Читать книгу The History of King George the Third - Horace Walpole - Страница 8

Table of Contents

Thanks of the House of Commons to Mr. Onslow, their Speaker.—His Character.—Sir John Philipps.—Mr. Legge.—Mr. More, of Shrewsbury.—Mr. Onslow’s retirement.—His last address to the House.—Lord Bath’s Pamphlet.—Solicitations by France for Peace.—Mr. Pitt disinclined to negotiate.—Expedition against Belleisle.—Mr. Pitt’s obstinacy.—Lord Bute’s Faction.—Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Bedford.—Negotiation for Peace.—Monsieur de Bussy.—Mr. Stanley.—Death of Archibald Duke of Argyle, and of Hoadley, Bishop of Winchester.—Character of those Personages.—Their Successors.

The last day of the session, March 18th, was fixed for returning the thanks of the House of Commons to Mr. Onslow, their Speaker, who had filled the chair with unblemished integrity during the whole long reign of George the Second, and who had the prudence to quit the scene before his years and growing infirmities made him a burthen to himself and the public.80 No man had ever supported with more firmness the privileges of the House, nor sustained the dignity of his office with more authority. His knowledge of the Constitution equalled his attachment to it. To the Crown he behaved with all the decorum of respect, without sacrificing his freedom of speech. Against encroachments of the House of Peers he was an inflexible champion. His disinterested virtue supported him through all his pretensions; and though to conciliate popular favour he affected an impartiality that by turns led him to the borders of insincerity and contradiction—and though he was so minutely attached to forms, that it often made him troublesome in affairs of higher moment, it will be difficult to find a subject whom gravity will so well become, whose knowledge will be so useful and so accurate, and whose fidelity to his trust will prove so unshaken.

Sir John Philipps81 moved the address of thanks to him for his great services, but so wretchedly, that the sensibility the House showed on the occasion flowed only from their hearts, not from any impression made on them by the eloquence of their spokesman. Legge seconded the motion with his usual propriety and brevity, and commended retreat, God knows with what sincerity! Others threw in their word of panegyric; and Mr. More, of Shrewsbury, an old and acute member, proposed to erect a statue to the Speaker’s memory, with great encomiums on the authority with which he had formerly kept in order such men as then filled the Treasury-bench and composed the Opposition, naming among the former Sir Robert Walpole and Mr. Pelham, the latter of whom, he said, had the honour of dying a Commoner. More was a Whig of the primitive stamp, and though attached to Sir Robert Walpole, had withstood, and by the force of his honest abilities had defeated, the intended clemency of that Minister to some attainted Jacobite families with respect to their estates. He had long abstained from Parliament, returned to it without his former success, and now appeared there for the last time.

Henry Archer82 proposed to address the Crown to bestow a pecuniary reward on the Speaker’s services. Sir John Philipps replied, he knew that was intended; as it was; an annuity of two thousand pounds a year to him and his son. Sir George Saville approved the reward, but desired the Commons, not the Crown, might have the merit of bestowing it. Velters Cornwall made one of his absurd, ill-natured speeches, which the House was always so kind as to take for humour, teazing the Speaker under pretence of complimenting him; while the good old man sat overpowered with gratitude, and weeping over the testimonies borne to his virtue. He rose at last, and closed his public life in the most becoming manner; neither over-acting modesty, nor checking the tender sensibility which he necessarily felt at quitting the darling occupation of his life. His thanks to the House for their patient sufferance of his errors, and for their gracious acceptance of his endeavours to serve them, were shortly, but cogently, expressed; and his voice, and the tears he could not restrain, spoke still more forcibly how much his soul was agitated by laudable emotions. He begged to have the address spared, as he would accept nothing for himself, though he would not prejudice his family. He was going, he said, into the most close and obscure retreat, where he should want little; and he concluded with a pathetic prayer for the perpetuity of the Constitution. Sir John Philipps desired that what he had uttered might be inserted in the votes. The Speaker protested he could not remember his own words, but the House insisted, as Cornwall and Sir George Saville did on the address, to which the Speaker at last acquiesced, and it was voted. He ended with saying this was the greatest day and the greatest honours ever known, for they could only be conferred by a free nation.83

The next day the Parliament was prorogued, then dissolved, and a new one chosen.

