Life of William, Earl of Shelburne/Volume 1/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
LORD SHELBURNE, LORD BUTE, AND MR. FOX
1757-1762
Lord Fitzmaurice served in the expeditions to the coast of France in 1757 and 1758, and subsequently under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick and Lord Granby in Germany, distinguishing himself at the Battle of Minden,[1] and again at Kloster Kampen, when as a volunteer, he joined the expedition led by the Hereditary Prince on the night of the 16th of October, 1760, in the hope of surprising the Marquis of Castries. During the retreat he was conspicuous by his courage, and on his return to England was rewarded with the rank of Colonel and the post of aide-de-camp to the King. His appointment, however, became the immediate cause of an outburst of spleen on the part of the Newcastle Whigs, already indignant "at the measure of bringing country lords and considerable gentlemen about the King."[2] Lord George Lennox it was said had distinguished himself still more than Lord Fitzmaurice, and the Duke of Richmond in a fit of dissatisfaction resigned the Bedchamber,[3] which he had quite recently asked for and obtained. Of the gallantry of Lord George Lennox at Kampen there was indeed no doubt, but the equal services of Lord Fitzmaurice were thus witnessed to by Lord Granby himself, who wrote to the newly appointed aide-de-camp: "When, my dear Lord, your very gallant behaviour at Kloster Kampen is more known, every one will think you have well merited the honour you have received. I speak of you, my dear Lord, from the information of those who were eyewitnesses of your behaviour on that day, and no one does my friend Fitzmaurice more justice than the Hereditary Prince, who desired I would make his compliments to you."[4]
In his new situation at Court Lord Fitzmaurice was at once brought into communication with Bute. The moment was a turning-point in English history. A new King was on the throne, in every respect the opposite of his predecessor, while the rival King over the water was daily sinking lower and lower in the estimation of even his most devoted followers. The Jacobites, who ever since the Revolution had either lived in retirement in the country or plotting against the established order of things in London, recognized the moment to have at length arrived for resuming their old position and returning to Court, where they were received with tokens of favour and welcome not unnaturally exhibited by a King who saw an important body of his subjects men likely to be as useful to government as they had been dangerous in opposition—all at once determined to yield an allegiance no longer nominal but real. The Whigs, who during the same period had with a single brief interval divided place and power amongst themselves, saw the danger which threatened them, but did not understand the true methods of combating it. Nor was this strange, for partly from the force of circumstances, partly under the influence of success, they had forgotten their own liberal creed and adopted that of their adversaries.[5] Retribution was now to befall them. When the Jacobites returned to Court, it was no longer possible for the Whigs to argue that upon their own retention of power depended either the maintenance of the House of Hanover or the Throne, or that of the Protestant religion in the country; while of that support which they might justly have claimed out of doors from a vigorous assertion of the principles of the Revolution of 1688, as capable of further development in the direction of civil and religious liberty, they had effectually deprived themselves. The popular belief was that it would have been difficult at that time to have found among the great Revolution families, a single man ready to sacrifice an appointment at Court or an official salary for any such Quixotic object. Nor could the Whigs claim confidence as administrators, for every child in the street knew that, after the death of Mr. Pelham, they had proved themselves incapable either of governing the country at home or of waging war abroad with success, that only the talents and energy of Pitt had saved the country from ruin since the time when, after many hesitations, Newcastle had exchanged his majority for a share of the popularity of the Great Commoner, and that it was the lustre of that popularity on which the Whig connection had been living ever since, though guiltless of having earned it. The country was in fact governed not by parties but by factions. Thus, when George III. ascended the Throne, the Whigs had ceased to be either necessary or consistent or even respected, while Pitt—although France, exhausted by the struggle, was willing to treat—seemed determined to carry on the war long after the main objects of the war had been attained. It was in this posture of affairs that Lord Fitzmaurice, entering public life, found Bute and Bedford anxious to terminate the war and put an end to the domination of Newcastle, the head of the most powerful of the three great Whig factions—the Pelhams, the Russells, and the Grenvilles. Bute had ulterior views which he only gradually avowed, and fortunately lacked the ability to carry out. Meanwhile his immediate objects were such as recommended themselves to the mind of Lord Fitzmaurice.
The Favourite had realised that it was necessary to obtain the services of some man of commanding ability in the House of Commons, and had cast his eye on Henry Fox.
Of all the statesmen of the time, Henry Fox was the least bound up with the existing system. On the formation of the Newcastle-Pitt administration in 1757, the whilom Secretary of State and leader of the House of Commons, had had to content himself with the small prestige and large emoluments of the Pay Office, a post which, indeed, he had only obtained by the decided interference of the King in his favour.[6] Through the support of the Duke of Cumberland, he had also obtained the reversion of a wealthy sinecure in Ireland in lieu of a peerage for Lady Caroline Fox which he was eagerly pressing to obtain,[7] but nothing appears to have been said to decide whether, when the reversion fell in, he was also to continue to hold the Pay Office as well as the sinecure. Since 1757 he had remained in a position of comparative obscurity, credited by the country with the possession of enormous gains, and the object accordingly of an unpopularity which his charm in private life only went a very short way towards redeeming; but his talents were undoubted, both as an administrator and a debater. Between Lord Shelburne and Mr. Fox there existed a family connection,[8] and to the son of Lord Shelburne, Bute not unnaturally looked as a convenient medium of communication. Nor was there any unwillingness in the other principal to the negotiation. Ever since the death of George II. Henry Fox had been engaged in worshipping the rising sun,[9] and endeavouring to attract attention to his orisons. Two great difficulties stood in the way: his unpopularity with the King, and his connection with the Duke of Cumberland and the Duke of Devonshire, both of whom had extended a steady protection to him during the time of his political effacement. It would be impossible to serve them and Bute at the same time, and it was not consequently till after many hesitations, that Fox at last resolved to make an offer of his services to the Court, coupling his advances with the demand of a peerage for Lady Caroline Fox, which he had vainly attempted to obtain in 1757. Early in February he accordingly wrote to Lord Fitzmaurice, asking him to obtain an interview with Bute.[10] The request was readily granted, and the preliminaries of the negotiation were soon settled, but difficulties then arose about the peerage, for the King believed Fox to have opposed the wishes of the Princess Dowager and Bute as to his own early education after the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Fox became alarmed at the delay, and gave vent to his feelings in the following letter:[11]
My dear Lord,—I take it for granted, by my not having seen you, you have not seen Lord Bute to-day. Consequently, whatever wants explanation is not explained; and may grow more hard to be explained. I do not comprehend Lord Bute's way of thinking: I might more truly say I do not know it on this occasion. If I have done wrong I suffer for it; but in all my uneasy thinking I cannot find out what to accuse myself of. If you see nothing improper in it, pray read the inclosed paper to, or leave it with Lord Bute.[12] It contains nothing but truth, and indeed I think the whole truth; some that I am ashamed of, I mean the little resolution with which I bear this disappointment. I have, indeed, said nothing of the unmanly envy it occasions in me; but I still flatter myself that nobody can at last more thoroughly withdraw into that narrow circle where all my happyness shall depend on myself and family. It costs at first to philosophize, but the philosophy will not be less perfect and calm and uninterrupted when it is determin'd. It is not so yet, or I should not write thus much about it.
In March Lord Holdernesse resigned the seals, and Bute accepted them. The resignations of Pitt and Temple were expected. "Mr. Fox," writes Lord Fitzmaurice to the new Secretary of State, "is not at all surprised at the change in general that is proposed, nor does he think that His Majesty's affairs will be carried on the worse for it. He does not, no more than I do, wish your Lordship joy of it, but congratulates the public very much, and wishes you all the private and particular satisfaction and success the situation can admit of, and your Lordship's wishes suggest. Since Sir Robert Walpole's time there has been no Ministry in this kingdom; and he hopes this will be the beginning of a durable and an honourable one to both King and State."[13]
While the negotiation was still in embryo, Lord Shelburne died, and Lord Fitzmaurice, who had been returned as member for the family borough of Chipping Wycombe was in consequence removed to the House of Lords without having taken his seat in the House of Commons, which had been elected in the spring of 1761.[14] A month before the death of his father, he had applied for the Comptrollership of the Household; but the King, apparently taking exception to some expressions used in his request, refused to grant it. This refusal was the more severely felt, as the Comptrollership had been asked as a step to an office of real employment. "Your Lordship knows better than I do," he wrote to Bute, "the manner places and employments are asked for in. By the manner I asked for this, you must be sensible that if any exigency required that it should be given to another, which by my own knowledge I think proper in the present case of Lord Powis, I should have been sorry that it had been given to me. I told your Lordship, by giving it you could not make me more your friend; by refusing it in the manner I was sure you would do, you would not make me less so. I was prevailed upon to ask it, as a step which might facilitate my coming to an employment of real business.
"But I am sorry that by any fault, in my expressions to His Majesty, my meaning and intentions should not have been understood. I cannot conceive that any man attached to His Majesty's Ministers and satisfied with their conduct, should not desire to have as considerable employments as he thinks suitable to his talents and capacity. If I had declared myself to be one of those that follow, I cannot imagine that His Majesty could have so favourable an opinion of me as I flatter myself he has. The only pleasure I propose by employment is not the profit, but to act a part suitable to my rank and capacity such as it is. If I have no employment, my part I hope still shall be suitable, and it is a pleasure which it is impossible to be deprived of."[15]
Vexed however at the refusal, Shelburne began to talk of retirement and devotion to country pursuits, except during a short interval of the year. Fox, however, did not encourage him in these notions. "Why," he writes,[16] "should not you like farming, but you are too young for anything that savours of retirement or philosophy. I should say more on this topick but that in the same letter, I see you have ordered Mr. Adam to look out for space to build an Hôtel upon. The late Lord Leicester and the late Lord Digby were about a fine piece of ground for that purpose, still to be had, the garden of which, or the court before which may extend all along the bottom of Devonshire Garden, though no house must be built there; the house must be where some old paltry stables stand at the lower end of Bolton Row. You see I can cherish this idea of yours.
