GIFT or MICHAEL REESE THE ENGLISH PAELIAMENT LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTI.SWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET A SHORT HISTORY ENGLISH PARLIAMENT BY ANDEEW BISSET WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON and 20 SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH 1882 [All rights reserved] 3 Order Book of the Council of State, 20th April, 1650. MS., State Paper Office. The Puritan Soldiers. 69 generis is not strictly classical Latin, that is, is not to be found in any writer of the age of Latin classical purity, as a term stamping a robber or pirate as an enemy of the human race ; for the Romans of the classical age were not likely to adopt a term that expressed so accurately their own character. And the term is a noteworthy landmark in the progress of civilisation, denoting that a time had come at last when men dared to give to evil deeds the name that belonged to them. The Romans had been robbers chiefly by land. The Norsemen had been pirates or robbers by sea. It would appear that a not inconsiderable change had taken place, at least in the west of Europe, since the time when the pirate Count Witikind was a joyful man, Less for the faith than the lands that he wan ; and when the Pope blessed the blood-stained banner of Duke William of Normandy, and that a reaction, if but a temporary reaction, had arisen against those blood-stained tyrants and robbers and their representatives. The reaction was, however, to be but temporary, and there was to be a return to the old system of robber and victim till such time as nations slowly wise should be awakened to the necessity of another reaction against land robbers and pirates, or sea robbers. For the pirate spirit is by no means extinct among mankind ; and from time to time we meet with elaborate panegyrics on successful and powerful oppressors, which, to borrow the words of an eminent writer, ' would excite admiration in a den of robbers, or on board of a schooner of pirates.' 'Most of the Greek despots, according to Aristotle, rose from the position of demagogues, who had abused the con- fidence which had been reposed in them by the people.' l It would have been, perhaps, an immoderate desire to have wished that the man who had done so much in delivering Englishmen from tyranny should have been able to resist the temptation to set up for tyrant on his own account. I do not 1 An Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Boman History. By the Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bart., M.P., vol. ii., p. 230. Cites Aristot. Pol. v. 5 and 10. Jo The English Parliament. suppose that Oliver Cromwell had ever heard of Aristotle's statement about the Greek despots having been men who had abused the confidence reposed in them by the people. Oliver was a man who did not value the authority of a name ; and who, if he felt disposed to commit a breach of faith, would do it on his own motion and his own responsibility. But in corroboration of the statement of Aristotle, who was an accu- rate observer and recorder of facts, a modern historian has on this point expressed himself more strongly than Aristotle, saying, ' In every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues.' 1 Oliver Cromwell had delivered parliamentary government from an implacable enemy by his overthrow of King Charles the First's armies at Marston Moor and Naseby ; and that' king's public execution had broken the spell of impunity for crimes that the divine right fictions of the two preceding centuries had woven round kings. But when Oliver saw fit to turn suddenly round upon the parliamentary government he had fought for and set himself up in its place, he gave parlia- mentary and good government of every kind a blow that it was not easy to recover from. Yet so strong at that time was the conviction against 'the government of a single person,' that Cromwell himself, even after he had concentrated all the powers of government in his own person, is reported to have said, ' I approve the government of a single person as little as any man.' This remark of Cromwell is reported to have been made with reference to Harrington's ' Commonwealth of Oceania,' which work Harrington dedicated ' To His High- ness the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland.' A commonwealth, in the sense of a republic, with such a ' Protector ' is a contradiction in terms. The Ca6sars might as well be called ' Protectors of the Roman Republic,' or the boa-constrictor the protector of the rabbit lie has swallowed. The truth of the assertion by which Cromwell qualifies his disapproval «of 'the government of a single person,' that he ' was forced to take upon him the 1 Lord Macaulay's History of England, vol. i., p. 280. The Puritan Soldiers. ji office of a high constable to preserve the peace among the several parties of the nation,' is involved in the other asser- tion that Cromwell governed better than the Long Parliament. Indeed, one foreign writer on English History asserts that no party could govern like Cromwell. This remark is only true as applied to the state of things after Cromwell's death, when it was found, by those who attempted to cause the public affairs to revert to their former channel, that, as the writer of the preface to ' Ludlow's Memoirs ' observes, ' Oliver had so choked the springs that the torrent took another course ; ' and after a short period of struggle among parties, Monk, according to the opinion of some, sold the nation to Charles II.; according to the opinion of others, restored the monarchy by pacific means. M. Guizot, who is not quite so much of an authority on political questions now as he was when he figured as Minister to Louis Philippe, says in the preface to his historical study of Monk : ' From two quarters did good sense concur to effect the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660 — the good sense of a man, and the good sense of the country, or, to speak more exactly, of the monarchical party in the country. Two centuries ago it was said in England, too, that the monarchy had disappeared without hope of return, and that the commonwealth alone was possible. Monk saw- that this was false. . . . Monk made up his mind in favour of the monarchy. But in advancing towards his object, Monk so used and abused falsehood that to prejudiced and superficial minds it must have appeared doubtful whether his mind was made up. . . . He uttered lies with a cool determination which confounded his most intimate adherents.' It would seem from this that M. Guizot is of opinion that falsehood is a necessary part of the science of government, according to the Machiavellian or Borgian maxim that the science of government is the science of lying — ' Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare.' The words used by M. Guizot may seem to justify the use of falsehood; a justification which politicians of average honesty most firmly refuse to admit. Nevertheless I will give M. Guizot the advantage of J 2 The English Parliament. Burke's opinion on this point. Burke says, ' It must be admitted that Monk freed this nation from great and just appreheDsions both of future anarchy and of probable tyranny in some form or other.' 'It must be observed that Burke, while he approves of the restoration of monarchy in England, does not speak like a court parasite of the man whom Monk brought in upon England. ' The person given to ns by Monk,' says Burke, ' was a man without any sense of his duty as a prince, without any regard to the dignity of his crown, with- out any love to his people ; dissolute, false, venal, and desti- tute of any positive good quality whatsoever, except a pleasant temper, and the manners of a gentleman.' When this man's brother, if possible a worse man than himself, had succeeded to him as a punishment to the nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland for their sins ; when this tyrant had fled from England, warned by the fate of his father ; when, after taking refuge in France, he went to Ire- land with some assistance furnished him by the King of France, and there, by the persecution of the Protestants, by the issue of base money, by the great Act of Attainder, ' a law,' says Lord Macaulay, 1 ' without a parallel in the history of civilised countries,' he inflicted unspeakable evils ', when every messenger from Ireland brought evil tidings, * it was natural,' says Lord Macanlay, 'that Englishmen should remember with how terrible an energy the great Puritan warriors of the preceding generation had crushed the insur- rection of the Celtic race. The names of Cromwell, of Ireton, and of the other chiefs of the conquering army, were in many mouths. One of those chiefs, Edmund Ludlow, was still living. At twenty-two he had served as a volunteer in the parliamentary army ; at thirty he had risen to the rank of lieutenant-general. He was now old, but the vigour of his mind was unimpaired. His courage was of the truest temper ; his understanding strong but narrow. What he saw he saw clearly ; but he saw not much at a glance. In an age of perfidy and levity, he bad, amidst manifold temptations and 1 History of England, ii. 345. The Puritan Soldiers. 73 dangers, adhered firmly to the principles of his youth. His enemies could not deny that his life had been consistent, and that with the same spirit with which he had stood up against the Stuarts he had stood up against the Cromwells. ... A small band of vehement and determined Whigs regarded Ludlow with a veneration which increased as years rolled away, and left him almost the only survivor, certainly the most illustrious survivor, of a mighty race of men, the conquerors in a terrible civil war, the judges of a king, the founders of a republic. More than once he had been invited by the enemies of the House of Stuart to leave his asylum, to become their captain, and to give the signal for rebellion ; but he had wisely refused to take any part in the desperate enterprises which the Wildmans and Fergusons were never weary of planning.' l When Cromwell, on his return from Ireland to London, came to Tyburn, the place of public execution, where a great crowd of people was assembled, a flatterer exclaimed, ' What a number of people come to welcome you home ! ' Cromwell replied, ' But how many more would flock to see me hanged ! ' About a hundred and fifty years after that day Washington entered New York in a bark which had thirteen pilots for rowers, representing the thirteen States ; and his feelings have been thus described by himself : ' The movement of the boats,' he says in his journal, ' the decking out of the ships, the music, the roar of cannon, the shouts of the people, whilst I went along the quays filled my soul with painful instead of pleasing emotions ; for I thought of the scenes altogether different which perhaps would take place some day in spite of the efforts I should have made to do good.' ' Curious analogy and glorious difference,' says M. Guizot, in his historical study of Washington, * between the sentiments and the words of a great man corrupted, and of a great man virtuous.' The difference between the conduct of Cromwell in 1653 and that of Washington in 1/82, who refused, 'with great 1 History of England, iii. 126. 74 The English Parliament. and sorrowful surprise ' (those were his words), the supreme power and the crown which certain discontented officers offered him, had most momentous consequences. Lord Macaulay considers the cause of the difference between the politicians of the Long Parliament and the politicians who succeeded them to lie in the difference between the moral qualities ' which distinguish the men who produce revolutions from the men whom revolutions produce.' If this be true, and if the moral qualities of Shaftesbury, of Danby, of Churchill, of Jefferys, of Lauderdale, of Claverhouse, were the natural fruit of the great English Revolution — why then, it may be asked, did not the American Revolution produce an equally abundant crop of such men ? The answer is, that it would have produced such a crop if Washington had acted the part which Cromwell acted ; that is, if he had turned round, and made use of the military power which he possessed to ruin the cause for which he had fought, and the men with whom he had acted, and who had entrusted him with that military power. By such a proceeding he would have driven away, or imprisoned, or destroyed, as Cromwell did, all the men who had fought and acted for something higher than self ; and would have let loose, as Cromwell did, all the men whose god was like his own, to borrow a phrase of John Lilburne's, ' self in the highest.' The character of Shaftesbury was a sort of archetype of the characters of the politicians who appeared in England, not only after the restoration of Charles the Second, but after the expulsion of the Long Parliament by Cromwell. From that time, if we except Blake — who continued to fight the foreign enemies of England, but who never in any sense became the creature of Cromwell l — none of the great spirits, whose fixedness of purpose and terrible energy had fought the great fight for liberty in the hall of debate as well as on the field of battle, had borne down the opposition alike of adverse opinions and of hostile armies, 1 Neither Admiral Blake nor his brother Benjamin, nor his nephew Kobert, ever set their hands to the declaration of approval of Cromwell's expulsion of the Parliament, to which Cromwell obtained the signatures of The Puritan Soldiers. 75 and extorted even from enemies a reluctant admiration, ever more acted with Cromwell. Between him and them there was a deep and impassable gulf fixed. Henceforth, he must seek for other instruments of his will ; for those who had been his fellow-labonrers in the great work of delivering England from civil and religious tyranny would never more work with Cromwell. Though Cromwell had particularly insulted Sir Henry Vane when, as Charles Dickens has expressed it, he 1 cleared out the Parliament, locked up the place, and put the keys in his pocket,' he knew well the importance of obtaining Vane's countenance to his usurpation, and applied to him to become a member of his Council of State. From Belleau, 1 his house in Lincolnshire, to which he had retired after April 20, 1653, Vane wrote a brief answer to the application from the Council, that ' though the reign of saints was now no doubt begun, he was willing, for his part, to defer his share in it till he should go to heaven.' 2 The last meeting recorded in the Order Book of the Council of State is on Friday, April 13, 1653. No business of any particular importance is recorded in the minutes. There were eighteen members of the Council present, includ- ing Vane, Scot, the Earl of Salisbury, and Sir Arthur Haselrig. Bradshaw was not President of the Council for this month, though he took a prominent part in answering Cromwell when, after having expelled the Parliament on the morning of April 20, in the afternoon of the same day he went to the Council of State, accompanied by Lambert and Harrison, and said : ' Gentlemen, if you are met here as private persons, you shall not be disturbed ; but if as a Council of State, this is no place for you.' The Earl of Salisbury was President of the Deane, Monk, Penn, and many of the captains of the ships. See the declaration in Granville Penn's Memorials of Sir William Penn, vol. i., pp. 489-491. London, 1833. See also Dixon's Robert Blake, p. 247, 8vo. edition, London, 1852. 1 Forster's Life of Sir Henry Vane, p. 172. London, 1837. 2 Forster's Life of Oliver Cromwell, vol. ii., p. 129. London, 1839. Cites an intercepted letter of Mr. T. Eobinson to Mr. Stoneham, at the Hague, in Thurloe's State Papers, vol. i., p. 265. J 6 The English Parliament. Council for the month preceding — namely, from February 23 to March 23. 1 For the month following, namely, from March 23 to April 23 — which last day the Council did not live to see — Dennis Bond 2 was President of the Council. The hard fact is indeed widely different from the parlia- mentary elysium described by Blackstone as the result of his imaginary constitutional balance ; 3 and instead of the condi- tion of blissful rest painted by the eloquent and learned com- mentator on the laws of England, we perceive, on a close inspection, a perpetual struggle, which seems to end only to begin again after a few years. The great struggle of the first half of the 17th century had to be renewed in the second half of that century. And even that great struggle itself, though an essential preliminary to parliamentary government, did not immediately produce what we now understand by that term. The Government of England, established in 1649, though called a Commonwealth with a Parliament, was not strictly parliamentary government. It wanted the essentials of true parliamentary government — a second chamber and a parliamentary opposition. It thus was deprived of the counterpoise necessary to protect any man or body of men from themselves when exposed to the corrupting influences of unchecked power. However, Cromwell soon put a stop to the existence of the short-lived Commonwealth ; and while he lived parliamentary government was as much dead as it was under Charles I. Under Charles II. it came again into a sort of unwholesome and feeble vitality, able, however, by a majority of 2 — 151 to 149 — to substitute the excise for the feudal payments to the Government, and thus make the tenants in chief a present of a large proportion of the land of England. There must have been, to judge from the large 1 ' That the Earl of Salisbury be appointed President of the Council for the month ensuing.' — Order Book of the Council of State, Wednesday, 23 February, 165§. MS. State Paper Office. 2 ' That Mr. Bond be appointed President of the Council for the month ensuing.' — Order Book of the Council of State, Wednesday, March 23, 165§. MS. State Paper Office. 8 See 1 Bl. Comm. 53, 51. The Puritan Soldiers. J J minority of 149, a stronger representation of the towns and trading classes as contrasted with the landed interest, than we have seen in the Parliament elected in 1874. Be that as it may, ' the great majority of the House of Commons,' says Lord Macaulay, writing of the Parliament of 1661, 1 'were zealous royalists. All the means of influence which the patronage of the Crown afforded were used without limit. Bribery was reduced to a system. The king, when he could spare money from his pleasures for nothing else, could spare it for purposes of corruption. The gold of France was largely employed for the same purpose. Yet it was found that there is a natural limit to the effect produced by means like these. It is curious to observe how, during the long continuance of this Parliament, called the Pension Parliament, the power of the Crown was constantly sinking, and that of the Commons constantly rising. The meetings of the Houses were more frequent than in former reigns ; they had begun to make peace, to make war, to pull down, if they did not set up, administrations . ' The Cavaliers who formed a large proportion of the members of Parliament, and who thus found themselves able to make peace and war, showed, as might be expected, less gratitude for these benefits, which they owed to the swords of the Roundheads, than exasperation for the humiliations they had suffered. They were, indeed, but little aware of the vast advantages the parliamentary war had given them — so little that on the accession of James II., or soon after his accession, when he was at the height of power and prosperity, the Cavaliers, or the Tories, as they then began to be styled, looked upon the Roundheads, or Whigs, as they also about the same time began to be styled, pretty much as the Tories of the present day look upon persons who have been contaminated by having been members of the Anti-Corn Law League. ' The name of Whig,' says Lord Macaulay, 2 ' was never used except as a term of reproach. The Parliament was devoted to the king. 1 Essay on Sir William Temple. 2 History of England, vol. i., pp. 319, 320. 7 8 The English Parliament. ... It seemed, indeed, that it would not be easy for him to demand more than the Commons were disposed to give. Already they had abundantly proved that they were desirous to maintain his prerogatives unimpaired.' In the nineteenth century those who, whether belonging to the denomination of Whig or Tory, Liberal or Conservative, are the representatives of the tenants in chief of Domesday, would seem to consider themselves as a very ill-used portion of the community. Sir Robert Peel, in his address to the electors of Tamworth, June 28, 1841, is reported to have said : * The proposition of buying corn in the cheapest market is certainly tempting in theory ; but before you determine that that is just, you must ascertain the amount of burdens to which land in other countries is subjected, and compare them with the burdens imposed on land in this country. Look at the amount of poor rates levied from land in this country, compared with the amount levied from the profits of manu- factures. Who pays the highway rate ? Who pays the church rate ? Who pays the poor rate and the tithes ? I say not altogether, but chiefly, the landed occupier of this country; and if there be corn produced by other land not subject to those burdens, it would clearly be not just to the land of this country to admit that corn on equal terms.' Nearly forty years after the time when Sir Robert Peel spoke the words quoted above, another Prime Minister, the Earl of Beaconsfield, spoke the following words in the House of Lords, on Friday, March 28, 1879 : \ If there is anything in the state of our system of taxation which acts unfairly to the British farmer, we have shown that we were prepared, and even eager to remove it, by the series of relief which we have given him.' The noble earl then proceeded to state five items, amounting together to more than two millions, and added, ' every one of those five items during the past five years has been carried, and every one of those burdens paid out of the Consolidated Fund.' All this, however, failed to give complete satisfaction to the agricultural mind, as would appear, or might be inferred, The Puritan Soldiers. from these words of the Marquis of Huntly : ' I said, thanks to the Government, real property has been relieved by two millions, bnt that other charges had been put upon it.' To this the reply of the Earl of Beaconsfield was in these words : 1 The other charges were for the poor, but after discussions of great length all parties and all governments came to the reso- lution that to make the relief of the poor an affair of the State, and to fasten and fetter it upon the general fund of the country, would be one of the most disastrous and pernicious measures that could be proposed.' In the next chapter some facts will be given, on the autho- rity of acts of parliament, which show that if the tenants in chief are now an ill-used and down-trodden portion of the com- munity, there was a time, some two hundred years back, when they were able to make their interests paramount to the inte- rests of all other classes in England. 8o The English Parliament. v#t ***?**+ CftNIk- y CHAPTER VI. CAN THE EXCISE OR CAN THE LAND TAX BE CONSIDERED AN EQUITABLE EQUIVALENT FOR THE PROFITS OF THE FEUDAL TENURES ? The Normans took from the Anglo-Saxons or English their country, but bound themselves by the most solemn engage- ments, which they fulfilled for 600 years, to defray the charges of governing England in peace and defending it in war. In the course of ages a time came when the holders of the land of Eng- land proposed as a boon to the people whose land had been taken from them that those who held it as the representatives of the captains of William the Norman conqueror in 1066 should hold it for the future discharged from the ' oppressive ' incidents of their tenure ; in other words, that the people of England who had nothing but their labour to subsist on should in future pay all the expenses of governing it in peace and defending it in war. Some of the conditions on which lands were held in England were of such a nature as to make it desirable for the tenants to exchange them for others of a less objectionable character ; and in the reign of James I. a plan, of which Coke has in the fourth part of his Institutes given an account, 'was moved on the king's behalf to Parliament for commuting the feudal services into a competent yearly rent.' l The amount of the rent proposed as a substitute for the king's feudal rights was 200,000Z. a year ; 2 and since it appears from the account of James's revenue during the first fourteen years of his reign that his ordinary income did not exceed 450,8632. , 3 it follows that at that time those feudal rights of the crown were equal 1 4 Inst., 202, 203. ' 1 Sincl. Hist. Reven., 233. ■ Ibid., 244. Equivalent for Feudal Tenures. 8 1 to nearly one- half of the whole revenue of the kingdom. To the statement given on the authority of Lord Chief Justice Coke it may be added that Mr. Justice Blackstone has cha- racterised the proposal of an annual rent-charge, or fee-farm rent, as ' an expedient seemingly much better than the here- ditary excise, which was afterwards made the principal equi- valent for these concessions.' l We have heard a good deal lately about parliamentary and personal government. Circumstances which it would be tedious to enumerate have led me to examine somewhat minutely the machinery of parliamentary as well as of personal government The result of my enquiry was that stratagem in legislation is by no means confined to personal government, but has been prac- tised to a very considerable extent by parliamentary govern- ment. The reign of Henry VII. in England was an example of stratagem in legislation practised by personal government. By stratagem in legislation is meant that laws are made pro- fessing to be one thing and being another thing. To take one example out of many, the statute of fines for landed pro- perty was, says Blackstone, * craftily and covertly contrived to facilitate the destruction. of entails, and make the owners of real estates more capable to forfeit as well as to alien. ... In short, there is hardly a statute in this reign, introductive of a new law or modifying the old, but what either directly or obliquely tended to the emolument of the exchequer.' 2 If we pass over two hundred years, we find a great change in England. It is no longer the king who is the dominant power, and can mulct the landholders for the emolument of his exchequer ; but it is the landholders who are the dominant power and can mulct all who are not landholders by throwing off from their own shoulders the burden of taxation. This they accomplished very much as Henry VII. had accomplished his objects, that is, by Acts of Parliament ' craftily and covertly contrived ' to seem to be one thing, and to he another thing. The result of the great and sanguinary struggle between the king and the parliament which took place between 1640 1 2 Bl. Comm., 77. 2 4 Bl. Comm., 429. G 82 The English Parliament. and 1650 was not by any means favourable to those who were the representatives of the individuals to whom the laDd of England had been portioned out more than 500 years before as private property. If those persons had succeeded in defeating both the king and the portion of the people of England who were not among those holding the land of England as private property, they might, by the usual logic of conquerors, have claimed to hold their land in future discharged of all obligations towards those they had conquered in fields of battle. But instead of having been victorious, they were tho- roughly and repeatedly beaten ; and therefore the conqueror's logic was entirely on the side of their opponents. The people of England, who had so thoroughly beaten on many fields of battle those who called themselves the representatives of the conquerors of 1066, might reasonably have hoped to derive some advantage from their victories. But instead of advan- tage they were called upon to pay contributions towards the public revenue, which had been payable for 600 years by those who had received grants of land on the express condition that they should pay those contributions to the State. As has been before mentioned, there were from the time of the Norman Conquest of England two principal sources of public revenue : the first, the income or produce of the crown lands, as they are now called ; the second, the emoluments arising from certain rents and services annexed by way of con- dition to the grant of such lands as were granted to individuals. These rents and services constituted, in fact, the purchase- money of the lands in question ; and could no more be equit- ably taken away 1 without an equivalent than the purchase- 1 The statute 12 Car. II. c. 24 is intituled, 'An Act for taking away the Court of Wards and Liveries, and tenures in capite, and by knight- service, and purveyance, and for settling a revenue upon his Majesty in lieu thereof/ ' The title of the Act,' observes Mr. Hargrave, ' expresses that it was made for taking away tenure in capite, and the first enacting clause proceeds on the same idea. But had the Act been accurately penned it would simply have discharged such tenure of its oppressive fruits and incidents, which would have assimilated it to free and common socage, without the appearance of attempting to annihilate the indelible distinction Equivalent for Feudal Tenures. 8 o money of an estate at the present time could be withheld or left unpaid while the defaulter insisted on retaining possession of the estate. However, though they might not be equitably taken away, they were taken away, and a tax, under the name of an excise on beer and ale, was substituted for them — a tax which amounted in fact to taking away an immunity from taxation from the very considerable portion of the population of England who were not tenants in capite, and conferring it upon those who were tenants in capite. The motion for substituting the excise for the feudal dues was carried by a very narrow majority of two, the numbers being 151 to 149. The vote of those 151 men may be, I be- lieve, correctly described as perpetrating an act of injustice on a large scale. In other words, this act may be described as a great political crime perpetrated, not, as great political crimes have often been, by one great man, but by 151 small men. But among the members of that Convention Parliament there were many men whose sense of justice was so strong as to induce them to give most decided opposition, both by speech and vote, to an act which they saw was an act of the most flagrant injustice. And indeed it is matter not of wonder but of admiration that 149 men should have been found in that Parliament who had the honesty and the courage to vote against a fraud so profit- able to themselves, and that some of them should so boldly utter their opinions to those public plunderers under colour of law. In the debate which preceded the division of 151 to 149, the greater number of speakers were against the excise ; and though the Court of Wards certainly afforded a very fair subject for invective, the strongest expression of opinion came from those who spoke against the excise, Mr. Annesley saying that ' if this bill was carried, every man who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow must pay excise to excuse the Court of Wards, which would be a greater grievance upon all than the Court of Wards was to a few ; ' and Mr. Prynne saying, between holding immediately of the king, and holding of him through ths medium of other lords.' Hargr. Co. Litt. 108 a. n. (5). g2 84 The English Parliament. 4 it was not fit to make all housekeepers hold in capite, and to free the nobility ; and inveighed passionately, says the diary, against the excise.' * The Act of Parliament (12 Car. II. c. 24) which abolished the Court of Wards and Liveries, and tenures in capite, and by knight-service, completely altered the fundamental element of the constitution of this country. The government pre- viously to that Act was a feudal monarchy, the very essence of which is that the public expenses of the government, both in war and peace, shall be defrayed by the various feudatories, the deficiency, if any, being provided for out of the public property in land vested in the monarch for the time being, and by taxes or subsidies granted by Parliament. But in order to guard against the confusion of ideas caused by raising a cry against the evils of feudalism, and the advantage of getting rid of them, it is to be observed that this Act gave to the feudatories a complete discharge from the oppressive incidents of their tenure, without enforcing an equivalent for this benefit. It confirmed their rights, discharged from the correlative obligations ; and thus created the moral and legal anomaly of rights without obligations — an anomaly which cannot exist without a legal and logical absurdity and a moral fraud. For it is perfectly clear that the excise cannot be considered as an equitable equivalent for the profits of the feudal tenures abolished by the statute 12 Car. II. c. 24. At the Revolution an attempt was made to redress the injustice perpetrated at the Restoration of Charles II., and a hond-fide property tax was levied by annual Acts of Parlia- ment, erroneously called Land Tax Acts. 2 By these Acts an 1 Comm. Joum. November 21, 1660. 