See Perry's Hist. of the Church of England , ii. 445. Buckle, in his otherwise admirable sketch of the foundation of the Royal Society, has, I think, overstated the amount of clerical opposition it encountered. Hist. of Civilisation , i. 341.
He writes to the Princess of Wales: ‘Mr. Newton prétend qu'un corps attire l'autre à quelque distance que ce soit, et qu'un grain de sable chez nous exerce une force attractive jusques sur le soleil sans aucun milieu ni moyen. Aprés cela comment ses sectateurs voudront-ils nier que par la toute-puissance de Dieu nous pouvons avoir participation du corps et du sang de Jésus-Christ sans aucun empêchement des distances? C'est un bon moyen de les embarrasser—des gens qui par un esprit d'animosité contre la Maison d'Hanovre, s'émancipent maintenant plus que jamais de parler contre nostre religion de la Confession d'Augsburg, comme si notre Réalité Eucharistique étoit absurde.’—Kemble's State Papers , p. 529.
See Whiston's Memoirs , i. 93.
See Alciphron , 6th dialogue.
‘That there should be more species of intelligent creatures above us than there are of sensible and material below us, is probable to me from hence, that in all the visible corporeal world we see no chasms or gaps. All quite down from us the descent is by easy steps, and a continued series of things that in each remove differ very little one from the other. There are fishes that have wings. … There are some birds that are inhabitants of the water, whose blood is cold as fishes, and their flesh is so like in taste that the scrupulous are allowed them on fish days. There are animals so near of kin both to birds and beasts, that they are in the middle between both; amphibious animals link the terrestrial and aquatic together. Seals live at land and at sea, and porpoises have the warm blood and entrails of a hog, not to mention what is confidently reported of mermaids or sea men. There are some brutes that seem to have as much knowledge and reason as some that are called men; and the animal and vegetable kingdoms are so nearly joined that if you will take the lowest of one and the highest of the other, there will scarce be perceived any great difference between them; and so on till we come to the lowest and most inorganical parts of matter, we shall find everywhere that the several species are linked together, and differ but in almost insensible degrees.’—Locke, On the Understanding , bk. iii. c. 6. See, too, the Spectator , No. 519.
See his Charge to the Clergy of Middlesex in 1731.
‘Have you not for many years together heard the clergy preach up the Divine right and indefeasible authority of kings, together with passive obedience, as the chief distinguishing doctrines whereby their church approved itself apostolic beyond all churches? Nay, were not the doctrines of loyalty to the king insisted upon more than faith in Christ? And yet, when their particular interest required it, their doctrine of non-resistance was qualified by non-assistance—the whole stream of loyalty was turned from the king to the Church; the indefeasible right was superseded by a miraculous conquest without blood; the oath of allegiance to the Divinely rightful King James has its force allayed by another oath of the same importance to the de facto King William.’— An Account of the Growth of Deism in England (1696), p. 8. On the many rationalistic explanations of miracles that were current see Hickes' Prefatory Discourse in Answer to the Rights of the Christian Church.
See Martin Sherlock, Lettres d'un voyageur Anglois (1779), Lettre xxii
I do not think that anyone who has mastered the general tenor of his political writings, will question that Swift expressed his deliberate opinion in the following passage. ‘He [the King of Brobdingnag] laughed at my odd kind of arithmetic, as he was pleased to call it, in reckoning the numbers of our people by a computation drawn from the several sects among us in religion and politics. He said he knew no reason why those who entertain opinions prejudicial to the public should be obliged to change or should not be obliged to conceal them. And as it was tyranny in any Government to require the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second; for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet but not to vend them about for cordials.’— Gulliver's Travels.
Charge delivered to the Clergy in the Diocese of Durham (1751).
Freeholder , No. 37.
Parl. Hist. xiv. 1389.
Notes sur l'Angleterre. He elsewhere says: ‘Je passe en France pour avoir peu de religion; en Angleterre pour en avoir trop.’— Pensées Diverses
Hoadly's Life of Clarke.
Essay on Epic Poetry.
Harleian Miscellany , ii. 19–24.
See Gibson's Codex , i. 240; and Lord Dartmouth's note in Burnet's Own Times , ii. 101.
5 & 6 William and Mary, c. 2.
Wilson's Life of Defoe , i. 300.
Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors , v. 409.
Watson's Anecdotes of his Life , ii. 113. Nichols says of a Mr. Goadby who died in 1808, that he lived to be shocked by the rattling of stage coaches on Sunday, ‘which when he was a young man was in this country devoted to rest and public worship.’—Nichols' Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century iii. 434. See, too, Andrews' Eighteenth Century , p. 165.
Walpole's Memoirs of George II. ii. 100,318. Stanhope's Hist. of England , iv. 89.
Walpole's Memoirs of George II. iii. 98.
Leland's View of the Deistical Writers , ii. 442.
Secker's Sermons. Works , i. 114, 115.
See Spectator , Nos. 53, 460, 630. Tatler , 140.
Stanhope's Hist. of England , vii. 320.
Rambler , 30; World , 179; Connoisseur , 109.
Burney's Hist. of Music , iv. 671.
Horace Walpole's Letters , ii. 147. Whiston's Memoirs , ii. 172. Bishop Newton's Life, Works , i. 108, 109.
Autobiography. See, too, for a very similar description of Oxford life in 1762–1765, The Correspondence of the first Earl of Malmesbury , i. p. ix.
Wealth of Nations , bk. v. ch. 1.
See on this subject the remarks of Sir C. Lewis, On Authority in Matters of Opinion , ch. ix.
Chesterfield's ‘Letters to Madden.’ Miscellaneous Works , iv. 100.
Tyerman's Life of Wesley , i. 66.
Monk's Life of Bentley , ii. 391–395.
Waterland says: ‘The controversy about the Trinity is now spread abroad among all ranks and degrees of men with us, and the Athanasian Creed become the subject of common and ordinary conversation.’—Introduction to the Hist. of the Athanasian Creed. Lady Cowper gives an amusing account of the vehemence of the discussion in Court circles. Diary , pp. 17–19. See, too, Buckle's Hist. of Civilisation , i. 389, 390.
Debarry's Hist. of the Church of England , pp. 458–460.
Bishop Clayton's speech has been reprinted, and much curious information collected about the bishop and his contemporaries, in a pamphlet called Bishop Clayton on the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds , by a Vicar of the Church of Ireland (Dublin, 1876).
Calamy's Life , ii. 404–417. Wilson's Hist. of the Dissenting Churches. Bogue and Bennett's Hist. of the Dissenters , ii. 168–178.
Burton's Hist. of Scotland since the Revolution , ii. 314–335.
See Reid's Hist. of the Irish Presbyterians , v. 111. Porter's Life of Cooke , pp. 37–41. When a young man, Hutcheson once occupied his father's pulpit, and his latitudinarianism is said to have driven the rigid congregation from the meeting-house. ‘Your silly son Frank,’ said one of the olders to his father, ‘has fashed a’ the congregation wi’ his idle cackle; for he has been babbling this oor aboot a gude and benevolent God, and that the souls of the heathen themsels will gang to heaven if they follow the licht of their ain consciences. Not a word does the daft boy ken, speer nor say aboot the gude, comfortable doctrines of election, reprobation, original sin, and faith, Hoot man, awa wi sic a fellow.’ Reid, iii. 406.
Calamy's Life , ii. 404.
Hist. of Ireland in the Eighteenth Céntury , i. 437.
See on this controversy, Hist. of England in the Eighteenth Century , i. 312, 313.
Walpole's Last Journals , i. 8–12.
Whiston's Memoirs , i. 162.
‘These slumberers in stalls suspect one very unjustly of ill designs against their peace, for though there are many things in the Church that I wholly dislike, yet whilst I am content to acquiesce in the ill, I should be glad to taste a little of the good, and to have some amends for that ugly assent and consent which no man of sense can approve of. We read of some of the earliest disciples of Christ who followed him, not for his works, but his loaves. These are certainly blameable because they saw his miracles, but to us who had not the happiness to see the one, it may be allowable to have some inclination to the other. Your Lordship knows a certain prelate who, with a very low notion of the Church's sacred bread, has a very high relish for, and a very large share of the temporal. My appetite for each is equally moderate, and would be satisfied almost with anything but mere emptiness. I have no pretensions to riot in the feast of the elect, but with the sinner in the Gospel to gather up the crumbs that fall from the table.’—To Lord Hervey. Nichols' Literary Anecdotes , v. 421, 422.
Burton's Life of Hume , ii. 187, 188.
In the Gentleman's Magazine , May 1780, there is a catalogue of the writers in the controversies occasioned by the publication of the Confessional , and by the presentation of the clerical petition in 1772. It comprises seventynine names. See, too, on this subject Belsham's Life of Lindsey; Whiston's Memoirs; Doddridge's Diary , vol. v.; Lindsey's Historical View.
Guardian, No. 105.
Secretan's Life of Nelson, pp. 118–122. See, too, Wilson's Life of Defoe, i. 298, and Tyerman's Life of Wesley, i. 63.
Ninety-six grammar schools were founded in England from 1684 to 1727. Of endowed schools for the poor there were seventy distinct foundations established in London and its immediate vicinity during the same period, besides great numbers in other parts of the country.—Routledge's Hist. of Popular Progress, pp. 53, 54.
The history of the societies may be gathered from Secretan's Life of Nelson; An Account of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners in London and Westminster (1699), and many pamphlets and anniversary sermons connected with them. A curious letter from Thomas Burnet to the Electress Sophia, describing Dr. Horneck, will be found in Kemble's State Papers. pp. 191–196.
Conclusion of the Serious Call. See, too, Tighe's Life of Law ; Overton's William Law . There is an admirable analysis of the works of Law in Mr. Leslie Stephen's very valuable Hist. of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century.
Wesley's Journals, his Thoughts on Methodism and his Hist. of the People called Methodist, form together a full autobiography; and besides the well-known Life of Wesley, by Southey, there are several biographies written by members of his sect. By far the fullest is that of Mr. Tyerman, who, in a succession of works, has collected, with great industry, nearly all extant facts relating to the early history of Methodism. In the following pages I have availed myself largely of his researches. I must also mention Miss Wedgwood's remarkably able Study on Wesley, which throws great light on many sides of the religious history of the eighteenth century.
