Life of William, Earl of Shelburne/Volume 1/Chapter 14

by Edmond George Petty-Fitzmaurice

 

CHAPTER XIV

 

BEFORE THE STORM

 

1772–1774

 

The unanimity which had on the whole characterized the proceedings of the Opposition on the question of religious toleration, was unfortunately not the harbinger of any permanent improvement in their political relations. This was soon seen. In October 1771, the Duke of Cumberland married Lady Anne Luttrell, and in the beginning of 1772 the Duke of Gloucester acknowledged his marriage to the Dowager Countess of Waldegrave. The Royal Marriage Bill was thereupon introduced, the principal provision of which was that no member of the royal family less than twenty-five years of age should marry without the royal consent. To this proposal Shelburne in common with the great mass of the nation was strongly opposed.

"The King," he told Chatham, "has not a servant in the line of business in either House, except the Chief Justice of the King's Bench can be called so, who will own the Bill, or who has refrained from every public insinuation against it, as much as can come from those who vote for it from considerations declared to be of another nature."^[1]

The popular feeling expressed itself in the lines:

 

Quoth Dick to Tom, This Act appears
⁠Absurd, as I'm alive:
To take the Crown at eighteen years,
⁠The wife at twenty-five.
The mystery how shall we explain,
⁠For sure as Dowdeswell said,
"Thus early if they're fit to reign,
⁠They must be fit to wed?"
Quoth Tom to Dick, "Thou art a fool,
⁠And little knowest of life:
Alas! 'tis easier far to rule

⁠A kingdom than a wife."

 

But notwithstanding the wisdom of the utterance with which the above epigram credits the "dull" Dowdeswell,^[2] and the harmony which reigned in the Upper House, where Shelburne and Rockingham had together warmly opposed the Bill, the Old Whigs refused to join the friends of Shelburne in the House of Commons in a direct vote against the Bill. "At half-past one in the morning the House divided, and by the jarring of the Opposition the Ministers carried it by 300 to 64 to go into Committee, most of the Rockinghams voting with the Ministry, Sir George Saville with the minority."^[3]

The dissensions of the Opposition became still more marked when in the following year that old apple of discord, the affairs of the East India Company, was once more thrown down on the floor of Parliament. It has been seen that when at the close of 1767, the policy of Townshend and the Bedfords definitely prevailed over that of Shelburne, the dividend under the compromise then effected was limited to ten per cent, and the territorial revenue was left to the Company for two years, in consideration of an annual payment of £400,000. With certain additions this arrangement was renewed in 1769 for a further term of five years. Immediately afterwards the old scandals with which the Directors had represented themselves as capable of dealing, broke out afresh. The servants of the Company in India were never at a loss how to extort money. They were as ingenious, according to Barré, as the Governor of Gibraltar, who refused to give audience to the Jews when they brought him 1000 shekels, on the ground that their ancestors were the men who had crucified Jesus Christ, and having frightened them by his refusal into coming back with 2000 shekels, admitted them, saying, "Poor men, they had no hand in the crucifixion!"^[4] The rapacity of these men was destroying the very sources of wealth, while a malignant fate seemed to pursue even the halting and ill-directed efforts of the Directors to check the evil, the existence of which they could not deny. The ship in which Governor Vansittart, Mr. Scrafton, and Colonel Ford were sent out in 1769 as supervisors, was never heard of again. A great famine decimated Bengal in 1770. On the 1st January 1771, the cash balances in the Treasury at Fort-William had sunk to 3,542,761 rupees. The bond debt was £612,628, and had increased to £1,039,478 by 1st January 1772. And yet it was difficult to excite attention to these facts. "The East India Affairs," writes Shelburne to Chatham, "do not catch the active public, who discover neither indignation at the conduct of persons there, nor anxiety to secure that object, while every man of every party acknowledges a blow to be impending in that part of the world which must shake to its foundation the revenue, commerce, and manufactures of this."^[5]

Trading on the public inattention, the General Court, on the 26th September 1770, came to a resolution to profit by a clause in the Act of 1769, under which, if the revenue allowed of it, they might increase the dividend to 12½ per cent. Emboldened by impunity, they took a similar course in the two succeeding years. But vengeance was following close on their heels. On the 8th July the General Court found itself face to face with an estimated deficit of £1,293,000 for the ensuing three months, at a period when, owing to several great commercial failures, the money market was already very tight, and on the 10th of August the Chairman had to apply to the Government for a loan of £1,000,000. This was refused except on conditions. A Parliamentary inquiry followed.

The two Committees successively appointed to examine the question did not report till the spring of 1773. It then appeared that the whole available property of the Company was reduced to £2,930,568, so that of their capital stock of £4,200,000, £1,269,431 was expended and gone.^[6] Nor was this all.

