I know as little, save 'from newspapers, of the present busy scenes as I do of transactions in Paris, and yet am destined for ever to a double uneasiness; that of incapacity to serve those I love, and yet to be continually censured for every public transaction, though totally retired from Court and public business." The King, as we have already intimated always denied indignantly denied - not only that he was under the influence of Bute, but even that he was on terms of familiar intercourse with him. Indeed we know from Lord Brougham that the King quarrelled with his aunt the Princess Amelia for having tried to entrap him into an interview with his old Minister at Gunnersbury, and it has always appeared to us that there were strong primâ facie grounds for assuming that the King would be disposed rather to break off than to continue his intimacy with Lord Bute. A man so sensitive as George III. was both on matters relating to the royal dignity and on those relating to private morals must have been painfully wounded by the scandalous rumours which coupled his mother's name with that of the favourite. If the rumours were true, then every fresh appearance of Bute in the royal presence was a fresh insult. If they were not true, still their notoriety would throw an air of embarrassment over every interview. This theory, so reasonable in itself, derives confirmation from the evidence of the late King of Hanover. Mr. Jesse quotes a letter of his Majesty to Mr. Wilson Croker, which con tains these passages:— 'While walking with my late revered father at Kew... he often talked of the different difficulties he had been placed in from various changes of Ministries. With respect to Lord Bute there seemed to me always something which denoted a reluctance on his part to speak out on the subject.... And I believe it was on account of Lord Bute's having beeen invited to Gunnersbury unknown to the King that he seldom or ever (qu. never) saw the Princess Amelia afterwards.' went over to breakfast with his mother the Princess Dowager; and she took him aside and said, “There is somebody here who wishes very much to speak to you." "Who is it?" "Lord Bute." "Good God! mamma, how could you bring him here? It is impossible for me to hold any communication with Lord Bute in this manner." However he did see him, when Lerd Bute made a violent attack upon him for having abandoned and neglected him. The King replied that he could not in justice to his Ministers hold any communication with him unknown to them, when Lord Bute said became angry in his turn, and said, "Then, he would never see the King again. The King my Lord, be it so; and remember from henceforth we never meet again;" and from that day he never beheld Lord Bute or had any communication with him. After they had parted, the former favourite lost every atom of influence he had once possess ed over the King's mind.' Mr. Jesse quotes a letter addressed by him to his friend Horne in 1773, in which these lamentations occur : — "Think, my friend, of my son Charles being refused everything I asked for him. I have not had interest to get him a company, while every alderman of a petty corporation meets with certain success." Degrees of interest are comparative.' Lord Bute probably thought it hard that his son should not command a company at twenty, when other young gentlemen had attained that dignity before they left school. But the son whose slow promotion he thus deplored died a Lieutenant-General and a Knight of the Bath at the age of forty-eight. The complaint and the circumstances on which it was founded illustrate not only Lord Bute's loss of influence, but also the advantages which its possession in those days was able to confer. On the whole it seems probable from the nature of things that Bute's long relations with the Court did give him access to the King after he had quitted office, but that as the scandal of Bute's connexion with the Princess Dowager became more general, and the importance of his influence over became anxious to break off an intimacy the King more credited, the King himself which certainly was detrimental to his interests and his peace of mind, and might also be inconsistent with his honour. somewhat at length, because it forms an We have treated this episodical matter important element in the history of the first twenty-five years of George III.'s reign, and because the allusions to it in all the speeches of the time are not only frequent, เ His 6 'It is a great mercy that Mr. Wilkes, the intrepid defender of our rights and liberties, may live to fight and write again in defence of them; and it is no less a mercy that God has raised up the Earl of Sandwich to vindicate and promote true religion and morality! These two blessings will justly make an epoch in the annals of this country.' but violent and acrimonious. We now re- concerned; Pitt withdrew, and the negotiasume our summary of the history of the tion was at an end. Grenville, of course, period which preceded the formation of remained in office, and began his new reign Lord North's Ministry. Of Grenville's Ad- by lecturing the King on the ascendancy of ministration it has been said that it was, on Bute. He was not long before he embarked the whole, the worst which has governed on a fresh sea of troubles. The House of England since the Revolution.' It was Lords addressed the Crown with a view to signalised by outrages on the liberty of prosecute the author of the scandalous' Esthe people and outrages on the dignity of say on Woman.' The House of Commons the Crown." To us it appears the severest was equally vigorous against the author of the trial to which the King, whose life was full scurrilous North Briton.' The Grenville of trials, was subjected. Later in his reign Ministry pitted Parliament and Governthe King had to contend with many misfor- ment against John Wilkes. The moral tunes; with unsuccessful and costly wars; effect of such strategy it should not have with national distress and national