‘No less than seventeen authorised editions (besides various piratical ones) of Hervey's Meditations were published in about seventeen years. Of his Theron and Aspasio (though it was in three volumes), nearly 10,000 copies were sold in England in nine months.’—Tyerman's Oxford Methodists, pp. 256, 304. See, too, Wedgwood's Wesley, p. 69. The popularity of Hervey was not confined to England. Coleridge says that for some years before the appearance of the ‘Robbers’ of Schiller, ‘three of the most popular books in the German language were the translations of Young's Night Thoughts, Hervey's Meditations, and Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe.’ —Critique on Bertram, in the Biographia Literaria.
Philip's Life of Whitefield.
Tyerman's Wesley , i. 96, 115.
Tyerman, i. 146-156, 160-169. It appears probable from some curious letters printed by Tyerman (i. 76–79) that Wesley had some years before been under the spell of that very fascinating woman Mrs. Pendarves, afterwards Mrs. Delany.
See his Letters on the most important Subjects , especially Letters 4 and 5, and also his work on The Atonement.
Journal , 1738.
Gledstone's Whitefield , pp. 458, 460.
Ibid. 253-262.
Franklin's Autobiography , ch. viii.
Winter, in his very interesting description of Whitefield's preaching, said: ‘Sometimes he wept exceedingly, stamped loudly and passionately, and was frequently so overcome that for a few seconds you would suspect he could not recover.’—Winter's Letter to Jay. Gillies' Life of Whitefield , pp. 298—308.
Gledstone's Life of Whitefield , pp. 378, 379.
Letter of the Rev. Cornelius Winter. Gillies' Whitefield , p. 302.
Franklin's Autobiography , ch. viii.
See Tyerman's Life of Wesley , i. 302—305.
Wesley himself said of him, long after the differences had broken out: ‘Mr. Whitefield called upon me. He breathes nothing but peace and love. Bigotry cannot stand before him, but hides its head wherever he comes.’— Journal , 1766.
Journal , 1743.
Ibid. 1749.
Warburton's Doctrine of Grace , bk. ii. c. iv.
Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared .
Doddridge's Diary , iv. 274–204. Philip's Life of Whitefield , pp. 252–263.
Journal , 1743.
Thus—to quote one example from many—he mentions translating from the French ‘one of the most useful tracts I ever saw for those who desire to be fervent in spirit,’ and adds: ‘How little does God regard men's opinions! What a multitude of wrong opinions are embraced by all the members of the Church of Rome! Yet how highly favoured many of them have been!’— Journal , 1768.
He recurs to the subject again and again. See his Journal , May 1761, April 1768, Nov. 1769, Jan. 1776, Feb. 1786.
Walpole's Mem. of George III . iii. 47.
Tyerman's Life of Whitefield , i. 282.
Wesley's Journal , 1768.
Ibid. 1741.
Ibid. 1739
Ibid. 1744.
See Lady Huntingdon's Memoirs , i. 68.
Wesley's Journal , 1739.
Journal , 1759.
Journal , 1759.
Journal , 1739.
Journal , 1739.
Ibid. 1740.
Ibid. 1739.
Journal , 1741.
The immense amount of insanity produced by this kind of preaching is well known to those who have studied the subject. Archdeacon Stopford, in a very sensible little book, called The Work and the Counter-work , describing one of the recent revivals in the North of Ireland, says; ‘In a very brief space of time and in a very limited circle of inquiry, I saw or heard of more than twenty cases of insanity. I fear a little more inquiry would have extended it largely’ (p. 61).
Journal , 1739, 1740. Another convert, named Joseph Periam, having read a sermon by Whitefield on Regeneration, was so impressed by it that he ‘prayed so loud, and fasted so long, and sold “all he had” so literally, that his family sent him to Bethlehem madhouse. There he was treated as Methodistically mad.’ He was ultimately released on the condition of emigrating to Georgia. Philip's Life of Whitefield , pp. 84, 85. See, too, on the madness accompanying the movement, Leslie Stephen's History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century , ii. 430.
Journal , 1740.
Journal , 1751.
Ibid. 1749.
Journal , 1749.
Ibid.
Ibid. 1761.
Ibid. 1741.
See Southey's Wesley (Bohn's ed.), pp. 546, 547.
Ibid. pp. 561–563.
Gledstone's Whitefield , pp. 207–209.
Tyerman's Wesley , ii. 514. Sidney's Life of Rowland Hill , p. 187.
Journal , 1755. So Rowland Hill, in his Tract against Public Amusements , speaks of the theatre ‘presuming to mock the voice of God in His thunderings and lightnings.’
When Rowland Hill was still an Eton boy he was obliged to go to a birthday party where the guests amused themselves by this dreadful exercise. He has himself described his sensations. ‘They danced two hours before tea; enough to give me a surfeit of it although I did not dance at all, nor come till after they had begun some time. Oh, glory be to grace, free grace, I knew I was out of my element, for oh, what a fluctuation my poor soul was in! How hard a trial it is to see the honour of that God we love thrown down to the ground! How hard it is to see our poor fellow sinners glory in their perfection of wickedness!’—Sidney's Life of Rowland Hill , p. 20.
See Lavington's Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists (ed. 1833), p. 15. Gledstone's Whitefield , p. 180.
Journal , 1776.
Ibid. 1781.
See the account of the Kingswood School in Wesley's Works , vol. xiii. As might have been expected, such rules soon proved impossible to execute, and Wesley complained bitterly of the condition of the school. The pupils ‘mix, yea, fight with the colliers children. They ought never to play, but they do every day, yea, in the school.’ Tyerman's Life of Wesley , iii. 397.
See the remarks of Doddridge and Watts upon Whitefield. Tyerman's Life of Whitefield , i. 220, 221.
Journal , 1755.
Ibid. 1746.
Ibid. 1755
Ibid. 1761.
Ibid. 1756.
Ibid. 1757.
Journal , 1757.
Ibid. 1758.
See this very curious history in the Journal , May 1768. The substance was taken down by Wesley from the lips of the visionary.
Journal , 1746.
Ibid.
Ibid. 1748
Ibid.
Journal , 1768, 1776. He elsewhere complains that ‘Infidels have hooted witchcraft out of the world, and the complaisant Christians in large numbers have joined with them in the cry.’—Ibid. (1770). So, too, he says in one of his letters: ‘I have no doubt of the substance both of Glanvil's and Cotton Mather's narratives.’—Tyerman's Wesley , iii. 171. See, too, Wesley's Letter to Middleton .
Journal , 1743.
Ibid. 1746, 1759, 1764
Ibid. 1759.
Ibid. 1740.
Ibid.
Journal , 1743.
Ibid. 1752.
Ibid. 1769.
Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion .
Tyerman's Life of Wesley , iii. 606.
Sidney's Life of Rowland Hill, p. 114.
Tyerman, ii. 561. See, too, some other cases collected by Warburton, Doctrine of Grace , bk. ii. e. xi
Gentleman's Magazine , 1750. Tyerman's Wesley , ii. 72, 73. Walpole's Letters to Mann. March and April 1750.
Tyerman's Life of Wesley , ii. 109. 285–289. Wesley actually published himself this most extraordinary correspondence. Mrs. Wesley soon after left her husband's house.
Rowland Hill's Imposture Detected . A vast number of similar flowers of rhetoric culled from other productions on the same side will be found in Tyerman's Life of Wesley , iii. 255–265.
He has himself made a curious catalogue of the abusive epithets Rowland Hill heaped upon him. See in Fletcher's Works ‘The Fourth Check to Antinomianism.’ In Sidney's Life of Rowland Hill , there is an edifying collection of the terms employed by some on the leaders on the other side (p. 121).
See the particulars of this very grave accusation in the Life prefixed to Toplady's Works, i. 122–135. Nothing could be more conclusive than Sir Richard Hill's letter describing the perfect and saintly peace of Toplady's deathbed.
See a curious and not altogether edifying account of the saintly demeanour of the criminals going to execution in Newgate, in Wesley's Journal, 1748. Horace Walpole has noticed the sympathy of Whitefield for criminals. Memoirs of George III. iii. 193.
See a remarkable passage in Wesley's Journal, March 1753.
Tyerman's Wesley, iii. 650.
Ibid. ii. 132. Tyerman's Life of Whitefield, ii. 169, 205–6, 272.
Tyerman's Oxford Methodists, p. 277. Life of the Countess of Huntingdon, ii. 264–266.
Cecil's Life of Newton, p. 104.
Wesley's Journal, 1755, 1756.
Sydney Smith's Essay on Methodism.
Journal, 1755–1764, 1768.
See the interesting sketch of Rowlands' life, in Ryle's Christian Leaders of the Last Century. Many statistics of the progress of Welsh Nonconformity are collected in Rees' Nonconformity in Wales.
Rees' Hist. of Nonconformity in Wales, p. 417.
See Rees' Hist. of Nonconformity in Wales. The Auto-biography of Howell Harris (reprinted in Jackson's Christian Biographies). Lady Huntingdon's Memoirs. The Life of Griffith Jones in Middleton's Biographia Evangelica. Philip's Life of Whitefield, pp. 111–132. Sidney's Life of Rowland Hill, pp. 115–117.
See the very curious collection of documents in Tyerman's Life of Whitefield, i. 509–514; ii. 10, 11.
Philip's Life of Whitefield, p. 249.
Journal, 1755, 1757.
Journal , 1747, 1748, 1759, 1769.
Ibid. 1758.
Journal , 1785.
Ibid. 1760.
Ibid. 1750.
Ibid. 1756, 1758, 1765.
Ibid. 1760, 1765, 1767.
Journal , 1747.
A great deal of information about the early history of the Evangelical movement in Ireland will be found in the Life of the Countess of Huntingdon.
Journal , 1784.
Tyerman's Life of Whitefield , ii. 106, 150.
Wesley's Journal, 1744, 1745, 1746. Life of the Countess of Huntingdon , i. 93, 94.
See Wedgwood's Wesley , p. 293. Wesley's Journal , 1742.
See Sir Richard Hill's Pietas Oxoniensis , and Dr. No-well's (the Vice-Chancellor) answer to it. See, too, Sidney's Life of Rowland Hill , pp. 48-52.
Sidney's Life of Rowland Hill.
See a letter from Venn in Sidney's Life of Rowland Hill , pp. 173, 174.
See Joseph Andrews , bk. i. ch. xvii.; Amelia , bk. i. chaps. iv. and v.; and the picture of the Methodist footman in Humphrey Clinker.
Life of the Countess of Huntingdon , i. 230. Tyerman's Wesley , ii. 499, 500. Newton, it is true, preached an impressive sermon on the profanity of treating the solemn words of the Passion merely as the subject of a musical spectacle. Cecil's Life of Newton , pp. 188–191. See, too, Cowper's Task , bk. vi.
