Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e. G. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book. For its Index, a page number has been placed only at the start of that section. In the original volumes in this set, each even-numbered page had a header consisting of the page number, the volume title, and the chapter number. The odd-numbered page header consisted of the year with which the page deals, a subject phrase, and the page number. In this set of e-books, the odd-page year and subject phrase have been converted to sidenotes, usually positioned between the first two paragraphs of the even-odd page pair. If such positioning was not possible for a given sidenote, it was positioned where it seemed most logical. In the original book set, consisting of four volumes, the master index was in Volume 4. In this set of e-books, the index has been duplicated into each of the other volumes, with its first page re-numbered as necessary, and an Index item added to each volume's Table of Contents. A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES AND OF WILLIAM IV. by JUSTIN MCCARTHY and JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY In Four Volumes VOL. III. Harper & Brothers PublishersNew York and London1901 Copyright, 1901, by Harper & Brothers, All rights reserved. CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME. CHAPTER PAGE XLII. "SUPREME IRONIC PROCESSION" . . . . . . . . . . . 1 XLIII. GEORGE AND THE DRAGONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 XLIV. THE "NORTH BRITON" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 XLV. NUMBER FORTY-FIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 XLVI. THE AMERICAN COLONIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 XLVII. EDMUND BURKE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 XLVIII. THE STAMP ACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 XLIX. WILKES REDIVIVUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 L. THE SPIRIT OF JUNIUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 LI. CHARLES JAMES FOX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 LII. ON THE CHARLES RIVER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 LIII. THE "VICAR OF WAKEFIELD" . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 LIV. YANKEE DOODLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 LV. THE GORDON RIOTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 LVI. TWO NEW MEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 LVII. FOX AND PITT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 LVIII. WARREN HASTINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 LIX. THE GREAT IMPEACHMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 LX. THE CHANGE OF THINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 LXI. "NINETY-EIGHT" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 LXII. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350 {1} A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. CHAPTER XLII. "SUPREME IRONIC PROCESSION. " For six and forty years England had been ruled by German princes. OneElector of Hanover named George had been succeeded by another Electorof Hanover named George, and George the First and George the Second, George the father and George the son, resembled each other in being bynature German rather than English, and by inclination Electors ofHanover rather than Kings of England. Against each of them a Stuartprince had raised a standard and an army. George the First had hisJames Francis Edward, who called himself James the Third, and whom hisopponents called the Pretender, by a translation which gave aninjurious signification to the French word "pretendant. " George theSecond had his Charles Edward, the Young Pretender who a generationlater led an invading army well into England before he had to turn andfly for his life. A very different condition of things awaited thesuccessor of George the Second. George the Second's grandson was anEnglish prince and an Englishman. He was born in England; his fatherwas born in England; his native tongue was the English tongue; and ifhe was Elector of Hanover, that seemed an accident. The title was as unimportant and trivial to the King of {2} England ashis title of King of France was unreal and theatrical. The remnant ofthe Jacobites could not with truth call the heir to the throne aforeigner, and they could not in reason hope to make such ademonstration in arms against him as they had made against hisgrandfather and his great-grandfather. The young King came to a muchsafer throne under much more favorable auspices than either of the twomonarchs, his kinsmen and his namesakes, who had gone before him. [Sidenote: 1760--Accession of George the Third] The young King heard the first formal news of his accession to thethrone from the lips of no less stately a personage than the GreatCommoner himself--the foremost Englishman then alive. George theThird, as he then actually was, had received at Kew Palace somemessages which told him that his grandfather was sinking fast, that hewas dying, that he was dead. George resolved to start for London. Onhis way, and not far from Kew, he was met by a coach and six, which, from the blue and silver liveries, he knew to be that of Mr. Pitt. George received the congratulations of his great minister--the greatMinister whom, as it was soon to appear, he understood so little andesteemed so poorly. Then Pitt, turning his horses' heads, followed hissovereign into London. Never perhaps in English history was a youngking welcomed on his accession by so great a minister. Among the manyauspicious conditions which surrounded the early days of George theThird's reign not the least auspicious was the presence of such abulwark to the throne and to the realm. For the name of Pitt was nowfeared and honored in every civilized country in the world. It hadbecome synonymous with the triumphs and the greatness of England. Pittwas the greatest War Minister England had yet known. He was the firstEnglish statesman who illustrated in his own person the differencebetween a War Minister and a Minister of War. Truly this journey of the King and the Prime Minister from Kew toLondon was what George Meredith calls a "supreme ironic procession, with laughter of gods in the background. " The ignorant, unwise youngKing led the {3} way, the greatest living statesman in England followedafter. One can hardly imagine a procession more supremely ironic. Almost all the whole range of human intellect was stretched out andexhausted by the living contrast between the King who went first andthe Minister who meekly went second. Pitt had made for young Georgethe Third a great empire, which it was the work of George the Third notlong after to destroy, so far as its destruction could be compassed bythe stupidity of a man. Pitt had made the name of England a power allover the civilized world. Rome at her greatest, Spain at her greatest, could hardly have surpassed the strength and the fame of England asPitt had re-made it. George, from the very first, felt a sort ofcoldness towards his superb Minister. He had all the vague pervadingjealousy which dulness naturally shows to genius. It was a displeasureto him from the first that Pitt should have made England so great, because the work was the inspiration of the subject and not of thesovereign. No one can know for certain what thoughts were filling themind of George as he rode to London that day in front of William Pitt. But it may fairly be assumed that he was not particularly sorry for thedeath of his grandfather, and that he was pleasing his spirit with theidea that he would soon emancipate himself from Mr. Pitt. "Be a king, George, " his mother used to say to him. The unsifted youth wasdetermined, if he could, to be a king. At the time of his accession George was in his twenty-third year. Hewas a decidedly personable young Prince. He had the large regularfeatures of his race, the warm complexion of good health, and avigorous constitution, keen attractive eyes, and a firm, full mouth. He was tall and strongly made, and carried himself with a carriage thatwas dignified or stiff according to the interpretation of those whoobserved it. Many of the courtly ladies thought him extremelyhandsome, were eagerly gracious to him, did their best to thrustthemselves upon his attention, and received, it would seem, very littlenotice in return for their pains. If George showed himself {4}indifferent and even ungallant to his enthusiastic admirers, hisbrother Edward was of a different disposition. But though Edward, likehis brother, was an agreeable-looking youth, and keen to win favor inwomen's eyes, he found himself like Benedict: nobody marked him becausehe was not the heir to the throne. In some illustrated histories of the reign two portraits of George theThird are placed in immediate and pathetic contrast. The one portraitrepresents George as he showed in the first year of his reign--alert, young, smiling, with short-cut powdered hair, a rich flowered coat, andthe star and ribbon of the Garter on his breast. So might a young kinglook called in the flower of his age to the control of a great country, pleased, confident, and courageous. The other picture shows how theKing looked in the sixtieth year of his reign. The face is old andwrinkled and weary; the straggling white locks escape from beneath afur-trimmed cap; the bowed body is wrapped in a fur-trimmed robe. Thetime of two generations of men lay between the young king and the old;the longest reign then known to English history, the longest and themost eventful. [Sidenote: 1760--George's qualifications for King] George the Third started with many advantages over his predecessors ofthe same name. He was an Englishman. He spoke the English language. It was his sincere wish to be above all things English. He honestlyloved English ways. He had not the faintest desire to start a seraglioin England. He had no German mistresses. He did not care about fatwomen. He was devoted to his mother--perhaps a good deal too devoted, but even the excess of devotion might have been pardonable in thepublic opinion of England; certainly it was only his own weakness andperversity that made it for a while not pardonable. He was of thecountry squire's order of mind; his tastes were wholly those of thestolid, well-intentioned, bucolic country squire. He would probablyhave been a very respectable and successful sovereign if only he hadnot been plagued by the ambition to be a king. It is curious to remember that the accession of George {5} the Thirdwas generally and joyfully welcomed. A hopeful people, having enduredwith increasing dislike two sovereigns of the House of Hanover, werequite prepared to believe that a third prince was rich in all regalqualities; in all public and private virtues. It would, perhaps, havebeen unreasonable on the part of any dispassionate observer of publicaffairs to anticipate that a third George would make a worse monarchthan his namesakes and immediate predecessors. The dispassionateobserver might have maintained that there were limits to kinglymisgovernment in a kingdom endowed with a Constitution and blessed witha measure of Parliamentary representation, and that those limits hadbeen fairly reached by the two German princes who ruled reluctantlyenough over the fortunes of England. This same dispassionate observermight reasonably, assuming him to possess familiar knowledge of certainfacts, have hazarded the prediction that George the Third would be abetter king than his grandfather and his great-grandfather. He wascertainly a better man. There was so much of a basis whereupon tobuild a hope of better things. The profligacy of his ancestors had notapparently vitiated his blood and judgment. His young life had been apure life. He was in that way a pattern to princes. He had been, which was rare with his race, a good son. He was to be--and there wasno more rare quality in one of his stock--a good husband, a goodfather. He was in his way a good friend to his friends. He wassincerely desirous to prove himself a good king to his people. The youth of George the Third had passed under somewhat agitatedconditions. George the Second's straight-forward hatred for his son'swife opened a great gulf between the Court and Leicester House, whichno true courtier made any effort to bridge. While the young Princeknew, in consequence, little or nothing of the atmosphere of St. James's or the temper of those who breathed that atmosphere, attemptswere not wanting to sunder him from the influence of his mother. Someof the noblemen and clergymen to whom the early instruction of theyoung {6} Prince was entrusted labored with a persistency which wouldhave been admirable in some other cause to sever him not merely fromall his father's friends but even from his father's wife. There wasindeed a time when their efforts almost succeeded in alienating theyoung Prince from his mother. The wildest charges of Jacobitism werebrought against the immediate servants of the Princess, charges whichthose who made them wholly failed to substantiate. The endeavor toremove the Prince from the tutelage of his mother was abandoned. Theeducation of the Prince was committed to more sympathetic care. Thechange had its advantage in keeping George in the wholesome atmosphereof Leicester House instead of exposing him to the temptations of aprofligate Court. It had its disadvantages in leaving him entirelyunder the influence of a man to whose guidance, counsel, and authoritythe Princess Dowager absolutely submitted herself. [Sidenote: 1760--Lord Bute] Observers of the lighter sort are pleased to insist upon the trifleswhich have the most momentous influence upon the fortunes of peoplesand the fates of empires. A famous and facile French playwrightderived the downfall of a favorite and of a political revolution fromthe spilling of a glass of water. There are times when the temptationto pursue this thread of fancy is very great. Suppose, for instance, it had not chanced to rain on a certain day at Clifden, when a cricketmatch was being played in which Frederick, Prince of Wales, happened tobe interested. A fretted Prince would not have had to retire to histent like Achilles, would not have insisted on a game of whist to cheerhis humor. There would have been no difficulty in forming a rubber. There would have been no need to seek for a fourth hand. No wistfulgentleman-in-attendance seeking the desirable would have had to ask theaid of a strange nobleman perched in an apothecary's chariot. Had thisstrange nobleman not been so sought and found, had the apothecary notbeen wealthy enough to keep a chariot, and friendly enough to offer apoor Scotch gentleman a seat in it, it is possible that the {7}American Colonies might yet form portion and parcel of the BritishEmpire, that Chatham's splendid dreams might have become still moresplendid realities, that the name of Wilkes might never have emergedfrom an obscurity of debauch to association with the name of liberty. For the nobleman who made the fourth hand in the Prince of Wales'srubber was unfortunately a man of agreeable address and engagingmanners, manners that pleased infinitely the Prince of Wales, andcemented a friendship most disastrous in its consequences to England, to the English people, and to an English king. The name of theengaging nobleman was Lord Bute. At the time of this memorable game of whist Lord Bute was thirty-sixyears old. He was well educated, well read, tall of body, pleasing ofcountenance, quick in intelligence, and curious in disposition. Thesequalities won the heart of the Prince of Wales, and lifted the youngScotch nobleman from poverty and obscurity to prominence and favor. The Prince appointed Bute a Lord of the Bedchamber and welcomed him tohis most intimate friendship. The death of the Prince of Wales twoyears later had no disastrous effect upon the rising fortunes of thefavorite. The influence which Bute had exercised over the mind ofFrederick he exercised over the mind of Frederick's wife and over themind of Frederick's heir. Scandal whispered, asserted, insisted thenand has insisted ever since, that the influence which Lord Buteexercised over the Princess of Wales was not merely a mental influence. How far scandal was right or wrong there is no means, there probablynever will be any means, of knowing. Lord Bute's defenders point tohis conspicuous affection for his wife, Edward Wortley Montagu's onlydaughter, in contravention of the scandal. Undoubtedly Bute was a goodhusband and a good father. Whether the scandal was justified or not, the fact that it existed, that it was widely blown abroad and verygenerally believed, was enough. As far as the popularity of thePrincess was concerned it might as well have been justified. For yearsno caricature was so popular as that which displayed the Boot and the{8} Petticoat, the ironic popular symbols of Lord Bute and the Princess. By whatever means Lord Bute gained his influence over the Princess ofWales, he undoubtedly possessed the influence and used it withdisastrous effect. He moulded the feeble intelligence of the youngPrince George; he guided his thoughts, directed his studies instatecraft, and was to all intents and purposes the governor of theyoung Prince's person. The young Prince could hardly have had a worseadviser. Bute was a man of many merits, but his defects were in thehighest degree dangerous in a person who had somehow become possessedof almost absolute power. In the obscurity of a private life, the manwho had borne poverty with dignity at an age when poverty waspeculiarly galling to one of his station might have earned the esteemof his immediate fellows. In the exaltation of a great if anunauthorized rule, and later in the authority of an important publicoffice, his defects were fatal to his fame and to the fortunes of thosewho accepted his sway. For nearly ten years, from the death ofFrederick, Prince of Wales, to the death of George the Second, Bute wasall-powerful in his influence over the mother of the future King andover the future King himself. When the young Prince came to the throneLord Bute did not immediately assume ostensible authority. He remainedthe confidential adviser of the young King until 1761. In 1761 he tookoffice, assuming the Secretaryship of State resigned by LordHoldernesse. From a secretaryship to the place of Prime Minister wasbut a step, and a step soon taken. Although he did not occupy officevery long, he held it long enough to become perhaps the most unpopularPrime Minister England has ever had. [Sidenote: 1760--Hannah Lightfoot and Lady Sarah Lennox] The youth of George the Third was starred with a strange romance. Thefull truth of the story of Hannah Lightfoot will probably never beknown. What is known is sufficiently romantic without the additions oflegend. Hannah Lightfoot was a beautiful Quaker girl, the daughter ofa decent tradesman in Wapping. Association with the family of anuncle, a linendraper, who lived near the {9} Court, brought the girlinto the fashionable part of the town. The young Prince saw her byaccident somehow, somewhere, in the early part of 1754, and fell inlove with her. From that moment the girl disappears from certainknowledge, and legend busies itself with her name. It is asserted thatshe was actually married to the young Prince; that William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, was present at the marriage; that she borethe Prince several children. Other versions have it that she wasmarried as a mere form to a man named Axford, who immediately left her, and that after this marriage she lived with the Prince. She issupposed to have died in a secluded villa in Hackney. It is said thatnot only the wife of George the Third but the wife of George the Fourthbelieved that the marriage had taken place. We must not attach toomuch importance to a story which in itself is so very unlikely. It isin the last degree improbable that a statesman like Pitt would havelent himself to so singular a proceeding. Even if an enamoured youngPrince were prepared to sanction his affections by a marriage, he wouldscarcely have found an assistant in the ablest politician of the age. The story of the Axford marriage is far more probable. If HannahLightfoot had been married to George she would have been Queen ofEngland, for there was no Royal Marriage Act in those days. Another and more famous romance is associated with the youth of Georgethe Third. Lady Sarah Lennox, the youngest daughter of the second Dukeof Richmond, was one of the most beautiful women of her time. Thewriters of the day rave about her, describe her as "an angel, " aslovelier than any Magdalen by Correggio. When she was only seventeenyears old her beauty attracted the young King, who soon made no secretof his devotion to her. The new passion divided the Court into twocamps. The House of Lennox was eager to bring about a marriage, whichwas not then obstructed by the law. Henry Fox, one of the mostambitious men of that time or of any time, was Lady Sarah'sbrother-in-law, and he did his best to promote the marriage. On theother hand, the {10} party which followed the lead of the PrincessDowager and Lord Bute fought uncompromisingly against the scheme. ThePrincess Dowager had everything to lose, Lord Bute had everything tolose, by such an alliance. The power of the Princess Dowager over theyoung King would vanish, and the influence of Lord Bute over thePrincess Dowager would cease to have any political importance. LordBute did all he could to keep the lovers apart. Henry Fox did all hecould to bring the lovers together. For lovers they undoubtedly were. George again and again made it plain to those who were in hisconfidence that he was in love with Lady Sarah, and was anxious to makeher his queen; and Lady Sarah, though her heart is said to have beengiven to Lord Newbottle, was quite ready to yield to the wishes of herfamily when those wishes were for the crown of England. On the meadowsof Holland House the beautiful girl, loveliest of Arcadian rustics, would play at making hay till her royal lover came riding by to greether. But the idyll did not end in the marriage for which Fox and theLennoxes hoped. It is said that the King was jealous of LordNewbottle; it is said that a sense of duty to his place and to hispeople made him resolve to subdue and sacrifice his own personalfeelings. He offered his hand and his crown to the Princess ofMecklenburg-Strelitz. Lady Sarah lost both her lovers, the King andLord Newbottle, who, in the words of Grenville, "complained as much ofher as she did of the King. " But she did not remain long unmarried. In 1762 she accepted as husband the famous sporting Baronet Sir ThomasCharles Bunbury, and nineteen years later she married the Hon. GeorgeNapier, and became the mother of an illustrious pair of soldierbrothers, Sir Charles Napier, the hero of Scinde, and Sir WilliamNapier, perhaps the best military historian since Julius Caesar. LadySarah died in 1826, in her eighty-second year. In her later years shehad become totally blind, and she bore her affliction with a sweetpatience. At her death she is described by the chroniclers of the timeas "probably the last surviving {11} great-grand-daughter of KingCharles the Second. " A barren honor, surely. [Sidenote: 1760--Princess Charlotte Sophia] The young Princess whom George married was in many ways well and evenexcellently qualified to make a good queen. It is said that she wasdiscovered for her young husband after a fashion something resembling atale from the "Arabian Nights. " The Princess Dowager, eager tocounteract the fatal effect of the beauty of Lady Sarah Lennox, wasanxious to have the young King married as soon as possible. Her ownwishes were in favor of a daughter of the House of Saxe-Gotha, but itis said that fear of a disease hereditary in the family overruled herwishes. Then, according to the story, a Colonel Graeme, a Scotchgentleman upon whose taste Lord Bute placed great reliance, was sent ona kind of roving embassy to the various little German Courts in searchof the ideal bride. The lady of the quest was, according to theinstructions given to Colonel Graeme, to be at once beautiful, healthy, accomplished, of mild disposition, and versed in music, an art to whichthe King was much devoted. Colonel Graeme, with this pleasing pictureof feminine graces ever in his mind, found the original of the portraitin Charlotte Sophia, the second daughter of Charles Lewis Frederick, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. There is another version of the manner of George's wooing whichnullifies the story of Colonel Graeme's romantic mission. According tothis other version George fell in love with his future queen simplyfrom reading a letter written by her. The tale sounds as romantic asthat of the Provencal poet's passion for the portrait of the Lady ofTripoli. It is true, however, that the letter of Charlotte Sophia wassomething of the nature of a state paper. The Duchy ofMecklenburg-Strelitz, of which the Princess Charlotte's brother was thesovereign, had been overrun by the troops of the King of Prussia. Theyoung Princess wrote a letter to the Prussian King, which came toGeorge's notice and inspired him, it is said, with the liveliestadmiration for the lady who penned it. Whatever the actual reason, whether the report of Colonel Graeme or the {12} charms of herepistolary style, the certain thing is that George was married, firstby proxy and afterwards in due form, to the young Princess in 1761. The young Princess was not remarkably beautiful. Even the courtiers ofthe day, anxious to say their strongest in her praise, could not domuch more than commend her eyes and complexion and call her "a veryfine girl, " while those who were not inclined to flatter said her facewas all mouth, and declared, probably untruly, that the young King wasat first obviously repelled by the plainness of his wife's appearance. If she was plain, her plainness, as Northcote, the painter, said, wasan elegant, not a vulgar plainness, and the grace of her carriage muchimpressed him. Walpole found her sensible, cheerful, and remarkablygenteel, a not inconsiderable eulogy from him. She was fairlyeducated, as the education of princesses went in those days. She knewFrench and Italian, knew even a little English. She had variouselegant accomplishments--could draw, and dance, and play, had acquireda certain measure of scientific knowledge, and she had what was betterthan all these attainments, a good, kindly, sensible nature. Themarriage could hardly be called a popular marriage at first. Statesmenand politicians thought that the King of England ought to have foundsome more illustrious consort than the daughter of a poor and pettyGerman House. The people at large, we are told from a private letterof the time, were "quite exasperated at her not being handsome, " beautyin a sovereign being a great attraction to the mass of subjects. Thecourtiers in general were amused by, and secretly laughed at, hersimple ways and old-fashioned--or at least un-English--manners. [Sidenote--1761--The Coronation of George the Third] After the wedding came the coronation, a very resplendent ceremony, which was not free from certain somewhat ludicrous features, and wasnot denied a certain tragic dignity. It was enormously expensive. Horace Walpole called it a puppet-show that cost a million. LoyalLondon turned out in its thousands. Surprisingly large sums of moneywere paid for rooms and scaffolds from which the outdoor sight could beseen, and much larger were paid {13} for places inside the Abbey. Itwas very gorgeous, very long, and very fatiguing. The spectatorcarried away, with aching senses, a confused memory of many soldiers, of great peers ill at ease in unbecoming habits, of beautiful womenbeautifully attired, of a blaze of jewels that recalled the story ofAladdin's mine, and of the wonderful effect by which the darkness ofWestminster Hall was suddenly illuminated by an ingenious arrangementof sconces that caught fire and carried on the message of light withgreat rapidity. The heralds in whose hands the ceremonial arrangementslay bungled their business badly, causing fierce heartburnings byconfusions in precedence, and displaying a lamentable ignorance of thenames and the whereabouts of many wearers of stately and ancienttitles. When the King expressed his annoyance at some of the blunders, Lord Effingham, the Earl Marshal, offered, for amazing apology, theassurance that the next coronation would be conducted with perfectorder, an unfortunate speech, which had, however, the effect ofaffording the King infinite entertainment. The one tragic touch in thewhole day's work may be legend, but it is legend that might be and thatshould be truth. When Dymoke, the King's Champion, rode, in accordancewith the antique usage, along Westminster Hall, and flung his glovedown in challenge to any one who dared contest his master's right tothe throne of England, it is said that some one darted out from thecrowd, picked up the glove, slipped back into the press, anddisappeared, without being stopped or discovered. According to oneversion of the incident, it was a woman who did the deed; according toanother it was Charles Edward himself, the Young Pretender--now nolonger so very young--who made this last protest on behalf of his lostfortunes and his fallen House. It is possible, it is even probable, that Charles Edward was in London then and thereafter, and it seemscertain that if he was in London King George knew of it and ignored itin a chivalrous and kingly way. The Young Pretender could do no harmnow. Stuart hopes had burned high for a moment, fifteen years earlier, when a handsome young {14} Prince carried his invading flag halfwaythrough England, and a King who was neither handsome nor young wasready to take ship from Tower Stairs if worse came of it. But thosehopes were quenched now, down in the dust, extinguished forever. Noharm could come to the House of Hanover, no harm could come to the Kingof England, if at Lady Primrose's house in St. James's Square a partyshould be interrupted by the entrance of an unexpected guest, of a manprematurely aged by dissipation and disappointment, a melancholy ruinof what had once been fair and noble, and in whom his amazed andreverent hostess recognized the last of the fated Stuarts. There werespies among those who still professed adherence to Charles Edward andallegiance to his line, spies bearing names honorable in Scottishhistory, who were always ready to keep George and George's ministersposted in the movements of the unhappy Prince they betrayed. Georgecould afford to be magnanimous, and George was magnanimous. If itpleased the poor Pretender to visit, like a premature ghost, the cityand the scenes associated with his House and its splendor and its awfultragedies, he did so untroubled and unharmed. It was but a cast of thedice in Fortune's fingers, and Charles Edward would have been inWestminster Hall and had a champion to assert his right. But the castof the dice went the other way, and George the Third was King, and hislittle German Princess was Queen of England. [Sidenote--1761--The London gayeties of the time] It is probable that those early days in London were the happiest in thelittle Queen's long life. She had come from exceeding quiet to a greatand famous city; she was the centre of splendor; she was surrounded bysplendid figures; she was the first lady of a great land; she was thequeen of a great king; she was the fortunate wife of a loyal, honorable, and pure-minded man. She was young, she was frank, she wasfond of all innocent pleasures, keenly alive to all the entertainmentthat Court and capital could offer her. She crammed more gayeties intothe first few days of her marriage than she had dreamed of in all herprevious life. The girl, who had never seen {15} the sea until shetook ship for England, had never seen a play acted until she came toLondon. Mecklenburg-Strelitz had its own strong ideas about the follyand frivolity of the stage, and no Puritan maiden in the sternest daysof Cromwellian ascendency, no Calvinist daughter of the most rigorousScottish household, could have been educated in a more austereignorance of the arts that are supposed to embellish and that areintended to amuse existence. She went to playhouse after playhouse, alarmed at the crowds that thronged the streets to see her, butfascinated by the delights that awaited her within the walls. Sheattended the opera. She saw "The Beggar's Opera, " which may havecharmed her for its story without perplexing her by its satire. Shesaw "The Rehearsal, " and did not dream that twenty years later thehumors of Bayes, which she probably did not understand, would beeclipsed forever by the fantasies of Mr. Puff. She carried the King toRanelagh, to that amazing, enchanting assembly where all the world mademasquerade, and mandarins, harlequins, shepherdesses, andmuch-translated pagan divinities jostled each other through Armida'sgardens, where the pink of fashion and the plain citizen, the patricianlady and the plebeian waiting-maid made merry together in a motley routof Comus, and marvelled at the brilliancy of the illuminations and themany-colored glories of the fireworks. The London to which the little Princess came, and which she found sofull of entertainment, was a very different London from the city forwhich the first of the Georges had quitted reluctantly the pleasures ofHanover and the gardens of Herrenhausen. The Hanoverian princes hadnever tried, as the Stuart sovereigns had tried, to stop by peremptorylegislation the spread of the metropolis. London had been steadilyspreading in the half-century of Guelph dominion, eating up the greenfields in all directions, linking itself with little lonely hamlets andtiny rustic villages, and weaving them close into the web of its being, choking up rural streams and blotting out groves and meadows withmonuments of brick and mortar. Where {16} the friends of George theFirst could have hunted and gunned and found refreshment in secludedcountry ale-houses, the friends of George the Third were familiar withmiles of stony streets and areas of arid squares. London was not thenthe monster city that another century and a half has made it, but itwas even more huge in its proportion to the size of any of its rivals, if rivals they could be called, among the large towns of England. Thegreat city did not deserve the adjective that is applied to it by thepoet of Chevy Chase. London was by no means lovely. However much itmight have increased in size, it had increased very little in beauty, and not at all in comfort, since the days when an Elector of Hanoverbecame King of England. It still compared only to its disadvantagewith the centres of civilization on the Continent; it still was rich inall the dangers and all the discomforts Gay had celebrated nearly twogenerations earlier. And these dangers and discomforts were notconfined to London. The world beyond London was a world of growingprovincial towns and increasing seaports connected by tolerable andsometimes admirable highways, and of smaller towns and villages reducedfor the most part to an almost complete isolation by roads that werealways nearly and often quite impassable. To travel much in England inthose days was scarcely less adventurous even for an Englishman than totravel in Africa to-day; for a foreigner the adventure was indeedenvironed by perils. [Sidenote: 1761--Fashions under George the Third] Dress and manners had changed in the Hanoverian half-century, thoughnot as much as they were to change in the fifty years that were stillin futurity. Extravagance of attire still persisted, though theextravagance had changed its expression. The gigantic hoops in whichladies had delighted had diminished, had dwindled, and gowns were of aslender seemliness. But reformed below, fantasy rioted above. Theheaddresses of women in the early days of the third George were asmonstrous, as horrible, and as shapeless in their way as the hideoushoops had been in theirs. Vast pyramids of false hair were piled onthe heads of fashionable ladies, were pasted together with pomatums, {17} were smothered in powder and pricked with feathers like theheadgear of a savage. These odious erections took so long to build upthat they were suffered to remain in their ugly entirety not for daysbut for weeks together, until the vast structure became a decomposingmass. It is rather ghastly to remember that youth and beauty and graceallowed itself to be so loathsomely adorned, that the radiant womenwhose faces smile from the canvases of great painters, and whose namesilluminate the chronicles of the wasted time of the reign of George theThird, were condemned to dwell with corruption in consenting to becaricatured. Till far on in the lifetime of Queen Charlotte thefashion in women's wear oscillated from one extreme to another, thegracious of to-day becoming the grotesque of yesterday, and modesucceeding mode with the confusion and fascination of a masquerade. The men were no less remarkable than the women for the clothes theywore, no less capricious in their changes. A decided, if not aconspicuous, turn of public taste had done much since the accession ofthe first George to minimize if not to obliterate the differencesbetween class and class. Men no longer consented readily to carry thebadge of their calling in their daily costume, and the great world camegradually to be no longer divided sharply from the little world bymarked distinction of dress. But still, and for long after 1760, theclothes of men were scarcely less brilliant, scarcely less importunatein their demands upon the attention of their wearers, than the clothesof women. Men made a brave show in those days. A group of men mightbe as strong in color and as vivid in contrast as a group of women; theneutralization of tone, the degradation of hue, did not begin till muchlater, and only conquered in the cataclysm of the birth-throes of tworepublics. Blue and scarlet, green and yellow, crimson and purple, orange and plum-color were the daily wear of the well-to-do; and evenfor the less wealthy there were the warm browns and murreys, thebottle-greens and clarets, and lavenders and buffs which made any crowda thing to please a painter in the eighteenth century. In all the {18}varying breeds of beaux and macaronis and dandies, of bucks andfribbles, into which the fine gentlemen of the age allowed themselvesto be classified, the one dominant feature, the one commoncharacteristic, was the love for gold and silver and fine laces, forgaudiness of color and richness of ornament, for every kind ofexquisite extravagance, every refinement in foppishness. There was apassion for the punctilio of dress, for the grace of a gold-headed caneand a chased sword-hilt, for the right ribbon, the right jewel, theright flower, and the right perfume, for the right powder in the hairand the right seals on the fob and the right heels and buckles on theshoes. There was an ardent appreciation, an uncompromising worship ofthe fine feathers that make fine birds. [Sidenote: 1761--The wine-drinking propensities of the age] The social system of the polite world had been slowly changing with thesuccessive Georges. The familiar events in the lives of the well-to-doclasses were growing steadily later. The dinner hour, which wasgenerally at noon or one in the reign of Queen Anne, had crept on tothree o'clock under the first, and to four o'clock under the secondGeorge. Under the third it was to grow later and later, until it madeHorace Walpole rage as if the world were coming to an end because amongfashionable folk it had settled itself at six o'clock. In the country, indeed, for the most part people lived the quiet lives and kept theearly hours of Sir Roger de Coverley. But, however, London lived, andwhatever London chose to do, England's simple honest King and England'ssimple honest Queen would have no concern with the follies of fashionand the luxuries of late hours. However much the rashness andwrong-headedness of his public policy forced him to accept the servicesand prime the pockets of a gang of drunkards and debauchees who calledthemselves and were called the King's friends, the evil communicationshad not the slightest influence upon the royal good manners, and didnot alter by one jot the rigid frugality of George's life and that ofhis royal consort. The King's friends were only the King's jackals;they never were suffered for a moment to cross the line which severedthe {19} sovereign's private life from his public actions. Indeed, itmay be assumed that few of the hard-drinking, hard-living, gambling, raking ruffians who battened on the King's bounty, and who voted whiteblack and good bad with uncompromising pertinacity and unappeasablerelish, would have welcomed the hard seats at the royal table, themeagre fare on the royal platters, the homely countrified air the royalcouple breathed, and the homely countrified hour at which the royalcouple took up their candles and went to bed. George the Third wouldbe long asleep at an hour when his friends would be thinking of payinga visit to Ranelagh, or preparing to spend a pleasant evening overtheir cards, their dice-box, and their wine. Especially their wine. The one great characteristic of the gentilityof the day was its capacity for drinking wine. "Wine, dear child, andtruth, " says a Greek poet, naming the two most admirable gifts of life. Truth was not always very highly prized by the men who set manners andmade history in the second half of the eighteenth century, but to winethey clung with an absolutely unswerving and unalterable attachment. If the great Oriental scholar who adorned the age had been morefortunate in his studies, if Sir William Jones had chanced to makeacquaintance with a Persian poet who has since become very famous amongEnglishmen, he would have found in the quatrains of Omar Khayyam thevery verses to please the minds and to interpret the desires of themajority of the statesmen, soldiers, divines, lawyers, and finegentlemen of the day. It is as impossible to imagine the men of theeighteenth century without their incessant libations of wine as it isimpossible to imagine what the eighteenth century would have been likeif it had been for the most part abstemious, sober, or even reasonablytemperate. As we read the memoirs of the day, and if we believe only apart of what they tell us, making the most liberal allowance for theexaggeration of the wit and the satire of the cynic, we have to picturethe political and social life of the time as a drunken orgy. Undoubtedly there were then, as always, men of decent behavior anddiscreet life, men who would {20} no more have exceeded in wine than inany other way. But the temper of the age and the tone of thefashionable world was not in tune with their austerity. Wonder at thefrequency with which men of position got drunk then is only rivalled bywonder at the amount which they could drink without getting drunk. [Sidenote: 1761--Unpropitious time for the King's rule] The cry of the Persian nightingale to the Persian rose, "wine, wine, wine, " was the cry to which hearts responded most readily in all theGeorgian era. Walpole the father made Walpole the son drink too much, that he might not be unfilially sober while his father was unpaternallydrunk. A generation later the younger Pitt plied himself with port asa medicine for the gout. The statesmen of the period, in the words ofSir George Trevelyan, sailed on a sea of claret from one comfortableofficial haven to another. The amount of liquor consumed by each manat a convivial gathering was Gargantuan, prodigious, hardly to becredited. Thackeray tells, in some recently published notes for hislectures on the four Georges, of a Scotch judge who was forced to drinkwater for two months, and being asked what was the effect of the_régime_, owned that he saw the world really as it was for the firsttime for twenty years. For a quarter of a century he had never beenquite sober. This man might be taken as a type of the _bons vivants_, the _buveurs très illustres_ of the eighteenth century. They werenever quite sober all through their lives. They never saw the world asit really was. They pleaded, preached, debated, fought, gambled, loved, and hated under the influence of their favorite vintage, saw allthings through a vinous fume, and judged all things with inflamedpulses and a reeling brain. But it must not be forgotten that thepopulation of the country was not entirely composed of corrupt, hard-drinking politicians, profligate, hard-drinking noblemen, andfurious, hard-drinking country gentlemen. If these were, in a sense, the more conspicuous types, there were other types very different andvery admirable. Apart from the great mass of the people, living theirdull daily lives, doing their dull daily tasks, quiet, ignorant, unconscious that they {21} could or should ever have any say in thedisposition of their existences, there were both in town and countryplenty of decent, sober, honorable, and upright men and women who hadnothing in common with the fine gentlemen and the fine ladies who fillthe historical fashion plates. If, unfortunately, Squire Western andParson Truliber were true pictures, at least Parson Adam and Sir Rogerde Coverley still held good. None the less a young, self-willed King, not too intelligent and not too well educated, could scarcely have cometo his sovereignty at a time less like to be fruitful of good for himor for the country that he was resolved to govern. {22} CHAPTER XLIII. GEORGE AND THE DRAGONS. [Sidenote: 1760--George the Third as a "Briton"] The King was not lucky in his first act of sovereignty. In his speechat the opening of Parliament on November 18, 1760, he used a form ofwords which he, and some of those who advised him, evidently believedto be eminently calculated to advance his popularity. "Born andeducated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton, " the Kingsaid; and the words would seem to suggest such an intimacy ofassociation between the King and the kingdom as must needs knit thehearts of ruler and of ruled more closely together. Yet the choice ofwords gave offence in certain quarters, and for two quite distinctreasons. Many of the adherents and admirers of the late King--for evenGeorge the Second had his admirers--were indignant at the contrastwhich the new King seemed deliberately to draw between himself and hisgrandfather. In accentuating the fact that he was born and bred inEngland, George the Third appeared by imputation to be casting a slurupon the German nature and German prejudices of George the Second. This boast, however much it might offend the feelings of the friends ofthe late King, was not at all calculated to affect the mass of thepublic, who had little love for George the Second, and whose affectionfor the new King was based mainly on the hope and the assumption thathe would prove to be as unlike the old King as possible. But there wasanother interpretation to be put upon the royal words which was likelyto cause a wider impression and a wider hostility. It would seem thatsome of the King's advisers wished him to write that he gloried in thename of Englishman; it would even seem that the King had actually usedthis word in the written draft of his speech. {23} Lord Bute, it wassaid, had struck out the word "Englishman, " and had induced the King toaccept the word "Briton" as a substitute. The difference would not bequite without moment now: it appeared very momentous to many then, whoread in the word chosen a most convincing proof of the Scotch influencebehind the throne. The King's pride in styling himself a Briton wastaken to be, what indeed it was, evidence of his affection for theScotch peer who had been so lately sworn into his Privy Council; andthe alarm and indignation of all who resented the Scotch influence wasvery great. The Duke of Newcastle in especial was irritated by the useof the word "Briton, " and the evidence it forced upon him of his ownwaning influence and the waxing power of Bute. He even went so far asto wish that some notice should be taken of the "royal words" both inthe motion and the address; but in the end he and those who thoughtwith him felt that they must submit and stifle their anger for thetime, and so the King, unchallenged, proclaimed himself a Briton. Whatever else George had learned in the days of his tutelage, he hadlearned to form an ideal of what a king should be and a determinationto realize that ideal in his own rule. The old idea of the personalauthority of the sovereign seemed to be passing away, to be droppingout of the whole scheme and system of the English Constitution alongwith the belief in the theory of the Divine right of kings. The newKing, however, was resolved to prove that he was the head of the statein fact as well as in name; that with his own hands he would restore tohimself the power and authority which his grandfather and hisgreat-grandfather had allowed unwisely to slip through their fingers. The difficulties in the way of such an enterprise might very well havedisheartened any being less headstrong, any spirit less stubborn. There were forces opposed to him that seemed to overmatch his punypurpose as much as the giants overmatched the pigmy hero of the nurserytale. St. George in the chivalrous legend had but one dragon todestroy; the young royal St. George set himself {24} with a light heartto attack a whole brood of dragons--the dragons of the great Whig party. When George the Third came to the throne the government of the countrywas entirely in the hands of the Whigs. The famous stately WhigHouses, the Houses of Cavendish, of Russell, of Temple, of Bentinck, ofManners, of Fitzroy, of Lennox, of Conway, of Pelham, of Wentworth, were as little subservient to the sovereign as the great Frankishnobles who stood about the throne of the Do-nothing kings. The Toryparty was politically almost non-existent. No Tory filled any office, great or little, that was at the disposal of the Whigs, and the Whigshad retained their ascendency for well-nigh half a century. Jacobitismhad been the ruin of the Tory cause. All Tories were not Jacobites, but, roughly speaking, all Jacobites were Tories, and there were still, even at the date of George's accession, stout-hearted, thick-headedTory gentlemen who believed in or vaguely hoped for a possiblerestoration of a Stuart prince. It is curious to find that, though theWhig ranks stood fast in defence of the House of Hanover, had made thatHouse, and owed their ascendency to their loyalty to that House, thelatest Hanoverian sovereign not only disliked them, but dealt them blowafter blow until he overthrew their rule. The Tories, who sighed for aStuart prince over the water, suddenly found to their astonishment thatthey had a friend in the Hanoverian Guelph, whose name they hated, whose right to the throne they challenged, and whose authority theyderided, when they dared not despise. [Sidenote: 1761--The corrupt methods of the Whig party] It cannot be denied that the Whigs had often abused, and more thanabused, the privileges which their long lease of power had given tothem. All political parties ruled by corruption during the lastcentury. The Whig was not more corrupt than the Tory, but it canhardly be maintained that he was less corrupt. The great Whig Housesbought their way to power with resolute unscrupulousness. A majorityin either House was simply a case of so much money down. The genius ofWalpole had secured his own pre-eminence at the cost of the almosttotal degradation {25} of the whole administrative system of thecountry. When George the Third came to the throne the Whigs werefirmly established in a powerful league of bigotry and in tolerance, cemented by corruption, by bribery, by purchase of the mostuncompromising, of the basest kind. George the Third had fosteredthrough youthful years of silence those strong ideas of his own aboutthe importance of the kingly office which he was now to proclaim by hisdeeds. In the way of those strong ideas, in the way of the steadfastdetermination to be King in fact as well as in name, stood the greatWhig faction, flushed with its more than forty years' debauch of power, insolent in the sense of its own omnipotence. George was resolute toshow that the claim to omnipotence was a sham, and, to do him justice, he succeeded in his resolve. At the head of the Whig party in the House of Lords was the Duke ofNewcastle. At its head in the House of Commons was William Pitt. These two ministers seemed fixed and irremovable in their supremeauthority. While Newcastle lavished the money of the state in thatspacious system of bribery which welded the party into so formidable amass, it was the proud privilege of Pitt to illuminate its policy byhis splendid eloquence at home and by the splendor of his enterprisesabroad. Both the ministers were an enormous expense to the country. Newcastle never counted the cost so long as there was a county memberto be bought or a placeman to be satisfied. Pitt never counted thecost so long as he could add another trophy of victory to the walls ofWestminster Abbey and inscribe another triumph on England's roll ofbattles. The sordid skill of Newcastle and the dazzling genius of Pittseemed between them to make the Whig party invulnerable andirresistible. There was no opposition in Upper or Lower House; therehad been for many years no hint of royal opposition. Everythingpromised a long continuance of the undisputed Whig sway when suddenlythe secret determination of a young King and the secret instigations ofa Scotch peer dissipated the stately fabric that had endured so long. {26} The fixed purpose of Lord Bute was to get rid of Pitt. The fixedpurpose of Lord Bute created the fixed purpose of the King, and thehours of Pitt's administration were numbered. After a season of rareglory, of resplendent triumph, Pitt found himself face to face with aformidable coalition of interests against him, a coalition of interestsnone the less formidable because it was headed by a man for whoseattainments, opinions, and ability Pitt must have felt, and scarcelyconcealed, the greatest contempt. Pitt had not made himself an objectof personal affection to those with whom he was brought into immediatecontact. In the time of his supremacy he had carried himself with ahaughty arrogance, with an austere disdain which had set the smallermen about him raging in secret antagonism. The King, driven on by hisown dreams of personal authority, disliked the great minister. Bute, drunk with the wild ambitions of a weak man, seems to have believedthat in succeeding to Pitt's place he could also succeed to Pitt'sgenius. Pitt soon became aware of the strength of the cabal againsthim. While some of his colleagues were disaffected, others were almostopenly treacherous. Bute's manner waxed more arrogant in Council. TheKing's demeanor grew daily cooler. The great question of war or peacewas the question that divided the Cabinet. On a question of war orpeace Bute triumphed and Pitt fell. Pitt was all for carrying on the war, which had thus far proved sosuccessful for the British flag. But Pitt was not powerfully supportedin his belief. If he had his brothers-in-law James Grenville and LordTemple on his side, he had ranged against him a powerful oppositionformed by Henry Fox and George Grenville, by Lord Hardwicke and theDuke of Bedford. On the side of the peace party Bute ranged himself, bringing with him all the enormous weight that his influence with theKing gave him. The case of the peace party was a simple, straight-forward case. Why, they asked, should we continue to fight?Our sweet enemy France is on her knees and ready to accept our terms. Let us enforce those terms and make {27} a triumphant peace instead offurther bleeding our exhausted treasury in the prosecution of a warfrom which we have now nothing more to gain. Chance gave the peaceparty their opportunity. Pitt had become cognizant of the treatybetween France and Spain known as the "Family Compact, " the secrettreaty which we have already fully described, by which the two Bourbonprinces agreed to make common cause against England. Pitt straightwayproposed that the hostile purposes of Spain should be anticipated by animmediate declaration of war against Spain and the immediate despatchof a fleet to Cadiz. Bute promptly opposed the proposal in theCabinet, and carried the majority of the Council with him in hisopposition. Pitt instantly resigned. [Sidenote: 1761--Pitt's probity] A curious thing had happened at the coronation ceremony. One of thelargest jewels in the royal crown got loose and fell from its place. This was looked upon at the time by superstitious people as a sinisteromen. These now saw the fulfilment of their forebodings in the loss tothe state of the services of the great minister. The King himself hadno sense that his regal glory was dimmed in its lustre by theresignation of Pitt. He was so delighted at having got rid thus easilyof the great obstacle to his own authority that he could readilyconsent to lend to the act of parting a gracious air of regret. Muchwas done to lighten Pitt's fall. Very liberal offers were made by theKing, offers which seemed to many to mask a hope, and more than a hope, of undermining the popularity of the great leader. Pitt declinedseveral offers that were personal to himself, but expressed hisreadiness to accept some signs of the royal favor on behalf of his wifeand his family. A barony was conferred upon Pitt's wife and a pensionof three thousand a year upon Pitt for three lives. There was nothingunworthy in Pitt's action. He was notoriously poor; he was no lessnotoriously honest; it was perfectly certain that, in an age when asuccessful politician was for the most part a peculator, no shilling ofpublic money had ever stuck to Pitt's fingers. If he was instantlyattacked by libels and pamphlets that were {28} probably paid for byBute, or that at least were inspired by a desire to please Bute, theattacks did Pitt more good than harm. They produced a prompt reaction, and only had the effect of making Pitt more dear to the people thanbefore. His pictures had an enormous sale, and his partisans on thepress poured out caricatures and lampoons upon Bute and his Scotchmenin greater volume and with greater violence than ever. Bute was not content with the overthrow of Pitt. He wished to stand inisolated splendor, and to accomplish this Newcastle too must go. Thegreat briber of yesterday had to give way to the great briber ofto-day, and Bute stood alone before the world, the head of the King'sMinistry, the favorite of the King, the champion of a policy thatpromised peace abroad and purity at home, and that resulted in arenewal of war under conditions of peculiar disadvantage and a renewedemployment of the basest forms of political corruption. Bute hadgained the power he longed for, but Bute was soon to learn that powerneed not and did not mean popularity. "The new Administration beginstempestuously, " Walpole wrote on June 20, 1762. "My father was notmore abused after twenty years than Lord Bute is after twenty days. Weekly papers swarm, and, like other swarms of insects, sting. " Buteaffected an indifference to this unpopularity which he did not reallyfeel. It is not flattering to a statesman's pride to be unable to goabroad without being hissed and pelted by the mob, and it is hard for aminister to convince himself of the admiration of a nation when astrong bodyguard is necessary to secure him from the constant danger ofpersonal attacks. Bute's character did not refine under the testsimposed upon it. His objectionable qualities grew more and moreunpopular. The less he was liked the less he deserved to be liked. Adversity did not magnify that small soul. In his mean anger he soughtfor mean revenge. Every person who owed an appointment to the formerministry felt the weight of the favorite's wrath. Dismissal fromoffice was the order of the day, and Whig after Whig was forced toleave his place or office open for {29} some Tory who was ready toexpress an enthusiasm for the statesmanship of Bute. [Sidenote: 1762--Bute's foreign policy] Bute's idea of a foreign policy was to reverse the policy of Pitt. Heabandoned Frederick of Prussia to his enemies by cutting off thesubsidy which Pitt had paid him, on the ground that the time agreed onfor the subsidy was up, and that as England only granted it for her ownpurposes, and not to benefit Frederick, she was justified indiscontinuing it whenever it suited her. Only a chance saved the GreatFrederick from what seemed like inevitable ruin. The Czarina, Elizabeth of Russia, died, and was succeeded by Peter the Third. Withthe change of sovereign came a change in the purposes of Russia. TheRussian army, which had fought with Austria against Frederick, nowreceived orders to fight with Frederick against Austria. The war withSpain that Pitt had predicted Bute was obliged to wage. The conduct ofSpain made it impossible for him not to declare war, and, aided byPitt's preparations, he was able to carry on the war with considerablesuccess. But the credit for such success was generally given to Pitt, and when Bute made peace with Spain and France it was generally feltthat the terms were not such as Pitt would have exacted after so longand splendid a succession of victories. There was, indeed, a good dealto be said for the peace, but at the time those who tried to say it didnot get a very patient hearing. It was well that the long Continentalwar was ended. Few of those engaged in it had gained much by it. Prussia, indeed, though it left her wellnigh bankrupt and almost ruinedby the enormous burdens she had sustained, was better in position. Shecame out of the struggle without the loss of a single acre ofterritory, and with what Frederick especially coveted, the rank of afirst-rate Power in Europe. If Prussia, which had been so longEngland's ally, had gained, England had not lost. Undoubtedly Pitt'swar was popular; no less undoubtedly Bute's peace was unpopular, andthe unpopularity of the policy intensified the unpopularity of theminister. In the eyes of the bulk of the English people Lord Bute, asa Scotchman, was {30} a foreigner, as much a foreigner as if he hailedfrom France or the Low Countries. Lord Chesterfield was finelydisdainful of the popular opposition to Bute on account of hisnationality. "If the vulgar are ever right, " he said, "they are rightfor the wrong reason. What they selected to attack in Lord Bute washis being a Scotchman, which was precisely what he could not help. "But it was not Bute's nationality, so much as his flagrant partialityto his fellow-countrymen, that made him unpopular. His affection forhis own countrymen, however admirable and even touching in itself, wasresented fiercely by the English people, who found themselvesthreatened by a new invasion of the Picts and Scots. Across the Bordercame a steady stream of Bute's henchmen, men with names that seemedoutlandish and even savage to the Londoner, and every Scotchman found, or hoped to find, through the influence of Bute his way to office andemolument. The growing hatred for Bute extended itself as rapidly asunjustly to the nation from which Bute came. The story of Bute's Ministry is a story of astonishing mistakes. TheTories, who for five-and-forty years had inveighed against thepolitical corruption which, fostered by Walpole, seemed to haveculminated under Newcastle, now boldly went in for a system of flagrantbribery which surpassed anything yet essayed by the most cynical ofWhig ministers. The Paymaster's Office became a regular mart whereparliamentary votes were bought and sold as unblushingly as humblerfolk bought and sold groceries across a counter. A Ministry weakenedby an unpopular peace, and only held together by such cynicalmerchandise, was not likely to withstand a strong storm, and the stormwas not long in rising. To swell the exchequer, the Ministry proposed to raise revenue by a taxon cider and perry. It was resolved to levy an imposition of fourshillings per hogshead on the grower of the apple wine and the pearwine. The cider counties raised a clamor of indignation that found aready echo in London. Pitt, Beckford, Lyttelton, Hardwicke, Temple, all spoke against the proposed measure and {31} denounced itsinjustice. George Grenville defended the bill. [Sidenote: 1763--George Grenville's characteristics] Grenville was one of those honorable and upright statesmen who do notcontrive to make either honor or rectitude seem lovable qualities. Hehad first made himself conspicuous as one of the Boy Patriots whorallied with Pitt against Walpole. His abilities ran with swiftnessalong few and narrow channels. He was desperately well informed aboutmany things, and desperately in earnest about anything which heundertook. Blessed or cursed with a solemnity that never was enlivenedby a gleam of humor, a ray of fancy, or a flash of eloquence, Grenvilleregarded the House of Commons with the cold ferocity of a tyrannicaland pompous schoolmaster. A style of speech that would have made adiscourse upon Greek poetry seem arid and a dissertation upon Italianpainting colorless--if it were possible to conceive Grenville aswasting time or thought on such trifles--added no grace to theexposition of a fiscal measure or charm to the formality of a phalanxof figures. He was gloomy, dogged, domineering, and small-minded. Hisnearest approach to a high passion was his worship of economy; hisnearest approach to a splendid virtue was his stubborn independence. He abandoned Pitt for Bute because he detested Pitt's prodigal policy, but Bute was the more deceived if he fancied that he was to find inGrenville the convenient mask that he had lost in Newcastle; and theKing himself had yet to learn how indifferent the dry, morose pedantand preacher could be not merely to royal favor, but even to theexpression of royal opinion. It was truly said of him by the greatestof his contemporaries that he seemed to have no delight out of theHouse except in such things as in some way related to the business thatwas to be done within it. The "undissipated and unwearied application"which he devoted to everything that he undertook was now employed inexasperating the country. The time was not yet ripe for it to beemployed in dismembering the empire. In his support of the cider tax Grenville managed to {32} make it andhimself ridiculous at the same time. In his defence he kept asking, over and over again, "Where will you find another tax? tell me where. "Pitt, who was listening disdainfully to his arguments, followed one ofthese persistent interrogations by softly singing to himself, veryaudibly, the words which belonged to a popular song, "Gentle shepherd, tell me where. " The House took the hint with delight, and the title ofGentle Shepherd remained an ironical adornment of Grenville for therest of his life. Bute's disregard of public opinion was contrasted to his disadvantagewith the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole, who bowed to the demonstrationagainst his far wiser system of excise. Bute forced his tax forward indefiance of the popular feeling, and then, apparently alarmed by thestrength of the spirit he had himself raised, he answered the generalindignation by a sudden and welcome resignation on April 8, 1763. Thiswas the end of Bute's attempt to be the recognized head of agovernment, though he still hoped and believed that he could rule frombehind the throne instead of standing conspicuously at its side. Tohis unpopularity as a foreigner, to his unpopularity as a favorite, public hostility added a fresh, if a far-fetched and fantastic reasonfor detesting Bute. It was pointed out that he had Stuart blood in hisveins, that an ancestor of his had been the brother of a Scottish King. Any stick is good enough to strike an unpopular statesman with, andthere were not wanting people to assert, and perhaps even to believe, that Bute had entertained insidious schemes for raising himself to thethrone. Bute is said to have declared that he resigned in order toavoid involving the King in the dangers with which his minister wasthreatened. If he did feel any fears for the King's safety he hadcertainly done his best to make those fears reasonable. It has notoften been given to any statesman to hold the highest office in thestate for so short a time, and in that time to accomplish so large anamount of harm. And the immediate harm of that year and a half waslittle as compared with the harm that was to follow, a fatal legacy, {33} from the principles that Bute advocated and the policy that Buteinitiated. [Sidenote: 1763--The retirement of Bute] With Bute retired two of his followers, Dashwood and Fox. Dashwoodwent to the Upper House as Lord Le Despencer; Fox accompanied him asLord Holland. The disappearance of Dashwood from the Commons was amatter of little importance. The disappearance of Fox marked theconclusion of what had been a remarkable, of what might have been agreat career. From this time Fox ceased to take any real part inpublic business, and if his presence lent no lustre to the Lords, hisabsence made the character of the Commons more honorable. Fox, withall his faults, and they were many and grave, had in him the gifts ofthe politician and the capacity of the statesman. Dashwood was avulgar fool, who, as Horace Walpole said, with the familiarity andphrase of a fishwife, introduced the humors of Wapping behind the veilof the Treasury. But Fox was a very different type of man. Had hebeen as keen for his own honor as he was eager in the acquisition ofmoney, had he been as successful in building up a record of great deedsas he was successful in building up an enormous fortune, he might haveleft behind him one of the greatest names in the history of his age. But he carried with him to the Upper House the rare abilities which hehad put to such unworthy uses, and he lives in memory chiefly as thefather of his son. In having such a son he rendered the world a goodservice, which he himself labored with infinite pains to make into anevil service. A young, inexperienced, and headstrong King found himself suddenly thecentral figure of perhaps as singular a set of men as ever weregathered together for the purpose of directing the destinies of anation. A famous caricature of the period represents the front of amarionette-show, through an aperture of which the hand of Bute pullsthe wires that make the political puppets work, while Bute himselfpeeps round the corner of the show to observe their antics. Nostranger dolls ever danced around a royal figure to the manipulation ofa favorite's fingers. At {34} a time when political parties as theyare now familiar to us did not exist, when Whiggism was so dominantthat Opposition in the modern sense was unknown, when the pleasures andthe gains of administration were almost entirely reserved for aprivileged caste, and when self-interest was the rarely disavowed spurof all individual action, it is scarcely surprising to find that thevast majority of the statesmen of the day were as unadmirable in theirprivate as they were unheroic in their public life. For then and longafter, the political atmosphere, bad at its best, was infamous at itsworst, and by an unhappy chance the disposition of the King led him tofavor in their public life the very men whose private life would havefilled him with loathing, and to detest, where it was impossible todespise, the men who came to the service of their country withcharacters that were clean from a privacy that was honorable. Many, ifnot most, of the leading figures of that hour would have been moreappropriately situated as the members of a brotherhood of thieves andthe parasites of a brothel than as the holders of high office and thecaretakers of a royal conscience. There were men upon the highway, rogues with a bit of crape across their foreheads and a pair of pistolsin their holsters, haunting the Portsmouth Road or Hounslow Heath, withthe words "Stand and deliver" ever ready on their lips, who seemrelatively to be men of honor and probity compared with a man like thefirst Lord Holland or like Rigby. There were poor slaves of the stews, wretched servants of the bagnios, whose lives seem sweet and decorouswhen compared with those of a Sandwich or a Dashwood or a Duke ofGrafton. Yet these men, whose companionship might be rejected by JackSheppard, and whose example might be avoided by Pompey Bum, are the menwhose names are ceaselessly prominent in the early story of the reign, and to whose power and influence much of its calamities are directlydue. [Sidenote: 1763--The Duke of Grafton] It is not easy to accord a primacy of dishonor to any one of the manystatesmen whose names degrade the age. Possibly the laurels of shame, possibly the palms of infamy {35} may be proffered to Augustus HenryFitzroy, third Duke of Grafton. When George the Third came to thethrone the Duke of Grafton was only twenty-five years old, and had beenthree years in the House of Lords, after having passed about twice asmany months in the House of Commons. Destined to live for more thanhalf a century after the accession, and to die while the sovereign hadstill many melancholy years to live, the Duke of Grafton enjoyed a longcareer, that was unadorned by either public or private virtue. Thereis no need to judge Grafton on the indictment of the satirist who in alater day made the name of Junius more terrible to the advisers of KingGeorge than ever was the name of Pietro Aretino to the princes whom hescourged. The coldest chronicle of the Duke's careers, the baldestnarrative of his life, proves him to have been no less dangerous to thepublic weal as a statesman than he was noxious to human society as anindividual. He had not even the redeeming grace that the charm ofbeauty of person lent to some of his companions in public incompetencyand private profligacy. His face and presence were as unattractive ashis manners were stiff and repellent. His grandfather, the first Duke, was an illegitimate son of Charles the Second by the Duchess ofCleveland, and the Duke's severest critic declared that he blended thecharacteristics of the two Charles Stuarts. Sullen and severe withoutreligion, and profligate without gayety, he lived like Charles theSecond, without being an amiable companion, and might die as his fatherdid, without the reputation of a martyr. Grafton did not die the death of his royal ancestor. He lived throughseventy-six years, of which less than half were passed in the fiercelight of a disgraceful notoriety, and more than half in a retirementwhich should be styled obscure rather than decent. The onlyconspicuously creditable act of that long career was the patronage heextended to the poet Bloomfield, a patronage that seems to have beenprompted rather by the fact that the writer was born near Grafton'scountry residence than by any intelligent appreciation of literature. His curious want of taste {36} and feeling allowed him to parade hismistress, Nancy Parsons, in the presence of the Queen, at the OperaHouse, and to marry, when he married the second time, a first cousin ofthe man with whom his first wife had eloped, John, Earl of UpperOssory. If his example as a father was not admirable, at least heshowed it to a numerous offspring, for by his two marriages he was theparent of no fewer than sixteen children. [Sidenote: 1763--Rigby and the Duke of Bedford] Perhaps the prize for sheer political ruffianism, for the frankaudacity of the freebooter, unshadowed by the darker vices of hisbetter-born associates, may be awarded to Rigby. Not that Rigbyredeemed by many private virtues the unblushing effrontery of hispublic career. It was given to few men to be as bad as Dashwood, andRigby was not one of the few. But his gross and brutal disregard ofall decency in his acts of public plunder--for even peculation may bedone with distinction--was accompanied by a gross and brutal disregardof all decency in his tastes and pleasures with his intimateassociates. Richard Rigby sprang from the trading class. He was theson of a linen-draper who was sufficiently lucky to make a fortune as afactor to the South Sea Company, and who was, in consequence, able toafford his son the opportunity of a good education, and to launch himon the grand tour of Europe with every aptitude for the costly vicesthat men in those days seemed to think it the chief object of travel tocultivate, and with plenty of money in his pocket to gratify all hisinclinations. Rigby did not take much advantage of his educationalopportunities. His Latinity laid him open to derision in the House ofCommons, and there were times when his spelling would have reflectedlittle credit upon a seamstress. But he was quite capable of learningabroad all the evil that the great school of evil was able to teach awilling student. He returned to England, and began his life there withthree pronounced tastes: for gambling, for wine, and for the baser usesof politics. His ambitions prompted him to adhere to the party of thePrince of Wales, and his ready purse won him a welcome among thecourtiers of Leicester House. The Prince of {37} Wales did little togratify his hopes, and Rigby would have found it difficult to escapefrom the straits into which his debts had carried him if his gift ofpleasing had not procured for him a powerful patron. The Duke ofBedford had been attracted by the remarkable convivial powers of Rigby, powers remarkable in an age when to be conspicuous for convivialitydemanded very unusual capacity both of head and of stomach. To beadmired by Bedford was in itself a patent of dishonor, but it was aprofitable patent to Rigby. The Duke, who was accused at times of ashameful parsimony, was generous to profusion towards the bloatedbuffoon who was able and willing to divert him, and from that hourRigby's pockets never wanted their supply of public money. There were few redeeming features in Rigby's character. It was hispeculiar privilege to be false to his old friends and to corrupt hisyoung ones. In an age when sobriety was scorned or ignored he had thehonor to be famous for his insobriety. A sycophant to those who couldserve him and a bully to those who could not, Rigby added the meannessof the social parvenu to the malignity of the political bravo. At atime when men of birth and rank came to the House of Commons in thenegligence of morning dress, Rigby was conspicuous for the splendor ofhis attire, and illuminated the green benches by a costume whose glowof color only faintly attenuated the glowing color of his face. Therewere baser and darker spirits ready for the service of the King; therewas no one more unlovely. Rigby's patron was as unadmirable as Rigby himself. He was fifty yearsold when George the Third came to the throne, and he had lived his halfa century in the occupation of many offices and through manyopportunities for distinction without distinguishing himself. He hadstill eleven years to live without adding anything of honor or creditto his name, or earning any other reputation than that of a corruptpolitician whose private life was passed chiefly in the society ofgamblers, jockeys, and buffoons. He had been Governor-General ofIreland, and had {38} governed it as well as Verres had governedSicily. He had been publicly horsewhipped by a county attorney on theracecourse at Lichfield. His career, always unimportant, wasignominious when it was not incapable, and it was generally both theone and the other. All the statesmen of the day were not of the school of Grafton. Therewere numerous exceptions to the rule of Rigby. The Graftons and theRigbys gain an unnatural prominence from the fact that then and laterit was to such tools the King turned, and that he always found suchtools ready to his hands. There were many men who, without any show ofausterity or any burden of morality, were at least of a very differentorder from the creatures whom the King did not indeed delight to honor, but whom he condescended to employ. The Earl of Granville, with theweight of seventy years upon his shoulders, carried into activepolitical life under his fourth sovereign the same qualities both forgood and evil that adorned or injured the name of Carteret. Heaccepted Lord Bute's authority, and he did not live long enough towitness Bute's fall. He accorded to the peace brought about by Bute"the approbation of a dying statesman, " as the most honorable peace thecountry had ever seen. He died in the January of 1763, leaving behindhim the memory of a long life which had always been lived to his ownadvantage but by no means to the disadvantage of his country. He leftbehind him a memory of rare public eloquence and graceful privateconversation, of an elegant scholarship that prompted him to thepatronage of scholars, of a profound belief in his own judgment, and ano less profound contempt for the opinions of others. His public lifewas honest in an epoch when public dishonesty was habitual, and thebest thing to be said of him was the best thing he said of himself, that when he governed Ireland he governed so as to please Dean Swift. [Sidenote: 1763--Dr. Samuel Johnson] At a time when the King was surrounded by such advisers as we haveseen, the King's chief servant and most loyal subject was a man nolonger young, who had nothing to do with the courts or councils, andwho yet was of {39} greater service to the throne and its occupier thanall the House of Lords and half the House of Commons. Long yearsbefore George the Third was born, a struggling, unsuccessfulschoolmaster gave up a school that was well-nigh given up by itsscholars and came to London to push his fortune as a man of letters. When George the Third came to the throne the schoolmaster had not foundfortune--that he never found--but he had found fame, and the name ofSamuel Johnson was known and loved wherever an English word was spokenor an English book read. The conditions of political life in Englandin the eighteenth century made it impossible for such a man as SamuelJohnson ever to be the chosen counsellor, the minister of an Englishking. The field of active politics was reserved for men of family, ofwealth, or of the few whom powerful patronage served in lieu of birthand aided to the necessary opulence. Johnson was one of the mostinfluential writers of his day, one of the strongest intellectualforces then at work, one of the greatest personalities then alive. Butit would no more have occurred to him to dream of administrative honorsand a place in a Ministry than it would have occurred to George theThird to send one of his equerries to the dingy lodgings of an authorwith the request that Dr. Johnson would step round to St. James'sPalace and favor his Majesty with his opinion on this subject or onthat. It is not certain that the King would have gained very much ifhe had done anything so unusual. Dr. Johnson's views were very muchthe King's views, and we know that he would have been as obstinate asthe King in many if not most of the cases in which the King's obstinacywas very fatal to himself. When Queen Anne was still upon the throne of England, when James theSecond still lived with a son who dreamed of being James the Third, andwhen George the First was only Elector of Hanover, people stillattributed to the sovereign certain gifts denied to subjects. Theybelieved, for instance, that the touch of the royal fingers could curethe malady of scrofula, then widely known in consequence of that beliefas the King's Evil. In obedience to that {40} belief, in the spring of1712 some poor folk of Lichfield travelled to London with their infantson, in the hope that Queen Anne would lay her hand upon the child andmake him whole. There were days appointed for the ceremony of thetouch, and on one of those days the Johnsons of Lichfield carried theirlittle Samuel into the royal presence, and Queen Anne stroked the childwith her hand. For more than seventy years a dim memory remained withJohnson of a stately lady in black; for more than seventy years themalady that her touch was thought to heal haunted him. When the manwho had been the sick child died, the third prince of a foreign housewas seated on the throne of England, and the third of the line owed, unconscious of the debt, no little of his security on his throne and nolittle of his popularity with the mass of his people to the strugglingauthor who had received the benediction of the last Stuart sovereign ofEngland. Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire, on September 8, 1709. His father was a bookseller, perhaps too fond of books to be agood dealer in them. But his crowded shelves were a paradise to hisson when at the age of sixteen he came home from the last of manyschoolings, each of which had taught him much. For two years he readhis way recklessly, riotously, and joyously through his father'smigratory library. He took the advice of the varlet in "The Taming ofthe Shrew, " and studied what he most affected. His memory was as vastas his head was huge and his body bulky. He read what he liked, and hestored his mind with as miscellaneous a mass of knowledge as ever washeaped up within the pent-house of one human skull. That youthful zealand fiery heat of study remained youthful with him to the end of hismany days; the passion for learning never burned low in that mightybrain. The man who in his old age studied Dutch to test the acquiringpowers of his intellect, and still found them freshly tempered, actedin his ebullient boyhood as if, like Bacon, he had taken all knowledgeto be his province. The man who in his old age found an exquisiteentertainment in reading a Spanish romance of chivalry, in his eager{41} boyhood found the Latin poems of Petrarch sweeter than apples. The great Italian who counted the sonnets to which he owes hisimmortality but as the clouds of a dream, and who built his hopes offame upon that "Africa" which the world has been willing to forget, found the reader he would have welcomed and the student he would havecherished in the ungainly youth who pored over him in a garret. Theboy Johnson, bent over the great folio, forgot that he was poor, forgotthat he was ill-clad, under the spell of the stately lines that theirpoet believed to be not less than Virgilian. He had set out on anerrand even more trivial than that of Saul the son of Kish, and he hadfound the illimitable kingdom of dreams. [Sidenote: 1728--The college days of Dr. Johnson] Chance sent the student of Petrarch to Pembroke College, Oxford, wherehe passed two years eating the bitter bread of poverty in the bitterpride of youth. He was hungry, he was ragged, he was conscious of hisgreat knowledge and his great gifts, and he saw all around him men inhigh places whose attainments he despised, and men seeking the samegoal as himself whose happy ease of circumstances he affected todisdain and was compelled to envy. His wild soul rose in rebellion atthe inequalities of life. He passed for a mutineer. His college days were bitter and rebellious; days of hunger and thirstand ruined raiment. Some well-meaning person, moved to pity by thesight of Johnson's shabby shoes, patched and mended till they were pastall wholesome cobbling, placed a new sound pair at Johnson's door innameless benevolence. Johnson cast them from him with fury, too proudto be shod by another man's bounty. He drifted through his few andgloomy college days deriding and despising those in authority;seemingly wasting his time and yet not wasting it; translating Pope's"Messiah" into such noble Latin that Pope, moved by honest admiration, declared that future times would be unable to tell which was theoriginal and which was the translation. Johnson could be nowherewithout learning, and he learned something at Oxford; but in any casehis stay was short, and he drifted back to Lichfield, leaving on the{42} banks of the Isis an amazing memory of a sullen savage creature, brimmed with the strangest miscellaneous learning. In Lichfield hisfather's death, following hard upon his return from Oxford, left himlonelier and poorer than ever, troubled by the grim necessity to befed, clothed, and sheltered, and by the uncertainty how to set aboutit. He did set about it, earnestly, strenuously, if not veryfruitfully. [Sidenote: 1737--Johnson and his work] He was ready to do anything, to turn to anything, to write, totranslate, to teach. He fell in love with an amazing woman more thantwenty years his senior, monstrously fat, monstrously painted, monstrously affected and absurd; he fell in love with her, and hemarried her. She had a little money, and Johnson set up an academy forthe instruction of youth. But youth would not come to be instructed. One youth came, one of the very few, a soldier's son and a grandson ofa Huguenot refugee, named David Garrick. The master and the pupilbecame friends, and the friendship lasted with life. Master and pupilresolved to make the adventure of the town together. The eyes ofaspiring provincials turned always to the great city, every ambitiousprovincial heart beat with desire for the conquest of London. Thepriest of letters and the player of parts, the real man and the shadowof all men, packed up bag and baggage and came to London to verydifferent fame and very different fortune. The great city had one kindof welcome to give to the man who desired to speak truth and another tothe man who proposed to give pleasure. The chances for men of lettersand for players were very unlike just then. The two strands of liferan across the web of London, the strand of Johnson iron-gray, thestrand of Garrick gleaming gold. Through long years Johnson hid indingy courts and alleys, ill-clothed, ill-fed, an uncouth Apollo in theservice of Admetus Cave and his kind, while the marvellous actor wasclimbing daily higher and higher on the ladder of an actor's fame, thefriend of the wealthy, the favored of the great, the admired, theapplauded, the well-beloved. Garrick deserved his fame and hisfortune, his splendid successes and {43} his shining rewards; but thegrand, rough writer of books did not deserve his buffets and mishaps, his ferocious hungers, his acquaintanceship with sponging-houses, andall the catalogue of his London agonies. His struggle for life was aTitan's struggle, and it was never either selfish or ignoble. Hewanted to live and be heard because he knew that he had something tosay that was worth hearing. He needed to live for the sake of hisardent squalid affections, for the sake of the people who were alwaysdependent upon his meagre bounty, for the sake of the wife he loved sodeeply, mourned so truly when she died, and remembered with such tenderloyalty so long as life was left to him. Miserably poor himself, healways had about him people more miserable and more poor, who looked tohim for the very bread and water of their affliction, dependents whomhe tended not merely generously, but, what was better still, cheerfully. Under conditions of existence that would have seemedcrushing to men of letters with a tithe of Johnson's greatness of soul, Johnson fought his way inch by inch in the terrible career of the manwho lived by his pen, and by his pen alone. He wrote anything andeverything so long as it was honorable to write and promised to makethe world better. But it was not what Johnson wrote so much as whatJohnson did that commanded his age and commands posterity. In thetruest sense of the word, he lived beautifully. "Rasselas" and "TheIdler, " "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes, " "The Rambler" andthe "Sessions of Lilliput, " and the "Lives of the Poets, " and even thefamous "Dictionary, " only claim remembrance because they were done by aman who would be as interesting a study and as ennobling an example ifhe had never written a line of the works that bear his signature inevery sentence of their solemn, even their portentous majesty. Johnsonhad the kindest heart wrapped in a rugged hide. One of the noblest ofthe many noble stories about him relates how he and a friend, whosename of Burke was not then famous, found a poor woman of the streetshouseless, hungry, and exhausted in the streets. Burke had a roomwhich he could {44} offer the poor creature for a night's shelter; butBurke could not get the woman there. Johnson had no room--hisdependents swarmed over every available space at his command--but hehad the strength of a giant, and he used it as a giant should, incarrying the poor wretch in his arms to the roof that Burke could offerher. Long years later, another man of letters, hungry, homeless, andfriendless, sick almost unto death, found a kind friend and gentlenurse in a woman of the streets. In succoring De Quincey we may wellthink that Anne was repaying something of the debt owed by one of herunhappy class to two of the glories of literature and of humanity. Slowly and surely Johnson's fame spread. The "Dictionary, " massivefruit of many vigils, reward of many supplications, made himillustrious. It might have been dedicated to Chesterfield, ifChesterfield had shown to the struggling author the courtesy he waseager to extend to the established writer. Chesterfield need not beblamed if he was reluctant to welcome a queer ungainly creature whosemanners were appalling, and of whose genius no one save himself wasassured. But he was to be blamed, and he deserved the stern punishmenthe received in Johnson's stinging letter of repudiation, forattempting, when Johnson was distinguished and beyond his power tohelp, to win the great honor of a dedication by a proffer of friendshipthat came too late. Johnson needed no Chesterfield now. London hadlearned to reverence him, had learned to love him. His friends werethe best Englishmen alive; the club which Johnson established bore onits roll the most illustrious names in the country; at the home of theThrales Johnson tasted and appreciated all that was best in the homelife of the time. He had a devoted friend in the person of a fussy, fantastic, opinionated, conceited little Scotch gentleman, Mr. JamesBoswell of Auchinleck, who clung to his side, treasured his utterances, cherished his sayings, and made himself immortal in immortalizing hishero. It is good to remember that when George the Third came to thethrone a man like Johnson was alive. It is not so good to remember howseldom he found himself {45} face to face with the King, whom he mighthave aided with his wisdom, his counsel, and his friendship. [Sidenote: 1763--Johnson's influence on literature] Johnson's presence adorned and honored four-and-twenty years of a reignthat was to last for sixty years. He was the friend or the enemy ofevery man worthy to arouse any strong emotion of love or scorn in astrong spirit. He had the admiration of all whose admiration was worththe having. The central figure of the literary London of his lifetime, he exercised something of the same social and intellectual influenceover all Londoners that Socrates exercised over all Athenians. Theaffection he inspired survived him, and widens with the generations. In the hundred years and more that have passed since Johnson's death, his memory has grown greener. The symbol of his life and of its lessonis to be found in what Hawthorne beautifully calls the sad and lovelylegend of the man Johnson's public penance in the rain, amid thejeering crowd, to expiate the offence of the child against its father. Johnson was the very human apostle of a divine righteousness. {46} CHAPTER XLIV. THE "NORTH BRITON" [Sidenote: 1763--John Wilkes] One of the most beautiful places on one of the most beautiful rivers inthe world is Medmenham on the Thames, hard by Marlow. In the awakeningof spring, in the tranquillity of summer, or the rich decline ofAugust, the changing charm of the spot appeals with the specialinsistence that association lends to nature. Medmenham is a hauntedplace. Those green fields and smiling gardens have been the scenes ofthe strangest idyls; those shining waters have mirrored the fairest offrail faces; those woods have echoed to the names of the light nymphsof town and the laughter of modish satyrs. It was once very lonely inits loveliness, a ground remote, where men could do and did do as theypleased unheeded and unobserved. Where now from April to October athousand pleasure-boats pass by, where a thousand pleasure-seekers landand linger, a century and a half ago the spirit of solitude brooded, and those who came there came to a calm as unvexed and as enchanting asthe calm of Avallon. They made strange uses of their exquisiteopportunity. They profaned the groves whose very winds breathed peace;they polluted the stream that a poet would have found sacred. Theremains are there of a Cistercian abbey, the ruins of a ruin, twicefallen into disuse and decay. It was a ruin in the eighteenth centurywhen a member of Parliament, who was also a baronet and a Chancellor ofthe Exchequer, took it into his evil head to repair it. Under the careof Sir Francis Dashwood it was restored for a new and altered life. The abbey rose again, and once again was associated with a brotherhoodof monks. But where the quiet Cistercians had lived and prayed a new{47} brotherhood of St. Francis, named after their founder, devotedthemselves to all manner of blasphemy, to all manner of offence. In aspot whose beauty might well be expected to have only a softeninginfluence, whose memories might at least be found exalting, a handfulof disreputable men gathered together to degrade the place, and, as faras that was possible, themselves, with the beastly pleasures andbeastly humors of the ingrained blackguard. The Hell-Fire Club was dead and gone, but the spirit of the Hell-FireClub was alive and active. The monks of St. Francis were worthy pupilsof the principles of the Duke of Wharton. They sought to make theirprofligacy, in which they strove to be unrivalled, piquant by a parodyof the religious ceremonies of the Christian faith. The energy and theearnestness which other men devote to the advancement of some publiccause, to the furtherance of their country's welfare, or even to thegratification of their own ambitions, these men devoted to a passionfor being pre-eminent in sin, conspicuous in infamy. If they succeededin nothing else, they succeeded in making their names notorious andshameful, they succeeded in stirring the envy of men no better thanthey, but less enabled by wealth or position to gratify their passions. They succeeded in arousing the loathing not merely of honest men, buteven of the knaves and fools whose rascality was not so rotten andwhose folly was not so foul as that of the noblemen and statesmen whorioted within the walls of Medmenham. It is curious and melancholy to record that the leading spirits of thisabominable brotherhood were legislators in both Houses of Parliament, men of old family, great position, large means, men holding high publicoffice, members of the Government. Their follies and their sins wouldscarcely be worth remembering to-day were it not for the chance thatgave them for companion and ally one of the most remarkable men of hisage, a man whose abilities were in striking contrast to those of hisassociates, a man who might almost be called a man of genius. {48} John Wilkes was the son of a rich distiller and of a Presbyterianmother. He had received a good education in England and at Leyden, where so many of the Englishmen of that day went as students. He hadtravelled much in his youth upon the Continent. On his return he wasinduced by his father, he being then only two-and-twenty, to marry alady who was exceedingly rich, but who had the misfortune to be atleast ten years older than her husband. It is scarcely surprising tofind that the marriage did not turn out happily. Wilkes was young, fresh from the bright Continental life, delighting in pleasure and thesociety of those who pursued pleasure. How far a happier marriagemight have influenced him for good it were idle to consider. Hismarriage he regarded always and spoke of always as a sacrifice toPlutus, not to Venus, and he certainly was at no pains to make it anymore of a sacrifice than he could help. His wild tastes, his wildcompanions soon sickened and horrified Mrs. Wilkes. The ill-matchedpair separated, and remained separate for the rest of their lives. Wilkes was delighted to be free. He was at liberty to squander hismoney unquestioned and unchallenged in the society of as pretty a gangof scoundrels as