4 Park Hist. 148, 149. 2 Men of great intelligence and historical knowledge have written about the origin of the land tax as if it were a very simple transaction. Lord Macaulay concludes his flowing narrative of the affair with a reference at the bottom of the page ' See the old Land Tax Acts,' conveying the im- pression that his lordship had read what he calls ' the old Land Tax Acts ' from beginning to end, and could recommend them to ' the general reader ' as rather light reading. In order to ' see the old Land Tax Acts ' the enquirer must have recourse to the Record Commissioners' edition of the Equivalent for Feudal Tenures, 85 aid was granted for each year, without specifying any fixed sum, of 4s. in the pound on the true yearly rental of real property, and 24s. for every 100Z. of personal property (except debts, stock on land, and household goods). This was the principle of the 1 Will, and M., sess. 1, c. 20, the 1 Will, and M., sess. 2, c. 1 ; the 1 Will, and M., sess. 2, c. 5. The statutes 2 Will, and M., sess. 2, c. 1, and 3 Will, and M. c. 5, are a departure from the principle of the three statutes before men- tioned, inasmuch as in these two statutes a fixed sum is to be made up. In 1692 Parliament, in the statute 4 William and M. c. 1, returned to the principle of the three statutes, 1 Will, and M- sess. 1, c. 20 ; sess. 2, c. 1 ; and sess. 2, c. 5. But the 'principle of the statute 4 Will, and M. c. 1, which was strictly observed in the five succeeding Acts called Land Tax Acts, was in 1697 altogether and finally departed from in the 9 Will. III. c. 10, by which, as in the two Acts above men- tioned — namely, the 2 Will, and M., sess. 2, c. 1, and the 3 Will, and M. c. 5 — & fixed sum was granted, by words which directed that sum to be made up in a way which was never carried into practice, for what reason not even the chairman of the Board of Stamps and Taxes, nor the registrar of the Land Tax (see their evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Agricultural Distress in 1836) seems to have any accurate knowledge. If the statute 9 Will. III. c. 10, of which all the subsequent statutes. In the common printed edition, the statute 4 "Will. & M. c. 1 is the only one of the Land Tax Acts of which more than the title is printed. As the knowledge of the land tax question could only be ac- quired by a careful perusal of many old Acts of Parliament, I may be permitted to state that it became necessary for me to go through that labour some years ago in writing an answer to a case submitted to me pro- fessionally on behalf of the Council of the Anti Corn Law League. The Council printed at the time two thousand copies of the argument which I drew up in answer to their questions. This publication, if it may be so called, has long been out of print. Having been repeatedly applied to for copies, as also was Mr. Cobden, who frequently referred applicants to me, I have thought that a summary of the argument as given in the text miirhi be of use. 86 The English Parlianie7it. statutes called Land Tax Acts are little else than copies, had been but a temporary expedient, the strange repugnance between the name as well as apparent purpose of the Acts called Land Tax Acts and their true character might have arisen from the blunders of the draftsmen and the ignorance of Parliament. But when for a whole century a scheme for raising money was re-enacted in almost identical words every year — when. every year for a hundred years a law was framed in such a shape that it appeared to be one thing, and was in fact another thing ; the inference is that the statute of 9 Will. III. c. 10 was, like the statute of fines in the reign of Henry VII., ' craftily and covertly contrived ' for the benefit of those who in the reign of William III. possessed the poli- tical power which when the statute of fines was made was possessed by Henry VII. Lord Cuief Justice Coke, 1 Mr. Attorney- General Noy, 2 and Mr. Justice Blackstone, 3 all proposed an annual rent- charge, or fee-farm rent, as an expedient much better than the hereditary excise, which was made the principal equivalent for the feudal payments. But Sir Heneage Finch, when the business of the Court of Wards was disposed of, moved the resolution ' that the income to be settled on the king in lieu thereof might be raised by an excise on beer and ale,' and Sir A. A. Cooper spoke for the excise. I am sorry to have to add that while Lord Macaulay has treated the character of Sir A. A. Cooper, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, with great, but hardly too great severity, he has altogether passed over his conduct in this matter of the feudal tenures. Lord Macaulay says : ' It is certain that, just before the Restoration, Shaftesbury declared to the Regicides that he would be damned body and soul rather than suffer a hair of their heads to be hurt, and that, just after the Restoration, he 1 4 Inst., 202, 203. 2 The Treatise on the Bights of the Crown may be considered as of nearly equal authority, whether it was by Noy or Sir Eobert Cotton. • 2 Bl. Comm., 77. Equivalent for Feudal Tenures. Sj was one of the judges who sentenced them to death. It is cer- tain that he was a principal member of the most profligate Ad- ministration ever known, and that he was afterwardsa principal member of the most profligate Opposition ever known.' 1 This is not a panegyric, yet it would seem, from Lord Macaulay's manner of narrating in his ' History of England ' the abolition of the feudal tenures, that Sir A. A. Cooper merited a pane- gyric from Lord Macaulay for the part he took in the debate on the business of the Court of Wards. For we are informed that * Sir A. A. Cooper spoke against the Court of Wards and for the excise.' 2 Lord Macaulay speaks only of the griev- ances and the wishes of ' the landed proprietors,' or * landed gentlemen.' He says, ' These abuses had perished with the monarchy. That they should not revive with it was the wish of every landed gentleman in the kingdom,' 3 seeming to forget that there were a good many persons in England who were not landed gentlemen ; and even that, according to the opinion of some members even of the Convention Parliament, ' if that bill ' (introduced by Sir Heneage Einch, and supported by Sir A. A. Cooper) ' were carried, every man who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow must pay excise, to excuse the Court of Wards, which would be a greater grievance upon all than the Court of Wards was to a few. ' 4 It would appear that the members of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Agricultural Distress in 1836 considered the landed interest to have been somewhat hardly dealt with. This opinion will not be shared by those who have really examined the Land Tax Acts, and have been led to ask the question, what reason was there for framing a law in such a shape that appeared to be one thing, and was in fact another. The Acts 1 Will, and M. sess. 1, c. 20 ; 1 Will, and M., sess. 2, c. 1 ; 1 Will, and M., sess. 2, c. 5 ; 4 Will, and M. c. 1 ; 5 Will, and M. c. 1 ; 6 and 7 Will, and M. 1 Essay on Sir William Temple. 2 4 Pari. Hist., 148, 149, Comm. Journ., Nov. 21, 1660. 3 History of England, i. 73. * Pari. Hist., 148, 149. 88 The English Parliament. c. 3 ; 7 and 8 Will. III. c. 5 ; 8 and 9 Will. III. c. 6 and c. 24, imposed a bond fide, an actual, a substantial tax on real property, a real, not a nominal land tax, at the rate of 4s. in the pound for the year, to be raised in each of these six years on the full and true annual rental, at the time of assessing thereof, of all the real property in the kingdom. But by the statute 9 Will. III. c. 10, and all the subsequent statutes called ' Land Tax Acts,' down to the 38 Geo. III. c. 5, the frame of the law was totally changed, and a certain specified sum was then to be raised by a certain specified rate imposed on the personal property of the kingdom, 'according to the true yearly value thereof.' l Now a rate of 4s. in the pound on all the personal property of the kingdom, even at the time of the last annual Land Tax Act (the 38 Geo. III. c. 5), much more at the present time, would amount to very much more than the whole sum specified by the Act. Therefore there would be no residue or deficiency to be made up from the pound rate ordered to be levied upon the lands, tenements, &c, of the kingdom, with so much ■ equality and indifference; ' and there- fore it may be considered as clear that the tax called the land tax has been levied in an illegal manner ; that is, that it has not been levied in strict conformity with the words of the Act of Parliament creating it. Moreover, the words, as before observed, were ' of the full yearly value at the time of assessing thereof.' Now I appre- hend that these words may be considered as having some application to all the years in which this tax was levied, at least down to the passing of the Act 38 Geo. III. c. 60, which made the specified amount, as then levied, perpetual on certain terms. In all the Acts down to the 38 George III. c. 5 inclusive the commissioners are directed to appoint ' assessors' 2 for the purpose of assessing all the property, real as well as 1 38 Geo. III. c. 5, s. 3. The words are preserved unaltered from year to year for a century. They were used also in the clauses relating to real property till the 9 Will. III. c. 10, after which they never occur as applied to real property, but always to personal. 1 See 38 Geo. III. c. 5, s. 8. Equivalent for Feudal Tenures. 89 personal. Now if there be any meaning in all this, the meaning surely is, that there was to be every year a new assessment, for otherwise what need would there be of asses- sors for the real estates ? Collectors of the moneys to be levied would be sufficient, whereas there is always a distinct and separate clause for the appointment of ' collectors of the moneys which shall be assessed as aforesaid.' l What was to be the valuation of the real property on which the pound rate was to be levied ? It is true the words ' according to the full true yearly value thereof are omitted after 1696, but there are no express words to exclude the implication of them. I have met with no clause declaring the will of the Legislature to be, that the valuation made in the fourth year of King William and Queen Mary shall prevail in future years. I have met with a clause declaring that the proportions shall be used ; but the proportional rate of contribution means something quite different from the real rate. The Acts after the 7 and 8 Will, and M. c. 5 being obscure as to the manner in which the rate was to be levied upon real property, if we adopt from the previous Acts the words ' of the full true yearly value at the time of assessing thereof,' we find some meaning given to the clauses in the subsequent Acts order- ing with such minuteness the appointment and marking out the particular duties of ' assessors.' Nor is this construction repugnant to specifying the total amount to be levied under the Act for the year. As the rate is not fixed at which the assessment is to be made on real estates, the magnitude of the amount on which the rate is to be made would only have the effect of diminishing the amount of the rate itself, since, where the sum to be raised, and the value of the property on which it is to be raised, are given, but the rate in the pound not given, the amount of the rate will be in the inverse ratio of the amount of the fund on which it is to be raised. This seems to me further confirmation of the opinion that the com- missioners of the land tax, as they are called, have been all along proceeding in an illegal manner. 1 See 38 Geo. III. c. o, s. 8. 90 The English Parliament. In regard to the question, ' Whether a constitutional right now exists to a revaluation of the land, for an assessment for the land tax, by a pound rate on the full yearly value at the time of assessing thereof, as appears to have been the inten- tion of Parliament at the Revolution,' it is necessary to call attention to the words ' legal ' and ' constitutional.' Although I have said that the commissioners of the land tax have been proceeding in an illegal manner, inasmuch as they have been departing from the precise words of the Acts of Parliament giving them existence, I do not say that the present land tax is illegal, since those who have the power of making the laws can make anything they please legal. They may make a law imposing a tax upon one class of persons which ought to be borne by another class, which tax, though in natural equity a downright robbery, it would be a contra- diction in terms to denominate illegal. They may make a law enabling them to sell a certain number of Englishmen for slaves, and put the money in their pockets. They may even strangle a nation in the night-time by a thing they may call a plebiscite or a prerogative — it does not much matter which — but though there are probably few words used more vaguely and loosely, with less precise and definite meaning, than the words ' Constitution ' and ' Constitutional,' yet I do not think that any man — any Englishman at least — who has received a legal education, and possesses the cerebral substance, the want of which no education can supply, will be found who will term such an act 'constitutional,' who will not, on the contrary, term it * unconstitutional.' And it appears to me that the term ' unconstitutional ' has about an equal right to be applied to the land tax in its present state. Between a constitutional right and a strictly legal right there exists also, I apprehend, this important distinction, that the former neither falls within the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals, nor within the ordinary statutes for limiting the time in which the legal right may be recovered. Consequently, in that court, viz. the High Court of Parliament, which is the proper tribunal for the determination of constitutional as Equivalent for Feitdal Tenures. 91 distinguished from legal rights, those who may feel them- selves aggrieved by the loss of certain constitutional rights in the present case must seek for the recovery of those rights. In reference to the objection that the statute 38 Geo. III. c. 60, 1798, which made the then payment on account of the land tax perpetual, subject to redemption, has cut off all farther right to increase or alter the modus then established, the answer to that argument is, that all that was done by the above Act was to guarantee to those who were willing to purchase a perpetual annuity, secured on the land tax, that a less sum should not be levied by way of land tax, thereby providing a security for the payment of the annuity they had purchased. But this is a totally different thing from securing to them the payment of a larger annuity than they had contracted and paid for, which would be the effect of holding that there could be no increase of tax laid upon the land on which the former land tax had been redeemed. In fact, this view is supported by the provisions made in section 37 of the Act itself, for the case of any person redeeming the land tax who has not an estate of inheritance. By that section of the Act it is pro- vided that any person not having an estate of inheritance, but nevertheless being entitled, under section 35 of the Act, to re- deem the land tax, redeeming the land tax out of his own estate, and declaring his option to be considered as a purchaser, shall hold the land tax redeemed as an annuity issuing out of the lands (subject to the reversioner's right of redemption, under section 18) ; and when any such person shall not at the time of entering into the contract for the redemption of such land tax, whereby such lands, &c, will be exonerated from the tax, have declared his option as aforesaid, such lands, &c, shall become chargeable for the benefit of such person, his executors, administrators, or assigns, with the amount of the 3 per Cent. Bank Annuities, transferred as the considera- tion, with interest equal to the land tax redeemed. It appears from a carefully prepared table, subjoined to the * Argument on the Constitutional Right to a Revision of the Land Tax,' published in 1842, by the Council of the 92 The English Parliament. Anti-Corn Law League, that from 1689 to 1702 the annual proportion of the land tax to the total revenue of the country was 34 per cent. ; from 1702 to 1714, 38 per cent. ; on the whole reign of George I., 23 per cent. ; of George II., 22 per cent. ; that it went on diminishing through the reign of George III. till in 1815 it reached 2 per cent. ; that in 1831 and 1841 it was 4 per cent. The proposition that this is an equitable equivalent for the benefits and advantages which the holders of land obtained by the abolition of the feudal tenures is manifestly untenable. By a careful comparison of the produce of the feudal tenures at the time of their abolition, with the produce of the land tax for the first twenty years after its in- stitution, it appears that the land tax was intended as a substi- tute and equivalent for the feudal dues, which dues were in the strictest sense the purchase-money of the land. That pur- chase-money may be very accurately described to have been made payable as a perpetual annuity to the State, increasing in value as the land increased in value. If it should be contended on behalf of the landed in- terest that it would be unjust, and an especial hardship upon those who have purchased land since 1660, to disturb an arrangement that has now stood as law for a period of two hundred years, the answer is: first, that this very arrangement was introduced in the place of a totally different one, which had been the law of the land for a period of six hundred years ; and if the landholders, for their benefit, altered a law that had stood for six hundred years, the rest of the com. munity, who are not landholders, would be perfectly justified in altering a law for their benefit which has stood two hundred years ; secondly, that those who have purchased land during the period that has elapsed since the law was altered as above stated have exempted their capital from the taxes that pressed on personal property, and consequently having enjoyed an undue exemption from taxation during the said period, cannot with justice complain now if they are called upon to pay a somewhat more equitable proportion of the taxes of their country. 93 "!?% &&*; ^ CHAPTER VII. THE THIRD FIGHT FOR PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT. GEORGE III. AND JUNIUS. The first fight for parliamentary government was, as has been shown, fought by the mail-clad barons. The second was fought by the fighting Puritans, whose cut-and- thrust blades were as formidable weapons as the two-handed swords of the old barons. The third fight was to be fought with other weapons. Such was the change between 1642 and 1760. After the Revolution the Court, finding itself compelled to abandon designs against the existence of Parliament, dis- covered that the forms of a free and the ends of an arbitrary government were things not incompatible. On the accession of George III. a new scheme was devised totally different from the system of administration which had prevailed since the accession of the House of Hanover, and forming a not un- interesting subject of study to those who are curious in the devices which at various times man has hit upon for govern- ing man. The substance of the scheme is thus described by Burke : ' Two systems of administration were to be formed ; one which should be in the real secret and confidence; the other, merely ostensible, to perform the official and executory duties of government. The latter were alone to be respon- sible ; whilst the real advisers, who enjoyed all the power, were effectually removed from all the danger. . . . Parliament was to be taught a total indifference to the rank, abilities, and character of the ministers of the Crown. It was to be avowed as a constitutional maxim, that the king might appoint one of his footmen, or one of your footmen, for minister ; and that 94 The English Parliament. he ought to be, and that he would be, as well followed as the first name for rank and wisdom in the nation. Thus Parlia- ment was to look on, as if perfectly unconcerned, while a cabal of the closet and back-stairs was substituted in the place of a national administration.' ' Though the government of the Duke of Newcastle could not be reckoned a good government, it was good when com- pared with the government of the Tudors, the Stuarts, the Sultan, or the Czar. It is clear from the statement of Burke that there was a deliberate plan, by whomsoever framed, at the commencement of the reign of George III. to assimilate the government of England to that of Turkey, strikingly evidenced in the inculcation of the ' constitutional maxim, 1 that as the Saltan might appoint the lowest slave in his seraglio to the post of Grand Vizier, so the King of Great Britain might appoint one of his footmen to the post of Prime Minister. It appears that the scheme above referred to had a very con- siderable amount of success. During the early part of the reign of George III., that is during more than twenty years, the ostensible or outer cabinet was powerless ; the inner cabinet worked in secret and counter- worked the outer cabinet. No writer except Burke seems to be fully aware of the true state of things. Burke, having been in parliament and private secretary to the Marquis of Rocking- ham during his one year's administration, made himself tho- roughly acquainted with the facts. Other writers speak of a set of politicians calling themselves the king's friends, but they do not explain clearly and fully the meaning of the term. If a king should devote half a million sterling annually to the payment of members of parliament, he will have power over the votes of those members of parliament. Such members of parliament also who received from a king so considerable a sum for their private use might be expected to announce themselves as ' the king's friends.' It may be said that a king who should devote so large a 1 ' Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent. Burke's Works, vol. i., pp. 315, 316, Bonn's edition. London, 1854. George III. and J unites. 95 portion of his revenue to the purpose above indicated must have been a man of unostentatious character. Such a man was George III. There were indeed in this king's character conflicting elements that led to conflicting opinions respecting him, some calling him a hypocrite, others calling him a good king. Those who had come into personal communication with him as his ministers complained of having suffered from his insincerity and cunning, treatment which left a bitterness of hatred sufficient to stamp itself in words which have made the ' Letters of Junius ' outlast their century. To those who had not had the experience of the ministers he had betrayed — the experience of Chatham, of Rockingham, of Earl Temple, of George Grenville — he appeared a model of a respectable gentleman, who rose early, dined at three o'clock on mutton and lemonade, never missed church, and at church never missed a response. Such was * the good king,' who spent the taxes he took out of the people's pockets, not in costly palaces, costly banquets, and more costly concubines, but in bribing the people's representatives with the people's own money. Burke's pamphlet, ' Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent,' wherein he gave an analysis of the process by which parliamentary government was to retain its name as a shadow to deceive the people, while the substance was entirely withdrawn from them, was published in 1770, at the time when the ' Letters of Junius ' were appearing in the Public Advertiser. Burke's pamphlet and the ' Letters of Junius,' both able expositions of the unconstitutional proceed- ings of the Court from the commencement of the reign of George III., might be expected to produce some effect. But the steady continuance of the parliamentary majority in favour of all measures which the Court wished to carry is against such an inference ; and we are forced to the con- clusion that the Court had in a great measure succeeded in destroying parliamentary government. What is the use, then, of Junius or any one else telling us that he knew that nature had intended George III. ' only for a good-humoured fool,' when George III. showed that he could do more than any 96 The English Parliament. v> who had preceded him on the seat he occupied since the time of William the First to make his power absolute ? This state of things went on for more than twenty years. In 1778 William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, died. In 1779 died his brother-in-law, Earl Temple. It was not till 1783 that a fatal blow was given to the system of government worked by means of the bribed members of parliament styled the king's friends. In 1783 William Pitt, the second son of the Earl of Chatham, who was to show himself more powerful than his father had ever been, entered upon his long career of power. From the day on which he was placed at the head of affairs there was an end of that strange anomalous government the machinery of which did credit to the ingenuity of its in- ventors. When any attempt was made to defeat any of his measures by the instrumentality of the Icing's friends, Pitt at once tendered his resignation, and as he alone stood between the king and the Coalition he could dictate his own terms. Burke and Junius, writing at the same time of the same matters, have occasion to express each of them his indigna- tion at the proceedings of the Court party. But it is curious to note the contrast between the two writers, which is so strongly marked that one is surprised that Burke should ever have been numbered among the many persons to whom the * Letters of Junius' have been ascribed. For Burke is singu- larly free from that bitter, one might say savage personality, in which Junius revels, and to which probably his letters owed some part of their popularity. While Burke, painting in t j^ strong colours the hypocritical injustice meted out to Wilkes, names no one who, though he had been the associate of Wilkes, was not viewed by the Court with any prudery ; Junius attacks the impersonal entity here indicated by Burke, as having the vices of Wilkes with the crime of servility added to them, under the name of * the Duke of Grafton,' vy, telling him, ' I do not give you to posterity as a pattern to imitate, but as an example to deter; and as your conduct comprehends everything that a wise or honest minister should na avoid, I mean to make you a negative instruction to your Cp George III. and ytinius. 97 successors for ever.' 1 And lie tells the Duke of Bedford, 2 1 Yon are so little accustomed to receive any marks of respect or esteem from the public, that if in the following lines a compliment or expression of applause should escape me, I fear you would consider it as a mockery of your established character, and perhaps an insult to your understanding. . . . The highest rank, a splendid fortune, and a name glorious till it was yours, were sufficient to have supported you with meaner abilities than I think you possess.' It is rather curious that almost the only time Burke was provoked into departing from his habit of avoiding personali- ties was when in his letter to a noble lord, on the attacks made upon him and his pension in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, Burke showed that he could hit as hard as Junius, in language more varied and picturesque, without the advantage Junius possessed of minute secret intelligence respecting those he attacked, for undoubtedly Junius showed that he was intimately acquainted with the highest members of the political parties in England, and that he was prepared to use his knowledge of their secrets with a boldness which, as he said in a private note to Woodfall, would cost him his life if discovered. It might be difficult to say whether the King or Lord Mansfield, or tFe Duke of Grafton or the Duke of Bedford, enjoyed the largest portion of the hatred of Junius, with whom hatred was a commodity of which he had always a large stock on hand. But the language used to express this hatred is apt to savour too much of that ' effeminate licence of tongue,' as an orator calls it who indulged largely in it himself, which is not the characteristic of the best manner of expressing thoughts in words. For instance, Junius thus expresses his feelings with regard to the Duke of Bedford, in a private note to Woodfall, dated Thursday night [October 5, 1769] : — 1 1 reserve some things expressly to awe him in case he should think of bringing you before the House of Lords. I 1 Junius, Letter xii. 2 Ibid., Letter xxiii. 98 The English Parliament. am sure I can threaten him privately with such a storm as would [make] him tremble even [in] his grave.' 1 There is a singularly temperate tone, strangely contrasted with the tone of Junius, in the short allusion Burke makes to the Earl of Bute. ■ It may seem,' says Burke, ' somewhat affected that in so much discourse upon this extraordinary party, I should say so little of the Earl of Bute, who is the supposed head of it. But this was neither owing to affecta- tion nor inadvertence. I have carefully avoided the introduc- tion of personal reflections of any kind. Much the greater part of the topics which have been used to blacken this nobleman are either unjust or frivolous. At best, they have a tendency to give the resentment of this bitter calamity a wrong direction, and to turn a public grievance into a mean personal, or a dangerous national quarrel. Where there is a regular scheme of operations carried on, it is the system, and not any individual person who acts in it, that is truly dan- gerous. This sy stem has not arisen solely from the ambition of Lord Bute, but from the circumstances which favoured it, and from an indifference to the constitution which had been for some time growing among our gentry. We should have been tried with it if the Earl of Bute had never existed ; and it will want neither a contriving head nor active members when the Earl of Bute exists no longer. It is not to rail at Lord Bute, but firmly to embody against this Court party and its practices, which can afford us any prospect of relief in our present condition.' 2 1 This flight of hyperbolical rhetoric, the learned editor of the Grenvillc Papers thinks may have been suggested to Junius by the following lines in Churchill's dedication of his poem, the Bosciad, to Bishop Warburton : — * Methinks I hear the deep-toned thunders roll, And chill with horror every sinner's soul — In vain they strive to fly — flight cannot save : And Potter trembles even in his grave.' Introductory Notes relating to the Authorship of Junius. Grcnville Papers, vol. iii., p. 39. 2 ' Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents.' Burke's Works, vol. i., p. 330, Bonn's edition. London, 1854. George III. and Junius. 99 George III., after the most searching enquiries, was con- vinced that the 'Letters of Junius' were not the work of one person. I was at one time inclined to think that the balance of evidence leaned to the' conclusion that George Grenville was the principal writer. But George Grenville died November 13, 1770, and therefore could not have written any of the later Junius' letters. Did George Grenville's elder brother, Earl Temple, or his younger brother, James Grenville, write any of them ? After a careful examination of the evidence adduced by Mr. William James Smith in his intro- ductory notes relating to Earl Temple and the authorship of Junius, in the third volume of the 'Grenville Papers,' I have come to the conclusion that the evidence brought forward by Mr. W. J. Smith is strongly in favour of the view that the 'Letters of Junius' were mostly or wholly the work of Earl Temple. I do not indeed presume to say more than Mr. W. J. Smith has said, ' that if ever Junius is satisfactorily identi- fied, it will be from the discovery of some very trifling circum- stance which the author himself, in his anxiety for conceal- ment, had possibly overlooked.' l Mr. W. J. Smith, the editor of the ' Grenville Papers,' having been librarian at Stowe, speaks with significance when he uses the words just quoted ; for he says 2 that though William Gerard Hamilton was in very frequent and most confidential correspondence with Lord Temple, and there is no reason to doubt but that their intimacy continued during the time of the appearance of the ' Letters of Junius,' only one letter (in 1768) from Hamilton to Temple has been found of a later date than 1767. It is equally certain that the inti- macy of Calcraft with Temple continued during the life of the former ; but no letter from Calcraft to Temple has been found dated in the year when Junius was writing his cele- brated letters. 