Part 2 (2/2)
CHAPTER II.
[1820.]
ARRIVAL OF QUEEN CAROLINE AT ST. OMER. HER DEMANDS. ABORTIVE NEGOTIATIONS. INTERPOSITION OF MR. WILBERFORCE TO AVERT THE THREATENED SCANDAL. QUEEN CAROLINE IN LONDON. SHE REFUSES THE CONCESSIONS PROPOSED BY THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PROPOSALS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. UNPOPULARITY OF MR. WILBERFORCE. POLICY OF THE QUEEN'S ADVISERS. PUBLIC EXCITEMENT. MOB ROUND THE QUEEN'S RESIDENCE.
DISSATISFACTION OF THE KING.
CHAPTER II.
On the 1st of June, Caroline of Brunswick arrived at St. Omer, intending to embark at Calais without delay for England. At once she showed her disposition to carry matters with a high hand. She wrote an imperious letter to the Earl of Liverpool, to prepare a palace in London for her reception; another to Lord Melville, to send a yacht to carry her across the Channel to Dover; and a third to the Duke of York, repeating both demands, and complaining of the treatment she had received. Two days later, Mr. Brougham, her chief legal adviser, arrived, and at the same time Lord Hutchinson, with a proposition from the King, offering her 50,000_l._ a year for life if she would remain on the Continent, and surrender the t.i.tle of Queen of England. She was in no mood to listen to reason, and indignantly rejected the offer.
The rumour of the Queen's approach created extraordinary excitement among all cla.s.ses in every part of the kingdom. The Lord Chancellor prophetically says, ”If she can venture, she is the most courageous lady I ever heard of. The mischief, if she does come, will be infinite.
At first, she will have extensive popularity with the mult.i.tude; in a few short months or weeks, she will be ruined in the opinion of all the world.”[20] ”One can't help admiring her spirit,” observes the moral Wilberforce, ”though I fear she has been very profligate.”[21] From such a man there might have been expected a severer judgment on her immorality, and a more subdued appreciation of her daring; but this evidence of ”spirit” was an appeal to the English people which many a grave father of a family found it impossible to resist. Mr. Wilberforce, however, much to his credit, was earnestly desirous of lessening the threatened scandal, and diminis.h.i.+ng the public commotion it was likely to create. He writes in his Diary,--”When, therefore, Lord Castlereagh had made a motion to refer the papers to the consideration of a Secret Committee, I endeavoured to interpose a pause, during which the two parties might have an opportunity of contemplating coolly the prospect before them. Accordingly I sounded the House; my proposition was immediately adopted, and a pause was made, with a declaration that its purpose was to give opportunity for a private settlement.”[22]
[20] Twiss's ”Life of Lord Eldon,” vol. ii. p. 3.
[21] ”Wilberforce's Life,” by his Sons, vol. v. p. 55.
[22] Ibid.
As no Royal yacht was likely to be at her disposal, Queen Caroline lost no time in embarking, crossed the sea safely, pursued her route to the metropolis through Canterbury, and, pa.s.sing through vociferous crowds, on the 7th, in default of the palace she had ordered, took up her residence with a City alderman, who had placed himself among the foremost of her champions. From this time the agitation in the public mind hourly increased, till it began to a.s.sume a most threatening aspect. Nothing was left undone by the Queen to ingratiate herself with the people; and, as a natural result, she never appeared publicly without creating intense excitement. When in the streets, her horses were taken from her carriage, and she was drawn in triumph, by scores of shouting adherents, through a clamorous mob. Before the alderman's house in South Audley Street stood hour after hour a shouting myriad, excited to a pitch of frenzy to which no description can do justice, by the appearance on the balcony of a stout lady, in a large hat surmounted by a plume of feathers.
On the day of her arrival in town, the King sent a message to the Houses of Lords and Commons, to the effect that the step taken by the Queen had forced him to bring before the consideration of Parliament, certain papers detailing her conduct since her departure from England.
The Queen, on the same day, sent a message by Mr. Brougham, in her usual high tone, expressing a desire for an open investigation. The friends of both parties were striving to spare the country the threatened exposure; and on the 9th, the Queen so far complied with the suggestions of her most sensible advisers as to write a moderate letter to Lord Liverpool, expressing her inclination to consider any proposition the Government were disposed to make in behalf of their Sovereign. Communications were exchanged; the Ministers repeated their liberal offer, and the Queen repeated her indignant refusal. How this sad business was felt at the period may be gathered from the letters that follow. But the first expresses a belief, then generally gaining ground, of a change in the Government in favour of the Grenville party.
It would appear as if a proposal of the kind had been submitted to the head of the family, but the sensible advice here given must at once have put an end to such a negotiation:--
LORD GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Dropmore, 12 at night, June 11.
We have both talked this thing over as fully as our materials enabled us to do, and it is our decided opinion that the King has, and can have in the present moment, only the alternative of putting himself fairly and fully into the hands of one or other of the two great parties; and that it would be deceiving him, and trifling with a most awful state of things, if anybody undertook to be useful to him on any other footing, or even gave rise to the delay of an hour in deciding on that alternative by countenancing hopes of any third arrangement.
The House of Commons is totally unmanageable in any such view. The whole weight of the Ministers there, combining their aid as they now do, is, as you see, hardly sufficient to carry on the ordinary public business from day to day. I very much question whether all the weight that the Opposition could unite for the same purpose, if the task were committed into their hands, would be much, if at all, more adequate to it. What hopes, then, could a third party entertain of doing this in opposition to both?
I can easily see in what course your a.s.sistance and support might be very useful indeed to strengthen his Government, into whatever hands he may finally determine to commit it; and in the present state of things I should, as far as my own wishes went, be most anxious that, in whatever hands it shall be vested, it should possess whatever of strength and efficiency it can receive. But as for undertaking any princ.i.p.al or leading part in the formation of a new Government, to the exclusion of the most considerable persons in this, and of the whole of the other party (who will doubtless on this occasion act with perfect union and concurrence among themselves), I hold the success impossible, and the undertaking much too desperate to be reconciled to any just sense of prudence or duty. And if the fact be so, it is most important that he should be as speedily, and as distinctly as possible, apprized that so it is. And you and Charles would much injure your own reputation and weight by appearing to tamper with a case in which you cannot be of any real use.
I do not wonder that he feels hurt at Canning's speech, such as it is reported; but this is not the first occasion, nor will it be the last, in which the Sovereign of this country must suppress such feelings, and bear with the faults of those who, on the whole, taking all things together, can serve him most usefully; and the manner in which the Opposition have of late years, most unfortunately for themselves and for the country, been drawn on to mix themselves up with projects of reform, and with the countenance and defence of reformers of the wildest description, seems to me, I regret to say it, to throw that balance at this time wholly on the side of their opponents.
I do not know that I can add more. My brother returns to town early to-morrow morning; and you will not wonder, knowing my feelings, that all that is now pa.s.sing is with me a decisive reason for not coming near it unless commanded so to do, and then it would only be for the purpose of expressing these opinions.
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