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 THE STATESMEN SERIES. 
 
 CHARLES TAMES FOX. 
 
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 CHAS. J FOX.
 
 STATESMEN SERIES. 
 
 1AV11 OF 
 
 CHARLES JAMES FOX 
 
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 LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 I SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PREFAC E. 
 
 >'. i :■ ■ 
 
 To write an adequate biography of Charles James Fox 
 would be to write the history of the reign of George III., 
 in its social as well as its political aspects. The mag- 
 nitude of the task is perhaps the chief reason why no 
 one has yet done for Fox what Lord Stanhope has done 
 for Pitt, and Mr. Stapleton for Canning. To some 
 extent, however, Fox has undoubtedly suffered for leaving 
 behind him too obvious a biographer. The breath had 
 scarcely left his body before a crowd of Memoirs and 
 Reminiscences made their appearance, of which the 
 volumes of Mr. Fell and Colonel Trotter are the best 
 known, but no one ventured to interfere with the un- 
 doubted prerogative of the third Lord Holland — the 
 Young One of Fox's correspondence — to write the bio- 
 graphyof the great Whig leader which should be a/rn/yua 
 es del. A series of misfortunes prevented the work from 
 ever being begun, and it was not till 1853 that the mate- 
 rials, which Lord Holland had collected and Mr. Allen had 
 annotated, were given to the world by Lord Russell, under 
 the title of Memoirs and Correspondence of C. J. Fox. 
 Thirteen years afterwards, at the fag end of a busy 
 political career, Lord Russell was able at last to publish
 
 vi PEE FACE. 
 
 the long-promised Life, when Fox had been in his grave 
 nearly sixty years. Much of the personal and political 
 interest in his career had by that time died away, and 
 Lord Russell himself would have been the first to acknow- 
 ledge that the work when published was very different 
 in scope and character to that which was originally 
 conceived. Since then the brilliant and attractive 
 essay of Sir George Trevelyan upon English politics 
 and society at the beginning of the reign of George III., 
 published under the title of the Early History of 
 Charles James Fox, has been the only serious historical 
 work which has dealt with the subject. It would seem 
 indeed as if interest in Charles James Fox had in 
 recent years been steadily decreasing. The references to 
 him in Lord Macaulay's writings are extremely few, while 
 in modern periodical literature his name hardly ever 
 appears except as the hero of an anecdote. While Burke 
 has become the storehouse of political wisdom to poli- 
 ticians of all parties, references to Fox's opinions and 
 quotations from his speeches arc rarely found. 
 
 Under such circumstances I hope it will not be deemed 
 presumptuous in me to attempt to present in a short and 
 condensed form a sketch of the political career of Fox as 
 a statesman, which may serve to recall to men's minds the 
 part which he played at a very important crisis of his 
 country's history. It is obviously impossible to com- 
 press within the limits of a work like this a complete 
 history of the times or of the man. Much has necessarily 
 to be left out, and, remembering that in this scries I am 
 specially called to deal with my subject as a statesman,
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 I have accordingly endeavoured to fix my attention par- 
 ticularly upon his public life, and upon those parts of 
 his private life and traits of his private character, which 
 had a definite influence upon his public career. The con- 
 nection between the two in the case of Fox is obvious 
 enough, and I do not pretend to do anything more in 
 the following pages than to elucidate and illustrate it. 
 
 Among the authorities on which I have mainly relied 
 may be mentioned ' Memoirs and Correspondence of 
 C. J. Fox,' and 'The Life and Times of C. J. Fox,' by 
 Lord Piussell ; ' Fox's Collected Speeches;' Sir G-. Tiv- 
 veh an's ' Early History of Charles James Fox ; ' Colonel 
 Trotter's 'Memoirs of Fox;' Rogers' 'Recollections of 
 C. J. Fox;' 'Gilbert Wakefield's Correspondence with 
 ('. J. Fox;' Horace Walpole's ' Memoirs and Journals ; ' 
 'Burke's Speeches and Correspondence; 1 'Selwyn's Life 
 and Letters;' Moore's 'Life of Sheridan;' 'Memoirs of 
 the Court Cabinets of George III.,' by the Duke of 
 Buckingham ; 'Memoirs of Lord Minto ;' Sir G. Corne- 
 wall Lewis's 'Administrations of Great Britain ;' Stan- 
 hope's 'Life of Pitt;' Gillray's 'Caricatures;' Lord 
 Albemarle's 'Memoirs of the Mare{uis of Rockiivham ;' 
 Fitzmaurice's ' Life of Shelburne ; ' ' The Correspondence 
 of George III., and Lord North;' Lord Holland's 
 ' Memoirs of the "Whig Party ; ' ' The Diaries of the first 
 Earl of Malmesbury;' &c. I need hardly add that 
 during the period which he has as yet covered, the 
 guidance of Mr. Lecky's clear sight and comprehensive 
 mind has been indispensable. 
 
 IT. 0. W, 
 OxFonn, 1890.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 «v-> 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 Fox as A Tory 1 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 The American War ....... 25 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 T 
 
 The Fall of Lord North 3 
 
 • > i 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Ministry of 1782 59 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Coalition 80 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The India Bill 100 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Tex Years of Opposition .110 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The War with France ...... 154 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 St. Ann's Hill ........ 175 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Ministry of all the Talents .... 104
 
 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FOX AS A TORY. 
 1749-1774. 
 
 " Mr. Fox never had any principle," — " II n'a nul 
 espece de principes. et il regarde avec pitie tous ceux 
 qui en out." Such were the criticisms passed on the 
 public and private conduct of Charles James Fox, in the 
 height of his parliamentary fame, by no mean judges of 
 human nature, George III. and Madame du Deffand. 
 From the damaging effect of those criticisms Fox's 
 reputation never yet has been, nor indeed can be, wholly 
 freed. Despite his brilliant services to the Whig party, 
 despite the magic sway of his eloquence, despite the rare 
 gifts of his singularly winning nature, there hangs across 
 his career from first to last, like a storm-cloud on a sunny 
 April sky, the dark shadow of an unprincipled life. The 
 reason is not far to seek. He was a spoiled child from 
 the cradle to the grave. Petted and indulged by his father 
 in his childhood, he was petted and indulged by his party 
 in his maturity. Even his opponents could hardly believe 
 him to be in earnest, and after having been for an hour 
 
 B
 
 2 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 the object of his most trenchant vituperation, Lord North 
 would be content to reply with a good-humoured joke. 
 It was not to be wondered at, that under such circum- 
 stances Fox. found it difficult to take politics seriously, 
 and to look at them in any other light than a game as 
 interesting and less expensive than faro or quinze. A 
 gambler at Brookes's, he was a gambler at St. Stephen's. 
 He played as recklessly in one place as in the other. 
 In both places much of his recklessness was due to the 
 training he had received from his father. Never was son 
 more obedient, never had son less cause for his obedience. 
 Deliberately educated in vice from a schoolboy, laughed 
 out of any scruples which might struggle to the surface, 
 encouraged to indulge every whim and every desire, he 
 could not but lose the niceness of moral judgment, and 
 could not but fail to appreciate the importance of moral prin- 
 ciple. To Lord Holland belongs the infamous distinction 
 of having been among the most corrupt of fathers as 
 well as the most corrupt of the statesmen of his time. 
 
 Born on the 24th o f January, 17 49, Charles Fox was 
 sent to Eton in the autumn of 1 7~>8, but he had not been 
 five years at school before he was taken by his fattier on 
 a tour to Spa and Paris, and at the age of fourteen was 
 introduced by him to the witty and abandoned society of 
 gamblers and debauchees in which Lord Holland then lived. 
 In 17b'-± lie attained the dignity of a sixth-form boy, but 
 in the autumn of that year he left Eton for Oxford, 
 and matriculated as a commoner of Hertford College at 
 what would now be considered the ridiculously early age 
 of fifteen. Two years more, divided between hard work 
 at Oxford and dissipation at Paris, sufficed to complete 
 his education as far as the University was concerned. 
 Another two years of Continental travel, chiefly spent 
 in Paris and Italy, gave him a considerable knowledge of
 
 . FOX AS A TOBY. 3 
 
 foreign languages, and a thorough acquaintance with the 
 lower aspects of Parisian life. At the age of nineteen, 
 when most men now-a-days are just entering on their 
 University career, and are beginning to realise the 
 existence of Logic and of Ethics, Charles Fox was returned 
 for the pocket borough of Mid hurst, and stepped out on 
 the parliamentary arena in the spring of 176 9 an 
 accomplished scholar, a versatile man of the world, and 
 a finished rake. 
 
 He had many of the qualifications necessary for a 
 successful politician. Gifted by nature with a fine 
 presence, and a figure, which, if portly, was not as yet. 
 gross, he had done much to improve his natural advan- 
 tages. His voice, rich, melodious, and strong, had been 
 carefully trained on the amateur stage to express the nicest 
 gradations of thought and feeling. His reason, vigorous 
 and clear, had acquired at Oxford enough of the discipline 
 of mathematics to become logical, and not enough to 
 become narrow. His taste, formed by Eton scholarship and 
 his own lifelong preference on the great classical writers, 
 was enriched by an extensive and intimate acquaintance 
 with French and Italian literature. His memory was 
 singularly keen and retentive. Even Pitt could not 
 more aptly point his arguments with the appropriate 
 classical sentence, so dear to the man of education of 
 those days, or turn the laugh against his adversary by 
 a well-capped quotation. No one could ruffle the even 
 serenity of his temper, few could resist the attractiveness 
 of his address. Such was Charles James Fox at his 
 entrance into political life in 1769. With all a young 
 man's heedlessness of consequences, and love of excite- 
 ment, with more than his share of generous instincts 
 and ambitious aims natural to his time of life, he at 
 once plunged impetuously into the fray, espoused without 
 
 b2
 
 4 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 thought the party of his father, took the House by storm 
 by his first important speech, and soon pushed himself 
 into the front rank of the most uncompromising defenders 
 of the King and the Prerogative. 
 
 The champion was sorely needed. For nine years 
 George III. had been working with stubborn pertina- 
 city to effect the overthrow of the Whig oligarchy, 
 which had for so long ruled England in the name of 
 the King. The attempt at first sight seemed hopeless 
 enough. What could a young man of narrow intellect 
 and limited experience do against a party, bound together 
 by every tie of political tradition and family connection, 
 and resting securely on a basis of scientific parliamentary 
 organization ? What could even a king do, whom all the 
 world believed to be a tool in the hands of a profligate 
 mother and her unprincipled favourite, against a statesman 
 who had just added two continents to the dominions of the 
 British Crown, and was the greatest orator England had 
 known since the days of Pym ? 
 
 But George III. was not the man to be dazzled by the 
 glory of a career even like that of Chatham. He had 
 the perseverance and the courage of a typical John Bull. 
 Curiouslv unable to understand the motives or feelings 
 of others, he looked upon all those who disagreed with 
 him or thwarted him as personal ei emies. His mind, 
 limited but tenacious, was singularly alive to his own 
 interests. His pluck, largely compounded of pride and of 
 obstinacy, forbade him to know when he was beaten. 
 But ver these lower qualities ruled with absolute sway 
 a conscience which, if always narrow and often ignorant, 
 was at any rate true and sincere. Honesty of purpose 
 is the distinguishing characteristic of George III. It is 
 easy to point out the deficiencies of a character which, 
 from a high sense of moral duty, soiled itself in shameless
 
 FOX AS A TORY. 5 
 
 and conspicuous corruption. It is easy to sneer at a 
 conscience which, on principle, excluded from its trust 
 a Chatham and a Rockingham, and folded to its breast 
 Sir Francis Dashwood and Lord Sandwich. It is easy 
 to say that consistency in politics is a virtue often closely 
 allied with stupidity and prejudice. To such criticisms 
 George III. must fairly plead guilty. Stupid, prejudiced, 
 and narrow, he was utterly unable to rise either in moral 
 or intellectual conception above the opinions of his age, but 
 he never deliberately sank below them. He did honestly 
 and fearlessly what he conceived to be right, and never 
 once did, in the course of one of the longest political 
 lives known to English history, what he knew to be 
 wrong. There are not many statesmen of the eighteenth 
 century of whom the same can be said. 
 
 To George III. the Whig oligarchy was a tyrant 
 which was slowly crushing the life out of the constitution. 
 Chatham was an all-powerful dictator who overshadowed 
 the legitimate influence of the Crown. As long as the 
 two were united, the liberties of Englishmen and the 
 rights of the Crown were alike at stake. There was 
 something to be said for this view. With the passing 
 away of all chance of a Stewart restoration, had passed 
 away the necessity for Whig ascendency. There was no 
 longer any reason why half the nation, and possibly the 
 larger half, should be denied all opportunity of serving a 
 dynasty to which it was thoroughly loyal. At the same 
 time the principles which had been inscribed on the Whig- 
 banner of 1688, and which had been entrusted as a sacred 
 deposit of political truth to the loving care of the great 
 Revolution families, had been carried into effect. Civil 
 and religious liberty in the Whig sense of the words had, 
 under the governments of Stanhope and of Walpole, 
 ceased to form the programme of a party, and had
 
 6 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 become the common heritage of all Englishmen. Not 
 even the most ardent of Tories seriously proposed to 
 revive the Schism Act, or disputed the right of the nation 
 to settle the succession to the Crown. The questions at 
 issue between statesmen were of a much narrower kind. 
 Whether the King should have the determining voice in 
 the choice of his advisers and in the direction of affairs, 
 was the crucial question of the day ; and to take the side 
 of George III. on such a subject was at least as much 
 open to the Whig who revered the memory of William 
 III., as to the Tory who observed the death day of King 
 Charles the Martyr. 
 
 And if the divisions which had once divided parties 
 had become obsolete, the new divisions which had taken 
 their place had become unreal. They were personal not 
 political, and represented cliques not principles. Walpole, 
 in order to assure his own power, and to establish the 
 Hanoverian dynasty upon the throne, had raised corruption 
 to the dignity of a science. The Ministerial majority, 
 nominated for the most part by a few Whig borough- 
 owners, was kept together by an elaborate system of 
 places and pensions. It was idle to say that a House of 
 Commons so returned represented the nation. It repre- 
 sented the great Whig families, the Pelhams, the 
 Cavendishes, the Bentincks and the Eussells, and it 
 represented the great Whig families alone. W T hen on 
 the fall of Walpole they assumed the reins of government, 
 they used their power to further the interests of their 
 connection. To a prescient statesman at the death of 
 G-eorge II. England might well have seemed already 
 a Venice of the North, slowly sinking under the deaden- 
 ing rule of a selfish and suspicious oligarchy of noble 
 families. 
 
 From such a danger England was saved by George III.
 
 FOX AS A TOBY. 7 
 
 He saw clearly enough that the weakness of the great 
 families lav in their mutual jealousies, and he set himself 
 to sow dissensions between them. The haughty in- 
 dependence of Chatham, the mystery in which he loved 
 to conceal his real thoughts, and his evident determination 
 never to bend his neck to the yoke of party, rendered it a 
 comparatively easy task to separate his interests from 
 those of Newcastle, who was a party leader and nothing 
 more. The weapon of corruption, which had proved so 
 effective in the hands of Walpole against the Tories, was 
 wielded with still more telling effect by the King and Bute 
 against the Whigs. Unexpected success attended their 
 efforts. The Russells, ever greedy of place, and already at 
 enmity with the Pelharas, drew nearer to the King. The 
 Grenvilles separated from Newcastle, though not wholly 
 from Chatham. The unpopularity of a fresh war brought 
 about the resignation of the great Minister in 1761. 
 Shelburne, soft, oily, and unscrupulous, placed his admitted 
 talents at the disposal of the Crown. Henry Fox, ever 
 venal and ever shameless, undertook the congenial task of 
 managing the bribery department, and the ratification of 
 the Peace of Paris by Parliament in 1763 won for Lord 
 Holland his tainted peerage, and for the King his first 
 great triumph over the Whig families. 
 
 But the emancipation of the Crown was by no means 
 completed by the substitution of Bute and Fox for 
 Chatham and Newcastle. Seven more weary years of 
 plot and counterplot were to pass away before the King 
 could obtain a Minister after his own heart. Bute soon 
 'quailed before a storm of unpopularity and calumny, such 
 as had not assailed an English Minister since the time of 
 Strafford, and George III., thrown back upon the discon- 
 tented Whigs, found the scorpions of Grenville and of 
 Bedford worse than the whips of Chatham. Restlessly he
 
 8 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 turned from party to party, from leader to leader, from 
 clique to clique, in the vain hope of freedom. To save him- 
 self from the thraldom of Grenville's tedious and insolent 
 harangues, he surrendered at discretion to Rockingham 
 and the Whig oligarchy. To escape from them he put 
 himself in the hands of Chatham and his personal Ministry. 
 In the chaos which resulted from the retirement of 
 the dictator owing to his strange attacks of nervous 
 prostration, the weary King lent his support by turns to 
 Grafton or to Shelburne or to North as occasion seemed 
 to offer. Yet through all this apparently aimless shifting 
 to and fro he had never lost sight of his main object. 
 With dogged pertinacity he had gone on steadily building 
 up his own party. Every change of Ministry served to 
 divide further the discordant sections of the once formid- 
 able Whig phalanx. Every session increased the numbers 
 of the King's friends. Every act of patronage was 
 dictated by a single eye to his political advantage. In 
 the great questions which had arisen, especially those 
 relating to Wilkes and to the American Colonies, he 
 probably had with him the majority of the nation as well 
 as the majority of Parliament. At last in 1770 came the 
 opportunity he had been waiting for so long and so 
 patiently. The reappearance of Chatham in Parliament 
 finally broke up the Administration which still nominally 
 owned the rule of Grafton. But neither Chatham, nor 
 Bedford, nor Rockingham, were strong enough by them- 
 selves to claim the seals of office. Mutual jealousies 
 were too rife to admit of a coalition, and so amid the 
 divided ranks of his enemies George marched safely to 
 victory. In Lord North he found a servant able and 
 trustworthy, in the House of Commons a majority of 
 placemen and pensioners obsequious and contented. The 
 threads of policy were in his own hands, patronage
 
 FOX AS A TORY. 
 
 entirely under his own control. For the first time since 
 his accession he felt himself to be in fact as well as in 
 name a King. 
 
 It was at this crisis that Charles Fox entered 
 Parliament, and it was quickly seen that he could bring 
 to the King's side just what it most wanted. To gain 
 his victory over the Whigs, George had been obliged to 
 oppose himself to the intellect as well as to the morality 
 of the country. By far the ablest statesman, and the most 
 commanding figure in English political life, was Chatham, 
 and Chatham was now in stern opposition. By far the 
 most respected leader in the House of Lords was the 
 praiseworthy and honest Rockingham, the acknowledged 
 chief of the Whig families, and to counteract the 
 reputation of Rockingham and withstand the thunder of 
 Chatham's eloquence, the Court could only oppose the 
 degraded character of Sandwich and the silver tongue of 
 Mansfield. In the House of Commons things were even 
 worse, for Lord North, clever and amiable as he was, 
 had nothing but a shrewd mother wit to enable him to 
 parry the attacks of Burke's impassioned declamation. 
 A young orator, cool, self-possessed, logical, incisive, and 
 cultured, was a godsend to a party which had to rely upon 
 the venal advocacy of Norton and Wedderburn. Nor was 
 Fox backward in taking advantage of his opportunity. 
 Political cowardice was never one of his failings. He 
 threw himself manfully into the breach, boldly defended 
 the supersession of Wilkes against Burke, supported the 
 committal of Lord Mavor Crosbv, forced Lord North 
 to vote with him against his will for the committal of 
 the printer Woodfall, was appointed one of the Junior 
 Lords of the Admiralty, and afterw T ards one of the 
 Commissioners of the Treasury, and w r as soon looked 
 upon on botn~~stdes of the House as among the most
 
 in CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 able, and most unprincipled, of the bodyguard of the 
 King. 
 
 It is impossible to credit Fox at this period of his 
 career with any settled political convictions. Though lie 
 was a man in education and in knowledge of society, he 
 was still a bov in iudument and in the enjoyment of life. 
 He had not as yet thought or felt deeply on any question. 
 Life was exceedingly pleasant to him, and in the gayness 
 of his epicurean nature he threw himself with zest into every 
 pleasure it afforded. Among those pleasures politics was 
 by no means the least. It gave unique opportunities for 
 cutting a figure in the world, and for paying off old 
 scores. It enabled him to indulge in the malicious 
 pleasure, so dear to the heart of the clever young politician, 
 of shocking dull respectability by the vigour of his denun- 
 ciation and the extravagance of his views. It provided 
 him with a pleasant relief to the more absorbing business 
 of Newmarket or Almack's. Careless of everything except 
 the excitement of the moment, Fox plunged into politics 
 and hit hard all round him with the same delightful sense 
 of irresponsibility with which a modern undergraduate 
 overthrows the Church and the Constitution at a debat- 
 ing society, and dances round a bonfire on the 5th of 
 November. 
 
 His conduct with regard to the Marriage Laws is the 
 typical exception which proves the rule. Among the 
 many subjects which came before Parliament in the years 
 1769—1771, it was the only one about which he really 
 cared, and the only one about which he showed inde- 
 pendence. Lord Holland, when approaching middle age, 
 had convulsed society in the days of the Pelhams by his 
 runaway match with Lady Caroline Lennox, the daughter 
 of the Duke of Richmond and great granddaughter of 
 Charles II. ; and the scandal occasioned by the marriage
 
 FOX AS A TORT. 11 
 
 had been among the reasons which led to the passing 1 of 
 Lord Hardw icke' s Marriage Act in 1753. Naturally 
 enough, Lord Holland had been the bitterest opponent of 
 the measure in the House of Commons, and its passing 
 was always regarded in the family as a condemnation of 
 the marriage. Thus from childhood Charles Fox had 
 been conversant with this particular subject, and had 
 approached it from a private and family, rather than from 
 a party, point of view, and, when he had acquired a 
 sufficient experience in the House, he determined to press 
 for its repeal. 
 
 But in 1772 the question of the Marr iage Laws came 
 before Parliament in an unexpected form. The marriage 
 of the profligate Duke of Cumberland with Mrs. Horton, 
 following as it did hard upon the secret marriage 
 of the Duke of Gloucester with Lady Waldegrave, 
 had filled the mind of the King with fears for the 
 succession, and irritation at the insubordination shown 
 by the royal family. He took the matter up with more 
 than his usual alacrity, insisted upon the immediate 
 preparation of a bill to deal with it, rejected a moderate 
 scheme drafted by Thurlow and Wedderburn, and finally 
 forced on the Cabinet a measure drawn by Lord Mansfield, 
 by which all descendants of George II. were rendered 
 incapable of contracting a valid marriage except with the 
 consent of the Crown. Rumours of the proposal soon got 
 wind and created general dissatisfaction, even among the 
 stoutest henchmen of the Court. Fox at once declared 
 his intention of opposing it. Wedderburn swore he would 
 not support it. Hardly a man on the Ministerial side of 
 the House could bring himself openly to defend it. 
 Startled at this appearance of mutiny amongst his 
 followers, and probably genuinely distrustful of the effect 
 of opposition upon Fox, Lord North prevailed upon the
 
 12 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 King and Mansfield to modify their bill in one important 
 particular, and, as finally submitted to Parliament, the 
 restriction of marriage only applied to members of the 
 royal family under the age of twenty-six. The modifi- 
 cation was useful to the wits. That a prince of the blood 
 might take upon himself the cares of state at the age of 
 eighteen, but those of matrimony not till he was twenty- 
 six, was too good an opportunity to be lost, and the 
 following epigram, said to be the work of Dowdeswell, was 
 soon making the circuit of the coffee-houses : — 
 
 "Quoth Dick to Tom — This Act appears 
 
 Absurd as I'm alive: 
 To take the Crown at eighteen years, 
 
 The wife at twenty-five. 
 The mystery how shall we explain, 
 
 For sure as Dowdeswell said, 
 Thus early if they're fit to reign, 
 
 They must be fit to wed? 
 Quoth Tom to Dick — Thou art a fool, 
 
 And little knowest of life : 
 Alas ! 'tis easier far to rule 
 
 A kingdom than a wife." 
 
 The change might produce an epigram, and keep 
 together the Ministerial majority, but it could not prevent 
 the secession of Fox. The fact was that he had be^un 
 already to realize his own importance, and to see that if 
 he wanted to satisfy his ambition he must make others 
 realize it as well as himself. The opportunity now 
 presented itself of assuming a more independent position 
 on a subject on which he was known to have strong 
 personal convictions, and he hastened to seize it. On 
 the 6th of January, 1772, he gave notice of a bill to 
 repeal Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act. On the 20th 
 of February he sent in his resignation as Junior Lord of 
 the Admiralty, and wrote in explanation to Lord Ossory, 
 his friend and connexion by marriage: —
 
 FOX AS A TOBY. 13 
 
 "I should not have resigned at this moment merely on account of 
 my complaint against Lord North, if I had not determined to vote 
 against this Koyal Family Bill, which in place I should be ashamed of 
 doing." 
 
 When the bill reached the House of Commons, he spoke 
 with studious courtesy of Lord North, but turned upon 
 the lawyers — Sir Fletcher Norton, Thurlow, and Wedder- 
 burn — with great vigour, evidently relishing the task of 
 pursuing his father's old enemies from subterfuge to 
 subterfuge, till at last he fairly drove them into flat 
 contradiction. 
 
 " Burke's wit, allusions, 'and enthusiasm," says Horace Walpole of the 
 debate, " were striking, but not imposing ; Wedderburn was a sharp, 
 clever arguer though unequal ; Charles Fox, much younger than either, 
 was universally allowed to have seized the just point of an argument 
 throughout with most amazing rapidity and clearness, and to have 
 excelled even Charles Townshend as a parliament man, though inferior 
 in wit and variety of talents." 
 
 The House of Commons readily understood, and the 
 Ministerial majority readily forgave, Fox's independent 
 attitude on the Royal Marriage Act. Unfortunately 
 there was one who looked at the whole matter from a no 
 less personal point of view than Fox, and who did not 
 understand and never forgave. Writing to Lord North 
 on the 26th of February, just after the bill had been intro- 
 duced into the Commons, George III. had said : " It is 
 not a question that immediately relates to administration, 
 but personally to myself; therefore I have a right to 
 expect a hearty support from every one in my service, 
 and shall remember defaulters." Three days before he 
 had put on record his opinion of Fox's recklessness. " I 
 think Mr. C. Fox would have acted more becomingly 
 towards you and himself if he had absented himself from 
 the House, for his conduct cannot be attributed to con-
 
 14 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 science, but to his aversion from all restraints." The 
 extravagances of Fox's private life and the fopperies of 
 his dress and manners were certain to be distasteful to 
 the staid and business-like King, and to render him little 
 disposed to make allowances for any political misconduct. 
 The two had now become opposed to each other on a 
 question in which the personal feelings of each were 
 strongly stirred. The " registered edict," as Chatham 
 finely called the Royal Marriage Act, had, it is true, 
 been passed into law, and the King had triumphed ; but 
 Fox had been nevertheless in his eyes amongst the worst 
 of the defaulters, and George had said that he would 
 remember defaulters. Thus began the little rift which 
 was soon to grow into so wide and impassable a gulf of 
 separation between Fox and the King. 
 
 On the 7th of April Fox's bill for the repeal of Lord 
 Hardwicke's Act came on for discussion. The day 
 before Fox had been at Newmarket, losing heavily as 
 usual on the turf. On his way back to town to introduce 
 his first important measure into Parliament — a bill which 
 was to alter the social arrangements of the country, and 
 remove a stigma from his family — he fell in with some 
 friends at Hocherel. Characteristically enough, he spent 
 the night drinking with them instead of preparing for the 
 struggle of the morrow, and arrived on the next, day at 
 the House without having been to bed at all, without 
 having prepared his speech, and without even having 
 drafted his bill. Nothing but the most consummate talent 
 could have saved him. Unprepared with arguments of 
 his own, he introduced his bill modestly and gracefully, 
 and reserved his strength for his reply, when Lord North 
 and Burke, who opposed him, should have given him the 
 necessary materials. Horace Walpole thus describes the 
 scene : —
 
 FOX AS A TOBY. 15 
 
 " Charles Fox, who had heen running about the House talking to 
 different persons and scarcely listening to Burke, rose with amazing 
 spirit and memory, answered both Lord North and Burke, ridiculed 
 the arguments of the former and confuted those of the latter with a 
 shrewdness that, from the multiplicity of reasons, as much exceeded 
 his father in embracing all the arguments of his antagonist as he did 
 in his manner and delivery. . . . This was genius, it was almost 
 inspiration." 
 
 Genius it certainly was, but genius which was solely 
 intent upon its own amusement and glorification. The 
 hill was read a first time by a majority of one, in spite of 
 Lord North's opposition. On the 19th of May it came 
 on again for discussion ; but its champion was not there. 
 He hurried in from Newmarket in time to find his bill 
 thrown out by a large majority without a debate. 
 
 Charles Fox remained out of office for the rest of the 
 year, but did not join the Opposition, nor alter in the least 
 his Tory views, except so far as they may have been 
 insensibly altered by the conversation of Burke, with 
 whom he now began that close and untiring friendship 
 which was only shattered by the French Revolution. 
 Lord North could not but feel the danger of leaving so 
 brilliant a comet in the political horizon to follow his own 
 erratic orbit, unregulated and uninfluenced by the sun of 
 the Ministerial system ; and in the last days of the year an 
 arrangement was made — of course at the expense of the 
 tax-payer — by which Fox took his place at the Treasury 
 Board. But in office or out of office, his nature remained 
 the same. Ten months of independence had only whetted 
 his appetite. Responsibility sat very lightly on his 
 shoulders, and he was no more likely to lose an opportunity 
 for delighting the House with a piece of brilliant invective 
 out of consideration for his party or his leaders, than he 
 was to check his horse at a fence because he did not 
 know what was on the other side. The more assured
 
 I 
 
 16 CHARLES JAMES FOX 
 
 grew his parliamentary position, the more hopeless be- 
 came the state of his finances, the more determinedly he 
 rebelled against the bridle of office, the more viciously he 
 kicked over the traces. 
 
 He had been hardly two months at the Treasury 
 Board when he acted as teller for Sir \V. Meredith's 
 motion against the imposition of a religious test on 
 matriculation at the Universities, although a strong whip 
 had been issued by the Government on the other side. 
 In June of the same year he suddenly delivered a 
 most violent philippic against Give, although the 
 House, at the instance of North7 had only a month 
 before come to a deliberate judgment on his conduct 
 which amounted to a guarded acquittal, and Give at that 
 moment was the possessor of ten Government votes. In 
 the February of 1774 came his final and unpardonable 
 indiscretion. An attack had appeared in a paper called 
 the Public Advertiser, upon the impartiality of the 
 Speaker, Sir Fletcher Norton, who appealed to the 
 House for an expression of its confidence. On this, 
 the printer, Wood fall, was ordered to appear at the 
 bar. On the 14th of February he attended, named the 
 well-known ex-vicar of Brentford, generally known as 
 Parson Home, as the author, pleaded that this was his 
 first offence, and asked for lenient treatment. Mollified 
 by his submission, the House was about to commit him to 
 the custody of the sergeant-at-arms, when Charles Fox 
 jumped up and moved that he be committed to Newgate. 
 Lord North, anxious to avoid another Wilkes case, nettled 
 at the assumption of leadership by Fox, and not knowing 
 of any precedent for committal to the sergeant-at-arms, 
 moved to commit to the Gate House instead of Newgate, 
 as that was out of the jurisdiction of the City. At this 
 moment Dowdeswell produced the very precedent for
 
 FOX AS A TOBY. 17 
 
 committal to the sergeant-at-arms which Lord North had 
 desired, who then entreated Fox to release him from his 
 pledge of supporting a committal to prison, since it was 
 given under a misapprehension. Fox, solf- willed and 
 obstinate, refused, and forced his leader to the ignominious 
 course of himself voting for a motion of which he dis- 
 approved, while he begged all his supporters to vote 
 against him. 
 
 Conduct such as this from a subordinate official to the 
 first Minister of the Crown was an insult which no party 
 discipline, however lax, could endure. Yet for some days 
 Lord North took no step, waiting perhaps for some 
 expression of regret on the part of Fox. He little knew 
 the man with whom he had to deal. So far from ex- 
 pressing regret, or caring at all what the King, or his 
 colleagues, or indeed the world in general, might think of 
 him, Fox was contemptuously accusing Lord North of 
 pusillanimity at the clubs. In the following week he 
 returned to the charge and openly attacked him in the 
 House for what he considered his culpable lenity towards 
 the printers. This was too much even for the patience of 
 Lord North, and on the 24th of February his dismissal 
 was notified to Fox in the following laconic terms : " His 
 Majesty has thought proper to order a new Commission of 
 the Treasury to be made out, in which I do not see your 
 name." 
 
 In four years and a quarter of parliamentary life Fox 
 had been twice in and twice out of office. When he so 
 wantonly left the Administration in 1774, he little thought 
 that he had already seen more of official life than he was 
 ever to see again, but so it was. Never again did he 
 hold office for more than eight months at a time, and the 
 total number of months which he spent in the service of 
 the Crown, during the thirty-two years which remained 
 
 c
 
 18 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 to him of life, when put together are only a little mure 
 than half of those which he spent in the Ministry of Lord 
 North. 
 
 It has been sometimes said that Fox's behaviour to 
 Lord North and his dismissal from officii which followed, 
 were due, not to petulance of temper or to vanity and self- 
 assertion, but to a sense of moral superiority which 
 would nut permit him any longer to condone the evil with 
 which he found himself involved ; that it was a true 
 moral instinct, which, working- faithfully if blindly, led 
 him to dissociate himself from a hireling crew of sycophants, 
 and cast in his lot with Chatham and with Burke rather 
 than with Sandwich or with Wedderburn. The facts 
 will hardly warrant such a view. Fox quarrelled with 
 Lord North, not because he was tuu much of a Tory, but 
 because he was not Tory enough. He led against the 
 Minister what in the parliamentary language of modern 
 France would be called the extreme right. It was to the 
 hireling crew, the placemen and the pensioners, that he 
 appealed, to force his timid trimmer of a leader to support 
 the dignity of the Crown and the privilege of Parliament 
 against those who dared to print criticisms on their 
 conduct. An honest indignation against parliamentary 
 corruption, if felt, was certainly singularly well concealed 
 by one who consistently opposed the only Act which was 
 efficacious in promoting an impartial trial of election 
 petitions. 
 
 The fact is that it is impossible to dissociate the public 
 life of Fox from bis private life at this period of his 
 career. The one was a mirror of the other. Both were 
 dominated by the same love of notoriety, were actuated 
 by the same impulsive temperament, were clouded by the 
 same reckless and cynical contempt for principle. It is 
 true that at a later period of his career he acquired strong
 
 FOX AS A TORY. 
 
 '" 
 
 convictions. The "Teat questions brought to the frunt 
 by the American War deepened and steadied his whole 
 character. Intervals of office taught him something of 
 responsibility. But conviction was with him a plant of 
 slow growth, to act upon impulse instead of on principle 
 was for him even to the end of his days the most congenial 
 course, to mistake sentiment for principle the most 
 unfailing snare. The King appreciated him at the time 
 of his secession far more justly, if more severely, than a 
 House which is ever indulgent to those who amuse it. 
 
 " I am greatly incensed," he wrote to Lord North after the division 
 on Woodfall's case, " at the presumption of Charles Fox in obliging you 
 to vote with him that night ; indeed that young man has so thoroughly 
 cast off every principle of common honour and honesty, that he must 
 become as contemptible as he is odious." 
 
 Walpole, with more delicacy but no less severity, put 
 the same truth in a letter to Sir Horace Mann : — 
 
 " The famous Charles Fox was this morning turned out of his place 
 of Lord of the Treasury for great flippancies in the House towards 
 North. His parts will now have a full opportunity of showing whether 
 they can balance his character or whether patriotism can whitewash it." 
 
 His first essay in political life, tried by any standard 
 except that of mere oratorical success, must be pronounced 
 a failure. Coming into Parliament gifted with trans- 
 cendent talents and enjoying unique opportunities, he had 
 in five years become unpopular with the people, hated by 
 the King, and distrusted by the House which petted 
 and applauded him. And his failure was distinctly a 
 moral failure, a failure of character and of character 
 alone. In that age of meanness and moral degeneration 
 there were plenty of statesmen who attained to honour- 
 able posts in the State whose private life would not bear 
 examination. The Duke of Grafton could become Prime 
 Minister, the high priests of the mysteries of Medmenham 
 
 c 2
 
 20 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 could preside over the finances and over the navy of 
 England, yet no one thought that Grafton, or Dashwood, 
 or Sandwich should be debarred from the counsels of an 
 English King because they were debauchees. ( Jharles 
 Fox. was not so degraded a libertine as Sandwich. He 
 was not so confirmed a drunkard as Carteret or as 
 Dundas. Even as a gamester he was no worse than his 
 friend Carlisle, though he might be more unlucky. What 
 then was it that singled out Fox as the one statesman of 
 the eighteenth century who must retrieve his character 
 before he could be trusted, in whose ease alone moral 
 failure was to be a bar to political advancement? 
 
 The answer to the question is to be found in the fact 
 that Charles Fox's faults were faults of character, not of 
 passion — faults which vitiated his whole life, and not 
 merely one department of it. A man might be a 
 libertine or a drunkard, but, when free from his particular 
 temptation, might have as cool a judgment and as far- 
 seeing an eye as the most blameless of politicians. But 
 no one can play fast and loose with men and parties, can 
 treat measure- as dice to be shuffled about for his own 
 advantage, and refuse to be bound by the ties of party 
 discipline, without showing that he is bringing the spirit 
 of a gambler into the counsels of the nation, and playing 
 with the honour and welfare of the country as stakes in 
 the game of his own ambition. And those who attentively 
 studied ( Jharles Fox in his youth saw how impossible it 
 was to trust him in any matter of importance. His 
 leading characteristic was exaggeration, which sprung 
 partly from inordinate animal spirits and partly from 
 overweening vanity. He was always in extremes. All 
 that he did was over-done. As a macaroni he was over 
 dressed. On the turf he had more bad horses in training 
 and backed them for higher sums than any one else. As a
 
 FOX AS A TOBY. 21 
 
 man of fashion he would sit up all night over the bottle 
 and hold his own in the morning against any one in the 
 House or on the racecourse. \\ hen at Oxford he 
 walked fifty-six miles in a day ; during; a tour in Ireland 
 he swam twice round the Devil's Punchbowl at Killarney. 
 In the House his invective was so unmeasured as to defeat 
 its own object. Men were amused at his insolence, 
 charmed with his da*h, but not convinced by his argument. 
 His idleness was fully equal to his recklessness ; many 
 of his speeches even on the most important subjects were 
 delivered without previous thought, and his opinions 
 decided by his personal dislikes. At Brookes's no name 
 appeared so frequently in the betting-book, no one played 
 so high or lost so carelessly at the gaining table. It was 
 the excitement of the game that captivated him, not the 
 desire to win. The largeness of the stake merely added 
 to the excitement, and, with a true gambler's instinct, he 
 cared not a button whether he lost or won provided he 
 had enough to stake on the next round. The cha- 
 racteristic way in which he prepared himself for making 
 his first appearance in Parliament as the champion of 
 religious liberty is thus described by Horace Walpole : — 
 
 " He did not shine in the debate, nor could it be wondered at. He 
 had sat up playing hazard at Almack's from Tuesday evening, 4th, till 
 five in the afternoon of Wednesday, 5th. An hour before he had 
 recovered £12,000 that he had lost, and by dinner, which was at five 
 o'clock, he had ended losing £11,000. On the Thursday he spoke in this 
 debate ; went to dinner at past eleven at night ; from thence to 
 White's, where he drank till seven the next morning ; thence to Almack's, 
 where he won £6000, and between three and four in the afternoon 
 he set out for Newmarket. His brother Stephen lost £11,000 two 
 nights after, and Charles £10.000 more on the 13th; so that in three 
 nights the two brothers, the eldest not yet twenty-five, lost £32,000." 
 
 Charles Fox complained of the quiet of the session, 
 and said the House of Commons was always up before 
 he was. Well might Selwyn congratulate the landlord
 
 22 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 of the lodgings where the two Foxes lived, on keeping in 
 his house the finest pickles in London. 
 
 He was a willing victim to the aristocratic sharpers 
 who filled the saloons of Paris and of London in the 
 early days of George III. The harpy crew of ladies, 
 in whose degraded minds avarice took the form of 
 gambling, found in him a perfect El Dorado — a gold 
 mine always ready to yield its treasures without ever 
 demanding them back. He knew that he was cheated, 
 but he would rather lose his money than his game. 
 
 "At Almack's of pigeons I am told there are flocks, 
 But it is thought the completest is one Mr. Fox ; 
 If he touches a card, if he rattles a box, 
 Away fly the guineas of this Mr. Fox. 
 In gaming 'tis said he's the stoutest of cocks, 
 No man can play deeper than this Mr. Fox." 
 
 During the three years which elapsed before the 
 outbreak of the American War the passion for gaming 
 was at its height. Fox himself said he had known as 
 much as £70,000 lost in one night. There was hardly an 
 elder son among the men of fashion who had not parted 
 with his reversion to the Jews to obtain money witli 
 which to gamble. Friends like Lord 3larch and George 
 Selwyn put all they had into a common bank, and each 
 stood surety for the losses of the other. Lord Carlisle 
 alone had at one time lent Charles Fox as much as 
 £17,000, and each morning, while the profligate was in 
 bed, his Jerusalem chamber, as he wittily called his 
 waiting-room, was thronged by the money-lenders 
 anxious to suck yet deeper into the fruits of Lord 
 Holland's corruption. Society, determined not to treat 
 him seriously either as a politician or a man of pleasure, 
 looked on with a smile, half of pity, half of contempt, as
 
 FOX AS A TORY. 23 
 
 the debts rolled up, and speculated when the crisis would 
 come. It came in 1774, soon after his quarrel with Lord 
 North. The birth of a son to his elder brother added a 
 good life to the one bad one which stood between him 
 and Lord Holland's fortune. The boy was born, said 
 ( 'narles Fox profanely, like a second Messiah, for the 
 destruction of the .lews. He was mistaken. At once 
 those worthies, hitherto so long-suffering - , began to show 
 their teeth. His father came nobly to the rescue, and of 
 the untold wealth which in the days of his political power 
 Lord Holland had filched from his country, no less than 
 £140.IHIO went at one blow to preserve his son from 
 bankruptcy and ruin. 
 
 How was it possible for the little aristocratic world 
 which held the reins of power in the time of George III. 
 to distinguish between the gamester of St. Stephen's and 
 the gamester at Brookes 's ? In every department of life 
 they saw in Charles Fox the same qualities. Profligacy, 
 vanity, and extravagance inspired his speeches and 
 marked his actions both private and public. His friends 
 knew that behind the love of notoriety which prompted 
 his worst excesses was to be found a clear head and a 
 warm and unselfish heart,, untiring patience and a sunny 
 temper, and could look forward to the time when the 
 energy and self-assertion, which now spent itself on 
 political and social extravagance, would be concentrated 
 and disciplined by a cause worthy to enlist alike his heart 
 and his judgment in its service. But the world which 
 knew him partly, and the world which knew him not at. 
 all, could not be expected to look below the surface for 
 qualities which he had hitherto carefully concealed. To 
 most men he was still the chip of the old block, the 
 unscrupulous son of an unscrupulous father, the political 
 as well as the social libertine. There is no mistaking
 
 24 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 the venomous hatred which assailed him on all sides, and 
 found expression in verses such as these : — 
 
 "Welcome hereditary worth, 
 No douht, no blush belies thy birth, 
 
 Prone as the infernal fiends to evil; 
 If that black face and that black heart 
 Be not old Holland's counterpart 
 Holland himself's unlike the devil."
 
 ( 25 ) 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE AMERICAN WAR. 
 
 1774-1777. 
 
 It was fortunate for Charles Fox that his quarrel with 
 the Court party, the crisis in his own financial position, 
 and the climax of the American difficulties, all came in 
 the same year. Forced by insolvency into some measure 
 of respectability, completely independent of all past 
 political ties, he found ready made to his hand a cause 
 important enough to demand the full exercise of all his 
 talents, and honest enough to give him an opportunity of 
 retrieving his character. It is not often that a young 
 politician who leaves his party from petulance and 
 wrongheadedness can so soon hide his faults under the 
 aegis of liberty and justice. When Fox quarrelled with 
 Lord North it was certain that the chief motive of his 
 conduct in the immediate future would be hatred of the 
 man whom he had wronged. His early speeches on the 
 American question show that he took it up, as he had 
 before taken up the case of Wilkes, because it was 
 obviously the next move in the political game. He 
 espoused the cause of the Colonies because Lord North 
 led the battle against them. But, fortunately for him 
 and his country, in the new policy which he adopted
 
 26 CHARLES JAMES EOX. 
 
 Burke was at. his side to prompt, and Chatham before 
 him to lead. The more he studied the question, and the 
 more he fought the question, the more his warm heart 
 and clear mind were touched by the principles at stoke. 
 He saw that, below the legal questions of the nature and 
 the extent of the power to tax the Colonics, lay far more 
 important principles of right and wrong ; and before the 
 year of his defection was over the Tory champion of the 
 prerogative, who had wantonly trampled upon the liberty 
 of the press, had become the Whig champion of the right 
 of resistance, and the denouncer of arbitrary rule. 
 
 The year 1774 was the critical year of the American 
 struggle. On the policy adopted by the Home Govern- 
 ment, and especially on the means chosen by which to 
 carry out that policy, depended the action of the vast, 
 majority of American citizens — men who were attached 
 to the Crown, did not desire independence, and hated 
 fanaticism, but who would unhesitatingly prefer their 
 liberty to their loyalty, if loyalty meant submission to 
 what they believed to be unjust In England the whole 
 question was wofully misunderstood, and the jealousies of 
 English parties made it impossible to unravel the knot. 
 Chatham and Burke agreed that England must render 
 justice before she could demand obedience. As lon<T 
 
 •J ^ 
 
 ago as the debates upon the repeal of the Stamp 
 Act Chatham had boldly exclaimed, " I rejoice that 
 America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead 
 to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to 
 be slaves, would have been tit instruments to make slaves 
 of the rest ; " but neither Burke nor Chatham were quite 
 agreed as to what justice really meant, and the latter 
 declared in a letter to a correspondent, in 1774:— 
 
 " If I could persuade myself that the Americans entertained the 
 most distant intentions of throwing off the legislative supremacy and
 
 THE AMERICAN WAR. 27 
 
 great constitutional superintending power and control of the British 
 Legislature, I would be the very first person to enforce that power by 
 every exertion the country was capable of making." 
 