3 ' Nor are there,' continues the editor of the 'Grenville Papers,' and librarian at Stowe, 'any letters at 1 Grenville Papers, vol. iii. p. 228. 2 Ibid., p. 93, note 2. 3 Ibid. h 2 ioo The English Parliament. this time [sic] from Alraon, a certain and constant purveyor of news to Earl Temple ; not one from Wilkes, from Humphrey- Cotes, from Beardmore, from Mackintosh, one only from Dayrell, all intimate friends of Temple, and all, as I believe, unconscious instruments in his hands to serve the purposes of the "Letters of Junius." M The next sentence is most signifi- cant as regards the inference which naturally arises from it respecting the destruction by Lord Temple of the greater part of his correspondence at this period. ' For special reasons Lord Temple must certainly have destroyed the greater part of his correspondence at this period.' In a letter to Almon, dated Ingress, December 29, 1771, Calcraft says: 'Many thanks to you for your correct and constant intelligence. If Mr. Hamilton is in town, I should like to hear what he thinks will be the consequence. What childish stories do they propagate ! You cannot 2 conceive either the questions I am ashed, or the innumerable reports about Lord Temple.' 3 It would appear that a writer in the Public Advertiser, under the signature of Scjjvola, incurred the wrath of Junius in more than an ordinary degree, as appears by his private notes to Woodfall. And there does not appear to be anything in the letters of Scaevola to warrant the very harsh terms applied to him by Junius in his private notes to Woodfall ; ' unless indeed it were, as I believe,' says Mr. W. J. Smith, 1 that the assertions of Scasvola approached too near the real truth of the case, and that Junius was not, at any time, so near being unmasked as by Scrovola, who had the unpardon- able temerity to accuse Lord Temple of being the patron of Junius, and William Gerard Hamilton the writer.' 4 In a letter addressed to Junius in the Public Advertiser of Saturday, November 9, 1771, and cited in the notes relating to the authorship of Junius in the third volume of the * Gren- ville Papers,' 3 Scrovola says : — 1 You call yourself a man of rank and wealth. To say the 1 Grenville Tapers, vol. iii. p. 94. a Italics in original. 8 Ibid., p. 94. * Ibid., p. 92. 5 Ibid. p. 94. George III. and y^trtius. i°6t truth, there are some perhaps over- acute, who will have it that you belong to a certain malcontent peer of this realm [Lord Temple] ; . . . that your politics are to make every public man either odious or despicable : that you have uncommon malig- nity, except as to Mr. Grenville.' Scasvola then proceeds to draw a distinction between the writer, ' whose abilities,' he says, ' are his own,' and the patron of Junius ; and appears to be of opinion that Lord Temple did not possess the abilities requi- site to write the ' Letters of Junius.' This letter then runs thus : * I for one declare that I shall wait for mathematical demon- stration before I can agree to associate Junius with one of the narrowest, most vindictive, and perfidious of human 'beings,'' The words italicised had been applied by Lord Camden in such a way as when thus used by Scsevola to associate Junius with Lord Temple. 1 Again on November 18, Scaevola writes : — 1 1 have dropped a hint with, regard to the patron of Junius. The fair way to examine this hint is to read the whole series of letters attributed to Junius, applying them to the supposed patron or party, and so correcting and esta- blishing the idea. However, to give the reader some excuse for my arrogance in suggesting a notion which differs from the most prevalent one [that Edmund Burke was the writer], let me observe that Junius never speaks of Mr. Grenville with disrespect ; that when he speaks of times and measures in which Mr. Grenville bore a principal share, and which he attacks with great freedom, he avoids even the name of Mr. Grenville ; for he describes his Grace as called in " to support an Administration which Lord Bute had pretended to leave in full possession of authority ; but which (as he would have us believe) became servile to my Lord Bute from the moment of his Grace's accession to the system, and by means of stipulations between the duke and the favourite." Here he transfers all the odium of that servility from his friend Mr. Grenville to the Duke of Bedford ; though in truth it belongs 1 Grenville Papers, vol. iii. p. 90. IG2 7 7? c English Parliament. equally to both. What is the ground of his inveteracy to the Duke of Bedford ? He shall tell you in his own words : "Apparently united with Mr. Grenville, you waited until Lord Rockingham's feeble Administration should dissolve in its own weakness. The moment their dismission was sus- pected, you thought it no disgrace to solicit once more the friendship of Lord Bute." ' l ' The Duke of Bedford forsook Mr. Grenville, and therefore Junius persecuted him with such rancour. But his panegyric upon the Stamp Act in his very first letter, and his anxious vindication of Mr. Grenville, 2 from the most vulnerable and most indefensible part of his political life, announce to us that gentleman's attached and partial friend. Out of many other passages that point out the suspected person, 3 I must remind the reader of two or three instances which evince that Junius, at two critical periods, disclaims Lord Rockingham and Lord Chatham : " When the Duke of Cumberland's first negotiation failed, and when the Favourite was pushed to the last extremity, you saved him by joining in an Administration in which Lord Chatham had refused to engage. Lord Chat- ham formed his last Administration upon principles which you certainly concurred in, or you could never have been placed at the head of the Treasury. By deserting those principles, and by acting in direct contradiction to them, in which he found you were secretly supported in the closet, you soon forced him to leave you to yourself, and to withdraw his name from an Administration which had been formed on tlje credit." 4 What caution is here used to avoid a compliment to Lord Chatham, or to those unstated principles, in the midst of invectives upon the Duke of Grafton for deserting them. I presume the conclusion is not a rash one from these premises (to omit for the present several others), that 1 ' Junius, vol. i., p. 538.' 2 'Letter xviii., to Sir William Blackstone, Solicitor-General to Her Majesty.' 3 ' William Gerard Hamilton.' * ' Letter xii., to the Puke of Grafton.' George III. and Jtmius. the patron of Junius is the person 1 characterised in my last.' 2 Scsevola's hypothesis thus appears to be framed with a care and discrimination which are more frequently found absent than present in hypotheses. There is a use and there is an abuse of hypotheses. Of the use Newton afforded a most instructive example. Though Newton said ' Hypotheses non fingo,' he had a hypothesis that the same law by which he had demonstrated that the planets gravitate towards the sun regulated the gravitation of the moon towards the earth. But he did not put forth his hypothesis as a fact till, after waiting sixteen years, he was enabled to prove that his hypothesis was a truth. Of the abuse of hypotheses it is far easier to find examples than of the use. All history, ancient and modern, is filled with them. Writers who have obtained even a great reputation have furnished many examples. I am satis- fied, from the evidence given in Sir George Cornewall Lewis's * Enquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History,' that most of Niebuhr's so-called hypotheses are nothing better than mere ' guesses.' But some of the most extraordinary examples of hypotheses are perhaps those afforded by the attempts to solve the mystery respecting the authorship of the ' Letters of Junius.' When it is borne in mind that the ' Letters of Junius ' are, from the very nature of the case, all written in a disguised hand ; when even that disguised hand is not ascertained to be the hand of the author of the Letters, but is supposed to be the hand of an amanuensis, a hypothesis put forth by an ' expert ' in handwriting, that he has settled the question of authorship in these Letters by close and microscopic exami- nation of the handwriting, cannot be received as a hypothesis bearing the most distant affinity to such a hypothesis as Newton had conceived respecting the law of gravitation, but which he modestly kept back until lie was able to verify it by accurate observation of facts. In addition to the observa- 1 ' Lord Temple.' 2 Public Advertiser, November 18, 1771, signed Sc-evola. 104 The English Parliament. tions of judges and lawyers, that ' the identity of handwriting is very much a matter of opinion,' 1 and that 'any of the modes of proof of handwriting by resemblance are worth little — in a criminal case nothing,' 2 I will quote some re- marks of the editor of the ' Grenville Papers ': — ' There are few things more difficult, even to the most ex- perienced eyes, than to form a correct judgment upon a ques- tion of disguised handwriting ; it is one upon which there will always be a variety of opinions, and I confess that after having, during a long course of years, examined and copied with accuracy the handwritings of some hundreds of remark- able persons of all classes and all times, I am still very slow in forming a decided opinion where there is any question of comparison. Some facsimiles are appended to these volumes in order to afford an opportunity for arriving, in that respect, at a due appreciation of the theory which I have endeavoured to support, viz. : that Lord Temple was the author of " Junius," and Lady Temple his amanuensis.' 3 In a subsequent page he says : ' Upon the supposition that Lord Temple was the author of "Junius," I believe that Lady Temple was the amanuensis, by whose hand all the writing part of the cor- respondence was executed. Lord Temple's autograph was evidently not capable of being adapted to the handwriting of " Junius ; " he wrote with difficulty, the letters are large and badly formed, and the whole appearance of it such as his person is supposed to have been, awkward and ungainly. Lady Temple, on the contrary, had very considerable facility in the use of the pen. In her handwriting at several periods of her life are to be found many of the characteristics of the writings of " Junius," the minute and delicate fineness of the letters, the regularity and clearness, the perfect formation of every letter, the nnevenness of the lines, the peculiarity of commencing with a small letter instead of a capital, and close 1 Mr. Justice Coleridge, in Smyth v. Smyth and others, at the Gloucester Assizes, August 1S53. 2 Best on Presumptions of Law and Fact, p. 233. London, 1844. 8 Grenville Papers, vol. iii., p. 78. George III. and Junius. 105 to the left-hand edge of the paper, the habit of occasionally omitting small words and single letters in words, the invari- able attention to the dotting of the letter i, the similarity in the form of individual letters and the general appearance of her early handwriting as compared with the feigned hand which she subsequently adopted for the writing of " Junius." '* 'Nor does the theory,' he says in another page, 'of Lady Temple beiDg the amanuensis in any way invalidate the solemn declaration of Junius, that he was the sole depositary of his own secret. I believe that declaration to have been true — with this reserva- tion only, that " Junius " considered his wife to be part of him- self, in accordance with the highest authority ; bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. He could not, without danger, have con- fided the secret to any human being but his wife ; with her it was safe : their very existence depended upon concealment.' 2 Richard Grenville, who in 1752 succeeded his mother, Hester Temple, wife of Richard Grenville, Baroness and Viscountess Cobham and Countess Temple, as Baron and Viscount Cobham and Earl Temple, is described on good authority as a man of a very haughty and impracticable temper, yet easily conciliated by small attentions. 3 He is also represented as a man of talents for business ; and altogether as a very superior man to the description of him by Lord Macaulay, taken from Horace Walpole. ' His talents for administration and debate,' says Lord Macaulay in his second article on the Earl of Chatham, ' were of no high order. But his great possessions, his turbulent and unscrupulous character, his restless activity, and his skill in the most ignoble tactics of faction, made him one of the most formidable enemies that a Ministry could have.' One of the charges here made, that Lord Temple's talents for administration were of no high order, has received a circum- stantial contradiction. ' Mr. Pitt, during the whole of his administration, relied entirely upon the advice and opinions 1 Grenville Papers, vol. iii. p. 194. 2 Ibid., pp. 65, 66. 8 Ibid., p. 27. to6 The English Parliament. of Lord Temple in the management of the war, and, indeed, entirely confided in him on the adoption of all measures of importance.' 1 'During the Seven Years' War Mr. Pitt held the seals of Secretary of State ; and at the same time his brother-in-law, Lord Temple, was in office, either as First Lord of the Admiralty or Lord Privy Seal, and in Mr. Pitt's frequent attacks of gout he entirely confided to Lord Temple the duties of the Secretary's office, he invariably consulted his opinion, and much of the success of the war has been attributed to Lord Temple's management of it.' 2 ' Wolfe's appointment to the expedition against Quebec had been made by Mr. Pitt and Lord Temple, and principally, it is believed, at the recommendation of the latter.' 3 While it may be true that Lord Temple was a man of a temper at once haughty and impracticable, the statement as to his ' turbulent and unscrupulous character,' and his ' skill in the most ignoble tactics of faction,' must be taken in con- nection with the statements given by Burke, that the Court commenced the war against parliamentary government, and carried it on in the most unscrupulous manner, and that Lord Temple might consider it not only a right, but a duty, to defend his country's institutions by all means resorted to in a war of life and death. It is, indeed, surprising to find that the real issues involved in the conflict between ' Junius' and George the Third should have been so mistaken or misrepre- sented as they have been. Lord Macaulay, after depreciating to the last degree Horace Walpole's historical judgment, takes him as an authority on matters where it would appear he is no au- thority. For instance, George Grenville has been described as using unbecoming language to the King, and as being extremely distasteful to George the Third ; chiefly on the authority of Horace Walpole, who personally disliked George Grenville, and never lost an opportunity of sneering at him. On the other hand it has been said, upon authority quite as 1 Grenville Papers, vol. iii. p. 42. 2 Ibid., p. 49. 3 Ibid., p. 88. George III. and Junius. 107 trustworthy as that of Horace Walpole, that on the death of George Grenville the King expressed to Lord Suffolk his great regard for his memory, and said he lamented the loss of ' that great and good man, Mr. Grenville, who was an honour to human nature.' 1 The words in Mr. Grenville's Diary afford a distinct refutation of Horace Walpole's statements. In a conversation between the King and Mr. Grenville, on Tuesday, May 21st, 1765, 'Mr. Grenville conjured the king, in the most earnest and solemn manner, if ever he had served him faithfully, or in a manner acceptable to him, that he would grant him the request he was then going to make to him. The king asked him what it was. Mr. Grenville said that what he entreated of him was, that if the continuing him in his service was in any degree a force upon his inclination, or done with any reluctance, he did conjure him not to do it on any consideration whatever ; that he always had endea- voured to serve him with the fidelity, duty, and attachment, 1 Grenville Papers, vol. iii., p. 182, note. As an example of the difficulty of extracting historical truth out of conflicting evidence, I give the following passage from the Mitchell Papers, vol. i., p. 183. 'Count Finken stein insisted on the absolute necessity there was to recall Sir Charles Hanbury "Williams, and to replace him by some man of temper and conduct, who might be able to restore our affairs in that Court [Eussia] by acting cordially and confidentially with the Great Chancellor.' As a counterpart to this portrait of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams by Count Finkenstein, I subjoin the following portrait of Count Finkenstein by Sir Charles : — ' He has very much the air of a French petit-maitr'e manque, and is extremely affected in every thing he says and does Count Finkenstein, whom everybody calls Count Fink, is very like the late Lord Hervey, and yet his face is the ugliest I ever saw. But when he speaks, his affectation, the motion of his eyes and shoulders, all his different gestures and grimaces, bring Lord Hervey very strongly into my mind.' — Walpole s Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of George II., vol. i., p. 515, appendix r, g, h. This was rather a strange topic to select for the amusement of Horace Walpole the younger, who resembled in bodily and mental qualities Lord Hervey much more than either Sir Eobert Walpole, or Sir Robert's brother, Horace Walpole the elder, of each of whom the characteristics were those of English country gentlemen, not those of a gentleman-usher, or of a French petit-maitre manque. 108 The English Parliament. which had been the rule of his conduct towards him ; and that he hoped that during the whole course of this conversa- tion no word had dropped from him in which he had been wanting in respect and duty to his Majesty. The king said he always did behave to him in the most respectful and becoming manner.' 1 Lord Temple having been described as a man possessed of ' talents for administration and debate of no high order,' but remarkable for ' his turbulent and unscrupulous character, his restless activity, and his skill in the most ignoble tactics,' justice requires the hearing of the other side, namely, Lord Temple's or his friends' statements, with regard to ' unscru- pulous character ' and ' ignoble tactics.' ' It may be stated, upon the authority of Almon, who, it should be remembered, derived his information principally from Lord Temple himself, that in March 1763 Lord Bute caused an offer to be made to Lord Temple and Mr. Pitt, by Hans Stanley, that if they would withdraw from the Whigs he would make an opening to them to return to administra- tion. He was, however, unsuccessful, and he then returned to Mr. Grenville, and this was the cause of the sudden succession of Mr. Grenville to the Ministry. 1 Again, in January 1766, Lord Bute is said to have made another unsuccessful attempt at a reconciliation with Lord Temple, through the medium of Lord Eglintoun ; and Almon asserts that, notwithstanding the failure of this project, Lord Bute found means, through one of the Princess's confidants, to amuse Lord Temple with assurances that a carte blanche would shortly be offered to him, and this manoeuvre succeeded so well, that Lord Temple was completely duped by it, and for some time believed the assurances.' 2 This manoeuvre of Lord Bute throws a light on his character, which shows that he possessed, at least, some portion of the genius for laying a trap, which has im- 1 Grenville Papers, vol. iii., pp. 181, 182. 2 Ibid. pp. 47, 48. George III. and Junius. 109 mortalised Borgia and Bonaparte. The object seems to have been to cause a quarrel between Lord Temple and his brother, George Grenville, and his brother-in-law, Pitt ; and thus break up the Pitt and Grenville connection. It succeeded for a time and may partly account for Temple's great bitterness against George the Third and his favourites. That Lord Bute was more successful in gaining Lord Chatham is thus alluded to by the author of ' Junius,' in one of the earliest letters attributed to him, dated June, 1767 : — 1 It was then his good fortune to corrupt one man, from whom we least of all expected so base an apostasy. Who, indeed, could have suspected that it should ever consist with the spirit or understanding of that person to accept of a share of power under a pernicious Court minion, whom he himself had affected to detest or despise, as much as he knew he was detested and despised by the whole nation ? I will not censure him for the avarice of a pension, nor the melancholy ambition of a title. These were objects which he, perhaps, looked up to, though the rest of the world thought them far beneath his acceptance.' But even Lord Temple's friends admit those tendencies to excesses of anger and intemperate language which were a great drawback to his friends, and a great advantage to his enemies. The writer I have before frequently quoted, the- editor of the ' Grenville Papers' and formerly librarian at Stowe, says: ' With a disinterested patriotism, and genuine love of liberty, Lord Temple is supposed to have delighted in faction, and the libellous abuse of men in power.' 1 Thus arises the contradiction whicm causes the puzzle respecting the character of a man of true love of country and capable of generous acts, passing what may seem the limits of fair controversy, and attacking those he considered public enemies with savage violence. But there is this to be said for Lord Temple. He appears to have felt what, as I have shown, at least one man, who saw farther than most men of his generation, also felt — Edmund Burke, though Burke, as I have also shown, 1 Grenville Papers, vol. hi., p. 28. 1 10 The English Parliament. sedulously avoided personal attack in expressing his opinions, the vehemence of Burke's nature being different from the vehemence of Temple's — he felt that the liberties of his country were as much endangered by the men he attacked with his pen, as they had been endangered by the men Cromwell attacked with his sword. 'Horace Walpole,' says Mr. W. J. Smith, editor of the ' Grenville Papers,' 1 ' who was for many years acquainted with Lord Temple, has, in his Memoirs and Letters, made frequent allusions to his character and habits.' He gives the following passage, as what he terms a very apt illustration : — ' This malignant man (Lord Temple) worked in the mines of succes- sive factions for near thirty years together. To relate them is writing his life.' 2 Lord Macaulay, in his second article on the Earl of Chatham, has expanded Walpole's sketch of his friend, which he, in that humane spirit so free from the malignity which he so liberally bestows on his victims, left to be published after his death — as a malignant and tricky, if not treacherous, man, who worked in darkness — into a historical portrait of a man of mean abilities for administration and debate, but of dark malignity and crooked and foul political practices, that formed a combination of Borgia and Guy Fawkes. And while Lord Macaulay has here taken Horace Walpole as an authority, he had before said of him that he had no discern- ment of the characters of men, beyond sneering at everybody, and putting on every action the worst construction which it would bear. As Lord Temple appears to me to have received from Horace Walpole and Lord Macaulay but scant justice, to say nothing of mercy, I should wish to say for Lord Temple what I think may be fairly said. Lord Temple has been shown to have possessed talents for administration, not, as Lord Macaulay affirms, ' of no high order,' but of an order which, as things go, may be justly termed 4 high.' On the other 1 Grenville Papers, vol. iii., p. 28. 2 ' Memoirs of George III., vol. ii., p. 359.' George III. and Junius. 1 1 1 hand, Lord Macaulay may be right in saying that his ' talents for debate were of no high order.' I know not whether they were high or low, or neither high nor low ; but I think it extremely probable that they were like those of many other men, very much below his talents for writing ; as the talents for debate of his brother-in-law, Chatham, were very much above his talents for writing. I have known intimately, and observed closely, several great debaters ; and I am inclined to think that it would be a serious obstacle to any man's be- coming a great debater, his being in his person, what Lord Temple was, awkward and ungainly. I do not say that such an obstacle is insurmountable ; but a certain ease and freedom in a man's bodily movements may be taken as a type of those mental movements which constitute a talent for debate. Lord Brougham, who may be accepted as an authority on the point, has a striking observation in his sketch of Erskine. ' It used to be a common remark,' he says, ' of men who ob- served his motions, that they resembled those of a blood horse ; as light, as limber, as much betokening strength and speed, as free from all gross superfluity or incumbrance.' 1 Might not Lord Temple, then, be one of those men who do much of the work of which others get all the honour? And if Lord Temple wrote those letters, which have made so much noise in the world, he has really left far more enduring memorials behind him than the famous orator of whose speeches scarce even a fragment has survived. But Lord Temple, who was not more insensible to fame than Lord Chatham, went to his grave, and his secret perished with him. Lord Macaulay himself knew well that in public affairs one man often gets all the honour and all the profit, while other men do all the work ; and he has shown a signal example of it in his account of Louis XIV. When every- thing was ready for the surrender of a town, the holiday king came in great state, with an army of royal carriages and royal concubines to receive the surrender, as if he had made the dispositions for the assault and borne the heat and burden of 1 Statesmen of the Time of George III. First Series, p. 237. 1 1 2 The English Parliament. the day. And men submit to this mockery and injustice be- cause they cannot help themselves, save in the case of a man like Lord Temple, who had in him much of that * fierce haughtiness ' which has been noted as the characteristic of the elder Pitt. According to Horace Walpole, indeed, Temple was an ■ impertinent poltroon ;' but then we know Horace to be an unsafe guide in politics, and an untrust- worthy authority as to character. According to Horace Walpole, our first writers were seven persons who had among them two seats in the House of Lords, two seats in the House of Commons, three seats in the Privy Council, a baronetcy, a blue riband, a red riband, about a hundred thousand pounds a year, and, in the opinion of Lord Macaulay, ' not 1 ten pages that are worth reading.' This seems a strange sage to pass judgment from the seat of the historian upon the men ! of his time. If Thucydides and Clarendon are not infallible, what must such a thing as this be ? We can now, perhaps, see a glimpse of the initial impulse of the ' Letters of Junius.' We can understand a haughty English nobleman, whose family history had made him take special note of monarchical oppression, exercised by Plan- tagenets as well as Stuarts, subjected to exasperating inter- ference in the fulfilment of his duties as minister by backstairs reptiles, and personally insulted by the German successor of the Plantagenets and Stuarts. We can understand any Englishman who happened to possess a portion of the old English stubbornness which had animated the Commonwealth cuirassiers and pikemen — when the battle had shifted from the fresh air of a heath, such as Marston Moor and Naseby, to the close atmosphere of the backstairs, where he feels stifled and suffocated by foul vapours and the reptiles nourished thereby, determined to stamp and record his vengeance in words that should outlast the brass and marble of his op- pressor's monument. We can understand all this, and also that the man must be of station that places him on an equality with the highest of the land ; but we cannot un- derstand that such work could be done by a clerk in the George III. and Junius. War Office without private fortune, and entirely dependent upon patronage and place. Lord Macaulay says, in liis article on Warren Hastings : 1 As to the position, pursuits, and connections of Junius, the following are the most important facts which can be con- sidered as clearly proved : first, that he was acquainted with the technical forms of the Secretary of State's Office ; secondly, that he was intimately acquainted with the business of the War Office ; thirdly, that he, during the year 1770, attended debates in the House of Lords, and took notes of speeches, particularly of the speeches of Lord Chatham ; fourthly, that he bitterly resented the appointment of Mr. Chamier to the place of Deputy Secretary at War ; fifthly, that he was bound by some strong tie to the first Lord Holland. Now Francis passed some years in the Secretary of State's Office. He was subsequently chief clerk of the War Office. He repeatedly mentioned that he had himself, in 1770, heard speeches of Lord Chatham ; and some of these speeches were actually printed from his notes. He resigned his clerkship at the War Office from resentment at the appointment of Mr. Chamier. It was by Lord Holland that he was first introduced into the public service. Now, here are five marks, all of which ought to be found in Junius. They are all five found in Francis. We do not believe that more than two of them can be found in any other person whatever. If this argument does not settle the question, there is an end of all reasoning on circum- stantial evidence.' Let us now see if we can find ' any other person whatever ' in whom more than two of these marks can be found. I have shown that during the Seven Years' War, when Mr. Pitt held the seals of Secretary of State, in his frequent attacks of gout he entirely confided to Lord Temple the duties of the Secretary's office, that he invariably consulted his opinion, that Wolfe's appointment to the command against Quebec had been made by Mr. Pitt and Lord Temple, principally, it has been said, at the recommendation of the latter. It follows I H4 The English Parliament. that Lord Temple was much more intimately acquainted with the Secretary of State's Office than Mr. Francis could be ; and that he had also the opportunity of knowing minutely everything that occurred in the War Office. , Two of Lord Macaulay 's marks are thus found in Lord Temple. Lord Macaulay's third mark, that during the year 1770 Junius attended debates in the House of Lords and took notes of speeches, particularly of the speeches of Lord Chatham, may also be said to be found in Lord Temple. Lord Macaulay's fourth mark is that Junius * bitterly re- sented the appointment of Mr. Chamier to the place of Deputy Secretary at War.' The words ' bitterly resented ' may apply to Mr. Philip Francis, but neither to Junius nor to Lord Temple. The ground for this opinion is the words used by Junius in reference to Francis's connection with the War Office. Having failed to obtain the appointment of Deputy Secretary at War, Francis resigned, or, as Junius describes it, Lord Barrington contrived to expel him — an expression by no means likely to be employed by Francis in speaking of him- self on such an occasion. Mr. Calcraft, whose business as an army contractor would oblige him to go often to the War Office, and through him Lord Temple, would become ac- quainted with the intrigues of the office. Neither Junius nor Lord Temple ' bitterly resented ' the appointment of Chamier, the broker, and brother-in-law of Bradshaw ; though the appointment afforded an opportunity for attacking Lord Barrington, who had incurred the wrath of Lord Temple by deserting the Grenvilles, by holding an adverse opinion on the subject of the Middlesex election, and moving the ex- pulsion of Wilkes from the House of Commons in February 1769. This, which Lord Macaulay calls his fourth mark, is in fact a mark, not that Francis was Junius, but that Lord Temple was Junius. The bitter resentment mentioned by Lord Macaulay, though a commodity of which Lord Temple always had a considerable stock in store, would not be roused by Chamier in Lord Temple, but it would in Francis ; while, on George III. and Junius I 15 the other hand, Bradshaw, who had been lately promoted to a seat at the Board of Admiralty, seems to have roused some personal resentment in Lord Temple, who when First Lord of the Admiralty may have come in contact with him. There is another mark of Francis not being Junius which Lord Macaulay does not include in his five marks. Junius manifested partiality, personal as well as political, towards George Grenville and John Wilkes. Francis showed no partiality for either. Lord Macaulay's fifth mark is that Junius ' was bound by some strong tie to the first Lord Holland.' It may be sufficient to say that this mark of Francis being Junius is disposed of by the statement in the autobiography that Francis concurred with his father in regarding Lord Holland as a ' scoundrel ' who had ill-treated them. On the supposition that Junius appeared to spare Lord Holland, I will quote a few words from the well-informed writer already cited : — 'In the letter addressed to the printer of the Public Advertiser on the 16th of October, 1771, and signed "Anti- Fox," which has by general agreement been attributed to Junius, he says : — 1 " I know nothing of Junius, but I see plainly that he has designedly spared Lord Holland and his family. Whether Lord Holland be invulnerable, or whether Junius should be wantonly provoked, are questions worthy the Black Boy's consideration." 