LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Sonbxrn : FETTER LANE, E.C. C. F. CLAY, Manager ffibmburfih: 100 PRINCES STREET $exlin: A. ASHER AND CO. IgtipziQ: F. A. BROCKHAUS Heto gorfe: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS SotttfmL' ani> Calcutta : MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. Ail rights reserved THE MARQUIS OF ROCKINGHAM AND EDMUND BURKE. From an unfinished picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION BY D. A. WINSTANLEY, M.A. FELLOW AND LECTURER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE CAMBRIDGE: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1912 -^ ^ LIBRARY -P H UNIV] .MFORXIA W 5 PREFACE An apology, or at least a defence, is perhaps necessary for a work dealing with the struggle between the whig factions and the crown during a very limited period of George III.'s reign ; for the party politics of a bygone age, however great their interest for contemporaries, are apt to be somewhat lacking in life and reality for those who, living at a later date, and absorbed in the political controversies of their own day, are disposed to be somewhat impatient of the details of a conflict long since brought to a final conclusion. It is possible that few would deny that the establishment of the personal influence of the crown by George III. had vital consequences in English history ; but there are pro- bably many who would feel that a close analysis of the means adopted by that king to attain his end, of the circumstances which favoured or retarded his progress, was perhaps unnecessary, and most certainly tedious. It can hardly be hoped that the following pages will provide a refutation of either of these charges ; but the responsibility for the failure rests upon the workman and not upon his material. Many are the accusations which can be brought against the period which lies between the formation of Chatham's ministry in July 1766 and the collapse of the whig opposition to Lord North in the summer of 177 1 ; but it can scarcely be accused of lacking in either interest or importance. , Within those few years the destinies of the nation were determined and the work of the Revolution nullified. vi LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION Never before had the opponents of personal government been given such a favourable opportunity to thwart the execution of the royal schemes ; and yet they failed hopelessly. It was the king, and not the whigs, who triumphed ; and, as Lord Acton has said, " about the year 1770 things had been brought back, by indirect means, nearly to the condition which the Revolution had been designed to remedy." x The consequences which flowed from that royal victory are too well known to need particularisation ; and it would be generally allowed that the history of England might have read somewhat differently if Grafton had fallen before the onslaught of the whigs, or if North had failed at the outset of his ministerial career. A contest so momentous can hardly be without interest ; and, therefore, an attempt has been made to give both a record and an explanation of the failure of the whigs. For this purpose it has been necessary to concentrate the attention almost exclusively upon domestic politics, and to omit much well deserving of close consideration. Colonial history and foreign policy have been but very briefly touched upon ; and if an exception has been made in the case of the dispute with Spain over the Falkland Islands, this can be justi- fied by the influence which those negotiations exercised upon the parliamentary conflict. Such omissions, how- ever serious they might be in a work claiming to be a history of the period, may perhaps be pardoned in what is more than a study of one particular aspect of the time ; and it is to be hoped that if something has been lost in comprehensiveness, something has also been gained in lucidity. It may not be out of place to say a few words about some of the manuscript authorities that have been used, 1 Lord Acton's History of Freedom and Other Essays (1907), 54-55. PREFACE vii well known though they are to all students of the period. The Newcastle Papers in the British Museum are, of course, absolutely essential for any understanding of the politics of the early years of George III.'s reign ; and historians have reason sincerely to lament the duke's death in November, 1768. Though neither an infallible guide, nor free from personal prejudice, Newcastle, from his position as patriarch of the whig party, and from his intimacy with the leading politicians of his time, was the centre of many negotiations and intrigues ; and his correspondence reveals not a little of the inner history of the Rockingham party. The Hardwicke Papers, also to be found in the British Museum, though perhaps of less importance for this particular period, certainly cannot be neglected with safety, since they include many valuable reports of parliamentary debates, and much of vital interest. Neither the second Lord Hardwicke, nor his two brothers, Charles and John Yorke, apparently enjoyed the close confidence of the Rockingham whigs ; but as politicians, keenly alive to their family interests and to the critical character of the warfare going on before their eyes, they are able to tell us much that we are glad to know. Sufficiently detached to be able to criticise, and sufficiently in- terested to care to do so, their judgments are often sounder than those of the politicians more actively engaged in the struggle ; and as onlookers, who are proverbially reported to see more of the game, their opinions and impressions are deserving of careful study. Moreover, in the same collection are to be found the two accounts of the last days of Charles Yorke, compiled by Lord Hardwicke and Mrs Agneta Yorke ; and though these have already been used to very good purpose by Mr Basil Williams for a most interesting paper published in the Transactions of the Royal viii LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION Historical Society, it has been thought permissible to narrate again a story which must ever appeal to those who realise the tragedy of human life and the vanity of human ambition. Mention should also be made of the Wilkes Papers in the British Museum, and of the Pitt Papers in the Record Office. As might be expected, the correspond- ence of Wilkes throws little light upon the designs of the various parties ; and his fragment of autobiography is rather a revelation of his private character than of his political activity. The more important of the Pitt Papers have for many years been accessible in the published correspondence of the Earl of Chatham ; but it would be a mistake to imagine that what has not been printed is without value. The unpublished papers can be consulted with advantage and profit, and should not be disregarded. History, however, even the most imperfect repre- sentation of it, is never made from manuscripts alone ; and to the great historians of the eighteenth century a debt of gratitude is owing from all who have profited by their labours. Lastly, my thanks are in a special measure due to my friend, Dr Foakes-Jackson, of Jesus College, Cambridge, who was kind enough to read my manuscript, and bold enough to play the part of the friendly but candid critic. For his advice I am sincerely grateful, and I only regret that the volume is so little worthy of the care which he generously bestowed upon it. D. A. W. July 191 2 CONTENTS The Marquis of Rockingham and Edmund Burke Frontispiece PAGE Preface ....... v CHAP. I. The Formation of Chatham's Administration II. The Ministry on its Trial .... 