"The other is quite unsuitable to time and place and years and talents."
A few days after he continues in the same strain:[17]
"You will I hope tell me when you shall come, for, as to your scheme of country life, it will never do. You see, this first summer of it, how it is interrupted by this scene of joy,[18] to which I wish I could add hopes of approaching peace, but I fear they grow fainter."
The scheme was accordingly abandoned, and Shelburne once more became the busy centre of the negotiations between Bute and Fox, which meanwhile had been renewed, but had made slight progress, for Fox still demanded a peerage for Lady Caroline as the price of his support, and Bute under the influence of the King still made difficulties.
Fox now began to have doubts whether "Bute intended to keep his word and go on amicably with him,"[19] and at length, urged by these feelings, wrote to Shelburne:[20]
"Recollection of your Lordship's late conversations, some suppositions made in consequence of them, and other circumstances, give me a good deal of uneasiness.
"To enter into the particulars of all these would make my letter long, nor is it besides necessary as you know more than I do.
"You are so entirely master of the case, and I so little (knowing only that I have not been in the least to blame, which experience has taught me at a Court signifies nothing), that I beg leave to put myself entirely into your Lordship's hands. And for this purpose I write this letter, lest what I have in conversation desired you to say, you should think yourself obliged to at the same time that you think saying something else, or saying nothing would be the better way.
"I know your honesty and your friendship to me. Say what you please for me; I'll make it good, or say nothing of me if you think that best, as perhaps it is at present."
Shelburne now proposed that Fox should give a general support to the Ministry, receiving at the same time the assurance which Bute was willing to give, that a peerage should at an early date be conferred on Lady Caroline. "I have written," he tells Bute, "to Mr. Fox, simply stated what has happened, what I have promised and taken upon me in his name in the strongest manner, and desired him to call on me as soon as he comes. I can see nothing for my life in Mr. Pitt's character, which can be called a sine quâ non, but am astonished to find other people upon various pretences of that opinion; no one person feared but him, and now he is out of place, every one playing a little game for themselves, temporizing and still thinking they can come about. So that if this is not stopped, or the least given into, I conceive it may have the strongest consequences, and may make a thing of no consequence very material. Your Lordship being assured of my motives will excuse my troubling you with what occurs to me. The employment of a Secretary of State is itself of no great consequence in a Ministry. The person who appears to have the principal management in the House of Commons must be, according to former custom at least, either Secretary of State, First Lord of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer. Even as to the appearance the Ministry must have out of doors, it cannot well be otherwise. What Mr. Pitt cryed at, at the beginning of the last Opposition, was a cabal of nobles, &c., and it took most with the people. Both as to the House of Commons and the effect the present fixing of the Ministry must have in the opinion of the nation, I should conceive it most prudent taking up a commoner. Mr. Legge, whatever opinion your Lordship, I, or some others may have of him, is a Gold Box. One Box is out and another put in his place.
"Your Lordship must be Minister, and he explain the measures; Fox, Oswald, &c., support him in the House with as much vigour as possible. Mr. Fox by this measure brings no odium. He is still Paymaster, does not appear in affairs, and only supports one gold Box against another. Fox, whose character is whole in dealing with particulars, and much depended on, and some others—Oswald suppose—must be the people to persuade the timid Legge to this Measure. If this is brought about, I should imagine all would be well, the House of Commons being the present great object, the rest depending on your Lordship. If the Duke of Newcastle choose to go out, you, if you did not choose to succeed him yourself, could put Lord Hardwicke in his place. As to the Idea of your Lordship confining yourself to your Department, I should conceive it to the last degree absolutely impossible, nor can I conceive Mr. Pitt ever to be in office in your Lordship's time. In either of these cases, upon your own account, I should rather wish to see you retired from affairs, which I should be sorry to see on account of the public."[21]
The above proposal, however, did not find favour in the eyes of Fox. He wished Lady Caroline to be made a Peeress immediately, and professing to conceive that a general support of the Ministry was tantamount to a half-opposition, he wrote in reply to Shelburne:[22]
"The more I think of the sort of half-Opposition mentioned, the more I think it impracticable and merely imaginary.
"To resign and oppose thoroughly, I understand and may be forced to it, but will avoid it if I can with honour. If I cannot avoid it with honour, I will get as much honour as I can by it.
"But why should I be forced to it? What I ask is not in your opinion enough, nor in mine; so far is it from being too much.
"A like favour to Lady Hester[23] was done the day after it was mentioned. Your Lordship ask'd me, pray ask Lord Bute whether this quite agrees with his promise? His words to you I believe were, Lady Caroline will be the first the King makes. Add to this, G. Grenville put over my head, sans dire gare![24] Surely, if I am left to digest all this, it is incumbent on me to shew that a wrong opinion has been conceived of me, and Lord Bute will have preferr'd doing a great deal to drive a friend from him, to the doing a very little to preserve one."
A day after he wrote again:[25]
"The more I think, the more I wish for this salve to honor, and the more I wish for it from Lord Bute in a friendly generous way, that will for ever oblige me to him. In order to get it so, say nothing that may have the least tendency to anger if disappointed. I should not like to grant to a person that should but insinuate a threat. I hope Lord Bute is of the same make.
"In that belief I wish to be his friend, and hope he does not despise me so much as not to wish it in some degree too."
An interview took place immediately after the receipt of this letter. Here is the account which Shelburne gives of it to Bute.[26]
October 12th.
My dear Lord,—Read the inclosed,[27] and see how much I have overshot what was intended. Do not shame me as a negotiator. 'Tis impossible for me to tell you all that passed with Mr. Fox. Whatever may be my opinion with regard to opposition, I did not look on it as my business to contribute in the least to one. I therefore took up the conversation upon the footing of the inclosed note. It came to this—Mr. Fox certainly felt it as a neglect that such great attentions should be shown to the wishes of Mr. Pitt,[28] and Mr. Grenville put in his place with regard to the House of Commons, where Mr. Fox had hitherto been supposed to have a considerable weight, and that after the very strong professions he had conveyed thro' me to your Lordship, without paying any regard or attention to him. He should be very glad of some mark of the King's attention, before he submitted to this, independent of any other view, to show the world that the Pay Office was not a sufficient reason for his submitting to everything that could arrive. Your Lordship had been so good as to promise him a particular favour within the year. None appeared to him so easy as to grant this a little sooner upon this occasion, but still if that does not suit your Lordship, and you will send to him, and tell him that the necessities of the Administration make the one necessary, as well as make the other inconvenient at this time, tho' you are still desirous of Mr. Fox's friendship, your Lordship may have as much of it as you please. And he will be ready to be of any use to you with the same sincerity as before, when he finds that your Lordship, on the one hand, does not suppose him so very interested as he suspected you did; and on the other, does not scruple to avow that regard for him with that degree of confidence (which is far from unbounded in his idea) which he thinks his professions of regard deserve, and which brings it pretty nearly to what your Lordship concluded with. All that I have to ask, my Lord, therefore is not to expose my want of art, for I really have very little, and very little concealment with your Lordship, perhaps too little in dealing with you as a Minister, and in ticklish times. Do not therefore make me fail in being the means of uniting two persons, whom I have long since endeavoured for both their interests (and am persuaded every day will show it more and more) to cement and make connected. Mr. Fox puts off his going to Windsor, to wait on you. You will be so good therefore to send to him when you choose, and I have only to beg that you will take up the conversation upon the footing of this letter, as I took up the conversation with him upon the footing of his note, which I received instantly as I returned home.
A few days after their interview Shelburne received a letter from Fox, which said:
"Let me beg you to read over the inclosed thoughts to-morrow, before you have that conversation which will probably decide of my conduct.
"You are certainly mistaken as to the possibility of gaining any credit by partial or moderate opposition. Such might be carried on in concert with persons seemingly opposed, but the friendship ought to be strong and well cemented between those who oppose, and are seemingly opposed.
"I see no such friendship wished for with me. You have so often heard that I question whether you yourself are not of opinion that my unwillingness to oppose may proceed from interested and pecuniary views, at least in some measure. Indeed it does not, nor do those who set about that calumny believe it, for they saw me refuse the Secretaryship of State in 1754, and resign it in 1756, and I am afraid will see me resign the Pay Office, which when I have done, you will be sorry for it. My dear Lord, I shall not do it till forced by honour, and consequently cannot afterwards repent of it.
"I'll wait on you after or about two to-morrow. Adieu."[29]
(Memorandum enclosed.)
"If Lord Bute imagines I ever thought of getting this great favour by the Duke of Cumberland without his help, he must imagine me the silliest fellow in England.
"If the message I sent his Lordship by Lord Fitzmaurice does not express Lord Bute to be in my opinion under the King sole master of the event, I do not understand English.
"The Duke of Cumberland ask'd on Thursday to be answered Sunday, not immediately.
"I could not mean to prevent Lord Bute's opposing it, for I never imagined he would. I flattered myself almost into a certainty he would assist me; and thought this manner of asking might make it more easy for him to advise and obtain a favourable answer, which, upon my honour, I meant by my message to implore of His Lordship as a thing on which the happiness of my life depended; I am sorry to feel and ashamed to own how much. I understand that mortification, not that happiness is determined to be my lot for the present, perhaps for ever.
"When Lord Bute shall have read and believed what is in this paper, I shall be glad to wait on His Lordship for half-an-hour, when he lets me know it will be convenient."[30]
Bute now became alarmed at the idea of possibly having Fox for a determined opponent, and an interview was arranged in accordance with the closing suggestion of the memorandum, at which terms were at length agreed upon.
"Lord Bute," writes Fox to Shelburne, "himself proposed to me a liberty which solves a great deal of my difficulty and which I will not abuse. I may, when I think it necessary, say that, on this being asked for me six months ago, I had such assurances given me as leave me no doubt of obtaining the favour before the end of the next session, and I think I see his Lordship will not by choice delay it to the very end. I am therefore satisfied and exceedingly obliged to your Lordship."[31]
Such was the agreement as to what was to be done for Fox. What Fox was to do in return may be gathered from the following letter:
Shelburne to Bute.