 The clergy and the landowners did not look deeper into, 
 the matter than to notice that the colonists were for the 
 most part Dissenters, and were in declared opposition to 
 the King-. The commercial classes, following - as usual 
 their pecuniary interests, were for or against the Americans, 
 according as their particular trades were affected by the 
 dispute. 
 
 Even in the Ministry itself opinion was much divided. 
 Mansfield and the lawyers were all for the assertion oi 
 legal right, and the punishment of those who ventured to 
 disobey the law. The Duke of Grafton and Lord 
 Dartmouth led a smaller section who wished for con- 
 ciliation. Lord North, indolent and amiable, shrank from 
 pushing matters to an extreme, and yet shrank more from 
 offending the King. So he allowed England to drift 
 aimlessly into a war, which, begun by misunderstanding, 
 was carried on with incapacity, and ended in disgrace. 
 There were two courses, and two courses only, open for the 
 Mini try to adopt, and even as late as 1774 either of them, 
 if pursued with sufficient vigour, might have been suc- 
 cessful. The one was the policy of Burke, a full and 
 frank repudiation of England's claim to raise a revenue 
 from America, and a generous recognition of the capacity 
 of the Colonies to a large share of self-government. The 
 other was the policy of the King, a prompt and swift 
 suppression of all opposition by irresistible force. Lord 
 North adopted neither the one nor the other, but a mixture 
 of both. Bv slow and hesitating threats without the 
 power to punish, by weak efforts to punish when 
 punishment had become not deterrent, but exasperating, 
 he made conciliation and repression alike impossible.
 
 28 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Half-hearted coercion, ill-conceived and feebly executed, 
 cannot but stand self-condemned. 
 
 During the year 1774, Fox was undergoing a course 
 of political education. His quarrel with Lord North by 
 no means meant that he had become a Whig. But 
 gradually the change came over him which has been 
 common enough in later political history, and the man 
 who separated from his party leader for personal reasons 
 soon adopted the principles of his political opponents. 
 With Fox the change was probably far more sincere than 
 it usually is. He had been a Tory in politics without ever 
 having been a Tory by conviction. His quarrel with Lord 
 North and the King freed him from party ties and put 
 him in opposition to the Tory Minister. The proposals of 
 the Government to close the harbour of Boston, to alter 
 the constitution of Massachusetts by Act of Parliament, 
 and to try Massachusetts prisoners in other colonies, or 
 possibly even in England, were sufficiently startling to 
 make even the most careless of politicians look well to his 
 compass before he cast himself loose from his moorings in 
 so stormy a sea. Against the Boston Port Bill, on 
 March 23, 1774, Fox merely objected that it gave too 
 much power into the hands of the Crown. A month later, 
 when the Massachusetts Charter Bill was before the House, 
 he denounced the attempt to tax the colonists without 
 their consent, and urged the J louse to pause before it 
 passed a bill of pains and penalties which began with a 
 crime and ended with a punishment, and to consider 
 whether it was not more proper to govern by military 
 force or by management? Just before this speech he had 
 given his first vote with the Whig party in favour of 
 repealing the duty on tea. Burke, whose great speech on 
 American Taxation was delivered on this occasion, had 
 during the session become his political instructor. In
 
 THE AMERICAN WAR. 29 
 
 July, the death of Lord Holland severed the last tie 
 
 which bound him to the Court, and in the October of the 
 
 same year, in a private letter to Burke, he avows himself 
 
 not merely a Whig, but a devoted follower and adviser of 
 
 Lord Rockingham. Referring to some success achieved 
 
 by General Gage's soldiers over the Boston mob, he 
 
 says : — 
 
 " What a dismal piece of news ! I do not know that I was ever so 
 affected with any public event either in history or in life. The intro- 
 duction of great standing armies into Europe has there made all 
 mankind irrevocably slaves, but to complain is useless, and I cannot 
 bear to give the Tories the triumph of seeing how dejected I am at 
 heart. I have written to Lord Kockingham to desire him to lose no 
 time in adopting some plan of operations in consequence of this event 
 I am clear that a secession is now totally unadvisable ; and that nothing 
 but some very firm and vigorous step will be at all becoming ; whether 
 that or anything else can be useful I am sure I do not know." 
 
 For the next nine years English politics were wholly 
 dominated by the American War. Its first direct result 
 was to divide parties at last upon an intelligible taisis. 
 The war was acknowledged to be the King's war. Lord 
 North was well known to be half-hearted from the first, 
 but obedient. The King became a party leader, the 
 Minister was seen to be but his servant, the party became 
 the King's party, the policy the King's policy, and its 
 failure the King's defeat. Parties became necessarily 
 divided into the party for the King and the party against 
 him. All the better part of Fox's nature impelled him to 
 enlist himself on the side against the King. He learned 
 from Burke to dread and to detest royal influence in 
 politics. He believed with Chatham in the essential 
 injustice of the English claim to tax the colonists. His 
 logical mind grasped with ease the key of the situation. 
 Whether the claims of England were technically legal 
 or illegal mattered but little. An attempt to coerce 
 the colonists could not but drive them to assert their
 
 30 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 independence. The assertion of independence could not 
 but enlist all Europe on their side. How could England 
 stand up single-handed against the world ? What sort 
 of relations could she establish, even if she was successful, 
 with a colony which she had conquered with the sword ? 
 In his speech on the Address delivered at the beginning 
 of the session of 1776 he put this with his accustomed 
 force : — 
 
 " We have been told that it is not for the interest of Spain and 
 France to have America independent. Sir, I deny it, and say it is 
 contrary to every principle of common sense. Is not the division of 
 the enemy's power advantageous ? Is not a free country engaged in 
 trade less formidable than the ambition of an old corrupted govern- 
 ment, their only formidable rival in Europe? The noble lord who 
 moved the amendmeut said that we were in the dilemma of conquering 
 or abandoning America: if we are reduced to that, I am for 
 abandoning America. What have been the advantages of America to 
 the kingdom ? Extent of trade, increase of commercial advantages 
 and a numerous people growing up in the same ideas and sentiments 
 as ourselves. Now, sir, would those advantages accrue to us if 
 America was conquered ? Not one of them. Such a possession of 
 America must be secured by a standing army ; and that, let me 
 observe, must be a very considerable army. Consider, sir, that that 
 army must be cut off from the intercourse of social liberty here, and 
 accustomed, in every instance, to bow down and break the spirits of 
 men, to trample on the rights, and to live on the spoils cruelly wrung 
 from the sweat and labour of their fellow-subjects ; such an army 
 employed for such purposes, and paid by such means, for supporting 
 such principles, would be a very proper instrument to effect points of 
 a greater, or at least more favourite, importance nearer home; points 
 perhaps very unfavourable to the liberties of this country." 
 
 As the years went on, events proved that Fox was in 
 the right and George III. in the wrong. The half- 
 heartedness and ignorance of the Ministers combined 
 with the incapacity of the generals to render conspicuous 
 the failure of the war. Nation after nation joined in the 
 hue and cry against England in the hour of her necessity, 
 as jays chatter and peck round a stricken eagle. The
 
 THE AMEBIC AN WAR. 01 
 
 storm-cloud settled lower and lower upon the head of the 
 brave and patient King- as he fought blindly and use- 
 lessly on in sheer despair. The more hopeless became 
 the struggle, the more men turned in anxious expectation 
 of relief to the faithful few, who had kept unstained 
 from the first the banner of opposition to the Crown. 
 The rights of nations, and opposition to prerogative 
 government, became the watchwords of the Whigs as 
 they reformed themselves under Fox and Burke out of 
 the chaos of existing parties during the American War. 
 In the enunciation of these principles Fox found the 
 means to obliterate from men's memories the records of 
 his older self, and stood forward in the eyes of his 
 countrymen, no longer the political gambler and the 
 insolvent rhetorician, but the trusted leader of the 
 younger Whigs, and the acknowledged champion of 
 Whig principles. 
 
 Yet the attentive observer of the public utterances of 
 Fox during the famous Parliament of 1774 will look in 
 vain for any signs of that political insight which is the 
 highest, as it is the rarest, gii't of statesmanship. His 
 contemporaries used to say that Fox was at his best 
 during the American War, that he never surpassed the 
 speeches he made on that subject; but this is really but 
 another way of saying that Fox excelled in the power and 
 rush of his invective. No politician whose strength lay 
 in the destructive force of his attack could wish for a 
 better opportunity for the exercise of his particular 
 talent than that afforded by a hateful and disastrous 
 civil war, in which every step was a blunder weaklv 
 adopted by a reluctant Minister, and carried by a 
 mechanical majority. During the six years of the War 
 Parliament Fox never threw away an opportunity. Night 
 after night he exposed with pitiless vehemence the folly of
 
 32 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 the Ministers and the hopelessness of their policy. Again 
 and again he turned upon Lord North and Lord George 
 G-ermaine with a fierceness of personal attack which was 
 almost too strong for the nerves of that not over- squeamish 
 assembly. Negligence, incapacity, inconsistency, un- 
 exampled treachery and falsehood, are flowers of invective 
 culled from a single speech directed in 1775 against the 
 former. In December, 1777, he turned upon the 
 latter : — 
 
 " For the two years that the noble lord has presided over American 
 affairs, the most violent scalping tomahawk measures have been pursued ; 
 bit rding has been his only prescription. ' If a people deprived of their 
 ancient rights are grown tumultuous, bleed them: if they are attacked 
 by a spirit of insurrection, bleed them : if their fever should rise into 
 rebellion, bleed them,' cries the State physician ; ' more blood, more 
 blood, still more blood ! ' " 
 
 In April, 1779, he moved for the removal of Lord 
 Sandwich from the office of First Commissioner of the 
 Admiralty. In June, stung by an accusation thrown out 
 in the debate on the bill for doubling the militia, that he 
 had allied himself with the Ministers, he burst out into a 
 torrent of passion afterwards often remembered against him. 
 
 " What, enter into an alliance with those very Ministers who havo 
 betrayed their country, who have prostituted the public strength, who 
 have prostituted the public wealth, who have prostituted what is still 
 more valuable, the glory of the nation ? The idea is to > monstrous to 
 be admitted tor a moment. Gentlemen must have foregone their 
 principles, and have given up their honour before they could have 
 approached the threshold of an alliance so abominable, so scandalous, 
 ami so disgraceful. Does the noble lord think it possible that I can 
 ally myself with those Ministers who have led us on from one degree 
 of wretchedness to another, till at length they have brought us to the 
 extreme moment of peril — the extreme verge of destruction? Ally 
 myself with (hose Ministers who have lost America, ruined Ireland, 
 thrown Scotland into tumult, and put the very existeuce of Great 
 Britain to the hazard? Ally myself with those Ministers who have, as 
 they now con ess, foreseen the Spanish war, the fatal mischief which 
 goads us to destruction, and yet have from time to time told Parlia-
 
 THE AMERICAN WAR. 33 
 
 mcnt that a Spanish war is not to lie feared? ... To ally myself with 
 men capable of such conduct would be to ally myself to disgrace and 
 ruin. I beg therefore, for myself and my friends, to disclaim any such 
 alliance, and T am the rather inclined to disavow such a connection, 
 because from the past conduct of Ministers I am warranted to declare 
 and to maintain that such an alliance would be something worse than 
 an alliance with France and Spain — it would be an alliance with 
 those who pretend to be the friends of Great Britain, but are in fact 
 and in truth her worst enemies." 
 
 He read again the philippics of Demosthenes to perfect 
 himself in the arts of vindictive declamation. He was the 
 most effective and popular of the Opposition speakers. 
 The whisper that Charles Fox was on his legs would till 
 the House in a moment. The rich sweep of his passion, 
 the quick thrust of his retort, the sharp edge of his 
 sarcasm, afforded to every member of the House a keen 
 intellectual pleasure, for Fox was never dull and never 
 involved. His arguments were intelligible to the meanest 
 understanding, his excitement was catching to those 
 moulded in the dullest clay, and the House, which, when 
 his speech was over, was going to outvote him by an 
 enormous majority, roared with applause as each shaft 
 sped home to its mark. 
 
 Yet in all the flood of eloquence which Fox poured 
 forth in this Parliament, there is singularly little which 
 could at all help to put an end to the evils of which he 
 complained. His speeches must be searched through and 
 through before anything can be found which shows a 
 deeper appreciation of the dangers and the difficulties of 
 the situation, than that the blunders of Ministers are the 
 opportunity of the Opposition. He had to deal with a 
 Parliament which was actuated mainly by a mistaken 
 view of what the dignity of the mother country required, 
 with a nation which was exceedingly ignorant of the 
 thoughts and policy of the colonists. As is usually the 
 
 D
 
 34 CHARLES J AXES FOX. 
 
 case, it was ignorance, not malevolence, which was hurry- 
 ing England along the path of destruction, it was pride 
 which prevented her leaders from acknowledging it. 
 The business of a great statesman in the years 1774 and 
 1775 and 177G was to convince all thinking men that it 
 is wise and courageous sometimes to eat humble pie ; to 
 show from the acts and recorded words of the colonists 
 themselves that they were being driven to independence, 
 not rushing to seek it ; to renounce wholly and frankly the 
 old theory that colonies exist to provide markets for the 
 trade of the mother country : and to prove that the true 
 wisdom of England would be found in promoting and not 
 retarding the development of colonial self-government. 
 It is possible that such a policy would have had no chance 
 of success, but, with the great names of Chatham and of 
 Camden, of Burke and of Fox, as its sponsors, it would at 
 any rate have guaranteed that the case of the Americans 
 was put fairly before the people of England, and that 
 judgment was not merely going by default. 
 
 Among English statesmen Burke was the only one who 
 saw that it was necessary to oppose some rival political 
 principle to the obvious one of maintaining the legal 
 rights of England over her colonies, but unfortunately 
 Burke had not the ear of the House of Commons or of the 
 country. In his great speech on conciliation with America, 
 delivered on March 22nd, 177"), he laid down, in words 
 which will live as long as the Empire of England has 
 any power over men's minds, the principles on which 
 alone it can hold tog-ether : — 
 
 •• My idea is therefore, without considering; whether we yield as 
 matter of right or grant as matter of favour, to admit the people of 
 our colonies into an interest in the constitution. . . . My hold of the 
 colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from 
 kindred Wood, from similar privileges and equal protection. These are
 
 THE AMERICAN WAR. 35 
 
 ties which, though light as air, are strong as links of iron. Let the 
 colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your 
 government, they will cling and grapple to you ; and no force under 
 heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it 
 be once understood that your government may be one thing and their 
 privileges another, the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, 
 and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have 
 the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the 
 sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, 
 wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom they 
 will turn their faces towards you. Deny them this participation of 
 freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally made and still 
 must preserve the unity of the empire. Do not entertain so weak an 
 imagination, as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and 
 your sufferances, your cockets and your clearances, are what form the 
 great security of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of 
 office and your instructions and your spending clauses are the things 
 that hold together this great contexture of this mysterious whole. 
 These things do not make your government. Dead instruments, 
 passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion 
 that gives all their life and efficacy to them; it is the spirit of the 
 English constitution which, infused through the mighty mass, pervades, 
 feeds, unites, invigorates, and vivifies every part of the empire even 
 down to the minutest member." 
 
 To turn from these noble words, pregnant with deep 
 political wisdom, to the personalities of Fox, is to come 
 forth from a great symphony into the midst of a vulgar 
 street brawl. Yet Fox was probably right in not 
 attempting nigher work than that of the dashing cavah'y 
 officer. The Rupert of debate, he could lead a charge 
 and win a victory, but not as yet determine a policy or 
 plan a campaign. To open the eyes of England to the vast 
 issues which lay hid under the narrow legal limits of the 
 American question, required the moral earnestness as well 
 as the political imagination of a Chatham or a Burke, 
 and moral earnestness to be anything but hypocrisy must 
 be based on moral conviction. The time had not yet come 
 when Fox could lay claim to that. True he could lament, 
 like Mirabeau, of the errors of his youth, but, like Mirabeau, 
 
 d 2
 
 36 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 he could not put them away. Though not the gambler 
 that he had been before the crisis of 1774. Newmarket 
 and Almack's still took up most of the time which was 
 not devoted to Parliament. " He had abandoned," says 
 "Walpole of him in 1776, " neither his gaming nor his 
 rakish life, and was seldom in bed before five in the 
 morning, nor out of it before two at noon." It was in the 
 following year that he visited Paris and made such an 
 unfavourable impre-sion upon Madame du Deffand. It 
 was not therefore surprising that men of fashion and 
 politicians refused to believe in the sincerity of his new 
 convictions, though they were quite ready to acknowledge 
 the increased power of his oratory. Even a political 
 opponent like Lord North so little believed him to be 
 serious as to congratulate him after one of his most 
 scathing denunciations of Lord George Germaine, in 
 the very hearing of his victim, with a joke. "Charles, I 
 am glad you did not fall on me to-day, for you was in full 
 feather."
 
 ( 37 ) 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE FALL OF LORD NORTH. 
 
 1777-1782. 
 
 The surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga on the 
 17th of October, 1777, put an end to the possibility of the 
 reduction of America by force of arms. The alliance 
 with France which followed hard upon it secured her 
 independence. Englishmen, under the leadership of the 
 single-minded King and his venal followers, had set about 
 the coercion of thirteen colonies with as light a heart as 
 they would order out the military to suppress a street 
 riot. From the first they persisted in attributing the 
 resistance which they met with to a few disloyal lawyers 
 and politicians who were bent on independence. They 
 would not believe that they had to deal with a nation 
 determined to maintain its liberties. They did not realize 
 how difficult it was to coerce into submission a country 
 between whose shores and their own flowed three thousand 
 miles of ocean. That terrible ocean they thought could 
 oe bridged if it could not be drained, and America had 
 no fleet with which to dispute with England for the 
 supremacy of the sea. They never stopped to think what 
 the result of their victory was to be. They might indeed, 
 with the help of German mercenaries and Indian savages,
 
 38 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 crush the hasty levies of Washington in the field, but that 
 was merely the beginning of difficulties. It was hard 
 enough, as every English statesman knew, to hold Ireland 
 down with all the help which a powerful English garrison 
 of landowners, the long tradition of Protestant ascendency, 
 and eighty years of the grossest legal tyranny could give. 
 \\ as it conceivable that a united America, the children of 
 Smith, and of Winthrop, and of Penn, would ever submit 
 to be the slaves of a penal code? Was it reasonable to 
 expect that an army of twelve, or of twenty, or of fifty 
 thousand men could thus hold down by force a growing and 
 vigorous nationality three thousand miles away ? Force, 
 as Burke pointed out, is not the only nor the truest sanction 
 of government. Besides the appeal to physical force 
 there must always be the appeal to moral right ; justice 
 must go hand in hand with power, if peace is to be the 
 result. The case for the Ministry depended wholly upon 
 two assumptions — that it was not the nation, but a factious 
 minority, which had taken up arms against its sovereign, 
 and that the military and naval superiority of England 
 was so great, that the geographical difficulties in the way 
 of conquest could be overcome. The events of the first 
 two years of the war showed that both assumptions were 
 erroneous. The a-H'inbling of the Congress, and the 
 Declaration of Independence, proved the union of the 
 ( 'olonies. The surrender of Saratoga showed that in 
 America colonists and loyalists could fight, to say the 
 least, on equal terms. The treaty with France put in 
 daily jeopardy the command of the sea, which was essential 
 to the carrying on of hostilities by England at all. 
 
 Lord North saw the abyss which was opening before 
 him. In February, 1778, he carried through Parliament 
 proposals for conciliation, which would have been welcomed 
 in America in 1774, and which were substantially the
 
 FALL OF LOUD NORTH. 39 
 
 same as those proposed by Burke in 1775. Secret com- 
 munications were opened with Franklin in Paris, but 
 Franklin replied that it was now too late. The public 
 avowal of the treaty between France and America a few 
 days afterwards more than justified his words. To be 
 too late is the attribute of all incompetent Ministers. In 
 1778 Lord North proposed too late terms which would 
 nave been accepted in 1775. In 1782 the King- had to 
 agree to the independence which he had refused to 
 consider in 1778. From the date of the treaty with 
 France it was clear that America would accept no terms 
 short of independence, and it was equally clear that 
 England could not force other terms upon her, as long 
 as France supplied her with money. After the death of 
 Chatham in May, 1778, it became a settled principle 
 with the Opposition that the acknowledgment of American 
 independence was a measure absolutely inevitable, and 
 therefore wise. Though no delinite motion was made by 
 Fox by way of pledging - the House to this policy, the 
 main gist of all his speeches on the American question, 
 delivered subsequently to 1778, was to show the impossi- 
 bility of conquering America, and the absolute necessity 
 of making peace. Once in 1779, and twice in 1781, he 
 urged this directly with all his powers upon Parliament, 
 and as it was universally admitted that peace at that time 
 could only be obtained by the grant of independence, there 
 could be no doubt as to which way his opinion pointed. 
 In 1781 he said as much openly : — 
 
 " As to the mere single proposition whether America might with pro- 
 priety be declared independent, abstracted from other considerations, it 
 is perfectly ridiculous to debate about it in the House this evening. 
 America, as the right honourable gentleman has confessed, is already 
 independent, and, as he well observed from one point of view, ought to 
 be considered as a public enemy. I most heartily agree with the right 
 honourjVie gentleman that she is independent ; I may possibly disagree
 
 40 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 with him when I affirm again that she will and must be independent .... 
 and this I am in my own mind authorized to say, were it not that 
 conciliatory healing and friendly negotiation may effect much in 
 preventing the had consequences which a vote declaring America 
 independent might be productive of hereafter, I should, instead of making 
 the motion I have done, directly have moved that the American States 
 be declared independent." 
 
 Burke had enunciated the same truths as early as 
 
 December, 1778 :— 
 
 " With regard to avowing the independency of America, gentlemen 
 looked at the position in a wrong point of view, and talked of it merely 
 as a matter of choice, when, in fact, it was now become a matter 
 of necessity. It is in this latter light only that I regard it, in the 
 latter light only that I maintain that it is incumbent on Great Britain 
 to acknowledge it directly. On the day I first heard of the American 
 States having claimed independency it made me sick at heart ; it struck 
 me to the soul, because I saw it was a claim essentially injurious to this 
 country, and a claim which Great Britain can never get rid of — never! 
 never ! never ! It is not therefore to be thought that I wish for the 
 independency of America. Far from it. I feel it as a circumstance 
 exceedingly detrimental to the fame, and exceedingly detrimental to the 
 interest of this country. But when by a wrong management of the cards 
 a gamester has lost much, it is right for him to make the most of the 
 game as it then stands, and to take care that he does not lose more. This 
 is our case at present ; the stake already gone is material, but the very 
 existence of our empire is more, and we are now madly putting that to 
 the risk." 
 
 The Duke of Richmond, with characteristic impetuosity, 
 had made up his mind as early as 1776 that the grant 
 of independence was the only way of preventing - serious 
 national disaster, and had said as much in the House of 
 Lords in 1778. Rockingham, careful and taciturn, was 
 understood to have accepted the inevitable after the 
 campaign of Saratoga. During the latter years of the 
 war Shelburne remained the only Whig politician of any 
 note, who, true to the memory of Lord Chatham, could 
 not bear openly to look facts in the face. 
 
 In the nation a similar change was slowly winning its 
 way owing to the stern logic of events. At the outbreak
 
 FALL OF LORD NORTH. 41 
 
 of the war the bulk of the educated classes were on the 
 side of the King. The Universities, the clergy, the 
 lawyers, the landed gentry, and a large part of the 
 commercial classes, readily supported a cause in which 
 King and Parliament were united, and which seemed 
 at first sight to be the cause both of constitutional right 
 and of imperial unity. The greatest names in the 
 literary world were found on the same side : Junius, 
 Adam Smith, Johnson, and Gibbon. Most men did not 
 trouble themselves to look to see if the colonists were 
 anything more than naughty boys who had made a riot 
 and must take their punishment. But when the time for 
 a general election came round again in 1780, a con- 
 siderable change was visible in public opinion. The 
 younger generation of educated men, who had been 
 growing up while the war had been raging, and who had 
 followed anxiously the failures of our armies, and had 
 sympathised heartily in the attacks on the mismanagement 
 of affairs, were almost to a man in opposition. William 
 Pitt, William Wilberforce, and Kichard Brinsley Sheridan 
 were all elected for the first time in the Parliament of 
 1780, and all joined the Opposition. The common people 
 had always been on the side of the colonists. In the 
 country during the winter of 1779-80 there were signs 
 that even the landed gentry and the clergy were beginning 
 to desert the banner of the Court. Petitions for peace 
 were largely signed in the counties. Meetings were 
 held, at which squires and clergy appeared and denounced 
 the corruption of the government, and the mismanage- 
 ment of the war. It is significant of the altered state 
 of opinion among the landed interest that Fox, at a great 
 meeting at Westminster, should have advocated the 
 addition of a hundred county members to the House of 
 Commons. Even the wits, who like rats ever quit a
 
 42 C1IARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 sinking' ship, were coining- round, and their shafts became 
 directed against the blunders of the Ministry instead of 
 against the factiousness of the Opposition. The disaster 
 of Saratoga could not dismay them : — 
 
 "Burgoyne, unconscious of impending fates, 
 Could cut his way through woods, but not through Gates;'' 
 
 and a report that our enemies were buying up our own 
 horses to use against ourselves only suggested to them 
 the following contrast — 
 
 "We are told that the Monsieurs our horses import, 
 But regardless we are of what passes ; 
 But, Lord, what a racket 'twould make in our Cuurt 
 If they kindly would purchase our asses ! " 
 
 In Parliament alone the arguments of reason and the 
 teachings of experience seemed to have no weight. It 
 was the business of the placeman to vote and not to think. 
 Not even the invective of Fox could penetrate to a 
 conscience or a mind protected by the solid armour of 
 self-interest. The only result of the superiority in 
 argument enjoyed by the Opposition was to raise the 
 price of votes. The elections of 1780 returned a sub- 
 stantial majority lor the Ministers, but at a cost so far 
 exceeding that of previous elections that even the King 
 remonstrated, while in the succeeding year the best part 
 of a million of public money was distributed among the 
 friends and supporters of the Ministry by the infamous 
 plan of issuing the new loan to them below the market 
 price. 
 
 It was a true instinct that made the Opposition con- 
 centrate their energies in 17SU-81 upon the reform of 
 Parliament. Whatever Burke and the old Whigs might 
 say, the Americans were perfectly right when they com- 
 plained that, since the accession of the Hanoverian 
 dynasty, a revolution had taken place in the English
 
 FALL OF LOBD NORTH. 43 
 
 Constitution, which, though silent, was of infinitely greater 
 moment than anything which was done in 1688. The 
 old system of checks and balances, so fondly appealed to 
 by writers on the constitution, though nominally in full 
 force, had practically disappeared. The old division 
 between the legislative and the executive, which Mon- 
 tesquieu thought the vital principle of the constitutional 
 organism, was a corpse when he discovered it. The per- 
 sonal responsibility of the Crown for the well-being of 
 the nation had shrivelled into a rudimentary organ of 
 constitutional life, valuable only as showing what once 
 had been. The authority of Parliament had taken the 
 place of the authority of the King. Parliament had 
 become the keystone of the constitutional structure. 
 The wisdom of Parliament made the laws, the voice of 
 Parliament called forth the Ministers, the finger of Par- 
 liament marked out their policy, the eye of Parliament 
 searched out abuses, the hand of Parliament punished 
 their perpetrators, the spirit of Parliament g;ive life and 
 unity to the whole body of the nation. So complete was 
 the transference of real power from the hands of the 
 King to those of Parliament, that even the ecclesiastical 
 supremacy of the Crown, an authority essentially personal, 
 and only intelligible because it is personal, had insensibly 
 drifted into the hands of Parliament. 
 
 Directly Parliament became in this way the real centre 
 of all government, it was natural that those sections of 
 society which wished for political power should at once 
 direct all their energies to the obtaining of control over 
 Parliament. During the eighteenth century the enslaving 
 of Parliament was an object of policy as deliberately 
 undertaken, and as unremittingly pursued, as ever was 
 the enslaving of the nation by Henry VIII. The 
 a istocracy were first in the field. The great Whig
 
 44 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 families who had carried through the Revolution of 1688 
 were the natural inheritors of its bounty. A combination 
 of events put all political power into their hands at the 
 accession of George I. They were determined to keep it. 
 In the House of Lords their supremacy was unchallenged. 
 They set themselves to make their supremacy in the 
 House of Commons equally undoubted, and with that 
 object grew up the system which has made the name of 
 AYalpole infamous for all time. The real charge against 
 Walpole is not that he was corrupt — that he gave pensions 
 and places for votes — statesmen before him and statesmen 
 after him have plunged their arms up to the elbow in 
 corruption, but after a time the muddy waters pass away 
 and the stream runs again pure and free, but that he 
 poisoned the river at its source. He deliberately developed 
 the disease of the body politic, and prevented the healthy 
 flow of the national life. He was the physician who, 
 being called in to regulate a patient's health, sets him- 
 self to produce in him an organic disease, in order 
 that he may retain him as a patient for the rest of 
 his life. 
 
 It was inevitable that during the progress of years the 
 representative system of England should become anti- 
 quated and obsolete. Towns once flourishing had become 
 hamlets; villages once obscure had grown into important 
 trading centres. The franchise which had once been 
 enjoyed by the bulk of the educated citizens had become 
 restricted to a small clique. These were the diseased 
 parts of the representative system. They were unhealthy 
 growths which had developed naturally in the course of 
 years, but which must be pruned and cut off before the 
 tree would bear fruit as it ought. But these were just 
 the parts on which the Whig families fastened in order 
 to make their supremacy complete. So far from pruning
 
 FALL OF LORD NORTH. 45 
 
 or cutting them away, they delighted in them, they stereo- 
 typed them, they made them their own. Here was the 
 chosen field of the local influence of the neighbouring 
 peer, of the open bribes of the borough-monger and of the 
 nabob, and of the gratifications of the dispenser of the 
 secret service money. So successful was this policy, that 
 by the middle of the century the House of Commons 
 represented the House of Lords far more faithfully than it 
 did the nation. 
 
 But on the accession of George III. the Whig families 
 found that the King could play their game even better 
 than they. To all the advantages which they possessed in 
 common, George could add the peculiar and subtle 
 influence of royalty. He could concentrate the whole 
 forces of influence upon his object better than could a 
 Minister or a clique. By the pressure of Court authority 
 and lavish additions to the peerage, he soon had the 
 House of Lords at his command. Ry the exercise of a 
 patronage more unprincipled than that of Newcastle, and 
 a corruption more shameless than that of Walpole, he 
 gained gradually a majority in the House of Commons 
 devoted enough to remain steady during all the blunders 
 of his early years. 
 
 It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of this 
 pollution of the representative institutions of England. 
 Nearly, if not quite all of the national disasters of the 
 time, it may safely be predicted, would not have hap- 
 pened had the House of Commons been in any sense 
 representative of public opinion. Of course no one at the 
 time of the American War (except the Duke of Richmond) 
 thought that the House of Commons should be represen- 
 tative of those who neither by their property nor by their 
 education had shown themselves entitled to exercise the 
 franchise. The age of democracy had not yet come.
 
 46 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 The demand of the reformers of the time was not for a 
 large extension of political power among 1 the people, but 
 for its more even distribution among the educated classes. 
 The House of Commons, it was felt, should be representa- 
 tive, at any rate in a rough way, of the education and 
 good sense of the nation ; and a constitution stultified 
 itself which, after carefully dividing political power 
 between the hereditary and the representative principles, 
 allowed the latter to fall entirely under the dominion of 
 the former. A House of Commons, which claimed to be 
 the representative of the Commonalty, and was in reality 
 an assembly of the paid servants of the King, was a con- 
 tradiction in terms. 
 
 The sense of this monstrous unreality runs through the 
 whole of the eighteenth century history. Felt instinc- 
 tively by the people rather than closely looked into and 
 understood, it is at the root of all the real dangers which 
 threatened the political fabric. It was one of the chief 
 merits of the elder Pitt — the Great Commoner — that he 
 learned early to look for the expression of public opinion 
 away from Parliament, and ever did his best to get the 
 nation as well as Parliament on his side. " You have 
 taught me," said George II. to him on a well-known 
 occasion, " to look for the sentiments of my people else- 
 where than in Parliament." Meaner men did not see the 
 necessity. A Newcastle, a Grenville, or a North was 
 content with his parliamentary majority, and as long as 
 that would last did not look further. Wilkes became a 
 hero and a patriot because it was felt that King, Parlia- 
 ment, and Judges were combined to crush him in their 
 own interests, and not in those of law or morality. The 
 City rallied cheerfully to the support of Lord Mayor 
 Crosby and Mr. Alderman Oliver, because they believed 
 that the privilege of Parliament in the mouth of the
 
 FALL OF LORD NORTH. 4? 
 
 House of Commons was but another name for the slavery 
 of the subject. Lord Greorge Gordon and his rioters 
 turned London into a Pandemonium tor two days, because 
 the more prejudiced and fanatical of Englishmen would 
 not trust a Parliament returned by royal influence to be a 
 safe guardian of Protestantism. 
 
 So it was with the American War. Had Parliament 
 truly represented the educated opinion of the country, it 
 is doubtful whether the great name and influence of Lord 
 Chatham would not finally have predominated over the 
 sense of outraged dignity and of legal right, and have in 
 the end saved the country from war at all. It is certain 
 that after the failure of the policy of coercion had become 
 patent to all, and the alteration of public opinion in the 
 country had made itself felt, it would have been perfectly 
 impossible for the King and Lord North to have pursued 
 their destructive course. As long as the Ministerial 
 majority was safe, Burke might declaim, and Fox might 
 demonstrate, and associations all over the country might 
 meet and protest, but what cared the Ministers ? Parlia- 
 ment was the authoritative voice of the country, and 
 Parliament was with them. Lord North was never tired 
 of asserting that the war was the war of Parliament and 
 not of himself, that he had parliamentary authority for all 
 that he had done, — a useless boast indeed to those who 
 knew the secrets of the Treasury, and that a parliamentary 
 majority followed his nod as certainly as the thunder 
 followed that of Zeus ! 
 
 But there comes a point when even the most servile 
 majority of an unrepresentative Parliament finds the strain 
 of party allegiance too severe, and that point was reached 
 when the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown became 
 known in November, 1781. "O God, it is all over ! " 
 cried Lord North, wringing his hands, when he heard of
 
 48 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 it. It was not the loss of office that broke down his 
 accustomed imperturbability. Those who accuse Lord 
 North of a mere desire to stick to his place, as Fox did 
 more than once in the heat of debate, much misjudge him. 
 Again and again he had entreated to be allowed to retire, 
 again and again he had weakly consented to go on. For 
 years he had foreseen the catastrophe which had now 
 come, but like most indolent men he had hoped against 
 hope. The brave struggle at sea against the combined 
 fleets of France and Spain had cheered him. The good 
 news sent home by Clinton and Cornwallis at the 
 beginning of the year had enabled him to deaden his 
 conscience with the thought that after all some brilliant 
 victory might yet atone for the disgrace of the past. 
 When the blow came, it came with all the force of a 
 surprise, and for the moment crushed him. 
 
 In the general consternation there was one brave heart 
 which never faltered, one iron will which never flagged, 
 one keen mind which at once began to scheme how the 
 disaster might be retrieved. It is impossible not to 
 admire the granite steadfastness of the King. Had it 
 been exercised in a better cause, how posterity would 
 have delighted to recall the simple phrases with which 
 " he nailed his colours to the mast" — 
 
 " Lord North's account that the Address was carried this morning hy a 
 considerable majority is very pleasing to me, as it shows the House 
 retains that spirit for which this nation has always been renowned, and 
 which alone can preserve it in its difficulties. That some principal 
 members have wavered in their sentiments as to the measures to be 
 pursued, does not surprise me. Many men choose rather to despond on 
 difficulties than to see how to get out of them . . . With the assistance 
 of Parliament I do not doubt if measures are well connected, a good end 
 may yet be made to this war, but if we despond certain ruin ensues." 
 
 The nation, true to the King's wish, did not despond, 
 but it was determined no longer to tolerate the Ministers
 
 FALL OF LOBD NORTH. 49 
 
 who had led it so far along the path of destruction. 
 George III. struggled on bravely, fighting gamely to the 
 end, but he only postponed, and could not avert, the 
 catastrophe. In January, 17S2, Lord George Germaine 
 was sacrificed. On February 7, a vote of censure, moved 
 by Fox, upon Lord Sandwich was negatived by a majority 
 of only twenty-two. On the 22nd, General Conway lost 
 a motion in favour of putting an end to the war by only 
 one vote. On the 27th, the motion was renewed in the 
 form of a resolution and carried by a majority of nineteen. 
 Still the King would not give his consent to Lord 
 North's resignation. Rather than commit himself to the 
 opposition, he seriously thought of abdicating his crown 
 ami retiring to Hanover. 
 
 " I am resolved," he writes on March 17, " not to throw myself 
 into the hands of Opposition at all events, and shall certainly, if things 
 go as they seem to lead, know what my conscience as well as honour 
 dictates as the only way left for me." 
 
 Indeed, if it had not been for his large family, and the 
 character of the Prince of Wales, already too well known, 
 it is far from improbable that he would have carried this 
 idea into execution, and retired from a Government of 
 which he was no longer master. By the 20th, however, 
 even George III. saw that the game could not be kept up 
 any longer. He gave permission to Lord North to 
 announce his resignation, and parted with him with the 
 characteristic words : " Remember, my Lord, it is you who 
 desert me, not I who desert you." 
 
 OF those who contributed most in Parliament to discredit 
 the American policy of the King, undoubtedly the most 
 prominent by far were Shelburne, Burke, and Fox, and 
 each of them represents not only a different section of the 
 Whig party, but a different type of political capacity. 
 Shelburne showed the greatest cleverness, Burke the 
 
 E
 
 50 CEABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 strongest grasp of political principle, Fox the most 
 practical ability. Shelburne, after some vicissitudes, 
 bad attached himself closely to Chatham, and after the 
 death of Chatham was looked upon as the leader of his 
 section of the Whig party. Up to the end he affected to 
 believe that peace with the colonies was possible without 
 acknowledging their independence ; and partly because of 
 this view, and partly because of his deferential manners, 
 which contrasted favourably with Chatham's affectation 
 and Rockingham's bluntness, he was more acceptable to 
 the King than was any other of the Opposition leaders. 
 He did not speak often in the House of Lords, and, when 
 he did speak, preferred subjects which required the ex- 
 position and application of political principles, rather than 
 vigorous attacks upon opponents. On all financial sub- 
 jects he was an acknowledged authority, was a student 
 of Adam Smith, and not only a firm believer in free trade, 
 but one of the first statesmen who wished to put his 
 principles into practice. An Irish landlord himself, he 
 strongly supported the Irish nationalist movement of 1782, 
 and would willingly have seen trenchant reforms carried 
 out in Irish administration in both Church and State. 
 In religion his conduct was more dictated by prejudice 
 than by conviction. Like so many men of the eighteenth 
 century, he sat very loosely to doctrine, valued religion 
 more as a useful moral force than as having any positive 
 merits of its own, was a great friend of the financier and 
 Congregationalist minister, Dr. Price, and entrusted to 
 him the education of his children. In morality he was 
 far above the level of most of his contemporaries, and it 
 is recorded of him as a strange and startling fact that he 
 was not a gamester. Vigorous in mind, laborious in 
 method, and well disciplined in life, Shelburne seemed 
 to have the world before him, vet never was a man
 
 FALL OF LORD NORTE. 51 
 
 of his ability who was a greater political failure. The 
 fault with him, as with Charles Fox, was a moral one, 
 but of a very different sort. The studied elaboration 
 of his phrase, the unctuous courtesy of his manner, 
 the affected deference of his address, betrayed instead 
 of concealing the utter insincerity of his heart. His 
 conscience twisted like an eel, it eluded all pursuit, 
 it could not be grasped. His nickname among the 
 satirists was Malagrida, the name of a well-known 
 Portuguese Jesuit. " My Lord," said Goldsmith to him 
 one day, reflectively, " I always wondered why they 
 called you Malagrida. He was a good man." There 
 was no one who was engaged for long in business with 
 Shelburne, who did not believe that he had been betrayed 
 by him. Henry Fox, Grattan, and Charles Fox openly 
 accused him of double dealing. Pitt served him most 
 loyally in 1783, but significantly left him out of his 
 Ministry in 1784, when he was sorely in need of talent. 
 There was a total want of English straightforwardness 
 about him — a complete absence of honhomie and sim- 
 plicity. The antithesis of Charles Fox, his character 
 suffered from over-elaboration and too much thought, and 
 was wanting in the healthier instincts of frank, reckless 
 boyhood, which made the other so easy to condemn and 
 so easy to forgive. 
 
 Edmund Burke will ever remain the most familiar 
 figure, and the greatest problem, among the statesmen of 
 the eighteenth century. The thin, gaunt frame, the keen, 
 eager face, with its sharp-pointed nose and large rimmed 
 spectacles, are as well known to all from the pages of Gillray 
 as is the heavy, swarthy, farmer-like figure of Fox. He 
 had read moi\j and he had thought more on political 
 subjects before he entered Parliament, than his colleagues 
 had done when they ended their political life. He was a 
 
 e 2
 
 52 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 philosopher first and a politician afterwards, yet his 
 philosophy was never purely academical. He insisted 
 always on bringing his general statements to some practical 
 conclusion. He loved to lay down great and abiding 
 political principles, and to move on in stately order to 
 their application, but never did he forget, like so many 
 philosophers, to come to the application eventually. Gifted 
 with a brilliant imagination and a tenacious memory, 
 consumed by an enthusiasm which was at times quite 
 oppressive in its heat, his oratory, when he was at his 
 best, was simply irresistible. He carried his hearers 
 away, like Demosthenes, by the richness and the power of 
 his declamation. Criticism was disarmed, and was con- 
 tent simply to listen and to admire the grandeur of his 
 mind. "When he was at his worst his speeches were but 
 the ravings of a madman. Horace "Walpole said most 
 justly of him : " Of all the politicians of talent that I ever 
 knew, Burke has the least political art." When he was 
 on his legs he knew nothing except his subject. He did 
 not shine as a debater. He could not endure interruptions, 
 lie never knew when the House was getting tired until 
 it began to show its dissatisfaction in a way which made 
 him irritable. Jealous, sensitive, excitable, unreasonable, 
 he was the worst of friends, as well as the worst of enemies. 
 No one did more to keep apart the friends of Rockingham 
 and of Chatham. Deeply grateful to Rockingham per- 
 sonally, and with a much higher opinion of his intellect 
 than most of his contemporaries, he looked upon the 
 Roekino-ham party as the sole inheritors of orthodox 
 Whig principles, and insisted that Chatham could only be 
 received into the fold on the footing of a convert. It was 
 largely owing to Burke that Rockingham took up a 
 similar attitude with regard to the King, and refused in 
 1778 to agree to terms with Lord North, by which a
 
 FALL OF LORD NORTH. 53 
 
 large section of the Opposition were to be included in the 
 Ministry, unless it was distinctly understood that they 
 were to be paramount. Against this decision Fox pro- 
 tested with all his might, urging that the only way to 
 assert influence was to obtain office, as long as it could 
 be done without sacrifice of principle; but Rockingham 
 continued obstinate, and the negotiations came to an end. 
 Burke, however, if responsible for keeping Fox out of 
 office in 1778, made ample amends by his attacks on the 
 Ministry in the following years. His great speeches on 
 American taxation in 1774, and on Conciliation with 
 America in 1775, had already marked him out as the one 
 statesman of the day, who saw the necessity of enunciating 
 a policy for the future regulation of the relations of Eng- 
 land and her colonies before it was too late. His speech 
 on Economical Reform in 1780 directed public attention 
 to the plague-spot of the existing parliamentary system. 
 " Temperate," says Horace Walpole, " moderate, and 
 sprinkled with wit and humour, it had such an universal 
 effect upon the whole House, that it was thought he could 
 that day have carried any point he had proposed." 
 Publicity was the only remedy for abuse so gross as that 
 which attended the pension and patronage system of the 
 Court. When the bright light of Burke's inquiry was 
 thrown upon it, no one but Lord George Gordon was 
 found bold enough to support it ; yet there after all was 
 the secret of all that was bad in the Court influence. Take 
 away from Lord North the privilege of giving away sine- 
 cures, granting pensions, and rewarding votes with grati- 
 fications, and his power was gone. It was all very well 
 to declaim, as Fox did, against his mismanagement, hi s 
 negligence, his incapacity, to denounce his subserviency, 
 to demonstrate the absolute certainty of disaster under 
 his leadership ; but attacks such as these made no im-
 
 54 CHAELES JAMES FOX. 
 
 pression upon his majority. That was not the way to 
 deal with the parliamentary magician. 
 
 " Oh. ye mistook ; ye should have snatched his wand 
 And bound him fast Without his rod reversed 
 And backward mutter of dissevering power, 
 We cannot free the Lady that sits here 
 In stony fetters fixed and motionless." 
 
 Until the wand of parliamentary corruption was seized 
 and reversed, it was impossible to free the independent 
 expression of parliamentary opinion from its chains. 
 
 If to Burke appertained the chief work of constructing 
 a policy for his party, upon Fox naturally fell the burden 
 of conducting the daily parliamentary battle. His un- 
 failing spirits, his universal popularity, his iron nerves, his 
 unrivalled power as a debater, all marked him out as the 
 real leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. 
 It was during the American War that he learned to 
 perfect the gifts of quick retort, ready wit, clear statement 
 and dashing attack, which made him the first of parlia- 
 mentary gladiators. It is characteristic of him that he 
 was at his best while Burke was at his worst — in reply. 
 In reading the fragments of his speeches on the American 
 War, which have come down to us, we are struck by a 
 sameness of argument and of method. The attack is 
 always telling and brilliant, but it is conducted again and 
 again in exactly the same fashion. The heavy cavalry 
 are sent charging up the hill again and again, and again 
 and again they recoil baffled from the solid squares of 
 the Government voters. Of parliamentary tactics there 
 is no trace, no attempt to take advantage of jealousies 
 and personal interests, no effort to sow dissension between 
 cliques, and to win over individuals. Again and again; 
 the Government stragglers are called back to their 
 allegiance by a direct challenge upon their whole position.
 
 FALL OF LORD NORTH. bo 
 
 In many ways Fox was singularly well fitted to play 
 the part of a clever parliamentary manager. Though he 
 acted with the Rockingham Whigs, he was never con- 
 sidered as one of them. He won his way in the House 
 by his own unaided exertions, by the sheer ascendency of 
 his talent. He owed nothing to position or property. 
 He had wilfully thrown away whatever advantage he 
 might have reaped from connection. Lord John Cavendish 
 expressed this very clearly in a conversation with Barre 
 in 1780 :— 
 
 " Our body has property, &c, but we have not those powers that 
 enable men to take the lead in public assemblies. You see what has been 
 the case of C. Fox. We must naturally give way to such men." 
 