"The crimes and frauds of the servants in India," wrote Shelburne to Chatham, "enormous as they appear in the Reports sent your Lordship, are not I believe yet fully stated. The Directors, occupied in domestic pursuits equally fraudulent, have produced the effect of accomplices throughout; while the proprietors, who, as the last resort, ought to be the purest to the objects of their charter, appear the most servile instruments of both, and to have their spirit directed by their several leaders, to answer nothing else than the different purposes of a ministerial market. Nor has there been found as yet, to speak impartially, anywhere in the House of Commons that firm, even, judicial spirit, capable of administering, much less of originating that justice which the case requires; and your Lordship will easily imagine the effect of scenes which daily arise there, from the activity and double dealing of the Court operating upon the situation and circumstances of individuals, in an interval when no avowed leader appears on either side, nor no one common object. In the meantime, the public judgment, as is often the case, goes to the right object, though on wrong reasoning. It is generally felt that the affairs of India are mismanaged; but the reasons given why they are so, are that charter rights should be inviolable, and that it is the last degree of hardship not to leave men the disposal of their own money and of the offices and emoluments arising from the distribution of it. While no one proprietor stands out to demand general justice, and the aid of Parliament at large for the safety or recovery of his property, but all act within the narrowest party limits, it is not surprising that the public should overlook the effect which any new system will have on the general commerce and government of the kingdom."^[7]

On the 3rd of May the Government proposed a new scheme for the government and administration of India. The Company was to receive a loan of £1,400,000 at 4 per cent, and the Government was to forego the annual payment of £400,000 till that debt was paid; the dividend was not to exceed 6 per cent during the same period, nor 7 per cent till the bond debt was reduced to £1,500,000. The surplus receipts, after the payment of £400,000 to the Government, were to be divided in proportions of three-fourths to the Government, and one-fourth either to the reduction of the debt or to a guarantee fund. The territorial revenue was on these conditions left under the management of the Company for six years, the unexpired term of the charter. The Government of Bengal, to which the other Presidencies were subordinated, was to be vested in a Governor and Council, with salaries sufficiently large, as it was hoped, to place them beyond the temptations of corruption and fraud. A supreme Court of Judicature was to be established at Calcutta with an extended area of jurisdiction. The several high officers were forbidden to engage in trade, and the servants of the Company were forbidden to accept presents. All the affairs of the Company except those relating to trade were to be submitted to the Ministers; the first Governor-General and Council were to be nominated for five years by Parliament, and afterwards by the Company with the approbation of the Crown; and the length of the tenure of the Directors and the qualification for a vote at the India House were both to be increased. On the motion of General Burgoyne the three following Resolutions were also carried:

 

1. That all acquisitions made under the influence of a military force or by Treaty with foreign Princes do of right belong to the State.

2. That to appropriate acquisitions so made to the private emolument of persons entrusted with any civil or military power of the State is illegal.

3. That very great sums of money, and other valuable property have been acquired in Bengal from Princes and others of that country, by persons entrusted with the military and civil powers of the State by means of such powers; which sums of money and valuable property have been appropriated to the private use of such persons.

 

Such were the main features of the new scheme for the government of India. To many parts of it Shelburne gravely objected.^[8] In the first place, the resolutions of General Burgoyne not having been followed up with any action against the offenders in India, it was, to say the least, problematical if they would have any effect. The increase of the qualification for a vote at the India House was intended to check the confusion which prevailed at the elections, but it was not clear to him that the increased value given to a vote by the scheme would not introduce the worse evil of cabal and corruption. The new judges were to be appointed during pleasure. Shelburne wished their tenure to be the same as that of the judges in England. The inland trade in his opinion ought also to have been thrown open, and the commercial monopoly of the Company abolished. There was also much to be said on the subject of the control—qualified as it was—which the Bill gave to the Government over the patronage of the Company.^[9] He felt, as strongly as Burke, that it had an undeniable tendency to increase the chief political danger of the time, the influence of the Crown over the House of Commons. On the other hand the Bill, by placing the nomination of the Governor-General and Council under the control of Parliament, violated the principle which places the appointment of public officers in the Crown, while committing a check upon improper nomination to Parliament. Shelburne, accordingly, would himself have preferred to leave the Company as receivers, liable to account for the territorial revenue to the State, and having first set their general administration in order, by means of a commission sent out to India with full powers to reach all guilty parties, would have left them to exercise their own patronage, entirely uncontrolled. Recognizing, however, in the Bill a genuine attempt at settling a difficult question, which admitted of no delay, and not seeing from what quarter any better proposals were to be expected with any chance of passing into law, he refused to join the opposition which the Rockingham Whigs, raising the cry of "the violation of charters," offered to the measure in both Houses of Parliament.

