Volume I Part 1 (1/2)

Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third.

by The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.

Volume 1.

INTRODUCTION.

In the selection and arrangement of the Correspondence contained in these Volumes, the intrusion of unnecessary commentaries and political opinions has been carefully avoided. The letters themselves are so lucid and complete, that the interest of the publication has been left to rest upon their details as far as possible. But as a collection of communications of this confidential nature, written from day to day upon pa.s.sing events, must necessarily involve numerous allusions which, intelligible at the time, are either obscure or liable to misapprehension now, occasional notices of the princ.i.p.al topics and circ.u.mstances referred to have been introduced wherever they appeared to be required. By the help of this ill.u.s.trative frame-work a certain degree of continuity has been attempted to be preserved, so that the reader will have no difficulty in blending these materials into the history of the period they embrace.

1782.

The Close of Lord North's Administration--The Second Rockingham Cabinet--Mr. Thomas Grenville's Mission to Paris--The Shelburne Administration--Lord Temple Appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland--Irish Affairs.

As no inconsiderable portion of the Correspondence contained in these volumes relates to the structure and conduct of Cabinets, throwing light upon public affairs from those secret recesses to which historians rarely have access, it may be useful, by way of introduction, to glance at certain circ.u.mstances which, during the period embraced in the work, exercised a special influence over the Government of the country: an influence no less directly felt in the councils of Ministers than in the measures and combinations of the Opposition.

The history of Administration in the reign of George III. presents some peculiarities which distinguish it in a very striking degree from that of most other reigns. The key to these peculiarities will be found in the personal character of the Sovereign. To that character, and its immediate action upon political parties, may be traced, to a greater extent than has been hitherto suspected, the parliamentary agitation and ministerial difficulties which were spread over nearly the whole of that long and eventful period. The means of forming an accurate judgment on matters of this nature exist only in confidential details, such as are disclosed in the collection of letters now for the first time laid before the public. In order, however, to render intelligible the allusions that are scattered through them, and to point out their real value as materials for the political history of the time, it is necessary to offer a few preliminary remarks on the circ.u.mstances to which reference has been made.

George III.--whose admirable business habits and inflexible integrity inspired the highest deference and attachment amongst the personal friends he admitted to his confidence--was remarkable in no one particular more than in his jealousy of the prerogatives of the Crown.

He carried his zeal in that matter so far as even to draw upon himself the charge of desiring to strain the rights of the Crown beyond const.i.tutional limitations. But as these limitations have never been accurately defined, and as it has always been difficult to prescribe the precise privileges which would relieve the Sovereign, on the one hand, from being a mere state puppet, without giving him, on the other, too great a preponderance of executive power, we need not discuss the justice of an imputation which refers to the general complexion of the King's views rather than to any particular acts of arbitrary authority.

That it was the great aim of His Majesty's life to preserve the royal prerogatives from encroachment is undeniable; but it should be remembered that when George III. ascended the throne, the relative powers and responsibilities of the Sovereign and his advisers were not so clearly marked or so well understood as they are at present; and if His Majesty's jealousy of the rights which he believed to be vested in his person led him to trespa.s.s upon the independence of his servants, or to resist what he considered the extreme demands of the Parliament, it was an error against the excesses of which our Const.i.tution affords the easiest and simplest means of redress.

Intimately conversant with official routine, and thoroughly master of the details of every department of the Government, he acquired a familiar knowledge of all the appointments in the gift of the Ministry, and reserved to himself the right of controlling them. Nor was this monopoly of patronage confined to offices of importance or considerable emolument; it descended even to commissions in the army, and the disposal of small places which custom as well as expediency had delegated to the heads of those branches of service to which they belonged. His Majesty's pertinacity on these points frequently precipitated painful embarra.s.sments of a personal nature, entailed much disagreeable correspondence, and sometimes produced misunderstandings and alienations of far greater moment than the paltry considerations in which they originated. Amongst the numerous instances in which His Majesty insisted on the preservation of patronage in his own hands, one of the most conspicuous was his stipulation with the Marquis of Rockingham for unconditional power over the nomination of the household, at a moment when the exigency of public affairs compelled him to surrender other points of infinitely greater importance. We shall find in the course of the following letters that His Majesty's desire to advance the interests of particular individuals interfered seriously, on some occasions, with the convenience of the public service.

The same spirit guided His Majesty's conduct, as far as the forms of the Const.i.tution would permit, in his choice of Ministers. He had strong personal likings and antipathies, and rather than consent to have a Ministry imposed upon him consisting of men he disapproved, he would have suffered any amount of difficulty or inconvenience. He prevailed upon Lord North to remain in office three years in the face of sinking majorities, and against his Lords.h.i.+p's own wishes, for the sole purpose of keeping out the Whigs, whom he regarded with a feeling of the bitterest aversion. Good reasons, no doubt, might be suggested for this pa.s.sionate abhorrence of the Whigs, who, independently of party antecedents, had given His Majesty much cause of uneasiness, by their strenuous opposition to the measures of his favourite Ministers, and by their alliance with his son. So deeply was this feeling rooted in His Majesty's mind, that when a junction with that party seemed to be all but inevitable in March, 1778, he threatened to abdicate rather than be ”trampled on by his enemies.” Four years afterwards he explicitly repeated the same threat under the excitement of an adverse division; and it was supposed by those who were best acquainted with the firmness of his resolution that, had he been forced to extremities, he would have carried his menace into execution.

