Recollections and reflections, personal and political, as connected with public affairs, during the reign of George III

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Chapter I

From the Accession of George the Third in October 1760, to the Dissolution of Parliament in March 1784.

George IL died suddenly about the close of October 1760. At that time I was nearly sixteen years old ; so that the active part of my life has all been passed during the reign of George III.

My father was physician to George II. This circumstance led me to see in early life, people who were about the Court. I cannot say that the nation much regretted the death of George II. During the last three years of his reign the war against France had been carried on with much success; but this was attributed to the energy of Mr. Secretary Pitt, who was known to be Minister against the wishes of the King.

The nation hailed with pleasure the accession of a Prince born in the country ; they persuaded

B themselves that the interests of England would no longer be sacrificed to the interests of Hanover; and much advantage of this circumstance was taken in the first speech of the young King to Parliament. « Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton :" the old Earl of Hardwicke, the Ex-chancellor, censured this expression, saying that it was an insult to the memory of the late King ; but the nation was pleased with the expression. The young King (for he was at that time little more than twenty-two years of age) was of a good person, sober, temperate, of domestic habits, addicted to no vice, swayed by no passion — what had not the nation to expect from such a character? There was another circumstance which much increased his popularity: during the reigns of George I. and George II. a considerable part of the nation had been as it were proscribed, under the name of Tories. The imputation against these men was, that they were attached to the family of Stuart : probably some of them were attached to that family; but very many were included under the denomination of Tories, solely because they had disapproved of the corrupt and feeble Administrations of Sir Robert Walpole and the Pelhams. It was soon remarked, that the Pelham party did not possess the partiality of George III. in the same manner as they had possessed that of George II.; and the Tories saw with pleasure the removal of that proscription by which they had been so

II

long oppressed. In one word, the nation was intoxicated with loyalty. But those who approached the court more nearly, perceived circumstances which filled them with apprehensions. I recollect the expression used to my father by Mr. Pratt, at that time Attorney General, afterwards better known by the name of Lord Camden, within four months after the King's accession : u I see already, that this will be a weak and an inglorious reign. " I recollect also the relation which a friend of my father's gave to him of a conversation which he had had with Charles Townshend : " I said to Charles Townshend, I don't want to know any state secrets, but do tell me what is the character of this young man V y After a pause, Charles Townshend replied, " He is very obstinate." It was also observed that the Princess Dowager of Wales had kept the young Prince from having any confidential intimacy with any person except herself and the Earl of Bute : the pretence of this was the preservation of his morals. In truth, they had blockaded all approach to him. A notion has prevailed, that the Earl of Bute had suggested political opinions to the Princess Dowager ; but this was certainly a mistake. In understanding, the Princess Dowager w r as far superior to the Earl of Bute ; in whatever degree of favour he stood with her, he did not suggest, but he received, her opinions and her directions. The late Marquis of Bute told me, that at the King's accession, his father, the

Earl of Bute, had no connexion beyond the pale of Leicester House. He added, " I never lived with my father, nor did any of his children." Could such a man be fit to be a minister?

The Princess Dowager of Wales was a woman of a very sound understanding, and was considered as such by all who had occasion to converse with her. But she had been educated in the court of her father, the Duke of Saxe Gotha ; here she had received her ideas of sovereign power, and she could never bring herself to feel the necessity, that sovereign power should be exercised by a King of Great Britain with different sentiments, and in a manner different from that in which she had seen it exercised at Saxe Gotha.

Few Englishmen have occasion to see the interior of the Court of a petty German Prince ; it may therefore be difficult to bring Englishmen to comprehend the character of such a court. A petty German Sovereign is not a magistrate ; he is rather the proprietor of the soil, and of the inhabitants. His Ministers exist by his breath; they are liable to no responsibility except to their master ; they fall into insignificance when his favour is removed : he resembles more a Polish or Hungarian Noble, than a British Sovereign. He has an interest that his lands should be well cultivated, and his people not driven from his territory; because, if the lands remained uncultivated, his revenues would be lessened; but he collects all the revenue which he can, consistently with this attention to his interest, and spends it all in vanity or personal gratifications.