discon- been difficult to prognosticate. Well did tent; with the gigantic resources of pow- Chesterfield write, after the duel into which erful enemies and the half-hearted friend- Wilkes had been hurried by his personaliship of crippled and desponding allies. But ties against Martin,in those days he had sympathies and consolations which now were wanting to him. He had in succession two Ministers on whose personal friendship and devotion he could implicitly rely; he had the regard and esteem of the middle classes of the country; he had the advantage of a character at last well known and understood. But during the Grenville Administration he had none of those consolations. chief Minister was not cordial, or sympa- It was indeed an epoch in the annals of the thetic, or devoted: but cold, formal, stern country. But its interest is tame and tranand dictatorial. His people were as yet sitory compared with that other epoch which strangers to his own character, and be- is eternally associated with Grenville's lieved the worst of him. Every ministerial name; the epoch at which he proposed his act that was obnoxious and unpopular was two famous Resolutions to tax the Ameri vulgarly attributed to the despotic schemes can Colonies. While he was thus raising of the King; and the King was believed to the popular spirit of England against be held in leading-strings by his mother the Government, and the popular spirit of and Lord Bute. The first outburst of the the Colonists against England, he was disprotracted storm commenced with the pub- obliging the Sovereign by stinting him in lication of what Burke called that spirit- matters most intimately affecting his digless, though virulent, performance, at once nity and comfort. On the spot where Buckvapid and sour,' No. 45 of the North Bri- ingham Palace now stands, the Queen's ton,' and the agitation about General War- House then stood. The ground which is rants. The war between Wilkes and the covered by Grosvenor Palace and the paGovernment was destined to last seven years; latial squares of Belgravia was marsh and seven years of successive humiliation for the swamp where sportsmen shot wild ducks. It Government, and of triumph to the most im- was considered necessary for the privacy pudent and scurrilous of demagogues. This of the Palace to include some acres of this was the first-fruits of Grenville's indiscre-ground in the desmesnes. 20,000l. was the tion, and was near being his last. A sense of the feelings of the Cabinet induced the King to consider the expediency of dismissing his Ministers. Bute suggested an application to Pitt, and, as we have before remarked, the Duke of Bedford came up to London to make the same suggestion at the same time, Pitt was sent for. He had three interviews with the King; but they were fruitless. Pitt insisted on bringing in certain colleagues, who were intolerable to he King. The King said his honour was price demandel. But Grenville's uncourtly of sufficient to overthrow a Cabinet which was tottering in its very commencement, but which deserves well of history for having succeeded in repealing the Stamp Act. Application was again made to Pitt, who this time condescended to afford his aid though unaccompanied by the co operation of Lord Temple. Pitt himself declined to take the ostensible post of First Minister, to which the Duke of Grafton was appointed; but in lieu of that became Privy Seal, and, shortly after, Earl of Chatham. In this Ministry it was that Lord North first took office, and first brought himself under the favourable notice of the King. The history of the Duke of Grafton's Administration is the history of the Duke of Grafton's distresses and anxieties, caused by the discontent in America, the contests with Wilkes, the savage onslaughts of Junius, and, not least, the illnesses, caprices, and finally the opposition of Chatham. With clouds gathering in every part of the political horizon, with London in a state of half-sedition, with his own Chancellor and his late colleague speaking against him in the House of Lords, it is not surprising that a man of the Duke of Grafton's luxurious and indolent habits should have preferred obscurity to pow er. a desire to exalt the House of Commons, to show its constitutional control over the public purse, in fact to exemplify its power over the Court in the same way as he wished to exemplify its power over the colonies by taxing America. On the constitutional right of the House of Commons to refuse a grant for buying grounds to improve the King's palace, there could be as little doubt as there was on its constitutional right to tax the dependencies of the kingdom. But if Grenville could only have persuaded himself that the highest political wisdom often consists in not pushing a constitutional right to its extreme point, how different would have been the present aspect of London and the present relations of England to America! On a subsequent occasion a severer wound was inflicted on the King's feelings by the studied omission of his mother's name from the Regency Bill. The omission was ultimately repaired, and Grenville assumed credit to himself for having repaired it; but the King can hardly be ignorant or forgetful of the part he had played during the passage of the Bill through Parliament. The impression made on the King's mind by the transaction an impression the more profound in consequence of one of those mental attacks which he had lately suffered no doubt led him to seek again to change his Ministry. The openness of his intention brought upon him one of those insulting reprimands from the Duke of Bedford, which, however they may have been justified at the time by the supposed influence of Lord Bute, would require some far greater reason to justify them in our time. As a comment on this suspicion, it is as well to add Lord North assumed the post of Prime that the attack on Bedford House by a mob Minister in January, 1770. His was the of Spitalfield weavers, who were irritated