He soon found " that the only contest was between the Ministry and the friends of Lord Rockingham, who should be most active in protecting the guilty Directors and their servants; while the latter seemed determined to find no fault with any Ministry except that of 1767."^[10] Burke made himself the especial champion of the Company. In strange contrast with his subsequent conduct on the trial of Warren Hastings, he declared that retribution would be the height of folly,^[11] and demanded a general amnesty, from which apparently the Ministry of 1767 alone was to be excepted. Entirely unprovoked, and with the bad taste which so often disfigured his greatest oratorical efforts, he made a diatribe against Beckford, then no more, into the vehicle of an attack on Shelburne and Chatham for what had been done at the end of that year. The responsibility of the measures then pursued he attempted to fasten on them, though it was well known that Shelburne's colonial policy had been forced to yield to that of Townshend and the Bedfords. This was well stated in reply by Barré, whose intimate knowledge of Indian affairs had in 1765 made him in public estimation the rival of Clive for the Governorship of Bengal, and had twice recently brought him offers of Indian appointments, which he had as often refused.^[12] The House when he rose was at once silent to hear him reply to Burke. He said with a smile, that "his ingenious friend"^[13] had been so rapid in his flight that it was scarcely possible for a common observer to follow him. He then entered into a justification of the treaty intended to have been made in 1767 with the East India Company by Shelburne, and stated the wisdom and comprehensiveness of the measures then projected, and their probable consequences had they been given fair-play. It was true that Mr. Burke had often given his friends a good basting for those negotiations, but he was conscious they did not deserve it. He contended that their failure was owing not, as Burke had said, to a general sense of the injustice and inexpediency of the territorial revenue being assumed to itself by the State, but to the factious conduct of some of "the honestest men" of the kingdom who had then just left Administration, owing to the interior intrigues of the Court of Directors, as much as to the open opposition of their enemies. He then went on to state the difference between the measures pursued at the end and at the beginning of 1767; the vexatiousness and inconsequential oppression of the latter as meriting censure if not impeachment, as did the subsequent neglect of India. The sense of impending ruin, he said, had alone called the attention of the Government to the subject; but their interposition, though late, was commendable; the reports of the Committee had merit if well followed up; suspicions of malversation were abroad, and arose from publications in the hands of every one; the eyes of Parliament must not be shut to delinquents on the one hand nor to extraordinary merits on the other; both should be weighed and justice should strike the balance; public examples were requisite to check the spirit of extortion and inhumanity prevailing in Bengal; if it was intended to take the revenue and patronage into the hands of the Crown and Houses of Parliament, a stand would have to be made against a step so highly dangerous to the constitution; the finger of Government to direct, aid, and control upon extraordinary occasions might be useful, but the strong hand of Government would ruin all; on the other hand, the total loss of Bengal was not to be risked from views of hostility to the present Administration, whatever the conduct of men in 1767 might deserve. "Opposition is dead," he went on to say—here he folded his arms and inclined his head—"Opposition is dead, and I am left chief mourner over her bier; but let not this, I conjure you, be a motive for your grasping at more power; have no cousins, no younger brothers, no servile dependents to quarter upon the Company. Seek not power in your researches, aim not at the distribution of offices; you have already enough at your disposal; permit me to say that you have too much to answer any good purpose. By these means you carry all before you. We only come here to know the hour when you order your carriages to be ready." He concluded by urging the absolute necessity of settling the question that session, as the condition of India would not admit of further delay.^[14]

With similar feelings Shelburne approached the discussion of the subject in the Upper House.

"After a very short debate on the first clause," he writes to Chatham,^[15] "regarding the duration of the Direction, I divided for it without speaking. It was my intention to act in exactly the same manner, upon the same motives, when the qualification clause came on, though Lord Talbot as well as the Duke of Richmond made a slight opposition to it; but Lord Denbigh obliged me to change my plan of silence. In defending it he chose (with Lord Bute's proxy) to declare, that he was for raising the qualification of all the electors of England. I was thus necessitated to declare my abhorrence of such an alarming plan of policy and such injustice, and to state the true grounds upon which I conceived Parliament could alone proceed in such cases, as guardians of charters, whose objects must ever be held sacred; which in the borough of Shoreham was an honest election of representatives, in the case of the India Company an honest administration of the exclusive trade. This led me to state shortly my opinion of the situation of the Company, arising from the misconduct of servants, directors, and acting proprietors; the necessity for the interference of Parliament, in behalf both of the honest proprietors as well as the public. The Duke of Richmond chose to reply, that the Company are in a very good state; which required as little the interference of Parliament, as their conduct did its censure, and made some apologies for the part I took. This began an altercation between his Grace and me, which lasted almost the whole of that and the two following days. He gave me repeated opportunities of stating my own conduct; my endeavours, in and out of the House, to promote a real inquiry in 1767; my reasons for the Restraining Bill then passed to save the prize from plunder, &c. The Duke of Grafton afterwards told me, in conversation, that he could witness what I had said as to myself, and that I could do him justice as to what his wishes were.