64 III. The Rise and Fall of the Opposition . . 114 IV. The Resignation of Chatham . . .194 V. The Fall of Grafton ..... 242 VI. The United Opposition . . . .318 VII. The Downfall of the Opposition . . . 368 Index ....... 437 IX LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION 1766-1771 CHAPTER I THE FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION The fall of the first Rockingham ministry in July, 1766, brings to an end a well-defined period in the constitutional struggle of George III.'s reign. Barely six years had elapsed since the king had come to the throne, an untried and inexperienced boy, yet deter- mined to regain for the monarchy the influence which it had lost during the reigns of the first two Hanoverian monarchs. It was never his intention to bring about a revolution in the government or to trample under foot the privileges acquired by the nation in its con- test with the Stuarts ; but he firmly believed, and with some justice, that the politicians, who had driven James II. from the throne and excluded his son from the succession, had never intended to reduce the kingship to a condition of subservience. The con- stitution had developed on other lines than those laid down by the statesmen responsible for the Revolution settlement ; and the royal authority had been usurped by a narrow oligarchy which had taken advantage of a disputed succession and a foreign dynasty to acquire supremacy in the state. The whigs had triumphed over the family which they had placed 2 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION upon the throne ; and when George III. succeeded his grandfather, the royal power appeared to have reached the very nadir of its fortunes. With some bitterness, and no little truth, George II. had once declared that " ministers were kings in this country," and the cry was wrung from him by bitter experience. Towards the close of his reign he discovered that he was often obliged to take his advisers at the dictation of the house of commons, and to give the sanction of his name to a policy which he did not approve. As long as the ministers enjoyed the confidence of parliament they were able to prevail against the court ; and George II. found much food for thought in the contemplation of the difference between the theory and the practice of the English constitution. He informed Lord Waldegrave that " we were, indeed, a very extraordinary people, continually talking of our constitution, laws and liberty. That as to our constitution, he allowed it to be a good one, and defied any man to produce a single instance wherein he had exceeded his proper limits. That he never meant to screen or protect any servant who had done amiss ; but still he had a right to chuse those who were to serve him, though, at present, so far from having an option, he was not even allowed a negative." 1 It was left for George III. to undertake the task of avenging his grandfather, and to recover for the crown the authority of which it had been deprived. For this work he had been trained by his mother, the dowager Princess of Wales, and her friend and counsellor, Lord Bute. According to the constitu- tional doctrines, in which he had been reared, an English king, though obliged to rule in accordance 1 Lord Waldegrave's Memoirs (1821), pp. 132-133. FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION 3 with the national will, had never been intended to become the puppet of the party predominant in parliament. It was the duty of the sovereign to lead rather than to follow, and the functions of the house of commons were those of a guardian, not those of a dictator. It was for the king to choose his own advisers ; and it was incumbent upon parliament to support the ministers of the crown, unless they were guilty of a breach of the law or proved themselves so incompetent as to render their removal a matter of urgent necessity. George III. was not slow to imbibe these tenets, and ascended the throne with a fully formed determination to rescue the royal prerogative from the decay into which it had fallen. He was resolved to govern as well as to reign, and he had not been king many days before his advisers discovered that they were intended to be servants of the crown in something more than name. For the first time, since the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty, the supremacy of the whig party seemed in danger of destruction ; and when all men thought that the power of the crown had passed away, never to revive, the court once more became the spring and centre of political life. That there should be a reaction against the whig rule is not surprising. Possessed of the charm of youth, dignified in bearing, and graceful in manner, 1 George III. was more likely to be the subject of loyal adoration than his grandfather who had never suc- ceeded in winning the affection of the nation whose welfare, nevertheless, he sincerely sought. The first 1 " The young king," wrote Horace Walpole, " you may trust me, who am not apt to be enamoured with royalty, gives all the indication imaginable of being amiable. His person is tall and full of dignity ; his countenance florid and good-natured ; [his manner graceful and obliging." Walpole's Letters, 4, 449-452. 4 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION of his family to be born and bred in this country, the young king could claim to be an Englishman, if not by birth, at least by education ; and the nation, which had long been weary of the undisguised preference of its rulers for their German dominions, welcomed with enthusiasm a sovereign who was at least a master of the tongue of his subjects. The political value of the outburst of loyalty, which usually greets a new occupant of the throne, must not, however, be exaggerated ; and it is perhaps of greater moment that the king could count upon a certain measure of interested support for his design of restoring the royal preroga- tive. Recruits for the cause were likely to be forth- coming from those who, under the whig domination, had either been driven from office or forced to spend the best years of their lives in the wilderness of opposi- tion. Men of this type were ready enough to rally round the throne in hope of profit or revenge ; whilst there were not a few who, actuated by a purer motive, regarded the subservience of the crown to one political faction as a gross perversion of the English constitu- tion. The supremacy of the whig party had been too oppressive to pass unchallenged ; and Bolingbroke, by his famous pamphlet, " The Idea of a Patriot King," had prepared the way for George III. It is fashion- able to decry Bolingbroke's political philosophy, and to depict him as the baffled adventurer seeking to poison the sources of political life ; but in the argu- ments which he advanced, in the most famous of his works, there is more truth and cogency than has often been allowed. It is impossible to deny the justice of his denunciations of the political morality of the age ; and when he called upon the monarchy to rescue the country from the slough of corruption into which it had fallen, it was not with the intention of restoring FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION 5 the absolutism of the Stuarts, but of bringing about an alliance between the crown and the nation, in order to effect the downfall of an immoral system of govern- ment. An experienced controversialist and a most attractive writer, Bolingbroke was able to persuade by the lucidity of his argument and the grace of his style ; and when George III. came to the throne, men had been taught to expect salvation from the court, and were not surprised to find that their new ruler was disinclined to be content with that narrow sphere of influence to which his predecessor had been restricted. 