The Shakespeare Tavern, celebrated as the head-quarters of the Whig party during Fox’s candidature for Westminster, was the scene of a popular ovation on the twentieth anniversary of the Whig chief’s election for that important constituency; the event was celebrated by a public dinner, October 10, 1800. Fox had so long absented himself from Parliament, feeling, as he declared, “his time of action was over when those principles were extinguished on which he acted,” that his reappearance excited the greatest enthusiasm amongst his partisans, who were anxious both to hear his sentiments on the political outlook, and to demonstrate their unabated attachment to the “Man of the People,” who preferred to seclude himself from public business and from the platform of his most brilliant oratorical triumphs, that he “might steadily adhere to those principles which had guided his past conduct.” Every room in the house was filled with company. In replying to the cordial reception of his health, Fox reminded his auditors that “During the twenty years I have represented you in Parliament I have adhered to the principles on which the Revolution of 1688 was founded, and what have been known as the old Whig principles of England;” and recalled that his first connection with his constituents occurred “during the calamitous war with America;” he then alluded to his absence from Parliament, extended to three years, and thus eloquently concluded: “I shall ever maintain that the basis of all parties is justice—that the basis of all constitutions is the sovereignty of the people—that from the people alone kings, parliaments, judges, and magistrates derive their authority.” Gillray has embodied this situation in his pictorial version of this most enthusiastic reception, ungenerously representing Fox as “The Worn-out Patriot; or, the Last Dying Speech of the Westminster Representative,” October 10, 1800. The great statesman is depicted as both mentally and physically in a state of decadence; Erskine is sustaining him with a bottle of brandy to stimulate his strength artificially, while Harvey Combe, in his robes as Lord Mayor, is lending his substantial support; a measure of Whitbread’s “entire” is also ready for the emergency. Among the guests are figured Sir J. Sinclair, and the gifted member for Southwark, Tierney. The speech the satirist has sarcastically introduced is a parody on that delivered by the Whig chief to the electors on the occasion:—
“Gentlemen, you see I am grown quite an old man in your service. Twenty years I’ve served you, and always upon the same principles. I rejoiced at the success of our enemies in the American War, and the war against the virtuous French has always met with my most determined opposition; but the infamous Ministry will not make peace with our enemies, and are determined to keep me out of their councils and out of place. Therefore, gentlemen, as their principles are quite different from mine, and as I am now too old to form myself according to their systems, my attendance in Parliament is useless, and, to say the truth, I feel that my season of action is past, and I must leave to younger men to act, for, alas! my failings and weaknesses will not let me now recognize what is for the best.”
THE WORN-OUT PATRIOT, OR THE LAST DYING SPEECH OF THE WESTMINSTER REPRESENTATIVE, ON THE ANNIVERSARY MEETING, HELD AT THE SHAKESPEARE TAVERN, OCTOBER 10, 1800. BY JAMES GILLRAY.
Pointed and pungent as is this version, it is on record that Fox’s mental activity was still most brilliant; indeed, to the extent of converting his consistent enemy, George III. The supposed “Worn-out Patriot” lived to form an administration in 1806 in conjunction with Lord Grenville, who made Fox’s accession to power a sine quâ non. He filled the office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at perhaps the most delicate and critical period of our history, when Napoleon entertained designs against England; and on the death of the patriotic statesman, the king declared “he had never known the duties of that office so efficiently discharged for the honour of the country.”
“Who,” remarked a contemporary, “in reviewing Fox’s noble adherence to the cause of Liberty, as it affected the American nation, and weighing the wisdom of his forewarnings of the fatal consequences of the American War, but must admire the prophetic spirit with which he foretold all the direful events which resulted both to the Mother Country and her colonies from that unnatural fratricidal war.”
The first Parliament after the Union with Ireland met January 22, 1801, and was marked by the reappearance of Fox and the election of Horne Tooke for the borough of Old Sarum through the influence of Lord Camelford. The return of one who had been in holy orders involved a great constitutional question; his admission was opposed on the ground of his clerical profession, and it led to a bill making clergymen incapable of sitting in parliament. Tooke occupied his seat until the next dissolution, which occurred the year following, when he was no longer eligible. The circumstances are commemorated in a caricature by Gillray, entitled, “Political Amusements for Young Gentlemen, or the Brentford Shuttlecock between Old Sarum and the Temple of St. Stephen’s,” March, 1801. Lord Temple led the opposition to Tooke’s admission, and he is represented as resisting his entrance to the House, within which Fox is pictured crying, “The Church for Ever!” Lord Camelford, who was in the navy, is batting the shuttlecock from Old Sarum (the electors depicted as swine at a trough) to the Commons; he cries, “There’s a stroke for you, messmate; and if you kick him back, I’ll return him again, if I should be sent on a cruise to Moorfields for it! Go it, Coz.” Lord Temple is replying, “Send him back? Yes, I’ll send him back twenty thousand times, before such a high-flying Jacobin shuttlecock shall perch it here in his Clerical band.” Lord Camelford’s “List of Candidates” includes, besides Tooke, the names of Black Dick (his negro servant), and orator Thelwall, in case his ex-clerical nominee’s election was annulled; but his lordship disclaimed ever having entertained the intention of offering so gross an insult to the House. The inscriptions on the feathers stuck in the head of the noble lord’s plaything, “The Old Brentford Shuttlecock,” are intended to indicate his character.
| Lord Temple. | J. Horne Tooke. | Lord Camelford. |
POLITICAL AMUSEMENTS FOR YOUNG GENTLEMEN, OR THE BRENTFORD SHUTTLECOCK BETWEEN OLD SARUM AND THE TEMPLE OF ST. STEPHEN’S. 1801. BY J. GILLRAY.