promised as the reward of his services. of labour and callous to abuse. He is kept constant to his vocation, in spite It was clear that there must be some of all its discomforts, at first by hope, change in the composition of the mi- and at last by habit. It was not so nistry. But scarcely any, even of those with Bute. His whole public life who, from their situation, might be lasted little more than two years. On supposed to be in all the secrets of the the day on which he became a poligovernment, anticipated what really tician he became a cabinet minister. took place. To the amazement of the In a few months he was, both in name Parliament and the nation, it was sud-and in show, chief of the administradenly announced that Bute had re-tion. Greater than he had been he signed. could not be. If what he already posTwenty different explanations of sessed was vanity and vexation of this strange step were suggested. Some spirit, no delusion remained to entice attributed it to profound design, and him onward. He had been cloyed some to sudden panic. Some said that with the pleasures of ambition before the lampoons of the opposition had he had been seasoned to its pains. His driven the Earl from the field; some habits had not been such as were likely that he had taken office only in order to fortify his mind against obloquy to bring the war to a close, and had and public hatred. He had reached always meant to retire when that ob- his forty-eighth year in dignified ease. ject had been accomplished. He pub- without knowing, by personal expelicly assigned ill health as his reason rience, what it was to be ridiculed and for quitting business, and privately slandered. All at once, without any complained that he was not cordially previous initiation, he had found himseconded by his colleagues, and that self exposed to such a storm of invecLord Mansfield, in particular, whom tive and satire as had never burst on he had himself brought into the cabi- the head of any statesman. The emonet, gave him no support in the House luments of office were now nothing to of Peers. Mansfield was, indeed, far him; for he had just succeeded to a too sagacious not to perceive that princely property by the death of his Bute's situation was one of great peril, father-in-law. All the honours which and far too timorous to thrust himself could be bestowed on him he had alinto peril for the sake of another. The ready secured. He had obtained the probability, however, is that Bute's Garter for himself, and a British peerconduct on this occasion, like the con- age for his son. He seems also to duct of most men on most occasions, have imagined that by quitting the was determined by mixed motives. treasury he should escape from danger We suspect that he was sick of office; and abuse without really resigning for this is a feeling much more common power, and should still be able to examong ministers than persons who see ercise in private supreme influence public life from a distance are disposed over the royal mind. to believe; and nothing could be more natural than that this feeling should take possession of the mind of Bute. In general, a statesman climbs by slow degrees. Many laborious years elapse before he reaches the topmost pinnacle of preferment. In the earlier part of We believe that those who made this his career, therefore, he is constantly arrangement fully intended that Grenlured on by seeing something above ville should be a mere puppet in the him. During his ascent he gradually hands of Bute; for Grenville was as becomes inured to the annoyances yet very imperfectly known even to which belong to a life of ambition. those who had observed him long. He By the time that he has attained the passed for a mere official drudge; and highest point, he has become patient [ he had all the industry, the minute ac Whatever may have been his motives, he retired. Fox at the same time took refuge in the House of Lords; and George Grenville became First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. We are inclined to think, on the whole, that the worst administration which has governed England since the Revolution was that of George Grenville. His public acts may be classed under two heads, outrages on the liberty of the people, and outrages on the dignity of the crown. He began by making war on the press. John Wilkes, member of Parliament for Aylesbury, was singled out for persecution. Wilkes had, till very lately, been known chiefly as one of the most profane, licentious, and agreeable rakes about town. He was a man of taste, reading, and engaging manners. His sprightly conversation was the delight of green-rooms and taverns, and pleased even grave hearers when he was sufficiently under restraint to abstain from detailing the particulars of his amours, and from breaking jests on His expensive curacy, the formality, the tediousness, | friendship between the two statesmen. which belong to the character. But Grenville's nature was not forgiving; he had other qualities which had not and he well remembered how, a few yet shown