tion arose, whether Hastings's impeachment was abated by the dissolution of the House of Commons which had commenced it? All impartial lawyers were of opinion that it was now to be considered as pending in statu quo; and, after a committee appointed to search for precedents had made their report to this effect, Lord Porchester moved, [MAY 16.] "That a message be sent to the Commons, to acquaint them that this House will proceed upon the trial of Warren Hastings, Esquire." This was strongly opposed by the Lord Chancellor, who contended that the prosecution was at an end with the prosecutors; that Mr. Hastings's recognisance had expired, so that, he being neither in prison nor under bail, he was not subject to their jurisdiction; and that all precedents were in his favour, as well as all reasoning. As to the report of the committee, he had read it with attention, and it seemed [A. D. 1792.] to him to be little short of demonstration, that, by the usage and law of that House, an impeachment was universally understood to abate at a dissolution.-Lord Loughborough, however, clearly proved that the impeachment, being "in the name of all the Commons of England," was still to be carried on in their name by their present representatives; that the House of Lords is a permanent judicial tribunal, deciding in one parliament appeals and writs of error brought before it in a preceding parliament; that the assumption of the defendant's recognisance being at an end was a mere begging of the question; that the precedents, when rightly understood, were inconsistent with the notion of abatement; and that to sanction the doctrine contended for, would be to put it in the power of the executive government at any time, by a dissolution of parliament, to screen a delinquent minister from deserved punishement. Lord Grenville, and most of the government Peers, divided against the Chancellor, and he was beaten by a majority of 66 to 18.*

But he succeeded this session in defeating Mr. Fox's Libel Bill, under pretence that there was not time to consider the subject, although, to the high credit of Mr. Pitt, who had supported the bill in Commons, Lord Grenville anxiously declared that "he should be extremely sorry if it were to go forth to the world that the Administration were against it, or unfriendly to the rights of juries."+

He

Thurlow's official career was now drawing to a close. On the 31st of January, 1792, he, for the last time, delivered into the hands of the King the speech to be read on the opening of parliament. It is exceedingly difficult to understand the wayward conduct during this session which led to his dismission. I have in vain tried to obtain a satisfactory explanation of it by studying contemporary memoirs, and consulting some venerable politicians whose memory goes back to this æra. had formed no connection with the Whigs;-he was more than ever estranged from their society, and opposed to their principles,—and he could not have had the remotest intention of going over to them. I can only conjecture that, as Mr. Pitt's reputation had been a little tarnished by the failure of the Russian armament, and he had not yet been † Ib. 726-741.

29 Parl. Hist. 514-545.

strengthened by the accession of the Duke of Portland, Burke, and the alarmist Whigs, which soon followed, Thurlow, still reckoning in a most overweening manner on his personal favour with the King, sincerely thought that he could displace the present Premier, whom he regarded as little better than a Whig, and that he could establish a real Tory government, either under himself, or some other leader, who would oppose the Libel Bill, and all such dangerous innovations, and rule the country on true old Church-and-King maxims.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer having announced a plan for bringing tobacco under the excise laws, and for facilitating summary proceedings against those who defrauded the revenue, endeavours were made to exasperate the public mind against him; and these the Lord Chancellor thought fit to abet in charging the jury in a proceeding relative to the coinage, called "a trial of the Pix." "So sacred is the trial by jury," said he, "that I trust the people of England will consider it their indefeasible right; and that under no pretence, either of revenue or of any other object, will this great safeguard of their property and their liberties be entrenched upon; for an infringement of this right, the longest life of the most exalted minister could never atone." Hand-bills were next day posted all over London, giving this extract from his speech, headed "BRITONS! ATTEND TO THE VOICE OF YOUR CHANCELLOR."*