 He started, therefore, free from the traditions of the old 
 Whig families. To him the parliamentary struggle was 
 a fair stand-up fight with Lord North. There was no 
 sense of grievance, as there was with Rockingham, at 
 having been ousted from a legitimate monopoly, lie 
 was quite ready to get back to office on any reasonable 
 terms. It was not necessary first to appease his pride by 
 acknowledging usurpation. 
 
 His gambling and raciug interests too brought him 
 into friendly and even affectionate relations with many of 
 the staunchest supporters of the Government. Lord 
 Carlisle was among the dearest of his friends. Lord 
 March, Lord Derby, and the Duke of Ancaster were 
 frequently the companions of his dissipation, and he was 
 even attracted to the Court bully Rigby, by a common 
 attachment to port wine. Had he used his unrivalled 
 social popularity for political ends, with a reasonable 
 exercise of tact, he might easily have detached section 
 after section from the Government phalanx. But nothing 
 really was further from his nature than a policy like 
 this. Ho was too open, too honourable, and, if the
 
 56 CEABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 truth must be told, too careless. There was nothing of 
 the schemer about him, nothing even of the strategist or 
 of the tactician. Finesse, management, plan, were all 
 hateful to him. To lead a forlorn hope, to head a 
 brilliant charge, this was his delight, and in this was his 
 strength. He rode forth to redress the wrongs of America 
 in the spirit of a knight errant. He embraced the 
 doctrines of the rights of man with as little of inquiry 
 and as much of sentiment as a hero of chivalry took up 
 the cause of an oppressed princess. He would win his 
 way to office by outshining all competitors, as an esquire 
 of chivalry would win the golden spurs of knighthood by 
 gallant deeds of arms. 
 
 But these years were by no means wasted by him. 
 Besides becoming a master of parliamentary debate in 
 the House of Commons, he was learning patience in the 
 school of adversity, and in the world he was winning 
 popularity and influence. This was the time when 
 pecuniary difficulties were pressing hardest upon him, 
 when his losses at play, if not in themselves so large as 
 formerly, were more difficult to meet. He was ohliged to 
 sell the estate at Kingsgate left him by his father, and to 
 mortgage the sinecure office of Clerk of the Pells in 
 Ireland, which Lord Holland had contrived to secure for 
 him. He then had to live upon what he could get from 
 his friends, or pick up at Newmarket or Almack's. 
 There was no one from whom he did not borrow. He 
 owed money even to the chairmen, and to the waiters at 
 Brookes's. Often he was reduced to the last shilling. 
 After a particularly bad night at Brookes's, when Fox 
 had lost everything, Beauclerk went to see him in the 
 morning expecting to find him in the last stage of despair. 
 The roue was sitting tranquilly in his armchair reading 
 Herodotus. " What would you have a man to do," he
 
 FALL OF LORD AORTH. 57 
 
 said with a smile, " who has lost his last shilling? " In 
 177G Lord Carlisle writes to George Selwyn : — 
 
 " Charles Fox left us this morning. He has been excellent company, 
 in good spirits, and not the worse for having levanted every sou at 
 Newmarket, after having lost everything he could raise upon Stavordale's 
 bond." 
 
 In 1779 he writes again : " Charles tells me he has not 
 now nor has had for some time one guinea, and is happier 
 on that account. The macao table flourishes." So great 
 were his difficulties that in 1777 he actually applied to 
 Lord North for his interest for an appointment on the 
 council of India, which Lord North very handsomely 
 promised on the next vacancy, probably reflecting that 
 the payment of a few thousands a year to keep Fox away 
 from Parliament would be a cheap bargain for the Govern- 
 ment. In 1778, if Horace Walpole is to be believed, 
 he lent himself to the infamous scheme of the two Foleys, 
 by which Parliament was asked to set aside by statute 
 their father's will, in order that their racing and gambling 
 debts might be paid out of the property which he had 
 left away from them. In 1781 an execution was actually 
 levied in his house and all his goods sold up. Walpole 
 happened to be passing at the time, and Fox, with his 
 usual nonchalance, came out and talked to him about 
 the Marriage Act then before Parliament, as if nothing: 
 was happening. 
 
 But, while he was sinking lower and lower in the slough 
 of debt, he was rapidly becoming the idol of the people ot 
 London. The deference paid to his opinion by the 
 associations which were formed in 1779 and 1780 to 
 promote agitation against the Government policy, the 
 enthusiasm with which he was accepted as a candidate 
 and triumphantly returned for Westminster in 1780, the 
 association which was formed to guard his life against
 
 58 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 threatened attacks by some of the noted duellists of the 
 day, showed that he had acquired an influence over the 
 people and a place in their hearts similar to that enjoyed 
 by Wilkes in the first years of the reign. He must often 
 have thought, as he listened to the plaudits of the populace, 
 of that scene at Westminster in March, 1771, when he 
 was with difficulty rescued from the infuriated mob who 
 had escorted Lord Mayor Crosby to the House of 
 Commons, and who cursed him and his father as their 
 prey was torn from their grasp. 
 
 When Lord North resigned, Fox was in some measure 
 the foremost man in England. He was the greatest 
 debater in the House of Commons, the most beloved 
 champion of the people. It remained to be seen whether 
 the talents which had raised him so high in Opposition 
 would bear the tierce test of office at such a critical time.
 
 C GO ) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF 1782. 
 
 FliOM the first time that Lord North had entreated his 
 indulgent tyrant the King to relieve him from the 
 responsibilities which he felt were too great for him, 
 George III. had had but one stereotyped answer : — 
 
 •• I will not put myself into the hands of the Rockingham Whigs, 
 who are the enemies both of my person and of the constitution as I 
 understand it. Any other arrangement I am perfectly willing to accept, 
 but that particular arrangement is out of the question, and any action on 
 your part which must lead to it I shall consider not merely desertion 
 but treachery." 
 
 Even at the beginning of 1782, after the disaster of 
 Yorktown, when all Europe was combined with America 
 in arms against him, the Kino- could not bring himself to 
 acknowledge that he would have to bow his head to the 
 yoke. On January 21st he wrote to Lord North : — 
 
 '■ On one material point I shall ever coincide with Lord G. Germaine, 
 that is against a separation from America, aud that I shall never lose 
 an opportunity of declaring that no consideration shall ever make me 
 in the smallest degree an instrument in a measure that I am confident 
 would annihilate the rank in which this Empire stands among the 
 European States, and would render my situation in this country below 
 continuing an object to me." 
 
 True to this conviction, even when the long-deferred 
 blow fell, and Lord North's Ministry was no more, the
 
 60 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 King refused to send for Lord Rockingham. He still 
 flattered himself that he might get together a Ministry 
 from among the followers of Chatham and of Lord North, 
 which would be able to restore peace without granting 
 independence, and Shelburne was the politician whom he 
 fixed upon to aid him in this scheme. 
 
 In making choice of Shelburne, George III. showed 
 that cleverness in dealing with individuals which did so 
 much to relieve the mediocrity of his commonplace 
 character. Ambition ruled supreme in Shelburne's breast. 
 It was no light compliment to choose him out from among 
 the rival politicians of the time, as the legitimate inheritor 
 of Chatham's power as well as of Chatham's policy — the 
 one man who was tit to become the trusted arbiter between 
 the Crown and the nation, and, like a second ifCneas, to 
 save the King and the constitution from amid the ruins 
 of a falling State. Besides, Shelburne had lately taken 
 pains to let it be known that he w r as against the sepa- 
 ration of America from England, and that he did not 
 wish the King of England to be a mere King of the 
 Mahrattas, with a Peishwa to hold the reins of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Shelburne, however, was too clever to fall into the trap 
 A Ministry which had against it the influence of the 
 Rockingham connection and the talents of Charles Fox, 
 and would not receive the hearty support of Lord North's 
 phalanx of placemen, was foredoomed to failure. The 
 pear was not yet ripe. He saw clearly enough that his 
 best chance of permanent success lay in becoming the 
 successor, not the supplanter, of Rockingham. On the 
 day, obviously not far distant, when the Whig families 
 would have to choose a new leader, the choice must lie 
 between himself and Charles Fox, and between those two 
 could they hesitate for a moment? On his side were
 
 THE MINISTRY OF 1782. 61 
 
 talents certainly eminent, possibly equal, aristocratic 
 connection, royal favour, and an unblemished private 
 character, none of which Charles Fox could claim. 
 Clearly, then, his game was to wait. He respectfully 
 declined to act without Rockingham. " You can do 
 without me," he said to him with commendable frankness, 
 " but I cannot do without you." To satisfy the King's 
 scruple about dealing personally with Rockingham, the 
 negotiations passed through his hands. Before Rockingham 
 consented to take office, he procured a distinct pledge from 
 the King that he would not put a veto upon American 
 independence, if the Ministers recommended it ; and on 
 the 27th of March the triumph of the Opposition was 
 completed by the formation of a Ministry, mainly 
 representative of the old Whig families, pledged to a 
 policy of economical reform, and of peace with America 
 on the basis of the acknowledgment of independence. 
 
 Fox received the reward of his services by being 
 appointed Foreign Secretary, and Lord Shelburne took 
 charge of the Home and Colonial department. Buck- 
 ingham himself went to the Treasury, Lord John 
 Cavendish became Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord 
 Keppel First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Camden 
 President of the Council. Burke was made Paymaster 
 of the Forces, and Sheridan Under-Secretary to his friend 
 Fox. At the King's special request, Thurlow was allowed 
 to remain as Chancellor. 
 
 The new Ministry had by no means an easy task before 
 them. They had to pass a scheme of economical reform 
 which was certain to arouse the hostility of many of the 
 most powerful interests in Parliament, they had to restore 
 tranquillity to Ireland, and they had to negotiate a peace 
 which could not fail to be humiliating, and might prove 
 to be disastrous. But their misfortunes did not end
 
 62 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 there. In all their policy they were certain of the 
 undisguised hostility of the King, and in the Cabinet itself 
 of the indirect opposition of the Chancellor, and before 
 many days were passed it was equally evident that even 
 the Whig majority were not agreed among themselves. 
 
 When Fox met Lord Shelburne shortly after the 
 Ministry was formed, he said, " I see the Administration is 
 to consist of two parts, the one belonging to the King and 
 the other to the public." He understated the case. There 
 were in reality three distinct parties among the Whigs 
 themselves. Shelburne from the first was playing an 
 ambitious game. He wished to gain such a decided 
 ascendency in the Cabinet before Rockingham's death, 
 that he might easily succeed to the chief place. With 
 that object he had manipulated, as far as he could, the 
 Cabinet offices when the Administration was being formed, 
 and could depend almost with certainty on the support of 
 Lord Camden, the Duke of Grafton, and Dunning, lately 
 raised to the peerage with the title of Lord Ashburton ; 
 while the vote of Lord Thurlow, which of course was at 
 the King's disposal, was more likely to be with him than 
 with his opponents. 
 
 On the other hand, Fox, though he commanded no 
 vote except perhaps that of the Duke of Richmond, was 
 known to be by far the most influential Minister in the 
 House of Commons, and was the idol of the people. He 
 represented, as men could not but feel, a type of Whig 
 principles which, if more aggressive and determined, was 
 certainlv much more effective than that of the Whig: 
 families. At the close of the American War, and to some 
 extent in the Wilkes case, the people had been called in 
 to express their opinions, and to exercise their influence 
 upon politics. Unrepresented they might be. but if they 
 were to be allowed to meet at public meetings, pass
 
 THE MINISTBT OF 1782. 63 
 
 resolutions and put pressure upon statesmen, they would 
 not remain unrepresented very long. Already schemes of 
 parliamentary reform were in the air. In all probability 
 this very Ministry would have to take up the subject, if 
 they survived the perils of the American peace. Fox was 
 felt on all sides to be the Minister of the future, the 
 representative of the Whiggism of the future, and of 
 the opinions and wishes of the populace of the present, 
 and he accordingly spoke in the Cabinet with much 
 greater effect than the number of votes at his command 
 would warrant. 
 
 Between these two opposing sections came the main 
 body of the old Whigs of the Rockingham connection, 
 men who were as totally opposed to organic change or 
 popular government as the King himself, who had been 
 brought up to look on office as the natural monopoly of 
 their family connection, who resented their exclusion from 
 it, as they would resent their exclusion from part of their 
 family property, they had espoused the cause of American 
 independence, not from any abstract love of liberty, but 
 because the policy of coercion was identified with the 
 Tory cuckoo who had seized upon their nest. They 
 were led always as much by personal as by political 
 considerations, and hated Shelburne's personality as much 
 as they disliked Fox's principles. 
 
 Composed as they were of these different and discordant 
 sections, the Cabinet no sooner met than it divided into 
 the parties of Shelburne and of Fox, while Rockingham, 
 Conway, and Cavendish tried to hold the balance between 
 them, and Thurlow artfully fomented the dissensions. 
 Fox at once saw the game which Shelburne was playing, 
 and determined to do his best to prevent its success. His 
 distrust of the " Jesuit of Berkeley Square " was ingrained 
 and hereditary. Twenty years before, when Shelburne
 
 64 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 was quite a young man, and had attached himself to the 
 rising fortunes of Bute, Lord Holland had strong reason 
 to suspect that he had been betrayed by him ; and 
 Charles Fox, with his chivalrous attachment to his father, 
 was not the man to forget, nor, as the wrong was not his 
 own, to forgive. They now found themselves the two most 
 prominent men in a Cabinet whose chief was moribund, 
 and the rivalry between them soon became too keen to 
 preserve even the semblance of unity. 
 
 Few xVdministrations have done so much in a short 
 time as did the Rockingham Ministry during the three 
 months of its existence, and it so happened that the lion's 
 share of the work fell to Fox. Upon his appointment to 
 office his friends noticed a change in habits and manner 
 of life, as complete as that ascribed to Henry V. on his 
 accession to the throne. He is said never to have" 
 touched a card during either of his three short terms of 
 office, he hardly ever appeared at Brookes's, he was most 
 attentive and zealous in the duties of his department, and 
 put completely aside his reckless manner of speaking. So 
 great was his consideration for what was due to the 
 Crown, that even George III. became somewhat reconciled 
 to him. Horace Walpole is always rather a partial 
 witness where Fox is concerned, but on this theme he 
 almost rises into eloquence. 
 
 '•The former (Fox) displayed such facility in comprehending and 
 executing all business, as charmed all who approached him. No 
 formal affectation delayed any service or screened ignorance. He seized 
 at once the important points of every affair, and every affair was 
 thence reduced within a small compass, not to save himself trouble, for 
 he at once gave himself up to the duties of his office. His good humour, 
 frankness, and sincerity pleased, and yet inspired a respect which he 
 took no other pains to attract. The Foreign Ministers were in admiration 
 of him, they had found few who understood affairs or who attended to 
 them, and no man who understood French so well or could explain 
 himself in so few words."
 
 THE MINISTRY OF 1782. do 
 
 The difference must have been indeed great between 
 mediocrities like Suffolk and Weymouth, or men of 
 indecision and indolence like Lord North, and a man of 
 first-rate ability and keen energy such as was Fox 
 when he attained Cabinet office for the first time. Since 
 Carteret there had not been a Foreign Minister of England 
 so well fitted by his attainments and genius to play a 
 leading part in continental politics. 
 
 The Ministry kissed hands on their appointment on the 
 27th of March. On April 8th Parliament re-assembled, 
 and Fox was immediately called upon to deal with the 
 complicated affairs of Ireland. England's necessity in 
 those days of tyranny was ever Ireland's opportunity, and 
 the closing years of the American War had seen grow up 
 in Ireland a strong and united force of public opinion in 
 favour of legislative freedom, which it was impossible for 
 England to resist. Led by G rattan and supported by 
 the organisation of the volunteers under Charlemont, the 
 Irish nation demanded freedom and self-government. 
 Legislative subjection, apart from legislative union, had 
 ever been the policy of England. By Poyning's Law, 
 the Declaratory Act of George I., and the Permanent 
 Mutiny Act, Irish law, Irish administration of justice, and 
 the Irish army, were all made subject to the control of the 
 English Ministers. The repeal of these measures, the 
 grant of self-government to Ireland, which, without 
 impairing the authority of the Crown, should take away 
 the control of the English Council and House of Lords, 
 was being ardently pressed upon the Ministers as the only 
 alternative to complete independence. On the day of 
 the meeting of Parliament, April 8th, a debate on Irish 
 affairs was introduced by Mr. Eden, the Secretary to 
 Lord Carlisle, who had come to England to tender his 
 own and his chiefs resignation. Thinking 1 that the
 
 G6 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Lord Lieutenant had been unhandsomely treated by the 
 present Ministry, he determined to embarrass them as 
 much as he could by suddenly demanding-, as the only 
 security for peace, that the whole of the Irish demand 
 should be at once granted. Fox replied with great skill, 
 pointing out the factious nature of the proposal, and 
 promising that Irish affairs should receive the prompt 
 attention of the Ministry. On May 17th, he redeemed his 
 promise and brought in a bill for the repeal of the 
 Declaratory Act of George I., which he advocated on the 
 general ground of the injustice jof legislating for those 
 who were not represented. At the same time a motion 
 was proposed which authorised the Crown to make such 
 administrative changes as would carry out the policy of 
 self-government adopted by the Irish Parliament. Thus, 
 by the combined action of the two Legislatures, Ireland 
 received the legislative freedom which she was demanding. 
 It is interesting to notice that Lord Loughborough was 
 the only member of either House of Parliament who 
 voted against the most revolutionary proposal which had 
 been brought before Parliament since the lievolution of 
 1688. The Duke of Portland, who succeeded Lord 
 Carlisle as Lord Lieutenant, though strongly disliking 
 the alteration, was convinced that it was absolutely 
 necessary. " The powers legislative and jurisdictive," he 
 wrote, " claimed by England are become impracticable. 
 If the Irish demands were now refused there would be an 
 end of all government." 
 
 A few days before, the Ministers had redeemed their 
 second great pledge. On May 5th, Burke brought in his 
 scheme of economical reform, which was to diminish and 
 render harmless for the future the corrupt influence of the 
 Crown. Here the ice over which the zealous reformer 
 had to glide was of a much more treacherous description.
 
 TEE MINISTRY OF 1782. 67 
 
 Shelburne and Thurlow, without actually opposing the 
 scheme, managed in the interests of the King to cut it 
 down in the Cabinet, and Burke soon found that he could 
 not carry out to the full the programme of his famous 
 speech of 1780. Nevertheless the measure, though not 
 perhaps complete, was an exceedingly valuable one. It 
 destroyed a large number of useless posts, and effected a 
 saving to the country of £72,000 a year, but besides this 
 it tolled the knell of systematised parliamentary corruption. 
 It was the first time that Parliament had really set itself 
 to put its house in order, and to make an honest attempt 
 to cure the evil. Its passing is no doubt rather the proof 
 than the cause of the improvement which is noticeable 
 after the American War. That improvement was due to 
 more than one cause. The higher standard of private 
 morality which marked the last decade of the century, and 
 the greater publicity of political life through the increased 
 importance of the press, had no doubt their share in 
 diminishing corruption. But the cause which had most 
 effect was the return of Mr. Titt to power in 1784 by so 
 unmistakable a majority. It destroyed corruption by 
 taking away the reasons for it, since it was sheer waste to 
 shower gifts and pensions on those who were certain in 
 any case to vote on the right side. Still Burke's bill 
 marks the beginning of a new era of purity, and it 
 emanated from a Ministry who were more free from 
 corruption than any Ministry which England had yet seen 
 during the century. 
 
 On the question of parliamentary reform the Ministry 
 were much divided. Rockingham and Burke were for 
 leaving things alone, thinking that, as it was impossible 
 to redress all anomalies, it was safest not to attempt to 
 redress any. The Duke of Richmond, on the contrary, 
 was in favour of annual parliaments, manhood suffrage, 
 
 F 2
 
 68 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 and equal electoral districts. On the 7th of* May Pitt, 
 who, during the two years in which he had sat in Parlia- 
 liament, had been rapidly growing- in reputation, brought 
 in a motion for a committee to consider the reform of the 
 representation, and Fox supported him on the double 
 ground that the county members had always proved 
 themselves much more independent in character than the 
 representatives of the boroughs, and that it was for the 
 welfare of the nation that all interests which had any 
 .vtake in the country should be represented in Parliament. 
 The motion was lost by a small majority of only twenty 
 in a fairly full House, and the reformers were never again 
 so near victory until 1832. 
 
 During these weeks, when the Ministry were so success- 
 ful in Parliament, their internal dissensions were growing 
 worse and worse. The greater ability Fox showed in the 
 House of Commons, the greater the jealousy Shelburne 
 displayed in private, and the more numerous the intrigues 
 which he undertook. The more active was Shelburne in 
 the Cabinet, the more did he arouse the suspicions of Fox. 
 On the 12th of April, before the Ministry had been three 
 weeks in office, Fox had already sniffed the coming 
 storm. 
 
 •• We had a Cabinet this morning," he writes to Fitzpatrick ; '• in 
 which, in my opinion, there were more symptoms of what we had always 
 apprehended than had ever hitherto appeared. The subject was Burke"s 
 hill, or rather the message introductory to it. Nothing was concluded, 
 but in Lord Chancellor there was so marked an opposition, and in yoni 
 brother-in-law so much inclination to help the Chancellor, that we got 
 into something very like warm debate." 
 
 On the 15th he writes again : — 
 
 " We have had another very teasing and wrangling Cabinet. . . . Lord 
 Chancellor, as you may imagine, dislikes it (i.e. Burke's bill) ; Lord 
 Shelburne seems more bothered about it than anything else, does not 
 understand it, but, in conjunction with Lord Ashburton, throws dimcultk-s 
 in its way."
 
 THE MINISTRY OF 1782. 69 
 
 On the 28th he adds :— 
 
 " With respect to affairs here, they are really in such a state as is 
 very difficult to describe. I feel them to be worse than they were, and 
 yet I do not know what particular circumstance to state as to the cause 
 of this feeling. Shelburne shows himself more and more every day, is 
 ridiculously jealous of my encroaching upon his department, and wishes 
 very much to encroach upon mine. He hardly liked my having a letter 
 from Grattan or my having written one to Charlemont. He affects the 
 Minister more and more every day, and is, I believe, perfectly confident 
 that the King intends to make him so." 
 
 By the 11th of May the uneasy feeling had grown, Fox 
 was much disheartened at the scanty attendance at the 
 House and hurt at a personal attack made on him hy 
 Dundas. Looking to the future, he saw in the coalition 
 of Shelburne and Pitt a danger of losing the latter. A 
 later letter from Mr. Hare, one of Fox's most attached 
 friends, mentions the suspicion that Dundas's attack 
 was "systematical and concocted not a hundred miles 
 from Berkeley Square." When mutual suspicion and 
 distrust were so rife, it did not require much to produce a 
 serious quarrel, and in the course of the peace negotia- 
 tions at Paris the necessary materials for a very grave 
 misunderstanding were not long in making their appear- 
 ance. 
 
 Seldom had English Foreign Minister a more thankless 
 and difficult task before him than had Fox. When he 
 assumed the seals of office England was at war with 
 France, Spain, and Holland, in addition to her revolted 
 colonies in America. The northern Powers under the 
 leadership of Eussia, though not at war, were in a condition 
 of decided hostility under the provisions of the Armed 
 Neutrality, since their doctrine of free ships, free goods, 
 was directed against the English claim to seize enemies' 
 goods carried in neutral bottoms. The maritime nations 
 of Europe had, in fact, taken advantage of England's
 
 70 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 difficulties to rid themselves of a superiority, which they 
 detested all the more because they could not under 
 ordinary circumstances dispute it. It was generally 
 thought on the continent that the year 1782 must see the 
 fall of England's upstart greatness, and reduce her again 
 to the condition of a second-rate Power, from which the 
 genius of Marlborough and Chatham had so recently 
 raised her. De Grasse having driven the English fleet 
 off the American waters in the preceding year, was 
 jndeavouring, at the head of the combined French and 
 Spanish fleets, to complete his success by the capture of 
 Jamaica and the rest of the English West Indies. 
 Crillon, flushed with his victory at Minorca, was preparing 
 to wrest the rock fortress of Gibraltar from the grip of 
 the islander, and to restore it again to its legitimate 
 owners. With America and the Mediterranean emanci- 
 pated from English domination, the Seven Years' War 
 would indeed be fitly avenged ; the star of the Eng- 
 lish Empire would set, and the way once more be 
 opened for the supremacy of the House of Bourbon in 
 Europe. 
 
 Such were the visions which floated before the eyes 
 of Vergennes, the Foreign Minister of France, such were 
 the dreams which it was Fox's business to prove to be 
 illusions. With characteristic energy and clear sighted- 
 ness, he at once fixed upon his plan and set himself 
 to carry it out. His main object was to isolate the House 
 of Bourbon, and hold it up before the eyes of Europe 
 once more as the real disturbing element amon^ the 
 nations of the continent, the real enemy of all peaceful 
 progress. He saw that the chief difficulties in the way of 
 peace must come from France, for France had not merely 
 objects to gain, but losses to revenge. He was not afraid 
 to face the possibility of having to continue the war with
 
 SHE MINISTRY OF 1782. 71 
 
 France and Spain. England, shattered and exhausted as 
 she was, had yet pluck enough left, he thought, to hold 
 her own against the House of Bourbon, though she could 
 not stand up against the world. If he could detach 
 Holland and America from the French alliance bv giving 
 to them what they wanted, if he could exchange the 
 suspicious hostility of the north for friendly alliance by 
 surrendering the right of search, he would then be able 
 to treat with France on equal terms. The design was 
 essentially a good one. England had nothing to gain 
 by insisting on the right of search. If she forced the 
 question to a decision she would most certainly be 
 beaten ; while if she gracefully yielded now, it was more 
 than probable that her very opponents would before long 
 claim to exercise it for their own protection. She must 
 stoop if she wanted to conquer. To a generation which 
 remembered the diplomacy of Kaunitz and Madame de 
 Pompadour the spectre of French aggression was ever 
 formidable. It is quite possible that had Fox been 
 complete master of the Cabinet, a brilliant diplomatic 
 success might have conspired with the victories of Rodney 
 and Elliot to throw a halo of glory round the last days of 
 the Ministry of Rockingham. 
 
 But it was not to be. Frederick the Great, to whom 
 Fox addressed a long letter in the hope of inducing 
 him to act as mediator in favour of England, was too old 
 and too unforgiving to mix himself up with European 
 politics on behalf of a Power which had treated him so 
 badly twenty years before. Holland refused to enter 
 into any negotiations apart from her allies. The Empress 
 Catherine II. coupled her offers of alliance with conditions 
 which the King and the majority of the Cabinet were not 
 prepared to accept, though apparently Fox and Sir James 
 Harris, the ambassador at St. Petersburg, thought them
 
 72 CHABLES JAMES FOT±. 
 
 reasonable. But the most serious difficulties with which 
 Fox had to contend came from within, not from without. 
 By the division of work among the two Secretaries of 
 State, all matters which related to the colonies were under 
 the control of Shelburne, while those relating to foreign 
 Governments belonged to the department of Fox. Con- 
 sequently it became exceedingly important to these two 
 Ministers whether independence was to be granted to the 
 American colonies by the Crown of its own accord, or 
 should be reserved in order to form part of the general 
 treaty of peace. 
 
 According to Fox's plan, independence was to be 
 offered at once fully and freely to the Americans. They 
 would thus gain at a blow all that they wanted. Their 
 jealousy of French and Spanish interests in America 
 would at once assert itself, and England would have no 
 difficulty in bringing them over to her side in the 
 negotiations with France. Such was Fox's scheme, but 
 unfortunately, directly America became independent, she 
 ceased to be in any way subject to Shelburne's manage- 
 ment, and the negotiations for peace would pass wholly 
 out of his control into the hands of Fox. Such a thing 
 was not to be endured for a moment. It would give his 
 rival too great an advantage. Shelburne at once threw 
 his whole weight into the opposite scale. He urged 
 with great effect that to give independence at once was 
 to throw away the trump card. It was the chief conces- 
 sion which England would be required to make, the only one 
 which she was prepared to make ; and to make it at once, 
 before she was even asked, was w'vfhlly to deprive herself 
 of her best weapon. The King and the Cabinet adopted 
 Shelburne's view. Fox's scheme for the isolation of 
 France failed, and a double negotiation for peace was set 
 on foot. Shelburne and Franklin took charge of the
 
 THE MINISTRY OF 17S2. 73 
 
 treaty with America, Fox and M. de Vergennes that 
 with France and Spain and Holland. 
 
 An arrangement of this sort could hardly have suc- 
 ceeded had the two Secretaries been the firmest of 
 friends ; since they were rivals and enemies, it was- 
 foredoomed to failure. Fox chose as his accredited 
 envoy to the French Court Mr. Thomas Grenvdle, the 
 \ounger brother of Lord Temple, a man of some ability, 
 but young and inexperienced. He reached Paris on the 
 8th of May, and on the 23rd the Privy Council authorised 
 him to propose the independence of America in the first 
 instance to the belligerent Powers as a basis of peace. 
 Loner, however, before Grenville was in formal communi- 
 cation with the representatives of the allied Powers, 
 Shelburne's envoy had been in confidential communica- 
 tion with Franklin. On the 22nd of March, two days 
 after the resignation of Lord North, Franklin, who was 
 the agent of the American Congress at Paris, wrote to 
 Lord Shelburne as a personal friend expressing his desire 
 for peace. On the 6th of April Shelburne, in his 
 capacity of Colonial Secretary, sent a Scotch merchant 
 resident in London, named Oswald, over to Paris to 
 consult with Franklin on the subject. Oswald was 
 described in the letter of recommendation which Shelburne 
 sent, as a " practical man and conversant in those negoti- 
 ations which are most interesting to mankind." In 
 reality he was much more. *He was not only a capable 
 man of business, but a sound and intelligent disciple of 
 Adam Smith. Unfortunately he was completely unversed 
 in diplomacy, and too simple-minded and straightforward 
 to be a match for the astute American. Franklin, 
 naturally enough, was delighted with him, introduced him 
 to Yergennes, wrote to Shelburne saying that he desired 
 no other channel of communication, and even broached
 
 74 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 in conversation with Oswald an idea, which had been 
 long in his mind, that it would serve greatly to lay a 
 strong foundation of friendship between England and the 
 United States, if England of her own accord was to 
 surrender Canada. Oswald seemed struck with the idea, 
 promised to talk the matter over with Shelburne, and 
 borrowed the paper which had served as a basis of 
 Franklin's conversation, in order to show it to Shelburne 
 when he got home. Care, however, was taken to place 
 on record a note to the effect that the paper was strictly 
 private, containing "merely conversation matter between 
 Mr. O. dnd Mr. F." On his return to London, Oswald at 
 once showed the document to Shelburne, who thought it 
 important enough to retain it for a day, and he showed it 
 certainly to Ash burton and probably to the King. He 
 made no reference to it whatever to the rest of his 
 colleagues, and never hinted at its existence to Fox, who 
 was engaged with him in the negotiations for peace. 
 
 On the 23rd of April Oswald was formally authorised 
 to return to Paris, as the duly accredited agent of the 
 English Government, to conclude a treaty with America 
 on the basis of independence. On the 4th of May he 
 found himself once more with Franklin, to whom he 
 returned the paper, saying that it seemed to have made 
 an impression on Lord Shelburne, and that he (Oswald) 
 believed the matter might be settled to the satisfaction of 
 America, but he did not wish it mentioned at the 
 beginning of the negotiations. On the 8th of May 
 Grenville arrived in Paris, and negotiations began in real 
 earnest. Oswald seems to have done his best not to 
 interfere with Grenville, and even returned to England 
 for a few weeks to be out of the way, and Shelburne 
 himself, in his despatches to him, insisted upon the 
 necessity of showing a united front to the enemy, yet the
 
 THE MINISTBY OF 1782. 75 
 
 existence of a double negotiation could not but cause 
 disagreements. On the 18th of May came the glorious 
 news of the destruction of the French fleet under De 
 Grasse by Rodney ; but much of the value which it 
 might have had in inducing the French to accept 
 reasonable terms, was neutralised by the naive confession 
 of Oswald to Franklin, that peace was absolutely neces- 
 sary to England, "her enemies might do what they 
 pleased with her, they had the ball at their feet and it 
 was hoped they would show their magnanimity." Fox 
 had from the first suspected Shelburne of playing a 
 double game, and Shelburne, on his part, suspected 
 Fox of intending to oust him from any share what- 
 ever in the treaty by claiming that the decision of 
 May 23rd was in fact a recognition of the independence 
 of the States, by virtue of which they had ceased to be, 
 even in name, colonies of Great Britain. Vergennes 
 knew perfectly well the state of affairs in the English 
 Cabinet, and was by no means anxious to expedite matters 
 with Grenville, as he saw in Shelburne the future Minister 
 and the King's friend. Naturally enough, nothing could 
 persuade the French courtiers that the presence of two 
 agents did not imply the existence of two authorities and 
 two policies, and Lafayette gave mortal offence to Gren- 
 ville by laughingly telling him that he had just left" Lord 
 Shelburne's ambassador at Passy." 
 
 Just when the minds of Fox and Grenville were thus 
 highly inflamed against Shelburne, an evil chance put the 
 latter in possession of the secret of the Canada paper. In 
 a conversation between Oswald and Grenville, the former, 
 thinking that Grenville had already partially heard about, 
 the matter from Franklin, told him the whole story, and 
 added that Lord Shelburne had proposed that he (Oswald) 
 should have a separate commission to treat with the
 
 76 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 American commissioners. Here at once to Grenville's 
 mind was a full confirmation of his worst surmises. 
 Shelburne was proved out of the mouth of his own agent 
 to have been carrying on a separate negotiation behind 
 the backs of the Cabinet, and secretly to have been 
 manoeuvring to supplant the accredited representative cf 
 England by his own servant, while outwardly he was 
 urging the closest possible union between the two. Tr. 
 indignant haste he wrote to acquaint Fox of the discovery 
 he had made, and Fox took a blacker view of Shelburne's 
 conduct than even G-renville had done. The Canada 
 paper was new to him, and to all the Cabinet too, except 
 Ashburton. Shelburne stood convicted of concealing- a 
 most important despatch from his colleagues, as well as 
 of carrying on a separate negotiation behind their backs. 
 It was treachery of which Malagrida alone among English 
 statesmen was capable, worthy of the man who had 
 betrayed Lord Holland years ago. In hot anger he 
 hurried off to Rockingham, the Duke of Richmond and 
 Lord John Cavendish, and showed them Grenville's 
 letter. They agreed that the thing wore an ugly 
 look, and that the Cabinet must be consulted. It was 
 clear after this that both Shelburne and Fox could no 
 longer remain in the same Cabinet, and be jointly 
 entrusted with the peace negotiations. The question 
 between them really resolved itself into one of confidence, 
 as to which of the two should have the conduct of the 
 treaty. Three meetings of the Cabinet were held in 
 quick succession, and at the final meeting of the 30th of 
 June, Fox proposed that independence should be granted 
 to America irrespective of a treaty for peace, and main- 
 tained that the Cabinet had already practically decided 
 that question by their minute of the 23rd of May. This 
 raised in the simplest form a question of confidence
 
 TUB MINISTRY OF 1782. 77 
 
 between the two statesmen, for Shelburne had constantly 
 asserted that the decision of the 23rd of May was only 
 conditional, and that independence ought not to be 
 granted unless accompanied by a satisfactory treaty. 
 The Cabinet voted on it as a purely party question. 
 Rockingham's absence deprived Fox of a powerful sup- 
 porter, and Conway — that innocent man as Shelburne 
 called him, who had a casting vote in the Cabinet, but 
 never knew it — shouted with the largest crowd. Fox, 
 defeated and despairing, only refrained from resigning 
 there and then because he would not embitter Hocking- 
 ham's last moments upon earth. 
 
 Fox had been but three months and a few days in 
 office, but in that time he had more than justified the 
 opinions which his friends had already formed of him. 
 He had proved himself by far the ablest English states- 
 man of his time. In Parliament his ascendency was 
 unchallenged, and he had shown that he could excel just 
 as certainly in the difficult art of ministerial defence 
 as he had formerly in that of dashing attack. His 
 leadership of the House of Commons, short as it was, had 
 been marked with courtesy and tact, and his treatment 
 of the Irish question in particular had been noticeable for 
 his judgment no less than for his boldness. In his 
 conduct of foreign affairs he was hampered by dissensions 
 within the Cabinet and humiliation without ; yet although 
 his own European scheme was a failure, and his endeavour 
 to obtain peace incomplete, he certainly succeeded 
 in raising the reputation of England among foreign 
 nations. In his dealings with his own colleagues he 
 showed more of the headstrong, self-willed spirit with 
 which men had been accustomed to credit him. Shel- 
 burne's conduct no doubt was insincere and irritating- to 
 the last degree. He was playing a game from the first,
 
 78 CUAELES JAMES FOX. 
 
 a game intensely hateful to Fox, and was playing it with 
 success. The elaborate protestations of sincerity, which 
 distinguished his public utterances, must have been doubly 
 trying to one who saw through them so plainly. Clear- 
 minded himself, and transparent in his honesty, Fox 
 hated hypocrisy, and Shelburne was not merely a hypocrite, 
 but a successful hypocrite. The want of political manage- 
 ment, which afterwards wrecked so much of Fox's life, 
 was conspicuous at every stage of the quarrel. He rushed 
 into the lists with Shelburne in the first blaze of his 
 indignation at finding himself outwitted, and so played 
 into the hands of his adversary. The evidence he possessed, 
 though convincing enough to a mind already from other 
 circumstances inclined to condemn, was not of a nature 
 to bear out before the Cabinet the charge of duplicity of 
 conduct which he himself believed. Nothing was ever 
 alleged against Shelburne which could not be explained 
 by errors in judgment and undue reticence, wanting no 
 doubt in frankness, but hardly treacherous or double 
 dealing. The popular estimate of the quarrel found 
 expression in one of Gillray's earliest and best cartoons. 
 Fox was depicted as the Miltonic Satan standing on a 
 roulette table with his pockets turned inside out, scowling 
 at the rising sun of Shelburne's glory as he poured forth 
 his hate in the well-known lines : — 
 
 « To thee I call, 
 But with no friendly voice, and add thy name — 
 Shelburne ! — to tell thee how I hate thy beams 
 That bring to my remembrance from what state 
 I fell. 
 
 Fox had to rest a case which was essentially personal 
 on grounds which were essentially political. He had 
 to induce the Cabinet deliberately to accept the bolder
 
 THE MINISTRY OF 1782. 7£> 
 
 and more dangerous policy, and he had to do this 
 deprived of the aid of the only man of real weight who 
 was on his side. What wonder, therefore, if the battle 
 fought under such circumstances ended in a defeat, and 
 the country was deprived of the services of her ablest son 
 just when she was most in need of them ?
 
 80 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE COALITION. 
 
 On the 30th of June, 1782, the Cabinet decided for 
 Shelburne against Fox. On the 1st of July Rockingham 
 died, and on the 2nd Shelburne accepted from the King 
 the task of forming a Ministry. The next three days 
 were spent in negotiations as plausible as they were 
 hollow. Fox was necessarily in a great difficulty. His 
 charges against Shelburne were not such as could be 
 published abroad to his colleagues, much less to the 
 world. A conviction of a man's insincerity is usually 
 formed from numberless small incidents all pointing in 
 the same direction, not from one or two clear and strong 
 eases of deception which can be made the subject of a 
 public accusation. In order to state his whole case against 
 Shelburne, Fox must have detailed at length all the 
 secret history of the Rockingham Cabinet and of the Paris 
 negotiations. Something would have doubtless been 
 gained if he had been in a position to enter the lists 
 himself for the premiership, and boldly claim that the 
 gravity of the situation demanded the ablest man at the 
 head. But this was not possible. At every crisis of his 
 life his sullied character stood up in judgment against him 
 and drove him back from the portals of fame. How could
 
 . THE COALITION. 81 
 
 the spendthrift, the libertine, and the gamester, so 
 recently a convert to Whig principles, presume to be the 
 successor of the blameless Rockingham, to lead the great 
 houses of Ben thick and of Cavendish ? The Whif 
 families were nothing if not respectable. To be led by 
 a ruined man of fashion and a political adventurer was 
 a degradation not to be thought of for a moment. 
 
 Yet there was no other candidate of even moderate 
 attainments for the office. If Fox was hopelessly 
 handicapped by his want of character and position, 
 his colleagues were even more impossible for want of 
 ability. The Duke of Grafton had already been proved 
 to be a failure, and his character was no better than that 
 of Fox. Lord John Cavendish .was respectable enough, 
 but narrow and priggish in temper. The Duke of 
 Richmond had lately plunged too deep into speculative 
 politics. The party had therefore to give up all thoughts 
 of getting a man to lead it, and had to content itself with a 
 figure-head. The Duke of Portland was rich, respectable, 
 and thoroughly safe. He seemed to divide parties least, 
 and he was accordingly chosen as the person whom the 
 purely Whig section of the Cabinet wished to see at the 
 head of affairs. It was unfortunate, as Horace Walpole 
 bitterly said, that the party could at such a crisis produce 
 nothing better than a succession of mutes. It is the 
 hereditary curse of narrow aristocratic cliques to suppress 
 independent ability, and to deify the commonplace. 
 Portland, though his Irish enemies might sneer at him as 
 a " fit block to hang Whigs on," was at any rate a 
 worthy successor to Stanhope and to Pelham, to 
 Newcastle, to Devonshire, and to Rockingham. It is 
 characteristic of the great Whig families, who ruled 
 England in the eighteenth century, that, with the ex- 
 ception of Walpole, they never assimilated to themselves, 
 
 G
 
 82 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 and utilised fur their country one man of real independent 
 talent. Townshend, Carteret, Pulteney, Pitt, Henry Fox, 
 Shelburne, all of them had one by one either to break 
 with the great families or to conquer them. It is a 
 sufficient condemnation of any political party to record 
 that with the two ablest men in England in its ranks, at a 
 crisis of the country's history so grave and so foreboding- 
 it should have been bound by its own principles to pass 
 over a Fox and a Burke, and to accept a Portland as its 
 leader and representative. 
 
 Shelburne was not the man to let slip any advantage 
 over his antagonist which dexterous management could 
 give him. He at once posed before the country as the 
 successor of Chatham, trying to free the King and the 
 country from the domination of a faction. To the King 
 he appeared as the champion of his right to choose his 
 own Ministers, and his defender against the phalanx of 
 the hated Whig oligarchy who wished to reduce him to a 
 nonentity. Absolutely secure of his own position at 
 Court, he could afford to make the fairest of promises to 
 Fox, and handsomely offer him the leadership of the 
 House of Commons, for Fox, he knew, would not serve 
 under him in any circumstances. When the offer was 
 refused, and the Duke of Portland chosen as the 
 candidate of the discontented section of the Whigs, it was 
 easy for Shelburne to represent the whole affair as merely 
 an audacious attempt of a few politicians to dictate to the 
 King, and not content with their fair share of power, to 
 insist on absorbing the whole administration. 
 
 Never was statesman put by the course of events and 
 the skill of his opponents into a more thoroughly false 
 position than was Fox throughout the whole affair. In 
 reality he was the one man who had a clear and well- 
 considered policy for dealing with the American and
 
 THE COALITION. 83 
 
 foreign difficulties of England as a whole. He appeared 
 to be pursuing the narrowest interests of a party clique, 
 wholly apart from the general welfare. In reality he had 
 quarrelled with Shelburne, because he had found that he 
 was deceiving 1 his colleagues, and was convinced that he 
 would, as a Minister, prove another Lord North. He 
 appeared to have resigned in a pet because the Cabinet 
 disagreed with him on a point of detail in the negotiations, 
 and because he could not force on the counsels of the 
 King a respectable nonentity far inferior to Shelburne in 
 ability and experience. In reality his motives were 
 dictated purely by what he believed to be the public 
 interest. He appeared to be breaking up his party in the 
 middle of foreign war simply to satisfy his own personal 
 antipathies. Conway, Keppel, and the Duke of Richmond 
 took this view. They trusted Shelburne rather than Fox. 
 Temple, Thomas Grenville's brother, thought the same ; 
 Fox had undone himself he said. Sir Gilbert Elliot and 
 Adam Smith, on the other hand, considered that he could 
 have done nothing eloe. Sheridan put the same view- 
 in an epigram : " Those who go are right, for there is 
 really no other question but whether, having lost their 
 power, they ought to stay and lose their characters." 
 Fox himself summed up the situation in a letter to 
 Thomas Grenville, which shows how deeply he felt his 
 position. 
 
 " I assure you that the thing which has given me most concern is the 
 sort of scrape I have drawn you into ; hut I think I may depend upon 
 your way of thinking for forgiving me, though to say one can depend 
 upon any man is a bold word after what has passed within these few 
 days. I am sure, on the other hand, that you may depend upon my 
 eternal gratitude to you for what you have undergone on my account, 
 and that you will always have the greatest share in my friendship and 
 affection. I do not think you will think these less valuable than you 
 used to do. I have done right, I am sure I have. The Duke of 
 .Richmond thinks very much otherwise and will do wrong. I cannot 
 
 G 2
 
 84 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 help it. I am sure my staying would have heeu a means of deceiving 
 the public and betraying my party, and these things are not to be done 
 for the sake of any supposed temporary good. I feel that my situation 
 in the country, my power, my popularity, in\ consequence, nay my 
 character are all risked, but I have done right, and therefore in the end 
 it must turn out to be wise. If this fail me, the pillared firmament is 
 rottenness, and earth's base built on stubble." 
 
 These were brave and heartfelt words, but many years 
 were to elapse before their fulfilment. 3Io.-t politicians 
 looked at Fox's conduct as wanting in judgment if not in 
 principle. The world in general, judging only from the 
 outside, thought it self-seeking and unpatriotic. The 
 King, whose dislike had been partially mollified by the 
 magic of Fox's personality, returned at once to all his old 
 hostility. Only Lord John Cavendish, Burke, and the 
 Solicitor-General, Lee, left office with Portland and Fox, 
 and the gap was inure than supplied by the entrance of 
 William Pitt into the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer. Fortune seemed to smile on Shelburne. He 
 had played boldly and unscrupulously for the stake, and 
 had won it. The battle had been hard, and at one time 
 doubtful, but in the end victory had declared for him all 
 along the line. His rival was not only beaten, but dis- 
 credited. Secure of the support of the King, strengthened 
 by the accession of Pitt, assisted by all the prestige that 
 a successful party tight gives, Shelburne might well look 
 forward to a long and unclouded tenure of political power. 
 
