Grantham, a gentleman of respectable character and attainments, grandfather of the present Earl Brownlow.

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The King's Speech on opening the Session was nearly in the same strain as those former Speeches which Pitt had drawn; like them it promised a vigorous prosecution of the war; like them it praised the "magnanimity and ability" of the King of Prussia. How far Lord Bute was in earnest when framing these expressions will presently be seen. Meanwhile the turn of the debates afforded Pitt several opportunities to explain or vindicate his recent course of policy. He spoke with unwonted temper and moderation, defending his own conduct without arraigning that of his former colleagues. If, as some detractors allege, his harangues at this time were inflammatory *, they were so from the force of his topics, and not from the violence of his language.

This virtue of moderation was not, however, shown towards himself by his opponents. On one occasion, when he was absent from the House, Colonel Isaac Barré, who only the year before had solicited preferment at his hands †, inveighed against him in the harshest terms as a profligate Minister," and as likely to incur "the ex"ecration of the people." Another such scene is well described in a letter of that time. - "Would you know a "little of the humour of Parliament, and particularly "with regard to Mr. Pitt? - I must then tell you that "Colonel Barré, a soldier of fortune, a young man born "in Dublin of parents in a mean condition, his father " and mother from France, and established in a little grocer's shop, this young man (a man of address and parts), found out, pushed, and brought into Parliament 'by Lord Shelburne, had not sat two days in the House "before he attacked Mr. Pitt. I shall give you a specimen of his philippics. Talking of the manner of Mr. "Pitt's speaking, he said: 'There he would stand, turn

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ing up his eyes to Heaven, that witnessed his perju

*“Since the Guildhall dinner, —for pensions stop the mouths "only of courtiers, not of the virtuous, -Pitt has harangued in the "House with exceeding applause; it was fine, guarded, artful, very inflammatory." (H. Walpole to Mann, November 14. 1761.) † See Colonel Barré's letter, April 28. 1760, in the Chatham Correspondence. His application had been refused by Pitt.

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1761.

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DOWRY FOR THE QUEEN.

249

"ries, and laying his hand in a solemn manner upon "the table,—that sacrilegious hand that had been employed in tearing out the bowels of his mother country!'-Would you think that Mr. Pitt would "hear this and be silent, or would you think that the "House would suffer a respectable Member to be thus "treated? Yet so it was." *

Notwithstanding the eloquence and the popularity of Pitt, it appears that he had at this time but few Parliamentary followers. On a motion to produce the papers respecting the Spanish negotiation, so scanty were his numbers that he could not venture a division. The new Opposition, which held its meetings at the St. Alban's Tavern, had, however, the good wishes or the secret aid of many more than openly joined it. Among the chief of these half-allies was the new Secretary at War, the volatile Charles Townshend, who was offended at the preference shown to George Grenville, and was beginning to veer back again from Bute to Pitt.

But the first business in this Session was to consider a paragraph in the Royal Speech, recommending a Dowry for the Queen. The precedent of Queen Caroline was consulted and adopted, and an Act passed unanimously, securing to Her Majesty in case she should survive the King a yearly income of 100,000l. When the King came to the House of Lords to give this Act the Royal Assent, the Queen appeared on his right hand seated on a chair of state, and publicly expressed her thanks by rising up and making her obeisance to His Majesty.

During this time the progress of the Spanish negotiations had been precisely such as Pitt had foreseen and foretold. On the 21st of September Lord Bristol announced to the Secretary of State that the FLOTA had safely anchored in the bay of Cadiz; and on the 2d of November he adds: "Two ships have lately arrived at "Cadiz with very extraordinary rich cargoes from the "West Indies, so that all the wealth that was expected "from Spanish America is now safe in Old Spain.” In

* Mr. Symmers to Mr. A. Mitchell, Envoy to the Court of Prussia, January 29. 1762. This and some other extracts from the Mitchell MSS. are printed as notes to the Chatham Correspondence.

that very same despatch of the 2d of November the ambassador has to report a "surprising change in General "Wall's discourse," and "haughty language now held by "this Court, so different from all the former professions." -It now became evident, even to Lord Bristol's apprehension, that the Spaniards had been pacific only while awaiting and expecting their resources for war. The claims of Spain upon England were urged anew in the most peremptory terms, while the request of the Court of London for some information or explanation respecting the rumoured Family Compact was met with a positive refusal. Further notes or further interviews served only to widen the breach. Before the close of the year the Earl of Bristol received orders to leave Madrid, and the Conde de Fuentes orders to leave London. Fuentes, pre

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vious to his departure, addressed by his master's order an angry Memorial to Lord Egremont, inveighing even by name against "the Minister Pitt."-"The horrors," added he, "into which the Spanish and English nations are going to plunge themselves must be attributed only to the pride and to the unmeasurable ambition of him who has "held the reins of the government, and who appears still "to hold them, although by another hand." *-—A course so unusual in diplomacy as to single out a statesman no longer in office as the object of attack indicates the impression which Pitt had made on the enemies of England, and is more creditable to the talents of the British Minister than to the temper of the Catholic King. Lord Egremont replied to this attack in a strain of dignified courtesy; but all hope of conciliation had vanished, and a Declaration of War against Spain was issued on the 4th of January 1762.

