The great body of the nation dreaded at this time nothing so much as any change in the ministry which would bring the despondents into office; they therefore regarded this refusal of the Prince Regent’s overture with the greatest satisfaction; but it gave offence to others of that party, who looked upon themselves with some reason as having been included in the overtures, and were of opinion that they ought to have been consulted before such an answer was returned; there might have been a distribution of loaves and fishes; and though the two lords were not hungry, they were: ... this ♦March.♦ the public learned from their complaints. The seals of the foreign department were now accepted by Lord Castlereagh, who while out of office, instead of entering into opposition, had supported the measures of a cabinet whose general course of policy he approved, and in whom the ministry, if they gained little accession of strength in public opinion, obtained an active and useful colleague, on whose intrepidity and honour and straightforward integrity they could rely.
♦Lord Boringdon’s motion.
Mar. 19.♦
Lord Boringdon, however, thought proper to move in the House of Lords for an address to the Prince Regent, requesting that he would endeavour to form a cabinet which might effectually call forth the resources of the empire. “The motion was founded,” he said, “on his deep sense of the alarming evils which threatened the safety of the nation, and on the imperative necessity of obtaining an efficient administration capable of averting them; ... for the darkest and most gloomy prospects now surrounded us; dangers were pressing upon us on every side, and at this same time the means of averting them were weakened.” The Catholic question was largely introduced in the ensuing debate; a party in Parliament using that question as a means for harassing the administration, while men of worse intentions but far greater foresight employed it as an engine by which they expected to separate Ireland from England, eradicate the Protestant Church in one country, and finally subvert the constitution of the other. But the public looked with much more interest to the opinions concerning the war expressed by those who, notwithstanding their late refusal of office, were supposed to be expectant of it; and upon this point Earl Grey’s sentiments seemed to have undergone some modification. “Certainly,” he said, “he was not prepared to affirm that it was expedient to recall our troops immediately home, but certainly he did not wish to proceed in that expensive mode of warfare without having some military authority as to the result of it. He ♦Speech of Earl Grey.♦ thought, and most decidedly, that a reduction of our expenditure was called for by reflections of the most urgent and powerful kind, ... but if any thing like a certainty of success could be shown in the schemes that were devised, then all his hesitations would be removed, and he should consider even the most extensive scale of foreign operations as recommended by the principles of economy itself. He felt warmly the justice of that cause which we were maintaining in the Peninsula. No cause related in the annals of mankind ever rested more entirely on sentiments of the most honourable feeling, or was more connected (if circumstances were favourable) with principles of national advantage. The spectacle exhibited was the most interesting that could engage the sympathies or the attention of the world; and it was impossible not to wish to afford assistance to the noble struggle of a free people, against the most unparalleled treachery, the most atrocious violence, that ever stained or degraded the ambition of despotic power. But those principles upon which the prosecution of that war could be defended must be reduced to a mere speculative theory, unless supported by adequate exertions from the Spanish people and the Spanish government. Without that necessary co-operation, all our efforts must prove useless. The success of our arms during the last two years had been called complete: he could coincide in no such declaration, knowing, as every other man knew, that the defence of Portugal must be impracticable after Spain should be entirely subdued. We had unquestionably achieved much, and in the capture of Cuidad Rodrigo he concurred in the admiration justly due to the great commander who conducted that important enterprise. But when he looked to another part of that kingdom, and saw Badajoz in possession of the enemy, ... when he looked to Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia, ... he was at a loss to discover what new prospects of success had dawned upon the Spaniards. Those conquests opened to the enemy a free communication between all their divisions, and they would soon be enabled by that circumstance to bring the whole weight of their united forces against the British. He did think, too, that ministers had been culpably negligent in not having exerted in that quarter the means actually in their power, by employing a considerable naval force for the purpose of lending our allies more effectual succour. Such a system, if properly conducted, would in all probability have enabled the Catalans to expel their invaders. Where then were the symptoms of this boasted success? Lord Wellington, at the head of 62,000 as effective men as were ever led into the field, had been compelled to remain on the defensive! With a force greater than that commanded by the Duke of Marlborough at the most splendid era of our military history, Lord Wellington had found himself limited to the pursuit of a defensive system!”
