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1758.

PRINCE FERDINAND OF BRUNSWICK.

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March Walpole writes to Mann: "Mr. Pitt, who has "been laid up with the gout, has been in the House but "twice this winter;" yet not long afterwards he adds: "Our unanimity is prodigious. You would as soon hear "No' from an old maid as from the House of Com66 mons!"

The Subsidy to Frederick was by no means the only measure taken in England to support the war in Germany. The King refused to ratify the Convention of ClosterSeven; indeed, as to several particulars respecting the Hessian troops and the observance of the truce, the French had already infringed it. The army at Stade was accordingly prepared for a fresh campaign, and a sum for its maintenance voted by the English Parliament.† On the recommendation of the King of Prussia, its command was intrusted to Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, brother of the Duke of that name. Prince Ferdinand, now thirtyseven years of age, had already attained high distinction in the Prussian service, and still held high rank in it as General, and Governor of Magdeburg. His military talents were worthy a pupil of Frederick; in the field he was ever calm, collected, skilful, and intrepid. Humanity to the vanquished, and consideration for his own officers and soldiers, were not the least conspicuous of his many good qualities. Amongst the scoffers at Frederick's Court he had been always steady and sincere, though unaffected, in his adherence to Revealed Religion. In private life his tastes and habits were such as a great General but seldom forms. A shrewd observer, who passed through Brunswick a few years after the peace, and who was presented to the Prince, thus describes him: "He is "of a ceremonious politeness, splendid in his manner of living, attentive even to the minutest points of his toilet, and fond of variety and magnificence in dress." ‡ The command of the Hanoverian army was assumed by Prince Ferdinand only a few days after the battle of

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*To Sir Horace Mann, December 25. 1758.

"Last week, in the House of Commons, above ten millions "were granted, and the whole Hanover army taken into British "pay, with but one single negative, which was Mr. Vyner's." (Lord Chesterfield to his son, April 25. 1758.)

Dr. Moore, View of Society in France, Germany, &c. Letter 56.

Rosbach, and his arrival from that field of victory inspiring the troops with new confidence, he gained almost immediately several small advantages over the French; but, severe weather setting in, both generals soon established themselves in winter quarters; Prince Ferdinand at Lüneburg, and the Duke de Richelieu at Hanover.

At home the harmony of the Session was scarcely broken by a slight disagreement between the two Houses on a proposed extension of the Habeas Corpus. The original Act in the reign of Charles the Second referred only to persons arrested on criminal charges. Now an instance had recently occurred of a gentleman being, by some mistake, pressed for a footsoldier, and confined in the Savoy, when his friends, on applying for a Habeas Corpus, found that the case did not come within the provisions of the Bill. No hardship ensued in this instance, because the gentleman thus imprisoned was released upon an application to the Secretary at War; but it tended to direct public attention towards the deficiencies of the law. Cases were imagined, without any violent stretch of probability, of a wife wrongfully immured by her husband, of a daughter by her father, of an alleged lunatic by his physician, for whom no redress could be obtained. Pratt, the new Attorney General, applied himself with zeal to this grievance, and introduced a Bill extending the Habeas Corpus to other cases of confinement besides those resulting from the allegation of crime. It was a noble sight thus to behold the first advocate of the Crown appearing the firmest champion against Prerogative.* The Bill passed the Commons,-opposed, indeed, by Fox, and a very few others, but supported by the two highest authorities then to be found in that assembly,- Secretary Pitt and Speaker Onslow. Far different was its reception in the House of Peers. Lords Temple, Talbot, and Stanhope spoke well in its behalf; they were speedily overwhelmed, however, by the superior ability and weight of Hardwicke and Mansfield. Of the latter, we are told by Horace Walpole, although a warm friend to the proposed extension, "I am not averse to own that I never

*Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 287. See also his letter to Conway, June 4. 1758.

1758.

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THE HABEAS CORPUS BILL.

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"heard so much argument, so much sense, so much oratory "united. . . . . Perhaps it was the only speech that in my time at least had real effect; that is, convinced many persons."- Hardwicke unfolded numerous doubts and objections of detail;- how hard to bring up a wife, a daughter, or a lunatic, from, perhaps, the remotest corner of the kingdom, and at one's own expense, without the least satisfaction from the persons who make such application, and while there may not be the slightest real grievance in the case! He acknowledged that he had, indeed, long been sensible of one defect in the law of Habeas Corpus, and wished it to be supplied, but he found not the least provision for it in the present Bill, — and that was, a power to a single Judge, during the vacation, to enforce a speedy return to an Habeas Corpus writ.* On the whole, he prevailed upon their Lordships to take the opinions of the Judges; but these opinions, separately delivered, proved to be discordant and inconclusive. Still following Hardwicke's guidance, the Peers then threw out the Bill, but directed the Judges to prepare for the next Session another Bill, extending the power of granting and enforcing the writ during the vacation. Such an order served at the moment to allay the popular excitement; and that once appeased, no further progress was made with the promised measure.

