Life of William, Earl of Shelburne/Volume 1/Preface
PREFACE
In 1872 I commenced a report on the MSS. at Lansdowne House for the Historical MSS. Commission, which appeared in the publications of the Historical MSS. Commission.[1]
During the progress of my work I came to the conclusion that sufficient materials would exist for a Life of Lord Shelburne, if, in addition to the papers at Lansdowne House and Bowood, the papers of Lord Bute in the possession of the Earl of Harrowby, and those of Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, at Holland House, were at my disposal.
I accordingly asked permission of Lord Harrowby and Lady Holland to inspect their respective collections, and I was allowed by them to take copies of the letters and papers relating to the period during which Lord Shelburne, Lord Bute, and Henry Fox were in frequent communication.
In 1874 Mr. George Bancroft placed at my disposal various notes and transcripts of great value relating to the negotiations of 1782-1783 which he had made from h the French archives. The Duke of Grafton also gave me the use of the MS. Autobiography of his ancestor, the Prime Minister, which has since been edited by Sir William Anson. The late Sir Edward Strachey allowed me to see the papers in his possession relating to the Peace of Versailles; and to Miss Travis and Mr. Stevenson I owed the use of the letters written by Lord Shelburne to Dr. Price.
From Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon I received permission to examine the papers relating to the period at the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office, of which at the time they were the respective heads.
Among the papers of Lord Shelburne are several autobiographical fragments, viz.:—
1. Two autobiographical Memoranda of events up to 1758.
2. A Memorandum on the events of 1762, only part of which exists.
3. Characters of Henry Fox, Lord George Sackville, Lord Temple, and Lord Ashburton.
4. A very short fragment on the Ministry of 1766, evidently part of a paper the rest of which is lost.
5. Notes on what passed in 1782 when Lord Rockingham became Prime Minister.
6. Memorandum on the reforms in the Public Departments made or contemplated in 1782-1783.
7. Some observations on the French Revolution.
8. Memorandum on the possibility of forming a Ministry in 1792.
9. Notes relating to a proposal to form a Ministry with Lord Moira and Mr. Charles Fox in 1798.
10. Miscellaneous Papers relating to Land Tenure, Estate Management, and the Poor Laws.
The most important of these papers are two autobiographical fragments forming an account of Lord Shelburne's own early life, with a sketch of the political history of England and of the characters of the leading statesmen of the period and of events up to 1758. What may be called two editions exist, and of these it is difficult to settle which is the earlier in date. Both are imperfect and show a complete absence of revision, especially the less complete of the two, which, however, contains some interesting matter of its own. A further difficulty arose from the chronological order being frequently neglected.
A careful study of the text convinced me that, without altering anything beyond what was absolutely necessary to make the story intelligible, by transposing various parts of the narrative so as to restore the chronological order, and at the same time by eliminating repetitions, in other words, by making those alterations which it may fairly be presumed Lord Shelburne would himself have made, had he lived to revise his own work,—I could present the account of his early life, so far as it exists, in a shape more agreeable to the reader and more just to the memory of my ancestor than if I had simply printed it in the confused and disjointed condition in which he left it. The result is the "Chapter of Autobiography" with which the book opens.
In the present edition a fuller use has been made of the more imperfect of the two autobiographical fragments where some passages in it add vividness to the narrative. A few additional pages, discovered since 1876 and relating mainly to the expeditions to the coast of France in 1757 and 1758, have also been added.
The story of the first election of Colonel Barré at High Wycombe, which stands in the middle of the less finished of the two autobiographical fragments, has been printed in connection with the events of 1761, to which it more properly belongs.
Besides the above chapter, Lord Shelburne, as already stated, left an incomplete Memorandum on the events of 1762, which will be found Volume I. Chapter III. To understand the events of that time, it is necessary to have a clear notion of the characters of Lord Bute and Mr. Henry Fox. Of these two characters Lord Shelburne has left a description. The former is contained in one of the editions of the Autobiography mentioned above. The character of the latter occupies a separate paper. I have printed both in connection with the events of 1762, at the same time warning the reader that when Lord Shelburne wrote them he was no doubt under the influence of subsequent transactions.
The other papers are in their proper position in the narrative of events.
The first edition of this book appeared in three volumes published separately in 1875 and 1876.
