AFFAIRS OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.
For the most part things were going well with the king. He rejoiced in the successes of his ministers, and his victory over the coalition brought him popularity such as he had not enjoyed since his accession. His popularity was heightened by an attempt to stab him made by an insane woman named Margaret Nicholson on August 2, 1786. The poor woman was sent to Bedlam. George, who behaved with the utmost calmness, escaped unhurt, and the manifestations of loyalty evoked by the incident deeply gratified him. He was, however, much troubled by the ill conduct of the Prince of Wales. The prince drank, gambled, betted, and was addicted to debauchery; he showed no sense of honour in his dealings either with men or women, was thoroughly mean and selfish, and consorted with low companions. He was outrageously extravagant, and, in addition to the large sums lavished on his ordinary expenses, incurred enormous liabilities in altering and decorating his residence, Carlton house. The arrangement of his affairs in 1783 was not on a scale sufficient to meet his expenditure. By August, 1784, he was so deeply in debt that he informed his father that he intended to leave England and live abroad. George insisted that he should give up this scheme, which would have implied a public breach, and said that if he expected help he should send him a full statement of his debts and some assurance that he would keep within his income in the future. The prince was unwilling to send details of his debts, and when Sir James Harris tried to persuade him to please his father by ceasing to identify himself with the opposition and by marrying, declared that he could not give up "Charles" [Fox] and his other friends, and that he would never marry. When at last he sent his father the required statement, it showed liabilities amounting to £269,000, of which £79,700 was for completing the work at Carlton house. George was very angry, and the prince finding that his father would not help him stopped the work, dismissed his court officers, and sold his stud. There was an open quarrel between the father and son. "The king hates me," the prince said, and he did not consider how grievously he had provoked his father.[212]
His friends wished to obtain the payment of his debts from parliament, but were embarrassed by the report that he was secretly married to Mrs. Fitzherbert, a beautiful and virtuous lady, six years older than himself, who at twenty-seven was left a widow for the second time. After repeated solicitations, unmanly exhibitions of despair, and a pretended attempt at suicide, he had persuaded her to accept his offer of marriage, and they were married privately before witnesses by a clergyman of the established Church on December 21, 1785. This was a most serious matter, for Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Roman catholic, and the act of settlement provided that marriage with a papist constituted an incapacity to inherit the crown, while on the other hand the royal marriage act of 1772 rendered the prince's marriage invalid. In April, 1787, his friends in the house of commons took steps towards seeking the payment of his debts from the house. Pitt refused to move in the matter without the king's commands, and, notice of a motion for an address to the crown on the subject having been given, declared that he would meet it with "an absolute negative". In the course of debate, Rolle, a member for Devonshire, alluded to the reported marriage as a matter of danger to the Church and state. Fox explicitly denied the truth of the report, and on being pressed declared that he spoke from "direct authority". There is no doubt that he did so, and that the prince lied. Mrs. Fitzherbert was cruelly wounded, and in order to satisfy her the prince asked Grey to say something in the house which would convey the impression that Fox had gone too far. Grey peremptorily refused to throw a doubt on Fox's veracity, and the prince had to employ a meaner instrument: "Sheridan must say something". Accordingly, Sheridan in a speech in the house, while not insinuating that Fox had spoken without the prince's authority, "uttered some unintelligible sentimental trash about female delicacy".[213] Fox was indignant at the way in which the prince had treated him, and is said to have refused to speak to him for more than a year; but he evidently did not consider the prince's conduct such as ought to prevent him from again acting with him, and in about a year they appear to have been as friendly as before.
The denial of the prince's marriage was generally accepted. Pitt saw that there was a strong feeling that he ought to be relieved from his difficulties, and determined to anticipate a motion to that effect. He and Dundas arranged terms between the father and son. George agreed that the prince should receive an addition to his income of £10,000 a year from the civil list, and that a royal message should be sent to the commons requesting the payment of his debts; and he demanded that the prince should promise not to get into debt again. The promise was given, and a reference to it was inserted in the king's message. The commons, without a division, voted £161,000 for the payment of the debts and £20,000 for the completion of Carlton house. The father and son were reconciled, and appeared together in public. In spite of his protestations the prince did not amend his conduct. Early in 1788 he still took an active part with the opposition, and set up a gambling club, where he lost heavily. His example was followed by his younger brother Frederick, Duke of York. The duke, then a lieutenant-general, after receiving a military education in Germany, returned home in 1787, and lived a very fast life with so little regard to decency that "his company was thought mauvais ton".[214]
THE KING'S INSANITY.
On November 5, 1788, the king, who for some time had been in bad health, became decidedly insane. At first it was believed that his life was in immediate danger, and that, even if he was spared, he would not recover his reason. The Prince of Wales stayed at Windsor, and assumed charge of the king's person, and it was universally recognised that he must be regent. Whether the king died or remained insane, Pitt's dismissal seemed certain, for not only was the prince closely allied with the opposition, but he was deeply offended at the line Pitt had taken with reference to his debts. The hopes of the opposition ran high. Fox, who was travelling in Italy with his mistress, Mrs. Armistead, was sent for in hot haste. In his absence Sheridan, whose convivial habits made him acceptable to the prince, busied himself with the affairs of the party. If they came into power Loughborough had an undoubted claim to the chancellorship. Thurlow, however, was ready to betray his colleagues if he were assured that he should retain his office. The prince and Sheridan arranged that he should have his price, and he secretly joined them. From the first Pitt decided on his course; the prince must be appointed regent by act of parliament, with such limitations as would secure the king, should he recover, from being hampered in the exercise of his rights.[215] For himself, embarrassed as his private affairs were, he looked forward calmly to the loss of office, and determined to practise as a barrister. According to the last prorogation, parliament was to meet on the 20th. The king's insanity rendered a further prorogation impossible; parliament met, and Pitt procured an adjournment until December 4, to see how it would go with the king.