 His Administration lasted not quite seven months, and 
 for more than half that period Parliament was in recess. 
 Prorogued soon after the change of Ministry, it did not 
 meet again till December. During that time the negotia- 
 tions for peace had dragged slowly along, and much had 
 happened to show how correct Fox's original estimate of 
 the state of affairs had been. The opponents of Lord 
 North had certainly been visited by a gleam of fortune's
 
 THE COALITION. 85 
 
 sunshine which had but rarely visited that unlucky 
 statesman. One of the first acts of the Rockingham 
 Ministry had been to supersede, with a discourtesy which 
 almost amounted to insult, Admiral Rodney, who was in 
 command of the West Indian fleet, and who had made 
 himself particularly obnoxious to the A\ r hig-s by his 
 conduct at the capture of St. Eustatia in L781. Bur, 
 fortunately for them, before the despatch arrived, Rodney 
 had entirely destroyed the allied fleets under De Grasse 
 and captured the French admiral. " You have conquered," 
 said Lord North in the House, " but with the arms of 
 Philip." On the 13th of September in the same year 
 the combined attack by the French and Spanish forces 
 upon the rock of Gibraltar, which had been so long pre- 
 paring, was delivered. Huge floating - batteries, carrying 
 no less than 212 guns, especially constructed by the 
 French engineer, D'Arcon, for this work, poured a storm 
 of shot and shell upon the devoted fortress at a distance 
 of only 900 yards. In the bay behind them were moored 
 the whole Mediterranean fleets of France and Spain, 
 while from the shore the attack was watched by a land 
 army of 40,000 men, and assisted by the fire of land 
 batteries of nearly 186 guns. Never was plan so elaborate 
 in its preparation and so terrible in its attack. For nine 
 hours the fortress was subjected to a terrific, converging 
 fire from over 400 guns, while it only had 96 guns with 
 which to reply. But in the afternoon it became slowly 
 visible to the band of heroic defenders that their red-hot 
 shot was finding its way through the armour of the 
 floating batteries. One by one they began to show signs 
 of distress. Flames rushed up from their holds ; a swarm 
 of boats shot out from the fleet to try and tow them out 
 of fire, but they were scattered by the red-hot balls like 
 autumn gnats by a hailstorm, and the huge monsters
 
 B6 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 were left to their fate. During the night the flames 
 burnt brighter, and dull explosions from time to time 
 told the defenders that their enemies were one by one 
 disappearing beneath the waters. When morning broke, 
 there was not one of them left. The English flag yet 
 waved unharmed over the stubborn fortress rock, and one 
 more story of heroic daring was added to the annals of 
 the English race. 
 
 These two great victories showed that Fox had jjood 
 reason for thinking that even in her exhausted state 
 England was more than a match for France and Spain. 
 The course of the negotiations with America soon showed 
 that his hopes of gaining the American agents to the side 
 of England against the interests of France and Spain, 
 were by no means chimerical. 
 
 It was soon agreed that Canada should remain British, 
 and that the thirteen States should become independent, 
 but much time was spent over the boundary lines. By 
 the Quebec Act of 1774 the frontiers of Canada were 
 made to stretch as far south as the Ohio, while between 
 the western frontier of Georgia and the Mississippi lay a 
 large district, almost uninhabited, except by Indians, 
 over which the Spaniards claimed a vague suzerainty. 
 France, conscious that she had led Spain into the war by 
 the promise of recovering Gibraltar, which she could not 
 fulfil, was most anxious to confine the United States to the 
 Alleghanies, in order to keep all the uninhabited Indian 
 country free for Spanish colonisation. Shelburne, fully 
 alive to the advantage of sowing dissensions between 
 America and France, and not beings able to look forward 
 a hundred years to the time when the territory, then so 
 thinly populated, should become the great trade centre of 
 the west, voluntarily offered to surrender to the States all 
 English claims on the country between the Great Lakes
 
 TEE COALITION. 87 
 
 and the Ohio, and to endeavour to obtain for them from 
 their allies the Mississippi as their western boundary. It 
 was all important to the Americans to get room for free 
 expansion to the west. Day by day, as the negotiations 
 proceeded, community of interest brought the English 
 and American envoys closer together ; day by day the 
 breach between the Spaniards and the Americans grew 
 wider and wider, until at last, by a bold repudiation of 
 the express orders of Congress, the Americans signed the 
 preliminaries of peace with the English on the 2nd of 
 December, 1782, before the continental Powers were 
 prepared to agree. Finding their hand thus forced by 
 the Americans, France and her allies had to give way, 
 and on the 20th of January, 1783, a general peace was 
 at last signed, by which the only substantial gains achieved 
 by France were the acquisition of Tobago, Senegal, and 
 Ooree, and the security of her right of fishing off New- 
 foundland, while Spain had to he satisfied by the two 
 Floridas and Minorca. America, on the contrary, had 
 gained all that she wished for, and more than she had a 
 right to ask. All claim for compensation on behalf of the 
 Loyalists was abandoned. The complete independence 
 of the thirteen United States, the extension of the western 
 frontier to the Mississippi, and of her northern frontier to 
 the Great Lakes, put into her hands the keys of North 
 America. From that moment it became certain that if 
 she was only able to retain her unity, her supremacy 
 over the whole continent was only a matter of time. 
 
 Shelburne looked upon the treaty of Versailles as the 
 triumph of his diplomatic skill. He had good reason for 
 the boast. When the negotiations first began, nothing 
 conld have been more pitiable than the condition of Eng- 
 land. Oswald, Shelburne's own envoy, told Franklin 
 that the ball was at his feet. When the treaty of 17b'3
 
 88 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 was mentioned to Vergennes as a basis of negotiation, he 
 scouted the suggestion, and intimated that it was now 
 the turn of France, and she would make the most of her 
 opportunity. Yet when the treaty was made, England 
 parted with little that was valuable, and she succeeded in 
 retaining intact Gibraltar and her East Indian possessions. 
 There were two sections of politicians, however, to whom 
 the treaty not unnaturally appeared in very different light. 
 To Lord North and his followers, who had taken up arms 
 to establish the authority of England over her colonies, 
 the wide extension of American frontier seemed criminally 
 generous, and the desertion of the Loyalists criminally 
 treacherous. With Fox, besides the feeling of dissatis- 
 faction, there was a sense of injustice. Shelburne had 
 ploughed with his heifer, and could not even then avoid 
 a catastrophe. He had won the terms which he had 
 obtained, by playing off the Americans against the French, 
 and yet he was the man who had in the Rockingham 
 Cabinet, nine months ago, thwarted the very same plan 
 because it was suggested by Fox ! Had it then been 
 adopted, there would have been no necessity for the lavish 
 grants of Indian territory, no cause for the shameful 
 desertion of England's allies. And so it happened that 
 in the turn of fortune's wheel, Fox and Lord North 
 found themselves leading a common Opposition, and 
 drawn towards each other by a common hatred. 
 
 Just when Fox and Lord North were being attracted to 
 one another, the Ministry of Shelburne was breaking up. 
 Lord Camden had never intended to serve for more than 
 three months, and Keppel only stayed on as long as the 
 war lasted. By the beginning of 1783 more dangerous 
 dissidents than these had declared themselves, and in the 
 case of each one the conduct of the first Minister was the 
 real cause of discord. The Duke of Richmond refused to
 
 TEE COALITION. 89 
 
 attend the Council because of Shelburne's assumption 
 of too much power ; the Duke of Grafton resigned the 
 Privy Seal complaining of his systematic withholding of 
 confidence. Lord Carlisle resigned the office of Lord 
 Steward. Throughout the ministerial ranks there reigned 
 the same profound distrust and suspicion. On all sides 
 was heard justification of Fox's conduct in the previous 
 summer. Even Pitt, who alone held his tongue and 
 remained scrupulously loyal to Shelburne throughout, said 
 afterwards that whatever sins' he might have committed as 
 a Minister, he had atoned for them all in advance bv 
 serving under Lord Shelburne for a year. 
 
 When parties were in this state of utter disintegration, 
 it was natural that a desire should manifest itself for a 
 coalition, strong enough both in personal ability and 
 political influence to put an end to these spectral Ministries 
 which flitted past like figures on a kaleidoscope. The 
 establishment of a strong and lasting Administration on a 
 sound basis, or, as the phrase then ran, "on a broad 
 bottom," was the necessity of the hour. Several schemes 
 of coalitions were in the air. Through the mediation of 
 Dundas and Adam, overtures were made by Shelburne to 
 Lord North to admit some of his friends to office in 
 return for a full and unconditional support. Lord North, 
 it was understood, probably at Pitt's demand, was not to 
 claim office for himself. On the failure of this scheme 
 Shelburne sent Pitt to Pox to see on what terms he could 
 wheedle back the erring sheep into the fold ; but Fox 
 absolutely refused to hear of any scheme which involved 
 the continued pre-eminence of Shelburne. "It is im- 
 possible for me," said Fox frankly, " to belong to any 
 Administration of which Lord Shelburne is the head/' 
 Meanwhile some of the younger members in the House 
 had conceived the idea, that of all the coalitions possible,
 
 90 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 one between Lord North and Fox offered the best 
 opportunities of lasting success. The first to suggest 
 the scheme was Lord Loughborough, but the principal 
 movers in it were Lord John Townshend and Greorjje 
 North, Lord North's son ; and they were soon afterwards 
 joined by Mr. Eden and Eichard Fitzpatrick, the bosom 
 friend and confidant of Fox. Some difficulty was ex- 
 perienced with Lord North's followers, and apparently 
 little progress had been made beyond a number of private 
 ■conversations up to the 12th of February, 1783. On 
 (hat day Dundas, who was very earnest to bring about 
 the coalition between Lord North and Shelburne, went to 
 see Adam, Lord North's most trusted friend, and in the 
 course of a long conversation told him, with the object of 
 making him see the necessity of an immediate junction 
 with Shelburne, that Shelburne had made up his mind to 
 resign if he was left alone, which would undoubtedly 
 result in a coalition between Pitt and Fox, and the 
 exclusion of Lord North from power for the rest of his life. 
 The threat had a very different result to that which Dundas 
 expected. Lord North and his friends fully recognised 
 the importance of preventing a coalition between Fox and 
 Pitt, but determined to use the negotiations already in 
 existence for an alliance with Fox to effect the purpose. 
 Eden and George North were able by dangling the sword 
 of Damocles over their heads to persuade the rank and 
 file of Lord North's party. Burke, who had embraced 
 the idea with his wonted enthusiasm, though less than his 
 wonted wisdom, undertook to answer for the Rockingham 
 Whigs. On the 14th of February everything was pre- 
 pared, Fox and Lord North met at the house of George 
 North, and arranged terms of alliance. Lord North 
 agreed that the system of government by departments 
 •should be abolished, and the direct power of the King
 
 THE COALITION. 91 
 
 over the Administration checked. Fox acknowledged 
 that economical reform had gone far enough, and both 
 consented that parliamentary reform should be an open 
 question. Upon these terms all former animosity was 
 laid aside. An amendment to the address on the peace 
 was drawn up by Lord North, which Lord John Cavendish 
 was to move and Fox support, and if, as was expected, 
 the division list showed a majority for them, they were to 
 form a combined Administration based on mutual goodwill 
 and confidence. 
 
 Such is the secret history of the famous coalition, 
 perhaps the best known of all the eighteen Ministries of 
 George III. The plot, if plot it was, was completely 
 successful. Ministers found themselves in a minority of 
 seventeen on a motion of censure on the peace, and on 
 the 24th of February Shelburne resigned. For five weeks 
 England was without a government. The King strained 
 every nerve to avoid accepting the coalition. He ap- 
 pealed to Pitt, to Lord Grower, to Lord North apart from 
 Fox, to Fox apart from the Duke of Portland, to Pitt 
 again, to Lord Temple, and even to Thomas Pitt, who 
 was quite undistinguished as a statesman, but it was no 
 use. On the 2nd of April he bowed to the inevitable, 
 but with as ill a grace as he could. " When Charles Fox 
 came to kiss hands," wrote Lord Townshend, " George III. 
 turned back his ears and eyes just like the horse at 
 Astley's when the tailor he had determined to throw was 
 getting on him." The Duke of Portland succeeded 
 Shelburne at the Treasury. Lord North and Fox 
 became the Secretaries of State. Lord John Cavendish 
 returned to the Exchequer, Keppel to the Admiralty, and 
 Burke to the Pay mastership, the followers of Lord North, 
 such as Loughborough, Carlisle, Storm on t, &c, were 
 rewarded with the lower offices.
 
 92 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Few combinations in the history of political parties 
 have been received by historians and posterity with more 
 unqualified condemnation than the coalition of 1783. It 
 has been denounced as monstrous and unnatural ; it has 
 been ascribed to the influence of the worst passions which 
 degrade human nature. Petty spite, greed of power, 
 revenge and avarice — such are the parents whose fell 
 union ushered forth into the world this child 
 
 " Born in bitterness 
 And nurtured in convulsion.*' 
 
 And even the methods adopted to bring about its ruin 
 have been condoned on the principle that vermin are out 
 of the protection of the law. And yet it may well be 
 questioned whether a great deal of this righteous indigna- 
 tion is not, as is too often the case in history, merely the 
 penalty of failure. The advantages which England 
 derived from its overthrow are written large on the pa^e 
 of history. She obtained a strong and stable government 
 more truly representative of the real wishes of English- 
 men, than any Government since the days of Walpole. 
 She obtained a Minister who, both in his virtues and his 
 failings, was essentially the Minister whom England 
 delighted to honour. She found a fit object for her 
 deepest loyalty in a King, now for the first time in 
 thorough sympathy with his Ministry, and with what was 
 best in the nation. The Opposition, weakened and dis- 
 credited, seemed day by day to be losing character, and 
 ro become more and more entangled in subversive and 
 sentimental theories, which were above all things un- 
 English. By an easy transition the blunders of the Whig 
 Opposition were seen to spring from the crimes of the 
 Whig Ministry, and to the shameful principles of the 
 coalition were ascribed in logical sequence the doctrines
 
 THE COALITION. 93 
 
 of Tom Paine, the drinking bouts of Sheridan, and the 
 
 crimes of the Prince of Wales. 
 
 It is not too much to say that this atrocious character 
 
 attributed to the coalition is an afterthought. There is 
 
 no evidence to show that at the time it struck politicians 
 
 in general as being specially heinous. It is true that 
 
 severe remarks were made about it in the House of 
 
 Commons, when it first took practical shape in the 
 
 debate of the 17th of February. Severe remarks 
 
 would of course always be made by opponents on any 
 
 combination which seemed formidable. Fox answered 
 
 them with excellent temper and a good deal of common 
 
 sense. 
 
 " I come to take notice of the most heinous charge of all. I am 
 accused of having formed a junction with a noble person whose principles 
 I have been in the habit of opposing for the last seven years of my life. 
 I see no reason for calling such a meeting an unnatural junction. It is 
 neither wise nor noble to keep up animosity ties for ever. It is neither 
 just nor candid to keep up animosity when the cause of it is no more 
 It is not in my nature to bear malice or live in ill-will. Amicitim 
 sempiternal, inamicit/'a placabiles. I disdain to keep alive in my bosom 
 the enmities which I may bear to men when the cause of those enmities 
 is no more. When a man ceases to be what he was, when the opinions 
 which made him obnoxious are changed, he then is no more my enemy 
 but my friend. The American War was the cause of the enmity 
 between the noble lord and myself : the American War and t«ie American 
 question is at an end. The noble lord has profited from fatal experience. 
 When that system was maintained nothing could be more asunder than 
 the noble lord and myself. But it is now no more, and it is therefore 
 wise and candid to put an end also to the ill-will, the animosity, tha 
 rancour and the feuds which it occasioned." 
 
 And again a few days later : — 
 
 " It is only from the coalition of parties for the honest purpose of 
 opposing measures so destructive to the interests of the country, that the 
 spirit of constitutional power can ever be restored to its former vigour. 
 It becomes men to forget private resentments when the cause of the 
 nation calls so immediately for public unanimity. It is only a coalition 
 that can restore the shattered system of administration to its proper tone
 
 94 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 of vigorous exertion. By this means we shall regain the lost confidence 
 of the people, and it is only that confidence that can give effect to the 
 springs of government." 
 
 These arguments had their due effect both in the 
 House and outside. There seems to have been during 
 the first few months of the Coalition Government no 
 attempt, either in Parliament or in the country, to 
 stigmatise it as an unprincipled thing outside ordinary 
 political morality. The opposition to it on the score of 
 its strange and unnatural character died quickly away 
 even among the partisans of Shelburne, and the King soon 
 remained the only man in great position who continued to 
 hold that view of it. And if we come to look closely into 
 it, it must necessarily have been so. Some coalition was 
 certain. There was nothing, now the American War was 
 over, in the political opinions of Fox and North at that 
 time, to make a coalition between them more unnatural 
 than one between Shelburne and North. There was not 
 nearly so much difference of opinion as existed between 
 Fox and Shelburne, yet an agreement between those 
 statesmen would have seemed natural enough to every 
 one, and had been approved of by the King. Besides, Fox 
 and North were not the only two people concerned. 
 Their supporters were not mere machines who turned 
 their coats at their bidding. No one has ever dared even 
 to murmur a charge of want of principle against the 
 political career of the Duke of Portland or of Lord John 
 Cavendish. Their honour is above reproach. They had 
 just j»iven a proof of it by insisting on retiring from the 
 Cabinet with Fox, rather than serve under a statesman 
 whom they distrusted, though, unlike Fox, they had had 
 no personal quarrel with Shelburne. Against Keppel the 
 case would be even stronger, for Keppel had been 
 personally wronged by North's Ministry, yet Keppel was
 
 THE COALITION. 95 
 
 willing to forget the past. It is impossible seriously to 
 maintain that one hundred and twenty Tories and ninety 
 Whigs agreed to prostitute their political honour for the 
 greed of place at the bidding of two unprincipled leaders. 
 The real charge against Fox is not that he coalesced with 
 North, but that he coalesced with North after havinjr for 
 so many years accused him of conduct almost criminal. 
 It is not the coalition that is unnatural and unprincipled, 
 but Fox who is unprincipled for joining the coalition. 
 The dilemma shapes itself this way. When Fox accused 
 North of public perfidy and unexampled treachery, when 
 in 1779 he denounced the idea of union with him as 
 abominable, scandalous, and disgraceful, an alliance with 
 disgrace and ruin, with the worst enemies of England, he 
 either believed what he said or he did not. If he did, 
 it was clearly unprincipled conduct on his part to join an 
 alliance which he himself admitted to be scandalous ; if he 
 did not, he was equally guilty in stirring up public passion 
 by attacks on men which he did not believe to be true. 
 To some extent undoubtedly the dilemma holds. In the 
 days when men spoke to the House of Commons and not 
 to the nation outside, the temptation was very great to 
 use strong and unqualified language. Every one did it 
 himself and every one expected it in others. It was a pity 
 to lose a rhetorical effect by precision of language, when 
 every one understood what was said in a Pickwickian 
 sense. Fox, with his impetuous temperament, his brilliant 
 imagination, and rapid utterance, was no more likely to 
 check the rush of his eloquence by an anxiety not to 
 exaggerate, than a jockey at a close finish would refuse 
 to use his spurs for fear of punishing his horse. He was 
 perpetually in exaggeration, and to that extent must bear 
 the blame of want of principle. Men who now sit down 
 and read his fiery invective in cold blood, naturally
 
 06 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 wonder how he could ever forget, or North condone. 
 Men who were present and saw the sunny boisterous 
 temperament lash itself into quick anger and be carried 
 away in a whirlwind of ungovernable rage, could easily 
 understand how soon the impression would pass from his 
 placable heart with the cause which produced it, and 
 warm-hearted friendship resume her reign, as the genial 
 sun bursts out after a summer storm. 
 
 If the coalition was not dishonourable and disgraceful 
 to the two chief parties concerned, it certainly was not 
 disadvantageous to the nation. The arguments of Fox 
 on that point are unanswerable. During twenty-three 
 years there had been no less than ten different Adminis- 
 trations. The old Whig phalanx had become so hope- 
 lessly disintegrated that it was quite impossible to find 
 a leader who could command a solid majority. The 
 Tories, broken as they were by the American War, would 
 no longer rally to the discredited standard of North. 
 Shelburne had become in a year so unpopular with all 
 parties that his retirement was the only thing absolutely 
 certain in English politics. A strong Government was 
 essential to England's welfare, and a coalition between 
 Fox and North afforded the best chance of establishing 
 a strong Government. And to the Whig party the 
 coalition promised to be no less advantageous than to 
 the nation. A few staunch Whigs, like the Duke of 
 Richmond, stood apart. He had put his name, he said, 
 to too many protests against North to feel comfortable in 
 his company. A few of the older race of Whigs, who 
 had once followed Chatham, like the Duke of Grafton 
 and Lord Camden, refused to join, but the younger men 
 and the able men followed Fox. From a party point of 
 view they were undoubtedly right. The party might be 
 called a coalition party, the policy might to some extent 

 
 TEE COALITION. 97 
 
 be a coalition policy, but the Ministry was a Whig 
 Ministry pure and simple. Lord North was the only 
 Cabinet Minister not a Whig. Much might be said from 
 the Tory side of the impolicy of coalescing with the 
 Whigs on terms which surrendered everything and 
 received nothing. Deliverance from a worse coalition 
 was but cold comfort to a Tory, who was called upon by 
 party obligations to vote steadily to keep the Whigs in 
 office. Fox certainly was not liable to the charge of 
 having made a bad bargain for his party. Men's minds 
 went naturally back a few years, and remembered how, 
 at a great crisis of the country's history, a Coalition 
 Ministry, which had been formed under circumstances by 
 no means unlike the present, had raised England to a 
 height of fame greater than she had ever experienced 
 before. They fondly hoped that history would repeat 
 itself. If Chatham could fairly boast that he had 
 borrowed Newcastle's majority in 1757 in order to govern 
 the country, with even greater justice could Fox boast, in 
 1783, that he had borrowed North's majority to establish 
 the ascendency of the Whigs. 
 
 Yet the Coalition Ministry was a fatal political 
 blunder, and wrecked the fortunes of the Whig party. 
 There was one element left out of the calculation, and 
 that vitiated the whole. No fairy left unasked to a 
 wedding-banquet ever revenged herself more speedily 
 and more fatally than did George III. on the coalition 
 politicians who had neglected him. Many circumstances 
 combined to make the King implacable. The shuffling 
 of the political cards behind his back, and without his 
 knowledge or consent, was peculiarly distasteful to him. 
 He saw himself treated as if he were already King of the 
 Mahrattas. He had resented the way in which Portland 
 was put forward in 1782, and now Portland was being 
 
 ii
 
 08 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 actually forced on him against his will. He hated Fox, 
 and looked upon him as an enemy to his throne, and 
 chief among the corrupters of his son's morals and 
 politics. But the cruellest stroke of nil was the stab 
 which Lord North gave him from behind. Et hi Brute! 
 Lord North had been his chosen servant, his friend more 
 than his Minister, on whom he had lavished all the 
 tenderness and thoughtfulness of which his nature was 
 capable, and now Lord North was in the ranks of his 
 enemies, and aspiring to be Peishwa over him. Often 
 had George III. been obliged to accept a Minister who 
 was personally distasteful to him. He always fought to 
 the last against him, but when he had given way he 
 treated him fairly and openly. He looked upon the 
 Coalition Ministers in a totally different light. They were 
 a set of political sharpers who were not fit to be treated as 
 gentlemen. He never attempted to conceal his opinion 
 of them. At his levees he would hardly speak to them. 
 In his first letter to Shelburne, after the vote condemning 
 the peace, he lamented that it was his lot to reign in the 
 most profligate age. To Lord Temple he called it " the 
 most unprincipled coalition the annals of this or any other 
 nation can equal," and spoke of his own attitude towards 
 his new Cabinet in most unmistakeable terms : — 
 
 " A Ministry which I have avowedly attempted to avoid by calling on 
 every other description of men, cannot be supposed to have either my 
 favour or my confidence ; and as such I shall most certainly refuse any 
 honours they may ask for. I trust the eyes of the nation may soon be 
 opened, as my sorrow may prove fatal to my health if I remain long in 
 this thraldom. I trust you will be steady in your attachment to me, and 
 ready to join other honest men in watching the conduct of this unnatural 
 combination, and I hope many months will not elapse before the 
 Grenvilles, the Pitts, and other men of abilities and character will relieve 
 me from a situation which nothing could have compelled me to submit 
 to but the supposition that no other means remained of preventing the 
 public finances from being materially affected."
 
 TEE COALITION. 99 
 
 It is abundantly evident from this letter that the King 
 regarded his Ministers not merely with dislike, but with 
 rancorous hostility. He never intended to deal fairly 
 with them. He looked on their existence as a tyranny to 
 which he only submitted under press of bankruptcy, 
 which he would throw off directly he had the opportunity. 
 This was a factor in the political problem which the 
 Ministers had never taken into consideration. They 
 were prepared to fight openly with Shelburne or with 
 Pitt, they were prepared to endure uncomplainingly the 
 aversion of the King, but to have to defend themselves 
 day by day and hour by hour against the secret intrigues 
 and underhand plots of their nominal master, was to 
 plunge them into a contest in which sooner or later they 
 were bound to receive a fall. " Nothing," said Fox himself 
 of the coalition, "but success can justify it." Unfor- 
 tunately for him the attitude of the King made success 
 impossible. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 • CEABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE INDIA BILL. 
 
 The summer of 1783 was spent by Fox, with the 
 assistance of Burke, in preparing the bill for the better 
 government of the Indian possessions of Great Britain, 
 upon which the Coalition Ministry had chosen to^ stand or 
 fall. Fox was fully aware of the difficulty of the task 
 which he had undertaken, and indeed it is not untrue 
 to say that he had undertaken it because of its difficulty. 
 In a letter to Lord Northington, the Lord Lieutenant of 
 Ireland, written in November, 1783, he says : — 
 
 ■• Our Indian measure will come on soon after the meeting. It will 
 be a vigorous and hazardous one, and if we get that well over I have 
 very little apprehension about anything else here." 
 
 And a few days later he says again : — 
 
 " Our Indian business, upon which all depends, comes on Tuesday ; the 
 great contest about it on the second reading will in my opinion be the 
 most important question to us that is ever likely to come on." 
 
 He did not therefore conceal from himself the risk 
 which he was running. Political cowardice was never 
 among his faults, though perhaps his friends might some- 
 times almost wish that it was. In an attack upon an 
 old-established and wealthy corporation like the East 
 India Company, he was certain to alienate many powerful
 
 THE INDIA BILL. 101 
 
 interests, to enable the different sections of his enemies to 
 find a common ground of opposition, and to give the King 
 an opportunity for the exercise of personal influence if he 
 was disposed to make use of it. Fox was well aware of 
 all this, but he was not the man to hesitate to put 
 his fate to the touch, and win or lose it all. His whole 
 heart was stirred by the reports which had been laid 
 before Parliament of the rapacity of English officials r 
 and the wrong done to unoffending natives. The purr 
 love of humanity, always among the noblest of his 
 qualities, burned with as intense a flame for the ryot o£ 
 Bengal or of Oude, as for the negro of Africa, or for the 
 
 'O l 
 
 serf of France. He could not endure the thought that 
 the rule of England should seem to the educated Hindo</ 
 a return to barbarism and brutality, the victory of might 
 over right. 
 
 But it was not only philanthropy which urged Fox to 
 stake the fortunes of the Ministry upon the Indian ques- 
 tion. Statesmanship undertook what humanity prompted. 
 A great success was necessary to quiet the cavillings of 
 opponents, to obliterate the remembrance of the past, and; 
 to give to England that steady and firm government 
 which was the best, and to many minds the only, justi- 
 fication of the coalition. The Ministry were secure of 
 their majority in the House of Commons, they were by 
 no means sure of a majority in the constituencies, if the 
 weight of the Court influence was to be thrown into the 
 opposite scale. The Indian question had been before 
 Parliament again and again. The proceedings of Warren 
 Hastings, his dissensions with the Council at Calcutta, 
 the repudiation of his policy by the Directors at home, its 
 support by the Proprietors, had been for years the common 
 talk of political society, and a fruitful topic of parlia- 
 mentary criticism. In 1781, an inquiry into the govern-
 
 102 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 ment of India had been authorised by Parliament, and the 
 report of the committee had been strongly condemnatory 
 of the Governor-General. Before the recess of 1783, just 
 after the Coalition Ministry had assumed the responsibilities 
 of office, Dundas had actually brought into the House of 
 Commons a bill for the appointment of Lord Cornwallis 
 as Governor-General with the unlimited powers of a 
 dictator. After this it would be a distinct confession of 
 weakness on the part of the Ministry if they avoided the 
 question ; while if they succeeded in solving it to the 
 satisfaction of the country and of their supporters, a long 
 period of office seemed assured to them. The prospect 
 was an enticing one. Fox had never yet been appalled 
 by the bigness of a stake, nor was he the man to be 
 turned from the path of glory because it was also the 
 path of danger. 
 
 From a dramatic point of view the India Bill, and the 
 events which succeeded it, form the crisis in Fox's life 
 and political career. It is his one great effort at con- 
 structive statesmanship, his one great opportunity, not 
 merely of destroying a vicious system, but of constructing 
 a method of government for thirty millions of people 
 which should be just, humane, and workable. It was a 
 problem which demanded the highest gifts of statesman- 
 ship, the insight which could look fearlessly and safely 
 into the future, the sympathy which could understand the 
 thoughts and feelings of people different in race, in 
 religion, and in temperament from Englishmen, and the 
 wisdom which could combine what was rightly due to 
 them with the just claims of a conquering and dominant 
 nation on the other side of the world. Fox threw himself 
 into his task with characteristic self-surrender. He 
 discarded the suggestions of political prudence as un- 
 worthy of the cause. He refused to compromise and 
 
 ,
 
 THE INDIA BILL. 103 
 
 impair the perfection of his scheme by concession to 
 ignorance or prejudice at home. lie could not bear to 
 think that the .reifare of India should be affected by the 
 danger of losing a ie^T corrupt votes at a parliamentary 
 division ; and he produced eventually a scheme which 
 posterity has agreed to admire and which contemporaries 
 united to denounce. 
 
 The principles of Fox's bill are principles which, when 
 carried out in later time, have given to the people of 
 India the only just government which they have ever 
 known. They are principles which, when enunciated by 
 Fox, seemed to educated England to be the corrupt 
 offspring of the meanest party spirit. To us the constant 
 supervision of Parliament, however liable in detail to 
 abuse, seems the best conceivable check upon Ministerial 
 maladministration. To the nation in the days of Fox 
 Parliament meant the chosen field of Ministerial influence ; 
 its supervision was a farce, its patronage corruption. To 
 increase the powers of the representatives of the people 
 was but a well-sounding phrase for throwing power into 
 the hands of the Minister. It was the unrepresentative 
 character of Parliament which was the real cause of the 
 mischief. People must first learn to trust Parliament 
 itself before they will trust its nominees. They were far 
 more willing to hand over all power to a dictator like 
 Lord Cornwallis, whose character was their guarantee, 
 than entrust a share of it to a House of Commons, which 
 too often meant a majority, nominated by peers and nabobs, 
 returned by secret service money, and kept together by 
 sinecures and pensions. Fox, in so many things below 
 the moral standard of his age, was in his belief in 
 Parliament above it. He looked forward to the time 
 when, by the passing of the imminent measure of parlia- 
 mentary reform, the House of Commons should be
 
 104 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 emancipated. His countrymen looked back to the last 
 election, when even George III. was aghast at tb p money 
 which had been spent. The mistake was f> iatal one. 
 He was sure of the House of Commons for the coalition 
 majority was unimpaired. The i louse of Lords might 
 be with him, for party ties were still strong ; but if any 
 untoward accident happened, and he was forced to the 
 arbitrament of the constituencies, his success would 
 mainly depend upon the way in which the question came 
 before the electors, and management was Fox's weak 
 point. 
 
 On the 18th of November Fox introduced his scheme. 
 It was divided into two parts. By the first bill the 
 existing authority of the East India Company was 
 superseded by a Board of seven Commissioners, in whom 
 absolute control over the patronage and government of 
 India was vested. Under them another Board of eight 
 Assistant Councillors was formed to administer and 
 regulate the commercial affairs of the Company. The 
 seven Commissioners were at first to hold office only for 
 four years, and to bg appointed by Parliament. If the 
 A ct proved a success in practice, after the expiration of 
 the four years they were to be appointed by the Crown. 
 The Assistant Councillors were also in the first instance 
 to be appointed by Parliament, but future vacancies were 
 to be filled up by the Court of Proprietors. The Com- 
 missioners were to sit in England under the eye of 
 Parliament. All business transacted by them was to be 
 entered in books open to the inspection of Parliament, 
 and all difference of opinion, which might arise between 
 them and the Governor-General or other authorities in 
 India, and especially any act of disobedience to orders 
 from home committed by the Indian officials, were to be 
 made the subject of careful minutes on both sides, so that
 
 THE INDIA BILL. 105 
 
 Parliament mi^ht have before it all the materials 
 necessary for an independent judgment. By the second 
 bill, which hardly survived its birth, minute and harassing 
 restrictions were imposed upon the free action of the 
 Governor-General, both in commerce and in politics, 
 which were intended to guard against abuse of power and 
 over-ambitious schemes, by bringing them rigidly under 
 the control of the home authorities. 
 
 The plan of Fox and Burke, therefore, depended upon 
 two great principles: (1) That India was to be governed 
 from England ; (2) That the guarantee for its good 
 government was to be found in parliamentary control. 
 India was to be brought within the pale of the English 
 Constitution. Kesponsibility for the well-being of 
 thirty millions of people was too great to be lodged 
 anywhere but in the Crown and its responsible advisers. 
 The same power that checked the insidious influence of a 
 George III. in England, and punished the oppression of 
 a Strafford in Ireland, or the corruption of a Trevor even 
 in the Speaker's chair, was to extend a watchful eye as 
 far as the distant plains of Bengal. Parliament in the 
 eyes of Fox, like Magna Carta in the eyes of Coke, was 
 " such a fellow that he will have no sovereign." True ! 
 India was not to follow humbly in the wake of English 
 party politics. Continuity in administration, so desirable 
 for a distant dependency, so essential for an Eastern 
 community, was carefully preserved. The Commissioners 
 were not to be the sport of party majorities in England, 
 and change with every Ministry as the Secretary for 
 India does now ; but when parliamentary control was 
 fully established, when each vacancy on the Board as it 
 occurred was filled up by the Crown on the advice of the 
 Prime Minister of the day, English party politics could 
 not fail to make themselves clearly, though indirectly, felt
 
 106 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 in the government of India, and India could not afford to 
 disregard her common interests in the polit cal problems 
 of England. 
 
 A scheme so broad and so far-seeing, almost disarms 
 criticism by its attractiveness ; yet it was clearly a scheme 
 for the future rather than for the present, for the nine- 
 teenth century rather than for the eighteenth. It would 
 almost seem as if the vivid and prophetic imagination of 
 Burke already saw the thin dark line of the electric 
 telegraph binding together England and India in quick 
 and close embrace, as if his ears already caught the thud 
 of the steam engine amid the deserts of Suez. Not many 
 years before he had denounced the folly of attempting to 
 coerce a nation three thousand miles away. lie was now 
 attempting to bind down by parliamentary inquiry and 
 legislative restriction the ruler of an empire on the other 
 side of the world. Restrictive checks such as Parliament 
 can impose or exercise are only useful when they can be 
 promptly enforced. They are valuable to prevent, they 
 are useless to cure, they are often dangerous to punish. 
 They must be both useless and dangerous when they can 
 only act a year after the occasion for action has arisen. 
 Men who have the stuff in them to build up an empire are 
 not the men to be bound dow r n by legislative restrictions, 
 or deterred by the fear of parliamentary inquiry. In 
 modern days the conditions are precisely reversed to what 
 they were in 1783. The business of Indian administrators 
 is to defend an empire, not to create it, and the will of 
 Parliament is known at Calcutta almost before it has been 
 declared in London, yet even in modern days the wisest 
 statesmen of England have been willing to give a generous 
 confidence to the Viceroy whom they have carefully 
 chosen. 
 
 In 1783 Indian affairs were in a state of transition.
 
 THE INDIA BILL. 107 
 
 Our power in India was but half developed, our adminis- 
 tration most imperfect, our knowledge of the country very 
 limited. We had but just escaped by the talents, and 
 partly it must be admitted by the unscrupulousness, of 
 Warren Hastings from total ruin. Grave dangers from 
 Mysore, from the Mahrattas, and from the French, still 
 threatened our ascendency. How could these dangers 
 possibly be adequately met by a Board of English 
 politicians in London ? Mr. Pitt's India Bill was not so 
 comprehensive, not so far-sighted a scheme as that of 
 Fox and Burke, but it possessed the great merits of being 
 suited to the circumstance of the time. It was transitional 
 in its nature, and it dealt with a power in a state of 
 transition. Corruption and oppression in India were to 
 be suppressed, not by the vigilance of an English Par- 
 liament, possibly equally corrupt and unjust, but by the 
 high character and unremitting efforts of the great 
 officials sent out to assume the reins of government. 
 Pitt's India Bill was twice modified in the ten years which 
 elapsed from its passing, and each time in the direction of 
 placing greater confidence in the Governor-General ; and 
 it was in consequence of such a policy that England 
 obtained the services of Lord Cornwallis and the 
 Marquis Wellesley. Had Fox's bill passed into law, and 
 by great good fortune Cornwallis and Wellesley accepted 
 office in spite of it, can it be imagined that the restrictions 
 which it contained would have lasted one moment beyond 
 the time when they began to be felt ? Would Cornwallis 
 have drawn back from the conquest of Mysore, or 
 Wellesley from the Treaty of Bassein for fear of par- 
 liamentary censure, or in deference to parliamentary 
 restriction? When the crisis came, all considerations 
 except those of the safety of the empire would have been 
 scattered to the wind, and legislative restrictions, like
 
 108 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Samson's bonds, proved efficacious only while the strong- 
 man slept. 
 
 But this was not the reasoning which proved fatal 
 to the bill. It was attacked, not from the high ground 
 of the true relations between India and England, but 
 from the lower ground of pure party policy. In order 
 to put the government of India on right lines for all time, 
 Fox had deliberately run the risk of wrecking his whole 
 scheme by his too ostentatious disregard of the prejudices 
 of the day. Never was any great scheme constructed 
 since the days of parliamentary government with so little 
 consideration for the necessities of parliamentary warfare. 
 The strange inability to grasp the political responsibilities 
 of the moment, and to combine them with statesmanlike 
 schemes for the future, which is so astonishing in a 
 practical and powerful debater like Fox, was never more 
 apparent than in his India Bill. The coalition on which 
 he relied was partly made up of men returned to Parlia- 
 ment by royal influence to support a royal Minister. The 
 opposition which he had to dread was inspired by the 
 King himself, and headed by men who had taken as their 
 leading political principle the vindication of royal authority 
 in administration. Yet Fox proposed to transfer the 
 whole patronage of India for four years from the Company, 
 not to the Crown as head of the State, but to Com- 
 missioners appointed by Parliament, that is, by himself 
 and his majority. Such a provision could not fail to unite 
 the whole Tory party, the whole of the Court party, and 
 the whole of those interested not merely in the East India 
 Company, but in any chartered company whatever, in the 
 bitterest hostility to the measure. It raised grave doubts 
 among those of his own supporters, who disliked wholesale 
 interference with old-established institutions. ' 
 
 Again, the chief difficulty with which Fox had to
 
 TEE INDIA BILL. 109 
 
 contend, next to the personal hostility of the King, was 
 the suspicion in the minds of the nation that his coalition 
 with North rested on no principle, and was dictated 
 merely b-- : greed of office. The King had diligently let it 
 be known wnat he thought about the matter. The 
 Opposition had not lost an opportunity of pressing their 
 view upon the country during the recess. It is noticeable 
 that the attack on the coalition as unprincipled and 
 unnatural became much more virulent after the recess 
 than it was before it. One member, with more passion 
 than humour, fell into the delightful bathos of winding up a 
 furious attack upon the Ministry by demanding that a 
 starling should be placed in the House to remind members 
 of the state of affairs by constantly repeating " Coalition, 
 coalition, cursed coalition ! " As a matter of parlia- 
 mentary tactics, it was above all things important to the 
 Ministry that their great measure should not be open to 
 the charge of being corruptly designed to throw power 
 and influence into their own hands, under cover of an 
 hypocritical profession of concern for the sufferings of 
 India. Yet Fox either carelessly or presumptuously ran 
 his head straight into the trap which lay open before 
 him. To those who were already somewhat doubtful of 
 the honesty of the coalition, the proposal to vest the 
 whole lucrative patronage of India in the hands of the 
 Ministry for four years seemed an absolute confirmation 
 of their worst fears. The revolutionary character of the 
 India Bill illustrated the unprincipled character of the 
 coalition. Men like Fox and Burke, in the cold shade 
 of opposition, had declaimed against corruption with 
 an intensity of moral earnestness which had convinced all 
 men of their sincerity. Yet, when other chances of 
 obtaining office seemed to fail, they had not scrupled to 
 make terms of alliance with the man who above all others
 
 1 10 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 was blackened with the stain of long years of parlia- 
 mentary corruption. And now, when they had gained 
 power by these doubtful means, they proposed to assume 
 to themselves the whole patronage of India for fo - :r years ! 
 For what purpose had they thus deprived the East India 
 Company of its chartered rights ? For what purpose did 
 they propose to deprive the Crown of its natural in- 
 heritance ? What sort of use would Fox and North make 
 of the influence thus greedily claimed? Was it to send 
 out to India men of approved honesty and of high 
 character, regardless of political connection and party 
 advantages ? or was it to use the patronage of India for 
 binding together the party at home, for the reward of 
 political service, for the satisfying of personal claims, 
 for consolidating the power of the Ministry ? Such were 
 the thoughts which were stirring in the minds of men 
 when Fox made public the names of the first seven 
 Commissioners. At their head stood the respectable 
 name of Lord Fitzwilliam, among them was the able 
 and subtle brain of Sir Gilbert Elliot, but one and all they 
 were essentially party men. They were the personal 
 friends and the devoted adherents of the leaders of the 
 coalition. What a lurid light was at once thrown upon 
 the real designs of the Ministers ! Here was the first 
 act of this unlimited patronage. Who were the men 
 chosen out of all England as most fit to become dictators of 
 India ? Men who had served the country well ? who had 
 proved themselves capable, just, and impartial adminis- 
 trators ? men who had made the great problems of India 
 their special study ? On the contrary, men of whom 
 nothing more was known than that they were personal 
 friends of the Ministers, steady political adherents, and the 
 owners of valuable votes. Like master like man. If Fox 
 and North used their patronage purely for the furtherance
 
 THE INDIA BILL. Ill 
 
 of party interests, it was perfectly certain that the Com- 
 missioners would follow in the same footsteps. Men saw 
 rising before them the horrible spectre of a vast colossus 
 of corruption, clasping both England and India in its 
 foul embrace, under the shadow of which royal authority, 
 and popular independence, and imperial development, 
 alike must wither and decay in order that on its shoulders, 
 sharing its crown of power, it might support in secure but 
 despicable dignity its twin children of the coalition. 
 Burke was seen to have turned his back upon a lifetime 
 devoted to economical reform, Fox was proved after all 
 to be but a chip of the old block, and men believed in the 
 absolute truth of the current sarcasm that the bill was 
 one to take away the crown from the head of George III. 
 and put it upon that of Fox. 
 
 Nevertheless this wide extended distrust was more 
 apparent without than within the walls of Parliament, 
 and the bill would almost certainly have passed with sub- 
 stantial majorities in both Houses, had it not been for 
 the extraordinary and unconstitutional action of the 
 King. George IIL, following out his principle that he 
 was not bound to give his confidence to Ministers who 
 had been forced upon him against his will, had from the 
 first openly declared that he would get rid of the coali- 
 tion directly an opportunity offered, and had called upon 
 the Grenvilles to come to his aid. The India Bill gave 
 him the desired opportunity, and Lord Temple, the head 
 of the Grenville family, came forward as his agent. On 
 the 1st of December the critical division in the House of 
 Commons gave the Ministers a majority of 114. On the 
 same day Lord Temple and Lord Thurlow submitted a 
 paper to the King in which they advised that every 
 possible exertion should be made to throw out the bill in 
 the House of Lords. On the 9th the bill was brought 
 

 
 112 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 up to the Lords, and the second reading was fixed for the 
 18th. In the meantime Lord Temple had an interview* 
 with the King, who authorised him in writing to say on his 
 behalf to the peers, that he should consider every man who 
 voted for the bill as his enemy. Called upon in this way by 
 George III. to decide between himself and his Ministers, 
 the majority of the Lords not unnaturally adhered to the 
 King, and the bill was thrown out by a majority of 19. 
 On the same evening the Ministers received an order 
 from the King to deliver up their seals of office, and the 
 Coalition Ministry came to an end. 
 
 The dismissal of the Ministry was by no means the end 
 of the conflict. It was merely the first blow struck by 
 the King in a long war. The real struggle was to come. 
 Fox himself had fully expected some such sudden back- 
 fall, and looked on the prospect of fighting his way back 
 into office again with zest as a soldier, and little mis- 
 giving as a general. Nor was he necessarily wrong. 
 Bad generalship on his part and unexpected treachery on 
 the part of the King had defeated him, but it was quite 
 possible that good generalship might not only retrieve the 
 past but establish him more firmly than ever for the future. 
 So, with the good humour which distinguished him, he 
 took his seat on the front Opposition bench and waited 
 events, little dreaming that he would be there for nearly 
 the rest of his life. On the 19th of December Pitt was 
 appointed Prime Minister, and on the 22nd the House 
 met again for business. 
 
