Nevertheless, the Chathamites, albeit a somewhat doctrinaire group, indeed scarcely a party, might now be utilized as a buffer between the throne and the Whig magnates. Accordingly, the King, during an interview with Shelburne, in which he expressed his dislike of Rockingham, proposed that Shelburne should form a Cabinet with Rockingham as head, Shelburne being the intermediary between the King and the Prime Minister. As Shelburne knew that he could not stand without the support of the Whigs, the latter had their way at nearly all points. The King most reluctantly consented not to veto American Independence—a matter on which Rockingham stood firm. In smaller and personal matters, on which George III set much store, he partly succeeded. He refused to see Rockingham until the latter was Prime Minister; he insisted on keeping his factotum, Lord Thurlow, as Chancellor, and he fought hard to keep the gentlemen of the royal household unchanged; but, as he wrote to Lord North, “the number I have saved is incredibly few.” Among them was Lord Montagu, the governor of the King’s son, whom Horace Walpole dubbed the King’s spy on the Prince of Wales, and the only man in whom he (George III) had any confidence. The same sharp critic noted that the King now used, with some success, the only artifice in which he had ever succeeded, that of sowing discord. He had openly shown that Shelburne and Thurlow were his men in the Cabinet; and Fox, who became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, said that the new Cabinet belonged partly to the King and partly to the people. In the very limited sense in which the Whigs were a popular party (for the official Whigs sought the support of the people mainly in order to browbeat the King), the remark was correct.
However that may be, the King had certainly contrived largely to nullify the victory of the Whigs by fomenting discords in the Cabinet. So astute an intriguer as Shelburne was certain to chafe at the ascendancy of Rockingham; and the King’s tactics, while humiliating the Prime Minister, enabled Shelburne secretly to arrange matters according to the royal behests. Shelburne held the secretaryship for Home Affairs, which then carried with it a supervision of the executive at Dublin Castle. He also brought in Dunning (now created Lord Ashburton without the knowledge of Rockingham) as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; and it has been ascertained that he sought to include Pitt in the Cabinet with some high office. Which office he was to have is not clear; but Lady Chatham wrote to Shelburne on 28th March in terms which implied an office of Cabinet rank. Here, however, Rockingham protested with success; and as a result only the Vice-Treasurership of Ireland was offered him, an office which by his previous declaration he had bound himself to refuse.[122] His exclusion from the Cabinet by the influence of the official Whigs served to alienate him from that party, and brought him more in contact with men who were beginning to figure as supporters of the royal prerogative.
As a private member, Pitt gave his support to the new Ministry; and on 29th April he made a brief but telling appeal for unanimity, “from which the salvation of the nation could alone be hoped for.” Certainly the Ministry needed the help of all patriots. The prestige of Britain was at the lowest ebb. Beaten alike in the New World and in the Mediterranean, where Minorca had recently been recovered by the Spaniards, she seemed at the end of her resources. Ireland was in a state of veiled rebellion. The Parliament at Dublin unanimously demanded the repeal of Poynings Act and that of the year 1720, which assured its dependence on the British Government; and some 100,000 Volunteers were ready to take the field to make good the claim. In vain did the new Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Portland, seek to gain time. Grattan, whom the Earl of Mornington styled “the most upright and temperate demagogue that ever appeared in any country,” had Ireland at his back. He refused to wait; and in the month of May the British Parliament gave effect to his demands by unanimously conceding legislative independence to the Dublin Parliament.[123] Pitt did not speak on the subject, but he probably agreed with the change, which in the circumstances was inevitable. The news aroused in Ireland a storm of enthusiasm, and the Dublin Parliament voted the sum of £100,000 for raising 20,000 seamen. For the present, then, the Irish question was shelved, but at the cost of many difficulties in the future.
About the same time, the cloud which had hung so ominously over Britain’s navy cleared away. News arrived of the victory which Rodney gained over the French fleet under Count de Grasse near Dominica on 12th April 1782,[124] which saved the West Indian colonies and restored Britain’s supremacy on the ocean. Equally fortunate was Eliott’s repulse of a determined attack on Gibraltar by the French and Spaniards, which brought about the relief of the garrison and ensured the total failure of the prolonged and desperate efforts of France and Spain to seize the key of the Mediterranean.
The spirit of the nation rose with these successes; and Shelburne brought forward a Bill for arming the people. The motion came to little, probably because of the fear which the Lord George Gordon riots had aroused;[125] but, as the sequel will show, it took effect in some quarters and provided the basis for the far more important Volunteer Movement of the Great French War.
It is remarkable, as showing the strong bent of Pitt’s nature towards civil affairs, that he spoke, not on these topics, but solely on the cause of Parliamentary Reform. His insistence on this topic at a time of national peril can be paralleled by the action of another statesman a century later; and it is significant that, when Mr. Gladstone introduced his Franchise Bill in 1884, he was warmly reproached by Lord Randolph Churchill for bringing forward this topic amidst the conflicts or complications in which we were involved in Egypt, the Sudan, Afghanistan, and South Africa. But the Liberal leader claimed that by conferring the franchise on some two million of citizens, the people would be arrayed “in one solid compacted mass around the ancient throne which it has loved so well and round a constitution now to be more than ever powerful and more than ever free.” The plea has been justified by events; and we can now gauge at its true value the politic daring of the two statesmen who sought to meet dangers from without by strengthening the fabric of the Empire at its base.
In the year 1782 the gravity of the crisis was far greater than that of the year 1884; for the storms were beating on an edifice dangerously narrow at the ground. Realizing that the subject of the representation was too complicated to be handled except after an official investigation, Pitt for the present proposed merely the formation of a Committee of Inquiry which should report on the best means of carrying out “a moderate and substantial reform.” His proposals, and still more the fame of his eloquence, aroused great interest; so that on the morning of 7th May a crowd endeavoured to gain access to Westminster Hall. Many of the “news-writers” were excluded, with results harmful to the printed reports of the speech.[126] Pitt prefaced his remarks by acknowledging most thankfully that they had now to do with a Ministry which desired such a measure, and not with one that “laboured to exert the corrupt influence of the Crown in support of an inadequate representation of the people.” He assumed it as proven that the House of Commons had received an improper and dangerous bias, which impaired the constitution.
That beautiful frame of government which has made us the envy and admiration of mankind, in which the people are entitled to hold so distinguished a share, is so far dwindled, and has so far departed from its original purity, as that the representatives have ceased, in a great degree, to be connected with the people. It is of the essence of the constitution that the people should have a share in the government by the means of representation; and its excellence and permanency is calculated to consist in this representation, having been designed to be equal, easy, practicable, and complete. When it ceases to be so; when the representative ceases to have connection with the constituent, and is either dependent on the Crown or the aristocracy, there is a defect in the frame of representation, and it is not innovation but recovery of constitution, to repair it.
He then pointed out some of the worst anomalies of the existing system. There were some boroughs wholly controlled, or absolutely possessed, by the Treasury. In others its influence was contested solely by a great landowner, but never by the inhabitants in their own right. Some few boroughs [Old Sarum is the classical instance] had only one or two voters. Other towns,
in the lofty possession of English freedom, claim to themselves the right to bring their votes to market. They have no other market, no other property, and no other stake in the country, than the property and price which they procure for their votes. Such boroughs are the most dangerous of all. So far from consulting the interests of their country in the choice which they make, they hold out their borough to the best purchaser.... It is a fact pretty well known that the Nabob of Arcot had no less than seven or eight members in that House. May not a foreign State in enmity with this country, by means of these boroughs, procure a party of men to act for them under the mask and character of members of that House?