October 31st.
My dear Lord,—I did what you desired as exactly as I could. Mr. Fox will attend every day, and will, either by silence or by speaking as he finds it prudent according to the occasion, do his best to forward what your Lordship wishes, and will enter no sort of engagement with any one else whatever. He will endeavour likewise to see your Lordship once a week. The rest depends upon yourself, and I trust will not be neglected. A certain cultivation and cordiality will yet change what is now prudence and good sense with regard to the public, into particular attachment and an honourable zeal, which is ever to be wished for in cases of this nature; and on this occasion I have great reason to assure myself you'll find it can entangle you with fewer demands than might be reasonably expected. You will forgive me, however, if I say this is necessary,
Another recruit at this moment joined the peace party, in the person of Isaac Barré, the successor of Lord Fitzmaurice in the representation of Chipping Wycombe. The Barré family originally belonged to Rochefort in France. Peter Barré, the father of Isaac, came to Dublin in 1720, and the future orator was born in 1726. His father was a merchant, and became Sheriff of Dublin in 1756, Alderman in 1758, and was one of the Governors of the Royal Dublin Society. His son was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, of which he became a scholar in 1744, graduating in 1745. In his early days, according to Walpole, he acted plays with so much applause, that Garrick offered him a thousand pounds a year to come upon the stage.[32] Rejecting this offer he entered the army and served with distinction under Wolfe on the coast of France, where he became acquainted with Lord Fitzmaurice. He also fought at Louisburg, and was at the side of Wolfe[33] when the latter fell at Quebec; but, notwithstanding his services, being devoid of powerful friends, he saw himself passed over in military promotion for the benefit of less distinguished but more influential officers. Smarting under the sense of injustice he appealed to Pitt, describing his past career and the misfortunes he had suffered. "The trophies," he wrote, "I can boast, only indicate how much I suffered, my zealous and sole advocate killed, my left eye rendered useless, and the ball still in my head."[34] Pitt, with the strange recklessness which on more than one occasion was the cause of his losing valuable support, refused the application, and Barr, sarcastically declaring himself "bound in the highest gratitude," returned to England. After a stormy scene with Lord Barrington, Secretary at War,[35] he went to Ireland on a tour of inspection of the estates of Lord Shelburne, and while in Dublin engaged himself in a controversy with his father on the subject of the pecuniary arrangements between them.[36] Meanwhile, returning to England, notwithstanding some intrigues of Lord Melcombe, he had been elected for Chipping Wycombe, and was now awaiting the meeting of Parliament, the members of which were soon to become very familiar with the Colonel.[37] He is described at this period as a black robust man, of a military figure, rather hard favoured than not, young, with a peculiar distortion on one side of his face, which it seems was owing to a bullet lodged loosely in his cheek, and which gave a savage glare to one eye."[38]
"It so happened," says Lord Shelburne, "that the election of Colonel Barré was the occasion of my becoming perfectly acquainted with Lord Melcombe's true character at my very first entrance into life. He was professedly devoted as well as myself to Lord Bute when my father died. From motives of propriety I stayed a month with my mother, and recommended by letter Colonel Barré to succeed me as member for Wycombe, where the principal people were very well disposed to accept my recommendation, and I considered the election secure, when I was surprised to hear of an underhand opposition from Mr. Willes, the son of the Chief Justice. It was a long time before I could find out his inducement, who encouraged him, or on what grounds he went. At last, to my utter astonishment, I found Lord Melcombe at the bottom of the whole. I had been in habits of intimacy with him, which naturally resulted from being both of us devoted to Lord Bute. My indignation knew no bounds.[39] All the world was of my side. The contest was very unequal between a young man just coming into the world and an old one just going out of it. I determined never to open my lips to him. However, soon after being to walk at the coronation, the order of the procession put first Lord Lyttleton and me together, but Lady Lyttleton quickly staring her husband out of countenance, from whom she had been separated some time, Lord Melcombe succeeded to his place. As we were to walk two and two I thought it stupid to pass so many hours together without speaking. I broke my resolution, and as he was more than ready on his part, we conversed very freely during the whole day. In the warmth and openness of my temper I could not help asking him what could possibly tempt him to try to raise an opposition against me at Wycombe. He made the same answer as he did to Lord Bute, 'that he conceived I was too young to trouble my head about such things.' I told him that 'it was that which provoked me the most of anything, for he knew the contrary most intimately well.' 'Well,' said he, 'when did you ever know anybody get out of a great scrape but by a great lye.' After this it was impossible to formaliser avec lui and I lived afterwards upon very familiar terms with him to the time of his death. He desired Mansfield and me to introduce him into the House of Lords, telling every one as he went up the House that he asked one to get him into every scrape, the other to get him out. His bon mots were numberless, if they had been collected; I should not be surprised if he had collected them himself, for he was a perpetual writer and collector of political anecdote. He read me several of his speeches, which might in every sense of the word be termed the speeches of the day. They were very fairly written over, and I have no doubt were preserved among his papers. He was a man of excellent parts but of no kind of judgment. Unsteady, treacherous, vain, with no regard to truth whenever any purpose was to be answered by it; otherways accurate, good-natured, officious, and not without something like public principle, which appeared to be more the result of opposition habits than of a sound judgment or honest determination. He was one of those people—and it is common enough—whom you see living in the world, desiring to know everything and knowing nothing, while there are others who live quite out of the world and yet know everything. He came into the world with uncommon advantages, well educated, and had travelled further and with greater observation than was usual at that time. He told me that, coming home through Brussels, he was presented to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, after her disgrace. She said to him, 'Young man, you come from Italy, they tell me of a new invention there called caricature drawing. Can you find me somebody that will make me a caricature of Lady Masham, describing her covered with running sores and ulcers, that I may send it to the Queen to give her a right idea of her new favourite.' His accuracy is to be depended upon, though his judgment is not. He relates many things the tendency of which he does not comprehend. If he had, he might probably have disfigured them. All that I have said of Lord Melcombe will be found fully confirmed by an attentive perusal of his own account of what passed between him and Sir Robert Walpole, which gives a very food notion of Sir Robert Walpole's manner of doing business, as well as of his opinion of Lord Melcombe."[40]
Lord Melcombe died within a year after his curious interference in the Chipping Wycombe election.
Shelburne having brought the negotiation with Fox to a successful close expected to see it used at once for the purpose of peace, or at least for a limitation of hostilities. The counsels of the Ministry were not, however, of that unanimous character which made any firm or definite line of policy easy. Pitt and Temple had resigned on the Spanish question in October. Of those that remained Bute was desirous of peace. Newcastle was, as usual, only thinking how to keep place and power; George Grenville was discontented, suspecting possibly that the lead of the House of Commons was not to be his for long; Charles Townsend, offended at the preference given to Grenville, was once more looking towards Pitt. Outside the clamour for war continued, and the downfall of the favourite of the King and the restoration of the favourite of the people were urgently demanded. The royal speech accordingly, at the opening of Parliament, bore the mark of the necessities of the hour, promising a continuation of the policy of the late reign, and the debate on the address turned chiefly in the Upper House on the conduct of the Duke of Bedford in his real or supposed revelations to M. de Bussi during the abortive negotiations of the year. Shelburne alone, disgusted at the intrigues of Newcastle and the hesitations of Bute, pronounced boldly for the withdrawal of the troops from Germany, to the alarm of Bute, and of Fox who wrote to expostulate in the following terms:
"I saw Lord Bute. I found him more hurt than I expected with what you said in the House of Lords. I told him what you had said to me the night before, and assured him that if he imputed it to the least decay of that affection which you bore him, and which I thought as great as ever I saw from one man to another, he wronged you extremely. He seemed vexed, more afflicted than angry, and said it was imprudence that had done him mischief; that the foreign Ministers as well as others did and would think that your sentiments so delivered, unprovoked and uncalled for, were at least a trial, and as you two lived together a trial made in concert with him.
"I thought and indeed understood from you that you would see him, or you would have heard this before. Pray do see him as soon as may be. Delay between two honest men does not help reconciliation.[41]
| . | . | . | . | . | . |
"I have no desire to read any treatise upon honesty. It is native, not taught honesty that I admire, of which indeed, my dear Lord, there is more than you at present seem to me to think there is. A man who follows his own interest, if he makes no undue sacrifices, either private or public, to the worship of it, is not dishonest or even dirty. I wish your Lordship, whom I love and admire, would not be so free of thinking or calling them such. Whoever goes on with what I have left off—ambition—must wish for such supporters, and it would be an additional curse on that cursed trade to have a constant bad opinion of one's most useful friends and most assiduous attendants."[42]
Meanwhile, the remarkable scene had taken place in the House of Commons, so graphically described by Walpole,[43] when Barré attacked Pitt in language overstepping all the bounds of decency and decorum, but with an eloquence and force which carried all before them. Walpole asserts that this attack was directly promoted by Shelburne, and describes Barré as "the bravo selected by him to run down Pitt." It was not unnatural in this instance to suppose that Barré, being Shelburne's nominee at Wycombe, was inspired by him. So far, indeed, as his sentiments about the war were concerned, Barré merely uttered the same opinions as those Shelburne had previously put forward in another place, but, as regards the extraordinary ferocity of the attack, there is no evidence that Shelburne was a consenting party. "I find," he writes to Fox the following day, "that Colonel Barré's conduct, however blamed, meets with partizans. You will hear what Lord Bute says of it."[44] Barré himself gave the following account of the transaction:
"When I came into Parliament Mr. Pitt, though out of office, possessed the House of Commons. Administration had, it is true, a great majority, but neither cordial nor spirited enough to produce one single man who would step forth and attack the insolent opposer of their measures. I took upon myself the dangerous and invidious task. A few days after I was pressed to go to Court, nay, it was urged as a measure. I obeyed, and there was honoured with more than common attention. I was soon universally pointed at as a most extraordinary probationer in parliamentary business, but being unfortunately a volunteer, as such I remained unnoticed and unrewarded. En politique malhabile, I had stipulated no terms, and of course met with that coldness which will ever be shewn to parliamentary spirit, unassisted by parliamentary intrigue."[45]
Fox, in order to quiet the apprehensions of Shelburne, assured him that "Lord Bute had no idea that carrying on the German war was compatible with what they had to do besides,"[46] alluding to the war with Spain, which had just been declared, nor was Pitt himself unaware of the power of the weapon which had thereby been placed in the hands of the Peace party, for he was heard to say in conversation "That now was the time; if those he had left had any spirit, which they had not," said he, "they would send and recall every man from Germany and so ruin me—but there's no danger of it."[47]
Bedford alone "had the spirit," and decided, on the reassembling of Parliament, though himself a colleague of Bute, to move a resolution as an amendment to the address.[48] "The Duke of Bedford," writes Fox,[49] "has in form declared his resolution to move, as soon as the House meets, for the recall of the troops from Germany. Lord Bute is of the same opinion, but as it should seem not in concert with the Duke of Bedford. The Duke of Newcastle and the Duke of Devonshire firm on the other side." Shelburne resolved to support Bedford, and informed Fox that such was his intention. Fox replied in these terms:
"I think the Duke of Bedford's motion will suit very well with the mode you propose to debate in. What His Grace's mode of debating it will be, I neither know nor can anybody direct. I fancy it will be full and entering into past, present, and to come; but probably taking care not to censure the measure ab origine too much, because, though your Lordship did not, His Grace did, at times at least, acquiesce in it.