by seventh Ministry which the first ten years of a sensible speech of the Duke's against pro- the King's reign saw. It was the stormiest tective duties, was devoutly believed by the and the gloomiest of the seven. When he begreat Whig leaders to have been instigated came Premier, the exasperation of the Ameby Lord Bute! The negotiation, however, rican Colonies had just been raised beyond which the King had entrusted to the Duke its former height by the ill-judged resolution of Cumberland broke down through a mis- of Parliament, on the motion of the Duke of understanding or coolness between those Bedford, to revive against the Colonists an two strange personages, Pitt and his broth- obsolete statute of Henry VIII., and to er-in-law Lord Temple; whose wayward bring over American prisoners for trial by caprices and inconsistencies seem to typify the English courts. On the very day when the relations of other and inferior statesmen he brought before Parliament the ministeof that day, and to supersede in no small rial proposal for a duty on the importation of degree the necessity of explaining the dislo- tea into America, occurred the first affray cation of parties and administration by any in which blood was shed between Amerisystematic intrigues or adroit monœuvres can subjects and English soldiers at Bosof the King himself. But a ministry at once ton. The lull that succeeded in America unpopular with the country and with the Court could not last, and eventually the Marquis of Rockingham undertook the task which Pitt had declined. About a year was He had doubtless long desired to resign office; and this desire received its final impulse when Charles Yorke, his new Chancellor, met with his mysterious and awful end. The Duke's Administration broke up; but not before it had, by Charles Townsend's scheme of tea duties, undone all the good which the Rockingham Government had affected by repealing the Stamp Act. was accompanied by commotions in England. The popularity and persecution of Wilkes were successfully arraved against the Court and the Ministry. For the first say: time in recent history, a Lord Mayor of in childhood, and acted with him in boyish London, at the head of a city deputation, theatricals. Mr. Massey says, • The answered his sovereign on the throne in difficulty was to find any public man of terms of resentful remonstrance. When the character who would accept office on the storm lulled in England, it broke out afresh King's terms; the first condition upon which in America. First came the dismissal of every Minister had hitherto insisted being Franklin from office, and the devotion of the expulsion of the King's friends.' It is that keen and angry spirit to the revolu- likely enough that North put the influence tionary cause — then the Boston Tea Riots of the King's friends at its proper value, then the fatal conflict at Lexington- and knew that no personal relations bethen the battle of Bunker's Hill then tween the sovereign and any number of priineffectual attempts at reconciliation on vate individuals could outweigh the influeither side and then the Declaration of ence of a Minister who was powerful in the Independence in 1776. Next followed the House of Commons. And this second qualaliance between France and America, the ification North possessed amply. Perhaps capitulation of Burgoyne, and an alternation no Minister has ever retained such large of successes on either side, until the surren- majorities in the face of so many and inder of Cornwallis rendered the prolongation creasing failures. Mr. Massey goes on to of the struggle hopeless aud odious. The vicissitudes of failure and success which intervened between the capitulation of Burgoyne and the capitulation of Cornwallis were not relieved by any brilliant events in the domestic administration of the country. During the greater part of Lord North's Ministry, the Opposition in Parliament was angry, vehement, and eloquent, while out of Parliament many parts of the country, and especially the city of London, resound ed with murmurs, remonstrances, and complaints. The spirit which had been kindled by Beckford and fanned by Chatham was not extinguished. Public meetings were held in Westminster, in Yorkshire, and other places, to denounce the conduct of the Government. At last, when the news of Cornwallis's surrender had been received, and the Opposition continued to repeat motion after motion condemnatory of the prosecution of the war, Lord North succeeded in persuading the King to accept his resignation, and startled the House on the evening on which Lord Surrey was to bring forward a motion more stringent than any which preceded it, by the announcement that his Administration was at an end. 'No creeping ambition actuated his conduct. When he enumerated his unpopular votes as a proof that he was not ambitious, I have no doubt that he spoke with perfect sincerity; although it so happened that the very course which seemed to him to lead in an opposite direction was the one which conducted him to power. He supported the King against the aristocracy; the Parliament against the people; and the nation against the Colonies. Lord North shrunk from the post of danger, it is not likely that any other man could have been found to occupy it. The King must have given way.' ... Had Assuming this portrait to be true, it only proves that Lord North must have possessed in an eminent degree the qualities which are required in a leader of the House of Commons. In a House in which Burke and Barré, Conway and Sir George Savile, were distinguished speakers, the Minister who could hold his own against so formidable a phalanx could have been no common debater. And all the accounts which we have received of that era represent him as powerful in debate, and a master of finanThe character of the man who held the cial details. With an easy and playful wit helm of the State during this troublous pe- he combined a clear and forcible expression; riod is worthy of