VII. REIGN OF GEORGE III…

VII. REIGN OF GEORGE III

Accession of George III.--His Conduct--Ascendency of Bute--Meeting of Parliament--Enthusiastic Reception of the King's Speech--Bute's Cabals--Hostility to Pitt--Ministerial Changes--Marriage of the King--Queen Charlotte--Misfortunes of Frederick--Ferdinand of Brunswick's Campaign--Defeat of the French in the East and West Indies--Negotiations for Peace--Pitt's large Demands--Obstinacy of Choiseul--The Family Compact suspected--Resignation of Pitt--Bute's Ministry--War with Spain--Abandonment of Frederick--Policy of the new Czar--Resignation of Newcastle--Bute at the head of the Treasury--Successes in the West Indies--Capture of Manila--Bute's Eagerness for Peace--The Terms--Bute's Unpopularity--Close of the Seven Years' War--Successes of Clive--Defeat of the Dutch in India--Final Overthrow of the French in India--Fate of the Count de Lally--Bute and the Princess of Wales--The Cider Tax--Bute's Vengeance--His Resignation--George Grenville in Office--No. 45 of the North Briton--Arrest of Wilkes--His Acquittal--Vengeance against him--The King negotiates with Pitt--Wilkes's Affairs in Parliament--The Wilkes Riots--The Question of Privilege--The Illegality of General Warrants declared--Wilkes expelled the House--Debates on General Warrants--Rejoicing in the City of London.

George III., at the time of the sudden death of his grandfather, was in his twenty-second year. The day of the late king's death and the following night were spent in secret arrangements, and the next morning George presented himself before his mother, the Princess-dowager, at Carlton House, where he met his council, and was then formally proclaimed. This was on the 26th of October, 1760.

The conduct of the young king, considering his shyness and the defects of his education, was, during the first days of his sudden elevation, calm, courteous, affable, and unembarrassed. "He behaved throughout," says Horace Walpole, "with the greatest propriety, dignity, and decency." He dismissed his Guards to attend on the body of his grandfather. But it was soon seen that there would be great changes in his Government. Pitt waited on him with the sketch of an address to his Council; but the king informed him that this had been thought of, and an address already prepared. This was sufficient for Pitt; he had long been satisfied that the favourite of mother and son, the Groom of the Stole, and the inseparable companion, Bute, would, on the accession of George, mount into the premiership.

On the morning of Monday, the 28th, the king's brother, Edward, Duke of York, and Lord Bute were sworn members of the Privy Council. It was obvious that Bute was to be quite in the ascendant, and the observant courtiers paid instant homage to the man through whom all good things were to flow. The king declared himself, however, highly satisfied with his present Cabinet, and announced that he wished no changes. A handbill soon appeared on the walls of the Royal Exchange expressing the public apprehension: "No petticoat government--no Scotch favourite--no Lord George Sackville!" Bute had always championed Lord George, who was so bold in society and so backward in the field; and the public now imagined that they would have a governing clique of the king's mother, her favourite, Bute, and his favourite, Lord George.

Parliament, which had been prorogued for a few days on account of the demise of the king, assembled on the 18th of November. The king delivered a speech, composed by Lord Hardwicke, and revised by Pitt, and containing a passage, said to be inserted by himself, as follows:--"Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton!" In the addresses these words produced the most enthusiastic responses. "What a lustre," exclaimed the Lords, "doth it cast upon the name of Briton, when you, sir, are pleased to esteem it amongst your glories!" For the rest, the speech expressed the royal determination to prosecute the war with all vigour; praised the magnanimity and perseverance of his good brother, the King of Prussia; and recommended unanimity of action and opinion in Parliament. Nothing could appear more unanimous or more liberal than Parliament.

But the smoothness was only on the surface--beneath were working the strongest political animosities and the most selfish desires. The little knot of aristocratic families which had so long monopolised all the sweets of office, now saw with indignation tribes of aspirants crowding in for a share of the good things. The aspirants filled the ante-chamber of Bute, the angry and disappointed resorted to Newcastle, who was in a continual state of agitation by seeing appointments given to new men without his knowledge; members rushing in to offer their support to Government at the next election, who had hitherto stood aloof, and were now received and encouraged.

Meanwhile, Bute was sedulously at work to clear the way for his own assumption, not merely of office, but of the whole power of the Government. He acted as already the only medium of communication with the king, and the depositary of his secrets. He opened his views cautiously to Bubb Dodington, who was a confidant of the Lichfield House party, and still hungering after a title. Dodington advised him to induce Lord Holderness to resign and take his place, which, at first, Bute affected to disapprove of, but eventually acted upon. The first object was to get rid of Pitt, who, by his talents and haughty independence of manner, was not more acceptable to the king and his counsellor, Bute, than by his policy, which they desired to abandon. Pamphlets were therefore assiduously circulated, endeavouring to represent Pitt as insatiable for war, and war as having been already too burdensome for the nation.

On the 21st of March Parliament was dissolved by proclamation, and the same day the Gazette announced several of the changes determined on in the Ministry. The Duke of Bedford retired from the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, and his place was taken by the Earl of Halifax. Legge, who was considered too much in the interest of Pitt, was dismissed, and Lord Barrington now took his place of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Charles Townshend took Barrington's former office, and Sir Francis Dashwood became Treasurer of the Chambers in room of Townshend. Both Townshend and Dashwood had gone over to the party of Bute. Lord Holderness was now made to do what Dodington had before suggested; he resigned his office of Secretary of State, and in due course Bute was gazetted as appointed to that post. No notice of this change had been communicated to Pitt, the other and Chief Secretary, till it took place.

On the 8th of July an extraordinary Privy Council was summoned. All the members, of whatever party, were desired to attend, and many were the speculations as to the object of their meeting. The general notion was that it involved the continuing or the ending of the war. It turned out to be for the announcement of the king's intended marriage. The lady selected was Charlotte, the second sister of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Apart from the narrowness of her education, the young princess had a considerable amount of amiability, good sense, and domestic taste. These she shared with her intended husband, and whilst they made the royal couple always retiring, at the same time they caused them to give, during their lives, a moral air to their court. On the 8th of September Charlotte arrived at St. James's, and that afternoon the marriage took place, the ceremony being performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. On the 22nd the coronation took place with the greatest splendour.

We must now step back a little to observe the war on the Continent from the opening of the present campaign. Frederick of Prussia lay encamped during the winter in Silesia, surrounded by difficulties and enemies. His resources both in money and men appeared well nigh exhausted. The end of autumn, 1760, brought him the news of the death of George II., and, from what he could learn of the disposition of his successor and his chief advisers, it was certain that peace would be attempted by England. This depressing intelligence was confirmed in December by the British Parliament indeed voting again his usual subsidy, but reluctantly, and he found it paid with still more reluctance and delay. Whilst thus menaced with the total loss of the funds by which he carried on the war, he saw, as the spring approached, the Russians and Austrians advancing against him with more than double his own forces. Disasters soon overtook him. The capture of Schweidnitz enabled the Austrians to winter in Silesia, which they had never yet done during the war; and the Russians also found, to their great satisfaction, on arriving in Pomerania, that they could winter in Colberg. The Russian division under Romanzow had besieged Colberg both by land and sea, and, despite the attempts of the Prussians sent by Frederick to relieve it, it had been compelled to surrender. In these discouraging circumstances Frederick took up his winter quarters at Breslau. His affairs never wore a darker aspect. He was out-generaled and more discomfited this campaign than by a great battle. His enemies lay near in augmented strength of position, and his resources had ominously decreased.

The campaign against the French was opened in February by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick attacking the Duke de Broglie, and driving him out of Cassel. Prince Ferdinand followed up this advantage by attacking them in Marburg and Göttingen, and applied himself particularly to the siege of Cassel. But Broglie, now recovered from his surprise, first defeated the hereditary Prince of Brunswick, Ferdinand's nephew, at Stangerode, and then repulsed Ferdinand himself from Cassel.

The destruction of the French magazines delayed their operations till midsummer, when Broglie advanced from Cassel, and the Prince Soubise from the Rhine, to give Ferdinand battle. On the march they fell in with Sporken, and this time defeated one of his posts, and took nineteen pieces of cannon and eight hundred prisoners. The Allies awaited them in front of the river Lippe, and between that river and the Aest, near the village of Kirch-Denkern. The French were routed at all points, having lost, according to the Allies, five thousand men, whilst they themselves had only lost one thousand five hundred. The effect of the victory, however, was small.

If the French had been by no means successful in Germany, they had been much less so in other quarters of the globe. In the East Indies we had taken Pondicherry, their chief settlement, from them, and thus remained masters of the whole coast of Coromandel, and of the entire trade with India. In the West Indies, the French had been fortifying Dominica, contrary to treaty, and Lord Rollo and Sir James Douglas were sent thither, and speedily reduced it. France, indeed, was now fast sinking in exhaustion. Louis XV. was a man of no mark or ability, inclined to peace, and leaving all affairs to his Ministers, and still more to his mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Choiseul was a man of talent, but of immense vanity, and little persistent firmness. He was now anxious for peace, but, too proud to make the proposal directly, he induced the Courts of Russia and Austria to do it. It was suggested that a congress should be held at Augsburg for settling the peace of Europe. England and Prussia readily consented. But the Duke of Choiseul, anxious to have a clear understanding of the terms on which England and France were likely to treat, proposed a previous exchange of views, and dispatched M. Bussy to London, whilst Mr. Pitt sent to Paris Mr. Hans Stanley.

Choiseul made, undoubtedly, a large offer for peace. It was that each power should retain all such of its conquests as should be in its hands, subject to exchanges and equivalents, in Europe, on the 1st of May next; in America, the West Indies, and Africa, on the 1st of July; and in the East Indies on the 1st of September. But Pitt had declared that he would never make another peace of Utrecht. He considered that we had France down, and he determined to retain everything of value. He therefore replied that the proper period for the principle of the treaty to take place was that on which the treaty was really signed, that it might so happen that it would not be signed at the dates named, and he did this in order to complete a scheme, which he had already nearly accomplished, that of seizing on Belleisle, an island on the coast of France. It surrendered in July, and the news of this loss was speedily followed in Paris by that of the loss of Dominica in the West, and of Pondicherry in the East Indies.

These reverses were calculated to make France more compliant; yet Pitt was astonished to find, instead of compliance, a great spirit of resistance. Choiseul would by no means admit that Belleisle was an equivalent for Minorca. He demanded Guadeloupe and Belleisle too, simply in lieu of the French conquests in Germany. He now demurred to the surrender of Cape Breton, or in any case to forego the right of fishing along its coasts. He was not content with Amaboo or Acra; he demanded Senegal or Goree. He declined also to destroy the fortifications of Dunkirk, raised in contempt of the treaty of Utrecht. All captures made at sea previous to the declaration of war must be restored; and in Germany, though he was willing to withdraw the French troops, it was only on condition that the troops commanded by Prince Ferdinand should not reinforce the Prussian army.

The secret of this wonderfully augmented boldness of tone on the part of France soon transpired. Choiseul had been endeavouring to secure the alliance of Spain, and saw himself about to succeed. Spain was smarting under many losses and humiliations from the English during the late war. Whilst General Wall, the Spanish minister at Madrid, urged these complaints on the Earl of Bristol, our ambassador there, Choiseul was dexterously inflaming the minds of the Spanish Court against Britain on these grounds. He represented it as the universal tyrant of the seas, and the sworn enemy of every other maritime state. He offered to assist in the recovery of Gibraltar, and to make over Minorca to Spain. By these means he induced Spain to go into what became the celebrated Family Compact--that is, a compact by which France and Spain bound themselves to mutually succour and support each other; and to admit the King of Naples, the son of the Spanish king, to this compact, but no prince or potentate whatever, except he were of the House of Bourbon.

Besides the general compact, there was a particular one, which engaged that, should England and France remain at war on the 1st of May, 1762, Spain should on that day declare war against England, and should at the same time receive possession of Minorca. The existence of these compacts was kept with all possible secrecy; but Mr. Stanley penetrated to a knowledge of them in Paris, and his information was fully confirmed from other sources. If these, however, had left any doubt, it would have been expelled by the receipt of a French memorial through M. Bussy, to which a second memorial on Spanish affairs was appended. Pitt received the proposition with a tone of indignation that made it manifest that he would suffer no such interference of a third party--would not yield a step to any such alliance. He declared, in broad and plain terms, that his majesty would not permit the affairs of Spain to be introduced by France; that he would never suffer France to presume to meddle in any affairs between himself and Spain, and that he should consider any further mention of such matters as a direct affront. A similar message was dispatched to the Earl of Bristol in Spain, declaring that England was open to any proposals of negotiation from Spain, but not through the medium of France. This was, in fact, tantamount to a defiance to both France and Spain, and would undoubtedly have put an end to all further negotiation had there not been a purpose to serve. The Spanish treasure ships were yet out at sea on their way home. Any symptoms of hostility would insure their capture by the British, and cut off the very means of maintaining a war. General Wall, therefore, concealed all appearance of chagrin; admitted that the memorial had been presented by France with the full consent of his Catholic majesty, but professed the most sincere desire for the continuance of peaceful relations.

Pitt was not for a moment deceived, and in August the Family Compact was signed. He broke off the negotiation, recalled Stanley from Paris, dismissed Bussy from London, and advised an immediate declaration of war against Spain, whilst it was yet in our power to seize the treasure ships. But there was but one Pitt--one great mind capable of grasping the affairs of a nation, and of seizing on the deciding circumstances with the promptness essential to effect. The usually timid Newcastle became suddenly courageous with alarm. Bute pronounced Pitt's proposal as "rash and unadvisable;" the king, obstinate as was his tendency, declared that, if his Ministers had yielded to such a policy, he would not; and Pitt, having laboured in vain to move this stolid mass of ministerial imbecility through three Cabinet Councils, at last, in the beginning of October, declared that, as he was called to the Ministry by the people, and held himself responsible to them, he would no longer occupy a position the duties of which he was not able to discharge. On the 5th he resigned, and his great Ministry came to an end.

The Bute Ministry was now in power, and determined on reversing the policy of Pitt--policy which had added so magnificently to the territory and glory of the country. Bute had now to seek powerful connections to enable him to carry on. The commonplace man seeks to make up for his feebleness by associating with him, not men of merit, but men of aristocratic connection. For this reason he conferred the Privy Seal on the Duke of Bedford, and the Seal of Secretary on the Earl of Egremont. To break the force of popular indignation for the loss of Pitt from the helm--for the people knew who was the great man and successful minister well enough--the king was advised to confer some distinguished mark of favour on Pitt. He was offered the government of Canada as a sinecure, with five thousand pounds a year. Pitt was not the man to undertake a highly responsible office without discharging the duties, and he was next offered the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster; but he preferred a simple pension of three thousand pounds a-year, and that a title should be conferred on his wife. By this arrangement he was left in the House of Commons, and in a position to continue his exertions for the country. Both these suggestions were complied with.

Ministers were soon compelled to pursue the policy which Pitt had so successfully inaugurated. With all the determination of Lord Bute and his colleagues to make a speedy peace, they found it impossible. The Family Compact between France and Spain was already signed; and in various quarters of the world Pitt's plans were so far in progress that they must go on. In East and West, his plans for the conquest of Havana, of the Philippine Isles, and for other objects, were not to be abruptly abandoned; and Ministers were compelled to carry out his objects, in many particulars, in spite of themselves. And now the unpleasant truth was forced on the attention of Ministers, that the war which Pitt declared to be inevitable was so, and that he had recommended the only wise measure. The country was now destined to pay the penalty of their folly and stupidity in rejecting Pitt's proposal to declare war against Spain at once, and strip her of the means of offence, her treasure ships. Lord Bristol, our ambassador at Madrid, announced to Lord Bute, in a despatch of the 2nd of November, that these ships had arrived, and that all the wealth which Spain expected from her American colonies for the next year was safe at home. And he had to add that with this, Wall, the Minister, had thrown off the mask, and had assumed the most haughty and insolent language towards Great Britain. This was a confession on the part of Lord Bristol that he had suffered Wall to throw dust in his eyes till his object was accomplished, and it made patent the fact that Pitt had been too sagacious to be deceived; but that the new Ministers, whilst insulting Pitt and forcing him to resign, had been themselves completely duped. Spain now, in the most peremptory terms, demanded redress for all her grievances; and, before the year had closed, the Bute Cabinet was compelled to recall Lord Bristol from Madrid, and to order Fuentes, the Spanish ambassador in London, to quit the kingdom. On the 4th of January, 1762, declaration of war was issued against Spain. Neither king nor Ministers, seeing the wisdom of Pitt's policy and the folly of their own, were prevented from committing another such absurdity. They abandoned Frederick of Prussia at his greatest need. They refused to vote his usual subsidy. By this execrable proceeding--for we not only abandoned Frederick, but made overtures to Austria, with which he was engaged in a mortal struggle--we thus threw him into the arms and close alliance of Russia, and were, by this, the indirect means of that guilty confederation by which Poland was afterwards rent in pieces by these powers. On the 5th of January, 1762, died the Czarina Elizabeth. She was succeeded by her nephew, the Duke of Holstein, under the title of Peter III. Peter was an enthusiastic admirer of the Prussian king; he was extravagant and incessant in his praises of him. He accepted the commission of a colonel in the Prussian service, wore its uniform, and was bent on clothing his own troops in it. It was clear that he was not quite sane, for he immediately recalled the Russian army which was acting against Frederick, hastened to make peace with him, and offered to restore all that had been won from him in the war, even to Prussia proper, which the Russians had possession of. His example was eagerly seized upon by Sweden, which was tired of the war. Both Russia and Sweden signed treaties of peace with Frederick in May, and Peter went farther: he dispatched an army into Silesia, where it had so lately been fighting against him, to fight against Austria. Elated by this extraordinary turn of affairs, the Prussian ambassador renewed his applications for money, urging that, now Russia had joined Frederick, it would be easy to subdue Austria and terminate the war. This was an opportunity for Bute to retrace with credit his steps; but he argued, on the contrary, that, having the aid of Russia, Frederick did not want that of England; and he is even accused of endeavouring to persuade Russia to continue its hostilities against Prussia; and thus he totally alienated a power which might have hereafter rendered us essential service, without gaining a single point. The Duke of Newcastle, man of mediocre merit as he was, saw farther than Bute into the disgraceful nature of thus abandoning a powerful ally at an extremity, as well as the impolicy of converting such a man into a mortal enemy; and, finding all remonstrances vain, resigned. Bute was glad to be rid of him; and Newcastle, finding both his remonstrance and resignation taken very coolly, had the meanness to seek to regain a situation in the Cabinet, but without effect, and threw himself into the Opposition.

On Newcastle's resignation Bute placed himself at the head of the Treasury, and named Grenville Secretary of State--a fatal nomination, for Grenville lost America. Lord Barrington, though an adherent of Newcastle, became Treasurer of the Navy, and Sir Francis Dashwood Chancellor of the Exchequer. Bute, who, like all weak favourites, had not the sense to perceive that it was necessary to be moderate to acquire permanent power, immediately obtained a vacant Garter, and thus parading the royal favours, augmented the rapidly growing unpopularity which his want of sagacity and honourable principle was fast creating. He was beset by legions of libels, which fully exposed his incapacity, and as freely dealt with the connection between himself and the mother of the king.