1 Yet, when every allowance has been made for favouring circumstances, it remains true that George III.'s initial efforts were rewarded with a far greater degree of success than could possibly have been anticipated by the most optimistic partisans of the royal prerogative. Contemporaries were astonished at the ease with which the youthful sovereign over- came obstacles which had proved too formidable for his more experienced predecessor. His campaign against the whig oligarchy was naturally not un- chequered by disaster, and at times he found himself obliged to undergo humiliations which his grand- father had never known ; but this is a lot common to those who embark upon novel and dangerous ventures, and the checks which he encountered never caused him to waver in his purpose. His persistence was rewarded with victory. The famous coalition ministry of Pitt and Newcastle, which had raised England to a pinnacle of glory, not attained since the days when the genius of Marlborough had humbled 1 It is intimated," wrote Horace Walpole, three days after the death of George II., " that he means to employ the same ministers, but with reserve to himself of more authority than has lately been in fashion." Walpole's .Letters, 4, 444-447. 6 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION the pride of the proudest of French kings, fell before the first assaults of the boy upon the throne. A victory over such opponents, so early in the reign, could not but redound to the credit of the crown ; for Pitt was by far the most popular statesman of the day, and Newcastle enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for being one of the most successful of party managers. Thus it was against experienced veterans that the king gained his first triumph, and the attack had not been made merely to demonstrate the strength of the royal authority. From the day that he succeeded his grandfather, the king had intended that his favourite, the Earl of Bute, should be the first minister ; and when Newcastle was driven to resign in the spring of 1762, Bute was chosen to succeed him as first lord of the treasury. No more striking testimony could have been given to the new order inaugurated by George III. than the rapid rise of Lord Bute to high office in the state. Regarded as an alien by the whig oligarchy which had hitherto enjoyed a monopoly of power, distasteful, both as a Scotchman and a friend of the king, to a nation which has never loved its northern neighbours and has always been opposed to royal favourites, Bute rose to supremacy in the cabinet solely through the influence of the crown. He had few qualifica- tions for administrative office, being neither a ready debater nor a far-sighted statesman ; and although his political ability has been unduly depreciated, his warmest admirers have never contended that it was of such a character as to justify his meteoric rise to power. Conscious of his own defects, aware of his deficiencies in the art of managing men, he shrank from political responsibility ; and it is to his credit as a man, if not as a statesman, that it was only FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION 7 genuine, if mistaken, affection for the king, his master and pupil, that led him to essay a task for which he knew himself to be intellectually unfit. With but a scanty personal following in parliament, the mark for the hatred of the people who regarded him as a Scotch adventurer preying upon the wealth of England, Bute was emphatically the king's minister, solely dependent upon the royal favour. 1 In the reign of George II., Carteret, one of the ablest men in an age when the standard of ability was high, had been un- able to maintain himself in office, though warmly supported by the court ; but where George II. had failed, his youthful successor triumphed. The in- fluence of the crown proved sufficient to uphold Bute against attacks in parliament and the virulent on- slaught of the opposition press ; and he was able to conduct a difficult and tortuous negotiation with France, which resulted in the conclusion of peace with that country and the withdrawal of England from the Seven Years war. He has been, indeed, most adversely criticised for conceding, in his anxiety for peace, more favourable terms to France than the course of the war justified ; and not a few historians have been blinded, by their dislike of his policy, to the difficulties of the task which he accomplished. It may be that it might have been better for England if he had never taken office, but he at least succeeded in attaining the goal which he sought, in spite of obstacles which at times threatened to prove insuperable. Without any 1 As is well known, George III., on the very first day of his reign, offered to make Bute secretary of state ; and when, six months later, the royal favourite accepted that office, it was only with the very greatest reluctance. " Each fond wish of my heart," he informed the king, " crys out against this important change, but duty and gratitude condemns one to the trial. I make it then, but not without violent emotions and unpleasant forebodings." Add. MS., 36797, f. 47. 8 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION previous experience of administrative life, intensely unpopular with the nation, and often obliged to meet and overcome the attacks of his colleagues in the cabinet, Bute did not purchase his success cheaply ; but, if the conclusion of the Peace of Paris testifies to the perseverance of the servant, it equally bears witness to the influence of the master. Deprived of the favour and confidence of the crown, the minister would have quickly fallen a prey to his many enemies ; and when he retired in the spring of 1763, it was not because he was unable to command a majority in the house of commons, but because his work was done. He had taken office in order to extricate the country from an exhausting conflict, and, having attained his end, he laid down the distasteful burden of administration. His place at the treasury was taken by George Grenville who resembled him in the particular of being neither the choice of parliament nor of the nation, but of the king. Politicians, however, even when they sit on thrones, are often compelled to do what they can rather than what they would ; and it was not without serious misgivings that George III. had selected Grenville as Bute's successor. Tenacious of power, so lately acquired, the king was resolved not to fall back into the condition of servitude from which he had but just emerged ; and, from the moment that he took office, the new first minister discovered that he was expected to be obedient to the court which had created him. His