to the power of his dangerous neighbour without taking some corresponding measures, and as a Prussian army entered and pillaged ruthlessly all the northern provinces, it became plain that there existed some understanding between Frederick and the Empress. The movement of Austrian troops, at first supposed to be friendly to the confederates, soon proved that Maria Theresa, however grandly she might write Treaty of Partition. and speak, had joined in the conspiracy of robbers; and before the year 1772 was over the treaty made early in the year was declared; and the necessary concessions were wrung with much violence from the King and legislature, absolutely unable to assert any will of their own. The final ratification took place in May 1773. The kingdom was to be partitioned. Each of the three great neighbours was to receive a portion somewhat in proportion to its size. Russia got 87,500 square miles; Austria 62,500; Prussia only 9,465 square miles, but these containing the best and most industrious part of the nation. What remained was formed into an hereditary monarchy in the house of Stanislas. It is fair to say, as an excuse for the supineness with which England looked on at this vast national crime, that the best and wisest of her statesmen had systematically directed their attention to the depression of the house of Bourbon. In the system of balance of power, as then understood, nothing was regarded as so likely to prove a check on the power of that house as the increase of the influence of Russia. Any movement in favour of Poland must have been in union with France and in opposition to Russia, and would have tended at first to reverse that action, which was generally regarded as most consistent with the safety of English interests. In the face of recent facts (1871), it may be clearly evident that the dangers of Europe come from the East and not from the West; but it is not fair to blame statesmen or nations because they did not foresee the French Revolution and its consequences, nor to throw indiscriminate censure on the whole system of the balance of power because it has sometimes Balance of Power. produced disasters. As long as the social constitution of Europe remains the same as it has been since the breaking up of the feudal system, as long as the feeling of nationality survives, in some form or other the balance of power is a necessary safeguard to national independence. The fictitious divisions into which Europe has by dynastic influences been forced, and the maintenance of which has been the chief cause of the disrepute into which the system of balance has fallen, have disappeared, or are disappearing, before more natural and truly national divisions; but until these in their turn give way to some wholly new industrial organization the undue preponderance of one nation must be an object of dread to all the rest, and their efforts must be directed, as events afford opportunity, to diminishing that preponderance.
It is fair also to say that the ministry had enough upon their hands already. Although there had been a comparative cessation of the troubles in America, there had been many signs that they were by no means over. The more advanced leaders, indeed, in Massachusetts were too determined in their views and too skilful as managers of agitation to let the friends of the English connection, though doubtless considerably the larger part of the population, carry the day through their inactivity. The discontent of the colonies had been sedulously kept alive by the skill and vigour of the leaders of the Opposition party. In the midst of constant quarrels with their governor, Hutchinson, an American by birth, the Massachusetts leaders appointed a committee of twenty-one for the purpose of organizing opposition to the Government. This step was followed by Virginia, where, in 1773, a corresponding committee of still wider scope was appointed; and at length two events occurred which entirely destroyed all hope of a peaceful accommodation. These incidents were the publication of some letters of Hutchinson, and an arrangement with the India Company which had in reality no connection with the quarrel. In June 1773, certain letters were laid before the House of Representatives of Massachusetts purporting to be written by Hutchinson, their governor, and his brother-in-law, Oliver, Lieutenant-Governor. These letters, written in 1767 and the two following years to Whately, the private secretary of Grenville, were of a private and friendly character. They took a view favourable to the Government, and stated the opinion of the writer, that a firm exhibition of authority would best tend to check the colonial discontent. The letters had been forwarded from England by Dr. Franklin, who was acting as agent for Massachusetts. As they were private letters, and Mr. Whately was dead, it is impossible that Franklin should not have known that they had come into his hands by unfair means. He had not the least right to use them. Indeed, on sending them to America he made a stipulation that they should not be published. Of course such a stipulation in the heat of a political quarrel was intended to be broken; and they were not only produced and read, and acknowledged by Hutchinson, but published. Their effect was very great; it seemed to the Americans as if the English Government had been urged to all its acts of severity by a party of traitors among themselves. The House of Representatives at once addressed the King, warmly demanding the removal of Hutchinson from his place as governor, since he had, they said, betrayed his trust, and given private, partial, and false information to Government. The petition was sent to Lord Dartmouth, who had succeeded Lord Dunning's petition rejected. 1774. Hillsborough as Colonial Secretary, by him it was laid before the King, who referred it to the Privy Council. The Council, consisting chiefly of "the King's friends," met in January 1774. Franklin, as Colonial agent, was present. The petitioners were represented by Dunning, the great Opposition advocate. The administration had unwisely given the affair the air of a Government question by naming Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, as Hutchinson's counsel. Dunning contented himself with saying that the petitioners had no impeachment to make, no facts to prove; they only appealed to the King's judgment. With most unwise want of reticence, Wedderburn, feeling himself in the presence of a very favourable audience, gave vent to a furious diatribe against America, and more especially against Franklin—a man, he said, to be shunned by all honest men, from whom men would henceforth hide their papers; in short, a thief. The Council heard, laughed, and applauded. Franklin stood unmoved, no muscle showing how much he felt the insult, but it did not miss its mark. For him from that day no accommodation was possible, and the brown suit in which he stood was put by, to be worn again only when the treaty declaring America independent was signed. The petition, in which a people had expressed their earnest and passionate feelings, was declared frivolous and vexatious, and Franklin was removed at once from his office of Deputy Postmaster for the colonies.
Wedderburn had, no doubt, in his violent invective only expressed the feeling of most of the English nation; only a few weeks after the meeting of the Privy Council news had reached England which was not likely to render the bitterness between the two people less. In 1772 the India Company had come to Parliament demanding a loan. The India Company's difficulties. 1772. Much censure had been thrown on their officers and their manner of action, and alterations had been insisted on, which placed the Company very much at the mercy of Government. As a sort of compensation a Bill was brought in in their favour, by which they were enabled to export their teas from their London warehouses to the American colonies free from the English duties, and liable only to the much smaller duty to be levied in the colony. This measure would allow the India Company to get rid of a large surplus stock of tea then lying on hand, and would enable the colonists to buy their tea considerably cheaper. To the colonists however it bore another aspect. The whole plan seemed to them a scheme to surprise or bribe them into compliance with the very measure of taxation they were so strenuously opposing. This belief was supported by the fact, that all the consignees who were to receive the tea were warm partisans of England, and was fostered by the whole body of tea merchants and free traders, who saw themselves likely to be driven from the market by this direct tea trade. The opposition party took means to organize a resistance. The consignees were duly warned. The tea ships entered Boston harbour, but the captains were so fully convinced of the futility of their speculation, that they would willingly have again withdrawn. Some little customhouse formalities detained them; and meanwhile they were boarded by a body of men dressed as Mohawks, who tossed the obnoxious tea into the sea. Similar steps, though less violent, were taken elsewhere, and none of the tea sent over under this disastrous law found its way into the market.