When the Princess of Wales came to the Court of St. James, she found the British Sovereign a very different character from that which she had seen at Saxe Gotha. She found him controlled by his Ministers, indulged in petty gratifications, but compelled to submit to their opinions on all important subjects. We cannot be surprised that she was disgusted at this ; and it is well known that she ever impressed upon the King from his early years this lesson, " George, be King." And this lesson seems to have influenced the King's conduct through the whole of his life. Extreme apprehension that his Ministers or others might encroach upon his power, an earnest wish that he might exercise his power personally, or, in other words, that he might be his, own Minister, have in a very singular manner marked his conduct during the whole of his reign.

At his accession, he found the Pelham party in possession of the Administration ; much strengthened by its alliance with Mr. Secretary Pitt, and popular from his successful conduct of the war. It was perilous to attempt to change such an Administration. The late Marquis of Rockingham told me, that about the end of February 1761, he received a message from the Duke of Newcastle, requesting him to be at Newcastle House that evening. He went there : on his entering the room, the Duke of Newcastle ran up to

jb 2 him and said, " We have received a message from die King, of great importance ; he wishes that the Earl of Holdernesse may resign the place of Secretary of State for the Northern Department, and receive in lieu of it the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports, and that the Earl of Bute may be appointed Secretary of State for the Northern Department, in the place of the Earl of Holdernesse." When this subject was discussed, the Earl of Hardwicke strongly recommended that the King's wishes should be complied with without opposition. He said, " that this was the first instance in which the King had interfered in the nomination of Ministers : and that resistance to his wishes might excite an ill-will which they might afterwards regret." The Marquis of Rockingham told me, that he himself rather objected, and desired them to consider, whether, H if they admitted, in February 1761, that the Earl of Bute was fit to be a Secretary of State, they could say in the following year that he was not fit to be a Prime Minister ?" But the Earl of Hardwicke's opinion prevailed, and the Earl of Bute was appointed Secretary of State.

In the autumn of 1761, Mr. Pitt was removed from the office of Secretary of State, and every tool of Government employed to run down his character and destroy his popularity.

The old Duke of Newcastle was as much rejoiced at the removal of Mr. Pitt as any man. He had always felt himself fettered and oppressed by the superior mind of Mr. Pitt ; and on Mr. Pitt's removal he was weak enough to imagine that he should possess the same degree of power as lie had possessed before Mr, Pitt's advancement to office. But early in the spring 1762, the Duke was himself removed from his situation, and the Earl of Bute appointed First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister in his room. During the year 1761 there had been a negotiation for peace, and M. Bussy had come to London for the purpose of conducting the negotiation ; but the negotiation failed, and I think, that whoever carefully and impartially examines the papers that passed on that occasion, will be of opinion that Mr. Secretary Pitt did not wish for peace. But the young King was anxious for it : and in the course of the year 1762, the Earl of Bute opened a new negotiation with the Court of France. Peace was the result of this negotiation : but the terms of the peace were universally abused, though I think it would be difficult to show what greater advantages could have been obtained ; every thing which we did retain, was either injurious or of little benefit* The acquisition of Canada, and the extension of the limits of our American Colonies, have been injurious to us ; the cession of Grenada, and of the neutral West India islands, has been of little importance ; and as it has been since decided, that the Slave Trade ought to be abandoned, acquisitions on the coast of Africa could not be of much use. But the language of the nation was, " After a most successful war, see how little we have gained. " People did not perceive, that the war had been continued without a British object; solely to support George the Second's Ge rman interests, and gratify the ambition of Mr. Pitt. But the peace was odious ; the pageant of a boot and petticoat paraded through the streets of London, frightened the Earl of Bute into a resignation ; and the King appointed George Grenville his successor. But before I examine the Administration of Mr. George Grenville, I will make a few observations on the transactions which took place from the accession of the King to the retirement of the Earl of Bute.