But in spite of Bute's incapacity the expeditions planned by Pitt were uniformly successful. The British fleets were everywhere busy attacking the Spanish colonies, and cutting off the Spanish ships at sea. A fleet had been dispatched, under Admiral Rodney, at the latter end of the last year, against Martinique, carrying nearly twelve thousand men, commanded by General Monckton. They landed on the 7th of January at Cas de Navires, besieged and took Port Royal, the capital, St. Pierre, and, finally, the whole island. This was followed by the surrender of St. Vincent, Grenada, and St. Lucia, so that the English were now masters of the whole of the Caribbees. A portion of this squadron, under Sir James Douglas, then proceeded to join an expedition, which sailed from Portsmouth on the 5th of March; the fleet commanded by Admiral Sir George Pococke, and the army by the Earl of Albemarle. The squadron arrived before Havana on the 4th of June--King George's birthday--and effected a landing without much difficulty.

It was not, however, till the 12th of August that they were ready with their batteries. The effect of the bombardment was almost instantaneous. Within six hours nearly all the enemy's guns were silenced, and the next day the Spaniards capitulated, agreeing to yield not only the place, and the vessels in the harbour, but the country for a hundred and eighty miles to the westward; in fact, all the best part of Cuba. The booty taken was valued at nearly three million pounds.

In the East Indies, immediately afterwards, another severe blow was inflicted on Spain. An expedition sailed from Madras, and Admiral Cornish conveyed in a small fleet a body of men amounting to two thousand three hundred, and consisting of one regiment of the line, in addition to marines and sepoys. Colonel William Draper, afterwards so well known for his spirited contest with the still undiscovered author of "Junius's Letters," was the commander. They landed near Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands, on the 24th of September, the Spanish garrison there being taken completely by surprise. The whole of the Philippines submitted without further resistance; and Draper, besides being made a knight of the Bath, was, with the naval commanders, thanked by Parliament, as well they might be.

The brilliant successes of this campaign had clearly been the result of Pitt's plans before quitting office. Bute and his colleagues had no capacity for such masterly policy, and as little perception of the immense advantages which these conquests gave them in making peace. Peace they were impatient for--less on the great grounds that peace was the noblest of national blessings, than because the people grumbled at the amount of taxation--and because, by peace, they diminished, or hoped to diminish, the prestige of the great Minister, who had won such vast accessions to the national territory. Bute was eager to come to terms with France and Spain, regardless of the advantages he gave to prostrate enemies by showing that impatience. Had he made a peace as honourable as the war had been, he would have deserved well of the country; but to accomplish such a peace required another stamp of mind.

Bute made overtures to France through the neutral Court of Sardinia. Louis XV. and his Ministers caught at the very first whisper of such a thing with the eagerness of drowning men; a sufficient intimation to an able and cautious minister, that he might safely name his own terms. The ambassadors, however, soon found that the real business of the treaty was transacted between Bute, on the part of Britain, and the Duke de Choiseul, on that of France; and that not through ambassadors, but through Sardinian envoys.

The conditions first agreed upon were, that both England and France were to withdraw their support, either by men or money, to the war in Germany. France was to evacuate the few towns that she held there, as well as Cleve and Guelders. Minorca was to be restored in exchange for Belleisle, which thus fully justified Pitt's capture of that little and otherwise useless island. The fortifications of Dunkirk were to be reduced to the state required by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

France ceded Canada, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton, stipulating for the free exercise of their religion by the inhabitants of Canada, and for their leaving the country if they preferred it, carrying away their effects, if done within eighteen months. Nova Scotia and Cape Breton were given up unconditionally. The boundaries of Louisiana were more clearly defined. The French retained the right to fish on part of the coast of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and to retain the two little islets of St. Pierre and Miquelon, as places of shelter for their fishermen, on condition that no batteries should be raised on them, nor more than fifty soldiers keep guard there. Their fishermen were not to approach within fifteen miles of Cape Breton.

In the West Indies it was decided that Great Britain should, of the French islands that she had taken, retain Tobago, Dominica, St. Vincent, and Grenada, but restore to France Guadeloupe, Martinique, and St. Lucia.

In the East Indies France agreed to keep no troops, and raise no fortifications in Bengal, and on these conditions their settlements were restored, but merely as places of trade. Goree, on the coast of Africa, was restored, but Senegal was surrendered.

As for Spain, she abandoned all designs on Portugal, and restored the colony of Sacramento; and she surrendered every point on which her declaration of war against England was based--namely, the right to fish on the coast of Newfoundland; the refusal to allow us to cut logwood in Honduras; and to admit the settlement of questions of capture by our courts of law.

These certainly were large concessions, but it was to be remembered that we had not received them for nothing; they had cost vast sums, and the national debt had been doubled by this war, and now amounted to one hundred and twenty-two million six hundred thousand pounds. These territories had, in fact, cost us upwards of sixty million pounds; and it is certain that Pitt would have exacted a more complete renunciation from France of the conquered countries. There was a clause inserted which Pitt would never have permitted--namely, that any conquests that should be made after the signing of these articles, should be restored by all parties. Now, Bute and the Ministry knew that we had expeditions out against Cuba and the Philippines, and that the only conquests likely to be made were in those quarters. To throw away without equivalent the blood and money expended in these important enterprises was a most unpatriotic act. Still, there was opportunity for more rational terms, for Grimaldi, the Spanish ambassador at Paris, held back from signing, in hope that we should be defeated at Havana, and that then he could raise his terms. When the news of the loss of both Havana and Manila arrived, Grimaldi was in great haste to sign, and Mr. Grenville and Lord Egremont very properly insisted that we should demand an equivalent for the conquest in Cuba. Pitt would have stood firm for the retention of that conquest as by far the most important, and as justly secured to us by the refusal of the Spanish ambassador to sign at the proper time. But Bute would have signed without any equivalent at all. Fortunately, there was too strong an opposition to this in the Cabinet, and the Duke of Bedford was instructed to demand Florida or Porto Rico in lieu of Havana. Florida was yielded--a fatal, though at the moment it appeared a valuable concession, for it only added to the compactness of the American colonies, hastening the day of independence, whilst Cuba would have remained under the protection of the fleet, one of the most valuable possessions of the British empire.

This point settled, the preliminaries of peace were signed at Fontainebleau on the 3rd of November. To console Spain for her losses by her unlucky alliance with France, Louis XV. ceded Louisiana to that country by a private convention.

The violent discontent with the conduct of Bute and his Ministry gave considerable strength to the Opposition, at the head of which now stood Pitt, supported by Lord Temple and the Duke of Newcastle. George Grenville, not satisfied with the terms of the peace, resigned the post of Secretary to Halifax, and took his new one at the head of the Admiralty; and Henry Fox, Paymaster of the Forces, became the leader of the Commons. The Duke of Devonshire and the Marquis of Rockingham also resigned their places in the royal household; and the king, in his vexation, striking Devonshire's name out of the list of Privy Councillors, the Duke's kinsmen, Lords George Cavendish and Bessborough, also resigned.

Such was the formidable opposition with which Parliament came to the consideration of this peace. It met on the 25th of November, and the tone of the public out of doors was then seen. The king, as he went to the House of Lords, was very coolly received by the crowds in the streets, and Bute was saluted with hisses, groans, and the flinging of mud and stones. On the 19th of December he moved in the Lords an address in approbation of the terms of the peace. Lord Hardwicke opposed the motion with great warmth and ability, but there was no division. Very different was the reception of a similar address in the Commons the same day, moved by Fox. There Pitt, who was suffering with the gout, denounced the whole treaty, as shamefully sacrificing the honour and interests of the country. When he rose he was obliged to be supported by two of his friends, and was at length compelled to beg to be allowed to address the House sitting. He yet made a vehement speech of three hours and a half against the conditions accepted. The Ministry, however, had a large majority, three hundred and nineteen voting for them against sixty-five. With this brief triumph of Bute's unpopular party closed the year 1762.

The year 1763 opened with the signing of the definitive treaty at Paris on the 19th of February, whence it was called the Peace of Paris. Five days later, a peace was signed between Prussia and Austria at Hubertsberg, in Saxony, to which Saxony, as the ally of Austria, was a party. Indeed, when England and France, Russia and Sweden, had withdrawn from the contest, there was little prospect of the continuance of the war. Both parties were exhausted, and yet, of the two, Frederick, in his dogged firmness, and in the almost unparalleled endurance of his people, was more than a match for Austria. If Maria Theresa could not cope with him when she had France, Russia, Saxony, and Poland, all united with her to put him down, the case was now hopeless. The English had stipulated that France should evacuate all the places in Germany and Flanders that belonged to those countries, and Frederick had easily induced the German states, in these circumstances, to a maintenance of neutrality. Austria, therefore, consented to this peace. She stood out the longest for the retention of Glatz, the only place won from Frederick still in her hands, but she was compelled to yield that, too. Both parties returned to the same situations as before the commencement of this fatal Seven Years' War.

Whilst this war was raging in Europe, and carrying its ramifications to the most distant regions of the world, Clive and Eyre Coote were extending the British Empire in India, and, in the case of Clive, with as much ability as Frederick of Prussia showed in enlarging his kingdom in Europe. Clive, in 1757, put down Surajah Dowlah, the Nabob of Bengal, and in June of that year defeated him at Plassey with a mere handful of men against his enormous host. He set up Surajah Dowlah's General-in-chief, Meer Jaffier, and hailed him Nabob of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar. We claimed from Meer Jaffier two million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds as the share of the Company, the fleet, and the army. Clive's own share was two hundred and fifty-four thousand pounds, and the shares of the members of the committee ran from twenty thousand to one hundred thousand pounds each. Besides this, it was stipulated that the French factories and effects should be given up to the English, and the French never again allowed to enter Bengal. The territory surrounding Calcutta, within a given distance of the town, was to be granted them on zemindary tenure, the company paying the rent, like the other zemindars or landholders. Thus the British, who were before merely the tenants of a factory, became in reality the rulers of Bengal.

At this moment Meer Jaffier found it impossible to retain his seat without the support of the English. Shah Allum, the eldest son of the Great Mogul, was coming against him with a large army. Clive met and defeated him, and for this service he received from his puppet a jaghire, or domain worth twenty-seven thousand pounds a year.

Scarcely had Colonel Forde returned from this expedition, towards the end of the year 1759, when the Dutch, envious of the English success, sent an armament of seven men-of-war and one thousand four hundred soldiers from Java. They landed on the Hooghly, and began committing ravages; but Forde surprised and defeated them, taking every one of their ships. They were glad to apologise, and pay the expenses of the war. In February, 1760, a few weeks after these events, Clive, whose health was failing, set sail for England, where he was received with the highest éclat, and made an Irish peer, as Lord Clive, Baron of Plassey. He soon after entered Parliament.

Our next great move was against the French in the Carnatic. After various actions between the French and English in India during the Seven Years' War, General Count de Lally, an officer of Irish extraction, arrived at Pondicherry in April, 1758, with a force of one thousand two hundred men. Lally attacked and took Fort St. David, considered the strongest fort belonging to the East India Company, and then, mustering all his forces, made his appearance, in December of that year, before Madras. He had with him two thousand seven hundred French and four thousand natives, whilst the English had in the town four thousand troops only, of which more than half were sepoys. But Captain Caillaud had marched with a small force from Trichinopoly, which harassed the rear of the French. After making himself master of the Black Town, and threatening to burn it down, he found it impossible to compel Fort St. George to surrender, and, after a severe siege of two months, on the appearance of Admiral Pococke's squadron, which had sailed to Bombay for more troops, he decamped in the night of the 16th of February, 1759, for Arcot, leaving behind him all his ammunition and artillery, fifty-two pieces. Fresh combats took place between Pococke and D'Aché at sea, and the forces on land. Colonel Brereton attempted to take Wandewash, but failed; and it remained for Colonel Eyre Coote to defeat Lally. Coote arrived at Madras on the 27th of October, and, under his direction, Brereton succeeded in taking Wandewash on the last of November. To recover this place, Lally marched with all his force, supported by Bussy, but sustained a signal defeat on the 22nd of January, 1760. Arcot, Trincomalee, and other places fell rapidly into the hands of Colonel Coote. The French called in to their aid the Nabob of Mysore, Hyder Ali, but to little purpose. Pondicherry was invested on the 8th of December, and, on the 16th of January, 1761, it surrendered, Lally and his troops, amounting to two thousand, remaining prisoners. This was the termination of the real power of France in India; for though Pondicherry was restored by the treaty of 1763, the French never again recovered their ground there, and their East India Company soon after was broken up. The unfortunate Lally on his return to France was thrown into the Bastille, condemned for high treason, and beheaded in the Place de Grève on the 9th of May, 1766.

The Earl of Bute became more and more unpopular. The conditions of the peace were greatly disapproved, and the assurance that not only Bute, but the king's mother and the Duke of Bedford, had received French money for carrying the peace, was generally believed. The conduct of Bute in surrounding the king with his creatures, in which he was joined by the Princess of Wales, added much to the public odium. George was always of a domestic and retiring character, and he was now rarely seen, except when he went once or twice a-year to Parliament, or at levees, which were cold, formal, and unfrequent. Though, probably, the main cause of this was the natural disposition of himself and queen, yet Bute and the princess got the credit of it. Then the manner in which Bute paid his visits to the princess tended to confirm the rumours of their guilty intimacy. He used always to go in an evening in a sedan chair belonging to one of the ladies of the princess's household, with the curtains drawn, and taking every other precaution of not being seen. There were numbers of lampoons launched at the favourite and the princess. They were compared to Queen Isabella and Mortimer, and Wilkes actually wrote an ironical dedication of Ben Jonson's play of "The Fall of Mortimer," to Bute.

All these causes of unpopularity were rendered more effective by the powerful political party which now assailed him. Pitt led the way, and the Dukes of Devonshire, Bolton, and Portland, the Marquis of Rockingham, the Earls of Temple, Cornwallis, Albemarle, Ashburton, Hardwicke, and Bessborough, Lords Spencer, Sondes, Grantham, and Villiers, James Grenville, Sir George Savile, and other Whigs, presented a formidable phalanx of opponents in both Houses. The measures, too, which he was obliged to bring forward, were certain to augment his discredit. The funded debt had grown to upwards of a hundred millions, and there were three millions and a half besides unfunded. It was necessary to raise a new loan, and, moreover, to raise a new tax, for the income was unequal to the expenditure, even in time of peace. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Dashwood, was not a man likely to make these new burdens go down easily. He issued the new loan to the public with so little advertisement, that the friends of the Ministers secured the greater part of the shares, and they soon rose to eleven per cent. premium, by which they were enabled, at the public cost, to make heavy sums. The tax which Sir Francis proposed was one on cider and perry, besides some additional duties on wines. There was at once an outcry in the City against this tax, led on by the Lord Mayor, Alderman Beckford, a great friend of Pitt. The cry was only too sure to find a loud echo from the cider-growing districts. Bute and his Chancellor were quickly compelled to reduce the proposed impost from ten shillings a hogshead, to be paid by the buyer, that is, by the merchant, to four shillings, to be paid by the grower. The tax thus cut down was calculated to produce only seventy-five thousand pounds--a sum for which it was scarcely worth while to incur so much odium.

The cider tax passed, opposed by thirty-nine Peers and a hundred and twenty Commoners; but it left a very sore feeling in the western counties, that cider, worth only five shillings a hogshead, the poor man's meagre beverage, should have a tax levied on it nearly doubling the price; whilst that at fifty shillings a hogshead, the rich man's luxury, only paid the same. The growers even threatened to let the apples fall and rot under the trees, rather than make them into cider, subject to so partial a tax. No imposition had excited so much indignation since Sir Robert Walpole's Excise Bill, in 1733. In the cider counties bonfires were made in many places, and Bute was burnt emblematically as a jack-boot--Jack Bute--and his supposed royal mistress under that of a petticoat, which two articles, after being carried about on poles, were hurled into the flames.

Instead of taking means to conciliate the public, Bute, stung by these testimonies of dislike, and by the pamphlets and lampoons which issued like swarms of wasps, revenged himself by others, which only intensified the hatred against him. Still worse for him, he had caused the Dukes of Newcastle and Grafton, and the Marquis of Rockingham, to be dismissed from the Lord-Lieutenancies of their respective counties, because they voted against the peace on Bute's terms. With a still more petty rancour he had visited the sins of these noblemen on the persons in small clerkships and other posts who had been recommended by them, turning them all out. Sir Henry Fox joined him relentlessly in these pitiful revenges, and would have carried them farther had he not been checked by others.

For a time, Bute and his colleagues appeared to brave the load of hatred and ignominy which was now piled everywhere upon them, but it was telling; and suddenly, on the 7th of April, it was announced that the obnoxious Minister had resigned. Many were the speculations on this abrupt act, some attributing it to the influence of Wilkes, and his remorseless attacks in the North Briton; others to the king and queen having at length become sensitive on the assumed relations of Bute and the king's mother; but Bute himself clearly stated the real and obvious cause--want of support, either in or out of Parliament. "The ground," he wrote to a friend, "on which I tread is so hollow, that I am afraid not only of falling myself, but of involving my royal master in my ruin. It is time for me to retire."

George Grenville succeeded to both Bute and Dashwood, becoming first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the king announced that he had intrusted the direction of affairs to him, and the Lords Egremont and Halifax, the Secretaries of State, whence they soon acquired the name of "The Triumvirate." The Duke of Bedford quitted his post as ambassador at Paris, and was succeeded by the Earl of Hertford. The Earl of Sandwich became head of the Admiralty, and the Earl of Shelburne head of the Board of Trade. Old Marshal Ligonier was removed from the post of Master of the Ordnance to make way for the Marquis of Granby, but received a peerage. These changes being completed, the king closed the Session of Parliament on the 19th of April, with a speech, in which he declared the peace honourable to his Crown, and beneficial to his people.

This avowal in the royal speech called forth John Wilkes in No. 45 of the North Briton, destined to become a famous number indeed. Wilkes had ceased in the North Briton to employ mere initials when commenting on leading men in Parliament or Government; and he now boldly declared that the speech put into the king's mouth by the Ministers was false in its assertion, that the peace was neither honourable to the Crown nor beneficial to the country. This was regarded as a gross insult to his Majesty, though it was avowedly declared to attack only the Ministry; and on the 30th of April Wilkes was arrested upon a general warrant, that is, a warrant not mentioning him or any one by name, but applying to the authors, printers, and publishers of the paper in question. George Grenville, the new Minister, had, of course, the credit of this proceeding; though it was thought that Bute still secretly directed the movements of Government, and that he or the king might be the real author of the order.

Wilkes entered the Tower in all the elation of spirits which the occasion of acting the political hero inspired. He was soon visited by the Dukes of Bolton and Grafton, and Lord Temple, who, as well as his own friends, his solicitor, and counsel, were refused admittance. His house was entered, and his papers were seized and examined by Wood, the Under-Secretary of State, and Carteret Webb, the Solicitor to the Treasury. On the 3rd of May Wilkes was conveyed to the Court of Common Pleas, before Sir Charles Pratt, where his case was stated by Mr. Serjeant Glynn, and then Wilkes himself made a speech of an hour long. On the 6th of May he was brought up to hear the joint opinion of the judges, which was that, though general warrants might not be strictly illegal, the arrest of Wilkes could not be maintained, on account of his privilege as a member of Parliament; that nothing short of treason felony, and an actual breach of the peace, could interfere with that privilege, and that a libel could not be termed a breach of the peace. The judgment of the Bench, therefore, was that Mr. Wilkes be discharged from his imprisonment.