1 This letter was evidently intended as a friendly warning (or even a threat, for it implies that Lord Holland was not in- vulnerable) to the Black Boy (meaning Charles James Fox, Lord Holland's second son), who was suspected by Junius of having been the author of some recent communications to the newspapers, as well as that Junius knew that the Black Boy had made himself busy in the affair of Luttrell and Wilkes, in favour of the former. Charles Fox was at this time M.P. for Midhurst, and a subaltern in the Tory ranks ; it was not until he quarrelled with Lord North, two or three 1 2 ] 1 6 The English Parliament. years later, that the Whigs were able to detach him from their adversaries. 1 1 That Lord Holland was not more frequently attacked by Junius, I believe to have been solely caused by the circum- stances I have stated, without the slightest reference to Mr. Philip Francis or his supposed gratitude. With all his faults, Lord Holland had more friends than enemies. His apparent frankness of disposition gained him many adherents, who were attached to him by strong personal friendship ; his agreeable manners and constant good humour rendered him ever a welcome companion in social life.' 2 I suppose by the words ■ circumstances I have stated ' he alludes to what he had said two pages before (p. 24), that when Lord Holland was designated by the Livery of London in their petition to the Kiug as a public defaulter of un- accounted millions, Junius, at least Lord Temple, knew that Lord Holland was not singular in that respect. He knew that Lord Chatham's accounts ending with 1755 were even then unsettled, and that the accounts of his brother George Grenville, as Treasurer of the Navy, an office which he had quitted for seven years, were not yet closed, and in fact remained unsettled at the time of his death in 1770. But though it may be not altogether useless to show the futility of the claims of some of the most prominent of the many persons who have been brought forward as the authors of the ' Letters of Junius ' (for since the publication of the first or author's edition of the Letters, in 1772, about forty persons have at various times been proposed as candidates for the authorship), 3 the value of the letters in a constitutional point of view is quite independent of the individual author- 1 Grenville Papers, vol. Hi., p. 24. See pp. 48, 49, for the squabbles among the War Office clerks. 2 Ibid., p. 26. 3 Ibid., p. 16. The editor of the Grenville Tapers adds in a note: • The references in these volumes to the Letters of Junius are to Woodfall's second edition, 3 vols. 8vo.. 1814 [edited by Dr. Mason Good].' Ibid., note i., Woodfall's first edition was published in 1812. George III. and Junius. 1 1 7 ship. Whether they were written by a king or a beggar, by a prime minister or a government clerk, their constitutional value is the same ; only there are marks about the writing which seem to render it a matter of surprise that a person of Lord Macaulay's knowledge should have supposed it possible that they could have been written by Sir Philip Francis. Whatever may be the literary or political merits or de- merits of the ' Letters of Junius,' the influence they exercised on a past generation is a historical fact, and it is altogether inde- pendent of the question by whom they were written. In regard to the controversy which has been revived as to one of those named as the possible or probable writer, it may be remarked that the 'Letters of Junius' exhibit more knowledge both of law and politics, as well as more intimate and familiar acquaintance with the habits of the highest class of English society at that time, than Mr. Philip Francis possessed. I agree with the editor of the * Grenville Papers' that Lord Temple was the author of the Letters, and Lady Temple his amanuensis. It would seem that there was some resemblance between the handwriting of Lady Temple and that of Mr. Philip Francis, but I do not think there is the least probability that any of the Letters were written by Francis, not even those concerning the squabbles among the War Office clerks ; which, it might be thought, Junius would hardly have condescended to enter into ; for the tone of Junius reminds one somewhat of the Pitt character. Moreover, several of the ' Letters of Junius ' appear to have been written by a man who had received the education of a lawyer, and had also had considerable practical experience as a politician ; neither of which conditions would apply to Francis. George Grrenville had been bred a lawyer, and like his relative, the second Pitt, was one of the lawyers who became Prime Ministers. George Grenville was turned out of his office as Prime Minister by the King for leaving the name of the Princess Dowager out of his Regency Bill. This might account for a hostile feeling towards the King and the Princess Dowager. Bat indeed not only Grenville, but Rock- ingham and Chatham, complained that they had been induced i r 8 The English Parliament. by royal entreaties and promises to undertake the administra- tion of the government at a difficult conjuncture, and that, as soon as they had served the turn for which they were wanted, their ungrateful master began to intrigue against them. Grenville, Rockingham, Chatham, though differing widely in other matters, agreed in thinking that the King, whose Prime Minister each of them had been, was one of the most insincere of men. His confidence, they said, was placed, not in the responsible ministers, but in a vile band of mercenaries who called themselves the King's friends. This will in some measure account for the unmitigated bitterness and severity of the language which Junius uses in speaking of the King. In his letter to the Duke of Grafton, dated July 8, 1769, Junius says : — ' Since the accession of our most gracious Sovereign to the throne, we have seen a system of government which may well be called a reign of experiments. Parties of all denominations have been employed and dismissed. The advice of the ablest men in this country has been repeatedly called for and rejected ; and when the royal displeasure has been signified to a minister, the marks of it have usually been proportioned to his abilities and integrity. The spirit of the favourite had some apparent influence upon every administra- tion ; and every set of ministers preserved an appearance of duration as long as they submitted to that influence.' What follows may be compared with Burke's account of the inner Cabinet given in a former page : — ' But there were certain services to be performed for the favourite's security, or to gratify his resentments, which your predecessors in office had the wisdom or the virtue not to undertake. The moment this refractory spirit was discovered, their disgrace was deter- mined. Lord Chatham, Mr. Grenville, and Lord Rockingham have successively had the honour to be dismissed for pre- ferring their duty as servants of the public to those com- pliances which were expected from their station. A submissive administration was at last gradually collected from the de- serters of all parties, interests, and connections ; and nothing remained but to find a leader for these gallant, well-disciplined George III. and Junius. 1 1 9 troops. Stand forth, my Lord ; for thou art the man. Lord Bute found no resource of dependence or security in the proud, imposing superiority of Lord Chatham's abilities ; the shrewd, inflexible judgment of Mr. Grenville ; nor in the mild but determined integrity of Lord Rockingham. His views and situation required a creature void of all these properties ; and he was forced to go through every division, resolution, composition, and refinement of political chemistry, before he happily arrived at the caput mortuum l of vitriol in your Grace. Flat and insipid in your retired state ; but brought into action, you become vitriol again.' Lord Macaulay says on the subject of handwriting (I have before observed that there was some resemblance between the handwriting of Lady Temple and that of Mr. Philip Francis): — 'The handwriting of Junius is the very peculiar handwriting of Francis, slightly disguised.' An attempt was made about ten years ago to settle the question of the author- ship of these letters by having ' the handwriting of Junius professionally investigated by Mr. Charles Chabot, Expert.' Lord Macaulay did not perhaps attach so much importance to the evidence of handwriting as Mr. Charles Chabot, Expert, and the Honourable Edward Twisleton ; nevertheless, it may be of use to show that it might be safer to attach none at al 1 The question of the authorship of the ■ Letters of Junius ' is not a question that can be determined by an l expert ' in hand- writing, as may, I think, be inferred from the following facts and judicial opinions on the evidence of handwriting. In the case of Smyth v. SmAjtli and others, tried at the Gloucester Assizes in August 1853, Mr. Justice Coleridge said : ' The identity of handwriting is very much a matter of opinion, and anybody might be deceived in a matter of evidence like that.' And in the case of Boupell and another v. Haws and others, tried at the Chelmsford Assizes in July 1863, the jury could not agree whether a certain signature was genuine or forged ; some of them thinking that it was 1 Caput mortuum, the old term for what remains in a retort after tho more valuable part has been drawn off. Residuum is the modern term. t 20 The English Parliament. genuine, others that it was not ; and the conflicting evidence of the numerous witnesses tended to confirm the above-cited observation of Mr. Justice Coleridge, that ' the identity of handwriting is very much a matter of opinion.' Indeed it is a rule of English law that evidence of handwriting based on the comparison between the handwriting of a party to a document, and other documents proved, or assumed to be his handwriting, as well as evidence of handwriting by knowledge acquired from specimens, is not receivable. 1 Among the cases collected by Mr. Best are two which strikingly show the deceptive nature of this kind of evidence. The first is related by Lord Eldon. 2 A deed was produced at a trial purporting to be attested by two witnesses, of whom one was Lord Eldon. The genuineness of the document was strongly attacked ; but the solicitor for the party setting it up, who was a most respectable man, had full confidence in the attesting witnesses, and had compared the signature of Lord Eldon to the document with that of several pleadings signed by him. Lord Eldon had never attested a deed in his life. In the other case, on a trial for forgery of some bank notes, one of the banker's clerks, whose name was on a forged note, swore that it was his signature, while as to another signature which was really his, he spoke with hesitation. ' Standing alone,' says Mr. Best, ' any of the modes of proof of hand- writing by resemblance are worth little — in a criminal case nothing.' 3 One should have thought that assassination as a mode of satisfaction for injuries among the more wealthy and edu- cated classes had gone altogether out in England by the middle of the eighteenth century. It is, therefore, some- what startling to find Junius, in a letter to Sir William Draper, dared September 25, 1769, writing in these terms: — ' As to me, it is by no means necessary that I should be 1 Best on Presumptions of Law and Fact, p. 221, et seq., and the cases there collected. London, 1844. 2 In the case of Engleton v. Kingston, 8 Ves. jnn. 476. 3 Best on Presumptions of Law and Fact, p. 233. George III. and Junius. 121 exposed to the resentment of the worst and most powerful men in this country, though I may be indifferent about yours. Though you would fight, there are others who would assassinate.' And in a private note to Woodfall he says : ' I sh d [sic'] not survive a discovery three days ; act honour- ably by me, and at a proper time you shall know me. I am persuaded you are too honest a man to contribute in any way to my destruction.' Again Junius writes privately to Woodfall : ' I am sure I sh d not survive a discovery three days, or, if I did, they wo d attaint me by bill.' The mean- ing is that if he left the country to escape private vengeance, he would incur the forfeiture of his estates. The expression leads to the inference that the author of the ' Letters of Junius ' was a man of rank and fortune. Lord Temple was a man possessed of large estates. Mr. Philip Francis was not possessed of any estates, large or small, as far as I know. Moreover, among the bearers of one of the titles which Earl Temple had inherited — that of Baron Cobham — was the famous Sir John Oldcastle, who obtained the title by marrying the heiress of Lord Cobham, and who, notwithstanding the mili- tary distinction he had gained in the French wars under Henry V., incurred the persecution of the clergy by editing the works of Wycliff, and, a bill of attainder having been passed against him, was hung in chains on a gallows in St. Giles's Fields, and burnt to death in December 1417. Old- castle was not an ancestor, though a predecessor in the title of Cobham, of Lord Temple, who might be supposed to have heard of the bill of attainder above referred to. But an an- cestor of Earl Temple, the Lord Cobham who had the mis- fortune to be involved in Raleigh's conspiracy in the time ot James the First, was reduced to beggary by his attempt to get rid of that king's government, and is said to have died in a wretched loft of starvation in 1619. No wonder then if Lord Temple should have a keener foresight than many other men of the contingencies of attempt- ing to oppose a bad government and a treacherous king. The man whose ancestral memories carried his associations back i 22 The English Parliament, to conflicts with the Plantagenets and the Stuarts was, it would seem, more likely to assume the tone of Junius towards the German successor of the Plantagenets and the Stuarts than a man whose ancestral memories did not go so far back. Still 1 assassinate ' is a word that has a strange sound when used as Junius used it towards the end of the eighteenth century in England. It seems to throw us more than a century back. The author of the ' Letters of Junius ' was evidently a man who, if not a lawyer by profession, or even a man who had received a legal education, was a man in the habit of consult- ing law books for himself. The editor of the * Grenville Papers,' who had been librarian at Stowe, informs us that the collec- tions that remain in Lord Temple's own handwriting show his extensive researches into old law books and authorities, as w r ell as the public records and journals of Parliament. Besides his brother George, who, as I have said, was bred to the Bar, Lord Temple's brother, James Grenville, was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, and his intimate friends were the barristers Dayrell and Mackintosh. The editor of the ' Grenville Papers ' informs us that Dayrell lived in an old manor-house which formerly stood in the village of Lamport, within half a mile of Stowe. He adds, writing about 1853, that this manor- house ' was pulled down about a dozen years ago, and its site is now included in Stowe gardens.' He further says, what may seem to connect Lord Temple with the ' Letters of Junius : ' 4 There has always been a tradition at Stowe that Dayrell furnished Junius with the legal argument for his letter to Lord Mansfield ; I have heard it frequently from the late Duke of Buckingham, and it is very possible to have been true, for if it were enclosed to Woodfall and addressed to Junius, it would have reached the hands of Lord Temple, and have been used by him, without any suspicion on the part of Dayrell, who might indeed have been even urged by Lord Temple to send it to Junius. Dayrell died at Lamport Manor House, in May 1816, at the age of seventy-three, and was buried in the church at Stowe.' 1 1 Grenville Papers, vol. iii., p. 168. George III . and Junius. Notwithstanding, however, Lord Temple's advantages both in regard to law books and professional friends, if he had not had a thorough legal education, and moreover had seen legal maxims reduced to practice, which he could only have done as a practising lawyer, he might always be liable to throw himself open to such remarks as Lord Mansfield made in his speech in the House of Lords in 1758, in the proceedings to explain and amend the Habeas Corpus Act — remarks which have been thought to have had some influence on the opinion respecting lawyers afterwards announced by Junius. Lord Temple having spoken much and warmly of the importance of Liberty, Lord Mansfield began with — ' Excusing the great zeal shown by many persons for the Bill, from their total ignorance of what it was, and their groundless imagination that Liberty was concerned in it, which had no more connection with the Bill than with the Act of Navigation, or that for encouraging the cultivation of madder. That ignorance on subjects of this kind was ex- tremely pardonable, since the knowledge of positive laws required a particular study of them, and the greatest genius, without such study, could no more become master of them, than of what was contained in the Japanese history with- out understanding the language of the country.' x Where Lord Mansfield can put his case with clearness and knowledge such as this passage exhibits, Lord Temple had but small chance in the dispute with him. But Lord Mansfield was not always on such advantageous ground as when Junius says in his letter to Lord Mansfield, dated November 14, 1770 : ' The Roman Code, the laws of nations, and the opinion of foreign civilians, are your perpetual theme ; but who ever heard you mention Magna Charta, or the Bill of Rights, with approbation or respect ? By such treacherous arts the noble simplicity and free spirit of our Saxon laws were first cor- rupted. The Norman conquest was not complete, until Norman lawyers had introduced their laws, and reduced 1 Cited, Grenvllle Papers, vol. iii., p. 43, from Lord Hardwicke's Papers. i 24 The English Parliament. slavery to a system. This one leading principle directs your interpretation of the laws, and accounts for your treatment of juries.' In the remonstrance from the army presented to the House of Commons on the 20th of November, 1648, it is set forth that the ' Court maxims, devised by the blasphemous arrogance of tyrants, concerning the absolute impunity of kings, their accountableness to none on earth, and that they cannot do wrong, which remain in our law books as heirlooms only of the Conquest, serve for nothing but to establish that which begot them, tyranny .; and to give kings the highest encouragement to do wrong and make war even upon their own people. If, therefore, our kings claim by right of conquest, God hath given you the same against them, and there is an end to their pretensions, as if the whole people were made only for them, and to serve their lusts.' 1 Junius himself, while he attacks Lord Mansfield's political principles, does justice to his abilities. 5Tet while Lord Mansfield's mind was admitted to have been clear and power- ful, the depth of his legal learning has been questioned. And such want of depth may account for his sometimes making law instead of expounding it — a thing which, though extremely difficult to do well, is easier to do ill or indifferently than it is to unravel and set forth in luminous order a large and confused mass of law already existing on a given subject. It follows that those judges who are the least profound lawyers, and consequently least able to say when law needs to be made, will be the most likely to evade the difficulty of elucidating the old law by making new. Lord Mansfield's judicial legis- lation has been most successful in some branches of commercial law. In the law of real property he was less successful. His decision in the case of Perrin v. Blake, which involved an alteration in the old established rules of law, particularly as regarded what is called the rule in Shelley's case, was reversed in the Exchequer Chamber. Lord Brougham, in reference to the judgment which Lord Mansfield delivered in the celebrated case of Perrin v. Blake, 1 Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England, vol. ii., p. 286. George III. and Junius. 125 says :■ — ' It must be observed that here, as in the former instance, he had the concurrence of his learned brethren, excepting only Mr. Justice Yates, whose difference of opinion led to his leaving the Court of King's Bench, and removing to the Common Pleas for the very short residue of his truly respectable and useful life.' l In a note to this passage Lord Brougham says : — ' This able, learned, and upright judge showed a courage greatly extolled in those times, but which, it is to be hoped, every member of the bench would now display as a matter of course. The minister having tampered with him in vain, previous to some trial involving rights of the Crown, the King was foolish or wicked enough to write him a letter, and he returned it unopened. Alderman Townsend stated this in Parliament, and it was not contra- dicted.' The former instance referred to above by Lord Brougham, and stated by him in a preceding page (p. 108), was a case where upon application for a mandamus to make an order of filiation upon a foreign ambassador's secretary, Lord Mansfield somewhat hastily refused it. * This view,' says Lord Brougham, ' was manfully resisted by the counsel who moved ; and Mr. Justice Yates took part with them. In the end Lord Mansfield gave way, and the remedy was granted as sought. But it must be observed that the third judge present, Mr. Justice Aston, at first entirely concurred with the Chief Justice, and only changed his opinion upon further consideration, being moved by the reasoning of the dissenting judge.' Perhaps one of the most remarkable circumstances about these ' Letters of Junius ' is that they should have had so much success notwithstanding the degree by which their virulence and acrimony overpass the bounds of fair and temperate discussion. A notable instance of this is afforded by what Junius says of this Mr. Justice Yates, whom he exalts by flagrant injustice towards the other judges of the Court of King's Bench. ' The name of Mr. Justice Yates,' says Junius in the letter to Lord Mansfield last quoted, ' will naturally revive in your mind 1 Statesmen of the Time of George III., first series, pp. 109, 110. 126 The English Pa rlia men L some of those emotions of fear and detestation with which you always beheld him. That great lawyer, that honest man, saw your whole conduct in the light that I do. After years of ineffectual resistance to the pernicious principles introduced by your Lordship, and uniformly supported by your humble friends [sic'] upon the bench, he determined to quit a court whose proceedings and decisions he could neither assent to with honour, nor oppose with success.' It will be observed that Junius here says ' uniformly sup- ported,' whereas in the case of the foreign ambassador's secre- tary, the third judge present, Mr. Justice Aston, changed his ofinion, which at first agreed with that of the Chief Justice ; such changes having been produced by the reasoning of the dissenting judge, Mr. Justice Yates. Junius ought to have obtained correct information ; and if he either neglected to obtain it, or having obtained it, wrote ' uniformly supported ' in defiance of it, he acted the part of a slanderer and a dis- honest man. In regard to Lord Brougham's criticism 1 of the style of Junius, which Lord Brougham calls ' polished, though very far from being a correct one, and farther still from good pure English,' whatever faults of style Junius may have, his ' polished style, the vehicle of sarcasm and pointed invective,' has given to his ' nominis umbra ' a longer life already than could be safely predicted to the production in the ' Edinburgh Review,' which Lord Byron, whom it attacked, said ' was a masterpiece of low wit — a tissue of scurrilous abuse.' Byron was at least as good a judge of style as Brougham ; and Byron's opinion was different from Brougham's as to Junius, into the mouth of whose shade he puts these words : — • Passion ! ' cried the phantom dim, • I loved my country, and I hated him. What I have written, I have written : let The rest be on his head or mine ! My charges upon record will outlast The brass of both his epitaph and tomb.' 1 Statesmen of the Time of George III., first series, p. 115. George III. and Junius, 127 If Brougham and Temple had been set to talk against each other, Brougham would have beaten Temple ; if to write, Temple would have beaten Brougham. Brougham wanted knowledge and accuracy for writing ; and his style is poor, wordy, and illogical. James Mill, who knew him well, once said of him, ' He does not know when his premisses and his conclusion are connected.' It may, however, be said for the writer, whoever he was, of the words in the * Edinburgh Review,' ' We are well off to have got so much from a man of this lord's station, who does not live in a garret, but has the sway of Newstead Abbey,' that even Walter Scott, when alluding to the attack on him in 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' said something not complimentary about ' this whelp of a lord.' Lord Byron, in- deed, with his popularity as a writer, added to his pretensions to descent from a robber or pirate of the eleventh century instead of the sixteenth, reached an arrogance which looked upon the House of Lords as a set of dull fellows, and the rest of the world as a set of low fellows. The writer of the review, instead of sneering at the boy lord's bad poetry, might have usefully em- ployed himself in showing the true extent and nature of the ground the Byron family might have for saying that they had come to England with William and had ' led their vassals proudly to battle on Palestine's plains ; ' in showing also that the Byron s, like many other Anglo-Norman families whose names figure in the roll of Battle Abbey, though they may have come from Normandy to England, were not at the battle of Hastings at all. Stubbs has shown that several names which figure in Thierry as copied from the livre or livret des con- quereurs were the names of men introduced by Henry I. into England from Normandy to superintend his judicial and financial reforms, soon after he had defeated and expelled from England the most powerful and most truly representative of the Conquest families. I have only mentioned the case of Perrin v. Blake here — for to comprehend the technical reasoning in it requires some measure of legal education — as affording some evidence of Lord 128 The English Parliament. Temple's connection with the ' Letters of Junius. ' The evidence referred to may be described as a knowledge, however imper- fect or inaccurate, of the laws of England derived partly from books, partly from the conversation of professional lawyers. I do not think it probable — to take one of the proposed can- didates for the authorship of the ' Letters of Junius,' who has been most prominently brought forward and influentially sup- ported — that Mr. Philip Francis had, any more than any other clerk in the War Office, ever heard of the ' celebrated case of Perrin v. Blake,' or of Fearne's once celebrated book on ' Con- tingent Remainders ' to which that case gave birth. While there was no special inducement to make Mr. Francis conversant either with English constitutional law or with those details of English government which a man could only become familiar with as a member of the Cabinet, it appears that Lord Temple, besides having been in the habit of consulting law books and the public records, and of discussing legal questions with barristers of admitted legal knowledge, had been an important member of Chatham's administration under George II. and George III., which entitled him to say, as he said to Sir William Draper, ' I should have hoped that even my name might carry some authority with it,' 1 words which are of themselves a conclusive proof that Junius was not Francis, was not Lord George Sackville, was not William Burke (that he was not Edmund Burke it is needless to repeat), that he was not any of the forty persons proposed as can- didates, and not one of whom had a name to carry an atom of authority with it in 1769, if they ever had. I am in- clined to think that of all the persons who have been named as the possible authors of the ' Letters of Junius,' Lord Temple was the one who could with least inaccuracy have used these words, ' I should have hoped that even my name might carry some authority with it.' For Lord Temple, without having attained fame like his brother-in-law Pitt, had held high and important offices of State, in which he had shown 1 Letter of Junius to Sir William Draper, Knight of the Bath February 7, 1769. Letter iii. of the Letters of Junius. George III. and Junius, 129 talents for administration, though perhaps not for debate. This was precisely the position in which a man might feel that though he had not made himself famous, he had something of a name, which neither Lord George Sackville (who had it in- deed in a negative sense), nor Philip Francis, nor William Burke could say at that time. William Gerard Hamilton had so much more fame, as single-speech Hamilton, than Lord Temple, that the expression might have come in the sense of 1 name ' from him, but not in the sense of ' authority,' as Lord Temple might use it, since Hamilton had not held such high offices as Temple, nor had any pretensions to hold them. While Junius, whether Lord Temple was Junius or not, protested against being taken for a lawyer himself, of being taken for a member of a profession where, according to him, ' subtlety is mistaken for wisdom and impunity for virtue,' he manifested a taste for legal studies. There is unquestionably something in a legal education — apart altogether from the habits of a legal practitioner — something of that knowledge which enables a man to act so far at least on Coke's advice as to ' beware of chronicle law reported in our annals ' — a sort of knowledge which is of great value to a man through life — a sort of knowledge of which Lord Temple possessed some portion. The evidence of handwriting I have already disposed of. In an elaborate article in the Times of May 22, 1871, on an attempt to prove by an expert that the ' Letters of Junius ' were written by Francis, there occur these very significant sentences : — * The common estimate of Francis, prior to the revival of the topic by Lord Macaulay, was expressed by Tierney when he said, " I know no better reason for believing the fellow to be Junius, than that he was always confoundedly proud of something, and no one could ever guess what it could be." Mr. Pitt told Lord Aberdeen (the late Premier) that he and his father (Lord Chatham) knew who wrote the Junius Letters, and that it was not Francis. Lord Aberdeen repeated this statement to his son, the Hon. Arthur Gordon, now Governor K 1 30 The English Parliament. of the Mauritius. The Right Hon. Thomas Grenville told Lady Delamere and Miss Williams Wynn (his nieces) and the Hon. Mrs. Rowley (his great-niece), as a matter of personal knowledge, that Junius was not one of the persons to whom the letters had been popularly ascribed. Soon after the pub- lication of the " Diaries of a Lady of Quality," in which the Grenvilles were mentioned as possessed of the key, Lady Grenville sent a message to the editor, through Dr. James Ferguson, to say that Lord Grenville told her he knew who wrote the Junius Letters, and they were not written by Francis. ' It would appear from this that Mr. Thomas Grenville did not make any communication to the same effect to the editor of the " Grenville Papers," who says : — " It has been supposed that the late Mr. Thomas Grenville had some peculiar know- ledge respecting the authorship of Junius. I have no reason to join in that belief, for I never heard him speak upon the subject, nor did I ever hear it mentioned in his presence. He had not seen these letters addressed to his father until they were shown to him by myself at Stowe, about ten or twelve years ago, I believe in October 1840. After having appeared to read them with great attention, he returned them to me without any observation whatever — it is possible, because he felt no interest in the subject, or that I did not presume to ask him any questions upon it. I remember considering that his manner upon this occasion was significant, because it was unusual. I revert with very great pleasure to the many hours which I had the honour and advantage of spending with him at various times in the library at Stowe, and he always appeared to be much pleased in giving one the benefit of his extensive and most accurate information upon the books and manuscripts which I produced, either for his amusement, or upon which I desired to ask his opinion or advice." ' * The editor of the ' Grenville Papers ' has some observations bearing on this point in his introductory notes relating to the authorship of Junius. ' It was not,' he says, ' until the end 1 Grenville Papers, vol. iii., p. 15, note 2. George III. and Junius. 