In the chapter of Autobiography, Lord Shelburne describes his object as being "to illustrate the new epoch which appeared with George III., and to state, in the first place, the new impulse which was imperceptibly given to things and to trifling incidents which afterwards originated the greater events." It is probable that he intended to write an account of his life, but did not live to complete it, and that most of these papers and memoranda are the disjecta membra of a larger undertaking.[2]
The author of the obituary notice which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1805 states that Lord Lansdowne had promised to supply a Supplement to Mr. Marshall's Life of General Washington, in which he intended to give the secret history of the Peace of 1783, which he told the writer of the article was not understood by the public. The anecdote related in Vol. II., page 434, in regard to the authorship of Junius points in the same direction.
Further study of the correspondence of Horace Walpole has convinced me that in the first edition I was mistaken in referring his hostility to Lord Shelburne to an earlier date than 1783, and I have altered the text accordingly.
The letter from Lord Chatham of 1777 relating to the battle of Saratoga (Vol. II. p. 9); the full text of the conversation between Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Pitt in 1785 (Vol. II. pp. 294-298), and between the Prince of Wales and Mr. Grey in 1798 (Vol. II. pp. 425-426), did not appear in the first edition. Use has also been made of a Memorandum by the Abbé Morellet of some conversations in 1783 with Lord Shelburne, which was found subsequently to 1876 among the papers at Lansdowne House.
Among the documents in the Appendix will be found a paper by Lord Shelburne on Sepulchral Monuments, to which my attention was drawn by Mr. G. F. Russell Baker, the author of the article on Lord Shelburne which appeared in 1896 in the Dictionary of National Biography. It was originally printed in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1791, in connection with a proposal to erect a memorial to Howard the philanthropist, and was subsequently printed in the Life of Mr. Coakley Lettsom, M.D. (1817).
Since 1876 much valuable information on the political history of the eighteenth century has been given in the Appendices to the Reports of the Historical MSS. Commission, to the authors of which every student of the period must desire to acknowledge his gratitude in unstinted terms. Where necessary, reference is made in the notes to these Reports.
In renewing the expression of my debt of gratitude recorded in the Preface in the first edition to those whose co-operation so materially lightened my task, I desire to record my sense of the help which I have since received from Mr. C. W. Alvord, Associate Professor of History in the University of Illinois, in regard to the "western policy" of the British Government in America from 1763 to 1772, a subject which he has made his own; and to Mr. John Jay in regard to several points in the history of the negotiations at Paris in 1782-1783. To Mr. Alvord I also owe the letter from Lord Shelburne to Major William Jackson, which will be found in the note to page 202 of the second volume. I also wish to thank Mr. G. R. A. FitzGerald, K.C., for the valuable assistance which I have received from him in the preparation of this edition.
Since the appearance of the first edition of this book numerous publications bearing specially on the negotiations of 1782-1783 have appeared both in England and in America. A bibliography will be found in the Appendix to Mr. Fiske's Critical Period of American History, published in 1888. To the books mentioned by him, the recently published papers of Caleb Whitefoord are to be added. The work of Monsieur Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France à l'Établissement des États Unis de l'Amérique (Paris, 1886-1890), has treated the subject from the point of view of the French negotiators; and The Relations of the United States and Spain, by Admiral Chadwick (London, 1911), has added much interesting information on the policy of the Continental Powers and of Spain in particular, to the story of the negotiations.
The frontispiece to the first volume is from the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted in 1764. The original is at Lansdowne House. The frontispiece to the second volume is from the group with Lord Ashburton and Colonel Barré, for which Lord Lansdowne sat in 1788 and 1789, and belongs to Lord Northbrook.
The caricature, reproduced at Vol. II. p. 155, representing Fox and Lord John Cavendish leaving the Treasury, while the heads of Lord Shelburne, Lord Ashburton, and Barré grin at them from over the archway, is by Sayer.
The caricature by Gillray, reproduced in Vol. II. p. 200, was drawn in 1787, at the time of the debates on the French Commercial Treaty, when the attacks on Lord Shelburne made in regard to the negotiations of 1782 were revived.
The caricature in Vol. II. p. 164, "Guy-Vaux and Judas Iscariot," is anonymous, and was published in 1782. It purports to be an addition to the Dialogues of the Dead, published by George, Lord Lyttelton, who died in 1773.
Leigh House, Bradford-on-Avon,
June 1912.
- ↑ Third Report, pp. 125-147; Fifth Report, pp. 215-260; Sixth Report, pp. 235-243.
- ↑ Vol. I. Ch. I. p. 24.