The release of Wilkes by the Court of Common Pleas was a triumph over Ministers, which, had they been wise, would have induced them to take no further notice of him. They had only made a popular demigod of him. The people, not only in London, but all over the country, celebrated his exit from the Tower with the liveliest demonstrations, especially in the cider districts, still smarting under the new tax, and where they accordingly once more paraded the jack-boot and petticoat, adding two effigies--one of Bute, dressed in a Scottish plaid and with a blue ribbon, the other no less a person than the king, led by the nose by Bute.

The English Government, instead of treating Wilkes with a dignified indifference, was weak enough to show how deeply it was touched by him, dismissed him from his commission of Colonel of the Buckinghamshire Militia, and treated Lord Temple as an abettor of his, by depriving him of the Lord-Lieutenancy of the same county, and striking his name from the list of Privy Councillors, giving the Lord-Lieutenancy to Dashwood, now Lord Le Despencer.

Meanwhile by the advice of Bute the king sent for Pitt. On the 27th of August he had an audience of the king at Buckingham House. Pitt, however, insisted on having in with him all, or nearly all, his old colleagues, and this was too much for the king; whilst not to have had them would have been too little for Pitt, who was too wise to take office without efficient and congenial colleagues. The king, nevertheless, did not openly object, but allowed Pitt to go away with the impression that he would assent to his demands. This was Saturday, and Pitt announced this belief to the Dukes of Devonshire and Newcastle, and the Marquis of Rockingham. But on Sunday Grenville had had an interview with the king, and finding that he considered Pitt's terms too hard, had laboured successfully to confirm him in that opinion. Accordingly, on Monday, at a second meeting, the king named the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Halifax, and George Grenville, for leading posts in the Cabinet, saying, "Poor George Grenville, he is your near relation, and you once loved him." Pitt said that it would not do, bowed and retired; the king saying, "My honour is concerned, and I must support it."

Grenville, chagrined as he was, still clung to the Government, and called in the Duke of Bedford as President of the Council, Lord Sandwich as Secretary of State. Lord Hillsborough succeeded Lord Shelburne at the Board of Trade. Such was the Government which was to supersede the necessity of Pitt; Lord Chesterfield declaring that they could not meet the Parliament, for that they had not a man in the Commons who had either abilities or words enough to call a coach.

Parliament met on the 15th of November, and the very first object which engaged the attention of both Houses was Wilkes. In such fiery haste were Ministers, that Lord Sandwich, in the Peers, started up, before the king's speech could be considered, and declared that he held in his hand a most filthy and atrocious libel, written by Wilkes, called "An Essay on Woman." Wilkes never had published the filth. He had written, as it appeared, by the assistance of a profligate and now deceased son of Archbishop Potter, this "Essay on Woman;" but he had never published it. It had lain in his desk, and had only been read to two persons--one of whom was Sandwich himself. When Wilkes, however, was driven to set up a printing press in his own house, he had printed a dozen copies of the "Essay on Woman," to give to his dissolute friends, whom he used to meet at the Dilettanti Club, in Palace Yard. Sandwich, aware of the existence of the essay, had bribed one of Wilkes's printers, named Curry, to lend him a copy of it, and had paid him five guineas as a guarantee for its safe return. The whole thing was a stupid parody of Pope's "Essay on Man;" in which, instead of the inscription to Bolingbroke, commencing "Awake, my St. John!" there appeared an invocation beginning, "Awake, my Sandwich!" and there were also ridiculous notes attributed to Warburton.

In the Commons, on the same day, Grenville delivered a message from the Crown, announcing to the House the imprisonment of one of their members during the recess. Wilkes immediately rose in his place, and complained of the breach of that House's privilege in his person; of the entry of his house, the breaking open of his desk, and the imprisonment of his person--imprisonment pronounced by the highest legal authority to be illegal, and therefore tyrannical. He moved that the House should take the question of privilege into immediate consideration. On the other hand, Lord North, who was a member of the Treasury board, and Sir Fletcher Norton, Attorney-General, put in the depositions of the printer and publisher, proving the authorship of No. 45 of the North Briton on Wilkes, and pressing for rigorous measures against him. A warm debate ensued, in which Pitt opposed the proceedings to a certain extent, declaring that he could never understand exactly what a libel was. Notwithstanding, the Commons voted, by a large majority, that No. 45 of the North Briton was "a false, scandalous, and malicious libel," tending to traitorous insurrection, and that it should be burnt by the common hangman.

The consequences were an intense excitement in favour of Wilkes, and execration against the Commons. Wilkes was reported to be delirious, and crowds collected in the streets before his house, calling for vengeance on his murderers. Sandwich was especially denounced; in return for his dragging forth the obscenity of Wilkes, his own private life was ransacked for scandalous anecdotes, and they were only too plentiful. Horace Walpole says that Sandwich's conduct to Wilkes had brought forth such a catalogue of his own impurities as was incredible. The "Beggar's Opera" being just then acted at Covent Garden, when Macheath uttered the words, "That Jemmy Twitcher should peach, I own surprises me!" the whole audience burst into most tumultuous applause at the obvious application; and thenceforth Jemmy Twitcher was the name by which Sandwich was more commonly known.

Still the affairs of Wilkes continued to occupy almost the sole thought and interest of the Session. On the 23rd of November the question of privilege came up; and though he was absent, having been wounded in a duel, it was actively pushed by the Ministers. Mr. Wilbraham protested against the discussion without the presence of Wilkes, and his being heard at the bar in his defence. Pitt attended, though suffering awfully from the gout, propped on crutches, and his very hands wrapped in flannel. He maintained the question of privilege, but took care to separate himself from Wilkes in it. The rest of the debate was violent and personal, and ended in voting, by two hundred and fifty-eight against one hundred and thirty-three, that the privilege of Parliament did not extend to the publication of seditious libels; the resolution ordering the North Briton to be burnt by the hangman was confirmed. These votes being sent up to the Lords, on the 25th they also debated the question, and the Duke of Cumberland, Lord Shelburne, and the Duke of Newcastle, defended the privilege of Parliament as violated in the person of Wilkes. In the end, however, the Ministers obtained a majority of a hundred and fourteen against thirty-eight. Seventeen peers entered a strong protest against the decision. On the 1st of December there was a conference of the two Houses, when they agreed to a loyal address to the king, expressing their detestation of the libels against him.

Simultaneously with these proceedings, the actions commenced by Wilkes, and the printer, publishers, and others arrested under the general warrant, were being tried in the Common Pleas. All the parties obtained verdicts for damages, and that of Wilkes was for a thousand pounds. Chief-Justice Pratt, strengthened by the verdicts, made a most decided declaration of the illegality and unconstitutional nature of general warrants.

As this excitement closed the old year, so it opened the new one. No sooner did Parliament meet, after the Christmas recess, than, on the 17th of January, 1764, the order for Wilkes's attendance at the bar was read. It was then found that he had thought it best to retire into France. Still he did not hesitate to send over a medical certificate, signed by one of the king's physicians and an army surgeon, affirming that his wound was in such a condition that it was not safe for him to leave Paris. The House of Commons paid no attention to the certificate, but proceeded to examine evidence, and the famous No. 45 of the North Briton; and after a violent debate, continuing till three o'clock in the morning, passed a resolution that the paper in question contained the grossest insults to his Majesty, to both Houses of Parliament, and tended to traitorous insurrection against the Government. Accordingly, the next day, he was formally expelled the House, and a new writ was issued for Aylesbury.

On the 13th of February the Opposition in the Commons brought on the question of the validity of general warrants. The debate continued all that day and the next night till seven o'clock in the morning. The motion was thrown out; but Sir William Meredith immediately made another, that a general warrant for apprehending the authors, printers, and publishers of a seditious libel is not warranted by law. The combat was renewed, and Pitt made a tremendous speech, declaring that if the House resisted Sir William Meredith's motion, they would be the disgrace of the present age, and the reproach of posterity. He upbraided Ministers with taking mean and petty vengeance on those who did not agree with them, by dismissing them from office. This charge Grenville had the effrontery to deny, though it was a notorious fact. As the debate approached its close, the Ministers called in every possible vote; "the sick, the lame were hurried into the House, so that," says Horace Walpole, "you would have thought they had sent a search warrant into every hospital for Members of Parliament." When the division came, which was only for the adjournment of Meredith's motion for a month, they only carried it by fourteen votes. In the City there was a confident anticipation of the defeat of Ministers, and materials had been got together for bonfires all over London, and for illuminating the Monument. Temple was said to have faggots ready for bonfires of his own.

Government, not content with expelling Wilkes from the House of Commons, had commenced an action against him in the Court of King's Bench, where they succeeded in obtaining a verdict against him for a libel in the North Briton. Temple paid the costs, and the City of London turned this defeat into a triumph, by presenting its freedom to the Lord Chief Justice Pratt, for his bold and independent conduct in declaring against the general warrants. They ordered his portrait to be placed in Guildhall; and the example of London was followed by Dublin and many other towns, who presented their freedom and gold snuff-boxes to Pratt. The City of London also gave its thanks to its members for their patriotic conduct.

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VIII. REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued)

The American Colonies and their Trade--Growing Irritation in America--The Stamp Act--The American Protest--The Stamp Act passed--Its Reception in America--The King's Illness--The Regency Bill--The Princess Dowager omitted--Her Name inserted in the Commons--Negotiations for a Change of Ministry--The old Ministry returns--Fresh Negotiations with Pitt--The first Rockingham Ministry--Riots in America--The Stamped Paper destroyed--Pitt's Speech--The Stamp Act repealed--Weakness of the Government--Pitt and Temple disagree--Pitt forms a Ministry--And becomes Lord Chatham--His Comprehensive Policy--The Embargo on Wheat--Illness of Chatham--Townshend's Financial Schemes--Corruption of Parliament--Wilkes elected for Middlesex--Arrest of Wilkes--Dangerous Riots--Dissolution of the Boston Assembly--Seizure of the Liberty Sloop--Debates in Parliament--Continued Persecution of Wilkes--His Letter to Lord Weymouth--Again expelled the House--His Re-election--The Letters of Junius--Luttrell declared elected for Middlesex--Incapacity of the Ministry--Partial Concessions to the Americans--Bernard leaves Boston--He is made a Baronet--"The Horned Cattle Session"--Lord Chatham attacks the Ministry--Resignations of Granby and Camden--Yorke's Suicide--Dissolution of the Ministry.

If Grenville and his Cabinet, in their ignorance of human nature, had made a gross mistake in their conduct towards Wilkes, they now made a more fatal one in regard to our American colonies. These colonies had now assumed an air of great importance, and were rapidly rising in population and wealth. The expulsion of the French from Canada, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton, the settlement of Georgia by General Oglethorpe, the acquisition of Florida from Spain, had given a compactness and strength to these vast colonies, which promised a still more accelerated and prosperous growth. At this period the inhabitants are calculated to have amounted to two millions of Europeans, and half a million of coloured people, Indians and negroes. The trade was becoming more extensive and valuable to the mother country. The imports from England, chiefly of her manufactures, amounted to three million pounds annually in value. They carried on a large trade with our West Indian islands and the Spanish American colonies, and French and Dutch West Indies. They also built ships for the French and Spaniards, in the West Indies. They had extensive iron and copper mines and works in different states. They manufactured great quantities of hats in New England. The fisheries of Massachusetts produced two hundred and thirty thousand quintals of dried fish, which they exported to Spain and Portugal, and other Catholic countries of Europe. Carolina exported its rice to these countries as well as to England; and they exported vast quantities of cured provisions, dye-woods, apples, wax, leather, tobacco from Virginia and Maryland (fifty thousand hogsheads annually to England alone) valued at three hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. The masts from New England, sent over for the British navy, were the largest in the world.

Such was the busy scene which these colonies were now presenting. Dutch, German, and Swedish emigrants were carrying their industry and handicrafts thither. But, instead of our merchants seeing what a mighty market was growing up for them there, their commercial jealousy was aroused at the sight of the illicit trade which the colonists carried on with the Spanish, French, and other colonies, and even with Europe. The planters of the British West Indies complained of the American colonists taking their rum, sugar, coffee, etc., from the Dutch, French, and Spanish islands, in return for their raw produce, asserting that they had a monopoly for all their productions throughout the whole of the British dominions. Loud clamours were raised by these planters in the British Parliament, demanding the prohibition of this trade; and, after repeated endeavours in 1733 an Act was passed to crush it, by granting a drawback on the re-exportation of West Indian sugar from England, and imposing duties on the importation of the West Indian produce of our European rivals direct into the American colonies.

These were measures which must have greatly irritated the American colonists. They exhibited a disposition to curb and repress their growing energies between the interests of British merchants and British West Indian planters. The prospect was far from encouraging; whilst, at the same time, the English Ministers, crushing these energies with one hand, were contemplating drawing a revenue by taxation from them on the other. Britain argued that she sacrificed large amounts in building up colonies, and therefore had a right to expect a return for this expenditure. Such a return, had they had the sagacity to let them alone, was inevitable from the trade of the colonies in an ever-increasing ratio.

Grenville, being on the look-out for new taxes, had paid particular attention to the rapid growth of the American colonies, and was inspired with the design of drawing a revenue from them. The scheme had been suggested to Sir Robert Walpole, when his Excise Bill failed, by Sir William Keith, who had been governor of Pennsylvania; but Sir Robert had a far deeper insight into human nature than the shallow and obstinate Grenville. He replied, "I have already Old England set against me, and do you think I will have New England set against me too?"

During the Session of 1764 Grenville imposed several duties on American articles of export, if imported direct from the French, Dutch, and Spanish West Indies. The Americans did not dispute the right of the mother country to impose such duties on the trade of the empire in any quarter; but these imposts, seeing the object of them, were not the less galling. But Grenville did not stop there; he stated, at the time of passing these duties, that it was probable that Government would charge certain stamp duties in America. This was creating a sore place and immediately striking it. The infatuated Minister was contemplating an act of the nature of which neither he nor his colleagues had any conception.

The news of these imposts, and of this intended stamp duty, flew across the Atlantic, and produced the most bitter excitement. Never could this unwelcome news have reached the colonies at a more unpropitious moment. To restrictions on their legitimate trade, the British had been adding others on their illegitimate trade. Nearly all the American colonies lay on the seaboard, and were, therefore, naturally addicted to a free sort of trade, which these new duties made contraband. The British Government had sent out a number of revenue ships and officers to cut off this trade, and capture and confiscate all vessels found practising it. The colonists met in various places, and passed very strong resolutions against these regulations. The people of New England spread their views and resolves all over the colonies by means of the press. They refused to listen to any overtures of the British Government on the subject. They claimed the right to grant, of their own free will, such contributions to the revenue of the empire as their own assemblies should deem just, and to submit to no compulsion where they had no voice. They called on all the colonists to refrain as much as possible from purchasing any of the manufactures of England so long as she showed a disposition to oppress them, and to obtain their materials for clothing from other countries, or to begin to manufacture them themselves; and to cease also to use all luxuries on which the duties were laid. To make their case known in England, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Georgia appointed the celebrated Benjamin Franklin their agent in London.

Parliament met on the 10th of January, 1765. The resentment of the Americans had reached the ears of the Ministry and the king, yet both continued determined to proceed. In the interviews which Franklin and the other agents had with the Ministers, Grenville begged them to point to any other tax that would be more agreeable to the colonists than the stamp-duty; but they without any real legal grounds drew the line between levying custom and imposing an inland tax. Grenville paid no attention to these representations. Fifty-five resolutions, prepared by a committee of ways and means, were laid by him on the table of the House of Commons at an early day of the Session, imposing on America nearly the same stamp-duties as were already in practical operation in England. These resolutions being adopted, were embodied in a bill; and when it was introduced to the House, it was received with an apathy which betrayed on all hands the profoundest ignorance of its importance. Burke, who was a spectator of the debates in both Houses, in a speech some years afterwards, stated that he never heard a more languid debate than that in the Commons. Only two or three persons spoke against the measure and that with great composure. There was but one division in the whole progress of the Bill, and the minority did not reach to more than thirty-nine or forty. In the Lords, he said, there was, to the best of his recollection, neither division nor debate!

But a very different spirit displayed itself in America on the arrival of the news of the passing of the Act. Franklin's friend, Thompson, replied to him, that, instead of lighting candles, there would be works of darkness. The rage of the American public burst forth in unequivocal vigour. At New York, the odious Stamp Act was represented surmounted with a death's head instead of the royal arms, and was hawked through the streets with the title of "the folly of England and the ruin of America." At Boston the colours of the shipping were lowered half-mast high, and the bells of the city were muffled and tolled funeral knells. Everywhere there was a frenzied excitement, and the provincial Assemblies resounded with the clamour of indignant patriotism. It was the fortune of that of Virginia to give the leading idea of union and co-operative resistance, which led to the grand conflict, and to eventual victory over the infatuated mother country. There Patrick Henry, a very different man to Franklin, started up, and kindled by his fiery breath the torch of confederate resistance. But it was at once seen that, to acquire their full weight, the colonies must unite. Speeches, pamphlets, articles in newspapers, all called for co-operation. A print was published exhibiting a snake cut into a number of pieces, each piece inscribed with the name of a colony, and with the motto, "Join or die." In consequence, several of the states sent representatives to a general congress, to be held at New York in the month of October, to take measures for a general resistance to the Stamp Act.

Whilst the American colonies were thus stimulated, by unwise taxation, into a temper which never again could be entirely allayed, the king was suddenly attacked with an illness, that startled himself and the kingdom from that security which his apparently robust constitution had inspired. He was said to labour under cough and fever; but it became pretty well understood, after a time, that it was something more alarming--that it was, in fact, an attack of that insanity which recurred again and again, and held him for years, during the latter part of his reign, in its fearful power. This time it was of short occurrence; and the moment it was past, George held a levee at St. James's, and appeared at it with a cheerful air, as if to dissipate all alarm. But the king himself immediately proposed a measure, which showed that it had excited grave thoughts in him. He submitted to Ministers the propriety of a provision for a regency, in case of any recurring malady which should incapacitate him for business. The matter was discussed in the Cabinet, and it was agreed that such a bill should be prepared, empowering the king to name, if deemed necessary, "either the queen, or any other person of the royal family usually residing in Great Britain."

On the 24th of April, accordingly, the king proposed, in a speech from the throne, the measure to the Houses in these words. Both Houses sent addresses of affection, and the bill was introduced into the House of Lords; and it was there contended that it was too vague, no person being directly named, except the queen. To remedy this the king sent a new message, naming the five princes of the royal house, with the power of nominating others in the case of the deaths of any of them. Still, on the second reading, Lord Lyttelton declared that this left it perfectly uncertain who would become regent; and he moved an address to the king to name which one of the persons specified he would nominate as regent. But here the Duke of Richmond asked, whether the queen were naturalised; and if not, whether she were capable of acting as regent. He asked, also, who were, strictly speaking, the royal family? The Earl of Denbigh replied, "All who were prayed for;" but the Duke of Bedford contended that those only in the order of succession constituted the royal family. This went at once to exclude the Princess Dowager of Wales, the king's mother; and Halifax, Bedford's colleague, agreed with him. Amidst all this confusion, Lord Halifax hastened away to the king, and advised him to have the name of his mother omitted, lest the Lords should strike it out, and thus make it appear a public insult. The poor bewildered king, taken by surprise, said, "I will consent, if it will satisfy my people."