1 3 1 of the year 1829, after the late Duke of Buckingham's return from a tour on the Continent, that I first suggested to his Grace the possibility that Lord Temple might have been the author of Junius. Although it had not occurred to him, nor had he heard it as a family tradition, the Duke did not discourage the supposition ; and in all our subsequent conver- sations upon the subject, we found no reasons for considering it in any respect improbable. In the year 1831 a book was published in America by Mr. Newhall, in which the claims of Lord Temple to be Junius are advocated in a series of letters to a friend at Salem. ' I have read with more or less attention nearly all the numerous publications on the authorship of Junius ; and nothing which has been written upon the subject has in any respect shaken my conviction that of all the persons hitherto named, the probabilities are greatly in favour of Lord Temple.' * There are facts mentioned in the ' Letters of Junius ' which were known only to three persons, Lord Chatham, Lord Camden, and Lord Temple. The manner in which Lords Chatham and Camden are spoken of by Junius precludes the supposition that either of them was Junius. There re- mains but Lord Temple. The objection to his having been the author of the Letters which has been made by Scaevola and others is also made by a writer who has left some volumes of prose and verse known only to the students of literary history. This writer says that in a conversation between Lord Camden and himself, the former said that ' many things in Junius convinced him [Lord Camden] that the materials were prompted by Earl Temple, and he mentioned in par- ticular a confidential statement which had been made in 1 Grenville Tapers, vol. iii., p. 16. I have mentioned in a former page that since the publication of the first or author's edition of the Letters, in 1772, about forty persons have been proposed as candidates for the author- ship. WoodfaH's^^ edition appeared in 1812. Woodfall's second edition, 3 vols. 8vo., edited by Dr. Mason Good, appeared in 1814. k 2 132 The English Parliament. private between Lord Chatham, Lord Temple, and Lord Camden, which, from the nature of it, could only have been disclosed by Lord Temple, through Junius, to the public' l The writer of this passage, Mr. George Hardinge, 2 says in the third volume of his works: l I know enough of Junius to know that he was of Lord Temple's school, and that in one 3 of the letters to Lord Camden he touched upon a fact, known only to three persons, Lords Chatham, Camden, and Temple.' Mr. George Hardinge then takes upon him to pronounce a very decided judgment upon the extent and limits of Lord Temple's ' eloquence and parts,' saying ' Lord Temple had not eloquence or parts enough to have written Junius ; but I have no doubt that he knew the author.' The words of Scaevola in a letter addressed to Junius in the Public Adver- tiser of Saturday, November 9, 1771, are : ' These par- ticulars are proofs not of the writer (whose abilities are his own), bnt of the Patron of Junius.'' 4 Burke's remark that ' Wilkes is pursued for the spirited dispositions which are blended with his vices ; for his un- conquerable firmness, for his resolute, indefatigable, strenu- 1 Nichols's Illustrations of Literary History, vol. i., p. 146, cited Gren- ville Papers, vol. iii., p. 130. 2 Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse of George Hardinge, Esq., Senior Justice of the Counties of Brecon, Glamorgan, and Kadnor, 3 vols. 8vo., Nichols, 1818. Cited,. ibid., p. 131. 3 Junius addressed only one of his Letters to Lord Camden, the last in the series of his acknowleged writings, and in that letter ' there is only one sentence in which by any possibility,' says the editor of the Grenville Papers (vol. iii., p. 131), 'such a fact can be involved.' The following is the sentence: — 'But it was said that Lord Chief Justice Wilmot had been prevailed upon to vouch for an opinion of the late Judge Yates, which was supposed to make against you ; and we admit the excuse.' ' The above passage,' continues the editor of the Grenville Papers, 4 probably contains the fact alluded to as being known only to Lords Chatham, Camden, and Temple. In what manner Lord Chief Justice Wilmot was prevailed upon, or what was the opinion of Mr. Justice Yates, or upon what occasion it was given, I regret that, after most diligent search, I have hitherto been unable to discover.' * Grenville Papers, vol. iii., p. 94. George III. and Junius. 133 cms resistance against oppression,' l indicates the cause of Lord Temple's support of Wilkes, which was associated with the good part of Wilkes's character, not with the bad. Before Wilkes went out to fight with Lord Talbot, he said he had some business to attend to, and he wrote a letter to Lord Temple recommending his daughter to the care of Lady Temple in the event of his death. Lord Temple had proved a friend to Wilkes on all occasions, and had stood forth in defence of Wilkes, as of one in whose honour and integrity he placed the highest confidence. Wilkes in his letter in De- cember 1766 to the Duke of Grafton, whose desertion of Wilkes, his former associate, Lord Temple regarded as a base and cowardly act, mentions Lord Temple as ' one of the greatest characters onr country could ever boast.' 2 In short Wilkes seems to have been the only man living as a contemporary of Lord Temple who formed an estimate of his abilities such as might indicate him as able to write the * Letters of Junius.' To Wilkes Lord Temple had never been wanting — the first to visit him after his arrest' under the General Warrant, and on his imprisonment in the Tower, and in the King's Bench Prison. Lord Temple, who, besides assisting him at various times with large sums of money, applied in person for the writ of Habeas Corpus, accom- panied him into the Court of Common Pleas, and offered to become bail for him to any amount that might be necessary. 3 But Lord Chatham, his brother-in-law, did not find Lord Temple by any means so invariable in friendship. One of the arguments used against the hypothesis of Sir Philip Francis being the author of Junius is the scurrility of the epithets applied to Lord Chatham in some of the earlier letters of the author of Junius under various signatures. If we substitute Lord Temple for Sir Philip Francis the diffi- culty does not disappear, for the amount of inconsistency is 1 Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents, Burke's Works, vol. i., p. 354, Bonn's edition. London, 1854. ' Grenville Papers, vol. hi., p. 82» » Ibid., vol. iii.» p. 81. 1 34 The English Parliament. startling in the change from ' a man purely and perfectly- bad ' ; ' so black a villain that a gibbet would be too honour- able a situation for his carcase ' ; 'a lunatic brandishing a crutch ' ; l to ' recorded honours shall gather round his monument, and thicken over him. It is a solid fabric, and will support the laurels that adorn it. I am not conversant in the language of panegyric. These praises are extorted from me; but they will wear well, for they have been dearly earned.' 2 If we are to wait till it can be shown by mathematical demonstration that Earl Temple had ' eloquence and parts ' enough to have written the * Letters of Junius,' we shall have to wait longer than Lord Eldon had waited to make up his mind about the construction of a certain will, respecting which he began his decision by saying, ' Having had doubts upon this will for twenty years.' 3 When a mystery has suc- ceeded in establishing itself in the popular mind, it is by no means an easy matter to dislodge it. An example of this is afforded by the controversy which has arisen respecting the publication professing to be the work of Charles I. The work was the production of a clergyman of the Church of England of the name of Gauden. Gauden was desirous of being made a bishop, as is proved by letters of his in the supplement to the third volume of the ' Clarendon Papers.' With this view Gauden wrote a book purporting to be medi- tations of Charles I., of which Perrinchief says, * It was imagined that the admiration of following ages might bring it into the canon of holy writings.' In Johnson's Dictionary Gauden is always quoted under the title of ' King Charles.' Though Dr. John Gauden himself states in a letter to Lord Clarendon, printed among the ' Clarendon Papers,' that he wrote the Eik&v, and further that Charles II. was satis- fied that he wrote it ; 4 so late as 1824 and 1828 the 1 Grenville Papers, vol. iii., p. 23. 2 The Letters of Junius, Letter liii. 3 Maddock's Court of Chancery, preface, p. 9. * Clarendon Papers, vol. iii., supplement, p. 29. George III. and Junius. 135 Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth, D.D., produced two elaborate volumes in which he unhesitatingly ascribed the authorship of ' Icon Basilike ' to Charles I. Lord Macaulay, on the other hand, not on the authority of Gauden's own letter in the ' Clarendon State Papers,' but on the authority of a book written by an old clergyman named Walker, who in the time of the Civil War had known Gauden intimately, as unhesitatingly ascribed its authorship to Gauden, as he ascribed the 'authorship of Junius to Francis. I have not seen the book, which, accor- ding to Lord Macaulay, 'convinced all sensible and dis- passionate readers ' ; and I am inclined to think that Lord Macaulay has not strengthened his position by the expres- sion of his opinion, that all who should not be convinced by Walker's book, as his lordship was convinced, were hot-headed fools ; though it is very possible that many of them might not be wise men. I am also much inclined to the opinion that no amount of circumstantial evidence can ever con- clusively settle such a question. If Mr. Pitt or his father Lord Chatham had stated in a credible way, that is by writing, or by words to a credible witness, that Earl Temple was the author of the ' Letters of Junius,' such statement would amount to nearly as conclusive evidence as Gauden's letter to Clarendon. But the evidence which has yet been produced does not go farther than the statement of credible witnesses, members of the Grenville family, or very near connections of that family, that they knew who wrote the Junius Letters, and that Junius was not one of the persons to whom the Letters had been popularly ascribed. This is an instructive illustration of the distinction be- tween direct and circumstantial evidence. Evidence is direct in respect of every fact of which the witness represents him- self as having been a percipient witness. It is circumstantial in respect of every fact of which the witness does not repre- sent himself as having been a percipient witness, and the existence of which therefore is matter of inference. When- ever the body of proof, to make it complete, stands in need of 136 The English Parliament. any, even a single inference, in so far an article of circum- stantial evidence forms a necessary part of it. The con- nection between direct and circumstantial evidence is so close and subtle, that the boundary line which separates them is often scarce determinable. 1 In the case, however, of the celebrated ' Letters of Junius ' we may, I think, almost venture to say that the circumstantial evidence has altogether broken down, at least has failed to settle the question ; and the direct evidence contained in the alleged ■ positive state- ments of Mr. Pitt, of Mr. Thomas Grenville, and of Lord Grrenville, quite upsets nearly all the conclusions that circum- stantial evidence had attempted to establish. 1 The distinction between direct and circumstantial evidence, as well as the intimate connection between them, will be found fully expounded in the fifth book of Bentham's Eationale of Judicial Evidence. Any clear and consistent exposition of that distinction and that connection will be sought for in vain either in the Roman or the English system of law. 137 CHAPTER VIII. ^/?r OR SIN- THE GREAT WAR BETWEEN PARLIAMENTARY AND PERSONAL GOVERNMENT. — WJLLIAM PITT AND NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. . The state of political affairs which has been described in the preceding chapter continued for some twenty years. As has been said, in 1778 William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, died ; and in 1779 died his brother-in-law, Earl Temple. But a man was now coming upon the stage who was to put an end to the servile condition of the English Parliament. This man was William Pitt, the second son of the first Earl of Chatham. After he was placed at the head of affairs when any attempt at interference with him was made by ' the king's friends,' he at once tendered his resignation, and as he alone stood be- tween the king and the coalition he could dictate his own terms. A state of parties had arisen which enabled Pitt, when in 1783 he entered upon his long career of power, to put an end to the back-stairs government of the persons who styled themselves ' the king's friends.' Pitt thus appears in a different light from that in which many persons have been accustomed to see him. I have not been one of Pitt's ad- mirers, and it is only since I had occasion to study minutely Pitt's career, that I have come to the conclusion that, before the force of circumstances drove him into determined hosti- lity to Napoleon Bonaparte, Pitt went as far in his political opinions as his uncle Earl Temple had gone, or as any member of that ultra- Whig party which the persecution of Wilkes and the Middlesex election had called into existence, and which the disastrous events of the American War and the 138 The English Parliament. triumph of republican principles in America had made for- midable. Burke died on July 9, 1797 ; and though he saw the begin- ning of the Bonaparte system when Napoleon Bonaparte was appointed to the command of the army of Italy in 1796, he did not live long enough to be able to recognise the advent of a robber and tyrant such as Europe had not beheld for centuries. In regard to the attempt to represent the interference of George III. in parliamentary proceedings as ' the first great effort of George III. to restore to the English people the blessings of their " old free monarchy," ' if a free, that is an absolute monarchy be a blessing, it may be granted that George III. was willing to confer that blessing upon the people of England. Yet can it be that George III. wished to restore the government of the rack, which was the govern- ment under which the people of England 'lived when they had a ' free monarchy,' that is, a monarchy without check or control ? During some two centuries, from the time when Edward IV., freed from the check of the warlike nobility, and transformed from an English King into an Asiatic Sultan, was free to give the reins to his evil passions, resistance to tyranny in England did not merely involve a violent death, but tyrants had invented slow and exquisite tortures by which and the dread of which their ' free monarchy ' was maintained. There would appear to be men even of great abilities who profess to entertain an admiration of Burke's genius and yet do not seem to have accurately reported his meaning. One of these eminent men does not appear to have studied with sufficient care Burke's admirable analysis of George III.'s double cabinet, and of the persons called the king's friends ; another writes as if he supposed that Burke approved of the attempt of George III. to reduce the English people to slavery, or as this writer phrases it, ' to restore to the English people the blessings of their old free monarchy.' Such a charge as that Burke took such a view of the proceedings of George III. is so serious as well as strange, that it seems worth while to quote Burke's own words in answer to it. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 39 Burke thus speaks of government or the method of governing by a man of parliamentary interest like the Duke of Newcastle and a man of parliamentary eloquence like Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham. ' This method of governing by men of great natural interest or great acquired consideration was viewed in a very invidious light by the true lovers of absolute monarchy. It is the nature of despotism to abhor power held by any means but its own momentary pleasure ; and to annihilate all intermediate situations between bound- less strength on its own part, and total debility on the part of the people. To get rid of all this intermediate and indepen- dent importance, and to secure to the Court the unlimited and uncontrolled use of its own vast influence, under the sole direction of its own private favour, 1 has for some years past been the great object of policy. If this were compassed, the influence of the crown must of course produce all the effects which the most sanguine partisans of the Court could possibly desire. Government might then be carried on without any concur- rence on the part of the people ; without any attention to the dignity of the greater, or to the affections of the lower sorts. A new project was therefore devised by a certain set of in- triguing men, totally different from the system of administra- tion which had prevailed since the accession of the House of Brunswick. This project, I have heard, was first conceived by some persons in the Court of Frederic, Prince of Wales.' 2 Burke then enters into the details of this scheme which Lord Beaconsfield calls ' the first great effort of George III. to rescue the sovereignty from the Great Revolution families,' and ■ to restore to the English people the blessings of their old free monarchy.' ' The earliest attempt,' says Burke, ' in the execution of this design was to set up for minister a person in rank indeed respectable, and very ample in fortune, but 1 The italics are in the original. The reader may judge whether Edmund Burke or Lord Beaconsfield is the most correct expounder of the policy of George III. 2 Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, Burke's Works, vol. i., pp. 314, 315, Bohn's edition. London, 1854. 140 The English Parliament. little known or considered in the kingdom. But that idea was soon abandoned. The instrumental part of the project was a little altered. * The first part of the reformed plan was to draw a line which should separate the Court from the ministry. Hitherto these names had been looked upon as synonymous ; but for the future court and administration were to be considered as things totally distinct. By this operation two systems of ad- ministration were to be formed ; one which should be in the real secret and confidence ; the other merely ostensible to perform the official and executory duties of government. The latter were alone to be responsible ; whilst the real advisers, who enjoyed all the power, were effectually removed from all the danger. ' Secondly, a party under these leaders was to be formed in favour of the Court against the ministry : this party was to have a large share in the emoluments of government, and to hold it totally separate from, and independent of, ostensible ad- ministration. ' The third point, and that on which the success of the whole scheme ultimately depended, was to bring Parliament to an acquiescence in this project. Parliament was to be taught a total indifference to the persons, rank, influence, abilities, and character, of the ministers of the crown. It was to be avowed as a constitutional maxim, that the king might appoint one of his footmen, or one of your footmen, for mini- ster ; and that he ought to be, and that he would be, as well followed as the first name for rank or wisdom in the nation. Thus Parliament was to look on, as if perfectly unconcerned, while a cabal of the closet and back-stairs was substituted in the place of a national administration. * With such a degree of acquiescence any measure of any court might well be deemed thoroughly secure. The capital objects, and by much the most flattering characteristics of arbitrary power would be obtained. Everything would be drawn from its holdings in the country to the personal favour and inclination of the prince. His favour would be the sole ntroduction to power, and the only tenure by which it was to William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 4 1 be held, so that no person looking towards another, and all looking towards the conrt, it was impossible bnt that the motive which solely influenced every man's hopes must come in time to govern every man's conduct ; till at last the ser- vility became universal, in spite of the dead letter of any laws or institutions whatsoever.' 1 That the back-stairs cabinet might be able to compass the ends of its institution, its members were not to aim at the high offices of the State. They were distributed through the subordinate offices and through the households of all the branches of the royal family. The principal object being a salary sufficient for the dignity of a member of Parliament, when that object was attained the member of Parliament's vote was at the service of the crown, and thus ' the king's friends,' though individually obscure placemen, * possessed all the influence of the highest posts.' 2 When we peruse the lineaments of a haughty parliamen- tary potentate in William Pitt, and those of a consummate military tyrant in Napoleon Bonaparte, we may ponder the question whether the insolence of the mighty men of the tongue, who are the heroes of parliamentary government, is more or less intolerable than the worse than insolence of the mighty men of the sword, who are the heroes of personal government. I shall have to deal with facts which present a somewhat paradoxical result, inasmuch as they exhibit the two English political parties — those parties which have borne the names of Cavalier and Roundhead, of Court and Country, of Tory and Whig, and lastly of Conservative and Liberal — as transformed for a time — the Whig standing forth as the champion, the Tory as the adversary, of the greatest tyrant , the most universal aggressor and largest robber of modern times. Under these circumstances parliamentary governmen t was enabled to do some things which, however misrepresented by party spirit, have been beneficial, not merely to England 1 Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, Burke's Works vol. i. pp. 315, 316. 2 Ibid., p. 327. 142 The English Parliament. but to Europe, in saving them from a yoke such as Asiatic Sultans impose on their slaves. And this portion of the his- tory of Europe, exhibiting parliamentary government in the most marked antagonism to personal government, will enable any one who reads it to understand clearly the distinguishing characteristics of the two kinds of government. This object will be promoted by substituting historical facts for the legends respecting Napoleon Bonaparte or Napoleon I. that have passed for history. When in England we find writers such as General Sir William Napier and Mr. Cobden holding up Napoleon I. not only as not the aggressor in the great Euro- pean war, after 1796, but as 'the champion of equality,' it is time to make some attempt to show the confusion into which Mr. Cobden's notions respecting ' the ordinary workings of the moral law ' l were calculated to throw the science of ethics. The difficulties in the way of attaining truth in this matter have been much lessened by the valuable labours of a modern French historian, M. Lanfrey, who has written a his- tory of Napoleon I., and not a political pamphlet or Bonapar- tist legend. It will be necessary to say a few words in order to attempt to do that justice to Pitt which he has not received between the blind admiration of his friends and the blind depreciation of his enemies. Napoleon Bonaparte has filled so large a space in the history of the world from 1796 to 1815, that it seems almost absurd, if not presumptuous, to say that till Bonaparte appeared the man who filled the largest space in the eyes of mankind was not a great general, a great king, or a great emperor, but simply Mister William Pitt, an English barrister, who ' if he had been dismissed from office after more than five years of boundless power would hardly have carried out with him a sum sufficient to furnish the set of chambers in which, as he cheerfully declared, he meant to resume the practice of the law.' 2 But a part of Pitt's power was asso- 1 Preface to Mr. Cobden's ' 1793 and 1853.' 2 Lord Macaulay's William Pitt, in his Miscellaneous Writings, p. 347. When Pitt died, in his forty-seventh year, on January 23, 1806, he had been William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 43 ciated with his poverty — much as has been said about the power of wealth. ' About treaties, wars, budgets, there will always be room for dispute. But pecuniary disinterestedness every- body comprehends. It is a great thing for a man who has only three hundred a year to be able to show that he considers three thousand a year as mere dirt beneath his feet, when compared with the public interest and the public esteem. Pitt had his reward. No minister was ever more rancorously libelled; but even when he was known to be overwhelmed with debt, when millions were passing through his hands, when the weal- thiest magnates of the realm were soliciting him for marquisates and garters, his bitterest enemies did not dare to accuse him of touching unlawful gain.' 1 In this pecuniary disinterestedness there is a certain re- semblance between Pitt and Washington, who in a letter to a friend in 1797, very soon after his official career had termi- nated, says, ' To make and sella little flour annually, to repair houses going fast to ruin, and to amuse myself in agricultural and rural pursuits, will constitute employment for the few years I have to remain on this terrestrial globe.' While Washington retired from the command of armies and the government of a great nation ' to make and sell a little flour annually,' Pitt was willing to retire from the government of a great nation, and return to the uncertain chances of practice at the Bar. But at the time of the date of the letter of Washington quoted above, Pitt found himself, as head of the English government, engaged in a conflict with the most formidable enemy that England had ever encountered since the time when William, Duke of Normandy, landed with an army on the coast of Sussex. twenty-five years in Parliament and during nineteen years Prime Minister. 1 Since Parliamentary government was established in England no English statesman has held supreme power so long. Walpole, it is true, was First Lord of the Treasury during more than twenty years ; but it was not till Walpole had been sometime First Lord of the Treasury that he could be properly called Prime Minister.' — Ibid., p. 359. 1 Lord Macaulay's William Pitt, p. 339. 144 The English Parliament. One consequence of not making the just distinction be- tween the war with France from 1792 to 1796 and the war with France after the latter date has been a continued mis- representation of the character of Pitt, who, to use the words of a staunch Whig politician, ' was a lover of peace and freedom, and liked neither war nor arbitrary government.' l Yet Pitt has been held up to obloquy as the oppressor of England, and the disturber of Europe. Coleridge represented the demons Famine, Slaughter, and Fire, declaring the first that she would raise the multitude against him in madness ; the second that she would drive them to tear him limb from limb ; the third that she would cling round him everlastingly. The French press and the French tribune charged all the evils and all the crimes that afflicted France upon * the monster Pitt and his guineas.' The ' monster Pitt ' is, how- ever, gradually emerging from the abyss of darkness and calumny in which it suited Bonaparte to envelope history ; and the word ' monster ' will be found applied not to Pitt but to Bonaparte by a French writer who has done for Bona- parte what Tacitus did for Tiberius. ' The spouter Tacitus,' as Bonaparte termed him, was not much of a spouter, not much of a wordy declaimer ; and Bonaparte did not relish the idea of having his deeds of darkness laid open as Tacitus had laid open the Roman tyrant's character and deeds in his dissection of Tiberius, by which he at once enables us to perceive the tyrant's vices and the transparent covering used to conceal them. Bonaparte did not relish the idea of the dissector's knife laying open the brain and heart of the Corsican oppressor of mankind, nor the idea of the dissector's pen tracing, as Tacitus had done in the case of Tiberius, the gradations by which the senator of a republic joining in 1 Lord Macaulay's William Pitt, p. 349. ' There can be little doubt that if the French Revolution had not produced a violent reaction of public feeling, Pitt would have performed, with little difficulty and no danger, that great work which at a later period Lord Grey could accomplish only by means which for a time loosened the very foundations of the common- wealth.'— Ibid., p. 347. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 145 debate with his fellow- senators and mingling with his fellow- citizens was transformed into an Asiatic Sultan, without associates except slaves ; and who would never more, as here- tofore, walk through the streets amidst a crowd of people, with an air of calm composure, occasionally loitering in conversation, his guards following at a distance. 1 Pitt's memory is more indebted to the short memoir of him by a man who was a staunch adherent of the political party of his great rival than to the ponderous biography by the senior wrangler who had been his private tutor at Cambridge ; whom his pupil before he had completed his twenty-eighth year made Bishop of Lincoln and Dean of St. Paul's ; and who showed his gratitude by writing a life of his pupil which has been described as ' enjoying the distinction of being the worst biographical work of its size in the world.' 2 The opprobrium implied in such terms as * the monster Pitt and his guineas ' was extended to the nation which Pitt governed. The man who had at that time got France under his iron heel styled the English a nation of boutiquiers, which, as before remarked, amounted to the same thing as calling them a nation of pedlars, the word boutique in old French denoting a pedlar's box as well as a shop. To Napoleon Bonaparte that a man not military — a jpequin — who had never won a battle except through his admiral, Nelson, should dare to oppose him in any way appeared a piece of frightful presumption. It is to be remarked that the estimate made by M. Lanfrey of the effect of Pitt's exertions against the projects of Bonaparte awards more merit to Pitt as a war minister than the estimate made by Lord Macaulay does. M. Lanfrey in a passage which I will quote in another page, speaks of Fox as an adversary who would give Bonaparte far less trouble 1 Tacit. Ann. ii. 34. 