"The motion speaks of the enormous expense, impossibility of having an army equal to the French, or of carrying on the war in Germany to any good purpose, of the great use the men and money employed there might be to the carrying on the wars we yet are engaged in, and must carry on with vigour against France and Spain to support publick credit, and to bring about a safe and honourable peace.
"These are not the words exactly, but I think it precisely the sense of the question.
"The only mode necessary to be settled among you, I think is, whether you will divide against the previous question, and that can't be judged of quite well, but in the House. As to the mode of debating, follow your own; it never happened that three or four speakers ever kept to the same. And if they agreed to do so, two or three of them would speak the worse for it. You'll speak very well, and I am glad it will not be against this Ministry, and I'll come and hear you. Lady Caroline is better, not well. You are the first man that ever went into the country on a cold day, because he had taken medicines."[50]
Shelburne in this speech, his second Parliamentary effort, insisted on the necessity of supporting public credit, now grievously injured; the sums which ought to have been spent in paying off debt having been consumed in military expenditure, while at the same time the fleet, on which the security of the country mainly depended, had been comparatively neglected.[51] The resolution carried to a division, as against the previous question, was negatived by 105 to 16, and eight of the minority, Shelburne amongst them, signed a protest against the decision of the House. This speech and protest threw Bute into a state of despondency and alarm. "Lord Bute," writes Fox, "says that Friday s'nnight gave delight and strength to his enemies at Court. I do not see why it should, but it is the real opinion of many very impartial people."[52] "Lord Shelburne," writes Jenkinson, striking the first note in a long history of discord, "is a mad politician."[53]
"Lord Bute," writes Shelburne in his own defence, "very unnecessarily, as well as very imprudently, was induced to defend a measure in which he was in no way concerned, and which he was well known to disapprove. He had the conscience, notwithstanding what I had declared the first day, to ask me first to vote with government, and then to stay away, and to affect being very much hurt with my conduct afterwards. The minority did not consist of more than sixteen,[54] who were all, however, distinguished the next day at Court by marks of the King's personal displeasure; a measure of a piece with all the rest, and which made the King's resentment as cheap as his favours had lately been made."[55]
Matters did not wear a more promising aspect in the House of Commons, where Mr. Bunbury, who had already spoken strongly against the war, was threatening a motion for a cessation of hostilities in Germany, which it was understood was to receive the support of Barré.
Fox exerted his utmost influence to procure a reconciliation and a withdrawal of Mr. Bunbury's motion.
"Pushing it now," he writes to Shelburne, "in the House of Commons, will certainly be imputed to you, and all this gives me great concern. Indeed, my dear Lord, you never judg'd better for yourself than in trying to dissuade. Lord Digby, who says little, hears a great deal, and is impartial as man can be, is of the opinion I wrote you this morning. Lord Bute is hurt, many think he ought to be so. And you push it, for when you shall have tryed ever so much to dissuade it, it will be called your doing. Lord Digby takes likewise a coolness between the Duke of Bedford and Lord Bute into consideration. Mr. McKenzie very friendlily advised me to speak lest I should be said to be conspiring with the Duke of Bedford in a measure so detrimental to Lord Bute."[56]
It will be seen that Fox was successful in his efforts, as later in the day he was able to write as follows:
Fox to Shelburne.
February 13th.
My dear Lord,—Mr. Bunbury was here this morning, and with good nature and good sense, for his friends' sake, not his own, though I truly think it is best for him too, consented to put off his motion.
I immediately wrote the following letter to Lord Bute: "My Lord,—I have the satisfaction to acquaint your Lordship that Mr. Bunbury has laid aside his intended motion. It is still a greater satisfaction to me, that Lord Shelburne is the person who has dissuaded him. His Lordship, who loves you sincerely, is so struck with the appearance of acting as if he did not, that though he says and thinks there has not been the least ground for the suggestion, he cannot bear to give any further room for such an insinuation. I am, &c., Henry Fox."
This is my letter to Lord Bute, which if I had been better, would have been better, and I should have said "imputation" instead of "appearance." But I think it can do no harm, will do good I hope.
Meanwhile the long-wished-for peerage was about to be conferred on Lady Caroline Fox.
Fox to Shelburne.
February 1762.
My dear Lord,—Lord Bute said it would be in the course of this session, and I have not the least doubt of it. He thought the session might end before Easter, but I hear that the necessary business will make it last beyond that period, so that you see the time is to a degree uncertain. I have told your Lordship all I know of it, but must not mention it without a thousand thanks.
Adieu. H. F.
Fox to Bute.
March 1762.
My Lord,—I went to Lord Egmont, who desires to be Lord Lovel and Holland, Baron of Enmore, in the county of Somerset, which neither in his Lordship's opinion or in mine, is any objection to Lady Caroline being Lady Holland, Baroness of Holland, in the county of Lincoln, and Foxley, in the county of Wilts.[57] May I beg that Lady Caroline's warrant may be signed when any of the rest are, that she may not lose that precedence which His Majesty perhaps intends should be regulated according to the present rank of those to whom he grants this great favour.
I am, with the greatest respect and gratitude,
My Lord,
"After the debate on the address, the rest of the session," wrote Lord Shelburne many years after,[58] "passed without anything remarkable till the Vote of Credit, which became the subject of very material differences. The Duke of Newcastle, then at the head of the Treasury, and his Chancellor of the Exchequer[59] thought it necessary to ask two millions on account of the great expenses which were apprehended from the continuance of the German war, which the Duke of Newcastle took for granted, and really was so personally engaged in, that it was impossible for him with any degree of consistency to see it tamely given up. Lord Bute, who was of a different opinion with regard to Germany, and who talked as if he was determined to recall the troops or make the peace, and was hard pushed by the Duke of Bedford to this (whose friendship he was obliged to court, notwithstanding what had passed), as well as some other of his friends who were determined to continue their opposition to it, thought therefore a single million sufficient. Mr. Grenville, who was intrusted chiefly in the House of Commons, and the other Lords of the Treasury were strongly for asking only a single million. Lord Bute alleged it to those who were of opinion against the German war as a proof of the sincerity of his intention in that respect; but as men mostly are not without two motives, and men of his character especially, one which they tell the world and at last persuade themselves is the true one, the other, which they scarce venture to own to their own minds, I should imagine one of the latter kind operated on this occasion, which weighed somewhat in the resolution of turning out the Duke, viz. that he panted for the Treasury.
"As for Mr. Grenville, the peevishness of his temper led him to wish to have the Duke of Newcastle out. His narrowness made him really of opinion for the single million, and eager in it, and besides, he wished to be higher, which he might have been before when Mr. Pitt went out, if his timidity and confusion had not made him prefer the half-measure. At first, the Duke of Newcastle, staggered with the defection of his own Board, declared he could not brook the affront; he was taken at his word; he was ready afterwards to retract, notwithstanding what he had said, and make every sort of submission, and actually offered it through Lord Mansfield,[60] but it was all refused. He might have had a pension, but that the Duke of Cumberland, as was generally supposed, prevailed on him not to accept, or at least to decline asking it. Lord Bute was named his successor; Mr. Grenville, Secretary of State, for which he was not fit, not Chancellor of the Exchequer, for which he was at least better qualified than any other person that was likely; Lord Barrington, Treasurer of the Navy; and Sir F. Dashwood, Chancellor of the Exchequer. By this two brothers-in-law became Secretaries of State[61] together in this critical moment; neither of them famed for integrity or for knowledge of foreign affairs, or for that sort of right-headedness which makes people of superior understandings submit to be convinced by those in whom the world has more confidence. On the Duke of Newcastle's going out of office Lord Hardwicke and the Duke of Devonshire left the Cabinet. The latter says he explained it to the King, who consented to his keeping the Chamberlain's staff on those terms. About this time some civil compliments that had passed through the Sardinian Ambassador between the two nations in relation to the Count d'Estaing, a prisoner sent from the East Indies to Europe under some particular circumstances, gave rise to a new negotiation of peace, the first advances being made by the Duke of Choiseul. They were carried on for a considerable time very boldly and very secretly by Lord Bute without any other person, through the Count de Viri,[62] who was mediator, as the other Sardinian Ambassador was with M. de Choiseul at Paris.[63] The Count de Viri was really a politician, he professed it, thought of nothing else; was an artful, assiduous, observant, prudent man; had the greatest spirit of intrigue that can be conceived perpetually working, with a good deal of experience, having been in two republics before, Berne and Holland; he had been here for five years, and knew everybody perfectly, and was well with everybody: but Lord Bute and his brother were perfectly known by him in every respect as to their tempers, their views, and their abilities, and he knew, therefore, what was for their interests much better than they did themselves. The style this was carried on in till such time as Lord Bute opened it to the Council must do Lord Bute the greatest honour as a Minister. It is not fair to examine too nicely how far accident on either side helped, or how far the abilities of Count Viri, or even the very failings of Lord Bute's character might have led him thus far in it, but in affairs of this high nature the event ought to go a great way, as it would have operated on the judgments of most very strongly if it had through any accident failed. Happy that the plant was strong in its first appearance, else it must have quickly drooped, for Lord Bute's abilities were by no means so successful in the arrangements he had made at home as they were in the negociations he was carrying on abroad. The Council, though now entirely composed of persons of his creating almost, or at least more than preferring, and loaded with a number of favours obtained of the King through him, yet whether it was owing to his neglect of them afterwards, or his not improving that groundwork of kindnesses into real friendship or attachment by living with them and communicating with them, which he scarce did at all, or to the ill choice he had made, this is certain: that they were all separated into little cabals and different ways of thinking quite independent of him; perpetually hearkening to each other's fears, which of course left their minds very unfit to take measures, which though right and necessary, might reasonably be expected to be attended with the greatest odium and the most severe abuse. The Duke of Bedford, however, whose rage for peace continued, and whose opinion carried weight with it in Council because he was determined it should do so, facilitated everything to a great degree. Mr. Grenville too, luckily, was ill some part of the time.