contemplation. There and he recommended both by a singular were many conditions which it was bound sweetness and placidity of temper. Often to fulfil, and in Lord North they were ful- assailed in language which would not be filled. It was necessary that the Minister tolerated in Parliament now-a-days, he alshould command the respect of the House of ways replied without bitterness, and generCommons, while he conciliated the confi- ally with good-humoured banter. A perdence of the King. The King had strug-sonal allusion of Burke serves at the same gled against the domination of the Grenvilles and the Bedfords. He longed for a Minister who would at least show deference to his rank, and consideration for his feelings. Such a Minister he found in Lord North, who had been brought up with him time to show the reckless license in which even the great parliamentary speakers of those days indulged, and the physical disadvantages under which Lord North laboured. The noble lord who spoke last, after extending his right leg a full yard before his left, rolling his flaming eyes and moving his ponderous frame, has at length opened his mouth. But the same great orator, in his letter to a Noble Lord,' describes him in these terms: He was a man of admirable parts, of general knowledge, of a versatile understanding, fitted for every kind of business, of infinite wit and pleasantry, of a delightful temper, and with a mind most perfectly disinterested. His great defect was a want of firmness, which made him unable to resist the influence of those he loved; though in defending their opinions he often encountered greater difficulties than he would have done in following his own. We shall see, in the course of this correspondence, how often he would cheerfully have resigned office, had his feelings of friendship to the King permitted him. At the same time it is difficult to see that a policy essentially different from that which he pursued in respect to America would have been followed by any contemporary Minister, except Lord Rockingham; and Lord Rockingham's views on this subject were not the views generally entertained by the nation. We may further add that Lord North was an elegant scholar of the . Eton type and emphatically a gentleman. And as the King, painfully impressed by his former experience, remarked, 'It was no slight thing having to do business with a gentleman.' Those who like to see a dramatic unity preserved throughout the relations of life, and those who love to see warm friendships perpetuated to the close of life, will be equally pained at the change which finally came over the mutual sentiments of the King and Lord North. While we read this correspondence, it seems impossible to believe that the time should ever come when the King and his Minister would be no longer friends. Yet that time did come, and came much sooner than either of the correspondents dreamed of. The Minister who had played the part of buffer between the Court and the Opposition, who had won majorities over to the side of the Court, and stood by the Court when they had dwindled to minorities, was himself to become a leader of Opposition, and a colleague both in Opposition and office with the man whose political principles and personal character were peculiarly odious to the King. His name was to be associated with a coalition which even the lax morality of those days deemed flagrantly dishonest, and with tactics which public opinion, then and since, has pronounced to be wholly unworthy of him as a man and a statesman. He was destined at a later period to act with men who abetted the Heir-Apparent's unconstitutional projects on the throne, and encouraged the unseemly jests of his parasites at its helpless occupant. It is not strange that the King should have felt deeply this bitter return for friendly intercourse and continued kindnesses; or that he should have spoken of Lord North as that ungrateful man.' Chatham, indeed, had been treated with great consideration, and had not returned it with the gratitude which the King thought due. But Chatham's nature was arrogant, dictatorial, and ungracious. Besides, Chatham did not ever, like North 6 bear the key of all his counsels, And know the very bottom of his soul; And almost might have coined him into gold.' In the ingratitude of Lord North the King experienced the ingratitude of an old and familiar friend; one who knew his every thought and wish. And to us this ingratitude seems inexplicable by any other assumption than that Lord North, with all his cleverness and good-nature, was wholly without sensibility. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Many of the people who pass through life with the character of being genial' and 'good-tempered,' owe their reputation entirely to the fact that they are not sensitive and thin-skinned. A man who has a good digestion, strong nerves, a smiling face, and a constitutional insensibility to ridicule or invective, may be a man without tenderness, without scruples, and without gratitude; but in the estimation of the world, he will pass for being a far better fellow' than the man whose kindliness or scrupulousness is marred by a thin-skinned susceptibility to blame or reproof. Lord North's nature was devoid of all profound emotion; probably, of all profound convictions. It was this want of depth which made him equally forgetful of former slights and former kindnesses; of old friends and old enemies; equally ready to help the King against Fox, and to coalesce with Fox against the King; to tolerate for years a servant who was perpetually giving him offence, and to ally himself with a faction which had for years been reviling and deriding him. This is not a great character, but it is an eminently popular one; and, as in the case of Lord North, there are seasons when it may be very useful. We will now proceed to examine some of the letters which show in the strongest light the King's personal qualities, political opinions, and estimate of his Minister. |