"When we came to the clause which contained the new appointments, the House suffered me to go into a very large discussion of it. To prevent misrepresentation, as well as because all that passed in the House of Commons had left no very distinct impression, I stated three modes of proceeding, which were all that occurred to me as possible: first, to take the whole into the hands of Government; which could not be, as it would certainly be subversive of the charter, as well as of very questionable policy; secondly, to leave it entirely in the hands of the Company, making them as responsible as possible; and, thirdly, to send out a Commission to report to Parliament as to men and things; which I proposed, as appearing to me far more eligible than the present appointments, which partook of the inconveniences of all three, without any of the advantages.

"It is in vain to attempt communicating to your Lordship all that passed; but I concluded the last day by giving my vote for the Bill, very much upon the general reasoning of your Lordship's letter, which I was honoured with afterwards; stating, besides the defects I have mentioned, one general defect in the principle of the Bill, that of not distinguishing between the trade and revenue; which was practicable, because they are in their nature separate, and certainly were so in the Mogul Government. The Duke of Richmond and Lord Rockingham would fain have made it out that I meant the patronage a boon to the Crown, but I flatter myself that I left that matter as your Lordship would approve.

"I do not recollect much more that is material to trouble your Lordship with at present. There are, however, two passages your Lordship should know. I took occasion upon the judges' clause to press their being appointed for life, and expressed my wishes that the same policy might be extended to America. The subject of America being renewed the last day, Lord Dartmouth, in terms of very great personal civility, declared his determination to support such a proposition for America, and, as I understood him, to place his existence in the Ministry upon it. I told him afterwards, in conversation, that I would acquaint your Lordship of it, knowing that it would give you real pleasure. The other was a declaration of Lord Rockingham's, who avowed himself the protector of the India Company, happen what will here or there, to a renewal even of their charter, upon the same terms of exclusive right."

The speech of Shelburne contributed largely to the success of the Bill. "He never spoke better in his life," said Mr. William Lyttleton, who was present. "It was universally said that Lord Shelburne showed more knowledge of the affairs of India than all the Ministers in either House."^[16] The anger of the Rockingham Whigs was great in proportion. The Duke of Richmond, who spoke nearly twenty times during the debate, finished by complimenting Shelburne ironically on the course he pursued, insinuating that he had acted from interested motives, "in order," as Walpole adds, "to forward his schemes of reconciliation with the Court, or else because he apprehended that Lord North's fall was at hand and a new scramble for places was about to take place."^[17] What schemes of reconciliation Shelburne would possibly at this moment entertain it is difficult to determine, for he had quite recently received a convincing proof of the royal displeasure.

In some military promotions Barré, who in 1766 had been restored to his rank, was passed over in so marked a manner that his resignation became no matter of choice.^[18] The indignity thus offered him was, in the opinion of Shelburne, the result of the personal interposition of the King.^[19] The Prime Minister indeed disapproved of the conduct of his royal master, but his own position was not at that moment sufficiently secure to make his opinion of much weight. George III. was said to be looking for a new minister as pliable, but even more reactionary. The object of his choice would in any case not have been the statesman who opposed the Declaratory Act, and supported the claims of the Nonconformists to toleration.^[20] The Ministry as a whole was secure. "There is no proposal," said Burke, "how destructive soever to the liberties of the kingdom which the Ministry can make, but what the people would readily comply with."^[21] Burke, however, did not sufficiently realize that it was in no small degree owing to the quarrels of the Opposition that this was the case, and that of these quarrels he was the principal cause. Chatham, it is true, by his retirement from political life, varied only by sudden appearances of which he sometimes did not even give his intimate friends notice, not unnaturally excited general apprehension as to what course he was at any moment likely to pursue; but Burke, on the other hand, was always present, and never weary of sowing suspicion, while expecting the unquestioning adherence of all the members of the Opposition to his proposals. He perpetually harps in his letters at this time on "the treachery of our allies in opposition,"^[22] expresses indignation at the comparison of Chatham even in the vigour of his intellect to Rockingham,^[23] gives " his clear opinion that no time or occasion can probably occur in which in the way of consultation or communication it would be right to have anything to do with the Shelburne corps,"^[24] and laments "the unsystematic conduct of many of his own friends,"^[25] when, for example, they refused to agree with him in such proposals as the following, viz.: "that as the House of Commons was more easily approachable by its feelings than by its reason, all the proprietors of Indian stock that can be got together should make a procession from the India House to Westminster, and should stand in all the avenues, and in the most humble manner request the members not to take away the legal rights of their countrymen."^[26]