"It is not easy to give a just idea of the character of the Earl of Bute, as it consisted of several real contradictions and more apparent ones, with no small mixture of madness in it.[64] His bottom was that of any Scotch Nobleman, proud, aristocratical, pompous, imposing, with a great deal of superficial knowledge such as is commonly to be met with in France and Scotland, chiefly upon matters of Natural Philosophy, Mines, Fossils, a smattering of Mechanicks, a little Metaphysicks, and a very false taste in everything.[65] Added to this he had a gloomy sort of madness which had made him affect living alone, particularly in Scotland, where he resided some years in the Isle of Bute, with as much pomp and as much uncomfortableness in his little domestick circle, as if he had been King of the Island, Lady Bute a forlorn queen, and his children slaves of a despotick tyrant. He read a great deal, but it was chiefly out of the way books of Science and pompous Poetry. Lucan was his favourite poet among the ancients, and Queen Elizabeth's Earl of Essex, his favourite author and object of imitation. He admired his letters, and had them almost by heart. He excelled most in writing, of which he appeared to have a great habit. He was insolent and cowardly, at least the greatest political coward I ever knew. He was rash and timid, accustomed to ask advice of different persons, but had not sense and sagacity to distinguish and digest, with a perpetual apprehension of being governed, which made him, when he followed any advice, always add something of his own in point of matter or manner, which sometimes took away the little good which was in it or changed the whole nature of it. He was always upon stilts, never natural except now and then upon the subject of women. He felt all the pleasure of power to consist either in punishing or astonishing. He was ready to abandon his nearest friend if attacked, or to throw any blame off his own shoulders. He could be pleasant in company when he let, and did not want for some good points, so much as for resolution and knowledge of the world to bring them into action. He excelled as far as I could observe in managing the interior of a Court, and had an abundant share of art and hypocrisy. This made all the first part of his rôle easy.
"He panted for the Treasury, having a notion that the King and he understood it from what they had read about revenue and funds while they were at Kew. He had likewise an idea of great reformations, which all men who read the theory of things, and especially men who look up at being Ministers, and want to remove and lower those that are, make a great part of their conversation. He had likewise a confused notion of rivalling the Duc de Sully, all which notions presently vanished when he came to experience the difficulties of it, and to find that dealing with mankind was the first thing necessary, of which he began to find himself entirely incapable."
Such being the opinion which Shelburne was gradually beginning to form of the character of the First Lord of the Treasury, it is not surprising that he was not very anxious to take office with him, though at the same time obliged to allow him to be necessary at the moment: the only possible alternative being the Newcastle Whigs, with or without Pitt, of which the first meant the continuation of the war, and the second implied the rule of an oligarchy of exclusive incompetence. He accordingly refused the offers which Bute at this time made to him, though they were supported by the urgent entreaties of Fox, to whom he explained his present attitude in the following letter:
Shelburne to Fox.
May 20th, 1762.
Dear Sir,—Lord Bute desired me to name what I wished, which I declined, declaring that emolument was not my object, no more than my turn was to live a mere attendant upon a Court; in which I could not help differing from Lord Talbot, who is desirous to remain where he is, and never to be of a Cabinet nor consulted upon business, but always ready to act for the personal service of the King or Lord Bute. Men of independent fortune should be trustees between King and people, and contrive to think in whatever they do to be occupied in actions of service to both, without being slaves to either. It will rest here I hope till I see you. I wish Lady Holland joy of your being better,—since I am sure she will be the happier by it. The town air is still unwholesome, and though Lord Bute wishes you to be in town on account of politicks, I do not want you to hurry on account of your health, till rain puts an end to this unhealthy state of the air.
Who, in the House of Commons, can be Chancellor of the Exchequer?
Fox replied in these terms: May 23.
My dear Lord,—I shall be in town a few hours after this letter, but I may not see you till you have had another opportunity which, by this letter, I do conjure you not to lose. You'll say, what shall I ask for? Ask for any place, Lord of the Bedchamber, or of the Treasury with a promise of being of the Plenipotentiaries at a Peace, either at Augsbourg or elsewhere. This will lead directly to what I suppose you aim at and perhaps soon. You'll never get it from that Trusteeship that you speak of; nor to say truth should you get it till you have got rid of such, to say no worse of them, puerile notions. I am not wiser than you, my Lord, but I am older. Don't think you have taken my advice if you get the promise without the place. It is in place that I long to see you; and it is the place-man, not the independent Lord, that can do his country good.
Tell me when I see you on Tuesday that you have a place, no matter what, and the promise above-mentioned. Lord Talbot may be in the right. I don't know him enough to say otherwise, but he is a great deal older than you are, and I don't know that he has such powers as I think I see in you, if you were once well broke in. Get your harness on immediately.
I have known Rigby these twenty years. He can feel an obligation, and when obliged may be entirely confided in. He has spirit, is ready, and will soon, if I don't mistake, be the most popular speaker in the House of Commons. I am heartily glad for Lord Bute's sake, that he will engage him. To serve Lord Bute I would come to town from the Land's End; but as it is, I am very sorry to leave this place,[66] which suits so very well both my mind and body. I have therefore thoughts of returning, Wednesday or Thursday, for four or five days to the ladies, who stay here till they hear whether I can or no. To your question, who, in the House of Commons, can be Chancellor of the Exchequer, I suppose Sir Frederick Dashwood. Is there any objection to that? I see none. If there is, the Prime Minister being at the head of the Treasury, and Mr. Grenville a Minister in the House of Commons, it were no hard matter to find expedients for the Exchequer. I shall be at the Pay Office not at Holland House. Adieu.
P.S.—Reading this letter over, I could wish you dared show it to Lord Bute.
Meanwhile the negotiations for peace were progressing, but before the preliminaries could be signed the news of the capture of the Havannah was likely to arrive. It was felt that public opinion would not suffer this important stronghold to be surrendered without an equivalent; already the rumoured stipulations of peace were freely compared to the "infamous stipulations of Utrecht," the constant object of the denunciations of Pitt, whose powerful voice was certain to echo within the walls of Parliament the clamour that was rising without. Bute "was in no way concerned as to the event of the Havannah influencing the enemy, but somewhat so as to the effect it might have on the friends of the Government, and looked on it as a want of attention in the French, not to foresee the possibility of that,"[67] but he too had his moments of doubt and perplexity. "Two things hung on him, one as to Spain, whether the affair of the Logwood would not be considered as a cession, and too much, if the Havannah were taken; the other, as to a cessation of arms in Germany, being apprehensive that, if the preliminaries were laid aside Prince Ferdinand might cry out that he had lost the moment;" but Shelburne urged him not to allow "any considerations connected with Germany to make his Council waver with regard to the most desirable of objects, peace on the present conditions,"[68] and while expressing his regret for his own friends in that country, he continued "to represent to the Prime Minister every time he saw him, that there was not a moment to be lost either in signing the peace or in assuring himself of a competent majority in the House of Commons to support him."[69] Bute was also much perplexed as to the best method of bringing the peace before Parliament, whether to lay the preliminaries before it though not confirmed by a Treaty, or wait for the confirmation,[70] a difficult question involving a discussion of the Treaty-making power in the country, as to which much difference of opinion has existed at all times.[71]
On this and other questions connected with the peace Shelburne was not only consulted by Bute, but was the person through whom the latter corresponded with Fox, then in his retreat on the sea coast. The recent death of Lord Melcombe had just made a great addition to his already enormous fortune, for in 1757 the Duke of Cumberland, as already seen, had induced the King to acknowledge Fox's claims to a recognition of his services, by the grant of a reversion to him and two of his children successively of a sinecure, the Writership of the Tallies and the Clerkship of the Rolls in Ireland, contingent on the death of the actual holder Bubb Dodington, who had since become Lord Melcombe. The two following letters addressed to Shelburne depict the hermit of Kingsgate as drawn by himself:
Fox to Shelburne.
August 16th.
My dear Lord,—I won't thank you for the Honour of your Letter, but for what I value much more, the pleasure and satisfaction of finding myself remember'd by you in a place where I am delightfully forgetting myself and thought myself forgot by everybody. Lady Holland thanks you, and says it is indeed very pleasant in this quiet unmolested place, to think of the hurry and crowds she is not in. But so very many love a crowd, that she says you must impute to that alone, and not to adulation that you see so many at Court on every occasion. I fancy she is in the right. Charles has not yet found out what you want him to show me in Rousseau. For my own part, sea air gives me Appetite, Sleep, and Spirits; I am very happy, and continually amused, and with trifles that can lead to nothing sad and serious. Forty years hence may your Lordship be even as I now am. I have given the precedence, as indeed I do the preference, to domestic affairs.