Halifax, possessed of this authority, returned to the House of Lords, and announced that, by the king's permission, he proposed the re-commitment of the bill, with the names only of the queen and the sons of the late king now living. Thus, the Princess Dowager was publicly stigmatised, on the authority of her own son, as incapable of reigning. The amendment, as the royal pleasure, was agreed to. The country was struck with astonishment. The Duke of Bedford is represented by Horace Walpole as almost dancing about for joy; the consternation of Bute and his party was indescribable. To cover the disgrace, they represented it as the wish of the Princess Dowager herself. But when the king was left to his own reflections, it began to dawn upon him that he had, by his weak compliance, openly insulted his own parent in the grossest manner. He bitterly upbraided Halifax with having thus stolen his consent by a surprise. But Grenville, with his usual obstinacy, declined to replace the princess's name unless it were strongly pressed upon him in the House. He trusted, however, that the Opposition, who hated the princess, would relieve him of this necessity by voting against the reinsertion of the name. But he was mistaken. Mr Morton, the chief justice of Chester, one of the Bute party, moved for the insertion of the princess's name in the bill, and the Opposition made no objection; they only too much enjoyed Grenville's embarrassment. He was therefore compelled to insert the name, which--thus falsifying Halifax's assertion to the king, that, if left in, it would be struck out by Parliament--was carried by an overwhelming majority.

The circumstance sank deeply into the mind of the king, and, resenting especially the conduct of Grenville--who had acted as though he held a monopoly of office,--he determined to be rid of him. He therefore consulted with his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. That prince, to whom age and infirmities seemed to have given a degree of wisdom, declared the offer of the Ministry to Pitt to be the necessary step, and willingly undertook to make it. But knowing that Pitt would not even listen to the proposal without Temple, he dispatched a summons to Stowe for that nobleman, and himself, infirm as he was, went to Hayes, to learn the will of the great commoner personally. Pitt showed himself disposed to accept the office, on condition that general warrants should be declared illegal; that the officers dismissed on account of their votes be restored; and that an alliance with Protestant powers, and especially with Prussia, should be formed, to counterbalance the compact between France and Spain. This was asking a great deal; but Pitt demanded more in the particulars of appointments, namely, that Pratt, who had opposed the Court so decidedly as regarded Wilkes and general warrants, should be Lord Chancellor, and he opposed the Court desire that the Duke of Northumberland should be at the head of the Treasury. Pitt, moreover, designed the Treasury for Temple. But, when Temple arrived, he refused to take office at all. The fact was that just now he was making a reconciliation with his brother, Grenville, and was averse from throwing him overboard. So far from joining Pitt, he was on the verge of another breach with him. Pitt, disconcerted by this repulse, with a weakness to be deplored in so great a man, refused to accept the offer to form a ministry at all.

The unfortunate king was obliged to submit, and retain his present incompetent Ministers. These incompetent Ministers, on their part, now believing themselves indispensable, became at once proportionably assuming, and even insolent, in their demands. Grenville and Bedford put several direct demands to the king as the conditions even of their condescending to serve him: that he would promise to have no further communications with Lord Bute, nor to allow him the slightest share in his councils; that he would dismiss Bute's brother, Mr. Mackenzie, from the office of Privy Seal of Scotland, and from the management of Scottish affairs; that he would dismiss Lord Holland from being Paymaster of the Forces, and appoint Lord Granby Commander-in-Chief. The king, after some demur, submitted to all these conditions, except the appointment of Lord Granby, and escaped that only by Granby himself declining the post. George submitted, because he could not help it, to these imperious conditions; but he inly resented them, and did not avoid showing it by his coldness towards both Bedford and Grenville. At this, the haughty Bedford took fire, and read the king a severe lecture before leaving town for Woburn. He complained of the king showing kindness to the enemies of the administration; and demanded whether the king had kept his promise not to consult Lord Bute.

George had much difficulty in restraining his indignation, but he kept it down, and only bowed the duke silently out of his presence. No sooner had he departed than he flew to Cumberland, and declared he would bear this no longer. Again overtures were made to Pitt, again Pitt expressed himself willing to take office, but again declined, because Temple still refused. Foiled in these attempts to engage Pitt, and equally foiled in an endeavour to engage some of the heads of the leading Whig houses, who would enter no administration without Pitt, a heterogeneous cabinet was at length cobbled up, through the management of the old Duke of Newcastle, who was hankering after office. The Marquis of Rockingham was put forward as First Lord of the Treasury and Premier. Grafton and Conway were to be Secretaries of State; and the latter, lately dismissed with ignominy from the army, was to lead the Commons. The Earl of Northington was made Chancellor, the old Duke of Newcastle Privy Seal; another old and almost superannuated nobleman, Lord Winchelsea, President of the Council. Charles Townshend retained his post of Paymaster of the Forces. Such materials, it was clear, could never long hold together. "It is a mere lute-string administration," said Townshend himself; "it is pretty summer wear, but it will never stand the winter!"

Whilst these changes had been passing at home, the effervescence in America had grown most riotous and alarming. Boston took the lead in tumultuous fury. In August, the house of Mr. Oliver, the newly appointed stamp-distributor, was attacked and ransacked; his effigy was hanged on a tree, thenceforward honoured by the name of the Liberty Tree. It was then taken down, paraded about the streets, and committed to the flames. The colonel of the militia was applied to, but sent an evasive answer, showing that there were others above the mob who enjoyed what the mob were doing. With this encouragement they broke out afresh, crying, "Liberty and Property!" which, said a colonial authority, "was their cry when they meant to plunder and pull down a house." This time they gutted and partly demolished the houses of the registrar-deputy of the Admiralty, the comptroller of the customs, and the lieutenant-governor, destroying a great quantity of important papers. In New York, delegates assembled from nine different colonial Assemblies. The governor forbade them to gather, declaring their meetings unprecedented and unlawful, but he took no active measures to prevent their deliberations. The Congress met in October, and sat for three weeks. They appointed Mr. Timothy Ruggles, from Massachusetts, their chairman, and passed fourteen resolutions denying the right of the mother country to tax them without their own consent; and they drew up petitions to the king and Parliament. Everywhere associations were established to resist the importation of British manufactures after the 1st of January next, and it was agreed that they should dissolve themselves as soon as the stamp tax was abolished. But it is well known, from letters addressed to Franklin, that the Republican element was already widely spread through the colonies, and this very first opportunity was seized on by its advocates to encourage the idea of throwing off the allegiance to England without further delay.

As the 1st of November approached, the day on which the Stamp Act was to take effect, the excitement became intense. Furious crowds assembled in the ports to prevent the landing of the stamped paper from the ships which brought it. The appointed distributors were compelled to resign their posts. At New York the stamped paper was landed, but such was the commotion that it had to be put into the custody of the city magistrates, and be kept under guard in the city hall. It was utterly impossible to put the paper into use, and, after some interruption, business and the courts of law were allowed to proceed without it, on the plea that the stamps could not be obtained.

On the 14th of January, 1766, the king opened Parliament with a speech, rendered necessary by the change of Ministry and the affairs of America. A great debate followed, in which Burke made his maiden speech, and was followed by Pitt, who said in his loftiest tone of eloquence: "This kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. On this point I could not be silent, nor repress the ardour of my soul, smote as it is with indignation at the very thought of taxing America internally without a requisite voice of consent. Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power. Taxes are the voluntary gift and grant of the Commons alone. At the same time, on every real point of legislation, I believe the authority to be fixed as the pole-star--fixed for the reciprocal benefit of the mother country and her infant colonies. They are the subjects of this kingdom, equally entitled with yourselves to all the rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen, and equally bound by its laws. The Americans are the sons, not the bastards of England. The distinction between legislation and taxation is essential to liberty. The Crown, the Peers, are equally legislative powers with the Commons. If taxation be a part of simple legislation, the Crown, the Peers, have rights in taxation as well as yourselves--rights which they will claim whenever the principle can be supported by might."

Grenville rose and defended the Stamp Act. He denied that the right of taxation depended on representation. He complained justly, that when he proposed to tax America, there was little opposition in that House. He contended that protection and obedience were reciprocal, and he exposed the fallacy of Pitt's distinction between taxes and duties. There was much justice in these remarks. The words of Grenville, so pointedly directed against him, immediately called up Pitt again. He had spoken; it was contrary to all rule, but the lion of Parliament broke recklessly through the meshes of its regulations, and when he was called to order the members supported him by cries of "Go on! go on!" He went on, severely castigating Grenville for complaining of the liberty of speech in that House; and dropping in his indignation the terms of courtesy towards the late Minister of "honourable" or "right honourable," said simply--"Sir, the gentleman tells us that America is obstinate--America is almost in open rebellion. Sir, I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest." He then exposed the cases quoted by Grenville to show that taxation in this country had been imposed without representation, showing that these very instances led to immediate representation. "I would have cited them," he continued, "to show that even under arbitrary reigns Parliaments were ashamed of taxing a people without their consent. The gentleman asks when the Americans were emancipated? But I desire to know when they were made slaves?" He then touched on the true sources of benefit from our colonies, the profits of their trade. He estimated the profits derived from the American commerce at two millions sterling, adding triumphantly, "This is the fund that carried us victoriously through the late war. This is the price America pays us for protection." He then alluded to the comparative strength of the two countries. "I know the valour," he said, "of your troops. I know the skill of your officers. In a good cause, on a sound bottom, the force of this country can crush America to atoms. But in such a cause as this your success would be hazardous. America, if she fell, would fall like the strong man. She would embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the constitution along with her."

The advice of Pitt prevailed. Ministers determined to bring in two Acts in accordance with his counsels: an Act declaratory of the supreme power of Parliament over the colonies, and another repealing the Stamp Act, on the plea which he had suggested. The Declaratory Act passed readily enough, for all parties agreed in it; but the repeal of the Stamp Act met with stout opposition. Grenville, with the pertinacity of a man who glories in his disgrace, resisted it at every stage. When he was hissed by the people, he declared that "he rejoiced in the hiss. If it were to do again, he would do it!" In the Lords there was a strong resistance to the repeal. Lord Temple, who had now deserted Pitt, supported his brother Grenville with all his might. Lords Mansfield, Lyttelton, and Halifax, the whole Bedford faction, and the whole Bute faction, opposed it. The king declared himself for repeal rather than bloodshed.

To acquire popularity, the Rockingham administration made a further restriction on the import of foreign silks; they made a modification of the Cider Bill, but this only extended to taking the duty off cider belonging to private persons, and was regarded as a bribe to the country gentlemen. They induced the House of Commons to pass a resolution on the 25th of April, declaring general warrants illegal, and, if for seizing any member of the House, a breach of privilege. But when they passed this in the form of a bill, the Lords threw it out; and a second bill for the same purpose failed in the Commons. Still, these conciliatory measures did not procure them confidence. Colonel Barré refused them his support; General Conway was sick of his post, and longed to be out of it; and Henley, Lord Northington, as Chancellor, was found actually intriguing against his colleagues. With the Court they grew into no favour, because the king thought them backward in procuring from Parliament suitable provision for his younger brother. It was clear that this could not last. To cap the climax of weakness, the Rockingham Cabinet came to open issue amongst themselves on the plan of government for Canada. Northington informed the king that they could not go on; and the king, on the 7th of July, gave the Chancellor a letter to Pitt, inviting him to form a new Ministry. The same day his Majesty also informed the existing Cabinet of the change which he contemplated. Conway said frankly, it was the best thing the king could do; but Lord Rockingham and the Duke of Newcastle were deeply offended.

Pitt hastened up to town, and was graciously received by the king, who told him that he left the choice of his colleagues entirely to himself. Pitt, as twice before, immediately proposed that his brother-in-law, Lord Temple, should be placed at the head of the Treasury. Temple was summoned from Stowe, but was as haughty and unmanageable as ever. He demanded that all the old Ministers should be dismissed, that Lord Lyttelton should have the Privy Seal, Lord Gower be Secretary of State, etc. Pitt could not accede to these terms. This time he did not throw up the offer of the Premiership to oblige his wrong-headed brother-in-law, who had the overweening idea that he was as great a man as Pitt himself. He stood firm, and, after a long interview at North End, Hampstead, where Pitt had taken a house for the time, Temple set off to Stowe again in high dudgeon, declaring that Pitt had thrown off the mask, and never meant to accept his co-operation at all. Lord Camden advised Pitt to stand fast, throw off the Grenvilles, and save the nation without them. He acted on the advice.

He found the Bedford clan ready, as usual, for office, but wanting to come in a whole legion; the poor weak Duke of Newcastle was equally prepared, shedding tears in his facile way, hugging and kissing people in his trouble, and wondering why his "dear old friend" had thus abandoned him. Pitt passed on, and chose Lord Camden as Lord Chancellor; Northington as President of the Council; Lord Granby as Commander-in-Chief; Shelburne and Conway as Secretaries of State; the Duke of Grafton as First Lord of the Treasury; Charles Townshend as Chancellor of the Exchequer; with Lord North, James Grenville, brother of Temple, Colonel Barré, and others, in secondary posts. Mr. Stewart Mackenzie, Bute's brother, was restored to his former office, but without any control over Scottish affairs. It was clear that Pitt had selected his colleagues without regard to party, but with an eye to the ability of the respective persons. It was a mode of acting particularly after the fancy of the king, who had always been, according to his own words to Pitt on the occasion, "zealously ready to give his aid towards destroying all party distinctions, and restoring that subordination to government, which can alone preserve that inestimable blessing, liberty, from degenerating into licentiousness." "I venture," said Burke, "to say, it did so happen that persons had a single office divided between them, who had never spoken to each other in their lives, until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle bed."

But where, all this time, was the Great Commoner? The whole world was astonished when the fact came out that Pitt would accept no post in his own Ministry but that of Privy Seal, which necessitated his removal to the House of Peers. The king himself offered no opposition. Pitt's colleagues were not only astonished, but confounded; for they calculated on having his abilities and influence in the House of Commons. "It is a fall up stairs," said the witty Chesterfield, "which will do Pitt so much hurt that he will never be able to stand upon his legs again." No doubt it was a great mistake, but the infirmity of Pitt's health is an abundant excuse. This matter settled, Chatham condescended to coax the haughty Duke of Bedford, whom he met at Bath, to join him. He explained that the measures he meant to pursue were such as he knew the Duke approved. Having heard him, Bedford replied, proudly, "They are my measures, and I will support them, in or out of office." It was understood that he would receive overtures from Chatham, and, in these circumstances, Parliament met on the 11th of November.

Previous to this, however, Chatham had thought over several decisive measures, and sketched out a scheme of foreign and domestic policy, which marked how far above the intellectual grasp of most of his contemporaries was that of his mind. He determined, if possible, to form an alliance of European states against the Family Compact of the Bourbons in France and Spain; to reform the Government of Ireland, which greatly needed it, and that of India.

His first measure was to establish the Great Northern Alliance. He had obtained information of designs on the part of France and Spain to make a descent on our southern coast, and burn the dockyards of Portsmouth and Plymouth. Before quitting office, in 1761, he had planned this alliance, and he now made endeavours, but in vain, to induce Frederick of Prussia to come into such an alliance. Frederick was too sore at his treatment by the Cabinet of Lord Bute to listen to any proposals from England. Still, this would not have prevented Chatham from prosecuting the object of the alliance with Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Germany, and Holland, had he remained long enough in office. His name carried the utmost weight all over the Continent. His indomitable vigour, and his victorious arms, had been witnessed with wonder. In Paris, Horace Walpole found the news of his return to office produced a panic not to be described. The very mention of his name struck a silence into the most boastful or insolent company.

His enemies of his own house were not so easily intimidated. The summer had been an unprecedentedly rainy one. The crops had failed, and, in consequence of the scarcity and dearness of corn, there had been riots, especially in the western counties. The enraged people had burned down the ricks and barns of the farmers who were hoarding their corn for higher prices. Chatham instantly, that is, on the 10th of September, issued a proclamation against "forestallers and regraters." As the riots still increased, on the 24th he caused an Order in Council to be issued, laying an embargo on corn, and prohibiting the sailing of vessels already laden with wheat for foreign markets, the failure of crops being as great on the Continent as in England. He had been advised not to venture on so bold a measure without calling together Parliament; but he would not hear of it, lest it should look like timidity of counsel. It was a daring stretch of prerogative, and did not pass without severe censure. Chatham defended the measure: he quoted Locke in justification of such measures for the prevention of internal calamity and tumult; and he defended it further by the fact, that to have called together Parliament would have brought noblemen and gentlemen from their own neighbourhood, just when they were most needful there to maintain order. Lord Camden, the present Chancellor, and Lord Northington, the late one, stoutly supported him, Camden saying that it was a measure so moderate and beneficial, that a Junius Brutus might have trusted it to a Nero. Unfortunately, he added that, at worst, it was only "a forty days' tyranny"--a phrase which excited the utmost clamour, and was long remembered against him.

In the Christmas recess Chatham hastened to Bath, to improve his health for the campaign of the ensuing Session; but when Parliament met again, in the middle of January, 1767, Ministers were in consternation at his not reappearing. The Duke of Grafton and Beckford, who were his most devoted adherents, were thunderstruck. They found it impossible to keep in order the heterogeneous elements of the Cabinet. All the hostile qualities, which would have lain still under the hand of the great magician, bristled up, and came boldly out. The spirit of Bedford, of Newcastle, and of Rockingham, was active in their partisans, and gathered courage to do mischief. Lord Shelburne and the Duke of Grafton became estranged; Charles Townshend, who had as much ambition and eccentricity as talent, began to show airs, and aim at supremacy. Grafton implored Chatham to come to town if possible, and when that was declared impracticable, to allow him to go down, and consult with him in his sick chamber. But he was informed that the Minister was equally unable to move or to consult.

In these unfortunate circumstances, Charles Townshend, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposed the annual rate for the land-tax. He called for the amount of four shillings in the pound, the rate at which it had stood during the war; but he promised next year to reduce it to three. The country gentlemen grumbled, representing that in years of peace it was commonly reduced to three and sometimes to two. Grenville saw his advantage--his great opponent away and the landholders ready to rebel--and he moved that, instead of next year, the reduction should take place immediately. Dowdeswell supported him, and the amendment was carried by two hundred and six votes against a hundred and eighty-eight. The Opposition was astonished at its own success, and yet it need not have been; they who had to vote were chiefly land-owners, and men who did not like taxing themselves. As Lord Chesterfield observed, "All the landed gentlemen had bribed themselves with this shilling in the pound."

The Opposition was in ecstasies: it was the first defeat of Ministers on a financial question since the days of Walpole, and in our time the Chancellor would have resigned. The blow seemed to rouse Chatham. Three days after this event, on the 2nd of March, he arrived in town, though swathed in flannel, and scarcely able to move hand or foot. He declared that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and himself could not hold office together. A few days, and Townshend would have been dismissed from office, and the country might have escaped one of its greatest shocks; but, unfortunately, the malady of Chatham returned with redoubled violence, and in a new and more terrible form. He was obliged to refuse seeing any one on State affairs.

Such a calamity could not but be attended with the most mischievous consequences. Chatham was obliged to leave town, and seek retirement and a purer air at North End, near Hampstead. Townshend, who in a few days would have ceased to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, still retained office, and now showed more freely the wild and erratic character of his genius. He had lost half a million from the revenue by the reduction of the land-tax, and he pledged himself to the House to recover it from the Americans. He declared that he fully agreed with George Grenville, even in the principle of the Stamp Act, and ridiculed the distinction set up by Chatham, and admitted by Franklin, of the difference between internal and external taxation. This was language calculated to fire the already heated minds of the colonists, who, the more they reflected on Chatham's lofty language on the supreme authority of the mother country in the declaratory Act, the more firmly they repudiated it.