In this month was published a pamphlet called “Seasonable Hints from an Honest Man on the present Crisis.” The author, and some of the doctrines it broached—not any merit in the composition—make it memorable. It was written by Lord Bath,84 who having surprised the King into a promise of the Lord-Lieutenancy of Shropshire, was opposed by the Duke of Newcastle, who supported Lord Powis.85 The pamphlet, therefore, warmly attacked his Grace, taxed him with his cabals and resignation in the last rebellion, and it defended the measure of admitting the Tories to a participation of power. In general, the language of the pamphlet was that of the Court, who conducted themselves by the advice bequeathed by Lord Bolingbroke, who had, and with truth, assured the late Prince of Wales, that the Tories would be the heartiest in the support of prerogative. The censure passed on pensions was not equally flattering to the Court, the new reign having already bestowed them profusely. Yet much the book vaunted the King’s declaration against corruption in elections, which had gone no farther than to undermine the Duke of Newcastle’s influence. The private Junto was impatient to conclude the peace, that they might prosecute the intended war on the old ministry at home, the established harmony being solely produced by the war, as had often been the case at Rome. A few pedantic examples were the sum of Lord Bute’s knowledge; yet his partizans affected to celebrate the care he had taken of the King’s education. A well-founded panegyric on a man who was deficient in the orthography of his own language! The King had had able preceptors: the Bishop of Norwich86 was a scholar; the Bishop of Salisbury87 not deficient. Stone and Scott had taste and knowledge. Lord Waldegrave, for forming a King, was not to be matched. It proved, indeed, that his Majesty had learned nothing, but what a man, who knew nothing, could teach him.

About the end of March, France renewed the most pressing solicitations for peace. They frankly avowed the distress of their affairs; for they did not apprehend hard-heartedness in the new Court. Augsburgh they proposed for the place of congress, or any other town the King should name, professing they would treat vis-à-vis du Roi de la Grande Brétagne; for which purpose they offered to send a minister hither, where, too, might be one from the King of Prussia: the ministers of their allies should assemble at Paris. The two Empresses, they said, were grown more moderate in their demands; and for their own part, they talked of yielding to us all Canada. So much ear was given to these overtures, that the Earl of Egremont88 and Sir Joseph Yorke89 were named to go to the Congress. But so little was this measure to the inclination of Mr. Pitt, that he prosecuted with unusual warmth an expedition he had meditated against Belleisle; a conquest of so little value, and so inadequate to the expense with which it was attended, that the plan was by many believed calculated solely to provoke the Court of France, and break off the negotiation. France was more surprised than concerned at this attack. Sir Edward Hawke had lain before it for two years, when there were not five hundred men on the island, without attempting it. Now they had had time to fortify it, we persisted in the conquest. Both Hawke and Boscawen90 earnestly dissuaded the enterprise. Yet Pitt was obdurate; and the island was taken at last by the beginning of June, after an enormous waste of money, and the loss of some men. There fell Sir William Williams, a gallant and ambitious young man, who had devoted himself both to war and politics. The island is a barren rock; and it was only to humour Mr. Pitt, that France, in the succeeding negotiations, condescended to treat it as an object of the smallest importance.