This rests on the authority of Lady Huntingdon herself. See the curious anecdote in Top lady's Works , iv. 101.
Life of the Countess of Huntingdon .
Ibid. Bishop Newton in his Autobiography ( Works , i. 51) also mentions the large charities of Bath. See, too, Pennington's Life of Mrs. Carter, p. 163.
‘We boast some rich ones whom the Gospel sways, And one who wears a coronet and prays.’—Cowper's Truth .
Life of the Countess of Huntingdon .
To Sir H. Mann (May 3, 1749).
To Mr. Chute (Oct. 10, 1766).
Tyerman's Wesley , ii. 509.
It is said that when Romaine first began to preach Evangelical doctrines he could only reckon up six or seven Evangelical clergymen. Before he died there were above 500 whom he regarded as such. Preface to Venn's Life , p. xiv.
Journal.
Tyerman, iii. 326, 390.
The Connoisseur , No. 126. Newton said of Whitefield: ‘He was the original popular preaching, and all our popular ministers are only his copies.’ Life of the Countless of Huntingdon , i. 92.
E.g. ‘Jonah's whale will teach a good lesson as well as Pisgah's top, and a man may sometimes learn as much from being a night and day in the deep as from being forty days on the mount.’
He says that on one occasion when he was in this state of perplexity, a lady came to him and told him it had been revealed to her that she was to be his wife. He answered, with some shrewdness, ‘In that case it would have been revealed to me that I was to be your husband.’
See the Memoir prefixed to Berridge's Works (ed. 1864), and many curious particulars in Lady Huntingdon's Memoirs . See, too, Venn's Life , pp. 500, 501. There is a good sketch of Berridge in Ryle's Christian Leaders .
See Hardy's Life of Grimshaw . Wesley's Journal , 1762. Gled-stone's Whitefield , p. 486.
‘I should be glad to know what use or what benefit these observations have been to the world? … Were dying sinners ever comforted by the spots on the moon? Was ever miser reclaimed from avarice by Jupiter's belts? or did Saturn's rings ever make a lascivious female chaste? … The modern divinity brings you no nearer than 121 millions of miles short of heaven.’— Gentleman's Magazine , March 1752.
See Calogan's Life of Romaine. Life of the Countess of Huntingdon .
Journal , 1780.
Journal , 1772.
Ibid. 1775.
Ibid. 1770, 1774, 1781. We have an amusing illustration of the theological bias in literary judgments in Toplady. He boasts that England had produced the greatest man in nearly every walk of useful knowledge, the four greatest being ‘Archbishop Breadwardin, the prince of divines, Milton, the prince of poets, Sir I. Newton, the prince of philosophers, and Whitefield, the prince of preachers.’—Top-lady's Works , iv. 130.
A Calm Address to our American Colonies . From 50,000 to 100,000 copies of this pamphlet were sold. Tyerman's Wesley , iii. 237. It is remarkable that Wesley never makes the slightest acknowledgment of his obligation to the Taxation no Tyranny of Johnson.
Tyerman's Wesley , i. 11.
Ibid. iii. 635.
See Porteus's Life of Seeker , pp. li-lv.
See on this subject the admirable essay on ‘The Evangelical Succession,’ in Stephens' Ecclesiastical Biographies.
Locke, On Government , book ii, ch. xiii. See, too, Hallam's Const. Hist. ch. xiii. O'Connell once drew up a legal argument to prove that it was within the prerogative of the Crown to restore the Irish Parliament by its sole action. See O'Neil Daunt's Personal Recollections of O'Connell , ch, xvi.
See e.g. Lord Waldegrave's Memoirs , p. 53. Walpole's Memoirs of George II. ii. 204, 205.
See the calculations in Discontents. Burke's Causes of the Present Discontents.
May's Const. Hist. i. 206.
Adolphus, Hist. of George III. i. 12.
Blackstone , book i. ch. vii.
‘The Pretender continues to be perpetually drunk; the other day he forced a Cordelier to drink with him as long as he possibly could. At last the friar made his escape, which the other resented so much that he fired with ball from the window at him. He missed him, but killed a cow that was passing by.’ Mr. Stanley to Pitt.— Grenville Papers , i. 366. In another letter Stanley says: ‘The Pretender's eldest son is drunk as soon as he rises, and is always senselessly so at night, when his servants carry him to bed. He is not thought of even by the exiles.’— Chatham Corresp. ii. 128.
After his resignation Pitt said: ‘He lay under great obligations to many gentlemen who had been of the denomination of Tories, but who during his share of the administration had supported Government upon the principles of Whiggism and of the Revolution.’—Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 150. ‘The country gentlemen deserted their hounds and their horses, preferring for once their parliamentary duty … and displayed their banner for Pitt.’—Glover's Memoirs , p. 97; see, too, p. 115. Walpole speaks of Pitt's ‘known design of uniting, that was breaking, all parties.’— Memoirs of George III. i. 15.
Memoirs of George III. i. 16.
‘During the last two reigns a set of undertakers have farmed the power of the Crown at a price certain; and under colour of making themselves responsible for the whole have taken the sole direction of the royal interest and influence into their own hands and applied it to their own creatures without consulting the Crown or leaving any room for the royal nomination or direction.’—Lord Melcombe to Bute. Adolphus , i. 24.
The term ‘King's friends,’ as a distinction for a particular class of politicians, if not invented, was at least adopted by Bute. See a letter from him (March 25, 1763).— Grenville Papers , ii. 32, 33.
Walpole's George III . i. 54. Wilkes in private conversations said that the ‘distinction which has been supposed to exist between the friends of the King and the friends of the minister originated in the councils of Lord Bath.’—Butler's Reminiscences , i. 74. ‘This project,’ said Burke, ‘I have heard was first conceived by some persons in the Court of Frederick Prince of Wales.’— Thoughts on the Present Discontents .
Burke, Observations on the State of the Nation .
See the curious account of Sir G. Colebrooke. Walpole's Memoirs of George III . i. 80–82.
Walpole says Bute was admitted into the Cabinet (i. 8), but it is, I think, evident that he only means the Privy Council. The same distinction was given at the same time to the Duke of York. Compare Walpole's Letters to Montagu and to Mann, October 28, 1760. Hist. of the late Minority , pp. 10, 11. Adolphus , i. 11. Annual Register , 1760, p. 142.
Walpole's George III . i. 10, 12.
According to Lord Hardwicke, Bute ‘availed himself with much art and finesse of the dissensions between the Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Pitt, and played off one against the other occasionally till he had got rid of the popular minister.’—Rockingham's Memoirs , i. 6, 7. See, too, pp. 8–10, and Dodington's Diary , Dec. 27, 1760.
‘For the King himself, he seems all goodnature and wishing to satisfy everybody; all his speeches are obliging; I was surprised to find the levee room had lost so entirely the air of the lion's den. This sovereign don't stand in one spot with his eyes fixed royally on the ground and dropping bits of German news; he walks about and speaks to everybody. I saw him afterwards on the throne, where he is graceful and genteel, sits with dignity and reads his answers to addresses well,’—Walpole to Montagu, Nov. 13, 1760. See, too, the Letters of the first Earl of Malmesbury , i. 82.
Pitt seems to have especially resented it, and it is said to have been the first cause of his enmity to Bute.—Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne , i. 232.
Parl. Hist . xv. 982–986.
Stephens' Life of Horne Tooke , i. 61. Junius talks of the King having ‘affectedly renounced the name of Englishman,’— Letter to the King .
See Townsend's Hist. of the House of Commons , ii. 51.
Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors , v. 295, 296.
He was accused of taking money in private causes from both sides, and availing himself of the information communicated on one side in advocating the opposite. See Walpole's George III . i. 240. Junius's Letters , 39.
Dodington's Diary , Nov. 1760.
See the very curious letters published in the Life of Barrington by his brother the Bishop of Durham, pp. 79, 99, 103-105.
Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 61–64. Walpole's Memoirs of George III . i. 41, 42. Dodington's Diary , Feb. 2. 1761.
See on the feeling of Bute towards Pitt a letter of the Duke of Newcastle.— Bedford Correspondence , iii. 19.
Parl. Hist . xv. 1000–1006.
See Bedford Correspondence , iii. 22–29.
In Dodington's Diary , Jan. 2, 1761, there is a report of a conversation he had with Bute on the prospects of the peace. Bute said ‘the ministry neither were nor could be united; that the Duke of Newcastle most sincerely wished for peace, and would go any length to obtain it; that Mr. Pitt meditated a retreat and would stay in no longer than the war.’
Annual Register , 1761, p. 83. Chatham Correspondence , ii. 100, 101. Walpole to Montagu, March 19, 1761. See, too, Adolphus's Hist. of England , i. 571, 572.
Adolphus , i. 100.
See the letter of Newcastle to Lord Hardwicke, April 15, 1761. Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 23, 24.
The earlier stages of this negotiation may be traced in the letters between Grimaldi and Fuentes, the Spanish ambassadors at Paris and London, in Jan., Feb. and March 1761. Chatham Correspondence , vol. ii
See the official documents on the subject in Parl. Hist . xv. There is a good epitome in De Flassan's Hist. de la Diplomatic Française .
Adolphus , i. 36–40. De Flassan , v. 382–388. A curious picture of the debates in the Cabinet, and of the imperative manner in which Pitt silenced all opposition, will be found in the letters of Newcastle to Hardwicke in Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , vol. i.
It is remarkable that Jenkinson, who was one of the most uncompromising adherents of Bute, had no doubt of this. He wrote (Aug. 6, 1761): ‘The Duke of Newcastle has already been with Lord Bute to beg that we may not lose sight of peace; and take my word for it, Mr. Pitt is almost as unwilling, though he is too wise to show it.’— Grenville Papers , i. 382.
Compare Walpole's George III . i. 123, 124. Adolphus , i. 41–45. Chatham Correspondence , ii. 140, 141.
See Grenville Papers , i. 386–7. Chatham Correspondence , ii. 140–143. Bedford Correspondence , iii. 46–49.
Sept. 23, 1761. Newcastle wrote to Hardwicke: ‘The King seemed so provoked and so weary that his Majesty was inclined to put an end at all events to the uncertainty about Mr. Pitt.’ Sept. 26, he writes: ‘The King seems every day more offended with Mr. Pitt, and plainly wants to get rid of him at all events.’—Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 42, 44. See, too, Bedford Correspondence , iii. 48.
Adolphus , i. 43, 44. Hist. of the late Minority , pp. 33–37. Annual Register , 1761. Mr. Ballantyne, however, in his Life of Carteret, has given (pp. 359–361) some reason for questioning whether the speech of Lord Granville was correctly reported.