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I don't know when you saw Lord Bute, but should it have been the 14th; I fear his Lordship must have been mistaken (though so sure) that a Messenger would come that night—I hope he is not in his other certainty, of Peace. And yet, as far as it turns on Monsieur de Grimaldi, what hopes are there from one who is an utter enemy to peace and to Choiseul? Are you so sure of Havannah? I am glad if you are, but I grieve to hear of difficultys that may arise from friends. These are not only the most grating, but the most fatal, too, of all difficultys; upon the whole I fear there must be an answer, and a good one from Spain to France before France will send one to England that will be satisfactory. However the firmer and the more sanguine Lord Bute is, the better. I should have been very sorry to see his enemys so sanguine, as I own they were when I left town, if I did not believe there was very little foundation for their being so. However, so much attention should be paid to it, that if you please, you may advise Lord Bute from me to make sure of as many individuals as may be engaged between this and the meeting of the House of Commons, and many may be more easily engaged than they can be after it is met.
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If there is firmness and courage without contempt of danger, things will go on very well; but then I depend on a firmness that may fix those enemys, his friends.
Fox to Shelburne.
September 4th.
My dear Lord,—I wished your Lordship a place because I wished to see you fixed, and no more exposed to those gusts which youth and spirit and a noble mind, are so apt to be carry'd out of the way by. But now the storm is raised, the violence with which it is directed at Lord Bute, will, if I know your Lordship, fix you most thoroughly. And you so little want, and so little like those agréments of a place which are so tempting to most other people, that I can be content now to see you wait till your first may be a very great employment, to which a steady course (as yours will now be) cannot fail to bring you. I was very glad to be so kindly remembered by your Lordship, but I must have expressed my thoughts very ill if I conveyed to your Lordship (what Mr. Selwyn understood from you) that I complained that my friends had forgot me. Indeed I have no reason for such complaint. He assures me my enemies don't forget me either. I could wish they would, but I wish it with so little anxiety, that if they knew how small a diminution they make of my happiness at Kingsgate, they would not give themselves the trouble they do. Your letter of September 1st, surprises me a little by the "If the Preliminarys succeed," which is more than once repeated; because I don't see a possibility of receding were we inclined to it. You do not say what the affair of the logwood is, so I can make no judgment of it. If it is only an immediate cession of these settlements, which we have no sort or pretence of right to, I think it to our honour.
A cessation of arms, if the preliminarys are as fixed as I imagined, cannot be a question. If indeed we are only treating with a probability of being forced to declare off and continue the war, it is another question and what I am no judge of. But upon the whole it is easy, even at this distance, to see that no terms of Peace would either lessen or increase the clamour. It is aimed at Lord Bute, not at his measures, and which is shameful, many who approve the Peace will join in opposing it as a means of destroying him. But I hope every step will be taken and endeavour used to weather this storm: it will be weathered and halcyon days succeed, that is such halcyon days as Ministers can have.
The capture of the Havannah was known in England by the end of September.[72] The Spaniards, before the news arrived, had been delaying the signature of the preliminaries, under which they were required to concede all the three points which they had used as their pretext for declaring war, viz. the legality of the captures made by English cruisers, the right of the English logwood cutters in Honduras, and those of the Spanish fishermen off Newfoundland. Grimaldi was now as anxious as he had previously been unwilling to sign, but, on the other hand, all the English Ministers, with the exception of Bute, were unanimously in favour of asking a territorial equivalent for the retrocession of the Havannah. It was in vain that Bedford, who had gone as Plenipotentiary to Paris, declared that this demand would be fatal to the whole negotiation.[73] The fear of Pitt was ever present in the English Cabinet, and the cession of Florida or Porto Rico was accordingly insisted upon, and the former obtained without the difficulties anticipated by Bedford. In America, France ceded to England the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, everything in fact for which she had contended in the last war, only retaining some very strictly limited rights of fishery off Newfoundland and in the gulf of St. Lawrence.
In the East Indies, France only recovered the possessions she had had on the 1st January, 1749. In the West Indies, England retained Tobago, Dominica, St. Vincent, and Grenada, and, in Africa, Senegal. In Europe the works of Dunkirk were to be again demolishe; Belleisle was given up by England in exchange for Minorca, while both England and France withdrew from the German war, and the French restored the German territories of the English King as well as those of Hesse, Cleves, and Gueldres. Such were the preliminaries of peace which Granville, the greatest authority on foreign politics in England, pronounced on his death-bed to be "glorious and most honourable,"[74] though if Bute had had his way some important advantages would have been lost. Nor was the Treaty that betrayal of Prussia which it is sometimes represented to have been, for the withdrawal of France from Germany more than compensated that of England. Prussia besides was no longer at the time the victim of the great coalition, Russia and Sweden having already made peace with her during the year.
But though thus far successful, Bute was aware that he was only at the beginning of his task. The preliminaries were to be laid before Parliament, and it was necessary to have a leader in the House of Commons better able than Grenville to defend them against the attacks to which they were sure to be exposed. Bute hoping to induce Fox to undertake the ungrateful task, once more commissioned Shelburne to negotiate on his behalf, holding out a peerage as the reward which Fox was to receive for his services. The negotiation was at once entered on, and Shelburne, before the close of the month, wrote to Bute "that every step possible was taken to prepossess Fox in favour of what was proposed, and that he did not think he could refuse taking on him the lead of the House of Commons."[75] At the same moment that Bute was looking for a leader, he had also to find a new Secretary of State, for Grenville had resigned the seals in consequence of the differences of opinion which existed between himself and his chief on the subject of the peace.[76] The seals were in consequence offered to Fox with the lead of the House. After considering these offers Fox embodied his own opinion on them in a memorandum which he sent to Shelburne through Calcraft, running in these terms:
"Secretary of State I cannot be; it would be adding much other business to what without it I can hardly go through.
"Let Lord Bute divest himself of any idea that I am thinking of the Duke of Cumberland's wishes in what I propose. I shall never mention it again. I would no more have the King bend the knee to the Duke of Cumberland than to any other man, and to save him from such disgrace, I would undertake anything that I could go through with; and He may command me in what there is a possibility of my doing.
"To undertake and fail would be making His Majesty's disgrace sure. Mine, upon my word, I do not think of. I will make two suppositions: suppose the Seals given to Charles Townshend, a Peace made, to be defended in the House of Commons; in the next place, suppose if friends as well as foes are drunk with success, or stunned with clamour, and this peace will not go down, the German Troops should be recalled immediately and War continued against Spain and France, and Portugal defended, till we grow wiser.
"These suppositions spring from my opinion that Lord Bute should not treat with the Duke of Newcastle. I am clear that a notion of Lord Bute's meeting in any way with him will weaken Lord Bute, and treating with him will end in nothing else, for he will be intractable.
"Short of being Secretary of State, I am, for the necessary time, at His Majesty's Service. But let it be well considered before I am called upon to try what, if it fails, will do His Majesty great harm. I will risk a great deal indeed to have the honour of doing him any good."
A few days after sending the above paper, Fox wrote to Shelburne:
"You'll look on the confused Paper I sent you by Calcraft, I hope not as an answer or to be shewn as such, but for your Lordship to think upon, and to talk out of, if you think fit. It was as this is, pouring out the thoughts, as they arise, of a mind very anxious about the cruel situation the King is in, the dangers that press upon the country, and the small hope there is from the means proposed to extricate both. I have all your Lordship's feelings; I vow to God I do not, I will not consider myself, or the Duke of Cumberland, further than to grieve that I knew him so little. My disposition is what you would wish it, but my opinion is very different; and what I said in my last and am going to say in this, ought to be well considered. Can I do any good, may I not do a great deal of harm? And if the experiment fails, the King is lost, and what a King! Indeed, my Lord, it ought to be well weigh'd and examined over and over again before His Honour is trusted to so weak, however willing, a support. I think, and am not singular in thinking, that you will not get one vote more than you have already by my change of situation. Everybody I can think of influencing, you have already. My abilities, which you are pleased to reckon upon, will be no greater than they are. And though you thought it paradoxical, I still think it true that abilities will not signify much. The additional load of unpopularity I shall bring to Lord Bute will more than overbalance them, and the more conspicuous I am made, the less use it may be I shall be of.
"I expect a return to my express sent my brother, to-morrow. I expect to see the Duke of Cumberland, my conversation with him shall remove all doubts, if there are still any, of my being warp'd up to his opinion. And till Monday therefore, I cannot wait on Lord Bute, who I hope will in the meantime take into consideration what you shall please to tell him out of these two papers. "Does not your Lordship begin to fear that there are but few left of any sort, of our friends even, who are for this peace? I own I do."[77]
The interview with the Duke of Cumberland took place on October 11th. The Duke proposed that Bute, after having received the most conspicuous marks of royal favour in the shape of rank and titles, should then retire from the Treasury in favour of Fox. This proposal Fox—much to his credit—refused to entertain, and the connection between him and Cumberland was in consequence finally severed. In his perplexity he then applied for advice to his friend Mr. Nicholl,[78] who strongly urged him to take the seals as necessary to the dignity of a leader of the House of Commons not First Lord of the Treasury. Fox remaining unconvinced, Mr. Nicholl returned to the charge. "My heart," he said,[79] "is so anxious for the success of what you are on the brink of sacrificing, your ease, quiet, credit, and health to effect, that I persuade myself you will pardon though you should not agree with me in what I presume once again just to mention before you take your final determination.
"You are called upon to carry a point of the greatest moment that can be to the nation and to the King; what it is thought cannot be done, but in a way that would be a disgrace to His Majesty, unless you avowedly undertake it.
"To induce you to do it, Lord Shelburne, Mr. Rigby, Calcraft, and others of your friends say that you have only to set up the standard and lead the way, the troops will follow; that the general good opinion of men is with you, that they will then believe there is something solid and to be relied on, and that the Administration will be steady and permanent. In all which I most perfectly agree with them, but I fear I differ from them and you too, as to the best mode of your operations.
