The importance of these debates centres in the treatment of a very complex question by the two great rivals, Pitt and Fox. The conduct of the former has been sufficiently outlined. It remains to say a few words on that of Fox. Few of his speeches are more ingenious than those on the Regency. As a forcible handling of a weak case they have few equals. But the House of Commons is rarely won over by a dazzling display of “tongue-fencing.” It demands to see the applicability of arguments to the needs of the time. This has been its peculiar excellence. Its deliberations are rarely lit up with the radiance of immortal truths; but they are suffused with the comforting glow of the domestic hearth. Fox forgot this. In contrast with the accepted Whig doctrine, he put forth claims which, if pressed to their natural conclusion, would have implied the restoration of monarchy of the pre-Revolution type. If it was true that the Prince of Wales could demand the Regency as a right, or even as a “legal claim,” free from all restrictions, how much more could the King govern independently of Parliament? A Regent is to a King what the moon is to the sun—a merely borrowed and temporary splendour. Apart, then, from an inconsistency of conduct highly damaging to a statesman, Fox committed the mistake of pledging himself to a scheme of government which was not only obsolete but unworkable.
Those who plod through the wearisome debates on the Regency must be conscious of an air of unreality. The references on both sides of the House to the cases of Edward VI or Henry VI were, after all, illusory; for in those times the powers of Parliament were ill defined. The nearest parallel to the present case was supplied by the events of 1688; and though pedants might appeal to certain forms observed by the Convention of that year, the significance of those events undoubtedly lay in the assertion of the supremacy of Parliament in all cases of a temporary lapse of the royal power. The argument for the supremacy of Parliament in all doubtful cases acquired redoubled strength from the Act of Settlement of 1701, which set aside hereditary right in favour of the House of Brunswick.
The arguments of Fox as to the inherent right of the Prince of Wales to the Regency must therefore be pronounced archaically interesting but inconclusive for any member of the reigning dynasty. The fact that they were adopted by the Irish Parliament adds nothing to their force; for that body was known to act more from corrupt motives or from opposition to George III and his Lord-Lieutenant, the Marquis of Buckingham, than from monarchical zeal.[671]
The divisions in the Parliament at Westminster were also much influenced by similar considerations. The numbers of those who went over to the Prince’s side were surprisingly large. Among the Peers, the cases of the Marquis of Lothian and the Duke of Queensberry attracted especial notice, as they had received many benefits from the King. Of those helped on by Pitt, Lord Malmesbury and Gerald Hamilton (commonly known as “Single-Speech” Hamilton) were the worst defaulters. The former, after calling on Pitt to assure him of his devotion, suddenly “ratted” to the Prince and sent a very lame letter of excuse. To this Pitt replied that he had certainly misunderstood every expression in their late interview, and begged his Lordship to act in any way he thought fit without troubling to send an apology.[672] Malmesbury sought to appease his friend Carmarthen by offering to call and discuss things in the old way; but, if he had lost his esteem, he would prefer to retire and feed goats on a mountain “out of the reach of d—d Kings and d—d Regents.”[673] What Carmarthen thought of the defaulters appeared in his witty reply to someone who asked how it came about that Fox had let the cat out of the bag so soon—“To catch the rats, I suppose.”