2 Lord Macaulay's William Pitt, p. 329. Lord Macaulay characterises the biographical work of Boswell, who was not a man of senio wrangler type, as the best in the world. L 146 The English Parliament. than ' the great minister whom he had everywhere met in his path, denouncing his projects as soon as they were formed, and whose penetrating eye and cold contempt had so often disconcerted imperial charlatanry.' On the other hand, Lord Macanlay speaks as if Pitt's opposition to the projects of Bonaparte was a failure ; as if it were a very easy thing for snch a statesman as Chatham to create with such means one of the finest armies in the world, and discover generals worthy to command such an army. As to Chatham, the great military genius of his time, Frederic of Prussia, was on his side, while the great military genius of his son's time was his son's opponent. Moreover, Chatham had no part in the successes of the King of Prussia except subsidising him ; to any merit in the exploits of Clive and Coote, Chatham had not the shadow of a claim ; Wolfe he may have discovered to be a man of promise. But it is by no means so easy to discover capable gene- rals as Lord Macaulay seems to assume. War cannot be conducted by a man sitting at a desk. Even Napoleon Bonaparte, when, during the short time he passed in the topo- graphical office, he drew up instructions for the commander-in- chief of the army of Italy — which constituted in fact the plan of his famous Italian campaign — while his plan of campaign was only known as the plan of a man at an official desk, was laughed at rather than honoured as a prophet. One general commanding the army of Italy to whom the plan was sent said the man who drew it up was a fit inmate for a lunatic asylum. Bonaparte had drawn up his plan from having personally studied the ground when he was with the army of Italy as an artillery officer ; and he executed the plan, with what success is well known, when he was appointed to the command of the army of Italy. Therefore, when a man, bred a soldier, drawing up a plan of a campaign to be executed by others, even though that plan contains a clear exposition, based upon political as well as strategic considerations, of all the principal combinations which made the first campaign in Italy be described as ' the masterpiece of military art and the William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 147 most brilliant conception of the genius of Napoleon Bonaparte,' l fares no better than being considered fit for a lunatic asymm, it is hardly to be expected that the plans even of a man of Pitt's abilities should meet with the approval of his political opponents. But that he had the discernment to perceive and appreciate military talent before repeated success had made it conspicuous appears from his remark to the Marquess Welles- ley on his brother Arthur, in the last meeting between the two friends just before Pitt's death — 1 1 never,' he said, ' met with any military man with whom it was so satisfactory to converse.' It is related that Coleridge on one occasion undertook to report for a newspaper a speech of Pitt's ; that he was ex- hausted before Pitt rose to speak, and fell asleep soon after Pitt began to speak. Finding the editor anxious for the report of Pitt's speech, he wrote offhand a speech for Pitt, on which Canning said, ' It does more credit to the author's head than to his memory.' This speech has been reprinted in Gillman's 'Life of Coleridge,' and suggests some reflections on Coleridge's character of Pitt, which has also been reprinted in the same work. Coleridge says that Pitt's education had been chiefly an education in the management of words ; and that ' an education of words, though it destroys genius, will often create, and always foster, talent.' The inference of Coleridge, of course, is that Pitt was a man of talent, but not of genius ; that the bulk of Pitt's speeches consisted of a repe- tition of words, and words only. Now, from the speech 2 1 Lanfrey's History of Napoleon the First, vol. i.,p. 47 (English transla- tion). Macmillan & Co., London, 1871. 2 The following is the exordium of the speech, extracted by Mr. Gill- man from the Morning Post of February 18, 1800: — 'The honourable gentleman calls upon ministers to state the object of the war in one sen- tence. I can state it in one word : it is Security. I can state it in one word, though it is not to be explained but in many. The object of the war is security — security against a danger the greatest that ever threatened this country ; the greatest that ever threatened mankind ; a danger the more terrible because it is unexampled. It is a danger which has more than menaced the safety and independence of all nations ; a danger which Europe has strained all its sinews to repel ; and which l 2 148 The English Parliament. which Coleridge wrote as a specimen of his notion of Pitt's speaking, it seems that Coleridge's opinion was that Pitt's speaking was less of a mere flow of words than Coleridge's own speaking ; for did any one ever carry away with him any distinct impressions of what Coleridge said in his in- terminable talk ? Nevertheless Coleridge is admitted to have been a man of genius. Moreover, Coleridge brings as an argument against Pitt's being an original man that ' he was cast rather than grew ' ; that his father's position ' con- trolled the free agency and transfigured the individuality of his mind.' The answer to this is that the position of the father of Hannibal as commander of the Carthaginian armies did not hinder his son Hannibal, whom when a child his father made to swear eternal hatred to Rome, from being not merely a man of genius, but perhaps the man of the greatest genius for war the world has ever seen. And yet Hannibal, as much as Pitt, ' was cast rather than grew,' to use Cole- ridge's expression, which appears to be a very apt example of a man's paying himself with words. M. Lanfrey speaks of Pitt as ' the haughty man whose penetrating eye and cold contempt had so often baffled im- no nation has repelled so successfully as the British ; because no nation has acted so energetically, so sincerely, so uniformly on the broad basis of principle ; because no other nation has perceived with equal clearness the necessity, not only of combating the evil abroad, but of stifling it at home ; because no nation has breasted with so firm a constancy the tide of Jacobinical power ; because no nation has pierced with so steadfast an eye through the disguises of Jacobinical hypocrisy ; but now, it seems, we are at once to remit our zeal and our suspicion ; that Jacobinism,which alarmed us under the stumbling and drunken tyranny of Robespierre ; that Jacobin- ism which insulted and roused us under the short-sighted ambition of the five Directors ; that Jacobinism to which we have sworn enmity through every shifting of every bloody scene, through all those abhorred mockeries which have profaned the name of liberty to all the varieties of usurpation ; to this Jacobinism we are now to reconcile ourselves, because all its arts and all its energies are united under one person, the child and the champion of Jacobinism, who has been reared in its principles, who has fought its battles, who has systematised its ambition — at once the fiercest instrument of its fanaticism and the gaudiest puppet of its folly.' William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 149 perial charlatanry ; ' ! but lie takes an nndue liberty with Hansard in his manner of stating the debate in the British House of Lords on January 28, 1800, and in the Commons on February 3, 1800, on the King's Message respecting Overtures of Peace from the Consular Government of France. M. Lanfrey says, ' When Bonaparte's sincerity was vouched for amid laughter in the House of Lords, Lord Grenville re- capitulated,' &c. Now in Hansard the debate is opened by Lord Grenville, whereas M. Lanfrey 's words lead to the supposition that he rose after other speakers. Lord Grenville then used words, according to Hansard, not very different from those attributed to him by M. Lanfrey. But M. Lanfrey's statement, that Lord Grey exclaimed that those were the faults of the Directory, looks like an example of the French practice of confounding history and poetry, for ' Lord Grey ' did not enter the House of Lords till 1807, and was then Mr. Grey in the House of Commons ; and there is no trace in Hansard of this interruption of Lord Grenville by any one about the Directory. The hypothesis of Bonaparte's sin- cerity was brought forward by the Duke of Bedford and Lord Holland, and the announcement of such an hypothesis does not say much for the care and accuracy with which they had studied the history of their time, for Lord Grenville's statements are confirmed by the investigations of historians — at least one historian, M. Lanfrey — three-quarters of a cen- tury after. Lord Grenville's statement is this : — ' If a treaty was concluded and broken with Sardinia, it was concluded and broken by Bonaparte ; if peace was entered into and violated with Tuscany, it was entered into and violated by Bonaparte ; if armistices were ratified and annulled with Modena and the other petty states of Italy, they were ratified and annulled by Bonaparte ; if Venice was first drawn into the war, and afterwards forced to conclude a treaty of peace, and after having been mocked with the gift of a Consti- 1 Lanfrey's History of Napoleon the First, vol. ii.,p. 545 (English trans- lation). Macmillan & Co., London, 1872. 150 The English Parliament. tution, delivered over as a slave to Austria, — all this was the work of Bonaparte.' * Coleridge, in his essay on Pitt published in the Morning Post, March 19, 1800, says: 'And now came the French Revolution. This was a new event ; the old routine of reasoning, the common trade of politics, were to become obsolete. He appeared wholly unprepared for it ; half favouring, half condemning ; ignorant of what he favoured and why he condemned, he neither displayed the honest enthusiasm and fixed principle of Mr. Fox, nor the intimate acquaintance with the general nature of man, and the conse- quent prescience, of Mr. Burke.' Now, in answer to Coleridge's assertion that Pitt's edu- cation had been a mere education of words, and that he did not display the honest enthusiasm and fixed principles of Mr. Fox, may be given his speech in the House of Commons on February 3, 1800, on the King's Message respecting Overtures of Peace from the Consular Government of France. It will be seen most clearly from this speech that Pitt had studied minutely and had thoroughly seen through the character of Napoleon Bonaparte, while Fox was a dupe to his artifices. ' Bonaparte had had some personal intercourse with Fox,' says M. Lanfrey, ' at the time of the Treaty of Amiens, and had endeavoured to flatter this benevolent optimist, whose character was ill fitted to penetrate the calculations of so sinister a policy. He had regarded him as an adversary who would be easily duped, and who would give him far less trouble than the great minister whom he had everywhere met on his path, denouncing his projects as soon as they were formed, and opposing them with an in- domitable resolution. What unhoped-for good luck was the substitution [by the death of Pitt] of the good and generous Fox for the haughty man whose penetrating eye and cold 1 Speech of Lord Grenville in the debate in the Lords on the King's Message respecting the Overture of Peace from the Consular Government of France, January 28, 1800, as printed in Hansard's Parliamentary History of England, vol. xxxiv., p. 1215. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 5 1 contempt had so many times disconcerted imperial charla- tanry ! ■ l Here we have the deliberate opinion, formed after long and careful stndy more than half a century after Pitt's death by a foreigner totally unconnected with English party warfare and party prejudices ; and that, too, by a foreigner who has written a history of Napoleon I. and of that great war, and not a mere political pamphlet or Bonapartist legend. In the debate above mentioned in the House of Commons on February 3, 1800, Mr. Pitt said in the course of a long speech 2 : — ' If we look at the catalogue of the breaches of treaty, the acts of perfidy, which are precisely commen- surate with the number of treaties made by the Republic (for I have sought in vain for any one which it has made and which it has not broken) ; if we trace the history of them all, or if we select those which have been accompanied by the most atrocious cruelty, the name of Bonaparte will be found allied to more of them than that of any other in the history of the crimes and miseries of the last ten years. His entrance into Lombardy was announced by a proclama- tion, April 27, 1796, which terminated with these words — " Nations of Italy ! the French army is come to break your chains ; the French are the friends of the people in every country ; your religion, your property, your customs shall be respected." A second proclamation, dated Milan, May 20, and signed " Bonaparte," repeated the assurance of respect for property, personal security, and religion, and contained these words — " The French, victorious, consider the nations of Lombardy as their brothers." In testimony of this fraternity and respect for property, this very proclamation imposed on the Milanese a provisional contribution of twenty millions of livres, or near one million sterling ; and successive exactions were levied on that single state to the amount of near six millions sterling. So much for Bonaparte's respect for pro- perty. As regards his respect for religion and personal 1 Lanfrey's History of Napoleon the First, vol. ii., p. 545 (English trans- lation). Macmillan & Co., London, 1872. 2 The speech fills fifty-two columns of Hansard. 152 The English Parliament. security, the churches were plundered and the whole country- was made a scene of disorder and rapine ; and the resistance offered by the people was put down by Bonaparte carrying military execution over the country. The transactions with Modena were of the same character. Bonaparte began by signing a treaty, by which the Duke of Modena was to pay twelve millions of livres, and neutrality was promised him in return. This was soon followed by the personal arrest of the Duke, and by a fresh extortion of two hundred thousand sequins ; after this he was permitted, on the payment of a further sum, to sign another treaty, which was only the pre- lude to further exactions.' * * In the proceedings towards Genoa,' Mr. Pitt continues, ' we shall find a continuation of the same system of extortion and plunder in violation of the pledge solemnly made in the usual proclamation. But of all the scenes which took place in Italy in 1796 and 1797, those which passed at Venice are perhaps the most striking and the most characteristic. At length, in the spring of 1797, occasion was taken to forge, in the name of the Venetian Government, a ■proclamation hostile to France ; and this was made the pretence for military execution against the country and the subversion of the Venetian Government. Sir, all this is followed by the expedition to Egypt, which I mention, not merely because it forms a principal article in the catalogue of those acts of violence and perfidy in which Bonaparte has been engaged ; not merely because it was an enterprise peculiarly his own, of which he was himself the planner, the executor, and the betrayer ; but chiefly because, when from thence he retires to a different scene, to take possession of a new throne from which he is to speak upon an equality with the kings and governors of Europe, he leaves behind him, at the moment of his departure, a specimen which cannot be mistaken of his principles of negotiation. The intercepted correspondence, 1 Speech of Mr. Pitt in the debate in the Commons on the King's Message respecting Overtures of Peace from the Consular Government of France, February 3, 1800, as printed in Hansard's Parliamentary History of England, vol. xxxiv., pp. 1333-1335. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 153 which has been alluded to in this debate, seems to afford the strongest ground to believe that his offers to the Turkish Government to evacuate Egypt were made solely with a view " to gain time " ; that the ratification of any treaty on this sub- ject was to be delayed with the view of finally eluding its per- formance, if any change of circumstances favourable to the French should occur in the interval. But whatever gentle- men may think of the intention with which these offers were made, there will at least be no question with respect to the credit due to those professions by which he endeavoured to prove in Egypt his pacific dispositions. He expressly enjoins his successor to insist in all his intercourse with the Turks that he came to Egypt with no hostile design, and that he never meant to keep possession of the country ; while on the opposite page of the same instructions he states in the most unequivocal manner his regret at the discomfiture of his favourite project of colonising Egypt, and of maintaining it as a territorial acquisition. Now, Sir, if in any note addressed to the Grand Vizier or the Sultan, Bonaparte had claimed credit for the sincerity of his professions, is there any one argument now used to induce us to believe his present pro- fessions to us which might not have been equally urged on that occasion to the Turkish Government ? Would not those professions have been equally supported by solemn assevera- tions, by the same reference which is now made to personal character. At present that he has an interest in making peace is at best but a doubtful proposition. That it is his interest to negotiate I do not deny. It is his interest to engage this country in separate negotiation, in order to dissolve the Confederacy on the Continent, and thus either to break off his separate treaty or to apply the lesson which is taught in his school of policy in Egypt. . . . His hold upon France is the sword, and he has no other. Is he connected with the soil, or with the habits, the affections, or the prejudices of the country ? He is a stranger, a foreigner, and an usurper ; he unites in his own person everything that a pure republican must detest ; everything that an enraged Jacobin has abjured ; 154 The English Parliament. everything that a sincere and faithful royalist must feel as an insult.' * Such was the leader in 1800 of the great political party which, whatever might be its errors or its crimes, committed neither error nor crime in opposing the Corsican whose aim was to reduce all the nations of Europe to the level of Asiatic slaves. Pitt, though at- fifteen his health was better than it had been previously, was never, any more than his great admiral, a man either of strong frame or hardy constitution. And if he had not, like Nelson, suffered from wounds and pestilential climates, he had to endure, throughout his not long life, years of great mental labour and anxiety, of nights passed in debate, and of summers passed in London. But Pitt, though a civilian, or a pequin as the military insolence of the Corsican banditti of his time termed civilians, was not less than Nelson a man of high and determined spirit, and like Nelson, not- withstanding Coleridge's bitter libel on him, to which I have already referred, he might declare himself to be a man of peace with as much justice as any member of the Peace Society ; for whose benefit I will transcribe here a short speech of Nelson, made in the House of Lords, November 23, 1802. ' My Lords,' said Nelson, ■ I have in different countries seen much of the miseries of war. I am therefore in my inmost soul a man of peace. Yet would I not, for the sake of any peace, however fortunate, consent to sacrifice one jot of England's honour. Our honour is inseparably combined with our genuine interest. Hitherto there has been nothing greater known on the Continent than the faith, the untarnished honour, the generous public sympathies, the high diplomatic influence, the commerce, the power, the valour of the British nation.' 2 1 Hansard's Parliamentary History of England, vol. xxxiv., pp. 1335-1340. 2 Speech of Lord . Nelson in the debate in the Lords, November 23, 1802, as printed in Hansard's Parliamentary History of England, vol. xxxvi., p. 937. Lord Nelson concluded his short speech with these words :— ' My professional education will plead my excuse for the imperfect manner in which I deliver my sentiments ; but I should not have done my duty if I had not, even in this plain seamanlike manner, seconded the present address.' William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 5 5 The argument which men of plain sense would have ad- dressed to the Emperor of Russia or any other Emperor, King, Khan, Sultan, or President, would be that, if he com- mitted a breach of the peace, the consequence would be such a result as he met with at the battles of the Alma and of Inkerman. Until some miraculous change has come over this world, which shall render possible revolutions made of rose- water, a deputation from the Peace Society to supplicate an armed king or emperor to save Europe from the calamities of war could only lead the armed personage to believe that the nation from which such a deputation came was no longer the nation which had more than once stood alone for constitutional liberty against the world ; and that he might safely count upon doing what seemed good in his own eyes without fear of any let or hindrance from the English people. Mr. Cobden says, in his work published in 1853, under the title of ' 1793 and 1853 ' (p. 11) : 'If you would really under- stand the motives with which we embarked upon the last French war, you must turn to Hansard, and read the debates in both Houses of Parliament upon the subject from 1791 to 1796.' Now if Mr. Cobden had continued his careful study of Hansard beyond 1796, he could not have failed to perceive that circumstances had changed prodigiously in and after 1796. I do not think he could have failed to be forcibly im- pressed by the passages I have quoted from Pitt's speech in the House of Commons on February 3, 1800. Admit- ting that England was the aggressor in 1792, I will give the authority of a French writer who has studied the whole question in all its bearings for the fact that in and after 1796 France was the aggressor against all Europe, indeed against all the world — witness Bonaparte's marauding expedi- tion to Egypt and Syria. Before 1796 the republican soldiers of France had often listened to addresses about the destruction of tyranny and the planting of liberty in its place ; but till Bonaparte obtained the command of the army of Italy and issued his proclamation, no one had attempted to inflame their courage by holding up to them the acquisition of riches 156 The English Parliament. as an incitement to war. 'In reading,' says M. Lanfrey, 'the first words addressed to the army of democrats by this power- ful tempter, we think with sadness of the subsequent mad and gigantic adventures into which he was destined to draw them by the false allurement of grandeur. Not in a day did the soldiers of the Republic become the soldiers of the Empire, but the commencement of the change dates from this pro- clamation, in which Bonaparte pointed to Italy — Italy, not as a nation to deliver, but as a prey to seize.' l ' The struggle between France and Europe had hitherto been a defensive war ; for the reasons which had led to our occupation of Savoy and Belgium were not only identity of race, and the almost unanimous wish of the inhabitants of the two countries, but also the enormous increase of territory which Russia and Germany had acquired by the partition of Poland. We had only invaded Holland when compelled to do so in self-defence, and without intention of encroaching in any respect on the rights and possession of the country. In entering Italy with the hidden notion of disposing of territories wrested from the enemy, not by any rule of right, not to ensure their independ- ence, but on false pretences to make use of them, the Directory not only commenced a policy of offensive warfare, but they substituted force for right ; they returned to the old routine of wars of aggrandisement, and by an inevitable consequence they gave a preponderating force in the Republic to the military element.' 2 But these ominous signs in the Directory, that the France of 1796 was not the France of 1792, were rendered far more ominous by the fact that since 1792 a man had appeared in the revolutionary armies of France whose talents for war would alone have made him formidable ; but who was rendered in- comparably more formidable by his art in deceiving those with whom he negotiated, in which he bore a resemblance to Caesar Borgia, who is said to have been able to assume a 1 Lanfrey's History of Napoleon the First, vol. i., pp. 60-62 (English translation). Macmillan & Co., London, 1871. 2 Ibid. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 157 geniality and apparent simplicity of manner which, notwith- standing his often proved perfidy, amnsed men and pnt them off their guard, throwing them perpetually into his trap. In all negotiations or transactions the quality which predominated in the proceedings of Bonaparte was that quality which led him to advance towards his ends by laying traps for those with whom he had dealings — traps which might be called stratagems if the dealings were military, but if they were diplomatic must receive another name. ' It may be asserted,' says M. Lanfrey, 1 'that no one has ever excelled him in the art of laying snares for an enemy, of enticing him step by step towards an abyss into which he wished to precipitate him, and, to use his favourite expression, of lulling him to sleep till the moment of his awakening. His whole diplomacy was nothing else than the art of imputing conspiracies invented by himself to all the governments that he wanted to attack. This trait of character is also displayed in his military strategy, the most remarkable for surprises, feints, and stratagems that has ever been known/ From a careful perusal of the statements of Lord Grenville and Mr. Pitt, and of the statements of M. Lanfrey, the French historian of Napoleon L, it would appear that the two English political parties had at this time suffered a trans- formation similar to that which occurred during the reign of George I., when, as Macaulay has remarked in his second essay on the Earl of Chatham, the Tory became the cham- pion of freedom and the Whig the apologist of despotism. Such is one of the effects — there are no doubt more beneficent effects — of party spirit. It seems incredible that any man of average intelligence who had the means of studying Bona- parte's proceedings in Italy — which means any English member of Parliament had — could have come to any other conclusion than that contended for by Lord Grenville and Mr. Pitt. This transformation Macaulay compares to the transformation described by Dante as the result of the encounter in Male- bolge between a human form and a serpent, when the serpent 1 Lanfrey's History of Napoleon the First, vol. ii., p. 305. 158 The English Parliament. stood up a man, and spake ; the man sank down a serpent, and glided hissing away. ' Something like this,' Lord Macaulay says, ' was the transformation which during the reign of George I. befell the two English parties. Each gradually took the shape and colour of its foe, till at length the Tory rose up erect the zealot of freedom, and the Whig crawled and licked the. dust at the feet of power.' But the question of party definition is not an easy one. The writer who has given this picturesque account of the transformation of the two English parties gives this description of the Tories of the reign of George II. : — ' The Tories furnished little more than rows of ponderous foxhunters — men who drank to the king over the water, and believed that all the fundholders were Jews ; men whose religion consisted in hating the Dis- senters, and whose political researches had led them to fear, like Squire Western, that their land might be sent over to Hanover to be put in the sinking-fund.' If any Tories were to be under any circumstances viewed as the ' zealots of free- dom,' they would not be likely to be men like Parson Trulliber and Squire Western. And yet, says the same writer, ' such were the people who composed the main strength of the Tory party during the sixty years which followed the Revolution.' The best example I find of the Tory, not precisely rising erect the zealot of freedom, but standing forth the enemy of des- potism, is the case of Pitt and Grenville — if they are to be counted Tories^-opposing Bonaparte with indomitable re- solution. Mr. Cobden pays a just tribute of praise to the manner in which Fox opposed the war in 1792. But there is no doubt that Fox's frank and open character rendered him liable to be duped in political transactions with Bonaparte. In illustra- tion of this I will quote a passage from M. Lanfrey : — * Fox's premature death at the very commencement of his administration, added to the admiration felt for his character, gave rise to very exaggerated regrets from those who main- tained that Napoleon's ambition was not incompatible with the peace of Europe. Bonaparte himself endeavoured to gain William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 159 credit for this erroneous opinion. " Fox's death," he often said, " was one of the fatalities of my career. ... If he had lived, the people's cause would have gained him, and we should have created a new order in Europe." * The proof, however, that this opinion is very questionable is that in the first place Fox, after all the philanthropic effusions by which he began, was afterwards forced to adopt, purely and simply, Pitt's policy; and secondly, that the first effect produced upon Napoleon by Fox's elevation to the Ministry was to render him much more exacting towards the Continental Powers. He had had some personal intercourse with Fox at the time of the Treaty of Amiens, and had endeavoured to flatter this benevolent optimist, whose character was ill fitted to penetrate the calculations of so sinister a policy. He had regarded him as an adversary who would be easily duped, and who would give him far less trouble than the great minister whom he had everywhere met in his path, denounc- ing his projects as soon as they were formed, and opposing them with an indomitable resolution. What unhoped-for good luck was the substitution of the good and generous Fox for the haughty man whose penetrating eye and cold con- tempt had so many times disconcerted imperial charlatanry ! ' 2 It follows from this exposition of the true state of facts that Mr. Cobden is in error in saying (p. 88) that but for the public opinion in England being misled, 'Fox and his friends would have prevented the last great war.' Moreover, so far is it from being true, as aflirmed by Mr. Cobden, that 'Napoleon was brought forth and educated by us,' that Napo- leon's career might have been stopped at its commencement had he encountered British troops in his early Italian campaigns. His extraordinary success in his first Italian campaign at so early an age threw his mind off its balance, and led him, among other indications of insanity, to say that he envied Alexander the Great the power of proclaiming himself the son of Jupiter 1 Las Cases. 2 Lanfrey's History of Napoleon the First, vol. ii., p. 545 (English trans- lation). Macmillan & Co., London, 1872. 