His conduct to his Ministers was equally steadfast where he bestowed his confidence, and stubborn where he withheld it. There were certain questions upon which he was known to be inexorable, and upon which it was useless to attempt to move him. Of these the most prominent were the American War, Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, and Parliamentary Reform. Whether his judgment was right or wrong on these questions, it was fixed and unalterable; and the Ministers who took office under George III. knew beforehand the conditions of their service, so far as these paramount articles of faith were concerned. It was the knowledge of this rigorous trait in His Majesty's character, that made the Marquis of Rockingham insist upon submitting to the King a programme of the policy he intended to pursue before he would consent to enter upon the Government in 1782.

His Majesty desired nothing more than a list of the persons Lord Rockingham wished to propose for the Cabinet; but Lord Rockingham thought that something more was necessary to his own security and independence. He considered that when a statesman undertakes the duties of Administration, he a.s.sumes a responsibility irrespective of the Sovereign, and that his duty requires of him that he shall lay before His Majesty, in the first instance, as the basis of negotiation, an outline of the measures by which alone he can conduct the affairs of the kingdom with honour and success. In the adoption of this clear and candid line of procedure there was no coercion on the Sovereign, who was free to accept or reject the propositions, while the const.i.tutional principle at stake was acknowledged and vindicated on both sides.

His Majesty's immobility on certain questions had the practical effect of literally placing them in abeyance in the councils of his Ministers.

As it was found to be impossible to form a strong Administration that should unanimously agree with His Majesty, and at the same time possess the confidence of the country, no alternative remained but to enter into a tacit arrangement, by which those questions were to be dropped out of the list of what were called Cabinet measures, each Minister being left at liberty to vote upon them as he pleased, without being held to have compromised the opinions of the Government. Had it not been for such an arrangement as this, Pitt, who was pledged to the relief of the Catholics from their disabilities, could never have held office under George III. And thus was introduced into the practice of Administration a principle which is undoubtedly a violation of its theory, and which, taking advantage of a dangerous precedent, has been acted upon since with less justification.

In the invention of this escape for the conscience of the King through the side vent of ”open questions,” the direct influence of the Sovereign upon the councils of the Administration may be clearly traced. There were no other means of reconciling His Majesty to the appointment of a Cabinet, demanded by the voice of the Parliament and the country. The dilemma was obvious. There was no choice between the rejection of Ministers who held certain doctrines adverse to His Majesty's convictions, and compromise upon the points of difference. When it was found impossible to conduct the Government of the kingdom with a Cabinet that did not possess the popular confidence, the Sovereign was reduced to the necessity of treating with men who did possess that confidence, whether he agreed with them in opinion or not. In our own times, and under most of the Sovereigns who have filled the throne since our Const.i.tution may be said to have been settled, there could be no great difficulty in a case of this kind. Ministers undertaking office under such circ.u.mstances would be responsible to the country for their policy, and the Sovereign would feel himself at once relieved by that responsibility from all further anxiety. But George III. took that responsibility upon himself in reference to the great measures that occupied the public mind; and when, by the exigency of circ.u.mstances, Ministers were pressed upon him from whose views he dissented, he accepted them upon conditions which restrained the action of the Cabinet, as a whole, in certain directions, but left its members individually free and unpledged. Such was the origin of ”open questions.” It was a compromise on both sides; and of course it must always depend upon the extent to which this compromise is carried, and the necessity under which it is resorted to, whether it should be regarded as a sacrifice of principle on the part of the Minister who submits to it.

Another novelty originating in this reign, out of the same peculiar state of things, and resting upon a similar theory of expediency, was that of the formation of a Coalition Administration, in which party differences were merged in a common agreement upon a general line of policy. As considerable light is thrown upon this memorable incident in the course of these volumes, it is unnecessary to dwell upon it here. It will be abundantly elucidated in the proper place. For the present, it is sufficient to refer to the junction, in a composite Ministry of hostile statesman, as one of the singular results flowing from that necessity of adaptation to circ.u.mstances which was rendered unavoidable by the unyielding character of the Sovereign.