"The effect expected from your appearance in this matter is to be the consequence of, or founded upon, the general opinion and the idea men have form'd of your character. It may then be worth while for a moment to examine that idea, and discover distinctly the parts of which it is composed, that when you stand forth you may be seen, if possible, in that light, that precise point of view, these minds have placed you in, that the original may be as like the picture as may be.
"'Mr. Fox then,' say they, 'is tried and experienced in Administration; he knows well what to do, and we know he has abilities to do it, he is open, plain, and honest—we can trust him, he is decisive and steady, and will put an end to the wretched fluctuation of Men and Measures, that has so long distracted all things.'
"Here Lord Shelburne, &c., end. But if I mistake not much, the idea the world have of you is not here complete; something more is wanting to come up to that Picture of Mr. Fox men have in their mind's eye when they hold this language of him. The place (from whence they suppose him to be able to exert to the utmost his known and approved qualities) is ever connected with it.
"The irresolution and weakness of these times, lamented by all good and honest men, decryed by good and bad, are by all constantly compared to those of more order and steadiness, when measures and men were more solid and permanent. In this discourse their thoughts are naturally carried back to that time all remember when Sir R. Walpole and Mr. Pelham were First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Minister of the House of Commons, and here, if I am not deceived, the world see Mr. Fox when they look up to him.
"Here every difficulty would vanish. The greatest impediment, that natural radical prejudice against the man, that virulent sore that taints and discolours all his measures would be covered over, the trifling objection to the Pay Office, and every other removed. Here I am convinced (could it be) Mr. Fox would infallibly carry this and every other point. But in the middle way proposed, which I fear may be looked on when known as but an Half-Measure, my poor weak judgment is in some doubt of the event.
"Where this shoe would pinch was you to try to put your foot into it I can imagine, and would say a great deal too, but that I think you will again say 'That is not the question put to me—nor would I go to the Treasury were it offered.' If so I have done. You know infinitely best. I can never think that right you do not. Let my affection for you and solicitude for your interest plead my excuse for troubling you with what I could never have excused myself, if I had not done it."
The nature of Mr. Fox's reply to the proposition of his friend that he should insist on taking the Treasury, may be gathered from the following letter addressed to him by Shelburne:
Shelburne to Fox.
Hill Street, Monday Night, October 1762.
Dear Sir,—Lord Bute very much admires even my account of your conversation with the Duke of Cumberland, and is much satisfied with it.
I mentioned Mr. Nicholl's letter, &c., as follows:—That I conceived what had passed very thoroughly convinced him, not only of your desire, to have done soon, but your wishes to do it immediately, if it were possible; that in a matter of this sort, I thought it must be agreeable to him to hear everybody's sentiments; that I conceived the Treasury a political wife, which every man should determine about himself, and a matter upon which it became not a friend even to advise, nor give his sentiments except upon a footing of confidence, which I took the liberty to do, with a view to discharge my mind of everything that occurred to it, for his or the King's interest; that I looked upon it as his duty to look on modesty with regard to himself as out of the question, for whoever looked now upon anything relating to him and his honour, as distinct or separate from the King's interest, must be led, to say no worse, to form a very wrong judgment, upon the present or future state of things. With this view, I communicated to him what occurred to myself, and likewise Mr. Nicholl's letter. He was much pleased with the latter, and praised it much, and desired me to leave it with him till to-morrow.
He asked what you yourself thought; I made him the answer you made to Mr. Nicholl, that you had never looked upon it as the thing in question, or to be considered of.
You must never expect that I shall tell you how much I admire your very handsome conduct both with regard to the King and the State; I reserve that to tell Lady Holland when you are taken up with other business, but you must give me leave for once, not as a private man only, but as a subject of His Majesty, and a free voter of Great Britain, to sign myself,
Two days after Fox replied:[80]
"I will be at twelve in Audley Street, and wherever I am desired to be from this day forward. The part is taken, you shall hear no more of fears; I shall not deceive you, but nobody else shall see that I am not fond of my situation. I am quite sure I shall please my superiors; it is a chance as to others (particularly Tories) but the dye is thrown and I will stand the hazard as if I had thrown it myself."
Thus was the negotiation ended, and Fox accepted the lead of the House, practically as Minister sans porte-feuille. Bute expressed his own satisfaction in the following letter:
Bute to Shelburne.
My dear Lord,—I return the enclosed[81] after having thoroughly weighed the contents of it, as well as the suggestion of the Duke of Cumberland that corresponds with it. I have considered the idea in one point of light only, the same that struck me when I placed it before your Lordship; for as to the additional thoughts of the Duke of Cumberland, titles, &c., had I ever been weak enough to ambition such trifles, all that the Crown could possibly bestow has been most certainly within my grasp ever since the King's accession. The only question then that occurred with me was, how far this (or any other) alteration in the plan proposed, could have more effectually supported the King's Honour, facilitated his measures, and produced the Peace, for to the accomplishments of these great points every pulse beats, and every wish of my soul turns, holding the sacrifice of myself as nothing if it procures any real advantage to my country, and to him, who is at once my King, my Master, and my Friend. Upon the most thorough and most disinterested examination therefore of this delicate point I am satisfi'd that any deviation from the plan proposed, will prove destructive to some of the purposes mentioned, detrimental to all, carrying with it an appearance of fear and timidity foreign to my heart and most inconsistent with my situation. No, my dear Lord, if the storm thickens and danger menaces, let me stand foremost in the ranks, I claim the post of honour, and will now for the first time fling away the scabbard. Next to my little experience of business my unwillingness to punish has been no little drawback to me as Minister; I know it; I know the constructions put upon my conduct; few, very few, indeed judge of me as I am, and even my noble Friend may sometimes have imputed actions to my timidity which spring from motives of a more generous nature: but now the King's situation, the perilous condition of the country, the insolence of faction, demand a rougher rein and I have taken my part. The more I reflect on Mr. Fox's conduct at this crisis, the more I admire the noble and generous manner in which he quits retirement and security to stand with me the brunt of popular clamour, in supporting the best of Princes against the most ungenerous, the most ungrateful set of men this country ever produced.
I am,
When Mr. Fox accepted the lead of the House of Commons he at first believed that he would have to surrender the Pay Office, not imagining that public opinion would allow him to keep a position of great emolument while performing a task which it was practically as well known to others as to himself, was to be otherwise rewarded, especially when he was about to enter, as all the political world well knew, on the enjoyment of the large income of the Irish sinecure, which amounted to £1600 a year.[82] There was a well-known precedent pointing out what was right. Horatio, the first Lord Walpole, had been appointed to the lucrative office of Teller of the Exchequer in 1741; but he had to resign the equally lucrative office of Cofferer of the Household, which he held at the time. Henry Fox, however, thinking on subsequent consideration that he was able to recognize an ebb in the current of his own unpopularity, determined to remain where he was, as will be seen from two letters which he addressed to Mr. Nicholl.
October 18th, 1762.
Dear Sir,—Mrs. Nicholl very kindly wants you not to think, and if I believed your very great kindness to me would suffer you to be thought less just now, I would not put you in mind of me. I cannot help thinking of your advice and that there is great likelyhood of my following it. Think then of arrangements; with regard to those I leave in the office, with regard to who should succeed me, whether one or two joint paymasters, and who; and with regard to my affairs and my friends in the office as they may be affected by them. The result of these thoughts it will be time enough for me to know when you return; for I shall not have determined till I see you or deliberated with anybody upon it till I see you. Adieu.
Dear Sir,—I thank you very kindly for your letter. When I wrote mine I thought the step very proper to be taken and saw it in a light in which its propriety appeared to me greater than it appears now. I likewise thought of Legge and believed (though for some reasons which you don't mention, and not for all those you do) he would have had the offer of it. But now I have great doubts about making the vacancy. Instead of what I expected, I believe that in no fortnight since the year 1756 have I ever been less abused than in this last. The better sort want a system that they can think will last and therefore like this arrangement without any particular regard for me, and the language is very general that I came in very unwillingly and by command; such language, you know is very favourable. There are, who say I ought to have been Secretary of State, that the Minister in the House of Commons ought for the honour of the House to have a very high place, and these would like it still less if I had none at all. I would not have you think that I believe nobody abuses me, though it is not in the strain and with the fury and in general as I expected, among those who did abuse. It was said I was to have a great sum of money for making the Peace; this I had from one who heard it. It immediately struck me that what I was going to do would be no prevention of this abuse, or perhaps rather give a colour to it and be esteemed as affectation of disinterestedness put on to cover some great job. Adieu.
This change of mind on the part of Fox was destined to have important consequences, as Shelburne, whose fault throughout these negotiations was the impulsiveness not unnatural in a young and inexperienced negotiator, remained under the impression that Fox's sense of honour would compel him to retire from the Pay Office, when he had carried through the work which he had undertaken in the House of Commons; as he would then receive the peerage which was to be his reward and would also be in the full enjoyment of the wealthy sinecure charged on the Exchequer of Ireland, for which he had been waiting ever since 1757.[83] Shelburne forgot that he had been negotiating with one of the astutest minds in the political world, whose recent nomination to lead the House of Commons was being justified at this moment by the King in the cynical words: "We must call in bad men to govern bad men."[84]
- ↑ 1759.
- ↑ Lord Melcombe's Diary, December 4th, 1760.
- ↑ Walpole says, in a letter to George Montagu, December 11th, 1760, that the appointment of Lord Fitzmaurice disgusted the army. The letter of Lord Granby—the most popular General in the army—proves the contrary.
- ↑ Lord Granby to Lord Fitzmaurice, December 1761. For an account of the battle of Kloster Kampen and Lord George Lennox's gallant conduct, see the appendix to Lord Melcombe's Diary, page 502, also a letter of the Duke of Richmond of May 23rd, 1782, to Lord Shelburne when Prime Minister asking for the post of Governor of Portsmouth for his brother. "I will say that no man has better pretensions as an officer, and I think too he has some claims on your Lordship as it was your being made a Colonel over his head after the Battle of Kampen with Lord Down, that was the first cause of his being left so behind in his profession." Lord Shelburne was appointed Major-General, March 26th, 1765; Lieutenant-General, May 26th, 1772; and General on February 19th, 1783.