themselves, devouring am- months before, he had been compelled bition, dauntless courage, self-confi- to yield the lead of the House of Comdence amounting to presumption, and mons to Fox. a temper which could not endure opposition. He was not disposed to be any body's tool; and he had no attachment, political or personal, to Bute. The two men had, indeed, nothing in common, except a strong propensity towards harsh and unpopular courses. Their principles were fundamentally different. Bute was a Tory. Grenville would have been very angry with any person who should have denied his claim to be a Whig. He was more prone to tyrannical measures than Bute; but he loved tyranny only when disguised under the forms of constitutional liberty. He mixed up, after a fashion then not very unusual, the theories of the republicans of the seventeenth century with the technical maxims of English law, and thus succeeded in combining anarchical speculation with arbitrary practice. The voice of the people was the voice of the New Testament. God; but the only legitimate organ debaucheries forced him to have rethrough which the voice of the people course to the Jews. He was soon a could be uttered was the Parliament. ruined man, and determined to try his All power was from the people; but chance as a political adventurer. In to the Parliament the whole power of parliament he did not succeed. His the people had been delegated. No speaking, though pert, was feeble, and Oxonian divine had ever, even in the by no means interested his hearers so years which immediately followed the much as to make them forget his face, Restoration, demanded for the King which was so hideous that the caricaso abject, so unreasoning a homage, as turists were forced, in their own deGrenville, on what he considered as spite, to flatter him. As a writer, he the purest Whig principles, demanded made a better figure. He set up a for the Parliament. As he wished to weekly paper, called the North Briton. see the Parliament despotic over the This journal, written with some pleanation, so he wished to see it also de-santry, and great audacity and impuspotic over the court. In his view the dence, had a considerable number of prime minister, possessed of the con- readers. Forty-four numbers had been fidence of the House of Commons, published when Bute resigned; and, ought to be Mayor of the Palace. The though almost every number had conKing was a mere Childeric or Chil-tained matter grossly libellous, no peric, who might well think himself lucky in being permitted to enjoy such handsome apartments at Saint James's, and so fine a park at Windsor. prosecution had been instituted. The forty-fifth number was innocent when compared with the majority of those which had preceded it, and indeed Thus the opinions of Bute and those contained nothing so strong as may in of Grenville were diametrically op- our time be found daily in the leading posed. Nor was there any private | articles of the Times and Morning Chronicle. But Grenville was now at to find at the entrance a chair, the the head of affairs. A new spirit had shape of which was well known to him, been infused into the administration. and indeed to all London. It was disAuthority was to be upheld. The tinguished by a large boot, made for government was no longer to be braved the purpose of accommodating the with impunity. Wilkes was arrested great Commoner's gouty leg. Grenunder a general warrant, conveyed to ville guessed the whole. His brotherthe Tower, and confined there with in-law was closeted with the King. circumstances of unusual severity. His Bute, provoked by what he considered papers were seized, and carried to the as the unfriendly and ungrateful conSecretary of State. These harsh and duct of his successors, had himself illegal measures produced a violent proposed that Pitt should be sumoutbreak of popular rage, which was moned to the palace. soon changed to delight and exultation. The arrest was pronounced unlawful by the Court of Common Pleas, in which Chief Justice Pratt presided, and the prisoner was discharged. This victory over the government was celebrated with enthusiasm both in London and in the cider counties. While the ministers were daily becoming more odious to the nation, they were doing their best to make themselves also odious to the court. They gave the King plainly to understand that they were determined not to be Lord Bute's creatures, and exacted a promise that no secret adviser should have access to the royal ear. They soon found reason to suspect that this promise had not been observed. They remonstrated in terms less respectful than their master had been accustomed to hear, and gave him a fortnight to make his choice between his favourite and his cabinet. George the Third was greatly disturbed. He had but a few weeks before exulted in his deliverance from the yoke of the great Whig connection. He had even declared that his honour would not permit him ever again to admit the members of that connection into his service. He now found that he had only exchanged one