The indecent and injudicious precipitation with which the Favourite’s faction hurried towards peace, justified any steadiness Mr. Pitt could exert to keep the balance where he had placed it, in our own hands. Newcastle and Hardwicke, either not perceiving the symptoms of their own fall, or hoping to ward off the evil hour, truckled to the Favourite’s views. The Duke of Bedford (who in his heart admired Pitt, but was made to hate him by Rigby, at the instigation of Fox, and inflamed by the coldness with which Pitt had listened to the representations made by his Grace, on the opposition to him in Ireland) was, avowedly, pacific; and all of them seemed united against the warlike minister. Lord Talbot went so far as to press the dismission of him. But it was Lord Bute’s nature to provoke first, before he offended. Gallitzin, the Russian minister, was reprimanded by him for carrying the proposition of peace to Mr. Pitt, instead of to him; though it had been usual, while Lord Holderness held the Seals, for the foreign ministers in his department to address themselves to the effective minister. Mr. Pitt’s temper, soured by these associations and contradictions, broke out first against the Duke of Newcastle. At a great council held on the 23rd of April, Mr. Pitt, who had been wont to affirm, that too much could not be spent on the war in Germany, made severe complaint of the extravagance in the management of it; and imputed it to the fault of our commissaries, that Prince Ferdinand had been disabled from making greater progress there. Himself, he said, within six months, would move for an inquiry into the conduct of the war. The Duke of Bedford took up the contrary side with warmth, and made a speech that was much admired; and so little attention was paid to the views of Mr. Pitt, that it was settled Mr. Stanley91 and Monsieur de Bussy should be exchanged to conduct the negotiation. Bussy was an Abbé of parts, who had formerly resided here as minister,92 and had given much offence to the late King whom he treated so impertinently, that the King, asking him one day in the circle, “Ce qu’il y avoit de nouveau à Paris?” Bussy replied with contemptuous familiarity, “Sire, il y gêle.” He had again been imposed on that Prince, when the French dictated to him a neutrality for Hanover. Bussy was not likely to be so presumptuous now. Yet France, trusting to our pusillanimous impatience for peace, had the confidence to demand, that the man-of-war that carried over Stanley should bring back Bussy. But Mr. Pitt was yet minister; the proposal was rejected; and it was settled that Stanley and Bussy should be at Dover and Calais on the 22nd.

Before the departure of Stanley, it was agitated in Council, whether he should be entrusted with full powers. Mr. Pitt, who had named Stanley from opinion of his abilities, though at that time disunited from him and gone over to Newcastle, confided in this nomination, and thought it would leave himself master of the negotiation, if Stanley, who by being at Paris was in his department, were charged with conclusive powers; for which, therefore, Pitt and Lord Temple pleaded. But Bute, and the rest of the Council, who chose not to let the negotiation pass out of their own hands, prevailed to have Stanley’s instructions limited.

During these discussions died two considerable men, Archibald Duke of Argyle, and Hoadley Bishop of Winchester. The character of the former93 has been sufficiently set forth in my preceding Memoirs. The last will be known by his writings, and as long as a Churchman, combating for the liberties of mankind, shall be an unusual phenomenon.94 Argyle had the lowest opinion of his nephew, Lord Bute, who he had foretold would rush into power without having formed a plan. The nephew had in truth too little capacity, and too much presumption, to let himself be guided by so shrewd a relation, though the uncle would not have been obdurate if proper deference had been paid to his oracle. The last effort of this great Lord’s power in Scotland had miscarried. The city of Edinburgh had recurred, as usual, to his nomination for the election of their representative; that is, of thirty-three electors, twenty-two still acknowledged their ancient dictator. He named Forester, an able Scottish counsellor, but always resident in England. Six days before the election such violent papers were dispersed against Forester, as too much an Englishman, that the City did not dare to put him in nomination, but were forced to choose their own Provost. How much did Scotland afterwards resent parallel nationalities, when exercised against them!

The Marquis of Tweedale95 succeeded the Duke of Argyle, as Chief Justiciary; and Bishop Thomas, of Salisbury, the King’s former preceptor, was made Bishop of Winchester. Drummond,96 of St. Asaph, whom Newcastle had destined to Winchester, succeeded. Thomas Earl Powis was made Comptroller of the Household on the death of Lord Edgcumbe.97