Grenville Papers , i. 411, 412.
Adolphus , i. 572.
Walpole's George III . i. 82
Bedford Corr . iii. 49, 50.
Chatham Corresp . ii. 147, 148. Harris's Life of Hardwicke , iii. 258, 259.
See for Walpole's opinions his letters to the Countess of Ailesbury, Oct. 10, 1761, and to Conway, Oct. 12, 1761. Gray wrote at the same time: ‘Oh that foolishest of great men, that sold his inestimable diamond for a paltry peerage and pension i The very night it happened was I swearing it was a d—d lie and never would be; but it was for want of reading Thomas à Kempis, who knew mankind so much better than I.’— Works , iii. 265.
Chatham Correspondence, ii. 147.
Ibid. ii. 149–152.
‘Mr. Pitt himself,’ wrote Walpole, Sept. 9, 1761, ‘would be mobbed if he talked of anything but clothes and diamonds and bridesmaids.’—Walpole to Mann.
This was Shelburne's own expression. See Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, i. 120.
See the statement of Barré himself in a letter to Shelburne.—Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, i. 122. Walpole's George III. i. 122. Barré had served with Wolfe, and he had written to Pitt shortly before his attack upon him, in a strain of warm admiration, asking for a promotion. Pitt had refused the request on the ground that senior officers would be injured by the promotion, and Barré in a letter to Pitt described himself as ‘bound in the highest gratitude for the attention he had received.’—Chatham's Corresp. ii. 41–43, 171. A graphic account of the manner in which Pitt was attacked in this debate will be found in a letter of Mr. Noel Milbanke to Rockingham.— Life of Rockingham, i. 79–83.
Annual Register, 1762. See, too, Bedford Correspondence, iii. 130.
See his complaint of the difficulty he had ‘to carry on the business of the House of Commons without being authorised to talk to the members of that House upon their several claims and pretensions,’— Grenville Papers, i. 483.
See the letters of Newcastle to Hardwicke, Albemarle's Life of Rockingham, i. 102–112; and his letter to Bedford, Bedford Correspondence, iii. 79, 80. Walpole's Memoirs of George III. i. 156. Harris's Life of Lord Hardwicke, iii. 230, 273, 274.
His private fortune is said to have been reduced from 25,000 l. to 6,000 l. a year by his long tenure of office.—Harris's Life of Hardwicke, iii. 280.
Cornwallis, Bishop of Lichfield. The Bishop of Norwich, however, who was then absent from London, remained staunch to his benefactor. See, on the ingratitude of the bishops, Harris's Life of Hardwicke, iii. 334. Walpole's Memoirs of George III. i. 169, 170. Walpole to Montagu, May 25, 1762. Newcastle is said on this occasion to have made a very happy witticism which is often ascribed to Lord Melbourne. Mrs. Montagu writes: ‘The Duke of Newcastle after his resignation had a very numerous levee, but somebody observed to him that there were but two bishops present. He is said to have replied that bishops, like other men, were too apt to forget their maker. I think this has been said for him, or the resignation of power has much brightened his understanding; for of whatever he was accused, the crime of wit was never laid to his charge.’—Doran's Life of Mrs. Montagu, p. 120.
See Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, i. 137.
Bedford Correspondence, iii. 17.
Ibid. pp. 23. 89.
Bedford Correspondence, iii. 26.
Ibid. p. 28.
Ibid. pp. 30–34. Grenville Papers, i. 376.
Bedford Correspondence, iii. 43.
Cavendish Debates, i. 568–575. Parl. Hist. xv. 1217–1221. Bedford Correspondence, iii. 73, Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, i. 123, 124.
Bedford Correspondence, iii. xxiii.
Ibid. pp. 114–119, 126–129.
Ibid. pp. 118, 119, 136–138. Lord Barrington, also, was of opinion, that no compensation should be asked for the restoration of Havannah.—Barrington's Life of Barrington, p. 82.
See Bute's own defence in a despatch to Mitchell, the English Minister to Frederick (May 26, 1762). Bisset's Life of Sir A. Mitchell, ii. 294–302.
Carlyle's Frederick, book xx. ch. xiii. Thackeray's Life of Chatham, ii. 22.
Anecdotes of Chatham, i. 401.
Compare Frederick, Œuvres Posthumes, iv. 290–292. Bisset's Memoirs of Sir Andrew Mitchell, ii. 206–302. History of the late Minority, pp. 52–54. Adolphus' Hist. of England, i. 76–81; and especially the letters in the appendix, pp. 579–589.
See the description of the Island by Admiral Rodney.— Grenville Papers, ii. 11–13.
Chesterfield's Letters, iv. 353.
Grenville Papers, i. 450.
Ibid. i. 450, 476, 483.
Ibid. ii. 12, 13. Life of Shelburne, i. 154.
See the striking statement of his views on this matter, Parl. Hist. xv. 1265. ‘The trade with these conquests [Martinique and Guadaloupe] is of the utmost lucrative nature and of the most considerable extent. The number of ships employed by it are a great resource to our maritime power; and, what is of equal weight, all that we gain on this system is made fourfold to us by the loss which ensues to France. But our conquests in North America are of very little detriment to the commerce of France.’
Thus in Jan. 1761, Lord Melcombe wrote to Bute: ‘If the intelligence they bring me be true Mr. Pitt goes down fast in the City, and faster at this end of the town. They add, you rise daily. … Should not a measure so extremely popular as the sacrificing that country [Hanover] to this, for a time, to secure an honourable and advantageous peace … come immediately from the King, and by his order be carried into execution by the hands in which he places his whole confidence?’— Adolphus, i. 571, 572.
Walpole to Montagu, Nov. 13, 1760.
Walpole to Conway, Oct. 26, 1761. Walpole's Memoirs of George III. i. 85. Grenville Papers, i. 452.
See the very curious letter of Frederick to his Ministers Knyphausen and Michell urging them to use all their influence to stir up writers and agitators against Bute.— Grenville Papers, i. 467, 468.
Chauncy Townsend, the Member for Wigtown, who died in 1770.— Annual Register, 1770, p. 114.
University members and sons of peers were in England exempt. Townshend's History of the House of Commons, ii. 406.
Their subservience had been very bitterly noticed by Jekyll in the last reign. When Walpole's special tax on Papists and Non-jurors was imposed, the Scotch were exempted. Jekyll said: ‘I know not why the Scotch should be excused from paying their proportion of this extraordinary tax, unless it was because forty-five Scotch representatives in that House always voted as they were directed.’—Townshend's Hist. of the House of Commons, ii. 52, 53. Montesquieu, in his Noies sur l'Angleterre, which were written, in 1730, had said, ‘Il y a des membres écossois qui n'ont que deux cents livres sterling pour leur voix et la vendent à ce prix.’
Walpole to Montagu, June 8, 1762.
Bedford Correspondence, iii. xxxiii.
Burton's Life of Hume , ii. 665.
Doran's Jacobite London , ii, p. 350.
Scott's Essay on the Life and Works of John Home.
See Walpole's Memoirs of George III . iv. 328. We have a curious illustration of the change that may take place in national judgments in the Autobiography of Lord Shelburne. ‘Like the generality of Scotch,’ he says, ‘Lord Mansfield had no regard to truth whatever.’—Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, i. 89. Among the many admirable qualities of the Scotch there is probably none which a modern observer would regard as so conspicuous and so uncontested as their eminent truthfulness.
Parliamentary Hist . xvi. 763—785.
See Lord Stanhope's History of England , iv. 273.
Parl. Hist . xv. 1307–1316. This tax was said to have been proposed ‘because Sir Francis Dashwood could not be made to understand a tax on linen, which was first intended, sufficiently to explain it to the House.’—Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne , i. 186.
Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne , i. 157.
Walpole's George III . i. 199. Hist. of the late Minority , pp. 69, 83, 93—102. Anecdotes of Chatham , i. 282. North Briton , p. 234
Adolphus , i. 119. Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 158, 159. Harris, Life of Hardwicke , iii. 320, 333—335.
‘The impertinence of our conquered enemies last night was great, but will not continue so if his Majesty shows no lenity. But, my Lord, with regard to their numerous dependants in Crown employments, it behoves your Lordship in particular to leave none of them. Their connections spread very wide, and every one of their relatives and friends is in his heart your enemy.… Turn the tables and you will immediately have thousands who will think the safety of themselves depends upon your Lordship, and will therefore be sincere and active friends.’—Fox to Bute, Nov. 1762. Shelburne's Life , i. 180.
Walpole's Memoirs of George III . i. 233—240.
Burke's Correspondence , i. 130. Colman's play, The English Merchant, was written to grace his pardon. An exceedingly favourable account of the literary acquirements and of the conversation of Lord Bute will be found in Dutens' Mémoires d'un Voyageur qui se repose , ii. 299—306. The author had been employed by Bute in some negotiations preparatory to the Peace of Paris.
Annual Register , 1763, p. 117.
Anecdotes of Chatham , i. 203. Adolphus, Hist. George III . i. 115, 121. Dodington's Diary , Dec. 20, 1760.
Rockingham's Memoirs , i. 152.
Thackeray , ii. 7.
Parl. Hist . xv. 1227.
Annual Register , 1761, p. 481.
Walpole's Memoirs of George III .
Parl. Hist . xv. 1316.
Compare Walpole's George III . i. 257, 258, with Lord E. Fitzmaurice's elaborate defence of Shelburne.— Shelburne's Life, i. 199—229.
Walpole to Montagu, April 14, 1763.
Walpole says: ‘It was given out that the King would suffer no money to be spent on elections,’ that ‘he had forbidden any money [at the general election] to be issued from the Treasury.—Walpole's George III . i. 19, 41 ‘Every one,’ said Burke, ‘must remember that the Cabal set out with the most astonishing prudery, both moral and political. Those who in a few months after soused over head and ears into the deepest and dirtiest pits of corruption, cried out violently against the indirect practices in the electing and managing of Parliaments which had formerly prevailed.… Corruption was to be cast down from Court as Atê was from Heaven.’— Thougts on the Causes of the present Discontents. See, too, the Seasonable, Hints from an Honest Man on the present Crisis .
Bedford Corresp . iii. 223–226.
He boasted that the secret service money was lower in his ministry than in any other recent administration.— Grenville Papers , ii. 519, iii. 143.
See Grenville Papers , i. pp. ix., x.
See an interesting autobiographical sketch in the Grenville Papers , i. 422–439, 482–485.
Grenville Papers , iii. p. xxxvii.
See Bedford Corresp. iii. 56.