set of masters for another set still harsher and more imperious. In his distress he thought on Pitt. From Pitt it was possible that better terms might be obtained than either from Grenville, or from the party of which Newcastle was the head. Pitt had two audiences on two successive days. What passed at the first interview led him to expect that the negotiation would be brought to a satisfactory close; but on the morrow he found the King less complying. The best account, indeed the only trustworthy account of the conference, is that which was taken from Pitt's own mouth by Lord Hardwicke. It appears that Pitt strongly represented the importance of conciliating those chiefs of the Whig party who had been so unhappy as to incur the royal displeasure. They had, he said, been the most constant friends of the House of Hanover. Their power was great; they had been long versed in public business. If they were to be under sentence of exclusion, a solid administration could not be formed. His Majesty could not bear to think of putting himself into the hands of those whom he had recently chased from his court with the strongest marks of anger. "I am sorry, Mr. Pitt," he said, "but I see this will not do. My honour is concerned. I must support my honour." How his Majesty succeeded in supporting his honour, we shall soon see. Pitt retired, and the King was reduced to request the ministers, whom he had been on the point of discarding, to remain in office. During the two years which followed, Grenville, now closely leagued with the Bedfords, was the master of the court; and a hard master he proved. He knew that he was kept in place only because there was no choice except between himself and the Grenville, on his return from an ex- Whigs. That under any circumstances cursion into the country, repaired to the Whigs would be forgiven, he Buckingham House. He was astonished thought impossible. The late attempt VOL. II. Сс to get rid of him had roused his resentment; the failure of that attempt had liberated him from all fear. He had never been very courtly. He now began to hold a language, to which, since the days of Cornet Joyce and President Bradshaw, no English King had been compelled to listen. In one matter, indeed, Grenville, at the expense of justice and liberty, gratified the passions of the court while gratifying his own. The persecution of Wilkes was eagerly pressed. He had written a parody on Pope's Essay on Man, entitled the Essay on Woman, and had appended to it notes, in ridicule of Warburton's famous Commentary. This composition was exceedingly profligate, but not more so, we think, than some of Pope's own works, the imitation of the second satire of the first book of Horace, for example; and, to do Wilkes justice, he had not, like Pope, given his ribaldry to the world. He had merely printed at a private press a very small number of copies, which he meant to present to some of his boon companions, whose morals were in no more danger of being corrupted by a loose book than a negro of being tanned by a warm sun. A tool of the government, by giving a bribe to the printer, procured a copy of this trash, and placed it in the hands of the ministers. The ministers resolved to visit Wilkes's offence against decorum with the utmost rigour of the law. What share piety and respect for morals had in dictating this resolution, our readers may judge from the fact that no person was more eager for bringing the libertine poet to punishment than Lord March, afterwards Duke of Queensberry. On the first day of the session of Parliament, the book, thus disgracefully obtained, was laid on the table of the Lords by the Earl of Sandwich, whom the Duke of Bedford's interest had made Secretary of State. The unfortunate author had not the slightest suspicion that his licentious poem had ever been seen, except by his printer and by a few of his dissipated companions, till it was produced in full Parliament. Though he was a man of easy temper, averse from danger, and not very susceptible of shame, the surprise, the disgrace, the prospect of utter ruin, put him beside himself. He picked a quarrel with one of Lord Bute's dependents, fought a duel, was seriously wounded, and when half recovered, fled to France. His enemies had now their own way both in the Parliament and in the King's Bench. He was censured, expelled from the House of Commons, outlawed. His works were ordered to be burned by the common hangman. Yet was the multitude still true to him. In the minds even of many moral and religious men, his crime seemed light when compared with the crime of his accusers. The conduct of Sandwich, in particular, excited universal disgust. His own vices were notorious; and, only a fortnight before he laid the Essay on Woman before the House of Lords, he had been drinking and singing loose catches with Wilkes at one of the most dissolute clubs in London. Shortly after the meeting of Parliament, the Beggar's Opera was acted at Covent Garden theatre. When Macheath uttered the words. That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me