160 The English Parliament. AmmoD, which had been worth more to him in his subjuga- tion of Egypt than twenty battles gained. There is one argument of Mr. Cobden to which I shall return in subsequent pages, but which it will be con- venient to mention here. ' We never had,' says Mr. Cobden ('1793 and 1853,' p. 5), 'forty thousand British troops on one field of battle on the Continent during the whole war.' And he infers that any suggestion as to quality rather than quantity of troops is a mere piece of despicable vanity, saying, ' When shall we be proof against the transparent appeal to the " liberties-of-Europe " argument ? ' No doubt Mr. Cobden, if he refused to recognise any difference between good troops and bad troops, might not have assented to what is said in the following paragraph. But the question is by no means one that can be settled by a summary and off-hand character of courage as ' the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.' It suited Mr. Cobden's argument to run down courage, which, so far from being, as Gibbon says, the most common, is, in that degree of it which makes it of use, the rarest quality of human nature. Brigadier- General Brooke, who was killed at Candahar while carrying Captain Cruickshank of the Royal Engineers wounded to the rear, said to the editor of, or to a writer in, the Bombay Gazette, in reference to the perfect coolness under fire which he had an opportunity of seeing in Sir Robert Napier, now Lord Napier of Magdala, ' I never knew half a dozen men of whom it could with truth be said that they were quite indifferent to shot and shell ; I know I am not. Of course men do their duty. They have no idea of running away ; but there are very few who do not feel that it would be as well if all were comfortably over. Lord Clyde was one of the men who might be said to be free from this feeling.' He adds that once, when a young officer stooped as a shot passed close overhead, and Lord Clyde involuntarily followed the example and stooped too, he reprimanded the officer, saying, ' You see, sir, your folly has made me do what I never did before in my life.' Yet, to judge from the rhetorical William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 6 1 phrases of historians and orators, nothing is more common than courage — perhaps they mean what has been called orator- courage, a somewhat different commodity from the courage which can go on watching with perfect coolness the movements of an enemy while a cannon-ball is passing close overhead. If courage be ' the cheapest and most common quality of human nature,' it is strange that a man who possessed such knowledge of human nature as Napoleon Bonaparte is ad- mitted to have possessed should in speaking of Moreau to Bourrienne have placed courage before the intellectual faculties that made Moreau be esteemed the best general in France next to Bonaparte, saying, ■ Moreau possesses some high qualities; his bravery is undoubted.' And in the case of Bonaparte himself, though in his later battles he did not expose himself as in his earlier campaigns, courage was the pre-eminent quality. In the retreat from Syria, when the troops, exasperated by their sufferings, shouted, ' Shoot the tyrant ! shoot the Corsican rebel ! ' with many other abusive words, he answered them coolly, ' You are too many to assas- sinate me, and too few to intimidate me.' (' Yous etes trop pour me tuer, et trop peu pour m'intimider.') Whereupon the soldiers exclaimed, ' Quel courage a ce la ! ' (' What courage the fellow has got ! ') * To the statement of a certain French Vice- Admiral that all invasions of England have been successful, an answer may be given in the words of the French historian of Napoleon I., M. Lanfrey: — 'The French addresses in- variably invoked the remembrance of Csesar and William the Conqueror, but times had changed prodigiously since those 1 This anecdote is from a MS. journal left by an Italian, -who was with the French army in Egypt; went to Malta and then to England, where he entered into the service of Admiral Bisset ; then into that of Sir Thomas Hardy; and finally as steward into that of Admiral Lord Keith, when Lord Keith commanded the Channel fleet. As admiral's steward he had the opportunity of showing much attention to Bonaparte when a prisoner on board the ' Bellerophon' ; and he received from the fallen Emperor, on his departure for St. Helena, a strong expression of thanks, with the decoration of the Legion of Honour. M 1 62 The English Parliament. two epochs. Caesar had not found a single bark of the enemy to oppose the approach of his eight hundred vessels to the shore ; he had only had to fight in England with half-savage hordes. The conquest of William had not met with much more formidable obstacles. Since then, all the different elements, Celtic, Danish, Saxon, Norman, which form the stock of the English nationality, had been merged and blended ; and from this fusion had resulted a people admirably balanced, and made as it were for politics, accustomed to govern them- selves, proud of their liberties, placed in the first rank by their intelligence, their energy, their culture, their wealth, and their national spirit. For a century especially their strength and resources had increased to such an extent, and they had so many times fought against us with advantage, in spite of the numeric inferiority of the population, that they could without fear regard the tempest that was about to burst upon them. The British Govern ment did not conceal from themselves that it was no longer an ordinary war, but a mortal duel, in which they had engaged with the First Consul. They knew, if by nothing else, by the spectacle of the whole of Europe, complaisant or subjugated, all that the genius of their adversary was capable of. Acquainted from the commence- ment with all the phases of the struggle, through the daily discussions of a free press and the admirable speeches of their statesmen and great orators, the English people had not re- mained in ignorance on a question in which their honour was so directly interested ; they had enlisted with passionate ardour, they had regarded Bonaparte's insults to their representatives and institutions as addressed to themselves.' l How much might be done by a body of British troops much smaller than forty thousand was proved before Welling- ton commenced his career of victory. There was a certain general of the name of Regnier who was with the French army in Egypt, and having been defeated by the English at the battle of Alexandria, had 1 Lanfrey's History of Napoleon the First, \ol. ii., pp. 252, 253 (English translation). Macmillan & Co., London, 1872. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 163 written a book about the campaigns in Egypt (one of the books which would of course obtain the Bonaparte licence for publication), denying every claim of the British to military skill and even to courage, treating both officers and men as unworthy of the name of soldiers, and imputing the loss of Egypt solely to the incapacity of Menou, under whom he (Regnier) had served as second in command. So far were General Regnier's statements from being in accordance with those of other Frenchmen that the French prisoners taken in the battle of Alexandria said that the battles in Italy were nothing compared to those they had fought since the landing of the British in Egypt. And the French regiments under Menou had formed a part of the army of Italy, and bore on their colours, with the names of many other victories, ' le Pont de Lodi.' General Regnier was destined to have an opportunity of bringing his opinion of the want of the ' warrior spirit,' an opinion, as has been seen, also expressed by Vice- Admiral DupetitThouars, to a satisfactory test. On July 6, 1806, Sir John Stuart, who had served under Abercrombie in Egypt, who had at the battle of Alexandria been directly opposed to Regnier, and who had with him the 58th Regiment, which had also fought at Alexandria, and therefore as well as Sir John Stuart could appreciate the statements made re- specting the English officers and men in General Regnier's book, fought the battle of Maida against General Regnier. Sir John Stuart in his despatch states his total number, rank and file, including the Royal Artillery, at 4,795 ; and he was obliged to report to the English parliamentary government his actual numbers. On the other hand, the French government being a purely personal government, the French generals reported merely to the Emperor; consequently there is no reliance to be placed on the French War Office returns at that time. But upon a comparison of various French and Italian accounts, it appears that Regnier mustered a total of 7,000 foot and 300 horse ; and his force included the favourite French regiment of light infantry, the I dre Legere. The British commanding officer, perceiving that his men were m2 164 The English Parliament. suffering from the heat and were embarrassed by the blankets which they carried at their backs, halted the line for a few seconds that they might throw their blankets down. This short halt was mentioned to Sir Walter Scott by an officer present at the battle. It was also mentioned to a friend of mine by a Calabrian who had viewed the fight from the neighbouring heights, and mentioned a short sudden halt of the English, which he interpreted as if the English were about to turn and run, ' but,' said he, * Santo Diavolone ! in the next instant there was a shout and a rushing onwards, and then it was the French that were running.' The French, who were veterans, while the English were for the far greater part young beardless recruits who had never been under fire before, mistook the pause for the hesitation of fear, and advanced with a quickened step and cheers. It was the boast of the French, which had grown louder since the en- counter with the Russians at Austerlitz, that no troops in Europe would stand their bayonet charge. The boast was now to be tested. As soon as the English were freed from their incumbrances, they gave one English hurrah and rushed on with their bayonets levelled. It is hardly necessary to tell what followed, ' They went down,' said an eye- witness, my friend's Calabrian, 'like grass before the mower.' Among the various devices which personal government has employed in its conflict with parliamentary government, there is none of more importance than its suppression of liberty of the press. In 1791 the two great rivals, Pitt and Fox, united their parliamentary powers and succeeded in adding to the English statute-book the law which places the liberty of the press under the protection of juries. There had never been liberty of the press in France. With the existence of liberty of the press such a measure of ethnological knowledge could hardly be co-existent as is exhibited in the evidence of a French Vice-Admiral, appended with that of other witnesses to the report of the French Enquete Parle- mentaire nominated in November 1849. I have cited the answer of an eminent French writer to the argument of this William Pill and Napoleon Bonaparte. 165 French Vice- Admiral, founded on the success of former in- vasions of England. I will now give another sentence of the same witness's evidence : ' The English have not the warrior spirit ; and if we have war with them, we should have but one thing to do, that is, a landing.' l Here is most valuable information, for w r hich we owe a debt of gratitude to Vice- Admiral Dupetit-Thouars ; if for nothing else, for the tendency it may have either to correct in us that weak and foolish spirit of vanity to which Mr. Cobden (p. 5) says we are addicted, or to enable us to see by what means a person who might be expected to be so well informed as a French Vice-Admiral is so far from being well informed as these utterances of Vice-Admiral Dnpetit Thouars show him to be. We are helped to an understanding of the means by which Vice-Admiral Dupetit Thouars attained to his knowledge of the English character by what we have seen done recently by the Turkish government when it vouchsafed to give to the world through its press a minute history of Mr. Gladstone. The Turkish government, like most if not all Asiatic govern- ments, not only claimed dominion over the persons and property of its subjects, but sought to destroy utterly that part of man which distinguished him from the other animals — namely, the power of reasoning upon facts — for the Turkish government did not recognise the existence of facts, or did not recognise any distinction between truth and falsehood. This was the condition to which it was the object of Napoleon Bonaparte to bring all Europe. In 1803, soon after he had obtained the Consulate for life, the state to which he had then reduced France is thus described by M. Lanfrey : ' Not only was all political discussion interdicted to the French nation, but news — that is to say, facts themselves, the material, im- mutable, indestructible part of truth, which is independent of our interpretations, and which, when they have once taken place, exist eternally — were only to be made known to them so far as it suited their government. By this means all the 1 Enquete Parlementaire, quoted at page 326 of Our Naval Position and Policy, by a Naval Peer. London, Longmans & Co., 1859. 1 66 The English Parliament. facts which would have enlightened their minds, and enabled them to judge the policy of their country, were suppressed by law. An event did not exist till it had been duly stated and legalised by the Moniteur. Nelson might destroy our navy at Trafalgar : the insolent fact was not recognised, and woe to him who should dare to allude to it ; it only began to exist at the fall of the Empire. This was not even the dis- position of the ancient regime. We must go back to Asiatic barbarism in order to find anything analogous to it.' * That Bonaparte sought to destroy the liberty of the press in England as well as in France appears from the fact that an order for Coleridge's arrest for writing certain essays in the Morning Post which did not please Bonaparte had been sent from Paris while Coleridge was in Rome during the winter of 1805-6. The brother of the celebrated traveller Humboldt, of whom Coleridge enquired whether he could pass through Switzerland and Germany, and return by that route to England, said that having passed through Paris on his journey to Borne, he had learnt that he, Coleridge, was a marked man, and he advised him to be careful to keep out of the reach of Bonaparte, whose wrath was excited against Coleridge in consequence of Mr. Fox having asserted in the House of Commons that the rupture of the truce of Amiens had its origin in certain essays published in the Morning Post, which were known to have been written by Coleridge. As soon as Bonaparte learnt that Coleridge was at Rome, an order for his arrest was sent from Paris. Early one morning a noble Benedictine brought Coleridge a passport signed by the Pope, and a carriage, and advised instant flight. Hasten- ing to Leghorn, he embarked on board an American vessel ready to sail for England. On the voyage they were chased by a French vessel, which so alarmed the American that he compelled Coleridge to throw his papers overboard, and thus were lost the fruits of his literary labours in Rome. 2 It might be expected that a soldier like General Sir 1 Lanfrey, vol. ii., pp. 245, 246. 2 Gillmen's Life of Coleridge, pp. 180, 181. London, 1838. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 167 William Napier, devoted to his profession, should in his just admiration of so great a soldier as Napoleon Bonaparte fail to penetrate the real character of that extraordinary man ; and affirm in the passage quoted by Mr. Cobden from his ' History of the Peninsular War,' that ' the English ministers hated Napoleon, not because he was the enemy of England, but because he was the champion of equality.' But it might have been hoped that Mr. Cobden would have been able to form a more just estimate of the character of Napoleon than to quote such words with approval. The equality of which Bonaparte was the champion was the equality of Asiatic slaves, to which it was the unremitted labour of his life to reduce all the people of Europe. I will here quote a French writer on this point : ' From the time when Bonaparte un- masked his system of conquest and his despotic designs, all who took up arms against him were fighting for the inde- pendence of Europe. The war which England was waging against us, so iniquitous in the beginning, had become, thanks to our aggressive policy, a guarantee and a protection to small states.' l There is another sense in which the word equality may be here taken. The French Revolution had been fertile beyond example in military genius, and had produced several great soldiers besides Napoleon Bonaparte, all of whom he had contrived to get rid of by death or exile, except such as he found willing to be his slaves. A man like Moreau, of mili- tary genius equal to his own, but a man of humanity, gene- rosity, and honour, whose ambition was to serve his country as Nelson and Wellington served theirs, and did not aim at empire over her, as Bonaparte's ambition did, had no chance against Bonaparte, in whom in the nineteenth century re- appeared on a colossal scale the genius and the policy of u*-+^ Caesar Borgia. 'Xaw-U But though it might have been hoped that General Sir William Napier and Mr. Cobden would have been able to avoid the more obvious misconceptions, it is not surprising 1 Lanfrey, vol. ii., p. 81. 1 68 The English Parliament. that they should have failed to penetrate the subtle depths of the character of Napoleon Bonaparte. As M. Lanfrey has observed : * A generation issued from the eighteenth century could not understand this contemporary of Caesar Borgia. Hence the illusions and mistakes of which he was the object during his life ; hence the inconceivable errors of judgment that have been made about him since his death. Men of great intelligence have spent twenty years of their lives in studying this character without understanding more of its springs and motives than if they had to judge a Pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty. We do not recognise him under the good-natured bourgeois mask that they have placed over the subtle and hard visage of steel. 1 The figure, no doubt, gains in morality by this disguise ; but they thus cut away the original and profound side of his character, to give place to a certain insipid mediocrity that singularly diminishes its depraved grandeur.' 2 Men of much less power, both mental and political, than Napoleon Bonaparte have succeeded in throwing a veil, apparently impenetrable, over proceedings that form portions of what is called history. The public archives being in the power of the government, where the government is personal and not parliamentary in the proper sense of the word, no paper will be found in the public archives that will disclose anything which the government may wish to conceal. Thus no papers will be found in the English archives before the 1 An English lady of rank who saw him in 1802 reviewing his troops in the Place de Carrousel thus describes him:— 'He was thin, and his figure appeared to be mesquin, but how grand was his face, with its hand- some features, its grave and stern and somewhat melancholy expression ! A face, once seen, never to be forgotten. It fascinated and acted upon me like a rattlesnake, for, though a mere child, I felt all the English horror of the man. and yet could not look at him without admiration mixed with awe.' — The Countess of JBrownlow's Reminiscences. Murray, 1867. Lady Urownlow describes Barras as a man of an 'ignoble figure,' and of 'a lowering, bad face.' She also says of Wellington that he spoke to her as if in early life he had not been a stranger to fear. 2 Lanfrey, vol. ii., p. 221. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 69 time of the Commonwealth — except a few fragments pre- served by some accident defeating the intention of their destruction — which will let out anything against the govern- ment, or expose to view the true characters of the persoDs who occupied the throne. In the case of Great Britain no events in its history have been more completely falsified than the murder of the Earl of Gowrie and his brother, the death of Prince Henry, and the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. In the case of France, no events in its history have been ' more completely and more daringly falsified,' says M. Lanfrey, ' then the conspiracy of Georges, the tragic end of Pichegru and of the Due d'Enghien, and the trial of Moreau. Never have blacker plots been enveloped in thicker clouds ; and this fact is easily explained when we think of the interests that so mxny powerful persons had in obliterating all trace of their acts. When we reflect on the facilities that they had for destroying proofs which would tell against them, on the forced silence of the press, on the absence of all control and all publicity, on the terror that hung over the public, we are surprised that so many elements of information have been allowed to survive. It is notorious that our archives have at different times been ransacked by interested parties, that some deeds have been suppressed, others forged, so that we can only judge the guilty by such documents as they have chosen to leave us, and by such as have escaped their notice.' l The manner in which the public archives were dealt with by Bonaparte may be exemplified by the fact that he caused all the papers relating to the battle of Marengo to be abstracted from the archives, in order to substitute an imaginary bulletin, drawn up many years after the event. 2 ' To all these causes of obscurity,' continues M. Lanfrey, ■ may be added the lies artfully invented to deceive posterity. These fictions form part of the Napoleonic legend. In the first rank of these inventions we must place the various stories that were fabricated at St. Helena, under the inspiration of Napoleon, and the Memoires of Savary, Duke of Rovigo. 1 Lanfrey, vol. ii., p. 294. 2 Ibid. 170 The English Parliament. Some of oar most accredited historians seem too often to have had no other object than that of developing the theme with which this double tradition has furnished them. It is certain that no evidence should be rejected till after a serious examination, even though it be full of obvious and palpable misstatements ; the accounts from St. Helena ought not, therefore, to be absolutely set aside, for they contain admissions that are useful, and their artifice itself reveals the character of the man who conceived them.' 1 Bonaparte hated Moreau with that intense hatred which a successful intriguer naturally felt for a man of honour whose great actions he could not obliterate from the records of France, and who would not bow the knee to the successful intriguer. 'And people exclaim,' says M. Lanfrey, 'at the supposition that Bonaparte was true to the habits of his whole life, concerning a man whom he detested the most, as the most dangerous to him ; towards Moreau, whom, up to his last day, he endeavoured to calumniate and ruin. They are indignant at the idea that he ever thought of ruining Moreau — he who would have ruined even Kleber, and who had so often set a price upon the head of his adversaries. By what feeling, or by what scruples, should he have been deterred ? The word ' scruple' excites a smile applied to a man who, in our memory, caused the two thousand prisoners of Jaffa to be slaughtered with the bayonet. Improbability is not, in this case, on the side of those who accuse, but of those who justify.' 2 1 Lanfrey, vol. ii., p. 294. 2 Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 305, 306. Bourrienne relates in his Memoires that a few days before the execution of Georges and his associates, Bonaparte said to him in private : — ' What do you think I ought to do with Moreau ? Detain him in prison ? No ! Let him sell his property and quit France. That will be best for all parties. ... I wanted to attach him to me. . . . Well ! I have ascended a throne, and he is the inmate of a prison ! Had he attached himself to me, doubtless I would have made him the first marshal of the empire.' In the same passage of Bourrienne there is a remark which may throw light on that peculiarity which enabled Bonaparte to triumph over Moreau, even if the genius of Moreau for war was equal or William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 7 1 The genius for deception which was so strong in Bonaparte would seem to have been connected with the Oriental character of his mind, which imposed on the people of France, and sought to impose on all Europe, such . a yoke as Tartars imposed on Chinese, and Turks on Greeks and Bulgarians. This same Oriental quality of his mind led him to surround himself with those Mamelukes whom he had brought with him from the East, and employed, according to the general, if not universal, opinion at the time, as the executioners of Pichegru in his dungeon — fit agents for this Oriental execu- tion. 1 On this subject I will quote the French historical writer whom I have already frequently referred to as having superior to that of Bonaparte. He said, 'Moreau possesses some high qualities, his bravery is undoubted, but he is indolent and self-indulging. When with the army, he lived like a pasha ; gave himself up to the pleasures of the table, and was almost constantly smoking.' Now Bonaparte certainly lost no time either in the pleasures of the table or in smoking. Even if smoking should be called an intellectual pleasure, Bonaparte had little taste for pleasure, even for intellectual pleasure. The need of activity in Bonaparte, which haunted him day and night, and woke him with a start in the middle of his sleep, was accompanied by a prodigious power of work, and (says one who is not his panegyrist) 'by a rapidity of conception that no other man has probably ever possessed to the same extent (Lanfrey,vol. ii. , p. 220). In the letter to his wife, written three days after he had received his fatal wound in the battle near Dresden, in 1813, Moreau says, 'Ce coquin do. Bonaparte est toujours heureux.' While in earnest conversation with the Emperor of Eussia on the progress of operations, the hated rival of Bonaparte, who had been living an exile in America, was struck by a French cannon-ball, which, passing through the body of his horse, carried away both his legs. During the surgical operation which followed he smoked his cigar and displayed the greatest coolness and fortitude. 1 ' The prisoners related that during the night they had heard the noise of a struggle in Pichegru's dungeon. Savary asserts that many years later an official gentleman who was his friend spoke to him of Pichegru's murder as "a fact of which there was no doubt." Baron de Dalberg, who then represented Baden at Paris, expressed the general feeling of the diplomatic body when he announced to his government " that Pichegru had been chosen as a victim. The history of the Roman emperors, the Lower Empire," he added, " that is the picture of this country and of this reign."" Lanfrcy vol. ii., p. 345. 172 The English Parliament. written a history of this period, and not a mere political pamphlet or Bonapartist legend. ' Time,' says M. Lanfrey, ' which so weakens all impres- sions, has almost obliterated the suspicions to which the death of Pichegrn gave rise ; bnt if we go back to the epoch, and examine, with calm attention, all the circumstances of the event, the motives for suspicion remain intact. Pichegru's death suggests a twofold question. Was Bonaparte capable of employing such means to rid himself of Pichegru ? The murder of the Due d'Enghien, victim infinitely more pure, more innocent, and more interesting than Pichegru, and who had been sacrificed a fortnight before, relieves us from replying to this question. It may next be asked if he had an interest in doing so ? Pichegru had constantly declared in his examinations that he would only answer before the Tribunal ; after he discovered that he had been the dupe of Real, he spoke in very bitter terms of the First Consul ; it was known that he had been entrusted with more than one secret concerning General Bonaparte, both before and after the 18th Fructidor ; every one was aware of his resolute and energetic character, and they also knew that he was driven to extremities, and was ready to rend every veil. It certainly did not require more to decide an all-powerful enemy, in whose eyes the life of a man did not count for more than that of a fly.' I break off this quotation here to say, in explana- tion of the importance of the secrets concerning General Bonaparte in the possession of Pichegru, that Pichegru and Bonaparte had both been very much mixed up with the leaders of the terrorist government, Robespierre and St. Just, and that Pichegru had been the confidant of St. Just, and the favourite general of the terrorist government of France. Pichegru had threatened to speak out on his public trial ; to make known the means by which he had been entrapped into the conspiracy by Bonaparte's police ; and to reveal what he knew of the First Consul's correspondence with the Bourbons. Pichegru and Bonaparte had been together in the military school of Brienne, and had obtained their commissions as William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 73 lieutenants of artillery on the same day. St. Just and the younger Robespierre had accompanied in the field the armies which they superintended as commissioners, where the younger Robespierre had been the friend of Napoleon Bona- parte, then an officer in the army of Nice. I resume the quotation from M. Lanfrey at the point where it was broken off. 1 But had not the First Consul, it is often asked, a much greater interest in getting rid of Moreau, and in that case why strike Pichegru ? The reply is clear. Pichegru was so compromised that he had no longer anything to care or to hope for ; he could only raise himself in public opinion by openly attacking the tyranny of Bonaparte ; Moreau, on the other hand, was in a situation in which he could not even hint blame on the First Consul's policy, without exposing himself to a suspicion of personal hostility ; there were only very light charges against him, and he would have given them weight if he had appeared in the trial as a rival, or even as an oppo- nent ; he had to confine himself strictly to the discussion of the facts brought against him. These were sufficient reasons for not fearing from him what they dreaded from Pichegru ; and, moreover, who would have believed that Moreau, against whom they had no proof, would have so far given way to despondency as to commit suicide ! Such a determination could only be explained by a desperate situation. Nor is this all. Pichegru was discredited ; he no longer inspired any interest except with the emigrants ; he could be 'put out of the way without danger. Moreau was esteemed even by his enemies, he was adored by his former soldiers, he had numerous partisans among the chiefs of the army, and even in the Senate, and if such a man had been strangled in his prison, the Consular Government would not have gone long unpunished. The result of all these considerations is, that if the murder of Pichegru cannot be given as a fact rigorously proved, it is at any rate not improbable. The mystery will never perhaps be cleared up, and an accusation would be rash ; but suspicion will remain legitimate.' 1 1 Lanfrey, vol. ii., pp. 345-347. 174 The English Parliament. The case of Captain Wright is, if possible, more illus- trative of the character of the son of the obscure Corsican lawyer, who was then tyrant of France, than those of Pichegru and Moreau. This modern Borgia never hesitated at assassination when it seemed to suit his purposes and was not likely to lead to dangerous consequences. His ambition, though the ruling passion, was only one of many passions that stirred his mind. Among those other passions, hatred, envy, and vindictiveness were pre-eminent. When he was informed that Wright's vessel, which had been captured after a desperate resistance on the French coast, was the same which had landed Pichegru, and that Wright had been a lieutenant on board Sir Sidney Smith's ship, and had distinguished himself under Sir Sidney in the defence of Acres, Wright's fate was sealed ; and his suicide in prison was announced in the Moniteur, but was universally declared to be another case of assassination. Indeed it has been said that if Bonaparte could only have caught Sir Sidney Smith, whether or not engaged in landing royalists and conspirators, Sir Sidney would have had a remarkably good chance of making his exit from this world after the manner of Pichegru and Wright. I have referred to the opinion of General Sir William Napier respecting Napoleon Bonaparte. In a letter to Mr. Henry Wellesley, in April 1810, published in the ' Wellington Despatches ' (vol. vi. , p. 62) , there'are two passageswhich General Napier characterises as ' reprehensible ' in an article on the Duke of Wellington published in the London and Westminster Review for January 1838. The first passage is, ' If it should suit Bonaparte's purpose to murder Ferdinand, he will not be prevented from executing it by knowing that the right of the Princess of Brazil to succeed to the crown is acknowledged.' The second passage is, * First, if the Allies should succeed in obliging the French to evacuate the Peninsula, which is not a very probable event at present ; and secondly, if the Allies should fail, and the French should obtain possession of the Penin- sula ; — in either case, but particularly in the last, it is most William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 75 probable that Ferdinand and his brother would be murdered.' l The Duke of Wellington's opinion, then, of Bonaparte's ethics is pretty much that of M. Lanfrey, and, it may be added, that of General Moreau ; and the last named had had more means of knowing the true character of Bonaparte than General Sir W. Napier. General Sir W. Napier having in a former page of the same paper remarked that ' there are some men, and Napoleon was one of them, who are permitted at times to rule the world with single unapproachable majesty of mind,' says, in answer to the words quoted above from Wellington's letter : — ' Napoleon was no murderer ; he was himself most inhumanly baited to death *to satisfy the insatiable revenge of a tyrannical aristocratic faction in England ; but he was too great, in every sense of the word, to have recourse to such dark practices himself.' What is the meaning of ' to satisfy the insatiable ' ? And in saying that he (Bonaparte) ' was baited to death, but was too great to have recourse to such dark practices himself,' General Sir W. Napier would seem to imply that some dark practice was employed in the death of Bonaparte, but that no dark practice was employed in the deaths of Pichegru and Wright. The sentence in General Sir W. Napier's article following the words ' dark practices himself,' runs thus : — ' The man who gave the Princess of Hatzfeld the letter which contained the only evidence against her husband was incapable of assassination, and there was a w r ant of magnanimity in thus gratuitously attributing such a sentiment to him.' This sentence proves the success of Bonaparte in getting up a scene, which, though only one of the innumerable fictions of the great artist who threw so many 'lights upon history,' appears to have completely imposed upon General Sir W. Napier. The facts of the case which General Napier has considered a proof that Bonaparte ' was incapable of assassi- nation,' prove, on the contrary, that Napoleon was a mean as well as a cruel and rapacious tyrant ; whose ' majesty of mind ' many if not most persons might desire to be c un- 1 Wellington Despatches, vol. vi. p. 62. 