On the 11th of March, 1768, the Parliament, having nearly lived its term of seven years, was dissolved, and the most unprecedented corruption, bribery, and buying and selling of the people's right to their own House, came into play. The system originated by Walpole was now grown gigantic, and the sale and purchase of rotten boroughs was carried on in the most unblushing manner by candidates for Parliament, particularly aristocrats, who had managed to secure the old boroughs as their property, or to control them by their property. The Mayor and Aldermen of Oxford wrote to their members, long before the dissolution, to offer them the renewal of their seats for the sum of seven thousand five hundred pounds, which they meant to apply to the discharge of the debts of the corporation. The House arrested the Mayor and Aldermen, and clapped them in Newgate for five days; but on their humbly begging pardon at the bar of the House, they released them again to continue their base contract. Nay, whilst in prison, these corporation officials had sold their borough to the Duke of Marlborough and the Earl of Abingdon. Well might Chatham say this rotten part of the constitution wanted amputating. Where the people of corporations had votes, they were corrupted beyond all hope of resistance by the lavish bribes of the wealthy. The Earl Spencer spent seventy thousand pounds to secure the borough of Northampton for his nominee. There were attorneys acting then as now for such boroughs and such corrupt constituents, and they went about offering them to the highest bidders. One Hickey was notorious amongst this tribe; and above all, the borough of Shoreham distinguished itself by its venality, which assumed an aspect almost of blasphemy. The burgesses united in a club to share the proceeds of bribery equally amongst themselves, and styled themselves "the Christian Club," in imitation of the first Christians, who had all things in common! In the train of all this unprincipled corruption followed riots and tumults amongst the people, who were at once starving from the scarcity and dearness of bread, and infuriated with the drink with which they had been plied to serve the views of these base candidates. From the centre of this unholy chaos again rose the figure of John Wilkes, as the reputed champion of liberty.

He was advised to try Westminster, where Mr. John Churchill, the brother of his coadjutor, the satirist, and others, were in his interest, but he boldly struck for the City of London. There were seven candidates at the poll. Wilkes received one thousand two hundred and forty-seven votes, but he was still lowest on the poll. His friends, the mob, had no franchise.

Undaunted by his defeat, he immediately offered himself for Middlesex, and there, though the mob could not vote, they could act for him. They assembled in vast numbers, shouting, "Wilkes and Liberty!" They accompanied him to the poll; they stopped all the roads that led to the hustings at Brentford, suffering no one to pass who was not for Wilkes and liberty. His zealous supporters wore blue cockades or paper in their hats, inscribed "Wilkes and Liberty," or "No. 45." At night they assembled in the streets, insisting on people illuminating their houses in honour of Wilkes; abused all Scotsmen they met; scribbled "No. 45" on the panels of carriages as they passed; made the parties in them shout their favourite cry; broke the windows of Lord Bute at the West End, and of Harley, the Lord Mayor, at the Mansion House--the same Harley, a younger brother of the Earl of Oxford, who, as sheriff, had had to burn No. 45 of the North Briton in Cornhill. By such means the mob managed to return Wilkes at the very head of the poll.

This was wormwood to the Government; and Wilkes did not leave them many days in quiet. He had declared that, on returning to England, he would surrender himself under his outlawry on the first day of the next term. Accordingly, on the 20th of April, he presented himself to the Court of King's Bench, attended by his counsel, Mr. Glynn, and avowed himself ready to surrender to the laws. Lord Mansfield declared that he was not there by any legal process, and that the court could not take notice of him; but in a few days he was taken on another writ, and on the 8th of June he was again brought before Lord Mansfield, who declared the outlawry void through a flaw in the indictment; but the original verdict against him was confirmed, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for twenty-two calender months, and two fines of five hundred pounds each--one for the North Briton, and the other for the "Essay on Woman."

But these proceedings had not been effected without continual tumults. On the day that Wilkes was arrested by order of the King's Bench (the 27th of April), and, being refused bail, was sent to the King's Bench prison, the mob stopped the hackney coach as it proceeded over Westminster Bridge, took out the horses, and, with shouts of "Wilkes and Liberty!" drew him, not to the prison, but into the City, and took him into a tavern in Cornhill, where they kept him till midnight, declaring that he should enjoy his freedom in spite of the law. But Wilkes knew his position better than his champions, and, stealing away, he went voluntarily to the King's Bench, and surrendered himself. The next morning, when the mob knew that he was in prison, they assembled in furious throngs, and demanded, under the most terrible menaces, his liberation. They were at length dispersed by a detachment of Horse Guards, but not until the mob had abused and pelted the soldiers. These riots were kept up in different places from day to day; and on the 10th of May, twenty people were killed or wounded. When the soldiers who had fired on the rioters were brought to trial, they were not only acquitted, but the new Parliament voted loyal addresses on the occasion; and the Government, through Lord Barrington, the Secretary at War, and in the king's name, thanked publicly the officers and men for their signal service in protecting the public peace. This only added fresh fuel to the popular flame. To protect the public peace by shooting the people, and to assure the perpetrators of this outrage, as Lord Barrington did, that they should have every assistance from Government in defending them from all legal consequences, was rightly deemed most un-English conduct. The riots spread on all sides.

In October of this year Chatham at length resigned, and Parliament assembled on the 8th of November. The two great objects which engrossed the attention of Government in these days were North America and John Wilkes. The news of the Act imposing import duties had reawakened all the indignation of the people of Massachusetts. The Bostonians took immediate steps to realise their doctrines. In October, 1767, the chief men there met, and entered into a bond to purchase or wear no English manufacture, but to encourage domestic manufacture till these obnoxious import duties were withdrawn. The Massachusetts Assembly passed strong resolutions to the same effect, and Mr. James Otis, who had been most active in contending for them, exerted himself, through the press, to circulate them all over America. Causes were not long wanting for testing the resolution of the people of Massachusetts. The governor of that colony, Francis Bernard, was precisely the man to bring the matter to a crisis. He was able, determined, and of a hot temper. The people hated him, because they knew that he was writing home despatches full of the most unfavourable representations of their proceedings and designs. He refused to confirm the nomination of such members of the council as he knew were opposed to the new regulation; and Lord Shelburne supported him in his act. In consequence, the Assembly addressed a circular letter to all the other colonies, calling on them to unite in defeating the new duties. Bernard in vain opposed the resolution authorising this circular letter; and, on his report, Lord Hillsborough instructed him to demand from the Assembly the rescinding of the resolution. The Assembly refused, declaring that if a British Minister could control the votes of provincial Assemblies, liberty was but a mere show. Lord Hillsborough had instructed Bernard to dissolve the Assembly in case it refused to rescind the resolution. In the meantime, events took place which might have caused a more judicious man to pause ere he fulfilled these instructions.

On the 10th of June, 1768, a sloop called the Liberty, the property of Mr. John Hancock, of Boston, arrived in the harbour of that city laden with a cargo of Madeira wine. Resistance having been offered to the collection of the duties, the comptroller signalled the Romney man-of-war, lying at anchor off Boston, to take the sloop in tow and carry her under her guns. Crowds, meanwhile, had gathered on the quay, and commenced measures for resistance. The captain of the Romney sent out his boat's crew to haul in the sloop, and the mob attacked them with stones. The man-of-war's men, notwithstanding, executed their task, and carried the Liberty under the guns of the Romney.

But the success of the capture only intensified the commotion on shore. The tumult continued the next day; the mob broke the windows of the houses of the commissioners and the custom-house officers; they dragged the collector's boat on shore, and made a bonfire of it. These officers fled for their lives--first on board the Romney, and then to Castle William, a fortress at the mouth of the harbour. The third day was Sunday, and the Bostonians kept the day with the decorum customary with New Englanders; but on the Monday the riot was resumed with unabated vigour. Placards were carried round the town, calling on the Sons of Liberty to meet on Tuesday at ten o'clock. The Sons of Liberty were members of the non-importation associations, which had been established there, and in many parts of America. They had adopted that designation from a phrase in a speech of Colonel Barré, delivered in Parliament as early as 1765. Daughters of Liberty existed as well as Sons of Liberty, who mutually bound themselves to drink no tea, as well as to wear nothing imported after the passing of these duties. The Government retaliated by pouring troops into the town and summoning ships of war into the harbour.

Such, then, was the state of affairs at the meeting of Parliament in November, 1768. These events in America claimed immediate attention. The petition of the Convention of Massachusetts, on its arrival, was rejected indignantly. The Opposition called for the production of the correspondence with the civil and military authorities there on the subject, but this demand was negatived. In January, 1769, the House of Lords took up the subject in a lofty tone. They complained of the seditious and treasonable proceedings of the people of Boston and of Massachusetts generally; and the Duke of Bedford, affirming that it was clear that no such acts could be punished by the magistrates or tribunals of the colony, moved an address to the king recommending that the criminals guilty of the late outrages should be brought to England and tried there, according to an Act of the 35th of Henry VIII. On the 26th of January it was introduced to the Commons. There it excited a very spirited opposition. Pownall, who had himself been governor of Massachusetts, and knew the Americans well, accused the Lords of gross ignorance of the charters, usages, and character of the Americans; and Governor Johnstone as strongly condemned the motion, which was carried by one hundred and fifty-five to eighty-nine. On the 14th of March a petition from New York, denying their right to tax America in any way, was rejected, on the motion of Lord North; and, still later in the session, Governor Pownall moved that the revenue acts affecting America should be repealed forthwith. By this time everybody seemed to have become convinced of the folly of the attempt; but Ministers had not the magnanimity to act at once on the certainty that stared them in the face. Parliament was prorogued on the 9th of May, and did not meet again till the following January, as if there were nothing of moment demanding its attention.

With the same want of sagacity which was driving Ministers and Parliament to the loss of America, they were still persecuting Wilkes into popularity. On the 14th of November, 1768, Sir Joseph Mawby, member for Southwark, presented a petition from Wilkes, reciting all the proceedings of Government against him, and praying for his being heard at the bar of the House. Wilkes appeared before the House on the 31st of January, where he took exception to the word "blasphemous" as applied to the "Essay on Woman." Thurlow, afterwards Lord Chancellor, a most swearing, blaspheming man, protested that if the House did not declare it blasphemous, it would be a disgrace to it. However, the words "impious" and "obscene" were substituted. On the 1st of February the House determined that his petition was frivolous. The next day the House went into another charge against Wilkes. In the preceding April Lord Weymouth, previous to the riots in St. George's Fields, had issued a letter, as Secretary of State, to the magistrates of Lambeth, warning them of the danger of riots taking place in the endeavour to free Wilkes from prison, and offering them the aid of the military. Wilkes, while in the King's Bench, had obtained a copy of this letter, and sent it to the St. James's Chronicle with his own comments, styling it a "hellish project," and as the direct cause of that "horrid massacre." Weymouth complained to the House of Lords that this was a breach of privilege. A conference was had with the Commons; Wilkes was brought to the Bar, where Baldwin, the printer, had acknowledged the letter to be his, and then, so far from denying it, claimed the thanks of the country for having exposed that "bloody scroll." The Commons decided that he was guilty of an insolent and seditious libel, and on the following day, February 3rd, on the motion of Lord Barrington, he was expelled the House, by a majority of two hundred and nineteen to one hundred and thirty-seven. The king had directly asked for such a verdict by a letter to Lord North, declaring that Wilkes's expulsion was "highly expedient and must be effected."

The direct consequence was that he was immediately nominated again by the freeholders of Middlesex. Mr. Dingley, a mercantile speculator of London, offered himself as the Government candidate, but withdrew in a fright, and Wilkes was returned, without opposition, on the 16th of February, only thirteen days after his expulsion. The next day Lord Strange moved in the Commons, that John Wilkes, after having been expelled, was incapable of serving again in the present Parliament, and the case of Sir Robert Walpole was quoted in justification. Wilkes was a second time declared incapable of sitting, the election was declared void, and the public indignation rose higher than ever. The freeholders of Middlesex instantly met at the "London" Tavern, and subscribed on the spot two thousand pounds towards defraying the expenses of Wilkes's election. They then formed themselves into a "Society for Supporting the Bill of Rights," and a third time proposed Wilkes as their candidate. He was immediately returned for Middlesex, Dingley not finding any one who dared to nominate him. The next day, the 17th of March, the Commons again voted the election void.

With the beginning of this year, 1769, there commenced, under the signature of "Junius," the most remarkable series of political letters which ever appeared in our political literature. Time has not yet disclosed who this public censor was, though the most weighty reasons attach the belief to its having been Sir Philip Francis. Whoever he was, his terrible dissections of the conduct and characters of public men--the Duke of Grafton, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Mansfield, and others, not excepting the king himself--caused the most awful consternation amongst the ranks of the Ministry, and raised the highest enthusiasm in the public by the keen and caustic edge of his satire and his censure, by the clear tone of his reasonings, his obvious knowledge of secret Government movements, and the brilliant lustre of his style.

At the same unfortunate juncture, the king insisted on Lord North demanding from Parliament half a million for the liquidation of his debts, though he possessed a civil list of eight hundred thousand a-year. Simple as were the habits of George and his queen, the most reckless disregard of economy was practised in his household. No means were taken to check the rapacity of his tradesmen, and it was shown that even for the one item of the royal coach, in 1762, there had been charged seven thousand five hundred and sixty-two pounds! The Commons voted the half million, the public grumbled, and the popularity of Wilkes, the great champion of reform, rose higher than ever. A fourth time the freeholders of Middlesex nominated him as their candidate; and on this occasion a fresh Government nominee presented himself. This was Colonel Henry Lawes Luttrell. Two other candidates, encouraged by Luttrell's appearance, came forward; and on the 13th of April the list of the poll, which had gone off quietly, showed Wilkes one thousand one hundred and forty-three; Luttrell, two hundred and ninety-six; Whitaker, five; and Roach, none.

On the 15th of April, notwithstanding Luttrell's signal defeat, the House of Commons, on the motion of Onslow, son of the late Speaker, voted, after a violent debate, by a majority of fifty-four, that "Henry Lawes Luttrell, Esq., ought to have been returned for Middlesex." The debate was very obstinate. The whole of the Grenville interest, including Lord Temple, was employed against Government, and the decision was not made till three o'clock on Sunday morning.

To such a pitch of folly and despotism had the Grafton Ministry been driven by the events of the Session of 1769, by their conduct towards the Americans and Wilkes. The Rockinghams and Grenvilles were combined against the Grafton Cabinet, and thus acquiring popularity at its expense. Lord Camden, though still retaining his place, utterly disapproved of their proceedings. The people everywhere held meetings to express their total loss of confidence in both the Ministers and Parliament, and to pray the king to dissolve the latter. In the autumn, the action of Wilkes against Lord Halifax, for the seizure of his papers, was tried, and the jury gave him four thousand pounds damages.

But, gloomy as was the aspect of affairs at home, they were far more so in America. There, the insane conduct of the Government had gone on exasperating and alienating the colonists. True, the Cabinet, on the close of Parliament, held a meeting to consider what should be done regarding America. Grafton proposed to repeal the obnoxious duties at the commencement of the next session, but he was overruled on the motion of Lord North, and it was agreed to repeal all but the tea duties. Within a few days after the close of the session, therefore, Lord Hillsborough wrote this news in a circular to the governors of the American colonies. As was certain, the partial concession produced no effect, the principle being still retained in the continued tea duty. Moreover, Hillsborough's circular was composed in such harsh and uncourteous terms, that it rather augmented than assuaged the excitement.

In Massachusetts the colonists were more exasperated against Governor Bernard, on account of his letters reflecting on the Bostonians in the matter of the late riots, these letters having been laid before Parliament, and copies of them by some means procured and sent on by their agents. They declared that it was beneath their dignity to deliberate in the midst of an armed force, and requested Bernard to withdraw the troops, but he refused; and they, on their part, declined to vote supplies, on which he adjourned them to Cambridge. There, however, as Cambridge was only separated from Boston by an arm of the sea, they continued to protest against an armed force, as an invasion of the national rights of the colonists, and highly dangerous. Bernard soon announced to them his intention to sail for England, to lay the state of the colony before the king, and the house immediately voted a petition to his Majesty, praying him to keep him from coming back again. Bernard then called upon them to refund the money expended for the quartering of the troops; but that they pronounced quite as unreasonable as the Stamp Act, and finding them utterly intractable, Bernard prorogued the Assembly, and quitted the colony, leaving the administration in the hands of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson.

Yet, in that blind and defiant spirit, which he continued to show till he had lost the colonies, George created Bernard a baronet on his reaching home, for having, in effect, brought Massachusetts to the verge of rebellion; and, to show his emphatic sense of these services, he himself paid all the expenses of the patent.

Parliament assembled on the 9th of January, 1770. People had been surprised at the unusual delay in summoning it, considering the critical state of America, but they were much more surprised when the subject put foremost in the king's speech was a lamentation over the murrain which had appeared amongst horned cattle during the recess, and which Ministers had taken some measures to stop without calling together Parliament. It was true that he afterwards alluded to the state of affairs in America, and trusted some means would be devised by Parliament to appease the irritation. But whilst war itself appeared imminent there, whilst the whole country at home was in a state of high discontent, and the Spitalfields weavers were at this moment in a state of open riot, the idea of giving the chief place in the royal speech to horned cattle caused a burst of universal ridicule. It was thenceforth called the "Horned Cattle Session." Junius launched one of his fierce missives at the Duke of Grafton, observing, "Whilst the whole kingdom was agitated with anxious expectation on one great point, you meanly evaded the question, and, instead of the explicit firmness and decision of a king, gave us nothing but the misery of a ruined grazier."

Chatham had begun to ponder the proceedings of Ministers towards America and towards Wilkes, or rather his constituents, as soon as the returning activity of his mind permitted him. The conduct of the Duke of Grafton, who had taken the lead during his retirement, did not escape his censure. He had too easily fallen into the demand of the Cabinet for severe measures in both those cases. No sooner, therefore, did Chatham appear than he launched the whole thunder of his indignation, and such was still his power that he shattered the Cabinet to atoms. No sooner was the Address to the king moved and seconded, than he rose and passed, with some expressions of contempt, from the mention of the horned cattle to the more important topics. He drew a dismal picture both of the domestic condition and the foreign relations of the country. He glanced at the manner in which the Treaty of Paris had been made, the abandonment of the King of Prussia, and the consequent isolated condition of the kingdom, without a friend or an ally. But bad as the external affairs of the nation were, he described the internal as far worse. There everything was at discount. The people were partly starving and wholly murmuring; the constituencies were alarmed at the invasion of their rights in the case of John Wilkes; and the colonies were on the very edge of rebellion. Such was the condition to which the Government in a short time had reduced the commonweal. More than all did he condemn the policy pursued towards America. He protested against the term "unwarrantable," as applied to the conduct of the colonists; proposed to substitute the word "dangerous." He owned that he was partial towards the Americans, and strongly advocated a system of mildness and indulgence in their case.

As for Wilkes, he counselled them earnestly to introduce a paragraph into their Address to the king, stating their conviction that the chief discontents of the nation arose from the violation of the rights of representation in his expulsion from the Commons. "I am," said the eloquent earl, "neither moved by his private vices nor by his public merits. In his person, though he were the worst of men, I contend for the safety and security of the best; and God forbid that there should be a power in this country of measuring the civil rights of the subject by his moral character, or by any other rule than the fixed laws of the land."