There were other circ.u.mstances which, combined with the personal dispositions of the King, led to the strenuous a.s.sertion in this reign of the prerogatives of the Executive against the interference and control of the aristocracy and the Parliament. From the date of the Revolution up to the accession of George III., the independent authority of the Crown can scarcely be said to have had any practical force--scarcely, indeed, to have had any existence. The Government of the country was essentially Parliamentary. It was part of the compact with William III. A foreign dynasty had been established, and the people naturally looked to the protection of their domestic interests against the possible preponderance of extrinsic sympathies in the reigning power. Under William III., the claim of the United Provinces upon the special regard of the Sovereign was the object of national jealousy; and when the House of Brunswick ascended the throne, popular vigilance was transferred to Hanover. The first two Princes of that House who ruled in England scarcely spoke our language, and were so ignorant of our Const.i.tution and our customs, that they could not be admitted with safety to an active partic.i.p.ation in the Government. The Whigs, who had brought about these changes, preserved in their own hands the entire authority of the State. The Sovereign was merely the motionless representative of the monarchical principle. But George III. was not an alien. Born in the country, educated in its language and its usages, and inspired by an ardent devotion to Protestantism, he entered life under auspices that attracted at once towards the Crown an amount of popularity which it had never enjoyed under his predecessors. The qualities and dispositions of the King were favourable to the cultivation of these opportunities. Without being profoundly versed in the philosophy of character, he possessed a remarkable apt.i.tude in the discrimination of persons suited to his purposes. He had considerable skill (to which Lord Shelburne bears special testimony) in extracting the opinions of others, and turning the results to account. If his mind was not vigorous and original, it was active and adaptive, inquisitive and watchful. If his judgment was not always sound, his convictions were strong, and the tenacity of his resolution commanded submission. An accomplished linguist, fond of business, and having some talents as a writer, which enabled him to express his meaning with facility and clearness, he was well qualified to avail himself of the political accidents which contributed to revive and strengthen the royal prerogative.

The Whigs themselves helped mainly to bring about this struggle between the Crown and the Parliament, or rather between the Crown and the ”great families,” to use Mr. Canning's phrase, who had hitherto absorbed the power and patronage of the State. United in principle, they were divided by personal jealousies. The long possession of office had given a sort of impunity to their pretensions; and believing that they held a perpetual tenure of Administration, they were weak enough, at every new ministerial change, to contend amongst themselves for the prizes. These internal dissensions weakened and scattered them, and prepared the way for those experiments which were made, during the early years of George III., to conduct the Government without their aid.

The effects were felt in an entire change of system. The accession of George III. was followed by a _coup-d'etat_, which displaced the able Cabinet that had been organized by the elder Pitt, to make room for the Earl of Bute, who had the credit of being the author of the scheme, and who was utterly incapable of carrying it out. Independently of his want of the requisite qualifications as a statesman, there were other objections of a private nature to Lord Bute, which rendered it impossible that he could ostensibly continue to guide the councils of the Ministry, however he might be permitted, or retained, to influence them from behind the curtain. But his short essay at Government had sufficiently disturbed the _ancien regime_, to leave in the King's hands the power of choosing his Ministers without reference to popular clamour or the will of Parliament. The consequence was, a rapid series of Ministerial mutations, throughout which the contest for power was maintained on both sides with so fierce a spirit, that during the first ten years of the reign of George III., there were no less than seven successive Administrations.

It was not till Lord North was called to the head of the Ministry, in 1770, that the public uneasiness was allayed, and a Cabinet of the King's own choice was founded in security. Lord North was an especial favourite with the King, whose extraordinary regard for him originated in the prompt.i.tude with which he responded to His Majesty's appeal, at a moment of serious embarra.s.sment, when the Duke of Grafton unexpectedly threw up the Government, and Lord North consented to undertake it. ”I love you as a man of worth, as I esteem you as a Minister,” writes the King to him on one occasion; ”your conduct at a critical moment I can never forget.” The Whigs were readily reconciled to Lord North's appointment, because he was not mixed up in their differences. They preferred a Minister who had no alliances amongst them to one of themselves, whose elevation would have produced discontents in the camp.

At first there was a show of dissatisfaction, and some attempts were made to foment the popular pa.s.sions; but the dignified firmness of the Sovereign, and the moderate bearing of the favourite, speedily tranquillized the public mind, and enabled Lord North to carry on the Government with energy and success.

In his private character, Lord North was irreproachable; as a debater, he displayed some valuable qualities--patience and endurance, facility of resources on occasions of emergency, great calmness and courage, and a playful wit, which never startled by its brilliancy, but seldom failed of its point. He betrayed no ostentation or vainglory in his position; never offended by any undue exhibition of the powers he wielded; and restricted himself severely to the discharge of his duties as an adviser of the Crown, deprecating the t.i.tle of Prime Minister, which he declared was an office unknown to the Const.i.tution of this country. As a statesman, he never achieved a high or distinguished reputation. The American war was the blot upon his career; nor can even his devotion to the Sovereign entirely excuse him for remaining in office at His Majesty's entreaty to pursue a course of colonial policy which his reason and his conscience disapproved. This was a political fault, which no circ.u.mstances can palliate. Others have done worse, no doubt, from meaner motives; but the mere desire of serving the King does not absolve the Minister from censure for having acted contrary to his own convictions on a question of such grave importance.