 Unfortunately it at ouce became apparent that good 
 generalship was a gift which the Opposition could not 
 hope to enjoy as long as it remained under the leadership 
 of Fox. It is almost incredible how deficient in insight 
 into the state of affairs he showed himself to be. He was 
 now in the zenith of his power as an orator. His special
 
 THE INDIA BILL. 113 
 
 strength in debate lay in his quickness in seizing and 
 dealing with the real point at issue. In the management 
 of a debate he rarely made a mistake, in the manage- 
 ment of a political question he rarely avoided fatal 
 blunders. He had had quite sufficient experience of 
 office to learn that, in a system of parliamentary govern- 
 ment, a politician must consider not only what is desir- 
 able but what is possible, and must make his policy 
 coincide with the general good sense of the country. 
 Yet through his love for abstract statesmanship or his 
 personal predilections, he continually allowed himself to 
 get into wholly false relations with the country. No 
 great leader of modern times has been served so devotedly, 
 and has been loved so passionately as was Fox, yet none 
 has ever led his followers so often into positions where 
 victory was only possible by a miracle. A general who 
 fought all his battles on the model of Hettingen would 
 soon cease to rank high among tacticians. 
 
 xl glance at the state of political thought in Parliament 
 and in the country at the time of the dismissal of the 
 coalition will soon show how greatly Fox misconceived 
 the position of affairs. In the House of Lords, as ex- 
 perience had just shown, distrust of the principles of the 
 coalition, and deference to the wishes of the Crown, had 
 become too strong for the ties of party, which are always 
 weaker in an hereditary than in a representative chamber. 
 The peers as a body were not likely to reverse their 
 recent decision, except under strong pressure from the 
 House of Commons, fortified by a fuller appreciation of 
 the danger attaching to unconstitutional conduct such as 
 that of George III. and Lord Temple. 
 
 The House of Commons was the stronghold of the 
 Opposition. There Fox reigned supreme. A substantial 
 majority followed his lead, and was not likely to be wanting 
 
 T
 
 114 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 in fidelity to any policy which seemed to promise a speedy 
 return to office. Yet any thinking man could easily see 
 that it was not wise to stake too much upon the power 
 and authority of the majority of the House of Commons. 
 The House was nearly four years old. It had been 
 elected towards the end of the American War, royal 
 influence and corrupt practices had been freely resorted 
 to, to procure a majority for the King and Lord North. 
 That majority was obtained at a time when the general 
 opinion of Englishmen was notoriously against the Crown. 
 No one knew better than Fox how opposed to the national 
 sentiments was the House of Commons of 1780. Why 
 should it so greatly have changed its character in 1784? 
 Of the majority which Fox and Lord North directed 
 against Pitt, the larger part no doubt were staunch and 
 true Whigs who had always followed the banners of Fox, 
 whose fidelity was above suspicion ; but the rest, whose 
 presence was absolutely necessary on a division, were the 
 followers of Lord North, returned by corrupt influence to 
 support the King's Minister in 1780, who partly from 
 allegiance and partly from desire of office had joined the 
 coalition in 1783, but who found themselves in a false 
 and uncongenial position when in 1784 they were called 
 upon to fight their way back to power over the prostrate 
 bodies of the King and Pitt. Their natural sympathies 
 were with authority, and they were not prepared to take 
 part in a Parliamentary Revolution. 
 
 In the nation itself much prejudice had been excited 
 by the India bill ; much sympathy was felt with the 
 King, upon whose counsels a Ministry of so questionable 
 a nature as the coalition had forced itself. Shocked by 
 the coalition, startled by the sweeping changes of the 
 India bill, men were not prepared at once to denounce 
 the King and his boy Minister, and shout for the " buff
 
 THE INDIA BILL. 115 
 
 and blue." They held their judgment in suspense, dis- 
 trustful of both parties, persuadable by either, but 
 vaguely sensible that after all the King was the most 
 honest man in the whole range of English political 
 life. 
 
 If this was the state of public opinion, Fox's true policy 
 was clear and distinct. lie ought to have applied him- 
 self heart and soul to persuade the nation that he was in 
 the right. Neither side could win without the active 
 support of the people. The influence of the Crown and 
 the deference of the peers could not by themselves 
 prevail over the will of the House of Commons. The 
 House of Commons by itself had not moral strength 
 enough to stand against the power of the Crown and of 
 the peers. The mutual war could at best only produce 
 a deadlock. The nation alone held the key to the 
 puzzle. If Fox had boldly claimed the nation on his 
 side, welcomed an immediate appeal to the people, 
 explained to them the real greatness of his Indian 
 scheme, modified, if necessary, those parts most open to 
 misconstruction, proceeded at once against Lord Temple 
 in Parliament for his unconstitutional conduct, and 
 denounced to the nation the sinister revival of the 
 personal interference of the Crown with legislation in 
 Parliament as subversive of true parliamentary liberty, he 
 would probably have won the day. At any rate he 
 would have had his case argued fairly on its merits 
 before a tribunal of which, on his own principles, he was 
 bound to approve. The policy which he actually adopted 
 was the exact opposite. He determined to rely solely 
 upon his majority in the House of Commons, and to 
 force the will of the Commons upon the King. He 
 showed the greatest dread of an appeal to the people, 
 procured an address to the King against a dissolution on 
 
 I 2
 
 116 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 the very first day on which the House met after the 
 change of Ministry, and tried later to extort a promise 
 from Pitt that he would not advise a dissolution. He 
 suffered the extraordinary action of Lord Temple to go 
 perfectly unchallenged, in the teeth of a resolution of the 
 House passed while the India Bill was before the Lords, 
 that to " report any opinion of His Majesty upon any 
 bill in either House of Parliament, with a view to 
 influence the votes of members, is a high crime and 
 misdemeanour, and subversive of the constitution of this 
 -country." 
 
 Having thus let the agent whom he could punish go 
 -rot- free, he proceeded to attack the principal who was 
 above his reach. There was hardly a speech of his in 
 the spring of 1784 which was not directed against 
 the secret influence of the Crown and the unconstitutional 
 appointment of the Ministers. Thus he narrowed the 
 issue as much as possible to a duel between himself and 
 ■<jeorjTe III., in which Pitt stood forth as the defender of the 
 ■Crown. He threw away the opportunity which the uncon- 
 stitutional conduct of the King had given him, by himself 
 taking the equally unconstitutional line of attempting to 
 interfere with the undoubted prerogative of the Crown to 
 dissolve Parliament. He threw away all the advantages 
 which his position as leader of the popular party gave 
 him, by insisting on defending the narrow rights of a 
 majority in one House, and enabled his adversary to pose 
 as the champion at once of King, Lords, and People. 
 Naturally, therefore, as the struggle increased in violence, 
 the nation began to declare itself more and more de- 
 cidedly on the side of Pitt and the King. When the 
 King took no notice of a vote of want of confidence, when 
 Pitt did not resign, and George did not dismiss him, all 
 that was left to Fox was to refuse supplies and make
 
 THE INDIA BILL. 1 1 7 
 
 government impossible. But that could only render 
 certain the dreaded dissolution, and make the elections 
 still more unfavourable. So, as time went on, Fox 
 found himself in a more and more hopeless position. 
 The memory of the King's unconstitutional act faded 
 away in the light of his own unconstitutional conduct. 
 The King, adopting his own view of the situation, 
 entered the lists with him as a combatant, and refused to 
 take any notice of his addresses and resolutions. The 
 people, trusted by Pitt, distrusted by Fox, naturally 
 turned to their friends. All that was left to Fox in the 
 political sphere was to stop the supplies, and that he 
 dared not do. A policy of protest and protest alone was 
 doomed to failure. Even the mechanical majority on 
 which he had relied, and for which he had sacrificed so 
 much, began to desert him and melt away. At last the 
 crash came. On the 8th of March, Fox carried a 
 representation to the Crown by a majority of one only. 
 This was the end of the Opposition. Dr. Johnson truly 
 said that the question before the country was whether it 
 would be ruled by the sceptre of George III. or by the 
 tongue of Fox. On the 24th of March, the Parliament 
 was dissolved, and Fox had the mortification of seeing 
 one of the most powerful parties ever gathered together 
 under a Minister hopelessly shattered to pieces by his 
 own extraordinary blunders. 
 
 A shower of squibs and broadsides followed him in 
 his discomfiture, for political wit never spares the 
 unfortunate : — 
 
 " Dear Car, is it true 
 
 "What I've long heard of you, 
 The man of the people they call you, they call you ? 
 
 How conies it to pass 
 
 They're now grown so rash 
 At the critical moment to leave you, to leave you ?
 
 118 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 " Oh, that cursetl India Bill ! 
 
 Arr.ih, why not be still ? 
 Enjoy a tight place, and be civil, be civil. 
 
 Had you carried it through, 
 
 O agli ! that would juat do, 
 Then their charters we'd pitch to the devil, the devil." 
 
 Others, not quite so good-tempered, pointed to the 
 political catastrophe as the natural and appropriate 
 reward of a career conspicuous for want of moral 
 principle : — 
 
 " When first young Reynard came from France 
 He tried to bow, to dress, to dance, 
 But to succeed had Little chance 
 
 The courtly dames among. 
 'Tis true, indeed, his wit hath charms, 
 But his grim j>liiz the point disarms, 
 And all were filled with dire alarms 
 
 At such a beau gar con, 
 
 "■ He left the fair, and took to dice, 
 At Brookes's they were not a i nice, 
 But cleared his pockets in a trice, 
 
 Nor left a wnrk behind. 
 Nay, some pretend he even lost 
 That little grace he had to boast, 
 And t lien resolved to seiz e me post 
 
 Where he might raise the wind. 
 
 i & 
 
 In politics he could not fail, 
 So set about it tooth and nail ; 
 But here again his stars prevail, 
 
 Nor long the meteor shone. 
 His friends, if such deserve the name, 
 Still keep him at a losing game, 
 Bankrupt in fortune and in fame, 
 
 His day is almost done.''
 
 ( 219 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 TEN YEARS OF OPPOSITION. 
 1783—1793. 
 
 The pitched battle of 1784 ended, as most battles do, in 
 the complete victory of the greatest tactician. When the 
 new Parliament met on the 18th of May, Fox found 
 himself at the head of a broken and dispirited party, 
 which numbered little over a hundred members, face to 
 face with a solid and triumphant body of some 250 
 Ministerialists, enthusiastic in their loyalty to the Crown 
 and completely devoted to their young and skilful leader. 
 Fox himself had only succeeded in obtaining the second 
 place on the poll for Westminster, after the most un- 
 remitting efforts on his own part, backed by the charms 
 of the Duchess of Devonshire and the open advocacy of 
 the Prince of Wales. As it was, his enemies succeeded 
 in preventing him taking his seat for Westminster for 
 more than a year, by obtaining a scrutiny from the 
 returning officer, pending which no return was made to 
 the House of Commons, of the result of the election. Fox, 
 who had also been elected for Orkney, at once challenged 
 the decision of the High Bailiff, and pointed out that by 
 an act of his own will he had practically disenfranchised 
 Westminster as long as the scrutiny lasted. Pitt, however,
 
 120 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 from party motives supported the returning officer ; and 
 Fox, or rather Fox's friends, found themselves involved 
 in a long, wearisome, and expensive inquiry which could 
 have no other result than to waste money and embitter 
 party feeling. At last, after nine months had elapsed, the 
 House of Commons ordered progress to be reported, and 
 it was found that the scrutiny was complete only in one 
 parish, and that no material change in the position of 
 parties had resulted from it. On this the majority 
 became rather ashamed of their factiousness, and, although 
 Pitt continued his opposition, the House, on the 5th of 
 March, 1785, declared Fox duly returned for West- 
 minster. 
 
 Such a beginning did not seem to promise any decline 
 in party virulence, yet it was really but the last muttering 
 of the thunderstorm as it passed away over the hills of 
 time. The majority which supported Pitt was so ample 
 and so homogeneous, and the verdict of the country, not 
 merely upon the policy of Fox but on the whole coalition, 
 so unmistakable, that all thought of changing the position 
 of affairs speedily dropped out of the thoughts of politicians 
 on both sides. Parliament settled down naturally and 
 quietly to the transaction of business under the guidance 
 of Pitt, without fear of any renewal of political convulsion. 
 Fox himself, tired out in body and mind, was anxious to 
 leave Parliament, and let the country take its chance 
 without the help of an organised and active Opposition, 
 while he pursued at St. Ann's what was to him the far 
 more enjoyable and profitable employment of the critical 
 study of the best classical and modern poetry. It was 
 only the stern call of duty, and the urgent representations 
 of his followers, which prevented him from anticipating in 
 1784 the secession of 1797. The reasons for this attitude 
 of mind are not far to seek. It is alwavs difficult for men,
 
 TEN YEARS OF OPPOSITION. 121 
 
 almost impossible for politicians, to look with impartiality 
 upon the withdrawal of distinguished men from posts of great 
 responsibility. It seems to argue on the face of it a want 
 of sense of duty, and of patriotism, if not serious defects 
 of temper and of perseverance. The abdications of history 
 are not reassuring. Diocletian, Charles V., and Christina 
 are not the greater for their efforts at self-abnegation. 
 Achilles sulking in his tents when the Trojans were at 
 the ships is a picture on which every English schoolboy 
 instinctively looks with contempt. And the instinct is 
 right, because it springs from the conviction that a man 
 cannot withdraw from the work of his life, while his 
 powers are still unimpaired, without grave loss to himself 
 and others. 
 
 But to Fox politics never appeared in this serious way 
 as the work of his life. He was not a professional 
 politician as Diocletian or Pitt were professional politicians. 
 He was not even a professional Parliamentary soldier as 
 Achilles was a professional military warrior. The accident 
 of his birth had made him a politician. His extraordinary 
 political gifts had made him a leader. His sporting 
 instincts made him determine to be first in any race in 
 which he was engaged. His real and strong sympathv 
 for the oppressed, his burning love for liberty, urged him 
 ever against his will to throw himself into the foremost 
 place and fight stubbornly for office, because office meant 
 the opportunity of advancing the cause of liberty. But 
 in his heart of hearts these were after all but episodes, 
 episodes w r hich from time to time took up into themselves 
 all the threads of his life's story, but which were still to 
 him essentially episodes. His true life as he conceived 
 it to himself was a life of lettered ease, of quiet domestic 
 enjoyment. When he was young his real interests were at 
 Newmarket and at Almack's, now in middle age they
 
 122 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 were with Homer and at St. Ann's. He had by this time 
 formed the permanent connection with Miss Blane, usually 
 known as Mrs. Armistead, which afterwards ripened into 
 marriage, and which shewed him the delights of domestic 
 happiness. Half of his great political blunders came from 
 either an inability or a disinclination to take the trouble 
 to understand the game of politics, to find out what people 
 were thinking about, to ponder carefully how prejudice 
 might best be overcome and difficulties avoided. The 
 work of the party manager was distasteful to him and 
 scorned by him, for the simple reason that politics in 
 themselves had no attractions for him, but only the ends 
 which politics might serve, or the passing excitement of 
 the political battle. 
 
 So it naturally happened, that when all possibility of 
 carrying out the object which he desired passed away 
 with the election of 1784, and all the excitement of 
 the duel with the King was over, it seemed to him 
 mere waste of time to keep up a hopeless opposition 
 to Pitt and Dundas when he might be so much more 
 profitably employed upon Homer and Ariosto. Had he 
 been left to himself, the world would have seen no more 
 of Fox as a politician after 1784, but knowledge would 
 have been enriched by healthy and eminently sensible 
 criticisms on the great poets of Greece and Italy, and 
 possibly scholars might have been delighted by a treatise 
 which would have set the question of the Digamma for 
 ever at rest. But it was not to be. Fox, above all men, 
 was the slave of his friends. He felt deeply what he owed 
 to those who stood by him in adversity, and at their call 
 he emerged from his seclusion at St. Ann's to oppose 
 Pitt's best measures, and to bring renewed disgrace upon 
 his party by his mismanagement of the question of the 
 Hegency. 

 
 TEN YEABS OF OPPOSITION. 123 
 
 The opportunities which attended Pitt on his entrance 
 upon office, were such as a constitutional Minister rarely 
 enjoys. For five years he was undisputed master of the 
 country without any serious question to face except that of 
 Regency. For nine years he was unhampered by war. 
 Royal influence, which had proved so fatal to so many of 
 his predecessors, from the very nature of things became 
 extinct. He was the King's own choice. It was he that 
 had won for George his victory. Respected by the King 
 though not beloved, deferential though not subservient, 
 self-reliant, self-controlled, incorruptible, he was at once too 
 powerful and too useful to be dispensed with. Though 
 George III. never gave him his full confidence, as he had 
 given it to North, and afterwards gave it to Addiugton, 
 he never caballed against him. The party of the King's 
 friends insensibly passed into well-merited oblivion. Jen- 
 kinson their leader accepted a peerage at the hands of 
 Pitt. The old cry of secret influence died away. Cor- 
 ruption, which can only really thrive when opinion is 
 much divided and votes are precious, veiled her face and 
 tied from the presence of a high-principled Minister and 
 a united nation. The personal authority of the King in 
 administration, so long the war cry of the Tory party, 
 was indeed still acknowledged in word, but it ceased to 
 mean much when it was constitutionally exercised through 
 the Prime Minister. So it came about that Pitt was the 
 strongest and most independent Minister whom England 
 had had since the days of Walpole, and under him the 
 doctrine of the Prime Ministership, which has done more 
 than anything else to take political power out of the 
 hands of the Crown, became finally established. 
 
 Besides these advantages of his political position, Pitt 
 also enjoyed gifts of character and mind which peculiarly 
 fitted him for the post he occupied. From his earliest
 
 124 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 boyhood he had made the House of Commons his special 
 study, and, at the age of twenty-five was a far greater 
 master of the difficult art of directing that fastidious and 
 critical assembly than many a veteran of fifty years' Par- 
 liamentary experience. It is said that, since the Huuse of 
 Commons became the chief factor in the government of 
 England, there have been only five men who have 
 thoroughly possessed its confidence as its leader, namely, 
 Pym, Walpole, Pitt, Peel, and Disraeli, and of those 
 Pitt stands out a head and shoulders above the rest. In 
 the whole of his long Ministerial experience he never 
 made a tactical mistake in parliamentary management. 
 His oratory too was exactly suited to his position and to 
 the times in which he lived. Gifted with a rich sonorous 
 voice, and having at his command an extraordinary wealth 
 of words, which seemed to shape themselves without art 
 or premeditation into majestic periods, and found their 
 natural completion in the appropriate Virgilian quotation ; 
 rising at times to powerful and stirring declamation, 
 never sinking into vulgarity or colloquialism, he made his 
 oratory exactly to correspond to the demands of the 
 purest art form of the 18th century. To the House of 
 Commons of those days, when one and all of the members 
 were trained in the school of imitative classical taste, his 
 speeches seemed perfect and flawless, formed on the 
 best models, polished " usque ad unguem." To us they 
 appear cold, stilted, and colourless, artificial in expression 
 and unreal in feeling, " the glitter of the sunlight upon 
 the snow " as has been well said, or rather perhaps like a 
 Greek statue, perfect in form, graceful in outline, instinct 
 with feeling, but wanting life. 
 
 These great gifts of parliamentary tact and oratory 
 were directed to their proper channels of usefulness by a 
 character the distinguishing mark of which was self-control ;
 
 TEN YEARS OF OPPOSITION. 125 
 
 and by a manner carefully adapted to maintain by a cold 
 and distant address that ascendency which talent had 
 gained. Pitt walked among - mankind, pale, passionless, 
 and lofty, " with his eye in the air ; " only among his 
 most intimate friends would he unbend. It is character- 
 istic of him that, while in private life he was witty and 
 agreeable, " the wittiest man I ever knew," said his 
 intimate friend Rose, in public he never made or 
 attempted to make a joke. His one failing was drunken- 
 ness, and that was to a great extent brought on by the 
 necessity of stimulant to a frame physically weak, and to 
 a nature overburdened with the cares of an empire. In 
 the eyes of the eighteenth century it was a venial sin, and 
 one which he shared with most of his contemporaries. 
 Such a man as this lived but for one object, political 
 ascendency. Having by great good fortune attained it 
 at a very early period of his life, his whole energies were 
 devoted to its maintenance. Regardless of office, he was 
 greedy of power, he became morbidly timorous in any 
 action which might tend to endanger his ascendency, was 
 careful not to embark, if he could help it, on any policy 
 which threatened to be unsafe, and drew back at once 
 directly he encountered serious opposition. Thus he 
 soon came always to take the line of the least pressure. 
 In his legislation he was said to think much more of the 
 Parliament, which was to pass the law, than of the country 
 which was to be affected by it. His greatest failures 
 came from a want of courage in risking his ascendency 
 for what he believed to be a great national good. The 
 very antithesis of Fox, he counted over and over again 
 the cost of everything he said, and everything he proposd 
 to do, and frequently allowed the golden moment for 
 action to pass away while he was counting. If he had set 
 himself in 1784 to deal boldly and comprehensively with
 
 126 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 the great questions which were clamouring for settlement, 
 — Parliamentary Beform, the Removal of Eeligious Dis- 
 abilities, the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the Union 
 with Ireland, — he would have saved England from the 
 effects of a political convulsion which was dangerous only 
 jecause it was delayed so long ; he would have rescued her 
 from the grave dangers which now threaten her political 
 and social welfare, through the domination of a democracy 
 mentally and politically uneducated ; and he would have 
 handed his name down to posterity as the greatest states- 
 man as well as the greatest economist among the 
 Ministers of the century. But questions such as these 
 involved risk. They ran counter to powerful interests, 
 they were certain to excite formidable opposition. So 
 Pitt deliberately let slip his unique opportunity, and the 
 most loyal majority Minister ever had was used to reform 
 the customs duties, and establish a sinking fund, while 
 the real wounds of the nation were festering undressed 
 and unhealed. 
 
 One result of Pitt's careful and safe policy was a great 
 diminution in the vigour of the Opposition. The 
 economical measures passed by Pitt in 1784 and 1785 
 were thoroughly non-contentious in character, and, though 
 open to criticism in details, were calculated greatly to 
 benefit the finances of the country. Fox accordingly gave 
 them his hearty support. He did not understand finance, 
 he would not read Adam Smith, it was not therefore likely 
 that he would vie with Pitt on financial or economical 
 questions, or would be able to detect any fallacy in his 
 reasoning about the Sinking Fund. The commercial 
 treaty with France, by which a limited system of free 
 trade was introduced, was the only question which brought 
 the whole force of the Opposition to bear upon the 
 Ministry. The scheme is Pitt's best title to fame as a 

 
 TEN YEARS OF OPPOSITION. 127 
 
 financial statesman. The idea was originally that of 
 Shelburne, and was directly inspired by the writings of 
 Adam Smith ; but to Pitt belongs the credit of having 
 adopted it, made it his own, and, with the able assistance 
 of Eden as negotiator, carried it through. The speech of 
 Pitt in introducing it was one of his greatest oratorical 
 efforts, and was mainly directed to show the mutual 
 benefit in commerce which both countries must infallibly 
 receive. Fox, on the other hand, attacked it violently on 
 political grounds. He declared that France was England's 
 natural enemy, and it was only at England's expense that 
 she could grow. Her object in the present treaty was 
 merely to entangle England in her own system of politics, 
 in order to neutralise opposition to her further political 
 aggressions. Burke, Sheridan, Windham, and Grey (who 
 made his maiden speech on this occasion) all reiterated 
 the same complaints, and avowed their distrust of France. 
 But, in spite of this appeal to national prejudice, the measure 
 was passed by a majority of two to one, and the consumption 
 of French wine in the country was at once nearly doubled, 
 without any corresponding loss in the Portuguese 
 trade. 
 
 The detestation of France which showed itself so 
 strongly in the speeches of all the Whig leaders at this 
 time, and especially in those of Burke and Fox, sounds 
 somewhat strange in the mouth of a party which a few 
 years later was specially to identify itself with the French 
 nation, and to sacrifice much for the sake of France. The 
 fact was, that in this, as in so many other questions, there 
 was a great difference of view in the ranks of the Oppo- 
 sition, though as yet no difference of action. To the mind 
 of Burke and the older school of Whigs, France itself 
 appeared as the traditional enemy, resistance against 
 whom had been the cardinal principle of Whig foreign
 
 128 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 policy ever since the days of William III. Opposition to 
 France was as sacred a duty as the support of the glorious 
 Revolution. To Fox on the other hand, younger in years, 
 and more practical and more sympathetic in mind, France 
 was represented by her government, and was hateful, not 
 because she was France, but because she was the greatest 
 foe to liberty in Europe. Still, whatever the motive may 
 have been, the union of the whole Whig party against 
 the French treaty in 1785 shows how far behind their 
 opponents they were at that time in appreciation of the 
 directions in which the true liberty of a commercial nation 
 can best influence the world. 
 
 During the two years which followed the passing of the 
 French treaty, the public question in which Fox chiefly 
 interested himself was the impeachment of Warren 
 Hastings. For some time Burke had been deeply en- 
 traced in investigating the conduct of this remarkable man. 
 Starting with a preconceived conviction of his guilt, he 
 soon found enough to persuade himself that Hastings had 
 not merely dishonoured the British name by his tyranny 
 and extortion, but that he was himself the source and 
 centre of all the misgovernment of India. The subject 
 preoccupied Burke. It became almost a mania with him. 
 He could think and speak of nothing else, and the more 
 he talked the more Hastings dilated before his eyes as a 
 monster of iniquity, in himself the incarnation of govern- 
 mental wickedness. Fox and Sheridan approached the 
 matter from rather a different standpoint. The sufferings 
 of the people of India had ever been a subject which easily 
 touched Fox's tender heart. All his strong humanitarian 
 instincts were with them against their oppressors. He had 
 lodged the power of control in the Parliament of England 
 in his India Bill because he hoped thereby best to watch 
 over the interests of the ryots. He did not, like Burke,
 
 TEN YEABS OF OPPOSITION. 129 
 
 permit himself to be so carried away with passion as to be 
 insensible to Hastings' real services to India and the 
 country. He fully recognised that without him the British 
 power in India must have sunk, but he thought that no 
 amount of difficulties overcome, no amount of services 
 rendered, could justify conduct in itself rapacious and un- 
 just. Such arguments were merely a plea on a gigantic 
 scale for doing evil that good might come ; and he thought 
 that it would be a very useful lesson to teach both to the 
 servants of the Company and to the natives, that no 
 services however great, no station however high, could to 
 the minds of Englishmen be considered as excuse for 
 tyranny, or ward off the avenging stroke of offended 
 justice. 
 
 But besides these considerations, founded on general 
 principles of morality, it was not very difficult to see that 
 an impeachment of Warren Hastings, if successfully 
 carried out, would be of immense political advantage to 
 the Opposition. It was an open secret that the King 
 warmly espoused the cause of Hastings. It was whispered 
 that he even wished to place him at the head of the Board 
 of Control. An impeachment justly founded on strong 
 evidence would therefore place Pitt on the horns of a 
 dilemma. He must either surrender Hastings and forfeit 
 the King's favour, or support Hastings and put himself 
 in marked opposition to the moral sense of the country. 
 Accordingly the Opposition mustered all their strength 
 and carefully prepared their scheme. On the 17th of 
 February, 1786, Burke moved for papers. On the 4th 
 of April he produced articles of impeachment of Hastings 
 for his conduct with regard to the Eohillas, the Kajah of 
 Benares, and the Begums of Oude. Burke, Fox, and 
 Sheridan respectively undertook the tasks of explaining 
 these charges to the House. 
 
 K
 
 130 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Unfortunately a diletnm t in politics is rarely more 
 successful than a dilemma in argument, and Pitt found 
 little difficulty in picking his way through the toils which 
 his enemies had spun for him. When the Rob ilia charge 
 was brought before the House by Burke on the 1st of 
 June, Dundas, Pitt's closest friend and the President of 
 the Board of Control, took the lead in opposing the 
 motion on the ground that, however blameworthy Hastings' 
 conduct might have been, there was nothing on which to 
 found a criminal charge. Fox strongly supported Burke, 
 and descrihed the whole transaction as the basest of 
 bargains, to exterminate an inoffensive people for forty lacs 
 of rupees ; " for that sum," he cried, " tin* character, the 
 dignity, the honour of the English nation were basely and 
 treacherously exposed to sale." The House, however, 
 took tin 1 other view, and threw out the motion by a 
 majority of fifty-two. On the 13th of June Fox brought 
 forward the Benares charge, and at the beginning of the 
 following year Sheridan introduced that relating to Oude 
 in hii celebrated Begum speech, which has been pro- 
 nounced by so many competent judges to be the finest 
 display of eloquence ever listened to by the House of 
 Commons. In both these matters Pitt, though not fully 
 accepting the accounts of the Opposition, thought that 
 there was enough disclosed on which to found an impeach- 
 ment. He took a leading part in settling the articles 
 which were to be laid before the Lords, and, having thus 
 carefully avoided identifying himself with the doubtful 
 acts of Hastings, was content to let the impeachment drag 
 its weary length along, and absorb the energy of the 
 Opposition, which otherwise would be devoted to his own 
 policy. On the other hand, the King was wise enough to 
 see that after all a long and wearisome investigation was 
 the best way of avoiding any direct censure on Hastings,
 
 TEN YEARS OF OPPOSITION. 131 
 
 and never withdrew from Pitt any of his confidence for 
 the part which he had played. 
 
 But by far the gravest of the difficulties with which Fox 
 had to contend during this part of his political life was 
 his close connection with the Prince of Wales. A cha- 
 racter so low, mean, and degraded has rarely tarnished 
 the reputation of an English family. To find a parallel 
 we must go to the brutalised courts of Germany, to the 
 abandoned court of Louis XV., or to the barbarous court 
 of Russia in the eighteenth century. Immorality, waste- 
 fulness, and folly were at that time the recognised privileges 
 of princes of the blood. The Prince of Wales added to 
 them the mean and unkingly vices of shamelessness and 
 mendacity, while generous instincts and noble thoughts 
 seemed as far from his character as the more vulgar 
 feelings of filial or domestic affection. 
 
 It had become a sinister tradition in the House of 
 Hanover for the heir to the throne to be in violent 
 antagonism to his father. In the case of George III. 
 and his son antagonism ripened into a hatred which 
 neither side cared to attempt to conceal. The King, 
 harsh and unsympathetic, looked upon every act of boyish 
 independence as little better than rebellion. The Prince, 
 dissolute and. undutiful, took a malignant pleasure in 
 outraging his father's prim respectability. Partly to 
 annoy the King, partly because he had imbibed as real 
 an affection for Fox as his shallow nature was capable of, 
 he had from the first violently attached himself to the 
 Whigs, became a member of Brookes's, wore their colours, 
 voted for their measures, and celebrated the return of 
 Fox for Westminster with rejoicings which were as 
 indecent in a person of his position as they were up- 
 roarious. " There was not a more violent Foxite in the 
 kingdom," wrote Lord Cornwallis in 1 783. 
 
 k 2
 
 132 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Such conduct as this naturally did no small disservice 
 to his friends. It is characteristic of Fox that he never 
 seems to have pressed upon the Prince, perhaps he never 
 fully realised, the harm which was being done to his 
 party and to its leader. The secret of the King's rooted 
 antipathy to the Whigs, of his personal enmity to Fox, 
 is to be found mainly in the conduct of the Prince of 
 Wales. Of course George III. was strongly opposed to 
 the Whigs on political grounds. He would never, and lie 
 had never, accepted Whigs as his Ministers when he could 
 help himself; but there is a distinct difference to be 
 noted in his dealings with men like Chatham or Rocking- 
 ham, and his conduct to Fox. Partly, no doubt, it is to 
 be accounted for by the change in his own position. lie 
 was not so strong and not so experienced in the days of 
 Chatham and Rockingham as he was in the days of Fox 
 and the Duke of Portland. Partly it is to be explained 
 by the greater boldness of Fox's views; but, after making 
 all allowances for considerations such as these, there 
 remains behind a vast fund of suspicion and prejudice 
 which is only explicable on the grounds of a deep moral 
 hatred. George III. looked on Fox not merely as a 
 wrong-headed and unprincipled politician, but as the 
 preacher and the teacher of evil, a Mephistopheles who 
 had set himself to corrupt the morals and ruin the 
 character of his son ; who, having succeeded only too 
 well, had carried him off in triumph to head the party of 
 revolution against the Church and the throne. 
 
 Nor was this view, distorted and one-sided as it was, 
 wholly without foundation. The Prince's character was not 
 one wdiich required a Mephistopheles to ruin it. There 
 was not much of it left by the time he was out of the 
 nursery. But Fox, if not his leader, had certainly been 
 his companion in many a scene of dissipation while the
 
 TEN YEABS OF OPPOSITION. 133 
 
 Prince was yet a boy. The coterie of young Whig lords 
 by whom the Prince was surrounded, and whose ill-timed 
 jests and bets upon the succession rankled so deeply in 
 the heart of the King, were the devoted adherents of Fox. 
 His was the one influence which the Prince, on emerging 
 into manhood, willingly owned. He was the only man 
 in England who could have checked the headlong torrent 
 of extravagance and vice. Yet his influence, though 
 sometimes exerted for the public good, seems never to 
 have been used in purely private matters. Fox was 
 content to allow the Prince the same liberty which he 
 himself had enjoyed ; and so it happened that the want of 
 moral sense, so conspicuous throughout his whole career, 
 forced him to throw away the opportunity which he, and 
 he alone, could utilise. How could he, with his past 
 history of debt and of gambling, with his present history 
 of carelessness and immorality, play the part of Mentor ? 
 His own vices rose up in judgment against him, and 
 prevented him from using the only means which could 
 have reconciled the King to the Whigs, and paved the 
 way for his own return to office. " Ah que l'immoralite 
 de ma jeunesse a fait de tort a la chose publique," was 
 the exclamation of the despairing Mirabeau in similar 
 circumstances, and Fox, if he ever permitted himself to 
 reflect upon the connection between morals and politics, 
 must often have been tempted to re-echo the cry. 
 
 Ever since he was eighteen the Prince had alwavs 
 been under the influence of women. Usually each con- 
 nection that he formed proved as evanescent as it was 
 discreditable. But in 1784 he fell seriously and, as he 
 thought permanently, in love with Mrs. Fitzherbert, a 
 young widow of 28, with considerable personal attractions, 
 but a Roman Catholic by religion. Mrs. Fitzherbert at 
 first was naturally rather alarmed than flattered by her
 
 134 CHARLES JA1IES FOX. 
 
 conquest. Nothing daunted, however, by her coyness, 
 the Prince proceeded to lay siege to the fortress by every 
 contrivance known to the hero of a melodrama. He 
 made vows and protestations, he cried by the hour, he 
 rolled on the floor, he tore his hair, he wrote appalling 
 love-letters thirty-seven pages long, he went into hysterics, 
 lie sw r ore to give up his crown and his country, and even 
 descended to the mean triek of an affected suicide. It is 
 not often that a Prince has to push his suit to such 
 lengths. When a year had elapsed, and his passion still 
 seemed to remain as constant as ever, Mrs. Fitzherbert 
 could hold out no longer. In December, 1785, she 
 returned to England from her sanctuary abroad, and on 
 the 21st of the same month the two were married by an 
 English clergyman in the presence of at least six witnesses. 
 The step was one of .-erious political importance. By 
 the Royal Marriage Act the marriage was invalid, as 
 the previous consent of the Crown had not been obtained, 
 and the Prince was under twenty-live years of aire ; 
 but it was exceedingly doubtful whether this disability 
 would be held to exempt him from the penalties of the 
 Act of Settlement, by which marriage with a Roman 
 Catholic forfeited the succession to the Crown. The 
 doubt was so grave that Fox thought it his duty to 
 interfere. In a long and carefully worded letter, written 
 ten days before the marriage, he pointed out in terms of 
 respectful affection the seriousness of the issues at stake 
 both to the Prince and to the nation. lie was answered 
 in a few jaunty lines absolutely denying the truth of the 
 rumours "so malevolently circulated." Ten days after 
 this distinct denial, the marriage was celebrated, but kept 
 secret from Fox. It was impossible, however, to keep it 
 secret very long from the world. Early in 1786 the 
 bailiffs were in possession of Carlton House. The
 
 TEN YEARS OF OPPOSITION. 135 
 
 King refused to authorise his Ministers to make any 
 application to Parliament for his son's assistance. The 
 Opposition took the matter up, and in April, 1787, 
 Alderman Newnham gave notice of a motion for the 
 payment of the Prince's debts. During the year the 
 rumours of his marriage had been growing more and 
 more persistent. Many of the Opposition leaders, partly 
 on that account, were opposed to any application to 
 Parliament at all. The Duke of Portland had such a 
 stormy interview with the Prince that Burke thought that 
 the party would break up. Polle, the hero of the Holliad, 
 took up the cudgels for the Tories, and openly intimated 
 that the proposal if pressed would involve questions by 
 which the " constitution both in Church and State would 
 be affected." 
 
 On this Fox saw that some explanation was absolutely 
 necessary. He had an interview with the Prince, and on 
 the next day, speaking on his behalf, and having as he 
 avowed "direct authority for what he said," told the 
 House of Commons that "the Prince was willing to give 
 His Majesty and His Majesty's Ministers the fullest 
 assurances of the utter falsehood of the fact in question, 
 which never had, and which common sense must se& 
 never could have, happened." In consequence of this 
 explicit statement, the House voted £1(51,000 for the 
 payment of existing debts, and an addition was made by 
 the King to the Prince's allowance. On the morning 
 following Fox's statement, the Prince went up to 
 Mrs. Fitzherbert, and, taking her hands in his, said, 
 " Only conceive, Maria, what Fox did yesterday. He 
 went down to the House and denied that you and I were 
 man and wife." On the same evening a gentleman said 
 to Fox at Brookes's, " I see, Mr. Fox, by the papers, you 
 have denied the fact of the marriage of the Prince with
 
 136 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Mrs. Fitzherbert. You have been misinformed. I was 
 present at that marriage." 
 
 A story more incredibly base could not be found in 
 the whole range of fiction. It was bad enough that a 
 man of position and education should solemnly deny his 
 approaching marriage ten days before the ceremony took 
 place. That after he had been married more than a year, 
 he should instruct his friend publicly to brand his wife's 
 honour in the House of Commons, in order that, as the 
 price of her assumed shame, he might procure the pay- 
 ment of his own debts, shows an extent of moral obliquity 
 but little better than that of a father who lives on the 
 proceeds of his daughter's prostitution. After an act of 
 such vileness as this, his attempt to throw over Fox, 
 when he had made all the use of him that he could, seems 
 comparatively trifling, yet that violated the rules of social 
 honour no less than the other did those of domestic faith. 
 Fox himself had the rare courage to hold his tongue, and 
 not to make matters worse by publishing the gross 
 deception of which he had been made the victim, but the 
 relations between the two could, of course, never again be 
 the same. For a year he absolutely refused to have any 
 dealing at all with the Prince, but after that time the 
 necessities of party warfare, and his own easy standard of 
 morality, paved the way for a reconciliation. They 
 became once more political allies, but never again intimate 
 friends. 
 
 In the spring of 1788, Fox found himself able to carry 
 out a long-meditated tour in Switzerland and Italy. As 
 was usual with him, he abandoned himself wholly to the 
 delights of travel, banished all thoughts of politics, never 
 looked at an English paper except to see the result of a 
 race at Newmarket, and promised himself a long spell of 
 unalloyed happiness in the art galleries of Italy. The
 
 TEN YEARS OF OPPOSITION. 137 
 
 dream, however, was quickly dispelled. He bad only got 
 as far as Bologna on his way south, when he was 
 summoned home as quickly as he could travel by the 
 news of the alarming illness of the King ; and he had to 
 tear himself from the society of Guido Reni and the 
 Caracci — whom, strange to say, he greatly admired — in 
 order to plunge headlong into the keenest party fight 
 which had occurred since 1784. 
 
 For some months it had been evident to those about 
 the Court that the King's mind was slightly impaired, 
 but it was hoped that quiet and rest would enable him to 
 recover without drawing public attention to the matter. 
 At the beginning of November, however, his affection 
 took a serious turn for the worse. He completely lost his 
 reason, became violent and depressed by turns, and was 
 seized by a sharp attack of fever which placed his life for 
 some days in danger. Parliament was summoned to 
 meet on the 20th, and it was clear that on its assembling 
 immediate measures would have to be taken for con- 
 ducting the affairs of the country during the incapacity of 
 the Crown. To an ordinary observer the difficulty did 
 not seem to be a serious one. The Queen was the 
 natural person to take charge of the King, and the Prince, 
 now of full age, to succeed to the Regency. All politicians, 
 however, knew that the matter was not so simple as it 
 looked. It was thought at that time that the King's 
 incapacity was certain to last for months and probably for 
 years. It was certain that the first act of the Regent 
 would be to dismiss Pitt from office and recall the leaders 
 of the hated coalition. Men saw with horror the prospect 
 open out before them of a renewal of the party figjit of 
 17SI with the conditions reversed. They found them- 
 selves suddenly face to face with a minority Ministry, 
 resting wholly on royal support, bidding frantically for
 
 1 :J8 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 the votes of the constituencies, as their only safeguard 
 against the vengeance of the King, should his reason 
 return. 
 
 So over the stricken mind of George III., as of old 
 over the dead body of Patroclus, swayed the faction 
 fight. It is a melancholy chapter of English history. 
 Not one of those who took a leading part in the question 
 came out of it with increased reputation. The Prince 
 and the Duke of York showed an indecent haste to seize 
 upon the King's papers, and a desire to oust the Queen 
 from the guardianship of his person. They were believed 
 openly to exult in the prospect of reversing his most 
 cherished policy, and ejecting hi> chosen Minister. When 
 the King lay, as it was thought, dying, they were dancing, 
 gambling, and drinking. The Queen, zealous in the 
 extreme of her rights over the King's person, resented 
 any interference on the part of the Princes with an 
 acrimony which bordered on insult, deliberately denied 
 them information, and on the King's recovery, poisoned 
 his mind against them. Pitt, ever stately and dignified, 
 wasted time deliberately in the hope of the King's recovery, 
 and embittered opposition by the needless and ungenerous 
 restrictions which he sought to place upon the Regent. 
 The Opposition completely lost their heads on the sudden 
 prospect of a return to power. They threw to the winds 
 all respect and thought for the terrible blow which had 
 fallen upon the head of the State. They took a pleasure 
 in magnifying his infirmities. They prophesied the 
 impossibility of his recovery. Burke especially was so 
 carried away that he almost gloated over his sufferings. 
 Fox and the Duke of Portland settled their Cabinet, and, 
 it was said, allotted their patronage before the Regency 
 was an accomplished fact. 
 
 On all sides mismanagement was rife, but Fox was
 
 TEN YEARS OF OPPOSITION. 130 
 
 chiefly responsible for the blow sustained by his own 
 
 party. His want of parliamentary tact again put the 
 
 game into his adversary's hands. Parliament met on the 
 
 20th of November, and on December 8th the Commons 
 
 examined the King's physicians as to the state of his 
 
 health, and drew up a report. On the 10th, Pitt, in 
 
 consequence of the report, moved that a committee should 
 
 be appointed to search for precedents, with a view of 
 
 laying a foundation for a Regency Bill, which he 
 
 proposed to introduce. Fox, who had been in England 
 
 more than a fortnight, and had had ample opportunity of 
 
 consulting his friends, strongly protested against the 
 
 adoption of this course. 
 
 "It is sheer loss of time to search for precedents," he said. "The 
 circumstances to be provided for does not depend upon our deliberations 
 as a House of Parliament. It rests elsewhere. There is now a person 
 in the kingdom different from any other person that existing precedents 
 can refer to, an heir-apparent of full age and capacity to exercise the 
 royal power. In my firm opinion the Prince of Wales has as clear as 
 express a right to assume the reins of government, and exercise the powers 
 of sovereignty, during the continuance of the illness and incapacity with 
 which it has pleased God to afflict His Majesty, as in the case of His 
 Majesty's having undergone a natural and perfect demise. As to this 
 right which I conceive the Prince of Wales to have, he himself is not to 
 judge when he is entitled to exercise it, but the two Houses of 
 Parliament, as the organs of the nation, are alone qualified to pronounce 
 when the Prince ought to take possession of and exercise this right." 
 
 The joy of the Ministerial party when they heard this 
 clear enunciation of the doctrine of hereditary, as ao-ainst 
 parliamentary, right from the lips of the Whig leader can 
 easily be imagined. "I'll unwhig the gentleman," cried 
 Pitt as Fox was speaking, " for the rest of his life." 
 
 ' Of the momentous business opened last night," wrote Sir William 
 Young to the Marquis of Buckingham, '• I can only say that our 
 astonishment is only equalled by the spirits we are in. on viewing the 
 grounds Mr. Fox has abandoned to us and left our own. Talbot, who 
 made one of my morning's leve'e, told me that at White's last night all 
 was hurra and triumph.''
 
 HO CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Pitt seized the opportunity with masterly skill. Once 
 more the blunders of his rival had enabled him to stand 
 forth in the eves of the world as the champion of the 
 King and the Constitution. Turning upon Fox, he 
 denounced the doctrine he had just heard as treason to 
 the Constitution, a reassert ion of the exploded doctrine of 
 indefeasible right In vain Fox tried to explain away his 
 words, to induce the House to leave abstract questions 
 alone, and proceed to practical matters. Pitt fully 
 understood his advantage and meant to press it Fox, 
 he said, had deliberately raised the question of abstract 
 ri>rbt. He had claimed for the Prince a vested right to 
 the Regency. It was impossible to stir a step until the 
 question of right was determined, for it touched the very 
 vitals of the ( 'on-titution. A few days afterwards 
 Sheridan added fuel to the flame by reminding the 
 House of the danger of provoking the Prince to assert 
 his right 'Fhc effect was instantaneous. "During the 
 whole time that I have .-at in Parliament," writes 
 W. Grenville to his brother, " I never remember such an 
 uproar as was raised by his threatening." Visions of the 
 davs of Charles J. floated before the members' eyes. 
 Parliament was being openly defied and threatened. 
 The principles of Divine right, and of the indefeasible 
 authority of princes, seemed again to rear themselves 
 from their slumber, and place the liberties of Englishmen 
 once more in jeopardy. Well might Grenville say in 
 another letter : — 
 
 " Only think of Fox's want of judgment, to bring himself and his 
 friends into such a scrape as he has done by maintaining a doctrine of 
 higher Tory principle than could have been found anywhere since Sir 
 Robert Sawyer's speeches." 
 
 Never was Pitt's singular parliamentary ability so 
 evident as in his management of the Regency question.
 
 TEN YEABS OF OPPOSITION. 141 
 
 J I is was the worst case to argue from the point of view 
 of constitutional law, but Fox, with his usual carelessness, 
 had used words which were easily capable of being inter- 
 preted in an unconstitutional sense. Pitt immediately 
 fastened this meaning upon them, and from that moment 
 all attempts to explain appeared as attempts to explain 
 away. To us there cannot help being something 
 ludicrous in the picture of Fox and Sheridan standing in 
 the pillory of public opinion with Atterbury and Sache- 
 verell as the apostles of Divine right. We wonder that 
 Parliament did not at once see the juke and sweep the 
 cobweb away with a hearty peal of laughter. But to 
 men of that day the danger to the Constitution seemed 
 serious enough. The tarnished character of the Prince of 
 Wales, and the distrust so generally felt in Fox since the 
 coalition, made men unwilling to entrust to their keeping 
 the full powers of sovereignty, and afraid of acknowledging 
 a principle which seemed to put them outside the sphere 
 of parliamentary control. 
 