♦Overture from the French government.♦
Lord Boringdon’s motion met with little support, and the tidings of Lord Wellington’s success at Badajoz contributed to confirm the confidence which the great majority of the public felt in the existing administration. The fall of that fortress was so decisive a proof of British enterprise and courage, that Buonaparte would not allow it to be mentioned in the French newspapers; and under his vigilant despotism the French people could know nothing more of public affairs than he thought proper to communicate. At this time he was preparing for an expedition upon a greater scale than any which he had before undertaken, and to a greater distance than he had yet advanced in his career of conquest. An overture for peace to the British Government, upon grounds which he knew to be inadmissible, served now, as on former occasions, for a prelude to this new drama of his ambition. “His Majesty the Emperor,” the Duc de Bassano said in a ♦April 17.♦ communication to Lord Castlereagh, “being constantly actuated by sentiments friendly to moderation and peace, and moved by the awful circumstances in which the world is at present placed, is pleased again to make a solemn and sincere attempt for putting an end to the miseries of war. Many changes have taken place in Europe during the last ten years, which have been the necessary consequence of the war between France and England, and many more changes will be effected by the same cause. The particular character which the war has assumed may add to the extent and duration of these results. Exclusive and arbitrary principles cannot be combated but by an opposition without measure or end; and the system of preservation and resistance must have the same character of universality, perseverance, and vigour. This might have been prevented if the peace of Amiens had been observed.” Having referred then to the overtures which Buonaparte had made in the years 1805, 1808 and 1810, the French minister proceeded thus: ... “I will express myself, Sir, in a manner which your excellency will find conformable to the sincerity of the step that I am authorized to take; and nothing will better evince the sincerity and sublimity of it than the precise terms of the language which I have been instructed to use. What motives should induce me to envelope myself in formalities suitable to weakness, which alone can find its interest in deceit?... The affairs of the Peninsula and of the Two Sicilies are the points of difference which appear least to admit of being adjusted.... I am authorized to propose an arrangement of them on the following basis: ... The integrity of Spain shall be guaranteed. France shall renounce all intention of extending her dominions beyond the Pyrenees. The present dynasty shall be declared independent, and Spain shall be governed by a national constitution of her Cortes. The independence and integrity of Portugal shall also be guaranteed, and the house of Braganza shall have the sovereign authority. The kingdom of Naples shall remain in possession of the present monarch, and the kingdom of Sicily shall be guaranteed to the present family of Sicily. As a consequence of these stipulations, Spain, Portugal and Sicily shall be evacuated by the French and English land and naval forces. With respect to the other subjects of discussion, they may be negotiated upon this basis, that each power shall retain that of which the other could not deprive it by war. Such, Sir, are the grounds of conciliation offered by his Majesty to his Royal Highness the Prince Regent. His Majesty, the Emperor and King, in taking this step, does not look either to the advantages or losses which this empire may derive from the war, if it should be prolonged: he is influenced simply by considerations of the interests of humanity, and the peace of his people. And if this fourth attempt, like those which have preceded it, should not be attended with success, France will at least have the consolation of thinking that whatever blood may yet flow, will be justly imputable to England alone.”
♦Lord Castlereagh’s reply.♦
This overture was answered as it deserved; Lord Castlereagh was instructed, before he entered into any explanations, to ascertain the precise meaning attached by the French Government to its proposal concerning the actual dynasty and government of Spain. “If,” said he, “as His Royal Highness fears, the meaning of this proposition is, that the royal authority of Spain and the government established by the Cortes shall be recognised as residing in the brother of the head of the French Government, and the Cortes formed under his authority, not in the legitimate sovereign Ferdinand VII., and his heirs, and the extraordinary assembly of the Cortes, now invested with the power of the government in that kingdom, in his name and by his authority, I am commanded frankly and explicitly to declare, that the obligations of good faith do not permit His Royal Highness to receive a proposition for peace founded on such a basis. But if the expressions apply to the actual government of Spain, which exercises the sovereign authority in the name of Ferdinand VII., upon an assurance of your Excellency to that effect, the Prince Regent will feel himself disposed to enter into a full explanation upon the basis which has been transmitted; it being his most earnest wish to contribute, in concert with his allies, to the repose of Europe; and to bring about a peace which may be at once honourable not only for Great Britain and France, but also for those states which are in amity with each of these powers. Having made known, without reserve, the sentiments of the Prince Regent with respect to a point on which it is necessary to have a full understanding previous to any ulterior discussion, I shall adhere to the instructions of his Royal Highness, by avoiding all superfluous comment and recriminations on the accessary objects of your letter. I might, advantageously for the justification of the conduct observed by Great Britain at the different periods alluded to by your Excellency, refer to the correspondence which then took place, and to the judgment which the world has long since formed of it. As to the particular character the war has unhappily assumed, and the arbitrary principles which your Excellency conceives to have marked its progress, denying as I do, that these evils are attributable to the British Government, I at the same time can assure your Excellency, that it sincerely deplores their existence, as uselessly aggravating the calamities of war; and that its most anxious desire, whether at peace or at war with France, is to have the relations of the two countries restored to the liberal principles usually acted upon in former times.”