even the age could produce. No meaner, moremalignant, or more repulsive figure darkens the record of the lastcentury than that of Lord Sandwich. Sir Francis Dashwood ran him closein infamy. Mr. Thomas Potter was the peer of either in beastliness. All three were members of Parliament; all three were partiallyresponsible for the legislation of the country; two were especially soresponsible. All three were bound at least to a decorousacknowledgment of the observances of the Church; one was in especial sobound. Sir Francis Dashwood and Lord Sandwich were, then orthereafter, members of the Government. Sir Francis Dashwood wasremarkable as having been the worst and stupidest Chancellor of theExchequer known to history. Lord Sandwich was made First Lord of theAdmiralty. As for the third in this triumvirate of blackguards, Mr. Thomas Potter was a son of the Archbishop {49} of Canterbury, and hewas soon afterwards made Vice-Treasurer for Ireland. Into suchhonorable hands were the duties of government delivered less than acentury and a half ago. [Sidenote: 1763--Wilkes's profligacy] In this society Wilkes was made very welcome. He brought to theirfilthy fooleries something resembling wit; he brought an intelligenceas far above that of his companions as that of the monkey is above thatof the rabbit. While he had money he spent it as royally as the rest. If he rivalled them in their profligacy, he outstripped them by hisintellect. They were conspicuous only by their vices; he would havebeen a remarkable man even if it had pleased Providence to make himvirtuous. It had not pleased Providence to make him attractive to lookupon. There were few uglier men of his day; few who lost less by theirugliness. But though we are well assured that his appearance wasrepulsive, he redeemed his hideousness by his ready tongue and wittymind. He said of himself, truly enough, that he only wanted half anhour's start to make him even with the handsomest man in England. Wilkes flung his money and his wife's money about recklessly, while heplayed his part as a country gentleman upon the estate at Aylesburywhich his unhappy wife had resigned to him when they separated. Ofthis money some eight thousand pounds went in an unsuccessful attemptto bribe his way into the representation of Berwick, and seven thousandmore went in the successful attempt to buy himself the representationof Aylesbury. It is probable that he hoped to advance his failingfortunes in Parliament. His fortunes were failing, failing fast. Hemade an ignoble attempt to bully his wife out of the miserable incomeof two hundred a year which was all that she had saved out of herwealth, but the attempt was happily defeated by that Court of King'sBench against which Wilkes was to be pitted later in more honorablehostility. It was perhaps impossible that Wilkes could long remain content withthe companionship of men like Dashwood and Sandwich; it was certainlyimpossible that men {50} like Dashwood and like Sandwich could for longfeel comfortable in the companionship of a man so infinitely theirsuperior in wit, intelligence, and taste. The panegyrists ofSandwich--for even Sandwich had his panegyrists in an age when wealthand rank commanded compliment--found the courage to applaud Sandwich asa scholar and an antiquarian, on the strength of an account of sometravels in the Mediterranean, which the world has long since willinglylet die. But the few weeks or months of foreign travel that permittedSandwich to pose as a connoisseur when he was not practising as aprofligate could not inspire him with the humor or the appreciation ofWilkes, and a friendship only cemented by a common taste for commonvices soon fell asunder. There is a story to the effect that thequarrel began with a practical joke which Wilkes played off on Sandwichat Medmenham. Sandwich, in some drunken orgy, was induced to invokethe devil, whereupon Wilkes let loose a monkey, that had been keptconcealed in a box, and drove Sandwich into a paroxysm of fear in thebelief that his impious supplication had been answered. For whateverreason, Wilkes and Sandwich ceased to be friends, to Wilkes's cost atfirst, and to Sandwich's after. Sandwich owes his unenviable place inhistory to his association with Wilkes in the first place, and in thenext to his alliance with the beautiful, unhappy Miss Ray, who wasmurdered by her melancholy lover, the Rev. Mr. Hickman, at the door ofCovent Garden Theatre. The fate of his mistress and his treason to hisfriend have preserved the name of Sandwich from the forgetfulness itdeserved. [Sidenote: 1763--Wilkes as a Member of Parliament] In those days Wilkes made no very remarkable figure in Parliament. Itwas outside the walls of Westminster that he first made a reputation asa public man. In the unpopularity of Bute, Wilkes found opportunityfor his own popularity. The royal peace policy was very unwelcome, andagitated the feeling of the country profoundly. Political controversyran as high in the humblest cross-channels as in the main stream ofcourtly and political life. At that time, we are told by acontemporary {51} letter-writer, the mason would pause in his task todiscuss the progress of the peace, and the carpenter would neglect hiswork to talk of the Princess Dowager, of Lord Treasurers andSecretaries of State. To win support and sympathy from such keenobservers, the Ministry turned again for aid to the public press thathad been so long neglected by the Whigs. Smollett, the rememberednovelist, Murphy, the forgotten dramatist, were commissioned tochampion the cause of the Government in the two papers, the _Briton_and the _Auditor_. The Government already had a severe journalistic critic in the_Monitor_, a newspaper edited by John Entinck, which had been startedin 1755. The _Monitor_ was not at all like a modern newspaper. It wasreally little more than a weekly pamphlet, a folio of six pagespublished every Saturday, and containing an essay upon the politicalsituation of the hour. Its hostility to Bute goaded the minister intothe production of the _Briton_, which was afterwards supplemented bythe creation of the _Auditor_ when it was found that Smollett hadcalled up against the Ministry a more terrible antagonist than the_Monitor_. For the _Briton_ only lives in the memories of men becauseit called into existence the _North Briton_. Wilkes had entered Parliament as the impassioned follower of Pitt. Hemade many confessions of his desire to serve his country, professionswhich may be taken as sincere enough. But he was also anxious to servehimself and to mend his fortunes, and he did not find in Parliamentarylife the advancement for which he hoped. Twice he sought for highposition under the Crown, and twice he was unsuccessful. He wished tobe made ambassador to Constantinople, where he would have found muchthat was congenial to him, and his wish was not granted. He wished tobe made Governor-General of the newly conquered Quebec, and again hisdesires were unheeded. Wilkes believed that Bute was the cause of hisdouble disappointment. He became convinced that while the favors ofthe State lay in Bute's hands they would only be given to Tories, andmore especially to Tories who were also {52} Scotchmen. If Bute couldhave known, it would have been a happy hour for him which had seenWilkes starting for the Golden Horn or sailing for the St. Lawrence. But Bute was a foolish man, and he did his most foolish deed when hemade Wilkes his enemy. The appearance of the _North Briton_ was an event in the history ofjournalism as well as in the political history of the country. It metthe heavy-handed violence of the _Briton_ with a frank ferocity whichwas overpowering. It professed to fight on the same side as the_Monitor_, but it surpassed Entinck's paper as much in virulence as inability. Under the whimsical pretence of being a North Briton, Wilkesassailed the Scotch party in the State with unflagging satire andunswerving severity. In the satire and the severity he had an ablehenchman in Charles Churchill. [Sidenote: 1731-1764--The poet Churchill] Those who are inclined to condemn Wilkes because for a season he foundentertainment in the society of a Sandwich, a Dashwood, and a Potter, must temper their judgment by remembering the affection that Wilkes wasable to inspire in the heart of Churchill. While the scoundrels ofMedmenham were ready to betray their old associate, and, with no touchof the honor proverbially attributed to thieves, to drive him intodisgrace, to exile, and if possible to death, the loyal friendship ofthe poet was given to Wilkes without reserve. Churchill was not a manof irreproachable character, of unimpeachable morality, or ofunswerving austerity. But he was as different from the Sandwiches andthe Dashwoods as dawn is different from dusk, and in enumerating all ofthe many arguments that are to be accumulated in defence of Wilkes, notthe least weighty arguments are that while on the one hand he earnedthe hatred of Sandwich and of Dashwood, on the other hand he earned thelove of Charles Churchill. Churchill's name and fame have suffered of late years. Since Byronstood by the neglected grave and mused on him who blazed, the comet ofa season, the genius of Churchill has been more and more disregarded. But the Georgian epoch, so rich in its many and contrasting types {53}of men of letters, produced few men more remarkable in themselves, ifnot in their works, than Charles Churchill. The cleric who firstbecame famous for most unclerical assaults upon the stage, the satiristwho could be the most devoted friend, the seducer who could be so loyalto his victim, the spendthrift who could be generous, the cynic whocould feel and obey the principles of the purest patriotism, was one ofthose strangely compounded natures in which each vice was as it wereeffaced or neutralized by some compensating virtue. It may be fairlyurged that while Churchill's virtues were his own, his vices were inlarge part the fault of his unhappy destiny. The Westminster boy wholearned Latin under Vincent Bourne, and who was a schoolfellow ofWarren Hastings, of Cowper, and of Colman, might possibly have made agood scholar, but was certainly not of the stuff of which goodclergymen are made. An early marriage, an unhappy marriage contractedin the Rules of the Fleet, had weighed down his life with encumbrancesalmost before he had begun to live. Compelled to support an unsuitablewife and an increasing family, Churchill followed his father's exampleand his father's injudicious counsel and took Holy Orders. Men tookOrders in those days with a light heart. It afforded the needy alivelihood, precarious indeed for the most part, but still preferableto famine. Men took Orders with no thought of the sanctity of theircalling, of the solemn service it exacted, of its awful duties and itsinexorable demands. They wished merely to keep famine from the door, to have food and fire and shelter, and they took Orders as under otherconditions they would have taken the King's shilling, with no morefeeling of reverence for the black cassock than for the scarlet coat. Churchill was not the man to wear the clergyman's gown with dignity, orto find in the gravity of his office consolation for the penury that itentailed. The Establishment offered meagre advantages to anextravagant man with an extravagant wife. He drifted deeper and deeperinto debt. He became as a wandering star, reserved for the blacknessof bailiffs and the darkness of duns. But the {54} rare quality he hadin him of giving a true friendship to his friend won a like qualityfrom other men. Dr. Lloyd, under-master of his old school ofWestminster, came to his aid, helped him in his need, and secured thepatience of his creditors. He was no longer harassed, but he was stillpoor, and the spur of poverty drove him to tempt his fortune inletters. Like so many a literary adventurer of the eighteenth century, he saw in the writing of verse the sure way to success. Like so many aliterary adventurer of the century, he carried his first effortsunsuccessfully from bookseller to bookseller. The impulses of his witwere satirical; he was not dismayed by failure; the stage hadentertained him and irritated him, and he made the stage the subject ofhis first triumph. "The Rosciad" was in every sense a triumph. Itsstings galled the vanity of the players to frenzy. At all times asusceptible brotherhood, their susceptibilities were sharply stirred byChurchill's corrosive lines and acidulated epigrams. Their indignationfinding vent in hot recrimination and virulent lampoon only served tomake the poem and its author better known to the public. Churchillreplied to the worst of his assailants in "The Apology, " which rivalledthe success of "The Rosciad, " and gained for the satirist thefriendship of Garrick, who had affected to disdain the praises of "TheRosciad, " but who now recognized in time the power of the satirist andthe value of his approval. Churchill himself was delighted with hisgood fortune. He was the talk of the town; he had plenty of money inhis pocket; he was separated from his wife, freed from his uncongenialprofession, and he could exchange the solemn black of the cleric for ablue coat with brass buttons and a gold-laced hat. [Sidenote: 1762--Newspaper polemics] Lest the actors whom he had lashed should resort to violence forrevenge, he carried with ostentation a sturdy cudgel. It was aformidable weapon in hands like Churchill's, and Churchill was notmolested. For Churchill was a man of great physical strength. Hetells the world in the portrait he painted of himself of the vastnessof his bones, of the strength of his muscles, of his arms like {55} twotwin oaks, of his legs fashioned as if to bear the weight of theMansion House, of his massive body surmounted by the massive face, broader than it was long. The ugly face was chiefly remarkable, according to the confession of its owner, for its expression ofcontentment, though the observant might discern "sense lowering in thepenthouse of his eye. " Like most giants, he overtaxed his strength, both mentally and physically. Whatever he did he did with all hismighty energy. He loved, hated, worked, played, at white heat as itwere, and withered up his forces with the flame they fed. In nothingdid his zeal consume itself more hotly than in his devotion to Wilkes. Churchill met Wilkes in 1762, and seems to have fallen instantly underthe spell which Wilkes found it so easy to exercise upon all who cameinto close contact with him. Undoubtedly Churchill's friendship wasvery valuable to Wilkes. If Churchill loved best to express his satirein verse, he could write strongly and fiercely in prose, and the _NorthBriton_ owed to his pen some of its most brilliant and some of itsbitterest pages. In the _North Briton_ Wilkes and Churchill laid aboutthem lustily, striking at whatever heads they pleased, holding theirhands for no fame, no dignity, no influence. It was wholly withoutfear and wholly without favor. If it assailed Bute again and againwith an unflagging zeal, it was no less ready to challenge to an issuethe greatest man who over accepted a service from Bute, and to remindDr. Johnson, who had received a pension from the King's favorite, ofhis own definition of a pension and of a pensioner. Before the fury and the popularity of the _North Briton_ both the_Auditor_ and the _Briton_ had to strike their colors. The _Auditor_came to its inglorious end on February 8, 1763. The _Briton_ died onthe 12th of the same month, leaving the _North Briton_ master of thefield. Week after week the _North Briton_ grew more severe in itsstrictures upon the Government, strictures that scorned the veil ofhint and innuendo that had hitherto prevailed in these pamphleteeringwars. Even the _Monitor_ had always alluded to the statesmen whom itassailed by initial letters. {56} The _North Briton_ called them bytheir names in all the plainness of full print, the name of thesovereign not being excepted from this courageous rule. But the fameof the _North Briton_ only came to its full with the number forty-five. {57} CHAPTER XLV. NUMBER FORTY-FIVE. [Sidenote: 1763--Wilkes's criticism of the King's speech] When Bute disappeared from the public leadership of his party, Wilkes, from professedly patriotic motives, delayed the publication of thecurrent number of the _North Briton_, to see if the policy which Butehad inspired still guided the actions of the gentle shepherd, GeorgeGrenville. Wilkes wished to know if the influence of the Scottishminister was at an end, or if he still governed through those wretchedtools who had supported the most odious of his measures, theignominious peace, and the wicked extension of the arbitrary mode ofexcise. He declared himself that if Bute only intended to retire intothat situation which he held before he took the seals, a situation inwhich he dictated to every part of the King's administration, Wilkeswas as ready to combat the new Administration as he had been steady inhis opposition to a single, insolent, incapable, despotic minister. Any hope that Wilkes may have entertained of a reformation of theMinistry was dispelled by a talk which he had with Temple and Pitt atTemple's house, where Temple showed him an early copy of the King'sspeech. Wilkes, Pitt, and Temple were entirely in agreement as to thefatal defects of the speech, and Wilkes went promptly home and wrotethe article which made the forty-fifth number of the _North Briton_famous. In itself the number forty-five was no stronger in its utterances thanmany of the preceding numbers. If its tone be compared with the toneof journalistic criticism of ministers or their sovereign less than ageneration later, it seems sober and even mild. Wilkes's articlestarted with a citation from Cicero: "Genus orationis atrox et {58}vehemena, cui opponitur genus illud alterum lenitatis etmansuetudinis. " Then came Wilkes's comment on the speech. He wascareful not to criticize directly the King. With a prudence that wasperhaps more ironical than any direct stroke at the sovereign, heattacked the minister who misled and misrepresented the monarch. "TheKing's speech has always been considered by the legislature and by thepublic at large as the speech of the minister. " Starting from this understanding, Wilkes went on to stigmatize theAddress as "the most abandoned instance of ministerial effrontery everattempted to be imposed upon mankind, " and he doubted whether "theimposition is greater upon the sovereign or on the nation. " "Everyfriend of his country, " the writer declared, "must lament that a princeof so many great and amiable qualities, whom England truly reveres, canbe brought to give the sanction of his sacred name to the most odiousmeasures and to the most unjustifiable public declarations from athrone ever renowned for truth, honor, and unsullied virtue. " The article was not intemperate and it certainly was not unjust. Butwhen it appeared the King was still new flushed with his idea of hisown personal authority in the State, and the slightest censure of hispolicy goaded him into a kind of frenzy. Had Wilkes endeavored withhis own hand to kill the King in his palace of St. James's he couldhardly have made the monarch more furious. He had long hated and hisministers had long dreaded the outspoken journalist. King andministers now felt that the time had arrived when they could strike, and strike effectively. The King commanded the law officers of theCrown to read the article and give their opinion upon it. The lawofficers did the work that they knew the King expected from them. Theyfound that the paper was an infamous and seditious libel tending toincite the people to insurrection. They declared that the offence wasone punishable in due course of law as a misdemeanor. Upon this hintthe ministers acted, rapidly and rashly. A general warrant was issuedfor the apprehension of the authors, printers, and publishers of the_North Briton_. The printer {59} and the publisher were arrested andbrought before Lord Halifax and Lord Egremont, to whom they gave up thenames of John Wilkes and Charles Churchill as the authors of the _NorthBriton_. The next step was to arrest Wilkes himself. [Sidenote: 1763--Arrest of Wilkes] The King's messengers came upon Wilkes in his house in Great GeorgeStreet, Westminster. It is honorably characteristic of the man that inthe moment of his own danger he felt more concern for the danger ofanother. While he was arguing with the officials that they had nopower to arrest him, as he was a member of Parliament and thereforeprivileged against arrest, Churchill came into the room on a visit toWilkes. Churchill, Wilkes knew, was as certain to be arrested as hewas. Churchill could plead no privilege. It was probable that themessengers were unfamiliar with Churchill's face. Wilkes, with happygood-nature and happy audacity, immediately hailed Churchill as Mr. Thompson, clasped his hand and inquired affectionately how Mrs. Thompson did and if she was going to dine in the country. If Wilkeswas clever in his suggestion Churchill was no less clever in taking thehint. He thanked Wilkes, declared that Mrs. Thompson was at thatmoment waiting for him, and that he had merely called in to inquireafter the health of Wilkes. Saying which, Churchill swiftly bowedhimself out, hurried home, secured all his papers, and disappeared intothe country. The King's messengers, who were promptly at his lodgings, were never able to discover his whereabouts. The flight to which Wilkes so ingeniously assisted him is not thebrightest part of Churchill's career. He carried with him into hisretreat a young girl, a Miss Carr, the daughter of a Westminsterstonecutter, whom the charms of Churchill's manners had induced toleave her father's house. He could not marry the girl, as he wasmarried already, and, to do him justice, he appears soon to haverepented the wrong he had done her. But after an unsuccessful attempton the girl's part to live again with her own people she returned toher lover, and she lived with her lover to the end. Churchill seems tohave been sincerely {60} attached to her. If he had been a free man, if his life had not been blighted by his early unhappy marriage, theirunion might have been a very happy one. At his death he left annuitiesto both women, to the woman he had married and the woman he had loved, the wife's annuity being the larger of the two. While Churchill was making his way as quickly as possible out of a townthat his services to his friend had rendered too hot to hold him, Wilkes was immediately hurried before Lord Halifax and Lord Egremont atWhitehall. He carried himself very composedly in the presence of hisenemies. He persistently asserted his privilege, as a member ofParliament, against arrest. He refused to answer any questions or toacknowledge the authorship of No. 45 of the _North Briton_. Heprofessed with equal enthusiasm his loyalty to the King and hisloathing of the King's advisers, and he announced his intention ofbringing the matter before Parliament the moment that the sessionbegan. Egremont and Halifax retaliated by sending Wilkes to the Towerand causing his house to be searched and all his papers to be seized. The high-handed folly of the King's friends had for their chief effectthe conversion of men who had little sympathy for Wilkes into, if nothis advocates, at least his allies against the illegal methods whichwere employed to crush him. Wilkes, through his friends, immediately applied to the Court of CommonPleas for a writ of _habeas corpus_. This was at once obtained, andwas served upon the messengers of the Secretary of State. But Wilkeswas no longer in their custody, and Wilkes was detained in the Towerfor a whole week, part of the time, as he declared, in solitaryconfinement, before he was brought into court. Judge Pratt immediatelyordered his discharge on the ground of his claim to immunity fromarrest as a member of Parliament, without prejudice to any later actionagainst him. [Sidenote: 1763--Hogarth's caricature of Wilkes] It was while Wilkes was before Pratt at Westminster that, if we mayaccept the authority of Churchill, one of Wilkes's keenest enemiesseized an opportunity for a cruel {61} revenge. Hogarth hated bothWilkes and Churchill. He had begun the quarrel by attacking the _NorthBriton_ and the _Monitor_ in his cartoon "The Times, " executed for thegreater glorification of the painter's patron, Lord Bute. The _NorthBriton_ replied to this attack with a vigor which infuriated Hogarth, who had his full share of the irritable vanity which the world alwaysattributes to the artist. In Wilkes's difficulty Hogarth saw hisopportunity. Lurking behind a screen in the Court of Common Pleas, thepainter sought and found an opportunity for making a sketch of Wilkes. While Justice Pratt, with what Wilkes called "the eloquence and courageof old Rome, " was laying down the law upon the prisoner's pleapreparatory to setting him at liberty, Hogarth's busy pencil wasengaged upon the first sketch for that caricature which has helped tomake Wilkes's features famous and infamous throughout the world. Theprint was promptly published at a shilling, and commanded an enormoussale. Nearly four thousand copies, it is said, were sold within a fewweeks. The envenomed skill of Hogarth has made the appearance ofWilkes almost as familiar to us as to the men of his own time. Thesneering, satyr face, the sinister squint, the thrust-out chin andprotruding lower jaw belong to a face severely visited by Nature, evenwhen liberal allowance is made for the animosity that prompted the handof the caricaturist. The caricature was a savage stroke; to Wilkes'sfriends it seemed to be a traitor's stroke. Wilkes appears to havetaken it, as he took most things, with composure. "I know, " he wrotelater, "but one short apology to be made for the person of Mr. Wilkes;it is that he did not make himself, and that he never was solicitousabout the case of his soul (as Shakespeare calls it) only so far as tokeep it clean and in health. I never once heard that he hung over theglassy stream, like another Narcissus, admiring the image in it, northat he ever stole an amorous look at his counterfeit in a side mirror. His form, such as it is, ought to give him no pain while it is capableof giving so much pleasure to others. I believe he finds himselftolerably happy in the clay {62} cottage to which he is a tenant forlife, because he has learned to keep it in pretty good order; while theshare of health and animal spirits which Heaven has given him shallhold out, I can scarcely imagine he will be one moment peevish aboutthe outside of so precarious, so temporary a habitation, or will everbe brought to own 'Ingenium Galbae male habitat:' 'Monsieur est mallogé. '" Good-humored at the time, his good-humor persevered, and inlater life he was wont to say jestingly that he found he was growingmore and more like his famous portrait every day. But if it wasbecoming of Wilkes to bear the attack in so serene and even so joculara spirit, it was not unbecoming, as it was not ungenerous, of hisfriends to fail to imitate the coolness of their leader. It is notquite easy to understand why, in an age of caricature, an age when allmen of any notoriety were caricatured, the friends of Wilkes were sosensitive to the satire of Hogarth. Public men, and the friends ofpublic men, have grown less sensitive. However, Wilkes's friends were, and showed themselves to be, as angry as Wilkes was, or showed himselfto be, indifferent, and the hottest and angriest of them all wasChurchill. Churchill could retaliate, and Churchill did retaliate witha ferocity that equalled and more than equalled Hogarth's. [Sidenote: 1763--Churchill's denunciation of Hogarth] With a rage that was prompted by friendship, yet with a coolness thatthe importance of the cause he championed called for, Churchill aimedblow after blow upon the offending painter. The skill of a practisedexecutioner directed every stroke to a fresh spot, and with everystroke brought blood. The satirist called upon Hogarth by his name, tostand forth and be tried "in that great court where conscience mustpreside, " bade him review his life from his earliest youth, and say ifhe could recall a single instance in which Thou with an equal eye didst genius view And give to merit what was merit's duet Genius and merit are a sure offence, And thy soul sickens at the name of sense. The poet goes on to say that "when Wilkes our countryman, {63} ourcommon friend arose, his King, his country to defend, " Malice Had killed thee, tottering on life's utmost verge, Had Wilkes and Liberty escaped thy scourge. And then, in some two hundred lines of strenuous rage, Churchilldenounced Hogarth with a denunciation that was the more effectivebecause it was accompanied by a frank and full recognition of Hogarth'sgreat gifts and deserved title to fame. Hogarth retaliated by hisfamous caricature of Churchill as a canonical bear with a pot of porterin one paw and a huge cudgel in the other, the knots on the cudgelbeing numbered as Lie 1, Lie 2, and so forth. Instantly the greatcaricaturist was attacked by others eager to strike at one who hadstruck so hard in his day. The hatred of Bute was extended to thepainter who condescended to accept Bute's patronage, and who labored toplease his patron. Hogarth was derided as "The Butyfier, " in mockeryof his "Analysis of Beauty. " It would have been as lucky for Hogarthas it would have been lucky for Bute to let Wilkes alone. If Wilkes's release filled his supporters throughout the country withdelight, it only spurred on his enemies to fresh attempts and freshblunders. Had they left the matter where it stood, even though itstood at a defeat to them, they would have spared themselves muchignominy. But the fury of the King inspired a fiercer fury in theministers and those who followed the ministers. Every weapon at theircommand was immediately levelled at Wilkes, even, it may not beunfairly asserted, the assassin's weapon. Wilkes carried himselfgallantly, defiantly, even insolently. His attitude was not one totempt angry opponents to forbearance. His letters from the Tower andafter his release to Lord Halifax were couched in the most contemptuouslanguage. He brought an action against Lord Halifax. He brought anaction against Mr. Wood, the Under-Secretary of State, and was awarded1, 000 pounds damages. When Lord Egremont died, in the August of 1763, Wilkes declared that he had "been gathered {64} to the dull of ancientdays. " He republished the numbers of the _North Briton_ in a singlevolume with notes, to prove that the King's speech couldconstitutionally be only regarded as the utterance of the King'sministers. There must have been a splendid stubbornness in the manwhich enabled him to face so daringly, so aggressively, the desperateodds against him. [Sidenote: 1763--Wilkes and his accusers] Every man who wished to curry favor with the King and the King'sministers was ready to strike his blow at Wilkes. There was not abully among the hangers-on of the King and ministers who was not eagerto cross swords with Wilkes or level pistol at him. Insult afterinsult, injury after injury, were offered to the obnoxious politician. The King dismissed him from the colonelcy of the BuckinghamshireMilitia. Lord Temple was the Lord-Lieutenant of the county ofBuckinghamshire, and as Lord-Lieutenant it was his duty to convey toWilkes the news of his disgrace. Never was such news so conveyed. Temple told Wilkes of his dismissal in a letter of warm enthusiasm, ofwarm personal praise. The King immediately retaliated by removingTemple from the Lord-Lieutenancy and striking his name off the list ofprivy councillors. The enmity was not confined to the King and to theparasites who sought to please the King. Dr. Johnson declared that ifhe were the monarch he would have sent half a dozen footmen to duckWilkes for daring to censure his royal master or his royal master'sministers. In the House of Commons the hostility was at its height. When Parliament met Wilkes sought to call the attention of the House tohis case, but was anticipated by Grenville, who read a royal messagedirected at Wilkes, the result of which was that the House voted thatthe number Forty-five of the _North Briton_ was a seditious libel, andordered it to be burned by the common hangman. The basest part of the attack upon Wilkes was the use that his enemiesmade of his private papers, the way in which they associated hispolitical conduct with an offence that was wholly unpolitical. It hadamused Wilkes to set up a private printing-press at his own house. Atthis {65} press certain productions were printed which were no doubtindecent, which were no doubt blasphemous, but which were furthermoreso foolish as to make both their indecency and their blasphemy of verylittle effect. One was the "Essay on Woman, " written as a parody ofPope's "Essay on Man;" the other was an imitation of the "VeniCreator. " Neither of these pieces of gross buffoonery bore anyauthor's name. Very few copies of them had been printed, and these fewsolely for circulation among private friends with a taste for foulliterature. No offence had been committed, no offence had beenintended, against public morality. It is certain, as far as anyliterary puzzle can be regarded as certain, that Wilkes's share in thedirty business was chiefly, if not entirely, limited to the printing ofthe pages. The "Essay on Woman, " as those who have had the misfortuneto read it know, is a dreary writer's piece of schoolboy obscenity, ifentirely disgusting, no less entirely dull. The text of the "Essay"was composed in great part, if not altogether, by Potter, the unworthyson of the Archbishop of Canterbury and worthy member of the Medmenhambrotherhood. When Wilkes's papers were seized, or by some other means, the Government got possession of the proof sheets of the "Essay onWoman. " They immediately resolved, in defiance of public decency, ofpolitical morality, to use it as a weapon against their enemy. Itshows the shallowness of their pretence at justification that they putthe weapon into the hands of the worst and basest of Wilkes's formerfriends and allies in profligacy, into the hands of Lord Sandwich. Onthe first night of the session Lord Sandwich rose in the House ofLords, and proceeded to denounce Wilkes and the "Essay on Woman" with avehemence of false austerity that impressed the assembly and infinitelydelighted Lord Le Despencer, who had been the common friend, thebrother sinner of accuser and accused, and who now expressed muchentertainment at hearing the devil preach. The spurious virtue ofSandwich was followed by the spurious indignation of Warburton. The"Essay on Woman" contained certain notes written in parody ofWarburton's notes {66} to the "Essay on Man, " just as the versesthemselves were a parody on Pope's poem. Warburton chose to regardthis as a broach of privilege, and he assailed Wilkes with even greaterfury than Sandwich had done, winding up by apologizing to the devil foreven comparing Wilkes to him. An admiring House immediately voted thepoems obscene, libellous, and a breach of privilege. Two daysafterwards an address from the Lords called upon the King to prosecuteWilkes for blasphemy. [Sidenote: 1763--Wilkes as a champion of popular liberty] Wilkes was unable to face this new attack. He had already fallen avictim to an attack of another and no less malignant nature. While thecreatures of the Government in the Upper House were trying to destroyhis character, one of their creatures in the Lower House was doing hisbest to take Wilkes's life. This was a man named Martin, who had beenattacked in the _North Briton_ some eight months earlier. Martinseemed to have resolved upon revenge, and to have set about obtainingit after the fashion not of the gentleman, but of the bravo. Day byday, week by week, month by month he practised himself in pistolshooting, until he considered that his skill was sufficient to enablehim to take the dastard's hazard in a duel. He seized the opportunityof the debate on November 15th to describe the writer in the _NorthBriton_ as a "coward and a malignant scoundrel. " When Wilkes, on thefollowing day, avowed the authorship of the paper, Martin sent him achallenge. The challenge was in all respects a strange one. It wastreacherous, because it came at the heels of deliberate preparation. It was peremptory, for it called upon Wilkes to meet his enemy in HydePark within an hour. It contravened the laws of the duello, becauseMartin, who was the challenger, himself insisted on the use of theweapons with which he had made himself so murderously skilful. Wilkesaccepted the duel with characteristic courage, with characteristicrashness. He met Martin in Hyde Park, and the amateur bravo shotWilkes through the body. It is a further characteristic of the manyelements of good that went to Wilkes's strange composition that, as helay on the grass bleeding fast and {67} apparently mortally wounded, his first care was not for himself and his hurt, but for the safety ofhis adversary, of an adversary who deserved chivalrous treatment aslittle as if he had taken Wilkes unawares and shot him in the back. While Wilkes was lying on what threatened to be his death-bed thefeeling on both sides only increased in intensity. The Ministry wereindifferent to the helplessness of their enemy. Wilkes was expelledfrom the House of Commons. He was expelled from the Militia. Thecommon hangman was ordered publicly to burn the _North Briton_, but thehangman was not suffered to obey the order. An angry mob set upon himand upon the sheriffs who were assisting at the ceremony, rescued the_North Briton_ from its persecutors, and in rude retaliation burnedinstead the joint emblems of the popular disdain--a boot and apetticoat. The people's blood was up; the symptoms were significantenough for any save such a King and such ministers to understand. While the Ministry, with a refinement of cruelty, were sending dailythe King's surgeons to watch Wilkes's health and proclaim the momentwhen he might again be attacked, the Corporation of Dublin was settingan example that was soon followed by the Corporation of London and byother corporations in presenting him with the freedom of its city. While Wilkes was slowly journeying towards Paris, where his daughterwas, and passing, as he wrote, "the most unhappy days he had known, " anangry mob gibbeted the effigy of Bute at one of the gates of Exeter, and kept the image swinging there in derision for a fortnight indefiance of the authorities. While Wilkes was languishing in foreignexile to save his liberty and his very life from the malignity of hisenemies, his portrait, painted by Reynolds, was placed in the Guildhallwith an inscription in honor of the jealous assertor of English libertyby law. Wilkes was well advised in keeping out of England. He had done hispart. The decisions of Pratt in the Court of Common Pleas, thedecisions in the Guildhall, had conferred a permanent benefit upon theEnglish citizen. But {68} Wilkes was not bound to put himself into thepower of his enemies in order to establish the authorship of the "Essayon Woman. " His enemies took as much advantage as they could of hisabsence. He was found guilty by the Court of King's Bench of havingreprinted the number Forty-five and of having written the "Essay onWoman. " As he did not appear to receive his sentence, he was promptlyoutlawed for contumacy. Thus a Ministry wise in their own conceitbelieved that they had got rid of Wilkes for good and all. They didnot note, or if they noted did not heed, that the favorite sign ofale-houses throughout the country was the head of Wilkes. They wereindifferent to the fact that Wilkes had come to be regarded in alldirections as the champion of popular liberty. All they knew, all thatthey cared to know, was that Wilkes was in exile, and was like enoughto die in exile. Even the success of "The Beggar's Opera" taught themnothing, and yet the success of "The Beggar's Opera" was a significantlesson. "The Beggar's Opera" was revived at Covent Garden while theexcitement about Wilkes was at its height, and its audiences were asready to read in political allusions between the lines as they had beenat the time of its first production. The line "That Jemmy Twitchershould peach on me I own rather surprises me" was converted at onceinto an innuendo at the expense of Lord Sandwich, to whom the nameJemmy Twitcher was immediately applied by the public at large, almostto the disuse, so Horace Walpole tells us, of his own title. [Sidenote: 1764--Death of Hogarth and Churchill] But the Ministry had so far triumphed that for four years Wilkesremained away from England, drifting from one foreign capital toanother, making friends and winning admirers everywhere, and employinghis enforced leisure in attempting great feats of literary enterprise. A scheme for a Constitutional History of England was succeeded by a noless difficult and, as it proved, no less impracticable scheme. DuringWilkes's exile he lost the most famous of his enemies and the mostfamous of his friends. On October 26, 1764, Hogarth died. It wascommonly said, and generally credited, that he died of a broken heart{69} in consequence of the furious attacks which had followed upon hisunhappy quarrel with Wilkes. It was a pity that the closing hours ofHogarth's life should have been occupied with so petty and soregrettable a squabble. Hogarth was entirely in the wrong. Hogarthbegan the quarrel; and if Hogarth was eager to give hard knocks heshould have been ready to take hard knocks in return. But the world atlarge may very well be glad that Hogarth did lurk in the court byJustice Pratt and did make his memorable sketch of Wilkes. The sketchserves to show us if not what Wilkes exactly was, at least what Wilkesseemed to be to a great many of his countrymen. The caricaturist is apriceless commentator. If Hogarth indeed indirectly shortened his lifeby his portrait of Wilkes, he gave, as if by transfusion of blood, anincreased and abiding vitality to certain of the most interesting pagesof history. Within a few days of Hogarth, Churchill died. His devotion to Wilkesprompted him to join him in his Continental banishment. He got as faras Boulogne, where Wilkes met him, and at Boulogne he died of a fever, after formally naming Wilkes as his literary executor. Wilkes, who wasalways prompted by generous impulses, immediately resolved that hewould edit a collected edition of Churchill's works, and for a time heburied himself in seclusion in Naples with the firm intention ofcarrying out this purpose. But the task was too great both for the manand for the conditions under which he was compelled to work. In thefirst place, annotations of such poems as Churchill's required constantreference to and minute acquaintance with home affairs, such as it waswell-nigh impossible for an exile to command. In the second place, itwas not an easy task for a man even with a very high opinion of himselfto play the part of editor and annotator of poems a great part of whichhad him for hero. In a very short time the work was abandoned, andWilkes emerged from his literary retreat. Wilkes has been very bitterly and, as it would appear, very unjustlyupbraided for his seeming neglect of his dead friend's wishes, of hisdead defender's fame. In spite of {70} those whose zeal for the memoryof Churchill drives them into antagonism with the memory of Wilkes, itmay be believed that the task was not one "for which Wilkes could, withthe greatest ease, have procured all the necessary materials; and towhich he was called not by the sacred duties of friendship only, but bythe plainest considerations of even the commonest gratitude. " Even ifWilkes had been, which Wilkes was not, the kind of a man to make a goodeditor, a good annotator, the difficulties that lay in the way of theexecution of his task were too many. The fact that the poems were solargely about himself gave a sufficient if not an almost imperativereason why he should leave the task alone. But in any case he musthave felt conscious of what events proved, that there was other workfor him to do in the world than the editing of other men's satires. Not, indeed, that the genius of Churchill needed any tribute thatWilkes or any one else could bestow. His monument is in his ownverses, in the story of his life. If indeed the lines from "TheCandidate" which are inscribed on Churchill's tombstone tell the truth, if indeed his life was "to the last enjoyed, " part of that enjoymentmay well have come from the certainty that the revolutions of timewould never quite efface his name or obscure his memory. Theimmortality of the satirist must almost inevitably be an immortalityrather historical than artistic; it is rather what he says than how hesays it which is accounted unto him for good. As there are passages ofgreat poetic beauty in the satires of Juvenal, so there are passages ofpoetic beauty in the satires of Churchill. But they are bothremembered, the great Roman and the great Englishman, less for whatbeauty their work permitted than for the themes on which they exercisedtheir wit. The study of Churchill is as essential to a knowledge ofthe eighteenth century in London as the study of Juvenal is essentialto a knowledge of the Rome of his time. That fame Churchill hadsecured for himself; to that fame nothing that Wilkes or any one elsemight do could add. {71} CHAPTER XLVI. THE AMERICAN COLONIES. [Sidenote: 1765--Grenville as Bute's successor] Wilkes in exile had ceased to exist in the minds of the King'sMinistry. In Naples or in Paris he was as little to be feared asChurchill in his grave. An insolent subject had presumed directly toattack the King's advisers and indirectly the King himself, and theinsolent subject was a fugitive, a broken, powerless man. The youngKing might well be pleased with the success of his policy. Inpursuance of that policy he had reduced the great fabric of the Whigparty to a ruin, and had driven the factious demagogue who opposed himinto an ignominious obscurity. To a temper flushed by two suchtriumphs opposition of any kind was well-nigh welcome for the pleasureof crushing it, and was never less likely to be encountered in a spiritof conciliation. Yet the King was destined in the very glow of hissuccess to find himself face to face with an opposition which he wasnot able to crush, and on which any attempt at conciliation was but somuch waste of time. The King's new and formidable opponent was his ownchief minister. When Bute, perhaps in fear for his life, perhaps in despair at hisunpopularity, resigned the office he filled so ill, he hoped to find inhis successor Grenville a supple and responsive creature, through whomBute would still be as powerful as before. Bute had to taste a bitterdisappointment. Grenville's gloomy spirit and narrow mind unfittedhim, indeed, for the office he was called upon to hold, but theyafforded him a stubbornness which declined to recognize either theauthority of the favorite or the authority of the favorite's master. By the time that Grenville had been two years in office the King hatedhim as {72} bitterly as he had ever hated Pitt. If Bute was impotentlyfurious to find himself discarded and despised by his intended tool, the King was still more exasperated to find that the King's servantproposed to be the King's master. Grenville was a good lawyer and agood man of business, but he was extremely dull and extremely tactless, and he was at as much pains to offend the King as if he intendedoffence. He was overbearing in manner to a monarch who was himselfoverbearing; he badgered him with long rambling discourses upon hisroyal duty; he deliberately wounded him in his two warmest affections, his love for his mother and his regard for Bute. Grenville was rightenough in his objection to the undue influence of Bute, but hisanimadversions came with a bad grace from the man who was to do as muchharm to England as Bute had ever done. As Grenville had triumphed overBute and driven him into the background, so he wished to triumph overthe Princess Dowager and deprive her of power. In 1765 the King fellill for the first time of that malady from which he was to suffer sooften and so heavily. As soon as he was restored to health he proposedthe introduction of a Regency Bill to settle satisfactorily thedifficulties that might very well arise if the heir to the throne wereto succeed before the age of eighteen. [Sidenote: 1765--The King seeks to remove Grenville] Grenville acted in the matter of the Regency Bill as if the dearestwish of his heart were to flout the King's wishes and to wound hisfeelings. The King wished, lest he should again be stricken withillness while the heir-apparent was still an infant, to be given theright to name a regent by will. Grenville and Grenville's colleagues, who were now as jealous of the authority of Bute as any subscriber tothe _North Briton_, saw or professed to see in the King's proposal aninsidious scheme for placing little less than royal power within thereach of the favorite. They made it impossible for the King to nameBute by limiting his choice to the members of the royal family. Butthey went further than this in affronting the King. They limited hischoice of a regent to members of the royal family, but they alsolimited the number of {73} members of the royal family from whom hemight make his choice. They insisted that the name of the King'smother, of the Princess Dowager, should not be included in the Bill. It is difficult to understand how the King could ever have been inducedto consent to this peculiarly galling insult. It seems that Grenvilleassured him, on entirely false premises, that if her name werementioned in the Bill the House of Commons would be certain to strikeit out. Preferring the private to the public affront, Georgesurrendered to his minister, only to find that his minister wasflagrantly misinformed. The friends of the Princess in the House ofCommons moved that her name should be written into the Bill, and theycarried their point in Grenville's teeth. Grenville had played thetyrant and George had accepted the humiliation for nothing. Georgetried at once to overthrow Grenville. In those days a king whodisliked a minister had a very simple and easy way of showing and ofgratifying his dislike. He could dismiss his minister without ceremonyand without question. Nowadays a minister depends for his power andtenure of office upon the majority in the House of Commons, and asovereign would not think of dismissing a minister, or of doinganything else than accepting formally the decision of the House ofCommons. But when George the Third was king the only check upon theroyal power of dismissing a minister lay in the possible difficulty offinding another to take his place. This was the check George now met. He wanted with all his heart to dismiss Grenville. He turned toCumberland of Culloden, and implored him to bring back Pitt and enablehim to get rid of Grenville. Cumberland tried and Cumberland failed. Pitt was in one of those paroxysms of illness which seem to havecompletely overmastered him. He was almost entirely under theinfluence of Temple. Temple's detestation of Bute reconciled him toGrenville's policy when he found that Grenville seemed to share thatdetestation. Temple persuaded Pitt to refuse. Cumberland came back tothe King to tell of his failure. There was nothing to be done. Grenville had to be kept on. If the enforced association {74} did notmake the sovereign and his minister better friends, if both smartedunder a sense of humiliation and defeat, it is scarcely surprising thatthe stubbornness of both was intensified in cases where theirstubbornness was pitted not against each other, but against a commonobstacle. Such a case was then in existence. [Sidenote: 1765--The American colonies] Three thousand miles away the wealth and power of England wasrepresented by a number of settlements occupying a comparatively narrowstrip of territory on the Atlantic seaboard of the North Americancontinent. The American colonies were the proudest possessions of theBritish Empire. Through generation after generation, for more than twocenturies, English daring and English courage had built up thosecolonies, reclaiming them from the wilderness and the swamp, wrestingthem from wild man and wild beast, fighting for them with Europeanpower after European power. They were a source of wealth, a source ofhonor, and a source of strength to England. They were cheaply boughtwith the brave lives that had been given for them. It is hard torealize that any sovereign, that any statesman could fail to see howprecious a possession they were, or how unwise any course of actionmust be which could tend in any way to lessen their affection or toalienate their support. Yet such a sovereign was upon the throne andsuch a minister was by his side. Mr. Willett, senior, in "Barnaby Rudge, " explains to his friends thathis absent son Joe is away in "the Salwanners in America, where the waris. " Mr. Willett's knowledge and appreciation of the American coloniesrepresents pretty well for profundity and accuracy the knowledge andappreciation of the majority of the English people in the timescontemporary with, and indeed long subsequent to, the quarrels betweenthe old country and the new. To the bulk of the British people Americawas a vague and shadowy region, a sort of no-man's land, peopled forthe most part with black men and red men, and dimly associated withsugar-planting and the tobacco trade. Its distance alone made it seemsufficiently unreal to those whose way of life was not drawn bybusiness or {75} by politics into association with its inhabitants. The voyage to America was a grimly serious adventure, calling forfortitude and triple brass. The man was indeed lucky who could makethe passage from shore to shore in six weeks of stormy sea, and thejourney generally took a much longer time, and under the sameconditions of discomfort and of danger that attended on the voyage ofthe "Mayflower. " The vast majority of Englishmen concerned themselvesas little with America as they concerned themselves with Hindostan. Both were British possessions, and as such important, but both were toofar away to assume any very substantial reality in the consciousness ofthe bulk of the English people. Of the minority who did possessanything that can be called knowledge of the American colonies, themajority imbibed its information from official sources, from thereports of governors of provinces and official servants of the Crown. These reports were for the most part as reliable for a basis on whichto build an intelligent appreciation as the legends of the Algonquinsor the myths of the Six Nations. If the English knowledge of the American colonies had been a littlemore precise it would have run to this effect. The colonies of the NewEngland region were mainly peopled by a hardy, industrious, sober, frugal race, still strongly Puritanical in profession and in practice, and knowing but little of the extremes of fortune. Neither greatpoverty nor great wealth was common among those sturdy farmers, whotended their own farms, tilled their own land, lived upon their ownproduce, and depended for their clothing and for most of thenecessaries of life upon the work of their own hands. A slenderpopulation was scattered far asunder in lonely townships and stragglingvillages of wooden houses, built for the most part in the formidablefashion imposed upon men who might at any time have to resist theattacks of Indians. Inside these villages the rough, rude justice ofthe Puritan days still persisted. The stocks and the pillory and thestool of repentance were things of the present. A shrewish housewifemight still be made to stand at her cottage door with {76} the iron gagof the scold fastened upon her shameful face. A careless Sabbatarianmight still find himself exposed to the scorn of a congregation, withthe words "A wanton gospeller" placarded upon his ignominious breast. Inside those wooden houses a rude simplicity and a rough plentyprevailed. The fare was simple; the labor was hard; simple fare andstern labor between them reared a stalwart, God-fearing race. Itspositive pleasures were few and primitive. Husking-bees, quiltings, arare dance, filled up the measure of its diversions. But the summersmiled upon those steadfast, earnest, rigorous citizens, and in thewild and bitter winters each household would gather about the cheerfulfire in the great chimney which in some of those cottages formed themajor part of the building, and find content and peace in quiet talkand in tales of the past, of the French and Indian wars, and of theirancestors, long ago, in old England. Those same great fires that werethe joy of winter were also one of its troubles. Once lit, with allthe difficulty attendant upon flint and steel and burnt rag, they hadto be kept alight from morning till night and from night till morning. If a fire went out it was a woful business to start it again with thereluctant tinder-box. There was, indeed, another way, an easier way, of going round to a neighbor and borrowing a shovelful of hot emberswherewith to kindle the blackened hearth. But in villages built forthe most part of wood this might well be regarded as a dangerousprocess. So the law did regard it, and to start a fire in this lazy, lounging fashion was penalized as sternly as any breach of the Sabbathor of public decorum, and these were sternly punished. Drunkenness wasgrimly frowned down. Only decent, God-fearing men were allowed to keeptaverns, and the names of persons who had earned the reputation ofintemperance were posted up in those taverns as a warning to the hostthat he should sell such men no liquor. In Connecticut tobacco wasforbidden to any one under twenty years of age, unless on the expressorder of a physician. Those who were over twenty were only allowed tosmoke once a day, and then not within ten miles of any dwelling. {77} [Sidenote: 1765--American colonial customs] In spite of their democratic simplicity, even the New England colonistshad their distinctions of rank as clearly marked as among the people ofold England. The gentry dressed in one fashion; the working classesdressed in another. The family rank of students determined theirplaces in the lists of Harvard College and Yale College. In Boston, the chief New England town, life was naturally more elaborate and moreluxurious than in the country places. Ladies wore fine clothes andsought to be modish in the London manner; gentlemen made a brave showin gayly colored silks and rich laces, gold-headed canes and costlysnuff-boxes. Even in Boston, however, life was simpler, quieter, andsweeter than it was across the Atlantic; there was Puritanism in itsatmosphere--Puritanism and the serenity of learning, of scholarship, ofstudy. There was much more wealth in the province of New York; there was muchmore display in the southern colonies. New York was as famous for itsDutch cleanliness and its Dutch comfort as for its Dutch windmills thattwirled their sails against the sky in all directions. There was storeof plate and fine linen in New York cupboards. There were good thingsto eat and drink in New York households. Down South the gentlefolklived as gentlefolk lived in England, with perhaps a more lavishostentation, a more liberal hospitality. They loved horses and dogs, horse-racing and fox-hunting, dancing, music, high living, all thingsthat added to the enjoyment of life. Their servants were their ownblack slaves. The great city of the South was Charleston, the third ofthe colonial cities. The fourth and last was Philadelphia, the "fairegreene country town" of Penn's love, the last in our order, but thefirst in size and splendor, with its flagged sidewalks that had made itfamous throughout the American continent as if it had been one of theseven wonders of the world, with its stately houses of brick and stone, its avenues of trees, its fruitful orchards and sweet-smelling gardens. The people of Philadelphia had every right to be proud of their city. Communication was not easy between one colony and {78} another, betweenone town and another. But neither was it easy in England. For themost part the conditions of life were much the same on one side of theAtlantic as on the other. The whole population, white and black, freeman and slave, was about two million souls. They were well-to-do, peaceable, hard-working--those who had to work, good fighters--thosewho had to fight, all very willing to be loyal and all very well worthkeeping loyal. It was worth their sovereign's while, it was worth thewhile of his ministers, to know something about these colonists and totry and understand natures that were not at all difficult tounderstand. Had they been treated as the Englishmen they were, allwould have been well. But the King who gloried in the name of Britondid not extend its significance far enough. [Sidenote: 1765--Friction with the American colonists] It is not easy to understand the temper which animated all the King'sactions towards the American colonies. They were regarded, and withjustice, as one of the greatest glories of the English crown; they wereno less a source of wealth than of pride to the English people. Yetthe English prince persisted in pursuing towards them a policy whichcan only be most mildly characterized as a policy of exasperation. When George was still both a young man and a young king, the relationsbetween the mother country and her children across the Atlantic were, if not wholly harmonious, at least in such a condition as to renderharmony not merely possible, but probable. The result of a long andwearing war had been to relieve the colonists directly from one andindirectly from the other of their two greatest perils. By the termson which peace was made the power of France was broken on the NorthAmerican continent. The French troops had been withdrawn across theseas. The Lilies of France floated over no more important possessionsin the new world than a few insignificant fishing stations nearNewfoundland. A dangerous and dreaded enemy to colonial life andliberty could no longer menace or alarm. As a consequence of thewithdrawal of the French troops the last united attack of the red menagainst the white was made and failed. {79} The famous conspiracy ofPontiac was the desperate attempt of the Indian allies of France toannihilate the colonists by a concerted attack of a vast union oftribes. The conspiracy failed after a bloody war that lasted fornearly two years. Pontiac, the Indian chief who had helped to destroyBraddock, and who had dreamed that all the English might as easily bedestroyed, was defeated and killed; his league was dissipated, and thepower of the red men as a united force broken for good. Under suchconditions of immunity from long-standing and pressing perils, due inthe main to the triumph of British arms, the colonists might very wellhave been expected to regard with especial favor their association withEngland. If there had been differences between the two countries forlong enough, no moment could have been apter for the adoption of apolicy calculated to lessen and ultimately to abolish those differencesthan the moment when the weary and wearing Seven Years' War came to itsclose. A far-seeing monarch, advised and encouraged by far-seeingstatesmen, might have soldered close the seeming impossibilities andmade them kiss. Had the throne even been filled by a sovereignslightly less stubborn, had the throne been surrounded by servantsslightly less bigoted, the arrogant patronage of the one part and theaggressive protestation of the other part might have been judiciouslysoftened into a relationship wisely paternal and loyally filial. Theadvantage of an enduring union between the mother country and hercolonies was obvious to any reasonable observer. A common blood, acommon tongue, a common pride of race and common interests should havekept them together. But the relations were not amicable. The colonieswere peopled by men who were proud indeed of being Englishmen, but byreason of that very pride were jealous of any domination, even at thehands of Englishmen. The mother country, on the other hand, regardedthe colonies, won with English hands and watered with English blood, asbeing no less portion and parcel of English soil because three thousandmiles of stormy ocean lay between the port upon the Severn and the portupon {80} the Charles River. She came to regard as mere ingratitudethose assertions of independence which most characteristically provedthe colonies to be worthy of it and of her. The theory of the absolutedominion of England over the American colonies might have died anatural death, a harmonious settlement of grievances and adjustment ofpowers might have knitted the two peoples together in an enduringleague, if it had not been for George the Third. [Sidenote: 1765--England and her colonial governors] The mind of George the Third was saturated with a belief in hispersonal importance; the heart of George the Third was exalted by thedetermination to play a dominating part in the country of his birth andthe history of his reign. The hostility to the exercise of homeauthority latent in the colonies irritated the King like a personalaffront. To resist or to resent the authority of the Government ofEngland was to resist and to resent the authority of the sovereign whowas determined that he would be to all intents and purposes theGovernment of England. If the relationship between England and Americahad been far happier than George found it at the time of his accession, it probably would not long have preserved a wholesome tenor. But therelationship was by no means happy. The colonial assemblies were forthe most part at loggerheads with the colonial governors. Thesegovernors, little viceroys with petty courts, extremely proud of theirpower and self-conscious in their authority, generally detested thepopular assemblies upon whom they were obliged to depend for thepayment of their salaries. Their dislike found secret expression inthe letters which it was the duty and the pleasure of the colonialgovernors to address to the Home Government. The system of colonialadministration in England was as simple as it was unsatisfactory. Atits head was a standing committee of the Privy Council which had beenestablished in 1675. This committee was known at length as "The Lordsof the Committee of Trade and Plantations, " and in brief and moregenerally as "The Lords of Trade. " It was the duty of the colonialgovernors to make lengthy reports to the Lords of Trade on the {81}commercial and other conditions of their governorships. It was toooften their pleasure to supplement these State papers with lengthy andembittered private letters, addressed to the same body, making the verymost and worst of the difficulties they had to deal with in their work. The colonies, as represented in these semi-official communications, were turbulent, contumacious, discontented, disrespectful to viceregaldignity, rebellious against the authority of Great Britain. Thesecommunications informed the minds of the Lords of Trade, who in theirturn influenced those who were responsible for the conduct of theKing's Government. Thus a vicious system, acting in a vicious circle, kept alive an irritation and fostered a friction that only increasedwith the increasing years. It had always been the worst feature ofEngland's colonial policy that she was ever ready to accept with toolittle question the animadversions of the governors upon the governed. The Lords of Trade accepted the communications of the colonialgovernors as gospel truth, and as gospel truth it was taken in its turnby the ministers to whom it was transmitted and by the monarch to whomthey carried it. The general public were as ignorant of and asindifferent to the American colonies as if they were situated in themountains of the moon. The major part of the small minority thatreally did seek or desire information about America gained it from thesame poisonous sources that inspired the Government, and based theirtheories of colonial reform upon the peevish epistles, often mendaciousand always one-sided, which fed the intelligences of the Lords ofTrade. The few who were really well informed, who had something likeas accurate an appreciation of the colony of Massachusetts as they hadof the county of Middlesex, were powerless to counteract the generalignorance and the more particular misconception. It was the cherisheddream of authority in England to bring the colonies into one commonrule under one head in such a way as to strengthen their military forcewhile it lessened their legislative independence. It now seemed as ifwith the right King and the right Ministry {82} this dream might becomea reality. In George the Third and in George Grenville prerogativeseemed to have found the needed instruments to subjugate the Americancolonies. [Sidenote: 1765--Trade restrictions upon the colonies] Many of the grievances of the colonies were grave enough. If some ofthe injuries that England inflicted upon her great dependency seempetty in the enumeration, a number of small causes of irritation are noless dangerous to peace between nations than some great injustice. Butlest the small stings should not be enough, the Government was resolvedthat the great injustice should not be wanting. The colonists resentedthe intermittent tyranny and the persistent truculence of the most partof the royal governors. The colonists resented the enforcedtransportation of criminals. The colonists resented the action ofGreat Britain in annulling the colonial laws made to keep out slaves. It is melancholy to reflect that the curse of slavery, for whichEnglishmen of later days often so bitterly and so rightly reproachedAmerica, was unhappily enforced upon a country struggling to be rid ofit by Englishmen who called themselves English statesmen. Thecolonists resented the astonishing restrictions which it pleased themother country to place, in what she believed to be her own interest, upon colonial trade. These laws commanded that all trade between thecolonies should be carried on in ships built in England or thecolonies. This barred out all foreigners, especially the Dutch, thenthe chief carriers for Europe. They compelled the American farmer tosend his products across the ocean to England. They forbade theexportation of sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, indigo, ginger, dyeing-woods to any part of the world except to England or some Englishcolony. They only allowed exportation of fish, fur, oil, ashes, andlumber in ships built in England or the colonies. They forced thecolonists to buy all their European goods in England and bring themover to America in English vessels. They prohibited the colonialmanufacture of any article that could be manufactured in England. Theyharassed and minimized the trade between one colony and another. No{83} province was permitted to send woollen goods, hats, or ironware toanother province. Some of the regulations read more like the rules ofsome Turkish pashalik than the laws framed by one set of Englishmen foranother set of Englishmen. In the Maine woods, for instance, no treethat had a diameter greater than two feet at a foot above the groundcould be cut down, except to make a mast for some ship of the RoyalNavy. Bad and bitter as these laws were in theory, they did not for longenough prove to be so bad in practice, for the simple reason that theywere very easy to evade and not very easy to enforce. The colonistsmet what many of them regarded as an elaborate system for therestriction of colonial trade by a no less elaborate system ofsmuggling. Smuggling was easy because of the long extent of sea-coast. Smuggling was lucrative, as few considered it an offence to evade lawsthat were generally resented as unfair. When the Sugar Act of 1733prohibited the importation of sugar and molasses from the French WestIndies except on payment of a prohibitory duty, the New Englandcolonists, who did a thriving trade in the offspring of the union ofsugar and molasses, rum, found themselves faced by a serious problem. Should they accept the Act and its consequential ruin of their trade orignore it, and by resorting to smuggling prosper as before? Withouthesitation they decided that their rights as Englishmen were assailedby the obnoxious imposition, and they turned to smuggling with thelight heart that is conscious of a heavy purse. The contraband tradewas brisk, the contrabandists cheerful, and so long as England made noserious attempt to put into operation laws that the genial andbusiness-like smugglers of the Atlantic sea-coast regarded aspreposterous nobody complained, and international relations werecordial. But the situation was not seen with so bright an eye by theBritish merchant. He witnessed with indignation the failure of theattempt to monopolize the commerce of the colonies to his ownadvantage, and he clamored for the restoration of his fat monopoly. His clamor was unheeded while the great war {84} was running itscourse. But with the end of the war and the new conditions consequentupon the advent of a new King with a brand-new theory of kingship andprerogative, the situation began to change. The colonial policy of George Grenville's Administration might beconveniently considered under three heads. The Ministry was resolved, in the first place, to enforce Acts of Trade which smuggling had longrendered meaningless in the American colonies. The Ministry wasresolved, in the second place, to establish a permanent garrison ofsome ten thousand men in America. The Ministry was resolved, in thethird place, to make the colonists pay a third of the cost of keepingup this garrison by a direct taxation. It was easy enough forGrenville to formulate the three ministerial purposes, but it was notvery easy to give them any effect. The colonists resented and thecolonists resisted all three proposals. If they were technically wrongin their resentment at the enforcement of the Acts of Trade, they werereasonable in their reluctance to accept the proposed garrison, andthey were justified by every law of liberty and of patriotism inresisting with all the strength at their command the proposed scheme oftaxation. [Sidenote: 1765--James Otis and John Adams] The English Government began its task by a rigorous attempt to enforcethe Acts of Trade. Grenville had made up his narrow mind that thecolonies should be compelled to adhere to the conditions which obligedthem to trade with England only for England's principal manufactures. There should be no more smuggling from Spanish America, no moresmuggling from the West Indies. To enforce this determination, whichdeprived the colonists at a blow of the most profitable part of theirtrade, the Government employed certain general search warrants, which, if strictly legal in the letter, were conceived in a spirit highlycalculated to goad a proud people into illegal defiance. They goadedone proud man into active protest. A distinguished servant of theGovernment, James Otis, the King's Advocate, resigned his office inorder that he might be at liberty to denounce the Writs of Assistance. {85} Otis may have been technically wrong in resisting the Writs ofAssistance, but it can scarcely be questioned that as a philosophicpolitician, who was devoted to the interests of his countrymen, he wasethically in the right. Otis was thirty-six years old; he was known tohis compatriots as a graduate of Harvard, an able lawyer, a zealousstudent of classical literature, and an author of repute on Latinprosody. The issue of the Writs of Assistance converted the respectedand respectable public servant into a conspicuous statesman as hotlyapplauded by the one side as he was execrated by the other. A singlespeech lifted him from an esteemed obscurity to a leading place amongthe champions of colonial rights against imperial aggressions. Theassemblage which Otis addressed, which Otis dominated, was forevermemorable in the history of America. "Otis was a flame of fire. " Thewords are the words of one who was a young man when Otis spoke, wholistened and took notes as the words fell from Otis's lips. "With apromptitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapidsummary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legalauthorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity, and a rapidtorrent of tempestuous eloquence, he hurried away all before him. Thenand there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to thearbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the childIndependence was born. Every man of an immense crowded audienceappeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take up arms against Writsof Assistance. " The youth who took notes of the words of Otis, and who was inspired bythem with the desire to rise and mutiny, was destined to play even agreater part in the history of his country. If Otis was one of thefirst to assert actively, by deed as well as by word, the determinationof the colonies to oppose and, if needs were, to defy the domination ofEngland, John Adams was the first to applaud his action and toappreciate its importance. In 1763 John Adams was no more than apromising young lawyer who had struggled from poverty and hardship toregard and authority, and who had wrested from iron Fortune a great{86} deal of learning if very little of worldly wealth. Short ofstature, sanguine of temperament, the ruddy, stubborn, passionate smallman had fought his way step by step from the most modest if not themost humble beginnings, as zealously as if he had known of the famethat was yet to be his and the honor that he was to give to his nameand hand down to a long line of honorable descendants. If theministers who weakly encouraged or meanly obeyed King George in hisfrenzy against America could have understood even dimly the temper of arace that was rich in sons of whom John Adams was but one and not themost illustrious even to them, there must have come dimly someconsciousness of the forces they had to encounter, and the peril oftheir policy. But the Ministry knew nothing of Adams, and knew only ofOtis as a mutinous and meddlesome official. Otis and his protestsignified nothing to them, and they would have smiled to learn thatyoung Mr. Adams, the lawyer, believed that American independence wasborn when Mr. Otis's oration against Writs of Assistance breathed intothe colonies the breath of life that was to make them a nation. [Sidenote: 1765--Taxation without representation] If Otis voiced and Adams echoed the feelings of the colonists againstWrits of Assistance and the enforcement of the Acts of Trade, theymight no less eloquently have interpreted the general irritation at theproposed establishment of a permanent garrison on the continent. Thecolonists saw no need of such a garrison so late in the day. When theFrenchmen held the field, when the red man was on the war path, thenindeed the presence of more British soldiers might have become welcome. But the flag of France no longer floated over strong places, no longerfluttered at the head of invasion. The strength of the savage wascrippled if not crushed. The colonists had nothing to fear from theone and little to fear from the other foe. They thought that they hadmuch to fear from the presence of a British garrison of ten thousandmen. This British garrison might, on occasion, be used not in defenceof their liberties, but in diminution of their liberties. Theirritation against the proposed garrison might have {87} smouldered outif it had not been fanned into a leaping flame by the means proposedfor the maintenance of the garrison. Grenville proposed to raiseone-third of the cost of support from the colonies by taxation. Noproposal could have been better calculated to goad every colony andevery colonist into resistance, and to fuse the scattered elements ofresistance into a solid whole. More than two generations earlier bothMassachusetts and New York had formally denied the right of the HomeGovernment to levy any tax upon the American colonies. The colonieswere not represented at Westminster--could not, under the conditions, be represented at Westminster. The theory that there should be notaxation without representation was as dear to the American for Americaas it was dear to the Englishman for England. Successive EnglishGovernments, forced in times of financial pressure wistfully to eyeAmerican prosperity, had dreamed, and only dreamed, of raising money bytaxing the well-to-do colonies. It was reserved to the Governmentheaded by Grenville, in its madness, to attempt to make the dream areality. It is true that even Grenville did not propose, did notventure to suggest that the American colonies should be taxed for thedirect benefit of the English Government. He brought forward hisscheme of taxation as a benefit to America, as a contribution to theexpense of keeping up a garrison that was only established in theinterests of America and for America's welfare. In this spirit ofbenevolence, and with apparent confidence of success, Grenville broughtforward his famous Stamp Act. There were statesmen in England who saw with scarcely less indignationthan the Americans themselves, and with even more dismay, the unfoldingof the colonial policy of the Government. These protested against theintolerable weight of the duties imposed, and arraigned the follywhich, by compelling these duties to be paid in specie, drained awaythe little ready money remaining in the colonies, "as though the bestway to cure an emaciated body, whose juices happened to be tainted, wasto leave it no juices at all. " They assailed the injustice thatrefused {88} to recognize as legal tender any paper bills of creditissued by the colonies. Politicians, guided by the intelligence andthe inspiration of Burke, applauded the Americans for their firmness inresolving to subsist to the utmost of their power upon their ownproductions and manufactures. They urged that it could not be expectedthat the colonists, merely out of a compliment to the mother country, should submit to perish for thirst with water in their own wells. Andthese clear-sighted politicians saw plainly enough that such blows asthe Government were aiming at America must in the end recoil upon GreatBritain herself. They appreciated the injury that must be done toBritish commerce by even a temporary interruption of the intercoursebetween the two countries. But bad as the restrictive measures were intheir immediate, as well as in their ultimate consequences, worseremained behind. The proposed Stamp Act scarcely shocked Otis or Adamsmore directly and cruelly than it shocked the soundest and sanestthinkers on the other side of the Atlantic. Words which certainlyexpressed the thoughts of Burke declared that the approval, even withopposition, given to such a measure as the Stamp Act, the bare proposalof which had given so much offence, argued such a want of reflection ascould scarcely be paralleled in the public councils of any country. The King's speech at the opening of Parliament on January 10, 1765, gave unmistakable evidence of the temper of the monarch and of theMinistry. It formally expressed its reliance on the wisdom andfirmness of Parliament in promoting the proper respect and obediencedue to the legislative authority of Great Britain. The Government wasresolved to be what it considered firm, and it undoubtedly believedthat a proper show of firmness would easily overbear any oppositionthat the colonists might make to the proposed measure. The Stamp Actwas introduced, the Stamp Act was debated upon; in due time the StampAct passed through both Houses, and in consequence of the ill health ofthe King received the royal assent by commission on March 28, 1765. The first foolish challenge to American loyalty was formally made, and{89} America was not slow to accept it. It may be admitted that initself the Stamp Act was not a conspicuously unfair or even aconspicuously unreasonable measure. It was a legitimate and perfectlyfair way of raising money from a taxable people. It was neitherlegitimate nor fair when imposed upon unrepresented colonists. But ifit had been the sanest and most statesmanlike scheme for raising moneyever conceived by a financier, it would have deserved and would havereceived no less hostility from the American people. The principleinvolved was everything. To admit in any degree the right of GreatBritain to impose at her pleasure a tax upon the colonists was tosurrender in ignominy the privileges and to betray the duties of freemen. Any expectations of colonial protest that the Ministry may haveallowed themselves to entertain were more than fulfilled. Colony aftercolony, great town after great town, great man after great man, madehaste to protest with an emphasis that should have been significantagainst the new measure. Boston led the way. Boston's mostdistinguished citizen, Boston's most respected son was the voice notmerely of his town, not merely of his State, but of the colonialcontinent. Ten years later the name of Samuel Adams was known, hated, and honored on the English side of the Atlantic. [Sidenote: 1765--Samuel Adams] Samuel Adams was one of those men whom Nature forges to be theinstruments of revolution. His three-and-forty years had taught himmuch: the value of silence, the knowledge of men, the desire to changethe world and the patience to bide his time. A few generations earlierhe might have made a right-hand man to Cromwell and held a place in theheart of Hampden. On the very threshold of his manhood, when receivinghis degree of Master of Arts at Harvard, he asserted his defiantdemocracy in a dissertation on the right of the people of acommonwealth to combine against injustice on the part of the head ofthe State. The badly dressed man with the grave firm face of a PilgrimFather was as ready and as resolute to oppose King George as any Pym orVane had been ready and resolute to oppose Charles Stuart. He had atone {90} time devoted himself to a commercial career, with no greatsuccess. He was made for a greater game than commerce; he had thetemper and he gained the training for a public life, and the hour whenit came found that the man was ready. When the citizens of Boston metto protest against the Stamp Act Samuel Adams framed the firstresolutions that denied to the Parliament of Great Britain the right toimpose taxes upon her colonies. [Sidenote: 1765--The opposition to the Stamp Act] If Massachusetts was the first to protest with no uncertain voiceagainst the Stamp Act, other colonies were prompt to follow herexample, and to prove that they possessed sons no less patriotic. Virginia was as vehement and as vigorous in opposition asMassachusetts. One speech in the Virginia House of Burgesses made thename of Patrick Henry famous. Patrick Henry was a young man who triedmany things and failed in them before he found in the practice of thelaw the appointed task for his rare gifts of reasoning and ofeloquence. A speech in Hanover Court House in defence of the peopleagainst a suit of the parish clergy gave him sudden fame. As grave offace as Samuel Adams, as careless of his attire, tall and lean, stampedwith the seal of the speaker and the thinker, Patrick Henry atnine-and-twenty was already a very different man from the youth whofive years earlier seemed destined to be but a Jack of all trades andmaster of none, an unsuccessful trader, an unsuccessful farmer, whosechief accomplishments in life were hunting and fishing, dancing andriding. The debate on the Stamp Act gave him a great opportunity. Ashe addressed his words of warning to the stubborn sovereign across thesea his passion seemed to get the better of his prudence and to tempthim into menace. "Caesar, " he said, "had his Brutus, Charles the Firsthis Cromwell. " He was going on to say "and George the Third, " when hewas interrupted by angry cries of "Treason!" from the loyalists amonghis hearers. Patrick Henry waited until the noise subsided, and thenquietly completed his sentence, "George the Third may profit by theirexample. If this be treason, make the most of it. " The words were nottreasonable, {91} but they were revolutionary. They served to carrythe name of Patrick Henry to every corner of the continent and acrossthe Atlantic. They made him a hero and idol in the eyes of thecolonists; they made him a rebel in the eyes of the Court at St. James's. Massachusetts had set an example which Virginia had bettered;Massachusetts was now to better Virginia. If Virginia, prompted byPatrick Henry, declared that she alone had the right to tax her owncitizens, Massachusetts, inspired by James Otis, summoned a congress ofdeputies from all the colonial assemblies to meet in commonconsultation upon the common danger. This congress, the first but notthe last, memorable but not most memorable, met in New York in theearly November of 1765. Nine colonies were represented at itstable--Massachusetts, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. Thecongress passed a series of resolutions, as firm in their purpose asmoderate in their language, putting forward the grievances andasserting the rights of the colonies. But the protests against the Stamp Act were not limited to eloquentorations or formal resolutions. Deeds, as well as words, made plainthe purpose of the American people. Riots broke out in colony aftercolony; the most and worst in Massachusetts. Boston blazed into openrevolt against authority. There were two Government officials inBoston who were especially unpopular with the mob--Andrew Oliver, thenewly appointed collector of the stamp taxes, and Chief JusticeHutchinson. A scarecrow puppet, intended to represent the obnoxiousOliver, was publicly hung upon a tree by the mob, then cut down, triumphantly paraded through the city to Oliver's door, and there seton fire. When the sham Oliver was ashes the crowd broke into andransacked his house, after which it did the same turn to the house ofChief Justice Hutchinson. Oliver and Hutchinson escaped unhurt, butall their property went through their broken windows and lay in ruinupon the Boston streets. Hutchinson was busy upon a History ofMassachusetts; the manuscript shared the fate of its {92} author'schairs and tables, and went with them out into the gutter. It waspicked up, preserved, and exists to this day, its pages blackened withthe Boston mud. Many papers and records of the province whichHutchinson had in his care for the purpose of his history wereirretrievably lost. The next day the judges and the bar, assembled in their robes at theBoston Court House, were startled by the apparition of a haggard man indisordered attire, whom they might have been pardoned for failing torecognize as their familiar chief justice. In a voice broken withemotion Hutchinson apologized to the court for the appearance in whichhe presented himself before it. He and his family were destitute; hehimself had no other shirt and no other clothes than those he was atthat moment wearing. Part even of this poor attire he had been obligedto borrow. Almost in rags, almost in tears, he solemnly called hisMaker to witness that he was innocent of the charges that had made himobnoxious to the fury of the populace. He swore that he never, eitherdirectly or indirectly, aided, assisted, or supported, or in the leastpromoted or encouraged the Stamp Act, but on the contrary did all inhis power, and strove as much as in him lay, to prevent it. The courtlistened to him in melancholy silence and then adjourned, "on accountof the riotous disorders of the previous night and universal confusionof the town, " to a day nearly two months later. It was a thankless privilege to be a stamp officer in those stormyhours. Most of the stamp officers were forced to resign under pressurewhich they might well be excused for finding sufficiently cogent. Inorder to make the new law a dead letter the colonists resolved thatwhile it was in force they would avoid using stamps by substitutingarbitration for any kind of legal procedure. With a people in thistemper, there were only two things to be done; to meet their wishes, orto annihilate their opposition. It is possible that Grenville mighthave preferred to attempt the second alternative, but by this timeGrenville's power was at an end. {93} CHAPTER XLVII. EDMUND BURKE. [Sidenote: 1730-82--Rockingham and his Ministry] The friction between Grenville and the King was rapidly becomingunbearable to George, if not to his minister. George was resolved tobe rid of his intolerable tyrant at the cost of almost any concession. He was now fully as eager to welcome Pitt back to office as he had oncebeen hot to drive him out of it. Again Cumberland was called in; againCumberland approached Pitt; again Pitt's willingness to resume theseals was overborne by the stubbornness of Temple. The King was indespair. He would not endure Grenville and Grenville's bullyingsermons any longer, and yet it was hard indeed to find any one whocould take Grenville's place with any chance of carrying on Grenville'swork. Cumberland had a suggestion to make, a desperate remedy for adesperate case. If Pitt and the old Whigs were denied to the King, whyshould not the King try the new Whigs and Rockingham? The old Whig party, as it had lived and ruled so long, had practicallyceased to exist. So much the King had accomplished. Saint George ofHanover had struck at the dragon only to find that, like the monster inthe classical fable, it took new form and fresh vitality beneath hisstrokes. There was a Whig party that was not essentially the party ofPitt, a party which was recruiting its ranks with earnest, thoughtful, high-minded, honorable men to whom the principles or want of principleswhich permitted the old Whig dominion were as intolerable as theyappear to a statesman of to-day. At the head of this new developmentof Whig activity was the man to whom Cumberland now turned in the hourof the King's trial, Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquis of Rockingham. {94} Lord Rockingham was one of those ornaments of the English senate forthe benefit of whose biographers the adjective amiable seems especiallyto have been invented. Although the master of a large fortune, whilehe was still a boy of twenty he was deservedly noted for the gravityand stillness of his youth, and during a political career ofone-and-thirty years, if he showed neither commanding eloquence norcommanding statesmanship, he did honor to the Whig party by his sincerepatriotism and irreproachable uprightness of character. If heaven haddenied Rockingham the resplendent gifts that immortalize a Chatham, ithad given him in full measure of the virtues of patriotism, honesty, integrity, and zeal. The purity of his life, the probity of hisactions, and the excellence of all his public purposes, commended himto the affectionate regard of all who held that morality was moreessential to a statesman than eloquence, and that it was better to failwith such a man than to succeed with those to whom, for the most part, the successes of that day were given. Two years before, in 1763, hisdislike for the policy of Lord Bute had driven him to resign his smalloffice as Lord of the Bedchamber, and he carried his scrupulousness sofar as to resign at the same time his Lord-Lieutenantcy of Yorkshire. To the delight of the Duke of Cumberland, and to the delight of theKing, Rockingham consented to form a Ministry. With the best will inthe world Rockingham could not make his Ministry very commanding. Itwas but a makeshift, and not a very brilliant makeshift, but at leastit served to get rid of Grenville and of Grenville's harangues. Solong as Grenville was unable to terrorize the royal closet withreproaches and reproofs addressed to the King, and with menaces aimedat Bute, George was quite willing to see Newcastle intrusted with thePrivy Seal, and Conway made Secretary of State for one department, andthe Duke of Grafton for the other. But the Ministry which the Kingaccepted because he could get nothing better, and because he would havewelcomed something much worse so long as it delivered him from {95}Grenville--the Ministry that provoked the derisive pity of most of itscritics was destined to attain an honorable immortality. Theheterogeneous group of men who called themselves or were called, whobelieved themselves or were believed to be Whigs, had obtained onerecruit whose name was yet to make the cause he served illustrious. Lord Rockingham had many claims to the regard of his contemporaries;undoubtedly his greatest claim to the regard of posterity lies in theintelligence which enabled him to discern the rising genius of a youngwriter, and the wisdom which found a place by his side and a seat inthe House of Commons for Edmund Burke. [Sidenote: 1765--The coming of Edmund Burke] The history of a nation is often largely the history of certain famousmen. Great epochs, producing great leaders, make those leadersessentially the expression of certain phases of the thought of theirage. The life of Walpole is the life of the England of his timebecause he was so intimately bound up with the great movement whichended by setting Parliamentary government free from the possibledominion of the sovereign. The life of Chatham, the life of Pitt, thelife of Fox, each in its turn is a summary of the history of Englandduring the time in which they helped to guide its destinies. But tosome men, men possessing in an exceptional degree the love for humanityand the longing for progress, this power of representing in their livesthe sum and purpose of their age is markedly characteristic. Just asMirabeau, until he died, practically represented the French Revolution, so certain English statesmen have from time to time been representativeof the best life, the best thought, the best purposes, desires, andambitions of the country for whose sake they played their parts. Of noman can this theory be said to be more happily true than of EdmundBurke. It would scarcely be exaggeration to say that the history of Englandduring the middle third of the eighteenth century is largely thehistory of the career of Edmund Burke. From the moment when Burkeentered upon political life to the close of his great career, his namewas associated with every event of importance, his voice raised {96} onone side or the other of every question that concerned the welfare ofthe English people and the English Constitution. As much as this, however, might be said of more than one actor in the political historyof the period covered by Burke's public life. But the influence whichBurke exercised upon his time, the force he brought to bear upon hispolitical generation, were a greater influence and a stronger forcethan that directed by any other statesman of the age. Whether for goodor for evil, according to the standards by which his critics may judgehim, Burke swayed the minds of masses of his countrymen to a degreethat was unequalled among his contemporaries. With the two greatevents of the century--the revolt of the American colonies and theFrench Revolution--his name was the most intimately associated, hisinfluence the most potent. With what in their degree must be calledthe minor events of the reign--with the trial of Wilkes, with the trialof Warren Hastings--he was no less intimately associated, and in eachcase his association has been the most important feature of the event. Where he was right as where he was wrong, and whether he was right orwhether he was wrong, he was always the most interesting, always themost commanding figure in the epoch-making political controversies ofhis day. Grenville wrote of him finely, many years after his death, that he was in the political world what Shakespeare was in the moralworld. [Sidenote: 1729-59--Burke's early life] Burke entered political life, or entered active political life, when hewas returned to Parliament in the December of 1765. Up to that timehis life had been largely uneventful; much of it must be called as faras we are concerned eventless, for of a great gap of his life, a gap ofno less than nine years, we know, if not absolutely nothing, certainlynext to nothing. It is not even quite certain where or when he wasborn. The most approved account is that he was born in Dublin onJanuary 12, 1729, reckoning according to the new style. The place ofhis birth is still pointed out to the curious in Dublin: one of themany modest houses that line the left bank of the Liffey. His