freedom in the construction of his own cabinet was seriously restricted, and in Lord Shelburne he was given a colleague whom he profoundly distrusted and disliked. Moreover, there was a wide-spread, and by no means unfounded, belief that Bute, though he had retired from the ministry, FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION 9 intended to remain the confidential adviser of the crown ; and that, if Grenville was the actor on the stage, the favourite was the prompter in the wings. Unconsidered by the nation which regarded him as a pawn in the royal game, and obliged to depend in the house of commons upon a majority supplied him by the court, Grenville was provided with the trappings but denied the substance of power. Uninspired by that personal affection for the king, which had caused Bute to seek no greater happiness than the execution of his master's will, and disinclined by disposition to adopt a deferential or even a conciliatory attitude, he was ill-adapted to acquiesce in a condition of gilded servitude ; and it is not surprising that friction soon arose between the crown and the minister. If he had incurred the royal hostility by espousing a popular cause, much would have been forgiven him, and he might have come down in history surrounded with the glory given to those who fail in a noble endeavour ; but, unfortunately for his good fame, Grenville was almost as objectionable to the nation as he was to the king. It had once been his wish to become Speaker of the house of commons, and it was in an evil moment for his reputation that he consented to forswear his ambition. Few men were more deeply versed in parliamentary law or more punctual and methodical in the despatch of business ; but the very qualities, which would have enabled him to preside with dis- tinction over the debates of the lower house, mili- tated against his success as a statesman. Stiff and unbending in demeanour, a tedious debater, afflicted with a pedantry which encouraged him to regard precedent and law as above reason and good sense, and lavishing upon details a wealth of care and atten- tion which rendered him oblivious to wider and more 10 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION important issues, Grenville was not fitted to be the ruler of a great country, and could never hope to acquire the approval of either the king or the nation. 1 No sooner had he taken office than his fall was pro- phesied ; and, if he continued in power for more than two years, it was not by reason of his parliamentary strength or his popularity with the country, but on account of the difficulty experienced by the king in finding a suitable successor. Grenville was, indeed, intolerable, but he was not dangerous ; and George III. preferred to endure discomfort rather than run the risk of diminishing his recently acquired authority. Thus, though saddled with a servant of whom he would have willingly been rid, the king could legitimately boast of the success he had achieved. It was now abundantly clear that, whereas in the past ministers had been able to coerce the court, they were now its dependents. The centre of power had been shifted from the cabinet to the palace ; and the change had been effected largely by an adroit and systematic use of the royal patronage. It is difficult to exaggerate the extent of the resources of bribery and corruption which remained to the crown in the eighteenth century, or the frankness with which politicians of the time were wont to demand a more substantial reward for their services than the grati- tude of the country. It was not only that the episcopal bench was crowded with men who had earned promotion by services not strictly ecclesiastical, and that many a skilful time-server was rewarded by a place among the peers of England : there were numberless posts at court which constantly brought 1 Dr Johnson, with his usual sturdy common sense, remarked of Grenville that " he had powers not universally possessed : could he have enforced pay- ment of the Manilla ransom, he could have counted it." FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION 11 their holders into close contact with the fount of bounty, and innumerable sinecure places which, once secured, dispensed their happy possessors from the necessity of earning an honest livelihood. Nor was it only by places and offices that adherents in parliament could be purchased : men, who would have been seriously offended if their honesty had been impugned, thought nothing of accepting a money bribe for a vote given in parliament ; and it was not infrequent for a ministry, when closely pressed, to purchase a majority in hard cash. 1 Nor was this torrent of corruption confined within the walls of parliament ; for elections were flagrantly and openly corrupt. A certain proportion of the members of the lower house sat for treasury boroughs, so called because they always elected the nominees of the government ; and in Cornwall, which returned forty- four representatives, and was notorious for electioneer- ing corruption, the influence of the crown was par- ticularly strong. By the end of the century nearly half the members of the house of commons were appointed by private patrons, 2 and borough owners were accustomed to treat their right of nomination as a species of property, saleable to the highest bidder. Thus it was not difficult for George III., if he was prepared to soil his hands by participation in a dis- gusting business, to secure a house of commons obedient to his will. He had but to proclaim that the avenue of promotion was obedience to the court, to dispense the royal patronage amongst those who 1 Thus when during Walpole's administration a proposal was made to settle an income of one hundred thousand pounds upon Frederick, Prince of Wales, it was reported that more money was expended to defeat the motion than "would have answered the demand made for the prince." Hist. MSS. Comm. Carlisle MSS., pp. 178, 179. 2 Porritt's The Unreformed House of Commons, i. 310, 311. 12 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION distinguished themselves by their readiness to support the crown, to traffic in boroughs like a huckster, and to dispense the secret service fund himself instead of allowing it to be manipulated by his ministers, and the eager crew of placemen would quickly rally round the monarchy. Neither genius nor statesmanship was required for the formation of a parliamentary party pledged to support any administration as long as it was approved at court ; and the cause for surprise is not that a youth upon the throne should have been able with so little difficulty to attain his end, but that his predecessors should have permitted such a sensible declension in the royal authority. The riddle, however, is not difficult of solution. Both George II. and his father were too little acquainted with English politics and too much attached to their German dominions, to play an active part in what was styled the management of the house of commons. Driven by fear of the tories, whom they suspected of sympathising with the exiled Stuarts, to give their confidence to one political party, the first two kings of the Hanoverian line, in order to safeguard them- selves against the Jacobites, undermined the founda- tions of their own authority ; and it was left for George II. to discover that the whigs had used the