This was going to the very heart of the question with that clear, searching sense for which Chatham was so distinguished. Lord Chancellor Camden, who had himself a strong and honest intellect, but not the moral courage of Chatham, had retained the Great Seal, though disapproving of the measures of his colleagues. Emboldened by the words of his friend, he now rose and expressed his regret for having so long suppressed his feelings. But, he added, "I will do so no longer; I will openly and boldly speak my sentiments. I now proclaim to the world that I entirely coincide in the opinions expressed by my noble friend, whose presence again reanimates us, touching this unconstitutional and illegal vote of the House of Commons.... By this violent and tyrannical conduct Ministers have alienated the minds of the people from his Majesty's Government--I had almost said from his Majesty's person!" After these words Camden could no longer remain Lord Chancellor.

The Marquis of Granby resigned his posts as Paymaster-General of the Ordnance and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, much to the annoyance and against the entreaties of the king and the Duke of Grafton. Camden would have done the same, but as the Ministers were anxious to be rid of him, Chatham and his friends counselled him to remain, and put the Ministry to the odium of dismissing him. This was done, and thus two of the men most popular with the public--Granby and Camden--were lost to the Administration. The Seals, as Lord Shelburne had predicted, went a-begging. Charles Yorke, second son of the former Lord Chancellor, Hardwicke, had all his life been hankering after this prize, but as he was closely pledged to the party of Lord Rockingham, he most reluctantly declined it. Three days subsequently, however, the king, after the levee, suddenly called him into his closet, and so pressingly entreated him to accept the Seals and rescue his sovereign from an embarrassment, that he gave way. This was on the 18th of January. He was to be raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Morden, but, on encountering the keen reproaches of his party at Lord Rockingham's, he went home and committed suicide. The Seals were then successively offered to Mr. de Grey, the Attorney-General, to Sir Eardley Wilmot, and Lord Mansfield, who refused them, and they were obliged to be put in commission, Lord Mansfield consenting to occupy the woolsack, as Speaker to the House of Lords, till that was done. After some time, Sir Sidney Stafford Smythe, one of the barons of the Exchequer, the Honourable Henry Bathurst, one of the justices of the Common Pleas, and Sir Richard Aston, one of the justices of the King's Bench, were named the commissioners.

In the House of Commons, too, the Speaker, Sir John Cust, was removed by death at the same moment, and Sir Fletcher Norton was elected in his place. On the 22nd of January, the same day that Sir Fletcher Norton was made Speaker of the House of Commons, the Marquis of Rockingham moved in the Lords for an inquiry into the state of the nation. The crumbling down of the Cabinet continued. James Grenville resigned; Dunning, the Solicitor-General, and General Conway, followed; and on the very day of Lord Rockingham's motion, the Duke of Grafton himself laid down the Seals. The whole of his administration had thus vanished, like a mere fog ministry, at the first reappearance of the luminary, Chatham.

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IX. REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued)

Lord North--He forms a Ministry--Chatham declaims against Secret Influence--Grenville's Election Committee--Lord North's Conciliatory Measures--Determination of the Bostonians--The Boston Massacre--Trial of the Soldiers--Apparent Success of North's Measures--Affair of the Falkland Islands--Promptitude of the Ministry--The Quarrel composed--Trials of Woodfall and Almon--The Right of Parliamentary Reporting--Strengthening of the Ministry--Quarrels in the City--The Royal Marriage Act--Fate of the Queen of Denmark--Anarchical Condition of Poland--Interference of Russia--Deposition of Poniatowski--Frederick's Scheme of Partition--It is ratified--Inquiry into Indian Affairs--Lord North's Tea Bill--Lord Dartmouth and Hutchinson--The Hutchinson Letters--Dishonourable Conduct of Franklin--Establishment of Corresponding Committees--Burning of the Gaspee--Destruction of the Tea--Franklin avows the Publication of the Letters--Wedderburn's Speech--The Boston Port Bill--The Massachusetts Government Bill--The Coils of Coercion--Virginia joins Massachusetts--Gage Dissolves the Boston Assembly--He fortifies Boston Neck--The General Congress--A Declaration of Rights--The Assembly at Concord--They enrol Militia--Seizure of Ammunition and Arms--Meeting of Parliament--Chatham's conciliatory Speech--His Bill for the Pacification of the Colonies--Its Fate--Lord North's Proposal--Burke's Resolutions--Prorogation of Parliament--Beginning of the War.

In this utter desertion, the king prevailed on Lord North, who was already Chancellor of the Exchequer, to accept Grafton's post of First Lord of the Treasury, with the Premiership. Lord North, eldest son of the Earl of Guildford, was a man of a remarkably mild and pleasant temper, of sound sense, and highly honourable character. He was ungainly in his person and plain of countenance, but he was well versed in the business of Parliament, and particularly dexterous in tagging to motions of the Opposition some paragraph or other which neutralised the whole, or turned it even against them. He was exceedingly near-sighted, so much so, that he once carried off the wig of the old Secretary of the Navy, who sat near him in the House. For the rest, he was of so somnolent a nature that he was frequently seen nodding in the House when Opposition members were pouring out all the vials of their wrath on his head. He thought himself a Whig, but if we are to class him by his principles and his acts of administration, we must pronounce him a Tory.

The Ministry, as reconstructed, consisted of Lord North, First Lord of the Treasury; the Great Seal was in commission; Granby's places, the Ordnance and Commander of the Forces, were still unsupplied; so was the Duke of Manchester's old post of Lord of the Bed-Chamber. The Earl of Halifax became Lord Privy Seal; the Earl of Pembroke became a Lord of the Bed-Chamber; the Earl of Waldegrave, Master of the Horse to the queen; Sir Gilbert Elliot, Treasurer of the Navy; Charles James Fox became a junior Lord of the Admiralty; Admiral Holborne another; Mr. Welbore Ellis became one of the Vice-Treasurers of Ireland; and Thurlow was appointed Solicitor-General, in place of Dunning.

Lord North soon found himself briskly assailed in both Lords and Commons. In the former, Chatham was not so happy in amalgamating the parties of Rockingham and Grenville as he hoped; but he had staunch friends and oppositionists in Lords Camden, Shelburne, and Stanhope, and in the Commons he was as warmly supported by Barré, Beckford, Calcraft, and Dunning. On the 2nd of March a motion was also made in the Lords for an Address to the king, praying him to increase the number of seamen in the navy; and it was made to introduce strong censures on the dismissal of able officers for their votes in Parliament. On this occasion Chatham loudly reiterated the old charge of the royal councils being influenced by favourites. "A long train of these practices," he said, "has convinced me that there is something behind the throne greater than the throne itself." He referred to Mazarin, of France; and as Bute was just at this period gone to Turin, he added, "Mazarin abroad is Mazarin still!" It is not to be supposed that Bute had any secret influence whatever at this period; but the people still believed that he had, and that two men especially were his agents with the king--Bradshaw, commonly called "the cream-coloured parasite," and Dyson, both placemen and members of the Commons. Probably, Chatham had a secondary object--to punish these men, who with Rigby, the parasite of the Duke of Bedford, were continually running about endeavouring to depreciate the efforts of the more competent, to whom they were pigmies, saying, "Only another mad motion by the mad Earl of Chatham." Grafton, though now out of office, repelled the insinuation of secret influence with indignation. This charge of Chatham's was followed up, four days after, by a most outspoken remonstrance from the Corporation of London. It was carried up to St. James's on the 14th of March by Beckford, the Lord Mayor, and two hundred and twenty Common Councilmen and other officers. Beckford read the Address, which charged secret counsellors, and a corrupt majority of the House of Commons, with depriving the people of their rights. It declared that the House of Commons did not represent the people, and called upon the king to dissolve it. His Majesty received the Address with manifest signs of displeasure, and the courtiers, who stood round, with actual murmurs and gesticulations of anger.

At this crisis George Grenville brought in and carried through a measure, which showed how useful he might have been, had he never been raised out of his proper element to rule and alienate colonies. He was now fast sinking into the grave, though but fifty-eight years of age. This measure was a bill to transfer the trial of controverted elections from the whole House of Commons to a Select Committee of it. Ever since the famous Aylesbury case, the whole House had taken the charge of examining all petitions against the return of candidates and deciding them. This was a great obstruction of business; and Grenville now proposed to leave the inquiry and decision to the Select Committee, which was to be composed of fifteen members of the House, thirteen of whom were to be chosen by the contesting claimants for the seat, out of a list of forty-five, elected by ballot from the whole House. The other two were to be named, one each, by the contesting candidates. The Committee was empowered to examine papers, call and swear witnesses, and, in fact, to exercise all the authority previously wielded by the whole House. It was opposed by Welbore Ellis, Rigby, Dyson, and Charles James Fox, not yet broken from his office shell into a full-fledged patriot. It was, however, carried, and being supported in the Lords by Lord Mansfield, who on this occasion manifested an unusual disregard of his party principles, it was passed there too.

Whilst Chatham was heading the Opposition in a determined onslaught on the Government, the latter were also compelled to face the awkward American question. Great hopes had been entertained that the people of Boston would be much calmer after the departure of Governor Bernard. Hutchinson, the Deputy-Governor, was not only an American, but a man of a mild temper. But the temper of the Bostonians was now so much excited, that the leaders of the non-importation Act were more vehement than ever. The English merchants presented a petition to Parliament showing that, in consequence of the import duties and the combinations of the colonists to resist them, the exports from England to these colonies had fallen off in 1769 by the amount of seven hundred and forty thousand pounds; that the revenue received from duties paid in America had fallen off from one hundred and ten thousand pounds per annum to thirty thousand pounds.

It was in these grave circumstances that Lord North, on the 5th of March, 1770, brought forward his bill, based on the terms of Lord Hillsborough's letter to the American governors, to repeal all the import duties except that on tea. This was one of those half-and-half measures which never succeed; it abandoned the bulk of the duties, but retained the really obnoxious thing--the principle. Grenville very truly told them that they should retain the whole, or repeal the whole. Lord Barrington and Welbore Ellis, in their dogged Toryism, protested against repealing a single item of them; and the Opposition, Barré, Conway, Meredith, Pownall, etc., as earnestly entreated them to remove the duties altogether, and with them all cause of irritation. The motion for leave to bring in the bill was carried by two hundred and four votes to one hundred and forty-two. During the debates it was shown that, during the financial year, the American tea duties had produced--not the calculated ten or twelve thousand, but less than three hundred pounds! For such a sum did our legislators risk a civil war. As a last effort on this question at this time, the Opposition, on the 1st of May, called for the correspondence with America; and, on the 9th, Burke moved nine resolutions on the general topic. They were not only negatived, but a similar motion, introduced into the Peers by the Duke of Richmond, met the same fate.

At the very time that these measures were occupying the British Parliament, the Bostonians were driving affairs to a crisis. In nearly all the seaports committees were in active operation for examining all cargoes of ships, and reporting the result. These committees also kept a keen observation on each other, and visited publicly any that appeared lukewarm. Boston, as usual, distinguished itself most prominently in this business. Regular meetings were held in Faneuil Hall, and votes passed denouncing all who dared to import the prohibited goods. Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson exerted himself to form an association amongst the traders in opposition to these anti-importers, but he tried in vain. They insisted that the merchants who had imported goods in their shops and warehouses should be compelled to ship them back to those who had sent them. One merchant, more stubborn than the rest, was immediately waited on by a deputation, headed by an axeman and a carpenter, as if prepared to behead and bury him; and he was told that a thousand men awaited his decision, and they could not be answerable for his safety if he refused to comply.

The animosity against the soldiers at Boston was actively kept up. The sentinel could not stand at his post without insult. Every day menaced a conflict. A fictitious account of an affray between the soldiers and the people of New York was circulated at Boston, in which the soldiers were represented as beaten. This gave impetus to the aggressive temper of the Bostonians. On the 2nd of March, a soldier, insulted by the men at Gray's rope-walk, resented it; they came to blows, and the soldier was overpowered. He fetched up some of his comrades, who, in their turn, beat and chased the rope-makers through the town. The passions of the mob were inflamed, and they began to arm themselves for an attack on the soldiery. In a few days the crowd assembled and assaulted a party of them in Dock Square. The officer prudently withdrew them to the barracks. As the evening advanced, the mob increased. They cried, "Turn out, and do for the soldiers!" They attacked and insulted a sentinel at the Custom House. A party of soldiers was sent by Captain Preston to the officers on duty to protect the man. The mob pelted them with pieces of wood, lumps of ice, etc., and denounced them as "cowards," "red-lobster rascals," and the like. The soldiers stood to defend the Custom House till they were fiercely attacked, and at length they fired in self-defence, killed three persons, and wounded several others--one mortally.

To prevent further carnage, a committee of the townsmen waited on the governor and council, and prevailed on them to remove the soldiers from the town to Castle William. The successful rioters carried the bodies of the killed in procession, denounced the soldiers as murderers, and spread the most exaggerated accounts of the affray through the newspapers, under the name of "the massacre." Captain Preston and his men were arrested and put upon their trials before a jury of the irate townsmen. Nobody, for a time, would act as counsel for the defence; but at length John Adams, a young lawyer, undertook the office, and made the case so plain, that not only Captain Preston, but all the soldiers were acquitted, except two, who had fired without orders, and these were convicted only of manslaughter.

The arrival of the news of Lord North's repeal of all the duties, except tea, produced little effect on the minds of the people of Boston. They declared that the unconstitutional principle was the real offence, and that it was still retained. The people of New York, however, had long inclined to gentler measures. They agreed to import all other articles except tea. Pennsylvania and other colonies followed their example; and they declared that they who wanted tea must smuggle it. The more fiery patriots declared against this lukewarmness; but the desire for the English goods was so great that, during the years 1770 and 1771, the importations were larger than they had ever been. Nevertheless, though the colonies appeared returning to order and obedience, the efforts of the Republican party never relaxed, and, especially in Massachusetts, there was a tone of sullen discontent. "Liberty poles" were still erected; exciting harangues were delivered on the anniversary of "the massacre," and the Assembly continued to manifest a stubborn resistance to the will of the Lieutenant-Governor.

During the recess of Parliament, a dispute occurred with Spain regarding the Falkland Islands, which led to the very verge of war. In 1764 the French, under Bougainville, made a settlement on Falkland Sound; but Spain putting in a claim that these isles were part of her South American territory, Choiseul, the French Minister, abandoned the settlement, and the Spaniards changed its name from Port Louis to Port Soledad. The very next year, 1765, Commodore Byron was sent to form a settlement on another of the islands, which he named Port Egmont, in honour of Lord Egmont, First Lord of the Admiralty. Such were the distant islets to which, in 1769, Spain began to assert her claim. The Governor of Port Soledad sent repeated messages to Captain Hunt, of the Tamar, stationed at Port Egmont, requiring the abandonment of the place. When the notices were succeeded by threats, Captain Hunt sailed home to lay the matter before his Government. He landed at Portsmouth in June, 1770, and made known the Spanish interference to the Cabinet. Meanwhile, the Spaniards, taking advantage of Hunt's absence, had, about the time that he arrived in England, dispatched to the Falklands Buccarelli, the Governor of Buenos Ayres, with five frigates and one thousand six hundred men. Having entered the port on pretence of wanting water, and finding the Tamar absent, and only two armed sloops there, and a mere handful of soldiers, Buccarelli landed his force, and, after the firing of a few shots for form's sake, the English surrendered, and were permitted to depart with all the honours of war.

The excitement, both at Court and in the country, was far beyond the then apparent value of the islands; but there had been an insult to the British flag, and both Government and Opposition demanded expiation. Lord North displayed a bold and determined tone on the occasion. Orders were sent over to the British ambassador, at Madrid, to demand an immediate disavowal of Buccarelli's act, and instant measures were taken for war, in case of refusal. Ships were refitted, their commanders named, stores were put on board, and orders for pressing men, according to the custom of the time, were issued. But in London these preparations met with resistance from the opposition spirit of the Corporation. Things, however, seemed tending strongly towards war. Our Chargé d'affaires at Madrid, in absence of the ambassador, was Mr. Harris, the son of the author of "Hermes." He was but a youth of four-and-twenty, but already displayed much of the talent which raised him to the title of Malmesbury. He wrote home that the King of Spain and some of his Ministers were averse from the idea of war, and unprepared for it; but that others were influenced by Choiseul, the French Premier, and demanded a vigorous attack on England.

But the King of France did not share in the feeling of Choiseul. He wrote to the King of Spain about this time, "My Minister wishes for war, but I do not!" In fact, changes had taken place in the Court of France which were about to precipitate Choiseul from his long-enjoyed favour. Madame de Pompadour was dead, and the king had become deeply enamoured of Madame du Barry. Choiseul was impolitic enough to despise her influence, and treated her with undisguised hauteur. He soon felt the consequence in an order from the king to resign his office and retire to his estate at Chanteloupe, in Touraine. The shock to the insolent Minister, who had so long ruled absolutely in the French Court, was the more unlooked for, because he thought himself now all the more safe from having secured the marriage of the king's heir, his eldest grandson, with the Austrian archduchess, Marie Antoinette. Choiseul was succeeded by the triumvirate d'Aiguillon, as Foreign Minister; Terray, as Minister of Finance; and Maupeou, as Minister of Jurisprudence; but all subject to the supreme influence of Madame du Barry. Louis XV. thenceforth became a cipher.

The spirit of Choiseul having departed from the French administration, and the king having so unequivocally expressed his intention not to go to war, the Spanish Court hastened to lower its tone and offer conciliatory terms. In December they had proposed, through Prince de Masserano, to disavow the expedition of Buccarelli, if the English Court would disown the menaces of Captain Hunt. This was promptly refused, and orders were sent to Mr. Harris to quit the capital of Spain. He set out in January, 1771, but was speedily recalled; the expedition of Buccarelli was disavowed; the settlement of Port Egmont was conceded, whilst the main question as to the right of either party to the Falklands at large was left to future discussion. So little value, however, did Britain attach to the Falkland Isles, that it abandoned them voluntarily two years afterwards. For many years they were forsaken by both nations; but in 1826 the Republic of Buenos Ayres adopted them as a penal colony, and in 1833 the British finally took possession of them.

Whilst these events had been progressing, the Ministry had entered into a combat with the great unknown political essayist, Junius. Junius had advanced from Sir William Draper to the Duke of Grafton, and from the Duke of Grafton to the king in his sweeping philippics. For these daring censures, Woodfall, the printer of the Public Advertiser, was tried, and also Almon, the publisher of the London Museum, a monthly periodical, for reprinting the libel there. Almon was convicted of publishing, and sentenced to pay a fine of ten marks, and give security for his good behaviour for two years, himself in four hundred pounds, and two sureties in two hundred pounds each. He moved in vain for a new trial. Woodfall was convicted of "printing and publishing only;" but he obtained an order for a new trial, on the ground of the phrase "only" being ambiguous. But the circumstance which excited the attention and turned the resentment of both Liberal statesmen and the people was, that Lord Mansfield on these trials had instructed the juries to confine themselves to the facts alone, and to leave the question of legality to the judges. This was properly declared a dangerous infringement of the rights of juries, and calculated to make their verdicts merely the servile echoes of the dicta of the judges. Lord Chatham, on the 28th of November, denounced in the Peers this dictation of the judge to the juries. Serjeant Glynn, at the same time, moved in the Commons for an inquiry into the administration of justice in Westminster Hall, where such unconstitutional instructions could be given. This occasioned a warm debate, in which Burke, Dunning, and others, ably defended the public rights. The motion was negatived.