familywas supposed to stem from Limerick, from {97} namesakes who spelledtheir name differently as Bourke. His mother's family were Catholic;Burke's mother always remained stanch to her native faith, and, thoughBurke and his brothers were brought up as the Protestant sons of aProtestant father, the influence of his mother must have counted formuch in creating that tender and generous sympathy towards a proscribedcreed which is one of the noblest characteristics of Burke's career. Burke's earliest and in a sense his best education was received betweenhis twelfth and fourteenth years, in the school of a Yorkshire Quakernamed Abraham Shackleton, who kept a school at Ballitore. Burke usedoften to declare in later years that he owed everything he had gainedin life to the teaching and the example of those two years with AbrahamShackleton. The affectionate regard which Burke felt for hisschoolmaster, an affectionate regard which endured until Shackleton'sdeath, thirty years later, in 1771, he felt also for his schoolmaster'sson, Richard Shackleton. Most of what we know of Burke's life inTrinity College from 1743 to 1748 we gather from his letters to RichardShackleton, letters of absorbing interest to any student of the growthof a great mind. Less vivacious, less brilliant than the boyishletters of Goethe, they resemble them in the eager thirst they displayfor knowledge of all kinds, in their passionate enthusiasm for all therich varieties of human knowledge, in their restless experiments in alldirections. In those younger days Burke thought himself, as everygenerous and ambitious youth must needs think himself, a poet, and manyverses were forwarded to the faithful friend, to lighten the effect ofserious theological discussions and elaborate comparisons of classicalauthors. Dissensions with his father and a determination to study for the barsent Burke to England in the early part of 1750, and there for ninelong years he practically disappears from our knowledge. All we knowis that he studied law, but that, like many another law student, hegave more time and thought to literature than to his legal studies;that this action deepened the hostility of his father, who {98} reducedBurke's allowance to a pittance, and that his daily need as well as hisdesire drove Burke to seek his livelihood in letters. [Sidenote: 1759--The work of Edmund Burke] He seems to have had a hard fight for it. The glimpses we get of himduring that period of youthful struggle show him as an ardent studentof books, but a no less ardent student of life, not merely in thestreets and clubs and theatres of the great city, but in the seclusionof quiet country villages and the highways and byways of rural England. Romance has not failed to endeavor to illuminate with her prismaticlantern the darkness of those nine mysterious years. A vivid fancy hasbeen pleased to picture Burke as one of the many lovers of themarvellous Margaret Woffington, as a competitor for the chair of MoralPhilosophy at Glasgow, as a convert to the Catholic faith, and, perhapsmost remarkable of all these lively legends, as a traveller in America. These are fictions. The certain facts are that somewhere about 1756 hemarried a Miss Nugent, daughter of an Irish physician who had settledin England. Miss Nugent was a Catholic, and thus, for the second time, the Catholic religion was endeared to Burke by one of the closest ofhuman relationships. At about the same time as his marriage, Burkemade his first appearance as an author by the "Vindication of NaturalSociety, " a satire upon Bolingbroke which many accepted as a genuinework of Bolingbroke's, and by the "Essay on the Sublime and theBeautiful, " which is perhaps most valuable because we owe to it in somedegree the later masterpiece of aesthetic criticism, the "Laocoon" ofLessing. From this time until his connection with public life beganhis career was linked with Fleet Street and its brotherhood of authors, and his pen was steadily employed. With that love for variety ofsubject which is characteristic of most of the authors of theeighteenth century, he handled a number of widely differing themes. Hewrote "Hints for an Essay on the Drama, " a work which has scarcely heldits place in the library of the dramatist by the side of the "Paradoxesur le Comédien" of Diderot, or the "Hamburgische {99} Dramaturgie" ofLessing. He wrote an account of the European settlements in America, still interesting as showing the early and intimate connection of histhoughts with the greatest of English colonies. He wrote an"Abridgment of English History, " which carries unfortunately no fartherthan the reign of John a narrative that is not unworthy of its author. He founded the "Annual Register, " and was in its pages for many yearsto come the historian of contemporary Europe. Of all the many debtsthat Englishmen owe to Burke, the conception and inception of the"Annual Register" must not be reckoned as among the least important. It was at this point in his career that Burke's connection with publiclife began, not to end thenceforward until the end of his own life. Single-speech Hamilton, so called because out of a multitude ofspeeches he made one magnificent speech, was attracted to Burke by thefame of the "Vindication of Natural Society, " sought his acquaintance, and when Hamilton went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Halifax, Burkeaccompanied him. For two years Burke remained with Hamilton inIreland, studying the Irish question of that day, with the closeness ofthe acutest mind then at work and with the racial sympathy of thenative. Then he quarrelled, and rightly quarrelled, with Hamilton, because Hamilton, to whom the aid of Burke was infinitely precious, sought to bind Burke forever to his service by a pension of threehundred a year. Burke demanded some leisure for the literature thathad made his name. Hamilton justified Leland's description of him as aselfish, canker-hearted, envious reptile by refusing. Burke, whoalways spoke his mind roundly, described Hamilton as an infamousscoundrel, flung back his pension and returned to freedom, independence, and poverty. But he was soon to enter the service ofanother statesman under less galling terms, under less unreasonableconditions. Burke's name was brought before Lord Rockingham, probably by Burke'sfriend and namesake, though in all likelihood not kinsman, WilliamBurke. Lord Rockingham {100} appointed Burke his private secretary, and by the simple integrity of his character bound Burke, to use hisown words, "by an inviolable attachment to him from that time forward. "But the alliance thus begun was threatened in its birth. A mysterioushostility attributed by Burke to "Hell-Kite" Hamilton brought certaincharges to the notice of the Duke of Newcastle. The Duke of Newcastlehurried to Lord Rockingham to warn him that his newly appointedsecretary was a disguised Jesuit, a disguised Jacobite. LordRockingham immediately communicated these accusations to Burke, whorepelled them with a firmness and dignity which had the effect only ofconfirming Lord Rockingham's admiration of Burke and of drawing closerthe friendship of the two men. Burke was promptly brought intoParliament as member for Wendover, and during the single year whichLord Rockingham's Administration lasted its leader had every reason torejoice at the happy chance which had given to him such a follower andsuch an ally. Burke delivered his maiden speech in the House of Commons on January27, 1766, a few days after the opening of the session, on the subjectof the dissatisfaction in the American colonies. His speech won thepraise of the Great Commoner; his succeeding speeches earned himenthusiastic commendation from friends and admirers outside and insidethe House of Commons. The successful man of letters had proved himselfrapidly to be a successful orator and a politician who would have to bereckoned with. [Sidenote: 1766--The influence of Burke's career] It has been contended, and not unreasonably, that as an orator Burke isnot merely in the first rank, but that he is himself the first, that hestands alone, without a rival, without a peer, and that none of theorators of antiquity can be said even to contest his unquestionablesupremacy. But it is in no sense necessary to Burke's fame that thefame of others should be in any way impugned or depreciated. It issufficient praise to say that Burke is one of the greatest orators theworld has ever held. To argue that he is superior to Demosthenes onthe {101} one hand, or to Cicero on the other, is to maintain anargument very much on a par with that which it amused Burke himself tomaintain when he contended for the superiority of the "Aeneid" over the"Iliad. " It is quite enough to be able to say well-nigh without fearof contradiction that Burke is probably the greatest orator who everspoke in the English language. Burke's political career began brilliantly in the championship offreedom, in the defence of the oppressed, in the defiance of injustice. He was made welcome to the great political arena in which he was tofight so long and so hard. His ability was recognized at once; he maybe said to have leaped into a fame that the passage of time has notmerely confirmed but increased. No author more profoundly influencedthe thought of his time; no author of that time is likely to exercise amore enduring influence upon succeeding generations. Of all the men ofthat busy and brilliant age, Burke has advanced the most steadily inthe general knowledge and favor. While other men, his rivals ineloquence, his peers in the opinions of his contemporaries, come yearby year to be less used as influences and appealed to as authorities, the wisdom of Burke is more frequently drawn upon and more widelyappreciated than ever. The world sees now, even more clearly than theworld saw then, that whether Burke was right or wrong in hisconclusions as to any question, it had to be admitted that the point ofview from which he started to get at that conclusion was the correctone. {102} CHAPTER XLVIII. THE STAMP ACT. [Sidenote: 1766--Benjamin Franklin] That the colonies were not well understood in England was no fault ofthe colonists. There was at that time and hour in England a manspecially authorized to speak on behalf of the colony of Pennsylvania, and indirectly entitled as he was admirably qualified to represent theother colonies. At that time Benjamin Franklin was the mostdistinguished American living and the most distinguished American whohad ever lived. It was not his first visit to England. He had crossedthe Atlantic forty years before when he was a youth of eighteen, eagerto set up for himself as a master printer, and anxious to obtain thematerials for his trade in the old country. In those eighteen years hehad learned many things. He had learned how to print; he had learnedhow to bear poverty with courage and ambition with patience; he couldnever remember a time when he was unable to read, but he had learnedhow to read with inexhaustible pleasure and unfailing profit, and hehad learned how to write. When he was seventeen he had run away fromhis birthplace, Boston, and the home of an ill-tempered brother, andmade his way as best he might to Philadelphia. As he tramped into thecity with a loaf under each arm for provender, a young woman leaning ina doorway laughed at the singular figure. Six years later she marriedFranklin, who in the interval had been a journeyman printer inPhiladelphia, a journeyman printer in London, and had at last been ableto set up for himself in Philadelphia. From 1729 the story ofFranklin's life is the story of a steady and splendid advance inpopularity and wealth, and in the greater gifts of knowledge, wisdom, and humanity. He published a newspaper, {103} the _PhiladelphiaGazette_; he disseminated frugality, thrift, industry, and the cheerfulvirtues in "Poor Richard's Almanack, " he was the benefactor and theblessing of the city of his adoption. He founded her famous library;he devoted the results of his scientific studies to her comfort, welfare, and comeliness; he maintained her defences as a militaryengineer, and was prepared to serve her gallantly in the field againstthe Indians as a colonel of Militia of his own raising. No man everlived a fuller life or did so many things with more indomitable zeal ormore honorable thoroughness. The colony of Pennsylvania was very proudof her illustrious citizen and delighted to do him honor. When hevisited England for the second time, in 1757, he was the Agent for theGeneral Assembly of Pennsylvania, he was Deputy Postmaster-General forthe British colonies, he was famous throughout the civilized world forhis discovery of the identity of lightning with the electric fluid. Hewas in London for the third time when Rockingham took office. He hadlived nearly sixty years of a crowded, memorable, admirable life; hewas loaded with laurels, ripe in the learning of books and the learningof the book of the world. Even he whom few things surprised or tookunawares would have been surprised if he could have been told that thelife he had lived was eventless, bloodless, purposeless in comparisonwith the life he had yet to live, and that all he had done for hiscountry was but as dust in the balance when weighed against the work hewas yet to do for her. He was standing on the threshold of his newcareer in the year when Edmund Burke entered Parliament. The Rockingham Administration did its best to undo the folly ofGrenville's Government. After long debates in both Houses, afterexamination of Franklin at the bar of the Commons, after the strengthand acumen of Mansfield had been employed to sustain the prerogativeagainst the colonies and the voice of Burke had championed the coloniesagainst the prerogative, after Grenville had defended himself withshrewdness and Pitt had added to the splendor of his fame, the StampAct was formally {104} repealed. Unhappily, the new Ministry was onlypermitted to do good by halves. The same session that repealed theStamp Act promulgated the Declaratory Act, asserting the full power ofthe King, on the advice of Parliament, to make laws binding theAmerican colonies in all cases whatsoever. This desperate attempt toassert what the repeal of the Stamp Act virtually surrendered wasintended as a solace to the King and as a warning--perhaps a friendlywarning--to the colonies. Those who were most opposed to it in Englandmay well have hoped that it might be accepted without too muchstraining in the general satisfaction caused by the repeal of the hatedmeasure. Even Franklin seemed to believe that the Declaratory Actwould not cause much trouble in America. The event denied the hope, and indignation at the Declaratory Act outlasted in America therejoicing over the subversion of Grenville's policy. Nevertheless, therejoicing was very great. On May 16, 1766, the public spirit of Bostonwas stimulated by the distribution of a broadsheet headed "GloriousNews. " This broadsheet announced the arrival of John Hancock's brig"Harrison, " in six weeks and two days from London, with the importanttidings of the repeal of the Stamp Act. The broadsheet painted alively picture of the enthusiasm at Westminster and the rejoicings inthe City of London over the total repeal of the measure. It told ofthe ships in the river displaying all their colors, of illuminationsand bonfires in many parts; "in short, the rejoicings were as great aswas ever known on any occasion. " This broadsheet, "printed for thebenefit of the public, " ended in a rapture of delight. "It isimpossible to express the joy the town is now in, on receiving theabove great, glorious, and important news. The bells on all thechurches were immediately set a-ringing, and we hear the day for ageneral rejoicing will be the beginning of next week. " Boston hadevery reason to rejoice, to ring its bells and fly its flags, and setpoor debtors free from prison in honor of the occasion. The colonieshad stood together against the Home Government, and had learnedsomething of {105} the strength of their union by the repeal of theStamp Act. [Sidenote: 1766--Action of the Colonial Governors] But when the bells had stopped ringing and the flags were hauled downand the released debtors had ceased to congratulate themselves upontheir newly recovered liberty, Boston and the other colonial citiesfound that their satisfaction was not untempered. The broadsheet thathad blazoned the repeal had also assured its readers that the Acts ofTrade relating to America would be taken under consideration and allgrievances removed. "The friends to America are very powerful anddisposed to assist us to the best of their ability. " The friends toAmerica were powerful, but they fought against tremendous odds. Dulness and mediocrity, a spite that was always stupid, and a stupiditythat was often spiteful, an alliance of ignorance and arrogance werethe forces against which they struggled in vain. The Acts of Tradewere to be enforced as rigidly as ever. The Declaratory Act pompouslyasserted the unimpeachable prerogative of British Majesty to make whatlaws it pleased for the colonies. The good that had been done seemedsmall in comparison with the harm that might yet be done, that in allprobability would be done. For the time more was to be feared from the viceroys of the provincesthan from the Home Government. Mr. Secretary Conway addressed acircular letter to the governors of the different colonies, reprovingthe colonists, indeed, for the recent disturbances, but with a measuredmildness of reproof that seemed carefully calculated not to giveneedless offence or cause unnecessary irritation. "If by lenientpersuasive methods, " Conway wrote, "you can contribute to restore thepeace and tranquillity to the provinces on which their welfare andhappiness depend, you will do a most acceptable and essential serviceto your country. " An appeal so suave, advice so judicious, did notseem the less prudent and humane because the Secretary insisted uponthe repression of violence and outrage and reminded those to whom hisletter was addressed that if they needed aid in the maintenance of lawand order {106} they were to require it at the hands of the commandersof his Majesty's land and naval forces in America. If all thegentlemen to whom the Secretary's circular was addressed had been asreasonable and as restrained in language as its writer, things mighteven then have turned out very differently. It was not to be expected, and the colonists did not expect, that outrage and violence were to gounchallenged and unpunished, and it is probable that few even inMassachusetts would have objected to the formal expression of thanksfor firmness and zeal which was made by Conway to the governor of thatcolony. But the temperance that was possible to Conway was impossibleto Bernard. Bernard was one of the worst of a long line ofinappropriate colonial governors. He was a hot-headed, hot-hearted manwho seemed to think that to play the part of a domineering, blusteringbully was to show discretion and discernment in the duties of hisoffice. He always acted under the conviction that he must always be inthe right and every one else always in the wrong, and he blazed up intofantastic rages at the slightest show of opposition. As this was notthe spirit in which to deal with the proud and independent men ofMassachusetts, Governor Bernard passed the better part of his life in apassion and was forever quarrelling with his provincial legislature andforever complaining to the Home Government of his hard lot and of themischievous, mutinous set of fellows he had to deal with. When Bernard received the Secretary's letters and the accompanyingcopies of the two Bills that had been passed by the British Parliament, he hastened to make them known to the Assembly of Massachusetts. Buthe made them known in a speech that was wholly lacking in eithertemperance or discretion. Had it been at once his desire and his dutyto inflame his hearers against himself and the Government which herepresented he could hardly have chosen words more admirably adaptedfor the purpose. With a wholly unchastened arrogance and a whollyungoverned truculence, the governor of the province lectured or ratherhectored the gentlemen of the Council and the {107} gentlemen of theHouse of Representatives after a fashion that would have seemed inquestionable taste on the part of an old-fashioned pedagogue to aparcel of unruly schoolboys. He was for bullying and blustering theminto a better behavior, and he assured those who were willing to makeamends and to promise to be good in the future that their past offenceswould be buried in a charitable oblivion. "Too ready a forgetfulnessof injuries hath been said to be my weakness, " Bernard urged withstrange ignorance. "However, it is a failing which I had rather sufferby than be without. " The House of Representatives replied to the reproofs of their governorin an address that was remarkable for the firmness with which itmaintained its own position and the irony with which it reviewed thegovernor's pretensions. To prove their independence of action, theydelayed the Act of Indemnity demanded by Secretary Conway for severalmonths, and then accompanied it with a general pardon to all personswho had been concerned in the riots provoked by the Stamp Act. Thoughthis Act was promptly disallowed by the Home Government on the groundthat the power of pardon belonged exclusively to the Crown, it tookeffect nevertheless, and added another to the grievances of Bernard andof his backers in England. [Sidenote: 1766--End of the Rockingham Administration] The slowly widening breach between the American colonies and the mothercountry might even yet have been filled if it had been possible for theKing to depend upon the services and listen to the advice of ministerswhose good intentions and general good sense had the advantage of beingserved and indirectly inspired by the genius of Burke. But unhappily, the fortunes of the party with whom he was allied were not long fatedto be official fortunes. After a year of honorable if somewhatcolorless existence, the Rockingham Administration came to an end. There was no particular reason why it should come to an end, but theKing was weary of it. If it had not gravely dissatisfied him, it hadafforded him no grave satisfaction. An Administration always seemed toGeorge the Third like a candle which he could illuminate or extinguishat his {108} pleasure. So he blew out the Rockingham Administrationand turned to Pitt for a new one. In point of fact, an Administrationwithout Pitt was an impossibility. The Duke of Grafton had resignedhis place in the Rockingham Ministry because he believed it hopeless togo on without the adhesion of Pitt, and Pitt would not adhere to theRockingham Ministry. Now, with a free hand, he set to work to form oneof the most amazing Administrations that an age which knew many strangeAdministrations can boast of. The malady which had for so long martyrized the great statesman hadafflicted him heavily of late. His eccentricities had increased tosuch a degree that they could hardly be called merely eccentricities. But though he suffered in mind and in body he was ready and even eagerto return to power, so long as that power was absolute. By this timehe had quarrelled with Temple, who had so often hindered him fromresuming office, and who was now as hostile to him as his brother, George Grenville, had ever been. Temple, in consequence, found noplace in the new Administration. The Administration was especiallydesigned to please the King. A party had grown up in the State whichwas known by the title of the King's friends. The King's friends hadno political creed, no political convictions, no desire, no ambition, and no purpose save to please the King. What the King wanted said theywould say; what the King wanted done they would do; their votes wereunquestionably and unhesitatingly at the King's command. They did not, indeed, act from an invincible loyalty to the royal person. It was theroyal purse that ruled them. The King was the fountain of patronage;wealth and honors flowed from him; and the wealth and the honors weldedthe King's friends together into a harmonious and formidable whole. The King's friends found themselves well represented in a Ministry thatwas otherwise as much a thing of shreds and patches as a harlequin'scoat. Pitt had tried to make a chemical combination, but he onlysucceeded in making a mixture that might at any time dissolve into itscomponent parts. It was composed {109} of men of all parties and allprinciples. The amiable Conway and the unamiable Grafton remained onfrom Rockingham's Ministry. So did the Duke of Portland and LordBessborough, so did Saunders and Keppel. Pitt did not forget his ownfollowers. He gave the Great Seal to Lord Camden, who, as JusticePratt, had liberated Wilkes from unjustifiable arrest. He made LordShelburne one of the Secretaries of State. The Chancellorship of theExchequer was given to a politician with a passion for popularity thatmade him as steadfast as a weathercock, Charles Townshend. [Sidenote: 1766--Pitt as Earl of Chatham] By this time Pitt was no longer the Great Commoner. The House ofCommons was to know him no more. Under the title of Earl of Chatham hehad entered the Upper House. Such an elevation did not mean then, asit came later to mean, something little better than politicalextinction. But Pitt's elevation meant to him a loss of popularity asimmediate as it was unexpected. Though he was no longer young, thoughhe was racked in mind and body, though he sorely needed the repose thathe might hope to find in the Upper House, he was assailed with as muchfury of vituperation as if he had betrayed the State. A country thatwas preparing to rejoice at his return to power lashed itself into afury of indignation at his exaltation to the peerage. In the twinklingof an eye men who had been devoted yesterday to Pitt were prepared tobelieve every evil of Chatham. His rule began in storm and gloom, andgloomy and stormy it remained. The first act of his Administrationroused the fiercest controversy. A bad harvest had raised the price offood almost to famine height. Chatham took the bold step of laying anembargo on the exportation of grain. The noise of the debates overthis act had hardly died away when Pitt's malady again overmasteredhim, and once more he disappeared from public life into mysteriousmelancholy silence and seclusion. It was an unhappy hour for thecountry which deprived it of the services of Chatham and left the helmof state in the hands of Charles Townshend. Charles Townshend was the erratic son of a singularly {110} erraticmother. The beautiful Audrey Harrison married the third MarquisTownshend, bore him five children, and then separated from him to carryher beauty, her insolence, and her wit through an amazed and amusedsociety. It was one of her eccentricities to change her name Audrey toEthelfreda. Another was to fancy herself and to proclaim herself to bevery much in love with the unhappy Lord Kilmarnock. She attended thetrial persistently, waited under his windows, quarrelled with Selwynfor daring to jest about the execution--no very happy theme forwit--and was all for adopting a little boy whom some of the officialsof the Tower had palmed off upon her as Kilmarnock's son. Walpoleliked her, delighted in her witty, stinging sayings. She was alwaysentertaining, always alarming, always ready to say or do anything thatcame into her mind. She lived, a whimsical, spiteful, sprightlyoddity, to be eighty-seven years of age. [Sidenote: 1766--Peculiarcharacteristics of Charles Townshend] Charles Townshend was her secondson, and Charles Townshend was in many ways as whimsical as his mother. He had a ready wit, a dexterity in epigram, an astonishing facility ofspeech, and a very great appreciation of his own power of turningfriends or foes into ridicule. It is told of him that once in hisyouth, when a student at Leyden, he suffered from his readiness to jestat the expense of another. At a merry supper party he plied one of theguests, a seemingly unconscious, stolid Scotchman named Johnstone, withsneers and sarcasms which the Scotchman seemed to disregard or take ingood part. On the next morning, however, Townshend's victim, enlightened by some friend as to the way in which he had been made abutt of, became belligerent and sent Townshend a challenge. Variousopinions have been expressed of Townshend's action in the matter. Hehas been applauded for good sense. He has been reproached forcowardice. Certainly Townshend did not, would not fight hischallenger. It required a great deal of good sense to decline a duelin those days, and Townshend did decline the duel. He apologized tohis slow-witted but stubborn-purposed opponent with a profusion ofapology which some of his {111} friends thought to be excessive. Inthese days we should consider Townshend's refusal to fight a duelmerely as an unimportant proof of his common-sense, but in the lastcentury, in the society in which Townshend moved, and on the Continent, such a refusal suggested the possession of a degree of common-sensethat was far from ordinary--that was, indeed, extraordinary. Townshend's tact, wit, and good spirits carried him through the scrapesomehow. He made the rounds of Leyden with his would-be adversary, calling in turn upon each of his many friends, and obtaining from each, in the presence of his companion, the assurance that Townshend hadnever been known to speak of Johnstone slightingly or discourteouslybehind his back. The episode, trivial in itself, gains a kind ofgravity by the illustration it affords of Townshend's character allthrough Townshend's short career. The impossibility of restraining anincorrigible tongue, and the unreadiness to follow out the course ofaction to which his words would seem to have committed him, were thedistinguishing marks of Townshend's political existence. No man, noparty, nor no friend could count on the unflinching services ofTownshend. His conduct was as irresponsible as his eloquence wasdazzling. In his twenty years of public life he had but onepurpose--to please and to be praised; and to gain those ends hesacrificed consistency and discretion with a light heart. The beautyof his person and the fluent splendor of his speech went far towardsthe attainment of an ambition which was always frustrated by a fatallevity. In the fine phrase of Burke, he was a candidate forcontradictory honors, and his great aim was to make those agree inadmiration of him who never agreed in anything else. It has been given to few men to desire fame more ardently, and toattain it more disastrously, than Charles Townshend. If we mayestimate the man by the praises of his greatest contemporary, no onebetter deserved a fairer fortune than fate allotted to him. Burkespoke of Townshend as the delight and ornament of the House of Commons, and the charm of every private society which he honored with hispresence. Though his passion for {112} fame might be immoderate, itwas at least a passion which is the instinct of all great souls. WhileBurke could rhapsodize over Townshend's pointed and finished wit, hisrefined, exquisite, and penetrating judgment, his skill and power instatement, his excellence in luminous explanation, Walpole was no lessenthusiastic in an estimate that contrasted Townshend with Burke. According to Walpole, Townshend, who studied nothing with accuracy orattention, had parts that embraced all knowledge with such quicknessthat he seemed to create knowledge instead of seeking for it. Ready asWalpole admits Burke's wit to have been, he declares that it appearedartificial when set by that of Townshend, which was so abundant in himthat it seemed a loss of time to think. Townshend's utterances hadalways the fascinating effervescence of spontaneity, while even Burke'sextempore utterances were so pointed and artfully arranged that theywore the appearance of study and preparation. This brilliant, resplendent creature, in every respect the opposite to GeorgeGrenville, showy where Grenville was solid, fluent where he was formal, glittering and even glowing where he was sober or sombre, fascinatingwhere he was repellent, gracious where he was sullen, and polishedwhere he was rude, was nevertheless destined to share Grenville'shateful task and Grenville's deserved condemnation. Such enthusiasm asParliament had permitted itself to show over the repeal of Grenville'sStamp Act had long flickered out. The colonists were regarded withmore disfavor than ever by a majority that raged against theiringratitude and bitterly repented the repeal of the Act. Townshend'spassion for popularity forced him into the fatal blunder of his life. He was indeed, as Burke said, the spoiled child of the House ofCommons, never thinking, acting, or speaking but with a view to itsjudgment, and adapting himself daily to its disposition, and adjustinghimself before it as before a looking-glass. The looking-glass showedhim a member of a Ministry that was unpopular because it refused to taxAmerica. He resolved that the looking-glass should show him a memberof a Ministry popular because {113} it was resolved to tax America. His hunger and thirst after popularity, his passion for fame, wereleading him into strange ways indeed. He was to leave after him anenduring name, but enduring for reasons that would have broken hisbright spirit if he could have realized them. The shameful folly ofGeorge Grenville was the shameful folly of Charles Townshend. His namestands above Grenville's in the roll of those who in that disastroustime did so much to lower the honor and lessen the empire of England. It became plain to Townshend that the Parliamentary majority regrettedthe repeal of the Stamp Act and resented the theory that America shouldnot be taxed. Townshend resolved that revenue could and should beraised out of America. He introduced a Bill imposing a tax on glass, paper, and tea upon the American colonies. Though the amount to beraised was not large, no more than forty thousand pounds, and though itwas proposed that the whole of the sum should be spent in America, itwas as mischievous in its result as if it had been more malevolentlyaimed. [Sidenote: 1766--Death of Townshend] Townshend himself did notlive long enough to learn the unhappy consequences of his folly. Aneglected fever proved fatal to him in the September of 1767, in theforty-third year of his age. Walpole lamented him with an ironicalappreciation. "Charles Townshend is dead. All those parts and fireare extinguished; those volatile salts are evaporated; that firsteloquence of the world is dumb; that duplicity is fixed, that cowardiceterminated heroically. He joked on death as naturally as he used to doon the living, and not with the affectation of philosophers who wind uptheir works with sayings which they hope to have remembered. "Townshend had passed away, but his policy remained, a fatal legacy tothe country. Townshend was immediately succeeded in the Chancellorship of theExchequer by a young politician who had been for some years inParliament and had held several offices without conspicuouslydistinguishing himself. When Lord North entered the House of Commonsas member for Banbury, his record was that of any intelligent young{114} nobleman of his time. He had written pleasing Latin love poemsat Eton, he had been to Oxford, he had studied at Leipzig. GeorgeGrenville saw great promise in North. He even predicted that if he didnot relax in his political pursuits he was very likely to become PrimeMinister. Unhappily for his country, North did not relax in hispolitical pursuits. There was an ironic fitness in the fact that Northshould be admired by Grenville and should succeed to Townshend, for noman was better fitted to carry on the fatal policy of the two men whohad outraged the American colonies by the Stamp Act and the tax on tea. {115} CHAPTER XLIX. WILKES REDIVIVUS. [Sidenote: 1767--The return of Wilkes] While the King's Government was preparing for itself an infinity oftrouble abroad, it was not destined to find itself idle for want oftrouble at home. Great and grave trouble came upon the King and hisfriends suddenly, and out of a quarter from which they least expectedit. If they were confident of anything, they were confident that theyhad dealt the final blow to the audacious demagogue who for a time hadfluttered the town with the insolences of the _North Briton_. The_North Briton_ had ceased to exist. Of the two men whose bitter geniushad been its breath, Churchill was dead, and Wilkes himself, a fugitiveand a beggar, drifting from one European capital to another, seemed aslittle to be feared as if he slept by Churchill's side. The visit ofthe Commander's statue to Don Juan seemed scarcely more out of thecourse of nature to Don Juan's lackey than the reappearance in activepublic life of Wilkes appeared to the King's friends, for whom Wilkeshad ceased to exist. Wilkes had wearied of Continental life. His affection for his owncountry was so earnest and so sincere that, in a letter to the Duke ofGrafton, he declared his willingness to bury himself in the obscurityof private life, if he were permitted to return unmolested to England. The appeal failed to extract a satisfactory reply. The Ministers wouldmake no terms with their ruined foeman. Wilkes then resolved to showthat he was not so helpless as his enemies appeared to think him. Hepublished in 1767, in London, a pamphlet, in which he stated his casewith indignation, but not without dignity. When the pamphlet hadobtained a wide circulation, Wilkes followed {116} it up by appearinghimself in London in the February of 1768, at the moment of the generalelection, and announcing himself as a candidate for Parliament for theCity of London. The audacity of this step amazed his enemies anddelighted his friends. If it had been taken a little earlier it mighthave won him the seat. So calm and so wise an observer as Franklin, atleast, thought that it would have done so. As it was, though Wilkescame late into the field, and was placed at the bottom of the poll, hesecured more than twelve hundred votes, and did, in the conventionalphrase too often used to soothe defeat, gain a great moral victory. The courage of the outlaw had more than revived all the old enthusiasmfor him. We know on the authority of Burke that the acclamations ofjoy with which he was welcomed by the populace were inconceivable, andthat the marks of public favor which he received were by no meansconfined to the lower order of the people. Several merchants and othergentlemen of large property and of considerable interest openlyespoused his cause, and a subscription was immediately opened in theCity for the payment of his debts. We know on other authority that inan age when betting was the mode the extraordinary betting as toWilkes's success in his desperate enterprise was actually organized bya certain number of brokers into stock which was quoted on 'Change. Burke ascribes the reason for the failure to the open voting. Theelectors were obliged, he said, to record their names, and theconsequences of an opposition to great corporate and commercialconnections were too obvious not to be understood. [Sidenote: 1768--Wilkes as Member for Middlesex] As soon as Wilkes knew of his defeat in the City, he struck a yetbolder note for success. He came forward at once as a candidate forthe County of Middlesex in opposition to the established interest oftwo gentlemen who had represented it for several years, who weresupported by the whole interest of the Court and who had considerablefortunes and great connections in it. But Wilkes, too, had powerfulabettors. The Duke of Portland was one of his most prominentsupporters. His old friend Temple {117} supplied the freeholdqualification which was then essential for a Parliamentary candidate. Horne, the Rector of Brentford, where the election took place, gave allhis great influence and all his gifts to the service of Wilkes with thesame devotion that had formerly animated Churchill. Horne was notaltogether an admirable character, and his enthusiasm for Wilkes hadhitherto awakened no corresponding enthusiasm on Wilkes's part. ButHorne was invaluable at a crisis like the Middlesex election. He hadthe eloquence of a sophist; he had the strategy of a tactician; he wasendowed with an unconquerable energy, an indomitable determination. Hewas exceedingly popular in his parish; he caught the mood of thepopular party, and he happened to be on the right side. It would bedifficult to exaggerate the importance of the services he rendered toWilkes and to the cause of which Wilkes was the figurehead by his workin the Middlesex election. The zeal of Horne, the friendship ofTemple, the daring of Wilkes carried the day. It was no ordinaryvictory. It was an astonishing triumph. As Burke pointed out, thesame causes did not operate upon the freeholders at large which hadprevented the inclinations of the livery of London from taking effectin Wilkes's favor, and the result of the polling on March 28 was thatWilkes was returned to Parliament by a prodigious majority. Wilkespolled 1290 votes. Mr. George Cooke, the Tory candidate, who had beenthe representative for eighteen years, only scored 827, and Sir W. Beauchamp Procter, the Whig candidate, only got 807 votes. There was great excitement in London when the result of the electionwas known. It pleased the popular voice to insist that every windowshould be illuminated in honor of Wilkes's triumph, and all windowsthat were not lit up were unhesitatingly broken. Those persons whowere known to be Wilkes's principal opponents received the specialattentions of the mob. Lord Bute's house had to stand a siege; so hadthe house of Lord Egremont, who had signed the warrant for Wilkes'scommittal; so had other houses which were either known to belong to the{118} opponents of the hero or showed themselves to be such by theirdarkened windows. All such windows were instantly broken, to the joyof the glaziers, who declared that a Middlesex election was worth anynumber of Indian victories. The mob had it all its own way, for thestrength of the constabulary had been drafted off to Brentford inexpectation of rioting there which never took place. But the mob didnot abuse its triumph. It was in its playful, not its dangerous mood. It stopped the carriages of the gentry, made the occupants cheer forWilkes and Liberty, scrawled the number Forty-five upon the polishedpanels, broke the glasses, but in the main let the carriage-owners gounmolested. The Duke of Northumberland was forced to toast the popularfavorite in a mug of ale. One ludicrous occurrence very nearly becamean international episode. The Austrian Ambassador, Count Hatzfeldt, famed for his stateliness, for his punctiliousness in ceremonial, fella victim to popular misapprehension. The mob that surrounded his coachtook him, unhappily, for a Scotchman, either because of his stiffnessof demeanor or because they could not understand what he was saying. To be thought Scotch was a bad thing for any man in the hands of a mobthat howled for Wilkes, that howled against Bute. The AustrianAmbassador was dragged from his carriage and held uplifted insufficiently uncomfortable fashion while the magic number Forty-fivewas chalked upon the soles of his shoes. He was no further hurt; if hehad been a more prudent man he would have grinned at the mischance andsaid no more about it. But he chose to consider his dignity and thedignity of his empire affronted by the follies of a crowd. He lodged aformal complaint with the English Government. The English Governmentcould do nothing more than express regret with such gravity as it couldmuster. As for the irreverent rogues who had laid their hands upon thefeet of the representative of a friendly State, it was not in the powerof the Government to punish them. The earth has bubbles as the waterhas, and they were of them. For two days the town was practically at the mercy of {119} the Wilkitemob. The trainbands were called out by the Mayor, who was an ardentcourtier, but the men of the trainbands were, for the most part, noless ardent Wilkites. They lent their drums to swell the noise ofWilkes's triumph; they could not be counted on to lend their muskets tothe suppression of Wilkes's partisans. Even the regular troops werenot, it was thought, to be relied upon in the emergency. It was saidhere that certain regimental drummers had beaten their drums forWilkes; it was said there that soldiers had been heard to declare thatthey would never fire upon the people. The fury of the Ministry, and especially the fury of the King, flamedhigh. The King's heat was increased by a letter which Wilkes hadaddressed directly to him on his return to England. In this letterWilkes made a not undignified appeal for the King's mercy and clemency, complained of the wicked and deceitful acts of revenge of the lateMinistry, and assured the sovereign of his zeal and attachment to hisservice. To this letter, naturally, no direct reply was made. Theform that the King's answer took was to insist that all the strength ofthe Government must be used against Wilkes in order that he should bedriven from that Parliament to which the electors of Middlesex haddared to return him. [Sidenote: 1768--Wilkes in prison] In the mean time the force of the law was slowly exerted againstWilkes. Wilkes had promised that on the first day of the termfollowing his arrival in England he would present himself at the Courtof King's Bench. He kept his promise and surrendered himself on April20. The judges of the King's Bench seem to have been paralyzed by theposition. It took them a whole week to decide that they would refuseWilkes bail--a whole week, every day, every hour of which served tomake Wilkes's cause better known and Wilkes himself more popular. Wilkes went to prison under the most extraordinary circumstances. Hisjourney from Westminster to Bishopsgate was more like a royal progressthan the passage of a criminal and an outlaw. It was only with thegreatest difficulty that Wilkes was able to detach himself from thezeal of the populace {120} and get quietly into his prison. The prisonimmediately became an object of greater interest than a royal palace. Every day it was surrounded by a dense crowd that considered itselfrewarded for hours of patient waiting if it could but get a glimpse ofthe prisoner's face at a window. All this show of enthusiasmexasperated the ministers and drove them into the very acts that werebest calculated to keep the enthusiasm alive. On the day of theopening of Parliament, May 10, the Government, under the pretence offearing riot, sent down a detachment of soldiers to guard the King'sBench Prison, in St. George's Fields. This was in itself a rash stepenough, but every circumstance attending it only served to make it morerash. As if deliberately to aggravate the popular feeling, theregiment chosen for this pretence of keeping the peace was a Scotchregiment. At a moment when everything Scotch was insanely disliked inLondon such a choice was not likely to insure good temper either on thepart of the mob or on the part of the military. That good temper wasnot intended or desired was made plain by a letter written by LordWeymouth, the Secretary of State, to the local magistrate, urging himto make use of the soldiers in any case of riot. What followed was only what might have been expected. The crowd, irritated by the non-appearance of Wilkes, still more irritated by thepresence of the soldiery, threatened, or was thought to threaten, anattack upon the prison. Angry words were followed by blows; the brawlbetween the mob and the military became a serious conflict. A youngman named Allan, who seems to have had nothing to do with the scuffle, was killed in a private house by some of the soldiers who had forced anentrance in pursuit of one of their assailants. Then the Riot Act wasread; the troops fired; half a dozen of the rioters were killed, including one woman, and several others were wounded. News of this bad business intensified the angry feeling against theGovernment. A Scotch soldier, Donald Maclean, was put on his trial forthe murder of Allan. His {121} acquittal caused an indignation whichdeepened when the colonel of the regiment presented him with thirtyguineas on behalf of the Government. This was taken as an example ofthe determination of the Crown to silence the voice of the people withthe weapons of Scotch mercenaries. Pamphlets, speeches, sermons, allwere employed to stimulate the general agitation and to brand withatrocity the conduct of the Ministry. The tombstone erected over themurdered man Allan chronicled his inhuman murder "by Scottishdetachments from the Army, " and quoted from Proverbs the words, "Takeaway the wicked from before the King. " [Sidenote: 1768--The Ministry on its defence] The ministers, on their side, were not slow to defend themselves. Burke, with his usual fairness, has stated their case for them when hetells how they painted in the strongest colors the licentiousness ofthe rabble and that contempt of all government which makes it necessaryto oppose to a violent distemper remedies not less violent. This is, of course, the excuse of every overbearing authority, which, havingaroused irritation by its own mismanagement, can conceive of no betterway of allaying that irritation than the bayonet and the bullet. TheMinistry and the advocates of the Ministry maintained that the unhappydisposition of the people was such that juries under the influence ofthe general infatuation could hardly be got to do justice to soldiersunder prosecution, unless Government interposed in the most effectualmanner for the protection of those who had acted under their orders. They further urged that, in view of the danger of the insolence of thepopulace becoming contagious with the very soldiery, it was necessaryfor them to keep those servants firm to their duty by new and unusualrewards. "Whatever weight, " says Burke, dryly, "might have been inthese reasons, they were but little prevalent, and the Ministry becameby this affair and its concomitant circumstances still more unpopularthan by almost any other event. " But it must in fairness be admittedthat, foolish, stubborn, and even brutal as the King's ministers showedthemselves to be, their position was a very difficult one. {122} It was well open to the Government to urge, and to urge with truth, thepeculiar lawlessness of the hour. It is an effective example of theineffectiveness of a mere policy of coercion that, at a time when thepenal laws of Great Britain were ferocious to a degree that would havedisgraced Dahomey, the laws were so frequently defied, and defied withimpunity. The laws might be merciless, even murderous, but theExecutive had not always the power to compel respect or to enforceobedience. Among the lower classes in the great city, and not merelythat portion of the lower classes who are qualified by the appellationof the dangerous classes, but in strata where at least a moderatedegree of civilization might be hoped for, an amount of savagery, oflawlessness, and of cruelty prevailed that would have not ill becomethe pirates of the Spanish Seas or the most brutal of Calabrianbrigands. The hideous institution of the pillory stimulated andfostered all the worst instincts of a mob to whose better instincts nodecent system of education sought to appeal. Ignorance, and poverty, and dirt brooded over the bulk of the poorer population, to breed theirinevitable consequences. Murder was alarmingly common. Riots thatalmost reached the proportions of petty civil wars were liable to ariseat any moment between one section of the poorer citizens and another. The horrors of the Brownrigg case show to what extent lust of crueltycould go. The large disbandments that are the inevitable consequenceof peace after a long war had thrown out of employment, and thrown uponthe country, no small number of needy, unscrupulous, and desperate men, only too ready to lend a hand to any disturbance that might afford achance of food and drink and plunder. [Sidenote: 1752--Mob violence in London] Mob law ruled in London to an extraordinary degree during the whole ofthe eighteenth century. It reached a high pitch, but not its highestpitch, at the time when the watchword was Wilkes and Liberty. Londonwas to witness bitterer work, bloodier work than anything whichfollowed upon the Middlesex election and the imprisonment of thepopular hero. But for the time the audacity of the mob seemed to havegone its farthest. The temper of the {123} mob was insolent, itsinsolence was brutal. It hated all foreigners--and among foreigners itnow included Scotchmen--and it manifested its hatred in vituperation, and when it dared in violence. A white man would hardly be in moredanger in a mid-African village than a foreigner was in the streets ofLondon. There is a contemporary account written by a French gentlemanwho travelled in England, and who published his observations on what hesaw in England, which gives a piteous account of the barbarousincivility to which he, his friends, and his servants were exposed whenthey walked abroad. The mob that jeered and insulted the master verynearly killed the servant for the single offence of being a Frenchman. But the brutalities of the mob were not limited to strangers. Thecitizens of London fared almost as badly if not quite as badly as anyFrenchman could do. Fielding gives a picture in one of his essays ofthe lawless arrogance which was characteristic of the rabble. He gaveto the mob the title of the Fourth Estate in an article in the _CoventGarden Journal_ for June 13, 1752, and in another article a week laterhe painted an ironical picture of the brutal manners and overbearingdemeanor of the mob. "A gentleman, " he wrote, "may go a voyage at seawith little more hazard than he can travel ten miles from themetropolis. " On the river, on the streets, on the highways, accordingto Fielding, mob manners prevailed, and brutal language might at anymoment be followed by brutal actions. When the largest allowance ismade for the exaggeration of the satirist, enough remains to show thatthe condition of London in the second half of the eighteenth centurywas disorderly in the extreme. People who ventured on the Thames wereliable to the foulest insults, and even to be run down by those whowere pleased to regard the stream as their appanage, and who resentedthe appearance on it of any who seemed better dressed than themselves. Women of fashion were liable to be hustled, mobbed, insulted if theyventured in St. James's Park on a Sunday evening. No one could walkthe streets by day without the probability of being annoyed, or bynight without the risk of {124} being knocked down. After painting hisgrim picture in the Hogarth manner, Fielding concluded grimly that hemust observe "that there are two sorts of persons of whom this fourthestate do yet stand in some awe, and whom, consequently, they have ingreat abhorrence: these are a justice of the peace and a soldier. Tothese two it is entirely owing that they have not long since rooted allthe other orders out of the commonwealth. " [Sidenote: 1769--Wilkes's expulsion from the Commons] The Government hoped that the longer Wilkes lay in prison, the morechance there was that the enthusiasm for him would abate. But in thishope the Government were disappointed. Even in the ranks of theministers the King was not able to find unswerving agreement to hisdemands for Wilkes's expulsion from Parliament. Outside Parliament theagitation was not only undiminished, but was even on the increase. This was shown conclusively by a fresh event in connection withMiddlesex. Cooke, who was the colleague of Wilkes in therepresentation of the county, died. Serjeant Glynn, who had madehimself conspicuous as the champion of Wilkes and the advocate of thepopular cause, came forward to contest the vacant seat, and carried theconstituency in spite of the most determined efforts on the part of theroyal faction to defeat him. There were more riots, more deaths on thepopular side, more trials, more convictions for murder and more pardonsof the condemned men. The agitation which had been burning at a steadyheat blazed up into a flame. Wilkes made every use of the opportunity. He had succeeded in getting a copy of the letter which Lord Weymouthhad sent to the magistrates, the letter in which Lord Weymouth hadpractically urged the magistrates to fire upon the people. Wilkesimmediately sent it to the _St. James's Chronicle_, a tri-weeklyindependent Whig journal which had been started in 1760. The _St. James's Chronicle_ printed the letter, and Wilkes's own letteraccompanying it, in which he accused the Ministry of having planned anddetermined upon the "horrid massacre of St. George's Fields. " Theletter, said Wilkes, "shows how long a hellish project can be broodedover by some infernal {125} spirits without one moment's remorse. " Itmay be admitted that if the language of Wilkes's enemies in the twoHouses was strong even to ruffianism, Wilkes could and did give them asgood as he got in the way of invective and vituperation. The Government, goaded into fury by this daring provocation, resolvedto make an example of the offender. Lord Barrington brought the letterformally before the House of Commons. The House of Commons immediatelyvoted it a libel, and summoned Wilkes from his prison to the bar of theHouse. On February 3, 1769, Wilkes appeared before the Commons. Withperfect composure he admitted the authorship of the letter to the _St. James's Chronicle_, and, with an audacity that exasperated the House, he proclaimed his regret that he had not expressed himself upon thesubject in stronger terms, and added that he should certainly do sowhenever a similar occasion should present itself. "Whenever, " hesaid, "a Secretary of State shall dare to write so bloody a scroll, Iwill through life dare to write such prefatory remarks, as well as tomake my appeal to the nation on the occasion. " Wilkes found championsin the House of Commons. Burke, Beckford, and many others eitherdefended Wilkes or urged that the matter was not for the House ofCommons, but for the law courts to deal with. In the division theGovernment was triumphant by a majority of 219 against 137, and Wilkeswas formally expelled from the House of Commons on the ground, notmerely of his comments on the letter of Lord Weymouth, but on accountof the Number Forty-five of the _North Briton_ and the "Essay on Woman. " A new writ was issued for the county of Middlesex. The county ofMiddlesex promptly re-elected Wilkes without opposition on February 16. On February 17 the House of Commons again voted the expulsion ofWilkes. This time the House of Commons exceeded its powers and itsprivileges in adding that the expelled man was incapable of sitting inthe existing Parliament. Every blow that the royal party had struck atWilkes had only aroused stronger sympathy for him; and this illegalact, this usurpation {126} by one House of powers that only belonged toParliament, caused the liveliest indignation. It was resolved by thefriends of Wilkes, and by all who were the friends of the principleswith which Wilkes had come to be identified, to fight to the utmost indefence of their constitutional rights, that were now so gravely, sowantonly jeopardized. On March 16 there was a new polling atBrentford, and, as before, Wilkes was returned unopposed. There was, indeed, an effort made by an obscure merchant named Dingley to opposehim, but he could find no freeholder to second him, and he was chiviedignominiously from the scene of the election. On March 17 the House ofCommons, for the third time, played what Burke called the tragi-comedyof declaring the election void. A new writ was again issued, and thistime the Ministry were resolved that, come what come might, Wilkesshould have an opponent. It was not the easiest of tasks to find a manwilling to oppose Wilkes's candidature on the hustings at Brentford. Dingley, the merchant, had experienced the violence of the mob; it wasconfidently assumed that any other antagonist would fare very muchworse. But the Ministry found their champion in a young officer, Colonel Luttrell, of the Guards, a son of Lord Irnham. Luttrell was agallant young soldier, a man of that temper which regards all popularagitations with supreme disdain, and of that courage that would faceany danger, not merely with composure, but with pleasure. His friendswere so apprehensive that he was going to his death that his life wasinsured, and the gentlemen of the clubs, who were always willing to betupon any imaginable contingency, betted freely on his chances ofsurviving his adventure. Wilkes's friends, however, were resolved todisappoint the expectations of their enemies. Thanks to their energyand patience, the election went off with perfect order. Wilkes was, ofcourse, returned at the top of the poll by an enormous majority. Luttrell came next with less than a quarter of his votes, and an absurdattorney, who had thrust himself into the election at the last moment, came last with a ludicrous poll of five votes. {127} [Sidenote: 1769--Lord North and the Wilkes case] On Thursday, April 13, Wilkes was elected. London was againilluminated, and a great demonstration outside the King's Bench Prisoncongratulated the hero of the hour on his third triumph. On thefollowing day the House of Commons prepared again to reject Wilkes. The debate lasted over the Saturday--a rare event in those days--and inthe early dawning of Sunday morning Colonel Luttrell was declared to beduly elected as the member for Middlesex. The ministerial victory wasnot a very great victory. They had only a majority of 197 votes to143. It served their turn at a pinch, but it was not a big enoughmajority to inspire Lord North with the courage to resist a proposalthat a fortnight should be allowed to the electors of Middlesex inwhich, if they wished, to petition against conduct which practicallydeprived them of their constitutional rights. Lord North had many years of public life before him, many years ofslumbering and blundering on the treasury bench, before his death in1792, as Lord Guildford, in a melancholy, premature old age. In thoseyears he was privileged to do a vast amount of injury to his country, uncompensated for by any act to her advantage. Lord North's conduct inthe case of Wilkes was not the most foolish act in a career of folly, but it certainly served as an illuminating preface to a chronicle ofwasted time. No proofs of the wit that endeared him to hiscontemporaries have been preserved; his fame for an unalterableurbanity is but an empty memory; his record is only rescued fromoblivion by the series of incredible follies which began with theunjust attempt to annihilate Wilkes. {128} CHAPTER L. THE SPIRIT OP JUNIUS. [Sidenote: 1769--The Letters of Junius] While all this was going on a new force suddenly made itself felt inEnglish political life. The King and his ministers found themselvesattacked by a mysterious and dangerous opponent. On March 21, 1769, aletter was addressed to the _Public Advertiser_, signed "Junius, " whichmarked the beginning of a new era in political literature. At thattime the _Public Advertiser_ was the most important paper in London. It had first appeared under that name in 1752, but it was the directdescendant, through a series of changes of name, of the _Daily Post_, which Defoe had helped to start in 1719. It had its rivals in the_Daily Advertiser_, which was founded in 1724, and the _Gazetteer_ and_New Daily Advertiser_, which was started in 1728. In the course oftime both these journals had sunk to be little more than advertisingsheets. They gave hardly any news, and they had no politicalinfluence. The _Public Advertiser_ was a much more important paper. It gave abundance of foreign and domestic intelligence, it had originalcontributions in prose and verse, and its columns were always open toletters from correspondents of all kinds on all manner of subjects. It was not until the first letter signed with the signature of Juniusappeared that the paper assumed a serious political importance. Thewriter, whoever he was, who chose that signature had written before inthe columns of the _Public Advertiser_. In 1767 Woodfall, thepublisher, received the first letter from the correspondent who was tobecome so famous, and from time to time other letters came signed byvarious names taken from classical nomenclature, such as Mnemon, Atticus, Lucius, Brutus, {129} Domitian, Vindex, and, perhaps, Poplicola. But it was with the adoption of the name of Junius that thereal importance of the letters began. They came at a crisis; theyspoke for the popular side; they spoke with a bitterness and a ferocitythat had hitherto not been attempted in political journalism. Thegreat French writer Taine has said that the letters of Junius, at atime of national irritation and anxiety, fell one by one like drops offire on the fevered limbs of the body politic. He goes on to say thatif Junius made his phrases concise, and selected his epithets, it wasnot from a love of style, but in order the better to stamp his insult. Oratorical artifices in his hand became instruments of torture, andwhen he filed his periods it was to drive the knife deeper and surer, with an audacity of denunciation and sternness of animosity, with acorrosive and burning irony applied to the most secret corners ofprivate life, with an inexorable persistence of calculated andmeditated persecution. The first few letters of Junius were devoted to an altercation with SirWilliam Draper over the character in the first place of Lord Granby andin the second place of Lord Granby's defender, Sir William Draper. SirWilliam, though he fought stoutly for his friend and stoutly forhimself, did neither himself nor his friend much good by engaging inthe controversy. He was no match for the weapons of Junius. He hadneither the wit nor the venom of his antagonist. But the greatinterest of the letters began when Junius, taking up the cause ofWilkes, struck at higher game than Sir William Draper or Lord Granby. His first letter to the Duke of Grafton was an indictment of the Dukefor the conduct of the Crown in the case of a murder trial arising outof the Brentford election. A young man named George Clarke had beenkilled in a riot and a man named Edward M'Quirk was tried and foundguilty of the murder. A kind of hugger-mugger inquest produced adeclaration that Clarke's death was not caused by the blow he hadreceived from his assailant, and in consequence, "whereas a doubt hadarisen in our royal breast, " the King formally pardoned the murderer byroyal {130} proclamation. On this theme Junius lashed Grafton andconcluded his letter with a direct allusion to Wilkes. He asked ifGrafton had forgotten, while he was withdrawing this desperate wretchfrom that justice which the laws had awarded and which the whole peopleof England demanded, that there was another man, the favorite of hiscountry, whose pardon would have been accepted with gratitude, whosepardon would have healed all divisions. "Have you quite forgotten thatthis man was once your Grace's friend? Or is it to murderers only thatyou will extend the mercy of the Crown?" The attack thus daringly begun was steadily maintained. Wilkes had nokeener, no acuter champion than Junius. With great skill Juniusavoided all appearance of violent partisanship. He was careful tocensure much in Wilkes's conduct, careful to discriminate betweenWilkes's private character and Wilkes's public conduct. Theunjustifiable action of the House of Commons in forcing ColonelLuttrell upon the electors of Middlesex gave Junius the opportunity ofassailing Wilkes's enemies without appearing to champion Wilkes to theutterance. Junius admitted that the Duke of Grafton might have hadsome excuse in his opposition to Wilkes on account of Wilkes'scharacter, and might have earned the approval of men who, looking nofurther than to the object before them, were not dissatisfied withseeing Mr. Wilkes excluded from Parliament. But, Junius went on toargue, "you have now taken care to shift the question; or, rather, youhave created a new one, in which Mr. Wilkes is no more concerned thanany other English gentleman. You have united the country against youon one grand constitutional point, on the decision of which ourexistence as a free people absolutely depends. You have asserted, notin words but in fact, that representation in Parliament does not dependupon the choice of the freeholders. " [Sidenote: 1769--The identity of Junius] The authorship of the letters of Junius is one of those problems, likethe problems of the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask, which havenever been settled with absolute certainty and which probably neverwill be settled {131} with absolute certainty. But between absolutecertainty and the highest degree of probability there is no very greatgulf fixed, and it is in the highest degree probable that the author ofthe letters was Philip Francis. The letters have been attributed toall manner of men. They were ascribed, absurdly enough, to Wilkes. Wilkes could write bitterly and he could write well, but he could writeneither so well nor so bitterly as Mr. Woodfall's correspondent. Dr. Johnson, who ought to have known better, thought they were written byBurke. It is his excuse that there did not seem at the time any man ofthe same ability as the writer of the letters except Burke. But Dr. Johnson, who had been quick enough to recognize the genius of theanonymous author of the essay on "The Sublime and the Beautiful, " erredwhen he thought that the same hand penned the anonymous letters. Theprose of Burke was as far above the prose of Junius as the prose ofJunius was above the prose of Wilkes. None of the letters surpasses inferocity, none approaches in excellence the letter which Burke wrote tothe noble Duke who had slandered him. The letters were attributed toBarré; they were attributed to Lee, who was yet to earn another kind offame; they were attributed to many hands. To us, at least, it seemsclear that they were the work of Philip Francis. The electors of Middlesex did petition against the substitution of thedespised Luttrell for the adored Wilkes. The consideration of thepetition was the occasion for one of the most memorable debates thatcan be recorded of an age rich in memorable debates. On the one sidethe influence of the Ministry and the influence of the King inducedBlackstone to deny himself and to falsify those principles ofconstitutional law with which his name is associated. On the otherside principles as little honorable but a far acuter politicalperception urged Wedderburn, who was nominally a King's man, to go overto the popular cause with the air of a Coriolanus. On the one sideFletcher Norton upheld the authority of the resolution. On the otherside George Grenville argued against it with an acumen which showedthat an able lawyer might have {132} been a great lawyer. In thatfamous debate Burke spoke at his best, and yet the event of that debatewas not the speech of Burke, was not the speech of the experiencedpolitician, of the seasoned statesman, of the famous man of letters, but the speech of a young man who was almost a boy, the speech ofCharles James Fox. All who have written on the debate agree in theiradmiration of the speech of one who, as far as Parliament wasconcerned, was but a raw lad and who nevertheless held his own on apoint of law against experienced lawyers, in statesmanship againstGrenville, and in eloquence against Burke. [Sidenote: 1769--Unpopularity of George the Third] Of course the petition of Middlesex was rejected; the election ofLuttrell was confirmed. On the day of the confirmation the Kingprorogued Parliament in a foolish speech in which he seemed to thinkthat he had gained a victory. But if the King and the Ministrybelieved or hoped that in expelling Wilkes from Parliament they had gotrid of Wilkes for good and all; if they believed or hoped that in thusdegrading Wilkes they would deprive him of his popularity with thepeople or even diminish that popularity, they were speedily to beundeceived and bitterly disappointed. Both King and ministers knewtheir business very badly; with limitations of intelligence which wouldhave been disastrous to the conduct of a small shop, they came in thisinstance, as in other instances, within measurable distance of wreckinga royalty. It is probable that Franklin, shrewd, cool observer thoughhe was, went too far when he wrote in his journal that if George theThird had had a bad private character, and John Wilkes a good one, thelatter might have turned the former out of his kingdom. But it iscertain that the signs of the King's unpopularity were now assignificant as were the signs of Wilkes's popularity. It had been saidthat at this time a good half of the King's subjects preferred Wilkesto their King. The estimate is probably under rather than above thefact. Wilkes was placed in the position of being the champion of allthe rights and liberties that Englishmen most prized; the King in the{133} position of being their most uncompromising, most obstinateopponent. Thus, while honors were offered daily to the prisoner of the King'sbench, insults were daily offered to his royal enemy. The King couldscarcely go abroad without becoming the object of a demonstration ofpopular disfavor, and even in his palace he could not escape fromdeputations empowered to protest against the conduct of his ministers. In all parts of the kingdom public meetings were held, and from thesepublic meetings petitions poured in upon the King calling upon him todissolve his Parliament. It has been truly observed that the custom ofholding public meetings for the discussion of public grievances datesfrom this period. On two solemn occasions the Lord Mayor of London, accompanied by the sheriffs, presented addresses to the Kingremonstrating against the action of the House of Commons. To the firstaddress the King replied that it was disrespectful to him, injurious toParliament, and irreconcilable to the principles of the Constitution. After which reply he could think of nothing better, nothing more kinglyto do than to turn round to his courtiers and burst out laughing. Hetreated the second address with the same insolence, an insolence whichprovoked from the Lord Mayor an uncourtierly reply which reminded theKing that those who endeavored to alienate the King's affections fromhis subjects were violators of the public peace and betrayers of theConstitution established by the glorious Revolution. Those words wereafterwards inscribed in gold upon the monument of the mayor who spokethem. If those words, and words of like purport and temper, at firstmoved the King to laughter, they soon exasperated him past laughing. Once he clapped his hand to his sword-hilt and declared that he wouldsooner have recourse to that than grant a dissolution. The tension ofpublic feeling can best be estimated when a constitutional sovereign onthe one side could dare to make such a remark; when a representative ofthe people like Colonel Barré on the other side could dare in the Houseof {134} Commons to say that disregard of public petitions might leadthe people to think of assassination. While the King was insulted and insulting, and longing to stifleopposition by the sword, John Wilkes in his prison was receiving newproofs of the place he held in public affection. He was electedalderman for the Ward of Farringdon Without. We are told that histable at the prison was daily supplied with the most rare and costlydelicacies, presented to him by his admirers. The mysterious Chevalierd'Eon sent him a present of Russian smoked tongues, with the whimsicalwish that they could have the eloquence of Cicero, and the delicacy ofVoltaire, to do him honor. Friendly revellers sent him hampers of thewine he liked the best. More serious gifts were laid at his feet. Fora while money literally rained in upon him. The leading Whigs providedhim with an income. Nobles and great ladies sent him large sums. Anumber of politicians banded together under the title of the Societyfor Supporting the Bill of Rights, and raised a great deal of money, much of which went in meeting some of the heavy debts with which Wilkeswas embarrassed, much of which went in keeping up the princely way ofliving which suited Wilkes's temperament, and which was perhaps notunsuited to the part he was playing as the rival of a prince. In thepublic press, on the platform, on the stage, his influence wasenormous. His good pleasure sent politicians to Parliament; his goodpleasure made London sheriffs, made provincial mayors. While the falserumor that he was the author of "The Letters of Junius" only swelledthe volume of his fame, the author of those letters was adding toWilkes's pride and power by public championship and by private letters, choking with an adulation that seems strange indeed from so savage apen. If Garrick dared for a moment to run counter to popular feeling, as a little earlier he had dared to disdain the praise of Churchill, hehad to give way in the case of Wilkes, as he had given way in the caseof Wilkes's poet. The very name of Wilkes drove men on both sides ofthe quarrel into a kind of frenzy. Alexander Cruden, of the"Concordance, " {135} showed his devotion to his King and his dislike ofWilkes by carrying a large sponge with him whenever he walked abroad inorder that he might wipe out the ominous number, forty-five, wheneverhe saw it chalked up. As the number was chalked up everywhere by theWilkites, Cruden soon found the task beyond his powers. It was luckyfor him that he got no harm in his zeal, lucky for him that he did notcome across that militant clergyman who pulled the nose of a Scotchnaval officer for attacking Wilkes and then met his man in Hyde Parkand wounded him. [Sidenote: 1770--A fight for the liberty of the Press] On April 17, 1770, Wilkes's term of imprisonment came to an end. Wilkes immediately started for Bath to avoid a demonstration in London;but London was illuminated in his honor, and in a great number ofprovincial towns his release was celebrated with all the signs of anational holiday. If he had been a hero in prison, he was no less ahero out of it. He moved from triumph to triumph. While alderman hewon a victory over the Court and the Commons which did much toestablish the liberty of the press in England. The House of Commons, in a foolish attempt to suppress reports of the debates in Parliament, tried to arrest certain printers. Wilkes and the Lord Mayor took theprinters' part; advised them to conceal themselves; and in their turnarrested those who, in obedience to a royal proclamation and the ordersof the House, arrested the printers. The House of Commons committed the Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver tothe Tower, and summoned Wilkes to appear at the bar. Wilkes coollyreplied that as he was a member of Parliament, and as he was notaddressed as a member of Parliament should be, and ordered to attend inhis place according to custom, he should ignore the summons. The Housemade a second and yet a third order for his appearance, each of whichWilkes treated with disdain. It is a significant proof of the power ofWilkes's popularity that the House did not take any steps to punish hiscontumacy. While it affected to find a consolation in the assurancesof the King that Wilkes was "below the {136} notice of the House, " ithad to endure as best it might an affront resentment of which wouldonly have added to Wilkes's popularity. The honors paid to the LordMayor and the alderman during their imprisonment showed only tooplainly that hostility to the Court and the Parliamentary majority washeroism in the eyes of the majority of the citizens of London. Once again Wilkes had won the day. From that time forward Parliamentput no embargo upon the publication of reports of its debates. Freshhonors were showered on Wilkes. He was elected sheriff. He waspresented by the Court of Common Council with a silver goblet, designedaccording to his own wish with a representation of the death of Caesar, and graced with the ominous motto from one of the poems of Churchill: May every tyrant feel The keen deep searchings of a patriot steel, a citation which, taken in conjunction with Barré's wild talk in theHouse about assassination, was sufficiently significant of the temperof the time. [Sidenote: 1774--Wilkes Lord Mayor of London] Wilkes had been alderman; he had been sheriff; he was now to bear thecrown of civic honors. He was put in nomination for the office of LordMayor. The Court party made a desperate effort to defeat him. Theyhad tried and failed to prevent him from being elected to Parliament. They had tried and failed to prevent him from being made alderman, frombeing made sheriff. They now tried with all their might to prevent himfrom being made Lord Mayor. Wilkes had much to fight against. Therewere defections from his own party. The once devoted Horne hadsquabbled with his idol over money matters, and was now as venomous anenemy as he had been a fulsome partisan. Alderman Townshend, anex-Lord Mayor, strained all his influence, which was great in the City, against Wilkes. A wild rumor got about at one time, indeed, thatTownshend had settled the difficulty of the Court forever bychallenging Wilkes and shooting him dead. The story had no foundation, but for a moment it flattered the hopes of Wilkes's {137} enemies andfluttered the hearts of Wilkes's friends. The opposition ended asopposition to Wilkes always ended. Twice he was placed at the head ofthe poll, and twice the Court of Aldermen chose another candidate. Thethird time, in the election of 1774, Wilkes was at last chosen as LordMayor by the Court of Aldermen in despite of the unwearied efforts ofthe Court party to defeat him. "Thus, " wrote Walpole, "after so muchpersecution by the Court, after so many attempts upon his life, after along imprisonment in jail, after all his own crimes and indiscretions, did this extraordinary man, of more extraordinary fortune, attain thehighest office in so grave and important a city as the capital ofEngland, always reviving the more opposed and oppressed, and unable toshock Fortune and make her laugh at him who laughed at everybody andeverything!" It has been well said by Mr. Fraser Rae that thesignificance of election to the office of Lord Mayor was very muchgreater more than a hundred years ago than it is now. Then the ChiefMagistrate of the City was not necessarily a man who had passed throughcertain minor offices and who rose by routine to fill the highest. Atthat time the Corporation was a political power, which ministers had totake into account, and which sovereigns had to propitiate. A greatertriumph than the mayoralty followed in quick succession. At thegeneral election of 1774 Wilkes came forward again, and for the fifthtime, as candidate for Middlesex. This time he was not opposed. Luttrell abandoned an impossible position and did not stand. Ten yearsafter Wilkes's first appearance in the House of Commons he returned toit again in triumph as the member for Middlesex and the Lord Mayor ofLondon. And here, on the top of his triumph, Wilkes may be said to drop throughthe tissue of our history. He was to live nearly a quarter of acentury longer, three-and-twenty years of a life that was as calm andpeaceful as the hot manhood that preceded it had been vexed andunquiet. Although he lives in history as one of the most famous of theworld's agitators, he had in his heart little affection {138} for thelife of a public man. And the publicity of the civic official wasespecially distasteful to him. He hated the gross festivals, the grosspleasures, the gross display of City life. He sickened of the longhours spent in the business of mayoralty; he sickened yet more of thepleasures incidental to mayoralty. Though he remained in Parliamentfor many years, and conducted himself there with zeal, discretion, andstatesmanship, and always, or almost always, proved himself to be thechampion of liberty and the democratic principle, he did not find hisgreatest happiness in public speeches and the triumphs and defeats ofthe division lobby. What he loved best on earth was the society of hisdaughter, between whom and himself there existed a friendship that isthe best advocate for Wilkes's character. And he loved best to enjoythat society in the kind of sham classic retirement which had sopowerful an attraction for so many of the men of the eighteenthcentury. His cottage in the Isle of Wight, with its Doric column tothe manes of Churchill, with its shrine to Fortuna Redux, was his ideaof the ancient city of Tusculum. His tastes and pleasures were the tastes and pleasures of a man ofletters. He affected a curious kind of scholarship. The hand that hadbeen employed upon the _North Briton_, now devoted itself to theediting of classic texts; the intellect that had been associated withthe privately printed "Essay on Woman" was now associated withprivately printed editions of Catullus which he fondly believed to beflawless, and of Theophrastus, whose Greek text it pleased him to printwithout accents. In his tranquil old age he made himself as manyfriends as in his hot manhood he had made himself enemies. Those whohad most hated him came under the spell of his attraction, even theKing himself, even Dr. Johnson. His interview with Dr. Johnson is oneof the most famous episodes in the literary and political history ofthe last century. His assurance to King George that he himself hadnever been a Wilkite is in one sense the truest criticism that has everbeen passed upon him. If to be a Wilkite was to entertain {139} allthe advanced and all the wild ideas expressed by many of those who tookadvantage of his agitation, then certainly Wilkes was none such. Buthe was a Wilkite in the better sense of being true to his own opinionsand true to his sense of public duty. When he expressed the wish tohave the words "A friend to liberty" inscribed upon his monument, heexpressed a wish which the whole tenor of his life, the whole tone ofhis utterances fully justified. And if he was loyal to his principleshe could be chivalrous to his enemies. Almost his last publicappearance was at the general election of 1796, when he came forward, with a magnanimity which would have well become many a better man, tosupport the candidature of Horne Tooke at Westminster, of the man who, after having been his fawning friend, his fulsome flatterer, had turnedagainst him with the basest treachery and the bitterest malignity. There may have been, surely there must have been, a vein of irony inthe words in which Wilkes complimented the apostate and the turncoat asa man of public virtues. But the irony was cloaked by courtesy; if theaction smacked of the cynic, at least it was done in obedience to thebehest to forgive our enemies. [Sidenote: 1797--Death of Wilkes] On November 38, 1797, the old, worn, weary man, who had worked so hardand done so much, welcomed, in his capacity of Chamberlain of the Cityof London, Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson to the honorary freedom of theCity. The setting star saluted the rising star. Nelson was thenthirty-nine. He had been at sea since he was twelve. He had voyagedin polar seas and tropic waters. He had fought the Americans. He hadfought the French. "Hate a Frenchman as you would the devil" was hissimple-minded counsel of perfection. He had fought the Spaniards. Hehad lost an eye at Calvi. He had lost an arm at Santa Cruz. He wasten years married. His love, his error, his glory, Emma Hamilton, Carracioli, Trafalgar, were yet to come. Less than a month later, in the late December, 1797, John Wilkes wasdead. He was seventy years old. For nearly forty years he had livedunknown, unheeded. For {140} ten years he was the most conspicuous manin England, the best hated and the best loved. For twenty years morehe was an honored public and private citizen. He will always beremembered as one of the most remarkable men of a century of remarkablemen. {141} CHAPTER LI. CHARLES JAMES FOX. [Sidenote: 1749-1768--A champion of popular rights] One of the most immediate results of the Wilkes controversy in theHouse of Commons was to draw attention to a young man who had enteredParliament at the General Election of 1768 while he was stillconsiderably under age. The young member for Midhurst made himselfconspicuous as the most impassioned opponent of Wilkes. A strenuoussupporter of Luttrell outside the walls of Westminster, inside thosewalls the boy who represented the fictitious constituency of Midhurstdistinguished himself by the easy insolence with which he assailedWilkes and the popular cause which Wilkes represented. He delighted ininforming the delighted majority in the House that he, for his part, "paid no regard whatever to the voice of the people. " When Burkecondescended to notice and to rebuke the impertinence of a youth ofnineteen, he little thought that the lad whom he reproved would come tobe a far more extreme advocate of popular rights than he himself, orthat the chronicle of the century in recording the names of those whomade themselves prominent for the utterance of democratic opinionsshould place the name of John Wilkes far below the name of CharlesJames Fox. It would not be easy to imagine a worse training for a youth intendedfor the service of his country and destined to contend for the honorsof the State than the life that was lived by Charles James Fox fromearly boyhood to early manhood. It was not in the power of his father, Henry Fox, Lord Holland, to set before his son the example of a parentwhose public life was pure, admirable, and honorable. But in thedomestic circle Lord Holland was {142} a very different man from thecorrupt and juggling politician known to the world. In the domesticcircle his affections and his tendernesses were his most conspicuoustraits, and in the domestic circle he was as unfortunate for hischildren through his very virtues as outside it he was unfortunate byreason of his vices. Fox was a loving husband, but he was an adoringfather, and the extremest zeal and warmth of his adoration was given tohis son Charles James. The child was from the first precocious, alert, and gifted beyond his years, and the father fostered and flattered theprecocity with a kind of worship that proved, as it was bound to prove, disastrous. It seems to have been Henry Fox's deliberate belief thatthe best way to bring up a spirited, gifted, headstrong child was togratify every wish, surrender to every whim, and pander to everypassion that ebullient youth could feel. The anecdotes of the day teemwith tales of the fantastic homage that Fox paid to the desires andmoods of his imperious infant. He made him his companion while he wasstill in the nursery; he allowed him to be his master before he hadfairly left it. Never was the creed of Thelema acted upon moreconsistently and persistently than by Lord Holland towards CharlesJames Fox. It is an astonishing proof of the strength and innategoodness of the childish nature that it was not ruined outright, hopelessly and helplessly, by the worst training ever given to a son bya father. That it did Fox infinite harm cannot be denied and was onlyto be expected. That it failed entirely to unbalance his mind anddestroy his character only serves to show the sterling temper of Fox'smetal. His youth was like his childhood, petted, spoiled, wayward, capricious, and captivating. Every one loved him, his father, hisfather's friends, the school companions with whom he wrote Latin versesin praise of lovely ladies with lovely names. All through his life thelove of men and the love of women was given to him with a generositythat was only equal to the lovable nature that compelled and commandedit. His career is one record of unrivalled precocity. As a child hehad been his father's friend rather than his father's plaything; as a{143} lad he was his father's travelling companion, and learned fromthat father the pleasant art of sowing wild oats not with the hand butwith the whole sack. He returned to England a proficient gambler, afinished rake, the dear friend of famous men, the darling of beautifulwomen, to enter, before he was of age, upon that political career inwhich it seemed certain that if he would follow in his father's stepshe might hope for more than his father's fortunes. If Charles Fox hadbeen quite cankered by his father's care, if the essence of his geniushad been corruptible, he might have given the King's friends a leaderas far removed from them as Lucifer from his satellites, and contrivedperhaps--though that indeed would have been difficult--to amass almostas much money as he was able to spend with comfort. To judge by theyoung man's initial enterprise, his Parliamentary career promised to beas brilliant and as brutal as any king who hated Chatham and hatedWilkes and hated the American colonies could possibly desire. Thefurious intolerance of his maiden speech was happily, however, onlylike that false dawn familiar to travellers in the East. The truesunrise was yet to come. But for six years he was as consistent in hissupport of Lord North and the policy that North represented as for therest of his career he was consistent in opposition to it. [Sidenote: 1768--Fox's scholarship] The life of Fox recalls, in its brilliant activity, in its no lessbrilliant scholarship, the dazzling careers of some of those Italianprinces who were equally at home and equally distinguished in thebattlefield and in the library, equally happy in handling their weaponsor in turning the pages of the latest volume from the presses of Aldusthat renewed the youth of some masterpiece of Greece or Rome. Fox'sscholarship would have been remarkable in a man whose days and nightswere devoted to scholarship alone. It was little less than marvellousin a man who gave a large part of his days to the fiercest politicalfights of a fiercely political age and a large part of his nights tothe fascination of the card-table, the disasters of the dice-box, andthe pursuit of the sweet, elusive shadow which is {144} calledpleasure. Fox's love for literature was indeed its own reward. In thedarkest hours of a life that tasted the bitterness of many public andmany private sorrows he could steep his vexed spirit in the sweetwaters watched by the Muses, and arise cleansed, inspirited, andcomforted. Though he saw those public honors that his genius deserveddenied, though he lost those chances of command by which he could besthave served his country, though his own fault wrecked his fortune andhis own follies wasted his substance and delivered the home of hisglorious youth into alien hands, he could turn from troubles that wouldhave broken the spirit and cracked the heart of a less heroic fighter, to find solace and consolation in the golden music of the "Odyssey" andthe majestic cadences of Virgil. Fox loved the classics with the passion of a poet, not with thepatience of a pedant, and found that noble rapture in the human beautyof Euripides which Parson Adams found in the divine grandeur ofAeschylus. But if his reading in the literatures of Greece and Romewas wide and deep, it was not limited to the literatures which theworld calls classic. France, Italy, Spain, offered him their best, andfound him a worthy worshipper, the faithful lover and loyal student ofall that was best in each. He was the comrade of Don Quixote as he wasthe comrade of Orlando Furioso and the comrade of Gil Blas. But he wasnever one of those who exalt the laurels of other lands to the neglectof those of their own. He knew English literature and loved Englishliterature as well as if he had never scanned a Latin line orconjugated a Greek verb or read a page of Molière, or Calderon, orMetastasio. He knew Chaucer as well as it was possible for any onethen or for generations later to know Chaucer, and he appreciated himas few have appreciated him before or since. The poets of his own timewere as dear to him in their degree as the singer of England's morningsong. It is hardly necessary to say that he was as familiar withShakespeare as every one should be and as very few are. Only one arcwas wanting to the circle of his splendid {145} culture, only onestring was lacking to the bow of his prodigious reading. There was agreat literature growing up in a neighboring country of which CharlesFox knew nothing, and of which we cannot doubt that he would haverejoiced to know much. It is curious that in a country which had beenruled for three successive reigns by German sovereigns, the Germanlanguage was entirely neglected and the glorious dawn of Germanliterature entirely ignored. While Fox was still a young man, playingat love, playing at cards, playing at politics, and through all thesediversions adding to that mighty store of learning, and training hismind in the finest and most intimate judgments upon the Greek and Romanpoets, Germany had been enriched by the masterpiece of the greatestcritic since Aristotle, and was fostering the golden youth of thegreatest poet since Shakespeare. It would have amazed Fox, as it wouldhave amazed every English scholar then living, if he could have beentold that the spirit of the antique world was to be renewed in acountry which had given them four generations of phlegmatic princes, and in a language of which few scholars in England knew a single word. [Sidenote: 1768--Fox's quarrel with Lord North] Fox's term of adherence to North and to North's policy was not toohappy a time for the nominal superior. A hot-headed young Lord of theAdmiralty resigned his office in a huff, and was not without difficultypersuaded to return to office as Commissioner of the Treasury. Thebreach between Fox and North was bridged over, but the bridge wasfrail. The two men eyed each other with disfavor. Fox asserted hisindependence by occasionally voting against the minister, by consortingwith Burke. After the death of Lord Holland, North revenged himself bydismissing Fox from office in a letter famous for its insolent brevity. For a time Fox still accorded to the ministry an uncertain support, buthe was drifting in thought and speech and action in the inevitabledirection of his genius. The hour came when he took his seat on theOpposition benches, and asserted himself as a {146} formidable opponentof the Government. A quarrel across the Atlantic gave him theopportunity to prove that the principles which men of to-day would callLiberal principles had gained one of their greatest and one of theirmost eloquent champions. {147} CHAPTER LII. ON THE CHARLES RIVER. [Sidenote: 1765-74--Lord Hillsborough] While the battle had been raging over Wilkes at home, the cloud oftrouble had been growing larger and larger abroad. The discontent ofthe American colonies increased in direct ratio with the determinationof the home Government to ignore or to override that discontent. TheKing was fortunate, or believed himself to be fortunate, in findingamong his ministers the aptest instrument he could desire for strikingat the Americans. Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State, was oneof those men who appear to be inspired by a very genius of perversity. He had a power of misunderstanding a political situation andunderestimating a political crisis which, if it could only have beenreversed, would have earned him a foremost place among the statesmen ofhis time. But his perversity was of like temper with the perversity ofthe King, and Lord Hillsborough was admirably qualified to interpretthe King's dislike of his American subjects and to make himself themouthpiece of the anti-Colonial feeling which had been steadily growingup in the House of Commons since the days when the repeal of the StampAct had known its season of brief popularity. The comparative temperance and lucidity of the Rockingham period seemednow indeed remote and memorable. Exasperation and not conciliationappeared to be the persistent note of England's colonial policy. Itwas England's misfortune to be peculiarly ill served on both sides ofthe Atlantic by those who were intrusted with the conduct of colonialaffairs. It would be hard to say whether the provincial governorsabroad or the ministers at home were least capable of understanding thepeople with whom they {148} had to deal, or were most to blame fortheir actions in the face of a danger that their own folly had broughtabout. With a man like Lord Hillsborough for Secretary of State inLondon, with a man like Bernard for Governor of Massachusetts inBoston, it is not to be wondered at now, and it ought not to have beenwondered at then, that the colonies refused to crystallize intotranquillity. Francis Bernard was a man of certain ability, certaingifts, and uncertain good intentions. But he was, as we have seen, aperfervid Tory, a zealous champion of the royal prerogative, a profoundbeliever in the wisdom of minimizing, if not abrogating, the privilegesof which the colonists, and especially the colonists of Massachusetts, were so proud. It was Bernard's peculiar fortune to be not merely thesupporter but the adviser of the English Ministries in almost all theseries of disastrous actions towards their colonies. Bernard wasinspired by a kind of furious folly in his words and deeds. Unhappily, this kind of furious folly was not confined to the colonial governor. Lord Hillsborough was no less foolish and no less dangerous thanBernard. Horace Walpole described Hillsborough as nothing more than apompous composition of ignorance and want of judgment. He certainlywas hopelessly ignorant of America, and he certainly showed a hopelesswant of judgment in his dealings with the Americans. Hillsboroughbacked up Bernard in his blunders and his braggadocio with the lightheart that comes of an empty head. He backed up Bernard with a steadyzeal that would have been splendid if it could have been made to serveany useful purpose. Where Bernard was bellicose and blustering, Hillsborough blustered and was bellicose in his turn. It wasHillsborough's honest, innate conviction that the American colonistswere a poor-spirited, feeble-hearted, and still more feeble-handed packof rascals, braggarts whom a firm front discomfited, natural bondsmento whom it was only necessary, as in the old classic story, to show thewhip to awe them into cringing submission. This theory found itsfittest formula a little later, when Hillsborough, speaking for theGovernment he adorned, and {149} inspired by a more than usual afflatusof folly, declared that "we can grant nothing to the Americans exceptwhat they may ask with a halter round their necks. " It is difficult tobelieve that a reasonable minister, endowed with a sufficient degree ofhuman ability to push his way from office to office and from title totitle, could have known so little of the history of his own country andthe characteristics of his own countrymen as to think that any ofEngland's children were easily to be frightened into ignominioussupplication. But Hillsborough undoubtedly did think so, and he alwaysacted consistently in support of his strong conviction that theindependent colonists were nothing more than a mob of cowardlymalcontents. He acted on this conviction to such good purpose that hisname has earned its place of honor with that of Grenville, ofTownshend, and of Wedderburn, in the illustrious junta who weresuccessfully busy about the sorry business of converting a great empireinto a small one. [Sidenote: 1766--The Mutiny Act] After the Stamp Act had raised its crop of disturbance and disorder, the Government extended to the colonies the measure called the MutinyAct, for the quartering of troops and providing them with necessaries. The Legislature of New York refused to execute this Act, on the groundthat it involved the very principle of taxation which had just beenabandoned by the repeal of the Stamp Act. It made provision for thetroops in its own way, and calmly ignored the Act of Parliament. Parliament retorted in due course by passing a bill by which theGovernor, Council, and Assembly of New York were prevented from passingany law whatsoever until they had complied with the letter and thespirit of the Mutiny Act. This measure was loudly applauded inEngland, even by some who had shown themselves very friendly to thegrievances of the colonists. When New York found that her great deedwas too great, and, bending before the anger of Parliament, reluctantlycomplied with the terms of the Mutiny Act, there were not wantingobservers to point out that the lesson, though only addressed to onecolony, was of significance to all, and that an inevitable surrenderwas the proof {150} of the hopeless inferiority of the colonies whenbrought into direct contest with the supreme power. These jubilationswere as short-lived as they were untimely. If New York was weak andwavered, Massachusetts was more firm of purpose. She sternly refusedto comply with the terms of the Mutiny Act. She went farther still indefiance of the Government. She issued a circular to the othercolonies, calling upon them very frankly and very clearly to co-operatein taking some united course for the purpose of obtaining redress forthe recent acts of the English Government. This was the secondinstance of deliberate combination for a definite end among thecolonies, and it caused much disquiet and more irritation to theGovernment. Lord Hillsborough, always in favor of what he believed tobe firm measures, immediately sent Governor Bernard instructions tohave the offending circular rescinded. Governor Bernard would havebeen only too glad to obey, but obedience was not easy. [Sidenote: 1770--The Boston massacre] Bernard could command, but Massachusetts could refuse to give way. When Bernard retaliated by dissolving the Massachusetts Legislature, colony after colony replied to his action by applauding the conduct ofMassachusetts and condemning Lord Hillsborough. The English Governmentanswered the protests of Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Georgia, and NewYork by creating a new office especially to deal with the colonies, andby appointing Lord Hillsborough to fill the post. Everything thatcould be done on the English side of the Atlantic by those in power toshow those on the American side of the Atlantic that they might look invain for justice or for consideration from authority was done. LordHillsborough was under the impression that a little firmness--what hecalled firmness--would soon bring the colonists to their senses, butevery mail that came across the Atlantic showed that LordHillsborough's theory was unsupported by facts. Now it was the newsthat the seizure of John Hancock's sloop "Liberty" for a breach of therevenue laws had brought about a riot in Boston in which theCommissioners of Revenue had to fly for their lives. Now it was thenews of {151} a great convention in Faneuil Hall to protest against thetroops which Hillsborough, at the request of Bernard; poured intoBoston. Now it was the news of daily increasing hostility between thecitizens of Boston and the British soldiers quartered in the town. Itwas evident, even to Hillsborough, that a dangerous spirit had beenaroused in America, but he still believed that America could be easilyfrightened or chastised into good behavior. He proposed to enforce anold law of Henry the Eighth by which the colonists offending could beshipped across the Atlantic for trial in England. All that was bestand most eloquent in the House of Commons protested against such folly, and did not protest in vain. Some small concessions were made in ahalf-hearted and grudging way to the Americans. Governor Bernard wasrecalled. Some of the obnoxious taxes were repealed, though Lord Northwas not to be persuaded to abandon the tax on tea. These poorconcessions were made known to the colonists in a more than usuallyuncivil and injudicious letter from Lord Hillsborough. The concessionswere too trivial and they came too late. If Boston had its brief dayof rejoicing when Bernard took his departure, the men of Boston weresoon to be occupied with other thoughts than of banners and bonfires. The bad feeling between the people and the military grew worse, and atlast displayed itself in active hostility. March 5, 1770, was amemorable day in the history of Boston. Three thousand miles away LordNorth was moving in Parliament for the repeal of all the Americanduties with the single and fatal exception of the tax on tea. InBoston a small quarrel between some of the citizens and certain Britishtroops under the command of Colonel Preston suddenly blazed up into adangerous collision. Some of the soldiers fired. Several citizenswere killed, several more wounded. There was an angry call to arms, and a general civil attack upon the military was only with difficultyprevented by the Lieutenant-Governor, who ordered the arrest andimprisonment of Colonel Preston and the soldiers under him. These dulyunderwent a trial whose conduct and whose issue reflect the highesthonor {152} upon Boston. The soldiers were defended by no lessprominent a man and conspicuous a patriot than John Adams; and, thanksto John Adams, Colonel Preston and six of his men were acquitted, andonly two of the soldiers convicted of manslaughter. But if the peopleof Boston were willing that even their enemies should be tried fairly, and fairly acquitted, they were not willing to allow the events of thatday to pass into oblivion. A public funeral was accorded to thevictims of the Boston Massacre, and the grim name for a grim deed wasfor long years later solemnly and publicly commemorated. The bad news of the Boston Massacre was followed to England by the badnews of the business of the "Gaspee. " The "Gaspee" was an Englishwarship employed to enforce the Revenue Acts along the Rhode Islandcoast. Its commander, Lieutenant Duddington, took an active delight inhis duty which brought him into perpetual antagonism with a people whoregarded elusion of the revenue laws as their privilege andprerogative. One night the "Gaspee, " pursuing the Providence packet, that had refused to lower her colors in salutation as she passed, ranaground in shallow water and lay fast bound for the night. The news ofher insolence to the Providence packet and of her present plight flewabroad all over Providence. After sundown a number of the townspeopleof Providence, well armed and stern of purpose, rowed from the town tothe stranded "Gaspee, " boarded her, and overcame the ineffectualresistance of her crew. In the scuffle Duddington was badly wounded. His wounds were dressed: he and his men were put on shore with alltheir belongings, and then and there the "Gaspee" was set fire to andwatched till she was consumed. Though a large money reward was offeredfor the apprehension of the offenders, no one of the assailants wasever brought before the King's justice. Misfortunes like the Boston Massacre, disorders like the burning of the"Gaspee, " naturally increased the anti-colonial exasperation of theEnglish King and of ministers like North and Hillsborough. Norththought whatever {153} the King wished him to think. Hillsboroughstill believed that the Americans were only to be listened to when theycame with halters around their necks. King George was convinced thatthe New England mutineers would speedily prove to be lambs when Englandchose to play the lion. At this moment of extreme tension somethinghappened which still further strained the relations between the twocountries. [Sidenote: 1767--The letters of Hutchinson and Oliver] In the year 1767, Hutchinson, who was then Governor-General ofMassachusetts, and Oliver, the Lieutenant-Governor of the colony, wrotecertain letters to Whately, who was private secretary to GeorgeGrenville. These were private letters, confidential letters. Neitherof the writers dreamed that they would ever become public possessions. They were intended to inform and to advise a minister's secretary andthe minister himself. In these letters Hutchinson and Oliver set forthvery fully and frankly their views as to the condition of the coloniesand the better way of dealing with them. Hutchinson and Oliver hadsuffered much at the hands of the people of Boston. It was chancerather than clemency which allowed them to escape with their lives onthat wild August day of 1765. It is probable that their opinion of thepopular party in Massachusetts was colored if not prejudiced bymemories of the Stamp Act riots. Hutchinson and Oliver were all forstrong measures of repression and coercion. To their minds thecolonies were allowed a great deal too much liberty; their people andtheir leaders were not nearly so sensible of the advantage of Britishsupremacy as they ought to be; they were forever asserting their ownrights and privileges in a spirit that could only be properly met by aprompt and comprehensive curtailment of those rights and privileges. The colonists were too free, too proud of their charters andconstitutions. Hutchinson and Oliver, with that fine superiority tocharters and constitutions which characterized so many a royalgovernor, insisted that very considerable changes of government, all inthe direction of coercion, were necessary, in order to make theconceited colonists know their place and to keep {154} them in it. These letters no doubt made their due impression upon Whately and uponGrenville. Letters like them were always being despatched across theAtlantic by governors and deputy governors to persons of importance inEngland, pointing out how ungrateful the colonists were for their manyblessings, and what a good thing it would be for them if a few of theseblessings were taken away. These letters had their influence upon thepersons of importance to whom they were addressed. They formed theminds of ministers; they fed the fancies of the King. They served tobolster up the singular system of ignorance and incapacity which wentby the name of colonial administration. Of course Hutchinson and Oliver and their kind thought that they wereonly writing for ministerial eyes, that they were only whispering intoroyal ears. They no doubt assumed that their letters would be safelypigeon-holed, or still more safely destroyed. It did not occur to themthat they ever could or would be made public, and by their publicationthrust new weapons into the hands of the men whose liberties they wereso zealous to suppress. But the unexpected often, if not always, happens. Whately died in the June of 1772, and after his death theletters he had received, and preserved, from Hutchinson and Oliver, were somehow stolen. We shall probably never know how they were stolenor by whom. It was claimed in later years, but not proved, that Dr. Hugh Williamson was the means of transmitting the letters to Franklin. All that we know for certain is that they came into the hands ofBenjamin Franklin, and that Benjamin Franklin believed it to be hisduty as agent for Massachusetts to make them known to the colony herepresented. He was only allowed to do so under certain strict anddefinite conditions. The source from which they came was to be keptabsolutely secret. They were only to be shown to a few leadingcolonists; they were to be neither printed nor copied, and they were tobe returned promptly. Franklin accepted these conditions, and as faras was in his power observed them. The source from which they came waskept a secret, is still a secret. {155} But Franklin could not verywell enforce, perhaps did not very greatly desire to enforce, thoseconditions upon his friends on the other side of the Atlantic. Hepointed out that, though they might not be printed or copied, theymight be talked about. And talked about they were. The knowledge ofthem set all Boston afire with excitement, filling the colonists withindignation and their opponents with dismay. The Massachusetts Houseof Assembly carried by a large majority a petition to the King, callingfor the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver as betrayers of their trustand enemies to the colony. Hutchinson, soon made aware of thepublicity given to the correspondence, demanded to see the letters thatwere said to come from him. The Assembly permitted this, but accordedthe permission with a show of distrust that was in itself the crudestaffront. A small committee was appointed to take the letters toHutchinson and to show him the letters in their presence, theimplication being that Hutchinson was not to be trusted with theletters except in the presence of witnesses. Hutchinson had to submitto the insult; he had also to admit that the letters were genuine. Hegave, or was understood to give, permission that the letters might bemade public. The letters were promptly made public. Thousands ofcopies were struck off and scattered broadcast all over the continent. [Sidenote: 1772--Temple and Whately fight a duel] England was scarcely less excited than America by the publication. There was a general curiosity to know how the letters had beenpurloined and how they had been made public. The Whately to whom theletters had been addressed had a brother, William Whately. WilliamWhately seems to have been alarmed lest it might be thought that he wasin any way instrumental to the promulgation of the letters. Hediverted any suspicion from himself by accusing another man of thetheft. This other man was a Mr. John Temple, who had once had anopportunity of examining the papers of the late Mr. Whately. Templeimmediately challenged his accuser; a duel was fought, and as far asordeal of battle went, Temple made good his innocence, for he woundedWilliam Whately. At {156} this moment Franklin came forward. Headmitted that the letters had come into his hands, and that he haddespatched them to America. He declined to say how they did come intohis hands, but he solemnly asserted the absolute innocence of bothTemple and Whately of any knowledge of or complicity in thetransaction. A storm of popular anger broke upon Franklin. He wasregarded as a criminal, spoken of as a criminal, publicly denounced asa criminal. Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, was his denunciator, and he chose for the place of his attack the House of Commons, and forthe hour the occasion of the presentation of the petition ofMassachusetts for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver. [Sidenote: 1772--Wedderburn's attack on Franklin] Wedderburn assailed Franklin in a speech whose ability was onlysurpassed by its ferocity. In the presence of an illustrious audience, that numbered among its members some of the most famous men of thattime or of any time, Wedderburn directed against Franklin a fluency ofinvective, a fury of reproach that was almost splendid in its unbridledsavagery. The Privy Councillors, with one exception, rocked withlaughter and revelled in applause as the Solicitor-General pilloriedthe agent from the colony of Massachusetts Bay as a thief, well-nigh amurderer, a man lost to all honor, all decency. The one graveexception to the grinning faces of the Privy Councillors was the faceof Lord North. He sat fixed in rigidity, too well aware of all thatdepended upon the glittering slanders of Wedderburn to find any matterof mirth in them. Only one other man in all that assembly of geniusand rank and fame and wit carried a countenance as composed as that ofLord North, and that was the face of the man whom Wedderburn wasbespattering with his ready venom. Benjamin Franklin, dressed in agala suit, unlike the sober habit that was familiar with him, stood atthe bar of the House and listened with an unconquerable calm to allthat Wedderburn had to say. If it was the hour of Wedderburn'striumph, it was not the hour of Franklin's humiliation. He held hishead high and suffered no emotion to betray itself while Wedderburnpiled insult upon insult, {157} and the majority of his hearers reeledin a rapture of approval. But if Franklin listened with an unmovedcountenance, the words of Wedderburn were not without their effect uponhim. He was human and the slanders stung him, but we may well believethat they stung him most as the representative of the fair andflourishing colony whose petition was treated with the same insolencethat exhausted itself in attacking his honor and his name. The clothes philosophy of Diogenes Teufelsdroch is readily annotated byhistory. There are garments that have earned an immortality of fame. Such an one is the sky-blue coat which Robespierre wore at the heightof his power when he celebrated the festival of the Supreme Being, andin the depths of his degradation when a few days later he was carriedto his death. Such an one is the gala coat of flowered Manchestervelvet which Franklin wore in his day of degradation when he wascompelled to listen with a tranquil visage and a throbbing heart to thefluent invective of Wedderburn, and which was laid away and left unusedthrough five tremendous years, not to be taken from its retirementuntil Franklin wore it again on the day of his greatest triumph, whenhe signed that treaty with England which gave his country her placeamong the nations of the world. Battles had been fought and won in thesaddest of civil wars, the trained and seasoned troops of Europe hadlearned the lesson of defeat from levies of farmers, English generalshad surrendered to men of their own race and their own speech, and anew flag floated over a new world between the day when Franklin wentsmartly dressed to Westminster to hear Wedderburn do his best andworst, and the day when Franklin vent smartly dressed to Paris as therepresentative of an independent America. Franklin's flowered coat isno less eloquent than Caesar's mantle. The man whom the Court party employed to deal the death-blow tocolonial hopes, and to overwhelm with insult and abuse the colonialagent, was a countryman and intimate friend of the detested Bute. Alexander Wedderburn attained the degree of eloquence with which he now{158} assailed Franklin at a cost of scarcely less pains than thosedevoted by Demosthenes to conquer his defects. He had a strong and aharsh Scotch accent, and neither the accent nor the race was gratefulto the London of the eighteenth century. Wedderburn's native tenacityenabled him in a great degree to overcome his native accent. He toiledunder Thomas Sheridan and he toiled under Macklin the actor to attainthe genuine English accent, and his labors did not go unrewarded. Boswell writes that he got rid of the coarse part of his Scotch accent, retaining only so much of the "native wood-note wild" as to mark hiscountry, "which if any Scotchman should affect to forget I shouldheartily despise him, " so that by degrees he formed a mode of speakingto which Englishmen did not deny the praise of eloquence. Successfulas an orator, secure in the patronage of the royal favorite, Wedderburnsought the society of the wits and was not welcomed by them. Johnsondisliked him for his defective colloquial powers and for his supplereadiness to go on errands for Bute. Foote derided him as not onlydull himself, but the cause of dulness in others. Boswell, who admiredhis successful countryman, assumed that his unfavorable appearances inthe social world were due to a cold affectation of consequence, frombeing reserved and stiff. The scorn of Johnson and the sneers of Footewould not have saved him from oblivion; he owes his unlovely notorietyto his assault upon Franklin, with all its disastrous consequences. Many years later, when Wedderburn was Lord Loughborough and ChiefJustice of the Common Pleas, a humorous editor dedicated to himironically a new edition of Franklin's "Rules for Reducing a GreatEmpire to a Small One. " The English Government was now resolved to show that it would temporizeno longer with the factious colonists. If in a spirit of rash andill-repaid good-nature it had repealed certain taxes, at least it wouldrepeal no more. The tax on tea existed; the tax on tea would beenforced; the tax on tea should be respected. The East India Companyhad a vast quantity of tea which it desired {159} to sell. It obtainedfrom the Government the permission to export the tea direct to Americainstead of being obliged to let it pass through the hands of Englishmerchants. Under such conditions the tea could be sold very cheaplyindeed in the colonies, and the Government hoped and believed that thisvery cheapness would be a temptation too keen for the patriotism of atea-drinking city to withstand. [Sidenote: 1773--The Boston "Tea-party"] If the King and the East India Company were resolved to force their teaupon the American colonists, the Americans were no less stubborn intheir resolution to refuse it. The tea-ships sailed the seas, weathered the winds and waves of the Atlantic, only to be, as it were, wrecked in port. The colonists in general, and especially thecolonists of Massachusetts, were resolved not to suffer the tea to belanded, for they knew that once landed it could be sold so cheaply thatit would be hard for many to resist the temptation to buy it. Everyeffort was made to prevent the importation. In many cases theconsignees were persuaded, not wholly without menace, to make publicengagement to relinquish their appointments. Pilots were advised aspatriots to lend no aid to the threatened importation; indeed, it waspretty plainly hinted to some of them that they would best prove theirpatriotism by using their especial knowledge in such a way as wouldmost effectually prevent it. Boston set the example of self-denial andof resistance. In the December of 1773 three ships laden with teaarrived in her port. Their captains soon heard of the hostility totheir mission, were soon warned of the dangers that awaited them. Alarmed at their perils, the captains declared their perfectwillingness to return with their cargoes to England if they werepermitted to do so by the Board of Customs and the persons to whom thetea had been consigned. But the willingness of the captains was of noavail. The consignees insisted that the tea should be delivered tothem, and neither the Custom House nor the Governor would grant thecaptains permission to return. But if the consignees and theauthorities were resolved that the tea should be landed, the citizensof Boston were equally resolved that it should {160} not. Theirfantastic method of giving force to their resolution has made itfamous. In the dusk of a December evening the three tea-ships weresuddenly boarded by what seemed to be a small army of Mohawk Indians inall the terror of their war-paint. These seeming Indians were inreality serious citizens of Boston, men of standing, wealth, and goodrepute, wearers of names that had long been known and honored in theCommonwealth. The frightful paint, the gaudy feathers, the moccasinsand wampum, the tomahawks, scalping-knives, and pistols that seemed soalarming to the peaceful captains of the boarded ships were but thefantastic accoutrements that concealed the placid faces and the portlypersons of many a respectable and respected Boston burgess. The plan had been schemed out by a conclave of citizens around a bowlof punch in Court Street, and was carried out with a success that wasno less remarkable than its peacefulness. The trappings of the red manconcealed the identity of many prominent citizens, friends of JohnHancock and Samuel Adams, their rivals in ability and their peers inenergy. The sham savages were so numerous and so determined that noresistance was offered by the captains or the crews of the vessels. The shore was picketed with sentinels ready to resist any interferenceon the part of any representatives of royal authority. There was nointerference. The conspirators of the punch-bowl and those who obeyedtheir instructions kept their secret so close, and did their work soquickly, that those in authority knew nothing about the business untilthe business was happily over. In about two hours the entire cargo ofthe three tea-ships was dragged out of the hold and flung into the sea. The patriotic citizen who had asked significantly if tea could be madewith salt water was satisfactorily answered by the Mohawks when theycast overboard the last of their three hundred and forty-two chests, and prepared to disappear as rapidly and as mysteriously as they hadcome. During the whole adventure only one man was hurt, who tried tosecrete some of the tea about his person, and who was given a drubbingfor his pains. The Mohawks {161} scattered and disappeared, washedtheir faces, rolled up their blankets, concealed their pistols andaxes, and as many reputable Boston citizens returned to their homes. It is related that some of them on their way home passed by a house inwhich Admiral Montague was spending the evening. Montague heard thenoise of the trampling feet, opened the window and looked out upon thefantastic procession. No doubt some news of what had happened hadreached him, for he is reported to have called out: "Well, boys, youhave had a fine night for your Indian caper. But mind, you've got topay the fiddler yet. " One of the Mohawk leaders looked up and answeredpromptly: "Oh, never mind, squire. Just come out here, if you please, and we'll settle the bill in two minutes. " The admiral considered theodds were against him, that the joke had gone far enough. He closedthe window, leaving the bill to be settled by whoso thought fit, andthe laughing savages swept on to their respectable wigwams. If somevery reputable citizens found a few leaves of tea in their shoes whenthey took them off that night, they said nothing about it, and nobodywas the wiser. So ended the adventure of the Boston Tea-party, whichwas but the prologue to adventures more memorable and more momentous. We learn that at least one of these masquerading Indians survived to solate a date as the March of 1846. Men now living may have claspedhands with Henry Purkitt and David Kinnison and heard from their ownlips the story of a deed that enraged a King, offended Chatham, wasdisapproved of by George Washington, and was not disapproved of byBurke. [Sidenote: 1773--After the Boston "Tea-party"] The news of the Boston Tea-party reached London on January 19, 1774, and was public property on the 21st. Other news little less unpleasantsoon followed. At Charleston tea was only landed to lie rotting indamp cellars, not an ounce of it to be bought or sold. In Philadelphiaa proclamation of December 27, 1773, announced that "THE TEA-SHIP beingarrived, every Inhabitant who wishes to preserve the Liberty of Americais desired to meet at the STATE-HOUSE, This Morning, precisely {162} atTEN O'clock, to advise what is best to be done on this alarmingCrisis. " "What was best to be done" proved to be to compel thetea-ship to return at once with its cargo to England. New York refusedto allow the tea-ship "Nancy" to enter the harbor, and if some tea waseventually landed under the cannon of a man-of-war, it was only to belocked up as in Charleston, and to be left to lie unused. The bad newswas received in England with an unreasoning fury by those whose faultit was, and by those who knew nothing at all about the matter; with agrave indignation by those who, like Pitt, were as resolute to supportthe supremacy of England as to plead for justice to her colonies; withdespair by those who dreamed of an honorable and abiding union betweenthe two peoples; and with applause by those who admired any protestagainst injustice, however vehement and irregular. It is difficult, in reading the debates on the troubles in America, tocredit the sanity of the majority of the speakers. These advocated acolonial policy that should only have commended itself to a session ofBedlamites, and clamored for a treatment of the colonists that mightwell have shocked the susceptibilities of a savage. No Virginianplanter could be more disdainful of the rights of his slaves, or moreresentful at any attempt to assert them, than the average member ofParliament was disdainful of the rights of the American colonists andresentful at their assertion. The English country gentlemen whoapplauded the ministers and who howled at Burke seemed to be absolutelyunconscious that the men of Massachusetts and the men of New York werenot merely like themselves made in the same image, but brethren oftheir own race, blood of their blood and bone of their bone, childrenof the same stock whose resistance to oppression was recorded atRunnymede and Worcester, at the Boyne and at Culloden. Even if thecolonists had been the knaves and fools and cowards that theParliamentary majority appeared to think them, the action of thatmajority was of a kind eminently calculated to lend strength to themost feeble spirit and courage to the most craven heart. The coarse{163} contempt, the brutal menace which were the distinguishingfeatures of all that ill-timed oratory might well have goaded intoresistance men who had been slaves for generations till servility hadgrown a habit. Yet this contempt and menace were addressed to mentrained by harsh experiences to be stubborn in defence and sturdy indefiance, men who had won their liberty from the sea and thewilderness, who were as tenacious of their rights and as proud of theirprivileges as they were tenacious of the soil which they had wrestedfrom the red man and the wolf, and proud of the stately cities whichhad conquered the forest and the swamp. It was the descendants ofMiles Standish and John Smith, of Endicott and Bradford and Underhilland Winslow whom the Squire Westerns of Westminster were ready toinsult and were eager to enslave. It must, however, be remembered that even men who had advocated theclaims of the colonies were, or professed to be, shocked at the daringdeed of the men of Boston. Dean Tucker declared that mutinous colonieswere no use to England, and had better be allowed to depart. Chathamfound the action of the Boston people criminal, prompted by passionsand wild pretences. In America George Washington disapproved of theexploit. [Sidenote: 1774--Closing the port of Boston] The East India Company, pressed by the pinch of financial difficulties, clamored for a revenge that the King was resolved to give them. Underhis instigation Lord North, in the beginning of 1774, introduced thefamous measure for closing the port of Boston against all commerce. The Bill declared that "in the present condition of the town and harborthe commerce of his Majesty's subjects cannot be safely carried onthere. " It was accordingly asserted to be "expedient that the officersof his Majesty's Customs should be forthwith removed from the saidtown. " It was enacted that "from and after the first day of June, 1774, it shall not be lawful for any person or persons to lade, orcause to be laden, or put off from any quay, wharf, or other placewithin the town of Boston, or in or upon any part of the shore of thebay, commonly called the harbor of Boston, into any ship, vessel, boat, etc. , any goods, wares, {164} or merchandise whatsoever . . . Or totake up, discharge, or cause or procure to be taken up or dischargedwithin the town, out of any boat, lighter, ship, etc. , any goods, wares, or merchandise whatsoever . . . Under pain of the forfeiture ofthe goods and merchandise and of the boat, " and so on, in a long anddrastic measure practically intended to ruin Boston. This was what theGovernment thought it well to describe by the word "expedient. " Thiswas not all. Comprehensive alterations of the laws of the provincefollowed. The charter of Massachusetts was changed. The council forthe province, which had hitherto been chosen by the people, was now tobe chosen by the Crown, and the judges of the province were to benominated by the Crown. Another measure authorized the Governor tosend persons implicated in the disturbances to England for trial. Boston and the province were indeed to be heavily punished and sternlybrought to their senses. The King and the King's ministers had hoped fondly, in the old as wellas the new sense of the word, that their action towards the port ofBoston would effectually humble the spirit and crush the opposition ofthat mutinous city. Their scheme was founded upon a nice calculationof the innate baseness of human nature. They argued that the closingof the port of Boston would turn the stream of her commerce in thedirection of other cities, which would be only too glad to enrichthemselves at the expense of their disabled comrade. While theybelieved that the punishment of Boston would thus breed a selfishdisunion in the province of Massachusetts, they trusted also that thespectacle of the severe punishment meted out to Massachusetts wouldhave its wholesome deterring effect upon other colonies and destroy atonce whatever desire for union might exist among them. The King andthe King's ministers were the more deceived. Their ingenious schemeproduced a result precisely the opposite of that which they soconfidently anticipated. The other ports of Massachusetts did notseize with avidity the opportunity for plunder afforded them by thehumiliation of Boston. The other colonies were not driven into discordby the sight of {165} the punishment of Massachusetts. On thecontrary, the ports of Massachusetts refused to take advantage of thedegradation of Boston, and the colonies were urged, and almost forced, into union by what they regarded as the despotic treachery of theEnglish Crown. The most devoted friend, the most enthusiastic advocateof the rights of the American colonists could scarcely have devisedbetter means of drawing them together and welding them into a solidfellowship than those which had been employed by George the Third andhis advisers for the purpose of keeping them apart forever. [Sidenote: 1774--General Gage] An immense number of copies of the Boston Port Bill were sent withgreat rapidity all over the colonies. In the fine phrase which we mustneeds believe to be Burke's, these had the effect which the poetsascribe to the Fury's torch; they set the countries through which theypassed in a flame. At Boston and New York "the populace had copies ofthe Bill printed upon mourning paper with a black border, which theycried about the streets under the title of a barbarous, cruel, bloody, and inhuman murder. " In other places the Bill was publicly burned. All over the Continent great meetings were held, at which, with more orless vehemence of speech, but with a common enthusiasm and a commonindignation, the Bill was denounced, and the determination to resist itdefiantly asserted. When General Gage arrived on his mission ofadministration he found not merely the colony of Massachusetts, but thewhole continent in an uproar. He had to deal with a vast majority ofthe people who were in proclaimed resistance to the Act, and who onlydiffered in the extreme of resistance to which they were preparedimmediately to go, and a minority who either approved or did notaltogether disapprove of the Act. Gage was condemned to the governmentnot of a cowed, humbled, and friendless province, but of a ragingnation, frantic at the infringement of its rights, and sustained in thestruggle it was resolved to make by the cheer and aid of a league ofsister nations. The flame from the Fury's torch had spread with avengeance. Gage was a brave man, an able man, an {166} honorable man;but for Alexander he was a little over-parted. The difficulties he hadto encounter were too great for him to grapple with; the work he wasmeant to do too vast for his hands or the hands of any man. He wassent out to sway a chastened and degraded province; he found himselfopposed by a defiant people, exalted by injustice and animated byattack. {167} CHAPTER LIII. THE "VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. " [Sidenote: 1774--Death of Oliver Goldsmith] In the early spring that followed upon the winter when the Mohawks ofBoston made tea with salt water, at a time when politicians were busyfighting over the Boston Port Bill, and neither side dreamed of theconsequences that could come of a decision, one of the gentlest andsweetest writers of the English speech passed quietly, and somewhatunhappily, away from a world he had done so much to make happy. WithOliver Goldsmith an epoch of literature came to an end, as the yearthat saw his death ended an epoch in the history of the world. Thecharacteristic literature of the eighteenth century, the literaturethat began with Swift and Addison, and Steele and Pope; that boastedamong its greatest the names of Sterne and Richardson, Smollett andFielding, came to its close with the genius of Goldsmith. With the newconditions which were coming over the world a new literature was to becreated. Wordsworth was a child of four, at Cockermouth; Coleridge wasa child of four, at Bristol; over in Germany a young poet, whose namewas unknown in England, had been much influenced by Goldsmith'simmortal story, and was in his turn and time to have a very profoundinfluence over the literature of Goldsmith's adopted country. The yearof Goldsmith's death was the year in which the young Goethe publishedthose "Sorrows of Werther" which marked the birth of a new form ofexpression in art. Goldsmith was born in Ireland, at Pallas, in the county of Longford, inthe early November of 1728. He lived for over forty-five years a lifeof poverty, of vagrancy, of squalor, of foolish dissipation, ofgrotesque vanity, of an {168} industry as amazing as his improvidence, of a native idleness that was successfully combated by a tirelessindustry, of an amazing simplicity that was only rivalled by hisamazing genius. There were a great many contrasting and seeminglyincompatible elements in Goldsmith's queer composition, but his faultswere not of a kind to prevent men from finding him lovable, and, whatever his faults were, they left no stain upon his writings. The writings of Goldsmith are distinguished in English literature, and, indeed, in the literature of the world, by their sweet pure humor, fresh and clear and sparkling as a fountain whose edges the satyr'shoof has never trampled. They charm by their humanity, by their tendercharity, by the nobility of their lesson, a nobility only heightened bythe intense sympathy with the struggles, and sorrows, and errors ofmankind. A new St. Martin of letters, he was ever ready to share hismantle of pity with the sad and sinning. He had himself suffered somuch, and been so tempted and tested, and had retained throughout histrials so much of the serenity of a child, that all his writingsbreathe compassion for frailty and failure with something of aschoolboy sense of brotherhood which softens even his satire. Theflames of London's fiery furnace had blazed and raged about him, but hepassed through them unconsumed. The age in which he lived was not anage of exalted purity, the city wherein he dwelt was scarcely saintly. He lived in some of the most evil days of the eighteenth century, buthis writings and his life escaped pollution. He was not a saint, indeed; he was a spendthrift and he loved his glass, but he was nevertainted with the servile sins of cities. Through all the welteringhorror of Hogarth's London we seem to see him walk with something ofthe freshness of his boyhood still shining on his face. The reflectionof the Irish skies was too bright upon his eyes to let them be dimmedby the squalor and the shame of a squalid and shameful city. [Sidenote: 1774--The friends of Goldsmith] With the true instinct of his fine nature he made his friends andcompanions among the wisest and highest of his time. His intimates andcompanions were Edmund {169} Burke, and Dr. Johnson, and Sir JoshuaReynolds. He had women friends too, as wisely chosen as the men--womenwho were kind to him and admired him, women whose kindness andadmiration were worth the winning, women whose friendship brightenedand soothed a life that was darkened and vexed enough. Mary Horneckand her sister were the stars of his life, his heroines, his idols, hisideals. He has made Mary Horneck immortal as the "Jessamy Bride. " Inhis hours of poverty he was cheered by the thought of her; while helived he worshipped her, and when he died a lock of his hair was takenfrom his coffin and given to her. Thackeray tells a touching littlestory of the Jessamy Bride. She lived long after the death of the manof genius who adored her, lived well into the nineteenth century, and"Hazlitt saw her, an old lady, but beautiful still, in Northcote'spainting-room, who told the eager critic how proud she was always thatGoldsmith had admired her. " Goldsmith was a companionable being and loved all company that was notvicious and depraved. He could be happy at the club in the society ofthe great thinkers and teachers and wits of the time. He could be morethan happy at Barton, in the society of Mary and her sister. But hecould be happy too, in far humbler, far less romantic fellowship. "Iam fond of amusement, " he declares in one of his most delightfulessays, "in whatever company it is to be found, and wit, though dressedin rags, is ever pleasing to me. " There was plenty of wit dressed inrags drifting about the London of that day. Men of genius slept onbulkheads and beneath arches, and starved for want of a guinea, orhaunted low taverns, or paced St. James's Square all night inimpecunious couples for sheer need of a lodging, cheering each other'ssupperless mood with political conversations and declarations that, letcome what might come, they would never desert the Ministry. ButGoldsmith unearthed men of genius whose names nobody ever heard of, andstudied them and made merry with them, and transferred them to hispages for us to make merry with more than a century after Goldsmith{170} fell asleep. We may suspect that Goldsmith never really foundthose wonderful beggars he chronicles. He did not discover them asCabot discovered America; he is their inventor, as the fancy of poetsinvented the Fortunate Islands. Goldsmith's strolling player is as real as Richard Savage, with whom heis contemporary, and it must be admitted that he is a more presentablepersonage. What a jolly philosophy is his about the delights ofbeggary! It has all the humor of Rabelais with no touch of theTouraine grossness. It has something of the wisdom of Aurelius, onlyclad in homespun instead of the purple. The philosophy of contentmentwas never more merrily nor more whimsically expressed. A synod ofsages could not formulate a scheme in praise of poverty more impressivethan the contagious humor of his light-hearted merriment. Thestrolling player has the best of the argument, but he has it because heis speaking with the persuasive magic of the tongue of Oliver Goldsmith. The same pervading cheerfulness, the same sunny philosophy, which is, however, by no means the philosophy of Pangloss, informs all his work. Beau Tibbs boasting in his garret; Dr. Primrose in Newgate; thegood-natured man, seated between two bailiffs, and trying to conversewith his heart's idol as if nothing had happened; Mr. Hardcastle, foiled for the five-hundredth time in the tale of Old Grouse in the GunRoom; each is an example of Goldsmith's method and of Goldsmith'smanner. If Goldsmith did not enjoy while he lived all the admiration, all the rewards that belonged of right to his genius, the generationsthat have succeeded have made amends for the errors of their ancestors. "She Stoops to Conquer" is still the most successful of the stockcomedies. If "The Good-Natured Man" can scarcely be said to have keptthe stage, it is still the delight of the student in his closet. Whatsatires are better known than the letters of the "Citizen of theWorld"? What spot on the map is more familiar than Sweet Auburn? Asfor the "Vicar of Wakefield, " what profitable words could now be addedto {171} its praise? It has conquered the world, it is dear to everycountry and known in every language, it has taken its place byunquestionable right with the masterpieces of all time. [Sidenote: 1774--Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson] "Dr. Goldsmith, " said his most famous friend of the man who was thenlying in the Temple earth--"Dr. Goldsmith was wild, sir, but he is sono more. " This epitaph has been quoted a thousand times, but it mustin no sense be taken as a summing-up of the dead man's career. It wasa rebuke, justly administered, to the critic who at such a moment couldhave the heart to say that Oliver Goldsmith had been wild. Dr. Johnson, who uttered the rebuke, put the same thought even moreprofoundly in a letter addressed to Bennet Langton shortly afterGoldsmith's death. In this letter he announces Goldsmith's death, speaks of his "folly of expense, " and concludes by saying, "But let nothis frailties be remembered; he was a very great man. " These simplewords are infinitely more impressive than the magniloquence of theepitaph which Johnson wrote on Goldsmith. Goldsmith lived in London and he died in London, and he lies buried inthe precincts of the Temple. The noise, and rattle, and roar of Londonrave daily about his grave. Around it rolls the awful music of a greatcity that has grown and swollen and extended its limits and multipliedits population out of all resemblance to that little London whereGoldsmith lived and starved and made merry, and was loved, and dunned, and sorrowed for. The body that first drew breath among the pleasantLongford meadows, which seem to stretch in all directions to touch thesky, lies at rest within the humming, jostling, liberties of theTemple. It is perhaps fitting that the grave of one who all his lifeloved men and rejoiced so much in companionship should be laid in aplace where the foot of man is almost always busy, where silence, whenit comes at all, comes only with the night. There is not a space in the scope of this history to deal, otherwisethan incidentally, with the literature of England in the eighteenthcentury. The whole Georgian era, from its dawn to its dusk, is rich insplendid names in {172} letters as in art. The great inheritance fromthe Augustan age of Anne, the anguish of Grub Street, the evolution ofthe novel, the eloquence of the pulpit and the bar, the triumphs ofscience, the controversies of scholars, the fortunes of the drama, thespeculations of philosophy, the vacillations of the pamphleteer, thejudgments of the critics, the achievements of historians--these arethemes whose intimate consideration is outside the range of this work'spurpose. All that is possible is here and there to linger a little inthe company of some dear and famous figure--a Swift, a Johnson, aGoldsmith, a Sheridan--who stands above his fellows in the world'srenown or in our individual affection, who played while he lived hisconspicuous part on the great stage of public life, or who helpedconspicuously to influence public thought. The selection is, withinthese limitations, inevitably arbitrary, and is given frankly as such. Certain names assert themselves masterfully, and of these Goldsmith'sis one of the most masterful. He added images to daily life and commonthought as Bunyan did or Shakespeare. There is no more need to explainDr. Primrose than there is to explain Mr. Facing-both-ways, and if BeauTibbs is only less familiar as Osric, Tony Lumpkin is to the full asfamiliar as Falstaff. Goldsmith himself is the lovable type of a classthat was often unlovely in the eighteenth century, the needy man ofletters. If he has his lodging in the Grub Street of Dreams, hispresence there brings sunlight into the squalid place, and an infinitehumor, an infinite charity compensate royally for a little finite follyand finite vanity. In the great art he served and the great age headorned Goldsmith stands, not alone, but apart, with the very humandemigods. {173} CHAPTER LIV. YANKEE DOODLE. [Sidenote: 1775--The Philadelphia Congress] An English ministry and an English king were convinced that everythingnecessary to do for the suppression of the mutinous spirit in aturbulent but unwarlike people had been done. The existence of Bostonas a trading port had been abolished; Carthage had been blotted out;there was an English army within the walls of Boston; there was anEnglish fleet in the Charles River. Who could doubt that the cowardlyfarmers whom Sandwich derided, and their leaders, the voluble lawyerswhom Sandwich despised, would be cowed now into quiescence, onlythankful that things were no worse? The best and wisest in Englandwere among those who did doubt, but they were like Benedict in theplay--nobody marked them, or at least nobody responsible for anycontrol over the conduct of affairs. Official confidence was suddenlyand rudely shaken. The lawyers proved to be men of deeds as well as ofwords. The disdained farmers showed that the descendants of the menwho had fought with beasts and with Indians after the manner ofEndicott and Standish had not degenerated in the course of a fewgenerations. Over the Atlantic came news which made the BostonMassacre, the burning of the "Gaspee, " and the Boston Tea-party, seemtrivial and insignificant events. An astounded Ministry learned that aformal Congress of Representatives of the different colonies had beenconvened and had met in Philadelphia, and had drawn up a Declaration ofRights. Chatham admired and applauded their work. To the King and theKing's ministers it was meaningless when it was not offensive. But thecolonists showed that they could do more than meet in Congresses anddraw up {174} splendid State Papers. The next news was of acts of war. Gage schemed a raid upon the stores of powder and arms accumulated bythe disaffected colonists in Concord. Warning of his plan was carriedat night by a patriotic engraver named Paul Revere to every hamletwithin reach of a horse's ride. There was a skirmish at Lexington onthe road to Concord between the King's troops and a body of minute-men, which resulted in the killing and wounding of many of the latter andthe dispersal of their force. An expedition that began with what mightin irony be termed a victory for the British arms ended in a disasteras tragic as it was complete. Concord forewarned had nothing to yieldto the English soldiers who invaded her quiet streets; but thesurrounding country, equally forewarned, answered the invasion bysending bodies of armed farmers and minute-men from every point of thecompass to the common centre of Concord. There was a sharp, shortfight on Concord Bridge, which ended in the repulse of the royal troopsand the death of brave men on both sides. Then the British officerdecided to retreat from Concord. It proved one of the most memorableretreats in history. From behind every tree, every bowlder, everywall, every hedge, enemies trained in the warfare of the wildernesspoured their fire upon the retiring troops. It seemed to one of theofficers engaged in that memorable fight as if the skies rained downfoes upon them, unseen foes only made known by the accuracy of theirmarksmanship and the pertinacity of their veiled pursuit. All the wayfrom Concord the retiring troops fought in vain with an enemy that wasseldom seen, but whose presence was everywhere manifested by theprecision of his aim and the tale of victims that followed each volley. The retreat was becoming a rout when reinforcements sent out fromBoston under the command of Lord Percy stayed an actual stampede. Butit could not stay the retreat nor avert defeat. Lord Percy, who hadmarched out with his bands playing "Yankee Doodle, " in mockery of theAmericans, had to retreat in his turn with no mocking music, carryingwith him the remnant of the invaders of Concord. He {175} and hisforce did not get within touch of Boston and the protection of the gunsof the fleet a moment too soon. Had a large body of insurgents, whocame hurrying in to help their brethren, arrived on the field a littleearlier, Lord Percy and his command must inevitably have been madeprisoners of war. As it was, this one day's business had given successand the confidence that comes of success to the raw colonists, and hadinflicted a crushing defeat upon a body of soldiers who had been led tobelieve that the sight of their scarlet coats would act like a charm totame their untutored opponents. [Sidenote: 1776--Military success of the colonists] Gage only recovered from the shock of this disaster to realize thatBoston was invested by an insurgent army. The victors of the fight andflight from Concord were rapidly reinforced by bodies of men from allparts of the country; their ranks were hourly swelled by levies roughlyarmed but stubbornly resolved. Unpleasant facts forced themselvesthick and fast upon Gage's notice. But yesterday, as it were, he hadimagined that the mere presence of the forces under his command wassufficient to overawe the colonists and settle any show ofinsubordination forever; to-day he had to swallow in shame and anger astaggering defeat. Still Gage did nothing and his enemies accumulated. Royal reinforcements arrived under Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe, to donothing in their turn. But the peasants they despised were not idleand would not allow them to be idle. The English general woke up onemorning to find that under cover of night an important point of vantageoverlooking the town of Boston had been occupied and roughly fortifiedby the rebels. The citizen soldiers who had gathered together todefend their liberties had stolen a march upon the English general. They had occupied the rising ground of Breed Hill, below Bunker's Hill, on the Charlestown side of the Charles River, and had hurriedlyintrenched themselves there behind rude but efficient earthworks. Gagewas resolved that the rebels should not remain long in their newposition. Chance might have allotted them a scratch victory over asmall body of men taken unawares in unfamiliar country {176} and byunfamiliar methods of fighting. But here was a business familiar tothe British soldier; here was work that he did well and that he lovedto do. If the colonists really believed that they could hold BreedHill against troops with whom the taking by storm of strong positionswas a tradition, so much the worse for them. The order was given thatthe rebels must be cleared away from Breed Hill at once, and thewelcome task was given to Lord Howe, in command of the flower of theforces in Boston. It is probable that Howe felt some pity for the rashand foolhardy men whose hopes it was his duty and his determination todestroy. Confident that the enterprise would be as brief as it must bedecisive, Howe prepared to assault, and the battle of Breed Hill began. [Sidenote: 1775--The Battle of Breed Hill] The Breed Hill battle is one of the strangest and one of the bravestfights ever fought by men. On the one side were some hundreds ofsimple citizens, civilians, skilled as individuals in the use of thegun, and accustomed as volunteers, militia, and minute-men to somethingthat might pass for drill and manoeuvre, officered and generalled bymen who, like Warren and Greene, knew warfare only by the bookishtheoric, or by men who, like Putnam and Pomeroy, had taken theirbaptism of fire and blood in frontier struggles with wild beast andwilder Indian. On the other side were some thousands of the finesttroops in the world, in whose ranks victory was a custom, on whosebanners the names of famous battles blazed. They were well trained, well armed, well equipped. They moved at the word of command with themonotonous precision and perfection of a machine. They were led byofficers whose temper had been tested again and again in the sharpexperiences of war, men to whom the thought of defeat was as unfamiliaras the thought of fear. The contrast between the two opposing forceswas vividly striking in the very habiliments of the opponents. The menwho were massed behind the breastworks of Breed Hill were innocent ofuniform, of the bright attire that makes the soldier's life alluring, innocent even of any distinction between officer and private, or, ifthe words seem too formal {177} for so raw a force, between the men whowere in command and the men who were commanded. The soldiers who weremassed below, the force whose duty it was to march up the hill andsweep away the handful in hodden gray and black broadcloth who held it, glittered with all the bravery of color dear to the British army. Splendid in scarlet and white and gold, every buckle shining, everybelt and bandolier as brightly clean as pipeclay could make it, thelittle army under Howe's command would have done credit to a parade inthe Park or a field day at Windsor. The one side was as sad and sombreas a Puritan prayer-meeting; the other glowed with all the color andwarmth of a military pageant. The holders of the hill had come fromtheir farms and their fields in the homely working clothes they wore asthey followed the plough or tended their cattle; the townsmen amongthem came in the decent civic suits they wore behind their desks orcounters. Few men's weapons were fellows in that roughly armed array. Each militant citizen carried his own gun, some favorite weapon, familiar from long practice in fowling, or from frequent servicefurther afield against the bear, the panther, and the wolf. Some ofthe flint-locks were enormously long; many of them would have seemedextremely old-fashioned to an ordnance officer. But every gun was likean additional limb to those practised marksmen, who knew little offiring in platoons, but everything of the patient accuracy which givesthe backwoodsman his unerring aim. The assailants carried the latestweapons approved of by the War Office, and manipulated them with thefaultless unison and unswerving harmony that would have compelled thecompliments of a commander-in-chief at a review. At the top of thehill were some sixteen hundred men, a mob of undisciplinedsharpshooters, few of whom had ever fired a shot in organized warfare. At the bottom of the hill were some four thousand of the finest troopsin the world, stiffened with all the strength that prestige andpractice could give them. It did not seem on the face of it a veryequal combat; it did not seem to the English generals that it ought totake very long to {178} march from the bottom to the top of the hilland make short work of the mutinous peasants on its summit. The bestindeed that the mutinous peasants could hope for when the British wereupon them was to be shot or bayoneted as quickly as possible, for theterms of Gage's proclamation directly threatened with the gallows everyrebel taken with arms in his hands. But at Breed Hill, as at Concord, the unexpected came to pass. TheBritish troops were unable to endure the destructive fire of thecolonists. Again and again they advanced over the incline as calmly asif on parade; again and again they reeled backward with shatteredranks, leaving grim piles of dead upon the fire-swept slope. Theexecution was terrible; regiments that marched up the hill as if tocertain victory fell back from it a mere remnant of themselves, leavingmost of their men and almost all their officers behind. For awhile thefight was a succession of catastrophes to the force under Howe'scommand. It looked as if Breed Hill would never be taken. But therecame a time when the men who held it could hold it no longer. Theirsupply of powder began to run out, and with their means of keeping uptheir fire their power of holding their position came to an end. Thencame a last charge of Howe's rallied forces, this time in the lightestof marching array, a last volley from behind the earth-works, and BreedHill was in the hands of the British. It was captured at the lastwithout much bloodshed, without much loss to its garrison. The smokehung so thick about the enclosure where the rebels had held their ownso long and so well that it was not easy for the bayonets of theconquerors to do much execution, and the defenders of Breed Hillslipped away for the most part under cover of the mist they themselveshad made. Indeed, there was little inclination for pursuit on the partof the victors. They had done what they had been set to do, but theyhad done it at a cost which for the time made it impossible for them toattempt to pursue an advantage so dearly bought. They did not, couldnot know the strength of their enemy; they were content to hold theground which had been won {179} with such a fearful waste of Britishblood. Breed Hill was a nominal victory for the King; it was a realvictory for the rebels, who had shown what an undisciplined force, composed of farmers, trappers, lawyers, shopkeepers, and divines, coulddo against the finest troops in the world. [Sidenote: 1775--The Continental Army] Already insurgent America had an army, and an army of investment. Therebels, whom Gage affected to despise almost as much as he was himselfdespised by General Burgoyne, were massed in numbers unknown to theloyalists before Boston, and the English soldiers were cooped up in thecity they had crossed the seas to command. The colonial army was rudeand rough, but earnest and resolute, and it had evolved generals of itsown making, rough and rude as itself, but able, daring, and fearless. Israel Putnam, who killed a wolf once with his own hands in his wildyouth, gripping it by the throat till he had choked its life out, hadcome to fight against the flag beneath which he had fought so well inthe French wars. Nathaniel Greene had flung down his military booksand caught up the sword, had abandoned the theory for the practice, andwas beginning to make a name. Benedict Arnold, after a life as varied, as shady, and as adventurous as that of any picaroon in a Spanishstory, leaped into fame as a daring spirit by the way in which he andEthan Allen, at the head of a mixed force of Vermonters and NewEnglanders, had taken Fort Ticonderoga, on the great lakes, bysurprise, and had endowed the dawning army with its captured cannon. Prescott, the hero of Breed Hill, was now a veteran soldier; and thenames of Artemas Ward, of Schuyler, of Pomeroy, Heath and Thomas, Sullivan and Montgomery, Wooster and Spencer were becoming more thanmere names to Englishmen in Boston and in London. Two Englishmen heldrank as generals in the crude colonial army--the adventurer CharlesLee, whom some foolish people believed to be the real Junius, andHoratio Gates. There were few thoroughly worthless men in the youngarmy, but it is painful to record that Lee and Gates were eminent amongthem. These were the generals of what was now to be called the {180}Continental Army. Happy in most of them, happy in much, it washappiest of all in this: that it had for its commander-in-chief thenoblest man, who was to prove the greatest soldier, then living in theworld. [Sidenote: 1775--George Washington] When Braddock died, the hero of a hopeless fight and the martyr of hisown folly, the funeral service was read over his body by the youngVirginian soldier who had fought by his side and had warned him againsthis rashness. To men in later years there seemed to be somethingprophetic, with the blended irony and pathos of prophecy, in thepicture of that dead Englishman, his scarlet coat torn and bloody withso many wounds, lying in his grave while his American lieutenant readover him the words that committed so much wasted courage to the earth. At the time and hour the thing signified no more than the price of apetty victory of allied French and Indians, which the Virginian soldierwas soon to avenge. After planting the banner of King George on theruins of Fort Duquesne, Captain Washington sheathed his sword andretired from military into civil life, with as little likelihood asdesire of ever carrying arms again. All he asked and all heanticipated was to live the tranquil life of a comfortable colonialgentleman. After a youth that had been vexed by many experiences ofthe passion of love he had married happily and wisely, and had settleddown to a gracious rural life at Mount Vernon, on the banks of thePotomac River. He wished no better than to be a country gentleman, with a country gentleman's pleasures and pursuits--farming, hunting, fishing--with a country gentleman's friendships for neighbors likehimself. He was a dutiful servant of his State; he was a member of theVirginia Houses of Burgesses for fifteen years after the fall of FortDuquesne, and though he seldom played any part in debate he commandedthe confidence and the esteem of his colleagues and of hisfellow-citizens. He lived and enjoyed a peaceful, honorable, useful, uneventful life, and might have lived it to its end in dignifiedobscurity if a rash and headstrong sovereign over-seas had not foundministers too servile or too foolish to say him nay. {181} The Continental Congress, conscious of Washington's ability, offeredhim the command of its improvised army. Washington accepted the duty, well aware of its gravity, its danger, its awful responsibility. Herefused any pay beyond his actual expenses, and he entered upon astruggle whose difficulties were not all or nearly all due to the enemyin the sternest and noblest sense of duty to his countrymen and to theprinciples of liberty. At first, in his own words, he loathed the ideaof independence. He only took up arms to defend cherished rights; theday was not yet, though the day was not far off, when the Virginiansoldier would renounce his allegiance to the King whose commission hehad carried and to the country from which his race stemmed. Washington's military genius soon showed itself in the use he made ofthe loose, incoherent, disorganized mass of men which was called theContinental Army. It was fortunate for the Continental cause that theEnglish generals, penned up within the walls of Boston, had little ideaof the obstacles Washington had to overcome, the opposition he had toencounter, the sore straits to which the want of everything essentialto a besieging army drove him. But his indomitable courage, hisunfailing coolness, his unconquerable resource overcame a sea oftroubles that might well have swept even a strong man and a bravesoldier off his feet. With regiment after regiment quietly disbandingas their term of service expired; with a plentiful lack of powder, ofarms, of provisions, of uniforms; with a force that at momentsthreatened to dissolve into nothingness and leave him with a handful ofgenerals alone beneath his insurgent flag, Washington never allowed theenemy, and seldom allowed a friend, to guess how near at times he cameto despair. He raised troops somehow; he got provisions somehow;somehow he managed to obtain powder; somehow he managed to obtain arms. The want of weapons was so great that many bodies of men were onlyprovided with pikes, and that Franklin was driven to suggest, andpartly in a spirit of humanity, that American farmers fighting fortheir liberty should be armed with the bows and arrows of the red {182}men, and should strive to renew upon the fields of Massachusetts thesuccesses of their ancestors, the yeomen of Agincourt, with theirclothyard shafts. The generals shut up in Boston knew nothing of the cares that harassedthe mind of Washington. All they knew was that they were closelybeleaguered; that they were cooped up in Boston by a large if irregulararmy, and that they could not get out. They affected, of course, todespise their enemy. At the private theatricals which were given todivert the enforced leisure of Lord Howe an actor who came on as acaricature of Washington, attired like a military scarecrow, neverfailed to please. Burgoyne was confident that sooner or later he couldfind that "elbow-room" the ungratified desire for which has served toimmortalize his name. But neither Howe nor Burgoyne nor any one elsecould dissipate the ragged regiments that invested Boston, nor bafflethe plans of the great soldier who commanded them. For nearly a yearthe world saw with wonder the spectacle of an English army confined inBoston, and an English fleet riding idly in the Charles River. Thenthe end came. Washington, closing in, offered Lord Howe, the Englishgeneral then in command, the choice of evacuation or bombardment. TheEnglish general chose the former. The royal troops withdrew fromBoston, taking with them the loyalist families who had thrown in theirlot with the King's cause. The English ships that sailed from Bostonwere terribly overcrowded with the number of refugees who preferredflight, with all its attendant sorrows, to remaining in a rebelliouscountry. The English fleet sailed away from Boston and the ContinentalArmy marched in. So far the cause of King George was going very badlyindeed; so far the rebellious colonists had failed to justify theconfident prophecies of Lord Sandwich. With any other king and withany other ministers one such year's work would have been enough atleast to induce them to reconsider their position. But the King wasGeorge the Third, and his ministers were what they were, and it wasresolved that the war must go on. {183} [Sidenote: 1775-81--The Declaration of Independence] The war did go on. It lasted for five years more, in spite of theprotests of every truly patriotic Englishman, in spite of proof afterproof that nothing could break the spirit or crush the courage of thecolonists. While in England Fox arrayed himself in the blue and buffthat composed the uniform of the Continental Army, while the Duke ofRichmond made it a point to speak, and with excellent reason, of theContinental Army as "our army, " while the eloquence of Chatham and theeloquence of Burke were launched in vain against campaigns as idle asthey were infamous, the war went stubbornly on. The King and hisministers proposed new measures of repression and expended vast sums inthe purchase of Hessian regiments to dragoon the defiant colonists. Soon all pretence of loyalty had to be abandoned by the Americans. Thestatue of King George was dragged from its place of honor in BowlingGreen, New York, and run into bullets to be used against his Germanlevies. In the summer that followed the evacuation of Boston therebellious colonies proclaimed their independence in the most memorabledeclaration of a people's right ever made by men. This was in 1776. The disastrous war had still five years to run. The fortunes of the war varied. The early victories of the Americanswere followed by a series of defeats which left Philadelphia in thehands of the British, and which would have broken the heart of any manof less heroic mould than Washington. Hope revived with a series ofContinental victories. Aid came to America from abroad. France, Germany, Poland sent stout soldiers to fight for freedom--Lafayette, Von Steuben, Kosciusko. The English general Burgoyne surrendered withall his army at Saratoga. After the winter of 1777, when Washingtonand his army suffered all the rigors of Valley Forge, Franceacknowledged the independence of America, the British evacuatedPhiladelphia, and Paul Jones made himself forever famous by the way inwhich he and his ship "Le Bonhomme Richard, " carried the American warto the coast of England. Again came colonial reverses. A {184} steadysuccession of English successes scarcely struck so hard a blow at theContinental cause as the treason of Benedict Arnold, who entered intonegotiations with the British to betray his command. Washington hadtrusted and loved Arnold like a brother. "Whom can I trust now?" heasked in momentary despair when the capture of an English officer. Major André, and the flight of Benedict Arnold to the British linesrevealed to him an undreamed-of treason which had threatened toundermine the colonial cause. But Benedict Arnold's crime had for itsonly result the death of a better man than himself, of Major André, whohad by the laws of war to suffer death as a spy. There were othertraitors and semi-traitors in the American army: Lee was certainly thefirst; Gates was almost, if not quite, the second. But Lee and Gatesfailed to do the mischief to which their base jealousy of Washingtonprompted them. The right cause triumphed. In 1781 another Britisharmy surrendered, the army of Cornwallis, at Yorktown. Even North wasforced to recognize that this crushing disaster to the royal hopes andthe royal arms practically ended the war. It was suspended in thefollowing year, and in 1783, after much negotiation, which at timesthreatened to come to nothing, a treaty of peace was signed in France, and the American Republic took its place among the nations of theearth. It was for these negotiations that Franklin, as we have said, brought out from its obscurity that gala suit which he had worn for thelast time when he stood at the bar of the House of Commons and listenedto the brutal and foolish assaults of Wedderburn. Many days had passedsince that day. So ended one of the most unjust and one of the most foolish wars everwaged by England. It must never be forgotten that the war was in nosense an English war. The English people as a whole had then no voiceto express itself one way or the other. Of those Englishmen whosevoices had to be heard, the best and the wisest were as angry in theirdenunciations of the crime of the King and the King's ministers, and ascordial in their {185} admiration of Washington and his companions, asif they had been members of that Continental Congress which first inPhiladelphia proclaimed the existence of a new nation. [Sidenote: 1778--Death of the Earl of Chatham] The fatal war which had cost the English King the loss of his greatestcolonies, which had spilt a vast amount of blood and wasted a vastamount of treasure in order to call into being a strong and naturallyresentful rival to the power of England, must be said also to have costthe life of the greatest English statesman of the century. The geniusof Chatham had never been more nobly employed than in protesting withall the splendor of its eloquence against the unjust war upon theAmericans and the unjust deeds which had heralded the war. But time, that had only swelled the ranks of the wise and sane who thought asChatham had thought and found their own utterance from the fire of hiswords, had wrought a change in the attitude of a great statesman. Harassed by the disease that racked his body, the mind of Chatham hadaltered. The noble views that he had maintained in defiance of aheadstrong king and a corrupt ministry had changed in the face of thesuccession of calamities that had fallen upon his country. The successthat he had desired for the insurgent arms had been accorded, and hecame to despair at the consequence of that success. He had beengranted his heart's desire in full measure, and the gratificationchoked him. When it came to be a question of conceding to thecolonists that formal recognition of an independence which they hadalready won, the intellect of Chatham revolted against the policyhimself had fostered. He forgot or he forswore the principles whichanimated Burke, which animated Fox, which guided the course ofRockingham and inspired the utterances of Richmond. All he could seewas an England humiliated by many defeats, an England threatened bymany terrible alliances, and in the face of humiliation and of menacehe forgot that both alike were the inevitable, the well-deserved fruitof injustice. Remembering that he had helped to make England great, herefused to remember that England would have been still greater if shehad {186} followed the honorable course his wisdom had made plain toher. His proud, unhappy spirit could not consent to her dismemberment, a dismemberment which seemed to his fading intellect to be theequivalent to her ruin. He came from his sick bed, a ghastly image ofdecay, to offer the desperate protest of a dying man against surrenderto the mutiny his own eloquence had fanned. "Come the four quarters ofthe world in arms and we will shock them. " The spirit of Faulconbridgewas strong in the ruined body of the statesman who was carried to hisseat in the House of Lords by the son who bore his name and by the LordMahon who had married his daughter. His eagle face was turned againstthe men who had been his colleagues. His trembling hand pointed atthem in condemnation. He gasped out a few sentences, almostinarticulate, almost inaudible, before he reeled in a fit upon the armsof those about him. He was carried from the House; he was carried toHayes, and at Hayes a few weeks later the great career came to an end. His last battle was at least heroic. If his stroke was struck on thewrong side and for a cause his prime had done so much to baffle, it isnot necessary to attribute his perversion entirely to the insidiousravages of the malady that had clouded his whole life. He could notbear to see the country that was in so eminent and so intimate a sensehis country yield even to claims that were conspicuously right and justat the command of a league between England's rebellious children andEngland's enemy, France. There broke his mighty heart. In ChathamEngland lost one of the greatest of her statesmen, one of the mostsplendid of her sons. His life was passionately devoted to hiscountry, his career one long struggle against a peculiarly bigoted, stubborn, and unwise King. Always hated by his enemies, oftenmisunderstood by his friends, he showed while he lived a steadfastfront alike against the enemies of England abroad and those worseenemies of England at home who filled the throne and the places aboutthe throne. He was buried with great pomp and honor at Westminster, leaving behind him not merely the memory of an illustrious name, {187}but a name that the second generation was still to make illustrious. [Sidenote: 1781--England and her lost colonies] The folly of the King and the servility of his ministers resulted inwhat seemed to be almost an irredeemable catastrophe for England. Eventhose Englishmen who most sympathized with the struggle for Americanindependence could not but feel a regret that men who might have beenamong the most glorious citizens of a great and united empire should bethus recklessly forced into an enmity that had deprived England of itsmost splendid possessions. The enemies of England, many and eager, believed her day was done, that her sun was setting, that neither herpower nor her prestige would ever recover from the succession ofdisasters that began at Lexington and that ended in Paris. But thevitality of the country was too great to be seriously impaired even bythe loss of the American colonies. From a blow that might well havebeen little less than fatal the country recovered with a readiness anda rapidity that was amazing. Men who in their youth heard their eldersspeak with despair of the calamity that had befallen their countrylived to old age to learn that the wound was not incurable, and thatEngland was greater, richer, prouder, and more powerful than she hadever been before. If she had lost the American colonies she hadlearned a lesson in the loss. The blow that might have stunned onlyserved to rouse her to a greater sense of her danger and a livelierconsciousness of her duty. If she had suffered much from rashness shewas not going to suffer more from inaction, and it seemed as if everysource of strength in the kingdom knit itself together in the commonpurpose of showing to the world that England still was England, although a part of her empire had passed away from her forever. Therewas no glory to be got for England out of the American war; it waswrong from first to last, wrong, unjust, and foolish, but when it endedit did not find her crippled, nor did it leave her permanentlyenfeebled in temper or in strength. We may gather some idea of what risk wise men felt they were runningfrom a famous speech of Edmund {188} Burke. He was striving to staythe determination of the Ministry to declare war upon the Americancolonies. He wished his hearers to appreciate the progress thatAmerica had made within living memory. He called imagination to hisaid. He spoke of a statesman then living in the late evening of anhonorable life. He pictured that statesman in the promise of his earlydawn, saluted by the angel of his auspicious youth, and given the powerto see into the future, so far as to the hour when Burke was speaking. "What, " said Burke, "if while he was gazing with admiration on the thencommercial grandeur of England the genius should point out to him alittle speck, scarce visible in the mass of the nation's interest, andshould tell him, 'Young man, there is America, which at this day servesfor little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men anduncouth manners, yet before you taste of death will show itself equalto the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase ofimprovement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession ofcivilizing conquests and civilizing settlements in a series ofseventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by Americain the course of a single life!' If this state of his country had beenforetold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity ofyouth and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm to make him believe it?Fortunate man, he has lived to see it. " If the genius of prophecycould have stood by Burke's shoulder then, and illuminated his noblesoul with the knowledge that is the common possession of mankindto-day, would it not have required all the sanguine credulity, all thedivine enthusiasm of genius to make him believe it? [Sidenote: 1732-99--The death of Washington] The war that gave the world a new nation and a republic greater thanRome added one of the greatest names, and perhaps the noblest name, tothe roll-call of the great captains of the earth. No soldier of allthose that the eyes of Dante discerned in the first circle, not even"Caesar, all armored with gerfalcon eyes, " adorns the annals ofantiquity more than George Washington illuminates the {189} lastquarter of the eighteenth century. His splendid strength, his sweetausterity, his proud patience are hardly to be rivalled in the previoushistory of humanity, and have perhaps only been rivalled since his dayby children of the same continent and of the same southern soil, whosacrificed qualities much akin to his own on a cause that, unlike his, was not the cause of freedom. "First in peace, first in war, and firstin the hearts of his country-men. " The phrase of Lee has been wornthreadbare with iteration since it was first uttered, but it alwaysrings true of the high-minded, unfaltering soldier and honorable, simple gentleman whose genius in war and whose modesty in peace madethe republic of America an enduring fact in history. Long after thegreat soldier and good man had been laid to rest an English poet didhim justice, and no more than justice, by writing that "the first, thelast, the best, the Cincinnatus of the West, whom envy dared not hate, bequeathed the name of Washington to make man blush there was but one. "Washington was made the first President of the American Republic in1789, after resolutely resisting all suggestions to make himself kingof the new commonwealth. He served for two terms of four years each, and then retired into private life, unembittered by the cruel andstupid ingratitude of the few and unspoiled by the reasoned andgrateful homage of the many. He died in 1799 in his quiet home inMount Vernon, while the King who still regarded him as a rebel had manyyears of his unquiet reign to live. {190} CHAPTER LV. THE GORDON RIOTS. [Sidenote: 1778-80--Sir George Savile's Catholic Relief Bill] In the year 1778 Sir George Savile earned for himself an honorabledistinction by passing his measure for the relief of Roman Catholics. Sir George Savile was a man of advanced views; he fought gallantly inthe House of Commons through five successive Parliaments, in which herepresented York County, for all measures which he believed to besincerely patriotic, and against all measures which he believed to beopposed to the honorable interests of his country. He gained thelaurel of praise from Burke, who, in one of his famous Bristolspeeches, spoke of him as a true genius, "with an understandingvigorous, acute, relined, distinguishing even to excess; andilluminated with a most unbounded, peculiar, and original cast ofimagination. " The man whom Burke thus generously praised deserved thepraises. He strove earnestly against the American war. Heenthusiastically supported Pitt's motion in 1783 for a reform inParliament. He was the author of an admirable Bill for the Limitationof the Claims of the Crown upon Landed Estates. But his name ischiefly associated with his Bill for Catholic Relief, both because ofthe excellent purpose of the measure itself, and because of theremarkable outburst of fanaticism which followed it. Sir George Savile's measure did away with certain restrictions, certainbarbarous restrictions, as they now seem, upon English subjectsprofessing the Catholic faith. The famous Act of the eleventh andtwelfth years of King William the Third, the Act known as the Act forthe Further Preventing the Growth of Popery, had instituted certainvery harsh penal enactments against Catholics. {192} That Act SirGeorge Savile proposed largely to repeal. This was a measure of reliefof no great magnitude, but it did at least recognize the commonhumanity of Catholic Englishmen with Protestant Englishmen; it did atleast allow to Catholic Englishmen some of the dearest and most obviousrights of citizenship. The savage penal laws which for so longafflicted the sister island of Ireland were tempered and abrogated inthis measure as far as England was concerned, and rumor spread itabroad that a similar relief was soon to be extended to the Catholicsof Scotland. Straightway a Bill which had passed both Houses without asingle negative aroused the fiercest opposition beyond the Border. Theannouncement of the recall of the Stuarts could not have spread agreater panic through the ranks of the Scottish Protestants. A violentagitation was set on foot, an agitation which could not have been moreviolent if the Highlanders had once again been at the gates ofEdinburgh. An alarmist spirit spread abroad. All manner ofassociations and societies were called into being for the defence of afaith which was not menaced. Committees were appointed to inflamefaction and serve as the rallying points of bigotry. Sectarian booksand pamphlets of the most exaggerated and alarming kind were sownbroadcast all over the country. The result of this kind of agitationshowed itself in a religious persecution, which gradually developedinto a religious war. The unfortunate Catholic residents in Edinburgh, in Glasgow, and in other great Scottish towns found themselves suddenlythe victims of savage violence at the hands of mobs incited by theinflammatory utterances and the inflammatory propaganda of theProtestant committees. In the face of the disorder which a suggestionof mercy aroused in Scotland, the Government seemed to take fright, andto abandon all thought of extending the clemency of the Relief Bill toScotland. But the Scottish agitation against the Catholics soon spread across theBorder, soon directed itself, not against the imaginary Bill which itmight be the intention of the Government to pass, but against theactual Bill which the {192} Government had passed for the benefit ofEnglish Catholics. The bigoted bodies, societies, and committees inScotland soon found their parallels in England. The English ProtestantAssociation rose into being like some sudden evocation of a wizard, andchose for its head and leader the man who had made himself conspicuousas the head and leader of the movement in Scotland--Lord George Gordon. [Sidenote: 1750-80--Lord George Gordon] Lord George Gordon lives forever, a familiar figure in the minds of theEnglish-speaking race, thanks to the picture drawn by Charles Dickens. Englishmen know, as they know the face of a friend, the ominous figure"about the middle height, of a slender make and sallow complexion, withan aquiline nose, and long hair of a reddish brown, combed perfectlystraight and smooth about his ears and slightly powdered, but withoutthe faintest vestige of a curl. " It is a living portrait of thatsolemn gentleman in the suit of soberest black, with those bright largeeyes in which insanity burned, "eyes which betrayed a restlessness ofthought and purpose, singularly at variance with the studied composureand sobriety of his mien, and with his quaint and sad apparel. " Itfits well with all that we know of Lord George Gordon, to learn thatthere was nothing fierce or cruel in his face, whose mildness and whosemelancholy were chiefly varied by a haunting air of "indefinableuneasiness, which infected those who looked upon him and filled themwith a kind of pity for the man: though why it did so they would havehad some trouble to explain. " Such was the strange fanatic whose namewas destined to be blown for a season throughout England, who was fatedto stand for a moment visible in the eyes of all men, the idol ofintolerance, the apostle of violence, of murder, and of fire, and thento fall most pitiably, most pitifully into the dust. Lord George Gordon was still a young man when he became leader of theanti-Catholic agitation. He would seem in our days a very young man, for, as he was born in 1750, he was only thirty when the agitationreached its height. But a man of thirty was counted older than he{193} would not be reckoned, in an epoch when it was possible for ayoung man just come of age to lead the House of Commons. Lord GeorgeGordon had led a somewhat varied life. He had been in the navy, andhad left the service from pique, while the American war was still inits earliest stages, in consequence of a quarrel with Lord Sandwichconcerning promotion. The restless energy which he could no longerdedicate to active service he resolved most unhappily to devote topolitical life. He entered Parliament as the representative of theborough of Ludgershall, and soon earned for himself a considerablenotoriety in Westminster. He had very fierce opinions; he attackedeverybody and everything; his vehemence and vituperation were seasonedwith a kind of wit, and he made himself, if not a power, at least animportant factor in the House of Commons. Indeed, it passed into akind of proverb at St. Stephen's that there were three parties in theState--the Ministry, the Opposition, and Lord George Gordon. Parliament had seen before, and has seen since, many a politicianfighting thus like Hal o' the Wynd for his own hand, but no one soinfluential for a season or so pernicious in his influence as LordGeorge Gordon. It seems quite clear to those who review so strange a career at thisdistance of time that Lord George Gordon was of deranged intellect. Itdoes not need the alleged contrast between his professions and hispractice to enforce this conclusion. Many men have affected thereligious habit and the religious bearing while their lives wereprivately profligate without deserving to be called insane except inthe sense in which any criminal excess may be regarded pathologicallyas a proof of madness. Even if it were true that the long-haired andblack-habited George Gordon were the debauched profligate that HannahMore and Horace Walpole maintained him to be, he might findfellow-sinners of unquestioned sanity. But the conduct of his publiclife goes to prove that his wits were diseased. His behavior in theHouse, when it was not intolerably tedious, was characterized by agrotesque buffoonery which men looked upon as laughable {194} orpitiable according to their tempers, but which they had not yet learnedto look upon as dangerous. When he denounced the King as a Papist, when he declared that the time would come when George Gordon would beable to dictate to the Crown and Parliament, when he occasionallyinterrupted his wild utterances to break into floods of tears, mensneered or yawned or laughed. They were soon to learn that the man wassomething more than divertingly contemptible. In the excitement that followed on the passing of the relief measureLord George Gordon found his opportunity for being actively noxious. Agloomy fanaticism in Scotland took fire at the fear lest kindred reliefshould be extended to the North Briton, and, as we have said, displayeditself in savage speech and savage deed. In the press and from thepulpit denunciations of the Catholics streamed. The Synod of Glasgowsolemnly resolved that it would oppose any Bill brought into Parliamentin favor of Scottish Catholics. In Edinburgh and in Glasgow houseswere wrecked and lives menaced. In Glasgow a worthy potter, Mr. Bagnal, who had brought from Staffordshire its famous art, had hisproperty wholly destroyed. In Edinburgh the house of a Catholic priestwas wrecked in obedience to a brutal handbill which called upon itsreaders to "take it as a warning to meet at Leith Wynd, on Wednesdaynext, in the evening, to pull down that pillar of popery lately erectedthere. " The "pillar of popery" was the dwelling occupied by thepriest, which was duly wrecked in obedience to the bidding of thenameless "Protestant" who signed the manifesto. It is curious to notea postscriptum to the handbill, which ran thus: "Please to read thiscarefully, keep it clean, and drop it somewhere else. For King andcountry. --UNITY. " The means which were adopted to spread fanaticism inScotland were carefully followed when the time came for carrying theagitation into England. [Sidenote: 1778-80--The English "Protestant Association"] It was indeed not necessary to be a Catholic to call down the fury offanatical persecution. To have expressed any sympathy for Catholicism, to have taken part in any way, {195} no matter how indirect, in theadvocacy of the relief measure, was enough to mark men out forvengeance. Dr. Robertson, the historian, was threatened because headvocated tolerance in religious matters. A lawyer named Crosbie wasdenounced merely because he had in the way of his regular businessdrawn up the Bill intended for Parliament. It was inevitable that theaction of intolerance in Scotland should come before the notice ofParliament. Wilkes, always ostentatious in the cause of liberty, called upon Dundas to bring in his relief measure for Scotland. WhenDundas declared that it was better to delay the measure until coolerjudgment might prevail, Wilkes denounced him for allowing Parliament totruckle to riot, and the denunciation found support in the actions ofBurke and of Fox. Lord George Gordon had found his opportunity. Heassailed Fox; he assailed Burke. He declared that every non-Catholicin Scotland was ready to rise in arms against Catholic relief, and thatthe rebels had chosen him for their leader. He raged and vapored andthreatened on the floor of the House. But he did more than rage andvapor and threaten. Whether of his own motion, or prompted by others, he formed a "Protestant Association" in England. Of this, as of thesimilar Scottish Association, he was declared the head, and thisaccumulation of honors wholly overthrew his intelligence. An amiablewriter has declared that "it would be much beneath the dignity ofhistory to record the excesses of so coarse a fanatic but for the fatalconsequences with which they were attended. " The amiable defender of adetestable phrase does not understand that it was the excesses of thefanatic that led to the fatal consequences, and that Lord GeorgeGordon, as the ostensible head and conspicuous cause of one of thegravest events of the history of England in the eighteenth century, isin no sense beneath the "dignity of history. " The business of historyis with him and with such as he, as well as with the statelier, austerer figures who sanely shape the destinies of the State. Therewas plenty of fanaticism abroad in England; it was reserved for LordGeorge Gordon to bring it together into {196} a single body, toorganize it, and to employ its force with a terrible if temporarysuccess. He issued an insane proclamation calling upon men to uniteagainst Catholicism; he held a great meeting of the ProtestantAssociation at Coachmakers' Hall, at which with a kind ofBedlamite-brilliancy he raved against Catholicism and lashed thepassions of his hearers to delirium. It was resolved to hold a hugemeeting of the Protestant Association in St. George's Fields on June 2. At its head Lord George Gordon was to proceed to the House of Commonsand deliver the petition against Catholic relief. All stanchProtestants were to wear blue cockades in their hats to mark out thefaithful from the unfaithful. [Sidenote: 1780--The Lord George Gordon riots] On June 2, 1780, the meeting was held. Lord George Gordon hadannounced in his speech at the Coachmakers' Hall that he would notdeliver the petition if the meeting were less than twenty thousandstrong. The number of Lord George's limit was enormously exceeded. Itis said that at least sixty thousand persons were present in St. George's Fields on the appointed day, and some chroniclers compute thenumber at nearer one hundred thousand than sixty thousand. It iscurious to note in passing that a Roman Catholic cathedral stands nowon the very site where this meeting was held. After the meeting hadassembled it started to march six abreast to Westminster. The hand ofthe great romancer who has made George Gordon live has renewed thatmemorable day, with its noise, its tumult, its tossing banners, itsshouted party cries, its chanted hymns, its