 As a matter of policy Pitt was undoubtedly right. It 
 was better under the circumstances to disregard consti- 
 tutional logic. It was wiser to confer the Regency on the 
 Prince, and to restrict his powers by Act of Parliament, 
 although such a course necessitated the creation of a 
 phantom King, than it was to place the whole household as 
 well as the whole administration unreservedly in the hands 
 of a Prince, who could not understand that a constitutional 
 King must not be a party leader. Put as a matter of 
 constitutional law Fox's view was by far the most logical 
 and comprehensive. The Crown of England is here- 
 ditary, not elective. Incapacity in the King must be 
 considered in the light of a temporary demise, on the 
 occurrence of which the temporary succession passes at 
 once to the heir if of age, and preserves the continuity of
 
 142 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 the Constitution. Parliament, apart from the King, as 
 the great council of the nation, may well recognise this 
 state of affairs and call upon the Prince to enter upon his 
 new duties ; but Parliament, as part of the legislature 
 apart from the King, has no power at all. It cannot by 
 itself pass the smallest measure, much less impose 
 restrictions on the executive. To get over the difficulty 
 by making the affixing of the Great Seal by a Parlia- 
 mentary Commission tantamount to the royal assent, was 
 to introduce a totally new principle into the Constitution, 
 and one far more dangerous than that of the inherent 
 right of the Prince of Wales, for it came very near to 
 dispensing with the royal assent altogether. 
 
 " It was intended." said Burke, " to set up a man with black eyebrows 
 and a large wig, a kind of Bcarecrow to the two Houses, who was to 
 
 give a fictitious assent m the royal name. The farce reminds me of a 
 priest among savages, who raised an idol and directed its worship 
 merely that he might secure to himself the meat that was offered as a 
 sacrifice." 
 
 Fortunately for both parties the necessity for a decision 
 never arose. Ireland, following the arguments of Fox. 
 recognised the Prince as Regent in his own right. In 
 England Pitt's bill, vesting the Regency in the Prince, 
 but placing the whole management of the King's person 
 and household in the hands of the Queen, and restricting 
 very considerably the patronage exercisable by the 
 Regent, passed the Commons and was before the Lords 
 when the King recovered. Had it passed, and had the 
 Prince, in accordance with his expressed intention, 
 dismissed Pitt, summoned to his counsels Fox and the 
 Duke of Portland and dissolved Parliament, the result 
 would not improbably have somewhat disillusioned the 
 Whig leaders. There is good reason to believe that thfr 
 country in the full flow of its sympathy for the King, and
 
 TEN YEARS OF OPPOSITION. 143 
 
 its indignant contempt for the Prince, with its deep- 
 rooted suspicion of Fox, unappeased and unappeasable, 
 would have inflicted upon the Whigs a chastisement so 
 severe as almost to wipe them out of existence as a 
 political party. 
 
 Among those who played t re sorriest of parts in the 
 Regency question was Thurlow', the Lord Chancellor. lie 
 had ever been among the stoutest of the henchmen of the 
 King, and had acted as detective on behalf of the King 
 in the Ministry of Rockingham. But there was one thing 
 which he valued more than the King, and that was the 
 woolsack. He had got accustomed to it, had grown to it 
 in the course of so many years, and could not bear the 
 thought of having to surrender it to Loughborough if the 
 Whigs came in. Fortunately for him, what Sir G. Elliot 
 finely calls his "table qualities," had endeared him to the 
 Prince of "Wales, and this gave him an opportunity of 
 standing' well with both sides. When the King was first 
 taken ill, Thurlow made up his mind that recovery was 
 hopeless, and at once put himself into communication with 
 'the Prince and the Luke of Portland. Secret interviews 
 were held, and pledges given, and it soon began to be 
 whispered on the Ministerial side that the Chancellor was 
 playing false. Much amusement was caused one day after 
 a Cabinet Council by the conduct of a page, who, having 
 been sent in search of Thurlow's hat, which was not to be 
 found, at last brought the missing article into the room 
 where the Ministers were assembled, with the naive but 
 compromising remark, "My Lords, I found it in the 
 closet of the Prince of Wales." When Fox returned from 
 Italy he found it practically settled that Thurlow was to 
 retain the woolsack, and there was nothing left for him 
 but to acquiesce. " I have swallowed the pill," he wrote 
 to Sheridan, " and a most bitter one it was : I do not
 
 144 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 remember ever feeling 1 so uneasy about any political thing 
 I ever did in my life." As the King's health improved, 
 however, so did Thurlow's loyalty. He ceased his visits to 
 the Prince, he became an ardent admirer of the Regency 
 Bill. When it was certain that the King would recover, 
 his zeal knew no bounds. Going down to the House of 
 Lords, he drew a picture of the King in his affliction which 
 touched all hearts, then, bursting into a flood of tears, he 
 allowed himself to be carried away in a paroxysm of 
 exuberant loyalty, and finished an impassioned peroration 
 with the exclamation, " When I forget my King, may my 
 God forget me." " Forget you," muttered Burke, who 
 stood near, " the best thing that could happen to you." 
 " Forget you," repeated Wilkes, with more wit than 
 
 reverence, " He will see you d d first." Pitt never 
 
 forgot the hypocrisy of this scene, and took the earliest 
 opportunity of placing the Great Seal in safer hands. 
 
 The following epitaph, one of the most pungent 
 lampoons which ever destroyed a reputation, shows the es- 
 timation in which the Chancellor's character was generally 
 held at the time : — 
 
 " To the memory of Tlmrlow. 
 
 Here lies, beneath the prostituted mace, 
 A patriot, with but one base wish — place. 
 Here lies, beneath the prostituted purse, 
 A peer with but one talent, how to curse. 
 Here lies, beneath the prostituted gown, 
 The guardian of all honour, but his own. 
 Statesman, with but one rule his steps to guide, 
 To shun the sinking, take the rising side. 
 Judge, witli but one ba*e law — to serve the time, 
 And see in wealth no weakness, power no crime. 
 Christian, with but one value for the name, 
 The scoffer's prouder privilege — to blaspheme. 
 Briton, with but one hope — to live a slave 
 And dig in deathless infamy his grave."
 
 TEN YEARS OF OPPOSITION. 145 
 
 If the Regency question was the most interesting, it was 
 certainly not the most useful of the subjects which claimed 
 the attention of Fox in Parliament during the ten years 
 which elapsed between the overthrow of the coalition and 
 the outbreak of the great war. During his whole 
 political career, Fox had never wavered in his unqualified 
 support of the removal of religious disability, the reform of 
 the House of Commons, and the abolition of the slave 
 trade ; but it is clear from his published utterances that 
 the three subjects appealed in a very different way to 
 his mind and heart. Parliamentary reform he had 
 inherited as an acknowledged part of the Whig policy, ever 
 since George III. had shown that the conditions of an 
 unreformed House of Commons were as favourable for 
 the maintenance of Tory as they had been of Whig 
 ascendency. Tt was a subject which the Opposition 
 naturally took up when kept out of office by aristocratic or 
 kingly influence. It was a subject they as naturally 
 dropped when that influence was on their side. Fox never 
 seems to have thoroughly understood the importance of 
 the subject, or appreciated its bearing upon national 
 liberty and progress. Even the disasters of the Wilkes 
 case and of the American War only taught him the evils 
 of corruption, not of faulty representation, and he had no 
 scruples in 1783 in pressing the wishes of an unrepre- 
 sentative House of Commons against the obvious wishes 
 of the people. Pitt was the oidy statesman of that 
 generation who really saw something of the deeper issues 
 of the question, but after 1785, when the existing system 
 seemed to be producing such excellent results, and any 
 attempt to alter it boded such indefinite dangers, he was 
 quite content to soothe his conscience to sleep by the 
 time-honoured opiate of Walpole's maxim, Quieta non 
 mo i- ere. 
 
 L
 
 146 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 The truth is, Reform is essentially an Opposition 
 question. No Government as long as it is strong in 
 Parliament and popular in the constituencies is likely to be 
 very anxious to try experiments. An Opposition, on the 
 contrary, in the position of the Opposition of 1784, had 
 every motive for energy. They had a great stain to wipe 
 off their political escutcheon. They had a great defeat 
 to avenge. They had every reason to welcome political 
 experiments, for they could not be worse off than they were. 
 It was true that some members of the party, like Burke, 
 were opposed to any measure of reform, but they were very 
 few in number. If Fox had had his heart in the question 
 he would never have rested until he had forced his rival 
 from his retreat, or have torn his weapons out of his feeble 
 and unwilling- hands and used them against him with deadly 
 effect. But Fox did neither of these things. He took no 
 action whatever between the abandonment of the cause by 
 Pitt in 17iST). and its revival under the influence of the 
 French Revolution by Flood in 1790. In that year he 
 supported Flood in a short and languid speech. In 
 
 1791 he again allowed the question to drop, and in 
 
 1792 resigned it permanently to Grey and the Society 
 of the Friends of the People, although he disapproved 
 of the Society himself, refused to become a member of 
 it, and must have known perfectly well that in the 
 exasperated state of public opinion the only result of 
 permitting the Society to monopolise reform would be 
 to unite the whole Tory party in blind opposition to 
 the question, and postpone indefinitely all possibility of 
 settling it on a fair and reasonable basis. There was 
 at that time no subject of more vital importance to the 
 well-being of England than that of parliamentary reform. 
 That its solution was postponed to a date at which it 
 could not fail to bring with it some of the evils of a
 
 TEN YEABS OF OPPOSITION. 147 
 
 revolution, was due almost as much to the indolence of 
 Fox as to the selfishness of Pitt. 
 
 In the various attempts made between 1783 and 1793 
 to remove religious disabilities, Fox played a more gene- 
 rous part. The idea of freedom from personal restriction 
 formed a large part of his conception of liberty. His 
 thoughts on the due relations of Church and State had 
 never been profound or comprehensive. He moved with 
 but slightly greater ease in the atmosphere of religion 
 than he did in that of finance. A comparison of his 
 speeches on these subjects with those of Burke, discloses at 
 a glance the whole difference between the views of a man 
 who has studied a problem with an intense desire to 
 arrive at the true solution, and has an intimate and heart- 
 felt sympathy with the subject-matter of his thought ; and 
 the judgmentof a clear, forcible, and powerful mind brought 
 to bear upon an unaccustomed subject, the full bearings of 
 which it does not, and perhaps does not care to, wholly 
 understand. Fox fully grasped the principle of religious 
 toleration. That any one should be prevented by law 
 from worshipping God in his own way (provided, of 
 course, there was no outrage of public order or decency) 
 was hateful to his mind. He laid down the broad prin- 
 ciple that the State has nothing to do with the opinions, 
 but only with the actions of men. He supported with 
 all his energy the Catholic Relief Acts of 1778 and 1791, 
 and himself brought the religious grievances of the 
 Unitarians before Parliament in 1792. But the doctrine 
 of religious toleration was not seriously disputed. Pitt 
 himself was responsible for the Relief Act of 1791, and 
 the Bishops supported it as eagerly as Fox. Even Lord 
 North, now infirm and blind, had himself carried down to 
 the House to speak in favour of the Unitarians, and the 
 bill was only lost because the Commons agreed with 
 
 l 2
 
 U8 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Burke that they were really quite as much a revolu- 
 tionary political faction as they were a religious hody. 
 
 On tin' much more serious question of the admission to 
 offices in the State of persons opposed to the religion of 
 the State, Fox never really faced the difficulties of his 
 own position. He had an amiable desire that everybody 
 should have what they wanted. He thought it absurd 
 and unreasonable to deprive the King of the services of 
 able and loyal men because of their religious opinions. 
 He had a very natural and just abhorrence of the par- 
 ticular test imposed upon Nonconformists by the legisla- 
 tion of Charles II., which excluded the conscientious, put 
 nu hindrance in the way of the sacrilegious, and placed a 
 very unfair burden upon the consciences of the clergy. 
 His own view of the Church was that put forward by 
 Hoadly at the beginning of the century, and adopted by 
 VValpole and the Whigs. In the language of the 
 18th century, it was the low-church view, and in modern 
 days would be termed Erastian. According to this view, 
 the Church was merely a State organisation for the 
 teaching of morality upon a religious basis. Its functions 
 were to inculcate good and reprove evil, and the more 
 reasonably and moderately it discharged these functions, 
 the more splendid appeared its reputation to the eyes of 
 Fox. It was the sanction of the State which gave its 
 authority to the Church, and even apparently secured the 
 truth of its teaching. " I will ever commend," he once 
 cried, with a momentary aberration into nonsense, " the 
 enlightened policy of the time of the Union, which 
 allowed both the kirk in Scotland and the hierarchy in 
 England to be religions equally true ! " " Equally true " 
 certainly no Act of Parliament could make them, but 
 what he meant, no doubt, was " equally the religion of the 
 State," for his argument was that, if the State thus recog-
 
 TEN TEARS OF OPPOSITION. 149 
 
 nised authoritatively two religions within its borders, it 
 could not logically object to be served by those who 
 differed in religion. The Test and Corporation Acts 
 accordingly seemed to him as simply acts of persecution 
 imposed by a dominant party in the interests of monarchy. 
 With the more enlightened views of the 18th century, 
 all excuse for such persecution had passed away, and 
 Fox looked forward with hope to the time when the 
 State would have nothing to say to opinion whatever, 
 religious or irreligious, and offices from the highest to the 
 lowest should be thrown open to all, irrespective of creed. 
 The ideal was a noble one. It is one of Fox's chief 
 claims to be considered the founder of the new Whig 
 party, that he formulated so distinctly the exact meaning 
 of the policy of religious liberty which has since been 
 carried into effect by them. Yet it was a policy essen- 
 tially incomplete, too narrow in its basis, too sectarian in 
 its objects to be wholly successful. It was the policy of 
 an opportunist, not of a statesman, an opportunist imper- 
 fectly acquainted with the gravity of the problem with 
 which he was dealing, and only able to see one small 
 part of it at a time. 
 
 The adjustment of the relations between Church and 
 State to the problems caused by the existence of religious 
 division has been the most crucial question with which Eng- 
 land has had to deal since the Reformation. Henry VIII. 
 and Elizabeth had no doubt at all about the principle 
 which ought to be followed. It was that of the absolute 
 oneness of Church and State under the Crown, a principle 
 which found its necessary and logical expression in the 
 attempt to insist that every officer and member of the 
 one State should also be a member of the one Church. 
 The whole theory of the Royal Supremacy, and the whole 
 policy of religious uniformity, with its long series of penal
 
 150 
 
 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 acts, rest alike upon this basis. The great and typical 
 work of Hooker takes it as its central thought. Opposed 
 to the popular religion of the day, the principle failed 
 and was overthrown at the Great Rebellion. It revived 
 at the Kestoration, but the number of religious dissidents 
 was then so great that its maintenance became intensely 
 difficult, and the Test and Corporation Acts were passed 
 with the express object of defending it, fiction though it 
 had grown to be. At the Revolution it underwent a 
 modification. The principle which had succeeded so 
 well under Richelieu in France was adopted in Eng- 
 land, which may be shortly expressed in the formula 
 — Religious Toleration — State Uniformity. The oneness 
 of Church and State was still to be maintained for the 
 security of the State, for the preservation of continuity in 
 the constitution, for the dignity o\' the ( 'liureh ; but liberty 
 of conscience was to be respected in religious mutters. 
 
 But the proposals of Fox went to the length of sweeping 
 away tlu- principle altogether, and establishing in its place 
 the totally opposite one that the State is wholly apart 
 from religion, and has nothing to do with it. And he did 
 not see that the carrying out of this principle, simply by 
 the removal of existing disabilities upon Nonconformists, 
 was in reality only a half measure of religions liberty. 
 It left the Church still under the operation of the theory 
 of the oneness of Church and State, and — as the his- 
 torical results of that theory — under the operation of the 
 Royal Supremacy and of parliamentary control. That is 
 to say, he left the largest religious body in England 
 under the control of an assembly, the doors of which 
 he had just opened to its' enemies, and subject to no 
 slight extent in its administration to the supremacy 
 of a Crown which, owing to the advance of Whig prin- 
 ciples, was every day becoming more and more merged
 
 TEN YEARS OF OPPOSITION. 151 
 
 in Parliament. Such disabilities, with regard to legisla- 
 tion and management, were intelligible enough and of 
 little practical moment when the State legislature and exe- 
 cutive were bound up with the Church. They amounted 
 to a very galling tyranny when the State legislature 
 contained a sufficient number of the enemies of the 
 Church to prevent it from carrying out the smallest 
 reform in its own organisation, or adapting itself to the 
 new claims which the growth of population were daily 
 making. To maintain an Established Church, with the 
 existing theory of the Royal Supremacy, after it had been 
 established as a principle of the Constitution that the 
 State, as such, has nothing to do with religion, was a 
 contradiction in terms, and an injustice in fact. Fox 
 himself was strongly in favour of the maintenance of an 
 Established Church, as long as it was the Church of the 
 majority ; but when he proposed to alter the whole basis 
 upon which an Established Church had been dealt with 
 since the Reformation, he ought, at least, to have taken 
 care that, in giving religious liberty to a minority, he was 
 not taking it away from the majority of the nation. Fox 
 himself never saw the completion of the work which he 
 took over from Beaufoy in 1792. During the terror of 
 the French Revolution a Tory Parliament was not likely 
 to alter lightly an important constitutional principle. 
 But it was Fox who planted this particular measure in 
 the seed plot of Whig policy, a.ul when the tarn of tin- 
 political wheel gave a majority to the Whigs, it was too 
 late for politicians to see anything beyond the party 
 triumph and the party obligations. They carried the bill, 
 they did not solve the question. 
 
 In his advocacy of personal liberty, Fox was on safer, 
 because on more congenial, grounds. Ever since the 
 decisions of Lord Mansfield in Wilkes's case, the com is
 
 152 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 had continued to hold that in a case of libel it was in the 
 province of the judge to say whether the words or writing 
 complained of constituted a libel, while the duty of the 
 jury was confined to saying whether the alleged libel was 
 published. This doctrine seemed to most statesmen and 
 to some lawyers, notably Lord Camden, to be seriously 
 detrimental to the liberty of the subject, and to impair 
 the right of every Englishman to be tried by his peers. 
 Erskine, in an eloquent speech in the Dean of Asaph's 
 case, drew public attention to the matter, and Fox applied 
 the proper parliamentary remedy. In 1791 he succeeded 
 in passing through Parliament, with Pitt's support, an Act 
 declaratory of the law of libel, by which it was asserted 
 by Parliament that the jury had the power of findinc a 
 general verdict upon the whole issue as in other criminal 
 cases. This was Fox's chief personal contribution to the 
 statute book. It contains only four clauses, but its 
 importance in securing personal liberty is but little less 
 than that of the Habeas Corpus Act itself. 
 
 In his effort to procure the abolition of the Slave Trade 
 Fox is seen at his best. He far outstripped all his con- 
 temporaries, except AVilberforce, in zeal, and presented in 
 his single-hearted humanity a striking contrast to the 
 calculating selfishness of Pitt. In his first speech on 
 the subject he laid down the broad principle that the 
 Slave Trade must not be regulated but abolished ; and to 
 this he resolutely adhered until the opportunity came for 
 him to carry his words into effect. In 1791, speaking to 
 Mr. Wilberforce's motion for a committee, he delivered 
 what some critics have considered the finest of his speeches 
 in Parliament. There is a ring of true enthusiasm about 
 it, wholly wanting in his speeches on the Test Act, and 
 in it he shows clearly the reasons which led him to speak 
 so strongly as he did : —
 
 TEN YEARS OF OPPOSITION. 153 
 
 " No man," he proudly said, " will suspect me of being an enemy to 
 political freedom. Political freedom is undoubtedly as great a blessing 
 as any people under heaven can pant after, but political freedom, when 
 it comes to be compared with personal freedom, sinks into nothing, and 
 becomes no blessing at all by comparison. It is personal freedom that is 
 now the point in question. Personal freedom must be the first object 
 of every human being. It is a right, and he who deprives a fellow 
 creature of it is absolutely criminal, and he who withholds when it is 
 in his power to restore it, is no less criminal in withholding." 
 
 Fox had indeed declared war with his whole heart 
 against arbitrary power exercised against individual 
 liberty. It was that which inspired his attacks upon 
 George III. and the American War. It was that which 
 impelled him to place the segis of Parliament over the 
 ryot of India. It was that which urged him in hot haste 
 to the punishment of Warren Hastings. It was that 
 which made him see nothing but hope in the rising of the 
 French peasant, and triumph in the mil of the Bastille. 
 It was a generous sentiment, and it sprang from a 
 generous and warm heart. Never was it more generously 
 and wisely invoked than in the assault against that castle 
 manned by selfishness and tyranny, and peopled by misery 
 and despair, known as the African Slave Trade : — 
 
 " I spoke," he writes to T. Grenville after the division, " I believe very 
 well, and indeed it is the thing which has given me most pleasure since 
 I saw you ; for I do think it is a cause in which one ought to be an 
 enthusiast, and in which one cannot help being pleased with oneself for 
 having done right."
 
 154 
 
 GUAELES JAMES FOX. 
 
 CHAPTER VI II. 
 
 Till: WAB WITH FRANCE. 
 
 "How much the greatest event it is that ever happened 
 in the world and how much the best." Such was the 
 comment of Fox on the arrival of the news of" the fall of 
 the Bastille on July 14th. 1 789. It expresses concisely his 
 consistent opinion on the French Revolution. Nor indeed 
 could it he otherwise. Fox could not remain Fox and 
 not see the best side of the Revolution, any more than 
 Burke could remain Burke and not sec the worst. Fox 
 had ever been an asserter of abstract rights, just as Burke 
 had been the apostle of practical expediency. Fox was 
 always ready to attack and destroy the abuse which 
 seemed to him to threaten the national well-being, Burke 
 to improve it till it ceased to be an abuse. To Burke 
 institutions were sacred tilings, valuable in themselves for 
 the history to which they witnessed, for the security which 
 they guaranteed. To Fox they were but the creation of 
 the people, they existed but for the welfare of the 
 governed, and they ought to exist not one moment longer 
 than they ministered to that welfare. While Fox was 
 unrinff the riffht of the American Colonists to resi&t 
 injustice and claim freedom, Burke w;is pointing out the 
 impossibility of coercing a country 3000 miles away.
 
 TEE WAR WITE FRANCE. 155 
 
 ^ hile Fox was vindicating the rio-ht of the natives of 
 India to just government at our hands, Burke was de- 
 claiming against outrages inflicted upon a religion and a 
 philosophy among the most venerable in the world. 
 While Fox was demanding the formal disavowal by the 
 Legislature of the last vestiges of religious persecution, 
 Burke's eyes were fixed upon the danger of disturbing the 
 old relations between Church and State. With his intense 
 love of personal and political liberty, with his intense 
 hatred of arbitrary power, with his strong vivid sympathy 
 for suffering humanity, his simple faith in human nature, 
 his belief in abstract right, his possession of keen sensi- 
 bilities, his lack of deep political thinking, Fox could not 
 fail to throw all his enthusiasm and all his strength into a 
 movement, which had for its object the emancipation of 
 man from one of the most corrupt and abject tyrannies 
 that have ever oppressed the human race. 
 
 All that was best in Fox's nature rose in protest against 
 the ancieti regime. lie had looked upon France hitherto 
 as the chief mainstay of despotism in Europe. Now she 
 was standing forth among nations as the pioneer of 
 liberty. The very unexpectedness of the change disarmed 
 criticism and awakened enthusiasm. That a movement 
 in favour of liberty could come from such a quarter raised 
 hopes indeed of a return to the golden age. Nor were 
 these hopes as chimerical as such hopes usually are. The 
 first aets of the Bevolution in France were conceived dis- 
 tinctly on constitutional lines. An influential party in the 
 Assembly deliberately adopted the English constitution as 
 their model. It was the bourgeoisie not the populace, 
 that reaped the fruits of the destruction of the Bastille. 
 It was they who ascended the throne left vacant by the 
 abdication of Louis. It was they who bargained with 
 their King almut the terms on which monarchy might be
 
 156 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 preserved. There was nothing to an English mind 
 necessarily dangerous or revolutionary in all this. The 
 party who were superseding Louis in France belonged to 
 just the same class as those who made Parliament supreme 
 over the King in England in 1640. The abolition of 
 feudal rights, voted on the memorable 4th of Aumist. 
 merely did at one blow what England had long ago done 
 by gradual steps. Even the civil constitution of the clergy 
 would seem a step in the right direction to a Whig of the 
 religious school of Hoadly; and the declaration of the 
 rights of man, with its inflated and magniloquent language, 
 would seem a mere piece of French rhetoric inspired by 
 the example of the American colonists and on that 
 account more than pardonable. Fox was not alone in this 
 view of affairs. All Whigs, and indeed most Tories, 
 agreed with him in the cordial sympathy which they 
 extended to their neighbours in their struggle to be free. 
 They were flattered by the evident respect with which 
 Filmland was looked upon as the pattern of free States. 
 The} considered that a constitution, based upon popular 
 election, in which the King was head of the executive, 
 chose 1 is Ministers, and had a suspensive veto on legisla- 
 tion, was an eminently sensible and practical scheme 
 well calculated to give to France the blessing of free 
 institutions. 
 
 But by the beginning of the session of 1791 a con- 
 siderable change had passed over English opinion. The 
 violence of the Paris mob, the occasional outbreaks of 
 unreasoning and cruel fury, the brutal disrespect shown 
 to the royal captives at the Tuileries, made the tide of 
 sympathy to ebb. Revolutions, if they are to receive the 
 applause of England, must be conducted on the English 
 model, and be decorous, re-trained, and perhaps even 
 dull. To the close observer far more serious symptoms
 
 THE WAR WITH FRANCE. 157 
 
 were showing themselves. The doctrines of the rights of 
 
 man, taught by Rousseau and embodied in the declaration 
 of 1789, were seen to be no mere fanfaronade, but a 
 solemn and earnest political faith, which the clubs of 
 Paris were prepared not merely to hold but to enforce. 
 The seizure of the property of the Church, the application 
 of the principle of election to all ecclesiastical offices, the 
 imposition of the oath to the civil constitution upon all 
 clergy, appeared like deliberate attacks upon the oldest 
 institution in France, if not a declaration of war against 
 religion itself. Men asked themselves anxiously, Was the 
 connection between the revolution of 1780 and that of 
 1688 so close after all? With the King a prisoner, the 
 Church an enemy, the rights of property threatened, the 
 old landmarks of the nation swept away, the doctrine of 
 the natural equality of man proclaimed as the cardinal 
 principle of the revolution, France seemed to have cut 
 herself off from her past history altogether, and to be 
 sliding down the inclined plane of revolution into the 
 abyss of anarchy, without hope of safety, and without 
 possibility of recovery. 
 
 When doubts such as these were in men's minds, the pub- 
 lication of Burke's ' Reflections on the French Revolution ' 
 turned those doubts into certainties. Never did political 
 pamphlet have so immediate and striking an effect. It 
 was not mainly because the principles of government 
 which Burke laid down were so convincing, because the 
 rich stores of illustration at his command were so com- 
 prehensive, or because his prophecies of future evil seemed 
 so probable, that the pamphlet had such an extraordinary 
 effect; but because he put into words, clear, telling, 
 and unanswerable, what other people were trying to think 
 out vaguely and clumsily for themselves. Fox, naturally 
 enough, was not impressed by his arguments. They were
 
 158 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 opposed to his whole method of political thought. But 
 he must have seen quite clearly from the moment of its 
 publication, that it could not fail to cost him the political 
 support of its author, and might not improbably endanger 
 the allegiance of his friends. Yet, so far from smoothing 
 matters over, he went out of his way to hasten the 
 catastrophe. On the 15th of April, in a debate upon the 
 foreign policy of the Government, he praised the new 
 Government and Constitution of France " as the most 
 glorious fabric ever raised by human integrity since the 
 creation of man." On the 21st, in a debate upon a bill 
 introduced by Pitt for providing a new constitution for 
 Canada, known as the Quebec Bill, he took occasion to 
 throw down a challenge to the world on the subject of 
 his opinions on the French Revolution, and, referring 
 pointedly to Burke, concluded his speech by saying, sorry 
 as he was to differ from some of his friends, he would 
 never be backward in delivering his opinion, and he did 
 not wish to recede from anything he had formerly advanced. 
 A challenge so offered could not be denied, and Burke 
 accordingly, when the Quebec Bill reached its next stage, 
 began to deliver a very carefully reasoned exercise on the 
 principles of the rights of man, and their results as 
 evidenced in France. The actual motion before the 
 House was that the Quebec Bill be read clause by clause, 
 and it was certainly rather a stretch of parliamentary 
 order to found upon so slender and distant a basis an 
 arraignment of the French Revolution. But Burke 
 evidently conceived that he had been challenged, and that 
 he was in honour bound to reply at the earliest possible 
 moment. He looked upon it as an intellectual disputa- 
 tion, not as a party fight, and seems to have chosen this 
 means of defending his opinions in order to keep as far 
 as he could from the regions of passion. But directly he
 
 THE WAR WITH FRANCE. 159 
 
 reached the subject which he had at heart, interruptions 
 beeran to be made. He was called to order, lie tried 
 to explain. He was called to order again. The inter- 
 ruptions came from his own party. He thought they 
 were instigated by Fox. Evidently there was a de- 
 termination on the part of the Whigs not to let him 
 speak. Under such circumstances even the coldest 
 temper will assert itself, but not yet did he give free rein 
 to the passion which was boiling within him. Turning 
 round on the pack of snarling curs yapping at his heels 
 with sublime dignity and bitter sarcasm he likened him- 
 self to Lear. "The little dogs and all— Tray, Blanche, 
 and Sweetheart — see they bark at me," and then sat 
 down awaiting the decision of the House. But even then 
 Fox was not satisfied. If malice was possible with Fox, 
 it was malice that continued to goad and to spur him on. 
 Speaking to the question of order, he said tauntingly that 
 on that day it was impossible for any one to be out of 
 order, it was a day of privilege, when any gentleman 
 might get up, select his mark and abuse any Government 
 he pleased — then launching forth into the very subject 
 which he and his friends had forbidden to Burke, he 
 complained that he had been unjustly traduced as a Re- 
 publican, repeated again and justified his opinion that the 
 Revolution was one of the most glorious events in the 
 history of mankind, and then, addressing himself to Burke, 
 he said : — 
 
 " When the proper period of discussion conies, feeble as my powers 
 comparatively are, I will be ready to maintain the principle I have 
 asserted even against my right honourable friend's superior eloquence — 
 to maintain that the rights of man, which he has ridiculed as chimerical 
 and visionary, are in fact the basis and foundation of every rational 
 constitution, even of the British constitution itself. Having been 
 taught by him that no revolt of a nation was ever caused without pro- 
 vocation, I cannot help feeling joy ever since the constitution of France
 
 160 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 became founded on the rights of man. To deny this is neither more nor 
 less than to libel the British constitution, and no book that my 
 honourable friend can cite, no words he can deliver in debate, can 
 induce me to change or abandon that opinion. I differ from him on that 
 subject toto coeto." 
 
 Burke rose slowly to reply. With a great effort to 
 keep full control over himself, he began in grave and quiet 
 tones, but as he proceeded to deal with the personal attack 
 now made upon him by his friend, as he repelled the mis- 
 representation of his opinions and words, as he recalled 
 the interruptions of a few hours ago, and pictured Fox 
 " supported by a corps of well-disciplined troops, expert 
 in their manoeuvres, obedient, to the word of their 
 commander," banded against him, he could no longer 
 restrain his emotions. Every word he spoke made him 
 realise with more intense vividness the irreparable 
 character of the breach now opening between the friends 
 of twenty-five years of close political life, every moment 
 as it passed strung his nerves up to the height of the 
 sacrifice he knew must come, till he could bear it no longer. 
 Bursting into a tempest of passion, he declared that, if the 
 choice had now come to him between his personal friend- 
 ship and his love for the Constitution, with his last breath 
 he would cry, " Fly from the French Constitution." — 
 "There is no loss of friendship," whispered Fox. "Yes 
 there is." said Burke. " I know the price of my conduct. 
 I have done my duty at the price of my friend. Our 
 friendship is at an end." 
 
 Fox, when it was now too late, was overwhelmed with 
 grief. He could hardly speak for some time through 
 the intensity of his emotion. He realised at last the 
 thoughtlessness with which he had pushed matters to a 
 crisis. He must have foreseen that Burke would not be 
 long alone in his isolation. But there was no possibility 
 of undoing the past. The difference between them had
 
 THE WAR WITH FRANCE. 161 
 
 far greater issues than those of a personal quarrel. It 
 marks the watershed between the old Whigs and the new 
 
 © 
 
 Radicals. Burke, on the one side, attached to institutions, 
 eager for administrative reform, suspicious of general 
 principles, with an unquestioning faith in gradual develop- 
 ment as the truest political wisdom, reaches back into a 
 glorious past, and forms one of the noble line of constitu- 
 tional statesmen who have developed by steady growth the 
 British oak of liberty under the fostering care of the Crown, 
 the educated classes, and the Church. Fox, on the other 
 side, with a clear faith in abstract rights, strong in 
 humanitarian sympathy, with a hearty hatred of class 
 interests, and a real belief in the essential goodness and 
 wisdom of human nature, looked forward to the golden 
 age when personal liberty should be secured, and class 
 oppression vanish, and religious intolerance be crushed, 
 under the beneficent rule of the sovereign people, who, 
 knowing their own best interests, will insist upon main- 
 taining them. This difference of view had existed in the 
 
 © 
 
 Whig party ever since the American War, but as long 
 as liberty, equality, and fraternity were confined to the 
 Declaration of Independence, and were entrusted to the 
 guardianship of a highly business-like people, nobody 
 paid very much attention to them. When in the hands of 
 one of the first of European nations, as impulsive in action 
 as it is logical in mind, these principles took the form of 
 the confiscation of Church property, the suppression of 
 the monarchy, and a clean sweep of all pre-existing 
 institutions, men had to make up their minds on the 
 subject, whether they wished it or not, and to regulate 
 their political conduct accordingly even at the cost of 
 personal friendship and party ties. 
 
 The immediate result of the quarrel between Fox and 
 Burke was merely to deprive the Whig party of Burke's 
 
 M
 
 162 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 services. For some time he remained isolated and alone, 
 belonging to neither party though respected by both. 
 The old Whigs were not yet prepared to renounce their 
 allegiance. They remained in doubt, unable wholly to 
 believe in the prophecies of Burke, or to acquiesce in the 
 panegyrics of Fox. But by the close of the year 1792, 
 a good many of the doubts then felt had become solved. 
 The change was attributable chiefly to two things. The 
 French had made a great step forward from constitutional 
 monarchy to militant republicanism, and the monarchies 
 of Europe had altered their attitude to France from one 
 of suspicious neutrality to that of organised repression. 
 While the quarrel between JUirke and Fox was absorb- 
 ing the attention of all Englishmen, Mirabeau had died, 
 and with Mirabeau died the last chance of preserving for 
 Louis XVI. any of his political authority. The failure of 
 the ill-managed Sight to Yarennes, which occurred a few 
 months afterwards, deprived him even of personal influence. 
 For the ten months that the monarchy was still permitted 
 to exist in name, he was but a phantom King who enjoyed 
 his dignity so long, and so long only, as he exercised no 
 independent judgment. Jn September, 1791, the Con- 
 stituent Assemblv came to an end, and the new constitution, 
 that work of genius which had so excited the enthusiasm 
 of Fox, came into being with the meeting of tiie Legis- 
 lative Assembly on the 1st of < )ctober. This " stupendous 
 monument of human integrity " lasted not quite a year. 
 The lead in the Assembly was taken by the parties of the 
 Girondists and of the Jacobins, who, much as they hated 
 each other, hated still more the old Constitutionalists. 
 They were one and all the apostles of the rights of man, 
 the children of the sovereign people, and they were 
 perfectly prepared to enforce their principles upon a 
 reluctant Europe by the sword. " Let us tell Europe,"
 
 THE WAR WITH FRANCE. W 
 
 cried the Girondist Isnard, " that if Cabinets eno-ajre 
 Kings in war against peoples, we will engage peoples in 
 war against Kings." The growth of military enthusiasm 
 among all sections of Republicans in France is the 
 distinguishing mark of the year 1792. 
 
 And on the other hand, while the military spirit was 
 thus developing in France, a corresponding spirit of fear 
 was spreading among the Courts of Europe, which led 
 them to think of uniting to support the common interests 
 of monarchy against the revolutionary doctrines. But 
 as yet not one single Power, except perhaps Spain, really 
 wished for war. The Emperor, the brother of Marie 
 Antoinette, clung to peace so stubbornly as to make men 
 doubt his affection. The King of Prussia and Catherine 
 II. of Russia were intent only upon dividing the last 
 morsel of Poland. Pitt absolutely refused to interfere in 
 any way. Yet all of them were at war in less than two 
 years. Just as in France it was the fear of internal 
 traitors, and of foreign intimidation, which led to the 
 horrors of the Reign of Terror, and the determination to 
 spread the doctrines of the Revolution throughout Europe ; 
 so among the Great Powers of Europe, it was the fear of 
 the revolutionary proselytism which led them unwillingly 
 into war. At the conference of Pilnitz in August, 1791, 
 the Emperor and the King of Prussia agreed to undertake 
 an armed intervention in France if the rest of Europe 
 would join them. The Girondist Ministry, irritated at 
 the threat, issued a sentence of death against ail emigrants, 
 demanded the withdrawal of the declaration of Pilnitz, 
 and finally declared war against the Emperor in January, 
 1792. A joint invasion of France by Austria and Prussia 
 was the natural result of the French foolhardiness, but, 
 as if on purpose to put the worst possible light on the 
 intervention, the Duke of Brunswick who commanded the 
 
 m 2
 
 164 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Allies issued a proclamation in which he demanded un- 
 conditional surrender to Louis, and threatened to treat 
 all who resisted as rebels. It was impossible to put more 
 clearly the fact that it was a royal army, come in the 
 interests of monarchy, to suppress in another country 
 political opinions which it did not like. One crusade 
 naturally produced another. The invasion led directly 
 to the victory of the Jacobins, the overthrow of the 
 monarchy, and the death of the King. The repulse of 
 the invasion led no less directly to the occupation of Savoy 
 and Belgium, to the opening of the Scheldt, to the threat 
 of an invasion of Holland, to the order to the French 
 generals to establish a republic wherever they could, 
 and to the declaration of the war against England in 
 February, 1793. 
 
 In this way acts of aggression on both sides plunged 
 Europe into the most terrible of all modern wars, strongly 
 against the wishes of all except the rulers of France ; but 
 in England matters could never have reached the crisis 
 which they did in 1793, had not the sentiments and 
 opinions of the English people, as well of the English 
 Government, undergone a great change. At the begin- 
 ning of 1791 Englishmen had begun to retract somewhat 
 of the delight in which they hailed the overthrow of the 
 ancien regime in 1789. They had begun to reflect more 
 upon the dangers which Burke had found lurking in the 
 plausible phrases of the declaration of rights. They had 
 begun to distrust a movement which seemed to be so 
 much at the mercy of the Parisian mob. The complexion 
 of the Legislative Assembly, the war fever, and the ad- 
 ministrative incapacity which characterised the Girondists, 
 frightened the Tories into sympathy, though not yet into 
 alliance, with the policy of armed intervention. They 
 followed the movements of the Duke of Brunswick with
 
 THE WAR WITH FRANCE. 165 
 
 anxiety, hoping that he would put an end to what 
 threatened to become a nuisance to Europe. " The 
 Duke of Brunswick's progress," writes Lord Grenville, 
 then Foreign Minister, to his brother on September 20th, 
 " does not keep pace with the impatience of our wishes ; " 
 and on the 11th of October, when the news of his retreat 
 had arrived, he adds : — 
 
 " We are all much disappointed with the result of the great expectations 
 that had been formed from the Duke of Brunwick's campaign. Whatever 
 be the true cause of his retreat, the effect is equally to be regretted.'' 
 
 When the Foreign Minister of a Ministry pledged to 
 neutrality wrote thus, it may be taken for granted that 
 the opinions of most of his party were not less strong in 
 favour of the Allies. At the same time the growth of 
 revolutionary sympathies in England, and the ill-advised 
 language in which they were expressed, made Tories 
 begin to fear lest the revolutionary propaganda instituted 
 by the Republic might not after all disturb the peace of 
 society at home. The publication of Paine's ' Rights of 
 Man,' the formation of the " corresponding societies " all 
 over England, consisting of men who openly avowed re- 
 publican principles, and delighted in using the catchwords 
 of French politics, increased suspicion far out of proportion 
 to the intrinsic importance of their movements. They 
 were accepted in France as the voice of the English 
 people, and in England as representing the real opinions 
 of the Whig leaders. In the caricatures of the time Fox 
 and Sheridan almost universally appear in the guise of 
 conspirators and republicans, whether discovered by Burke 
 in the act of blowing up the constitution with French 
 powder, or joining with Paine and Priestley in riotous 
 and seditious orgies. 
 
 In reality the Whigs were by no means so confident 
 about the Revolution as they had been. Fox himself
 
 1C6 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 never faltered in his splendid if unreasoning faith in 
 the ultimate goodness of the movement, but he was 
 sickened and horrified at the mob violence of the 
 20th of Juno, and the massacres of September 2nd. On 
 the 3rd of September, 1792, he writes to his nephew 
 Lord Holland : — 
 
 '•I do not think near so ill of the business of the 10th of August 
 (i.e. the overthrow of the monarchy), as I did upon first hearing it. 
 However, it is impossible not to look with disgust at the bloody means 
 which have hern taken even supposing the end to be good, and I cannot 
 help fearing that we are not yet near the end of these trials and 
 executions" 
 
 A few days later he writes : — 
 
 " I had just made up my mind to the events of the 10th of August, when 
 the horrid accounts of the 2nd of this month arrived, and I really 
 consider the horrors of that day and night as the most heart-breaking 
 event that ever happened to those who, like me, are fundamentally and 
 unalterably attached to the true cause. There is not, in my opinion, a 
 shadow of excuse for this horrid massacre, not even the possibility of 
 extenuating it in the smallest degree." 
 
 Thus deprived by the action of the French themselves 
 of any possible sympathy for their internal administration, 
 and alienated and disgusted more and more as time went 
 on by the wickedness and cruelty of the Terror, Fox 
 turned his attention mainly to the external relations of 
 France, and strove with all his power to avert the 
 threatening danger of a war with England. He took as 
 his great principle the absolute wickedness of any attempt 
 to force upon the people of France a government of 
 which they disapproved. The invasion of the Allies in 
 1792 w r as in his eyes an act of pure tyranny, the Duke of 
 Brunswick's proclamation he described as " revolting to 
 the feelings of mankind ; " of his retreat after Valmy he 
 writes : — 
 
 " No public event, not excepting Saratoga and Yorktown, ever 
 happened that gave me so much delight. The defeats of great armies
 
 THE WAR WITH FRANCE. 167 
 
 of invaders always gave mo the greatesl satisfaction from Xerxes' time 
 down wants, and what has happened in America and France will, I hope, 
 make whir Cicero says of armed force be the opinion of all mankind, 
 Incidiosum, <lif,.<tnl>il<\ /iiihirUhtui, cwlucum 
 
 In this spirit he applied all his energies to the preven- 
 tion of war. " I shall think the Ministry mad," he writes, 
 "if they suffer anything to draw them into a war with 
 France, though 1 really do think Pitt in these 
 businesses is a great bungler." That England should go 
 to war in alliance with the tyrants of 1792 was in his 
 eves, not merely unjustifiable, but an abdication of her 
 position as the chief of the free States of Europe. He 
 agreed that the violation of the Scheldt by Erance 
 formed a casus fault- r is, and that if Holland claimed our 
 help, and Erance refused redress, war could not be 
 avoided : but he maintained that a direct and friendly 
 negotiation with the French Government, and an evident 
 separation of the interests of England from those of the 
 Allies, would easily prevent a rupture, and afford the 
 only chance of preserving the life of Louis XVI. With 
 these objects, at the beginning of the session of 1792-93, 
 he moved an amendment to the Address, and proposed 
 that a Minister should be sent to Paris to negotiate. 
 
 The numbers in the division showed that the rupture 
 in the Whig party was now complete. The events of 
 1792 had convinced the older section of Whigs that the 
 principles of the Revolution were incompatible with 
 monarchical institutions, and dangerous to the welfare of 
 Europe. Only fifty members followed Fox into the 
 lobby, and they comprised entirely the left wing of the 
 party. The rest either remained away or voted against 
 him. Windham, once the staunchest of his supporters, 
 spoke strenuously on the Ministerial side. Directly the 
 measures of defence spoken of in the King's speech were
 
 1G8 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 introduced into the House, the breach was made still 
 more evident. Fox throughout the session spoke with 
 great vigour and more than ordinary earnestness, in 
 eloquent condemnation of a war, as he phrased it, against 
 opinion, but the whole of the older Whigs were now 
 against him. The Duke of Portland, Lord Fitzwilliam, 
 Sir Gilbert Elliot, Mr. Thomas Grenville, each one of 
 whose names recalled the trusted ally of a great conflict 
 iu the past, could no longer follow him into the regions 
 of abstract principle, but took their places with Burke 
 within the rampart of time-honoured institutions. The 
 old Whig party of 1688 had ceased to be. One Revolu- 
 tion had destroyed the child of the other. It was 
 inevitable that it should be so, for the principles of the 
 old Whig party had worked themselves out, and its 
 aristocratic framework had fallen to pieces. With the 
 French Revolution new men and new principles had come 
 into being. The youthful democracy, recently born, was 
 still in the nursery ; — an infant Hercules, terrible in its 
 strength, ungoverned in its passion, attractive and re- 
 pellent by turns, a prodigy too ill regulated as yet to be 
 obeyed by men of sober judgment. Against it were 
 arrayed the forces of society enlisted under the banner of 
 existing institutions. The Throne, the Church, the Con- 
 stitution, formed the natural watchwords of defence, and 
 gathered round them all, whether Tory or Whig, who 
 were opposed to democracy. Fox, strictly speaking, 
 belonged to neither side. In his love for the Revolution 
 he was a democrat, in his love for the constitution he 
 was almost a Tory. The principles of democracy were 
 to him always much more of an ideal than they were a 
 political programme. Still, as events worked themselves 
 out, he became enouo-h of a democrat to form the rock on 
 which the wave of English parties was irretrievably to
 
 
 THE WAR WITH FRANCE. 169 
 
 split, and with his diminished band of fifty followers to 
 lay the foundation of modern radicalism in twelve long 
 weary years of opposition. 
 
