The Providence which watches over the affairs of mortals sometimes wills that the dénouement of a problem shall come with dramatic effect. It was so now. The recovery of the King occurred in the very week to which the Prince’s friends were eagerly looking forward as the time of entry into his enchanted palace.[684] Their chagrin, at the very moment when the paeans of triumph were on their lips, recalls the thrilling scene in “Paradise Lost,” where the fiends are about to acclaim Satan at the end of the recital of his triumph over mankind, and raise their throats for the shout of victory, when, lo, the sound dies away in
A dismal universal hiss
issuing from thousands of forms suddenly become serpentine.[685]
Such (if we may compare small things with great) was the swift change from exultation to disgust which came over the Prince’s friends. Shortly before the critical day, the 19th, they had declared that, were the Regent in power only for twelve hours, he would make a clean sweep of all official appointments. Indeed, from the outset, he and his followers had let it be known that no mercy would be shown to the Pitt Administration and its officials.[686] There is a manifest absurdity in the assertion of Sir Gilbert Elliot, that Ministers and their adherents looked on the Prince’s following “as a prey to be hunted down and destroyed without mercy.”[687] Up to the 19th of February this phrase aptly described the aim of their rivals. So early as 13th December 1788 Sheridan informed the Marquis of Buckingham that the Prince intended to dissolve Parliament both at Westminster and Dublin; for the Opposition “could not go on with the old one in England; and the choice of a new one in Ireland would give them a lasting advantage, which is true.”[688] The large powers of patronage entrusted to the Regent would have influenced very many votes at the General Election, just as the prospect of princely rewards caused many place-hunters to change sides in the two Houses.
The lavishness of this form of bribery appears in a letter written by Sydney to Cornwallis about 20th February, wherein he asserts that the following promotions in the army were all but officially announced. Four Field-Marshals, thirty-one Generals, twenty Lieutenant-Generals, twelve Major-Generals, besides many Colonels and lower grades; also ten new Aides-de-camp—almost all for political reasons. It was further known that Portland would be Prime Minister; Stormont and Fox, Secretaries of State; Loughborough, Chancellor; Sandwich or Fitzwilliam, First Lord of the Admiralty;[689] Spencer, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; Northumberland, Master-General of the Ordnance; Fitzpatrick, Secretary at War; Sheridan, President of the Board of Control.[690] We may note here that Northumberland and Lord Rawdon (afterwards the Earl of Moira) with some followers had formed a group standing somewhat apart, but acting with the Prince’s friends on consideration of gaining office. They were called the Armed Neutrality; and their proceedings bore no small resemblance to a political auction, in which the Prince of Wales knocked down offices at discretion.[691]
The abrupt ending to these intrigues and bargains brought intense relief to every patriot. Independent observers, like Cartwright and Wyvill, had felt deep concern at the prospect of the rule of the Prince and Fox. “I very much fear,” wrote the former to Wilberforce, “that the King’s present derangement is likely to produce other derangements not for the public benefit. I hope we are not to be sold to the Coalition faction.” Wyvill also wrote to Wilberforce: “Cabal I doubt not is labouring under his [Fox’s] direction to overturn the present Government, while you and the other firm friends of Mr. Pitt are making equal exertions to prevent a change of men and measures. I think the general opinion is that the Prince has acted like a rash young man, that he is capable of being led into dangerous measures, and that men whom the nation greatly distrusts have all his confidence and esteem.”[692]
Public opinion was, however, influenced by something more definite than distrust of the Prince and his favourites. By this time the nation confided entirely in the good sense and disinterestedness of Pitt. The Marquis of Buckingham expressed the general opinion when he called Pitt “the honestest Minister he ever saw.”[693] Those qualities never shone more brightly than during the perplexing problem of the Regency. If he trammelled the Prince, it was in order to assert the supremacy of Parliament, and to prevent personal changes at Windsor which would probably have brought about a return of the King’s malady. For himself, he prepared quietly and with dignity to resume his practice at the Bar. Had the recovery of George III been delayed another week, the Minister would have been found once more at Lincoln’s Inn, looking on with his wonted serenity at the wholesale changes in the official world brought about by the vindictiveness of his rivals. So near was England then to the verge of a political crisis which would have embattled the nation against a Government foisted upon it by an unscrupulous Prince and a greedy faction.
Fortunately the crisis was averted; and, thanks to the wise measures taken by Pitt, the recovery of the royal patient was not interrupted by the sight of new faces around him at Kew and Windsor. Long and laboured explanations were afterwards offered to the King by the Prince of Wales, in which he had the effrontery to refer to the pain caused him when he “saw Her Majesty set up by designing men as the head of a system” which was “a device of private ambition.”[694] After this he never was trusted or fully forgiven either by the King or Queen. Their confidence and that of the nation was heartily accorded to the Minister whose conduct had been as loyal and consistent as that of Laurentius in Pitt’s early dramatic effort. Friends pointed to his simple and earnest regard for the public welfare throughout the whole dispute. By those qualities he peacefully solved a tangled problem and bound together the King and the people in a union of hearts such as had not been known since the accession of the House of Brunswick. On the evening of the day when George III resumed his regal functions, London was ablaze with illuminations which extended from Hampstead to Clapham and Tooting.[695] The joy of all classes of the people brimmed over once more at the Thanksgiving Service held at St. Paul’s Cathedral on 23rd April, when the demonstrations of loyalty were such as to move the King to an outburst of emotion. The part played by Pitt was not forgotten. With difficulty he escaped from the importunities of his admirers, who had to content themselves with dragging his carriage back to his residence in Downing Street. Outwardly, this day marks the zenith of his career. True, he was to win one more diplomatic triumph over the House of Bourbon, the importance of which has been strangely under-rated. But already there was arising on the horizon a cloud, albeit small as a man’s hand, which was destined to overcloud the sky and deluge the earth. Only ten days after the Thanksgiving Service at St. Paul’s there assembled at Versailles the States-General of France, whose actions, helped on by the folly of the French princes, led to the subversion of that august monarchy. By so short an interval did the constitutional crisis in Great Britain precede a convulsion which was destined to overturn nearly every Government in the civilized world.
CHAPTER XIX
AUSTRALIA AND CANADA
The outcasts of an old Society cannot form the foundation of a new one.—Parl. Report of 28th July 1785.