military evolutions, itsinsane enthusiasms, its dangerous latent passions. Gibbon, who wasthen a member of the House of Commons, declared that the assemblageseemed to him as if forty thousand Puritans of the days of Cromwell hadstarted from their graves. The forty thousand Puritans were escortedby and incorporated with a still greater body of all the ruffianism andscoundrelism that a great city can contribute to any scene of popularagitation. What fanaticism inspired rowdyism was more than ready toprofit by. The march to Westminster and the arrival at Westminsterform one of {197} the wildest episodes in the history of London. Bythree different routes the blue-cockaded petitioners proceeded toWestminster, and rallied in the large open spaces then existing infront of the Houses of Parliament. The innate lawlessness of theassemblage soon manifested itself in a series of attacks upon themembers of both Houses who were endeavoring to make their way throughthe press to their respective Chambers. It is one more example of theeternal irony of history that, while the mob was buffeting members ofthe Lower House, and doing its best to murder members of the UpperHouse, while a merciless intolerance was rapidly degenerating into amerciless disorder, the Duke of Richmond was wholly absorbed in aspeech in favor of annual parliaments and universal suffrage. Memberafter member of the House of Lords reeled into the Painted Chamber, dishevelled, bleeding, with pale face and torn garments, to protestagainst the violence of the mob and the insult to Parliamentaryauthority. Ashburnham, Townshend and Willoughby, Stormont andBathurst, Mansfield, Mountfort, and Boston, one after another came in, dismayed victims of and witnesses to the violence that reigned outside. Bishop after bishop entered to complain of brutal ill-treatment. Butthe Duke of Richmond was so wrapped up in his own speech and itsimportance that he could only protest against anything whichinterrupted its flow. It is agreeable to find that imbecility andterror did not rule unchallenged over the Upper House that day. Oneaccount, that of Walpole, who is always malicious, represents LordMansfield as sitting upon the woolsack trembling like an aspen. Another, more creditable and more credible, declares that LordMansfield showed throughout the utmost composure and presence of mind. About the gallantry of Lord Townshend there can be no doubt. When heheard that Lord Boston was in the hands of the mob, he turned to theyounger peers about him, reminded them of their youth, and the factthat they wore swords, and called upon them to draw with him and fighttheir way to the rescue of their brother peer. It was at least agallant if a hopeless suggestion. What could the {198} rapiers of ascore of gentlemen avail against the thousands who seethed and ravedoutside Westminster Hall? The solemn Duke of Richmond interfered. Ifthe Lords went forth to face the mob he urged that they should go as aHouse and carrying the Mace before them. On this a debate sprang up, while the storm still raged outside. A Middlesex magistrate, called tothe bar in haste, declared that he could only offer six constables tomeet the difficulty. A proposal to call upon the military power wasfiercely opposed by Lord Shelburne. Under such conditions the Peersdid nothing, and in the end retired, leaving Lord Mansfield alone inhis glory. [Sidenote: 1780--Lord George Gordon at Westminster] If things went badly in the Upper House, they went still worse in theLower House. While members trying to gain entrance suffered almost asmuch ill-treatment as the Peers at the hands of the mob, the Commons'House was much more closely leaguered than the House of Lords. For itwas in the Commons' House that the petition was to be presented. Itwas in the Commons' House that Lord George Gordon, pale, lank-haired, black-habited, with the blue cockade in his hat, was calling upon theCommons to receive immediately the monstrous petition. Every entranceto the House was choked with excited humanity. The Lobby itself wasoverflowing with riotous fanatics, who thundered at intervals upon theclosed doors of the Chamber with their bludgeons. Shrieks of "NoPopery, " and huzzas for Lord George Gordon filled the place with ahideous clamor strangely contrasting with the decorum that habituallyreigned there. Lord George Gordon did not cut a very heroic figure on that memorableday at Westminster. He was perpetually rushing from his place to thedoor of the House to repeat to rowdyism in the Lobby what differentmembers had said in the debates. At one time he denounced the Speakerof the House; at another, Mr. Rous; at another, Lord North. Occasionally he praised a speaker, and his praise was more ludicrousthan his condemnation. At one moment, when Lord George was at the doorcommunicating with the crowd, Sir Michael le Fleming came up to him{199} and tried to induce him to return to his seat. Lord Georgeimmediately began caressing Sir Michael le Fleming in a childish, almost in an imbecile way, patting and stroking him upon the shoulders, and expressing inarticulately a pitiful kind of joy. He introduced SirMichael le Fleming to the mob as a man who had just been speaking forthem. A little later Lord George again addressed the crowd, this timefrom the little gallery, when he stimulated their passions by appeal tothe example of the Scotch, who had found no redress till they hadpulled down the Mass-houses. Probably no stranger scene has ever beenwitnessed at Westminster than this of the pale-faced fanatic andmadman, with the blue cockade in his hat, running backward and forwardfrom the Chamber to the door of the House, delivering inflammatoryaddresses to the mob that raged in the Lobby, and stimulating them byhis wild harangues to persevere in their conduct, and to terrify theKing and the Parliament into obedience to their wishes. The names ofthe members who spoke against the petition he communicated to theshrieking throng; their utterances he falsely reported. It is deeply interesting to note a fact which has escaped the notice ofnot merely the most conspicuous historians of the time, but also thekeen eye of the great novelist who studied the event. It is recordedin the "Annual Register" for the year 1780 that among the members whosenames Lord George Gordon denounced to the raving crowd in the Lobby thename of Mr. Burke had especial prominence. It is curious to picturethe imbecile fanatic standing upon the steps leading to the Strangers'Gallery and invoking the fury of the fanatic and the lawless againstthe greatest public man of his age. For a while Lord George Gordon was suffered to rant unimpeded. At lastColonel Holroyd, seizing hold of him, threatened to move for hisimmediate committal to Newgate, while Colonel Gordon, with a blunterand yet more efficacious eloquence, declared that if any of the riotersattempted to force his way past the door of the House, he, ColonelGordon, would run his sword through {200} the body, not of the invader, but of Lord George Gordon. As Colonel Gordon was a kinsman of LordGeorge's, it may be that Lord George knew sufficient of his temper tobelieve his word and was sufficiently sane to accept his warning. Atleast there came a pause in his inflammatory phrases, and shortlyafterward the news of the arrival of a party of Horse and Foot Guardsdid what no persuasions or entreaties could effect. It cleared theLobby and the approaches to the House. Under conditions of what mightbe called comparative quiet the division on Lord George Gordon'sproposal for the immediate reception of the petition was taken, andonly found six supporters against a majority of one hundred andninety-two. [Sidenote: 1780--Spread of the Gordon Riots] But mischief was afoot and began to work. The mob that had beendispersed from Westminster broke up into different parties andproceeded to expend its fury in the destruction of buildings. Thehustling of peers, the bonneting of bishops, the insulting of membersof Parliament, all made rare sport; but the demolition of Catholicplaces of worship promised a better, and suggested exquisitepossibilities of further depredation. The Catholic chapels in DukeStreet, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and in Warwick Street, Golden Square--theone belonging to the Sardinian, the other to the BavarianMinister--were attacked, plundered, set fire to, and almost entirelydestroyed. The military were sent for; they arrived too late toprevent the arson, but thirteen of the malefactors were seized andcommitted to Newgate, and for the night the mob was dispersed. It wasnot a bad day's work for the rioters. Parliament had been insulted, the Government and the very Throne menaced. In two parts of the townCatholic buildings, under the protection of foreign and friendlyPowers, stood stripped and blackened piles. Riot had faced thebayonets of authority--had for a moment seemed ready to defy them. Yetat first nobody seems to have taken the matter seriously or gauged itsgrave significance. Neither the Catholics, against whom the agitationwas levelled, nor the peers and prelates and members of Parliament whohad been so harshly treated seemed to understand the {201} sternness ofthe situation. There was a sense of confidence in law and order, afeeling of security in good administration, which lulled men into afalse confidence. This false confidence was increased by the quiet which reigned overSaturday, June 3. Parliament met undisturbed. An address of LordBathurst's, calling for a prosecution of "the authors, abettors, andinstruments of yesterday's outrages, " was carried after a rambling andpurposeless debate, and the House of Lords adjourned till the 6th, apparently convinced that there was no further cause for alarm. Thispublic composure was rudely shaken on the following day, Sunday, June4. The rioters reassembled at Moorfields. Once again the buildingsbelonging to Catholics were ransacked and demolished; once againincendiary fires blazed, and processions of savage figures decked inthe spoils of Catholic ceremonial carried terror before them. The LordMayor, Kennett, proved to be a weak man wholly unequal to the peril hewas suddenly called upon to face. There were soldiers at hand, butthey were not made use of. One act of resolution might have stayed thedisorder at the first, but no man was found resolute enough to performthe act; and rapine, raging unchecked, became more audacious and moredangerous. On the Monday, though the trouble grew graver, nothing was done to meetit beyond the issuing of a proclamation offering a reward of fivehundred pounds for the discovery of the persons concerned in thedestruction of the chapels of the Bavarian and Sardinian Ambassadors. The mob gathered again, bolder for the impunity with which it had sofar acted. Large bodies of men marched to Lord George Gordon's housein Welbeck Street and paraded there, displaying the trophies strippedfrom the destroyed chapels in Moorfields. Others began work of freshdestruction in Wapping and in Smithfield. Sir George Savile's house inLeicester Fields, and the houses of Mr. Rainsforth of Clare Market, andMr. Maberly of Little Queen Street, respectable tradesmen who had beenactive in arresting rioters on the Friday night, were sacked and theirfurniture burned in huge bonfires in the streets. The {202} Guards whohad the task of escorting the prisoners taken on Friday to Newgate werepelted. On the Tuesday authority seemed to have wakened up to a vague sensethat the situation was somewhat serious. Parliament reassembled tofind itself again surrounded and menaced by a mob, which wounded LordSandwich and destroyed his carriage. Lord George Gordon attended theHouse, but even his madness appeared to have taken alarm, for he hadcaused a proclamation to be issued in the name of the ProtestantAssociation disavowing the riots. As he sat in his place, with theblue cockade in his hat, Colonel Herbert, who was afterwards LordCarnarvon, called to him from across the House, telling him to take offthe badge or he would cross the floor and do it himself, Lord George'svehemence did not stand him in good stead where he himself was menaced. He had no following in the House. Colonel Herbert was a man of thesword and a man of his word. Lord George Gordon took the cockade fromhis hat and put it in his pocket. If authority had acted with thefirmness of Colonel Gordon on the Friday and of Colonel Herbert on theTuesday, the tumult might have been as easily cowed as its leader. Butstill nothing was done. The House of Commons made a half-heartedpromise that when the tumult subsided the Protestant petition would betaken into consideration, and a suggestion that Lord George ought to beexpelled was unfavorably received. From that moment, and for two long and terrible days, riot ruled inLondon. In all directions the evening sky was red with flames ofburning buildings; in all directions organized bands of men, maddenedwith drink, carried terror and destruction. The Tuesday evening wassignalized by the most extraordinary and most daring deed that theinsurgents had yet done. Some of the men arrested on the Friday hadbeen committed to Newgate Prison. To Newgate Prison a vast body of menmarched, and called upon Mr. Akerman, the keeper, to give up his keysand surrender his prisoners. His firm refusal converted the mob into abesieging army. {203} [Sidenote: 1780--The burning of Newgate Prison] Two men of genius have contributed to our knowledge of the siege ofNewgate. Crabbe, the poet, was at Westminster on the Tuesday, andafter seeing all the disturbance there he made his way with the currentof destruction towards Newgate, and witnessed the astonishing captureof a massive prison by a body of men, unarmed save with such rudeweapons of attack as could be hurriedly caught up. The prison was sostrong that, had a dozen men resisted, it would have been almostimpossible to take it without artillery. But there was nobody toresist. Mr. Akerman, the keeper, acted with great courage, and did hisduty loyally, but he could not hold the place alone. Crowbars, pickaxes, and fire forced an entrance into the prison. "Not Orpheushimself, " wrote Crabbe, "had more courage or better luck" than thedesperate assailants of the prison. They broke into the blazingprison, they rescued their comrades, they set all the other prisonersfree. Into the street, where the summer evening was as bright asnoonday with the blazing building, the prisoners were borne in triumph. Some of them had been condemned to death, and never were men morebewildered than by this strange reprieve. The next day Dr. Johnsonwalked, in company with Dr. Scott, to look at the place, and found theprison in ruins, with the fire yet glowing. The stout-hearted Doctorwas loud in his scorn of "the cowardice of a commercial place, " wheresuch deeds could be done without hinderance. While one desperate gang was busy with the destruction of Newgate, other gangs, no less desperate, were busy with destructive workelsewhere. The new prison in Clerkenwell was broken open by one crowd, and its prisoners set free. Another assailed Sir John Fielding'shouse, and burned its furniture in the streets. A third attacked thehouse of Lord Mansfield in Bloomsbury Square. This last enterprise wasone of the most remarkable and infamous of the bad business. LordMansfield and his wife had barely time to escape from the house by aback way before the mob were upon it. The now familiar scenes ofsavage violence followed. The doors were broken open, the {204} throngpoured in, and in a comparatively short time the stately mansion was aruin. Lord Mansfield's law library, one of the finest in the kingdom, and all the judicial manuscripts made by him during his long career, were destroyed. A small detachment of soldiers came upon the scene toolate to prevent the destruction of the house or to intimidate the mob;although, according to one account, the Riot Act was read and a coupleof volleys fired, with the result that several of the rioters were shotand wounded. It is curious to find that the reports of the intendedpurposes of the wreckers drew persons of quality and curiosity toBloomsbury Square in their coaches as to a popular performance, andthat the destruction of Lord Mansfield's house proved more attractivethan the production of a new play. [Sidenote: 1780--Public alarm in London] The Wednesday was no less terrible than the Tuesday. The riotersseemed to think that, like so many Mortimers, they were now Lords ofLondon. They sent messages to the keepers of the public prisons of theKing's Bench, the Fleet, and to prominent Catholic houses, informingthem of the precise time when they would be attacked and destroyed. Bythis time peaceable London was in a state of panic. All shops wereshut. From most windows blue banners were thrust out to show thesympathy of the occupants with the agitation, and the words "No Popery"were scrawled in chalk across the doors and windows of everyhouseholder who wished to protect himself against the fanaticism of themob. At least one enterprising individual got from Lord George Gordonhis signature to a paper bidding all true friends to Protestants to dono injury to the property of any true Protestant, "as I am well assuredthe proprietor of this house is a stanch and worthy friend to thecause. " But there were plenty of houses where neither fear norfanaticism displayed blue banner or chalked scrawl, houses whose ownersboasted no safeguard signed by Lord George Gordon, and with these themob busied themselves. The description in the "Annual Register" is sostriking that it deserves to be cited; it is probably from the pen ofEdmund Burke: "As soon {205} as the day was drawing towards a close oneof the most dreadful spectacles this country ever beheld was exhibited. Let those who were not spectators of it judge what the inhabitants feltwhen they beheld at the same time the flames ascending and rolling inclouds from the King's Bench and Fleet Prisons, from New Bridewell, from the toll-gates on Blackfriars Bridge, from houses in every quarterof the town, and particularly from the bottom and middle of Holborn, where the conflagration was horrible beyond description. . . . Six-and-thirty fires, all blazing at one time, and in differentquarters of the city, were to be seen from one spot. During the wholenight, men, women, and children were running up and down with suchgoods and effects as they wished to preserve. The tremendous roar ofthe authors of these terrible scenes was heard at one instant, and atthe next the dreadful report of soldiers' musquets, firing in platoonsand from different quarters; in short, everything served to impress themind with ideas of universal anarchy and approaching desolation. " From the closing words of this account it is plain that at lastauthority had begun to do its duty and to meet force with force. Terrorized London shook with every wild rumor. Now men said that themob had got arms, and was more than a match for the military; now thatthe lions in the Tower were to be let loose; now that the lunatics fromBedlam were to be set free. Every alarming rumor that fear couldinspire and terror credit was buzzed abroad upon that dreadful day, when the servants of the Secretary of State wore blue cockades in theirhats and private gentlemen barricaded their houses, armed their people, and prepared to stand a siege. Horace Walpole found his relative, LordHertford, engaged with his sons in loading muskets to be in readinessfor the insurgents. Everybody now shared in the general alarm, but thealarm affected different temperaments differently. Some men fled fromtown; others loaded guns and sharpened swords; others put their handsin their pockets and lounged, curious spectators, on the heels of riot, eager to observe {206} and willing to record events so singular and sounprecedented. It is pleasant to be able to chronicle that the King showed an especialcourage and composure during that wild week's work. George the Thirdnever lost head nor heart. To do his House justice, personal couragewas one of their traditions, but the family quality never showed tobetter advantage than in this crisis. If indeed George the Second wereprepared, as has been hinted, to fly from London on the approach of theyoung Pretender, George the Third displayed no such weakness in theface of a more immediate peril. The peril was more immediate, it wasalso more menacing. No man could safely say where bad work so begunmight ultimately pause. What had been an agitation in favor of apetition might end in revolution against the Crown. Outrages that hadat first been perpetrated with the purpose of striking terror only werechanging their character. Schemes of plunder formed no part of theearly plans of the rioters; now it began to be known that the riotershad their eyes turned towards the Bank of England and were planning tocut the pipes which provided London with water. With a little morelaxity on the part of authority, and a few more successes on the partof the mob, it is possible that Lord George Gordon might have foundhimself a puppet Caesar on the shields of Protestant Praetorians. [Sidenote: 1780--Stern action by the authorities] That nothing even approaching to this did happen was largely due to thecourage and the determination of the Sovereign. The Administrationvacillated. The Privy Council, facing an agitation of whose extent andpopularity it was unaware, feared to commit itself. George felt nosuch fear. Where authority fell back paralyzed in the presence of anew, unknown, and daily increasing peril, he came forward and assertedhimself after a fashion worthy of a king. If the Privy Council wouldnot act with him, then he would act without them. He would lead outhis Guards himself and charge the rioters at their head. The couragewhich had shown itself at Dettingen, the courage which had beendisplayed by generations of rough German {207} electors and Italianprinces, showed itself gallantly now and saved the city. The Kinglamented the weakness of the magistrates, but at least there was one, he said, who would do his duty, and he touched his breast with hishand. George the Third is not a heroic figure in history, but just atthat moment he bore himself with a royal honor which ranked him withLeonidas or Horatius. If there are to be kings at all, that is howkings ought to behave. George was fortunate in finding a man to standby him and to lend to his soldierly courage the support of the law. Wedderburn, the Attorney-General, declared, with all the authority ofhis high position, that in cases where the civil power was unable torestrain arson and outrage, it was the duty of all persons, civil aswell as military, to use all means in their power to deal with thedanger. The reading of the Riot Act was nugatory in such exceptionalconditions, and it became the duty of the military to attack therioters. Thus supported, the King ordered Wedderburn to write at onceto Lord Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief, authorizing him to employ themilitary without waiting for authority from the civil powers. Wedderburn, who in a few days was to become Chief Justice and LordLoughborough, wrote the order, kneeling upon one knee at the counciltable, and from that moment the enemy was grappled with in grim earnest. It was high time. No less than two unsuccessful attacks had been madeduring that day upon the Bank of England, but precautions had beentaken, and the successes of Newgate were not repeated in ThreadneedleStreet. The assailants were repulsed on each occasion by the military, who occupied every avenue leading to the Bank. Had the attack upon theBank succeeded it is impossible to form any estimate of what the resultmight have been. But it failed, and with that failure the wholehideous agitation failed as well. But the crowning horror of the wholeepisode was reserved for that final day of danger. In Holborn, whereriot raged fiercest, stood the distilleries of Mr. Langdale, a wealthyRoman Catholic. The distilleries were attacked and fired. Rivers ofspirit ran in all the {208} conduits and blazed as they ran. Men, drunk with liquor and maddened with excitement, kneeled to drink, and, drinking, fell and died where they lay. By this time the soldiers wereacting vigorously, driving the rabble before them, shooting all whoresisted, as some did resist desperately. The fire that had grownduring the week was quenched at last in blood. On the Thursday morningLondon was safe, comparatively quiet, almost itself again. The shopsindeed were still closed, but mutiny had lived its life. There was ashort, sharp struggle during the day in Fleet Street, between some ofthe fanatics and the Guards, which was stamped out by repeated bayonetcharges which killed and wounded many. Everywhere were blackenedspaces, smouldering ruins, stains of blood, and broken weapons, everywhere the signs of outrage and of conflict. But the incendiaryfires were quenched and with them the fire of insurrection. The riotswere at an end. The one wish of every one was to obliterate theirmemory as speedily as might be. The stains of blood were quicklyremoved from the walls of the Bank of England, from the roadway ofBlackfriars Bridge. The marks of musket shots were swiftly effacedfrom the scarred buildings. [Sidenote: 1780--Suppression of the Gordon Riots] It was never fully known how far the rioters themselves suffered in thesuppression of the disorder. The official returns give lists of 285direct deaths, and of 173 cases of serious wounds in the hospitals. But this can only represent a small proportion of the actualcasualties. Many dead, many wounded, must have been carried away byfriends and hidden in hurried graves, or nursed in secret to recovery. Many, too, perished at Blackfriars Bridge, or were hideously consumedin the flames that rose from the burning of Langdale's distilleries. But if the number of those who suffered remains an unknown quantity, itis not difficult to approximate to the destructive power of thedisturbances. The cost of the whole bad business has been estimated atat least 180, 000 pounds. To that amount an imbecile insanity haddespoiled London. But the imbecile insanity had incurred a deeperdebt. In the wild trials that followed upon the panic and the violenceforty-nine {209} men were condemned to death for their share in theriot, and twenty-nine of these actually suffered the last penalty ofthe law. It was not, in the eyes of some, a heavy sacrifice to pay. It did not seem a heavy sacrifice in the eyes of John Wilkes, whodeclared that if he were intrusted with sovereign power not a singlerioter should be left alive to boast of, or to plead for forgivenessfor, his offence. But Lord George Gordon was not worth the life of oneman, not to speak of nine-and-twenty. The folly of the Administration did not end with their victory. On the9th they did what they ought to have done long before, and arrestedLord George Gordon. But even this necessary belated act of justicethey performed in the most foolish fashion. Everything that the pompand ceremonial of arrest and arraignment could do was done to exaltLord George in the eyes of the mob and swell his importance. He wasconveyed to the Tower of London. Though the rising was thoroughlystamped out, and there was practically no chance of any attempt beingmade to rescue the prisoner, Lord George was escorted to the Tower by anumerous military force in broad daylight, with an amount of displaythat gave him the dignity of a hero and a martyr. To add to theabsurdity of the whole business, the poor crazy gentleman was solemnlytried for high treason. Many months later, in the early February ofthe next year, 1781, when the riots were a thing of the past, and theirterrible memory had been largely effaced, George Gordon was brought tothe Bar of the Court of King's Bench for his trial. His wits had notmended during his confinement. He had been very angry because hethought that he was prevented from seeing his friends. His angerdeepened when he learned that no friends had desired to see him. Thefanatic had served his turn, and was forgotten. He was not of thattemper which makes men devoted to a leader. He was but the foolishfigurehead of a fanatical outburst, and when he was set aside he wasforgotten. But when he was brought up for trial a measure of popularenthusiasm in the man reasserted itself. He behaved very strangely athis trial, urging his right to read {210} long passages of Scripture inhis defence. Happily for him, his defence was managed by abler handsthan his own. The genius of Erskine, the gifts of Kenyon, wereexpended in his behalf. The unwisdom of the Government in prosecutinghim for high treason was soon apparent. He was acquitted, to thegeneral satisfaction of his supporters, and of many who were not hissupporters. If public thanksgiving were returned in several churchesfor his acquittal, one grave manly voice was uplifted to swell theapproval. Dr. Johnson declared that he was far better pleased thatLord George Gordon should escape punishment than that a precedentshould be established for hanging a man for constructive treason. Thus the great Gordon riots flickered ignominiously out. Lord Georgemade occasional desperate efforts to reassert himself, trying to forcehimself upon the notice of the King at St. James's. In 1787 he wasfound guilty of libels upon the Queen of France and the FrenchAmbassador. He fled to Holland, where he was arrested by the Dutchauthorities, and shipped back to England. He was committed to Newgate, by curious chance, on the anniversary of the day on which it had beenburned by his followers. In Newgate he lived for some years, adjuringChristianity, and declaring himself to be a follower of the Jewishfaith. In Newgate the fanatic, renegade, madman, died of jaildistemper on November 1, 1793. He was only forty-two years old. Inhis short, unhappy life he had done a great deal of harm, and, as faras it is possible to judge, no good whatever. Perhaps the example ofthe Gordon riots served as a precedent in another land. If the news ofthe fall of the Bastille and the September massacres reached LordGeorge Gordon in his prison, he may have recalled to his crazed fancythe fall of Newgate and the bloody Wednesday of the June of 1780. {211} CHAPTER LVI. TWO NEW MEN. [Sidenote: 1780--The younger Pitt and Brinsley Sheridan] The year 1780 that witnessed the Gordon riots welcomed into politicallife two men, both of whom were young, both of whom bore names thatwere already familiar from an honorable parentage, and both of whomwere destined to play very conspicuous parts in the House of Commons. One of the two men was known to his family alone, and his intimates, asa youth of great promise and great knowledge, which gave to his twentyyears the ripened wisdom of a statesman and a scholar. The other, whowas eight years older, had been for some years in the public eye, hadbeen the hero of a romantic scandal which had done much to make hisname notorious, and had written some dramatic works which had done moreto make his name famous. It was a fortunate chance that when the Houseof Commons stood in need of new blood and new men the same time and thesame year saw the return to Parliament of William Pitt and of RichardBrinsley Sheridan. It has been said that every reader of the "Iliad" finds himselfirresistibly compelled to take sides with one or other of the greatopposing camps, and to be thenceforward either a Greek or a Trojan. Insomething of the same spirit every student of the reign of the thirdGeorge becomes perforce a partisan of one or other of two statesmen whodivided the honors of its prime between them, who were opposed on allthe great questions of their day, and who represented at their best thetwo forces into which English political life was then, and is still, divided. The history of England for the closing years of theeighteenth century and the early dawn of the nineteenth century is{212} the history of these two men and of their influence. Those whostudy their age and their career are separated as keenly and as hotlyto-day as they were separated keenly and hotly a hundred years ago intothe followers of Charles James Fox or the followers of William Pitt. The record of English party politics is a record of long and splendidduels between recognized chiefs of the two antagonistic armies. Whatthe struggle between Gladstone and Disraeli, for example, was to ourown time, the struggle between Fox and Pitt was to our ancestors ofthree generations ago. All the force and feeling that made for what wenow call liberal principles found its most splendid representative inthe son of Lord Holland: all the force and feeling that rallied aroundthe conservative impulse looked for and found its ideal in the son ofLord Chatham. The two men were as much contrasted as the opinions thatthey professed. To the misgoverned, misguided, splendidly recklessboyhood and early manhood of Fox Pitt opposed the gravity and stillnessof his youth. The exuberant animal vitality of Fox, wasting itselfoverlong in the flame of aimless passions, was emphasized by the solidreserve, the passionless austerity of Pitt. The one man was compact ofall the heady enthusiasms, the splendid generosities of a nature richin the vitality that sought eagerly new outlets for its energy, thatplayed hard as it worked hard, that exulted in extremes. The othermoved in a narrow path to one envisaged aim, and, conscious of acertain physical frailty, husbanded his resources, limited the scope ofhis fine intellect, and acted not indeed along the line of leastresistance but within lines of purpose that were not very far apart. The one explored the mountain and the valley, lingered in gardens andorchards, or wandered at all adventure upon desolate heaths; the otherpursued in patience the white highway to his goal, untempted or atleast unconquered by allurements that could prove irresistible to hisadversary. [Sidenote: 1780--The character of the younger Pitt] The two men differed as much in appearance as in mind. The outerseeming of each is almost as familiar as the forms and faces ofcontemporaries. Fox was massively {213} corpulent, furiously untidy, aheroic sloven, his bull throat and cheeks too often black with a threedays' beard, infinitely lovable, exquisitely cultured, capable of thenoblest tenderness, yet with a kind of grossness sometimes that was buta part, and perhaps an inevitable part, of his wide humanity. Pitt wasslender, boyish, precise, punctilious in attire, his native composureonly occasionally lightened by a flash of humor or sweetened by a showof playfulness, old beyond his years and young to the end of his shortlife, sternly self-restrained and self-commanded, gracious in a kind ofmelancholy, unconscious charm, a curiously unadorned, uncoloredpersonality, that attracted where it did attract with a magnetism thatwas perhaps all the more potent for being somewhat difficult toexplain. Fox was always a lover in many kinds of love, fugitive, venal, illicit, honorable, and enduring. Pitt carried himself throughtemptations with a monastic rigor. There was a time when his friendsimplored him for the sake of appearances, and not to flout tooflagrantly the manners of the time, to show himself in public with awoman of the town. His one love story, strange and fruitless, neithergot nor gave happiness and remains an unsolved mystery. There were only two tastes held in common by the two men, and thosewere tastes shared by most of the gentlemen of their generation andcentury, the taste for politics and the taste for wine. Men of theclass of Holland's son, of Chatham's son, if they were not soldiers andsailors, and very often when they were soldiers and sailors, went intopolitical life as naturally as they went into a university or into thehunting field. In the case of the younger Fox and of the younger Pittthe political direction was conspicuously inevitable from thebeginning. The paths of both lay plain from the threshold of thenursery to the threshold of St. Stephen's. The lad who was the chosencompanion of his father at an age when his contemporaries had onlyabandoned a horn-book to grapple with Corderius, the boy who learnedthe principles of elocution and the essence of debate from the lips ofthe Great Commoner, were children very specially fostered in the artsof {214} statesmanship and curiously favored in the knowledge thatenables men to guide and govern men. From the other taste there was noescape, or little escape, possible for the men of that day. It wouldhave been strange indeed if Fox had been absolved from the love ofwine, which was held by every one he knew, from his father's old friendand late enemy Rigby to the elderly place-holder, gambler, andletter-writer Selwyn, who loved, slandered, and failed to ruin Fox'sbrilliant youth. It would have been impossible for Pitt, floatedthrough a precarious childhood on floods of Oporto, to liberate hisblood and judgment from the generous liquor that promised him astrength it sapped. It was no more disgrace to the austere Pitt thanto the profligate Fox to come to the House of Commons visibly under theinfluence of much more wine than could possibly have been good forHercules. Sobriety was not unknown among statesmen even in those daysof many bottles, but intoxication was no shame, and Burke was no morecommended for his temperance than Fox, or Pitt, or Sheridan were blamedfor their intemperance. [Sidenote: 1759-80--The youth of the younger Pitt] William Pitt was born in 1759, when George the Second still seemedstable on his throne, and when the world knew nothing of that grandsonand heir to whose service the child of Chatham was to be devoted. Hewas the fourth child and second son; the third son and last child ofChatham was born two years later. William Pitt was delicate from hisinfancy, and by reason of his delicacy was never sent to school. Hewas educated by private tuition, directly guided and controlled by hisfather. From the first he was precocious, full of promise, full ofperformance. He acquired knowledge eagerly and surely; what he learnedhe learned well and thoroughly. Trained from his cradle in theacquirements essential to a public life, he applied himself, as soon ashe was of an age to appreciate his tastes and to form a purpose, toequipping himself at all points for a political career. When the greatChatham died he left behind him a son who was to be as famous ashimself, a statesman formed in his own school, trained in his ownmethods, inspired by his counsels, and guided by {215} his example. Alegend which may be more than legend has it that from the first destinyseemed determined to confront the genius and the fame of Fox with thegenius and the fame of Pitt. It is said that the Foxes were assured bya relative of the Pitts that the young son of Chatham, then a childunder a tutor's charge, showed parts which were sure to prove him aformidable rival to the precocious youth who was at once the delightand the despair of Lord Holland's life. It is certain that the youngFox was early made acquainted with the ripe intelligence and eagergenius of the younger Pitt. It was his chance to stand with the boyone night at the bar of the House of Lords, and to be attracted andamazed at the avidity with which Pitt followed the debate, the sagacitywith which he commented upon what he saw and heard, and the readinesswith which he formulated answers to arguments which failed to carryconviction to his dawning wisdom. Pitt loved the House of Commonswhile he was still in the schoolroom; it was inevitable that he shouldbelong to the House of Commons, and he entered it at the earliestpossible moment, even before he was legally qualified to do so, for hewas not quite of age when he first took his seat. The qualities of fairness and fitness which Greek wisdom praised in theconduct of life were characteristic of Pitt's life. In its zealous, patient preparation for public life, its noble girding of the loinsagainst great issues, its wistful renunciation of human hopes, itsearly consciousness of terrible disease, its fortitude in the face ofcatastrophes so unexpected and so cruel; in its pensive isolation, inthe richness of those early successes that seemed as if in anticipationto offer compensation for the early death, his life seems to have beenadorned with certain ornaments and ordered by certain laws that make itstrangely comely, curiously symmetrical. In that youth of his whichwas never quite young, and which was never allowed to grow old, in hisaustere attitude to so much that youth holds most dear, in the highpassion of his patriotism with its eager desire, so often and sosternly thwarted, to add to England's glory, he stands apart from {216}many greater and many wiser men, in a melancholy, lonely dignity. Ithas been given to few men to inspire more passionate attachment in theminds of his contemporaries; it has been given to few statesmen to beregarded abroad, by eyes for the most part envious or hostile, aspre-eminently representative of the qualities that made his country atonce disliked and feared. His political instincts were for the mostpart admirable, and if it had been his fortune to serve a sovereignmore reasonable, more temperate, and more intelligent than George theThird his name might have been written among the great reformers of theworld. At home an unhappy deference to the dictates of a rash andincapable king, abroad an enforced opposition to one of the greatestforces and one of the greatest conquerors that European civilizationhas seen, prevented Pitt from gaining that position to which hisgenius, under conditions less persistently unhappy, would have entitledhim. To have gained what he did gain under such conditions was initself a triumph. The new-comer who entered Parliament at the same period as William Pittwas as curiously unlike him as even Fox himself. If few knew anythingof Pitt every one knew something of Sheridan, who had already made famein one career and was now about to make fame in another. It may affordconsolation to the unappreciated to reflect that the most famousEnglish dramatist since Shakespeare's day, the brightest wit of an agewhich piqued itself into being considered witty, the most brilliantorator of an age which regarded oratory as one of the greatest of thearts, and whose roll is studded with the names of illustrious orators, the most unrivalled humorist of a century which in all parts of theworld distinguished itself by its love of humor, was looked upon in hisnonage as a dull, unpromising boy, chiefly remarkable for his idlenessand carelessness. [Sidenote: 1751-80--The parents of Brinsley Sheridan] The quality which we now call Bohemianism certainly ran in Sheridan'sblood. His grandfather, Dr. Thomas Sheridan, the friend of Swift, theDublin clergyman and schoolmaster, was a delightfully amiable, whollyreckless, {217} slovenly, indigent, and cheerful personage. Hisfather, Thomas Sheridan, was a no less cheerful, no less careless man, who turned play-actor, and taught elocution, and married a woman whowrote novels and a life of Swift. At one time he could boast thefriendship of Dr. Johnson, who seems to have regarded him with anill-humored contempt, but Dr. Johnson's expression of this contemptbrought about a quarrel. The most remarkable thing about him is thathe was the father of his son. Neither he nor his wife appears to havehad any idea of their good fortune. Mrs. Sheridan once declared of hertwo boys that she had never met with "two such impenetrable dunces. "None the less the father contrived with difficulty to scrape togetherenough money to send his boys to Harrow, and there, luckily, Dr. Parrdiscerned that Richard, with all his faults, was by no means animpenetrable dunce. Both he and Sumner, the head-master of Harrow, discovered in the schoolboy Sheridan great talents which neither ofthem was capable of calling into action. Richard Sheridan came from Harrow School and Harrow playgrounds toLondon, and, later on, to Bath. London did not make him much moreindustrious or more careful than he had been at Harrow-on-the-Hill. Itwas far pleasanter to translate the honeyed Greek of Theocritus, withits babble of Sicilian shepherds, its nymphs and waters and Sicilianseas, than to follow the beaten track of ordinary education. It wasvastly more entertaining to translate the impassioned prose ofAristaenetus into impassioned verse, especially in collaboration with acherished friend, than to yawn over Euclid and to grumble over Cocker. The translation of Aristaenetus, the boyish task of Sheridan and hisfriend Halhed, still enjoys a sort of existence in the series ofclassical translations in Bohn's Library. It is one of the ironies ofliterature that fate has preserved this translation while it haspermitted the two Begum speeches, that in the House of Commons and thatin Westminster Hall, practically to perish. What little interest doesnow cling to the early work belongs to the fact of its being acollaboration. Halhed, who worked {218} with Sheridan at the uselesstask, was a clever young Oxford student, who was as poor as he wasclever, and who seemed to entertain the eccentric idea that large sumsof money were to be readily obtained from the reading public for arendering in flippant verse of the prose of an obscure author whosevery identity is involved in doubt. Aristaenetus did not become thetalk of the town even in spite of an ingeniously promulgated rumorassigning the authorship of the verses to Dr. Johnson. Neither did theplays and essays in which the friends collaborated meet with anyprosperous fate. From the doing of Greek prose into English verse Sheridan and Halhedturned to another occupation, in which, as in the first, they were bothof the same mind. They both fell in love, and both fell in love withthe same woman. All contemporary accounts agree in regarding thedaughter of Linley the musician as one of the most beautiful women ofher age. Those who knew the portrait which the greatest painter of histime painted of Sheridan's wife as St. Cecilia will understand theextraordinary, the almost universal homage which society and art, witand wealth, and genius and rank paid to Miss Linley. Unlike the girlin Sheridan's own poem, who is assured by her adorer that she will meetwith friends in all the aged and lovers in the young. Miss Linleyfound old men as well as young men competing for her affection and forthe honor of her hand. Sheridan and Halhed were little more than boys when they first beheldand at once adored Miss Linley. Charles Sheridan, Richard's elderbrother, was still a very young man. But Miss Linley had old loverstoo, men long past the middle pathway of their lives, who besought herto marry them with all the impetuosity of youth. One of them, whom shewisely rejected on the ground that wealth alone could not compensatefor the disparity in years, carried off his disappointment gracefullyenough by immediately settling a sum of three thousand pounds upon theyoung lady. There is an air of romance over the whole course of {219} Sheridan'sattachment to Miss Linley. For a long time he contrived to keep hisattachment a secret from his elder brother, Charles, and from hisfriend Halhed, both of whom were madly in love with Miss Linley, andneither of whom appears to have had the faintest suspicion of finding arival, the one in so close a kinsman, the other in his own familiarfriend. It must be admitted that Sheridan does not appear to havebehaved with that uprightness which was to be expected from hisgallant, impetuous nature. Not merely did he keep his secret from hisbrother and his friend, but he seems to have allowed his friend to lookupon him as a confidant and ally in pressing Halhed's suit upon MissLinley. Halhed reproached him sadly, but not bitterly, in a poeticalepistle, the value of which is more personal than poetical, when hediscovered the real mind of his friend. Then, like a wise man if a sadone, Halhed went away. He sailed for India, the golden land of so manywrecked hopes and disappointed ambitions; he long outlived his firstlove and his successful rival; he became in the fulness of time amember of Parliament, and he died in 1830. He is dimly remembered asthe author of a grammar of the Bengalee language and of a work onGentoo laws translated from the Persian. [Sidenote: 1771--Marriage of Sheridan and Miss Linley] Sheridan's courtship progressed more and more romantically. Thepersecutions of a married rake named Matthews drove Miss Linley to flyto France with Sheridan, to whom she was secretly married at Calais. The revengeful and disappointed Matthews inserted a libellous attackupon Sheridan in the _Bath Chronicle_. Sheridan extorted at hissword's point a public apology from Matthews. Further and basermendacity on the part of Matthews provoked a second duel, in which thecombatants seem to have fought with desperate ferocity, and in whichSheridan, badly wounded, refused to ask his life at the hands of hisantagonist and was only rescued by the seconds. A long period ofseparation followed, full of dark hours for Sheridan, hours onlybrightened by occasional meetings of the most eccentric kind, as whenthe wild young poet, quaintly {220} disguised in the complicated capesof a hackney coachman, had the tormenting privilege of driving hisbeloved from Covent Garden Theatre, where her voice and beauty werenightly charming all London. At last the opposition of Linley wasovercome, and on April 13, 1773, the most brilliant man and mostbeautiful woman of their day were for the second time and more formallymarried, and a series of adventures more romantic than fiction came toan end. The romance, it is agreeable to think, did not conclude with themarriage ceremony. Sheridan seems to have offered his wife as devotedan attachment after her marriage as he had shown in the days ofduelling and disguising that preceded it. He wrote verses to her, andshe wrote verses to him, long after they had settled down to serenedomesticity, which breathe the most passionate expressions of mutuallove. And yet there is a legend--it is to be hoped and believed thatit is only a legend--which ends the romance very sadly. According tothe legend young Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Sheridan's close friend, feltmore than a friend's admiration for the wife of his friend. Accordingto the legend Elizabeth Sheridan returned the passion, which by theunhappiness it brought with it shortened her life. According to thelegend Lord Edward only married the fair Pamela, Philippe Egalité'sdaughter, because of the striking resemblance she bore to the St. Cecilia of his dreams. The legend rests on the authority of Madame deGenlis, who was probably Pamela's mother and who is no infallibleauthority. It is possible that the undoubted resemblance of Pamela toMrs. Sheridan is the origin of the whole story. Lord Edward was alwaysfalling in love in a graceful, chivalrous kind of way. But there is noserious proof that his friendship for Mrs. Sheridan was anything morethan the friendship an honorable man may entertain for the wife of hisfriend. The graver and more authentic story of Fitzgerald's life hasyet to be told in these pages. [Sidenote: 1775--Sheridan as dramatist and politician] For a brief period after his marriage Sheridan thought of devotinghimself to the law. But his thoughts and {221} tastes were otherwiseinclined, and on January 27, 1775, not quite two years after hismarriage, "The Rivals" was produced at Covent Garden and a new chapteropened in the history of dramatic literature. It is curious to thinkthat the clumsiness of the player to whom the part of Sir LuciusO'Trigger was given came very near to damning the most brilliant comedythat the English stage had seen for nearly two centuries. The happysubstitution of actor Clinch for actor Lee, however, saved the pieceand made Sheridan the most popular author in London. How gratefulSheridan felt to Clinch for rescuing Sir Lucius is shown by the factthat his next production, the farce called "St. Patrick's Day; or, theScheming Lieutenant, " was expressly written to afford opportunity forClinch's peculiar talents. In 1777 came "The School for Scandal, "Sheridan's masterpiece, which was followed by Sheridan's last dramaticwork, "The Critic. " Never probably before was so splendid a successgained so rapidly, so steadily increased in so short a time, to come soabruptly to an end in the very pride of its triumph. Quite suddenly the most famous English author then alive foundopportunity for the display of wholly new and unexpected talents, andbecame one of the most famous politicians and orators alive. Therehad, indeed, always been a certain political bent in Sheridan's mind. He had tried his hand at many political pamphlets, fragments of whichwere found among his papers by Moore. He had always taken the keenestinterest in the great questions which agitated the political life ofthe waning eighteenth century. The general election of 1780 gave himan opportunity of expressing this interest in the public field, and hewas returned to Parliament as member for the borough of Stamford. Itis difficult to find a parallel in our history for the extraordinarysuccess which attended Sheridan in his political life as it had alreadyattended him in his dramatic career. Just on the threshold of his political career Sheridan lost the wife heloved so well. He was profoundly afflicted, but the afflictionlessened and he married a Miss {222} Ogle. There is a story told inconnection with this second marriage which is half melancholy, halfhumorous, and wholly pathetic. The second Mrs. Sheridan, young, clever, and ardently devoted to her husband, was found one day, according to this story, walking up and down her drawing-roomapparently in a frantic state of mind because she had discovered thatthe love-letters Sheridan had sent to her were the same as those whichhe had written to his first wife. Word for word, sentence forsentence, passion for passion, they were the same letters. No doubtSheridan made his peace. It is to be presumed that he thought theletters so good that they might very well serve a second turn; but thisact of literary parsimony was not happy. Parsimony of his written workwas, however, Sheridan's peculiarity. Verses addressed to his dear St. Cecilia make their appearance again and again, under alteredconditions, in his plays. It is singular enough, as has been happilysaid, that the treasures of wit which Sheridan was thought to possessin such profusion should have been the only species of wealth which heever dreamed of economizing. {223} CHAPTER LVII. FOX AND PITT. [Sidenote: 1781--Fall of the Lord North Administration] Pitt entered public life the inheritor of a great name, the transmitterof a great policy, at a time when the country was in difficulty and theGovernment in danger. In the January of 1781 North was still in power, was still supported by the King, had still some poor shreds of hope thatsomething, anything might happen to bring England well out of thestruggle with America. In the November of the same year North reeled tohis fall with the news of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Inthose ten months Pitt had already made himself a name in the House ofCommons. He was no longer merely the son of Pitt; he was Pitt. He hadattached himself to an Opposition that was studded with splendid names, and had proved that his presence added to its lustre. The heroes andleaders of Opposition at Westminster welcomed him to their ranks with agenerous admiration and enthusiasm. Fox, ever ready to applaud possiblegenius, soon pronounced him to be one of the first men in Parliament. Burke hailed him, not as a chip of the old block, but as the old blockitself. The praises of Burke and of Fox were great, but they were notundeserved. When the Ministry of Lord North fell into the dust, when theKing was compelled to accept the return of the Whigs to office, Pitt hadalready gained a position which entitled him in his own eyes not toaccept office but to refuse it. Rockingham formed a Ministry for the second time. The new Ministry wasformed of an alliance between the two armies of the Rockingham Whigs andthe Shelburne Whigs. Rockingham represented the political principlesthat dated from the days of Walpole. {224} Shelburne represented, ormisrepresented, the principles that dated from the days of Chatham. TheKing would very much have preferred to take Shelburne without Rockingham, but even the King had to recognize that it was impossible to gratify hispreference. Even if Shelburne had been a much better leader than he washe had not the following which would entitle him to form a Ministry onhis own account. And Shelburne was by no means a good leader. To theLiberal politician of to-day Shelburne seems a much more desirable andadmirable statesman than Rockingham. Most of his political ideas were inadvance of his time, and his personal friendships prove him to have beena man of appreciative intelligence. He had proved his courage in hisyouth as a soldier at Campen and Minden; he had maintained his courage in1780 when he faced and was wounded by the pistol of Fullarton. But hisgifts, whatever they were, were not of the quality nor the quantity tomake a leader of men. He could not form a Ministry for himself, and hewas not an element of stability in any Ministry of which he was a member. The Administration formed by the alliance of Rockingham and Shelburnecould boast of many brilliant names, and showed itself laudably anxiousto add to their number. In an Administration which had Fox for aSecretary of State, Burke for Paymaster-General of the Forces, andSheridan for Under-Secretary of State, the Vice-Treasurership of Irelandwas offered to Pitt. [Sidenote: 1782--Fox's quarrel with Pitt] Pitt declined the offer. He had made up his mind that he would notaccept a subordinate situation. Conscious of his ability, he wasprepared to wait. He had not to wait long. During the four agitatedmonths of life allowed to the Rockingham Administration Pittdistinguished himself by a motion for reform in the representative systemwhich was applauded by Fox and by Sheridan, but which was defeated bytwenty votes. Peace and reform were always passions deeply seated at theheart of Pitt; it was ironic chance that associated him hereafter sointimately with war and with antagonism to so many methods of reform inwhich he earnestly believed. When the quarrels {225} between Fox andShelburne over the settlement of the American war ended afterRockingham's death in July, 1782, in the withdrawal from the Ministry ofFox, Burke, and the majority of the Rockingham party, Pitt rightly sawthat his hour had come. Fox resigned rather than serve with Shelburne, Pitt accepted Shelburne, and made Shelburne's political existencepossible a little longer. With the aid of Pitt, Shelburne could hold onand let Fox go; without Pitt, Fox would have triumphed over Shelburne. From this moment began the antagonism between Fox and Pitt which was tolast for the remainder of their too brief lives. At the age oftwenty-three Pitt found himself Chancellor of the Exchequer, and one ofthe most conspicuous men in the kingdom. Fox, who was ten years older, was defeated by the youth whose rivalry had been predicted to Fox whenthe youth was yet a child. Pitt's triumph lasted less than a year. Fox, conscious of his own greatpurposes, and eager to return to office for their better advancement, wasprepared to pay a gambler's price for power. To overthrow Shelburne andwith Shelburne Pitt, he needed a pretext and an ally. The pretext waseasy to find. He had but to maintain that the terms of the peace withAmerica were not the best that the country had a right to expect. Theally was easy to find and disastrous to accept. Nothing in the whole ofFox's history is more regrettable than his unnatural alliance with LordNorth. Ever since the hour when Fox had found his true self, and hadpassed from the ranks of the obedient servants of the King into the ranksof those who devoted themselves to the principles of liberty, there hadbeen nothing and there could have been nothing in common between Fox andNorth. Everything that Fox held most dear was detestable to North, asNorth's political doctrines were now detestable to Fox. The politicalenmity of the two men had been bitter in the extreme, and Fox hadassailed North with a violence which might well seem to have made anyform of political reconciliation impossible. Yet North was now the manwith whom Fox was content to throw in his lot in order to obtain the{226} overthrow of Shelburne and of Pitt. And Fox was not alone amonggreat Whigs in this extraordinary transaction. He carried Burke with himin this unholy alliance between all that was worst and all that was bestin English political life. The two men whose genius and whose eloquencehad been the most potent factors in the fall of North a year before werenow the means of bringing the discredited and defeated statesman backagain into the exercise of a power which, as none knew better than they, he had so shamefully misused. Fox and North between them swept Shelburneout of the field. Fox and North between them were able to force aCoalition Ministry upon a reluctant and indignant King. The followers ofFox and the followers of North in combination formed so numerous and sosolid a party that they were able to treat the sovereign with a lack ofceremony to which he was little used. Fox had gone out of office ratherthan admit that the right to nominate the first minister rested with theKing instead of with the Cabinet. Now that he had returned to office, heshowed his determination to act up to his principles by not permittingthe King to nominate a single minister. [Sidenote: 1783--Fox's coalition with Lord North] The King's contempt for North since the failure to coerce America, theKing's dislike of Fox since Fox became an advanced politician, weredeepened now into uncompromising and unscrupulous enmity by the cavalierconduct of the coalition. The King, with his doggedness of purpose andhis readiness to use any weapons against those whom he chose to regard ashis enemies, was a serious danger even to a coalition that seemed soformidable as the coalition between Fox and North. Fox may very wellhave thought that his unjustifiable league with North would at least havethe result of giving him sufficient time and sufficient influence tocarry into effect some of those schemes for the good of the country whichhe had most nearly at heart. The statesman who makes some unhappysurrender of principle, some ignoble concession to opportunity in orderto obtain power, makes his unworthy bargain from a conviction that hishold of office is essential to the welfare of the State, and that alittle {227} evil is excusable for a great good. The sophistry thatdeceives the politician does not deceive the public. Fox gravely injuredhis position with the people who loved him by stooping to the pact withNorth, and he did not reap that reward of success in his own high-mindedand high-hearted purposes which could alone have excused his conduct. The great coalition which was to stand so strong and to work such wonderswas destined to vanish like a breath after accomplishing nothing, and tocondemn Fox with all his hopes and dreams to a career of almost unbrokenopposition for the rest of his life. If anything in Fox's checkeredcareer could be more tragic than the degradation of his union with thepolitician whom he declared to be void of every principle of honor andhonesty, it was the abiding consequences of the retribution that followedit. Fox had fought hard and with success to live down the follies of hisyouth. He had to fight harder and with far less success to live downwhat the world persisted in regarding as the infamy of his associationwith North. It is difficult to realize the arguments which persuaded Fox, whichpersuaded Burke, to join their forces with the fallen minister whom theirown mouths, but a little while before, had, in no measured terms, declared to be guilty of the basest conduct and deserving of the severestpunishment. All that we know of Fox, all that we know of Burke--and itis possible to know them almost as well as if they were the figures ofcontemporary history--would seem to deny the possibility of theircondescending to any act of conscious baseness. Stained and sullied asthe youth of Fox had been with some of the more flagrant vices of aflagrantly vicious society, his record as gambler, as spendthrift, and aslibertine seems relatively clean in comparison with this strange act ofpublic treason to the chosen beliefs of his manhood, of public apostasyfrom those high and generous principles by whose strenuous advocacy hehad redeemed his wasted youth. Fiery as Burke's temper had often proveditself to be, fantastic and grotesque as his obstinacy had often showeditself in {228} clinging defiantly to some crotchet or whimsey, thatseemed to the spectator unworthy the adhesion of his great intellect, hismost eccentric action, his most erratic impulse, appeared sweetlyreasonable and serenely lucid when contrasted with the conduct thatallowed him to guide or be guided by Fox in a course that proved asfoolish as it looked disgraceful, to lead or to follow Fox into packingcards with their arch-enemy of the American war. On the face of it there is nothing that seems not merely to justify, buteven to palliate, the conduct of Fox and Burke. Ugly as the deed seemedto the men of their day, to the men who believed in them, trusted them, loved them, it seems no less ugly to those who at the distance of acentury revere their memories and cherish their teachings. One thing maybe, must be, assumed by those before whom the lives of Fox and Burke liebare--that men so animated by high principles, so illuminated by highideals, cannot deliberately, of set purpose, have sinned against thelight. They must have felt, and strongly felt, their justification forentering on a course which was destined to prove so disastrous. Theirjustification probably was the conviction, nursed if not expressed, thatto statesmen whose hands were so full of blessings, to statesmen whosehearts were so big with splendid enterprises, a trivial show ofconcession, a little paltering with the punctilio of honor, a littleeating of brave words, and a little swallowing of principle, was a smallprice to pay and a price well worth paying for the immeasurable good thatEngland was to gather from their supremacy. Whatever may have been the motives which induced Fox and Burke to allythemselves with a discredited and defeated politician like Lord North, the results of that alliance were as unsatisfactory to the highcontracting parties as the most rigid believer in poetic justice coulddesire. The Coalition Ministry was unlucky enough in its enterprises tosatisfy George himself, who had talked of going back to Hanover ratherthan accept its services, and had only been dissuaded from self-exile bythe sardonic reminder of Lord Thurlow that it might be easier for the{229} King to go to Hanover than to return again to England. Burkeinaugurated his new career at the Pay Office by an unhappy act ofpatronage. He insisted upon restoring to their offices two clerks, namedPowell and Bembridge, who had been removed and arraigned formalversation, and he insisted upon defending his indefensible action inthe House of Commons with a fury that was as diverting to his opponentsas it was distracting to his colleagues. Fox, who had earned so large ashare of public admiration for his advocacy of what now would be calledliberal opinions, was naturally held responsible by the public for thesuccessful opposition of the Coalition Ministry to Pitt's plan ofParliamentary reform. [Sidenote: 1783--Legislation of the Coalition Ministry] Pitt's proposal was not very magnificent. He asked the House to declarethat measures were highly necessary to be taken for the future preventionof bribery and expense at elections. He urged that for the future, whenthe majority of voters for any borough should be convicted of gross andnotorious corruption before a select committee of the House appointed totry the merits of any election, such borough should be disfranchised andthe minority of voters not so convicted should be entitled to vote forthe county in which such borough should be situated. He suggested thatan addition of knights of the shire and of the representatives of themetropolis should be made to the state of the representation. He leftthe number to the discussion and consideration of the House, but for hisown part he stated that he should propose an addition of one hundredrepresentatives. Pitt's scheme was scarcely a splendid measure ofreform; but at least it was a measure of reform, and it met with smallmercy at the hands of the coalition, being defeated by a majority of 293to 149. This was not an auspicious beginning for the new Ministry, andit was scarcely surprising that many of Fox's adherents in the countryshould resent his employment of the swollen forces that were practicallyif not technically under his command to compass the defeat of a billwhich, however inadequate, did at least endeavor to bring about amuch-needed improvement. {230} The great adventure of the Coalition Ministry, the deed by which it hopedto justify its existence, and by which indeed it has earned its onlyhonorable title to remembrance, was the bill which is known to the worldas Fox's India Bill. If the extending influence of England in India wasa source of pride to the English people, it was also a source of graveresponsibility. The conditions under which that influence was exercised, the weaknesses and inadequacies of the system by which the East IndiaCompany exercised its semi-regal authority, were becoming more apparentwith every succeeding year to the small but steadily increasing number ofpersons who took a serious and intelligent interest in Indian affairs. Aseries of events, to be referred to later, had served to force into aspecial prominence the difficulties and the dangers of the existing stateof affairs and to fasten the attention of thinkers upon the evils thathad resulted, and the evils that must yet result from its continuance. To mitigate those evils in the present, and to minimize them in thefuture, Fox, inspired and aided by Burke's splendid knowledge of Indianaffairs, worked out a measure which was confidently expected tosubstitute order for disorder and reason for unreason. In the Novemberof 1783, Pitt addressed a challenge to the Ministry calling upon them tobring forward some measure securing and improving the advantages to bederived from England's Eastern possessions, some measure not of temporarypalliation and timorous expedients, but vigorous and effectual, suited tothe magnitude, the importance, and the alarming exigencies of the case. Fox answered this challenge by asking leave to bring in a bill "forvesting the affairs of the East India Company in the hands of certaincommissioners for the benefit of the proprietors and the public. " At thesame time Fox asked leave to bring in another bill "for the bettergovernment of the territorial possessions and dependencies in India. "These two bills, supplementing each other, formed, in the opinion ofthose who framed and who advocated them, a simple, efficient, andresponsible plan for the better administration of England's Indian {231}dependencies. However tentative and incomplete they may now appear as ameans of dealing with a problem of such vast importance and suchfar-reaching consequences, they certainly were measures the adoption ofwhich must have proved a gain to the country governing and to the countrygoverned. [Sidenote: 1783--Fox and the affairs of India] The measures, which, it is probable, were originally planned out byBurke, but to which it is certain that Fox devoted all the strength ofhis intellect and all the enthusiasm of his nature, were of a daring andcomprehensive character. The first proposed to make a clean sweep of theexisting state of things in India by the appointment of a Board composedof seven commissioners to whom absolute authority over the East IndiaCompany's property, and over the appointment or removal of holders ofoffices in India, was to be intrusted for a term of four years. Thisterm of four years was not to be affected by any changes ofadministration that might occur in England during the time. The commerceof the Company was to be managed by a council of directors, who werethemselves entirely under the control of the seven commissioners. Thecommissioners and the directors were required to lay their accountsbefore the proprietors every six months, and before both Houses at thebeginning of every session. The commissioners were in the first instanceto be appointed by Parliament, that is to say, by the Ministry headed byFox and North; at the end of the four years they were to be appointed bythe Crown. The Court of Proprietors was to fill up the vacancies in thecouncil of directors. The second and less important measure dealt withthe powers of the Governor-General and Council and the conduct to beobserved towards the princes and natives of India. The first measure was the measure of paramount importance, the measurefrom which Fox and his friends hoped so much, the measure which arousedin a very peculiar degree the anger of the King and of the King'sfollowers. They saw in a moment the enormous influence that the passingof the measure would place in the hands of Fox. The names of thecommissioners were left blank {232} in the bill, but when their time cameto be filled up in committee they were all filled with the names offollowers of Fox. It was argued that were the bill to become law a setof persons extremely obnoxious to the King would have in their hands fora solid term of years the entire administration of India and the controlof an amount of patronage, estimated at not less than three hundredthousand a year. This would enable them to oppose to the royalprerogative of patronage an influence of like nature that brought with itscarcely less than royal power. It is scarcely surprising that Pittshould have employed all his eloquence and all his energy against what hedescribed as "the boldest and most unconstitutional measure everattempted, transferring at one stroke, in spite of all charters andcompacts, the immense patronage and influence of the East to Charles Foxin or out of office. " [Sidenote: 1783--Henry Dundas and James Sayer] If Pitt was the most conspicuous opponent of the India Bills, only lessconspicuous was a man who, though much Pitt's senior, was still young, and who had already made himself prominent in the House of Commons, notmerely as a politician of general ability, but as one who took a specialinterest in the affairs of India. Henry Dundas had been a characteristicornament of the Scottish bar, at once a skilful lawyer and an attractiveman of the world when, eight years before the existence of the CoalitionMinistry, he had come to St. Stephen's as Lord Advocate. An ambition toshine as a statesman and an extraordinary power of application hadequipped him with the varied information that enabled him to asserthimself as an authority in many departments of national business. He hadearly recognized the importance of India as a field for the powers of arising politician, and he had devoted to India and to Indian affairs thattireless assiduity which permitted him at once to appear a convivialspirit with the temperament and leisure of a man of pleasure, and amaster of profound and intricate subjects, the secret of which was onlyknown to those who were acquainted with his habit of early rising and hisindefatigable capacity for work in the time that he allotted to work. When the public attention was {233} directed to India, towards the closeof the American war, and when a very general sense of indignation wasaroused by the mismanagement that lessened and that threatened to destroyBritish influence in the East, Dundas came forward with the confident airof one who was intimately acquainted with the complicated problem and whobelieved himself perfectly competent to set all difficulties right. Hewas the chairman of the select committee of the House of Commonsappointed to inquire into the causes of the war in the Carnatic, and heimpressed himself upon the House as an authority upon India of no meanorder, both in the report from that committee and in a bill which hehimself introduced for the purpose of dealing with the Indian question. He did not succeed in carrying his measure, but he took care that hisknowledge of his subject increased in proportion to its growingimportance in the public view, and his ready eloquence and specious showof information made him a very valuable ally for Pitt and a fairlyformidable opponent to Fox in the heady debates over the measures towhich the political honor of the dishonorable coalition was pledged. The India Bill had a more serious enemy than Dundas, a more serious enemythan Pitt so far as the immediate effect of enmity upon public opinion isto be estimated. There was an attorney in London named James Sayer whoseprivate means enabled him to neglect his profession and devote himself tothe production of political caricatures and squibs. Sayer was one of themany who believed in the rising star of Pitt, and he proved his belief bythe publication of a caricature which Fox himself is said to haveadmitted gave the India Bill its severest blow in public estimation. This caricature was called "Carlo Khan's Triumphal Entry into LeadenhallStreet. " It represented Fox in the grotesque attire of a theatricalOriental potentate, and with a smile of conquest upon his black-hairedface, perched upon an elephant with the staring countenance of LordNorth, that was led by Burke, whose spectacled acridity was swollen withthe blowing of a trumpet from which depended a map of India. The {234}caricature was ingenious, timely, and extraordinarily efficacious inharming the measure and its champions. It had an enormous sale; it wasimitated and pirated far and wide. It carried to all parts of thekingdom the conviction that Fox was aiming at nothing less than adictatorship of India, and it intensified the general animosity towardsthe measures and the men of the Coalition Ministry more effectively thanany amount of speeches in Westminster could have done. But it had nomore power to weaken the solid majority of the Ministry in the House ofCommons than the hurried erudition of Dundas, or than what Walpole calledthe "Bristol stone" of Pitt's eloquence as contrasted with the "diamondreason" of Fox's solid sense. Neither political caricature nor populardisapproval, neither the indignation of the King nor the opulence of thefearful and furious East India Company, could prevent Fox from carryinghis measures in the House of Commons by means of the sheer force ofnumbers that he had obtained by his unhallowed compact with North. But the power of the new Ministry was vulnerable in another place wherethe most unconstitutional weapons were employed against it. The King waseager to avenge the affront that had, as he conceived, been put upon himby the compulsion that had forced him to accept ministers so little tohis taste. He was prepared to stick at little in order to retaliate uponhis enemies, as he always conceived those men to be who ventured to crosshis purposes. Nothing could be done effectively to change the politicalcomposition of the Lower House; something could be essayed with thereasonable hope of modifying the composition of the Upper House. LordTemple, a second-rate statesman, whose position gave him almostfirst-rate importance, was the instrument by which the King was able tobring very effective pressure upon the peers. George wrote a letter toLord Temple in which he declared that he should deem those who shouldvote for Fox's measure as "not only not his friends, but his enemies;"and he added that if Lord Temple could put this in stronger words "he hadfull authority to do so. " With this amazing document in his {235}possession Lord Temple went from one noble lord to another, pointing outthe unwisdom of each in pursuing a course which would constitute him anavowed enemy of the King, and insisting upon the advantages that mustfollow from the taking of the very broad hint of the royal pleasure thusconveyed. Temple's arguments, backed by and founded upon the King'sletter, had the most satisfactory result from the King's point of view. Peer after peer fell away from the doomed Ministry; peer after peerhastened to prove himself one of the elect, to assert himself as a King'sfriend by recording his vote against the obnoxious measure. [Sidenote: 1783--Fall of the Coalition Ministry] The course of action inspired by the King and acted upon by Lord Templewas flagrantly unconstitutional even in an age which permitted to thesovereign so much liberty of personal intervention in affairs. It was, however, attended with complete success. The India Bills were rejectedin the House of Lords by a majority of nineteen, and this defeat, whichwould not have been regarded in more recent times as fatal to a Ministry, however fatal for the time being to the measure thus condemned, wasinstantly used by the King as a pretext for ridding himself of theadvisers whose advice he detested. The King resolved to dismiss theministers, and to dismiss them with every circumstance of indignity thatshould render their dismissal the more contemptuous. On the midnight ofthe day following the final defeat of the measure in the House of Lords amessenger delivered to the two Secretaries of State, Fox and North, amessage from the King stating that it was his Majesty's will and pleasurethat they should deliver to him the seals of their respective offices, and that they should send them by the Under-Secretaries, Mr. Frazer andMr. Nepean, as a personal interview on the occasion would be disagreeableto the King. The seals were immediately sent to Buckingham House andwere promptly handed over by the King to Lord Temple, who on thefollowing day sent letters of dismissal to the other members of theCabinet Council. When the House of Commons met, under conditions of {236} keen excitement, Fox and North took their seats on the Front Opposition Bench with theirvast majority behind them eager to retaliate upon the King, who haddefied their voices and insulted their leaders. A young member, Mr. Richard Pepper Arden, rose in his place and moved a new writ for theborough of Appleby, in the room of the Right Honorable William Pitt, whohad accepted the office of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor ofthe Exchequer. We are told that this motion was received with loud andgeneral laughter by the Opposition, who regarded Pitt's conduct as apiece of foolhardy presumption. And indeed at first Pitt's positionseemed difficult in the extreme. It was hard to form a Government in theface of a hostile majority in the Commons, and in the Lords Pitt'sperplexity was increased by Lord Temple's sudden and sullen resignationof the office to which he had been so newly appointed. Various reasonshave been given for Temple's mysterious and petulant behavior. Some havethought that he resigned because he was in favor of an immediatedissolution, while Pitt was opposed to such a step. Others believe thathe was eager for some high mark of royal favor, possibly a dukedom, whichwas refused by the King and not warmly advocated by Pitt. In spite ofall obstacles, however, Pitt succeeded in forming a Ministry, the best hecould manage under the conditions. To Shelburne he offered nothing, andthis omission adds a mystery greater than that of Temple's resignation toPitt's administration. It must have surprised Shelburne, as it surprisedevery observer then and since. Pitt has been accused of ingratitude tothe man who had been his father's friend and to whom he himself had owedso short a time before the leadership of the House of Commons. But Pittwas not ungrateful. He was merely astute. He read Shelburne as perhapsno other of his contemporaries was able to read him, and he gauged him athis true value or want of value. Shelburne's glittering unreality, hisshowy unreliability, were to have no place in Pitt's scheme of things. Abandoned by Temple, abandoning Shelburne, Pitt went his own way, doingthe best he could in the face {237} of tremendous odds and doing it verywell. One of his first acts of office was to bring in an India Bill ofhis own, which was decisively defeated in the Commons. For some monthsPitt fought his hard and thankless fight as a minister with a minoritybehind him. At last, in the end of March, he saw his opportunity for adissolution and resolved to take it. A singular episode threatened todelay his purpose. [Sidenote: 1784--The disappearance of the Great Seal]The Great Seal of England was stolen from the house of the LordChancellor in Great Ormond Street, and was never recovered. It may havebeen purloined by some political partisan who believed, as James theSecond believed, that by making away with the Great Seal he couldeffectively embarrass his opponents. But this "curious manoeuvre, " asPitt himself called it, was nullified by the promptitude with whichanother Great Seal was made. The result of the dissolution was as gratifying to Pitt as it wasdisastrous to Fox. More than one hundred and sixty of Fox's friends losttheir seats and earned instead the sobriquet of Fox's Martyrs, and Foxhimself had very great difficulty in getting elected for the newParliament. So ended the unfortunate episode of the Coalition Ministry. Much as Fox had suffered from the sins of youth, he was destined tosuffer even more from this error of his manhood. For the rest of hislife, save for a few months towards its close, he was destined to remainout of office, conscious of the great deeds he would have done and deniedthe power to do them, while his antagonist Pitt lived through long yearsof office, long years that were as eventful as any years and moreeventful than most years in the history of the country. Fox had run up agreat debt for a little power. He had paltered with his honor, with hisprinciples, with his public utterances; he had staked more than he had aright to stake on success, and he had lost, utterly and hopelessly. Ifevery error in life has to be paid for sooner or later, the price duefrom Fox for his apostasy was very promptly demanded and was very heavy. It is to be regretted that Pitt began his long period of authority by anattempt as stubborn as it was ungenerous to keep his great rival out ofpublic life. The election for {238} Fox's constituency of Westminsterwas one of the fiercest conflicts in English history. Every effort wasmade to drive Fox out, every effort to put him in. Beautiful women--whomPitt described as "women of the people, " in parody of the name they gaveto Fox of "the man of the people"--bribed voters with kisses, while thefriends of Pitt rallied every man they could muster to the pollingbooths. Fox was returned, but the unconstitutional conduct of the HighBailiff in granting the request of the defeated candidate, Sir CecilWray, for a scrutiny, and in refusing to make a return till the scrutinywas effected, might have deprived Westminster for a season of anyParliamentary representation, and would have kept Fox out of Parliamentaltogether if he had not been returned for the Kirkwall Borough throughthe friendship of Sir Thomas Dundas. Pitt unfortunately backed up theaction of the High Bailiff with a vehemence of zeal that suggestedrancor, and that failed of its purpose. Fox was in the Commons to defendhimself and his cause, and he did defend himself with an eloquence thateven he never surpassed, and that gave its additional glory to itsultimate success. [Sidenote: 1784--Pitt as a financier] However the generosity or the taste of Pitt's conduct towards Fox in thisinstance might be questioned, there could be no question as to the rareability he soon made proof of as a statesman and as a financier. Duringhis few and troubled months of office before the dissolution, he hadintroduced an India Bill to take the place of that of Fox, which the Kingand the Lords had shattered. This Bill had been defeated by a majorityof eight. He now introduced what was practically the same measure, andcarried it triumphantly by a majority of more than two hundred. Itestablished that Board of Control and that double system of governmentwhich existed, with some modifications, until the Act of 1858, followingupon the Indian Mutiny, effected a radical revolution in theadministration of India. The enemies of Pitt's measure declared that itsabuse of patronage was as flagrant as and more enduring than thatproposed by Fox, and for a long time public discontent {239} expresseditself loudly against the extreme favor that was shown to Scotchmen inthe filling up of appointments. The financial affairs of the country called for a bold hand and found it. Lord North had muddled the finances of England almost as completely andalmost as hopelessly as contemporary French financiers were muddling thefinances of France. Pitt faced something that was not altogether unlikefinancial chaos with a courage which was well and with a genius which wasbetter. The picturesque institution of smuggling, capitalized by wealthand rank in London, and profitably employing some forty thousandadventurous spirits, withered before the spell of Pitt's dexterousmanipulations. A window tax compensated for a lightened tea duty thatmade smuggling merely a ridiculous waste of time, and its most sinistereffect may still be noticed here and there in England in the hideousimitations of windows painted on to the walls of houses to support agrotesque idea of harmony, without incurring the expense of an actualaperture for light and air. Pitt raised the loans necessary to meet theyawning deficit and to minimize the floating debt, and he astonished hisworld by introducing the amazing elements of absolute honesty andadmirable publicity into the transaction. The principle of patronagethat had made previous loans a scandalous source of corruption wasgallantly thrown overboard; and the new minister announced to the generalamazement that the new loans would be contracted for with those whooffered the lowest terms in public competition. A glittering variety ofnew taxes, handled with the dexterity of a conjuror, and extractingsources of revenue from sources untaxed and very justifiably taxable, rounded off a series of financial proposals that inaugurated brilliantlyhis administration, and that had their abiding effect upon the welfare ofthe country. The crown of his financial fame was his plan for theredemption of the National Debt introduced in 1786. His plan was basedon the comparatively familiar idea of a sinking fund. Up to the time ofPitt's proposal, however, such sinking fund as might exist in a time ofpeace was always liable to be taken over and {240} made use of by theGovernment in a time of war. Pitt's plan was to form a sinking fundwhich should be made inalienable by an Act of Parliament until the Actcreating it should be repealed by another Act of Parliament. For thispurpose Pitt created a Board of Commissioners consisting of the Speaker, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Master of the Rolls, theAccountant-General, and the Governor and Deputy-Governor of the Bank ofEngland. To this independent and distinguished body of men the sum ofone million sterling was to be handed over annually for the gradualredemption of the existing debt by the purchase of stock. The story of Pitt's early administration was not all a record of success. For the last time, and unsuccessfully, he attempted to bring about aParliamentary reform. For the first time, and no less unsuccessfully, hetried to bring about that better understanding between England andIreland which it was his merit always to desire, and his misfortune neverto accomplish. In spite of his genius, his eloquence, and hispopularity, his position in the House of Commons was in a senseprecarious. It was not merely that he had the bad luck to be opposed bysuch a galaxy of ability as has perhaps never before or since dazzledfrom the benches of Opposition the eyes of any minister of Pitt'sintellectual power. To be fought against relentlessly, tirelessly, by aSheridan, a Burke, and a Fox would have been bad enough for a statesmanat the head of a large and reliable majority and enjoying the uncheckeredconfidence of his sovereign. But Pitt did not enjoy the uncheckeredconfidence of the King, and Pitt's majority was not reliable. LordRosebery quotes an analysis of the House of Commons dated May 1, 1788, recently discovered among the papers of one of Pitt's privatesecretaries, which serves to show how uncertain Pitt's position was, andhow fluctuating the elements upon which he had to depend for hispolitical existence. In this document the "Party of the Crown"--anominous term--is set down as consisting of 185 members, including "allthose who would probably support his Majesty's Government under anyminister not {241} peculiarly unpopular. " No less than 108 members areset down as "independent or unconnected;" the party ascribed to Foxmusters 138, while that of Pitt is only estimated at 52, with theminimizing comment that "of this party, were there a new Parliament, andMr. P. No longer to continue minister, not above twenty would bereturned. " In the face of difficulties like these Pitt stood practicallyalone. His was no Ministry "of All the Talents;" the ranks of theMinistry did not represent, even in a lesser degree, the rich variety ofability that made the Opposition so formidable. [Sidenote: 1788--Prince George Augustus Frederick] If the King was at best but a lukewarm supporter of his splendidminister, the heir to the throne was the minister's very warm andpersistent enemy. When Pitt came to power the Prince of Wales was, andhad been for some time, a conspicuous figure in society, a fitful elementin political life, and a subject of considerable scandal to the publicmind. George the Third was not the kind of man to be happy with or tobring happiness to his children. Possessed of many of those virtueswhich are supposed to make for domestic peace, he nevertheless failedsignally to attach to himself the affection of his children. One andall, they left him as soon as they could, came back to him as seldom asthey could. The King's idea of firmness was always a more or lessaggravated form of tyranny, and he reaped in loneliness the harvest ofhis early harshness. Between his eldest son and himself there soon aroseand long continued that feud between the reigning sovereign and his heirwhich seemed traditional in the House of Hanover. George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, has many claims to beregarded as perhaps the worst, and as certainly the most worthless, prince of his House. Something was to be excused in the son of such afather; some wild oats were surely to be sown in the soil of a childhoodso dully and so sourly cultivated. But no severity of early surroundingswill explain or palliate the unlovely mixture of folly and of falseness, of debauchery, vulgarity, profligacy, and baseness, which were the mostconspicuous {242} characteristics of the Prince's nature. The malignantenemy of his unhappy father, the treacherous lover, the perjured friend, a heartless fop, a soulless sot, the most ungentlemanly First Gentlemanof Europe, his memory baffles the efforts of the sycophant and paralyzesthe anger of the satirist. Genius has wasted itself again and again inthe attempt fittingly to describe him. To Byron he became "the fourth ofthe fools and oppressors called George. " Moore immortalized his"nothingness" as a "sick epicure's dream, incoherent and gross. " LeighHunt went to prison for calling him a "fat Adonis of fifty. " Landor, inan epigram on himself and his royal namesakes as bitter as four bitinglines could be, could find nothing more bitter than to record his descentfrom earth, and thankfulness to Heaven that with him the Georges had cometo an end. Thackeray abandoned in despair the task of doing justice tohis existence. "I own I once used to think it would be good sport topursue him, fasten on him, and pull him down. But now I am ashamed tomount and lay good dogs on, to summon a full field, and then to hunt thepoor game. " When Pitt became Prime Minister the Prince of Wales was in Opposition, because he was opposed to his father. He imagined himself to be thefriend of Fox, of Sheridan, of Burke, because Fox and Sheridan and Burkewere unpopular with the King. His career had been one of debt anddrunkenness, of mean amours and degrading pleasures, when the son ofChatham passed from his studious youth to the control of the destinies ofEngland. Pitt was called upon and refused to consent to a Parliamentaryappeal to the King for the payment of the Prince's debts. Pitt couldfeel no courtier's sympathy for the unnatural son, for the faithlessFlorizel of foolish Perdita Robinson, for the perjured husband of Mrs. Fitzherbert. There can be no doubt that in the December of 1785 thePrince of Wales went through a ceremony of marriage, which could notunder the conditions constitute a legal marriage, with Mrs. Fitzherbert, a beautiful young woman of a little more than twenty-nine years of age, who had twice been widowed {243} and was a member of the Roman Catholicfaith. The town soon rang with gossip, and what was gossip in thedrawing-rooms threatened to become a matter for "delicate investigation"in the House of Commons. The denial given by Fox in Parliament on theauthority of the Prince of Wales practically ended any attempt at publicinquiry, and almost broke the heart of Mrs. Fitzherbert. To her thePrince of course promptly disavowed Fox, with whom she immediately brokeoff all friendship. Fox himself, indignant at the Prince's falsehood andat the base use which had been made of his voice, shunned the Prince'ssociety for a long time, which might very well have been longer. Thescandal slowly ebbed; a compromise was arrived at between the King andhis son; the King made an appeal to Parliament; and a sum of money wasvoted to deal with the Prince's debts in consideration of his promises ofreform in the future. [Sidenote: 1788--Talk of a Regency] The Prince of Wales did not forget Pitt's attitude towards him, and thetime soon arrived in which the minister came near to feeling the force ofthe Prince's anger. The health of the King was suddenly and seriouslyaffected. Soon after his reign began he had been afflicted by atemporary loss of reason. The same misfortune now fell upon him in theautumn of 1788. It became necessary to make arrangements for theappointment of a regent, and the necessity was the cause of a fierceParliamentary controversy. Fox rashly insisted that the Prince of Waleshad as much right to assume the reins of government as he would have hadin the case of the death of the monarch. Pitt maintained the moreconstitutional opinion that it was the privilege of Parliament to appointa regent and to decide what powers should be intrusted to him. Howeverlittle the knowledge may have influenced his action, Pitt knew very wellthat with the appointment of the Prince of Wales as regent his own holdof power would, for a time, come to an end. The whole question, however, was suddenly set on one side by the unexpected recovery of the King. TheKing's restoration to reason was well for the minister, and undoubtedlywell for the {244} kingdom. If Burke and Sheridan and Fox were avowedlythe Prince's friends in Parliament, his most intimate friends, those whowould be likely to prove influential in his mimic Court, were men of avery different kind. These were such men as George Hanger, the half-madsoldier, the "Paragon of Debauchery, " as the caricaturists labelled thePrince's "confidential friend, " who having been almost everything fromcaptain of Hessians to coal merchant, and from recruiter for the EastIndia Company to inmate of a debtor's prison, ended his long and unlovelycareer by declining to assume the title of Lord Coleraine, to which hebecame entitled in 1814, ten years before his death. These were such menas Charles Morris, the amiable Anacreon of Carlton House, who made betterpunch and rhymed better ballads than his fellows of that convivial age, and who had the grace to expiate the ignoble noonday of his existence byan honorable evening. These were such men as the queer gang ofblackguards, ruffians, and rowdies who haunted Brighthelmstone, the badand brutal Richard