The year 1771 opened in circumstances which greatly diminished the interest in Parliamentary proceedings. As all reporting was excluded from the House of Lords, the chief speakers there felt that they were no longer addressing the nation, but merely a little knot of persons in a corner, and consequently the stimulus of both fame and real usefulness was at an end. In the Commons, the desire of the Ministry to reduce that popular arena to the same condition of insignificance produced a contest with the City as foolish and mischievous in its degree as the contests then going on with Wilkes and America. George Onslow, nephew of the late Speaker, and member for Guildford, moved that several printers, who had dared to report the debates of the House of Commons, should be summoned to the bar to answer for their conduct. Accordingly, these mediums of communication between the people and their representatives were summoned and reprimanded on their knees. One of their number, named Miller, however, declared that he was a liveryman of London, and that any attempt to arrest him would be a breach of the privileges of the City. The Serjeant-at-Arms dispatched a messenger to apprehend this sturdy citizen, and bring him before the House; but, instead of succeeding, the Parliamentary messenger was taken by a City constable, and carried before Brass Crosby, the Lord Mayor. With the Lord Mayor sat Alderman Wilkes and Alderman Oliver. It was delightful work to Wilkes thus to set at defiance the House of Commons, which had made such fierce war on him. The Lord Mayor, accordingly, was fully confirmed in his view that the messenger of the Commons had committed a flagrant violation of the City charter, in endeavouring to lay hands on one of its liverymen within its own precincts, and they held the messenger accordingly to bail. The House of Commons was fired with indignation at this contemptuous disregard of their dignity. They passed a resolution, by a large majority, ordering the Lord Mayor and the two aldermen to appear at their bar. Wilkes bluntly refused to attend the House in any shape but as a recognised member of it. Crosby pleaded a severe fit of the gout; and Oliver, though he appeared in his place, refused to make any submission whatever, but told them he defied them. The House, in its blind anger, resolved that Oliver should be committed to the Tower, and Crosby to the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms. But Crosby declared that he would not accept this indulgence at the hands of the House, but would share the incarceration of his honourable friend; and he was accordingly sent also to the Tower. The people out of doors were in the highest state of fury. They greeted the City members on their way to and from the House, but they hooted and pelted the Ministerial supporters. Charles James Fox, still a Government man, as all his family had been, was very roughly handled; Lord North's carriage was dashed in, and himself wounded; and had he not been rescued by a popular member, Sir William Meredith, he would probably have lost his life. The Commons had engaged in a strife with the City, in which they were signally beaten, and no further notice being taken of the printers, from this time forward the practice of reporting the debates of Parliament became recognised as an established privilege of the people, though formally at the option of the House; and so far now from members or Ministers fearing any evil from it, the most conservative of them would be deeply mortified by the omission of their speeches in the reports. The termination of the Session also opened the doors of the Tower, and liberated the Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver. They were attended from the Tower to the Mansion House by the Corporation in their robes, where a banquet celebrated their restoration to freedom, and the populace displayed their sympathy by bonfires and illuminations.

During the recess considerable changes took place in the Cabinet. Lord Halifax died on the 8th of June; the Earl of Suffolk succeeded him as Secretary of State, and the remainder of the Grenville party thereupon supported the Ministry. Suffolk introduced his friend, Lord Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, to the post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with an augmented salary. The administration of Lord North was considerably strengthened, too, by the abilities of Thurlow, as Attorney-General, and of Wedderburn, as Solicitor-General. But the addition to the Cabinet of Lord North which occasioned the greatest surprise, was that of the Duke of Grafton. He received the Privy Seal.

During the recess a violent quarrel had been going on in the City, which showed the disorganisation of the Opposition. Wilkes had offered himself as sheriff; but Alderman Oliver, who had lately been in prison for his bold conduct in the affair of Miller, the printer, had refused to support the claim of Wilkes. In fact, not only he, but the Lord Mayor, Alderman Townshend, and Sawbridge, were beginning to see through Wilkes. Oliver went further--he refused to serve as the other sheriff with Wilkes. Government availed itself of these divisions to defeat the election of Wilkes. Alderman Bull became the second candidate with Wilkes, and Government induced their party in the City to nominate Aldermen Plumbe and Kirkman in opposition to them. Wilkes would probably have been defeated, especially as Oliver finally came forward, supported by all the eloquence and exertions of John Horne. But, fortunately for Wilkes and his fellow-candidate, Bull, a letter sent by the Government agent to a Mr. Smith in the City was misdelivered to another Mr. Smith, a supporter of Wilkes and Bull, announcing the exertions that Government would make in support of their men, Plumbe and Kirkman. This letter was immediately published, and, alarming all the enemies of Government, made them rally round Wilkes and Bull, who were accordingly elected.

On the 21st of January, 1772, the king opened Parliament, and the two divisions of the Opposition under the leadership of Rockingham and Chatham were found to be divided and dispirited. The chief proceeding of this session was one of a very remarkable character. The boasted morals of George III. and of his queen had not defended his family from gross crimes and corruptions. Very notorious was the life of his brother, the Duke of Cumberland. Amongst his licentious intrigues was one with Henrietta Vernon, Lady Grosvenor, a young and beautiful woman, whom he seduced, following her into Cheshire, when her husband took her from town, and meeting her in various disguises. In 1770 Lord Grosvenor brought an action against him and obtained a verdict of ten thousand pounds. With a rapidity of fickleness almost unexampled, he was immediately afterwards paying suit to Mrs. Horton. Cumberland went over to Calais with Mrs. Horton, and there married her according to the rites of the Church of England (October 2, 1771). The Duke of Gloucester also now confessed to a secret marriage (September 6, 1766) with the Countess Dowager Waldegrave. A Bill was brought into Parliament in 1772, since well known as the Royal Marriage Act, by which every prince or princess, descendant of George II., except only the issue of princes married abroad, was prohibited from marrying until the age of twenty-five without the king's consent. After that age they might apply to the Privy Council, and if within a year of such announcement both Houses of Parliament should not express disapprobation of the intended marriage, it might then be lawfully solemnised. The Bill did not pass without violent opposition.

But these were by no means the total of the royal troubles at this period. The youngest and most beloved of George III.'s sisters, Caroline Matilda, had been married to Christian VII. of Denmark. This young man was little better than an idiot, and the poor princess was married to him at the age of sixteen. The marriage of this young couple, and their ascent to the throne, were nearly simultaneous; and, contrary to the usual custom of a monarch, it was deemed advisable that he should travel. In his tour he fell in with the celebrated Struensee, a young physician of Altona. Christian VII., like all weak monarchs, must have favourites. Struensee speedily became the perfect master of Christian's mind and actions, and on their return to Copenhagen he was raised to the rank of count, and soon after was made Prime Minister. His enemies were of course numerous, and scandal soon connected his name with that of the queen. All this especially favoured the plans of the base queen dowager, who, in league with the hostile nobles, feigned a plot against the king; obtained from him, in his bed at midnight, an order for the arrest of the queen, Struensee, and others. The queen was seized half dressed. Struensee was executed with especial barbarities; but the King of England interfered to save his sister, and to procure the succession to her son. The unhappy young queen, however, was separated for ever from her two children, and conveyed to Zell, in Hanover--the same castle or prison where the unhappy wife of George I. had pined away her life. There she died after a few years, protesting her innocence, though Struensee had confessed his guilt.

From the affairs of the royal family, we turn to a more important subject, the partition of Poland. Poland, lying contiguous to Russia, had for ages been in a condition calculated to attract the cupidity of ambitious neighbours. Its nobles usurped all authority. They kept the whole mass of the people in hopeless serfdom; they usurped the whole of the land; they elected their own king, and were too fond of power themselves to leave him more than a puppet in their hands. To make the condition of the country worse, it was violently divided on the subject of religion. One part of the nobles consisted of Roman Catholics, another of what were called Dissidents, made up of members of the Greek Church, and Protestants, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Arians. Although by what was called the Pacta Conventa the Dissidents had been admitted to an equality of rights, this was totally disregarded by the overbearing Roman Catholics; and in 1736 the Pacta Conventa was formally abolished. Every Dissident was, by this measure, for ever excluded from government, and from all interest in it.

Thus the whole country was torn by religious animosity; the nobles were insolent to the Crown, and the people were nothing. Such was the divided condition of Poland which led to its dismemberment. All nobility of mind was destroyed; pride and oppression were the inseparable consequences of such a system. There was no middle class, no popular class; it was a country of lords and slaves--of one class domineering over the other. The Greek Catholics were the Dissidents, and the Dissidents sought aid from Russia--which was also Greek in religion--and, to insure this aid, condescended to the lowest arts of solicitation, to the practice of fawning, stooping, and cringing to the great barbarous power of Russia on one side, and to the equally barbarous power of Turkey on the other. The nobles could bring large bodies of cavalry into the field, as many, at times, as a hundred thousand; but as they had no free people, and dreaded to arm their slaves, they had little or no infantry, except such as they hired, and even this was in no condition to withstand the heavy masses of Russian infantry, much less such armies as Prussia or Austria might be tempted to bring against them.

From the moment that Russia was called in, under the pretext of maintaining order, she became, or aimed to become, the dominant power there. She pressed on the whole line of the Polish frontier with her armies, inundated the kingdom with her troops, and levied contributions for their support as if she had been in a conquered country. From that hour, too, the kings were elected rather by foreign armies than by the Poles themselves. Stanislaus Poniatowski, the present king, was the nominee of Catherine of Russia, whose lover he had been till superseded by Orloff. She had placed him on the throne by force of arms, and he was incapable of doing anything except through her power.

Some faint endeavours were made to shake off the yoke. Encouraged by France, they summoned the Turks to their aid and cut to pieces several detachments of the Russians. They proclaimed Poniatowski deposed, and called on the people to aid them to drive out the invaders. But the people, long used to oppression from their own lords, did not answer to the call. In France, Choiseul had been hurled from power, and France left the Poles to their fate. It was now that Frederick of Prussia proposed to Austria to combine with Russia and share Poland between them. At this robber proposition, so in character with Frederick, who had all his life been creating a kingdom by plundering his neighbours, Maria Theresa at first exclaimed in horror. But she was now old and failing, and she gave way, declaring that, long after she was dead and gone, people would see what would happen from their having broken through everything which had, till then, been deemed just and holy. Frederick of Prussia took the surest way to compel the Austrians to come in for a share of the spoils of Poland. He marched a body of soldiers out of Silesia--the territory which he had rent from Austria--into Posen, and Austria, not to be behind, had marched another army into the Carpathian Mountains.

In vain did Poniatowski remonstrate; he had no means of resistance. The Turks could no longer defend themselves from Russian invasion, much less assist Poland. They applied to Frederick to intercede with Catherine for peace for them. Nothing could so entirely suit Frederick's plans. He sent Prince Henry of Prussia to negotiate with Catherine, who took the opportunity to represent to her the advantages to the three great powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, strengthening themselves by appropriating portions of Poland. The Russians, relieved from contention with the Poles, now pushed on their victories against the Turks; drove them over the Danube, and seized some of their most fertile provinces. To complete their ruin, they, aided by England, attacked and destroyed their fleet in the Mediterranean.

The treaty between Russia, Prussia, and Austria for the first division of Poland was signed at St. Petersburg on the 5th of August, 1772. The three robber powers now promised to rest satisfied with their booty; to respect the rights and remaining territories of Poland--words hollow and worthless as they who used them. The invaders divided at this time about one-third of Poland between them. Prussia appropriated the whole of Pomerania, part of Great Poland, the bishopric of Warmia, and the palatinates of Marienburg and Culm; with complete command of the lower part of the Vistula. The whole of this territory did not exceed eight hundred square miles, but it was a territory of vast importance to Prussia, as it united Pomerania with the rest of that kingdom. Russia and Austria acquired immensely more in extent. Russia took nearly the whole of Lithuania, with the vast country between the rivers Dwina and Dniester. Austria secured the country along the left bank of the Vistula from Wieliczka to the confluence of the Vistula and the Viroz. But Russia had Galicia, the palatinate of Belz, and a part of Volhynia. Unsupported by France, England had no course but to acquiesce in the arrangement.

The year 1773 opened with an inquiry in Parliament into the abuses of the administration of affairs in India. There were great complaints of the wholesale rapacity and oppression perpetrated on the natives by the Company's servants. Before the close of the preceding year, a secret committee had been appointed to inquire into these abuses, and to take the matter out of the hands of Government, the Company proposed to appoint a number of supervisors to go out to India and settle the causes of complaint. The secret committee proposed a Bill to prevent this, as a scheme for merely evading a thorough inquiry and continuing the atrocities. Burke, who was a holder of India stock, defended the Company, and declared that such a Bill would annihilate the Company, and make the House of Commons the Company itself and the Speaker its chairman. He reminded them that the Company paid to Government four hundred thousand pounds a year, and that Government had connived at the maladministration which had been carried on. This certainly was, so far from a reason against the Bill, a reason why they should connive no longer; and the Bill was carried by a large majority.

The Company was then compelled to reduce its dividends to six per cent. and apply to Parliament for a loan of a million and a half to meet its pecuniary difficulties. This, Ministers and Parliament complied with, and proceeding to relieve the Company of its embarrassments, Lord North proposed and carried a measure, by which the Company, which had no less than seventeen million pounds of tea in its warehouses, should, without limit of time, be authorised to export its teas to the British colonies of America duty free. This was thought a great and conciliatory boon to the Americans, but it proved otherwise. The import duty of threepence in the pound was still stubbornly retained, and the Americans, looking at the principle of taxation, and not at a mere temptation of a cheapened article, saw through the snare, and indignantly rejected it. The principal tea merchants declared that this would be the case, and that the whole Government scheme was wild and visionary.

Though there had appeared a lull in American affairs for some time, any one who was observant might have seen that all the old enmities were still working in the colonial mind, and that it would require little irritation to call them forth in even an aggravated form. Lord Hillsborough was no longer Governor, but William Legge, Lord Dartmouth. He was a man of high reputation for uprightness and candour; Richardson said that he would be the perfect ideal of his Sir Charles Grandison, if he were not a Methodist; and the poet Cowper, not objecting to his Methodism, described him as "one who wears a coronet and prays." But Lord Dartmouth, with all his superiority of temper and his piety, could not prevent the then stone-blind Cabinet and infatuated king from accomplishing the independence of America.

Another favourable circumstance would have been found in the fact that in Hutchinson, Massachusetts had a native Governor, a man of courteous manners and moderate counsels. But even out of Hutchinson's position arose offence. His brothers-in-law, Andrew and Peter Oliver, were appointed Lieutenant-Governor and Chief Justice of the province. Lord North thought that the payment of these officers should be in the hands of Government, to render them independent of the colonists; but this the colonists resented as an attempt to destroy the Charter and establish arbitrary power. The Massachusetts House of Assembly declared on this occasion, in their address to the Crown:--"We know of no commissioners of his Majesty's Customs, nor of any revenue that his Majesty has a right to establish in North America." They denounced the Declaratory Act passed at the suggestion of Chatham, and the attempt to make the governors and judges independent of the people, and the arbitrary instruments of the Crown. In Virginia the same spirit was conspicuous.

During the years 1767, 1768, and 1769, Mr. Thomas Whately--at one time private secretary to Grenville, and several years Under-Secretary of State to Lord Suffolk, but during these years out of office, and simply member of Parliament--had maintained a private correspondence with Governor Hutchinson and his brother-in-law, Andrew Oliver, the Lieutenant-Governor. In these letters Hutchinson and Oliver had freely expressed to their old friend their views of the state of affairs in the colony; and, of course, said many things never intended to come to the public eye, or to operate officially. On the death of Whately, in 1772, some villain purloined these letters and conveyed them to Franklin, who was acting as agent for Massachusetts. Who this dishonest firebrand was, was never discovered. Franklin pledged himself to secrecy, both as to the letters and as to the name of the person who so basely obtained them. The name of this person he faithfully kept; but the contents of the letters were too well calculated to create irreconcilable rancour in the minds of the Americans, for him to resist the pleasure of communicating them to the Massachusetts Assembly. He accordingly forwarded them to Mr. Curling, the Speaker of the Assembly.

The whole mode of coming into possession of these papers has something in it revolting to all honourable minds. Franklin, aware of this, insisted that they should not be printed nor made public, but only circulated amongst a select few. But the same motives which had induced Franklin to break his pledged secrecy, operated on the Assembly. They determined to make them public, and therefore pretended that other copies of them had reached them from England, and that they were thus absolved from all conditions of secrecy. This was totally false. The story was invented for the occasion, and the letters, without the name of Whately, to whom they had been addressed, were published by the Assembly. It was left to be inferred by the public, that they had been sent officially to England by the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, and the Assembly voted the writing of them ample evidence of a fixed design on the part of the British Government to destroy the Constitution and establish arbitrary power. A petition was dispatched to be presented by Franklin to the king, calling for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver from their posts. When these letters were read under these false impressions, sentiments were found in them which assumed a wholly exaggerated character, and the flame produced was, as Franklin and the Assembly intended, of the most furious kind.

When these letters were published in America, their real character was concealed, and every means taken to represent them as official despatches to the officers of Government in England. The public rage was uncontrollable. A committee was formed to wait on Governor Hutchinson, and demand whether he owned the handwriting. Hutchinson freely owned to that, but contended very justly that the letters were of a thoroughly private character, and to an unofficial person. Notwithstanding, the House of Assembly drew up a strong remonstrance to the British Government, charging the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor with giving false and malicious information respecting the colony, and demanding their dismissal. This remonstrance, accompanied by copies of the letters themselves, was immediately dispatched over the colonies, and everywhere produced, as was intended, the most violent inflammation of the public mind against us. The Bostonians had for some time established what was called a Corresponding Committee, whose business it was to prepare and circulate through the whole of the colonies papers calculated to keep alive the indignation against the British Government. This Committee quickly was responded to by other committees in different places, and soon this plan became an organisation extending to every part of the colonies, even the most remote, by which intelligence and arguments were circulated through all America with wonderful celerity.

That the spirit of the Bostonians had ripened into actual rebellion was unequivocally shown in the course of the year 1773. The Gaspee Government schooner, commanded by Lieutenant Dudingston, had been singularly active in putting down smuggling about Rhode Island. The Rhode Island packet coming in one evening from Newport to Providence, instigated by the general anger against the Gaspee--for the Rhode Islanders were great smugglers--refused to pay the usual compliment of lowering the flag to the schooner. Dudingston fired a shot across her bows, and, on her paying no regard to that, gave chase. The packet, however, ran close in shore, and the Gaspee following too eagerly, ran aground. It was on a sandy bottom, and the return of the tide would have lifted her off undamaged; but the smuggling population of Providence put off to her in the night, whilst she lay in a position so as to be incapable of using her guns, surprised, boarded, and set fire to her, carrying the lieutenant and the crew triumphantly on shore. Government offered a reward of five hundred pounds for the discovery of the perpetrators of this daring outrage; but though it was well known who the perpetrators were, no one would give any information. On the contrary, the most violent threats were uttered against any one who should do so.