I own surprised me,"-pit, boxes, and galleries, burst into a roar which seemed likely to bring the roof down. From that day Sandwich was universally known by the nickname of Jemmy Twitcher. The ceremony of burning the North Briton was interrupted by a riot. The constables were beaten; the paper was rescued; and, instead of it, a jack boot and a petticoat were committed to the flames. Wilkes had instituted an action for the seizure of his papers against the Under-secretary of State. The jury gave a thousand pounds damages. But neither these nor any other indications of public feeling had power to move Grenville. He had the Parliament with him and, according to his political creed, the sense of the nation was to be collected from the Parliament alone. Soon, however, he found reason to fear that even the Parliament might fail him. On the question of the legality of general warrants, the Opposition, having on its side all sound principles, all constitutional authorities, and the voice of the whole nation, mustered in | in that clear, concise, and lively manner, great force, and was joined by many which alone could win the attention who did not ordinarily vote against the of a young mind new to business, he government. On one occasion the spoke in the closet just as he spoke in ministry, in a very full House, had a the House of Commons. When he majority of only fourteen votes. The had harangued two hours, he looked storm, however, blew over. The spirit at his watch, as he had been in the of the Opposition, from whatever cause, habit of looking at the clock opposite began to flag at the moment when suc- the Speaker's chair, apologised for the cess seemed almost certain. The session length of his discourse, and then went ended without any change. Pitt, whose on for an hour more. The members eloquence had shone with its usual of the House of Commons can cough lustre in all the principal debates, and an orator down, or can walk away to whose popularity was greater than ever, dinner; and they were by no means was still a private man. Grenville, sparing in the use of these privileges detested alike by the court and by the when Grenville was on his legs. But people, was still minister. the poor young King had to endure all this eloquence with mournful civility. To the end of his life he continued to talk with horror of Grenville's orations. As soon as the Houses had risen, Grenville took a step which proved, even more signally than any of his past acts, how despotic, how acrimonious, and how fearless his nature was. About this time took place one of Among the gentlemen not ordinarily the most singular events in Pitt's life. opposed to the government, who, on There was a certain Sir William Pynthe great constitutional question of sent, a Somersetshire baronet of Whig general warrants, had voted with the politics, who had been a Member of minority, was Henry Conway, brother the House of Commons in the days of of the Earl of Hertford, a brave soldier, Queen Anne, and had retired to rural a tolerable speaker, and a well-mean- privacy when the Tory party, towards ing, though not a wise or vigorous po- the end of her reign, obtained the litician. He was now deprived of his ascendency in her councils. His manregiment, the merited reward of faith-ners were eccentric. His morals lay ful and gallant service in two wars. It was confidently asserted that in this violent measure the King heartily con curred. under very odious imputations. But his fidelity to his political opinions was unalterable. During fifty years of seclusion he continued to brood over the But whatever pleasure the persecu- circumstances which had driven him tion of Wilkes, or the dismissal of Con- from public life, the dismissal of the way, may have given to the royal Whigs, the peace of Utrecht, the desermind, it is certain that his Majesty's tion of our allies. He now thought aversion to his ministers increased day that he perceived a close analogy beby day. Grenville was as frugal of the tween the well remembered events of public money as of his own, and mo- his youth and the events which he had rosely refused to accede to the King's witnessed in extreme old age; between request, that a few thousand pounds the disgrace of Marlborough and the might be expended in buying some disgrace of Pitt; between the elevation open fields to the west of the gardens of Harley and the elevation of Bute; of Buckingham House. In consequence between the treaty negotiated by St. of this refusal, the fields were soon John and the treaty negotiated by covered with buildings, and the King Bedford; between the wrongs of the and Queen were overlooked in their House of Austria in 1712 and the most private walks by the upper win-wrongs of the House of Brandenburgh dows of a hundred houses. Nor was in 1762. This fancy took such posthis the worst. Grenville was as libe- session of the old man's mind that he ral of words as he was sparing of determined to leave his whole proguineas. Instead of explaining himself perty to Pitt. In this way, Pitt unex |