"We have been too ready," the Duke of Richmond at length writes to him, "in taking up the cudgels for everybody the Ministers please to attack, and the consequence of our readiness has been, that people think we attack only for the sake of opposition, and to get ourselves into place."^[27] Such was the lamentable result of the advice of Burke. Can much blame be attached to those who, not being like Richmond and Rockingham attached to the philosopher as a friend, refused, as Shelburne did, to accept him as a political guide?

The differences of opinion between the two sections of the Whig party increased yet further, when, towards the end of 1773, it became known that the Irish Parliament was likely to send over the heads of a Bill, imposing a tax of two shillings in the pound on the estates of absentee landowners, and that it was the intention of the Ministry to advise the King to let them pass the English Privy Council. Among the persons most affected by the proposed tax were the great Whig landowners, and as soon as the intention of the Irish Parliament became known they began to bestir themselves. At their instance Burke drew up a memorial to North, protesting against the English Privy Council letting the measure pass, should it be sent over,^[28] and they asked Shelburne to join them in signing it. "When I wrote last," the latter says in writing to Chatham, "I mentioned nothing to your Lordship about Ireland, notwithstanding Lord Bessborough had written to me to Bowood, that he knew Administration had determined, in case a Bill came from Ireland taxing the estates of non-residents, to pass it here. The measure appearing incredibly unjust and impolitic, I own I wrote his Lordship a very civil answer, without giving the smallest credit in my own mind to his intelligence. It turns out, however, very true; and now the fact is ascertained, I profess to your Lordship I am entirely lost in endeavouring to account for the motives or consequences of it. I naturally distrust my own judgment, where I am so deeply interested; and, at any rate, I should be sorry to pay a greater regard to myself than becomes a liberal man, or may be likely to meet the public; who are not too apt to extend their feelings, even in cases of oppression, where the case does not exactly apply to the whole, or a majority of the whole."^[29]

To the letter of the Whig Peers, North replied with an evasive answer. In 1767 a tax had been passed on the income of all places and pensions secured on the Irish revenue, but held by persons living out of Ireland, and it was difficult to draw any distinction in principle between this tax and that now proposed. But apart from this, any interference of the English Privy Council would at once have raised that already much-vexed question, viz.: whether or no Money Bills were or were not an exception to the powers it exercised over Irish legislation.^[30] "I could not," writes Chatham in reply to Shelburne, "as a Peer of England advise the King, on principles of indirect accidental English policy, to reject a tax on absentees, sent over here as the genuine desire of the Commons of Ireland, acting in their proper and peculiar sphere, and exercising their inherent exclusive right, by raising supplies in the manner they judge best. This great principle of the constitution is so fundamental, and with me so sacred and indispensable, that it outweighs all other considerations."^[31]

Shelburne accordingly refused to sign the memorial to North. "Lord Rockingham," he writes to Chatham, "has called here twice, and I have called upon him as often upon this business. I took occasion the last time to tell him, to prevent the possibility of the least disappointment in my conduct, that I should certainly be very much governed by your Lordship's opinion, and whatever my first impressions might have been, should lend a willing mind to your reasoning on the subject, for very obvious reasons. I told him further in general terms, that I had reason to believe your Lordship's opinion to be, that Ireland was the proper place for opposition to the measure, and that here it became a very different question, whether to advise the Crown to reject the desire of the Irish Commons in matter of supplies. I desired it might be in confidence, as I was not accustomed to say more than what regarded myself, except when particularly desired. He expressed great surprise, apprehended that if any measure could produce general union, and draw a person from the country, it must be this, which from daily conversations and accounts, as well as from the nature of it, could not fail to interest and animate the whole kingdom. He concluded by supposing, that either my impetuosity or over-warmth, or some defect in the statement of the question, could alone have given such an inclination to your Lordship's judgment, and that upon a fuller statement and further consideration you might come to adopt a different judgment. I entered as lightly as I could into this part; content to answer my own object, and desirous to commit your Lordship's opinion as little as possible without your particular desire."^[32]

The memorial to the King having failed, the friends of Rockingham, true to their theory of the relation between England and her dependencies, whether Irish or American, determined to have recourse to the paramount authority claimed by the Parliament sitting at Westminster over the Parliament sitting at Dublin.