Walpole's George III. i. 121.
This is stated in the Journal of the Duke of Grafton.—See Campbell's Chancellors , vi. 327; and also Grenville Papers , ii. 192. See, too, on the warm personal interest which the King took in pushing on the measures against Wilkes, Walpole's George III. iii. 296. According to Almon (who is not a very good authority), No. 45 was in a great measure based upon a conversation about the King's Speech between Pitt and Temple which took place at the house of the latter when Wilkes happened to be calling there.
Walpole' Memoirs of George III. iii. 164.
Compare Adolphus , i. 136, 137. Campbell's Chancellors , vi. 370. The legality of general warrants was brought before Mansfield in November 1765. He gave an opinion similar to that of Pratt. In order to avoid a judgment against the Crown on the merits of the case, the Attorney-General admitted a formal objection, and so contrived to be defeated.—Campbell's Life of Mansfield , p. 462.
See much curious evidence of this, Grenville Papers , ii. 8, 71, 130, 155-160. In one of his letters to Wilkes, Temple said: ‘I am so used to things of this sort at the Post Office, and am so sure that every line I write must be seen, that I never put anything in black and white that might not be read at Charing Cross for all I care.’— Grenville Papers , i. 489.
Parl. Hist. xv. 1354-1360.
A description of the Essay on Woman will be found in a contemporarypamphlet denouncing it by a clergyman named Killidge. No genuine copy of the poem is known to exist, though some spurious versions were circulated. The manuscript poem bearing the name which is among the Wilkes papers in the British Museum is certainly not genuine. An elaborate discussion about the authorship and the true version of the poem will be found in Dilke's Papers of a Critic.
Walpole to Mann, Nov. 17, 1763. Lord De Spencer was said to have been the other.
Walpole's George III. i. 309-312.
Parl. Hist. XV. 1357-1359.
Walpole's Memoirs of George III. i. 280.
Campbell's Chancellors , vi. 289.
Walpole's George III. i. 330. Annual Register , 1763, p. 144.
Annual Register , 1764, p. 51. Campbell , vi. 372.
Walpole's George III. i. 314. ‘It is a mercy,’ wrote Chesterfield, ‘that Wilkes, the intrepid defender of our rights and liberties, is out of danger; and it is no less a mercy that God hath raised up the Earl of Sandwich to vindicate and promote true religion and morality. These two blessings will justly make an epooha in the annals of this country.’
It presented petitions to this effect against both the Cyder Bill and the Quebec Bill.
The Duellist.
Grenville Papers , ii. 138, 142. See, too, Mr. Rae's Wilkes Skeridan, and Fox , p. 69.
Annual Register , 1764, p. 113.
Ibid. p. 91.
Walpole's Memoirs of George III. ii. 15.
See a remarkable letter ‘Concerning libels, warrants, and the seizure of papers,’ ascribed to Dunning, in Almon's Scarce and Rare Tracts , i. 102.
Annual Register , 1764, p. 92; 1765, pp. 96, 97, 262.
Grenville Papers , ii. 199.
‘We entered into the King's service … to hinder the law from being indecently and unconstitutionally given to him.’— Grenville Papers , ii.16. ‘I told his Majesty that I came into his service to preserve the constitution of my country and to prevent any undue and unwarrantable force being put upon the Crown. (Ibid. p. 106. See, too, a remarkable letter of Sir John Phillips to Grenville, ibid. p. 118.)
Ibid. ii. 192. See, too, pp. 205, 493, 495, 500.
Ibid. pp. 162, 166, 223, 224.
See Harris's Life of Hardwicke , vol. iii. Grenville Papers , ii. 83–97, 104–107, 191–206. Bedford Correspondence , vol. iii. Walpole's George III.
See the correspondence between Bute and Shelburne.—Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne , i. 273–278.
Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne , i. 281–289.
See the detailed account of this event in Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne. Walpole said: ‘Many reasons are given [for the resignation], but the only one that people choose to take is, that thinking Pitt must be minister soon, and finding himself tolerably obnoxious to him, he is seeking to make his peace at any rate.’—Walpole to Mann, Sept. 13, 1763.
The King speaks daily with more and more averseness to Lord Sandwich, and appears to have a settled dislike to his character.’— Grenville Papers , ii. 496. The King would have deserved more credit for his feelings about Sandwich if he had ever shown reluctance to employ bad men who were subservient to his views. When remonstrated with for employing such a man as Fox, his answer was, ‘We must call in bad men to govern bad men,’—Ibid. i. 452. In 1778, when North was very anxious to resign and when there was a question of reconstructing the administration on a Whig basis, the King declared that he would accept no ministry in which some politicians he mentioned had not seats in the Cabinet, and among these politicians was Sandwich.— Letters of George III. to Lord North , ii. 158.
Grenville Papers , iii. 213.
Burke—who had not yet entered Parliament—wrote at this time to Flood: ‘The Regency Bill has shown such want of concert and want of capacity in the ministers, such inattention to the honour of the Crown, if not such a design against it, such imposition and surprise upon the King, and such a misrepresentation of the disposition of Parliament to the Sovereign, that there is no doubt that there is a fixed resolution to get rid of them all (except perhaps Grenville), but principally of the Duke of Bedford.’— Burke Correspondence , i. 79, 80. The best account of the management of the Regency Bill is in the Grenville Papers , iii., especially the very interesting Diary of G. Grenville, pp. 112–222. The interview at which the King consented to the exclusion of his mother was on May 3. He immediately after felt that he had committed an impropriety, and his opinion was strengthened by the Chancellor, who assured him that many people were offended at it, and that a motion against it would be made by the Opposition. On the 5th, the King ‘in the utmost degree of agitation and emotion, even to tears,’ implored Grenville to alter the Bill, but he was unable to prevail.—Ibid. pp. 152–155.
See Cumberland's own statement.—Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 185–203. On the 27th of April the King had an interview with Bute at Richmond.— Grenville Papers , iii. 134.
Ibid. ii. 490.
Grenville Papers , iii. 159, 160. Bedford Correspondence , iii. 279–281.
See the letter of the Duke of Cumberland, May 21, 1765.—Albemarle's Life of Rookingham , i. 211.
Walpole's Memoirs of George III. ii. 155–159. Grenville Papers , iii. 171.
I have compiled this account from the memorial of the Duke of Cumberland describing the negotiations with which his was entrusted, which is printed in Albemarle's Life of Rockingham the ‘Diary’ of George Grenville in the Grenville Papers , and the account given by Walpole. These three accounts are not in all points quite coincident, and some of the dates in the Duke of Cumberland's memorial appear to be wrongly given.
See the Bedford Correspondence , iii. 283, 284, 286–290, 293–295. Walpole's George III. Grenville Papers , iii. Albemarle's Life of Rockingham.
Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , ii. 50.
Prior's Life of Burke , i. 135.
Lord Lyttelton wrote at this time (Jan. 28, 1765): ‘The desire of Mr. Pitt in the public is inexpressibly strong, and nothing will satisfy them without him. I believe he is also much desired in the Court.’—Phillimore's Life of Lyttelton , ii. 683.
Bedford Correspondence , iii. 304, 305, 312.
Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 296.
Thackeray's Life of Chatham , ii. 75. Grenville Papers. Bedford Correspondence. Chatham Correspondence.
Walpole's Memoirs of George III. ii. 287, 288.
Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 321. Barrington's Life of Barrington , p. 108.
Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 312. Adolphus , i. 227–230. Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne , i. 364–371.
Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , i. 269.
Burke's Correspondence, i. 80.
Albemarle's Life of Rockingham, i. 177.
Chatham Correspondence, ii. 360; see, too, p. 322. The final rupture seems to have been in Oct 1764 (ibid. pp. 293–298). On January 9, 1766, the Duke of Newcastle wrote a letter to Rockingham which does the writer great credit, urging that a junction with Pitt was absolutely indispensable to the Government, and that he was himself perfectly ready to resign office in order to facilitate it.—Albe-marle's Life of Rockingham, i. 264, 265.
See above, p. 178.
See a very curious passage in the historical section of the Annual Register for 1762. ‘From the beginning of this reign it had been professed, with the general applause of all good men, to abolish those odious party distinctions [Whig and Tory] and to extend the royal favour and protection equally to all his Majesty's subjects.’— Annual Register 1762, p. [47].
Chatham Correspondence, ii. 296, 297. On Feb. 24, 1766, when Rockingham had been making a new indirect overture to Pitt, the latter wrote to Shelburne: ‘Lord Rockingham's plan appears to me to be such as can neve r bring things to a satisfactory conclusion; his tone being that of a minister, master of the Court and of the public, making openings to men who are seekers of offices and candidates for ministry. … In one word, my dear lord [he continued], I shall never set my foot in the closet but in the hope of rendering the King's personal situation not unhappy, as well as his business not unprosperous; nor will I owe my coming thither to any Court cabal or ministerial connection.’— Chatham Correspondence, iii. 11, 12. In April 1766, Rigby wrote to the Duke of Bedford that Pitt had made ‘a kind of farewell speech,’ in which he said ‘that he wished for the sake of his dear country that all our factions might cease; that there might be a ministry fixed such as the King should appoint and the public approve … that if ever he was again admitted as he had been into the royal presence, it should be independent of any personal connections whatsoever.’— Bedford Correspondence, iii. 333. ‘Lord Chatham,’ wrote Mitchell in Dec, 1766, ‘declares to all the world that his great point is to destroy faction, and he told the House of Lords the other day “that he could look the proudest connection in the face.”’— Chatham Correspondence, iii. 138.
Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne i. 382. See, too, his very similar declaration in 1762,—Albemarle's Life of Rockingham, i, 151.
Shelburne's Life, i. 334.
The judgment of Walpole when the ministry was first formed is a remarkable instance of his political sagacity, ‘The plan will probably be to pick and cull from all quarters, and break all parties as much as possible. From this moment I date the wane of Mr. Pitt's glory; he will want the thorough-bass of drums and trumpets, and is not made for peace.’—To Montagu, July 10, 1766.
Thackeray's Life of Chatham, ii. 84.
Chatham Correspondence, iii. 26.
Chatham Correspondence, iii. 21.
Grenville Papers, iii. 283.
Chatham Correspondence, iii. 22, 23.
Chatham Correspondence, iii. 111. Prior's Life of Burke, i. 163.
George III. cap. vii. See an account of the whole transaction in a letter from Grenville himself, Grenville Papers , iii. 341-343, and in a letter from Flood to Charlemont ( Flood's Letters , ix.). See, too, Chatham Correspondence , iii. 125-128.