Barry, the "Hellgate" Lord Barrymore; the Jockey ofNorfolk, with his hair grown gray in iniquities; Sir John Lade, whosewife had been the mistress of a highwayman; and the worst and basestspirit of the gang, the Duke of Queensberry. Such were the men whom thePrince delighted to make his companions; such were the men who, if theKing's madness had persisted, would have hailed with satisfaction theoverthrow of Mr. Pitt. It were needless to dwell further for the present upon the adventures ofthe Prince of Wales, his amours, his debts, his friendships, hisfantastic pavilion at Brighton, or his unhappy marriage in April, 1795, to his cousin, the Princess Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick. Twenty years were to pass away before the recurrence of the King's maladywas to give his eldest son the show of power, and in those twenty yearsthe two political rivals--one of whom was the greatest of his allies, andthe other the greatest of his adversaries--had passed away. {245} CHAPTER LVIII. WARREN HASTINGS. [Sidenote: 1732--The birth of Warren Hastings] In the days when Clive was first winning his way to fame in India therewas another young Englishman serving John Company, whose abilityattracted the notice and gained the esteem of the conqueror of Dupleix. It is one of the privileges of genius to discern the genius of others. But even Clive, when he noted a young volunteer at Falta, who seemeddestined for better things than the handling of a musket, cannot havedreamed that he was giving an opportunity to a man whose name was totake as high a rank in the history of India as his own, whose deedswere to be no less fiercely battled over, whose part in the creation ofa great Indian Empire was to be as illustrious. All that India hadbeen to Clive--a refuge, a battleground, a theatre of great deeds, andunfortunately also of great offences, the cause of almost unbearabletriumph and almost intolerable humiliation, all that in as great adegree India was to be to Warren Hastings. Warren Hastings was born in the December of 1732, in Churchill, Oxfordshire, near Daylesford in Worcestershire. His family had been agood as it was an old family. But it had come down in the world. Ithad grown poorer and poorer as the generations rolled on, and thatmanor of Daylesford which had been in the family in the days of thesecond Henry had passed in the year of Sheriffmuir into the hands of aGloucester merchant. When Warren Hastings was born, the fortunes ofthe house had come to a very low ebb indeed. Pynaston Hastings, WarrenHastings's father, was, perhaps, as imbecile a man as ever yet was themeans of bringing an illustrious son into the world. He seems to havebeen weak, foolish, shiftless, as {246} worthless as a man well couldbe who was not actually a criminal. He had married very young, beforehe was sixteen; his wife had died shortly after giving birth to WarrenHastings. Pynaston married again, entered the Church, when he was oldenough to take holy orders, and drifted away into the West Indies intoouter darkness and oblivion, leaving children entirely dependent uponthe charity of relatives. That charity did not fail, though at firstit could be but meagrely extended. Warren Hastings's grandfather wasdesperately poor. All he could do for his deserted grandchild was toplace him at the charity school of the village. There, habited almostlike a beggar, taught as a beggar, the companion of clowns andplayfellow of rustics, the future peer of kings and ruler of rajahs, the coming pro-consul who was yet to make the state of England asimperial as the state of Rome, received his earliest lessons in thefacts of life, and dreamed his earliest dreams. His were strangedreams. In sleep, says a Persian poet with whom young Hastings wasafterwards doubtless acquainted, the beggar and the king are equal. IfWarren Hastings slept as a beggar, he certainly dreamed as a king. Weknow, on his own statement, that when he was but a child of seven hecherished that wild ambition which was to lead him through so manyglories and so many crimes. We are familiar with the picture of theboy leaning over the stream on that summer day, and looking at the olddwelling of his race, and swearing to himself his oath of Hannibal thatsome day he would, if the stars were propitious, win back hisinheritance. [Sidenote: 1750--Warren Hastings's early life] Somewhere about a year after this oath of Hannibal the fortunes of thelad took a turn for the better. An uncle, Howard Hastings, who had aplace in the Customs, was willing to give a helping hand to the son ofhis graceless brother. He brought Warren Hastings to London. InLondon Warren Hastings was first sent to school at Newington, where hismind was better nourished than his body. In after life he used todeclare that his meagre proportions and stunted form were due to thehard living of his Newington days. But the Newington days came to{247} an end. When he was some twelve years of age, his uncle sent himto Westminster School, where his name is still inscribed in letters ofgold, and where his memory adds its lustre to the historic associationsof a place that is richly blessed with historic associations. WarrenHastings distinguished himself in the great school of Westminster, ashe had already distinguished himself in the little village school ofDaylesford. With his oath of Hannibal burning in his mind, he seems tohave determined to seek success in all that he attempted, and to gainit by his indomitable energy and will. If he was brilliant as ascholar, he was not, therefore, backward in those other arts whichschool-boys prize beyond scholarship. He was as famous on the riverfor his swimming and his boating as he was famous in the classroom forhis application and his ability. His masters predicted for him abrilliant University career, and it is possible that Hastings may haveseen Daylesford Manor awaiting him at the end of such a career, andhave welcomed the prospect. But the life of Warren Hastings was notfated to pass in the cloistered greenness of a university or in thestill air of delightful studies. Howard Hastings died and left hisnephew to the care of a connection, a Mr. Chiswick, who happened to bea member of the East India Company. Perhaps Mr. Chiswick resented theobligation thus laid upon him; perhaps, as a member of the East IndiaCompany, he honestly believed that to enter its service was theproudest privilege that a young man could enjoy. Whatever were hisreasons, he resolutely refused to sanction his charge's career at theuniversity, insisted upon his being placed for a season at a commercialschool to learn arithmetic and book-keeping, and then shipped him offout of hand to Bengal as an addition to the ranks of the Calcuttaclerks. Thus it came to pass that Warren Hastings, like Clive, wassent to India by persons in England who were anxious to get rid of atroublesome charge. There were a good many persons in the years tocome who were very ready to curse the obstinacy of the elder Clive andthe asperity of Mr. Chiswick for sending two such terrible adventurersforth to {248} the great battle-field of India. The history of ourIndian Empire would certainly have been a very different story if onlyMr. Clive had been more attached to his ne'er-do-well son, and if onlyMr. Chiswick had been better affected towards his industrious charge. In the January of 1750 Warren Hastings said farewell to his dreams of ascholar's garland in England and sailed for India. In the October ofthe same year he landed in Bengal and altered the history of the world. Gentlemen adventurers who went out to India in the last century in theservice of John Company seldom knew much, or indeed cared much, aboutthe condition of the country which they were invading. They dreamedmostly of large fortunes, fortunes to be swiftly made and then broughthome and expended splendidly to the amazement of less fortunatestay-at-homes. For the past history of India they did not care a pennypiece. What to them were the mythical deeds of Rama and of Krishna;what to them the marches of Semiramis and Sesostris, or the conquestsof Alexander, or the fate and fortunes of the ancient kingdoms of theDeccan and Hindostan? They cared nothing for the spread of Mahommedaninfluence and authority, the glories of the Mogul Empire, the fate ofTamerlane, the fame of Aurungzebe. For them the history of India beganwith the merchant adventurers of 1659 and the East India Company of1600, with the grant of Bombay to England as part of the dower whichthe Princess of Portugal brought to Charles the Second. Nor were theymoved by imperial ambitions. It did not enter into their heads toconceive or to desire the addition of a vast Indian empire to theappanages of the English crown. They cared little for the conflictingcreeds of India, for Brahmanism and Buddhism and Jainism and Hinduismand the sects of Islam. They knew little of the differing tonguestalked over that vast continent, more than five hundred in number, fromthe Hindi of one hundred million men to the most restricted dialects ofthe mountains of Assam and Nepaul. India for them meant the littlespace of earth where the English had a trading interest, {249} and theregions of the shadowy potentates beyond from whom in some way or othermoney might be got. [Sidenote: 1750--Suraj ud Dowlah] When Warren Hastings landed in India the relations of England and ofEnglishmen to India were just upon the turn. The star of Clive'sfortunes was mounting towards its zenith; the fiery planet of Dupleixhad begun to fail and pale and fade. The policy which Dupleix hadadopted, that policy of intrigue with the native princes of India, theEnglish East India Company had been forced in self-defence and veryreluctantly to adopt. Having adopted it, the men of the English EastIndia Company proved themselves to be better players at the game thanDupleix. Warren Hastings, driving his pen at a desk in Calcutta, orlooking after silk-spinning in the factory of Kazim Bazar nearMurshidabad on the Ganges, was able to watch almost from its beginningthe great political drama in which he was destined in his time to playso great a part, and which was to end in giving England a great Asiaticempire. When Suraj ud Dowlah declared war against the English hisfirst move was to fall upon the Kazim Bazar settlement. WarrenHastings and the other English residents were made prisoners and sentto Murshidabad, where, through the intervention of the Dutch Company, they were humanely treated. Then came the madman's march on Calcutta, the horror of the Black Hole, and the flight of the Governor and theCompany's servants to the little fort at Falta in the Hughli belowCalcutta. Communications were entered upon between Governor Drake inFalta Island and Hastings at Murshidabad with a view to coming to termswith Suraj ud Dowlah. Warren Hastings was already, however, developingthat genius for Oriental diplomacy which afterwards so characterizedhis career. He was made aware of the treason that was hatching againstSuraj ud Dowlah in his own court and among his own friends, and he wasquite ready to play his part and find his account in that treason. Treason is a risky game for a political prisoner at a court like thatof Suraj ud Dowlah. Warren Hastings was quick-witted enough to seethat the sooner he got away from that {250} court the better forhimself. He succeeded accordingly in making his escape and joining thefugitives at Falta. Here two things of moment happened to him. He metthe woman who was to be his first wife, and he met the great man whowas to give him his first chance for fame. Among the refugees fromCalcutta was the widow of a Captain Campbell. Warren Hastings fell inlove with her, and afterwards in an hour of greater security he marriedher. He seem to have been very fond of her, to have been very happywith her, but she died very soon after the marriage, and the twochildren she bore him both died young, and so that episode came to anend. The more momentous meeting was with Clive. When the Madrasexpedition appeared in the Hughli, Warren Hastings volunteered to servein the ranks, shouldered his gun, and took his part in the fightinground Calcutta. But Clive's keen eyes discerned stuff for betterthings than the sieging of Indian forts in the young volunteer. WhenSuraj ud Dowlah's defeat ended in Suraj ud Dowlah's death, and thetraitorous Mir Jaffier sat on the throne in his stead, Warren Hastingswas sent to the court of the new prince at Murshidabad, originally assecond to the Company's representative, Mr. Scratton, and afterwards assole representative. [Sidenote: 1762--Clive and the East India Company] At Murshidabad Warren Hastings had every opportunity to justify Clive'sacumen in singling him out for distinction. The post he held was oneof exceptional difficulty and delicacy. Mir Jaffier was not altogetheran agreeable person to get on with. The English in India were takingtheir first lessons in Oriental intrigue. They were learning that ifit was not particularly difficult to upset one tyrant and place anotheron his throne, it was not always easy to keep that other on the throne, or at all safe to rely upon his loyalty to the men who had broughtabout his exaltation. Mir Jaffier was surrounded by enemies. Hiscourt, like every other Oriental court, was honeycombed with intriguesagainst him. His English patrons, or rather his English masters, proved to have an itching palm. They were always wanting money, andMir Jaffier {251} had not always got enough money in his treasury tocontent their desires. So he began to intrigue against the Englishwith the Dutch, and the English found him out and promptly knocked himoff his throne, and set up a new puppet in his stead. By this timeClive had returned to England, and the direction of the destinies ofthe East India Company was in the hands of the Governor, Mr. Vansittart, a well-meaning man whose views were not the views of Clive. Clive objected very much to the course which the East India Companywere pursuing. He wrote a letter to the London Board rebuking in nomeasured language the defects and evils of the Indian Administration. Once again Clive was the cause of Warren Hastings's advancement. TheLondon Board ordered the instant dismissal of all the officials who hadsigned Clive's letter and Warren Hastings was appointed to fill one ofthe vacant places. The five years that elapsed between the departure of Clive for Englandin 1760 and his return to India in 1765 are not years that reflect muchcredit upon the East India Company's administration. They had suddenlyfound themselves lifted from a condition of dependency and, at onemoment, of despair to a position of unhoped-for authority andinfluence. New to such power, dazzled by such influence, they abusedthe one and they misused the other. But the part that Warren Hastingsplayed during this unfortunate five years reflects only credit uponhimself. The vices of the East India Company were not his vices; hewas no party to their abuse of their power, or their misuse of theirinfluence. When he was advanced from the Patna agency, his place wastaken by a Mr. Ellis, who seems to have been exceptionally andpeculiarly unfitted for the delicate duties of his post. He appears tohave carried on all his negotiations and communications with the NawabMir Kasim with a high-handed arrogance and an absence of tact whichwere in their way astonishing. Relations between the Nawab and Mr. Ellis, as the Company's representative, became so strained that in 1762Warren Hastings was again sent to Patna to investigate the wholetrouble. {252} Clive's judgment was already justified: WarrenHastings's ability had already found much of the recognition itdeserved; his twelve years of Indian life had changed him from theadventurous, inexperienced lad into the ripe and skilful statesman uponwhom his masters were confident that they could rely in such a momentof emergency as had now come. It would have been better for the Company if they had taken the advicethat Warren Hastings gave in the report on the quarrel between theNawab on the one side and Mr. Ellis on the other. He was a servant ofJohn Company, but he was too good a servant not to see the faults ofhis masters and the follies to which those faults were leading. TheCompany had blundered very badly before the coming of Clive; hadblundered through false security, through negligence, throughpusillanimity, through greed. After the victories of Clive had placedthe Board in Leadenhall Street, and its representatives in India, on avery different footing, the Company blundered through rapacity, throughselfishness, through the arrogance born of an unforeseen success. Allmanner of oppressions and injustices were committed under the powerfulprotection of the English name. Hastings declared that the only way ofending the difficulty was to come to some definite settlement with theNawab as to his authority on the one hand and the Company's privilegeson the other. Together with Mr. Vansittart, the Governor, Hastingsvisited the Nawab, and a plan of conciliation was made by which therights of the Nawab and the rights of the Company were duly apportionedand declared. But the headstrong Council of the Company refused thepropositions of Warren Hastings and of Vansittart, and refused to makeany concessions to the Nawab. The irritated Nawab retaliated byabolishing all internal duties upon trade, by which act he deprived theEnglish of the unjust advantages for which they had contended. It wasnow a question which should attack the other first, and Mr. Ellis, hearing a rumor of intended hostilities on the part of Mir Kasim, attacked the Nawab, drove him out of his dominions and {253} set up MirJaffier again for a time. Hastings protested against these acts, anddeclared that he would have resigned but that he was unwilling to leavethe Company while engaged in a harassing war. But his position wasuncomfortable. His counsels and those of Mr. Vansittart were unheeded. English aggression continued. Mr. Vansittart left for England in 1764, and in the December of that year Hastings followed him, glad to leave ascene of so much disorder, a disorder that was to increase alarmingly, until in the September of 1765 Clive reappeared in India and set thingsstraight again. [Sidenote: 1765-69--Hastings's return to England] Of no period of Warren Hastings's life is less known than of the fouryears which he spent in his native land--from 1765 to 1769. He did notreturn to England like the traditional Nabob, with pockets overflowingwith rupees. He had not employed his time and his energies, as so manyother servants of John Company had done, solely to the furthering ofhis own fortunes, and the filling of his own pockets. If he had sailedfor India fourteen years earlier as a penniless lad, he returned toEngland comparatively a poor man. He had tried his hand at commercelike every one else in India, but commerce was not much in his line. He had the capacities of a statesman, he had the tastes of a man ofletters, but he did not in any great degree possess the qualities thatgo to make a successful merchant. It is even said that he had toborrow the money to pay his passage home, and it seems certain thatwhen he was home, the generous way in which he endeavored to assist hisrelations sorely taxed his meagre means. Hastings seems to have sought for distinction in the career of a man ofletters and not to have found it. The ability which he displayed inadministration and the writing of State papers and politicalcorrespondence vanished whenever he attempted to produce work that madea more ambitious claim to be considered literature. The clearness ofstatement, the width of view, the logical form, the firm grasp andprofound knowledge which were characteristic of the evidence he gavebefore the House of {254} Commons Committee in 1766, gave place to athin and niggling pedantry of style when he turned his pen to theessays and the verses of a man of letters. Yet there were some topicson which he was eminently qualified to write, and by which, underhappier conditions, he might have earned distinction. While he was inIndia he had not allowed his active mind to be entirely occupied withthe duties of his official career. That love of literature, thatmarvellous capacity for acquiring knowledge, which had characterizedhim in his Westminster school-days, remained with him at the desk ofthe East India Company and in the courts of Indian princes. He gavegreat attention to the languages and the literatures of the East. Mostof those English who served their term in India contented themselves, when they troubled themselves at all about the matter, with learning asmuch of the native vernaculars with which they were brought intocontact as was necessary for the carrying on of a conversation and thegiving of an order. With such a measure of knowledge Warren Hastingswas not content. He studied Persian, the courtly language of India, closely; he read much in its enchanting literature. When he came backto England in 1765 he was possessed of a knowledge of the mostbeautiful of the Eastern languages, as rare as it was useless then foran English man of letters to possess. [Sidenote: 1769--Warren Hastings as an Oriental scholar] Almost a century later the great American transcendentalist, Emerson, prophesied a rise of Orientalism in England, and he lived to see hiswords come true. But in the days when Warren Hastings was striving tomake his way in London as an author, the influence of the East uponliterature, upon scholarship, upon thought, was scarcely perceptible. People read indeed the "Arabian Nights" in M. Galland's delightfulversion; read the Persian tales of Petit de la Croix; read all thetranslations of the many sham Oriental tales which the popularity ofGalland and Petit de la Croix had called for in Paris, and which theParisian writers were ready to supply. But serious Orientalscholarship can hardly be said to have existed in England. Sir WilliamJones was the only Englishman of {255} distinction who was earnestlydevoted to Eastern studies; but his Persian Grammar, which was in somedegree the foundation-stone of Persian scholarship in England, had notyet appeared, and Sir William Jones was still writing to Reviczki thosedelightful letters in which he raves about the poetry of the Arabs andthe Persians. Thus the scholarship of Warren Hastings placed him in anexceedingly small minority among Englishmen of letters. Hastings wasnot the man to be alarmed or discouraged by finding himself in aminority. He was as impassioned an admirer of Persian poetry as SirWilliam Jones; he considered that the Persian language should beincluded in the studies of all well-educated men; he dreamed ofanimating the waning fires of Oriental learning at Oxford. He had avision in his mind of a new scholarship, to be called into being by thegenerosity of the East India Company. He thought of Englishmenbecoming as familiar with the deeds of Rustum as with the wrath ofAchilles, as intimate with the Ghazels of Hafiz as with the Odes ofHorace. He seems to have visited Dr. Johnson in the hope of securinghim as an ally in his scheme. The scheme came to nothing, but thelearning, the literary taste, and scholarly ambition of Hastings made astrong impression upon Johnson, who entertained a stately regard forthe young man from India. It soon became plain to Warren Hastings that he was not going to makemuch of a livelihood either by Persian poetry or by the calling of aman of letters. His thoughts had turned back to India within a year ofhis return to England, and he had applied for employment to theCompany, but for some reason his request was not granted. In 1768, however, the Court of Directors appointed him to a seat in Council atMadras, and early in the following year, 1769, he sailed again forIndia on his most momentous voyage. Not only was that ship, the "Dukeof Grafton, " bearing him to a career of the greatest glory and thegreatest obloquy; not only was it carrying him to a grandeur and a fallalmost unparalleled in the history of men who were not monarchs. Onboard the "Duke of {256} Grafton" Warren Hastings was to meet with oneof the most serious influences of his life. We have already seen howHastings had married, had been a father, and how wife and children hadpassed out of his life and left him alone. Hastings was a man ofstrong emotions. Now he met a woman who awoke all the strongestemotions of his nature and won his devotion for the rest of his life. The Baroness von Imhoff was a young, beautiful, attractive woman, married to a knavish adventurer. It is certain that she and Hastings felt a warm attachment for eachother; it seems certain that Imhoff connived at, or at least winked at, the attachment. It may be that the understanding between Hastings andImhoff was in this sense honorable--that the Baron was willing to freehis wife from an unhappy union that she might form a happy union. Itmay be that Hastings's passion was indeed, in Macaulay's fine phrase, "patient of delay. " The simple facts that call for no controversy arethat Hastings met the Baroness von Imhoff in 1769; that eight yearslater, in 1777, Imhoff, with the aid of Hastings's money, obtained hisdivorce in the Franconian Courts, and that the woman who had been hiswife became the wife of Hastings. She made him a devoted wife; he madeher a devoted husband. Hastings was never a profligate. In an agethat was not remarkable for morality his life was apparently moral evento austerity. His relationships with the Imhoffs constitute the onlycharge of immorality that has been brought against him, and the charge, at least, is not of the gravest kind. If Anglo-Indian society was atfirst inclined to be uncharitable, if the great ladies of its littleworld held aloof in the beginning from the Baroness von Imhoff, hermarriage with Hastings seems to have restored her to general favor andesteem. [Sidenote: 1771--Hastings's great administrative qualities] Warren Hastings found plenty of work cut out for him on his return toIndia. He had his own ideas, and strong ideas, about the necessity forreforms. He was much opposed to the policy of sending out assecretaries to the local governments men who were without localexperience and therefore less likely to take a warm interest {257} inthe Company's welfare, while such appointments were in themselvesunjust to the claims of the Company's own servants. He vehementlyurged the necessity for making the rewards of the service more adequateto the duties of the service, and he announced himself as determined todo all he could for "the improvement of the Company's finances, so faras it can be effected without encroaching upon their future income. "If Hastings could scheme out needed reforms on his way out, he found onhis arrival that the need for reform was little short of appalling. The position which Hastings held was a curious one. He was Presidentof the Council, it is true, but president of a council of which everymember had an equal vote, and many of the members of which had personalreasons for wishing to oppose the reforms that Hastings was coming outto accomplish. A disorganized government had to be reorganized, anexhausted exchequer to be refilled, a heart-breaking debt to bereduced, and all this had to be done under conditions that well mighthave shaken a less dauntless spirit than that of Warren Hastings. Warren Hastings was never for one moment shaken. In a very short spaceof time he had greatly bettered the administrative system, had fosteredthe trade of the country by the adoption of a uniform and low Customsduty, and had greatly furthered the establishment of civilized rule inthe province conquered by Clive. He accomplished this in the face ofdifficulties and all dissensions in his own Council, against subtlenative intrigues, against opposition open and covert of the mostpersistent kind. Every creature who throve out of the disorganizationof India naturally worked, in the daylight or in the dark, againstHastings's efforts at organization. In 1771, when he was made Governorof Bengal, he had attempted much and succeeded in much. He fought hardwith the secret terror of dacoity. Having given Bengal a judicialsystem, he proceeded to increase its usefulness by drawing up a code ofMohammedan and Hindu law. For the former he used the digest made bycommand of Aurungzebe; for the {258} second he employed ten learnedPundits, the result of whose labors was afterwards translated intoEnglish by Halhed, who had been the friend of Sheridan and his rivalfor the hand of Miss Linley. The work which Warren Hastings accomplished in India must be calledgigantic. He created organization out of chaos; he marchedstraightforward upon the course which Clive had already marked out asthe path of the East India Company's glory. The East India Company wasnot very eager to advance along that path. Hastings spurred itssluggish spirit, and, though he was not able to do all that his daringnature dreamed of, he left behind him a long record of greatachievements. The annexation of Benares, the practical subjection ofOude, the extension of British dominion, the triumphs of British arms, must be remembered to the credit of Warren Hastings when his career asa great English adventurer is being summed up. That British Empire inIndia for which Clive unconsciously labored owes its existence to-dayin no small degree to the genius, to the patience, and to the untiringenergy of Warren Hastings. [Sidenote: 1773--Hastings and the Rohilla War] The two heaviest charges levelled against Warren Hastings are inconnection with the Rohilla war and with the trial of Nuncomar, nowbetter known as Nand Kumar. The genius of Burke and the genius ofMacaulay have served not merely to intensify the feeling againstHastings, but in some degree to form the judgments and bias theopinions of later writers. But it is only due to the memory of a greatman to remember that both in the case of the Rohilla war and in thecase of Nand Kumar there were two sides to the question, and thatHastings's side has not always been investigated with the care itdeserves. The adversary who denounced him in the House of Commons andimpeached him in Westminster Hall, the adversary who assailed him witha splendid prose, were alike inspired by a longing for justice and ahatred of oppression. But it should be possible now, when more than acentury has passed since the indictment of the one and well-nigh half acentury since the indictment of the other, to remember {259} that ifHastings cannot be exculpated there is at least a measure of excuse tobe offered for his action. There is much to be said from a certain point of view in defence ofWarren Hastings's action with regard to the Rohilla war. The Rohillachiefs were no doubt a danger to the Nawab of Oude, whom Hastingsregarded as a useful ally of the Company. By the conquest ofRohilkhand Hastings hoped to obtain for that ally a compact State shutin effectually from foreign invasion by the Ganges all the way from thefrontiers of Behar to the mountains of Thibet, while at the same timethis useful ally would remain equally accessible to the British forceseither for hostilities or protection. Put in this way the case seemed, no doubt, plausible enough to Hastings, and to all who thought withHastings that Indian chiefs and princes were but pieces on a board, tobe pushed this way or that way, advanced or removed altogether at thepleasure and for the advantage of the English resident and ruler. Butwhat actually happened was that Hastings, in defiance of the wholeprinciple of the Company's administration in India, interfered in thecontests of native races and lent the force of English arms to aid adespot in the extirpation of his enemies. It is not to the point tourge that the Rohillas were not undeserving of their fate. Even if theRohillas were little other than robber chiefs, even if their existenceconstituted a weak point in the lines of defence against theever-terrible Mahrattas, all this did not in the eyes of Burke and ofthose who thought with Burke justify Hastings in lending English armsfor their extermination and receiving Indian money for the loan. Theysaw an act of hideous injustice and corruption where Hastings sawmerely a piece of ingenious state policy. He gave the troops, he gotthe money. The Rohillas were destroyed as an independent power, andthe Company was richer than it had been before the transaction by somefour hundred thousand pounds. The story of Nand Kumar comes into the history as the result of anorganic change in the composition and administration of the East IndiaCompany. North's {260} Regulating Act of 1773 made many changes in theadministration of English India. The changes that most directlyconcerned Hastings converted the Governor of Bengal into aGovernor-General, and reduced his Council to four members. TheGovernments of Madras and Bombay were placed under the joint control ofGovernor-General and Council. Hastings was appointed, naturallyenough, to be the new Governor-General. His four councillors wereRichard Barwell, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Philip Francis. Barwell was the only one who was a member of Hastings's old Council. The three others were in England; they had been chosen expressly toguide Indian policy in accordance with the views of the homeGovernment. Clavering and Monson had already earned some distinctionof a soldierly kind; Francis was by far the ablest of the three. Theauthor of the "Letters of Junius" was much of a scholar and somethingof a statesman, but he was a man of a fierce and unbending temper, prompt to quarrel, hotly arrogant in argument, unrelenting in hishatred of those who crossed his purposes. These were not the kind of men with whom Hastings was likely to get on, and from the moment of their landing in India, where they complainedthat they were not received with sufficient ceremony, they and Hastingswere furiously hostile. The meetings of the Governor-General and hisCouncil became so many pitched battles, in which Hastings, aided onlyby Barwell, fought with tenacity and patience against men whosedetermination appeared to be in every possible instance to undo what hehad done, and to oppose what he proposed to do. They treated him as ifhe were little better than a clerk in the Company's service; they actedas if their one purpose was to drive him out of public life. [Sidenote: 1775--Charges against Hastings] As soon as it was plain that the new men of the new Council werehostile to Hastings, Hastings's enemies were eager enough to comeforward and help in the work. One of Hastings's oldest and bitterestenemies was the Brahmin Nand Kumar. Nand Kumar had always been hostileto Hastings. Now, when Hastings was in danger, was {261} threatenedwith defeat and with disgrace, Nand Kumar came forward with a wholestring of accusations against him, accusations to which Francis, Clavering, and Monson listened eagerly. Nand Kumar accused Hastings ofmany acts of shameless bribery, declared that he himself had bribed himin large sums, and produced a letter from a native princess in whichshe avowed that she had bribed Hastings in large sums. The threecouncillors appear to have accepted every word uttered by Nand Kumar asgospel truth. Hastings, on his side, refused to be arraigned at hisown Council-board by a man whom he alleged to be of notoriouslyinfamous character, though he and Barwell were perfectly willing thatthe whole matter should be referred to the Supreme Court. At lastHastings withdrew from the Council, followed by Barwell. The othersimmediately voted Clavering into the chair, summoned Nand Kumar beforethem, listened to all that he had to say, and on that evidence, in theabsence of the accused man, the self-constituted tribunal foundHastings guilty of taking bribes from the princess, and ordered him torepay the sum of thirty-five thousand pounds to the public treasury. For the moment it seemed as if Francis and his party had carried theday. Hastings had his back to the wall, he seemed to be well-nighfriendless. The triumvirate declared that there was no form ofpeculation from which Hastings had thought it reasonable to abstain, and they formally charged him with having acquired by peculation afortune of no less than forty lakhs of rupees in two years and a half. Suddenly, when the position of Hastings appeared to be at its worst, itchanged. Nand Kumar and two Englishmen named Fowke, who had been veryzealous against Hastings, were charged before the Supreme Court withconspiracy, in having compelled a native revenue farmer to bear falsewitness against Hastings. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court wasElijah Impey, Hastings's old and attached friend, a circumstance ofwhich much has been made. While Nand Kumar was bound over for trial onthe charge of conspiracy, another and more serious charge was broughtagainst him by a native attorney, who {262} accused him of forging andpublishing a bond. On this charge Nand Kumar was arrested, and after alengthy hearing of the case committed to the common jail. There is nothing very surprising in this charge of forgery. Forgerywas not a very serious crime in the eyes of such men as either NandKumar or his accuser. It was made plain that, whether he had forgedthe bond or no, he had forged the letter from the princess upon whichthe charge against Hastings was based, for the princess herselfdeclared it to be a forgery. It had aroused some suspicion even beforethe disclaimer, on account of the signature, which did not resemble hersignature in undoubted and authentic communications. On the questionof the forged bond Nand Kumar was duly and apparently fairly tried. Itwas not very much of a charge. The business was very old. The nativeattorney had been seeking for some time to bring Nand Kumar to trial, and had only substituted a criminal for a civil suit when theestablishment of the Supreme Court enabled him to do so. [Sidenote: 1775--The execution of Nand Kumar] Nand Kumar's trial ended in conviction, and conviction for forgerybrought with it by the English law sentence of death. Whatever may bethought of the crime of forgery in England, it certainly was not lookedupon in India by Indians as a criminal offence of a kind that calledfor the severest penalty of the law. But Nand Kumar had been tried byEnglish law. His judges, in order to show their fidelity not merely tothe spirit but to all the forms of English law, had worn their heavywigs all through the torrid heat of those Calcutta June days. By theEnglish law he was convicted and sentenced to death. The triumviratemade little or no attempt to save the man on whose word they hadrelied. On August 5, 1775, Nand Kumar was hanged on the Maidan outsideCalcutta. He met his death with the composed courage of a man wholooked upon himself as a martyr. Whatever his offences may have been, he had done nothing which in his own eyes, or in the eyes of hisfellow-countrymen, called for the pitiless punishment which fell uponhim. Of course, the important question is how far, if at all, {263} Hastingswas concerned in the death of Nand Kumar. That is just the questionwhich it is impossible to answer definitely. The certain facts arethat Nand Kumar was Hastings's enemy, that Impey was Hastings's friend;that at a moment of grave crisis in Hastings's life, when Nand Kumarwas the most eminent witness against his name and fame, that witness, was arraigned on a charge that was very old, that had been suddenlyconverted from a civil to a criminal charge; that he was tried, foundguilty, and executed. On the basis of that bare narrative of facts itwould seem that if Hastings had nothing to do with the matter, he mightalmost as well have had as far as the judgment of posterity went. Thething was too apt, the conditions too peculiar not to leave theirstigma upon the memory of the man who gained most by them. At the same time it must be remembered that, however black thearguments against Hastings may seem, there is no positive proof that hewas directly implicated in what his enemies called the judicial murderof Nand Kumar. It must be remembered that the writer who has gone mostdeeply into the whole ugly story, Sir James Stephen, in his careful"Story of Nuncomar, " has after long and exhaustive analysis of everyparticular of the case recorded his judgment in favor of Impey and ofHastings. Sir James Stephen's judgment is not final, indeed, but itmust have weight with any one who attempts impartially to appreciatetwo public men who have been accused for more than a century of aterrible crime. Sir James Stephen believes that Nand Kumar's trial wasperfectly fair, that Hastings had no share whatever in the prosecution, and that there was no collusion of any kind between Hastings and Impeywith regard to the trial, the verdict, or the execution. Every onemust form as best he may his own judgment upon the matter and the men;but Sir James Stephen's opinion is one that must be taken into accountin any attempt to decide. The death of Nand Kumar did not end the struggle between Hastings andhis three antagonists. While they made no further attempt of a likekind--the fate of Nand {264} Kumar, said Francis, would prevent anyfurther native information against the Governor-General--they stillresolutely strove by all possible means to cross and check him. It isnot necessary to follow in all their mean and wearisome details theparticulars of that prolonged conflict. The odds were against Hastingsuntil the death of Monson, when, by means of his own casting vote andthe adhesion of Barwell, Hastings found himself the master of themajority at the Council-table. But the persistence of the attacks hadtheir result at home, where an ill-advised offer of resignation made byHastings was seized upon by the Directors of the Company. Theresignation was accepted, Wheler was appointed Governor-General in hisstead, and pending his arrival in India the post was to be filled byClavering. This was a severe blow for Hastings. At first he thought of yieldingto it, in which case his career in India would have been closed. ButClavering's indecent eagerness to seize upon the Governor-Generalshipbefore it was fairly vacant forced Hastings to defiance. He refused tosurrender his office to Clavering. Clavering called upon the army tosupport him. Hastings called upon the army to stand fast by him. Thearmy followed Hastings, and the support of the men of the sword wasfollowed by the support of the men of the robe. The judges of theSupreme Court backed up Hastings and censured Clavering, and a littlelater Clavering's death left Hastings for the time supreme in theCouncil-chamber. His supremacy was contested after the arrival ofWheler, who immediately sided with Francis against Hastings. But thesupremacy was not overthrown. Hastings was in the majority; he wouldnot allow the alliance of Francis and Wheler to impede him in hispurposes, and he stuck to his post as Governor-General. The East India Company made no effort to enforce his resignation. TheCourt of Directors resented his conduct, and found fault with himpersistently, but they could not overlook his influence with the Courtof Proprietors, and the condition of affairs in India was too grave tomake the {265} dismissal of Hastings wise or politic. The Governmentbore Hastings little love, and the King in particular was much incensedat his refusal to resign, and was all for his recall and the recall ofBarwell who had abetted, and the judges who had supported him. But thestruggle with the American colonies absorbed the attention of theAdministration too closely to allow them to interfere so markedly inthe affairs of India at a moment when interference might perhaps have aresult not unlike the civil war. [Sidenote: 1702-82--Haidar the bitter enemy of the English] English opposition was not the only difficulty that Warren Hastings hadto contend with. Like the monarch in the Arabian tale who discernsarmies marching against his capital from every point of the compass, Hastings found enemies rising up against him in all directions. Aleague of three native powers menaced the safety of the Britishpossessions. The Mahratta states combined with the Nizam of theDeccan. Both again combined with a new power whose rise had been asrapid as it was alarming, the Mohammedan power of Haidar in Mysore. When Warren Hastings arrived in India the second time Haidar was in hissixty-seventh year. He was born in 1702 as the son of a Mogul officerin the Punjaub. At his death Haidar held a rank somewhat similar tothat of a captain in the service of the Emperor of Delhi. Haidardeemed, and rightly deemed, that there was little or no opportunity forhis ambition in that service, and his eyes seeking for a better chief, found the man in Nunjeraj, the nominal vizier and real ruler of theRajah of Mysore. In 1750 Haidar persuaded the troops under his commandto leave their Mogul prince and take service with the sovereign ofMysore. Under that sovereignty he rose rapidly to distinction. Thoughhe was little better than a robber chieftain, the ablest and mostdaring robber of a horde of robbers, his power grew so rapidly that intime he was able to supplant Nunjeraj, and in the end to usurp thesovereignty of Mysore in 1761. Haidar had his bitter grudge against the English. In 1771 he had beenbadly beaten by the Mahrattas and had appealed to the English to helphim, as they had {266} undertaken by treaty to do. But the help wasrefused to the defeated prince, and the defeated prince swore an oathof vengeance against the English, and when the time seemed ripe he didhis best to keep his oath. When in 1779 France declared war againstEngland, Haidar declared in favor of the French. He gave his sword tothe service of the Grand Confederacy in 1778 and prepared to march uponMadras. The President and the Council were taken unawares. It was notuntil Haidar had marched with fire and sword into the Carnatic, andthat the smoke of the villages he destroyed in his progress could beseen from Madras, that they learned that Haidar was in earnest and notmerely making a menace in the hope of frightening the English into anadvantageous treaty. Hastings himself seems to have been convincedthat Haidar did not mean to attack the Company, but when the Mysoreprince's purpose was plain every effort was made to stay his onset. Lord Macartney, although not one of the Company's servants, was madeGovernor of Madras. Haidar was compelled for the time to abandon hisattempt upon the Carnatic. In 1783 his hatred of the English was endedby his sudden death. But he bequeathed it as a rich legacy to his sonTippu, a man as daring and as ambitious as his sire. Hastings won away by concessions the Mahrattas and the Nizam from thecause of Tippu. But Tippu had his French allies, and Tippu and hisFrench allies carried on a campaign successful enough to force theEnglish practically to appeal for a peace, which Tippu accorded in atreaty flattering at once to his pride and to his ambition. It was asomewhat dearly bought peace for the English, for Tippu, regarding theadvances of the English as a proof of their weakness, made demands farmore arrogant than his successes justified, and those demands wereagreed to by the English envoys. The treaty with Tippu had to be madeon a basis of mutual restitution of conquests, so that England was leftat the end of the struggle against Mysore with a great loss both of menand money, and no advantages, territorial or strategical, to setagainst the loss. Even the peace upon these terms obtained did notprove {267} a lasting peace. Tippu was not unnaturally tempted by theconcessions of the English into further displays of arrogance which intime inevitably resulted in another war. But by the time that warbroke out Warren Hastings had returned to England and had no furtherpersonal concern with the affairs of British India. In the mean time Hastings's feud with his antagonists on theCouncil-board continued. A kind of reconciliation, a kind of agreementwith Francis, enabled Hastings to allow Barwell to return to Englandand still to leave the Governor-General in authority at the Board. ButHastings found that reconciliation or agreement with Francis waspractically impossible. Rightly or wrongly, Francis renewed his oldpolicy of attacking every proposal and interfering with every projectthat Hastings entertained. At last the long quarrel came to a violenthead. Hastings replied to one of Francis's minutes in some severewords, in which he declared himself unable to rely upon Francis's word, as he had found Francis to be a man devoid of truth and honor. [Sidenote: 1780--Hastings and Francis fight a duel] Such a charge made in those days was generally to be met with in onlyone way. In that way Francis met it. Francis challenged Hastings to aduel. Hastings accepted the challenge. The antagonists met, exchangedshots, and Francis fell severely wounded before the pistol of Hastings. Hastings sent friendly messages to Francis and offered to visit him, but Francis rejected his overtures absolutely, and on his return tohealth renewed his attacks upon Hastings until the close of the year, when he sailed for England to carry on more successfully his plansagainst his enemy. Well as the Supreme Court had served Hastings in the case of Nuncomarand in the quarrel with Clavering, the time came when Hastings foundhimself placed in a position of temporary hostility to that Court andto his old friend Impey. The bad machinery of the Act of 1773 leftroom for almost every possibility of friction between the Supreme Courton the one hand and the Council on the other, instead of framing, as itshould have framed, its {268} measure so as to allow the two powers towork harmoniously together, each in its own sphere, for the welfare ofBritish India. The friction grew more intense as time went on. Sometimes one party to the quarrel was in the right, sometimes theother. Whichever was the case, the spectacle of the quarrel was initself sufficiently humiliating and sufficiently dangerous. Hastingsdevised a scheme for the better regulation of the powers and privilegesof the two conflicting bodies, but his scheme was put on one side bythe British Government, and the Court and the Council remained asirreconcilable as before. At last it reached such a pitch that theCourt issued a summons against the Government. The Government ignoredthe summons; things stood at a dead-lock; the personal relationships ofHastings and Impey were strained almost to severance. In this crisisHastings thought of and carried out a compromise. He offered to Impeythe presidency of the Company's chief civil court. Impey accepted theoffer, and, though he has been severely censured for what has beencalled the taking of a bribe, the compromise proved to be the best wayout of the difficulty that had arisen. Impey, who has been happilycalled the first of Indian codifiers, showed himself to be an excellenthead for the provincial courts that were thus put under his control. The provincial courts had been hitherto more of a curse than ablessing; under Impey's guidance they were brought into harmony withthe Supreme Court. Impey was not long suffered to remain in his newoffice. Two years after his acceptance of the post he was removed fromit by order of the Court of Directors. But the work he had done inthat short time was good work and left abiding traces. Hastings's planhad borne fruit in Impey's "Code, " and afterwards in the passing of anAct of Parliament clearly defining the jurisdiction and the powers ofthe Supreme Court. [Sidenote: 1781--Hastings and the Rajah of Benares] One of the latest acts of Warren Hastings's administration was also oneof the acts that most provoked the indignation and the resentment ofthose who in England were watching with hostile eyes the progress ofhis career. {269} Chait Singh, the Rajah of Benares, held authority atfirst under the ruler of Oude, and afterwards under the government ofthe East India Company, to whom the sovereign of Oude had transferredit. The Rajah of Benares paid a certain tribute to the Company. Theheavy necessities of the war compelled Hastings to call upon the Rajahfor a larger sum. The step was not unusual. In time of war a vassalof the Company might very well expect to be called upon for anincreased levy. But the Rajah of Benares was very unwilling to givethis proof of his devotion to the Company. He demurred, temporized, promised aid of men and arms, which was never rendered. Hastings seemsto have been convinced, first of all, that the Rajah was possessed ofenormous wealth, and could well afford to pay heavily for the privilegeof being ruled over by the Company, and in the second place that it wasnecessary for the power and influence of the Company to force thealmost mutinous Rajah to his knees. He made a final demand for no lessthan fifty lakhs, or half a million pounds, and set off himself forBenares to compel the Rajah to obey. Hastings never wanted courage, but his Benares expedition was certainlythe most daring deed of his whole life. He entered the sacred city ofBenares attended by an escort of a mere handful of men, and in Benares, in the midst of a hostile population, and practically in the power ofthe Rajah, he acted as if he were the absolute master of prince, people, and city. He insisted upon his full demands being compliedwith, and as the Rajah's reply appeared to be unsatisfactory heimmediately ordered his assistant, Mr. Markham, to place the Rajahunder arrest. The audacity of the step was so great as to suggesteither that Hastings was acting with the recklessness of despair, orhad formed no thought as to the not merely possible but probable resultof his action. The Rajah accepted the confinement to his palace with adignified protest. Two companies of sepoys were placed to guard him. These sepoys had no ammunition; they were surrounded by swarms of theRajah's soldiery raging at the insult offered to their lord. TheRajah's men fell upon the sepoys and cut them {270} and their Englishofficers to pieces. The Rajah lowered himself to the river by a ropeof turbans, crossed the Ganges, and shut himself up in his strongholdof Ramnagar. Hastings's life was in imminent peril. Had he remainedwhere he was he and his thirty Englishmen and his twenty sepoys wouldhave been massacred. He fled in the darkness of the night to thefortress of Chunar, about thirty miles from Benares, where there was asmall garrison of the Company's troops. [Sidenote: 1781--The Vizier of Oude and the Begums] However rash Hastings might have been in provoking the conflict withthe Rajah, once it was provoked he carried himself with admirablecourage and coolness. Shut up with a small force in a region blazingwith armed rebellion, menaced by an army of forty thousand men, heacted with as much composure and ability as if he were the unquestionedmaster of the situation. He declined all offers of assistance from theVizier of Oude, rejected all Chait Singh's overtures for peace, andissued his orders to the forces that were gradually rallying around himwith rare tact and judgment. In a very short time the whole aspect ofaffairs changed. The Company's forces under Major Popham defeated theRajah's troops, captured fort after fort, drove the Rajah to takerefuge in Bundelcund, and brought the city and district of Benaresunder British rule again. Hastings immediately declared that thefugitive Rajah's estates were forfeited, and he bestowed them upon theRajah's nephew upon tributary terms which bound him faster to theCompany, and exacted double the revenue formerly payable into theCompany's exchequer. But the money which Hastings so urgently needed, the money for which hehad struck his bold stroke at Benares, was still lacking. All thebooty gained in the reduction of Benares had been divided among thevictors; none of it had found its way into the Company's coffers. TheVizier of Oude was deeply in the Company's debt, but the Vizier of Oudewas in desperately straitened circumstances, and could not pay hisdebt. Knowing Hastings's need, the Vizier exposed to him certain planshe had formed for raising money by seizing upon the estates of the two{271} Begums, his mother, the widow of the late Nawab, and hisgrandmother, the late Nawab's mother. The Vizier may have had justclaims enough upon the Begums, but it was peculiarly rash andunjustifiable of Hastings to make himself a party to the Vizier'sinterests. Hastings, unhappily for himself, lent the Vizier the aid ofthe Company's troops. The Begums, who were quite prepared to resisttheir feeble-spirited relation, did not go so far as to oppose theCompany in arms. Their palace was occupied, their treasure seized, their servants imprisoned, and they themselves suffered discomforts andslights of a kind which constituted very real indignities and insultsin the eyes of Mohammedan women. This was practically the last, as itwas the most foolish, act of Hastings's rule. It had the misfortunefor him of stirring the indignant soul of Burke. {272} CHAPTER LIX. THE GREAT IMPEACHMENT. [Sidenote: 1785--Burke's knowledge of India] Burke's spacious mind was informed by a passion for justice. He wasnot cast in the mould of men who make concessions to their virtues orcompacts with their virtues. He could not for a moment admit that theaggrandizement of the empire should be gained by a single act ofinjustice, and in his eyes Warren Hastings's career was stained by along succession of acts of injustice. He certainly would not do evilthat good might come of it. If the Rohilla war was a crime, if theexecution of Nand Kumar was an infamy, if the deposition of Chait Singhand the plundering of the Begums were crimes, then no possibleadvantage that these acts might cause to the temporal greatness of theState could weigh for one moment in the balance with Burke. In thehigh court of Burke's mind Warren Hastings was a doomed, a degradedman, even though it could have been proved, as indeed it would havebeen hard to prove, that any ill deeds which Warren Hastings had donewere essential to the maintenance of English rule and English glory inIndia. Burke argued that English rule in India, English glory inIndia, did not gain but only lost by ill deeds. But if England's gainand England's glory in India depended upon such deeds, he for his partwould have refused the gain and shuddered at the glory. If Burke's all-conquering passion was a passion for justice, perhapshis keenest political taste was for India and the affairs of India. Ata time when our Indian Empire was merely in its dawn, at a time whenthe affairs of India were looked upon by the nation at large as thecommercial matters of a company, Burke allowed all the resources of hisgreat mind to be employed in the study of India. He {273} knewIndia--he who had never sailed its seas or touched its shores--asprobably no other Englishmen of his time knew India, not even thosewhose lives had been for the most part passed in the country. And thiscomprehensive knowledge Burke was able to impart again with a readinessthat was never unreliable, with a copiousness that was never redundant. He gave a fascination to the figures of Indian finance; he made thefacts of contemporary Indian history live with all the charm of themost famous events of Greek or Roman history. India in his handsbecame what it rightly is, but what few had thought it till then, oneof the most fascinating of human studies. Indian affairs on his lipsallied all the allurement of a romance with all the statisticalaccuracy of a Parliamentary report. Such a genius for the presentationof facts inspired by such a passion for justice has enriched Englishliterature with some of its noblest and most truthful pages. The pith of all Burke's Indian policy, the text upon which all hissplendid sermons of Indian administration were preached, is to be foundin one single sentence of the famous speech on the Nabob of Arcot'sdebts. In that single sentence the whole of Burke's theory ofgovernment is summed up with the directness of an epigram and with theauthority of a law. "Fraud, injustice, oppression, peculation, engendered in India, are crimes of the same blood, family, and caste, with those that are born and bred in England. " Outside the noblesimplicity of that ethical doctrine Burke could not and would notbudge. That sentence represents the whole difference between him andthe man whom he afterwards accused, between him and the men of whomthat man came to be the representative. Burke's morality was direct, uncompromising, unalterable by climatic conditions or by the supplemoralities of other races. The morality of Warren Hastings and ofthose who thought with and acted for Warren Hastings was the moralityof Clive beforehand, was the morality that had been professed andpractised time and again since the days of Clive and Hastings by theinheritors of their policy in India. The ingenious theory was set upthat in {274} dealing with Oriental races it was essential for theEnglishman to employ Oriental means of carrying his point. If anOriental would lie and cheat and forge and, if needs were, murder, whythen the Englishman dealing with him must lie and cheat and forge andmurder too, in order to gain the day. Things that he would not dare todo, things that, to do him justice, he would not dream of doing inEngland, were not merely permissible but justifiable, not merelyjustifiable but essential in his intercourse with Asiatic princes andpeoples, with dexterous Mohammedan and dexterous Hindoo. The policywas inevitably new in Burke's time; it has been upheld again and againsince Burke's time. The theory which allowed Clive to forge and WarrenHastings to plunder was the same principle which led English soldiersthree generations later to make Brahmins wipe up blood before beingkilled, which prompted them to blow their prisoners from the cannon'smouth in the hope that their victims should believe that their souls aswell as their bodies were about to perish, which instigated gallant mento suggest in all seriousness the advisability of flaying alive theircaptured mutineers. The influence of the East is not always awholesome influence upon the wanderer from the West. It is displayedat its worst when it leads great men, as Clive and Hastings undoubtedlywere great men, into the perpetration of evil actions, and thejustification of them on the principle that in dealing with an Orientalthe Englishman's morality undergoes a change, and becomes for the timeand the hour an Oriental morality. [Sidenote: 1785-87--The defender of Hastings] Against such an adversary, Hastings, ignorant of the conditions ofEnglish political life, could bring forward no better champion thanMajor Scott. Hastings opposed to the greatest orator and most widelyinformed man of his age, a man of meagre parts, who only succeeded inwearying profoundly the House of Commons and every other audience towhich he appealed. Such a proconsul as Warren Hastings standing histrial upon such momentous charges needed all the ability, all the artthat an advocate can possess to be employed in his behalf. HadHastings {275} been so lucky as to find a defender endowed, not indeedwith the genius or the knowledge of Burke, for there was no such man tobe found, but with something of the genius, something of the knowledgeof Burke, his case might have appeared very different then and in theeyes of posterity. If Scott could have pleaded for Hastingseloquently, brilliantly, with something of the rich coloring, somethingof the fervid enthusiasm that was characteristic of the utterances ofhis great antagonist, he might have done much to stem, if not to turnthe stream of public thought. But Warren Hastings was not graced sofar. His sins had indeed found him out when he was cursed with such anenemy and cursed with such a friend. It is clear that Hastings himself on his return had little idea of theserious danger with which he was menaced. He seems to have becomeconvinced that his services to the State must inevitably outweigh anyaccidents or errors in the execution of those services. He honestlybelieved himself to have been a valuable and estimable servant of hiscountry and his Crown. We may very well take his repeated declarationsof his own integrity and uprightness, not, indeed, as proof of hispossession of those qualities, but as proof of his profound belief thathe did possess them. When he landed in England he appears to haveexpected only honors, only acclamation, admiration, and applause. Hereturned to accept a triumph; he did not dream that he should have toface a trial. The long years in India had served to confuse his perception of theconduct of affairs at home. He did not in the least appreciate the menwith whom he had to deal. If he gauged pretty closely the malignity ofFrancis, he may have fancied that the malignity was not very likely toprove dangerous. But he wholly misunderstood the character of theother foes, as important as Francis was unimportant, who were rangedagainst him. He made the extraordinary mistake of despising Burke. Hastings had certain anxieties on his return to England, His first wascaused by his disappointment at not finding his wife in London to greethim on his arrival, a {276} disappointment that was consoled two dayslater when, as he was journeying post-haste to the country to join her, he met her on Maidenhead Bridge driving in to join him. His second wasthe pleasurable anxiety of negotiating for the purchase of Daylesford, the realization of his youthful dream. He was made a little anxioustoo, later on, by the delay in the awarding to him of those honorswhich he so confidently expected. But he does not seem to have beendisturbed in any appreciable degree by the formidable preparationswhich were being made against him by Burke and Fox and the followers ofBurke and Fox. It is just possible that those preparations might have come to littleor nothing but for the folly of Major Scott. Major Scott was madenough to try and force the hand of the enemies of Hastings by callingupon Burke and Fox to fix a day for the charges that they wereunderstood to be prepared to bring against him. Fox immediately roseto assure Major Scott that the matter was not forgotten. Burke, withgrave composure, added that a general did not take choice of time andplace of battle from his adversaries. It has been suggested that butfor Major Scott's ill-advised zeal the attack might never have come toa head. But the conclusion is one which it would be rash to draw. Burke was not the man to forego his long-cherished hope of bringing acriminal to justice. If he had been inclined to forego it, he was notthe kind of man to be goaded into unwilling resumption of his purposeby the taunts of Major Scott. It may surely be assumed that theimpeachment of Warren Hastings would have been made even if Major Scotthad been as wise and discreet as he proved himself to be unwise andindiscreet. Even when the attack was formally begun, Hastings failed to grasp itsgravity or guess the best mode of meeting it. He insisted upon beingheard at the Bar of the House in his own defence. A man of rareoratorical ability, gifted with special skill in the selection of hismaterial and the adjustment of his arguments, might have done himself agood turn by such a decision. But Hastings was not so endowed, and hewould have done far better in {277} following the example of Clive andof Rumbold. He committed the one fault which the House of Commonsnever forgives, he wearied it. Such dramatic effect as he might havegot out of his position as a proconsul arraigned before a senate hespoiled by the length and tedium of his harangue. He took two days toread a long and wordy defence, two days which he considered all tooshort, and which the House of Commons found all too long. It yawnedwhile Hastings prosed. Accustomed to an average of eloquence of whichthe art has long been lost, it found Hastings's paper insufferablywearisome. Although he was the target for the eloquence of Burke, of Fox, and ofSheridan, still Hastings's hopes were high, and they mounted higherwhen the Rohilla war charge was rejected by a large majority. But theywere only raised so high to be dashed to earth again in the mostunexpected manner. The friends of Hastings were convinced that hewould have the unfailing support of Pitt in his defence. He was now tolearn that he was mistaken. [Sidenote: 1787--Pitt and the impeachment] Hastings had one very zealous champion in the House of Commons. Thiswas a young member, Sir James Bland-Burges. He rose not merely withthe approval of Pitt, but actually at Pitt's instigation, to defendWarren Hastings on the question of the treatment of the Rajah ofBenares. It is scarcely surprising that the House did not pay him anygreat attention. Having just come under "the spell of the enchanter, "it would hardly have listened with attention to an old and well-knownmember, and Bland-Burges was a young and unknown man. He could notcommand a hearing, so, whispering to Pitt that he would leave theremainder of the defence to him, he sat down, and the debate, on Pitt'ssuggestion, was adjourned. On the following day the young defender came to the House hot to hearPitt deliver to an attentive senate that defence which he had strivenunsuccessfully to make. He has recorded the astonishment, indignation, and despair when Pitt rose to make his declaration concerning thecharge against Hastings. The minister in whom Hastings trusted to findan ally offered some cold condemnation of {278} the intemperance of theattack, proffered some lukewarm praise to Hastings, and then announcedthat he would agree to the motion. To most of Pitt's supporters Pitt'saction came as an unpleasant surprise; but to Bland-Burges, from hisprevious conversation with the minister, it seemed like an act oftreason. There was little for Bland-Burges to do, but it is to hiscredit that he did that little. It required no small courage for afollower and a friend of Pitt to defy his authority in the House. Yetthat is practically what Bland-Burges did. Raging with indignation atwhat he conceived to be the tergiversation of his leader and thetreachery to his hero, Bland-Burges once again forced himself upon theattention of the House. The leaders on both sides being agreed, it wasexpected that the matter would be settled out of hand, and the Speakerhad actually put the question and declared it carried when Bland-Burgesleaped to his feet and challenged a division. He acted with thecourage of his despair, but, as he says, few unpremeditated enterprisesever succeeded better than this one. "The question indeed was carriedby a great majority, but those who were against it were almost entirelyof those who till then had implicitly voted with the minister. Thiswas not only mortifying to Mr. Pitt, but highly encouraging to Mr. Hastings and his steadfast friends. " Bland-Burges did not escape an early intimation of the disapproval ofhis chief. When the House broke up, Pitt said to him, with an austerelook, "So, sir, you have thought proper to divide the House. I hopeyou are satisfied. " Bland-Burges answered that he was perfectlysatisfied. "Then you seem satisfied very easily, " the ministerretorted; to which Bland-Burges replied, "Not exactly so, sir. I amsatisfied with nothing that has passed this evening except thediscovery I have made that there were still honest men present. " "Onthat, " Bland-Burges continues, "with a stern look and a stately air heleft me. " [Sidenote: 1787--Bland-Burges and Hastings] Bland-Burges won a reward for his courage which outweighed thedisapproval of Pitt. When he had thus {279} volunteered on behalf ofWarren Hastings he was so entirely a stranger to him that he did noteven know him by sight. Naturally enough, however, the arraigned manwas desirous to become acquainted with the stranger who had stood byhim when his own friends had abandoned him. He lost no time, therefore, in calling upon Bland-Burges to thank him for the part hehad played. Bland-Burges says that the conversation was deeplyinteresting, but that he only made a note of one passage, in which heexplained that, independently of his own conviction that the cause ofWarren Hastings was just and honorable, he had been moved to take partin his defence by the positive instructions of his father, who had diedabout two years previously. Bland-Burges's father, attributing thepreservation of England's power in India to Hastings, had enjoined hisson, if ever an attack were made upon Hastings, to abstract himselffrom all personal and party considerations and to support him liberallyand manfully. Whatever we may think of the conduct of Warren Hastings, it is a pleasure to find that those who thought him to be in the rightstood up for their belief as honorably and as gallantly asBland-Burges. It is not surprising that Warren Hastings was moved totears. That day's interview was the beginning of a friendship thatendured unbroken until the death of Warren Hastings. The reason which Pitt gave for his action on the Benares vote wassimple enough. He said that, although the action of Hastings towardsthe Rajah was in itself justifiable, yet that the manner of the actionwas not justifiable. Chait Singh deserved to be fined, but not to befined in an exorbitant and tyrannical manner. The explanation mightvery well be considered sufficient. A high-minded minister might feelbound to condemn the conduct of an official whom he admired, if thatconduct had pushed a legal right to an illegal length. But Pitt'sdecision came with such a shock to the friends, and even to the enemiesof Hastings, that public rumor immediately set to work to find someother less simple and less honest reason for Pitt's action. One rumorascribed it to an {280} interview with Dundas, in which Dundas hadsucceeded, after hours of argument, in inducing Pitt to throw WarrenHastings over. Another suggested that Pitt was spurred by anger at adeclaration of Thurlow's that he and the King between them would makeHastings a peer, whether the minister would or no. A third suggestedthat Pitt was jealous of the royal favor to Mr. And Mrs. Hastings;while a fourth asserted that Pitt deliberately sacrificed Hastings inorder to afford the Opposition other quarry than himself. But there isno need to seek for any other motive than the motive which Pittalleged. It was quite sufficient to compel an honorable man to givethe vote that Pitt gave. Blow after blow fell upon Hastings. The terrible attacks of Burke werefor a time eclipsed by the dazzling brilliancy of Sheridan's attackupon him in the famous Begum speech. Those who heard that speech speakof it with reverence and with passion as one of the masterpieces of theworld. In the form in which it is preserved, or rather in which it hasfailed to be preserved for us, it is hard, if not impossible, to findmerit calling for the rapture which it aroused in the minds of menfamiliar with magnificent oratory, and perfectly competent to judge. That it did arouse rapture is beyond doubt, and for the moment it waseven more effective in injuring Hastings than the more profound butless flaming utterances of Burke. The testimony of Fox, the testimonyof Byron, alike are offered in its unqualified praise. It was decided by the House of Commons, with the consent of Pitt, thatHastings should be impeached. One indignity Pitt spared him, onedanger Pitt saved him from. Burke was, somewhat incomprehensibly, anxious that the name of Francis should be placed upon that Committeeof Impeachment to which Burke had already been nominated as the firstmember by Pitt. But here Pitt was resolute. Francis was flagrantlyhostile to Hastings, hostile with a personal as well as a publichatred, and Pitt could not tolerate the notion that he should find aplace upon the Committee of Impeachment. Burke protested, and the{281} very protest was characteristic of Burke's high-mindedness. Forto Burke the whole business was a purely public business, in no senseconnected with any private feelings, and it seemed to him as if theexclusion of any one of those who had been conspicuous in thearraignment of Hastings from a responsible place on the Committee ofImpeachment on the ground of personal feeling was to cast somethinglike a slur upon the purity of motive of the men engaged in the attack. But Pitt was in the right, and the name of Francis was, by a largemajority, not suffered to appear upon the committee. [Sidenote: 1787--The impeachment trial] In the May of 1787 Burke formally impeached Warren Hastings at the Barof the House of Lords. Hastings was immediately taken into custody bythe Sergeant-at-Arms, and was held to bail for 20, 000 pounds, with twosureties for 10, 000 pounds each. The delay which was to becharacteristic of the whole proceedings was evident from the first. Though Hastings was taken into custody in the May of 1787, It was notuntil February 13 of the following year, 1788, that the impeached manwas brought to his trial in Westminster Hall. Before the trial began, popular feeling was roused against Hastingsmore keenly by the action of the Court than by the action of Burke andof his colleagues. The Court was inclined to be even more thanfriendly to Hastings and to his wife, and both Hastings and his wife, who were not in touch with English public opinion, took the unwisecourse of making the very most of the royal favor, and of displayingthemselves as much as possible in the royal sunlight. The Londonpublic, always jealous of any Court favoritism, resented the patronageof Hastings, and while it was in this temper an event took place whichserved to heighten its resentment. The Nizam of the Deccan had sent avery magnificent diamond to the King as a present, and, being ignorantof what was going on in England, he chose Hastings, naturally enough, as the medium through which to convey his diamond to the King. Hastings, with the want of judgment which characterized him at thistime, accepted a duty which, delicate at any {282} time, became underthe conditions positively dangerous. He was present at the Levee atwhich the diamond was presented to the King. Immediately rumor seizedupon the incident and distorted it. It was confidently asserted thatHastings was bribing the Sovereign with vast presents of preciousstones to use his influence in his behalf. The solitary diamond becamein the popular eye more numerous than the stones that Sinbad came uponin the enchanted valley. The print-shops teemed with caricatures, allgiving some highly colored exaggeration of the prevailing impression. Every possible pictorial device which could suggest to the passer-bythat Hastings was buying the protection of the King by fabulous giftsof diamonds was made public. In one Hastings was shown flingingquantities of precious stones into the open mouth of the King. Inanother he was represented as having bought the King bodily, crown andsceptre and all, with his precious stones, and as carrying him away ina wheelbarrow. So high did popular feeling run that the great diamondbecame the hero of a discussion in the House of Commons, when MajorScott was obliged to make a statement in his chief's behalf giving anaccurate account of what had really occurred. The trial of Warren Hastings is one of the most remarkable examples ofcontrasts in human affairs that is to be found in the whole course ofour history. It began under conditions of what may fairly be callednational interest. It came to an end amid the apathy and indifferenceof the public. When it began, the Great Hall of Westminster wasscarcely large enough to contain all those who longed to be present atthe trial of the great proconsul. All the rank, the wealth, thegenius, the wit, the beauty of England seemed to be gathered togetherin the building, which is said to be the oldest inhabited building inthe world. When it ended, and long before it had ended, the attendancehad dwindled down to a mere handful of spectators, some two or threescore of persons whose patience, whose interest, or whose curiosity hadsurvived the indifference with which the rest of the world had come to{283} regard the whole business. The spirit of genius and the spiritof dulness met in close encounter in that memorable arena, and it mustbe admitted that the spirit of dulness did on the whole prevail. Thereseemed a time when it was likely that the trial might go on forever. Men and women who came to the first hearing eager on the one side orthe other, impassioned for Hastings or enthusiastic for Burke, died andwere buried, and new men and women occupied themselves with otherthings, and still the trial dragged its slow length along. [Sidenote: 1788-95--Hastings's Oriental fortitude] It may be unhesitatingly admitted that during the long course of thetrial Warren Hastings bore himself with courage and with dignity. Hewas firmly convinced that he was a much-injured man, and if the justiceof a man's cause were to be decided merely upon the demeanor of thedefendant, Hastings would have been exonerated. He professed to behorrified, and he no doubt was horrified, by what he called "theatrocious calumnies of Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox. " He carried himself asif they were indeed atrocious calumnies without any basis whatsoever. His attitude was that of the martyr supported by the serenity of thesaint. He had lived so long in the East that he gained not a little ofthat Eastern fortitude which is the fortitude of fatalism. While thetrial was progressing he told a dear friend that he found muchconsolation in a certain Oriental tale. The story was of an Indianking whose temper never knew a medium, and who in prosperity washurried into extravagance by his joy, while in adversity griefoverwhelmed him with despondency. Having suffered many inconveniencesthrough this weakness, he besought his courtiers to devise a sentence, short enough to be engraved upon a ring, which should suggest a remedyfor his evil. Many phrases were proposed; none were found acceptableuntil his daughter offered him an emerald on which were graven twoArabic words, the literal translation of which is, "This, too, willpass. " The King embraced his daughter and declared that she was wiserthan all his wise men. "Now, " said Hastings, "when I appear at the Barand hear the violent invectives {284} of my enemies, I arm myself withpatience. I reflect upon the mutability of human life, and I say tomyself, 'This, too, will pass. '" It did pass, but it took its long time to pass. The trial lasted sevenyears. Begun in the February of 1788, it ended in the April of 1795. In that long space of time men might well be excused if they had grownweary of it. Had its protracted course been even pursued in colorless, eventless times it would have been hard to preserve the public interestin the trial so terribly drawn out. But it was one of the curiousfortunes of the trial to embrace within its compass some of the mostthrilling and momentous years that have been recorded in the history ofmankind. In the year after the trial began the Bastille fell. In theyear before the trial closed the Reign of Terror came to an end withthe deaths of Robespierre and St. Just. The interval had seen thewhole progress of the French Revolution, had applauded theconstitutional struggle for liberty, had shuddered at the Septembermassacres, had seen the disciplined armies of the great European Powersreel back dismayed before the ragged regiments of the Republic, hadseen France answer Europe with the head of a king, with the head of aqueen, had observed how the Revolution, like Saturn, devoured its ownchildren, had witnessed with fear as well as with fury the apotheosisof the guillotine. While the events in France were shaking everyEuropean State, including England, to its centre, it was hard for thepublic mind to keep itself fixed with any degree of intentness upon thetrial of Warren Hastings. The events of that interval had affected too, profoundly, the chiefactor in the trial. Burke entered upon the impeachment of WarrenHastings at the zenith of his great career, at the moment of hisgreatest glory. The rise and progress of the French evolutionexercised a profound, even a disastrous, effect upon him. For once hisfine intellect failed to discriminate between the essentials and thenon-essentials of a great question. His horror at the atrocities ofthe Revolution blinded him to all the advantages that {285} the successof the Revolution brought with it. The whole framework of that greatevent was to him so hideously stained with the blood of the Queen, withthe blood of so many innocent persons, that he could see nothing butthe blood, and the influence of this is to be noticed in Burke's finalspeech with its almost confident expectation that the guillotine wouldsooner or later be established in England. Burke's frenzy against theFrench Revolution made it appear to many as if his reasoned and carefulindictment of the erring Governor-General might after all be only merefrenzy too. [Sidenote: 1788-95--Acquittal of Hastings] Such as it was, and under such conditions, the trial did come to an endat last, after such alternations of brilliant speeches and dullspeeches as the world had never witnessed before. Sheridan again addedto his fame by a speech of which, unhappily, we are able to form novery clear idea. Law defended Hastings in detailing the whole of thehistory of Hindostan. Hastings again and again appealed piteously andpathetically that the trial might be brought somehow or other to anend. He was growing old, he had been for years a nominal prisoner, hewas very anxious that the terrible strain of waiting upon the slowproceedings of the tribunal should be relieved. At last the end cameafter weary years of controversy, in which Hastings had been loadedwith more contumely and lauded with more extravagance than it werepossible to conceive him good enough or bad enough to deserve. Finally, in the April of 1795, Warren Hastings was acquitted by a largemajority on every one of the sixteen counts against him that were putto the vote. Burke could not conceal his chagrin at this unexpectedresult. He had expected, he declared afterwards, that the corruptionof the age would enable Hastings to escape on some of the counts, buthe was not prepared for the total acquittal. It is probable thatHastings himself was not prepared for it, but the relief it affordedhim was tempered by the grave financial difficulties into which hefound himself plunged. The conduct of that long defence had well-nighexhausted all his available resources. After a vain appeal to Pitt to{286} indemnify him for his legal expenses, an arrangement was come tobetween the Government and the Company by which Hastings was enabled tolive at first in straitened, afterwards in moderate, circumstances forthe rest of his life. [Sidenote: 1788-95--Effect of the impeachment trial] It can scarcely be questioned but that Burke was in some degreeresponsible for the result of the trial. His burning sense ofinjustice, his passionate righteousness, and the perfervid strength ofhis convictions betrayed him into an intemperance of language thatinevitably caused a reaction of sympathy in favor of the man soviolently assailed. It is impossible to read without regret the actualferocity of the epithets that Burke hurled against Warren Hastings. Inthis he was followed, even exceeded, by Sheridan; but the utterances ofSheridan, while they enraptured their hearers by their brilliancy, didnot carry with them the weight that attached to the utterances ofBurke. Burke's case was too strong to need an over-charged form ofexpression. The plain statement of the misdeeds of Warren Hastings wasfar more telling as an indictment than the abuse with which Burkeunhappily was tempted to overload his case. Those who were amazed andsickened, with Macaulay, to think that in that age any one could befound capable of calling the greatest of living public men, "thatreptile Mr. Burke, " must reluctantly be compelled to admit that Burkeset his enemies a bad example by his own unlicensed use of opprobrium. In justifying, for instance, the application to Warren Hastings ofCoke's savage description of Raleigh as a "spider of hell, " Burkeallowed his fierce indignation to get the better of his tongue, to thedetriment of his own object, the bringing of an offender to justice. Miss Burney in her memoirs affords a remarkable instance of the injurywhich Burke did to his own object by the exuberance of his anger. Shetells us how, as she listened to Burke's arraignment of Hastings, andwent over the catalogue of his offences, she felt her sympathy forHastings slowly disappear, but that as Burke increased in the fury ofhis assault, and passed from accusation to invective, the convincingeffect {287} of his oratory withered, and the effect which he had socarefully created he himself contrived to destroy. In spite of defects which in some degree brought their own punishmentwith them, Burke's speeches against Warren Hastings must ever remainamong the highest examples of human eloquence employed in the serviceof the right. The gifts of the statesman, the philosopher, the orator, the great man of letters, are all allied in those marvellous pageswhich first taught Englishmen how closely their national honor as wellas their national prosperity was involved in the administration ofjustice in India. If Burke failed to convict Warren Hastings, hesucceeded in convicting the system which made such misdemeanors asWarren Hastings's possible. We owe to Burke a new India. What hadbeen but the appanage of a corrupt and corrupting Company hepractically made forever a part of the glory and the grandeur of theBritish Empire. Abuse and invective were not confined to Burke nor to the side whichBurke represented. Warren Hastings, or those who acted for WarrenHastings, employed every means in their power to blacken the charactersof their opponents and to hold them up to public ridicule and to publicdetestation. The times were not gentle times for men engaged inpolitical warfare, and the companions of Hastings employed all the artsthat the times placed at their disposal. Burke and Sheridan, and thosewho acted with Burke and Sheridan, were savage enough in the tribune, but they did not employ the extra-tribunal methods by which their enemyretaliated upon them. Hastings is scarcely to be blamed, considering duly the temper of hisage, for doing everything that party warfare permitted against hisopponents. He was fighting as for his life; he was fighting for whatwas far dearer to him than life--for life, indeed, he had ever shown amost soldierly disregard; he was fighting for an honorable name, forthe reward of a lifetime devoted to the interests of his country, as heunderstood those interests; he was fighting for fame as against infamy, and he fought hard and he {288} fought after the fashion of the time inwhich he lived. The newspaper, the pamphlet, the lampoon, thecaricature, the acidulated satire, the envenomed epigram, all wereused, and used with success, against the promoters of the impeachment. The caricatures were not all on one side, but the most numerous and themost effective were in favor of the impeached statesman. If theadversaries of Hastings naturally seized upon the opportunity of aclassical effect by presenting Burke and Hastings in the character ofCicero and Verres, the friends of Verres replied by the pencil ofGillray, representing Hastings as the savior of India defending himselfheroically against assassins with the faces of Burke and of Fox. Asthe interest in the trial flagged the caricatures grew fewer and fewer, to revive a little at the close of the case. The popular view of thetrial was then represented fairly enough by a large print called "TheLast Scene of the Manager's Farce, " in which Hastings was representedas rising in glory from the clouds of calumny, while Burke and Fox arerepresented witnessing with despair the failure of their protractedfarce, and the crafty face of Philip Francis peeped from behind a scenewhere he was supposed to be playing the part of the prompter--"nocharacter in the farce, but very useful behind the scenes, " adescription which sums up smartly enough the part that Philip Francisplayed in the whole transaction from first to last. [Sidenote: 1818--Death of Hastings] The eve of Hastings's life was as peaceful as its noon and day had beenstormy. The proconsul became a country squire; the ruler of an empire, the autocrat of kings, soothed his old age very much after the fashionof Diocletian and of Candide, in the planting of cabbages. Forthree-and-twenty years he dwelt at Daylesford, happy in his wife, happyin his friends, happy in his health, in his rustic tastes, in hissimple pleasures, in his tranquil occupation. He and his wife oftenvisited London, but Hastings seems to have been always happiest in thecountry, and he gradually declined into extreme old age with all thegrace and dignity of a Roman gentleman, loved by his {289} friends, dearly loved by those who were young. Once in those long quiet years, after the death of Pitt, Hastings, to please his wife, pleaded forpublic reparation of the wrong which he believed had been done him. Grenville professed every willingness to grant him a peerage, butrefused to entertain the idea of inducing the Commons to reverse theirformer judgment. On those terms Hastings declined the peerage. Thenearest approach to anything like public consolation for his sorrowscame to him in 1813, when, at the age of eighty, he came once more tothe Bar of the House of Commons, this time to give evidence on thequestion of renewing the Charter of the East India Company. By bothHouses, Commons and Lords alike, the old man was greeted with thegreatest enthusiasm, saluted with rapturous applause on his arrival, with reverential salutations on his departure. In 1818 the healthwhich he had preserved so well till then broke, and he died after somesevere suffering on August 22 in that year, and was laid in the earththat he had always loved so well. One of the latest acts of his life was to appeal to the Court ofDirectors to make some provision for his wife, by extending to her theannuity that had been accorded to him. They gave, says his mostdevoted biographer, no more heed to his dying entreaties than theywould have given to the whine of a self-convicted beggar. Yet surelyHastings had deserved well of the East India Company. His faults hadbeen committed in their service and had given them, not himself, wealthand power. But England is not always grateful to her servants. It isnot wonderful, says Sir Alfred Lyall, that Hastings's applicationfailed entirely, "remembering that even Lord Nelson's last testamentaryappeal on behalf of a woman--'the only favor I ask of my King and mycountry at the moment when I am going to fight their battle'--had beenrejected and utterly disregarded. " Mrs. Hastings survived her husbandfor some years, and was over ninety years of age when she died. {290} CHAPTER LX. THE CHANGE OF THINGS. [Sidenote: 1789--The political condition of France] The establishment of the American republic meant something more forEngland than the loss of her fairest colonies, and meant much more forEurope than the establishment of a new form of government in the NewWorld. While the United States were acclaiming Washington as their firstPresident and rejoicing over the excellence of their carefully framedConstitution, the principles which had elected the one and had createdthe other were working elsewhere to unexpected and mighty issues. Frenchgentlemen of rank and fortune, fired by a philosophic admiration forliberty, had fought and fought well for the American colonists. When therevolt had become a revolution, and the revolution a triumph, the Frenchgentlemen went back to France with their hearts full of love and theirlips loud in praise for the young republic and its simple, splendidcitizens. The doctrines of liberty and equality, which had been so dearto the Philosophers and the Encyclopaedists, were now being practicallyapplied across the Atlantic, and the growth of their success was watchedby the eager eyes of the wisest and the unwisest thinkers in France. Within five years from the time when the American army was disbandedFrench political philosophy found itself making astonishing stridestowards the realization of its cherished ideals. It had long felt theneed of some change in the system of government that had prevailed inFrance, but its desires had seemed dim as dreams until the success of ahandful of rebellious colonists in a distant country had made the spiritof democracy an immediate force in the life and the thought of the world. Undoubtedly the condition of France was bad. {291} The feudal system, orwhat was left of the feudal system, worn out, degraded, and corrupt, wasrapidly reducing France to financial, physical, and political ruin. Itis no part of the business of this history to dwell upon the conditionsprevailing in France towards the close of the eighteenth century, conditions which prevailed in varying degree over the most part ofEurope. Great French financiers like Turgot, great French thinkers likeVoltaire and Rousseau and the company of the "Encyclopaedia, " had beenkeenly conscious of the corroding evils in the whole system of Frenchpolitical and social life, and had labored directly and indirectly todiminish them. Keen-eyed observers from abroad, men of the world likeChesterfield, philosophers like Arthur Young, had at different epochsobserved the symptoms of social disease and prognosticated the nature ofits progress. The France of that day has been likened to a pyramid withthe sovereign for its apex, with the nobility, a remnant of antiquefeudalism, for its next tier, with the wealthy and influential Church forthe next, and below these the vast unrecognized bulk of the pyramid, theunprivileged masses who were the people of France. In the hands of thefew who had the happiness to be "born, " or who otherwise belonged to theprivileged orders, lay all the power, all the authority which for themost part they misused or abused. It has been said with truth that theman who did not belong to the privileged orders had scarcely any moreinfluence upon the laws which bound him and which ground him than if helived in Mars or Saturn instead of in Picardy or Franche Comté. Such asystem of government, which could only have been found tolerable if ithad been swayed by a brotherhood of saints and sages, was, as a matter offact, worked in the worst manner possible and for the worst purposes. The conditions under which the vast mass of the French people lived, struggled, suffered, and died were so cruel that it is hard indeed tobelieve them compatible with the high degree of civilization which, inother respects, France had reached. A merciless and most comprehensiveprocess of taxation squeezed life and hope out of the French nation {292}for the benefit of a nobility whose corruption was only rivalled by itsworthlessness and an ecclesiasticism that had forgotten the Sermon on theMount and the way to Calvary. But if the condition of France was bad it contained the germs ofimprovement. A greater freedom of thought, a greater freedom of speechwere beginning, very gradually, to assert themselves and to make theirinfluence felt. Philosophical speculation on sorrow and suffering turnedthe minds of men to thoughts of how that sorrow might be stanched andthat suffering abated. The slowly rising tide of thought was blown intoan angry sea by a wind from the west, and in a little while a scarcelysuspected storm became a hurricane that swept into a common ruineverything that opposed its fury. England had long been looked up to byFrench reformers as the pattern for the changes they desired to seebrought about in their own country. The moderation and equality of itslaws, as compared with those of France, the facilities of utteranceafforded to the popular voice, made it seem a veritable Utopia to eyesdimmed by the mist of French feudality. But now another and a greaterEngland had arisen in the New World. Across the Atlantic the descendantsof the men who had overthrown a dynasty and beheaded a king had shakenthemselves free from forms of oppression that seemed mild indeed toFrenchmen, and had proclaimed themselves the champions of theories ofsocial liberty and political freedom which had been dreamed of by Frenchphilosophers but had never yet been put into practice. RebelliousAmerica had fired the enthusiasm of gallant French adventurers;successful, independent America animated the hopes and spurred theimaginations of those whose eyes turned in longing admiration