Mr. Edmund Burke has said, in one of his political works, that the plan of an interior Cabinet was formed during the life of Frederic Prince of Wales. I doubt the correctness of this assertion. I think that it must be at least adooted with Great allowances. I believe the Princess Dowager of Wales had suggested to the King, from his earliest years, to be his own Minister, and to resist the control of those who were in office. She had seen the manner in which the Ministers had, at different times, thwarted the wishes of George II. Perhaps even George II. himself had sometimes felt and been indignant at this control : he was a foreigner, and feared the return to power of the Stuart family. But the Princess Dowager of Wales wished her son to be a King, such as she had been educated to believe a King ought to be ;

viz. a King after the model of a Duke of Saxe Gotha : and this was the object of that lesson which she was continually inculcating to him, 11 George, be King." But I do not see any reason for believing that there was any original intention of forming an interior Cabinet. I believe that the plan of the interior Cabinet grew out of circumstances which afterwards arose. The first wish was, that the Earl of Bute should be advanced to be Prime Minister; and while he was Minister, there was certainly no desire to form an interior Cabinet. Most probably the interior Cabinet arose on his retirement from office. When the Earl of Bute was made Secretary of State for the Northern Department, he found in that office Mr. Chares Jenkinson, a man of family, though in the inferior situation of a volunteer clerk. The Earl of Bute discovered this gentleman's abilities; and when he was made First Lord of the Treasury, removed Mr. Jenkinson with him to his new office, and made him Secretary of the Treasury. When the Earl of Bute resigned, Mr. Jenkinson was the channel through which confidential communications were conveyed from the King to the Princess Dowager and the Earl of Bute ; and this was most probably the origin of the interior Cabinet.

The King, at his accession, had two objects : the first was to destroy the Pelham faction, the second was to put an end to the war. For his attempts to effect those objects, he was more abused than for any other act of his life ; although perhaps those objects were the most judicious and the most meritorious of his reign. But the Pelham faction was very powerful. Many individuals, not acting under the direction of that faction, indulged themselves in gross abuse of the Princess Dowager and the Earl of Bute, and even of the King himself. This gave occasion to measures dictated more by resentment than by judgment, and ultimately produced a sort of personal contest between the Princess Dowager and the King on one side, and John Wilkes on the other. The generous character of the English nation naturally led them to take part with the individual whom they thought oppressed, and the King was injured by the victory. I do not believe that the King ever wished to reinstate the Earl of Bute. He saw the Earl's want of courage : probably he saw his incapacity, and his unfitness to serve his views: but it is possible that the Princess Dowager of Wales might still retain a wish that the Earl of Bute should be replaced in the office of Prime Minister. However this might be, whenever the new Minister, Mr. Grenville, resisted the wishes of the King and the Princess Dowager, he was recalled to obedience by a negotiation being opened with Mr. Pitt. This negotiation was not concealed ; on the contrary, there was a wish on the part of the King and the Princess Dowager that it should be generally known ; for their object was to bring back Mr. Grenville to obedience, by showing him the danger of his being removed, in case he resisted their wishes. And while Mr. Grenville remained Minister, these negotiations happened not unlrequently.

But the great measure of Mr. Grenville's Administration was the Stamp Act. This was an attempt to raise taxes in the American Colonies by the vote of a British Parliament ; all taxes in the British Colonies having, down to that period, been ever voted by their several Colonial Assemblies. This measure has produced consequences so important, not solely to Great Britain, but also to so many other states, that one cannot pass over it without deep reflection. I have heard it doubted, whether the measure originated with Mr. George Grenville. I have heard it intimated, that the measure originated with the King, that is to say, with the King's secret adviser? ; and that Mr. Grenville acceded to the plan with considerable reluctance. I have no means of knowing whether the measure originated with Mr. Grenville or with the King. But from the unremitted obstinacy with which the King persevered in the wish to impose taxes on the Colonies by a British Parliament, every man must see that it may fairly be called the favourite measure of his reign. I will examine the subject more fully at another time.