confidence of the crown to establish a hold upon parliament and secure themselves against the attacks of either the court or the nation. Permitted by the king to dispense the royal patronage, to purchase rotten boroughs, and to buy votes in parliament, the whig ministers had quickly overshadowed the mon- archy. Rapacious placemen, intent upon nothing but to keep what they had got, and to acquire more if they could, quickly perceived the drift of events and followed the ministry and not the king ; and George II., FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION 13 at the close of his reign, was mortified to find that he had sold himself into slavery to a few whig nobles who ruled the country in his name. The most successful of these whig leaders, who had thus reduced the monarchy to subjection, was, undoubtedly, Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of New- castle. An important territorial magnate, descended through his father from an ancient Sussex family, and through his mother from the Earls of Clare, New- castle was born to a great political position, and, espousing the whig cause, quickly rose to high office in the state. Few English statesmen have enjoyed a more prolonged or less interrupted tenure of political power ; but with posterity he has paid dearly enough for his success, his name having become a byword for inefficient administration and wholesale corruption. Historians have depicted him in graphic language as little better than a dotard who, by dint of a certain low cunning and great wealth, rose to political eminence ; and his contemporaries never wearied of enlarging upon his lack of dignity, his childish inconsequence, his colossal ignorance, and his absurd jealousies. No one would assert that he was in any way a great statesman or deny his many serious limitations. He was often unduly suspicious of his closest and most trusted friends, and was wont to take offence at imaginary slights ; but the greatest statesmen are not without shortcomings, and Newcastle has suffered from being judged by whig historians who have chosen to consider him a disgrace to their party. His incapacity as an administrator has probably been exaggerated, and his unremitting industry, in the discharge of what he believed to be the business of the state, has not received the recognition it deserves. Nor was he without a certain measure of 14 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION political insight. Long before Burke had preached the necessity of a party system, Newcastle had prac- tised the same doctrine, devoting all his energy to the formation of a strong personal following in both houses of parliament. He understood, far better than many of his contemporaries, that the natural outcome of the Revolution settlement was the dependence of ministers upon parliament rather than upon the crown, and he acted accordingly. He realised that systematic organisation was the secret of political success, and that, unless ministers were able to count with confidence upon the support of the house of commons, they would inevitably tend to fall into submission to the court. Such was his contribution to the practical philosophy of politics ; and, if not the first, he was by far the most successful of party managers. No man was more alive to the value of the loaves and fishes of public life ; and he dispensed them with a lavish, though discriminating, hand. Possessed of estates in nine counties, and the owner of nearly the whole of Nottinghamshire, he was able to control elections over the length and breadth of England ; and few men were more adept in the art of borough-mongering or more eager and persistent in the purchase of adherents. 1 The episcopal bench was crowded with his nominees, 2 and, very often, a wealthy peer and a humble exciseman found themselves strangely connected by a common bond of obligation 1 For a most interesting account of the Duke of Newcastle's electioneering methods see an article by Mr Basil Williams in the English Historical Review, entitled " The Duke of Newcastle and the Election of 1734." Vol. xii. pp. 448 ff. 2 At his first levee, after his fall from office in 1762, only one bishop was present, though in the days of his greatness they had been conspicuous by the regularity of their attendance. When this marked abstention was pointed out to Newcastle, he wittily declared that " bishops, like other men, are apt to forget their Maker." FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION 15 to the great whig duke. In return for what he gave, he only asked that the recipients of his bounty should answer to the call of the party and support him in parliament ; and the politicians of the day were not averse to enriching themselves upon such easy terms. Nor was Newcastle left unrewarded for his prescience and industry, for both George II. and William Pitt had occasion to regret the unbounded influence which the duke had been allowed to acquire over the repre- sentatives of the nation. Yet, impressive as was the edifice which Newcastle had reared, its foundations were of sand. He had gained a parliamentary following, not by the ability of his statesmanship or the force of his personality, but by bribery and corruption ; and was not so much the leader of a party as the captain of a band of mer- cenaries. His followers had no common belief, no common political principles, and if they remained faith- ful to him, it was because they hoped to profit by their loyalty. Deprived of the right of dispensing the royal patronage, Newcastle would, indeed, be a shorn Samson ; and no sooner had George III. ascended the throne than the duke discovered the insecurity of the founda- tions upon which his power rested. The placemen, who had fawned upon him in the days of his greatness, now turned to the court, and were as eager to follow the king as they had been in the past to follow the minister. Parliament, which remained as corrupt as before, was now tied by gold chains about the throne ; and, under normal conditions, the king had no call to fear the opposition of the house of commons. To excuse the change, that had thus been effected, there was much talk of the usurpation of oligarchy, and of the king's right to remunerate his servants ; but the phrases of courtiers and political philosophers were 16 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION but a scanty veil to conceal the substantial truth that there had been something little short of a con- stitutional revolution, the significance of which could not be measured by the ease with which it had been effected. No longer could parliament be considered an effective check upon the despotic tendencies of the crown, since the astute policy of George III. had rendered the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement, which had been framed with the intention of sub- jecting the monarchy to the national will, almost constitutionally valueless. Parliament, which had previously been the puppet of the whig nobility, now became the slave of the court. By preying upon the weakness of mankind, and cynically indifferent to the morality of public life, George III. had conquered where better and more scrupulous men might have failed ; and, though he may be guiltless of the remark, with which he is credited, that " we must call in bad men to govern bad men," the epigram is a true de- scription