The necessity of this new war was most galling to Lord Bute. In the first place it confirmed in the fullest manner his rival's system of policy, for never surely were any statesman's projects or predictions more thoroughly confirmed by the event, than those of Pitt in October 1761 by that in January 1762. But even besides such rivalry, Lord Bute had set his heart on terminating without delay the hostilities previously existing. It was his maxim that

* Conde de Fuentes to the Earl of Egremont, Christmas Day, 1761.

1702.

THE PRUSSIAN SUBSIDY.

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England ought to stand as clear as possible of Continental ties; a maxim which was founded on a dislike of the Hanover politics in the two last reigns, and which would deserve approbation, if the exact reverse of wrong were always right. But such views as the British Minister was now prepared to carry into action seem scarcely suited to a first-rate Power; and even allowing them true, would be valid only against contracting new engagements, not against honourably fulfilling the engagements already formed, and the expectations already raised. These objections, however forcible, and however forcibly urged, made little or no impression on Lord Bute. On various pleas he eluded a renewal of the yearly Prussian subsidy, to which Frederick had undoubtedly at this time an equitable claim, and of which he never stood in greater need. Nay more, Lord Bute had resolved that if even he should find himself compelled by Frederick's popularity in England to grant another subsidy, he would do so without any renewal of the treaties as to time, so as to dole it out at his pleasure, and to keep the King in his dependence.* Indeed the whole correspondence of Bute upon this subject, even in his own vindication, betrays both distrust and aversion against that Prince, whom he had so lately lauded in public as our magnanimous ally. He made a clandestine overture, without the consent or knowledge of Frederick, to the Court of Vienna. He allowed the Duke of Bedford, his new colleague, selected by himself as Lord Privy Seal, to bring forward in the House of Peers a motion against the war in Germany, an Address to the King to recall his troops from that country. And though Bute himself felt it necessary to resist this motion, he did so only by moving the previous question, and by arguing rather against the time and manner than against the substance

"This expedient, the King of Prussia's Ministers observe, leaves "their master at the mercy of his ally. . . . . . and cannot fail to "render his enemies more obstinate and inveterate." Mr. A. Mitchell to Lord Bute, January 16. 1762. Mitchell Papers.

† See this correspondence at length in the Appendix to Mr. Adolphus's first volume, p. 575-589. ed. 1840.

of the Address.* In short, his whole foreign policy tended to withdraw from Prussia not only substantial but moral support.

The effects of this want of good judgment, or rather, perhaps, of good faith, in Lord Bute, unhappily extended very far beyond his own administration. From this time forward the King of Prussia lost for ever all confidence in the stability of British counsels, or the value of British alliance. Thus it happened, that when, some years afterwards, we in our turn were beset with dangers, and sought anew the friendship of the Court of Berlin, we saw our overtures slighted, and those of the Court of Petersburg preferred. Thus it was that, amidst the hostile combination of France and Spain, and the gathering storms of our own colonial empire, we found ourselves alone. Thus it was that Frederick, closely leagued with Russia, became an accomplice in that great political crime, — the first partition of Poland.† Seldom indeed, let me in passing observe it of Lord Bute, has any Minister, with so short a tenure of power, and, I may fairly add, with so little of guilt in his intentions, been the cause of so great evils. Within a year and a half he had lost the King his popularity and the kingdom its allies.

The disasters to Prussia of the campaign of 1761, combined with the unfriendly disposition of the British rulers, had placed Frederick on the very brink of ruin. At this crisis he was rescued by a most auspicious event in his favour, the death of the Czarina Elizabeth, on the 5th of January 1762. Her nephew, the Duke of Holstein, who succeeded to the throne by the title of Peter the Third, a prince of feeble if not diseased intellect, far from sharing her resentment against the Prussian Monarch, entertained for him an enthusiastic veneration. He was accustomed to kiss his portrait, and talk of him with rapture, calling him his friend and master. Such a master, for war or statesmanship, would indeed have been wisely chosen; but the Czar's imitation of the hero turned

*Parl. Hist., vol. xv. p. 1218. This debate is given from Lord Hardwicke's notes. Lord Bute's speech will be found at full length in the Appendix to the Cavendish Reports, vol. i. p. 570. ed. 1841. †The origin of this partition from the policy of Lord Bute is well traced by Preuss, Lebens-Geschichte, vol. ii. p. 306.