 Fortunately for England the French would not w r ait tor 
 the slowly increasing pressure of public opinion to have its 
 due effect. On February 1st, 1793, they declared war 
 against England on their own account. The establish- 
 ment of the Terror, the execution of the Queen, the 
 repudiation of Christianity, following quick upon the 
 declaration of war, removed any lingering doubts which 
 may still have existed in the minds of law-abiding and 
 God-fearing Englishmen. All that Burke had prophesied 
 was in the act of accomplishment. The aristocracy, the 
 Church, the Monarchy, political and personal liberty, and 
 even Christianity itself, had been thrown overboard one 
 after another in the mad frenzy of revolution. Jacobin- 
 ism stood out clearly to the eyes of all who prized the 
 blessings of civilisation as the enemy and the scourge of 
 the human race, not less destructive, and in its nature 
 more immoral, than the barbarism of Attila or the religion 
 of Islam. Pitt therefore had the nation at his back when 
 he took up the glove of battle thrown down by France in 
 February, 1793. War had been quite inevitable ever 
 since France had determined to carry the principles of the 
 Revolution into other countries. Pitt and Grrenville, if left 
 to themselves, would have put off the evil day as long as 
 possible, but their hands were forced by public opinion in 
 England and republican enthusiasm in France. There 
 was no similarity to English minds between the action of 
 the Allies in 1792 and the action of England in 1793. 
 The former was a war undertaken to compel France to 
 accept a form of government which was distasteful to her ; 
 the latter was a war undertaken to prevent France from 
 imposing Jacobin opinions and democratic government
 
 170 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 upon other nations. The system of revolutionary prose- 
 lytism adopted in the autumn of 1792 exaetly reversed the 
 whole condition of affairs. It was to England what the 
 declaration of Pilnitz was to France ; and it was not 
 until that system was carried into effect in Savoy, and was 
 on the point of being carried into effect in Belgium, that 
 Pitt bewail unwillingly to arm. 
 
 This was the weak point of Fox's position. It was 
 all very well eloquently to denounce the war as one 
 waged against opinion. It was a fair party charge to 
 make that Pitt had surrendered his principle of 
 neutrality, and had made common cause with despotism 
 against freedom of opinion. It was reasonable enough 
 to maintain that there was no logical halting place 
 between complete disregard of Jacobinism and the forcible 
 restoration of the ancien regime. But every educated man 
 could see perfectly clearly that then' was all the difference 
 in the world between the right of a nation to adopt what- 
 ever form of government it pleased, and profess whatever 
 opinions it preferred without let or hindrance, and the 
 right of a nation to try and establish that form of govern- 
 ment, and preach those doctrines, in the territories of 
 neighbouring States. This was a distinction which Fox 
 wholly ignored, but it is one which Englishmen at once 
 comprehended, which Pitt acted upon, and which forms 
 the justification of England in the war of 1793. 
 
 The history of the years which elapsed between the out- 
 break of the war in 1793 and the Whig secession in 1797 
 form Fox's best title to fame as an Opposition leader. He 
 was in a hopeless minority. He had lost the support of 
 many of his closest and dearest friends. Hardly more 
 than fifty or sixty members still owned his leadership, and of 
 those some, like Grey, were in his eyes injudicious, others, 
 like Sheridan, of no moral weight. Almost alone he had
 
 THE WAR WITH FRANCE. 171 
 
 to bear the burden of directing- a steady and vigorous 
 opposition to a policy, which from the bottom of his heart 
 he believed to be both suicidal and wicked, with no 
 reward before him except the possible gratitude of after 
 times. There can be nothing more dispiriting to a 
 politician than the obligation of spending session after 
 session in hopeless warfare against organised stupidity. 
 That this was Fox's position no one could dispute. 
 Whatever opinions may be held as to the necessity and 
 the justice of the war, there is an universal agreement as 
 to the folly and incapacity which signalised its conduct. 
 What can be said for a finance minister who continued to 
 borrow year after year £1,000,000 at high interest to put 
 it away in a sinking fund in order to pay itself off? who 
 obtained loans by issuing bonds of £100 for £50 to £h'0 
 which were certain to rise in value when the strain of war 
 was over? who in four years added 80 millions to the 
 national debt ? What can be said for a War Minister who 
 twice placed the English army under the imbecile leader- 
 ship of the Duke of York ? who wasted the resources of 
 the country upon small expeditions over all parts of the 
 world ? and who in seven years of warfare never discovered 
 a capable general or won a great victory ? What can be 
 said of a Home Minister who in abject terror of a few 
 blatant and self-important democratic orators took away 
 one after another most of the safeguards of personal 
 liberty ? 
 
 Against these measures Fox directed an unremitting 
 attack. He divided the House again and again on the 
 conduct of the war and the subsidising of the German 
 powers. He sought to enlist on his side the growing 
 feeling of distrust which naturally attended continued 
 failure in the field. He made energetic appeals in favour 
 of peace whenever opportunity offered. v He threw all his
 
 172 CnAIiLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 strength into the denunciation of the Habeas Corpus 
 Suspension Act and the Seditious Meetings Act and the 
 rest of Pitt's code of executive terror. 
 
 " We have had warm and good debates in Parliament," he writes in 
 17'.»4. " in which, if my partiality does not deceive me, our advantage in 
 speaking has been as gnat as that of the enemy in voting, especially 
 upon the suspension of the Habeas Corpus and on my motion for peace. 
 I believe the country is heartily tired of the war. hut men dare not show 
 themselves, I think, of all the measures of the Government, this last 
 nonsense about conspiracy is the most mischievous, and at the sai ie time 
 the most foolish." 
 
 Again, in 1 705 he says: — 
 
 -I think there is something more truly diabolical in the part we are 
 acting now, than in the conduct of any nation in history. Peace is the 
 wish of the French, of Italy. Spain, Germany, and all the world, and 
 Great Britain is alone the cause of preventing it- accomplishment, and 
 this not for any point of honour or even of interest, but lest there 
 jhould he an example in the modern world of a great and powerful 
 Republic. Everybody says the country is nearly unanimous for peace, 
 the Ministers as warlike as ever." 
 
 Again, a few weeks later, he writes of the Seditious 
 Meetings Bill : — 
 
 •• There appears to me to be no choice at present but between an 
 absolute surrender of the liberties of the people and a vigorous assertion, 
 attended, I admit, with considerable hazard at a time like the present. 
 My view of things is. I own. very glooiny.andlamconvined that ina very 
 few years this Government will become absolute, or that confusion will 
 arise of a nature almost as much to be deprecated as despotism itself. That 
 the Ministers mean to bring on the first of these evils appears to me so 
 clear, that I cannot help considering any man who denies it as a fool 
 or hvpocrite, and I cannot disguise from myself that there are but too 
 many who wish for the second." 
 
 In this criticism Fox does but scant justice to Pitt. 
 The inroads upon personal liberty made by Pitt during 
 the progress of the French Revolution, arose from too 
 great a dread of the influence of the democratic propa- 
 ganda, not from a desire to found a despotism. They
 
 THE WAR WITH FRANCE. 173 
 
 were, like the war itself, defensive, not agressive in their 
 character, and they passed away easily with the terror 
 which gave them birth. Pitt's obstinate continuance of 
 the war in spite of failure, and in spite of desertion, 
 sprang also from the same belief, but in this case its 
 results were more disastrous. England had gone to war 
 to prevent Europe being revolutionised by the sword ; but 
 all danger of the success of democratic proselytism passed 
 away with the fall of the Jacobins in 17i)4. By that 
 time the spirit which ruled France had quite altered. 
 The victories of the French armies had revived the old 
 love for military glory, and before that the star of 
 abstract democracy paled. Frenchmen were no longer 
 mainly anxious to emancipate the world, they were much 
 more anxious to win battles, and to extend the frontiers 
 of France. It was the ghost of Louis XIV. which 
 Europe had to deal with in 1795, not the red spectre of 
 Jacobinism. The other nations of Europe perceived this. 
 They had long ago given up the idea of forcing the 
 Bourbons upon a reluctant nation. They would be quite 
 content to retire from the position of champions of 
 monarchical orthodoxy, and take up once more the old 
 familiar task of rearranging the map of Europe, so that 
 everyone should have a bit of what he wanted, enough to 
 stimulate the appetite, but not enough to satisfy the 
 craving. Prussia made a separate peace in April, 1795. 
 Spain followed her example in June. The Emperor was 
 only prevented from doing the same by the bribes of Pitt. 
 Just at this moment, in the interval between the mil of 
 the Jacobins and the rise of Xapoleon, peace was possible 
 on honourable and satisfactory terms. Fox saw this at 
 once, and redoubled his efforts. Pitt could not see it, 
 The red spectre still dazzled him. To plod steadily on, 
 doggedly and determinedly, undeterred by failure, un-
 
 174 CHAHLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 elated by success, along the path of resistance, until 
 France was crushed and Jacobinism was killed, seemed 
 to him the plain duty which patriotism dictated. And so 
 the opportunity was lost. Jacobinism as a danger to 
 Europe had indeed committed suicide in the Terror, but 
 France had a greater curse still in her womb. Pitt 
 insisted on the continuance of the war, and the war gave 
 birth to Napoleon. Military despotism, brutal, selfish, 
 and unscrupulous, soon ousted Jacobinism as the bugbear 
 of Europe, and England, which had cheerfully, if blindly, 
 obeyed Pitt in refusing peace in 179"). had to fight on 
 almost singlehanded against the tyrant, until she received 
 her reward as the champion of the freedom of Europe in 
 the triumph of 1815.
 
 ( 17o 
 
 CIIAPTEIt IX. 
 
 ST. ANNS HILL. 
 
 Among the many disappointments of Fox's life, there 
 was none which touched him more poignantly than the 
 difference which sprung up between himself and the older 
 Whigs on the subject of the French devolution. Won- 
 derful as were his spirits, he was too warmhearted not to 
 feel deeply his separation from old friends such as Elliot 
 and Thomas Grenville, too sensitive not to understand 
 the grave rebuke conveyed by the withdrawal of the Duke 
 of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam. A Whig party, which 
 no longer numbered in its ranks the Cavendishes and the 
 Bentincks and the Wentworths, seemed indeed, in the 
 eyes of a politician of the eighteenth century, to be but a 
 maimed and mutilated trunk. On the 9th of March, 
 1794, Fox writes sorrowfully to his nephew on the 
 subject: — 
 
 •• You will easily imagine how much I felt the separation from 
 persons with whom I had so long been in the habit of agreeing; it 
 seemed some way as if I had the world to begin anew, and if I could 
 have dene it with honour what T should best have liked would have 
 been to retire from politics altogether; but this could not be done, and 
 there remains nothing but to get together the remains of our party, 
 and begin, like Sisyphus, to roll the stone up again, which long before 
 it reaches the summit may probably roll down again."
 
 176 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 In the August of the same year he breaks out with 
 still greater pathos : — 
 
 " I have nothing to say for my old friends, nor, indeed, as politicians 
 have they any right to anv tenderness from me ; hut I cannot forget how long 
 I have lived in friendship with them, nor can I avoid feeling the most 
 severe mortification when I recollect the certainty I used to entertain 
 that they never would disgrace themselves as I think they have done. 
 I cannot forget that ever since I was a child, Fitzwilliam has heen in all 
 situations my warmest and most affectionate friend, and the person in the 
 world of whom decidedly I have the best opinion, and so in most 
 respects I have still, but as a politician I cannot reconcile his conduct 
 with what I, who have known him for more than five-and-thirty years, 
 have always thought to be his character. There is a sentiment of Lord 
 Kochester that I have always much admired, and which I feel the truth 
 of very forcibly upon this occasion ; it is this : To be ill-used by those 
 on whom we have bestowed favours is so much in the course of things, 
 and ingratitude is so common, that a wise man can feel neither 
 much surprise nor pain when he experiences it, but to be ill-used by 
 those to whom we owe obligations which we never can forget, and 
 towards whom we must continue to feel affection and gratitude, is indeed 
 u most painful sensation. I think they have all behaved very ill to me, 
 and for most of them, who certainly owe much more to me than I do to 
 them, I feel nothing but contempt, and^do not trouble myself about them ; 
 but Fitzwilliam is an exception indeed, and to my feelings for him 
 everything Lord Rochester says applies very strongly indeed. I hope 
 you will come home soon, it will make amends to me for everything, and 
 make me feel alive again about politics, which I am now quite sick of 
 and only attend to because I think it is a duty to do so, and feel that 
 it would be unbecoming my character to quit them at this moment." 
 
 It is clear from the letters which contain his most 
 private thoughts, that Fox was utterly dispirited by the 
 schism of 1793, and only persevered in the up-hill fight 
 because he believed it was his duty to his country to do 
 so. But the struggle, though manfully maintained, grew 
 year by year more distasteful. His heart was ever at 
 St. Ann's Hill when his bodily presence was at West- 
 minster. " Here we are in this cursed place," he begins 
 one letter from the manager's box in Westminster Hall, 
 •' very different from St. Ann's Hill or from Tivoli, where
 
 ST. ANN'S HILL. 177 
 
 perhaps you now are." Throughout the years 1793-94, 
 his mind evidently recurred again and again to the dis- 
 carded plan of 1784, and he positively longed to find an 
 argument which would justify to his conscience a with- 
 drawal from regular attendance in Parliament. In 171)5 
 he discusses the question in a letter to Lord Holland, but 
 most reluctantly decides that to quit public business would 
 be too open to the misconstruction that — 
 
 " Having lost all hope of place, we left the country to take care of 
 itself. I am so sure that secession is the measure a shabby fellow would 
 take in our circumstances, that I think it can scarcely be right for us. 
 But as for wishes, no man ever wished anything more." 
 
 As the years passed on, and the policy of the Ministry 
 seemed to become more and more obstructive and 
 tyrannical, and their position more and more assured, the 
 cry for a secession from Parliament began to make itself 
 heard among most of the Opposition leaders. Grey, im- 
 pulsive and irritable, was anxious for it. Erskine and the 
 Duke of Bedford were willing to try it, and Fox on 
 personal grounds longed for it, but could not disabuse 
 his mind of the idea that it was ill-advised. " He ac- 
 quiesced in it," says Lord Holland, " more from indolence 
 than from judgment." Eventually, a meeting was held 
 in 1797, at which all the chiefs of the Opposition were 
 present, and it was agreed by all, except Sheridan and 
 Tierney, to leave Parliament if Grey's motion for Reform 
 was thrown out. Fox was anxious that too much im- 
 portance should not be attributed to the step. In the 
 House he only spoke of devoting a larger portion of his 
 time to his literary pursuits, and in a letter to Lord 
 Holland he wrote : — 
 
 " Pray if you have an opportunity of talking about the Secession say 
 what is the truth, that there was not agreement of opinion enough upon 
 the subject to make it possible to take what one may call a measure 
 
 N
 
 178 CUMll. E8 J A MES FOX. 
 
 upon the subject, but thai most of us thought that after the proposition 
 for Reform we might fairly enough stay away, considering the preceding 
 events of the Session and the behaviour of Parliament upon them." 
 
 Fox had warned his friends that if he once left Parlia- / 
 ment it would be very difficult to get him back again, and 
 so it proved. From May 26th, 1797, the day of Grey's 
 motion, to March 3rd, 180G, the day on which he 
 received office in the Ministry of all the talents, he only 
 addressed the House nineteen tunes, while before the 
 secession he had usually spoken more than that number of 
 times in one year. There were, indeed, many reasons why 
 he should prefer the quiet seclusion and lettered ease of 
 St. Ann's to the turmoil of St. Stephen's. He was now 
 getting well into middle age, had outgrown the passions 
 and the excitement of youth, and was beginning to long 
 for the full enjoyment of domestic peace congenial to his 
 time of life. His marriage with Mrs. Armistead in 1795 
 had hallowed a love in which for many years he had 
 found his chief delight. His letters are full of the 
 most natural and tender allusion to her, which could 
 only spring from the realisation through her of unalloyed 
 domestic happiness. " If there ever was a place which 
 might be called the seat of true happiness," he writes in 
 1794, "St Ann's is that place ;" and again in 1795 : — 
 
 " I am perfectly happy in the country, I have quite resources enough 
 to employ my mind, and the great resource of all, literature, I am 
 fonder of every day ; and then the Lady of the Hill is one continual 
 source ot happiness to me. I believe few men, indeed, ever were so 
 happy in that respect as I." 
 
 And in another letter : — 
 
 " I declare I think my affection for her increases every day. She is a 
 comfort to me in every misfortune, and makes me to enjoy doubly every 
 circumstance of life. There is to me a charm and a delight in her 
 society, which time does not in the least wear off. and for real goodness 
 of heart if she ever had her equal, she certainly never had a superior." 
 
 ,
 
 ST. ANN'S 1ULL. 179 
 
 Besides his delight in his domestic life, his private 
 affairs made Fox anxious if possible to avoid the expense 
 of a house in London. Owing - to the recklessness of his 
 youth, and his natural indolence about money matters, 
 he had always been in embarrassed circumstances, and 
 usually owed a good deal of money to his friends. In 
 1787 he was as much as £5000 in debt to Coutts the 
 banker; but in 1793, by the exertions of his political 
 friends, a sum was raised sufficient to clear him from debt, 
 and to purchase an annuity for him. Naturally, therefore, 
 he was anxious not to get into embarrassments again, 
 and exercised for the rest of his life the strictest economy 
 in order to live within his means. 
 
 Attracted by the pleasures of home, and urged by the 
 dictates of economy, Fox found another inducement to leave 
 public life in the virulence of the attacks made upon 
 him by the Tory press. No man, however even-spirited, 
 can be wholly unatfected by continuous abuse, and Fox must 
 have been all the more sensitive to the attacks made upon 
 him because, unscrupulous as they were in their misrepre- 
 sentation, many of them had some colour of excuse in his 
 own folly. After the outbreak of the war, Fox was one 
 of the best abused men in England. He was looked 
 upon by a large section of the community as unpatriotic 
 and untrustworthy, little better than a traitor. In 
 Gillray's caricatures he figures as the leading member 
 of the party who were conspiring with the French to 
 overthrow the constitution of England, and establish in 
 its place a republic on the French model. With the 
 unerring instinct on such matters which is the life blood 
 of the caricaturist, Fox is always the central figure, the 
 head and front of the offending. Sheridan is the 
 faithful henchman when anything mure than usually 
 extravagant is to be done, but he always plays a 
 
 N 2
 
 180 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 subordinate, often a mean part. Stanhope, Erskine, 
 Grey, fill up the picture, but it is upon Fox that 
 attention is concentrated. It is he that is held up to the 
 scorn and the hatred of patriots. It is he who is 
 depicted as the arch-enemy of his country. To be cari- 
 catured by Gillray was a very different matter to an 
 appearance in the pages of Mr. Punch. There is 
 nothing of wit, of banter, of good temper, seldom even 
 anything of the ludicrous in the acrid work of Gillray. 
 The blows he directs are straight from the shoulder, 
 deliberately brutal in conception, intended to inspire 
 hatred, and to destroy reputation. We are so accustomed 
 to the delicate handling of political caricature by 
 Mr. Punch, to look under his guidance at the ludicrous 
 side of serious politics, and to enjoy a laugh at the 
 expense of both our friends and foes, that we are apt to 
 forget what a terrible engine of misrepresentation and 
 calumny political caricatures may become, if meant to 
 hurt and not to amuse. Gillray is not the predecessor 
 of Leech and Tenniel, he is the successor of Hogarth, a 
 satirist of the school of Churchill, whose satires were all 
 the more powerful because they were conveyed in pictures, 
 and required no intellectual effort to be understood. 
 
 The popular idea of Fox is to this day largely formed 
 upon a vague remembrance of Gillray's caricatures. 
 AYe know him so well as Guy Fawkes, just about to 
 apply the torch of the Rights of Man to the gunpowder, 
 which was to blow up the King and House of Lords, 
 when arrested by the searching gleam of Burke's lantern ; 
 or acting as headsman, with a mask on his face, at the 
 execution of George III., while Sheridan holds the 
 King's he*d steady for the stroke of the axe ; or pre- 
 senting the. nead of Pitt as the choice dish to be set before 
 the demon of Revolution. After the war broke out, the
 
 ST. ANN'S HILL. 181 
 
 satire grew more virulent than ever. Fox was depicted 
 at the night signal set up to draw the French flret to the 
 sack of London ; as the agent of the French, smuggling 
 provisions over to France, and so causing a famine in 
 England; as the devotee before the images of Robespierre 
 and Buonaparte at the shrine of St. Ann's Hill ; as the 
 French brigand soldier giving the death-stroke to King, 
 Lords, and Commons. He was, as all his speeches show, 
 exceedingly sensitive about the charge of holding 
 republican sentiments. It was that, more than anything 
 else, which goaded him on to the quarrel with Burke. 
 After the quarrel he took great pains to explain the 
 importance he attached to an aristocracy, and to 
 announce his belief that no Government could be a fit 
 one for British subjects to live under, which did not 
 contain its due weight of aristocracy, as the proper poise 
 of the Constitution. He had in fact an immense, almost 
 superstitious love, for the British Constitution, with its 
 system of checks and balances, with its due proportion 
 of monarchical, aristocratical, and popular elements. It 
 was of course not to be a fixed and stereotyped Constitution. 
 The relations between the different elements required 
 continual adjustment. It was always most necessary to 
 take care that the popular element was not unduly 
 suppressed, and the monarchical unduly prominent. It 
 was to represent the whole nation and not only certain 
 sections of the nation. But advocacy of a Republic, as 
 even the ideally best form of Government, was wholly 
 foreign to his mind. He had no sympathy whatever 
 with the doctrines that the uneducated masses were 
 collectively wiser than the educated few, or that universal 
 suffrage flowed necessarily from the rights of man. 
 
 The fact was that he was so delighted at the overthrow 
 of the ancier* regime, that he did not scan narrowly the
 
 182 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 principle upon which that overthrow proceeded. "When 
 enunciated in the vague form of abstract principles, such 
 as Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the Rights of Man, the 
 Sovereignty of the People, he always found himself 
 perfectly able to put an interpretation upon them abso- 
 lutely consistent with his political creed. When different 
 interpretations were put upon them in France, he lamented 
 them as momentary aberrations, or justified them on the 
 general ground of the liberty which must always be 
 accorded to a nation to be allowed to know what is best 
 for itself, lie never grappled with the question whether 
 there was not really a fundamental difference between 
 the English and the French theory of liberty, and whether 
 a democratic Republic was not the only political organi- 
 sation which fully expressed the French theory? In 
 answer to Burke's strictures upon the rights of man and 
 the sovereignty of the people, he said that to attack them 
 wa> to attack the British Constitution, for since the 
 Hanoverian succession the British Constitution had 
 depended upon the rights of men and the sovereignty of 
 the people. An answer like that was possible in 1791, 
 if the new constitution in France might be taken as an 
 honest attempt to secure Parliamentary government with 
 a constitutional King and a constitutional Church. It 
 was not possible as a justification of the formula in 1798, 
 after Jacobinism had, in its name and under its authority, 
 swept away the Crown and the Church, and established 
 universal suffrage. Yet after the Duke of Norfolk had 
 been dismissed from his Lord Lieutenancy, for giving the 
 toast of "The People Our Sovereign" at a complimen- 
 tary dinner, Fox did not hesitate to go down to the 
 "Whig Club a few nights later and propose the same 
 toast, justifying it on the ground that George III. owed 
 his crown to the will of the people. To claim that a,
 
 ST. ANN'S HILL. 183 
 
 constitutional meaning might be placed on the formula, 
 at a moment when in the minds of every one in Europe it had 
 become associated with the Jacobin principles of democracy, 
 was either elaborate trifling or criminal folly. It was 
 inevitable that men should take Fox at his word, judge 
 of his opinions by the ordinary meaning of the words he 
 used, and put him down as a Republican, since he chose to 
 use, and go out of his way to justify, Republican sentiments. 
 It was not to be wondered at if political opponents 
 hurled at him the charge of unpatriotic conduct, and 
 pictured him in league with England's enemies. 
 
 There was truth in the charge. As the war went on, 
 ruinous and criminal as it was in his opinion, he wrote and 
 he acted as no true patriot in a crisis of his country's fate 
 should write and act. The Duke of Bedford, a staunch 
 opponent of the war, subscribed £100,000 to the patriotic 
 loan in 179(5. Fox, on the other hand, took advantage of 
 the mutiny at the Nore to embarrass the Ministers. As 
 in the American war he had rejoiced over Saratoga and 
 Yorktown, so now he rejoiced over French victories. In 
 1801, he writes to Grey, who had remonstrated with him : — 
 
 " The truth is, I am gone something further in hate to the English 
 Government than perhaps you and the rest of my friends are, and 
 certainly further than can with prudence be avowed. The triumph of 
 the French Government over the English does in fact afford me a degree 
 of pleasure which it is very difficult to disguise." 
 
 When Fox was a young man, it happened that a 
 criminal, bearing exactly the same name, was hanged. 
 George Selwyn, who was a great friend of his, and had a 
 passion for attending executions, was asked if he had been 
 to the hanging of Fox. " No," said Selwvn ; "I make a 
 point of never attending rehearsals." The prophecy of 
 the joke did not remain wholly unfulfilled. For more 
 than ten years Fox was looked upon by the majority of
 
 184 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Englishmen as a criminal and a traitor at heart. Gill ray 
 drew a sketch to show that there was no hope for England 
 until his head was treated French fashion, as the ornament 
 for the top of a pike. His own indiscretion in conversation 
 and letters deepened the general conviction. It was not 
 to be wondered at, therefore, that he fled from Parliament 
 and politics, when the opportunity came, with the zest of a 
 schoolboy flying from school. 
 
 At St. Ann's Hill Fox found the perfect rest which his 
 tired nature most required, the loving tenderness which 
 his warm affections so strongly demanded, the inner society 
 of intimate friends, which is the real solace amid the 
 anxieties of life to all generous natures, and, above all 
 things, time, that inestimable boon to the bookish man, 
 time that may be wasted in busy idleness. " When I am 
 here," he says, in a phrase which goes straight to the 
 heart of every man who knows what a holiday ought to 
 be, " every hour and minute oi' idleness grows to have a 
 double value, and as one knows one is so soon to have so 
 little of it, one likes to enjoy it while it lasts pure and 
 unmixed." What his idea of idleness was, we can easily 
 see from a subsequent letter, where he says : — 
 
 ■• -Mrs. A. tells me it is a long time since I wrote to you, I thought 
 not ; but vet I recollect that when I wrote last I was in the Ninth Book 
 of the Odyssey, which I have since finished, and read eighteen books of 
 Iliad, so that it must be a good while since." 
 
 The date of the letter shows that just over a month had 
 
 elapsed. Thirty-three books of Homer in a month is no 
 
 bad record for a man who thought of writing up over the 
 
 door of his house — 
 
 " How various his employments whom the world 
 Calls idle." 
 
 St. Ann's was, indeed, a perfect place of retirement for 
 the statesman, who, freed at last from the turmoil of
 
 ST. ANN'S HILL. 185 
 
 politics, was eagerly longing to devote the remainder of 
 his life to literature. The house was small but comfort- 
 able, standing on the side of a hill which overlooked the 
 Thames. About thirty acres of ground went with it, part 
 of which was carefully planted and formed the garden and 
 shrubbery, and part reaching up to the top of the hill was 
 left to grow wild with heather and gorse. The garden 
 was Fox's chief delight. lie loved flowers and shrubs 
 with an intensity which came only second to his love of 
 Homer. He was his own gardener, and thoroughly 
 understood the science of old-fashioned English gardening. 
 
 Co © 
 
 Nothing gave him more unalloyed pleasure than an 
 afternoon spent in training the honeysuckle and the roses, 
 and deciding, with the help of Mrs. Fox, where to plant 
 the new shrubs from the nursery. So fond was he of his 
 garden that he made a catalogue in his own handwriting 
 
 O o o 
 
 of all the flowers which grew in it. His life at this chosen 
 home was equally characteristic in its simplicity, and 
 forms a welcome contrast to the town life of earlier days. 
 An early breakfast and the newspaper began the day. 
 After breakfast an hour spent with Mrs. Fox in reading 
 some Italian poet led to the more serious studies of the 
 day, which lasted till dinner at three o'clock. These 
 varied of course, according to the work upon which he 
 was engaged, but they usually took the form of the 
 critical study of some great poet. After dinner the care 
 of the garden occupied him till tea, and when that was 
 over, he generally worked at his projected history of the 
 reign of James II. until bed-time came at half-past ten. 
 Such was the ordinary routine of life at St. Ann's. 
 Simplicity was its characteristic, love its inspiration, 
 literature its occupation. Happiness reigned everywhere 
 in the statesman's paradise, until politics, like sin, entered 
 in to tempt and to destroy.
 
 186 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Literature was the serious work of Fox in his retirement. 
 From his earliest youth he had acquired a love for poetry, 
 and an admiration for the classics. His knowledge of the 
 classical authors had often stood him in good stead anions 
 the vagaries of his youth, and amid his triumphs in 
 Parliament. They had been both a solace and an 
 amusement. But until now he had never had the 
 opportunity of applying himself to the critical study of 
 literature, and of comparing the authors of one age with 
 those of another. That opportunity now presented itself, 
 and he fastened on it with avidity. Fortunately, he 
 numbered among his friends the three men who could 
 best help him in his undertaking. In Dr. Parr, a 
 Warwickshire clergyman, he found the width of reading 
 and extent of knowledge in classical subjects, which could 
 illustrate and explain any point which might arise. In 
 Gilbert Wakefield, the Nonconformist and the Jacobin, 
 lay hid an instinct for scholarship and an enthusiasm for 
 classical literature which could make even questions of 
 grammar interesting. From these Fox was content to 
 learn : but in Lord Holland, his nephew, he found a pupil 
 apt, thoughtful, and receptive, in whose independence of 
 judgment he could rely, and to whom he was not afraid to 
 pour out his crudest thoughts. Yet with his intense love 
 for literature, Fox was extraordinarily limited in his grasp 
 of it. He had no knowledge of philosophy, of law, or of 
 political economy, and no great command of history. 
 Poetry was the chief, almost the only object of his worship, 
 and his knowledge of all the greater poets of the world 
 (except of Germany) was intimate and profound. Poems 
 of action pleased him more than poems of thought, and 
 his affections, however widely they strayed, were sure to 
 come back before long to the great epics of Homer and 
 Virgil. His criticisms on poetry are always distinguished
 
 ST. ANN'S HILL. 187 
 
 by taste. He had an instinctive sense of what was proper 
 and fitting, an instinctive loathing for what was unreal or 
 overdone, and he never fell into the trap, so fatal to 
 many a writer of the eighteenth century, of mistaking 
 perfection of form for correctness of taste. In all that he 
 writes there is a healthy manly vigour of mind which 
 comes like a sea-breeze, before which falsity and 
 affectation cannot live. 
 
 Among English poets, following his usual rule, Fox 
 preferred the earlier to the later. Chaucer was his 
 special favourite. "What a genius the man has," he 
 exclaims. Spenser gave him more pleasure than Milton, 
 partly, he confesses, because of his close relations with 
 Italian poetry, but chiefly because the " Paradise Lost " 
 seemed to him, in spite of grand and stupendous passages, 
 to have " a want of flow, of ease, of what the painters call 
 a free pencil." Shakespeare, strange to say, he never 
 criticises, but in his occasional references to him assumes his 
 superiority as unquestioned. Of more modern poets Dryden 
 certainly is the one whom he admired most, especially in 
 his imitative work. He had caught more, he thought, of 
 the spirit of Juvenal in his satires, while Giffard, who had 
 distinctly aimed at it, was unreadable. Pope was too 
 artificial to please Fox's robust taste, nor were the subjects 
 he treated such as to rouse any interest in one who, it 
 must be confessed, delighted in something exciting and 
 imaginative. Of Wordsworth he had no ureat opinion, 
 which was a poor return for the poet's faithful admiration, 
 but oddly enough he admired Cowper. His sympathy with 
 the oppressed and his ardent love of peace made amends 
 for his Methodism, and Fox frequently instanced the 
 opening lines of ' ; The Task " as among the finest poetry of 
 the English language. Among foreign authors he gave 
 the palm to Racine and Ariosto ; the classical imitations of
 
 188 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 the former, and the romantic grace of the latter especially 
 charmed him. 
 
 " I observe," he writes to Lord Holland, " that Goodwin shows his 
 stupidity in not admiring Racine. It puts me quite in a passion : ' je veux 
 contre eux faire un jour un gros livre,' as Voltaire says. EvenDryden, 
 who speaks with proper respect of Corneille and Moliere, vilipends 
 Racine. If ever I publish my edition of his works I will give it him for 
 it, you may depend. What can you mean by saying there is little good 
 of the new poetry of Cowper ? What not the triplets to Mary ? Not 
 the verses about his early love in the first part ? Not one of the sonnets ? 
 Nut the Shipwreck or Outcast ? Pray read them over again and repeat 
 your former judgment, if you dare ! " 
 
 But after all Fox's heart was in the classics, and his 
 judgment upon modern poetry, in spite of his excellent 
 taste, was somewhat warped by his great predilection for 
 the classical models. That he did not appreciate religious 
 ami thoughtful poetry, and seems only to have seen in 
 Dante and Milton a collection of brilliant and striking 
 passages in a cumbersome and heavy setting, probably 
 sprang largely from the sense that they were moving in a 
 totally different sphere from the great classical poets. 
 ^Vant of connection and interest certainly seems to us a 
 strange charge to bring against the " Divina Commedia," 
 probably the most philosophically arranged poem in 
 literature. Of the ancient writers the Greeks were 
 to his mind far superior to the Romans. Among the 
 many Latin poets whom he admits having read, he 
 only singles out for special praise Ovid and Virgil. The 
 Odes of Horace pleased him for their grace and sweetness 
 of versification, but he does not mention the Satires or 
 the Epistles. In Greek dramatic poetry he had read only 
 two plays of ^Eschylus and nothing of Aristophanes ; but 
 Euripides he greatly admired, and more than once 
 recommended a study of him as the best training for a 
 public speaker.
 
 
 ST. ANN'S HILL. 189 
 
 " He appears to me," he says to Colonel Trotter, " to have much more 
 of facility and nature in his way of writing than Sophocles. Of all 
 Sophocles' plays I like Electra clearly the best. In the Antigone there 
 is a passage in her answer to Creon that is perhaps the sublimest in the 
 world. I suppose you selected Hipp, and Iph. in Aulis on account of 
 Racine ; and I hope you have observed with what extreme judgment he 
 had imitated them. In the character of Hipp, only I think has he fallen 
 short of his original. The scene of Phaedra's discovery of her love to her 
 nurse he has imitated pretty closely, and if he has not surpassed it, it is 
 only because that was impossible." 
 
 Homer and Virgil were the subjects of his minutest 
 and most constant study. He once read through the 
 Odyssey for the purpose of noting any peculiarities in 
 prosody, with the triumphant result that there was only 
 " one line (and I do not know what that is) which I could 
 not reconcile to the common rules." His correspondence 
 with Mr. "Wakefield mainly turns upon points of Homeric 
 prosody and philology. It is worth notice that the parts 
 which attracted him most were those which appealed to 
 the affections and to family relations. In the Iliad 
 nothing pleased him more than the brotherly feeling 
 between Agamemnon and Menelaus, and the amiable 
 character of Menelaus, " whom Homer, by the way," he 
 says, " seems to be particularly fond of." The interview 
 between Priam and Achilles, where the old man un- 
 attended seeks the Grecian ships and with his arms 
 
 " Embraced those knees, and kissed those fearful hands 
 Bloodstained, which many of his sons hath slain ! " 
 
 entreating Achilles to grant him Hector's body, that it 
 might receive due funeral rites — 
 
 " For thy fathers sake look pitying down 
 On me more needing pity ; since I bear 
 Such grief as never man on earth hath borne, 
 Who stc#p to kiss the hands that slew my sen " — 
 
 he pronounces to be the finest passage of the whole poem.
 
 190 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 lie constantly refers to the description of the anxious 
 family council among the Greek leaders at the beginning 
 of the Tenth Book as being particularly fine. 
 
 " If you will not read the Iliad through," he writes to Lord Holland, 
 in 17'.*7. " pray read the Tenth Rook, or rather the first half of it. It is a 
 part I never heard particularly celebrated ; hut I think the beginning of it 
 more true in the description of the uneasiness in the Greek army, and 
 the solicitude of the different chiefs, than anything almost in the poem. 
 It is one of those things which one cannot give an idea of by any 
 particular quotation, but which is excellent beyond measure in placing 
 the scene exactly before one's eyes : and the characters, too. are remarkably 
 well distinguished and preserved. I think Homer always happy in his 
 accounts of Meuelaus, remarkably so. you know, in the Odyssey: but I 
 think he is so always, and in this place too particularly. You see I have 
 never done with Homer, and. indeed, if there w;is nothing else except 
 Virgil and Ariosto, one should never want reading." 
 
 If Homer was the poet Fox admired most, Virgil was 
 the poet whom he loved. He loved him all the more 
 because he was so distinctly on a lower level than Homer, 
 and yet so consummate an artist. " Read him," he says 
 in one place, "until you get to love him for his very 
 faults." Fox. too, had one point in common with Virgil 
 which he could not have with Homer— he was a great 
 defender of imitation on principle, and in Virgil's works 
 he found plenty of argument for his favourite thesis. 
 Once he read the Fourth Book of the yEneid through, 
 marking carefully all the passages which were borrowed, 
 and was delighted to find that they were nearly all greatly 
 improved bv their transplantation. In Wakefield he 
 found a supporter of his theory, and he writes to him in 
 great delight : — 
 
 '• Your notion with respect to poets borrowing from one another seems 
 almost to come up to mine, who have often been laughed at by un- 
 friends as a systematic defender of plagiarism. Indeed, I got Lord 
 Holland, when a school-hoy, to write some verses in praise of it. and in 
 truth it appears to me that the greatest poets have been the most guilty, 
 if guilt there be in such matters."
 
 ST. ANN'S HILL. 101 
 
 His favourite passages in Virgil as in Homer were in 
 the episodes rather than in the main texture of the work, 
 The story of Nisus and Euryalus, the address of Evander 
 to Pallas, the episode of Dido, were the parts which ho 
 loved best. Of .xEneas himself he had a very just 
 contempt, and wonders if Virgil really intended anything 
 else. In a letter to Wakefield, written in 1801, he thus 
 sums uj) his opinion upon Virgil : — 
 
 "The verses you refer to are indeed delightful : indeed, I think that 
 sort of pathetic is Virgil's great excellence in the iEneid, and in that way 
 he surpasses all other poets of every age and nation, except perhaps (and 
 only perhaps) Shakespeare. It is on that account that I rank him so 
 very high, for surely to excel in that style which speaks to the heart is 
 the greatest of all excellence. lam glad you mention the Eighth Book 
 as one of those which you most admire. It has always been a peculiar 
 favourite with me — Evander 's speech upon parting with his son is, I think, 
 the most beautiful thing in the whole, and is, as far as I know, wholly 
 unborrowed. "What is more remarkable is, that it has not. I believe, been 
 often attempted to be imitated. . . . The passage, ' Sin aliquem infandum 
 casum ' is nature itself. And then the tenderness in turning towards 
 Pallas: 'Duin te care puer,' &c. In short, it has always appeared 
 to me divine. On the other hand, I am surprised and sorry that among 
 the capital books you should omit the Fourth. All that part of Dido's 
 speech that follows Num fletu ingemuit nostro ? is surely in the highest 
 style of excellence, as well as the description of her last impotent efforts to 
 retain iEneas, and of the dreariness of her situation after his departure " 
 
 In a letter to Mr. Trotter . he gives the other side of 
 the picture. 
 
 " Though the detached parts of the iEneid appear to me to be equal to 
 anything, the story and characters appear more faulty every time I read it. 
 My chief objection (I mean to the character of .<Eneas) is of course not 
 so much felt in the first three books : but afterwards he is always either 
 insipid or odious, sometimes excites interest against him, and never foi 
 him. One thing wmich delights me in the Iliad and Odyssey, of which 
 there is nothing in Virgil, is the picture of manners, which seem to be sc 
 truly delineated. The times at which Homer lived undoubtedly gave 
 him a great advantage in this respect, since from his nearness to the 
 times of which he writes what w r e always see to be invention in Virgil 
 appears like the plain truth in Homer. But exclusive of this advantage, 
 Homer certainly attends to character more than his imitator."
 
 192 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Then be adds in his postscript, " Even in the First 
 Book yEneas says, ' Sum pins ^Eneas fama super aethera 
 notus.' Can you bear this ? " 
 
 Criticism of this sort might be multiplied from Fox's 
 correspondence almost without limit. His range of 
 reading in his special department of poetry was exceed- 
 ingly wide, and he brought to the study of classical 
 poetry a taste trained in the best school of scholarship 
 which but rarely failed him when dealing with the litera- 
 ture of later times. His strong, vigorous, and clear 
 intellect gives a turn of sound common sense to all his 
 opinions. He has the faculty, so rare and so precious in 
 a literary critic, of self-restraint. Enthusiastic lie always 
 is, but he never permits himself to gush. Yet, in spite of 
 the sound judgment, the powerful mind, the clear state- 
 ment, the trained taste, the self-restrained method, the 
 subdued enthusiasm which appear in every line of his 
 letters or literary subjects, it is impossible not to feel that 
 there is something wanting. His judgment on poets does 
 not, it is true, deal only with the outside, with the form 
 and the expression, yet it docs not pierce into the inside. 
 He fastens upon passages, episodes, scenes, and criticises 
 them. He never deals with a great work as a whole, or 
 attempts to penetrate into the motives which produced it, 
 and the circumstance which moulded it. He is always 
 interesting, never profound, always tasteful, never intel- 
 lectual. He criticises each author, as he studies him, 
 from the standpoint of his own personality. He judges 
 him by his own likes and dislikes ; he looks for the 
 passages which, by their tender sentiment, their true 
 sympathy, their artistic management, fall in with his own 
 feelings and appeal to his own nature. He never tries to 
 put himself into his author's place, and try to realise how 
 his work appeared to him, and what it was meant to be.
 
 ST. ANN'S BILL. 193 
 
 Perhaps the conditions under which he wrote his criticisms 
 did not admit of this. It is too much to expect that a 
 statesman, who is able to devote but the fag-end of a busy 
 life to the claims of literature, and from circumstances 
 throws most of his literary criticism into letter form, 
 should do more than bring the force of a vigorous under- 
 standing and a trained taste to bear upon the art-work of 
 his favourite authors. Yet the complete failure of his 
 own literary effort, the" History of James II.," gives rise 
 to the suspicion that his defects lay deeper than in the 
 outward circumstances of his life. He lived, it is true, at 
 a peculiarly unfortunate time for a literary critic who had 
 not the opportunity of being original. At the time when 
 his literary tastes were forming, there was no school of 
 English poetry worth the name. The old artificial school 
 of Pope had become so thin and attenuated as to be 
 scarcely visible. The romantic and imaginative school 
 inspired by the French Revolution was hardly born before 
 Fox's death, the intellectual school of modern days was 
 yet to be. For a literary prophet it was perhaps an 
 opportunity, but prophets are rare in literature as 
 elsewhere, and certainly there was not in Fox enough of 
 moral stamina or of intellectual depth to make one. 
 
 o
 
 KU CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS, 
 
 The unexpected resignation of Pitt at the beginning of 
 1801 put an end to the idyll of St. Ann's. At once, of 
 course, there was a ferment among the Opposition, and 
 rumours of all sorts began to fly about. Gradually, 
 however, the truth came out and every one began to feel 
 disappointed. Fox at first could not understand it. He 
 thought there must be something behind, some dark 
 intrigue, or, as he expressed it, " a notorious juggle." 
 The substitution of Addington for Fitt could only be 
 believed on the principle quia incredibile. In reality, it 
 was only one of the King's party triumphs, carried a little 
 further than he or his Minister intended. Pitt had begun 
 at last to realise the necessity of peace, but he had not 
 yet schooled himself into the determination to propose it. 
 He had promised to the Roman Catholics of Ireland 
 complete freedom from religious disability in return for 
 their support of the Union ; but he had not yet nerved 
 himself to the effort of obtaining the King's consent to 
 introduce the measure. When he did begin to lay siege 
 to that fortress, he found it well manned and armed at all 
 points, thanks to the diligent care of Lords Lough- 
 borough and Auckland. George III. had got firm hold,
 
 THE 3IINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS. 195 
 
 in his narrow but singularly honest mind, of the convic- 
 tion that to grant Catholic Emancipation was contrary to 
 his Coronation oath, and the Ahitophel was not born 
 who by argument or by guile could move him from that 
 position. Pitt's pledges to the Irish were too distinct 
 and stubborn to be got rid of wholesale, and so there was 
 nothing for it but a resignation, which was equally dis- 
 tasteful to the King and to the Minister. The fruits of 
 victory, however, lay with the King. He found in Adding- 
 ton and Eldon Ministers after his own heart, honest, 
 stupid, and accommodating. A slight return of his old 
 complaint, occasioned by the anxiety of changing his 
 Ministers, redoubled his popularity, and brought Pitt to 
 his knees. He consented to withdraw the question of 
 Catholic Emancipation during the King's lifetime ; and so 
 George III. found himself in the hands of a Minister, 
 whom he regarded with more perfect confidence than any 
 Minister since North, and able, if necessary, to recall the 
 most popular and trusted statesman in England to his 
 councils on his own terms, whenever he chose to do so. 
 
 To Fox the change was of little practical importance. 
 Pitt supported Addington, looking upon him merely as a 
 stop-gap until such time as it might be convenient for 
 him to resume the cares of office, and the majority 
 followed Pitt. It was thought worth while, on the part 
 of the Opposition, to muster their forces and challenge 
 the new Ministry on their formation ; but they were beaten 
 by nearly three to one, and though Fox appeared at 
 Westminster on this occasion, and craved in his speech 
 the usual privilege given to a new Member, he did not 
 yet consider the secession as over. The first work of 
 the new Ministry was the negotiation of the peace with 
 France. That was a measure upon which there were not 
 two opinions in the whole of England, and while that was 
 
 o 2
 
 196 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 in progress all party warfare was hushed. In the autumn 
 the treaty was concluded, and accepted by Parliament 
 and the nation with enthusiastic joy, and so the curtain 
 fell on the first act of the great war drama. Fox 
 immediately determined to seize the opportunity to pay 
 a visit to Paris, partly to collect materials for his history, 
 and partly to see for himself the victorious general who 
 had, as Fox expressed it, "like most military men, 
 reformed the country by taking the power into his own 
 hands." 
 