It may be observed, I think, without injustice, that the course pursued by the Peers in regard to the Habeas Corpus Act has not been honourable to their judgment or consistent with other parts of their conduct. Even in the original measure under Charles the Second the Bill had passed their House only by trick or chance. Bishop Burnet tells us, how, upon that division, Lord Grey, the teller in behalf of the Bill, availed himself of the eccentricity of his colleague, Lord Norreys, an odd, absent man, to reckon a corpulent Peer who walked in as ten votes instead of one, how the miscalculation passed current, and how it decided the success of the measure. † In 1758

*From Lord Hardwick's original notes; Parliamentary History, vol. xv. p. 897.

+ History of his Own Time, vol. ii. p. 256. ed. Oxf. 1833, with & note of Speaker Onslow in corroboration of the story.

we find no friendly spirit to its extension and support. It was not till 1816 that nearly the same amendment as Pratt had proposed, coupled with Lord Hardwicke's suggestion, was again introduced by Serjeant Onslow, when it passed without much opposition or notice, or any renewed reference to the Judges.*

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The internal tranquillity of England, where all parties, Whig or Tory, were rapidly blending into an emulous support of Pitt, was set off as with a foil by the rising troubles of Ireland. The Duke of Bedford, the new Lord Lieutenant, himself of violent passions, was illfitted for quelling or directing the passions of others. But with all his faults of temper he was an honest and honourable man, and had entered on his Vice-Royalty with upright intentions. He had professed and resolved to ob serve a complete neutrality between the contending parties. He had begun with exacting strict attendance at their posts from all persons in civil employment, and refusing leaves of absence to officers and chaplains of regiments; nor did he omit,-finding the revenue bur dened with so many useless charges,- -some angry diatribes against Irish pensions. Unfortunately he was too much under the influence of his Secretary and favourite, Rigby, a gay, jovial, not over-scrupulous placeman. With such a counsellor the rigid virtue of the new Lord Lieutenant speedily relaxed. The Queen Dowager of Prussia had lately died, and by her demise there reverted to the Crown a pension of 800l. a year, which had been secretly granted to her on the Irish Establishment at the period of her ill-treatment by her harsh and penurious husband. This pension Bedford was persuaded to ask for Lady Betty Waldegrave, sister to his Duchess. He obtained it, but immediately roused against his government whatever of patriotism or of public spirit was then to be found in Ireland. In like manner his views of public policy, so lofty at the outset, speedily dwindled into donatives and quiet. This appears from his own private Diary of May 24. 1758. "As things are circumstanced, "business may be easily carried on the next Session, but

* Hansard's Debates, February 14. 1816. &c. See also Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iii. p. 138. ed. 1825.

1758.

IRISH AFFAIRS.

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"the leading people must have DOUCEURS...... By "these means His Majesty may do what he pleases with "this country." ""* Nor was His Grace more steady in his purpose of strict impartiality between the factions. There were at that time three in the Irish Parliament; first, that of the Primate Stone; secondly, that of the Speaker Ponsonby; thirdly, that of Lord Kildare, the head of the great family of Fitzgerald. Towards this last party the Lord Lieutenant ere long began strongly to incline, on account of his friendship with Fox, whose sister-in-law was the wife of Kildare.

It must be acknowledged as strange, and but little to the credit of Irish politics at this time, to find an Archbishop and a Speaker the chiefs of the rival Parliamentary cabals. The former evil had been fomented avowedly, and as a matter of design, by the late Primate Boulter. "The Bishops here," says he, in one of his letters, are the persons on whom the Government must depend for doing the public business." It was another of Boulter's maxims to place the Irish mitres on none but English heads +,-to strengthen, as it was called, the English interest, a most false and suicidal policy.

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Two other peculiarities of the Irish Government at this period, though far less important, may yet deserve a passing notice. It was usual for every Lord Lieutenant to absent himself from his post during the second year of his Vice-Royalty, so as to pocket its salary without incurring its expenses.§-The choice of the Secretary depended solely on the Lord Lieutenant, instead of being, as now, a subject of care and thought to the Prime Minister; a change which indicates a far different degree and direction of responsibility in the inferior officer.||

* Bedford Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 335.

†To the Duke of Newcastle, April 30. 1728.-Boulter's Letters, vol. i. p. 238.

Thus, for instance, on the dangerous illness of the Archbishop of Dublin, Boulter writes, "I hope that no native will be thought of "for that place." (To the Bishop of London, December 21. 1728.) See also Hallam's Constit. Hist., vol. iii. p. 542.

§ This is stated incidentally, and as a matter of course, in Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 279.

We may trace the transition state (as a geologist would term it) between the two systems in a letter from Mr. Pitt to the Duke of

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