About the beginning of the year 1765, the King fell ill ; I know it has been said that his illness was a mental derangement, but I do not believe it.

On his recovery, it occurred to Mr. Grenville and the other Ministers, that if the King had died, there would have been considerable difficulty in appointing a Regent; and as the Prince of Wales was then only two years and a half old, a Regency, and for a long continuance, would have been necessary. They therefore determined to bring into Parliament a bill enabling the King to appoint a Regent by his will. But Mr. Grenville did not choose that the Princess Dowager of Wales should be the Regent ; and he probably thought that the Princess Dow T ager would be the person whom the King would be most disposed to select : for during the Princess Dowager's life, the Queen does not appear to have had much influence over the King. He therefore suggested to the King, that his power of appointment must be confined to the Queen, and the descendants of George II. The King resisted this, as he saw that by such a limitation he should be precluded from nominating the Princess Dowager. Mr. Grenville persevered ; telling the King, that he could not undertake to carry the bill through the House of Commons, except his Majesty's power were thus limited. The King at length yielded; and as the Bill was already in the house of Lords, he consented that the Earl of Halifax, Secretary of State, should be sent down to the House of Lords with a message to the Earl of Northington, at that time Chancellor, signifying that it was the King's pleasure that his power of appointment should be confined to the Queen, and the descendants of George II. I have been told, and from good authority, that the Earl of Northington replied, " Your Lordship astonishes me; I should not have given credit to such a message if it had not been brought to me by one of His Majesty's Secretaries of State." But the Bill was framed agreeably to this message, and sent down in that shape to the House of Commons, After the Bill had thus passed the Lords, the Earl of Northington waited on the King to inform him what had been done; adding, that in obedience to the message which he had received through the Earl of Halifax, his Majesty would not have the power of appointing the Princess Dowager of Wales. The King replied, €i Mr. Grenville tells me, that if my power of apppointment had been extended to the Princess Dowager, he could not have undertaken to carry the Bill through the House of Commons." " Would your Majesty have wished to have had the power of appointing the Princess Dowager ?" — iC Most certainly; provided the introduction of such a power would not have provoked a debate painful to the Princess Dowager herself." The Earl of Northington said no more ; but on his retirement from the King's closet, sent for Mr. John Morton, member for Abingdon. To Mr. Morton he gave these instructions : " When the Bill in your House is in a committee, jump up, and move to insert the name of the Princess Dowager of Wales, and in the mean time keep die design

c to yourself " Mr. Morton followed the Earl of Northington's directions. The Opposition, not expecting such an amendment, was not prepared to oppose it. It would have been indecent in the Ministers to oppose it, and the amendment was adopted without one dissenting voice. Mr. Morton was an intimate friend of my father, and related this anecdote to him.

It will easily be supposed, that the Princess Dowager was highly indignant at the affront which Mr. Grenville had attempted to put on her; and the King immediately decided to dismiss him. I have been told, that the King did not conceal the ground of his displeasure with Mr. Grenville: openly saying, * When Mr. Grenville told me, that, if the Princess Dowager's name were inserted in the Bill, he could not undertake to carry it through the House of Commons, either Mr. Grenville did not know the disposition of the House of Commons, or he practised a deception on me : in either case he is not fit to be my minister."

On the removal of Mr. Grenville, the King appointed the Marquis of Rockingham Prime Minister. This Nobleman was a man of high honour and the strictest integrity; from his accession to office to the day of his death, he was never accused of being influenced by motives of personal interest : his understanding was sound, though not brilliant; but he had never before held any public situation, nor had he been much conversant in business : his friends saw, that with such habits, it would be advantageous that he should always have near him a man acquainted with political subjects, and accustomed to laborious application. They selected for this purpose Mr. Edmund Burke. When William Gerard Hamilton (generally known by the name of Single-speech Hamilton) went to Ireland as Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, Mr. Edmund Burke attended Mr. Hamilton as his private Secretary: he was rewarded for this service with a pension of 3001. a year; which, as I have heard, he soon after sold to relieve his immediate necessities.