"I propose returning to London to-morrow evening," writes Shelburne to Chatham, "where I expect to find the same feebleness and uncertainty in the political world which for some time past has been the characteristic of it. Some of Lord Rockingham's friends alone are capable of thinking things advancing; and it is, I understand, his Lordship's and their intention to have a question offered to both Houses upon the Irish business. If I had the least influence, I should certainly deprecate such a measure, because I do not conceive that either Ireland or America can ever gain by the interposition of Parliament here; and it can answer no good purpose to the public, or individuals, to call upon every acting man for a creed regarding Ireland. However, if it does come on, my opinion will naturally lead me to condemn the justice and the policy of such a tax as was proposed, as inconsistent with any degree of connection, much more of dependence, of Ireland on Great Britain. I shall, at the same time, acknowledge the great principle of the constitution your Lordship dwells upon; that of the competency of the House of Commons to judge of all matters of supply, in every part of the King's dominions, and the inadvisedness of any interference, by the King or otherwise, with this their exclusive privilege, reserving the negative of the King, as well as the controlling power of the British Parliament, to be exercised in matters of commercial regulation.

"I am particular in stating this, because I apprehend that I may be the only person in either House of Parliament who will go so far without descending to managements, which every day's observation confirms me in wishing to avoid. The Ministers, I understand, are come round to join with the most violent in condemning the policy, and I suppose will not be less ready to join them in upholding Poynings' Act, and all the old doctrine of the dependence of Ireland upon England, in all cases whatsoever. I shall therefore be very anxious to know how far the reservation I have stated meets your Lordship's idea, as I expect whatever debate occurs will turn upon that, or some other distinction which may be offered in favour of the supreme authority of the mothercountry."^[33]

If the opinion of Shelburne was clear on the injustice and impolicy of any interference on the part of the English House of Commons, the views of Chatham were not less distinct. "Allow me to say," he writes in reply to Shelburne, "that any question, resolution, proposition or declaration in Parliament here, censuring, branding or forbidding in future, a tax laid, in a Committee of Supply, upon Ireland, in the Irish House of Commons, appears to me to be fatal. Were my information less authentic, I should think it impossible that the axe could be so laid to the root of the most sacred fundamental right of the Commons by any friend of liberty. The justice or the policy of the tax on absentees is not the question; and on these, two endless arguments may be maintained, pro and con: the simple question is, have the Commons of Ireland exceeded the powers lodged with them by the essential constitution of Parliament? I answer, they have not, and the interference of the British parliament would in that case be unjust, and the measure destructive of all fair correspondence between England and Ireland for ever. Were it possible for me to attend the House of Lords, I would, to the utmost of my power, oppose any interference of Parliament here upon this matter, and enter my protest upon the journals against it.

"Thus, my dear Lord, I have with abundant temerity sent your Lordship an insignificant, solitary opinion: it is pure in the source, flowing from the old-fashioned Whig principles; and if defective in discernment, very replete with conviction."^[34]

While the above exchange of ideas was passing, and preparations were being made for a great Parliamentary struggle, news arrived that the proposed tax had been rejected in the Irish House of Commons by a majority of 20, notwithstanding the support of the Government. Most of the tenants who held leases had allowed clauses to be inserted in them stating that they would pay all new taxes, and they now threatened that if the absentee tax were held to come within the terms of their agreement, they would emigrate. Hence the tax had become generally unpopular, and it perished ignominiously. "If they could but have obtained the absentee tax," writes Mr. Beauclerk to the Earl of Charlemont, "the Irish Parliament would have been perfect. They would have voted themselves out of Parliament, and lessened their estates one-half of their value. This is patriotism with a vengeance!"^[35]

The struggles of the Whigs were now renewed on a different field. Shelburne, feeling the injury which was being done to the popular cause in the City, by the want of character of Wilkes, had long resolved to oust him, if possible, from the position he had acquired. With this object he selected James Townshend, commonly known as Alderman Townshend, to be his instrument.