176 The English Parliament. approachable,' as far as they were concerned, and ' single' if that meant no repetition of it upon earth. On October 27, 1806, Napoleon made a triumphal entry into Berlin at the head of his army. At the head of the magistrates of the town who came to present to him the keys of Berlin was the Prince von Hatzfeld, to whom the King of Prussia had entrusted the civil government. Napoleon received the de- putation with a haughty and irritated countenance, and said to the Prince von Hatzfeld, ' Do not present yourself before me ; retire to your estates.' Bonaparte's first care on entering Berlin had been to lay hands on the post, and open all the correspondence, public and private. The Prince had just written to his sovereign to give him an account of the entrance of the French under Bonaparte into Berlin ; and, says M. Lanfrey, the French historian of these events, ' he was so far from suspecting that there could be anything criminal in so natural an act that he had not hesitated to trust his communication to the post. This letter, a copy of which has been preserved, and which is extremely insig- nificant, was shown to Napoleon. He immediately seized it as the pretext of which his policy had need to make an example of the Prussian nobility. He forthwith issued a decree to bring the Prince von Hatzfeld before a military commission composed of seven colonels, 1 to be tried as a traitor and a spy. The appointment of the seven colonels recalled the evil history of Palm and of the Due d'Enghien. It clearly announced what the judgment would be. With regard to the imputation of espionage and treachery, which they dared to cast on an honourable man for an inoffensive communication addressed to a prince without states and without an army, who was already menaced in his distant refuge beyond the Oder, as if the safety of over two hundred thousand soldiers had depended on the disclosure of events which had been witnessed by a whole nation, it was impudent and derisive to the highest degree. Napoleon's most intimate and most submissive generals, Duroc, Berthier, and Rapp, were indignant at the idea of seeing the 1 The italics are M. Lanfrey's. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 7 7 blood shed of an honourable and estimable man, whose only crime was that he had remained faithful to his sovereign. The j surrounded Napoleon and entreated him in accents of the deepest grief not to tarnish his own glory nor make execu- tioners of his companions. They found him so much the more inflexible that his resolution was the result of a cold and studied calculation. He merely applied methodically on this occasion the system which in all his letters he urged Joseph to adopt in Naples, to show himself terrible in the first moment, in order to suppress in the vanquished all idea of revolt, and to be able afterwards to gain all hearts by an unhoped-for gentleness. Such was the revived precept of Caesar Borgia, which the Emperor adopted as his favourite maxim, and which the mild Joseph could never bring himself to put into practice. The Prince von Hatzfeld was only chosen for a victim on account of his high position and the well-known part that he had taken in the declaration of war. Happily for him, his friends succeeded in hiding him for the first few days, and the delay saved his life. The impression of horror produced by the mere announcement of the fate that was reserved for him was so general that it became impossible to think of the execution. The right moment had slipped by, and Napoleon, feeling the effect of so atrocious an act, that had been rumoured abroad beforehand, arranged that scene of clemency by which historians, with more sensibility than penetration, have so often been touched. Never was a man more loudly extolled for having abstained from assassina- tion.' ! If Bonaparte in this case escaped the fate of being justly styled a murderer, the result certainly does not entitle him to the praise of magnanimous clemency which General Napier's words imply ; and the case of Palm, the bookseller of Nurem- berg, if no other case existed, would negative General Napier's proposition — ■ Napoleon was no murderer.' 'Palm,' says M, Lanfrey, like all other booksellers, had committed the crime, not of publishing but of selling and distributing, the 1 Lanfrey, vol. ii., pp. 602, 603. N i/8 The English Parliament. pamphlets written in favour of the liberty of his country. Among these pamphlets was the eloquent publication of Gentz, entitled " The Deep Degradation of Germany," a work of which the fervour and vehemence had powerfully con- tributed to rouse the national spirit. Napoleon did not know two ways of refuting writings : not being able to suppress the author, he laid the blame on the booksellers. In this affair he employed a remedy which in all his letters he had recommended to his brother Joseph as an infallible means of quieting the Neapolitans — a remedy which he considered applicable to everything and everywhere, and expressed in a single word which was in his opinion the sum of all political wisdom — Shoot ! On August 5, 1806, he sent Berthier this order : — " My cousin, you have, I imagine, arrested the booksellers of Augsburg and Nuremberg. I intend them to be brought before a military commission and shot within twenty-four hours. The sentence is to state that, being convicted of having attempted to rouse the inhabitants of Swabia against the French army, they are condemned to death." Everything was thus regulated beforehand, the guilt, the punishment, and the conviction, and seven colonels in the French army were found willing to accept the ignominious office of judges. But they might have said what Hullin wrote in reference to the Due d'Enghien : — " We were obliged to condemn under pain of being condemned ourselves." Palm, arrested in Nuremberg, was handed over to the military commission, who obeyed their orders and con- demned him to death, together with three other book- sellers, whom they did not succeed in apprehending. They rightly thought that it was useless to give him a counsel for his defence, but they altered their opinion on this point when they drew up the sentence, and in the judgment they added a lie to their atrocious deed by solemnly testifying that this formality had been observed. Palm met death with a courage and simplicity that moved even his executioners. He was very soon celebrated as a martyr by the patriotic songs which re- sounded throughout Germany. The murder of this innocent William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte, i 79 man caused a shudder among all the German population. Shooting might have been an efficacious means in' the half- savage provinces of Naples, but in the heart of civilised Europe, and in the midst of a people that had not yet been fashioned to servitude, the effect produced was far less that of fear than of indignation.' i But certain advocates of the Bonaparte system of ethics may say that the life of an obscure individual is of little im- portance, especially when he is struck in the name of a pre- tended interest of the state, ' for reasons of state,' as the phrase ran — the time-honoured phrase of the Borgias and their disciples. Palm was but one ; Pichegru was but one ; Wright was but one ; the Due d'Enghien was but one ; four in all — what is that to bring against so great a man — a man who ruled the world with * single unapproachable majesty of mind ' ? Ay ! but let us look a little farther. The aggressor in a great war is a criminal on the very largest scale — a criminal who may receive with a smile of haughty contempt the charge of having murdered an obscure bookseller ; — a criminal that sheds innocent blood as if it were water ; in whose eyes the life of a man does not count for more than that of a fly ; — a criminal withal whose power of sophistry is able to steel him effectually against all remorse. It has been shown, it has been demonstrated, that down to 1796 — that is, for the first two or three years — England was the aggressor in the war with France; but that in and after 1796 — that is, for the last nineteen years — Napoleon Bonaparte was the aggressor. I must here quote again two or three words of a short passage I have already quoted from General Sir W. Napier. These are the words : ' Napoleon was no murderer ; he was himself most inhumanly baited to death to satisfy the insatiable revenge of a tyrannical aristocratic faction in England.' M. Lanfrey, in reference to the misstatements of facts by the apologists of Bonaparte, partly in consequence of their adopting his artfully- constructed fables for facts, has attempted — for no human voice or pen could do more than 1 Laufrey, vol. ii., pp. 571, 572. N 2 i8o The English Parliament. attempt — to express in words the true interpretation of the government of Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 Let us learn,' M. Lanfrey says, ' to think and to speak like men, and not to mix adulation even with blame. Every idea of justice is profaned by those who say that Napoleon was punished because he signally failed in one of the most wicked enterprises which a crowned villain ever endeavoured to carry out. No ! the shedding of so much innocent blood, so many families sacrificed, so many mothers reduced to despair, so many inoffensive men driven for years to murder without scruple, so many crimes conceived, committed, and persisted in with such cool premeditation, are not so easily expiated ; and the lengthened inactivity of St. Helena was in itself nothing but an insignificant punishment when compared with the enormity of the crime. Let us not name punishment when speaking of this man, or if we do, let us place him boldly in a rank superior to the rest of mankind, and in that case we shall only be doing justice to ourselves by thinking that we are beings of an inferior nature, made to be for ever the prey and the playthings of a few privileged monsters.' 1 That government which General Sir William Napier has called ' ruling the world with single unapproachable majesty of mind,' was in fact neither more nor less than a system of organised robbery on a large scale. Nor is the confusion in the science of ethics which General Napier's words would tend to introduce greater than that which is created by the following passage in Mr. Cobden's preface : — ' It is true that there were brief suspensions of hostilities at the peace, or, more properly speaking, the truce of Amiens, and during Bonaparte's short sojourn at Elba ; but even if it were clear that Napoleon's ambition put an end to the peace, it would prove nothing but that he had by the ordinary workings of the moral law been in the meantime raised into a retributive agent for the chastisement of those who were the authors of the original war. I am bound, however, to add that, if we examine the circumstances which led to the renewal of 1 Lanfrey, vol. in., pp. 278, 279. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 8 1 hostilities after the short intervals of peace, we shall find that our government showed quite as great readiness for war in 1803 and 1815 as they had done in 1793.' These opinions of General Sir W. Napier and Mr. Cobden furnish a most striking illustration of the truth of M. Lanfrey's observation, which I have before quoted, that ' men of great intelligence have spent twenty years of their lives in studying this character without understanding more of its springs and motives than if they had to judge a Pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty.' l That the words ' organised robbery ' have been used not lightly, but advisedly, appears from the fact that the cry of the Directory being for money, Bonaparte plundered the Italian governments and sent the plunder to the Directory. Thus at first he robbed for the Dire'ctory, and in this way over-reached Moreau, his equal in military genius, who would not rob for the Directory. As Bonaparte got stronger he proceeded from robbery for others to rob for himself. In the term robbery for himself is included robbery for the instru- ments of his power. As the means of enriching these instru- ments out of the soil of France became more and more exhausted, Bonaparte cast his eyes over the whole of Europe as the ager jpublicus with which he was to reward the large bands of robbers which he kept up under the name of the Grand Army. ' In this,' says M. Lanfrey, ' he was consistent with his political system ; he acted as the dictator and tribune of that military democracy which had elected him for their chief. Being no longer able to give them at home the spoils of the ancient privileged classes, he applied a sort of agrarian law to foreign nations by means of conquest. Even when he created a new nobility, these dupes of fanaticism continued to look upon him as their Gracchus as well as their Caesar. They forgave him for having made dukes, because he had made one out of the son of a peasant, and they believed that their fortune would increase indefinitely like his own, thanks to that inexhaustible ager publicus, which was Europe.' 2 I now approach a special illustration of the distinction 1 Lanfrey, vol. ii., p. 221. 2 Ibid., vol. iii., p. 139." 1 82 The English Parliament. between personal and parliamentary government — a case where a king's own personal interests are secured and pro- tected against a dangerous and formidable aggressor by the rule that under the modern English system of government the king or queen shall correspond with foreign governments only through their ministers. The operation of the Borgian method in politics is well exemplified in Bonaparte's treatment of Alexander, Emperor of Russia. ' Seduced by the promises made at Tilsit, Alexander had sacrificed to Napoleon the generous illusions of his yonth, his popularity in Europe, and the almost super- stitious attachment of his subjects ; he had sacrificed to him his own self-respect ; and yet, even after these sacrifices, the promises had not been kept.' 1 ' In 1808, as Spanish affairs grew more complicated after the affair of Baylen, Napoleon's demonstrations of friendship assumed a tone of tenderness. He grew impatient to see Alexander, to press him to his heart, to efface all recollection of temporary misunderstandings.' 2 All this was only to draw Alexander into a new trap. This feature of Bonaparte's character furnishes a most instructive illustration of the difference between personal and parliamentary government. Bonaparte, knowing his skill in the art of deception, had made several attempts to draw the King of England into a personal correspondence ; but he had never succeeded in extracting, in answer, one word signed by the King of England. But having succeeded in drawing the Emperor of Russia into a new trap, he thought that by pre- senting the name of the Emperor of Russia this time by the side of his own, he would force King George to swerve from his system — to do which would, in fact, have been at one blow to destroy parliamentary government and substitute for it personal government in England. In the proposal for peace which Napoleon and Alexander addressed, in the form of a letter, to the King of England (October 12, 1808), they appealed to the duty of ' yielding to the wishes and require- ments of all nations, and of putting an end to the misfortunes 1 Lanfrey, vol. iii., p. 300. 2 Ibid., vol. iii., p. 293. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 83 of Europe. Peace was as much the interest of the people of the Continent as of the people of Great Britain. They joined therefore in begging his Britannic Majesty to hearken to the voice of humanity by silencing that of passion, so as to ensure the happiness of Europe and of the present generation.' 1 If Bonaparte had hoped to be able to see King George and to press him to his heart, as he had done the Emperor Alexander, he was doomed to disappointment, as he only ob- tained an answer from the king's ministers, addressed to him through Canning (October 28). Bonaparte's demonstrations of affectionate eagerness to press the Emperor Alexander to his heart remind one of what has been said of the Roman Republic—' Her enmity was dangerous ; but her friendship was fatal. None ever escaped with honour from that deadly embrace.' How much sincerity there was in the appeal for peace made by Bonaparte on this occasion may be measured by the fact that at the very time when he made it he was on the point of marching towards Spain with two hundred thousand men, for the purpose of seizing Spain and Portugal. One of the arguments used by Mr. Cobden (p. 5) to prove that the claim that the war made by England against Napoleon Bonaparte was in defence of the liberties of Europe was not a well-grounded claim, is that ' we never had forty thousand British troops engaged in one field of battle on the Continent during the whole war.' I admit that this is a specious argu- ment ; and when I first read it, it weighed with me, as I surmise it weighed with the Czar Nicholas in his deliberations before the Crimean war. Undoubtedly forty thousand troops seem a small number when set against two hundred thousand. Nevertheless, accepting Mr. Cobden's figures, it would appear that less than forty thousand British troops, led by an able man like Wellington, can do something to stop even a conqueror like Napoleon Bonaparte, who numbers his troops not by tens, but by hundreds of thousands. For General Sir William Napier says that in that war carried on in Spain and 1 Lanfrey, vol. iii. f p. 311. 184 The English Parliament. Portugal against Napoleon Bonaparte, those British troops * won nineteen pitched battles and innnmerable combats ; made or sustained ten sieges, and took four great fortresses ; twice expelled the French from Portugal, once from Spain ; penetrated France : killed, wounded, or captured two hundred thousand enemies — leaving of their own numbers forty thousand dead.' ! Even at the Alma and Inkerman British troops, not more than half forty thousand in number, and led by generals not quite equal to Wellington, did something to show another despot that he was not to have everything his own way in this world. Moreover, Wellington says in reference to sending the large expedition to Spain instead of to the Scheldt — ' If we had had 60,000 men instead of 20,000, in all probability we should not have got to Talavera to fight the battle, for want of means and provisions. But if we had got to Talavera, we could not have gone further, and the armies would probably have separated for want of means of subsistence, probably without a battle, but certainly after.' 2 It has been remarked of the battle of Prague that it was a battle more bloody than any which Europe saw during the long interval between Malplaquet and Eylau. The battle of Malplaquet was fought against the pretensions of Louis XIV. to conquer and oppress his neighbours ; and it is usually supposed that the presence of the Duke of Marlborough and some thousands of British troops had some weight in obtaining a victory over the French in that hard-fought battle; but as the British troops did not amount to forty thousand on that occasion, they could not, according to Mr. Cobden's hypothesis, have done anything worth mentioning in defence of the liberties of Europe. The same remark applies to the battles of Blenheim, of Ramilies, of Oudenarde. And if the 1 English Battles and Sieges of the Peninsula. Extracted from his Peninsula War. By Lieut.-Gen. Sir William Napier, K.C.B., &c, &c, p. 469. London : John Murray, Albemarle Street, 185/i. 2 Letter to Lord Castlereagh, August 25, 1809. Wellington Despatches, vol. v. p. 82. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 185 actions of Marlborough and the British troops under his com- mand had some influence on the affairs of Europe, a similar influence cannot be denied as due to the presence of Wel- lington and the British troops under his command — since an authority on such a matter, General Sir William Napier, has said that Wellington was ' more than the rival of Marl- borough, for he had defeated greater generals than Marlborough ever encountered.' l Eylau was a drawn battle after great slaughter on both sides — both French and Russians having fought with the most obstinate courage. I had been reflecting on what might have been the effect of even a much smaller number than forty thousand British troops to aid the Russians at Eylau, when I met with the fol- lowing passage in a French writer : — ' Napoleon had remained master of the field of battle ; and although he was incapable of attempting anything further, he was not a man not to take advantage of this circumstance to transform the check into victory. His army had, in reality, suffered so fearfully that it would have been impossible for him to keep his positions any longer before a resolute enemy. Bennigsen's lieutenants, Generals Knorring and Tolstoi, entreated their commander to renew the fight : but he had sustained enormous losses, and his soldiers were dying of hunger. Napoleon's inflexible will prevailed.' The reflection contained in the next sentence is valuable as the opinion of a Frenchman, and is an in- structive commentary on Mr. Cobden's hypothesis. ' Such is the value of tenacity in war, that it is noi> improbable that the obstinate and indomitable attitude of a Wellington would have constrained him almost immediately to retreat.' 2 Mr. Cobden says (p. 5) : ' When shall we be proof against the transparent appeal to our vanity involved in the " liberties- of-Europe" argument?' Mr. Cobden, who had travelled in Turkey, must have known that resistance to a man who 1 English Battles and Sieges of the Peninsula. Extracted from his Peninsula War. By Lieut.-Gen. Sir William Napier, K.C.B., &c, &c, pp. 198, 199. London : John Murray, Albemarle Street. 2 Lanfrey, vol. iii., p. 42. 1 86 The English Parliament. songht to impose upon all Europe such a yoke as the Turks had imposed on all who had the misfortune to be conquered by them was a matter that had very little to do with vanity. Mr. Cobden also says in the same page, in reference to the assertion that the war against Bonaparte had been in defence of the liberties of Europe, that he had sought for the liberties of Europe from Cadiz to Moscow without having been so fortunate as to find them. To this the answer is that, even such a condition as Mr. Cobden found the people living in from Cadiz to Moscow, when compared with what he found the subjects of the Turk living in, might receive the title of 1 liberties of Europe.' Mr. Cobden found the nations from Cadiz to Moscow under the yoke of their native oppressors. But what was that to the yoke of a Bonaparte ? And it was to deliver the nations from that yoke that England fought the long fight by sea and land which ended at Waterloo. And now as to Mr. Cobden's grand argument of our never having had forty thousand British troops engaged in one field of battle on the Continent during the whole war. Let us look at it again. Napoleon said to De Pradt, at Dresden, c I will destroy Russian influence in Europe. Two battles will do the business. Spain costs me very dear ; but for that I should be master of the world.' It thus appears that Bona- parte himself, who was likely to know something of the matter, even before he found what less than twenty-five thousand British troops (many of them new levies, and not his old Spanish infantry, with which Wellington said he felt he could go anywhere and do anything) could do at Waterloo, rated somewhat higher than Mr. Cobden what they could do in Spain ; that he counted Russia somewhat for- midable, but to be crushed in two battles ; but that Spain, hacked by England, he counted more formidable than Russia, At the conclusion of his account of the battle of Essling, M. Lanfrey says : * Whilst the different nations questioned themselves as to the issue of the great duel, another actor had appeared on the scene. Far away, at the other extremity of the horizon, on the confines of the land of William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 1 8 7 marvels, called Spain, a tumultuous mass may be discerned that draws nearer and grows larger from hour to hour. It is Wellington's army, which advances from Portugal, driving before it the legions commanded by Soult.' l I will quote another passage from M. Lanfrey on the character of this man whom General Napier and Mr. Cobden have represented as ' the champion of equality ' — whatever that may mean — and have, at the same time, failed to discern his true character, while they have overrated his genius. ' He,' says M. Lanfrey, ' who had lied 2 to everybody, found everybody united against him. His imposture was unmasked, and a few months after Austerlitz the Continent was armed to attack us afresh. ... When we think of the marvellous instrument that he had in his hands, and the unworthy use to which he put it for so long a time with impunity, imagina- tion turns to those magic powers which play so important a part in Eastern tales. So long as the hero is in possession of the talisman, everything he attempts succeeds, even that which is most improbable. . . . For him madness becomes genius, iniquity justice ; and the more he treads under foot 1 Lanfrey, vol. hi., p. 403. 2 This was personal government. Sir John Kaye, the historian of the first Afghan war, has thus described the conduct of parliamentary govern- ment, when the ministry of Lord Melbourne dragged England into ■ that war. ' The character of Dost Mohamed was lied away; the character of Burnes was lied away. Both, by the mutilation of the correspondence of the latter, have been represented as doing what they did not, and omitting to do what they did.' — Kaye's History, vol. i. p. 203-4. When small men copy great men they are apt to leave a good many matters out of account. Lord Melbourne, and other parliamentary prime ministers, in negotiating a war with the Afghans, might support themselves with the example of the man who first drew up on paper the plan for others, and then executed himself that Italian campaign which has been called the masterpiece of military art. While it is impossible to read without admiration either the plan on paper or the execution in the field of the first Italian camp.iigu, it is also impossible to read without an emotion the reverse of admiration the same man's proceedings in picking quarrels with weak states ; which these representatives of parliamentary government have copied without having either drawn out on paper or fought in the field the first Italian campaign. The English Parliament. all the rules of wisdom, of right, and of common sense, the more his success increases. Men contemplate with supersti- tious awe the sinister splendour of the meteor. They are ready to deify the privileged and invulnerable mortal whose astounding fortune no folly and no crime can mar. One day the talisman is lost or broken, and suddenly the god has disappeared. Nothing remains but a poor fool ; and the be- wildered mind, hesitating between horror and pity, asks whether this elect of destiny was not rather its victim. Such is the history of Napoleon and the Grand Army.' l If we compare this character of Napoleon Bonaparte with some of the aspects of his character presented by Bourrienne, we obtain a curious result. Those who, like Simomde Mont- fort, like Washington and others, looked to institutions for good government, Bonaparte called ideologues. He had no idea of power except in direct force. To look for power in institutions he called metaphysics ; and those who had faith in institutions were regarded by Bonaparte as dangerous, be- cause their principles were diametrically opposed to the harsh and arbitrary system he had adopted. There is a certain resemblance between Bonaparte's notion of metaphysics and some men's notion of Berkeley's theory of the non-existence of matter. The most popularly effective argument, as Mill has observed, next to a ' grin,' 2 1 Lanfrey, vol. ii., pp. 574, 575. 2 The allusion is to the line : — 1 And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin,' a line which, though generally attributed to Pope by those who quote it, is not Pope's. It was quoted as Pope's in the first edition of J. S. Mill's Logic. In a letter to me, dated Blackheath Park, Kent, April 15, 1870, Mill says : • The error was pointed out to me, soon after the publication of my Logic, by a man of some knowledge of books, who said that the writer was John Brown, author of Essays on the Characteristics and An Estimate of the Manners of the Time. I have never had the means of veri- fying this statement, but I have struck out the name of Pope in the sub- sequent editions.' The line occurs in An Essay on Satire, by J. Brown, M.A. printed at the end of some editions of Pope's works, and is the only good line in Brown's performance, for it is a line containing so much of the polish and terseness of Pope as to have been mistaken for Pope's. William Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte. 189 against Berkeley's theory, the argument of some men like Samnel Johnson, of practical understanding without any turn for metaphysical speculation, and the stock argument of a certain school of metaphysicians, consists, like Bonaparte's favourite idea of power, direct force, in knocking a stick against the ground. It has been remarked that Napoleon was not only a great general, but that he possessed some of the qualities which give point to the writing of a reviewer. This is exemplified in a fragment of criticism on the second book of the iEneid, from which the following passage is a quotation : — * If Homer had treated the taking of Troy, he would not have treated it like the capture of a fort, but he would have employed the time necessary ; at least eight days and eight nights. In reading the Iliad one feels every instant that Homer had seen actual service, and had not passed his life, as the commentators say he did, in the schools of Chios ; in reading the -ZEneid one feels that it is the work of a pedagogue, who had never seen anything at all. . . . Scipio required seventeen days to burn Carthage ; it took seven days to burn Moscow, though for the most part built of wood. Troy was a great city, for the Greeks, who had 100,000 men, never attempted to surround it.' After saying that Virgil compresses operations for which more than a fortnight is required into a space of three hours, he adds, ' Such ought not to be the march of epic poetry, and such is not the march of Homer in the Iliad. The diary of Agamemnon could not be more accurate for distances and time, and the probability of military operations, than that masterpiece is.' 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