- ↑ See the observations at the commencement of Lord Macaulay's Essay on the Earl of Chatham, 725, edition 1851. Critical and Historical Essays.
- ↑ George II. to the Duke of Newcastle, September 1757.
- ↑ "Mr. Fox was very desirous of bargaining for a peerage for Lady Caroline; the King has positively refused it, but has given him the reversion for three lives of Clerk of the Rolls in Ireland, which Dodington has now."—To Sir Horace Mann, April 7th, 1757. Correspondence, iii. 69. See too Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II., ii. 377; iii. 3-
- ↑ Bentham's Works, x. 101. Walpole to Mann, April 22nd, 1751. Correspondence, ii. 251. Lord Shelburne's uncle left Lady Caroline Fox a legacy of £5000.
- ↑ Mr. Fox to Mr. Collinson, February 1761.
- ↑ Fox to Fitzmaurice, February 1761.
- ↑ Fox to Fitzmaurice, February 20th, 1761.
- ↑ Paper missing.
- ↑ Fitzmaurice to Bute, March 1761.
- ↑ He was first returned on June 20th, 1760, while serving abroad; and again at the general election in May 1761. His father died in May 1761. He took his scat in the House of Lords on November 3rd, 1761. His father had been created a Peer of Great Britain on the 17th May 1760, and thereupon vacated the seat of High Wycombe, for which, being an Irish peer, but not a representative peer, he had been able to sit. Lord Shelburne took his seat in the Irish House of Lords, April 25th, 1764.
- ↑ Fitzmaurice to Bute, April 29th, 1761.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, June 29th, 1761.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, July 9th, 1761.
- ↑ The marriage of the King.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, September 3rd, 1761.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, September 5th, 1761.
- ↑ Shelburne to Bute, October 6th, 1761.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, October 11th, 1761.
- ↑ Lady Hester Pitt, created Lady Chatham.
- ↑ The lead in the House of Commons was given to George Grenville on the retirement of Mr. Pitt. On the resignation of the Duke of Newcastle in May 1762, Lord Bute became head of the Treasury, and George Grenville Secretary of State.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, October 12th, 1761.
- ↑ Shelburne to Bute, October 12th, 1761.
- ↑ The two previous letters.
- ↑ The allusion is again to the peerage conferred on Lady Hester Pitt.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, October 1761.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, October 1761.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, October 1761.
- ↑ Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., i. no.
- ↑ Barré is one of the figures in West's picture of the death of Wolfe.
- ↑ Chatham Correspondence, ii. 41. Colonel Barré to Mr. Pitt, New York, April 28th, 1760. Sir Joshua Reynolds turns the wounded side of Colonel Barré's face away from the spectator (T. Taylor, Life of Reynolds).
- ↑ Barré to Shelburne, February 7th, 1761. Barré to Shelburne, August 13th, 1761.
- ↑ Barré to Pitt, October 8th, 1760.
- ↑ Barré was at length promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel on January 29th, 1761.
- ↑ Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., i. 109. Mr. Symmers to Sir Andrew Mitchell, January 29th, 1762, describes Barré's parents as being of a mean condition; his father and mother from France, and established in a little grocer's shop by the patronage of the Bishop of Clogher, whose child the mother nursed.
- ↑ "It has been asserted to Lord Shelburne that your Lordship attempted to supply his vacancy in Wycombe without his knowledge. There is not a man in the kingdom for whom I entertain a warmer friendship, and whose character, spirit and talents I have a higher opinion of. Therefore you must not be surprised if the least surmise of this nature puts me in a flurry." The Earl of Bute to Lord Melcombe, June 15th, 1761, in the Eyre-Matcham Papers. Hist. MSS. Commission Reports (various collections), vi. 49.
- ↑ Memorandum on the events of 1762. Lansdowne House MSS.
- ↑ Lord Shelburne's speech was made on November the 6th.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, November 12th, December 29th, 1761.
- ↑ Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George III., i. 120.
- ↑ Shelburne to Fox, December 12th, 1761.
- ↑ Barré to Shelburne, April 18th, 1763.
- ↑ Shelburne to Bute, December 1761.
- ↑ Fox to Bute, January 1762.
- ↑ It is to be remembered that at the date of these events, the idea of the Ministers being a homogeneous body was as yet far from established.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, January 8th, 1762.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, February 4th, 1762.
- ↑ Parliamentary History, xv. 1217.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, February 13th, 1761.
- ↑ Jenkinson to Bute, February 14th, 1761.
- ↑ See Parliamentary History, xv. 1218. Walpole, Memoirs, i. 136, says that the Duke of Bedford softened his motion from a proposal of recalling the troops from Germany into a resolution of the ruinous impracticability of carrying on the war. Had the Duke of Bedford done this, it would not have made his motion less but more hostile to Ministers.
- ↑ Memorandum on events of 1762.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, February 13th, 1762. On the withdrawal of Mr. Bunbury's
otion Mr. Fox wrote the following epigram:
"A cock-match at Westminster lately was made,
The cock-pit was crowded, great wagers were laid;
The people impatient heard at last that the Fox,
Had stole over night both the beautiful cocks." - ↑ The creation did not actually take place till May 6th, 1762.
- ↑ Memorandum on the events of 1762.
- ↑ Lord Barrington.
- ↑ The Duke of Newcastle's repentance is the general subject of observation. He has likewise, by Lord Mansfield and every means possible, made advances towards a reconciliation, which has been declined in the strongest manner. (Shelburne to Fox, May 20th, 1762.)
- ↑ The Earl of Egremont was the colleague of George Grenville as Secretary of State.
- ↑ This secret negotiation began on November 17th, 1761, and continued with intervals till May 22nd, 1763. There is a copy of the correspondence in the Lansdowne House MSS., partly in cypher.
- ↑ M. le Bailli Solar de Breille. Lord Chesterfield writes as follows: " This however is certain, that in all Courts and Congresses, where there are foreign Ministers, those of the King of Sardinia are generally the ablest, politest and les plus delies."—Letters (ed. Bradshaw), i. 172, November 18th, 1748.
- ↑ This character was written many years after the events to which the chapter relates (probably in 1803) which accounts for the bitterness of some of the expressions used, Bute and Fox having both long since quarrelled with Shelburne.
- ↑ "Your reading," Lord Chesterfield observes in one of his letters to his son, "should be chiefly historical; I do not mean of remote, dark, and fabulous history of fossils, minerals, plants, etc., but I mean the useful, political, and constitutional history of Europe."—Letters, ed. Bradshaw, i. 387.
- ↑ Kingsgate.
- ↑ Shelburne to Fox, August 10th, 1762.
- ↑ Shelburne to Fox, September 1st. The allusion is to the demolition of the English forts in Honduras in return for the concession of the right to cut logwood.
- ↑ Shelburne to Bute, August 30th.
- ↑ Shelburne to Fox, September 1st; September 18th.
- ↑ Compare Pitt's speech, November 9th, 1762, and Mr. Gladstone's speech, Hansard, ccix., February 14th, 1873. Fox, writing to Bute on October 4th, says, "I should be glad in this ugly situation to have the sense of Parliament, not for security, but to remove difficulties. The objection of its letting down Government is obviated by its having been done before, and in times when prerogative was carried high, and it would obviate the great difficulty, because the greatest coward would sign what the Parliament authorized without considering that he was not secured by it. But now, on the other hand, not seeing the precedent, I cannot imagine how the sense of Parliament can be taken; and by taking it you subject yourself to as many questions as there are articles in the preliminaries, and if any one question is carried or not defeated by a great majority the whole is marred, unless France and Spain, who I believe will not like to see their offer presented to the House of Commons sub spe rati, will go farther and submit to our alterations of it. How difficult will it be to keep the attention of a number of men upon the whole, through so many questions on particular articles? Friends, I should fear, would leave us on some. From the nature of opposition none from the other side would come to us on any; and, upon the whole, I have no idea of a House of Commons turned into a Council of State. What then is my opinion? I told you I could give none."
- ↑ Egremont to Bedford, September 29th, 1762.
- ↑ Bedford to Egremont, October nth, 1762. Egremont to Bedford, October 26th, 1762.
- ↑ See the passage in the Preface to the Essay on Homer by Mr. Wood.
- ↑ Shelburne to Bute, September 1762.
- ↑ From a letter of Calcraft to Shelburne, it would seem as if Grenville had been threatened by Bute with the loss of his place for not voting in the Cabinet for giving up the Havannah without an equivalent, and had resigned in consequence; but the language is obscure. October 23rd, 1762.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, October 10th.
- ↑ Mr. Nicholl is frequently mentioned in the letters of Horace Walpole, whose intimate friend he was. Correspondence, v. 416, 448, 463, 467. His son is to be recognised in the following passage: "I was excessively amused on Tuesday night. There was a play at Holland House acted by children—not all children, for Lady Sarah Lennox and Lady Susan Strangways played the women. It was 'Jane Shore.' Mr. Price—Lord Barrington's nephew—was Gloster and acted better than three parts of the comedians. Charles Fox, Hastings, a little Nicholl, who spoke well, Belmour, &c."
- ↑ From a copy at Lansdowne House where the letter is wrongly attributed to Colonel Barré. The original is at Holland House.
- ↑ Fox to Shelburne, October 12th, 1762.
- ↑ Mr. Nicholl's letter.
- ↑ Thom's Irish Tracts and Treatise, ii. 241. It is perfectly true that the Irish sinecure was never expressly mentioned in the negotiations, and Fox took full advantage of this.
- ↑ Grenville Correspondence, i. 452.
- ↑ Mr. Riker suggests, in his Life of the first Lord Holland, and with great probability, that there was another misunderstanding, viz. that Fox believed he was to receive an Earldom (vol. ii. pp. 253, 296). See also Walpole to Mann, April 30th, 1763, Correspondence, iv. 72.