At the time when Mr. Burke was selected to be the private Secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, he was an author in the service of Mr. Dodsley the bookseller; he had conducted for that gentleman the Annual Register,, a work of considerable reputation and merit, first established in the year 1758; and I believe that it was conducted under the direction of Mr. Burke to a very late period of his life. The political knowledge of Mr. Burke might be considered almost as an Encyclopedia : every man who approached him received instruction from his stores; and his failings (for failings he had) were not visible at that time ; perhaps they did not then exist ; perhaps they grew up in the progress of his political life. When Mr. Burke entered into the service of the Marquis of Rockingham he was not rich, but the munificent generosity of that nobleman immediately placed him in an affluent situation. Mr. Burke purchased a beautiful villa, at Beaconsfield, which was paid for by the Marquis of Rockingham. When Dr. Johnson, who, like Mr. Burke, had subsisted by his labours as an author, visited his friend at his new purchase, he could not help exclaiming with the shepherd in Virgil's Eclogue,

But the Marquis of Rockingham's liberality was not confined to the person of Mr. Burke ; he procured for Mr. William Burke, his cousin, and most confidential connexion, the employment of Under Secretary of State to General Conway; and he gave to Mr. Edmund Burke's brother, Richard Burke, the place of Collector of the Customs at Grenada. I mention these circumstances to show, that Lord Rockingham was fully entitled to that devoted attachment which Mr. Edmund Burke ever paid him to the end of that noble Lord's life.

Let me pause to reflect on the transactions of that year in which Lord Rockingham was minister. I can discover no faults in the administration of public affairs during that year : the conduct of Government was wise and upright: by the repeal of the Stamp Act, they put an end to a civil dissension, which had been unnecessarily excited. Had the measures adopted by Lord Rockingham been persevered in, Great Britain, I might almost add, Europe, itself, would not have experienced that misery, relief from which she now finds so difficult. Lord Rockingham repealed the Stamp Act ; and from that hour the King determined to remove him. Lord Rockingham himself told me, that the King never showed him such distinguished marks of kindness, as after he had secretly determined to get rid of him. The Marquis of Rockingham accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act with another Act, declaratory of the right. I know that he has been much censured for this measure. Mr. Pitt recommended that the Stamp Act should be repealed by an Act declaring that the claim of the British Parliament was unconstitutional and illegal. This would most certainly have been the bolder measure ; but we must recollect the situation of Lord Rockingham when he proposed to Parliament the repeal of the Stamp Act. In his front he had a formidable opposition : in his rear the household troops, ready to declare against him : it was his duty to consider what measures were practicable ; I will even go one step further, it was his duty not unnecessarily to offend the King. The plan which he brought forward, of an Act, declaratory of the right, while it relinquished the exercise of that right, had been formerly adopted on a dispute with Ireland, of a nature somewhat similar. When the civil dissension with America had been put an end to, who could imagine that the King and the interior Cabinet would wish to renew it ?