The occasion he selected for commencing hostilities in parliament was the introduction into the House of Lords of Mr. Pitt's celebrated bill "to establish a Sinking Fund for the redemption of the National Debt." This measure, which has proved a failure, and which almost all financiers now condemn, was considered by its reputed author, his friends, and the bulk of the nation, as the greatest effort of his genius, and a lasting monument of his fame.† He staked upon it the stability of his administration. It passed the Commons with applause. But in the Lords, "to the astonishment of every one, it was violently reprobated by the Lord Chancellor." His colleagues must have been even more startled than the rest of mankind; for he had not offered the slightest objection when the measure was considered in the Cabinet, and, when he left the woolsack to throw it out, he had not hinted to any of them an intention to say a word against it. In truth he had not discovered its fallacy, and he made no attempt to show that, by the creation of additional stock and additional taxation to supply the sinking fund, the aggregate amount of the national debt would be increased with diminished means of bearing the burden of it. He almost entirely confined himself to a rather futile objection, that an unconstitutional attempt was made to bind future parliaments. No one believed that future parliaments could be bound to provide for the sinking fund, if they should think that the money to be raised had better be left to "fructify in the pockets of the people;" but the inability to insure a perpetual adherence to the plan could be no

*Adolphus, v. 234.

†The scheme which was in fact Dr. Price's, and was the worst of three which he suggested. Tomlin's Life of Pitt, ii. 513.

solid argument against attempting it; for, if sound and beneficial, there was every reason to expect that it would become more and more popular. But Thurlow believed that he had gained a complete triumph by thundering out most impressively and awfully, "that the bill exhibited a degree of presumption and arrogance, in dictating to future parliaments, which he trusted the House would never countenance. None but a novice, a sycophant, a mere reptile of a minister, would allow this act to prevent him from doing what, in his own judgment, circumstances would require at the time; and a change in the situation of the country may render that which is proper at one time inapplicable at another." He thus concluded, "In short, the scheme is nugatory and impracticablethe inaptness of the project is equal to the vanity of the attempt." Such observations were probably better adapted to his audience than others more profound, and he had nearly succeeded in defeating the bill-which must have been followed by the retirement of Mr. Pitt. On the division it was carried only by a majority of six.*

Next morning Mr. Pitt wrote a letter to the King, the tenour of which we may pretty well guess at from the following letter, which he at the same time sent to the Lord Chancellor :

:

"Downing Street, Wednesday, May 16, 1792.

(6 My Lord, "I think it right to take the earliest opportunity of acquainting your Lordship, that being convinced of the impossibility of his Majesty's service being any longer carried on to advantage while your Lordship and myself both remain in our present situations, I have felt it my duty to submit that opinion to his Majesty; humbly requesting his Majesty's determination thereupon.

"I have the honour to be, &c.

"W. PITT."

The coming storm had been foreseen by several, and the result had been distinctly foretold by that sagacious statesman, Lord North, who a short time before had said to a person peculiarly intimate with Lord Thurlow, "Your friend thinks that his personal influence with the King authorises him to treat Mr. Pitt with humeur. Take my word for it, whenever Mr. Pitt says to the King, 'Sir, the Great Seal must be in other hands,' the King will take the Great Seal from Lord Thurlow, and never think any more about him.”

And so it turned out. The King at once yielded to Mr. Pitt's wishes and caused an intimation to be conveyed to Lord Thurlow that “his Majesty had no longer any occasion for his services."

We are not informed of the channel through which the dismissal was announced to the Chancellor, but the act was a dreadful surprise to him, and the manner of it deeply wounded his pride. "I have no doubt," writes the same person to whom Lord North had uttered his prophecy, "that this conduct of the King was wholly unexpected by Lord Thurlow:

*This very important debate is not even noticed in the Parliamentary History, and the only account we have of it is in a very wretched book, Tomlin's "Life of Pitt." See vol. ii. 513.; Gifford's Life of Pitt, iii. 187.

it mortified him most severely. I recollect his saying to me, 'No man has a right to treat another in the way in which the King has treated me we cannot meet again in the same room.'"*