of his contribution to the art of government. He had defeated Newcastle with his own weapons, the boasted strength of the whig party had crumbled away into dust ; and the royal authority, no longer obscured by the clouds of faction, shone forth in undiminished splendour. Yet, all men were not blind or indifferent to the policy pursued by the court, and if many were regard- less of what was happening or only thought to make use of it to promote their own interests, there was one at least who understood that the constitution was confronted by a danger as great as any as had threatened to overwhelm it in the previous century. It was he who had suffered most by the change. Though defeated, Newcastle remained true to the principles he had professed when in power ; and, in FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION IT opposition, as in place, constituted himself the champion of the party system so deftly attacked by the court. Though it was loudly and repeatedly proclaimed that the country would never know good government until ministers were selected, not on account of their political connections or their following in parliament, but by reason of their capacity for administration, Newcastle was content to adhere to the doctrines which he had learnt in his youth, and practised with so much effect ; and no sooner had he been driven from office than he set to work to form an opposition party to the court, recruiting his followers from the scanty few who were not prepared to sacrifice every conviction on the altar of their own advancement. This little band, which came to be known by the name of the Rockingham whigs, but of which Newcastle was the founder, fought for a constitutional principle which seemed in the way of becoming obsolete. Instead of administrations, lacking in unity, composed of men of widely different political opinions and un- accustomed to work together, Newcastle and his supporters believed that a really efficient government should be representative of one party in the state, and dependent, not upon the crown, but upon its own adherents in parliament. It is true that their con- ception of a political party was far narrower and more oligarchic than would be tolerated at the present day, and, though willing enough to have the nation on their side, they had little thought of widening the confined aristocratic circle in which they habitually moved ; but it should be remembered that this tend- ency to exclusiveness was in accordance with con- temporary opinion which regarded government as an essentially aristocratic art, and that the vices incidental to oligarchy were blended with real political virtues. 18 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION If they can be accused of attempting to wrest power from the crown in order to acquire it for themselves, it ought not to be forgotten that they were contending for a system of government which has become an essential element of parliamentary life. In an age when open war was declared upon the party system, they defended it ; and their efforts have received scanty recognition. It is too often overlooked that if George III. was fighting for a principle, so were his opponents. It was a clash of differing and opposite constitutional ideals, a new phase of the old struggle between the monarchy and the nation. The contest may be said to have begun in the autumn of 1762, when the preliminaries of peace with France were submitted to parliament and were at- tacked by Newcastle's recently formed opposition party. The challenge, thus thrown down, was quickly taken up by the court, and the men, who had dared ] to oppose the peace which Bute and the king approved, were punished for their audacity. Newcastle was deprived of his lord lieutenancies, and a political persecution set on foot, expressly designed to stifle the opposition in its birth. The exercise of the parlia- mentary function of criticism was treated as a traitor- ous insurrection against the crown ; and the persecu- tion, which would have been sufficiently iniquitous if confined to those who had taken an active part in opposing the peace, was rendered additionally shame- ful by being extended to humble dependents of the great whig leaders. Neither great nor small were spared, and holders of small places under government were driven from their employments for no other offence than that they had received their preferment from the men who had dared to rebel against the court. Yet the politicians, who had had the courage FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION 19 to embark upon such a dangerous enterprise, were not to be turned aside by the first disaster ; and for three years Newcastle marshalled, if he did not lead, the forces of opposition to the crown. His allies, though numerically insignificant, were worthy of the cause they had espoused, for among them are to be found some of the most honourable and distinguished statesmen of the day. William Cavendish, fourth Duke of Devonshire, and Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke, had both played for many years a leading part in the world of politics, and it was no slight blow to George III. that they refused to abjure their prin- ciples and enlist under his banner. But, valuable as their services might have been to the opposition in the constitutional struggle, for Devonshire was deservedly renowned for his probity, and Hardwicke justly famous for his extensive legal learning, it was hardly likely, seeing that they were both well advanced in years when George III. ascended the throne, that they would long be able to endure the heat and burden of the battle. Both were taken by death in the year 1764, and the loss, though great, was not unexpected. The future of the party lay with its younger members and its more recent recruits, with those who had never known the whig cause in the days of its greatness, but were prepared to fight for it in the hour of dis- aster. Youth is the season of heroic opposition and high endeavour, and it is not surprising that many young nobles, removed by their wealth and their social position from the temptation of succumbing to the insiduous influence of the crown, elected to join Newcastle in his arduous campaign. The most important and influential of these allies were the Duke of Grafton and the Marquis of Rocking- ham. Grafton, very largely because at a later date 20 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION he was unfortunate enough to incur the vitriolic hatred of Junius, has acquired an evil reputation both as a man and as a politician. As generally depicted, the licentiousness of his private life was only exceeded by his incapacity as a statesman ; and his most partial critics would hardly deity that his defects were many and conspicuous. Yet, at the beginning of his career, he seemed likely to win a name for disinterested patriotism and purity of motive. Careless of the favour of the court, placing his principles above his own advantage, he enlisted under Newcastle's banner, and embarked upon a course of opposition ; but time was to prove him lacking in stability of purpose, and the hopes, which had been based upon his early achievements, were never to find fulfilment. If some- thing far better than the abandoned voluptuary and tyrannical debauchee represented by Junius, his career as a statesman gave sufficient colour