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The Administration of Lord Rockingham lasted one year, and, I believe, a few days more. On his removal, the King sent for the Ex-Secretary Mr. Pitt, and requested him to form an Administration. From the reports circulated at that time, it seems as if Mr. Pitt had been the dupe of those apparent marks of kindness which the King knew so well how to practise whenever he thought them necessary. Mr. Pitt thought that he possessed the entire confidence of the King, and acted as if the selection of his colleagues depended wholly upon himself. This occasioned a breach between him and his brother-in-law, Earl Temple ; and, as Mr. Burke has remarked in a pamphlet subsequently published, " When Mr. Pitt had formed his Cabinet, he was no longer Minister." It is much to be regretted, that when the Marquis of Rockingham formed his Administration, in 1765, he did not feel the advantage which would have been derived from Mr. Pitt being in his Cabinet. Lord Rockingham must at that time have fully known the King's character ; he must have been sensible of the difficulty which every Administration would have in restraining the King from pursuing his own private views, in opposition to the opinion of his ostensible Ministers. The experienced mind, the popularity, the venerable character of that great Statesman Mr. Pitt, would have added strength to his government. What a different Cabinet would it have been, if, instead of that contempti.

ble old man the Duke of Newcastle, he had made Mi\ Pitt Lord Privy Seal ! But, although an apparent union had subsisted, from 1757 to 1761, between the Pelham party and Mr. Pitt, yet the Pelham party had always hated Mr. Pitt ; they felt themselves oppressed by the superiority of his mind, and perhaps he had sometimes unnecessarily made them sensible of their inferiority. Lord Rockingham had been educated from early life in this party ; and, from that circumstance, most probably, felt no inclination to be united with Mr. Pitt.

In forming his Cabinet, Mr. Pitt made the Duke of Grafton First Lord of the Treasury. His own health disqualified him from holding that office, and he chose for himself the office of Lord Privy Seal, with an earldom. But he admitted into his Cabinet so many persons not sincerely attached to him or to his measures, that, whenever ill health compelled him to absent himself from the Cabinet, measures were adopted wholly repugnant to Mr. Pitt's views. His removal to the House of Lords deprived him of a great portion of his power. From this circumstances, Charles Townshend remained indisputably the first speaker in the House of Commons. Mr. Burke, in one of his political speeches, calls him " that prodigy Charles Townshend." I have heard the late Lord Thurlow say, that Charles Townshend was the most delightful speaker he ever heard. For myself, I never heard him but once ; and that was not on an occasion in which his powers could be fairly shown, for he had himself arranged that he should on that day be in a minority. It was on that debate, previous to the dissolution of Parliament in 1768, when the land-tax was reduced from four shillings to three shillings : or, as it was ludicrously said, when the country gentlemen bribed themselves with a shilling in the pound of their own land-tax.

Mr. Charles Townshend was soon taken into the Duke of Grafton's Cabinet, and made Chancellor of the Exchequer. I will not use so strong an expression as to say that he was treacherous to this iVdministration, but he certainly saw that the Earl of Chatham's greatness was on the decline ; and that he should most readily increase his own importance by acquiescing in the wishes of the King. He therefore brought forward measures tending to revive the question of the right of the British Parliament to tax the American Colonies; but his premature death protects him from being considered as the author of the American war.

The Duke of Grafton, who had been made First Lord of the Treasury, was certainly a man of a very feeble mind ; he had about him at that time a Secretary of the name of Thomas Bradshavv ; and a mistress, formerly known by the name of Nancy Parsons, at that time bearing the name of Mrs. Horton, afterwards Lady Maynard. Those who wished to destroy the Earl of Chatham's Administration saw, that they should very much advance their designs if they could separate the Duke of Grafton from the Earl of Chatham : they had gained over the Duke's Secretary, Mr. Bradshaw ; but they could not corrupt his mistress. She had the sense to see that the Duke's honour required him to remain firm in his connexion with the Earl of Chatham. She had the sense to see this, and she had the integrity to tell him so. Her influence for some time prevented the Duke of Grafton from deserting the Earl of Chatham. When this was seen, those who wished the destruction of that Administration changed the direction of their batteries ; instead of using their efforts to separate the Duke of Grafton from the Earl of Chatham, they employed them to separate him from his mistress. In this they succeeded, and married him to Miss Wrottesley, the niece of the Duchess of Bedford. To separate him from the Earl of Chatham was then an easy task. Thus fell the Earl of Chatham's Administration ; and, I believe, the Earl was never after in any public office.