James Townshend was the son of Chauncey Townshend, for many years member for Wigton,^[36] and a devoted adherent of the Court. The politics, however, of his two sons, Joseph and James, were very different from those of their father. The former was the "honest Joe Townshend," rector of Pewsey in Wiltshire, with whom in after-years Bentham swore eternal friendship at Bowood, on the basis of their both having nearly been Methodists, of their both being actually Utilitarians, and of their both hating the Scotch.^[37] James Townshend was member for West Looe and a landowner in Hertfordshire. He is described as a man of great resolution and firmness. On one occasion it is said that a highway robbery having been committed in his neighbourhood, he disguised himself as a countryman, set out in search of the offender, and much to the astonishment of the latter, overpowered and apprehended him.^[38] "He was a firm and steady friend," says one who knew him, "and so tenacious of his promise that he would leave the remotest part of the kingdom and the most delightful society, to attend and give his vote at the Guildhall, though for the meanest individual and the lowest office. He was proud and tenacious of his dignity among the great, and of the most conciliatory affability with his inferiors. He would travel from one end of the kingdom to the other with a small change of linen behind his saddle."^[39] With commerce he had no connection, but it was far more usual in the eighteenth century than at the present day, for comparative strangers to the City to stand for the highest municipal offices on purely political grounds. His friendship with Shelburne was of long standing, and for some time past he had lived at Shelburne House during the Parliamentary session.^[40] His chief fault was a violent temper. "Je respecte Townshend," the abbé Morellet wrote to Shelburne, "et je l'aimerais probablement pour peu que je vécusse avec lui, malgré sa grande chaleur, qui m'a paru quelquefois aller jusqu'à la brûlure, mais qui est peut-être celle qu'il faut avoir dans le pays que vous habitez."^[41]

The struggle between Wilkes and Townshend began in 1770 on the question of the Durham Yard Embankment Bill, but soon extended to the whole management of the Whig party in the City. In the ready tongue and pen of the celebrated John Home, generally known as Parson Home, Townshend found a valuable coadjutor. The notorious faults of Wilkes were now unsparingly exposed, but the majority of the Livery still clung to him, and outside the City he had the support of Rockingham and his friends, who had already discovered that "Wilkes was not a Wilkite."^[42] On the other hand, the majority of the Court of Aldermen was on the side of Townshend. Two years in succession was the name of Wilkes sent up by the Livery as one of their two nominees to the post of Lord Mayor, and twice in succession did the Court of Aldermen reject it. In 1772 Townshend himself was elected.

Wilkes, who had fully expected a contrary result, was thunderstruck. His friends accused Alderman Oliver of having taken the vote of the Court before their party had arrived, and their rage broke out in every kind of outrage against Townshend and Shelburne, who, they said, had sold them to the King. A figure of Parson Home was burnt in full canonicals outside the Mansion House. On the Lord Mayor's Day, Wilkes' mob attacked the Guildhall at night during the ball; Townshend, with characteristic energy, proposed to sally out with drawn swords, and was with difficulty restrained. The surprise at the result of the election was indeed general. "Eh bien, milord," the abbé Morellet had written only a short time before to Shelburne, "Wilkes va pourtant être Lord Mayor, au moins nous y comptons ici, c'est-à-dire nous autres philosophes et amis de la liberté; car vous pouvez compter que notre ministère payerait beaucoup pour l'empêcher. Un homme qui résiste à la volonté ou aux simples désirs du souverain est appelé ici séditieux, et les fauteurs du despotisme n'aiment pas qu'il y ait une sédition même au Congo. Au reste, il me semble que si notre ami Townshend était élu, le roi ne gagnerait pas beaucoup à ce marché. Ce serait toujours un séditieux."^[43]

Among the partisans in the City contest was Oliver Goldsmith, who put a paragraph into one of the newspapers in praise of Townshend. The same night he happened to sit next Lord Shelburne at Drury Lane; who being informed of the circumstance of the paragraph by Mr. Beauclerk, said to Goldsmith that he hoped he had mentioned nothing about Malagrida in it. "Do you know," answered Goldsmith, "that I never could conceive the reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very good sort of man?" The blunder, as Dr. Johnson, who was fond of the anecdote, used to observe, was one of emphasis. What Goldsmith meant was, "I wonder they should use Malagrida as a term of reproach;" but the blunder, to borrow the words of Walpole, was a picture of Goldsmith's whole life.^[44]

The next move made by Wilkes was more successful. He succeeded in getting a remonstrance to the Court on the Middlesex Election drawn up in such violent terms, that he boasted that Townshend, if he presented it, would be undone, and stoned by the people if he refused; while he artfully invented a variety of reasons in order to excuse himself from attending the deputation which was to carry it to the palace.^[45] The Attorney-General advised Townshend that the presentation of the remonstrance would be the publication of a libel; Glyn, the Recorder, gave a contrary opinion, adding that Townshend was obliged to present the remonstrance in virtue of his office.^[46] Townshend accordingly had to submit to the hard necessities of the position in which the skill of his rival had placed him, for the language of the remonstrance was so outrageous, that popular opinion supported the King in the contemptuous reception with which he greeted both the remonstrance and the deputation which accompanied it.