to the bitterest charges to render them plausible. Ill-fitted for public life, and condemned to pass through a fiery ordeal which would have taxed the virtue of far better men, Grafton suffered the fate of those who shoulder a burden too heavy for them to bear. Cursed by such anxiety to please as to prefer to do wrong rather than give offence, furnished with few settled convictions, and, though anxious to do his duty, not sufficiently clear sighted to recognise where the path of duty lay, he became a piece of wreckage upon the waste of waters, a prey to the winds and waves of time. He passes down to the political hell by the road of good intentions, and the tragedy of his fall is rendered all the greater by the promise of his beginning. A happier fate befell the young Marquis of Rock- ingham who ultimately became the leader of the party which Newcastle had created. Like Grafton, FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION 21 Rockingham shared many of the tastes of the young aristocrat of the period, and was wont to be at New- market when he ought to have been at the house of lords ; but, though sometimes inattentive to business, he never wavered in his adherence to the whig cause, and was content to spend the greater part of his life in leading a forlorn hope. Wealthy, and acquiring no little distinction from being the only marquis in the English peerage, Rockingham's rise to political eminence was much assisted by his birth and affluence ; but it would be a serious error to dismiss him as an aristocratic dilettante in public life. With every temptation to spend the useless and often vicious life of the fashionable young man of his day, he fought the good fight against the crown, and carried on the work which Newcastle had begun. Scorning the meaner side of public life, so attractive to many of his contemporaries, sincerely desirous of promoting the welfare of the country, and conscientiously convinced of the truth of the constitutional ideals for which he fought, there is much to admire in his career ; but the charm of his private life, and the many attractive traits in his character, cannot obscure the truth that he had many defects as a statesman, and was but ill- fitted to accomplish the task which he had so heroically undertaken. He was not cast by nature to endure the heat and burden of a constitutional struggle, and, in a more democratic age, it is unlikely that he would have ever emerged from comparative political ob- scurity. Shy, and of a retiring disposition, rarely taking part in debate, and always reluctant to stand in the fore of the battle, Rockingham could win re- spect, but was unable to inspire either fear or admira- tion. The courage, which steeled him to persevere in a seemingly hopeless contest, was not always united 22 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION with the wisdom to select the best mode of attack , or the insight which would have enabled him to see the weak points in his adversary's armour. Though in much superior to Newcastle, he was infinitely be- neath him as a party manager ; and when the old duke died in 1768, the whig party suffered a greater loss than has often been admitted. Youth is not inclined to overrate the value of the experience of age ; and, like many a young man, Rockingham was disposed to minimise the dangers which beset his path, and was, therefore, consequently sometimes guilty of serious blunders and tactical mistakes. His greatest admirers have been forced to allow that as a leader he was often singularly ineffective ; and that, though the end at which he aimed was generally right, the methods he pursued were sometimes open to criticism. Nor were his political associates of such eminence as to compensate for the shortcomings of their leader. The Duke of Portland, Sir William Meredith, Sir George Savile, and William Dowdeswell never emerged from the second rank of politicians in which nature had placed them ; and, if in Edmund Burke the party was given a genius of the first order, that great Irish- man did not take his seat in parliament until the year 1766, and was too accustomed to dwell in the altitudes of the intellect to be really successful in the rude warfare of parliamentary life. Thus the opposition, though numbering many bearers of distinguished names, and including much virtue and gallantry in its midst, was not over rich in political sagacity ; and could ill afford to lose the wise counsels of a Hardwicke or a Devonshire. Yet for three years it maintained the parliamentary struggle against Bute and Grenville, championing causes which it hoped would prove popular, and seeking to defend FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION 23 the interests of the nation against a house of commons which had sold itself to the court. The preliminaries of peace with France, the cyder tax, and the use of general warrants were attacked, while Wilkes, that rather sordid champion of freedom, was defended by men who had nothing in common with him save hostility to the personal influence of the crown. Yet the reward of all these efforts was failure, and by the summer of 1765 the party of opposition was weaker than it had ever been before. Defeat following upon defeat had extinguished hope, and even Newcastle gave way to despair, and retired for a short time from the fray. The ranks of the party had been thinned by death and by the desertion which is the inevitable accompaniment of a failing cause, and Charles Towns- hend was probably not the only member of the band to reflect that " he was a younger brother, and if nothing was to be made out of opposition, or no active measures pursued, he would lie by this summer, and consider himself at liberty to take what part would be most convenient to him." x The causes of the failure are not far to seek. As long as bribery and corruption continued, as long as boroughs were bought and sold, and parliament was crowded with placemen who could be deprived of their livelihood at the royal will, an opposition party was at a very serious disadvantage. Allowing for the political morality of the day, it is little wonder that the bribes and offices, dispensed by the court, proved too tempting for the easy virtue of men who regarded a political career as an easy and expeditious way of filling pockets emptied at Arthur's or White's ; and, although reason and good sense were more often than not to be found on the side of the enemies of the crown, 1 Add. MS., 35361, f. 95- 24 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION the government had little cause to fear the force of argument as long as it could count with confidence upon the support of the solid phalanx of placemen. Yet, true as it is that Newcastle and his followers were fighting with weapons of straw against arms of iron, to attribute the success of the ministry solely to the power of the purse, would be to fall into the mistake of explaining by a single cause an event which, indeed, had several. Due account must be taken of the often neglected fact that a systematic opposition to the administration was an irregular and novel feature of the constitutional life of the period. Political traditions die hard, and it was still very generally held that it was in accordance with the best interests of the nation to promote, rather than to hinder, the task of government. To thwart the ministers at every