 On his return he found the Ministers in a most 
 anomalous condition. One section of Pitt's old majority, 
 led by the Grenvilles, had declared strongly against the 
 peace, and directed a furious onslaught upon Addington 
 on the terms of the Treaty. The Whigs, on the other 
 hand, were overjoyed at the peace, and supported the 
 Government staunchly when that was in danger. On 
 all other matters, of course, they could have nothing in 
 common with an administration formed on a purely 
 reactionary basis. Pitt, who still held the strings in his 
 own hands, and might have forced himself upon the King 
 whenever he pleased, withdrew altogether from Parlia- 
 ment, though it was understood that he gave a qualified 
 support to the Ministry. A state of affairs like this 
 clearly could not last long. It was necessary for the 
 AVhigs to keep a sharp eye upon what was going on, and 
 Fox could no longer resist the importunities of his 
 friends to put a formal end to the ill-advised secession. 
 On June 27th, 1802, in a letter to Lauderdale, he reluc- 
 tantly gave it its coup de grace — "I have at last made 
 up my mind to come in, not convinced by reason, but 
 rinding the wish among my friends so general ; I am sure 
 I am wrong, but I cannot go against the tide." 
 
 The crisis was, indeed, one which demanded that the
 
 THE MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS. 197 
 
 country should have the benefit of the counsel of all true 
 patriots. She was on the xerge of a war with the 
 greatest military genius whom the world has ever seen, 
 while her affairs were directed by a crazy King and an 
 incapable Minister, and the two ablest men in England 
 were sulking in their respective tents. Buonaparte had 
 never intended the peace of Amiens to be anything else 
 than a breathing-space. As he frankly confessed to 
 M. Gallois a few months later, his power in France was 
 not sufficiently consolidated, nor was his ambition suffi- 
 ciently satisfied, to permit him to allow such a splendid 
 weapon as the army of France to rust in disuse. He 
 used the peace of Amiens, just as Louis XIV. had used 
 the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle and the peace of Nimeguen, 
 simply as a period of quiet in which he could prepare for 
 the next move in the game of ambition. During the 
 latter part of the year 1802 despatch after despatch, each* 
 treading on the heels of its predecessor, came pouring in* 
 upon the British Government, bringing news of fresh- 
 French aggressions. In August Buonaparte seized upon- 
 Elba, in October upon Parma and Piacenza, a few weeks- 
 later he occupied Switzerland. He demanded from the 
 English Government the expulsion of the emigrants, the 
 banishment of the Bourbon princes, the suppression of 
 newspapers hostile to himself. Finally, in January, 1803, 
 he published a report of Colonel Sebastiani upon Egypt, 
 the object of which was to show how easily it could be 
 reconquered. In fact, by the time the campaigning 
 season of 1803 had begun, he had made all his prepara- 
 tions and was ready for action. All that remained was 
 to bring about a declaration of war upon a point which 
 should put England technically in the wrong. The feeble 
 Government, under its pompous and stupid head, did all 
 it could to second his efforts. Without ever laying
 
 198 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 before Europe a remonstrance against the obvious 
 aggressions of France, Addington called out the Militia 
 in March, 1803, and thus enabled Buonaparte, at the 
 celebrated interview with Lord Whitworth which followed, 
 to represent England as showing a desire for war. By 
 refusing to restore Malta to the Knights of St. John, he 
 allowed the quarrel nominally to arise out of an infrac- 
 tion of the treaty of Amiens by the English Government. 
 Well might Fox say: ''Addington by his foliy has 
 contrived to lay bare the injustice of our cause." 
 
 Directly it became clear that the country was drifting 
 again into war, a determined effort was made to put the 
 helm of state into more secure hands. Lord Grenville, 
 who perhaps alone among English statesmen fully realised 
 the character and genius of Buonaparte, was anxious to 
 form a Ministry on a broad bottom, which should include 
 both Pitt and Fox. Canning and the younger followers 
 of Pitt, with whom were the bulk of the nation, looked 
 upon Pitt as the only man capable of steering the country 
 safelv through the perils which encompassed her. The 
 wits turned their batteries upon Addington and tried fairly 
 to laugh him out of office. Never was Minister more 
 unmercifully ridiculed. Endless were the jests pointed at 
 his father's profession. " The Medici Administration," 
 they called it. " The Pills for himself and the Pells for 
 his son,"' they sang, when the valuable sinecure of the 
 Clerk of the Pells was kept in the family. 
 
 •• As London is to Paddington, 
 So is Pitt to Addington," 
 
 was the less good-humoured comparison of Canning. But 
 the Minister ; wrapped up in sublime self-conceit, was im- 
 pervious to argument or witticism. He was quite acute 
 enough to know that the royal favour was his, and his alone ;
 
 THE 3IINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS. 199 
 
 and trusting to that he could afford to treat even Pitt with 
 some degree of independence. When war became un- 
 avoidable, he actually had the impertinence to think that 
 he could make his own terms with Pitt. Through the 
 instrumentality of Dundas, now Lord Melville, he proposed 
 that Lord Chatham should become the nominal leader of a 
 coalition between Pitt and himself, but stipulated as an 
 essential condition for the exclusion of the Grenvilles. 
 He was speedily undeceived. Pitt put a summary stop to 
 the negotiation. " I really had not the curiosity to 
 inquire what I was to be," he said afterwards to a friend. 
 Addington, nothing disconcerted, declared war on the 
 16th of May, and to mark the occasion came down to 
 Parliament dressed in full Windsor uniform. Unfortunately 
 for his dignity the business before the House at that very 
 moment was the Medicine Bill. The House, of course, at 
 once saw the joke, and a roar of laughter greeted the 
 martial appearance of " the Doctor," which broke out 
 again irrepressibly as Sheridan, in his best manner, alluded 
 to him as the " right honourable gentleman who has 
 appeared this evening in the character of a sheep in wolf's 
 clothing." 
 
 The debate of the 23rd of May on the policy of the 
 war, showed the strange divisions of parties at the time. 
 Pitt, Fox, and Grenville were all personally opposed to 
 Addington on the ground of his incapacity. Pitt, never- 
 theless, supported the Minister in his war policy, and made 
 one of his most brilliant speeches in his favour. Grenville, 
 too, was eager for war, but far too virulent against 
 Addington to support his conduct of it. Fox, though he 
 thought war inevitable, yet clung fondly to a hope that 
 Buonaparte was not really so ambitious and unscrupulous 
 ;.s he was thought to be, and steadilv maintained that if 
 the negotiations had been better conducted, peace might
 
 209 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 have been preserved. In this, however, some of his 
 followers, notably Grey, seem to have disagreed with him, 
 When once war had been declared all parties agreed that 
 it must be carried on vigorously, and Lord Grenville 
 approached Fox to see if they could not find a ground for 
 common action, if not for coalition, in their common oppo- 
 sition to the Minister. After some negotiation, which 
 mainly passed through the hands of Thomas Grenville, 
 Fox's old friend and agent in 1782, an agreement for 
 common opposition was arrived at. Efforts were made to 
 get Pitt to join ; but he, though reserving to himself full 
 liberty to question and criticise any measures of the 
 Ministers which seemed to him to be bad or wanting in 
 vigour, would not definitely range himself on the side of 
 the Opposition, lie saw clearly enough that he had the 
 game in his own hands if he waited, and did not want to 
 be encumbered by ties which might prove inconvenient. 
 The event proved that he was right. The relations 
 between Grenville and Fox grew closer. The Opposition 
 grew stronger and more consolidated as the months crept 
 on. "When Pitt chose to oppose the Ministry, their 
 majority was doubtful ; when he supported it, it was assured. 
 Slowly, however, it dwindled away. Eventually by April, 
 1804, it was reduced to 36. Addington resigned, and Pitt 
 resumed office, with the acquiescence of the King and the 
 support of the vast majority of the country, wholly un- 
 fettered by any promises to Grenville or to Fox. 
 
 At last there seemed a chance that the nation, as she 
 was entering on the crisis of her fortunes in the death 
 struggle with France, might be able to rather to her 
 assistance all the talent in her service. The war of 1803 
 was a very different one to that of 1793. No one could 
 pretend that it was a war against opinion, or a war of 
 sheer unmanly terror, least of all a war to restore the
 
 THE MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS. 201 
 
 ancien regime. Whatever had been the case in 1793, no 
 one doubted now that the cause of Buonaparte was the 
 cause of absolutism and tyranny, and the cause of England 
 was the cause of liberty. Military despotism was no new 
 danger to Europe, no new factor in English politics. 
 Among the noblest of England's claims to the gratitude of 
 Europe, was the remembrance of the part which she had 
 played in breaking the European tyranny of Louis XIV. 
 But Louis, at any rate, was the representative of a great 
 tradition, had a definite national policy, and was in his 
 own way a champion of civilisation as well as of despotism. 
 The ambition of Buonaparte on the contrary was personal, 
 not national. His tyranny represented nothing but his 
 own sword, it rested purely and nakedly on force. What 
 enemy of the human race could be imagined more deadly 
 than a military adventurer, cruel, faithless, and unscrupu- 
 lous, gifted with extraordinary talents, restrained by no law 
 human or Divine, who looked upon human beings simply 
 as the playthings of his ambition, upon nations as ministers 
 to his glory ? Fox perhaps was the only statesman in 
 England who was still inclined to hope, who still believed 
 that the ogre might be tamed by dexterous treatment ; 
 but neither he nor any one else denied for a moment the 
 absolute duty of England to spend her last man and her 
 last shilling in the cause of the liberation of Europe, should 
 Buonaparte prove the tyrant which his enemies believed 
 him to be. 
 
 Once more the best hopes of England were doomed to 
 be wrecked by the narrow-minded honesty of the King. 
 To George III., Addington was still the best Minister he 
 had ever had, Fox was still the unprincipled roue who 
 had taught his son to hate him. George III. had enough 
 Stewart blood in his veins to learn nothing and to forget 
 nothing. Directly Pitt proposed to him a Coalition
 
 202 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 Ministry, a Ministry in fact of the national defence, 
 wholly apart from party, which was to include Fox, 
 Grenville, Fitzwilliam, Grey, and Canning, the King 
 resolutely refused to agree to Fox. On hearing this, Fox, 
 with characteristic good temper, at once asked not to have 
 his own claims pressed, but insisted on the inclusion of 
 some of his followers, if it was in any real sense to be a 
 Coalition Ministry. His followers, with equally charac- 
 teristic loyalty, refused to serve if their chief was not 
 to lead them ; and the Grenvilles, true to their policy of 
 co-operation with the Whigs, refused to join unless the 
 AYhigs came in too. 
 
 The result was that the King was victorious all 
 along the line. " Never in any conversation that I have 
 had with him has he so baffled me," said Pitt. The 
 old Ministry of incapables was reconstituted, but with 
 the addition of Pitt and Dundas; the old policy of 
 organising coalitions against France with English gold 
 was taken up, and Sisyphus began once more to roll the 
 stone up the hill. All that zeal could do was done. The 
 record of Pitt's second Ministry is a noble story of energy 
 and vigour, unsuccessful though it was. The threat of 
 invasion roused the patriotism of every Englishman, and 
 defences not formidable in themselves, but useful in 
 quieting apprehension, sprung up on the coast of Kent. 
 Lord Melville worked so hard at the reorganisation of 
 the fleet that it is said he added no less than one hundred 
 and sixty-six vessels to the navy in a year. The principle 
 of the conscription for national defence was introduced by 
 the Additional Forces Bill. Abroad the murder of the 
 due d'Enghien, the assumption of the title of Emperor by 
 Napoleon, his virtual annexation of Italy, Holland, and 
 Switzerland, were powerful arguments in Pitt's favour, and 
 by April, 1S05 ; he had the satisfaction of seeing Austria and 

 
 THE MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS. 203 
 
 Russia again allied against the tyrant. In August, 1805, 
 the superiority of Nelson and Calder over Villeneuve at 
 sea effectually relieved England of any fear of invasion. 
 The victory of Trafalgar in October annihilated the 
 French navy for the rest of the war. But in all other 
 respects the story is one of continued disaster. Pitt's 
 own health was breaking down under the strain. He 
 spoke at times with his old fire, but the effort became 
 visibly greater. The attack upon Lord Melville for 
 malversation, carried in the House of Commons by the 
 Speaker's casting vote, simply broke his heart. The news 
 of the capitulation of Ulm, and the total failure of the 
 coalition at Austerlitz, brought him to his grave. On 
 January 23rd, 180 J, he died, murmuring, it is said, with 
 his last breath a prayer for his country. 
 
 The death of Pitt left literally no one in England to 
 rake his place except Fox and Grenville. Pitt and 
 Melville had been the only able men in the Cabinet. 
 Addington had been tried and found wanting, and it was 
 impossible even for the King to explore the depths of the 
 kingdom of dulness which stretched below the feet of 
 Addington. He fully understood the state of affairs, sent 
 for Lord Grenville and entrusted the government to him. 
 Grenville at once replied that the first person he should 
 consult would be Fox. " I understood it to be so," said the 
 King, ''and I meant it to be so." Not two years before 
 George III. had taken care to let it be known that Fox 
 had been excluded from the Ministry by the King's 
 personal action, but a few months previous he had written 
 that he would run the risk of civil war rather than 
 admit Fox. No one knew better than George III. when 
 opposition was hopeless. He struggled to the very end, 
 but always gave way when it was absolutely necessary, 
 and so it was in this case. After an interval of twenty-
 
 204 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 three years, Fox again kissed his hands on his appoint- 
 ment as Foreign Secretary, and in no period of his life in 
 which he had been Minister did he find the Kinjj more 
 cordial and accommodating. 
 
 The Ministry of All the Talents, as that of Grenville 
 and Fox was called by the wits, was based upon the idea 
 long urged by the Grenvilles, that in a combination of 
 parties alone could be found sufficient national strength 
 to withstand Napoleon. But the nomination of Fox as 
 Foreign Secretary of course implied that an attempt to 
 restore peace would at once be made. Fox had always 
 maintained that Napoleon did not really wish for the 
 renewal of war. His objects, Fox thought, at that time 
 were mainly to consolidate his own power in France, and 
 had the English Ministers met him straightforwardly, and 
 shown them that they had no intention of disturbing his 
 authority at home, he would have manifested a very 
 different disposition towards England. Napoleon, when 
 First Consul, had either taken a great fancy to Fox, or 
 he had thought it prudent to try and make so influential 
 a man his friend, and Fox could not bring himself to 
 believe that one, who had treated him so courteously and 
 so openly, could really be playing a double game. He 
 had hardly settled himself in his new office when an 
 opportunity for opening negotiations presented itself. A 
 man called on Fox and detailed to him a plan for the 
 Emperor's assassination. Fox, in a tempest of indignation, 
 drove him from the room, and at once acquainted 
 Napoleon with the plot. Probably he might have saved 
 himself the trouble, as there is good reason to suppose that 
 the whole thing was concocted by Talleyrand. However 
 this may be, it answered the purpose. A. friendly speech 
 of the Emperor's was forwarded to Fox, and negotiations 
 began. At first they were carried on between Fox and
 
 TEE MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS. 205 
 
 Talleyrand, a little later Lord Yarmouth, who was one 
 of the Englishmen seized by Buonaparte on the outbreak 
 of the war, was used as agent, and eventually Lauderdale 
 was sent as full plenipotentiary. 
 
 It did not make much difference through whose hands 
 the negotiations passed. Napoleon was at that time 
 busily engaged in mapping out central Europe afresh, 
 with the double object of consolidating his own authority, 
 and of bringing the whole of Europe to bear upon 
 England in order to crush her trade. The only question 
 really was, how long it would take Fox to tind this out ? 
 By the summer he still had hopes of an accommodation, 
 but they had become very faint, as Napoleon, in spite of 
 his promise to the contrary, had annexed Sicily to the 
 new kingdom of Naples — created for his brother 
 Joseph — and by the formation of the Confederation of the 
 Rhine had broken his engagement to Yarmouth that the 
 constitution of Germany should not be altered. Fox, 
 whose health was beginning to break down, hoped to 
 hand over the Foreign Office to his nephew Lord Holland 
 directly the negotiation was finished, and a conversation 
 between them, which occurred at this time, shows that he 
 had practically given up all hope of peace. 
 
 " We can," he says, " in honour do nothing without the full and 
 bond fide consent of the Queen and Court of Naples ; but even exclusive 
 of that consideration and of the great importance of Sicily which you, 
 young one, very much underrate, it is not so much the value of the point 
 in dispute as the manner in which the French fly from their word that 
 disheartens me. It is not Sicily, but the shuffling, insincere way in 
 which they act, that shows me that they are playing a false game ; and 
 in that case it would be very imprudent to make any concessions, which 
 by any possibility could be thought inconsistent with our honour, or could 
 furnish our allies with a plausible pretence for suspecting, reproaching, 
 or deserting us." 
 
 The negotiations did not actually cease till after Fox's
 
 206 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 death, but it is evident from this letter that Grey did not much 
 misrepresent Fox's opinion when, a few months later, he 
 said : " There never was any opportunity of procuring any 
 such terms as would have been adequate to the just pre- 
 tensions, and consistent with the honour and interests of 
 this country." Fox had always maintained that the 
 chances of peace and war depended entirely upon the 
 good faith of Napoleon. He had always persuaded 
 himself that Napoleon was actuated more by patriotism 
 than by ambition. Seven months of negotiation disabused 
 him of this idea, and before his death he had sorrowfully 
 reached the conclusion that war was not only unavoidable 
 but desirable as long as Napoleon claimed the right to 
 ride roughshod over the liberties of Europe. 
 
 If Fox could not restore peace to Europe, he could do 
 something at least to remove from England the stain of 
 an unnatural and cruel traffic. He was not the man to 
 reckon up the magnitude of the interests affected, when 
 he was called upon to do an act of simple justice to 
 suffering humanity. Year after year, as long as he 
 attended Parliament, his voice had been raised against 
 the detestable trade in slaves, and now that he had the 
 power, he at once seized the opportunity of showing that 
 his sympathy, unlike that of Pitt, was not confined to 
 words. In June, 1806, Fox pledged himself to introduce 
 a measure of total abolition. It was his last speech in 
 Parliament. He did not live to carry out his pledge, 
 but the bill drawn on the lines which he had sketched 
 out, was introduced by Grey in January, and became 
 law in March, 1S07. By it the trade in negroes was 
 absolutely forbidden to British subjects after January 1st, 
 1808. Three years later it was made a felony to take 
 part in it. So was accomplished this great act of social 
 reform, which Fox had strenuously urged for so many
 
 TUB MINISTRY OF ALL TUB TALENTS. 207 
 
 years in apparently hopeless opposition, but which he was 
 not permitted to see pass into law. 
 
 The end came very quickly. In January 1806 he 
 accepted office, and set about the work of his department 
 With unabated energy ; but his attendance at the House, 
 and his anxiety about the peace and the abolition of the 
 slave trade soon told on him, and he determined to give 
 up the seals to Lord Holland directly those questions were 
 settled. " Don't think me selfish, young one," he wrote, 
 " the slave trade and peace are such glorious things I 
 can't give them up, even to you." In June, however, came 
 a change for the worse. His malady was now declared to 
 be dropsy, and he was obliged to give up all business. It 
 soon became so serious that operations had to be resorted 
 to for his relief, and he, as well as his wife and friends, 
 understood that the end could not be far off. At the 
 beginning of September he rallied a little, and was 
 removed to Chiswick, but on the 7th he began plainly to 
 get weaker. Lord Holland and General Fitzpatrick, 
 who were always with him, read to him constantly. It 
 was his great delight. Virgil, Dryden, and Crabbe were 
 the authors he asked for oftenest, and his favourite 
 passages of Virgil were read and re-read, as if he could 
 not bring himself to part with so old a friend. At length 
 he became too weak to understand what was read, and 
 during the morning of the loth of September he lay 
 motionless and almost unconscious, with a sweet smile of 
 happiness on his face. At last, at six in the evening, he 
 passed away, sinking to rest quite quietly and peacefully, 
 surrounded by those whom he loved best in the whole 
 world, undisturbed by anxious thought or touch of pain. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, in the well-known lines of the prelude 
 to " Marmion," has given lasting expression to the thought 
 which was uppermost in the minds of most Englishmen
 
 208 CHABLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 when they heard of the death of Fox. It was that of 
 thankfulness that one, who was in so many things 
 essentially English, should at last be found acting in 
 harmony with the bulk of his countrymen on the great 
 -abject of the day. Yet it may be questioned whether 
 praise thus limited did not really do an injustice to Fox's 
 memory ? It implied a want of patriotism in previous 
 years, which, if true, would be most detrimental to his 
 character as a statesman. It suggested a fault in his 
 nature which his friends certainly would have most 
 energetically repudiated. Those who look upon Fox as 
 having anything foreign in his sympathies or turn of mind, 
 totally misread his character. He was English to the 
 backbone, a product of the England of the eighteenth 
 century just as typical as was Pitt, though representative 
 of a different type. There was nothing in him of the 
 finesse of a Frenchman, of the suppleness of an Italian, 
 of the brutality of a German. His love of home, his 
 simplicity of life, his straightforward directness of speech 
 and thought, his stubbornness of will, his steadfastness of 
 affection, his very indolence, and yet the sense of duty 
 which obliged him to work against his will, were all 
 qualities essentially English. It was because he was 
 so essentially English that he acquired the hold which he 
 did over the country. Men recognised instinctively that 
 he was one of themselves. They could understand him. 
 In his good qualities and his bad qualities there was nothing 
 outside the sphere in which they themselves moved. It 
 was just because they knew him so well that they hated 
 him so relentlessly or loved him so passionately. Even 
 his worst enemies, those who really believed that he 
 wished to establish a republic in England on the Jacobin 
 model, never accused him of hitting below the belt. 
 They knew perfectly well what they had to meet, the
 
 THE MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS. 209 
 
 war between them was open and above board. What 
 Fox meant he said, and he did not mean any more than 
 he said. As a matter of fact he usually meant a great 
 deal less. In the most truculent attacks which were 
 made upon him, such as those of Gillray, there was nothing 
 kept in reserve, no suggestion of things worse than what 
 appeared, no allusions to dark designs which were not 
 avowed. It was a fair stand-up fight on both sides, 
 conducted according to the most approved principle of the 
 English prize ring. 
 
 The attacks on Fox in this respect are very different 
 to those directed against his father. Compare Gillray's 
 caricature of Fox cutting off the head of George III. 
 with Gray's venomous lines on Lord Holland at Kings- 
 gate : — 
 
 '• Old and abandoned by each venal friend, 
 Here Holland formed the pious resolution 
 To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend 
 A broken character and constitution. 
 
 'Ah,' said the sighing peer. ■ had Bute been true, 
 Nor Mungo's, Rigby's, Bradshaw's friendship vain. 
 
 Far better scenes than these had blest our view, 
 And realised the beauties which we feign.' 
 
 Purged by the sword and purified by fire, 
 
 Then had we seen proud London's hated walls ; 
 
 Owls would have hooted in St. Peter's choir, 
 And foxes stunk and littered in St. Paul's." 
 
 Or compare again the spirit which attached to Shelburne 
 the name and characteristics of Malagrida with the wave 
 of popular feeling which deprived Fox of his majority in 
 1784. In the one there is the distrust which is born of 
 fear, and which is all the more formidable because it 
 cannot easily be explained, because it is felt rather than 
 expressed ; the other was the distrust of a healthy moral 
 sentiment, which punished appropriately what it considered
 
 210 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 to be an obvious outrage to political morality. To most 
 Englishmen undoubtedly, the support given by Fox to the 
 French Revolution was a severe shock. They were at that 
 time too much under the influence of fear themselves to be 
 able to judge impartially of the conduct of one who, on the 
 contrary, was inspired, not by fear, but by sympathy ; and 
 he was too much of a partisan to make allowance for their 
 prejudices. The judgment passed on both sides was much 
 too harsh. Party feeling became more exacerbated than 
 it had ever been before, and yet even in the height of the 
 flood of public opinion which overwhelmed him, in spite of 
 all the abuse which was showered upon him, no one really 
 could bring himself to believe that Fox had set himself to 
 destroy the institutions of his country. They believed 
 him to be wrong, but they believed him to be honest, and 
 when the time came for him to stand forward in their 
 behalf against Napoleonic aggression, they rejoiced, not 
 because the prodigal had returned home from the Jacobin 
 swine troughs, but because the line of patriotic duty as 
 understood bv Whig and Tory had converged in common 
 action for their country's good. 
 
 The question then naturally arises, Is there in the 
 public life of Fox any evidence that he had a distinct 
 political ideal, which he followed as consistently as his 
 circumstances and his temperament admitted ? Was this 
 patriotism, which it is now on all bands acknowledged that 
 be possessed, a vague sentiment or a considered policy ? 
 The circumstances of Fox's political life almost forbid a 
 direct answer to the question. It is the business of an 
 Opposition to oppose, and no one expects that the attack 
 will always be made from the same quarter or in the same 
 way. By the conventions of politics a good deal of 
 latitude is allowed to an Opposition, both as to the 
 principles they lay down, and the arguments they use. It
 
 TEE MINISTRY OF ALL TEE TALENTS. 211 
 
 is when a statesman or a party is in office that their 
 political ideal is seen, and Fox never while in office had 
 any chance whatever of carrying political principles into 
 legislation, except in his India Bill, which did not pass. 
 In 1782 and 1806 his time was almost entirely occupied 
 with negotiations for peace. His political principles, 
 therefore, have to be drawn mainly not from what he did 
 do, but from what he blamed others for not doing, which 
 is a test far more severe than that applied to any other 
 great statesman of the century, and which, if applied to 
 modern statesmen — " who would escape whipping ? " 
 
 Fox himself steadily maintained throughout his career a 
 consistent appeal to Whig principles as the kernel of his 
 political faith. He rarely made a speech in the Bouse 
 of Commons in which he did not profess his intense, almost 
 blind admiration for the British Constitution ; but these 
 were phrases which by the end of the eighteenth century 
 had become little more than phrases. To a politician of 
 Wal pole's day, Whig principles meant distinctly the 
 supremacy of Parliament over the prerogative, party 
 government, and religious toleration. It was summed up 
 in the motto of the Revolution of 1688 — Civil and 
 Religious Liberty. The British Constitution had an 
 equally distinct meaning. It meant a government in 
 which political power was divided between the Crown, the 
 Ministers, and Parliament, but in which the aristocracy 
 had the real ascendency. But by the end of the 
 eighteenth century the phrases understood in this sense 
 had become unreal. No Tory, however reactionary, 
 thought of disputing the supremacy of Parliament, the 
 necessity of party government, or the advisability oi 
 religious toleration ; and although opinions differed as to 
 the exact limits which should be placed on the influence 
 of the Crown, or of the people, in the government, no one 
 
 p 2
 
 212 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 doubted that the chief control should be vested in the 
 aristocracy. Thirty years later, on the contrary, they had 
 again become intensely real They had acquired a new 
 meaning. In the cold shade of opposition the Whig party 
 had learned the doctrines of Free Trade from Adam 
 Smith, and of Utilitarianism from Bentham ; they had 
 seized Parliamentary Reform from the nerveless hands of 
 Pitt, and in the mouths of Grey and of Russell and of 
 Al thorp, these time-honoured phrases meant the ousting 
 of the Crown from political power, the supremacy of the 
 middle classes, the domination of commercial objects in 
 politics, and religious equality. 
 
 Fox bridges over the gulf which separates these two 
 conceptions of Whig principles. He it is who enables 
 the programme of 1832 to be carried out by the same 
 party which was overthrown by George III. in 1770. He 
 it is who forms the link between Rockingham and 
 Burdett. And the very indcfiniteness of his own views, 
 the fact that sentiment entered so largely into his 
 political judgments, enabled him to discharge the function 
 with the greater ease. He brought to the work of 
 politics the talents of an orator, rather than of a statesman,, 
 and he never made any definite scheme his own for 
 placing the government of the country upon a more popular 
 basis. He had in fact no enlarged conceptions of politics. 
 He was too indolent to work out problems for posterity to 
 settle. He was content to deal with the present, with the 
 resources which the present supplied. He never laid 
 before Parliament on any subject a carefully reasoned out 
 scheme of political conduct, based upon principle and 
 applied to the facts in question, except the India Bill, and 
 it must always be doubtful how much of the India Bill 
 was due to the inspiration of Burke. Hard political 
 thinking he invariably avoided. In the American War
 
 THE MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS. 213 
 
 lie could denounce the folly of the Ministry and demand 
 the acknowledgment of independence, but he never had any 
 scheme of his own to propound based upon a reasonable 
 theory of colonial politics. He could cut the Gordian knot, 
 but not untie it. The same thing is observable in his 
 struggle with Pitt in 1784. He could denounce in Parlia- 
 ment the unconstitutional appointment of the Ministers, he 
 never could outvote them on questions of confidence, but he 
 attempted to present his case to the constituencies, who 
 after all must be eventually the arbiters, as one between 
 the prerogative and the independence of Parliament. 
 The same defect is still more conspicuous in his way of 
 dealing with the war of 1793. Again and again he 
 attacked Pitt for not making clear the object of the war, 
 and sought accordingly to prove that it must be either a 
 war against opinion, or a war to restore the Bourbons. 
 But he on his side never had any clear idea of the 
 principle on which friendly relations with France could 
 be maintained. He admitted that the violation of the 
 Scheldt was a necessary cause of war by treaty, if the 
 Dutch chose to make it so. He allowed that the French 
 proclamation, inciting rebellion in monarchical countries, 
 could not be passed over without demanding an explana- 
 tion. But he refused to face the question of what should be 
 done if the Dutch did call upon us to act, if the French, 
 as of course they would, declined to explain. It was 
 merely his own belief in the good sense and faith of 
 the French that he opposed to the traditional policy of 
 civilised nations in pursuance of treaty obligations. So 
 again in 1803 he opposed the renewal of the war because 
 he believed in the good faith of Buonaparte, and knew that 
 Addington was a blunderer and an incapable, but in 180(5 
 he found that he was wrong. 
 
 It was just that preference of personal conviction to the
 
 214 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 resists of hard political thinking as the motive of policy, 
 which made matter-of-fact Englishmen distrust Fox as 
 a political leader, and made them sometimes think that 
 he had no political principles. In that they did him a 
 grievous injustice. He used the time-honoured formula? 
 of party politics so frequently, at a time when to most 
 men they had shrunk and withered into mere skeletons, 
 that people could not realise that he was reclothing 
 them again with flesh and blood, and inspiring them with 
 new life for a fresh struggle under the old banners. 
 The independence of Parliament — civil and religious 
 liberty — the glorious constitution of 1688, had got to be 
 formulae as hollow as the immortal principle of '89 sound 
 to us now. Their original meaning had become ex- 
 hausted, and they were usually intended to mean just 
 what anybody chose. But in Fox's mouth they had a 
 very definite meaning. They meant the crushing of the 
 royal influence in government, the establishment of a 
 responsible Prime Ministership, the reform of Parliament, 
 and the removal of political disabilities from Non- 
 conformists. But here again, as in matters of external 
 policy, he stopped short just where he should have gone 
 on. He contented himself with the principle, he shrunk 
 from translating his principle into action. In all these 
 questions he was content to play the second part, to 
 follow where others led. The scheme for the Beform of 
 Parliament belonged to Pitt, and was appropriated by 
 Grey. That for the removal of Nonconformists' dis- 
 abilities Fox inherited from Beaufoy, that for the 
 Abolition of the Slave Trade was Wilberforce's own. 
 In no one of these measures, which are the best evidence 
 of Fox's insight as a statesman, which are the great 
 historical triumphs of the Whig party, did Fox himself 
 take the initiative. He did not even give himself the
 
 THE MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS. 21 § 
 
 trouble to place them before Parliament, in reasoned and 
 considered legislative form. It is not too much to say 
 that at his death, not one of them had definitely taken 
 rank as essential parts of the Whig policy. Yet these 
 are the measures upon which depends the reputation of 
 Fox as the statesman, to whom the policy brought to 
 such a glorious conclusion in 1829 and 1832 is mainly 
 due. If Fox is to be considered as the author of a new 
 departure in Whig policy, if his separation from Burke is 
 to mean anything in the history of political principle, if 
 in any sense whatever he is to be looked upon as the 
 father of the Whigs of '32, these are the measures by which 
 that claim will be judged. It is fatal to his reputation 
 as a serious statesman, that not one of them was during 
 his lifetime permanently associated with his name. It is 
 to his honour as a politician that they all received his 
 support. It was to the advantage of his party, that by 
 his support he was enabled to pass them to his followers 
 as a legacy of which they could make better use than he 
 had done. 
 
 There is in fact a real want of political ambition in 
 Fox. It was that which made him recoil when the tru?^ 
 test of statesmanship, as of everything else great in this 
 world, presented itself to him — the imptM-ative necessity for 
 taking trouble. Great political successes are not won on 
 the floor of the House of Commons amid the plaudits of 
 an excited crowd, they are won in the office, or the study, 
 amid stat sties and reports. Fox never could bring him- 
 self to understand this. Eager, impulsive, and impetuous, 
 he would throw himself into the fray when the debate 
 came on, and speak with a conviction all the more positive 
 because it was born of the necessities of the moment, but 
 when the excitement had passed it was very difficult to 
 get him to attend to the humdrum business of preparing
 
 216 CHARLES JAMES FOX. 
 
 and arranging for the next step. Sir Gilbert Elliot tells 
 us that he was curiously vacillating and hesitating in 
 making up his mind. 
 
 " This I fear," he says, " is a habitual defect in Fox, who has a great 
 difficulty or backwardness in resolving as if he had no interest or no 
 judgment in the affairs that are depending, and at last lets anybody else 
 decide for him." 
 
 His indecision sprang not from want of will but from 
 real want of interest. He could take trouble enough 
 about a disputed reading in Homer, he would not decide 
 whether the Opposition should start a candidate for the 
 office of Speaker, until the day before that on which 
 Parliament was to meet. Indolence was a fault which 
 ran through the whole of Fox's life, political and social. 
 Perhaps it was too much to demand of a statesman, who 
 was always in a hopeless minority, that he should master 
 details and apply principles with the avidity of one for 
 whom the gates of power are just opening in the distance, 
 but the result was none the less disastrous. Fox called 
 in sentiment to supply the place of knowledge — sentiment, 
 it is true, which sprang from a healthy and sound English 
 heart, and was checked by an eminently sensible mind, 
 but still sentiment which was very dangerous as an 
 important element in a statesman's policy at the time of 
 the French Revolution. What England wanted was a 
 leader with the political sympathies of Fox, and the 
 philosophical depth and practical mind of Burke. What 
 she got was, on the one side the conventional common- 
 place selfishness of Pitt, and on the other side in Fox, a 
 real zeal for liberty, which was inspiring and essentially 
 true, but which could do nothing to solve the difficulties 
 of the hour. To tell the English nation that the revolu- 
 tion of 1789 was a great step on the path of liberty, at a 
 time when it had led to the overthrow of all the institutions
 
 THE MINISTRY OF ALL THE TALENTS. 217 
 
 with which in England liberty had been bound up, was as 
 pernicious as it was useless. It sprang from an opinion 
 which had its root in sentiment, not in reason. It 
 destroyed the confidence of the British nation in Fox as a 
 practical politician, and it did much to hand England 
 over, as the only alternative, a victim to the terror of the 
 Tories. 
 
 Where then is the secret of Fox's great influence over 
 contemporaries, of his position in the page of history ? It 
 is to be found in his oratory and in his personal attractive- 
 ness. Undistinguished as a statesman, except in the 
 department of foreign politics, a failure as a party leader, 
 he was unrivalled in debate. On the floor of the House 
 of Commons he never met his match. Sheridan had more 
 wit, Pitt more declamatory power, Erskine more elegance, 
 Tierney more polish, but the oratory of Fox outshone 
 them all in the qualities which go straight to the 
 heart, Robustness and earnestness were its two main 
 characteristics. In the whole range of Fox's speeches 
 there is not to be found a mean thought or an affectation. 
 No doubt the charm of his personality greatly assisted 
 the effect of his oratory. His speeches were rarely 
 prepared beforehand. The words and expressions came 
 straight out of a mind inspired by a strong mascu- 
 line reason, and corrected by a faultless taste. " Nature 
 and simplicity," said Sir G. Elliot, " were the true 
 characteristic qualities of his eloquence." The manner- 
 isms and the self-consciousness of a trained orator 
 were exceedingly distasteful to him. Even Sheridan's 
 prepared impromptus grated against his ear. The very 
 openness, and complete absence of reserve, with which he 
 poured out his whole heart to his audience took them by 
 storm. The presence of the reporter, the vision of next 
 morning's paper would have been fatal to him, if he had
 
 2 1 8 CHA ULES J A 3IES FOX. 
 
 stopped to think of them. It is the whole personality of 
 the man, not this or that particular quality, that gave 
 him his power. The generosity of his heart, the openness 
 of his mind, the simplicity of his nature, the robustness of 
 his intellect, the felicity of his expression, the tire of his 
 indignation, the earnestness of his sympathy, the vigour 
 of his conviction, — all these combined in a personality 
 which men might fly from in questioning doubt, or might 
 worship in trusting love, but could not criticise. "There 
 are hut forty of them," said Thurlow of the Opposition of 
 1793, '-but there is not one of them who would not be 
 willingly hanged for Fox." 
 
 A tribute such as this, coming too from an enemy, is not 
 lightly to be disregarded. When the grave closed over 
 Fox many thousands in England who had never seen 
 him and never heard him felt that they had lost a friend. 
 All Englishmen knew that a light had gone from the 
 world, and England was the debtor to nature for the loan 
 of one of those rare spirits who sum up in themselves the 
 gifts and the powers of many types of ordinary men. 
 
 "A power is passing from the eaith 
 
 To breathless Nature's dark abyss, 
 But when the great and good depart. 
 
 AVhat is it more than this? 
 That Man who is by God sent forth. 
 
 Doth yet again to God return: 
 Such ebb and flow must ever be, 
 
 Then wherefore should we mourn ? "
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Adam Smith, 50. S3, 127. 
 
 Addiugton, 123, 195, IDS. 
 
 America, question of independ- 
 ence of, 39. 
 
 American War, The, policy of 
 Fox, 29, 39; speeches of Fox 
 upon, 30, 31 ; mismanagement 
 of, 37 ; effect of, on English 
 parties, 29; opinion in the 
 country about, 41. 
 
 Amiens, Peace of, 196. 
 
 Armed Neutrality, The, 69. 
 
 Armistead, Mrs., 122. 178. 
 
 Austi rlitz, Battle of, 303. 
 
 B. 
 
 Beauclerk, Topham, 56. 
 
 Bedford, Duke of, 177, 183. 
 
 Boston Port Bill, 1 he, 28. 
 
 Brookes's Club, 2, 21, 56. 
 
 Brunswick, Duke of, 163, 165. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, position of, in 
 Parliament, 51 ; views of, on 
 the American War, 27, 34. 40; 
 oratory of, 52 ; opinions of, on 
 the French Revolution, 154 ; 
 quarrel of, with Fox, 159. 
 
 Bute, Earl of, 7. 
 
 Camden, Lord, 34, 61, 88. 
 Canada, proposed cession of, 74. 
 Cauning, George, 198. 
 Carlisle, Earl of, 20, 22, 57, 65, 89. 
 Catholic Emancipation, question 
 
 of, 195. 
 Catholic Belief Acts, 147. 
 
 Cavendish, Lord John, 61, 81. 
 
 Chatham, first Earl of, 4, 7, 26. 29. 
 
 Chatham, second Earl of, 199. 
 
 Church and State, Relations be- 
 tween, 149. 
 
 Clive, Lord, 1 6. 
 
 Coalition Ministry, The, nego- 
 tiations about, 90 ; criticism 
 upon, 92. 
 
 Commercial Treaty with France 
 The, 127. 
 
 Conway, General, 77. 
 
 Comwallis, the Marquis, 102.107. 
 
 CriUm, 70. 
 
 Crosby, Lord Mayor, 9. 
 
 Cumberland, Duke of, 11 
 
 D. 
 
 Dashwood, Sin Fraxcis, 5. 20. 
 Declaratory Act of George 1., 
 
 The, 65. 
 Deffand, Madame du, 1. 
 I De Grasse, 70. 85. 
 Dowdeswell, 12. 16. 
 Dundas, Lord Melville, 20. 69, 90. 
 
 102, 130. 202, 203, 
 Dunning, Lord Ashburton, 62. 
 
 74. 
 
 E. 
 
 ! Economical Reform, Burke's bil I 
 for, 66. 
 Eden, 65, 195. 
 
 Elliot, Sir Gilbert, 83, 11 0.1 GS 216 
 Erskine, 177, 180. 
 
 F. 
 
 Fitzhereert, Mrs., 133. 
 Fitzwilliam, Lord, 110, 168. 
 Flood, 146.
 
 220 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Fox, Henry Lord Holland, 2, 7, 
 10,29. 
 
 Ft >x, Charles James, early life of, 
 2; early character of. 10. 18; 
 change of principles of, 25. 28 : 
 oratory of, 31, 217; pusition of 
 in 1782. 54. 04 ; foreign policy 
 of, 69; Indian policy of, 100; 
 home policy of, 146; opinions 
 of, on the French Revolution, 
 154, 16G, 181 ; quarrel of, with 
 Burke, 159; literary criticisms 
 of, 187 ; estimate of career of, 
 207. 
 
 France, The great war with, 164. 
 169. 
 
 Franklin, 73. 
 
 French Revolution, effect of, on 
 English politics, 161, 167. 
 
 G. 
 
 George III., character of, 4; 
 policy of, towards the "\Vhig6, 
 5. 7. 45; responsibility of, for 
 the American War, 27 ; conduct 
 of. to the Coalition Ministry, 
 91, 97. Ill ; opinion of, on Fox, 
 13, 19, 132. 
 
 Germaine, Lord George, 32. 
 
 Gibraltar, 85. 
 
 Gillray, James, 179. 184. 
 
 Girondins, The, 162. 
 
 Gloucester, Duke of. 11. 
 
 Gordon, Lord George, 47. 
 
 Grafton, Duke of, 8, 19, 27, 81, 89. 
 
 Gratton, Henry, 65. 
 
 Grenville, George, 7. 
 
 , Thomas, 73. 168. 200. 
 , William Wyndham, 
 Lord, 140. 165. 169, 196. 
 
 Grey, 127, 170, 177, 180, 200, 206. 
 
 H. 
 
 Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, 
 
 The, 172. 
 Hastings, Warren, 101, 107, 128. 
 Holland, third Lord, 166, 177. 186, 
 
 207. 
 Home Tooke, 16. 
 
 I. 
 
 India Bill, The, of Fox, 104 ; of 
 
 Pitt, 107. 
 Ireland, grant of self-government 
 
 to, 66. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jacoblns, The, 162, 173. 
 Johnson, Dr., 117. 
 
 K. 
 
 Keppel, Lord, 61. 88. 
 Kingsgate, 56, 209. 
 
 L. 
 
 Libel Act, of Fox, 152. 
 
 Louis XVI. of France, 155, 162. 
 
 M. 
 
 Malagrida, 51, 209. 
 
 Mansfield, Lord. 9, 11. 
 
 Marriage Act, Lord Hardwicke'e, 
 
 11, 14; TheR«yal, 11, 134. 
 Massachusetts Charter Act, The, 
 
 28. 
 Mirabeau, 162. 
 
 N. 
 
 Napoleon Buonaparte, 173, 197, 
 201,204. 
 
 Newcastle, Duke of, 7. 
 
 Newmarket, 10, 14, 15. 
 
 Nesvnham, Alderman, 135. 
 
 Nore, mutiny at the, 183. 
 
 North, Lord, early relations of to 
 Fox, 8, 11, 15, 16 ; policy of, 
 on the American War, 27, 38, 
 47 ; resignation of, 49 ; coalition 
 of, with Fox, 90. 
 
 Northingron, Lord, 100. 
 
 Norton, Sir Fletcher, 9, 16. 
 
 o. 
 
 Ossory, Lord, 12. 
 Oswald, 73.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 221 
 
 P. 
 
 Parliamentary Reform, 42, 67, 
 146. 
 
 Parr, Dr., 186. 
 
 Pilnitz, conference at, 163. 
 
 Pitt, William, views of, on the 
 American War, 41 ; conduct of, 
 to Shelburne, 89; ministry of, 
 in 1783, 112; talents of, as 
 minister, 123 ; war of, with 
 France, 169, 171 ; resignation 
 of, 194 ; second ministry of, 200, 
 202. 
 
 Portland, Duke of, 66, 81. 135, 
 168. 
 
 Poynings Law, repeal of, 66. 
 
 Price, Dr., 50. 
 
 Prince of Walts, The, 131. 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quebec Act, The, of 1774, 86 ; 
 of 1791, 158. 
 
 R. 
 
 Regency Bill, The, 137. 
 Religious disabilities, removal of, 
 
 147. 151. 
 Richmond, Duke of, 40, 67, 81, 89. 
 Rockingham, Marquis of, 8, 9, 29, 
 
 40, 61, 80. 
 Rodney, Admiral, 71, 85. 
 Rolle, 135. 
 
 S. 
 
 Sandwich, Earl of, 5, 9, 20. 
 Saratoga, 37, 42. 
 Secession, the Whig, 177, 196. 
 Seditious Meetings Aot, The, 172. 
 Selwyn, George, 22, 183. 
 Shelburne, Earl of, 7, 40, 50, 60, 
 74, 77, 82. 
 
 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 41, 
 
 83, 130, 179. 
 Slave Trade, abolition of, 152, 
 
 206. 
 St. Ann's Hill, 120. 184. 
 Stanhope, Earl, ISO. 
 
 T. 
 
 Talents, The Ministry of All the, 
 
 203. 
 Temple, Earl, 91. 111. 
 Thurlow, Lord, 11, 61. 143. 
 Trafalgar, Battle of, 203. 
 Trotter, Colonel, 189, 191. 
 
 V. 
 
 Vergennes, 70. 
 
 Versailles, negotiations for peace 
 of, 86. 
 
 w. 
 
 Wakefield, Gilbert, 186, 189. 
 Walpole, Sir Robert. 6, 44. 
 Walpole, Horace, 13, 15, 19, 53, 
 
 ft7, 64. 
 Wedderburn, Sir William (Lord 
 
 Loughborough\ 9, 11, 90, 191. 
 Wellesley, The Marquis, 107. 
 Westminster Election, The, 119. 
 Whig Club, The, 182. 
 Whig Party, state of, at beginning 
 
 of reign of George III., 6 ; in 
 
 1782, 61 ; schism of the, 167, 
 
 175. 
 Wilberforce, William, 41. 
 Windham, 127, 167. 
 Woodfall, 9, 16. 
 
 Y. 
 
 York, Duke of, 138, 171. 
 Yorktown, 47.
 
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