Wilkes, though successful in this episode of the struggle, saw himself none the less losing ground day by day in the country, and his party gradually became more and more restricted to the City alone.^[47] The violent scenes which had accompanied the election of Townshend were repeated in 1773, when the Court of Aldermen again rejected Wilkes, though only by the casting vote of Townshend himself, nor was it till 1774 that Wilkes obtained the object of his ambition.

While, however, this struggle was being carried on events had happened on the other side of the Atlantic which threw the quarrels of the City factions, and the jealousies of the Whigs, into comparative obscurity.

 

1. Shelburne to Chatham, March 18th, 1772.
2. "Dull" was the epithet applied by Chatham to Dowdeswell.
3. Walpole Journals, i. 45, 47.
4. Parliamentary History, xvii. 867.
5. Shelburne to Chatham, April 13th, 1772.
6. See for the above facts and further details, Mill's British India, bk. x. ch. ix.
7. Shelburne to Chatham, June 12th, 1773.
8. See Chatham to Shelburne, June 17th, 1773. Shelburne to Chatham, June 26th, 1773. Speeches of Barré. Parliamentary History, xvii.
9. By the clauses which gave the Government a general control in all matters not relating to trade.
10. Shelburne to Chatham, February 27th, 1773.
11. See especially the two speeches at pp. 461 and 818, vol. xvii., Parliamentary History.
12. See supra, p. 221, Shelburne to Chatham, April 13th, 1772; June 12th, 1773.
13. Burke.
14. The speech of Barré given above is partly from the account contained in a letter from Shelburne to Chatham of March 30th, 1773, partly from the Report in the Parliamentary History, xvii. 825.
15. Shelburne to Chatham, June 26th, 1773.
16. Chatham Correspondence, iv. 284. Walpole, Journals, i. 250.
17. Walpole, Journals, i. 250.
18. Barré to Shelburne, January and February 1773. Chatham Correspondence, iv. 242-250.
19. Shelburne to Chatham, February 27th, 1773.
20. Shelburne to Chatham, February 18th, 1772.
21. Parliamentary History, xvii. 836.
22. Burke to Dowdeswell, October 27th, 1772.
23. Burke to Rockingham, August 1st, 1767.
24. Edmund Burke to Richard Burke, January 10th, 1773.
25. Burke to Dowdeswell, October 27th, 1772.
26. Memorandum by Mr. Burke, addressed to gentlemen forming the Opposition, 1773.
27. Richmond to Burke, December 2nd, 1772.
28. Memoirs of Rockingham, ii. 227.
29. Shelburne to Chatham, October 17th, 1773.
30. See Vol. I. Ch. IX. p. 340.
31. Chatham to Shelburne, October 24th, 1773. For a different account of the above transaction the reader is referred to Walpole Journals, i. 266. In this account (which Walpole says was conveyed to him by Richmond, who had received it from Rockingham, who had been told it by Burke) the conduct of Shelburne appears in the darkest colours. See too Bentham, x. 103.
32. Shelburne to Chatham, October 31st, 1773.
33. Shelburne to Chatham, January 8th, 1774.
34. Chatham to Shelburne, January 10th, 1774.
35. Mr. Beauclerk to the Earl of Charlemont, November 20th, 1773.
36. He sat for Westbury from March 1748 to the General Election of 1768; and for the Wigton Boroughs from December 1768 until his death in March 1770.
37. Bentham, x. 92.
38. Walpole, iii. 284.
39. Beloe, Literary Reminiscences.
40. Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham, ii. 95.
41. Morellet to Shelburne, 1773.
42. When Wilkes was Lord Mayor in 1775 and presented an address, "the King himself owned he had never seen so well-bred a Lord Mayor" (Walpole, Journal of the Reign of George III., i. 484). On a later occasion, after the Lord George Gordon riots in 1780, the King asked Wilkes after his friend Serjeant Glyn. "My friend, sir," says Wilkes to the King, "he is no friend of mine." "Why," said the King. "he was your friend and your counsel in all your trials." "Sir," rejoined Wilkes, "he was my counsel, one must have a counsel; but he was no friend; he loves sedition and licentiousness, which I never delighted in. In fact, sir, he was a Wilkite, which I never was." Twiss's Eldon, ii. 356.
43. Morellet to Shelburne, 1772.
44. Boswell's Johnson, iv. 299, 54. The story is also told in a letter from Topham Beauclerk to Lord Charlemont, November 20th, 1773 ("Charlemont Papers" in Reports of Hist. MSS. Commission, ii. 359).
45. Walpole, Journals, i. 189.
46. Walpole, Journals, i. 189, and Glyn's opinion amongst the Lansdowne House MSS.
47. Lord Albemarle says that from the period of the above struggle "the Whigs and what are now called 'Radicals' became two distinct sections of the liberal party."—Memoirs of Rockingham, ii. 209.