turn, to oppose their measures for no better reason than that they proposed them, to subject them to an incessant shower of criticism, was regarded as playing into the hands of the enemies of England, and as a blameworthy indulgence in that spirit of faction which renders all good government impossible. Thus those who attacked the court in the early years of the reign of George III. endured all the disabilities attach- ing to constitutional pioneers. The cause for which they fought was destined ultimately to triumph, and an opposition party was to become an indispensable element in the parliamentary life of the country ; but they were not to reap the fruits of their labours, and were compelled to endure the burden of mis- representation. Though fully aware of the difficulties of the path which they had elected to tread, the whig leaders had not been without hope that victory might yet be theirs. Recent history had shown that it was some- FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION 25 times possible for the opposition to carry the day against the court and the ministry. Sir Robert Wal- pole who, whatever his faults as a politician, cannot be charged with timidity, had been obliged to abandon the excise bill on account of the parliamentary attack upon it, and had been induced by the popular outcry to make war upon Spain against his will and his own better judgment. Moreover, the same opponents, who had induced him to abandon his much cherished policy of peace, succeeded, a few years later, in driving him from office by depriving him of his majority in the house of commons. Historians, rightly impressed by Walpole's sagacity and the recklessness of the opposition party, have dwelt too much upon the enlightened policy of the minister and too little upon the insight of his enemies. Carteret and Pulteney, Walpole's leading adversaries, conquered because they deserved to conquer ; and, though their cause was evil, their skill was great. Understanding the con- ditions under which the game of politics was played in their day, aware that it was hopeless to expect to prevail by force of argument in a parliament which had sold itself to the government, they had sought to champion causes likely to be popular with the country, and to appeal from an unrepresentative house of commons to the nation at large. Caring little for truth, only anxious to create a public opinion antagonistic to the administration, they used the press to spread their own opinions and to misrepresent those of the ministers. They succeeded in working the country up into a frenzied state of excitement over the excise bill which was represented as an insidious attack upon the cherished liberties of Englishmen, and they did not a little to spread the cry for war with Spain throughout the land. For so doing they 26 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION may, indeed, be justly blamed, but it would be unfair to deny that they were wise in their generation. If they can be accused of being regardless of the true interests of the country, and of playing, for their own selfish purposes, upon the ignorance of the mob, they at least paid homage to the force of public opinion, and encouraged the belief that the nation is the ultimate court of appeal. They saw that when popular excite- ment ran high and the conviction spread that the ministers were guilty of inefficiency, if not of something worse, the political system of the day, based as it was on the maxim that all men were to be bought, was apt to suffer a complete collapse. Members of parlia- ment, for once with the fear of their constituents before their eyes, would refuse to sell their votes to an un- popular government, and the opposition party, with an infuriated country behind it, would rise at a bound from insignificance to power. Public opinion was a rare and intermittent force in the politics of the eigh- teenth century, but its existence is testified by the fall of Walpole in 1742, and Newcastle's similar fate fourteen years later. It may well be asked why public opinion did not come to the aid of the whigs in their contest with George III., for it would be generally admitted that they were far more deserving of such assistance than Walpole's opponents. It is certain that, in the early years of the reign at least, they advocated a policy more in accordance with the wishes of the people than the measures pursued by the king and his advisers. The peace, which they opposed, was intensely disliked by the populace who believed that a golden opportunity had been missed of crushing for ever England's tra- ditional enemy ; and Wilkes, whom the opposition vainly sought to defend against the animosity of FORMATION OF CHATHAM'S ADMINISTRATION 27 George III. and Grenville, was the object of a popular admiration which he was too adroit not to use and too clever not to despise. Moreover, the cyder tax threatened to rival the excise bill in the outcry which it evoked ; and yet, in spite of these many advantages, Newcastle and his friends signally failed to win the country to their side. The applause and affection of the people were given, not to them, but to William Pitt who consistently declined to throw in his lot with the party, with which he had much in common, and which sorely needed his help. Few statesmen have stood higher in popular favour than William Pitt at the accession of George III. ; and that he fully deserved the almost unique position he had won in the affections of his people is shown by the agreement between the judgment of con- temporaries and the verdict of history. That shrewd, if cynical, critic of mankind, Frederick the Great, is reported to have said that England had been long in travail but had at last brought forth a man ; and the remark aptly sums up the impression created by the appearance of Pitt upon the stage of European and domestic politics. In an age when public life was marred by rapacity and self-seeking, when ideals had vanished, and enthusiasm was decried, Pitt arose to breathe a new spirit into a nation dying of inanition. His greatest achievement was not the conquest of the new world, but the regeneration of England from a cynical indifference to every true and inspiring im- pulse. He has been well termed the Wesley of the political world, and if his burning sense of patriotism, more akin to ancient than to modern times, was sometimes tinged with the spirit of conquest, if he was often overbearing towards his colleagues, and lacking in sympathy for those who were not in entire 28 LORD CHATHAM AND THE WHIG OPPOSITION agreement with him, these faults may be forgiven to one who did so much for the country whose interests he always had at heart. At the moment of peril, when England, just entering upon a war with France, seemed likely to succumb to her ancient enemy, Pitt, taking upon himself the burden of government, in- fused an energy and zeal into the administration, astonishing to a people who had come to expect any- thing of its rulers except enthusiasm and efficiency. Brooking no opposition, dominating alike the cabinet and the house of commons, and intent upon the overthrow of that Bourbon power which barred the road to English supremacy in the New World and the East, Pitt, by the activity and enterprise with which he carried on a world-waged conflict, gained for himself the admiration of every English patriot and