When such acts as the burning of the Gaspee had been done with impunity, and whilst the American mind was rankling with the Franklin poison of the purloined letters, three vessels arrived at Boston, laden with tea, under the conditions of Lord North's Bill. On the arrival of the ships the commotion was intense. The captains themselves would gladly have sailed away with their obnoxious cargoes in safety, but the governor very foolishly gave orders that they should not pass the ports without a permit from himself, and he sent Admiral Montague to guard the passages out of the harbour with two ships of war. As the evening grew dark, those who had quitted the meeting held on the 16th of December to demand that the ships should be sent home again, were met by mobs of men arrayed as wild Indians, who hurried down to Griffin's Wharf, where the tea ships lay. Rushing tumultuously on board, and hoisting out the tea chests, they emptied them into the sea amid much cheering and noise. Having thus destroyed teas to the amount of eighteen thousand pounds, the triumphant mob retreated to their houses.

The news from Boston could not have arrived at a moment when the public mind was more ill-disposed towards the Americans. The affair of the abstraction of Mr. Whately's private letters from his house or office, and their publication, contrary to custom and to its own engagement, by the Massachusetts Assembly, had produced a deep conviction in all classes in England of the utter disregard of honour both in the American colonists and their agent, Franklin. This disgraceful violation of the sacred security of private papers roused the indignation of Mr. William Whately, banker, in Lombard Street, and brother to the late Mr. Thomas Whately. He conceived strong suspicions of John Temple, afterwards Sir John Temple, Lieutenant-Governor of New Hampshire, and, though one of the Commissioners of Customs at Boston, really hostile to the Commission, and a strong partisan of Franklin. Whately challenged Temple, and was severely wounded in the rencontre. At this, Franklin came forward with an avowal that neither the late Mr. Whately nor Mr. Temple had anything to do with the carrying off of the letters; that he alone was responsible for this act.

Owing to these circumstances, occasion was taken, on the presentation to the Privy Council of the petition of the people of Boston for the removal of the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, to animadvert on Franklin's conduct. This took place on the 29th of January, 1774, when Dunning and Lee were retained on the part of the petition, and Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, appeared for the Crown. There were no less than thirty-five Privy Councillors present, amongst them Lord North, and Lord Gower at their head, as Lord President. Neither Dunning nor Lee spoke effectively, but as if they by no means relished the cause in which they were engaged; while Wedderburn seemed animated by extraordinary life and bitterness. He was the friend of Whately, who was now lying in a dangerous state from his wound. After speaking of the Charter and the insubordinate temper of the people of Massachusetts, he fell with withering sarcasm on Franklin, who was present. Hitherto, he said, private correspondence had been held sacred, even in times of the most rancorous party fury. But here was a gentleman who had a high rank amongst philosophers, and should be the last to sanction such infamous breaches of honour, openly avowing his concern in them. He asked where, henceforth, Dr. Franklin could show his face; and said that henceforth he must deem it a libel to be termed "a man of letters," he was "a man of three letters, f u r, a thief." Wedderburn could compare him only to Zanga, in Dr. Young's "Revenge:"--

"Know, then, 'twas I; I forged the letter--I disposed the picture-- I hated--I despised--and I destroy!"

Priestley, in a letter, describes the effect of Wedderburn's address as received with what must seem mad merriment by the Council. "Mr. Wedderburn had a complete triumph. At the sallies of his sarcastic wit, all the members of the Council, the President himself, Lord Gower, not excepted, frequently laughed outright; and no person belonging to the Council behaved himself with decent gravity, except Lord North, who came in late."

The Privy Council decided that the petition from Massachusetts was framed on false and exaggerated allegations, and was groundless, vexatious, and scandalous. Two days afterwards, the king dismissed Franklin from the office, which he had till now held, of Deputy-Postmaster of America.

On the 14th of March Lord North moved to bring in a Bill to take away from Boston the customs, the courts of justice, and government offices, and give them to Salem. This Bill was carried through both Houses with little opposition. Bollan, the agent of the Council of Massachusetts, desired to be heard against the Bill, but was refused. It received the royal assent on the 31st of March, and the trade of Boston was supposed to be annihilated.

Whilst this Bill was passing the Lords, on the 28th of March Lord Gower brought a fresh one into the Commons, which had no less object than the repeal of the Charter of Massachusetts. It was entitled, "A Bill for the Better Regulating Government in the Province of Massachusetts Bay." It went to remove the nomination of the members of the Council, of the judges and magistrates, etc., from the popular constituencies to the Crown. Lord North observed that the Charter of William III. had conferred these privileges on Massachusetts as exceptional to all other colonies, and that the consequence was that the Governor had no power whatever. Strong opposition was made to this proposed Bill by Dowdeswell, Sir George Savile, Burke, Barré, Governor Pownall, General Conway, and Charles Fox, who was now in opposition. The Bill passed the Commons by a majority of two hundred and thirty-nine against sixty-four; and it passed the Lords by a majority of ninety-two against twenty. But even now another Bill passed the House of Commons--a Bill for removing to another colony for trial any inhabitant of Massachusetts Bay, who was indicted for any murder or other capital offence which the Governor might deem to be perpetrated in the attempt to put down tumults and riots. This measure was still more vehemently opposed than the rest.

To commence a course of more rigour in Massachusetts, Governor Hutchinson was recalled, and General Gage, a man who had seen service, and had the reputation of firmness and promptitude, was appointed in his stead. But the mischief of the new Acts became rapidly apparent. Had the Boston Port Bill alone been passed, perhaps not much harm might have been done. There were numbers of people throughout America who were of opinion that Boston had gone too far in destroying the tea, and might have remained passive if the Bostonians had been compelled to make compensation. But the fatal Act was that which abolished the Massachusetts Charter. That made the cause common; that excited one universal alarm. If the British Government were thus permitted to strike out the colonial Charters at pleasure, all security had perished. All the colonies determined to support their own cause in supporting that of Massachusetts.

The Virginians were the first to move to lead the agitation. Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson took the initiative in a measure which would have better suited the character of the religious New Englanders. A fast was ordered on account of the Boston Port Act. The next day, however, being the 25th of May, Lord Dunmore, the governor of the province, dissolved the Assembly. The members, nothing daunted, retired to the "Raleigh" Tavern, and passed a series of resolutions. The chief of these were to purchase nothing of the East India Company, except saltpetre and spices, until their injuries were redressed; to request the members of all Corresponding Committees to take measures for the appointment of members to a General Congress; to summon the new members of the Assembly (the writs for which were already in course of issue) to meet at Williamsburg to elect delegates from that colony to the Congress.

In the meantime, General Gage landed at Boston on the 13th of May. The Port Bill had preceded him a few days, and the tone of the other colonies rendered the Bostonians firmer in their temper than ever. On the 25th of May General Gage announced to the Assembly at Boston the unpleasant fact, that he was bound to remove, on the 1st of June, the Assembly, the courts of justice, and all the public offices, to Salem, in conformity with the late Act. As they petitioned him to set apart a day for fasting, he declined that, and, to prevent further trouble, adjourned them to the 7th of June, to meet at Salem.

On the 1st of June according to the arrangements of General Gage, as the clock struck twelve, all the public offices were closed, and the whole official business was transferred to Salem. But the wide discontent of the people met him there as much as at Boston. When the Assembly met, which was in the following week, such was its spirit that General Gage felt that he must dissolve it. General Gage, seeing the lowering aspect of affairs, took the precaution to throw more troops into the neighbourhood, so that he had some six regiments, with a train of artillery, when he encamped on the common near Boston. Active emissaries were immediately sent amongst these troops, who, by presents of ardent spirits and fine promises, seduced a considerable number from their duty. To prevent this, he stationed a strong guard at Boston Neck, a narrow isthmus connecting the town with the common and open country. On this a vehement cry was raised, that he was going to cut off all communication with the country, blockade the town, and reduce it to submission by famine. The inhabitants of the county of Worcester sent a deputation to inquire Gage's intentions, and they did not omit to hint that, if necessary, they would drive in the guard with arms; for, in fact, besides the arms which most Americans then had, others had been supplied to such as were too poor to purchase them. Gordon, their historian, tells us that the people were preparing to defend their rights by the sword; that they were supplying themselves from Boston with guns, knapsacks, etc. According to the Militia Law, most men were well furnished with muskets and powder, and were now busily employed in exercising themselves; thus all was bustle, casting of balls, and making ready for a struggle. Gage, seeing all this, removed the gunpowder and the military stores from Charlestown, Cambridge, and other localities, to his own quarters. This, again, excited a deep rage in the people, who threatened to attack his troops. To prevent this, he went on briskly with his defences on the Neck; but what he did by day the mob endeavoured to undo by night. They set fire to his supplies of straw; they sank the boats that were bringing bricks, and overturned his waggons conveying timber. Nothing but the greatest patience and forbearance prevented an instant collision.

The General Congress met at Philadelphia on the 4th of September, when all the delegates, except those of North Carolina, who did not arrive till the 14th, were found to represent twelve States, namely, the four New England States, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and the two Carolinas. It was settled, however, that, whatever the number of delegates, each colony should have one vote. The next day they assembled in Carpenters' Hall for business, and elected Peyton Randolph, late Speaker of the Virginian House of Burgesses, president. It was soon found that so much diversity of opinion prevailed, it was deemed prudent, in order to preserve the air of unanimity, to deliberate with closed doors. It was clear that Massachusetts and Virginia were ready for war; but it became equally clear that other States yet clung with all the attachment of blood and old connection to the fatherland. Strong and long-continued, according to Mr. Joseph Galloway, one of their own members, were the debates; and though they finally, and, from their system of secrecy, with an air of unanimity, drew up strong resolutions, they were more moderately expressed than the instructions of many of the delegates. They agreed to a Declaration of Rights, in which they asserted that they had neither lost the rights of nature, nor the privileges of Englishmen, by emigration; consequently, that the late Acts of Parliament had been gross violations of those rights, especially as affecting Massachusetts. They therefore passed resolutions to suspend all imports, or use of imported goods, until harmony was restored between Great Britain and her colonies. An association was formed to carry these resolutions out, to which every member subscribed. Having adjourned till the 10th of May of the next year, the Congress dissolved itself on the 26th of October, and the delegates then hastened home to keep alive the flame of their revived zeal in every quarter of the continent.

But, whilst Congress was sitting, the spirit of revolution was every day growing more rife in Massachusetts. Governor Gage had issued writs for a new Assembly, which was to meet at Salem on the 5th of October; but so many of the newly appointed members refused to act, that he issued a proclamation to countermand the writs. The patriots, however, set the proclamation at defiance; and confident, from the resignation of the timid loyalists, that they were in a majority, met at Salem, and formed themselves into a provincial congress, to be joined by such other persons as should be chosen for the consideration of public affairs. They then adjourned to Concord, a town about twenty miles from Boston, and elected John Hancock, the owner of the Liberty sloop, as president. They then adjourned to Cambridge, and constituted Concord the depôt of arms and ammunition for twelve thousand militia. They enrolled the militia under the name of "Minute Men," or men who were to turn out, at a minute's notice, with musket or rifle. They appointed committees and sub-committees for different purposes, and, in fact, put the province into a perfect attitude of war.

News arrived that the king, by proclamation, had prohibited the export of arms and military stores to America. This news was received with a burst of rage. The people of Rhode Island, who had burnt the king's schooner, The Gaspee, seized forty pieces of cannon on the batteries defending the harbour, and carried them into the country. The people of New Hampshire surprised a small fort called William and Mary, garrisoned only by one officer and five men, and carried off the ordnance, arms, ammunition and military stores. Everywhere orders were issued for the purchase of arms and ammunition; for training the militia; for erecting powder mills, and manufactories of arms and shot, as well as for making saltpetre. So far as it depended on the people of Massachusetts, it was already rebellion. Still, however, the other colonies, except, perhaps, Virginia, were far from this bellicose temper. The colonies, in general, thought the measures of the late Congress too strong; and the State of New York, in spite of the impetuosity of such men as Jay, carried a vote rejecting the resolutions of the Congress.

The Parliament of England had now nearly run its septennial course, and was accordingly dissolved on the 30th of September. Such was the feeling of resentment in Great Britain against the proceedings of the Americans, that the Parliament that was now elected gave the Ministers an increased majority.

It met on the 29th of November. The king, in his speech, alluded to the determined resistance to the imperial authority of the American colonists, and pre-eminently of those of Massachusetts Bay. He called upon Parliament to support him in his endeavours to restore order. There was strong opposition to the addresses in both Houses, demands being made for a full production of all papers and correspondence on this great subject, but the battle did not begin until January, 1775, when Chatham moved the repeal of the legislation of the previous year, and the withdrawal of the troops from Boston.

Chatham, on rising, severely blamed Ministers for the course which they had pursued, and which had driven the colonies to the verge of rebellion. "Resistance to your Acts," he said, "was necessary as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of Parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally incompetent to convince or to enslave your fellow-subjects in America, who feel that tyranny, whether attempted by an individual part of the Legislature, or the bodies who compose it, is equally intolerable to British subjects." He eulogised the conduct of the Congress, and remarked that it was obvious that all attempts to impose servitude on such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. "We shall be forced," he said, "ultimately, to retract; let us retract while we can--not when we must. I say we must necessarily undo these violently oppressive Acts; they must be repealed. You will repeal them; I pledge myself for it that you will, in the end, repeal them. I stake my reputation on it. I will consent to be taken for an idiot if they are not finally repealed. Avoid, then, this humiliating, this disgraceful necessity." He declared that the cause of America and England was one; that it was the glorious spirit of Whiggism which animated the colonists. "It is liberty to liberty engaged. In this great cause they are immovably allied; it is the alliance of God and nature--immutable, eternal--fixed as the firmament of heaven. You cannot force them, united as they are, to your unworthy terms of submission. It is impossible." Lords Shelburne, Camden, and Rockingham, and the Duke of Richmond, zealously supported the views of Chatham, but the Ministerial party opposed the motion as obstinately as ever; and it was rejected by sixty-eight votes against eighteen.

Chatham, undeterred by the fate of his motion, determined to make one more effort, and bring in a Bill for the pacification of the colonies, and he called upon Franklin to assist in framing it. On the following Tuesday, Franklin hurried down to Hayes with the draft of the Bill left with him, and with his full approbation of it, having, he says, only added one word, that of "constitutions" after "charters." The next day (Wednesday), the 1st of February, Chatham appeared in the House of Lords with his Bill. He declared that it was a Bill not merely of concession, but of assertion, and he called on the Lords to entertain it cordially, to correct its crudenesses, and pass it for the peace of the whole empire. The Bill first explicitly asserted our supreme power over the colonies; it declared that all that related to the disposing of the army belonged to the prerogative of the Crown, but that no armed force could be lawfully employed against the rights and liberties of the inhabitants; that no tax, or tollage, or other charge for the revenue, should be levied without the consent of the provincial Assemblies. The Acts of Parliament relating to America passed since 1764 were wholly repealed; the judges were made permanent during their good behaviour, and the Charters and constitutions of the several provinces were not to be infringed or set aside, unless upon some valid ground of forfeiture. All these concessions were, of course, made conditional on the recognition by the colonies of the supreme authority of Parliament.

Had this Bill been frankly accepted by Ministers, it would have gone far to heal the rupture between the mother country and her colonies. The Earl of Dartmouth, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, proposed that the Bill should lie on the table for deliberation. The Duke of Grafton complained of the manner in which the Bill had been hurried into the House, and, as Chatham in his reply observed, showed every disposition to hurry it as quickly out again. The friends of the Duke of Bedford, who had joined the administration, exhibited the most rancorous disposition towards America. The chief of these, Lord Sandwich, declared that he never could believe this Bill was the work of any British peer, but rather of an American, and he looked full at Dr. Franklin, who was leaning on the bar. He declared the Americans to be in actual rebellion; that they were not troubling themselves about mere words and nice distinctions; that they were aiming at independence, and nothing else. The Bedford party carried the day, and the Bill was rejected by sixty-one votes against thirty-two.

Lord North, however, was still sufficiently impressed by the solemn warnings of Chatham and others to attempt a conciliatory measure of his own. Accordingly, on the 20th of February, only ten days after his Bill restrictive of the American trade, and whilst it was progressing, he moved in a committee of the whole House, "That if the Legislature of any of the American provinces should propose to make some provision for the common defence, and also for the civil government of that province, and if such proposal shall be approved of by the king and Parliament, it would be proper to forbear, whilst such provision lasted, from levying or proposing any tax, duty, or assessment within the said province."

This proposal, which, at an earlier stage of the dispute, might have been listened to, was one at this stage which was sure to be rejected, and was only one of those miserable half measures which commonplace minds so frequently put forth only to demonstrate their inability to grasp the amplitude of the occasion. It was supposed that the measure had been intended to be larger, but that the Bedford party had fallen on it in Council, and reduced it to these pitiable dimensions. Yet when it was introduced into the Commons by Lord North, the Bedford party looked at each other in consternation, and soon the tempest broke loose on the Treasury benches.

The storm was appeased only by Lord North's condescending to explain his measure in such a manner as deprived it of every particle of generous feeling, and reduced it to the lowest Machiavellian level. He said the real object of the resolution was to divide the Americans, to satisfy the moderate part of them, and oppose them to the immoderate, to separate the wheat from the chaff; that he never expected his proposal to be generally acceptable. On this, Colonel Barré and Burke assaulted him fiercely. Barré branded the whole scheme as founded on that low, shameful, abominable maxim, "Divide et impera." Burke declared that the proposition was at variance with every former principle of Parliament, directly so with the restrictive measures now in progress; that it was mean without being conciliatory. But the resolution passed by two hundred and seventy-four votes against eighteen.

Again, on the 22nd of March, Burke made another earnest effort to induce the infatuated Ministers and their adherents in Parliament to listen to reason. In one of the finest speeches that he ever made, he introduced a series of thirteen resolutions, which went to abolish the obnoxious Acts of Parliament, and admit the principle of the colonial Assemblies exercising the power of taxation. In the course of his speech he drew a striking picture of the rapid growth and the inevitable future importance of these colonies. He reminded the House that the people of New England and other colonies had quitted Great Britain because they would not submit to arbitrary measures; that in America they had cultivated this extreme independence of character, both in their religion and their daily life; that almost every man there studied law, and that nearly as many copies of Blackstone's "Commentaries" had been sold there as in England; that they were the Protestants of Protestants, the Dissenters of Dissenters; that the Church of England there was a mere sect; that the foreigners who had settled there, disgusted with tyranny at home, had adopted the extremest principles of liberty flourishing there; that all men there were accustomed to discuss the principles of law and government, and that almost every man sent to the Congress was a lawyer; that the very existence of slavery in the southern States made white inhabitants hate slavery the more in their own persons. "You cannot," he said, "content such men at such a distance--Nature fights against you. Who are you that you should fret, rage, and bite the chains of Nature? Nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations who have extensive empires. In all such extended empires authority grows feeble at the extremities. The Turk and the Spaniard find it so, and are compelled to comply with this condition of Nature, and derive vigour in the centre from the relaxation of authority on the borders." His resolutions were negatived by large majorities.

In the meantime, petitions, memorials, and remonstrances were presented from New York and other places, and from the British inhabitants of Canada, but all were rejected. On the 26th of May George III. prorogued Parliament, and expressed his perfect satisfaction in its proceedings; so utterly unconscious was this king that he was alienating a great empire, and which, indeed, was already virtually gone from him; for during the very time that Parliament had been protesting against even the contemptible crumbs of concession offered by Ministers, war had broken out, blood had flowed, and the Americans had triumphed!

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