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1756.

NEWCASTLE RESIGNS.

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continue Attorney General, and that as to the business of the House of Commons he should leave them to fight their own battles. This frank declaration had an immediate effect; and Murray obtained not only the Chief Justiceship but also a peerage under the title of Mansfield.

Still, however, Newcastle cherished the hope that he might by a new combination maintain his power. He prevailed upon the King that a flattering overture should be sent to Pitt; but Pitt, conscious of his own importance, absolutely refused to treat with the Duke. He declared, with some irony, that he had infinite respect for His Grace in his private capacity, but that a plain man, unpractised in the policy of a Court, must not presume to be the associate of so experienced a Minister.

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Newcastle next tried Lord Egmont, to whom he offered the Seals of Secretary, and the lead of the House of Commons. Egmont was an able speaker, delighted in public business, and bore a high character in private life; but he had fixed his mind upon an English peerage. refused to engage unless he were forthwith removed to the House of Lords, which was directly opposite to the Duke of Newcastle's object, the House of Commons being the only place where he wanted assistance. Thus, then, Egmont, placing no faith whatever in the Duke's assurances of a peerage at some future time, allowed this negotiation to drop.

Still untired whenever office was in view, Newcastle then proposed to Granville that they should exchange places. the Duke becoming Lord President, and the Earl First Lord of the Treasury, with power to construct as he pleased the new administration. How gladly ten years ago would Granville's ambition have leaped at such an offer! But now he had grown too old,—or, as he termed it, too wise.

At length, every expedient having been tried and having failed, and not a single commoner remaining of sense and character who would stand in the gap, or place any further trust in Newcastle, -the Duke most reluctantly resigned.* He was followed, to the general

"The Duke of Newcastle has advertised in all the papers that "he retires without place or pension. Here is a list of his disinterestedness. The reversion of his Dukedom for Lord Lincoln.

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regret of the nation, by his constant friend, and the main pillar of his administration, the Earl of Hardwicke, whose advancing years had for some time past counselled retirement. Never has the high office of Chancellor been more uprightly, more learnedly, and more ably filled; and after him the Seal was either left in commission or only entrusted to a Keeper, during the whole remainder of this reign.

Sir George Lyttleton also was dismissed from the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, and Lord Anson from the Admiralty. The fall of the first, however, was softened by a peerage. He had shown little aptitude for business, but had gained general respect by his honesty, candour, and accomplishments. Anson had been justly renowned for courage, perseverance, and good judgment in his expedition round the globe, but had by no means obtained so high a character in office at home. From having been rated far too high in his abilities, he became, by a common and natural transition, unduly depressed; and a violent though ill-founded clamour had been lately raised against him for the loss of Minorca.

The ground being thus cleared, the King sent for Fox, inquired whether Pitt were willing to act with him in office, and bade him ascertain. Next day, accordingly, Fox went to the Prince's Levee, and taking Pitt apart at the head of the stairs, asked him if he was going to Stowe, as he would soon have a message of consequence by persons of consequence. Pitt answered: "One likes "to say things to men of sense, and of your great sense "rather than to others, and yet it is difficult even to you."."-"What!" said Fox, "you mean that you will "not act with me as a Minister?"-"I do," rejoined Pitt.*

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"This is the only Duchy bestowed by the present King. On my "father's resignation, the new Ministers did prevail to have Duke"doms offered to Lord Northampton and Lord Aylesbury, but "both declined, having no sons. Mr. Shelley, the Duke's nephew, "has the reversion of Arundel's place. Mr. West has a great rever

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"sion for himself and his son. Your little waxen friend, Tommy Pelham, has another reversion in the Customs. Jones, the Duke's "favourite Secretary, and nephew of the late Chancellor, has "another." H. Walpole to Sir H. Mann, November 29. 1756. *Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 97.

1756.

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The intended coalition being thus nipped in the bud, the King next applied to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who, by his father's decease in the preceding winter, had become from Marquis of Hartington the fourth Duke of Devonshire. This nobleman was, like his father, naturally averse to public business, and engaged in it only from a sense of duty, but, like his father also, was highly esteemed by all parties for probity and truth. Dr. Johnson, for example, though opposed to the Duke in politics, bears a strong testimony to his character. "He was not a man of superior abilities, but strictly "faithful to his word. If, for instance, he had promised you an acorn, and none had grown that year in his "woods, he would not have been contented with that excuse, he would have sent to Denmark for it."* All the former intimacy, all the personal predilections of the Duke, tended to Fox; but, on assuming the commission with which the King had charged him, he found Fox distrusted by the people and excluded by Pitt, while Pitt himself was now regarded by the public as the only man able to steer the vessel of the state through the coming storm. It was therefore not with Fox, but with Pitt, that the Duke of Devonshire, notwithstanding his friendship for the former, combined. His Grace became First Lord of the Treasury, and Pitt Secretary of State, retaining, to gratify the King, Lord Holderness for his colleague. The Chancellorship of the Exchequer fell to Legge; the Admiralty to Pitt's brother-in-law, Earl Temple. The Duke of Bedford became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, at the instigation, as is alleged, of Fox, and with a view, on Fox's part, to the future embarråssment of Pitt. Several of the late Cabinet, and many more in subordinate employments, remained, for Pitt had but few Parliamentary followers; he mainly relied on his Grenville connection, and, as Horace Walpole maliciously observes, "had not cousins enough to fill the whole "administration."