However, as Mr. Pitt was not then provided with any successor, as great inconvenience would have arisen from putting the Great Seal into commission during the sitting of parliament, and as it was desirable that the present holder of it should continue in office a short time to give judgment in causes which had been argued before him, an arrangement was made that he should not surrender it till the day of the prorogation. Meanwhile, he tried to set the King against Mr. Pitt and the Government from which he was retiring, but his violent and somewhat artful opposition to a bill which they had introduced "for encouraging the growth of timber in the New Forest." This provided for the inclosure of some crown land to be planted with trees for the use of the navy, and suspended or mitigated the forestal rights of the Crown over a large district in Hampshire,-these rights being of no practical value to the sovereign, and very injurious to the subject. The bill passed the Lower House with the praise of all parties. But when it stood for a second reading in the Lords, "the Lord Chancellor objected to what he called the supposed principle of the bill, for he would not admit that it was founded on any real principle, as tending, under false pretences, to deprive the Crown of that landed property to which it was entitled by the constitutional law of the country. He maintained that it was of consequence that the King should have an interest in the land of the kingdom. He allowed the imperfection of the forest laws, but he insisted that the defects of this bill were infinitely more pernicious. In conclusion, he attacked the framers of the bill, his colleagues in office, in the most pointed and most unjustifiable manner. He openly charged them with having imposed upon their Sovereign, and did not scruple to assert that if the members of that House, who were the hereditary counsellors of the Crown, did not interfere in opposition to those who had advised this measure, all was over.' Nevertheless the bill passed, and the resistance to it being explained to his Majesty to be merely an ebullition of spleen from him who had so long piqued himself on the appellation of "the King's friend," no alarm was excited in the royal bosom, and the resolution to dismiss him remained unaltered.

Seeing his fate inevitable, instead of quietly submitting to it he complained loudly of the ingratitude and faithlessness of princes. But, even without regarding the double part which Thurlow had acted re

*Nich. Recoll. 347. The author adds,-"It is well known that, for some years before Lord Thurlow was a second time deprived of the Great Seal, he and Mr. Pitt had not lived on pleasant terms. I never could discover the cause of this. I recollect Lord Thurlow's having once said to me- When Mr. Pitt first became Prime Minister, it was a very unpleasant thing to do business with him but it afterwards became as pleasant to do business with him as with Lord North.' Lord Thurlow strongly disapproved of Mr. Pitt's conduct on the impeachment of Mr. Hastings: how far that contributed to excite ill humour in him, I cannot say."

Gifford's Life of Mr. Pitt, iii. 187; Moore's Life of Sheridan. ii 273

specting the regency, all must agree that George III. could not properly have hesitated in taking part with Mr. Pitt in this controversy. The wanton desertion of those who had claims upon him by their services could not justly be imputed to this monarch during any part of his reign.

Before the conclusion of the session important debates took place on two measures, which the government very cordially and creditably supported, and both of these were opposed by the Chancellor. Resolutions came up from the Commons for the abolition of the slave trade, and Lord Grenville having contended "that, for the sake of preserving the national character from disgrace, it ought to be abolished, not only as a traffic founded on inhumanity and injustice, but a traffic unnecessary and impolitic," Lord Thurlow said, "As to the iniquity and atrocity which had been so largely imputed to the slave trade, he could not understand why its criminality had not been discovered by our ancestors, and should become so conspicuous in the year 1792." Then, forgetting his former contempt for colonial legislation, which he had testified during the contest with America, he suggested that the importation of slaves from Africa into the West India islands was a subject of internal commercial regulation, which the planters themselves best understood, and which should be left to their decision. This being considered an open question, on the division which took place, he carried a majority of 63 to 36 against the government.*

But, luckily, he failed in his dying effort as Chancellor again to defeat the bill to ascertain the rights of juries on trials for libel, and to protect the liberty of the press. He first contrived to get it postponed till near the end of the session; in every stage he inveighed violently against it; he obtained a declaration of opinion from the judges, that "libel, or no libel ?" was a pure question of law for the Court; and, thoroughly beaten by Lord Camden, he proposed a clause which would have rendered the bill nugatory, and to which he pretended that the venerable patriot conld not object, when he received a memorable answer, which seems actually to have made him ashamed, as he offered no farther opposition to the bill. However, when it had passed, he embo[JUNE 12.] died his objections to it in a strong protest, which remains as a monument of his illiberality and his obstinacy.†

Three days after this protest was signed, he ceased to be Chancellor. The 15th of June, 1792, must have been a sad day for the haughty spirit of Thurlow.

Now came the prorogation, the event to which his dismissal was respited. The King being placed on the throne, and the Commons attending at the bar of the House of Lords, the Speaker, in his address, before presenting the Supply Bill for the royal assent, eulogised in warm terms the measures of the session-particularly that for establishing a sinking fund to pay off the national debt, and that for ascertaining the rights of juries and protecting the liberty of the press. Nay, in the † Ante, p. 283.

* 29 Parl. Hist. 1341-1355.