The pamphlet literature that sprang up at this crisis is highly interesting. The hacks employed by the Opposition persistently accused Pitt of aiming at dictatorial power—a theme on which they richly embroidered, despite the well-known fact that he was preparing to resume his position as a barrister. It is somewhat significant that, while the nation warmly supported Pitt, he was bitterly assailed by Grub Street and Soho. Anonymous writers confidently foretold his ascendancy and the ruin of England. “A few years, perhaps, and our boasted commonwealth may be numbered among the governments that cover the earth—the awful ruins of edifices once consecrated to the rights and happiness of the human kind.”[674] A “Private Citizen” urged the drawing up of an address to the Prince begging him to take the full regal power as a “simple and obvious mode of restoring the constitutional government to its full vigour.”[675] A flurried patriot declared that he knew of “but one alarming Regency, which is that of ambitious Ministers voting themselves in power.”[676] Another citizen, surely of Jacobite tendencies, proved that no power in the universe could appoint a Regent; for he assumed that office solely by hereditary right. As for “Regent Ministers,” they would every day prostitute the dignity of the Crown in the animosities of debate, and the state of England would soon be worse than that of Poland.[677] Similar in tone is an “Address to those Citizens who had resisted the Claim of the late House of Commons to nominate the Ministers of the Crown.” The writer asserts that only sophistry can deny that the sole question now is whether Pitt and his colleagues shall be invested with the regal authority with unlimited powers and for an indefinite period.[678] These insinuations harmonize with those which Buckingham found in circulation at Dublin; that the King had long been insane, but Pitt had concealed the fact in order to govern without control; and that the plan of a restricted Regency was the outcome of the same lust for power.[679]
The falsity of these charges is obvious. Whether the Regency were a right or a trust, the Prince of Wales in the middle of February was about to become Regent; and if he chose to risk a conflict with Parliament he might at once dismiss Pitt and summon Fox to his counsels. On this all-important question there were no restrictions whatsoever. The restrictions solely concerned the relations between the Regent and the King, with two exceptions. These were the entrusting the Great Seal to a Commission, and the forbidding the Regent to create Peers except among the royal family; and here the aim obviously was to prevent the Prince obstructing legislation and swamping the House of Lords with his own nominees.
That the Prince did not dismiss Pitt was due, not to the lack of legal power to do so, but to the opportune recovery of the King. As appears by the reports of Dr. Willis, his health steadily improved throughout February. It is clear that Fox, who was drinking the waters at Bath, disbelieved the official bulletins on this subject and looked forward to a lease of power; for he wrote to Fitzpatrick on 17th February in terms of jubilation at the decision of the Irish Parliament, and added: “I hope by this time all idea of the Prince or any of us taking action in consequence of the good reports of the King are at an end: if they are not, do all you can to crush them.... I rather think, as you do, that Warren has been frightened. I am sure, if what I hear is true, that he has not behaved well.... Let me know by the return of the post on what day the Regency is like to commence.”[680] From this it is obvious that the pessimism of Dr. Warren was not uninfluenced by political considerations.
The Prince was either better informed or more cautious than his favourite. On that same day a bulletin appeared announcing the King’s convalescence. The signatories included Dr. Warren, who speedily fell into disgrace with the Prince’s friends. On the 19th, at the request of the King, Thurlow had an interview with him and informed him of what had happened during his illness. We may be sure that the Chancellor’s narrative illustrated that power of language to conceal thought which Talleyrand held to be its choicest function. Thurlow, on his return to town, moved the adjournment of the debate on the Regency Bill, which proved to be the beginning of the end of that measure.
A still severer test of the King’s powers was afforded by his interview four days later with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York. The Queen was present the whole time, and political topics were of course avoided. Grenville asserts that after that interview the Princes drove straight to Mrs. Armstead’s house in Park Street in hopes of finding Fox there and informing him of the King’s condition. Certain it is that, according to Willis’s report to Pitt, “the Princes expressed great astonishment and satisfaction to Colonel Digby after their interview with the King, remarking only one or two trifling circumstances in which they thought His Majesty was not perfectly right. The King has been perfectly composed since, and his anxiety to see Mr. Pitt increases to that degree that probably Mr. Pitt will receive a message to that purport to-morrow morning.”[681] Accordingly Pitt saw his sovereign on the 24th, and found him calm and dignified, without the slightest sign of flurry or disorder of mind. He spoke of his illness as a thing entirely past, and with tears in his eyes thanked all those who had stood by him. Even his emotion did not derange his faculties or mar his equanimity.[682]
Meanwhile at Westminster the Opposition sought to vie with their rivals in expressions of loyal joy at the King’s recovery. Viscount Stormont and other deserters to the Prince’s side hastened to avow their satisfaction; and the Duke of York displayed some skill in depicting the heartfelt joy which filled his heart and that of his royal brother—sentiments which they further proceeded to illustrate by plunging into a round of orgies.[683] In the Commons Fox sought decently to draw a veil over the disappointment of his partisans.