The new administration, however strong in talent, was, it soon appeared, greatly wanting as to Parliamentary interest and influence. These had been always too little

Boswell's Life of Johnson, under the date September 22. 1777.

valued and too little studied by Pitt. In these, on the contrary, Newcastle was ever predominant. Pitt himself found some difficulty in obtaining a seat. At the last dissolution he had been returned for Aldeburgh in Yorkshire, a borough under Pelham control; and on accepting the Seals, and excluding the Duke of Newcastle from power, Pitt could not of course apply to His Grace for reelection; but he availed himself of the opening afforded by Sir George Lyttleton's peerage, and became a successful candidate for Sir George's seat at Oakhampton.

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A few days had sufficed to complete the new arrangements, and on the 2d of December the Session was opened by a Speech from the Throne, which showed the hand of a new speech-maker. The uncourtly Addresses of the preceding summer were termed " signal proofs how dearly my subjects tender my honour and that of my "Crown." The scheme of a national Militia, to which His Majesty was well known to be no friend, was recommended" to the care and diligence of my Parliament.” And, above all, His Majesty announced that he had given orders for the return of his Electoral troops in England to his dominions in Germany. But though George the Second, as a constitutional monarch, thus spoke to his Parliament in the language of his Ministers, he did not attempt in his private conversation to conceal his real sentiments. Thus on one occasion, being informed that an impudent printer was to be punished for publishing a spurious Royal Speech, he answered that he hoped the man's punishment would be of the mildest sort, because he had read both, and, as far as he understood either of them, he liked the spurious speech better than his own.'

For the Electoral troops in England, they had been encamped during the whole summer, the Hessians near Winchester, the Hanoverians near Maidstone. But when the cold season came on the magistrates were advised that they were not obliged by law to billet foreigners in public houses, nor the owners of such houses to receive them; thus the poor soldiers were left in their camps, exposed to the wind and rain, until the transports came

* Lord Waldegrave's Memoirs, p. 89. See also the Parliamentary History. vol xv. n. 779.

1756.

DISMISSAL OF THE HANOVER TROOPS.

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for their return.* Under all circumstances the conduct of these troops had been, not only free from all exception, but exemplary for their discipline, good order, and sobriety. But the imprudence of one of their chiefs had revived the clamours against them. One day a Hanoverian soldier buying four handkerchiefs at Maidstone took away the whole piece, which contained six. All parties have since allowed that the man did it by mistake, and without any design of fraud; but in the first impulse a robbery was sworn against him, and he was committed to jail. The commanding officer, Count Kilmanseg, ignorant of constitutional law, and much incensed at this instance of it, despatched an express with his complaint; and the Secretary of State, Lord Holderness, scarcely less ignorant than Kilmanseg, signed an arbitrary warrant for the soldier's release. In a few days, however, the rising popular voice gave both Holderness and his Master cause to repent his rashness, and, so far as they could, to disavow it. The angry Count was ordered to retire without taking leave, and the poor soldier to receive 300 lashes. This affair occurred, as indeed might be guessed from the pusillanimous termination to it, while the Duke of Newcastle was still at the head of the Government.

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After the change, however, and when the King's speech had announced the recall of these Electoral troops, the new First Lord of the Treasury, the Duke of Devonshire, had inserted in the Lords' Address an expression of thanks to His Majesty for having brought them over. This seemed no undue or unreasonable compliment, since the King had summoned these troops to England at the express request of both Houses of Parliament. But the new First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl Temple, being confined to his bed by illness, had not been consulted on this clause in the Address. Much offended at the neglect, he appeared in the House of Lords at some risk to his health, at the hazard of his life, as he declared, -to represent the grievous enormity and the fatal consequences

*H. Walpole to Sir H. Mann, November 4. 1756. Next Session the Secretary at War, Lord Barrington, brought in a Bill to remedy this defect in the law, and it passed without opposition.

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