Parl. Hist. xvi. 362-364. Chatham Correspondence, iii 224.
Burice's Correspondence, i. 106,
Chatham Correspondence, iii. 210. ‘There are four parties,’ Lord Northington said about this time, ‘Butes, Bedfords, Rocking-hams, Chathams, and we (the last) are the weakest of the four.’—Albemarle's Life of Rocking-ham, ii. 34.
Chatham Correspondence , iii. 136.
Ibid. iii. 6-9, 84-86.
Ibid. iii. 80.
Chatham Correspondence , iii. 62. Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, ii. 16-18
Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, ii. 22.
Chatham Correspondence , iii. 68.
Grenville Papers , iii. 384, 385.
The following were the numbers in several of the chief party divisions in 1766:—129 to 76, 166 to 48, 140 to 56, 131 to 67, 106 to 35, 180 to 147.—Wolpole's George III. vol. ii.
Grenville Papers , iii. 279.
See Walpole's Memoirs of George III. iii. 41—44. Chatham Correspondence. Whately wrote (July 30, 1767), ‘Lord Chatham's state of health (I was told authentically yesterday) is certainly the lowest dejection and debility that mind or body can be in. He sits all the day leaning on his hands, which he supports on the table; does not permit any person to remain in the room; knocks when he wants anything, and, having made his wants known, gives a signal without speaking, to the person who answered his call to return.’—Phillimore's Life of Lyttelton , p. 729.
‘Here [at Bath] Lord Chatham is, and goes out every day on horseback when the weather lets him, and looks rather thin and pallid; but otherwise very well in appearance; he sees no one.’—Mr. Augustus Hervey to Mr. Grenville, Nov. 3, 1767. Grenville Papers , iv. 180. On May 5, 1767, Chesterfield wrote, ‘Lord Chatham is still ill, and only goes abroad for an hour a day to take the air in his coach.’— Chatham Correspondence , iii. 253.
See the interesting passage from the Duke of Grafton's autobiography quoted in Walpole's George III. iii. 51, 52 .
In one of Lord Lyttelton's letters (Nov. 25, 1767) there is a very curious account of a conversation of Lord Mansfield with the writer on the condition and prospects of the ministry. Mansfield said that ‘no opposition would signify anything if the ministers held together, that the King mediated between them and kept them from breaking; that he was the most efficient man among them; that he made each of them believe he was in love with them [ sic ] and fooled them all: that unless that mad-man, Lord Chatham, should come and throw a fireball in the midst of them he thought they would stand their ground, but what that might do he could not tell; that Lord Bute alone could make a ministry which could last; that if he was dead no other man could do it so well. … He then dwelt a good deal on the certainty of a fixed resolution in the King not to change his army but only the generals of that army.’—Phillimore's Life of Lyttelton , pp. 736, 738.
Grenville Papers , iv. 27, 31.
Walpole's George III. iii. 268.
Some very curious anecdotes of this singular personage will be found in Albemarle's Life of Rockingham, ii. 70-72.
Walpole's George III. iii. 143—146.
Chatham Correspondence, iii 21.
Ibid. iii. 137.
In 1778 Bute authorised his son to write to the papers, ‘that he declares upon his solemn word of honour that he has not had the honour of waiting upon his Majesty but at his levee or drawing-room; nor has he presumed to offer any advice or opinion concerning the disposition of offices or the conduct of measures either directly or indirectly, by himself or any other, from the time when the late Duke of Cumberland was consulted in the arrangement of a ministry in 1765 to the present hour.’—See the Correspondence of George III. and Lord, North , i. p. xxi.
See a very striking account of his budget speech in 1767, in a letter of Rigby.— Bedford Correspondence. iii. 408.
The details of his journey through Italy will be found in a curious manuscript fragment of autobiography in the British Museum.
Grenville Papers , iii. 95. Prior's Life of Burke , i. 153.
‘The ministers are embarrassed to the last degree how to act with regard to Wilkes. It seems they are afraid to press the King for his pardon, as that is a subject his Majesty will not easily hear the least mention of; and they are apprehensive if he has it not, that the mob of London will rise in his favour.’—The Bishop of Carlisle to Grenville (May 27, 1776), Grenville Papers , iii. 241.
See the letters of Lord Camden, Campbell's Chancellors , vi, 890-392.
Correspondence of George III. with Lord North, i. 2. Walpole's George III. iii, 200.
Franklin's Works (Spark's ed.), vii. 399, 400.
Annual Register , 1768, p. 100.
Annual Register , 1769, p. 116.
Annual Register , 1763, pp. 52–58. It is remarkable that the Drury Lane riots were instigated and in part defended by anonymous writings of Philip Francis—his first known compositions in print.—Parkes and Merivale's Life of Francis , i. 68, 69.
Annual Register , 1762, p. 75; 1763, p. 67; for another instance of a culprit being killed by ill-usage in the pillory, see Annual Register , 1780, p. 207.
Grenville Papers , ii. 193. Annual Register , 1763, p. 96.
Annual Register , 1765, p. 58.
This case is briefly noticed in the Annual Register of 1762, p. 75: for a further account see a remarkable essay on capital punishments in England in the Anthologia Hibernica , iv. 172. It is a curious illustration of the absurdity of British law that it was found that none of these criminals could be executed, as their offence only amounted to perjury. One of them was killed on the pillory by the mob.
Holt's George III. i. 149, 156.
Annual Register , 1768, p. 105.
Walpole's Memoirs of George III. iii. 219–221. Annual Register , 1768, pp. 99, 114, 119, 129.
Annual Register , 1767, pp. 139, 140, 152, 158; 1768, pp. 139, 157; 1769, pp. 111, 124, 132, 136, 138; 1771, p. 96.
Ibid. 1770, p. 78. Accurate statistics of the crime of housebreaking in London and Westminster may be found in Parl. Hist. xvi. 930. Between Michaelmas 1769 and March 14, 1770, no less than 104 houses were broken open and robbed. In 1772 a writer in the Annual Register (p. 80) emphatically said, ‘Villany is now arrived at such a height in London that no man is safe in his own house.’ And it was noticed that in 1759 and 1760, two years of war, the number of criminals condemned at the old Bailey was only 29; while during the two last years of peace, 1770 and 1771, the number had risen to 151. Annual Register , 1772, pp. 144, 145.
Annual Register , 1767, pp. 48, 49.
Ibid. 1767, pp. 117–121, 190–197.
Ibid. 1771, p. 65. Gentleman's Magazine , 1771, p. 232.
Walpole's Memoirs of George III. iii. 200, 277, 316.
The words—which are not in the abstract of Wilkes' speech in the Parliamentary debates—were quoted by G. Grenville in the very remarkable speech he afterwards made and corrected on the subject of the expulsion.—See Almon's Collection of Scarce and Interesting Tracts , iii. 31, 32.
Walpole's Memoirs of George III. iii. Annual Register , 1769. Parl. Hist. xvi.
Chatham Correspondence , iii. 358.
In 1698 Mr. Wollaston, being a collector of duties, was ‘expelled’ from the House in obedience to a law which had recently disqualified those who held that office from sitting, and having given up the office he was re-elected and allowed to sit. The partisans of Wilkes maintained that this was a valid precedent, while his opponents thought the word ‘expelled’ was in this case improperly used by the Commons. The case was at least not one of penal expulsion. See a long discussion of it in ‘A Fair Trial of the Important Question,’ Almon's Scarce and Interesting Tracts , vol. iii. In 1715 Serjeant Comyns having refused to take the oath of qualification, the House determined that the votes given to him were lost, and gave the seat to the candidate who stood next on the poll; and in 1727 they adopted a similar course in a case where the elected person being a Commissioner of Customs was disqualified. In both of these cases, however, there was a statutory disqualification.—See Belsham's Hist. of George III. i. 242, 243.
The passage was altered in later editions.
Locke on Government , bk. ii. ch. six.
Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne , ii. 205.
Burke's Correspondence , i. 169, 176, 177, 184, 189, 235.
Annual Register , 1770, pp. 56-58. Chatham says fifteen counties petitioned, and that ‘these fifteen petitioning counties contain more people than all the rest of the kingdom, as they pay infinitely more land tax.’— Chatham Correspondence , iv. 169.
Annual Register , 1769, pp. 84, 87. Walpole's Memoirs of George, III. iii. 350–353.
The King writing to Lord North complained bitterly of ‘the factious and partial conduct of the grand jury,’ and added, ‘if there be no means by law to quell riots, and if juries forget they are on their oath to be guided by facts not faction, this constitution must be overthrown, and anarchy (the most terrible of all evils) must ensue.’— Correspondence of George III. and Lord North , i. 8. The ministers described ‘the unhappy disposition of the people to be such that juries, under the influence of the general infatuation, could hardly be got to do justice to soldiers under prosecution.’— Annual Register , 1769, p. 62. According to Walpole, ‘in the hands of a Middlesex jury at that time no man's life was safe.’— Memoirs of George III. iii. 312.
Ibid. iii. 359.
See Cavendish, Debates , i. 101.
Walpole, p. 378. Annual Register , 1769, pp. 117, 118.
Walpole, iv. 57.
Part. Hist. xvi. 893, 894.
Parl. Hist. xvi. 578. He afterwards is said to have explained away his meaning, and it is very probable that he was not quite accurately reported. Lord Egmont in the House of Lords described the petitions as ‘treasonable.’— Chatham Correspondence , iii. 419.
Walpole's George III. iv. 60.
Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne , ii. 119–124. Burke said, ‘Corsica, a French province, was terrible to him.’ Cavendish, Debates , i. 40
Annual Register , 1769, p. 63. Part. Hist. xvi. 843–852.
Walpole's George III. ii. 339–341.
Ibid. ii. 385.
Walpole's George III. iii. 148–150.
Ibid. p. 311.
Nicholls' Recollections of George III. ii. 128.
William Gerard Hamilton wrote to Temple (July 20, 1767), ‘The idea of continuing Lord Camden as a friend of Lord Chatham's is extremely entertaining if the accounts which I hear are true, and my authority is such that I have not a doubt of them; and they are that, in all places, the most violent man against Lord Chatham, and the harshest interpreter of his long sickness and of his late conduct in every particular, is Lord Camden.’— Grenville Papers , iv. 64. In his private letter to Chatham, written January 2, 1768, Junius said, ‘The Chancellor on whom you had particular reasons to rely has played a sort of fast and loose game, and spoken of your lordship with submission or indifference according to the reports he heard of your health, nor has he altered his language until he found you were really returning to town.— Chatham Correspondence , iii. 303. This coincidence has been justly pointed out as one of the many slight indications that Junius was well acquainted with the information then current in Lord Temple's circle.
