Lord Camden to Mr. Wilberforce.
"January 7, 1802.
"Dear Wilberforce,—I lament extremely that Lady Camden and I have been deprived of the pleasure we should have had in receiving you and Mrs. Wilberforce here, and still more that you should have been confined to London by the very anxious attendance you have undergone. I thank you for communicating with me on the subject of Lord Castlereagh, and I will explain to you all I know of his objects as connected with the situation you have mentioned.
"Amongst the many unpleasant circumstances attending our secession from office I have considered Lord Castlereagh's actual situation as one peculiarly awkward to himself, and I have also thought that in the present dearth of men of spirit and sense who can take office it was unfortunate for the country that he should be excluded. With a view of relieving him, if possible, from such exclusion, I contrived that he should meet Pitt here about a month ago, and have a full and explicit conversation with him and me relative to the future views of the one and the future prospects of the other. (I confess I was not indifferent at the same time to the consideration of the line I may myself hereafter think it right to adopt.) In a previous conversation I had with Pitt respecting Lord Castlereagh, he expressed his anxiety that he should take office, and he is desirous of contriving it if possible with credit to him; and amongst the objects to which Lord Castlereagh might look, he took notice to me of an idea which he knew had been entertained of sending him to the East Indies as Governor-General. He (Pitt), however, expressed an objection to this appointment, as it would take him from the House of Commons, which he thought should be the theatre of his future fame, and where, whenever Lord Hawkesbury is removed, he will be much wanted. In preparing Lord Castlereagh for his conversation with Pitt I mentioned to him the idea which had been entertained of his going to India, but I took notice of it as a mere floating idea that had not been matured, and in the short conversation upon that part of the subject which ensued, his impression appeared to be an unwillingness to banish himself from his country and to withdraw for ever (as he should conceive he did, by now abandoning it) from the situation he had a right to look for in the House of Commons. In the subsequent conversation with Pitt at which I was present, not a word passed on this subject, and I should therefore conceive that Lord Castlereagh has never had the subject fairly before him. I am convinced he would have communicated with me if he had; and although I should conceive it very doubtful if the event might turn out as you wish, if the proposition were made to him, I yet think if the directors of the East India Company have really thought of him, he ought to have the opportunity of weighing a subject of this great importance in his mind before he has been understood to decline the offer. By way of apprising Lord Castlereagh upon the subject I will enclose him your letter (if you have no objection), which I think will give him the opinion of a person indifferent to everything concerning him except his public character, and open the business in as advantageous a manner as it can be done.
"Believe me,
"Ever most sincerely yours,
"Camden."
In 1803 the tardiness of our military preparations had been accentuated in a debate on the second reading of the Army Reserve Bill. Windham, of whom Wilberforce says that "he had many of the true characteristics of a hero, but he had one great fault as a statesman, he hated the popular side of any question," gives as his opinion in the next letter, that he saw no impossibility in two armies of from twenty to thirty thousand men being landed in different places, and being opposed only by yeomanry and volunteers they might advance to London or wherever else they pleased. "Government acknowledge that there is an utter want of firearms."[35] Windham's hope was that Buonaparte might, for some reason or other, not come; though he confesses that he did not know of any foundation for such hope.
Right Hon. William Windham to Mr. Wilberforce.
"BEACONSFIELD,
"August 18, 1803.
"Dear Wilberforce,—The breaking up of Parliament, advanced as the season is, I can hardly help regretting on another account. One wants a means of publishing the abominable backwardness in which things are with respect to defence: so as literally to put us in the situation, described by some writer in the Moniteur, namely that if fifty thousand men can anyhow get on shore, they must conquer the island. What shall we say to the fact, that at the end of now more than five months since the King's message not a single ball cartridge (I suppose) has been fired from one end of the country to the other, unless perhaps a few that I have desired to be fired just by me in Norfolk, and some that I hear Grey has been using upon the same principle in Northumberland?—that the corps, which have been raising, such as they are, remain to this moment for the greater part without arms?—that excepting, I am afraid, a very few thousand men to the army of reserve, not the smallest addition has been or can be made to a force truly regular, such as can alone be opposed upon equal terms to the troops by which we shall be invaded?—and that the whole assistance, that would be to be received from works, of whatever sort, is all yet to be begun, and even settled? When men talk of the difficulties and impracticability of invasion, of the impossibility of conquering a country such as this, they say what may be true, but which is certainly not so for any reasons which they can, or at least which they do, give. It is all a kind of loose, general vague notion founded on what they have been accustomed to see and to conceive, to which the answer is that so was everything which we have seen successively happen for these last fourteen years. Considering things not in much detail, but upon principles somewhat less general than those which I have been alluding to, I can see no impossibility in the supposition of two armies landing in different places of from twenty to thirty thousand men each, of their beating, severally, the troops immediately opposed to them, and that having nothing then to encounter but volunteers and yeomanry, and other troops of this description, in the midst of all the confusion and panick which would then prevail, that they might advance to London or wherever else they pleased. What the further consequences might be, one has no pleasure in attempting to trace; but I should be obliged to anyone who would show me some distinct limits to them. The persons to do this are, I am sure, not those who talk so glibly of crushing and overwhelming, and smothering, and I know not what all; without the least idea how any of these things are to be done, while the persons attacking us know how these things are, sometimes at least, not done, by the example of the numerous countries which they have overrun in spite of all such threatened opposition. I shall go from here, that is from London, as soon as I have settled some necessary business, and see whether I can be of any use in Norfolk, though I do not perceive how with the aid of only a single regiment of militia (all our present force) we are to stop a body of even one thousand men, or how for the present, anything at all can be done, when there is not as yet a provision for even the delivery of arms. All the firelocks which they have as yet got immediately about here have been sent down at my own expense. My chief hopes are I confess that Buonaparte may, for some reason or another, not come, or at least for some time; but what foundation there is for any such hope I confess I do not know. Forgive my running on at this rate. The importance of the subject would certainly warrant me if I had anything new to say.
"Yours very truly,
"W. Windham."