♦Jan. 3.♦
Mr. Perceval immediately laid this correspondence before parliament, saying, “that, though, if it had not been for the difficulty thus unexpectedly started, he should not have thought it expedient to bring the subject under their immediate notice, yet he had always anticipated it as his duty to submit it to their consideration, not for the purpose of obtaining a previous vote of indemnity, but, having incurred the responsibility of action, with the view of calling on the house to determine whether or not ministers had acted justifiably.” He now moved a resolution, that the Lords of the Treasury should issue their warrants for the payment of such sums as were necessary, and that the Auditors and officers of the Exchequer should obey those warrants. In the course of the debate he noticed the argument, that public inconvenience was now proved to have arisen from the delay occasioned by adjournments. “We have,” said he, “this marked, monstrous, abominable, and aggravated case before us, ... and what is it? what is this great public inconvenience? Why, that ministers have found it necessary to come to parliament to authorize the issue of money, for services for which that very money has been appointed!”
The resolution passed without a division; but, in the Upper House, twenty Peers, among whom were all the Royal Dukes, protested against it; because, they said, the principle on which it was founded would justify the assumption of all the executive power of the crown by the two houses of parliament, during any suspension of the personal exercise of the royal authority. This business attracted more notice than it otherwise would have done, because, upon Lord Grenville’s accession to the first place in the ministry after the death of Mr. Pitt, a bill had been passed, empowering him to hold at the same time the offices of First Lord of the Treasury and Auditor of the Exchequer; offices which, it was argued in support of the bill, might without inconvenience be held by the same person. The imprudence of bringing thus to recollection a measure, which at the time had called forth strong animadversions, did not tend to lessen the unpopularity of Lord Grenville and the coalition with which he acted.
♦State of the opposition.♦
That party fully expected their return to power. They were strong in borough influence, while Mr. Perceval, owing to the course which he pursued concerning the regency, lost the support of those members of the royal family who had been most closely connected with their father’s government. Their journalists were numerous and active, and they depended upon the Prince’s favour. But though all the various sects and subdivisions of opposition had united in one cry against the king’s ministers, there were too many points of difference between them to be easily accommodated. On the question of what is insidiously termed catholic emancipation they were agreed; but only on that question: the Grenvilles were at variance with all their allies upon the subject of parliamentary reform, and the reformists were at variance among themselves as to the nature and extent of their purposed reformation. The war also was another ground of dissension. One party would have sacrificed our allies, our interest, and our honour, for the sake of obtaining vile popularity, by concluding a nominal and deceitful peace. They saw no difficulty in accommodating our differences with all our enemies; according to them, their country was in the wrong upon every disputed point; we had therefore only to concede every thing to America, and suffer Buonaparte, without farther opposition, to govern Spain and Portugal in his own way: then we might have illuminations for a definitive treaty, transparencies of Peace and Plenty, and quartern loaves and pewter pots carried in jubilant procession, in honour of the reduced prices of bread and porter. This would have been the foreign policy of the radical reformers; that of Lord Grenville and the despondents would have been equally ruinous; believing it impossible that we could resist the military power of France, and yet knowing that peace would be only a snare, they would have carried on a timid defensive war, without the hope or the possibility of bringing it to a glorious termination. Lord Holland, on the contrary, would have acted with additional vigour in aid of Spain; in this he would have been supported by Earl Moira and Mr. Sheridan, and perhaps by the Marquis of Lansdowne and Mr. Ponsonby.
♦Their expectations.♦
The hopes, however, of the opposition were raised to the highest pitch, and their partizans scarcely even attempted to conceal their joy at an event, which, as they fully expected, was to restore them to their places. The disposition of the Prince was well known to be favourable to these hopes: he had a personal regard for some of the leaders of the party, and it was believed that many of his political opinions had been imbibed from Mr. Fox. It was therefore probable that a change of ministry would take place; and all the opponents of government, however greatly they differed among themselves as to their ultimate objects, from the regular opposition, under Lords Grey and Grenville, down to the very dregs of the revolutionary faction, vied with each other in exulting over a falling enemy.