See Grenville Papers , iv. 402, 405. Parl. Hist. xvi. 825. Adolphus , i. 410.
Chatham Correspondence , iii. 389.
Lord Temple described this incident as ‘the dismissal of the virtuous and independent lord who sat on the woolsack, in order to supply his place by some obsequious lawyer who would do as he was commanded.’ Lord Shelburne ‘hoped there would not be found in the kingdom a wretch so base and mean-spirited as to accept the Seals on the conditions on which they were offered.’—Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , ii. 157.
Rigby wrote (May 14, 1770), ‘I think the very best speech I ever heard in my life was the Duke of Grafton's reply to Chatham, a very memorable part of which was the most solemn declaration that a man can make in public, never to act again in public business with Lord Chatham.’— Bedford Correspondence , iii. 412.
Walpole's George III. iv. 87.
Harris' Life of Hardwicke , iii. 465–479. Campbell's Chancellors , vii. 96–112.
Walpole's George III. iv. 55, 56, 60, 61, 193.
Chatham Correspondence , iii. 418.
Ibid. 422.
Chatham Correspondence , iii. pp. 423, 425.
Ibid. pp. 424, 426.
Ibid. p. 453.
Ibid. p. 372.
Chatham Correspondence, iv. 2–18.
Ibid. pp. 17, 18.
Chatham Correspondence, iii. 439. In one of the last speeches Chatham made (Dec. 5, 1777), there is a remarkable passage which can be construed into little less than a confession that the line which he had adopted about party government in the first years of the reign was a mistake. ‘For fifteen years,’ he said, ‘there had been a system at St. James's of breaking all connections, of extinguishing all principle. A few men had got an ascendency where no man should have a personal ascendency; by the executive powers of the State being at their command they had been furnished with the means of creating divisions. This brought pliable men, not capable men, into the highest and most responsible situations, and to such men was the government of this once glorious empire now entrusted.’—Thackeray's Life of Chatham, ii. 343.
Chatham Correspondence, iii. 481.
Ibid. p. 408. Lord Fitzwilliam reported to Rockingham, November 1769, a conversation in which Chatham said: ‘For my own part I am grown old, and find myself unable to fill any office of business; but this I am resolved upon, that I will not even sit at council but to meet the friends of Lord Rockingham; whatever differences may have been between us they must be forgotten. The state of the nation is such that all private animosities must subside. He, and he alone, has a knot of spotless friends such as ought to govern this kingdom.’ See, too, a similar conversation reported by the Duke of Portland.—Albemarle's Life of Rockingham, ii. 142, 143.
Chatham Correspondence iii. 468.
See the autobiographical sketch in Parkes and Merivale's Life of Francis, i. 362.
Bedford Correspondence, iii. 412.
Chatham Correspondence, 179.
See a remarkable passage in one of Dr. Johnson's pamphlets in favour of the Government. ‘Every honest man must lament that it [the Government] has been regarded with fixed neutrality by the Tories, who, being long accustomed to signalise their principles by opposition to the Court, do not yet consider that they have at last a king who knows not the name of party, and who wishes to be the common father of all his people.’— The False Alarm.
Chatham Correspondence, iv. 83.
Chatham Correspondence, iv. 187.
Ibid. p. 204.
Ibid. p. 259.
Burke's Correspondence, i. 256, 346.
Woodfall's Junius, i. 255.
Burke's Thoughts on the present Discontents.
Annual Register, 1770, p. 72.
Parl. Hist. xxiii. 101.
Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, December 19, 1767.
Chatham Correspondence, iii. 405.
Grenville Papers, iv. 14. Walpole's George III. i. 330.
Walpole's George III. iii. 197.
Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, April 12, 1768.
Walpole's Memoirs of George III. iii. 198.
Walpole's Memoirs of George III. i. 42.
Parl. Hist. xiv. 397–402. Walpole's George III. iii. 153, 154.
Walpole's George III. iii. 157.
Annual Register, 1769, p. 93.
Annual Register, 1771, pp. 54, 56. Adolphus, i. 479.
De Burgh's Political Dissertations, i. 40–48.
On the extraordinary condition of the Scotch representation before the Reform Bill of 1832, see May's Constitutional History, i. 301–304.
See Clarendon's History, i. 403, 404, 412, 413; iii. 61.
Tindal's History, iv. 219.
Cooke's Hist. of Party, iii. 187. May's Constitutional History, ii. 121. Buckle's Hist. of Civilisation, i. 394, 395.
Annual Register, 1769, pp. 125, 126.
Stephen's Life of Horne Tooke, i. 163–175. See, too, a remarkable letter of Junius to Wilkes severely criticising the resolutions of the Society of ‘the Supporters of the Bill of Rights.’—Woodfall's Junius, i. 275–296.
Annual Register, 1769, p. 73, Walpole's George III, iii. 331.
Scott's Swift, x. 362–366.
Chatham Correspondence, iv. 169. According to Lord Charlemont, Chatham, in one of his speeches on the Stamp Act in 1766, said, ‘If England were not properly represented, the representation ought to be amended. The safe advice of Machiavel must one day be pursued, and the Constitution brought back to its first principles. People, however, are apt to mistake the nature of representation, which is not of person but of property, and in this light there is scarcely a blade of grass which is not represented.’— Original Letters to Henry Flood, pp. 14, 15.
In another speech, if rightly reported, he spoke with more hesitation of ‘the corrupt and venal boroughs which perhaps could not be lopped off entirely without the hazard of a public convulsion.’— Chatham Corresp. iii. 457.
Ibid. pp. 406, 407.
Chatham Correspondence, iii. 464.
Ibid. iv. 156, 157.
Ibid. iv. 174.
Walpole's George III. iv. 57, 58.
See Burke's correspondence with Richard Shackleton, the son of his schoolmaster, in that singularly charming boot, the Leadbeater Papers , written by the daughter of Richard Shackleton.
There is some controversy on this point. See Prior's Life of Burke , i. 44, 45.
Chatham Correspondence , i. 430-433.
No less than 14,000 l. (out of 20,000 l. required to buy the estate) was raised on a mortgage which was still outstanding when the estate was sold in 1812. Sir Joseph Napier has investigated with great care the circumstances relating to the Beaconsfield estate and to a small property at Clogher, which was also in the Burke family, in a lecture on Edmund Burke delivered in Dublin in 1862 (Napier's Lectures and Essays , pp. 109–211). This lecture contains several particulars about Burke's private life which will not be found elsewhere, and a very complete answer to some obscure slanders on the subject which had been exhumed and elaborated by the late Mr. Dilke, and which have since been reprinted. It was natural that in an age of unsparing calumny a high-minded and very sensitive public man should have endeavoured as much as possible to withdraw his private concerns and domestic relations from the public gaze. It was equally natural that a critic of the stamp of Mr. Dilke should regard such a reticence as profoundly suspicious, and should make it the endless theme of dishonourable insinuations.
See the different testimonies on the subject collected in Prior and Macknight's Lives of Burke, and also the masterly sketch in Buckle's Hist, of Civilisation , i. 414–423. Charles Butler says that ‘Burke's conversation was rambling, but splendid, rich and instructive beyond comparison.’—Butler's Reminiscences , i. 168. Some interesting fragments which were reported by Mrs. Crewe have been printed by Lord Houghton in the Philobiblion Society and in Rogers' Recollections .
Sir Gilbert Elliot, after a very interesting description of the eloquence of Sheridan, says, ‘Burke also abounds with these fine passages, and he soars also as much out of the lower regions of discourse and infinitely further into those of imagination and fancy; but no man could ever perceive in him the least trace of preparation, and he never appears more incontestably inspired by the moment and transported with the fury of the god within him than in those finished passages which it would cost Shakespeare long study and labour to produce.’—Lady Minto's Life of Sir G. Elliot , i. 215. Walpole, on the other hand, while speaking of the ‘inexhaustible fertility’ with which Burke ‘poured out new ideas, metaphors, and allusions which came forth ready dressed in the most ornamental and yet the most correct language,’ complained that even when he ‘replied extempore, his very answers, that sprang from what had been said by others, were so painted and artfully arranged, that they wore the appearance of study and preparation.’—Walpole's George III. ii. 273, 275. Gibbon bears witness to the correctness of those printed speeches which he had himself heard delivered.— Miscellaneous Works , i. 235.
There is an excellent criticism of the merits and defects of Burke as a speaker in a letter of Flood to Charlemont, describing one of Burke's great speeches on conciliation with America. ‘His performance was the best I have heard from him in the whole winter. He is always brilliant to an uncommon degree, and yet I believe it would be better he were less so. I don't mean to join with the cry which will always run against shining parts, when I say that I sincerely think it interrupts him so much in argument that the House are never sensible that he argues as well as he does. Fox gives a strong proof of this, for he makes use of Burke's speech as a repertory, and by stating crabbedly two or three of those ideas which Burke has buried under flowers, he is thought almost always to have had more argument,’— Charlemont MSS. Erskine used to say that the grand fault of Burke's speaking was that he was too episodical.—Prior's Life of Burke , ii. 473
See e.g. the magnificent declamatory passage on the justice of the French war in the first letter on the Regicidal Peace.
It is related of Coleridge that a very experienced shorthand writer was employed to take down his lectures on Shakespeare, and that his manuscript proved almost unintelligible. The reporter afterwards said that from long experience he had, with every other speaker he had ever heard, been almost always able to guess the form of the latter part of each sentence by the form of the beginning, but that the conclusion of every one of Coleridge's sentences was a surprise to him.
There are excellent descriptions of Burke's speaking in Wraxall's Memoirs , ii. 35–38; Walpole's Memoirs of George III. ii. 273, 274; Last Journals , i. 84, 85, 443; and in the letters in Lady Minto's Life of Sir G. Elliot. See, too, Butler's Reminiscences , pp. 166–168. Erskine's very unfavourable description of his manner is given in Campbell's Chancellors , ix. 68, 69. Lord Brougham, in his sketch of Burke ( Statesmen of George III. ), has collected several instances of his glaring bad taste. Another, too gross for quotation, will be found in Jesse's Life of Selwyn , iv. 130, 131. Wilkes said that the Venus of Burke ‘was sometimes the Venus of whisky.’ ‘What will they think,’ Sheridan once said, ‘of the public speaking of this age in after times when they rear Mr. Burke's speeches and are told that in his day he was not accounted either the first or second speaker?’—Rogers's Recollections , p. 89.
Boswell's Johnson (Croker's ed.), p. 177.