from theseasoned constitution of monarchical England to the as yet greenconstitution of republican America. [Sidenote: 1789--Revival of the States-General in France] Those Englishmen whose tastes and sympathies induced them to keep intouch with political opinion in France, and to watch with interest thespread of ideas which they themselves held dear, noted with approval manyremarkable {293} signs of activity across the Channel. While the strainupon the false financial system of France had become so great that theattempt to stop the hole in the money chest broke the spirit of financeminister after finance minister, a feeling in favor of some change in thesystem that made such catastrophes possible seemed to be on the increasein educated and even in aristocratic circles. Many Englishmen of thatday knew France, or at least Paris, fairly well. If Pitt had paid theFrench capital but a single visit, Fox was intimately acquainted with it, and Walpole was almost as familiar with a superficial Paris as he waswith a superficial London. Dr. Johnson, not very long before the time ofwhich we write, had visited Paris with his friends the Thrales, and hadmade the acquaintance of a brewer named Santerre. Arthur Young travelledin France as he travelled in England and in Ireland. On the other hand, Frenchmen who were soon to be conspicuous advocates of change were notunknown on the English side of the Channel. Mirabeau was known inLondon--not too favorably--and the cousin of the French King, the Duke deChartres, afterwards Duke of Orleans, had moved in London society and wasto move there again. So when educated Englishmen heard that Lafayettehad demanded the revival of the States-General, unused and almostforgotten these two centuries, they knew that the friend of Washingtonwas not likely to ask for impossibilities. When the Duke of Orleans sethimself openly in opposition to the King, his cousin, they recognized asignificance in the act, and when Mirabeau asserted himself as thechampion of a growing agitation in favor of an oppressed andunrepresented people they remembered the big, vehement man who had passedso much of his life in prisons and had played the spy upon the PrussianCourt. Gradually prepared for some change in the administrative systemof France, they were not prepared for the rapid succession of changesthat followed upon the formal convocation of the States-General in thespring of 1789. The States-General was the nearest approach to a representativeparliamentary system that was known to France. {294} But theStates-General had not been summoned to aid the deliberations of a Frenchmonarch in the course of many reigns. France had lived under what waspractically a despotism untempered by an expression of organized publicopinion for several generations. It was so long since the States-Generalhad been convoked that the very forms and ceremonies incidental to oressential to its convocation had passed out of living memory, and had tobe painfully ascertained by much groping after authority and precedent. In the end, however, authority and precedent were ascertained, and theStates-General, composed of representatives of the three estates of therealm--the Church, the Nobility, and the People--met with much ceremonyat Versailles. They were called together for the ostensible purpose ofdealing with the financial difficulties that threatened to make thecountry bankrupt. But it was soon clear that they, or at least themajority of their members, intended to accomplish much more than that. The news that travelled slowly in those days from the capital of Franceto the capital of England grew to be interesting and important with aninterest and an importance that were not to cease in steady activity formore than a quarter of a century. Event followed event with startlingrapidity. The members of the Third Estate severed themselves from theChurch and the Nobility, met in the Tennis Court in Versailles, anddeclared themselves a National Assembly. The people of Paris, profoundlyagitated, and fearing that the King intended to suppress the insurgentNational Assembly by force, broke out into riots, which culminated in anattack upon the famous and detested prison in the Faubourg St. Antoine, the Bastille. The Bastille had not for many years been a seriousinstrument of oppression, but its record was an evil record, and itrepresented in the eyes of the people of Paris all that was most detestedand most detestable in the old order. The Bastille was captured; its fewprisoners were borne in triumph through the streets, while its commander, De Launay, was decapitated and his head carried about on the point of apike. [Sidenote: 1789--The French Revolution] If the King of France had been a different man from {295} Louis theSixteenth he might have faced the rising storm with some hope of success. But he could do nothing, would do nothing. His advisers, his intimates, his kinsmen, his captains, despairing at his vacillation and fearing thatthey would be abandoned to the fury of insurgent Paris, fled for theirlives from a country that seemed to them as if possessed by a devil. Thecountry was possessed, possessed by the spirit of revolution. After agesof injustice a chance had come for the oppressed, and the oppressed hadseized their chance and misused it, as the long oppressed always misusesudden power. Rebellious Paris marched upon Versailles, camped outsidethe King's palace; broke in the night time into the King's palace, slaying and seeking to slay. The Royal Family were rescued, if rescue itcan be called, by the interposition of Lafayette. They were carried intriumph to Paris. Still nominally sovereign, they were practicallyprisoners in their palace of the Tuileries. Europe looked on inastonishment at the unexpected outbreak. In England at first the leadersof liberal opinion applauded what they believed to be the dawn of a newand glorious era of political freedom. Fox hailed in a rapture ofexultation the fall of the Bastille. The Duke of Dorset, the Englishambassador to France, saluted the accomplishment of the greatestrevolution recorded by history. Eager young men, nameless then but yetto be famous, apostrophised the dawn of liberty. "Bliss was it in thatdawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven, " Wordsworth wrote, with a wistful regret, fifteen years after the Bastille had fallen, recalling with a kind of tragic irony the emotions of that hour andcontrasting them with his thoughts on the events that had followedthrough half a generation. All over England strenuous politicians, catching the contagion of excitement from excited France, formulatedtheir sympathy with the Revolution in ardent, eloquent addresses, formedthemselves into clubs to propagate the principles that were making Francefree and illustrious, and sent delegates speeding across the Channel toconvey to a confident, constitution-making National Assembly the {296}assurance that the best hearts and the wisest brains in England pulsedand moved in unison with their desires. [Sidenote: 1790--Burke and the French Revolution] Such assurances were inaccurate and misleading. There was one man inEngland the goodness of whose heart, the wisdom of whose brain couldscarcely be questioned, whose censure in England, and not in Englandalone, was more serious than the applause of a whole theatre of others. At a moment when all who represented liberal thought in politics, all whosome ten years earlier had sympathized with the American colonists, wereshowing a like sympathy for the insurgent people of France, Edmund Burkemade himself conspicuous by the vehemence and the vigor of his oppositionto a movement which commanded the admiration of his most intimate friendsand closest political allies. While the Revolution was still almost inits infancy, while Sheridan and Fox vied with each other in the warmth oftheir applause, Burke set himself to preach a crusade against theRevolution with all the unrestrained ardor of his uncompromising nature. No words of Fox or of Sheridan, no resolution of clubs, no delegatedenthusiasm had anything like the same effect in aiding, that Burke'sfamous pamphlet had in injuring the French Revolution, in the eyes notmerely of the mass of the English people, but in the eyes of a very greatnumber of people in the countries of Europe. People whose business itwas to be king, to use the famous phrase of a then reigning prince, readily welcomed Burke's "Reflexions on the French Revolution, " which wassoon disseminated all over the Continent in a French translation. Naturally enough it appealed to the Emperor of Germany, to the EmpressCatherine of Russia, to the French princes sheltering in Coblentz andboasting of the revenge they would take on the Revolution when the Kingshould enjoy his own again. Naturally enough it appealed to George theThird as a book which every gentleman ought to read. Kings and princeseverywhere, who felt that at any moment their own thrones might begin torock unsteadily beneath them, inevitably applauded the unexpectedassistance of the greatest orator and thinker of his age. {297} Such applause alone would not have made Burke's pamphlet the formidableweapon that it proved to be in the hands of reaction, or have broughtabout the grave results that may be directly attributed to Burke's pen. The words of Burke created, the breath of Burke fanned, a public opinionin England and abroad that was in direct antagonism to everything thatwas meant by those who formed and who guided or were driven by theRevolution. It would be hard to find a parallel in history for theinfluence thus exerted by a single man against so great a force. All theconservatism of Burke's nature--the conservatism that led him to regardthe English Parliamentary system of his day as well-nigh ideally perfect, and that prompted him to resist so steadily and so successfully Pitt'sproposals of Parliamentary reform--concentrated itself against what hebelieved to be the spirit of anarchy newly arisen in France. TheRevolution was but a year old, and was as yet unstained by the worstexcesses of the Terror, when Burke launched his bolt, shouted hisbattle-cry, and animated Europe to arms. It must be admitted that manyof the evils which Burke prophesied in his review of the nascentrevolution were the stigmas of its prime. From the premises he beheld hedrew clear and definite conclusions, which were only too unhappilyverified as the tide of revolution flowed. But it must also beremembered that Burke was himself in no small measure the cause of therealization of his own dark and tragic prognostications. Burke'sarguments, Burke's eloquence, Burke's splendid ability were among themost potent factors in animating the hopes of the refugee princes, ofinspiriting their allies, and of forming that ill-advised and disastrouscoalition of the Powers against France which Danton answered with thehead of a king. It was the genius of Burke that stemmed the sympathybetween England and a nation struggling to be free; it was the genius ofBurke that fostered the spirit of animosity to France which began withthe march upon Paris, and which ended after the disastrous defeats of theinvaders, the deaths of the King and Queen, and all the agonies of theTerror, in {298} creating for England, in common with Europe at large, the most formidable enemy that she had ever known. In spite of Burke and Burke's melancholy vaticinations the course of theRevolution in France seemed at first to most liberal-minded Englishmen tomove along reasonable lines and to confine itself within the bounds ofmoderation. The excesses and outrages that followed immediately upon thefirst upheaval, the murders of Foulon and Berthier in Paris, the peasantwar upon the castles, were regarded as the unavoidable, deplorableebullitions of a long dormant force which, under the guidance of capableand honorable men, would be directed henceforward solely to theestablishment of a stable and popular system of government. The men whowere, or who seemed to be, at the head of affairs in France had namesthat for the most part commended themselves to such Englishmen as hadanything more than a superficial knowledge of the country. The fame ofLafayette, the hero of the American war, seemed to answer for the conductof the army. In Bailly, the astronomer whom unhappy chance had madeMayor of Paris, constitutionalism recognized a man after its own heart. The majority of the members of the National Assembly seemed to begloriously occupied in evolving out of the chaos of the old order a newand entirely admirable framework of laws modelled boldly after theEnglish pattern. Most English observers thought, in opposition to Burke, what the majority of the members of the National Assembly themselvesthought, that the Revolution was an accomplished fact, a concluded pageof history, brought about not indeed bloodlessly, but still, on thewhole, with comparatively slight shedding of blood, considering thedifficulty and the greatness of the accomplished thing. The practicalimprisonment of the King and Queen within the walls of Paris, within thewalls of the Tuileries, seemed no great hardship in the eyes of theEnglishmen who sympathized with the aims of those of the Frenchrevolutionaries with whom they were acquainted. The French King himselfseemed to be reconciled to his lot, to have joined himself frankly and{299} freely enough to the party of progress within his dominions, and tobe as loyally eager to accept the new constitution which the NationalAssembly was busy framing as the most ardent patriot among its members. Even the flight of the Royal Family, the attempted flight that began withsuch laborious pomp at Paris to end in such pitiful disaster at Varennes, the flight that condemned the King and Queen to a restraint far morerigorous than before, did not greatly disturb British equanimity. [Sidenote: 1791--Burke and the coalition against France] To the mind of Burke, however, his prophecies were already justifyingthemselves. He could see nothing in the Revolution but its errors, andhe hailed the coalition of Europe against France as a league of lightagainst the powers of darkness. He broke away furiously from his friendsand allies of so many great political battles. He could not understand, he could not bear to realize that men who had struggled with him tochampion the rights of the American colonists, and to punish the offencesof Warren Hastings, should now be either avowed sympathizers with orindifferent spectators of the events that were passing in France. He hadloved Charles Fox greatly ever since Fox had shaken off the traditions ofToryism and become the most conspicuous champion of liberal ideas inEngland. But he could not and would not forgive him for his attitudetowards the French Revolution and the French Revolutionists. Burke sawnothing but evil in, thought nothing but evil could come of, what washappening in France, and he feared disasters for his own country if itbecame impregnated with the poison of the revolutionary doctrine. ThatFox should in any way advocate that doctrine made him in Burke's eyes anenemy of England, and not merely of England but of the whole human race. There was no middle way with Burke. Those who were not with him wereagainst him, not merely as a politician, but as a man. To the day of hisdeath, in 1797, he hated the Revolution and denied his friendship tothose who expressed anything less than execration for its principles andits makers. Although it is always easy to exaggerate the influence thatany single spirit may have upon a movement embracing {300} manynationalities and many different orders of mind, it would be difficult tooverestimate the effect of Burke's words and Burke's actions in animatingthe coalition of monarchical Europe against insurgent France. And upon aresponsibility for the intervention of other States in the affairs ofFrance depends also a proportionate degree of responsibility for theresults of that intervention. Burke was to see all the horrors he had soeloquently anticipated realized as the direct consequence of the invasionof France by the allied armies. The French people in the very hour inwhich they believed their cherished revolution to be an accomplished factsaw it menaced by the formidable league which proposed to bring theKing's brothers back in triumph from Coblentz, and which threatened, inthe extraordinary language to which Brunswick put his name, to blot Parisfrom the map of Europe if any injury were done to the King, who hadalready formally accepted the constitution that the Revolution hadcreated. Paris went mad with fear and rage. The September massacres, the attacks upon the Tuileries, the proclaimed republicanism of theConvention, the rise of the men of the Mountain, Marat, Danton, andRobespierre, the execution first of the King and then of the Queen, thedominion of the guillotine and the Reign of Terror, were the directresults of a coalition whose only excuse would have been its completesuccess. The coalition proved to be an absolute failure. To the crythat the country was in danger ragged legions of desperate men rushed tothe frontiers, and, to the astonishment of the world, proved more than amatch for the armies that were sent against them. [Sidenote: 1789-92--Pitt and the French Revolution] Pitt was not himself eager to see England dragged into the Europeanquarrel with France. But it was not easy for a minister who lovedpopularity, and who very sincerely believed his presence at the head ofaffairs to be essential to the welfare of the State, to avoid beinginvolved in the controversy. The result of the unsuccessful coalitionhad been to increase the crimes that marked the course of the FrenchRevolution, and seemingly to justify the fierce indignation of Burke. The country that had {301} been profoundly impressed by Burke's eloquencewas profoundly shocked by the horrors that lost nothing of theirmagnitude in the reports that crossed the Channel. The country wasflooded with fugitives from France, emigrants who presented in themselvesmoving pictures of the sufferings of those who were opposed to theRevolution, and who were not slow to express their sense of the ruin thathad fallen upon their country. King George's native shrewdness andnative narrowness of mind had made him from the first an active opponentof the Revolution. He declared that if a stop were not put to Frenchprinciples there would not be a king left in Europe in a few years. Tohim, whose business above all things it had been to be king, the prospectwas unlovely and alarming. The fear that he felt for his office wasshared in varying degree by all those who felt that they would have muchto lose if the example set by France came to be followed in England. TheChurch and the aristocracy, with all wealthy and vested interests, werenaturally ranked to resist by all means the spread of the new doctrines. There were a few noblemen who, like Lord Stanhope and Lord Lauderdale, professed themselves to be champions of the French Revolution; there weresome statesmen among the Opposition who were either sympathizers with theRevolution or asserters of the doctrine that it was no part of England'sduty to interfere with the way in which another nation chose to governherself. But the strength of public opinion was against these, as it wasagainst the minister who was as eager as any Englishman living to remainon good terms with France. Pitt from the first had looked with a favorable eye upon the changes thatwere taking place across the Channel. To maintain a friendship withFrance was a radical part of his policy. Friendship with France wasessential in his mind in order to combat the aggrandizement of Russia andPrussia, and friendship with France seemed more possible under anenlightened constitution than under a despotic king. While Burke, whocould only make the House of Commons smile and sneer by his denunciations{302} of Jacobin intrigues and his display of Jacobin daggers, wasplaying on the heart-strings of England and reviving all the oldhostility to France, Pitt pursued as long as he was allowed to pursue ita policy of absolute neutrality. But he was not long allowed to pursuethat policy, although he reaped some reward for it in a proof that theFrench Government appreciated his intentions and shared his desire forfriendship. An English settlement at Nootka Sound, in Vancouver Island, had been interfered with by Spain. England was ready to assert herrights in arms. Spain appealed to France for her aid by the terms of theFamily Compact. The French King and the French Ministers were willingenough to engage in a war with England, in the hope of diverting thecourse and weakening the power of the Revolution. But the NationalAssembly, after a long and angry struggle, took away from the King theold right to declare war, save with the consent of the National Assembly, which consent the National Assembly, in that particular crisis, wasdecided not to give. Pitt was delighted at this proof of the friendlyspirit of the French people and the advantage of his principle ofneutrality. But he was not able to act upon that principle. The forcesbrought against him were too many and too potent for him to resist. Fromthe King on the throne to the mob in the streets, who sacked the housesof citizens known to be in sympathy with the Revolution, the Englishpeople as a whole were against him. The people who sympathized with theRevolution, who made speeches for it in Westminster and formedConstitutional Clubs which framed addresses of friendship to France, werebut a handful in the House of Commons, were but a handful in the wholecountry. Their existence dazzled and deluded the French Revolutionistsinto the belief that the heart of England was with them at a time whenevery feeling of self-interest and of sentiment in England was againstthem. Pitt clung desperately to peace. He thought, what the Oppositionthought then and for long years later, that it was wisest to leave Franceto settle her internal affairs and her form of government in her own way. When England {303} no longer had an ambassador at the French capital Pittadhered doggedly, tenaciously, to a peace policy; persisted in preservingthe neutrality of Holland; was ready, were it only possible, onlypermitted to him, to recognize the new Republic. But even if theexecution of Louis the Sixteenth had not roused irresistible indignationin England the action of the new Republic made the prolongation of peacean impossibility. When, in the winter of 1792, the Convention made thefamous offer of its aid in arms to all peoples eager to be free, it musthave been plain to Pitt that, with France in that temper and Englandtempest-tossed between hatred of the Revolution and fear lest itstheories were being insidiously fostered in her own confines, thepreservation of peace was a dream. The dream was finally dissipated whenFrance made ready to attack Holland and, rejecting all possiblenegotiations, declared war in the early days of 1793. [Sidenote: 1793--France declares war against Holland] At first the war went ill with France, and if the German Powers hadco-operated earnestly and honestly with England it is at least within thelimits of possibility that Paris might have been occupied and theRevolution for the time retarded. France seemed to be circled by foes;her enemies abroad were aided by civil war at home. La Vendée was inRoyalist revolt; Marseilles and Lyons rose against the tyranny of Paris;Toulon, turning against the Republic, welcomed an English fleet. For amoment the arms of England and the aims of the Allies seemed to havetriumphed. But the passionate determination of the French popularleaders and the mass of the French people to save the Revolution seemedto inspire them with a heroism that grew in proportion to the threateneddanger. Her armies were swollen with enthusiastic recruits. Herinternal revolts were coped with and crushed with savage severity. LoyalLa Vendée was beaten. The rebellious towns of Lyons and Marseillesalmost ceased to exist under the merciless repression of theirconquerors. Many of the allied armies were defeated, while those of thetwo German Powers for their own selfish ends played the game ofrevolutionary France by abstaining from any serious effort to {304}advance into the country. Germany and Austria were confident that theycould whenever they pleased crush revolutionary France, and theypreferred to postpone the process, in order to occupy themselves in a newpartition of Poland, which they could scarcely have carried out if theFrench monarchy had been restored. If there was nothing to justify theconduct of the two German Powers, there was much to warrant theirconfidence in their own strength when they judged that the time had comefor them to exert it. They counted upon the known when they measuredtheir forces with those of revolutionary France; they could not countupon the unknown quantity which was to disturb all their calculations. The unknown quantity asserted itself just at the moment when France, inspite of some successes, seemed to be deeply wounded by the loss ofToulon. With the great port of Toulon in their hands the adversaries of Francemight well believe that a serious blow had been struck at her strength, and that the spirit which so long had defied them might yet be broken. But the success which had seemed to menace France so gravely proved to bebut the point of departure for a new era of French glory. The occupationof Toulon is forever memorable, because it gave an opportunity to a younglieutenant of artillery in the French service, quite obscure in thatservice and wholly unknown outside of it. The quick intelligence of thisyoung soldier perceived that the seizure of a certain promontory leftunguarded by the invaders would place Toulon and those who had held it atthe mercy of the French cannon. The suggestion was acted upon; wasentirely successful; the English admiral was obliged to retire with allhis fleet, and Toulon was once again a French citadel garrisoned byFrench soldiers. But the importance of the event, for France and theworld lay not in the capture but in the captor. Though Barras, confidentin his dominion over the Directory, might sneer at the young adventurerfrom Corsica and minimize his share in a success that had suddenly madehim conspicuous, the name of Bonaparte then for the first time took its{305} place in the history of Europe. The youth whose military geniushad enabled him to see and to seize upon the fatal weakness in awell-defended city was destined to prove the greatest soldier France hadever known, the greatest as well as the most implacable enemy England hadever to reckon with, and one of the greatest conquerors that everfollowed the star of conquest across the war-convulsed earth. [Sidenote: 1793--Napoleon Bonaparte] This is the story of England, not the story of France, and Napoleon wasat his best and worst rather an influence upon than an integral part ofEnglish history. It must be enough to say here that he is assumed tohave been born in Ajaccio, in Corsica, in 1769; that when he was tenyears old he tried to become French rather than Italian--a feat which henever successfully accomplished--by entering the military school ofBrienne; that he served Louis the Sixteenth with indifference and theRevolution with an ambition that was often baffled, and that he struckthe first of his many strokes at England when he won Toulon for France. {306} CHAPTER LXI. "NINETY-EIGHT. " [Sidenote: 1798--Irish Catholic disabilities] England was not concerned merely with the successes of France upon theContinent, with the French power of resisting invasion and preservingits capital and its constitution. The time was at hand when Englandwas to take the French Republic into consideration as a more activeenemy, whose enmity might take effect and be a very serious menace ather own doors. The breath of the French Revolution was to GreatBritain like that of a sudden storm which sweeps round some statelymansion and finds out all its weak places and shatters some of itsoutlying buildings, although it cannot unroof its firmest towers ordisturb its foundations. The weakest spot in Great Britain, and indeedwe might almost say in the whole British Empire, was the kingdom ofIreland. Ireland had for long been in a state of what might almost becalled chronic rebellion against the rule of England. England'senemies had always been regarded as Ireland's friends by the Irishmenwho claimed especially to represent the national aspirations of theircountry. This is a fact which cannot be made too clear to the minds ofEnglishmen even at the present day, for the simple reason that no onewho is capable of forming a rational idea on the subject can doubt thatwhere a government is persistently hated that government must have donemuch to deserve the hate. It is not necessary here to undertake a survey of the many grievancesof which Ireland complained under the rule of Great Britain. Onegrievance which was especially felt during the reign of George theThird came from the persistent refusal of the Hanoverian Sovereign tolisten {307} to any proposals for the relief of the Roman Catholicsfrom the civil and religious disabilities under which they suffered. The Catholics constituted five-sixths of the whole population ofIreland, and up to the time of the War of Independence in America noCatholic in Great Britain or Ireland could sit in Parliament, or votefor the election of a member of Parliament, or act as a barrister orsolicitor, or sit on a bench of magistrates or on a grand jury, or holdland, or obtain legal security for a loan. No doubt the state of thepenal laws as they then existed was mitigated when compared with thatwhich had prevailed but a short time before, when an ordinary Catholichad hardly any right to do more than live in Ireland, and a Catholicpriest had not even a legal right to live there. But up to the timewhen the growing principles of liberty manifested themselves in theoverthrow of the feudal system in France the Catholics in Great Britainand Ireland were practically excluded from any approach to civil orreligious liberty. Ireland had a Parliament, but it was a Parliamentof Protestants, elected by Protestants, and it was in fact a meredepartment of the King's Administration. The American War ofIndependence suddenly awakened wild hopes in the breasts of alloppressed nationalities, and the Irish Catholic population was amongthe first to be quickened by the new life and the new hope. Thenational idea was not, however, at first for a separation from England. Ireland was then for the most part under the leadership of HenryGrattan, a patriot, statesman, and orator--an orator whom Charles JamesFox described as the "Irish Demosthenes, " and whom Byron glorified as"with all that Demosthenes wanted endued, and his rival and victor inall he possessed. " Grattan's purpose was not separation from England or the setting up ofan independent republic. An Ireland enjoying religious equality forall denominations and possessing a Parliament thoroughly independent ofthat sitting at Westminster would have satisfied all his patrioticambition. In fact, what Grattan would have desired for Ireland isexactly such a system as is now possessed by one {308} of the provincesof Canada or Australia. When the alliance between France andindependent America began to threaten Great Britain, and the EnglishGovernment practically acknowledged its inability to provide for thedefence of Ireland, Henry Grattan, with other Irish patriots of equalsincerity, and some of them of even higher social rank, started theIrish Volunteer movement, to be a bulwark of the country in case offoreign invasion. When the Irish patriots found themselves at the headof an army of disciplined volunteers they naturally claimed that thecountry which was able to defend herself should be allowed also anindependent Parliament with which to make her domestic laws. Theyobtained their end, at least for the moment, and at least to alloutward appearance, and Grattan was enabled to declare that for thefirst time he addressed a free Parliament in Ireland and to invoke thespirit of Swift to rejoice over the event. Catholic emancipation, however, had not yet been secured, although Grattan and those whoworked with him did their best to carry it through the Parliament inDublin. The obstinacy of King George still prevailed against everyeffort made by the more enlightened of his ministers. Pitt was in hisbrain and heart a friend of Catholic emancipation, but he had at lastgiven way to the King's angry and bitter protests and complaints, andhad made up his mind never again to trouble his Sovereign with futilerecommendations. It so happened that a new Viceroy sent over toIreland in 1794, Earl Fitzwilliam, became impressed with a sense of thejustice of the claims for Catholic emancipation, and therefore gavespontaneous and honorable encouragement o the hopes of the Irishleaders. The result was that after three months' tenure of office hewas suddenly recalled, and the expectations of the Irish leaders andthe Irish people were cruelly disappointed. From that moment it must have been clear to any keen observer inIreland that the influence of Grattan and his friends could no longercontrol the action of Irish nationalists in general, and that thepolicy of Grattan would no longer satisfy the popular demands ofIreland. Short {309} as had been the Irish independent Parliament'sterm of existence, it had been long enough to satisfy most Irishmenthat the control of the King's accepted advisers was almost as absolutein Dublin as in Westminster. To the younger and more ardent spiritsamong the Irish nationalists the setting up of a nominally independentIrish Parliament had always seemed but a poor achievement when comparedwith the change which their national ambition longed for and which theconditions of the hour to all appearance conspired to renderattainable. These young men were now filled with all the passion ofthe French Revolution; they had always longed for the creation of anindependent Ireland; they insisted that Grattan's compromise hadalready proved a failure, and in France, the enemy of England, theyfound their new hopes for the emancipation of Ireland. [Sidenote: 1791--The United Irishmen] There were among the Irish rebels, as they were soon to declarethemselves, many men of great abilities and of the purest patrioticpurpose. Among the very foremost of these were Theobald Wolfe Tone andLord Edward Fitzgerald. Both these men, like all the other leaders ofthe movement that followed, were Protestants, as Grattan was. WolfeTone was a young man of great capacity and promise, who began hispublic career as secretary to an association formed for the purpose ofeffecting the relief of the Roman Catholics from the civil andreligious disabilities which oppressed them. This society, afterawhile, was named the Association of United Irishmen. The UnitedIrishmen were at that time only united for the purpose of obtainingCatholic Emancipation. The association, as we shall soon see, when itfailed of its first object became united for other and sternerpurposes. Wolfe Tone was a young man of a brilliant Byronic sort ofnature. There was much in his character and temperament which oftenrecalls to the mind of the reader the generous impulse, the chivalricardor, and the impetuous eccentricity of Byron. Tone, as a youth, wasa careless student, or, indeed, to put it more distinctly, he onlystudied the subjects he cared about and was in the habit of neglectinghis {310} collegiate tasks until the hour arrived when it becameabsolutely necessary that he should master them enough at least to passmuster for each emergency. He was a keen and close student of anysubject which had genuine interest for him, but such subjects wereseldom those which had anything to do with his academical career. Hestudied law after a fashion in one of the London Inns of Court, and hewas called to the Bar in due course; but he had no inclination whateverfor the business of an advocate, and his mind was soon drawn away fromthe pursuit of a legal career. He had a taste for literature and alonging for travel and military adventure in especial, and for a timehe lived a pleasant, free and easy, Bohemian sort of life, if we mayuse the term Bohemian in describing days that existed long before HenriMurger had given the word its modern application. [Sidenote: 1763-89--Theobald Wolfe Tone] One of the many odd, original ideas which floated like bubbles acrossWolfe Tone's fancy was a scheme for founding a sort of military colonyin some island in the South Seas, to act as a check upon the designsand enterprises of Spain against the British Empire. Tone took hisidea so seriously that he wrote to William Pitt, the Prime Minister, describing and explaining his project and asking for Government help inorder to make it a reality. As will be easily understood, Pitt took nonotice of the proposal, having probably a good many more suggestionsmade to him every day as to the best defences of England than he couldpossibly consider in a week. It is somewhat curious, however, to findthat Wolfe Tone should at one period of his life have formed the ideaof helping England to defend herself against her enemies. Somehistorians have gone so far as to opine that if Pitt could have seenhis way to take Tone's proposition seriously, and to patronize theyoung man, the world might never have heard of the insurrection of"Ninety-Eight. " But no one who gives any fair consideration to thewhole career and character of Tone can have any doubt that Tone'spassionate patriotism would have made him the champion of his owncountry, no matter what prospects the patronage of an {311} Englishminister might have offered to his ambition. At the time when Tone wasscheming out his project for the island in the South Seas the leadersin the national movement in Ireland still believed that the just claimsof their people were destined to receive satisfaction from the wisdomand justice of the English Sovereign. When it became apparent thatCatholic Emancipation was not to be obtained through George the Thirdand through Pitt, then Wolfe Tone made up his mind that there was nohope for Ireland but in absolute independence, and that thatindependence was only to be won by the help of Napoleon Bonaparte andof France. In the mean time Tone had taken a step which brilliant, gifted, generous, and impecunious young men usually take at the openingof their career--he had made a sudden marriage. Matilda Witheringtonwas only sixteen when Tone persuaded her to accept him as her husbandand to share his perilous career. Romance itself hardly contains anystory of a marriage more imprudent and yet more richly rewarded bylove. Tone adored his young wife and she adored him. Love came in attheir door and, though poverty entered there too, love never flew outat the window. The whole story of Wolfe Tone's public career may beread in the letters which, during their various periods of longseparation, no difficulties and no dangers ever prevented him fromwriting to his wife. When he made up his mind to consecrate himself tothe national cause of Ireland, and, if necessary, to die for it, he setforth his purpose to his wife, and she never tried to dissuade him fromit. It is told of her that at one critical period of his fortunes sheconcealed from him the fact that she expected to become a mother, lestthe knowledge might chill his patriotic enthusiasm or make him unhappyin his enterprise. Tone went out to America and got into council with the representativeof the French Republic there; then he returned to Europe, and heentered into communication with Carnot and with Napoleon Bonaparte. Tothese and to others he imparted his plans for a naval and militaryexpedition from France to approach the coast of Ireland, to {312} landtroops there, and to make the beginning of a great Irish rebellion, which must distract the attention and exhaust the resources of Englandand place her at the feet of all-conquering France. Tone felt certainthat if an adequate number of French troops were landed on the westernor southern shore of Ireland the whole mass of the population therewould rally to the side of the invaders, and England would have to letIreland go or waste herself in a hopeless struggle. Tone insisted inall his arguments and expositions that Ireland must be free andindependent, and that no idea of conquering and annexing her must enterinto the minds of the French statesmen and soldiers. Napoleon andCarnot approved of Tone's schemes as a whole, but Tone could not helpseeing that Napoleon cared nothing whatever about the independence orprosperity of Ireland, and only took up with the whole scheme as aconvenient project for the embarrassment and the distraction ofEngland. Tone received a commission in the army of the FrenchRepublic, and became the soul and the inspiration of the policy whichat fitful moments, when his mind was not otherwise employed, Napoleonwas inclined to carry out on the Irish shores. [Sidenote: 1763-98--Lord Edward Fitzgerald] Lord Edward Fitzgerald was a son of the great ducal house of Leinster. He was born in the same year as Wolfe Tone; he was to die in the sameyear. It was his evil fortune to have to fight for the cause of KingGeorge against the uprising of the patriotic colonists of NorthAmerica. He afterwards became filled with the ideas of the FrenchRevolution, and got into trouble more than once by expressing hissentiments too freely while yet he wore the uniform of the Britisharmy. In Paris he became acquainted with Thomas Paine and was greatlytaken with the theories and charmed with the ways of the revolutionarythinker, and in the company of Paine and congenial associates he tookpart in Republican celebrations which became talked of in England andled to his dismissal from the army. Lord Edward Fitzgerald had astrong love of adventure and exploration, and had contrived to combinewith his military career in the New {313} World a number of episodesalmost any one of which might have supplied the materials for aromance. He was a man of a thoroughly lovable nature, gallant, high-spirited, generous. Like Wolfe Tone, he had made a romanticmarriage. His wife was the famous Pamela, the beautiful girl who wasward to Madame de Genlis, and commonly believed to be the daughter ofthe Duke of Orleans, Philippe Egalité. Louis Philippe, afterwards Kingof France, was one of the witnesses at the marriage ceremony. LordEdward was perfectly happy with his young and beautiful wife until thepolitical events came on which gave the sudden and tragic turn to hislife. He was a member of the Irish Parliament for many years, and hadon several occasions supported the policy which was advocated byGrattan. He too, however, soon made up his mind, as Wolfe Tone haddone, that there was nothing to be expected from the Sovereign and hisministers, and he became an active member of the Society of UnitedIrishmen when that association ceased to be a constitutional body andset its heart on armed rebellion. Lord Edward went over to France andworked hard there for the purpose of obtaining armed assistance for theIrish cause, but he returned to Ireland to work up the rebelliousmovement there while Tone remained in France to influence as well as hecould the policy of Napoleon and Carnot. Among the other distinguished Irishmen who worked at home or inFrance--sometimes at home and sometimes in France--to promote therebellion were Arthur O'Connor and Thomas Addis Emmet. Arthur O'Connorcame of a great Irish family; Thomas Addis Emmet, after the failure ofthe rebellious movement, escaped to the United States and made a greatposition for himself as an advocate in New York. A younger brother ofThomas Emmet also took part in the organization of "Ninety-Eight, " butthe fate of Robert Emmet will have a place to itself in this chapter ofour history. One fact has to be mentioned, and must be kept constantly in mind whenwe are studying the grim story of "Ninety-Eight. " Every step taken bythe rebel leaders {314} was almost instantly made known to the EnglishGovernment. The spy, the hired informer, was then, as he has alwaysbeen, in the very thick of the Irish national movement. Some of theinformers in "Ninety-Eight" were of a different class from that of theordinary police spy; and it has been made quite certain by subsequentdiscoveries that Wolfe Tone and Fitzgerald, Arthur O'Connor and theEmmets were in the closest friendly association with men whom theybelieved to be as genuine Irish patriots as themselves, but who wereall the time in the pay of Pitt, and were keeping him well informed ofevery plan and project and movement of their leaders. As politicalmorals were then and are perhaps even now, it would be absurd to findfault with Pitt because he made use of the services of spies andinformers to get at the plans of a number of men who proposed to invitea foreign enemy of England to invade the Irish shores, and were doingall they could to secure by armed rebellion the independence ofIreland. The wonder that will now occur to every reasonable mind isthat the Irish leaders should have failed to guess that whatever moneywould do would be done by the English Government, as it would have beendone by any other Government under similar conditions, to get at aknowledge of their designs and to counteract them. At all events, itis quite certain that while Tone and Fitzgerald and their comrades wereplaying their gallant, desperate game, the British Minister was quietlylooking over their shoulders and studying their cards. [Sidenote: 1797--A French fleet in Bantry Bay] Napoleon Bonaparte, meanwhile, seems to have been but half-heartedabout the scheme for the invasion of Ireland. He had many otherschemes in his mind, some of which probably appeared more easy ofaccomplishment, and at all events promised a more immediate result thanthe proposed flank attack on the power of England. It is certain thatWolfe Tone had long intervals of depression and despondency, againstwhich it needed all the buoyancy of his temperament to sustain him. Atlast a naval expedition was resolved on and despatched. In the lateDecember of 1796 a small French fleet, with about 14, 000 troops {315}on board, under the command of General Hoche, made for the southwesternshores of Ireland. Tone was on board one of the war vessels in hiscapacity as a French officer serving under General Hoche. The weatherproved utterly unfavorable to the expedition. The war vessels wereconstantly parting company. The admiral's vessel, together withseveral others, was lost to sight on the very first night, and theheart of Tone grew sick as he saw that with every fresh outburst of thetempest the chances even of effecting a landing grew less and less. Most of the vessels entered Bantry Bay and lay helplessly at anchorthere, but there was no landing. Tone's despondency and powerless rageas he foresaw the failure of his project might have been still deeperif he could have known how utterly unprepared the authorities of DublinCastle were for any sort of invasion. Tone had observed already, asthe expedition made its way from Brest, that they had not seen a singleEnglish vessel of war anywhere on the sea or around the Irish coasts. But he could have had no idea of the manner in which the BritishGovernment had intrusted the keeping of the island to the protection ofthe winds and of the fates. A letter written from Dublin by ElizabethMoira Hastings, widow of the first Earl of Moira, throws a curiouslight on the state of things which existed among the governingauthorities at the time of the invasion, and amazingly illustrates theodd rumors and wild conjectures which were floating about at the time. Writing to a friend in a different part of Ireland on January 19, 1797, Lady Moira says: "Our escape has been miraculous: the French fleet left Brest . . . Mistook the Durseys for Mizen Head, and therefore did not make theirentrance into Bantry Bay till the 24th, on which very day the stormarose and prevented the greater part of their fleet getting into theBay, driving the greatest part of them out to sea. You will observethat it was on the 19th Lord Malmesbury had orders to quit Paris. Heundoubtedly had purchased intelligence at a high price, being duped inthat inquiry by the manoeuvres of the Directory, and gave falseinformation {316} to England. Had the French landed on the 18th or19th, which they might have done, had they not mistaken the Durseys, weshould have had the French now governing in this metropolis. All agreethat there never was an expedition so completely planned, and in somepoints so curiously furnished--the most beautiful ladies of easy virtuefrom Paris were collected and made a part of the freight. Hoche'smistress accompanied him, and his carriage was on board 'La Villed'Orient, ' taken by the 'Druid. ' The hussars taken on board thatvessel were those who guarded the scaffold at the execution of theunfortunate Lewis--they are clothed in scarlet jackets trimmed withgold and fur, and wear each the butcher's steel, on which they whettheir knives, to whet their swords with. It is reported that Hoche andReilly (one of the admirals) are gone off to America with seven hundredthousand pounds in specie that was on board their vessel to pay thetroops. Others think the vessel has sunk, for neither of thesepersonages or the frigate 'La Fraternité, ' which they were on board, has been seen since they quitted Brest by any of the French vessels. What a fortunate person Mr. Pitt is! and what a benefit is good luck toits possessor! The troops are all marching back to their old quarters;Cork and its environs indignant at Government for leaving them again tothe entire care of Providence. . . . It is a general belief among allparties that the French will revisit Ireland, and at no distantperiod--probably the next dark nights. If the storms now preventedthem they have learned how possible the attempt is, and how can such acoast be guarded? There has been much show of spirit and loyalty, andyet I thank God they did not land!" The words of Wolfe Tone, taken from his journal, may be accepted as theepitaph of the first French expedition. "It was hard, " says Tone, "after having forced my way thus far, to be obliged to turn back; butit is my fate, and I must submit. . . . Well, England has not had suchan escape since the Spanish Armada; and that expedition, like ours, wasdefeated by the weather; the elements fight against us, and courage isof no avail. " {317} [Sidenote: 1797--The French and Dutch to aid Ireland] The French did return, as Lady Moira had predicted. They returned morethan once, but there was a long interval between the first and thesecond visitation, and there were negotiations between the French andthe Dutch Republic--the Batavian Republic, as it was called--which hadbeen forming an alliance with France. Neither the French Republic northe Batavian felt any particular interest in the Irish movement, orcared very much whether Ireland obtained her national independence orhad to live without it. France, of course, was willing to make use ofIreland as a vantage-ground from which to harass Great Britain, and theBatavian Republic, which had for some time been lapsing out of Europeannotice, was eager to distinguish herself and to play a conspicuouspolitical part once again. The idea at first was that Holland shouldfurnish the naval expedition and France contribute the troops--5000Frenchmen, under the command of General Hoche, who were to land inIreland and form the centre and rallying point for the United Irishmen. The Batavian Republic, however, did not seem anxious to give all themilitary glory of the affair to France, and some excuses were made onthe ground that the discipline of the Dutch navy was somewhat toosevere for the soldiers of France to put up with. General Hoche seemsto have acted with great disinterestedness and moderation under tryingconditions. He saw that the Dutch were anxious to make a name forthemselves once more, and he feared that if he were to press for theembarkation of the French soldiers it might lead to the abandonment ofthe whole expedition. Longing as he was for the chance to distinguishhimself in any attack upon England, he controlled his eagerness andconsented that the Dutch should have the undertaking all to themselves. Poor Wolfe Tone had to wait and look on all this time, eating his ownheart, according to the Homeric phrase. He has left us in his journala description of his feelings as he saw the days go by without anymovement being made to harass the English enemy, and of his ownemotions when what might have seemed the heaven-sent chance of themutiny at the {318} Nore broke out in the English fleet and noadvantage could be taken of it to forward the chances of the expeditionfrom the Texel. For now again the skies and the winds had come to thedefence of England, and the Dutch fleet was kept to its anchorage inits own waters. Various plans of warfare were schemed out by theBatavian Republic, with the hope of putting the English navalauthorities on a wrong scent, but all these schemes were suddenlydefeated by the orders given to the Dutch admiral to put to sea atonce. He did put to sea, and was encountered by Admiral Duncan, andthe result was the great victory of Camperdown, won by the English overthe Dutch after splendid fighting on both sides. Admiral Duncanthereby became Lord Camperdown and the Batavian Republic dropped allideas of a naval expedition against England. Meanwhile the gallantGeneral Hoche had died, and Wolfe Tone lost a true friend, with whom, from the beginning of their acquaintance, he had been in thoroughsympathy. [Sidenote: 1798--The brink of an Irish rebellion] All this time the condition of things in Ireland was becomingdesperate. After the appearance of the fleet in Bantry Bay, and thehopes which it created on the one side and the alarms on the other, theruling powers in Dublin Castle, and indeed at Westminster, had no otheridea but that of crushing out the rebellious spirit of the Irish peopleby Coercion Acts and by military law. The national sentiment ofIreland counted for nothing with them. It may be safely laid down asan axiom in political history that the men who are not able to takeaccount of the force of what they would call a mere national sentimentin public affairs are not and never can be fit to carry on the greatwork of government. Ireland was overrun by militia regiments, sentover from England and Scotland, who had no sympathy whatever with theIrish people, and regarded them simply as revolted slaves to bescourged back into submission or shot down if they persevered inrefusing to submit. Other forces representing law and order were foundin the yeomanry, who were chiefly Orangemen and officered by Orangemen, and who regarded the Catholic peasantry as their born enemies. A stateof tumult raged {319} through the greater part of the unhappy island, and there cannot be the slightest doubt that the floggings, hangings, and shootings inflicted by the militia and by the yeomen were in manycases done not so much in punishment as in anticipation of rebelliousmovements on the part of the Catholics. In the mean time preparationswere unquestionably going on in many Irish counties, more especially inUlster, for an outbreak of rebellion. The organization of UnitedIrishmen was adding to its numbers of sworn-in members every day, andthe making of pikes was a busy manufacture all over many of thecounties. Grattan and some of his friends made many efforts in theIrish House of Commons to induce the Government to devise some meansfor the pacification of Ireland other than Coercion Acts, the scourge, the bullet, and the gallows. Finding their efforts wholly in vain, Grattan, Arthur O'Connor, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his brother, andmany other men of high character and position withdrew from the DublinParliament altogether, and left to the Government the wholeresponsibility for the results of its policy. It is always to beregretted that a man like Grattan should ever recede from his positionas a constitutional patriot in the assembly where alone his counselscan have any practical weight; but of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and ArthurO'Connor the same is not to be said, for these men and many of theirfriends had made up their minds that the time had come when only inarmed rebellion there remained any hope for Ireland. In the EnglishParliament some efforts were made by Charles James Fox and by Whitbreadto obtain an inquiry into the real cause of the troubles in Ireland, but the attempts were ineffectual, and the authorities at Dublin Castlewere allowed to carry out their own peculiar policy without control orcheck of any kind. Once again the fates were suddenly unpropitious to the Irish nationalmovement. The force which was intended for Ireland was suddenlyordered to form a part of the expedition which Bonaparte was leadingagainst Egypt. Thereupon the chiefs of the United Irishmen began tosee {320} that there was not much hope to be founded on any help tocome from France, and it was decided that Ireland should enter intoopen armed rebellion under the command of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Itwas confidently believed that all but a small number of the Irishcounties would rise to arms at once under such leadership, and theIrish leaders little knew how completely the Government was suppliedwith the knowledge of all the Irish national plans and movements. Indeed, there seems only too much reason to believe that the policy ofPitt had long been to force the Irish into premature rebellion by thepersistent application of the system of coercion, represented by whatwere called "free quarters"--in other words, the billeting of soldiersindiscriminately among the houses of the peasantry, thereby leaving thewives and daughters of Irish Catholics at the mercy of a hostilesoldiery--by the burning of houses, the shooting down of almostdefenceless crowds, and the flogging and hanging of men and women. Certain it is that many of the British officers high in commandprotested loudly against such a policy, and that some of thempositively refused to carry it out, and preferred to incur any rebukerather than be the instruments of such indiscriminate oppression. Pittand the authorities at Dublin Castle probably reasoned with themselvesthat since the rebellion was certain to come it was better to press iton prematurely, so that it might be easily crushed, rather than leaveit to take its own time and put its plans into execution when theyshould have arrived at a formidable maturity. [Sidenote: 1798--Father John Murphy and Miles Byrne] The rebellion broke out in the early part of 1798. It had somebrilliant temporary successes in Wexford County and in other counties. In one part of Wexford the movement was literally forced upon thepeople by the outrageous conduct of the militia and the yeomanry. Oneof the local Irish priests, Father John Murphy, had used all hisefforts up to the last in the cause of order, and had been mostenergetic in persuading the people to give up their pikes and otherweapons to the local authorities. After the people had surrenderedtheir arms the scourging, {321} shooting, and hanging went on just thesame as before, and Father John Murphy and numbers of his parishionerswere forced to take refuge in the woods. Then for the first timeFather Murphy became a rebel. More than that, he became all at once aninsurgent general. He put himself at the head of the despairingpeasantry, and he suddenly developed a decided talent for the work ofan insurgent chief. His people were armed for the most part only withpitchforks and with spades. Their pikes had nearly all beensurrendered; only some few of the farming class had guns; and therewas, of course, no sort of heavy artillery. Father Murphy showed hispeople how to barricade with carts the road through which a body ofcavalry were expected to pass, and at the right moment, just when thecavalry found themselves unexpectedly obstructed, the insurgentssuddenly attacked them with pitchforks and spades, won a completevictory, and utterly routed their opponents. By this success therebels became possessed of a considerable number of carbines, and wereput in heart for further enterprises. Father John Murphy won severalother victories, and for the hour was master of a large part ofWexford. One of those who took service under him was a young man, Miles Byrne, scarcely eighteen years of age, who afterwards rose tohigh distinction in the French army under Napoleon, and maintained hisposition and repute under the Restoration, and might have been seen upto the year 1863, a white-headed, white-bearded veteran, sunninghimself in the gardens of the Tuileries. Father Murphy, however, wasnot able long to hold out. The want of weapons, the want of money andof all other resources, and no doubt the want of military experience, put him and his men at a hopeless disadvantage, and he was defeated inthe end, and was executed in the early summer of 1798. While the rebellion lasted there were, no doubt, many excesses on bothsides. The rebels sometimes could not be prevented by their leadersfrom fearful retaliations on those at whose hands they had seen theirkindred suffer. The gallant Miles Byrne himself has told us in hismemoirs {322} how in certain instances he found it impossible to checkthe rage of his followers until their fury had found some satisfactionin what they believed to be the wild justice of revenge. No one, however, who has studied the history of the times even as it is told byloyalist narrators will feel surprised that the policy which had forcedon the outbreak of the rebellion should have driven the rebels intoretaliation on the few occasions when they had the upper hand and foundtheir enemies at their mercy. It has never been denied that theexcesses committed by the rebels were but the spasmodic outbreaks ofthe passion of retaliation, and that the Irish leaders everywhere didall they could to keep their followers within the bounds of legitimatewarfare. It is not necessary to follow out in detail the story of therebellion. With no material help from abroad there could have been butone end to it, and the end soon came. A peasantry armed with pikescould hardly hold their own for very long even against the militiaimported from Great Britain, the Orange yeomanry, and the Hessiantroops hired from Germany, to say nothing of the regular Englishsoldiers, who were armed and trained to war. Even the militiamen andthe yeomanry had better weapons than the pikemen who followed theirIrish leaders to the death. Before the rebellion was wholly crushedLord Edward Fitzgerald was dead. The plans arranged by the leaders ofthe movement had appointed a certain day for the rising to begin; theoutbreak in Wexford, as has already been shown, was entirelyunpremeditated, and merely forced on by events; and, as might have beenexpected, the plans were betrayed to the authorities of Dublin Castle. Some of the leaders were instantly arrested, and Lord Edward had to flyand conceal himself. His hiding-place was soon discovered, and he wasarrested in Thomas Street, Dublin, on May 19, 1798. Lord Edward atfirst refused to surrender, and fought desperately for his life. Hewounded some of his assailants, and received himself a bullet in hisbody. He was then carried to prison, where he died sixteen days after. "Fitly might the stranger lingering here, " as Byron says of anotherhero, {323} "pray for that gallant spirit's bright repose. " EvenGeorge the Third himself might have felt some regret for the state oflaws which had turned Edward Fitzgerald into an enemy. [Sidenote: 1798--Ireland invaded by General Humbert] Suddenly another attempt to help Ireland and harass England was madefrom the French side of the English Channel. Bonaparte was away on hisEgyptian expedition, and the Directory in his absence did not wish toforego all idea of sending a force to Ireland, but were evidently notvery strong on the subject and did not seem quite to know how to setabout such a business. For awhile they kept two or three small bodiesof troops ready at certain ports within easy reach of the Englishshores, and a number of vessels at each port waiting for sudden orders. General Humbert, an adventurous soldier of fortune, who had courageenough but not much wisdom, grew impatient at the long delay of theDirectory, and thought he could not do better to force the hand of theDirectory than to start an expedition himself. Accordingly he tookcommand of a force of about a thousand men in number which had beenplaced at his disposal for an undefined date, and with three or fourships to convey his men he made for the Irish shores. He landed atKillala Bay, in the province of Connaught, and he made his way inlandas far as the county of Longford. The Irish peasantry rallied roundhim in considerable numbers, and were received by him as part of thearmy and invested with the French uniform. He began his march with asudden and complete victory over a body of English troops considerablyoutnumbering his own force, but whom he managed cleverly to surprise, and among whom a regular panic seems to have set in. Humbert's schemewas, however, hopeless. The part of the country through which he wasmarching was thinly populated, and large bodies of English troops, under experienced commanders, were approaching him from all sides. Bythe time he had reached the county of Longford he found himself faced, or indeed all but surrounded, by the royal troops under the command ofLord Cornwallis. There was nothing for Humbert but to {324} surrender, and he and his French followers were treated as prisoners of war aftera final and brilliant fight and sent back to France. The Irishinsurgents who had fought under his leadership dispersed and fled afterthe surrender, well knowing that they would not be included in itsterms and treated as prisoners of war, and they were pursued by theroyal troops and most of them were killed. Matthew Tone, a brother ofWolfe Tone, was one of those who had fought under Humbert. He was madeprisoner, taken to Dublin, and executed there within a few days. Thusended the second expedition from France for the relief of Ireland. Wolfe Tone meanwhile was waiting in France, hoping against hope. Hehad as yet known nothing of the fortunes and failure of Humbert'sexpedition. Some extracts from a letter written to his wife about thistime have a melancholy interest. "Touching money matters, I have not yet received a sou, and last nightI was obliged to give my last five guineas to my countrymen here. Ican shift better than they can. I hope to receive a month's payto-day, but it will not be possible to remit you any part of it; youmust therefore carry on the war as best you can for three or fourmonths, and before that is out we will see further. . . . I ammortified at not being able to send you a remittance, but you know itis not my fault. "We embark about 3000 men, with 13 pieces of artillery, and I judgeabout 20, 000 stand of arms. We are enough, I trust, to do thebusiness, if we arrive safe. "With regard to myself, I have had every reason to be satisfied; Istand fair with the General and my _camarades_; I am in excellenthealth and spirits; I have great confidence in the success of ourenterprise; and, come what may, at least I will do what is right. Thetime is so short that I must finish this; I will, if possible, write toyou again, but if we should unexpectedly sail my next will be, I hope, from Ireland. " [Sidenote: 1798--The capture of Wolfe Tone] The embarking to which Tone referred was that of an expedition whichthe Directory had at last resolved to {325} despatch from Brest for theIrish shore. By a somewhat touching coincidence Tone found himself onboard a war-vessel called the "Hoche, " which was under the command ofthe admiral of the little fleet. This expedition consisted of one sailof the line and eight frigates, with 3000 French soldiers. It sailedon September 30, 1798; but the destinies were against it, as they hadbeen against its predecessors, and contrary winds compelled the admiralto make a wide sweep out of what would otherwise have been its naturalcourse. It was not until October 10 that the little fleet, thenreduced to four vessels--the others had been scattered--reached theshore of Lough Swilly, on the northwest coast of Ireland, and was thereencountered by a fleet of six English sail of the line and twofrigates. The admiral of the French fleet saw that there was no chancewhatever of his fighting his way through such an opposition, and hemade up his mind to offer the best resistance he could for the honor ofthe French flag. He promptly gave signals for the lighter vessels, which would have been of little practical service in such a struggle, to make the safest retreat they could, and with his own vessel resolvedrather perhaps to do and die than to do or die. A boat came from oneof the frigates to take his final instructions, and he and all theFrench officers, naval and military, who were on board the "Hoche"strongly urged Wolfe Tone to go to the frigate in the boat and thussave his life. They pointed out to him that if they were captured theymust be treated as prisoners of war, but that no mercy would be shownto him, a subject of King George, taken in French uniform. Wolfe Toneperemptorily declined to accept the General's advice. It should neverbe said of him, he declared, that he saved his life and left Frenchmento fight and die in the cause of his country. A fierce naval battletook place, and the French admiral fought until he was overpowered, andhad no course left to him but to surrender. The French officers whohad survived the fight were all taken to Letterkenny, Tone among thenumber. Tone was in French uniform, and might have passed unrecognizedas a French officer but that {326} an Ulster magnate, Sir George Hill, who had known him in earlier days, became at once aware of hisidentity, and addressed him by name. Tone calmly and civilly repliedto the greeting, and courteously asked after the health of the wife ofhis discoverer. Then all was over so far as Tone was concerned. Hewas conveyed to Dublin and tried by court-martial as a rebel and atraitor to George the Third. He defended himself in a speech ofremarkable eloquence--that is, if he can be said to have defendedhimself when his whole speech was a frank avowal of his purpose tofight for the independence of Ireland. He declared that he thoroughlyunderstood the consequences of his failure, and was prepared to abideby them. "Washington, " he said, "succeeded, and Kosciusko failed;" andhe only insisted that in his case, as in that of Kosciusko, failurebrought with it no dishonor. The one sole appeal which he made wasthat he might be allowed to die a soldier's death--that he might beshot and not hanged. Tone was found guilty, of course; there was nochoice left to the court-martial on that question, and his appeal as tothe mode of his death was refused by the Lord-Lieutenant. John PhilpotCurran, the great advocate, made a motion in the King's Bench to theeffect that Tone should be removed from the custody of theProvost-Marshal and tried before a civil tribunal, on the ground thatTone was not in the English army, and that, as the civil courts weresitting, there was no warrant for the interference of martial law. TheLord Chief Justice, Lord Kilwarden, a man whose public spirit and whosedevotion to law and justice would have done honor to any bench, ruledin favor of Curran's appeal, and ordered that Tone be removed from thecustody of the Provost-Marshal. When the Provost-Marshal declined toobey the order the Chief Justice directed that the Provost-Marshal betaken into custody, and that he, along with Tone, be brought before theCourt. The decision came too late so far as Tone was concerned. Bather than endure the ignominy of a public execution by the gallows, which he believed to be awaiting him, he had found means to open a veinin his throat. {327} "You see I am but a poor anatomist, " he said witha quiet smile to the surgeon who was brought to his bedside. Helingered in a half-unconscious state for a few days and then died. Hisdeath was the closing event of the Irish insurrection of 1798. [Sidenote: 1778-1803--Robert Emmet] There was, however, a sort of afterbirth of the struggle of"Ninety-Eight" in the attempt hazarded by Robert Emmet, to which wehave already made anticipatory allusion. Robert Emmet, the brother ofThomas Addis Emmet, was a young Irishman of great abilities and ofgenerous, unselfish, imprudent enthusiasm. He could not bring himselfto believe that the hopes of Irish independence were buried even in thegraves of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Wolfe Tone. He had no trustwhatever in any assistance to be given from France, but he set himselfto organize a movement which should be Irish only and should find itswhole organization and its battle-field on the soil of Ireland. Hefound numbers of brave and ardent young men to assist him, and heplanned out another rising, which was to begin with a seizure of DublinCastle and a holding of the capital as a centre and a citadel of thenew movement for Irish independence. Emmet's passion for nationalindependence had been strengthened by the passing of the Act of Union. The Act of Union had long been a project in the mind of Pitt, andindeed it was the opinion of many observers then, and of somehistorical students from that time to the present, that Pitt had forcedon the Irish rebellion in order to give an excuse for the absoluteextinction of the Irish Parliament and the centralization of the systemof government in the Parliament sitting at Westminster. It is, at allevents, quite certain that Pitt accomplished his scheme for alegislative union between Great Britain and Ireland by a wholesalesystem of bribery, the bribery taking the form of peerages, ofhigh-salaried appointments, of liberal pensions, and even of sums ofready money. All that was really national in the Irish Parliamentfought to the last against Pitt's Act of Union, but the Act wascarried, and it came into operation on January 1, 1801. The Act itselfand the methods by which {328} it was passed only gave to Robert Emmeta fresh stimulus to prepare his plans for the independence of Ireland. We need not follow in detail the story of these plans and the attemptto put them into execution. Robert Emmet's projects were, no doubt, all well known to the authorities of Dublin Castle before any attemptcould be made to carry them out. In any case their chances of successseem to have depended very much upon the simultaneous action of a greatnumber of persons in a great number of different places, and thehistory of every secret revolutionary movement tells us of the almostinsuperable difficulty there is in getting all the actors of such adrama to appear upon the stage at the same moment and at the rightmoment. Emmet's plan broke down, and it ended not even in a generalrising of the nationalists of Dublin, but in a mere street riot, themost sad and shocking event in which was the murder of the Lord ChiefJustice, Lord Kilwarden. While Emmet, in another part of the city, wasvainly striving to retrieve the disorder into which the excesses ofsome of his followers had broken up the plan of attack, LordKilwarden's carriage was stopped by a body of undisciplined andinfuriated rioters, and one man thrust a pike into Kilwarden's body. Emmet himself came too late upon the scene to rescue the Chief Justice, and from that moment he gave up all hope of anything like orderlyaction on the part of the insurgents, and indeed his whole effort wasto get his followers to disperse and to stop any rising in the adjacentcounties. Kilwarden died soon after he had received his wound, but notbefore he had uttered the noble injunction that no man should sufferfor his death without full and lawful trial. Seldom has even theassassin's hand stricken a worse blow than that which killed LordKilwarden. In an age when corrupt judges and partial judges were notuncommon, Kilwarden was upright, honorable and just. The fiercestnationalist of the day lamented his death. He had again and againstood before the Crown officials and interposed the shield of lawbetween them and the victims whom they strove by any process to bringto death. Emmet made his way into Wicklow with {329} the main purposeof stopping the intended outbreak of insurrection there, as he saw nowthat no such attempts could, under the conditions, end in anything butuseless bloodshed. His friends urged him to make his escape to France, and he might easily have escaped but that he went back to Dublin withthe hope of seeing once again Sarah Curran, the youngest daughter ofthe great advocate, with whom he was devotedly in love. He wasrecognized, arrested, and sent to trial before Lord Norbury, a judgewho bore a very different sort of reputation from that which honoredLord Kilwarden. Emmet made a brilliant and touching speech, not indefence of himself against the charge of trying to create a rebellion, for he avowed his purpose and glorified it, but in vindication of hiscause and in utter denial of the accusation commonly brought againsthim that he intended to make his country the subject of France. [Sidenote: 1803--The execution of Robert Emmet] He was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed on the morning after his trial. Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, who was a college friend of Emmet's, hasembalmed his memory in three beautiful songs, "She is far from the landwhere her young hero sleeps, " she being of course Sarah Curran, to whomEmmet addressed his last written words; "Oh, breathe not his name, " and"When he who adores thee, " an appeal to Ireland to remember him who hadat least "the pride of thus dying for thee. " Washington Irving, theAmerican author, devoted a touching essay, called "The Broken Heart, "to the story of Robert Emmet and his blighted passion. The lovers ofromance may be somewhat disconcerted to hear that Sarah Curran marriedafter her young hero's death; but she remained single many years, andthere is no reason to suppose that she ever forgot or disclaimed heraffection for Robert Emmet. Wolfe Tone's wife married again somesixteen years after the husband of her youth had passed away. Hergrave is to be seen in a cemetery close to Washington, in the UnitedStates, the land in which Wolfe Tone's widow passed all the later yearsof her life. With the failure and the death of Robert Emmet closed the lastrebellious rising in Ireland which belongs to the {330} history of theGeorges. Pitt's Act of Union is still in force, but it would be idleto say that it is anything more than in force. The union betweenEngland and Scotland, to which Pitt's supporters so often triumphantlyappealed, was made under conditions and on terms totally different fromthose which had to do with the union between England and Ireland. {331} CHAPTER LXII. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. [Sidenote: 1793-1815--The genius of the great Bonaparte] Nothing in the history of the world is quite as wonderful as thehistory of the first Napoleon. No other man ever rose from so littleto so much, ever played a greater part in the eyes of the civilizedworld, was more monstrous in his triumphs or more tragic in his fall. Everything connected with his strange career was distorted, exaggerated, seemingly out of all proportion to the familiarities, theconventionalities, and even the possibilities of existence. As theancient Greeks, in their sculpture, for the delineation of their godspermitted themselves the use of the heroic size and made theirimmortals and their demi-gods more than common tall, and more thancommon comely, so might the modern historian seem privileged in the useof a superlative style in dealing with a life so phenomenal, sounbounded by the average horizon, so ungoverned by the ordinary laws. And yet no more is needed than the cold statement of the stages in thatgreat story, of the steps which conducted to the summit of the pyramidonly to be descended on the other side. Such a statement is itself thesermon on an earthly glory that was almost unearthly in the vastness ofits aims and of its gains, and on a humiliation that restored humanityto reason and reaffirmed the inexorable lesson. As the mere names ofbattles on the commemorative arch appeal to the memories, theambitions, and the passions of a military race with a monumentalemphasis that is not to be rivalled by the painter or writer, so a fewsimple words serve to contrast with a simplicity that is in itself apomp the crowns and the catastrophes of that amazing visitation. "Corsica, " "St. Helena, " "Brumaire, " "Moscow, " "Toulon, " {332}"Waterloo. " The chronicle of the great conqueror is written in littlein the names of two islands, two battles, and two towns. [Sidenote: 1803-15--England's fear of Napoleon] To Frenchmen, even to the Frenchmen who are most opposed to him, Napoleon must always be an object for gratitude and for admiration. The most passionate champion of the Bourbon lilies and the doctrine ofthe divine right of kings cannot refuse to recognize that NapoleonBonaparte gave to France a greater military glory than she had everknown or ever dreamed of before. The most devout disciple of theprinciples of '89, the fieriest apostle of the Revolution that wentdown into the dust before the cunning of Barras and the cannon of theCorsican adventurer, is obliged to admit the splendid services thatNapoleon Bonaparte rendered to his adopted country. The one antagonistconfesses that the Napoleonic eagles flew with the length of flight andthe strength of wing of the Roman eagles. The other antagonist seeswith approval the Code Napoléon and the Order of the Legion of Honor, the Simplon Road and the Canal of St. Quentin, the encouragement givento arts, to letters, and to commerce, the reorganization of finance andthe reconstitution of the army. But to the average Englishman of thattime, and for long afterwards, Napoleon was first and last and alwaysthe implacable enemy of Great Britain. From the day of Toulon to theday of Waterloo, Bonaparte was the Big Bogey of England; always eitherfighting against her openly or plotting against her secretly, alwaysguided by one purpose, always haunted by one hope--the conquest of acountry that had learned to look upon herself as unconquerable. Pitt, who hated war, was destined to play the uncongenial part of a WarMinister, with one short interval, for the rest of his life, and todevote his genius and his energy to a life-and-death struggle with thesoldier of fortune who was yesterday the hero of Italy, to-day FirstConsul, to-morrow to be Emperor of the French. The story of Pitt'slife, for the rest of Pitt's life, is the story of a struggle againstNapoleon, a struggle maintained under difficulties and disadvantagesthat might well have {333} broken a strong man's heart, and that seemedto end in disaster when the strong man's heart was broken. It looked for long enough as if nothing could withstand the militarygenius or sate the ambition of Napoleon. On his sword sat laurelvictory, and smooth success was strewn before his feet. He overranEgypt, and dreamed of rivalling the Eastern conquests of Alexander. The Kingdoms of Europe crumpled up before him. On land he seemed to belittle less than invincible. England was only safe from him becauseEngland held the supremacy of the sea. When the war with France beganEngland was blessed with an effective navy, and England's fleet wasEngland's fortune in the days when the conqueror of a continent was thenightmare of an island. A monstrous regiment of caricaturists werepainting themselves into fame by fantastic and ferocious presentationsof the man who was so fiercely hated because he was so greatly dreaded. Some of these caricatures are pitifully ignoble, some in their kind aremasterpieces; all are animated by a great fury that is partly theoutcome of a great fear. For years that fear was always present; foryears it was always well within the bounds of possibility that the fearmight be realized in a great national catastrophe. In every coast townof England men volunteered and drilled and manned defences, and scannedwith anxious eyes the horizon for the sails that were to fulfil amenace more terrible than the menace of the Armada. England's militaryfame had dwindled on the battle-fields of Europe; England's strength athome was as nothing compared to the strength that France could employagainst her if once France could obtain a landing on her shores. Napoleon had declared scornfully that the country with the few millionsof men must give way to the country with many millions of men. Allthat he needed to reduce England, as he had reduced so many other ofthe kingdoms of the earth, was to place his armed majority where itcould act with overwhelming force against an armed minority. Only onething lay between him and his purpose, but that one thing was the navyof England. Napoleon knew that if he had but {334} command of theChannel for a very few hours the landing of which he had dreamed, andfor which he had schemed so long, would be a reality, and a march onLondon as easy as a march on Vienna. But he never got those few hours'command of the sea. Perhaps no greater monument of human vanity existsthan the medal which Napoleon, madly prophesying, caused to be struckin commemoration of the conquest of England. Perhaps no pages of allthe pages of history are more splendid than those which record thetriumphs and the glories of the English fleet in the mortal strugglewith France. When the great war began it was well for England that hernavy was in effective condition; it was perhaps better still that thetraditions of her navy were rich with heroic deeds, examples splendidto emulate, hard to surpass, but which, however, the sailors of KingGeorge the Third were destined to surpass. [Sidenote: 1797--Mutinies in the British Navy] Yet the conditions of life under which the English sailor lived werescarcely of a kind to foster the serene, austere virtues of patriotismand heroism. The English sailor was often snared into the activeservice of his country sorely against his will by means of the odiousinstrument for recruiting known as the press-gang. His existence onboard the mighty and beautiful men-of-war was a life that at its bestwas a life of the severest hardship, and that at its worst was hardindeed to endure. He and his fellows were herded together underconditions of indescribable filth, squalor, and discomfort, oftenfoolishly ill-fed, often cruelly ill-treated, often the victims ofintolerable tyranny from brutal superiors. It is sometimes littleshort of marvellous that the sailors on whose faith the safety ofEngland depended should have proved so faithful, so cheerful, sodesperately brave. There was, indeed, a moment when the faith of someof them failed, and when the safety of England was in greater jeopardythan it had been in since the crescent of the Armada was reported offPlymouth or the Dutch ships lay in the Medway. While the war withFrance was still in its gloomy dawn the unwisdom of treating Britishsailors worse than beasts of burden came near to wrecking the kingdom. In 1797 the crews {335} of very many of the King's ships wereexasperated by ill-treatments and injustices of many kinds, exasperatedmost of all by the fatal folly of long arrears of pay--a folly which inFrance, but eight years earlier, had been one of the most powerfulfactors in aiding the spread of the Revolution. There came a pointwhen the sense of injury seemed too hard to bear, and England wasstartled by the news of a mutiny at Spithead. But the mutiny, ifalarming, was kept within moderate bounds and under control by themutineers; it was temperately met and temperately dealt with by LordHowe, and it soon came to an end. It was immediately followed by a farmore alarming mutiny which broke out among the ships at the Nore. Thismutiny, headed by a seaman named Parker, who proved himself a bold anddaring spirit, swelled swiftly to serious proportions. Londoners sawthe mouth of their river blockaded by the war-ships of England, sawtheir capital city fortified against the menaces of the men they reliedupon as their saviors. Admiral Duncan, busily engaged in keeping aDutch fleet cooped up in the river Texel, suddenly beheld almost thewhole of his squadron desert him and sail away to join Parker and hisfellow-mutineers at the Nore. It was one of the gravest crises inEnglish history, one of the greatest perils that England had to faceduring the whole of the French war. But the danger was weathered, theperil overcome. The Government faced the dangers of mutiny as firmlyas they had faced the dangers of the war. Whatever the provocation, mutiny at such a moment was a national crime. It flickered out astamely as it blazed up fiercely. Parker and some of hisfellow-conspirators were hanged, strong men dying unhappily, and onceagain England had only her foreign foes to reckon with. Over away bythe Texel stout-hearted Duncan, with only his flagship and two frigatesto represent the sea power of England, met the difficulty with ashiftiness worthy of Ulysses. Through all his long hours of lonelinesshe kept on gallantly signalling away to an imaginary fleet, and theDutchmen in the Texel little dreamed that they were held in check by adeserted admiral {336} upon a desolate sea. When at last they emerged, Duncan's danger was over; his faithless vessels had returned to theirfaith, and the crushing victory of Camperdown consoled one of thebravest of the brave for an agony unrivalled in the story of the sea. [Sidenote: 1758-1805--Nelson] The British admirals are the heroes of the dying eighteenth century. "Admirals all, they said their say, the echoes are rising still"--inthe words of Henry Newbolt's gallant song. "Admirals all, they wenttheir way to the haven under the hill. " Dundonald was called, andfinely called, the last of the sea-kings; but they were all truekinsmen of the Vikings, the admirals who were famous figures inDundonald's fiery youth and famous memories in Dundonald's noble age. And as the admirals were, so were the captains, so were the men. Fearney sticking the surrendered swords in a sheaf under his arm;Walton calmly informing his superior that "we have taken or destroyedall the Spanish ships on this coast: number as per margin, " are typicalfigures in a tradition of a courage so superlative that Admiral SirRobert Calder, who fought very gallantly and took two ships, was triedby court-martial and severely reprimanded for not having destroyed theFrench fleet. The age of George the Third would be memorable, if itwere memorable for nothing else, for the deeds and the glories of thegreat sea fights and the great sea fighters who saved England frominvasion, knocking the tall ships of France to pieces, taking monstrousodds with alacrity, eager to engage in all weathers and under allconditions, cheerfully converting what seemed an impossible task intonot merely a feasible but an easy piece of business. There are somesea battles of that time, fought out in storm and darkness, which readin the tamest statement with the pomp and beauty of the most majesticmusic. The names of the great admirals must always be dear to Englishears, must always sound sweet on English lips. St. Vincent, Collingwood, Howe, Duncan, the noble list proceeds, each nameilluminated with its only splendid story of desperate enterprise anddeathless honor, till the proudest name of all is reached, {337} andpraise itself seems to falter and fall off before the lonely grandeurof Nelson. Never was a little life filled with greater achievements;never was a little body more compact of the virtues that make greatcaptains and brave men. The life that began in the September of 1758and that ended in the October of 1805 holds in the compass of itsforty-seven years the epitome of what England meant for Englishmen inthe days of its greatest peril and its greatest glory. Magnificent, magniloquent, turbulent, it is starred with glowing phrases as thicklyas with glowing deeds. "Fear! I never saw fear: what is it?" "Apeerage, or Westminster Abbey;" the immortal signal; the famous sayingoff Copenhagen: "It is warm work; this day will be the last to many ofus, but I would not be elsewhere for thousands;" the pathos of thedying lover: "Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair;" and the pride ofthe dying hero: "Thank God, I have done my duty"--all these things arethe splendid ornaments of a splendid career; they gleam on his story ashis stars and orders gleamed upon his breast when the "Victory" renewedher name. With the battle of Trafalgar and the destruction of theallied French and Spanish fleets Napoleon's dream of England's conquestcame to an end. The result was bought at a great price, the price ofNelson's life. But Nelson had done his work, and done it well. Hesaved his country; he had deserved well of his countrymen; he summed inhimself all the qualities that made the English sailor the idol of hispeople and the terror of his foes. While Nelson still lived and conquered, there came a check to thetroubled supremacy of Pitt. In 1801--when the memories of the battleof the Nile and the defence of Acre were still fresh in men's thoughts, and Napoleon had been for a year First Consul--Pitt, baffled bycircumstances, surrendered to mediocrity and Addington was PrimeMinister in his place. For three disastrous years Addington waspermitted to prove his incompetency, till in 1804 Pitt, as the onlypossible man, came back to power to face a Napoleon more menacing thanever, a Napoleon now, in that same year, crowned and triumphant as{338} Emperor of the French. England was Mistress of the Seas, butNapoleon was Master of Europe. Pitt's health was fading swiftly; hewatched with despair the progress of his enemy. Ulm came, andAusterlitz, and Austerlitz struck Pitt at the heart. The closing hours of Pitt's career were as troubled and as gloomy asits dawn had been radiant and serene. It may have cost him little tobe reconciled with the pompous mediocrity of Addington, and thereby toplacate the King. His nature could afford to be magnanimous to theungrateful incompetency that was able only in betrayal. It need nothave given a pang to that proud and lonely spirit to welcome into theCabinet the Earl of Buckinghamshire, who had wedded the one fair womanwhose heart Pitt had won and lost. But the anguish of his soul waswrung into expression by the fall of Dundas. He had loved Dundas, whowas now Lord Melville, long and well. Lord Melville's conduct asTreasurer to the Navy provoked from the Opposition a series ofcondemnatory resolutions. In spite of all that Pitt could do, theresolutions were supported by many of his followers, by many of hisfriends, by one friend conspicuous among all, by Wilberforce. Thedivision was neck and neck, 216 to 216; the Speaker, "white as asheet, " gave the casting vote against Dundas which stabbed Pitt to thecore. Whether it were or no, as Wilberforce maintained, a "falseprinciple of honor" which led the great minister to support Melville, Pitt felt the blow as he had felt nothing before and was to feel butone thing again. Pitt pulled his little cocked hat over his foreheadto hide his tears. One brutal adversary, Sir Thomas Mostyn, raised thewild yell of triumph that denotes to huntsmen the death of the fox. Another savage, Colonel Wardle, urged his friends to come and see "howBilly looked after it. " But the young Tory gentlemen rallied aroundtheir hero. They made a circle of locked arms, and with looks andwords that meant swords they kept the aggressors off. In their midstPitt moved unconsciously out of the House--a broken-hearted man. [Sidenote: 1806--Death of Pitt] The heart of Pitt was allowed to feel one pulse of pride {339} andpleasure before it ceased to beat. Pitt shared in the triumph ofTrafalgar; he made his best and noblest appearance in public; made hislast most splendid speech: "Europe is not to be saved by any singleman, " he said to those who saluted him at the Guildhall as the saviorof Europe. "England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, Itrust, save Europe by her example. " A few weeks later, in the Decemberof 1805, Pitt was at Bath, when a courier brought him the news of thebattle of Austerlitz. The news practically killed him. He had longbeen ailing grievously. Sir Walter Farquhar's account of Pitt'shealth, lately made public by Lord Rosebery, proves that the body whichcased that great spirit was indeed a ruined body. Grief and anxietyhad stamped lines of care and sorrow upon his face, which gave it whatWilberforce afterwards called "the Austerlitz look. " The phrase isfamous and admirable, if not exactly accurate as used by Wilberforce, for Lord Stanhope shows that Wilberforce never saw Pitt after thebattle of Austerlitz was fought. With the Austerlitz look on his face, Pitt travelled to London, to the villa now known as Bowling Green Houseat Putney. With the Austerlitz look on his face he surrendered himselfto the care of his niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, who afterwards livedeccentric and died lonely in the East, a kind of desert queen. Withthe Austerlitz look on his face he bade that niece roll up the map ofEurope: "It will not be wanted these ten years. " With the Austerlitzlook on his face he died on January 23, 1806. England, that had lost in three months Nelson and Pitt, was to lose athird great man in only eight months more. Pitt's body lay inWestminster; Pitt's Ministry was dissipated into air; Pitt's greatopponent was called to the office for the last time, and for a veryshort time. Fox, as we are told by his biographer, Lord Russell, neverfelt personal enmity to Pitt. He said, with generous truth, that henever gave a vote with more satisfaction than his vote in support ofthe motion to pay Pitt's debts and to settle pensions on his nieces. He could not and did not indorse the proposal to confer honor on thememory of Mr. Pitt {340} as an "excellent statesman. " He was ready totake office in the Ministry of All the Talents that Lord Grenvillegathered together. He became Foreign Secretary and Leader of the Houseof Commons. Fox, in office as out of office, had three great questions closely atheart: the treatment of Catholics, peace with France, and the SlaveTrade. But Fox in office was obliged to face and recognize thedifficulties, the solution of these questions. He admitted, reluctantly, the inadvisability of pressing the Catholic claims at atime when such pressure would prove destructive alike to the claims andto the Ministry that maintained them. He admitted, reluctantly, thatthe prospect of peace with France was very far from hopeful. He stilldreamed of a speedy abolition of the Slave Trade, and to this end heattended Parliament too persistently in defiance of the warnings of hisfailing health. He was tapped for dropsy; his condition grew worse; inthe evening of September 13, 1806, he died. He was the greatestliberal of his age; the greatest friend of liberty. The Irish poetbade the Irish banshee wail for him on whose burning tongue, truth, peace, and freedom hung. Fox was not long dead when the Ministry of All the Talents found itselfin direct collision with its royal master. It had ventured to suggestthat it should be permitted to Catholics and to Dissenters to serve theKing and the country in the Army and Navy. This small concession wastoo vast for the bigotry of George. He would have none of it, and theobsequious Ministry consented to abandon the measure. This was notenough for George. He wanted to extract from the Ministry a formalpromise in writing that it would never submit to the sovereign anymeasure that involved, or was in any way connected with, concessions tothe Catholics. The Ministry was not obsequious to that ignoble degree. It refused to bind itself by any such degrading pledge; and, inconsequence, it was turned out of office, and the Duke of Portland andMr. Perceval reigned in its stead. The Ministry of All the Talents hadlived neither a long nor a useful life. {341} Spencer Perceval was an able lawyer, a dexterous debater, a skilfulParliamentarian. He was privately an excellent man, with an excellencethat the irony of Sydney Smith has made immortal. He was not quite theman to sit in the Siege Perilous that had been occupied in turn by Pittand Fox. He held his