♦Language of the anarchists.♦
Two years before the King’s illness, one of their journalists had said, that “of all monarchs, since the revolution, the successor of George III. would have the finest opportunity of becoming nobly popular.” This sentence, connected as it was with the anticipation of “a crowd of blessings that might be bestowed upon the country, in the event of a total change of system,” had unwisely been selected for prosecution by Sir Vicary Gibbs, and the defendants were of course acquitted. Such language was perfectly consistent in the Foxites; but in the mouths of the anarchists, the flattery which was now used toward the Prince appeared not a little extraordinary. “Never,” they said, “was there so fair an opportunity for producing a great and salutary effect, as the Prince now had. We want a change of the whole system, a radical and a sweeping change of it; and it is because we hope that such a change would be the consequence of giving full powers to the Prince, that we wish to see full powers given to him. Is not the Prince of Wales as likely to be able to judge of political systems as his father, ... afflicted as the latter unhappily has been in more ways than one, and bent down with age as he now is? Is not the Prince as likely to be able to choose proper advisers as his father was, or ever can be? Why then should powers, of any sort, belonging to the kingly office, be withheld from him? I know it has been said, that we are bidding for the Prince; and who can bid above us? We have to offer him hearts, and sinews, and lives, if he needs them, and we ask for nothing but our well-known rights in return. We want to strip him of nothing. We grudge him and his family nothing that the constitution awards them, or that they could ever wish for, in the way of splendour. All we have to beseech of him is, that he will resolve to be the ruler of a free people, and not the leader of a faction.” ... “His succession to power,” we were told by another of these journalists, “with such opportunities before him, and at so momentous a time, appeared a lot so enviable, that it might turn philosophy itself into ambition. Hitherto he had been seated in that domestic privacy, which he had learnt how to value and dignify. And so wonderfully had past circumstances held back the cause of radical reform, and so favourable for it were the present, that Fate seemed purposely to have reserved the amiable task for his royal highness, that with one restoring breath he might melt away the accumulated oppressions of half a century.”
The wishes of this party concerning the King’s resumption of authority were sufficiently expressed. They told us, it was exposing the government to the contempt of foreign powers, to have a person at the head of affairs who had long been incapable of signing his name to a document, without some one to guide his hand; a person long incapable of receiving petitions, of even holding a levee, or discharging the most ordinary functions of his office; and now, too, afflicted with this mental malady! They cited cases to show how doubtful and precarious were the appearances of recovery from mental derangement; observed that persons having been so afflicted were easily hurried, and inferred that a man subject to hurries was not fit to wield the executive power. When they were charged by their opponents with thus disclosing a determination, that if they acceded to power the King should never resume his functions, the manner in which the charge was repelled was such as confirmed it. “Every one,” they said, “expresses regret that the King, or that any other human being, should be afflicted with blindness. But old age is old age, and blindness is blindness, in a King as well as in other men; and when blindness is unhappily added to old age, and to both are added mental derangement, is it unreasonable that people whose happiness or misery must, in a great degree, depend upon their government, should be solicitous that great caution should be used in the resumption of the royal authority by a person thus afflicted?”... “Throw him into a corner!” exclaimed a ministerial writer, when he exposed with indignation the wishes of this party; “tell him, this is the lot reserved for a king who has reigned so long!” The reply to this was any thing rather than a confutation or denial of the charge. “We have had nothing to do with the lot,” said a mouthpiece of the anarchists; “we have had no hand in making the King either old, or blind, or mentally deranged. The lot has fallen upon him. The first is the lot of every man, and is generally esteemed a very fortunate lot; the second is nothing very rare, and it is by no means an unfrequent companion of old age; and the third, and all three, are the work of nature, and not of any of us. And as to the King’s having reigned so long, there is neither merit nor demerit in that, either in him or his people.”