Chatham Correspondence , iii, 111.
Grattan's Life , i. 142.
Walpole's Last Journals , i. 84-86, 438, 443, 513; ii. 26.
Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works , i. 235.
Walpole's Last Journals, ii. 194. Walpole's Letters , vii. 29, 30.
Lady Minto's Life of Sir Gilbert Ellliot , i. 195.
Prior's Burke , ii. 472.
Chatham Correspondence , iii. 110, 111. Lord Stanhope's Hist, of England , v. app. p. x.
See the Chatham Correspondence , especially iii. 61, 199, 200, 216, 269; iv. 276, 277.
7 George III. c. 57. 9 George III. c. 24.
See Chatham Correspondence , iv. 254, 255, 283. Burke's Correspondence , i. 210, 211, 389, 390. Walpole's Last Journals , i. 169, 207, 210, 242-246.
Burke's Correspondence , i. 251. See on the other side Chatham Correspondence , iv. 101-104, 109-114.
Chatham Correspondence , iv. 296-307, 318-321. Albemarle's Life of Rockingham , ii. 226-234.
Burke's Correspondence , i. 170, 216.
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents .
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents . Fox in the same spirit, in two very remarkable letters written in 1794, defended the maintenance of party government as ‘the only mode or plan in this country by which a rational man can hope to stem the power and influence of the Crown;’ and he says, ‘I am convinced that this system, and this alone, has prevented Great Britain from falling into what Hume calls its euthanasia of absolute monarchy.’—Lord Russell's Life of Fox , iii. 68-72. I may add a few sentences describing the political condition of England in 1772, from a very able anonymous book published in that year. ‘No regular party existing, the breath of the day has formed, dissolved, and changed oppositions; no tie or connection being formed among any set of men, they have fallen into the most unnatural unions imaginable. … Every set of men, nay almost every man, has been in and out, with or without any other set of men, so that nothing like the principle of a party is left in the nation. This revolution must in the end have great consequences; the present miserable disconnection among all the great men and their dependants in the kingdom has thrown a greater power into the hands of the Crown, than an augmentation in the army of 10,000 men. … At present we have in the nation only one set of men that can pretend to the appearance of a party, which are those who adhere to the Court on every question. … These men, who are strictly united and under the ministerial banner, having a principle of union wanted by every other set, are an overmatch for all.’— Letters on the present State of England , pp. 202–204.
Burke's Correspondence , 382, 383.
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
See e.g. that noble passage in his speech on American taxation. ‘If ever Lord Chatham fell into a fit of the gout, or if any other cause withdrew him from public cares, principles directly the contrary to his own were sure to predominate. … When his face was hid but for a moment, his whole system was on a wide sea without chart or compass. … Deprived of his guiding influence his colleagues were whirled about, the sport of every gust and easily driven into any port; and as those who joined with them in manning the vessel were the most directly opposite to his opinions, measures and character, and far the most artful and most powerful of the set, they easily prevailed so as to seize upon the vacant, unoccupied, and derelict minds of his friends, and instantly they turned the vessel wholly out of the course of his policy.’
Burke's Correspondence , i. 179, 204, 206, 252, 475, 506; ii. 55, 63, 78.
Burke's Correspondence , ii. 276, 277.
Ibid. i. 200.
See the remarks of Walpole, Memoirs of George III . iv. 129-135.
Rockingham's Memoirs , ii. 193-195. This letter bears the following strange and very melancholy endorsement written by Burke more than twenty years later amid the excitement of the French Revolution. ‘July 13, 1792. Looking over poor Lord Rockingham's papers, I find this letter from a man wholly unlike him. It concerns my pamphlet ( The Cause of the Discontents ). I remember to have seen this knavish letter at the time. The pamphlet is itself by anticipation an answer to that grand artificer of fraud. He would not like it. It is pleasant to hear him talk of the great extensive public who never conversed but with a parcel of low toad-eaters. Alas! alas! how different the real from the ostensible public man! Must all this theatrical stuffing and raised heels be necessary for the character of a great man? Edmund Burke. Oh! but this does not derogate from his great, splendid side, God forbid!—E. B.’ In Mrs. Crewe's Memoranda of Burke's Conversation there is the following more favourable character of Chatham. ‘Lord Chatham was a great minister and bold in his undertakings. He inspired the people with warlike ardour when it was necessary. He considered mobs in the light of a raw material which might be manufactured to a proper stuff for their own happiness in the end.’—Rogers's Recollections , p. 82.
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents. Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol. Speech on the Duration of Parliaments .
Speech on the Duration of Parliaments . It is curious to contrast this with the statement of Junius that ‘the last session of a septennial Parliament is usually employed in courting the favour of the people.’—Dedication to the English People. Charles I. thought long Parliaments specially hostile to royal influence. He wrote to Went-worth (January 22, 1634-5), ‘Parliaments are of the nature of cats. They ever grow curst with age; so that if you will have good of them, put them off handsomely when they come to any age, for young ones are ever most tractable.’
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents .
Burke's Correspondence , ii. 383. So again he speaks of ‘a rotten subdivision of a faction amongst ourselves who have done us infinite mischief by the violence, rashness, and often wickedness of their measures. I mean the Bill of Rights people;’ and he adds, ‘If no remedy can be found in the disposition of capital people, in the temper, spirit (and docility too) of the lower, and in the thorough union of both, nothing can be done by any alteration in form.’ Ibid. i. 229, 231. In a later letter he say, ‘If the nation at large has disposition enough to oppose all bad principles and bad men, its form of government is in my opinion fully sufficient for it; but if the general disposition be against a virtuous and manly line of public conduct, there is no form into which it can be thrown that will improve its nature or add to its energy.’ Ibid. ii. 384. Speaking of the assertion ‘that we are not happy enough to enjoy a sufficient number of voters in England,’ he says, ‘I believe that most sober thinkers on this subject are rather of opinion that our fault is on the other side, and that it would be more in the spirit of our Constitution and more agreeable to the pattern of our best laws, by lessening the number to add to the weight and independency of our voters. And truly, considering the immense and dangerous charge of elections, the prostitute and daring venality, the corruption of manners, the idleness and profligacy of the lower sort of voters, no prudent man would propose to increase such an evil.’— Observations on the State of the Nation .
See especially his speech on the Reform of Parliament. Burke's Works , x. 92-108.
Correspondence , ii. 385, 383.
Last Journals , i. 84.
Watson's Anecdotes of his Own Time , i. 132.
Lord Holland writes: ‘Mr. Fox has more than once assured me that in his [Burke's] invectives against Mr. Hastings's indignities to the Indian priesthood, he spoke of the piety of the Hindoos with admiration, and of their holy religion and sacred functions with an awe bordering on devotion.’—Lord Holland's Memoirs of the Whig Party , i. 5, 6. See, too, Moore's Life of Sheridan , ii. 94, 95.
Parl. Hist . xvi. 920, 921.
Thoughts on the present Discontents . So, again, ‘To govern according to the sense and agreeably to the interests of the people, is a great and glorious object of government’ (Speech on the Duration of Parliaments). Works , x. 73.
Speech on the Reform of Parliament (1782). Works, x. 95.
Speech on the Duration of Parliaments. Works , x. 73.
‘One may generally observe that the body of a people has juster views for the public good, and pursues them with greater uprightness, than the nobility and gentry, who have so many private expectations and particular interests, which hang like a false bias upon their judgments, and may possibly dispose them to sacrifice the good of their country to the advancement of their own fortunes, whereas the gross of the people can have no other prospect in changes and revolutions than of public blessings, that are to diffuse themselves through the whole State in general.’—Addison's Remarks on Italy.
Burke's Works , x. 97-102.
Thus in his speech against reform in 1782, he says: ‘I went through most of the northern parts—the Yorkshire election was then raging; the year before, through most of the western counties—Bath, Bristol, Gloucester—not one word either in the towns or country on the subject of representation.’—Burke's Works , x. 101. In a remarkable letter on the same subject to the chairman of a Buckinghamshire meeting in 1780, he says: ‘I most heartily wish that the deliberate sense of the kingdom on this great subject should be known. When it is known it must be prevalent. It would be dreadful indeed if there were any power in the nation capable of resisting its unanimous desire, or even the desire of any great and decided majority of the people. The people may be deceived in their choice of an object, but I can scarcely conceive any choice they can make to be so very mischievous as the existence of any human force capable of resisting it.’—Ibid. ix. 319, 320.
Thoughts on the present Discontents.
See a striking letter by Rousseau to a Dutch gentleman ‘On the present State of Liberty in Europe,’ in the American Remembrancer for 1776, part ii. pp. 292–295.
See vol. ii. pp. 52-55.
Thus Dr. Johnson in a pamphlet called The Patriot , describing the old mode of trying elections, says: ‘The claim of a candidate and the right of electors are said scarcely to have been, even in appearance, referred to conscience, but to have been decided by party, by passion, by prejudice, or by frolic. To have friends in the borough was of little use to him who wanted friends in the House; a pretence was easily found to evade a majority, and the seat was at last his that was chosen, not by his electors, but by his fellow-senators.’ Since Grenville's Bill, he says, ‘a disputed election is tried with the same scrupulousness and solemnity as any other title.’
These were the last words of his speech. Wedderburn began his reply by continuing the quotation:
Ibid. xvi. 902-923; xvii. 1062-1074. Annual Register , 1770, pp. 77, 78, 226, 227. Walpole's George III. iv. 111, 112. Grenville Papers , iv. 515, 516, Walpole's Last Journals , i. 314–325.
Parl. Hist. xvi. 834-841. Annual Register , 1770, pp. 69-71.
Commons Journals , vol. ix. 431. Burgh's Political Disguisitions , i. 212. See, too, 4 Geo. III. c. 33.
12 and 13 Wm. III. c. 3; 2 and 3 Anne, c. 18; see, too, 11 Geo. II. c. 24.
10 Geo. III. e. 50. See, too, Blackstone , bk. i. ch. ii. May's Law of Parliament , ch. v. Mansfield spoke powerfully in favour of this measure. Parl. Hist. xvi. 974-978.
Commons Journals , vol. xxxi. p. 540.
For a full history of parliamentary privilege, see Pemberton's Letter to Lord Langdale on Parliamentary Privilege.
Walpole's George II. i. 17, 21, 29, 31.
Andrews' Hist. of British Journalism , i. 208.
Walpole's George III. iv. 1.
Andrews' Hist. of Journalism , i. 211.
Wright's House of Hanover , ii. 373.
See May's Constitutional History , ii. 107–116.