Meanwhile Fox returned home and unwillingly agreed to the arrangement with Thurlow. The chancellor's colleagues were convinced that he betrayed their counsels, and one day when the cabinet met at Windsor, the fact that he had first had a private interview with the prince was disclosed through the loss of his hat; "I suppose," he growled, "I left it in the other place," the prince's apartment.[216] Pitt wisely took no notice of his treachery. On the 3rd the king's physicians were examined by the privy council; they stated that he was mentally incapable, that they believed that his illness was curable, and that they could not say how long it might continue. The opposition was anxious to make the worst of matters, for if the illness was likely to be a long one, it would be difficult to refuse the regent full powers. Accordingly, on the 4th, Fox urged that the physicians should be examined by a committee of the house. Pitt assented readily, for a new physician had been called in who took a favourable view of the case. This was Willis, a clergyman, who had become a doctor, and was a specialist in insanity; he took chief charge of the king, who was removed to Kew, pursued a new line of treatment, prohibited irritating restraints, and controlled him by establishing influence over him. He told the committee that he had found that such cases lasted on an average five months, and at worst about eighteen; the other doctors, though less hopeful, held that ultimate recovery was probable. The ministers were ready to proceed, and reckoned that another month would see the prince appointed regent, and that their own dismissal would follow at once.[217]
FOX ASSERTS THE PRINCE'S RIGHT.
On the 10th Pitt moved for a committee to search for precedents. Fox objected; it was not for parliament, he maintained, to consider who should be regent; the Prince of Wales had a clear right to the regency, and parliament was only qualified to decide when he should exercise his right. When Pitt heard the authority of parliament thus called in question, he is said to have slapped his leg and to have exultantly exclaimed to the minister sitting beside him, "I'll unwhig the gentleman for the rest of his life!" He declared that Fox's doctrine was in the highest degree unconstitutional, and that no part of the royal authority could belong to the prince unless it was conferred on him by parliament; the question, he told the house, concerned its right of deliberation. Fox saw his mistake, and two days later stated that the prince put forward no claim of right; both sides agreed that he must be regent and that before he assumed the office he must be invited to do so by parliament; his right was an abstract question upon which it was no use to argue. Pitt was too good a tactician to allow him to minimise the point at issue; he denied "that the prince had any right whatever". The difference between an irresistible claim, which Pitt acknowledged, and an inherent right was not one merely of words; if the prince could claim the regency as of right, parliament could not restrict his power without his consent. The effect of Fox's false move was heightened by the folly of Sheridan who raised a storm of indignation by a threat of the danger of provoking the prince to assert his claim. Once again Fox made Pitt the champion of the king and the nation against the pretensions of a whig faction. The character of the struggle was understood, and bills were posted with the heading: "Fox for the prince's prerogative," and "Pitt for the privilege of parliament and the liberties of the nation". Yet in both houses several supporters of the government ratted, for the prince seemed the rising sun, and he and the Duke of York openly canvassed on Fox's side.
Nevertheless the commons approved Pitt's resolutions to the effect that, as the personal exercise of the royal authority was interrupted, it was the duty of the two houses to supply the defect, and that it was necessary to determine on means by which the royal assent might be given to bills for that purpose. None of the precedents adduced by the committee met the present case. Fox argued that to appoint a regent by a law was to treat the monarchy as elective, and that the two houses had no legislative power independently of the crown; and assuming that he was about to re-enter on office taunted the ministers with a design to weaken their successors by limiting the powers of the regent. The ministerial majority was 268 to 204. Pitt proposed to provide for the royal assent by placing the great seal in a commission with authority to affix it to the bill. This daring fiction, the only means by which a regency could be established by enactment, was approved by 251 to 178. On this question, and throughout the whole course of the struggle, Burke spoke with a violence and impropriety which injured his party and suggested a disordered mind. He called Pitt the prince's competitor, referred to the chancellor as Priapus and as "a man with a large black brow and a big wig," and later disgusted the house by speaking of the king as "hurled from his throne" by the Almighty. In the lords the proceedings followed the same lines as in the commons. Willis's account of the king convinced Thurlow that he was playing a wrong game, and when the question of the prince's right was discussed in the lords' he spoke strongly on the government side. Several members of the lower house were present to hear him. He referred to the favours he had received from the king, "When I forget them," he said, "may God forget me!" "Forget you!" said Wilkes with exquisite wit, "He will see you damned first." "The best thing that can happen to you," said Burke. Pitt left the house exclaiming, "Oh, the rascal!" On the 25th Thurlow formally severed his connexion with Fox. After a warm debate the ministerial resolutions were affirmed by the lords by 99 to 66.