No answer was attempted to this unanswerable reply; and the signal success of the British arms since the commencement of the year had so far raised the public spirit, that no attempt was made in Parliament to ground upon the failure of these overtures any accusation against the ministers for wantonly prolonging the war. With a great majority in both Houses, and a still greater in the nation, with the confidence also of the Prince Regent, which was now no longer doubtful, the administration seemed, for the first time since the king’s ♦Mr. Perceval murdered.
May 11.♦ malady, to be firmly established, when Mr. Perceval was shot through the heart, in the lobby of the House of Commons, by a madman. The murderer was a person who, having failed in some mercantile speculations at Archangel, and having been thrown into prison there, imagined himself wronged by the Russian Government, and by the British Government, because it had not taken up his cause, concerning which he had molested both governments, with repeated and groundless memorials; for the business was entirely of a private nature, in which they could not interfere. He made no attempt to escape. “My name,” he said, “is Bellingham; it is a private injury; it was a denial of justice on the part of government. I know what I have done. They have driven me to despair by telling me at the public offices that I might do my worst. I have obeyed them: I have been watching more than a fortnight for a favourable opportunity; I have done my worst, and I rejoice in the deed!” He had no personal enmity to Mr. Perceval, with whom, as it happened, he had not at any time communicated; and he would rather have had Lord Levison Gower for his victim, who, having been ambassador in Russia, ought, according to his opinion, to have interfered.
Bellingham was insane on the single point of his own imagined injuries; but his insanity was of a kind which, for the sake of society, must not be pleaded in bar of justice before an earthly tribunal. The murder was committed on a Monday, and as the sessions had commenced at the Old Bailey, he was brought to trial on the Friday, and executed on the Monday following. On this occasion, it was seen to what a degree seditious journalists, the most nefarious that ever were allowed to make a free press their engine for mischief, had succeeded in corrupting no small portion of the ignorant and deluded multitude. When he was conveyed from the House of Commons to Newgate, in a carriage ♦Conduct of the populace.♦ and under an escort, an attempt was made to rescue him, and the soldiers were hooted. The mob which collected next day in Palace-Yard uttered the most atrocious exclamations. Before it was known that Bellingham was an object of commiseration as well as horror, he was extolled in pot-houses as a friend to the people, who had done them good service in killing a prime minister; exulting anticipations were expressed that this was but the beginning, and that more such examples would follow; healths were drunk to those members of Parliament, whose language at various times (whatever their intentions may have been) had been mischievous enough to bring upon them the stigma of such popularity: and in certain manufacturing places public rejoicings were made for the murder of a minister, who both in private and in public life was absolutely without reproach. In public life he was without fear also: this kingdom was never blest with a more intrepid nor a more upright minister; he feared God, and therefore he had no fear of man. There were persons who upon his elevation alluded to the Knight of the Round Table, from whom his family derive their descent, and said that Sir Perceval was not the man who could sit in the “Siege Perilous.” That seat, however, he took, and filled it worthily; and like his ancestor in the romance, he was qualified to do this by the purity as well as by the strength of his character. A sense of religious duty was the key-stone which crowned his virtues and his talents, and kept them firm.
A grant of £50,000 for the twelve children of Mr. Perceval was voted by Parliament, with a pension of £2000 to his widow, and to the eldest son, whose reversion was subsequently commuted for one of those sinecures, against which, if they were always thus properly bestowed, no voice would be raised. The loss of the murdered minister was thus repaired to his family, as far as it was reparable; but how was his place in the ♦Overtures from the ministry to M. Wellesley and Mr. Canning.
May 17.♦ cabinet to be supplied? Overtures were made to Mr. Canning and Marquis Wellesley, as persons who were understood to act in unison, and who in their views of foreign policy differed in no respect from the existing ministers. They were informed that the Prince naturally looked to them, because he was desirous of continuing his administration upon its present basis, and also of strengthening it as much as possible by associating to it such persons in public life as agreed most nearly and generally in the principles upon which public affairs had been conducted. Lord Liverpool, by whom this communication was made, stated that his colleagues wished him to be appointed First Lord of the Treasury, and that their wish was known to the Prince, when His Royal Highness charged him with this negotiation; he added also, that Lord Castlereagh was to retain his office, and act as leader in the House of Commons.