office under difficult conditions. In 1810 theKing, whose ailing mind was unhinged by the death of his daughterAmelia, lost his reason irreparably. Perceval had to fight thequestion of the Regency with a brilliant Opposition and a bitterlyhostile Prince of Wales. He succeeded, in the January of 1811, incarrying his Regency Bill on the lines of the measure proposed in 1788. In May, 1811, he was shot dead, in the Lobby of the House of Commons, by a madman named John Bellingham, who had some crazy grievance againstthe Government. The years from the January of 1811 to the January of 1820 aretechnically the last nine years of the reign of George the Third; theyare practically the first nine years of the reign of George the Fourth. The nine years of the Regency were momentous years in the history ofEngland. The mighty figure of Napoleon, whose shadow, creeping overthe map of Europe, had darkened and shortened the life of Pitt, wasstill an abiding menace to England when the Prince of Wales becameRegent. But England, that had lost so much in her struggle with theCorsican conqueror, who had now no Nelson to oppose to him on the highseas, and no Pitt to oppose to him in the council chamber, foundherself armed against his triumphs in the person of a great soldier. [Sidenote: 1769-1852--Arthur Wellesley] In the same year that saw the birth of Napoleon, and on a date aslittle certain as that of the conqueror of Europe, a child was born toGarret Wellesley, first Earl of Mornington, in Dublin. The child was ason, the third that Anne Hill, Lord Dungannon's eldest daughter, hadborne to her music-loving husband; the child was christened Arthur. Dates as various as May 1, May 6, and April 29, 1769, are given bydifferent authorities in that very year, and the place of birth is asunsettled as the date, Dangan Castle in Meath, and Mornington House, Merrion Street, {342} Dublin, being the alternatives offered. Verylittle is known about the childhood and early youth of ArthurWellesley. His mother seems to have considered him stupid, and to havedisliked him for his stupidity. He went from school to school--firstat Chelsea, then at Eton, then at Brussels--without showing any specialgifts, except a taste for music, inherited no doubt from the father, whose musical tastes had earned him the affection of George the Third. An unamiable mother decided that he was "food for powder and nothingmore;" and when he was sixteen years old he was sent to the FrenchAcademy at Angers, where he was able to learn all the engineering thathe wanted, at the very same time that the young Napoleon Bonaparte wasbeing trained for a soldier in the military college at Brienne. Of thelittle that can be known of the first seventeen years of ArthurWellesley's life the clearest facts are that his childhood was nothappy, that he was believed by many to be a dull and backward boy, andthat he himself thought that if circumstances had not made him asoldier he would probably have become distinguished in public life as afinancier. [Sidenote--1786-97--Wellesley's military training] Circumstance made him a soldier. Through the patronage of his eldestbrother, who became Earl of Mornington on his father's death, in 1781, the young Arthur Wellesley entered the Army as an ensign in theSeventy-third Foot. The same influence that had got him into the armyaided him to rise in it. When he was little more than of age he wascaptain of the Eighteenth Light Dragoons, aide-de-camp to theLord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and member of the Irish Parliament for hisbrother's borough of Trim. In the Irish Parliament he supported Pitt'smeasure to enfranchise Roman Catholics. It was characteristic of theyoung man that, when once a career had been chosen for him, he devotedhimself to it with a cold, persistent zeal that accomplished as muchfor him as the most passionate enthusiasm would have done for another. He set before himself the principle that having undertaken a professionhe had better try to understand it, and understand it he did with adetermined thoroughness {343} that was rare indeed, if not unknown, among the young officers of his day. We are told that soon after hegot his first commission he had one of the privates of theSeventy-third weighed, first in his ordinary military clothes, and thenin heavy marching order, in order to ascertain what was expected of asoldier on service. This kind of thoroughness, at once comprehensiveand minute, distinguished the conduct of his whole career. One of themaxims that regulated his life was always to do the day's business inthe day. Long years later he and a friend were driving together alonga coaching road, and amusing themselves by guessing what kind ofcountry lay behind each hill they approached. When the friendcommented upon the surprising accuracy of his companion's guesses theman who had been Arthur Wellesley answered: "Why, all my life I havebeen trying to guess what lay on the other side of the hill;" astimulating piece of wisdom, to which he himself supplied the no lessstimulating comment: "All the business of war, and, indeed, all thebusiness of life, is to endeavor to find out what you don't know fromwhat you do. " The youth who took soldiering in this iron spirit musthave been more than a puzzle to many of his contemporaries, whosesimple military creed it was that when an officer was not actuallyfighting he might best employ his time in drinking and gambling. YoungWellesley fell in love with Catherine Pakenham, Lord Longford'sdaughter, and she with him; but the means of neither permitted marriagethen, and they did not marry until long years later. When the war withFrance was forced upon a reluctant minister, Wellesley went to theContinent under Lord Moira and saw some fighting. But his seriouscareer began when he was sent to India with the Thirty-third Regimentin 1797. It was in India that the young soldier was to learn those lessons inthe art of war which were afterwards to prove so priceless to England, and to gain a fame which might well have seemed great enough to satisfyany ambition less exacting than his. But he had the generous greed ofthe great soldier, the restless, high-reaching spirit, to which {344}the success of yesterday is as nothing save as an experience that mayserve for the success of to-morrow. No better field than India couldhave been found for a young and ambitious soldier who had devotedhimself to his career almost by chance, but who was resolved to approvehis choice by giving to the career of arms a zeal, a stubbornpertinacity, a very passion of patience, rare, indeed, at the time, andwho was resolved to regard nothing as too great to attempt, or tootrivial to notice, in the execution of his duty. After a career of military honor and experience in India, ArthurWellesley began his struggle with Napoleon on the battle-fields of theSpanish Peninsula, and ended it upon the battle-field of Waterloo. Hiswas the hand that gave the final blow to the falling, failing Emperor. The career of so much glory and of so much gloom, of Corsicanlieutenantship and Empire, of Brumaire and Bourbon Restoration, ofEgyptian pyramids and Russian snows, of Tilsit and of Elba, and of theHundred Days, ended in the Island of St. Helena. There exists amongthe documents that are preserved from Napoleon's youth a geographicallist made out in his own boyish hand of names and places, withexplanatory comments. The name of St. Helena is on the list, and theonly words written opposite to it are "Little Island. " The Preacher onVanities never had a better text for a sermon. The "little island"that had then seemed so unimportant became in the end more momentousthan the Eastern Empire of his dreams. The man who had made and unmadekingdoms, who had flung down the crowns of Europe for soldiers offortune to scramble for as boys unto a muss, was now the unhonoredcaptive of ungenerous opponents, the unhonored victim of the pettytyrannies of Sir Hudson Lowe. [Sidenote: 1812-15--The War of 1812] As the most disastrous event of the reign of George the Third prior tothe Regency was a war with America, so the most disastrous event of theRegency was a war with America. Napoleon's fantastic decrees ofcommercial blockade levelled against England, and known as theContinental system, had embroiled the young republic and England, anddifferences inflamed by the unwisdom of {345} Perceval were not to behealed by the belated wisdom of Castlereagh. Two keen causes ofquarrel were afforded by England's persistent assertion of the right tostop and search American vessels on the high seas for British subjectsand England's no less persistent refusal to recognize thatnaturalization as an American citizen in any way affected theallegiance of a British subject to the British crown. Wisestatesmanship might have averted war, but wise statesmanship waswanting. The death of Spencer Perceval caused the elevation to thepremiership of a man as incapable as his predecessor of dealingskilfully with the American difficulty. Robert Banks Jenkinson, whohad been Lord Hawkesbury and who was now Lord Liverpool, was acuriously narrow-minded, hidebound politician who had never recoveredfrom the shock of the French Revolution, and who was chieflyconspicuous for his dogged opposition to every species of reform. Hewas five years old when the fight at Concord began the struggle thatended with American Independence, but the great event whichovershadowed his childhood had no apparent effect upon his laterjudgment. This belated survival of the tradition of Hillsboroughthought and said that America ought to look to England "as the guardianpower to which she was indebted not only for her comforts, not only forher rank in the scale of civilization, but for her very existence. "Folly such as this could only end in disaster. America, believingherself to be deeply wronged, declared war on Great Britain in the Juneof 1812. The war lasted more than two years with varying fortunes. Once again the scarlet coats of English soldiers were familiar, ifdetested, objects to many of the men who had made the Republic, andover bloody battle-fields fluttered that English flag which most ofthose who now opposed it had only seen as a trophy of their fathers'victories. Both sides fought under heavy disadvantages. If Englandwas weakened by her struggle with Napoleon, America was hampered byinternal dissensions, by a disorganized army and by a navy so smallthat it might almost have been regarded as not in existence. Yet itwas this very navy which did most for {346} America in the struggle, and dealt England the most staggering blows inflicted upon hersupremacy of the sea. The most shameful episode of the whole unhappycampaign was when the English General Ross captured Washington, and, inobedience to infamous orders from home, burned the Capitol and otherpublic buildings. No more disgraceful act stains the history of thetime. It proved as impossible for England to defend as for America toforget. The war ended at last, after the commerce of both countrieshad been gravely injured, in a grotesque treaty of peace, signed atGhent, in which the principal cause of the war, the impressment ofAmerican sailors by English ships, was not even alluded to. But as theimpressment was abandoned by England, the war had not been waged whollyin vain. In the year that followed upon the Battle of Waterloo, Sheridan died. He had outlived by ten years his great contemporaries Pitt and Fox, bynearly twenty years his greatest contemporary Burke, and by more thanthirty years his great contemporary Johnson. The pompous funeral thatcarried his remains to Westminster Abbey was the funeral not merely ofa man but of an age. He was almost the last of the great heroicfigures that made the eighteenth century famous. He had long outlivedall the friends, heroes, rivals of his glorious prime: he could talk tothe children of the dawning century of Johnson, and Goldsmith, and SirJoshua Reynolds; of Burke, and Pitt, and Fox; of poets and painters, players, and politicians, who seemed to his listeners to belong to adeparted Age of Gold. Two years later, in the November of 1818, England, and indeed the whole civilized world, received a sudden andpainful shock by the death, under conditions peculiarly harrowing, ofSir Samuel Romilly, the great lawyer, social reformer, andphilanthropist. Romilly had been deeply attached to his wife, and onher death in October of that year, it would seem that he must have losthis reason, for, in the following month, he committed suicide. Romillywas a man of the highest principles, and the most austere conscience, and although the loss of his much-loved wife must have made the worldbut a mere {347} ruin to him, it is not believed that, if his mind hadnot suddenly given away, he would have done himself to death with hisown hand. To Napoleon, then fretting in exile in St. Helena, the deedappeared to be one curiously characteristic of the English people. "The English character is superior to ours. Conceive Romilly, one ofthe leaders of a great party, committing suicide at fifty because hehad lost his wife. They are in everything more practical than we are;they emigrate, they marry, they kill themselves with less indecisionthan we display in going to the opera. " Napoleon was wrong in hisestimate of Romilly's age. Romilly was sixty-one when he died. He wasone of the greatest legal and social reformers of his age. His fatherwas a Huguenot watchmaker who had settled in London, and the youngSamuel Romilly had only an imperfect education to begin with. Byintense study he became possessed of wide and varied culture. Hestudied for the bar, became distinguished in Chancery practice, madehis way in public life, sat in the House of Commons for several years, and finally represented Westminster. During successive visits toFrance he had made the acquaintance of Diderot and D'Alembert, andbecame the friend of Mirabeau. He won a noble fame by his persistentendeavors to mitigate the cruelties of the criminal laws, to introducethe principles of a free country into political prosecutions, toabolish the odious spy system, and to put an end to slavery at home andabroad. His name will be remembered forever in the history ofpolitical and social reform. The Houses of Death and of Birth were busy for the royal family in theclosing scenes of the King's tragedy. There had been very littlehappiness for George the Third in his long reign and his longer life. His childhood had been darkened by the shadow of a family feud thatseemed traditional in his line. His marriage, indeed, fortunate ifunromantic, the sequel of more than one unfortunate romance, gave him acompanion whose tastes were as simple, and whose purposes were asupright as his own. But his private domesticity was not destined to beless troubled than his public fortunes. The grim tradition asserted{348} itself again for him whose childhood and manhood had been onlytoo devoted to the influence of his mother. Few of his children were acause of joy to him; some were a source of very poignant sorrow. Hemight have known content in a private station under conditions betterfitted to strengthen his virtues and to lessen the force of hisdefects. If Farmer George had really been but Farmer George, hisexistence might tranquilly have followed the courses of the seasonsthrough a prosperous manhood to a peaceable old age. But the curse ofkingship was upon him very heavily, and his later years are verypitiful in their loneliness and their pain. Of the course of eventsabout him he, in the awful visitation of his infirmities, had long beenunconscious. Blind and deaf and mad, he seems to have been haunted bythe ghastly fancy that he was already dead. "I must have a suit ofblack, " he is reported to have said, "in memory of George the Third, for whom I know there is a general mourning. " George the Third wasdead in life, and about him those he loved were dying fast. OnNovember 6, 1817, the Princess Charlotte died, the only child of thePrince Regent. She was very popular, was in the direct succession tothe throne; she hoped to be queen, and many shared her hope. Theprisoner of St. Helena believed that in her lay his best chance ofliberation. She married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg on May 2, 1816, and died after giving birth to a still-born child in the followingyear. She was not quite twenty-two years old. The news of her deathgreatly affected the old queen, her grandmother. Her health, that hadlong been weak, grew weaker, and she died on November 17, 1818. Shehad lived her simple, honest, narrow, upright life for seventy-fouryears. On May 24, 1819, a daughter was born to the Duchess of Kent, the wife of Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George the Third. On January 23, 1820, the Duke of Kent died. Six days later the Kingceased to exist. He was in the eighty-second year of his age and thesixtieth year of his reign. The most devoted loyalist could not havewished for the unhappy King another hour of life. "Vex not his ghostO! Let {349} him pass; he hates him that would upon the rack of thisrough world stretch him out longer. " [Sidenote: 1760-1820--Progress under George the Third] The reign that had ended was certainly the longest and perhaps the mostremarkable then known to English history. The King's granddaughter, the Princess Victoria, born so short a time before his death, wasdestined to a reign at once longer and more remarkable than the reignof George the Third. The England of 1820 was not nearly so far removedfrom the England of 1760 as the England of the last year of thenineteenth century was removed from 1837. But the changes that tookplace in England in the sixty years of the reign of the third Georgewere changes of vast moment and vast importance. If England'spolitical fortunes fell and rose in startling contrast, the progress ofcivilization was steady and significant. The social England of 1820was widely different from the social England of 1760. The advance ofpopulation, the growth of great towns, the increase of means ofintercourse between one part of the country and another by highways andwaterways, the engineering triumphs that bridged rivers and cut canals, the marvels of industrial invention that facilitated labor, the patientpains of science on the edge of great discoveries, the slowlyincreasing spirit of toleration, pity, and humanity, the gradual spreadof education, the widening realms of knowledge, the increasingappreciation of the decencies and amenities of life--all these thingsmake the reign of George the Third the hopeful preface to the reign ofgreater length, greater glory, greater promise and greater fulfilmentthat was to dawn when two more sovereigns of the House of Hanover hadceased to reign over England. If George the Third had been a wiser manhis reign would have been happier for the country he ruled; but thecountry at least was happy in this, that he was, as kings went, andaccording to his lights, a good man. END OF THE THIRD VOLUME. {350} INDEX. Abernethy, Dr. , death, iv. 282. Act for better securing the Dependency of Ireland, i. 177. Act of Settlement, i. 4. Act of Union passed, iii. 327, 330. Acts of Trade, iii. 82, 84, 86, 105. Adams, John: Conduct towards Colonel Preston, iii. 152. Opposes dominion of England, iii. 85. Adams, Samuel, protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90. Addington, Henry, Viscount Sidmouth, Prime Minister, iii. 337. Addison, Joseph: M. P. For Malmesbury, i. 52. Secretary of State; circular letter to English Ministers, ii. 109. Sketch of, i. 37, 180. Address (1715), i. 102. Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of William IV. , iv. 97. Supposed attitude towards Reform, iv. 172. Agrarian crime, iv. 84, 106. Agriculture in Scotland (1714), i. 87, 89. Agriculture in 1721, i. 229. Aislabie, John: Chancellor of Exchequer, i. 188, 190. Committed to Tower, i. 199. Impeaches Lord Strafford, i. 109, 110. Treasurer of Navy, i. 105. Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, ii. 260, 280. Akerman, Keeper of Newgate, attitude towards mob, iii. 203. Albany, Countess of, wife of Charles Stuart, ii. 233. Alberoni, Giulio: Policy, i. 159. Sketch of, i. 158. Ale-tax in Scotland, i. 249. Ali Vardi Khan, death of, ii. 265. Allan, killed in riot (1768), iii. 120. Allen, Ethan, iii. 179. Almanza, battle of, ii. 35. Althorp, Lord (_see_ Spencer, John Charles, Earl). Amelia, daughter of George III. , death of, iii. 341. Amelia, Princess (_see_ Emily, Princess). American Colonies: Discontent in, iii. 147 _seqq. _ Grievances, iii. 82. Proclaim their Independence, iii. 183. Report on, i. 310. Sketch of history, iii. 74. Systems of governing, i. 310. American Republic acknowledged, iii. 184. Influence on France, iii. 290, 292. American War of Independence, iii. 173 _seqq. _ American War, Second, iii. 344. Amherst, Jeffrey, Baron: Commander-in-Chief, iii. 207. Commands troops in Canada, ii. 287. Amhurst, Nicholas (Caleb d'Anvers), edits _Craftsman_, i. 261. Anaverdi Khan, Nabob of Carnatic, ii. 201. André, Major, death as spy, iii. 184. Anglesey, Marquis of, Viceroy of Ireland, attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 73, 74. Anne, Princess of Orange, ii. 38. Illness, ii. 71, 76. Marriage, ii. 42. Anne, Queen: Character, i. 1, 13. Death, i. 47. Declining health, i. 1. Scheme to reduce expenses, i. 281. "Annual Register": Description of mob in London, iii. 205. Founded by Edmund Burke, iii. 99. Anti-Irish riots, ii. 45. "Anti-Jacobin, " iv. 33. Arbuthnot, John: History of John Bull, i. 97. Sketch of, ii. 20. Arcot, Siege of, ii. 263. Arden, Richard Pepper, iii. 236. Argyll, John Campbell, Duke of, i. 42. Commander-in-Chief for Scotland, i. 98, 123. Sketch of, i. 44. Speech on Convention, ii. 166. Aristotle on administration, ii. 246. Arnold, Benedict, iii. 179. Treason, iii. 184. Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, ii. 293. Ashley, Lord (_see_ Shaftesbury, Earl of). Association of United Irishmen, iii. 309, 313, 319. Atterbury, Francis, Bishop of Rochester, i. 48. Arrested and committed to Tower, i. 212. Banished, i. 222. Evidence against, i. 219, 220, 222. On condition of church, ii. 129. Opposes Septennial Act, i. 146. Sketch of, i. 214. _Auditor_, iii. 15, 55. Augusta, Princess of Saxe-Gotha, wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales, ii. 46, 47; iii. 6, 7. Birth of first child, ii. 104-107. Regency Bill and, iii. 73. Augustus, Elector of Saxony, ii. 23. Augustus II. Of Poland, ii. 23. Aurungzebe, Empire on death of, ii. 257. Austerlitz, Battle of, iii. 338, 339. Austria in 1716, i. 154. Bailly, Mayor of Paris, iii. 298. Ballot system, iv. 131. Balmerino, Lord, trial, ii. 228. Bank of England: Attacked by rioters, iii. 207. Charter renewed, iv. 232. Imitates South Sea Company, i. 189. Barber, John: Letter to Swift, i. 48. On Arbuthnot, ii. 20. Barnard, Sir John: Abandons seceders, ii. 174. On Convention, ii. 162. On grievances against Spaniards, ii. 154, 157. On Walpole's Excise scheme, i. 315. Barré, Colonel, iii. 131, 133, 136. Barry, Richard, Lord Barrymore, iii. 244. Supports Young Pretender, ii. 221. Barry, Sir Charles, designs new Houses of Parliament, iv. 270, 272. Bartholomew Fair, i. 73. Barwell, Richard, iii. 260. Supports Hastings, iii. 260, 261, 264. Bastile captured, iii. 294. Bath in 1714, i. 79. Bathurst, Lord, demands prosecution of rioters, iii. 201. Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of: On Lord John Russell, iv. 126. Philippics against Sir Robert Peel, i. 287. Beaux and requisites, i. 76. Bedford, Duke of: Opposes Pitt, iii. 26. Patron of Rigby, iii. 37. Presents petition against Convention, ii. 164. Bellingham, John, shot Spencer Perceval, iii. 341. Benares annexed, iii. 258. Benares, Chait Singh, Rajah of, iii. 269. Bentham, Jeremy, theories of, iv. 281. Béranger, "King of Yvetot, " iv. 119. Berkeley, George Bishop: Character, ii. 296. Lives in Rhode Island, ii. 295. Scheme of Settlement in Bermuda, ii. 294. Sketch of, ii. 292. Berkeley, Lord, of Stratton, describes duel between Colonel Chudleigh and Charles Aldworth, i. 58. Bermuda, Scheme for Settlement in, ii. 294. Bernard, Francis, Governor of Massachusetts, iii. 106, 148. Dissolves Massachusetts Legislature, iii. 150. Recalled, iii. 151. Berwick, James FitzJames, Duke of: Sketch of, ii. 34. Takes Kehl, ii. 24. Bill for Catholic Relief, iii. 190, 191. Bill for Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 43. Bill for strengthening Protestant interest, i. 171, 172. Bill of Rights, i. 3. Bill to adjust affairs of South Sea Company, i. 203, 205. Bill to suspend Habeas Corpus Act, i. 213. Birmingham, iv. 99. Bismarck, Prince, Peace policy, ii. 147. Black Hole of Calcutta, ii. 266, 267; iii. 249. Blackstone, Speech on Middlesex Election Petition, iii. 131. Bland-Burges Papers, ii. 217. Bland-Burges, Sir James, defends Warren Hastings, iii. 277, 278. Bloomfield, patronized by Duke of Grafton, iii. 35. Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, i. 22, 115. Advises secession from Commons, ii. 172. Alliance with Pulteney, i. 260; ii. 17. At St. Germains, i. 116. Attitude towards restoration of Stuarts, i. 39, 48, 107. Character, i. 116; ii. 18, 279. Correspondence with James Stuart, ii. 18. Dismissed by James, i. 131. Dreams of Coalition Ministry, ii. 194. Flight, i. 103. Impeached of high treason, i. 108, 110. Inspires _Craftsman_, i. 290. Leaves England for France, ii. 17, 18. Letter to Swift, i. 47. Name erased from roll of peers, i. 114. On Duke of Berwick, ii. 34. On Duke of Shrewsbury, i. 42. On Wyndham's death, ii. 179. Petition to Lords, i. 258. Removed from Secretaryship of State, i. 101. Returns to England, i. 222, 258. Scheme of Opposition, i. 287. Sketch of, i. 26; later life, i. 133; ii. 278, 279. Style as speaker and writer, i. 27. Walpole's portrait of, ii. 15, 16. Bombay, dower of Catherine of Braganza, iii. 248. Boston: Evacuated, iii. 182. Hostile to British, iii. 151. Invested, iii. 175, 181. Life in 1765, iii. 77. Massacre, iii. 151. Protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90. Tea thrown into harbor, ii. 43; iii. 160. Boston, Lord, in hands of mob, iii. 197. Boston Port Bill, iii. 163; copies circulated, iii. 165. Boswell, James: Johnson and, iii. 44. On Alexander Wedderburn, iii. 158. Bourbon family: Aims of, ii. 28. Compacts, ii. 26. Bourne, Vincent, at Westminster School, iii. 53. Braddock, General, defeat and death, ii. 286; iii. 79, 180. Bradley on reform of Calendar, ii. 275. Breed Hill battle, iii. 176. Bremen ceded to Hanover, i. 160, 161. Brewster, Sir David: British Association and, iv. 262. On Newton, i. 273. Bright, John, doctrine of non-intervention, iv. 62. Bristol: Growth of, i. 78. Reform riot at, iv. 171. British Admirals of Eighteenth Century, iii. 336. British Association founded, iv. 262. British garrison proposed for America, iii. 84, 86. British sailor (1797), iii. 334. _Briton_, iii. 51, 55. "Broad-bottomed Ministry, " ii. 245, 246. Bromley, William, motion on Septennial Act, ii. 10, 12. "Brothers" Club, i. 74. Brougham, Henry, Lord Brougham and Vaux: Advice to Queen Caroline, iv. 5. Attitude towards electoral reform, iv. 52. Attitude towards Poor Relief, iv. 223. Attitude towards West Indian Slavery, iv. 192, 193. British Association and, iv. 262. Character, iv. 251. Defends Queen Caroline, iv. 6, 8. Evidence in Cobbett's prosecution, iv. 156. Leader of Opposition, iv. 103. Lord Chancellor, iv. 124. Motion on Reform, iv. 104, 110, 111. Motions against Slavery, iv. 194, 195. Negotiates with King on creation of new peers, iv. 180. On Parliamentary Reform, iv. 85. Oratory, iv. 104, 174. "Penny Cyclopaedia" and, iv. 262. Persuades William IV. To dissolve Parliament, iv. 151. Power as Reformer, iv. 122, 125. Retires from Ministerial life, iv. 251. Scheme for national education, iv. 22. Speech on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 74. Brunswick family, i. 5. Buchanan, messenger of Young Pretender, ii. 205. Buckingham, Earl of, iii. 338. Buckingham House, i. 66. Buckingham Palace, iv. 93. Bunbury, Sir Thomas Charles, marries Lady Sarah Lennox, iii. 10. Burdett, Sir Francis, resolution on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 73. Burgoyne at Boston, iii. 175, 182. Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga, iii. 183. Burke, Edmund: Alliance with Fox and North, iii. 226. Attitude on American Independence, iii. 87. Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 285. Career, iii. 96 _seqq. _ Character, iii. 227. Crusade against French Revolution, iii. 296, 298. Denunciation of French Revolution, i. 96. "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, " iii. 98. Friend of Goldsmith, iii. 168. Impeaches Warren Hastings, iii. 281, 285. Indian policy, iii. 273. Influence on generation, iii. 96, 100. Maiden speech, iii. 100. Marriage, iii. 98. On Ballot system, iv. 131. Boston exploit, iii. 161. Chesterfield's rule in Ireland, ii. 251. Ministry and Wilkes's riots, iii. 121, 122. Townshend, iii. 111. Walpole's opposition to war party, ii. 181. War with Spain, ii. 184. Warren Hastings, iii. 258, 259. Wilkes's reception in London, iii. 116; in Middlesex, iii. 117. Opinion of George IV. , iv. 90. Oratory, iii. 100. Passion for justice, iii. 272. Paymaster-General, iii. 224, 228. Praises of Pitt, iii. 223. Private Secretary to Lord Rockingham, iii. 99. Reproves Charles James Fox, iii. 141. Speech against American war, iii. 188. Speech on Middlesex Election Petition, iii. 132. Vindication of Natural Society, iii. 98. Burke, William, iii. 99. Burnet, Bishop, on: Condition of Church, ii. 129. Duke of Marlborough, i. 23. High and Low Church, i. 17. Queen Anne, i. 2. Burney, Miss, in Burke's arraignment of Hastings, iii. 286. Burns, Robert, on William IV. And Mrs. Jordan, iv. 97. Bury Street, price of lodgings in, in 1714, i. 70. Bute, Lord: Bribery under, iii. 28, 30. Cabals against Pitt, iii. 26. Character, iii. 7, 28. Foreign policy, iii. 28, 29. House besieged, iii. 117. Influence over Princess of Wales and her son, iii. 8. Prime Minister, iii. 28. Proposes cider tax, iii. 30, 32. Resigns office, iii. 32. Secretary of State, iii. 8. Sketch of, iii. 7. Unpopular, iii. 28, 32. Buxton, Fowell, West Indian slavery and, iv. 190, 191, 194, 195. Byng, Admiral: Fails to relieve Minorca, ii. 297. Tried and shot, ii. 298. Byrne, Miles: Career, iii. 321. Memoirs, iii. 321. Byron, Lord: Assists Greeks, iv. 48. Death at Missolonghi, iv. 50. On George IV. , iii. 242. On Grattan, iii. 307. Scorn of O'Connell's loyalty, iv. 23, 27. Verses on Castlereagh's death, iv. 37. Cabot, John and Sebastian, discover Canada, ii. 283. Calder, Admiral Sir Robert, iii. 336. Calendar, reform of, ii. 275. Campbell, John, Baron, on Lord Harcourt, i. 51. Campeachy logwood question, i. 294, 295; ii. 160. Camperdown, battle of, iii. 318, 336. Canada: French and English colonies in, ii. 283, 284. Sketch of history, ii. 283 _seqq. _ "Canter of Coltbrigg, " ii. 213-215. Canterbury, Archbishop of, attends Queen Caroline, ii. 121. Canning, George: Accepts Governor-Generalship of India, iv. 35. Attitude towards Free Trade and Parliamentary reform, iv. 52, 62. Character, iv. 60, 65. Death, iv. 61. Duel with Lord Castlereagh, iv. 34. Foreign Secretary, iv. 38. Funeral in Westminster Abbey, iv. 62. Monroe doctrine and, iv. 44. Opponents in House of Lords, iv. 59. Oratory, iv. 33, 34, 64. Policy, iv. 34, 38, 41, 42, 43, 52, 55. Summary of, iv. 62. Prime Minister, iv. 55, 58. Resigns office, iv. 7, 31, 34. Sketch of career, iv. 31 _seqq. _, 62. Supports Queen Caroline, iv. 5, 7. Sympathy with Greece, iv. 49, 52. Canning, Stratford, iv. 32. "Canningites, " iv. 65, 72. Carew, Sir George, builds Chichester House, Dublin, i. 80. Caricature in political controversy, i. 52. Caricatures during Hastings's trial, iii. 288. Caricatures of Napoleon Bonaparte, iii. 333. Carnwath, Earl of, a prisoner, i. 137, 138. Caroline, Amelia Elizabeth, Princess of Brunswick, wife of George IV. , iii. 244. Character, iv. 11. Demands to be crowned, iv. 8, 10. Divorce bill, iv. 6; abandoned, iv. 8. Illness and death, iv. 10, 11. Italian witnesses against, iv. 7. Returns to England on accession of George IV. , iv. 5, 6. Caroline, Princess, ii. 38, 71, 79, 105. Attends on Queen, ii. 118, 124. Dislikes Walpole, ii. 126. Caroline, Wilhelmina Dorothea, wife of George II. , i. 303. Action towards Porteous, ii. 62, 66. Acts as Regent, ii. 49. Alarmed for King's safety, ii. 71, 72. Character, i. 276; ii. 77. Death-bed, ii. 114 _seqq. _ Family, ii. 38. Godmother to her granddaughter, ii. 108. Hates Prince of Wales, ii. 40, 50, 71, 76, 118. Lampoons on, ii. 102. Carteret, John, Earl of Granville: Attacks Ministry and Convention, ii. 165. Character, ii. 240, 241; iii. 38. Death, iii. 38. Denounces Convention, ii. 163. Enmity to Walpole, ii. 159, 160, 185. Foreign Policy, ii. 177, 240, 241. Hatred of Pulteney, ii. 192. Knowledge of German, i. 235. Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, i. 239; iii. 38. Motion on Petition against Convention, ii. 164. Moves motion for removal of Walpole, ii. 185. Proclamation against "Drapier's Letters, " i. 247. Proposes address on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 89. Resigns, ii. 244. Secretary of State, ii. 191. Sketch of career, i. 233. Speech on Salt Tax, i. 314. Cartier, Jacques, ascends St. Lawrence, ii. 283. Castlereagh, Viscount (Marquis of Londonderry): Character, iv. 36. Death, iv. 36. Duel with Canning, iv. 34. Policy, iv. 34, 39, 41. Catalans and Peace of Utrecht, i. 94. "Catholic" and "Protestant" Ministers, iv. 54. Catholic Association formed, iv. 21. Catholic disabilities, iii. 307. Catholic emancipation question, iv. 52, 67 _seqq. _ Catholic Relief Bill passed, iv. 78. Catholics, feeling against, i. 143. Catholics, penalty against, i. 216. Cato Street Conspiracy, iv. 2, 15. Censorship for stage and press discussed, ii. 96 _seqq. _ Chadwick, Sir Edwin, on Poor Law Commission, iv. 225, 227. Chait Singh, Rajah of Benares, and Warren Hastings, ii. 269. Chambord, Count de, i. 40. Charing Cross in 1714, i. 68. Charles II. Of Spain: Character, i. 61. Will of, ii. 27. Charles VI. , Emperor, ii. 23. Death, ii. 182. Denounces Walpole, ii. 25. Pragmatic sanction, i. 228. Charles X. Deposed, iv. 98. Charles XII. Of Sweden: Action in Poland, ii. 23. Sketch of, i. 160, 162. Charles River, English fleet in, iii. 173, 182. Charleston in 1765, iii. 77. Charleston, tea landed at, iii. 161. Charlotte, Princess: Death, iii. 348. Marries Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, iii. 348. Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of George III. , iii. 10. Character and personal appearance, iii. 12, 14. Death, iii. 348. Chartists demand vote by ballot, iv. 131. Chaworth, Mary, Mrs. Musters, iv. 170. Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of: Administration in Ireland, ii. 249. Advice to Prince of Wales, ii. 78. Attitude on Penal Laws, ii. 249. Character, ii. 6. Conduct to Johnson, iii. 44. Enmity to Walpole, ii. 159, 160, 185. Irish policy, ii. 7. Moves address on Accession of George II. , ii. 7. On Bolingbroke, i. 117. Bute's nationality, iii. 30. Carteret, i. 235. Lord Cowper, i. 98. Recalled from Ireland, ii. 252. Retires from public life, ii. 274. Secretary of State, ii. 252. Sketch of, ii. 4 _seqq. _ Speech on Convention, ii. 164. Speech on Playhouse Bill, ii. 100. Speech on Reform of Calendar, ii. 275. Viceroy of Ireland, ii. 246, 247. Chichester, Sir Arthur, i. 80. China trade and East India Company, iv. 231. Chippenham election petition, ii. 189, 190. Chiswick, Mr. , sends Warren Hastings to Calcutta, iii. 247. Cholmondeley, Earl of, moves address on Convention, ii. 164. Chudleigh, Colonel, quarrels with Charles Aldworth, i. 58. Chunar fortress, iii. 270. Chunda Sahib: Besieges Trichinopoly, ii. 262. Captured and put to death, ii. 264. Invades Carnatic, ii. 261. Church of England, condition in 1738, ii. 129, 132. Churchill, Charles: Character, iii. 52. Death, iii. 69. Denunciation of Hogarth, iii. 63. Flight, iii. 59. "Rosciad, " iii. 54. Satires, iv. 69. Wilkes and, iii. 55. Cider tax proposed, iii. 30. Claimants to throne (1714), i. 3 _seqq. _ Clare Election (1828), iv. 70, 78. Clarence, Duke of (_see_ William IV. ). Clarendon, Lord, bears tidings of Queen Anne's death to George, i. 56. Clarke, Adam, death, iv. 284. Clarke, George, killed in riot, iii. 129. Clarkson, Thomas, West Indian Slavery and, iv. 195, 200. Clavering, General Francis, iii. 260, 261. Death, iii. 264. Clement, Pope, interview with Charles Stuart, ii. 202. Clerk, Lord Justice, i. 130. Clerkenwell Prison broken open, iii. 203. Cleveland, Duchess of, i. 23. Clifton, engagement at, ii. 223. Clinton at Boston, iii. 175. Clive, Richard, ii. 254. Clive, Robert, ii. 253. Advances against Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 268. Captures Arcot, ii. 262. Character, ii. 255. Discerns Warren Hastings's talent, iii. 250, 252. Escapes from Madras, ii. 260. Forges Admiral Watson's signature, ii. 270. Governor of Fort St. David, ii. 265. Marries, ii. 264. Negotiates with Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269. Protests against Indian Administration, iii. 251. Returns to England, ii. 264, 273. Returns to India, iii. 253. Sketch of career, ii. 256 _seqq. _ Clonmel, State trials at, iv. 179. Clubs in 1714, i. 73. Coalition Ministry (1783), iii. 225, 229 Fall of, iii. 235, 237. Cobbett, William: Death, iv. 282. Prosecution, iv. 154. Sketch of career, iv. 155. Cobden, R. , doctrine of non-intervention, iv. 62. Cochrane, Thomas, Earl of Dundonald, assists Greeks, iv. 48. "Cocoa Tree" coffee-house, i. 76. Code Napoléon, iii. 332. Codrington, Sir Edward, commands at Navarino, iv. 50, 96. Coffee-houses, i. 75, 76. Coke's description of Raleigh, iii. 286. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, death, iv. 283. Colonial Administration System (1765), iii. 80. Committee of Secrecy, i. 104, 168. Compton, Sir Spencer, Lord Wilmington, ii. 107, 189. Character, i. 275. Death, ii. 240. Prime Minister, ii. 191. Speaker of House of Commons, i. 212. Concord, battle and retreat from, iii. 174. Congress of Verona and Vienna (_see_ Verona and Vienna Congress). Congreve, William, sketch of, i. 299. Coningsby, Lord, i. 105. Impeaches Oxford, i. 108. Convention between England and Spain (1739), ii. 161, 168. Petition against, ii. 163. Conway, Circular letter to governors of colonies, iii. 105. Cooke, George, Tory candidate for Middlesex, iii. 117. Death, iii. 124. Coote, Major Eyre, ii. 272. Cope, Sir John, Scottish Commander-in-Chief, ii. 210. Defeated at Preston Pans, ii. 214, 215. Copley, Sir John (_see_ Lyndhurst, Baron). Cork Hill, Dublin, i. 82. Cork in 1714, i. 83. Cornwallis, Charles, Marquis: Commands royal troops in Ireland, iii. 323. Surrenders at Yorktown, iii. 184. Corporation Act repealed, iv. 52, 67. Corstorphine, Dragoons at, ii. 212. Cottenham, Lord Chancellor, iv. 252. Court Street Conspiracy, iii. 160. Covent Garden in 1714, i. 68. Cowper, Spencer, i. 105. Cowper, William, Earl, Lord Chancellor: Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 190. Evidence against, i. 219. Opposes taxing Catholics, i. 216. Sketch of, i. 98. Coxe, Archdeacon, on: Division on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 88. Duke of Newcastle, ii. 33. Crabbe, George: Account of taking of Newgate, iii. 203. Death, iv. 282. _Craftsman_: Objects of, i. 290, 291. On Walpole's excise scheme, i. 318. Picture of Walpole, ii. 14. "Sedition and defamation displayed, " i. 306. Series of pamphlets, i. 286. Started, i. 260. Craggs, Father and Son, i. 197. Crawford, Earl of, on Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 44. Croix, Petit de la, Persian Tales, iii. 254. Croker, John Wilson, ii. 107. Obstructs Reform Bill, iv. 163. Cromarty, Lord, trial, ii. 228. Cromwell, Elizabeth, death, ii. 3. Cruden, Alexander, dislike to Wilkes, iii. 135. Culloden, Battle of, ii. 224. Prisoners, ii. 232. Cumberland, Ernest Augustus, Duke of: Orange Association and, iv. 276, 278. Supports Irish Church, iv. 219. Unpopularity, iv. 102. Cumberland, William Augustus, Duke of (Butcher), ii. 38. Army at Stafford, ii. 217. Character, ii. 223. Commands English troops at Lauffeld, ii. 239. Conduct after Culloden, ii. 226. Invites Pitt to return to office, iii. 73, 93. Queen Caroline's advice to, ii. 118. Curran, John Philpot: Appeal on behalf of Wolfe Tone, iii. 326. Description of Ireland, iv. 27. Curran, Sarah, and Robert Emmet, iii. 329. "Daily Advertiser, " iii. 128. _Daily Post_, iii. 128. Dalton, Sir Charles, Gentleman Usher of Black Rod, i. 278. Dashwood, Francis, Lord Le Despencer, iii. 33, 65. Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 48. Founds brotherhood of Medmenham, iii. 46. Davy, Sir Humphry, iv. 93. Dawson, James, supports Young Pretender, ii. 221, 229. Dawson Street, Dublin, i. 81. Daylesford Manor, Worcestershire, iii. 245, 247. D'Espremesnil, Duval, Governor of Madras, ii. 261. De Launay decapitated, iii. 294. De Quincey, iii. 44. Deccan, Nizam of, sends diamond to George III. , iii. 281. Declaration of Rights, Philadelphia, iii. 173. Declaratory Act, iii. 104, 105. Defoe, Daniel, "Robinson Crusoe, " ii. 1. Demerara, "Insurrection" of slaves, iv. 193. Denman, Thomas, Lord Chief Justice: Defends Queen Caroline, iv. 6, 7, 8. Denmark, King of: Character, i. 3. Treaty with George I. , i. 161. Treaty with George II. , ii. 176. Derby, Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, Earl of: Letter to Peel declining office, iv. 238. Political principles, iv. 217. Secretary to Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, iv. 127. Speech on Emancipation of Slaves, iv. 196. Speech on Irish State Church, iv. 217, 246. Derby, Reform riot at, iv. 170. Derwentwater, Earl of, i. 137. Executed, i. 142. Dettingen, battle of, ii. 182. Devonshire, Duke of, Premier of Coalition Ministry, ii. 298. D'Iberville on Whigs, i. 18. Dickens, Charles, iv. 286. Dinner hour, changes in, iii. 18. Dinwiddie, Governor of Virginia, ii. 285. Disarmament of clans, ii. 208, 232. Disarming Act (1716), result of, ii. 209. Disraeli (_see_ Beaconsfield, Lord). Divorce Bill (1820), iv. 6. Abandoned, iv. 8. Don Carlos: Compact to protect (1733), ii. 26. Heir to Parma and Placentia, ii. 28. Dorset, Duke of, English ambassador to France, iii. 295. Drake, Governor, in Fulta Island, iii. 249. Draper, Sir William, replies to letters of Junius, iii. 129. Drapier's letters, i. 240, 242. Drummond, Lord James, supports Young Pretender, ii. 221. Dublin coffee-houses, i. 82. Dublin in 1714, i. 80. Dubois, Abbé, Sketch of, i. 155. Duddington, Lieutenant, Commands "Gaspee, " iii. 152. Dumouriez and Duke of Wellington, i. 129. Duncan, Admiral (Lord Camperdown): Deserted by squadron, iii. 335. Victory of Camperdown, iii. 318, 336. Duncannon, Lord, Commissioner of Woods and Forests, iv. 127. Dundas, Henry, Viscount Melville: Catholic Relief Bill for Scotland, iii. 195. Fall of, iii. 338. Sketch of, iii. 232. Dundonald, Admiral, last of sea-kings, iii. 336. Dunleary (_see_ Kingstown). Dunoyer, dancing-master and spy, ii. 106. Dupleix, Governor of S. India, ii. 261. Dreams of French empire in India, ii. 258. Founds Chandernagor, ii. 258. Indian policy, iii. 249. Recalled to France, ii. 262. Refuses to ratify Convention and pillages Madras, ii. 259. Duplicity universal, i. 30. Durham, Earl of, iv. 291. Efforts for Parliamentary reform, iv. 22. Lord Privy Seal, iv. 127. Manners, iv. 121. Sketch of, iv. 127. Suggestions on Reform Bill, iv. 129. Dutch (Batavian) expedition to Ireland, iii. 317. Dymoke, King's champion, iii. 13. East India Companies, ii. 254, 260. East India Company: Charter renewed, iv. 230, 232. Clamors for revenge, iii. 163. Forces tea on America, iii. 161. Policy, iii. 248 _seqq. _ Semi-regal authority, iii. 230. Edgeworth, Talbot, i. 82. Edinburgh: Bill, ii. 66, 68. City guard, ii. 60. Condition in 1745, ii. 210. In 1714, i. 84. Life in, i. 85. Edinburgh Castle: Jacobite plan to capture, i. 129. Reduction abandoned by Young Pretender, ii. 216. Edwards, spy in Cato Street conspiracy, iv. 17, 19. Effingham, Lord, Earl Marshal, iii. 13. Egremont, Lord, iii. 59, 63. House besieged, iii. 117. Wilkes before, iii. 60. Elcho, Lord, ii. 227. Eldon, Earl of, Lord Chancellor, iv. 3. Attitude on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 69. Attitude towards death penalty for stealing, iv. 21. Resigns office, iv. 57. Toryism, iv. 3. Elizabeth, Electress Palatine of the Rhine, i. 5. Elizabeth of Parma, wife of Philip V. , ii. 28. Ellis, relations with Nawab Mir Kasim, iii. 251. Emerson prophesies rise of Orientalism in England, iii. 254. Emily, Princess: At her father's death-bed, ii. 304. Attends on Queen, ii. 117, 122, 123. Dislikes Walpole, ii. 126. Emmet, Robert, iii. 313, 314; iv. 206. Projects for Independence of Ireland, iii. 327. Emmet, Thomas Addis, iii. 313, 314. England: American Colonies and Advantages of union between, iii. 80. Declares war against Spain, ii. 178. Politics of Continent, and, i. 154, 225. Protests against War of Independence, iii. 183, 184. Recuperates, iii. 187. Spain and, trade disputes, ii. 150. English Copper Company and South Sea Company, i. 193. English Protestant Association, iii. 192, 195. Meeting in St. George's Fields, iii. 169. English substituted for Latin in indictments, etc. , i. 302. Entinck, John, Editor of _Monitor_, iii. 51. Eon, Chevalier d', present to Wilkes, iii. 134. Erskine, Thomas, Lord: Defends Lord George Gordon, iii. 210. On Coronation oath, iv. 54. Eugene, Prince, of Savoy, ii. 24, 35. Excise Bill (1733), i. 317. Abandoned, i. 320. Excise Reform, i. 311. Exeter in 1714, i. 79. Factories Act (1833), iv. 202, 204. Factory labor and State, iv. 201, 202. Fairman, Colonel, Orange lodges and, iv. 278. Falkirk, Hawley defeated at, ii. 223. "Family compacts, " ii. 26; iii. 27. Famines in Scotland, i. 89. "Fancy Franchises, " iv. 183. Fane, British Envoy at Florence, ii. 202. Fashions in 1760, iii. 16. Ferguson, on Edinburgh City Guard, ii. 60. Fielding, Henry: On mob in London, iii. 123. Satires on Pretender, ii. 219. Fielding, Sir John, house sacked, iii. 203. Finch, Lord, presents Bolingbroke's petition to Lords, i. 258. Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, iii. 309, 314; iv. 206. Death, iii. 323. Marriage, iii. 220. Sketch of career, iii. 312. Withdraws from Dublin Parliament, iii. 319. Fitzgerald, Vesey, defeated by O'Connell, iv. 74. Fitzherbert, Mrs. : Death, iv. 289. George IV. And, iii. 242; iv. 88. Fitzwilliam, Earl, Viceroy of Ireland, iii. 308. Flaxman, John, iv. 93. Fleet ditch, i. 72. Fleet marriages, ii. 279. Fleming, Sir Michael, and Lord George Gordon, iii. 199. Fletcher, Andrew, in Edinburgh in 1745, ii. 211. Fleury, Cardinal, Prime Minister of France, i. 264, 291. Florida and Carolina, dispute as to boundaries, ii. 160. Fontenoy, Battle of, ii. 210. Foote, on Alexander Wedderburn, iii. 158. Forbes, Duncan, in Edinburgh in 1745, ii. 62. Foreign aid for America, iii. 183. Forster, Thomas: Escapes, i. 142. In Newgate, i. 137. Fort Duquesne built, ii. 286. Fort Duquesne taken, iii. 180. Fort St. David, Olive at, ii. 260, 263. Fort Ticonderoga taken, iii. 79. "Forty-five, " Account of Rebellion, ii. 203 _seqq. _ Forty-shilling freeholders, iv. 179. Fowke, charged with conspiracy, iii. 261. Fox, Charles James, i. 28. Acquainted with Paris, iii. 293. Antagonism to Pitt, iii. 225. As Leader of Opposition, i. 287. Attitude on Regency, iii. 243. Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 296, 299. Attitude towards Pitt, iii. 339. Character, iii. 227. Coalition with North, iii. 225. Contracted with Pitt, iii. 212 Death, iii. 340; iv. 61. Early life, iii. 142. Foreign Secretary and Leader of Commons, iii. 340. Friend to Ireland, iii. 319; iv. 23. India Bill, iii. 230 _seqq. _ On Henry Grattan, iii. 307. Parliamentary career, iii. 141, 143. Praises of Pitt, iii. 223. Prince of Wales's conduct to, iii. 243. Resigns office, iii. 225. Scholarship, iii. 143. Secretary of State, iii. 224. Speech on Middlesex Election Petition, iii. 132. Fox, Henry (_see_ Holland, Lord). Fox's Martyrs, iii. 237. France: Acknowledges independence of America, iii. 183. Condition before Revolution, iii. 291. Declares war (1793), iii. 303. In 1716, i. 154, 155. Spain and, Alliance between, ii. 25, 26, 182. Spanish policy, iv. 42. Francis, Philip: Character, iii. 260. Duel with Hastings, iii. 267. Hostile to Hastings, iii. 280. Probable author of "Letters of Junius, " iii. 39. Franklin, Benjamin: At Bar of House, iii. 103, 156. Gala suit, iii. 156, 184. Letters of Hutchinson and Oliver and, iii. 153, 155. On Whitefield's eloquence, ii. 139. On Wilkes's candidature for Parliament, iii. 116, 132. Signs Peace in Paris, iii. 184. Sketch of, iii. 102. Frazer, Under Secretary of State, iii. 235. Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, ii. 38. Attempts to see his mother, ii. 118. Banished from King's palaces, ii. 108. Bids for popularity, ii. 71. Carries off his wife to London, ii. 106. Character, ii. 71, 72, 74, 77. Claims independent allowance, ii. 77. Conduct on declaration of war, ii. 178. Death, ii. 276. Epitaphs, ii. 276. Income, ii. 87. Marries Princess Augusta, ii. 47. Patriots and, ii. 50, 108, 110. Relations with George II. , ii. 39, 50, 76, 91, 104. Sketch of, ii. 39. Votes against address on Convention, ii. 169. Frederick II. Of Prussia (the Great), ii. 280. Account of abandonment of Excise Bill, i. 320. Description of George I. , i. 270. Occupies Silesia, ii. 182. Frederick William, King of Prussia, and George II. , ii. 45. Free Trade, movement towards, iv. 93. Free Trade, Walpole and, i. 317. Freedom of City, origin of, iv. 256. French aims in America, ii. 285. French expeditions to Ireland, iii. 315, 323, 325. French in Canada, ii. 283. French Revolution, iii. 284, 293 _seqq. _ Condition of France before, iii. 291. England and, iii. 302, 306. French Revolution of 1830, iv. 98. Fuseli, Henry, iv. 93. Gage, General: Arrives in Massachusetts, iii. 165. Raid upon stores in Concord, iii. 174. Galland, version of "Arabian Nights, " iii. 254. Game Laws, severity of, iv. 84. Garrick, David, and Samuel Johnson, iii. 42. Gascoigne, General, amendment to Reform Bill, iv. 150. "Gaspee, " iii. 152. Gates, General Horatio, iii. 179. Traitor, iii. 184. Gay, John; "Beggar's Opera, " i. 302; ii. 95. Lampoons, ii. 102. "Polly, " ii. 95. Secretary to Lord Clarendon, i. 38. Sketch of, ii. 3. _Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser_, iii. 128. George I. (George Louis, Elector of Hanover): Attitude towards Prince of Wales, i. 153, 256, 274. Character, i. 6, 8, 58, 91, 269. Conduct during 1715, i. 136. Coronation, i. 101. Death, i. 266. Descent, i. 6. Directions about Czar, i. 163. Distrusts Marlborough, i. 54. Entry into London, i. 58. Extent of Empire, i. 89. Journey to England, i. 56. Letter to King of Spain on Gibraltar, i. 296. New Lords Justices, i. 54. Principles of government, i. 91. Proclaimed King, i. 47, 49. Project for kidnapping Prince of Wales, ii. 109, 110. Stories of later years, i. 266. Treatment of Oxford and Bolingbroke, i. 101. Visits Hanover, i. 152, 236, 265. Will, i. 269. George II. : At Dettingen, ii. 182. Character, i. 274; ii. 46, 48, 76, 117, 123, 304. Consults Walpole, ii. 195. Death, ii. 303. Godfather to his grand-daughter, ii. 108. Guardian of the Realm and Lieutenant, i. 153. His family, ii. 38. In danger through storms, ii. 69. Income, ii. 89. Letter to Queen, ii. 76. On Handel, ii. 52. Opens Parliament (1728), i. 282. Negotiates with Carteret and Pulteney, ii. 244. Party when Prince of Wales, i. 257. Proposes allowance to Prince of Wales, ii. 81, 86. Proposes duel with Frederick William of Prussia, ii. 46. Relations with George I. , i. 153, 256, 274; ii. 109. Relations with Prince of Wales, ii. 40, 50, 76, 104 _seqq. _, 118. Royal speech (1727), i. 278. Speech from throne (1735), ii. 22. Sympathy with his mother, i. 153. Unpopular, ii. 69. Visits Hanover, ii. 47, 49, 210. George III. : Accession, iii. 2. Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 53. Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 301. Attitude towards Wilkes, iii. 17, 119, 132. Birth, ii. 278. Character, iii. 4, 241; iv. 91. Coronation, iii. 12. Courage during Gordon riots, iii. 206. Death, iii. 348. Dislikes Fox and North, iii. 225. Dislikes Pitt, iii. 3, 26. Dismisses Fox and North, iii. 235. Grenville and, iii. 71, 72, 93. Ideal of governing, iii. 23, 25, 80. Illnesses, iii. 72, 243, 341. Improvements during reign, iii. 349. Letter to Temple on India Bills, iii. 234. Ministry of all the talents and, iii. 340. Personal appearance, iii. 3. Policy towards American colonies, iii. 78, 79, 153, 164. Private life, iii. 19. Speech from throne (1760), iii. 22. George IV. (Augustus Frederick): Accession and illness, iv. 1. Attitude towards Canning, iv. 31, 37, 46, 48, 55, 65. Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 54, 55, 76. Attitude towards Lord Grey, iv. 76. Character, iii. 241; iv. 24, 28, 30, 89 _seqq. _ Coronation, iv. 9. Death, iv. 87. Endeavors to obtain divorce, iv. 3, 4, 6, 8. Friend of Fox and Sheridan, iii. 242; iv. 23. Illness, iv. 86. In opposition, iii. 242. Interview with Wellington, Lyndhurst, and Peel, iv. 77. Letters to Lord Liverpool, iv. 27, 37. Marries Princess Caroline of Brunswick, iii. 244. Mrs. Fitzherbert and, iii. 242; iv. 88. Regent, iii. 341. Visits Hanover, iv. 28. Visits Ireland, iv. 23 _seqq. _ Visits Scotland, iv. 29. Georgia, John Wesley visits, ii. 127, 134. Georgian drama, ii. 94. Georgian literature, iii. 171. Gheriah, Pirate stronghold, ii. 265. Gibbon on Gordon riots, iii. 196. Gibraltar: Besieged (1727), i. 228. Debate on restitution of, i. 296. Gin riots, ii. 56. Gladsmuir (_see_ Preston Pans, battle of). Gladstone, John, entertains George Canning, iv. 35. Gladstone, William Ewart, iv. 35. Junior Lord of Treasury, iv. 239. On "Drapier's Letters, " i. 245. Speech on Irish Church revenues, iv. 247. Glasgow in 1714, i. 86. Gloucester, Duke of, death, i. 3. Glynn, Serjeant, M. P. For Middlesex, iii. 124. Goderich, Viscount: Colonial and War Secretary, iv. 58. Prime Minister, iv. 65. "Prosperity Robinson, " iv. 65. Resigns office, iv. 67. Sketch of, iv. 65. Godolphin, Countess of, i. 210. Godolphin, Earl of, Lord Privy Seal, ii. 107. Goethe, referred to, iii. 144, 145. "Sorrows of Werther, " iii. 167. Goldsmith, Oliver: Plays, iii. 170. Sketch of career and writings, iii. 167, 171. Gordon, Colonel, threatens rioters, iii. 199. Gordon, Elizabeth, Duchess of, improves Scotch agriculture, i. 88. Gordon, Lord George: Acquitted, iii. 210. Arrested, iii. 209. Death in Newgate, iii. 210. Denounces Burke, iii. 199. Presents petition to Commons, iii. 198. Sketch of, iii. 192. Gordon riots, iii. 196 _seqq. _ Gordon, Sir John, ii. 223. Government by party, i. 284. Graeme, Colonel, mission, iii. 11. Grafton, Duke of (I. ), killed in Cork, i. 83. Grafton, Duke of (II. ), Bill to suspend Habeas Corpus Act, i. 213. Grafton (Augustus Henry Fitzroy), Duke of (III. ): Junius's indictment of, iii. 129. Resigns place in Rockingham ministry, iii. 108. Sketch of, iii. 35. Graham, Sir James: First Lord of Admiralty, iv. 127. Refuses office in Peel's ministry, iv. 238. Resigns office, iv. 218. Speech on Irish Church revenues, iv. 246. Granard, Lord, tells King James of conspiracy, i. 24. Grant, Sir Archibald, interest in road-making, i. 88. Granville, Earl of (_see_ Carteret, John). Grattan, Henry: Buried in Westminster Abbey, iv. 23. Leader of Irish, iii. 307. Withdraws from Dublin Parliament, iii. 319. Gray, "Elegy in a Country Church-yard, " ii. 289. Great Seal stolen, iii. 237. "Grecian" coffee-house, i. 76. Greece: struggle for independence, iv. 40, 48. Green, J. B. , on "Family Compact, " ii. 31. Greene, Nathaniel, iii. 176, 179. Gregory XIII. Reforms calendar, ii. 275. Grenville, George, iii. 26, 57. Colonial policy, iii. 84, 87. Prime minister, iii. 72. Proposes tax to maintain garrison in America, iii. 87. Regency Bill and, iii. 72. Sketch of, iii. 31. Speech on Middlesex election petition, iii. 131. Stamp Act, iii. 87, 90. Grenville, James, iii. 26. Grenville, William Wyndham, Lord, Ministry of all the talents, iii. 340. Greville, Charles, on: Duel between Wellington and Winchilsea, iv. 83. Edmund Burke, iii. 96. George IV. 's illness, iv. 86. James and John Stuart Mill, iv. 281. Meeting Macaulay, iv. 185. Princess Victoria, iv. 290, 291. William IV. , iv. 114, 115. William IV. And Whig ministers, iv. 175. Grey, Charles, Earl: Appeal to archbishops and bishops on Reform Bill, iv. 171. Appeals to country, iv. 152. Attacks Canning, iv. 59. Attitude towards electoral reform, iv. 52, 59. Attitude towards Irish State Church, iv. 218, 220. Catholic Emancipation and, iv. 76. Character, iv. 120. Introduces third Reform Bill, iv. 173. Irish grievances and, iv. 207. Leader of Opposition, iv. 103. Motion on speech from throne, iv. 104. Prime Minister, iv. 122. Resigns office, iv. 233. Scheme for creating new peers, iv. 176, 180. Speech on reform, iv. 108. Speech on Reform Bill (second), iv. 168. Grey, Earl: Committed to Tower, i. 214. Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 190. Grey, Sir George, Under-Secretary of Colonies, iv. 252. Grosvenor, Sir Richard, names squares and streets, i. 68. Grote, George: On Irish State Church system, iv. 210. Motion for ballot in municipal elections, iv. 259. Sketch of, iv. 215. Speech on Ward's motion on Irish Church, iv. 216, 217. Guelf, history of family, i. 5. Guildhall banquet rumors, iv. 112. Haddington, Lord, introduces sowing grass seeds, i. 88. Haidar: Grudge against English, iii. 265. Sketch of career, iii. 265. Halhed, friend of Sheridan, iii. 217, 218. Halifax, Lord, iii. 59. Wilkes before, iii. 60. Halkett, Sir P. K. , warns General Braddock, ii. 286. Hall, Robert, death, iv. 284. Hamilton, James, Duke of, killed in duel, i. 122. Hamilton, Lady Archibald, accompanies Prince and Princess of Wales to London, ii. 107. Hamilton (Single-speech), Secretary to Halifax, iii. 99. Hampden, John, and ship money, i. 247. Hampden, Richard, i. 105. Hampton Court Palace, Royal Family in, ii. 105, 106. Handel: Reception of "Messiah, " ii. 51. Royal Family and, ii. 51. Hanger, George, iii. 244. Hanover: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's account of, i. 152. Separation from English Crown proposed, ii. 105. Sketch of House of, i. 5. Thackeray's description of, i. 55. Treaty of, i. 295. Hanoverian dynasty, position of, iv. 94. Harcourt, Simon, Lord Chancellor: Motion on Oxford's impeachment, i. 169. Sketch of career, i. 49. Hardwicke, Philip Yorke, Lord Chancellor, ii. 9, 192. Heads deputation to Prince of Wales, ii. 81. On declaration of war, ii. 177. Opposes Pitt, iii. 26. Passes Marriage Act, ii. 279. Harley, Robert (_see_ Oxford, Earl of). Harley, Thomas, arrest ordered, i. 106. Harrington, Lord, Secretary of State, i. 304. Harrison, Audrey, marries third Marquis Townshend, iii. 110. Harrowby, Lord, and Cato Street conspiracy, iv. 18. Harvard College, places in lists, iii. 77. Hastings, Howard, assists his nephew, iii. 246. Hastings, Lady Elizabeth, Essays by Congreve and Steele on, i. 301. Hastings, Pynaston, iii. 245. Hastings, Warren: Acquitted, iii. 285. Advice on quarrel of Nawab and Ellis, iii. 252. At Bar of House, iii. 276, 289. Attempts literature, iii. 253. Benares expedition, iii. 269. Buys Dalesford, iii. 276. Charges against, iii. 258. Company's representative at Murshidabad, iii. 250. Defence at Bar of House, iii. 276. Duel with Francis, iii. 267. Enemies, iii. 260, 264, 265. Evidence before House of Commons' Committee, iii. 253. Friendship for Sir James Bland-Burges, iii. 278. Governor-General, iii. 260; his Council, iii. 260 _seqq. _ Governor of Bengal, iii. 257. Impeached, iii. 281. Indian policy, iii. 273. Life at Daylesford, iii. 288. Marriage, iii. 250, 256. Oriental diplomacy, iii. 249. Oriental studies, iii. 254. Presents Deccan diamond to king, iii. 281. Reforms needed and carried out, iii. 257, 258. Relations with Impey, iii. 267, 268. Resignation accepted, iii. 264. Returns to England, iii. 253. Returns to India, iii. 255. Scheme for Supreme Court and Council, iii. 267. Sketch of career, iii. 245 _seqq. _ State of India on his arrival, iii. 249. Trial, iii. 281 _seqq. _ Work accomplished, iii. 258. Hatzfeldt, Count, mobbed, iii. 118. Hawley, defeated at Falkirk, ii. 223. Hazlitt on Steele and Addison, i. 300, 301. Heath, --, iii. 179. Heber, Bishop, death, iv. 92. Heights of Abraham, ii. 288, 289. Hell-Fire Club, iii. 47. Hemans, Felicia, death, iv. 284. Henry IV. Becomes a Catholic, i. 13. Henry, Patrick, speech against Stamp Act, iii. 90. Hepburn, James, of Keith, ii. 214. Herbert, Colonel (Lord Carnarvon), Treatment of Lord George Gordon, iii. 202. Herbert, Sidney, as debater, iv. 239. Herrenhausen, i. 55. Herschel, Sir John, on Newton, i. 273. Hertford, Lord, preparations against insurgents, iii. 205. Hervey, James, author of "Meditations, " ii. 128. Hervey, John, Lord, Baron Hervy of Ickworth: Appeal on Convention, ii. 163. Attends dying Queen, ii. 118, 123. Compares Chesterfield with Scarborough and Carteret, ii. 5. Interviews with Walpole on Queen's death, ii. 120, 125. Lampoons, ii. 102. Memoirs of Reign of George II. , i. 306, 308. On Duke of Argyll, i. 44. On Frederick, Prince of Wales, ii. 39, 105. On George II. 's danger, ii. 69. On George II. 's illness, ii. 303. On Handel and Royal Family, ii. 51. On Hardwicke and Talbot, ii. 10. On letters between George I. And Prince of Wales, ii. 109. On Princess Caroline, ii. 38. On Princess Emily, ii. 38. On Sir William Wyndham, i. 288. On Walpole being indispensable, ii. 91. Sedition and Defamation displayed, i. 306. Sketch of, i. 306. Supports Walpole's policy, ii. 160, 168. Takes news of Prince of Wales's claim to Queen, ii. 78, 79. Hessian mercenaries, i. 291, 292. For America, iii. 183. In Ireland, iii. 322. Highlands, modern prosperity of, ii. 233. Highlands, pacification after Culloden, ii. 227. Hill, Frank H. , quoted on: Fame and George Canning, iv. 59. Peel and art of government, iv. 57. Hill, Rowland, death, iv. 284. Hill, Sir George, recognizes Wolfe Tone, iii. 325. Hillsborough, Lord, Secretary of State, iii. 147. Colonial policy, iii. 147, 148, 150, 152. Hoadley, Dr. , Bishop of Winchester, opposed to Test Act, ii. 110, 111. Hoche, General: Commands expedition to Ireland, iii. 315. Death, iii. 318. Hogarth, William: Caricature of Churchill, iii. 63. Caricature of Wilkes, iii. 61. Death, iii. 68. "March to Finchley, " ii. 231. Pictures of London, i. 64, 65. "Polling Day, " ii. 188. Portrait of Lord Lovat, ii. 230. Sketch of career, ii. 230. Hogg, James, death, iv. 282. Holland, Henry Fox, Lord: As Administrator and Debater, ii. 274. Asked to support Prince of Wales's claim, ii. 78. Character, iii. 33, 141. Forms Opposition to Pitt, iii. 26. Macaulay and C. Greville dine with, iv. 185. Paymaster, ii. 298. Protests against words "On the true faith of a Christian, " iv. 69. Secretary at War, ii. 296. Holroyd, Colonel, threatens Lord George Gordon, iii. 199. Holwell, on Black Hole of Calcutta, ii. 267. Holy Alliance and Congress of Verona, iv. 39, 42, 45. Horne-Tooke, John, Rector of Brentford: Candidate for Westminster, iii. 139. Quarrels with Wilkes, iii. 136. Supports Wilkes, iii. 117. Horneck, Mary, "Jessamy Bride, " iii. 169. Houghton, Walpole at, i. 196. House of Commons: Chairman of Committee, iv. 160. Commencement of Party organization, i. 256. Committee on Convention, ii. 171. Debates on: Allowance for Prince of Wales, ii. 82, 88. American Colonies, iii. 162. Middlesex Election, iii. 131. Restitution of Gibraltar, i. 297. Supply to George II. , i. 280. Election Petitions, ii. 189. Gordon presents petition to, iii. 198. Growth of, i. 32. In Committee, iv. 160. Inadequate accommodation, iv. 270, 271. Ladies' Gallery, iv. 272. Numbers in 1714, i. 51. Obstruction in, iv. 159, 160 _seqq. _ Petition of merchants against Spaniards, ii. 153. Petitions against Spaniards, i. 294. Secession from, ii. 172, 174. Subsidies for foreign mercenaries, i. 293. House of Lords: Agitation against, iv. 167. Debates on: Bill for Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 43. Convention, ii. 164, 168. Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 89. India Bills rejected, iii. 235. Numbers in 1714, i. 51. Protest against Address on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 90. Reform and, iv. 169, 173, 176. Scene during Gordon Riot, iii. 197, 201. Walpole and, ii. 159. Houses of Parliament (old), i. 64. Destroyed by fire, iv. 267. Houses of Parliament, design for new, iv. 269, 270. Howe, Admiral Richard, Viscount, Mutiny at Spithead and, iii. 335. Howe, William, Viscount, iii. 182. Commands at Breed Hill, iii. 176. Humbert, General, commands expedition to Ireland, iii. 323. Hume, David, on Whitefield's eloquence, ii. 139. Hume, Joseph, Committee on Orangeism, iv. 387. Hungerford speaks for Bolingbroke, i. 108. Hunt, Leigh, on: George IV. , iii. 242. William Congreve, i. 301. Hunt, Orator, defeats Stanley at Preston, iv. 131. Huskisson, William: Attitude on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 68. Colonial and War Secretary, iv. 65, 67. Death, iv. 103. Resigns office, iv. 72. Sketch of career, iv. 52. Treasurer of Navy and President of Board of Trade, iv. 58. Hutchinson, Governor-General of Massachusetts: House in Boston ransacked, iii. 91. Letters to Whately, iii. 153. Hyde Park, camp in, i. 121. Ibraham Pasha, military capacity, iv. 49. Imhoff, Baroness von, and Warren Hastings, iii. 255. Impey, Elijah, Chief Justice, iii. 261, 268. Impressment for Navy abolished, iv. 263, 267. India Bills: Fox's, iii. 230 _seqq. _ Pitt's, iii. 237, 238. Indian Empire, ii. 257. Condition in 1707, ii. 257. Three Presidencies, ii. 253. Inglis, Sir Robert Harry, speech on Reform Bill, iv. 144. Insurrection of 1715, i. 118 _seqq. _ Conditions of success, i. 118. Intrigues in Cabinet, i. 251. Ireland: Agitation in 1724, i. 240. Condition in 1797, iii. 318. Grievances, iii. 306. In 1714, i. 80. New copper coinage, i. 240. Irish and English Parliaments, i. 179. Irish Brigade at Fontenoy and Lauffeld, ii. 239. Irish clergy, ii. 130. Irish House of Lords, i. 178. Irish Parliament, i. 80; iii. 307. Abolished, iv. 206. Irish, Penal Laws against, ii. 248. Irish Rebellion of '98, iii. 313, 314 _seqq. _; iv. 206. Irish State Church question, tithes, iv. 207 _seqq. _ Debate on, iv. 212. (_See also_ Tithe question, Ireland. ) Irish vote, iv. 244. Irving, Washington, essay on Robert Emmet, iii. 329. Isla, Earl of, i. 250. Italy in 1716, i. 154. Jacobite demonstration in England, i. 121, 135. Jacobitism and Tory cause, iii. 24. Jamaica: Act to mitigate punishment of slaves, iv. 193. Jekyll, Sir Joseph, Gin Act, ii. 56. Jenkins, Captain, story of his ear, ii. 158. Johnson, Samuel: English dictionary, ii. 299. Epitaph on Goldsmith, iii. 171. Friend of Goldsmith, iii. 169. Interview with Wilkes, iii. 138. On acquittal of Lord George Gordon, iii. 210. On Alexander Wedderburn, iii. 158. On authorship of _Letters of Junius_, iii. 131. On state of Irish, ii. 248. On taking of Newgate, iii. 203. Opinion of Thomas Sheridan, iii. 217. Receives pension, iii. 55. Regard for Warren Hastings, iii. 255. Sketch of, iii. 39 _seqq. _ Visits Paris, iii. 293. Jones, Inigo, lays out Covent Garden, i. 68. Jones, Paul, commands "Le Bonhomme Richard, " iii. 183. Jones, Sir William, Persian grammar, iii. 254. Jonson, Ben, Comedies, i. 299. Jordan, Mrs. , and William IV. , iv. 97. Julius Caesar regulates calendar, ii. 275. _Junius's Letters in Public Advertiser_, iii. 128. Kazim Bazar Settlement, iii. 249. Keats, John, death, iv. 92. Kean, Edmund, death, iv. 285. Kelly supports Young Pretender, ii. 205. Kemble, John, death, iv. 92. Kendal, Mlle. Schulemberg, Duchess of, i. 7, 241, 266. Bribed by Bolingbroke, i. 267. Death, i. 266. Kenmure, Viscount, i. 137. Executed, i. 142. Kennett, Lord Mayor of London, iii. 201. Kent, Edward, Duke of, death, iii. 348. Kent, Duchess of, and William IV. , iv. 117. Kenyon defends Lord George Gordon, iii. 210. Ker, Lord Mark, reception of Cope, ii. 215. Kilmansegge, Mme. (Countess of Darlington), i. 7. Kilmarnock, Lord, trial of, ii. 228, 229. Kilwarden, Lord Chief Justice: Action respecting Wolfe Tone, iii. 326. Murdered, iii. 328. King's Evil, iii. 39. King's friends, iii. 108. Kingstown, origin of name, iv. 25. Kinnison, David, iii. 161. "Kit-Kat" Club, i. 74. Kneller: portrait of Queen Anne, i. 2. Knighton, Sir William, sketch of, iv. 47. Königsmark, Aurora, mother of Maurice de Saxe, i. 8. Königsmark, Charles John, i. 7. Murders Lord Thynne, i. 8. Königsmark, Philip Christof, assassinated, i. 7. Kosciusko in America, iii. 183. La Bourdonnais: Besieges and takes Madras, ii. 259. Founds colonies of Ile de France and Bourbon, ii. 258. Sent to France under arrest, ii. 259. La Vendée, Royalist revolt in, iii. 303. La Vrillière, Mme. , i. 237. Lade, Sir John, iii. 244. Lafayette: Demands revival of States-General, iii. 293. In America, iii. 183. Lamb, Charles: Death, iv. 284. On "Robinson Crusoe, " ii. 2. Lambton, J. G. (_see_ Durham, Earl of). Lampooners, ii. 102. Landor, Walter Savage: Epigram on the Four Georges, iii. 242. On George I. And George II. , i. 273. Langdale, distilleries fired by mob, iii. 207. Lauderdale, Lord, attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 301. Lauffeld, battle of, ii. 239. Law, defends Warren Hastings, iii. 285. Law, John, forms Mississippi Company, i. 184. Law, William, "Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, " ii. 133. Lawrence, Major, commands in S. India (1751), ii. 264. Lawrence, Sir Thomas, iv. 93. Layer, Christopher: Arrested, i. 219. Hanged, i. 221. Lecky, William E. H. , on: Catholics and Protestants, iv. 55. Shrewsbury as Lord High Treasurer, i. 46. Lee, Richard Henry, on George Washington, iii. 189. Lee, General Charles, iii. 179. Traitor, iii. 184. Leeds, iv. 99. Leeds, Duke of, protests against Act for Dependency of Ireland, i. 178. Leibnitz on Electress Sophia, i. 4. Lennox, Lady Sarah, sketch of, iii. 9. Leopold, King of the Belgians, iv. 117, 290. Lepell, Mary, Lady Hervey, i. 307, 308. Lessing, "Laocoon, " iii. 98. Referred to, iii. 145. Leszczynski, Stanislaus, King of Poland, sketch of, ii. 23. _Letters of Junius_ in _Public Advertiser_, iii. 128. Authorship, iii. 130. Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, i. 290. Lexington, battle at, ii. 43; iii. 174. Liberal political principles, rise of, iv. 94. Lightfoot, Hannah, iii. 8. Limerick invested by William III. , i. 83. Limerick, Treaty of, i. 83. Linley, Elizabeth (Mrs. Richard B. Sheridan), iii. 218. Liverpool: As commercial port, iv. 99. In 1714, i. 79. Memorials of Canning, iv. 34. Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened, iv. 103. Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of: Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 34. Attitude towards popular liberty, iv. 3. Character, iii. 345. Death, iv. 62. Illness, iv. 55, 58. Prime Minister, iv. 3. Recommends Canning as Foreign Secretary, iv. 37. Lloyd, Dr. , at Westminster School, iii. 54. Logwood Trade on Campeachy Bay, i. 294, 295. London: In panic, iii. 204. In 1714, i. 63. In 1760, iii. 15. Penny Post, i. 78. Poverty in, ii. 89. State during '45, ii. 218. London University Charter, iv. 261. Londonderry, Marquis of (_see_ Castlereagh, Viscount). Lord High Treasurer, office of, i. 46. Lord Mayor of London committed to Tower, iii. 135. Lord Mayor of London presents addresses to King, iii. 133. Lord Treasurership in Commission, i. 97. "Lords of Trade, " iii. 80. Louis XIV. And Stuart cause, i. 117. Louis XV. Places Stanislaus Leszczynski on throne of Poland, ii. 23. Louis XVI. : Character, iii. 295. Executed, iii. 300, 303. Louis Napoleon, Emperor, demeanor, i. 127. Louis Napoleon, Prince, i. 10. Louis Philippe, King of the French, iv. 98, 105. Louisiana, ii. 283. Lovat, Simon Fraser, Lord, sketch of, ii. 229. Lowe, Sir Hudson, and Napoleon Bonaparte, iii. 344. Lowland Agriculture, i. 87. Loyalty in 1714, i. 59. Luttrell, Colonel: Opposes Wilkes, iii. 126. Petition against, iii. 132. Lyall, Sir Alfred, on Hastings's application for annuity for his wife, iii. 289. Lyndhurst, John Singleton Copley, Baron, iv. 58, 65. Amendment on Reform Bill (third), iv. 174. Interview with King on Catholic emancipation, iv. 77. Lord Chancellor, iv. 239. Opposes Municipal Bill, iv. 259. Oratory, iv. 174. Lyons rises against Paris, iii. 303. Lyttelton in politics and literature, ii. 274. Maberly, house sacked, iii. 201. Macartney, General, returns to England, i. 122. Macartney, Lord, governor of Madras, iii. 266. Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Lord: On Arbuthnot, ii. 21. On Irish tithe question, iv. 210. On Warren Hastings, iii. 258. Sketch of, iv. 184. Macaulay, Zachary, West Indian Slavery and, iv. 190. Macclesfield, Thomas Parker, Earl of: Impeached, i. 262. On reform of calendar, ii. 275. M'Cullock, Lieutenant, suggests scaling Heights of Abraham, ii. 288. Macdonald, Aeneas, evidence on '45, ii. 205, 227. Macdonald of Barrisdale, ii. 227. Macdonald of Sleat refuses to support Young Pretender, ii. 205. Macdonald, Sir John, supports Young Pretender, ii. 205, Macdonalds' conduct at Culloden, ii. 225. Mackintosh, Brigadier, escapes from Newgate, i. 142. Mackintosh, Sir James: Bill to abolish death penalty for minor offences, iv. 20. Death, iv. 281. Denounces trial of Rev. John Smith, iv. 194. M'Laurin improves fortifications of Edinburgh, ii. 211. Maclean, Donald, tried for murdering Allan, iii. 120. Macleod of Macleod refuses to support Young Pretender, ii. 205. M'Quirk, Edward, tried for murder of George Clarke, iii. 129. Madras: Besieged by Le Bourdonnais, ii. 259. Restored to England, ii. 260. Madras expedition, iii. 250. Mahon, Lord, iii. 186. Mahratta States and Nizam of Deccan, iii. 265, 266. Malleson, Colonel, on Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 267. Malthus, Thomas Robert, iv. 281. Manchester, iv. 99. In 1714, i. 79. Mangan, Clarence, "Dark Rosaleen, " iv. 205. Manley, Isaac, Postmaster-General, Dublin, i. 82. Mansfield, Murray, Lord, ii. 274. Attorney-General, ii. 296. Demeanor during Gordon riot, iii. 197. House sacked, iii. 203. Mar, John Erskine, Earl of, i. 39. Leader of insurrection, 1715, i. 123. Letter to Bolingbroke, i. 120. Sketch of, i. 123. March Club, i. 74. Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary, British troops support, ii. 182. Marie Antoinette executed, iii. 300. Markham arrests Rajah of Benares, iii. 269. Marlborough House, i. 69. Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of, i. 2, 54. Advice on rebellion of 1715, i. 128. Advice to Bolingbroke, i. 104. Character, i. 22, 24, 210. Charges against, i. 94. Closing days, i. 208. Funeral, i. 211. Member of Privy Council, i. 100. Return to England, i. 16, 52. Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of, i. 208. Advice to Duke, i. 100. Character, i. 25. Marriage Act, ii. 279. Marseilles rises against Paris, iii. 303. Martin challenges Wilkes, iii. 66. Martineau, H. : Attitude towards Poor Relief, iv. 224. On admission of ladies to hear debates in House, iv. 272. On movement against monopoly of East India Company, iv. 232. On Queen Caroline, iv. 10. Masham, created peer, i. 174. Masham, Mrs. , i. 2. Letter to Swift, i. 36. Result of influence with Queen, i. 94. Massachusetts: Memorial from, ii. 42. Mutiny Act and, iii. 150. Petition for recall of Hutchinson and Oliver, iii. 155. Protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90. Punishment of, iii. 164. Mathews, Charles, Sen. , "At Home" performance, iv. 285. Maximilian, Emperor, iv. 45. Mayfair, i. 72. Mechanics' Institutes, iv. 93. Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Duchy of, iii. 11. Medmenham-on-Thames, iii. 46. Meer Jaffier conspires against Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269, 270, 271, 272. Melbourne, William Lamb, Viscount: Attitude towards reforms, iv. 254. Character, iv. 234. Home Secretary, iv. 126. Irish Members and, iv. 253. Prime Minister, iv. 233, 250. Meredith, George, "Ironic procession, " iii. 2. Methodism (_see_ Wesleyan Movement). Methuen, Sir Paul, Treasurer of Household, i. 279. Opposes Bolingbroke's pardon, i. 259. Mexican Empire, iv. 45. Middlesex election (1768), iii. 117. Debate on petition, iii. 131. Mill, James, historian of British India, iv. 281. Mill, John Stuart: Doctrine of non-intervention, iv. 62. On Irish cottier tenant, iv. 222. Mills, Mrs. , friend of Lady Nithisdale, i. 139. Ministry of All the Talents, iii. 340. Ministry of 1714, i. 97. Ministry of 1742, ii. 192. Minorca, i. 296, 298. Captured by French, ii. 297. Mir Jaffier, iii. 250, 253. Intrigues, iii. 250. Mir Kasim, Nawab, and Ellis, iii. 251. Mirzapha Jung claims Deccan Vice-royalty, ii. 261. Death, ii. 262. Mississippi scheme, i. 184 _seqq. _ Mitchel, John, on Chesterfield's rule in Ireland, ii. 250. Mob law in London, iii. 122. Mob orators, Sir Robert Inglis on, iv. 145. Mohun, Lord, i. 74. Killed in duel, i. 122. Moira, Lady Elizabeth, letter on French expedition to Ireland, iii. 315. Molesworth: on renewal of East India Company's Charter, iv. 230, 232. Monarchy under Hanoverians, ii. 74. _Monitor_ edited by John Entinck, iii. 51, 52, 55. Monopolies, petitions for, i. 191. Monroe doctrine, iv. 44. Monson, Colonel, iii. 260, 261. Death, iii. 264. Montagu, Edward Wortley, i. 105. Ambassador to Constantinople, i. 148. Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley: Letters, i. 148, 149, 152, 157. Sketch of, i. 148, 149, 150. Montcalm, Louis, Marquis de: Killed at Quebec, ii. 290. Monument, ii. 290. Montesquieu, on Duke of Berwick, ii. 34. Montgomery, --, iii. 179. Moore, Thomas: Lines on Robert Emmet, iii. 329. On George IV. , iii. 242. Quoted, iv. 23. Moravian sect, ii. 134. More, Hannah: Death, iv. 282. On Lord George Gordon, iii. 193. Morgan, Mrs. , friend of Lady Nithisdale, i. 139. Morris, Charles, iii. 244. Mostyn, Sir Thomas, iii. 338. "Mug houses, " i. 75. Municipal Corporation Bill for Ireland, iv. 258. Municipal Corporations Commission and Bill, iv. 257, 258. Municipal system, reorganization of, iv. 254 _seqq. _ Munster, Earl of, iv. 114. Murari Rao offers to assist English, ii. 263. Murchison, Sir Roderick, and British Association, iv. 262. Murger, Henri, "bohemianiam, " iii. 310. Murphy, Father John: And _Auditor_, iii. 51. Conduct in '98, iii. 320. Murray, James (Earl of Dunbar), Secretary to James Stuart, ii. 18. Murray, John, of Broughton, ii. 227. Murray, tutor to Charles Edward, Young Pretender, ii. 202. Murray (_see_ Mansfield, Lord). Musters, Mr. , house set fire to, iv. 170. Mutiny Act and New York, iii. 149. Nairn, Lord, a prisoner, i. 137, 138. Nand Kumar (Nuncomar), iii. 258, 259. Accusations against Hastings, iii. 261. Charged with conspiracy, iii. 261. Charged with forgery, iii. 261. Tried and hanged, iii. 262. Napier, Hon. George, marries Lady Sarah Bunbury, iii. 10. Napier, Sir Charles, iii. 10; iv. 179. Napier, Sir William, iii. 10. Napoleon I. (Bonaparte): Close of career, iv. 12. On Romilly's suicide, iii. 347. On Thames Embankment, iv. 14. On Wellington seizing English crown, iv. 277. Scheme for invasion of Ireland and, iii. 312, 314. Sketch of career, iii. 331 _seqq. _, 344. Wins Toulon, iii. 304. Napoleon III. (Charles Louis), Policy, iv. 45. National Assembly, declaration of war and, iii. 302, 303. National Crisis (1832), iv. 178. National Debt (1714), i. 93. Pitt's plan for redemption of, iii. 239. National distress in 1830, iv. 100, 105. Navarino, battle of, iv. 50, 67, 96. Navy, press-gang system abolished, iv. 263, 266. Nelson, Horatio, Viscount, iii. 337. Receives freedom of London, iii. 139. Nepean, Under-Secretary of State, iii. 235. New England Colonies, iii. 75. New York: Congress of 1765, iii. 91. In 1765, iii. 77. Mutiny Act and, iii. 149. Newbottle, Lord, and Lady Sarah Lennox, iii. 9, 10. Newcastle, Duke of: Appeal to Lords on declaration of war, ii. 177. Bribery under, iii. 25. Family influence, ii. 243. Jealous of Pulteney, ii. 192. Leader of Administration, ii. 210, 296. On Bill for Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 44. On "Briton, " iii. 23. On "Family Compact, " ii. 33. Resigns office, ii. 298. Sacrifices Byng, ii. 298. Secretary for Foreign Affairs, ii. 160. Secretary of State, ii. 192. Traitor to Walpole, ii. 160, 189. Warns Rockingham against Burke, iii. 100. Newfoundland, French fishing-stations on, iii. 78. Newgate taken by rioters, iii. 203. Newton, Sir Isaac: Death, i. 272. Opinion on Irish coins, i. 241. Neyoe, Irish priest: Arrested, i. 219. Drowned, i. 221. Nile, battle of the, iii. 337. Nithisdale, Countess of: Effects Earl's escape, i. 140. Petition to King, i. 139. Nithisdale, William Maxwell, Earl of: Condemnation and escape, i. 138. Nizam-Al-Mulk, Viceroy of Deccan, death of, ii. 261. Nizam of Deccan and Mahratta States, iii. 265, 266. Nollekens, Joseph, iv. 93. Nootka Sound, English settlement at, iii. 302. Norbury, Baron, tries Robert Emmet, iii. 329. Nore, mutiny at, iii. 335. Norfolk, Duke of: Committed to Tower, i. 214. Discharged, i. 215. Norris, James, sketch of, iv. 288. _North Briton_, iii. 51, 52, 155. Churchill writes on, iii. 55. No. 45 on King's Speech, iii. 57, 60. Ordered to be burned, iii. 67. Warrant for arrest of authors, printers, and publishers, iii. 58. North, Frederick, Lord: Attitude during Wedderburn's attack on Franklin, iii. 156. Bill to close Port of Boston, iii. 163. Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 113. Coalition with Fox, iii. 225. Colonial policy, iii. 152. Fall of Ministry, iii. 223. Finances and, iii. 239. Makes peace with America, iii. 184. Moves repeal of American duties except tea tax, iii. 151. Regulates Act of 1773, iii. 260. North, Lord: Committed to Tower, i. 214. Discharged, i. 215. Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 190. Northcote, James, on Queen Charlotte, iii. 12. Northumberland, Duchess of: Governess to Princess Victoria, iv. 291. Northumberland, Duke of, forced to toast Wilkes, iii. 118. Norton, Fletcher, speech on Middlesex election petition, iii. 131. Norwich in 1714, i. 79. Nottingham Castle burned, iv. 170. Nunjeraj, Vizier of Rajah of Mysore, iii. 265. Oates, Titus, on term "Tory, " i. 17. O'Brien, Smith, iv. 179. O'Connell, Daniel: Demands municipal reform for Ireland, iv. 258. Elected for Clare, iv. 71, 78. In favor of ballot, iv. 131. Loyalty, iv. 23, 27. On Universal Suffrage, iv. 85. Oratory, iv. 70. Seconds amendment on Emancipation of Slaves, iv. 197. Sketch of, iv. 53, 69. Speech on Irish Church Revenues, iv. 248, 249. Speeches on Reform Bill, iv. 148, 172. O'Connor, Arthur, iii. 313, 314. Withdraws from Dublin Parliament, iii. 319. October Club, i. 74. Oglethorpe, General, invites John Wesley to Georgia, ii. 134. Ohio, English and French on, ii. 285. Oliver, Alderman, committed to Tower, iii. 135. Oliver, Andrew, collector of stamp taxes at Boston, iii. 91. Oliver, Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts: Letters to Whately, iii. 153. O'Meara, Dr. Barry E. , conversations with Napoleon, iv. 13. Omichund: Death, ii. 273. Plots against English and Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269, 270. Onslow, Arthur, Speaker of House of Commons: On Sir William Wyndham, i. 288. Opposes Bolingbroke's pardon, i. 259. Re-elected Speaker, ii. 22, 186. Sketch of, i. 282. Onslow, Sir Richard, i. 105. Orange Associations, iv. 274 _seqq. _ Orange, Prince of, marries Princess Anne, ii. 41. Order of Bath revived, i. 252. Orleans, Louis Philippe, Duke of (Egalité), iii. 293. Orleans, Philippe, Duke of (Regent), i. 117. Death, i. 238. Overtures to George I. , i. 156, 181. Sketch of, i. 155. Ormond, Duke of: Flight, i. 111. Heads Spanish Jacobite expedition, i. 162. Impeached, i. 109, 110. In Paris, i. 119, 120. Name razed from roll of Peers, i. 114. Warden of Cinque Ports, i. 39. Orrery, Earl of: Committed to Tower, i. 214. Discharged, i. 215. Otis, James, denounces Writs of Assistance, iii. 84. Oude subjected, iii. 258. Oude, Vizier of, and Begums, iii. 271. Oxford in '45, ii. 220. Oxford, Robert Harley, Earl of, i. 26, 29. Acquitted, i. 111, 170. Attitude towards Restoration of Stuarts, i. 107. Character, i. 113. Committed to Tower, i. 112. Establishes South Sea Company, i. 187. Impeached of high treason, i. 109, 110, 112, 168. Petition to House of Lords, i. 168. Reception by George I. , i. 101. Sketch of, i. 30. Ozinda's chocolate-house, i. 76. Paine, Thomas, iii. 312. Pakenham, Hon. Catherine, Duchess of Wellington, iii. 334. Palmerston, Viscount: Foreign Secretary, iv. 126, 252. Member for Tiverton, iv. 254. Member of Liverpool Administration, iv. 3. On the "Inevitable Man, " iv. 55. Resigns office, iv. 72. Secretary at War, iv. 58. Pamela, wife of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, iii. 313. Paradis defeats Nabob of Carnatic at St. Thome, ii. 261. Parker heads mutiny at Nore, iii. 335. Parliament: Annual, i. 146. Dissolved (1831), iv. 143. Election of 1734, ii. 19. Election of 1830, iv. 105. Irish and English, i. 179. Language of sycophancy, ii. 85. Motions for removal of Walpole, ii. 185. Of 1722, i. 206, 213. Prorogued (1727), Royal Speech, i. 278. Septennial Act, i. 146. Short, ii. 11. Speech from Throne (1739), ii. 162; (1741), ii. 186; (1765), iii. 88. Triennial Acts, i. 145. (_See also_ House of Lords and House of Commons. ) Parliamentary Opposition, system of, i. 285 _seqq. _ Parma, Duke of, i. 158. Parnell, Sir Henry: Motion on Civil Service Estimates, iv. 110. Paymaster-General, iv. 252. Parr, Dr. , opinion of Sheridan, iii. 217. Patents, petitions for, i. 190. "Patriots, " i. 288, 296, 298. Frederick, Prince of Wales, and, ii. 50, 108, 110. In Opposition and power, ii. 242. Oppose borrowing from Sinking Fund, i. 309. Raise war cry, ii. 149, 157. Return to Commons, ii. 178. Secede from Commons, ii. 172. Struggle against Walpole, ii. 11. Patten, Rev. Robert, as King's evidence, i. 137. Peel, Sir Robert: At opening of Liverpool and Manchester railway, iv. 103. Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 57, 68, 74, 75. Attitude towards Reform, iv. 152, 163. Declines to form Ministry, iv. 177. Free Trade and, iv. 52. Home Secretary, iv. 71, 103. Interview with King on Catholic emancipation, iv. 77. Measure on Irish Tithe System, iv. 245; Speech on, iv. 249. On claims of "Princess" Olivia, iv. 287. Prime Minister and Chancellor of Exchequer, iv. 238. Resigns office, iv. 113, 250. Speech on municipal reform, iv. 259, 260. Speech on Reform Bill, iv. 146. Summoned to form Ministry, iv. 235. Tamworth Address, iv. 240. Peerage Bill, object of, i. 174. Peers, creation of new, iv. 180. Pelham, Henry: Death, ii. 296. Letter to Duke of Cumberland, ii. 239. Paymaster, ii. 192. Prime Minister, ii. 244, 245. Pelham Ministry: Resign, ii. 244. Return to power, ii. 245. Penn, William, death, i. 179. Penny Post, London, i. 78. Pepys quoted on Duchess of Cleveland, i. 23. Perceval, Spencer: Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 341. Death, iii. 341. Regency Bill, iii. 341. Percy, Lord, commands reinforcements from Boston, iii. 174. Perry, presents petition of merchants against Spaniards, ii. 153. Perth, Duke of, ii. 223. Appeal to Macdonalds, ii. 225. Death, ii. 232. Perth, Jacobites retreat from, i. 128. Pestolozzi, Johann H. , iv. 93. Peter the Great, character, i. 162. Peterborough, Lord, anecdote of, ii. 167. Philadelphia: Congress draws up Declaration of Rights, iii. 173. Evacuated, iii. 183. In hands of British, iii. 183. In 1765, iii. 77. Tea-ship at, iii. 161. Philip V. Of Spain, ii. 28. Renounces French throne, i. 157. Phipps, Sir Constantine, removed from office of Chancellor, i. 98. Pitt diamond, ii. 54. Pitt Ministry (1766), members of, iii. 108. Pitt, Thomas, i. 105. M. P. For Okehampton, ii. 54. Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham: Accepts pension and barony for his wife, iii. 27. Advice to Prince of Wales, ii. 78. As War Minister, ii. 299; iii. 2, 27, 29. Character, iii. 186. Coalition against, iii. 26. Death, iii. 186. Denunciation of Walpole and Carteret, ii. 245. Illness, iii. 73, 108, 109. In House of Peers, iii. 109. Maiden speech, ii. 52, 55. On action of Boston people, iii. 161, 163. Paymaster-General, ii. 296. Protests against war with America, iii. 185. Quarrels with Temple, iii. 108. Refuses office, iii. 73, 93. Resigns office, iii. 27. Sketch of, ii. 54. Speech on Convention, ii. 171. Takes news of accession to George III. , iii. 2. Takes office, ii. 274; iii. 108. Wilkes and, iii. 57. Pitt, William (the younger), iii. 211. Antagonism to Fox, iii. 225. Attacks Fox's India Bill, iii. 232. Attitude on Regency, iii. 243. Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iii. 308; iv. 53. Challenge to Ministry on Eastern possessions, iii. 230. Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 225. Closing hours, iii. 338. Coalition against, iii. 26, 225. Contrasted with Fox, iii. 212. Death, iii. 339. Declines Vice-Treasurership of Ireland, iii. 224. Difficulties of Administration, iii. 240. Financial measures, iii. 239. First Lord of Treasury and Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 236. Foreign policy, iii. 302. French policy, iii. 301. India Bill, iii. 237, 238. Irish policy, iii. 319, 327. Makes name in Commons, iii. 223. Plan of Parliamentary reform, iii. 229, 240. Refuses to appeal for payment of Prince of Wales's debts, iii. 242. Resigns office, iii. 337. Sketch of, iii. 214. Speech on Benares vote, iii. 277, 279. Speech on Trafalgar, iii. 339. Struggle with Napoleon Bonaparte, iii. 332, 337. Supports Dundas, iii. 338. Plassey (Palasi), Battle of, ii. 271, 272. Playhouse Bill, ii. 96, 99. Plunket, Lord, Lord Chancellor for Ireland, iv. 127. Pocket boroughs, iv. 99, 147. Poland, condition of, iv. 40. Poland, election of king, ii. 23. Political freedom in 1716, i. 144. Political life in 1742, ii. 239. Political parties in 1728, i. 287, 288. Pomeroy, General, iii. 176, 179. Pontiac conspiracy, iii. 79. Population of Great Britain (1714), i. 63. Poor Laws, iv. 221 _seqq. _ Commission, iv. 225. Bill, iv. 228, 229. Pope, Alexander: "Dunciad, " i. 301. Epitaph on James Craggs, i. 198. Epitaph on Sir Isaac Newton, i. 272. Lampoons, ii. 102, 103. Loses money in South Sea stock, i. 22. On Argyll, Duke of, i. 44. On Bacon, i. 22. On Bolingbroke, i. 29. On Oxford, i. 29, 31. Place in literature, ii. 197. Sketch of, ii. 197. Popham, Major, defeats Rajah's troops, iii. 270. "Porcupine Papers, " iv. 155. Porteous, Captain John: Death, ii. 64. Sentence on, ii. 62. Sketch of, ii. 58. Porteous riots, ii. 58 _seqq. _ Portland, William Cavendish Bentinck, Duke of: Prime Minister, iii. 340. Supports Wilkes, iii. 116. Portsmouth, press-gang in, iv. 265. Portugal: free institutions, iv. 43. Potter, Thomas, iii. 48, 65. Vice-Treasurer for Ireland, iii. 49. Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, iv. 239. Pratt, Justice, Lord Camden, iii. 109. Discharges Wilkes, iii. 60, 67. Predestination, Wesley and Whitefield dispute on, ii. 139. Prescott, hero of Breed Hill, iii. 179. Preston: "Fancy franchises, " iv. 183. Jacobites defeated at, i. 128. Preston, Colonel, commands British troops at Boston, iii. 151. Preston, General, in Edinburgh Castle, ii. 215. Preston Pans, Battle of, ii. 214, 215. Prideaux, --, in Canada, ii. 287. Primacy of Ireland and George IV. , iv. 27. Prior, Matthew, i. 38. Arrested, i. 106. M. P. For East Grinstead, i. 52. Prisoners in 1715, i. 136. Privy Council, July 30, 1714, i. 40, 45, 46. Proctor, Sir W. Beauchamp, Whig candidate for Middlesex, iii. 117. "Protestant" and "Catholic" Ministers, iv. 54. Prussia, position at end of Seven Years' War, iii. 29. _Public Advertiser, Letters of Junius_ in, iii. 128. Pulteney, William (Earl of Bath), i. 105. Accepts Peerage, ii. 192. Advice to Prince of Wales, ii. 78. Alliance with Bolingbroke, i. 260; ii. 17. Attacks Convention and Ministers, ii. 156, 172. Declines office, ii. 191. Duel with Hervey, i. 306. Founder of Parliamentary Opposition, i. 225, 284, 288; ii. 195. Leader of discontented Whigs, i. 287. Letters to Pope, i. 305. Letter to Swift, i. 306. Motion on papers concerning war, ii. 187. On Arbuthnot, ii. 20. On grievances against Spain, ii. 154, 156. On Walpole's excise scheme, i. 315. Opposes Playhouse Bill, ii. 99. Proposes allowance for Prince of Wales, ii. 82. Sketch of, i. 98, 253, 286. Speech on salt tax, i. 313. Speech on Secession, ii. 178. Tribune of Commons, ii. 192, 194. Puritanism in Boston, iii. 76. Purkitt, Henry, iii. 161. Putnam, Israel, iii. 176, 179. Quadruple Alliance, i. 161. Principle of, i. 295. Quebec: Attacked by Wolfe, ii. 287. Described, ii. 287, 291. Founded, ii. 283. Queen Anne's Bounty, i. 280. Queen Anne's houses, i. 69. Queensberry, Duke of, iii. 244. Radcliffe, Charles, escapes from Newgate, i. 142. Radical party, i. 20. Rise of, iv. 218. Rae, Fraser, on elections of Lord Mayor, iii. 137. "Rainbow" Coffee-house, i. 75. Rainsforth, house sacked, iii. 201. Rajah Dulab Ram, ii. 272. Rajah Sahib: Besieges Arcot, ii. 263. Defeated, ii. 263. Ramnagar stronghold, iii. 270. Rathbone, William, and movement against monopoly of East India Company, iv. 231. Ray, Miss, murdered by Hickman, iii. 50. "Rebecca and Her Daughters, " ii. 56. Rebellion of 1745, ii. 203 _seqq. _ Reform Bill (First): Committee, iv. 127. Debate on, iv. 144, 149. Introduced in Commons, iv. 134, 137. General Gascoigne's amendment, iv. 150. Principles of, iv. 143. Redistribution, iv. 142. Scheme for, iv. 129, 132. Second Reading, iv. 149. Reform Bill (Second), iv. 154. Introduced into House of Lords, iv. 168. Rejected, iv. 169. Second Reading, iv. 154, 159. Third Reading, iv. 166. Obstructed, iv. 161, 163. Reform Bill (Third), iv. 172. Defect in, iv. 182. Passed, iv. 181. Political Parties and, iv. 218. Reform Bills for Ireland and Scotland, iv. 181. Reform Meetings, iv. 177. Reform Parliament (First), iv. 172, 204, 241. Reform Riots, iv. 170. Regency Bill, iii. 72. Regency Question (1830), iv. 101, 104, 107. Religious equality and Parliament, iv. 67, 99. Restoration dramatists, character of, ii. 93. Revere, Paul, iii. 174. Reynolds, Sir Joshua: Friend of Goldsmith, iii. 169. Portrait of Wilkes, iii. 68. Richelieu, Duc de, captures Minorca, ii. 297. Richmond, Duke of: On "Our Army, " iii. 183. Speech on Annual Parliaments, iii. 197. Richter, Jean Paul, on: Eloquence, ii. 135. Laurence Sterne, ii. 302. Rigby, Richard, sketch of, iii. 36. Riot in St. George's Fields, iii. 120, 124. Rioters killed, wounded, and executed, iii. 209. Ripon, Earl of (_see_ Goderich, Viscount). Ripperda, Duke of, i. 264. Rob Roy at Sheriffmuir, i. 126. Robertson, Dr. , threatened, iii. 195. Robertson, George, and Porteous riots, ii. 58. Robinson, Dr. John, Bishop of London, i. 109. Robinson, Frederick (_see_ Goderich, Viscount). Robinson, Sir Thomas, ii. 297. Rockingham, Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquis of: Character, iii. 94. Dismissed from office, iii. 108. Prime Minister, iii. 94. Repeals Stamp Act, iii. 104. Second Ministry, iii. 223. Rohilla War, iii. 258. Roman Catholics (_see_ Catholics). Romilly, Sir Samuel: Death and character, iii. 346. Philanthropic reforms, iv. 21. Rosebery, Lord, on Pitt's position, iii. 240. Ross, General: Captures Washington, iii. 346. Speaks for Bolingbroke, i. 108. Rousseau, on "Robinson Crusoe, " ii. 1. Rowe, Nicholas, i. 38. Roxburgh, Duke of, attitude towards Walpole, i. 250. Royal Society of Literature founded, iv. 93. Royal Standard set up at Glenfinnan, ii. 206, 210. Russell, Lord John: As reformer, iv. 104, 126, 127. As speaker, iv. 133. Beaten in S. Devonshire, iv. 253. Carries repeal of Test and Corporation Acts, iv. 52, 67. "English Government and Constitution, " iv. 128, 129. Home Secretary, iv. 252. Interview with Napoleon in Elba, iv. 277. Leader of Opposition, iv. 103. Municipal Bill, iv. 257, 260. On Parliamentary Reform, iv. 85. Reforms Parliamentary representation, iv. 22. Resolution on Irish Church revenues, iv. 246, 250. Second Reform Bill, iv. 154. Sketch of proposed Reform Bill, iv. 128, 132. Speech on Greek cause, iv. 48. Speech on Reform Bill, iv. 137 _seqq. _ Statement on Reform Act, iv. 182. Rupert, Prince, sketch of, i. 6. Russia in 1716, i. 154. Russia: policy towards Greece and Turkey, iv. 49. Sacheverell, Dr. , impeached, i. 34. St. James's, i. 65. St. James's coffee-house, i. 75. _St. James's Chronicle_, iii. 124. St. James's Square, i. 67. St. James's Street, i. 66. St. John, Henry, Viscount (_see_ Bolingbroke). St. Helena, Island of, iii. 344. St. Margaret's Lane, London, i. 64. St. Patrick's Well, Dublin, i. 81. St. Simon on Mississippi scheme, i. 185. St. Thome, Nabob of Carnatic defeated at, ii. 261. Sala, George Augustus, picture of London in '45, ii. 219. Salt tax, i. 313. Sandwich, Earl of, iii. 48, 49. Denounces Wilkes, and "Essay on Woman, " iii. 65. First Lord of Admiralty, iii. 48. "Jemmy Twitcher, " iii. 68. Mobbed, iii. 202. Sandys, Samuel, Chancellor of Exchequer, ii. 192. Motions against Walpole, ii. 185, 186. Saratoga, Burgoyne surrenders at, iii. 183. Sarsfield defends Limerick, i. 83. "Saturday" Club, i. 74. Savile, Sir George: Bill for Catholic Relief, iii. 190, 191. House sacked, iii. 201. Sketch of, iii. 190. Saxe, Maurice de: Commands at Fontenoy and Lauffeld, ii. 239. Parentage, i. 8. Sayer, James, caricature of Fox, iii. 233. Scarborough, Lord: Character, ii. 5. On Declaration of War, ii. 178. Schaub, Sir Luke, Ambassador at Paris, i. 237. Recalled, i. 239. Schleswig-Holstein, seized by King of Denmark, i. 161. Schomberg, Duke of, opinion of Marlborough, i. 24. Scotch Judges at Bar of House of Lords, ii. 66, 67. Scotland: Condition in 1745, ii. 208. Fanaticism in, iii. 194. Riots in, i. 249. Scott, Captain, commands Scots Royal, ii. 206. Scott, Dr. , iii. 203. Scott, Major, defends Hastings, iii. 274, 276, 282. Scott, Sir Walter: Interview with George IV. , iv. 29. Later years and death, iv. 187. Sketch of John, Duke of Argyll, i. 44. Scottish Highlands and Lowlands, i. 87. Scratton, represents Company at Murshidabad, iii. 250. "Scriblerus" Club, i. 73. Secession from House of Commons, ii. 172, 175. Secretary of State, two departments, ii. 192. Seeley, Professor, on "Family Compact, " ii. 31, 33. Selwyn, George, attachment to Fox, iii. 214. Senior, Nassau: Attitude towards Poor Relief, iv. 223. On Poor Law Committee, iv. 225. Septennial Act, i. 146, 147. Debate on repealing, ii. 10. Serres, Olivia Wilmot, sketch of, iv. 286. Servants in 1714, i. 77. Seven Men of Moidart, ii. 205. Seven Years' War, ii. 297; iii. 29. Close of, iii. 79. Sévigné, Mme. De, ii. 35. Seville, Treaty of, i. 297. Trade disputes and, ii. 150. Shackleton, Richard, schoolmaster of Edmund Burke, iii. 97. Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of: Factory labor and, iv. 200 _seqq. _ Sketch of, iv. 203. Shah Alum, enterprise against Meer Jaffier, ii. 273. Sheffield, iv. 99. Shelburne, William Petty, Earl of: Opposes calling out military, iii. 198. Passed over by Pitt, iii. 236. Secretary of State, iii. 109. Sketch of, iii. 223, 224. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, death, iv. 92. Sherbrooke, Robert Lowe, Lord, i. 290. Sheridan, Charles, iii. 218. Sheridan, Mrs. , opinion of her boys, iii. 217. Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, iii. 211. Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 296. Begum speech, iii. 280. Duel with Matthews, iii. 219. Funeral in Westminster Abbey, iii. 346. M. P. For Stamford, iii. 221. Marriage, iii. 220, 222. "School for Scandal, " "Critic, " iii. 221. Sketch of, iii. 216. Speeches during Hastings's trial, iii. 280, 286. "The Rivals, " iii. 221. Under-Secretary of State, iii. 224. Sheridan (Dr. ), Thomas, friend of Swift, iii. 216. Sheridan (Sir), Thomas: Death, ii. 232. Tutor to Charles Stuart, ii. 205. Sheriffmuir, battle of, i. 125. Shippen: Amendment on Supply (1727), i. 280. Leader of Jacobites, i. 287. Opposes Septennial Bill, i. 146. Sketch of, i. 289. Shrewsbury, Charles Talbot, Duke of, i. 41. Death, i. 179. Lord High Treasurer, i. 45. Resigns offices, i. 97. Sketch of career, i. 41. Shrewsbury, Duke of, killed by Duke of Buckingham, i. 41. Shrewsbury in 1714, i. 79. Siddons, Mrs. , death, iv. 285. Sidmouth, Viscount, Home Secretary: Challenged by Thistlewood, iv. 16. Signs in streets, i. 70. Sinking Fund, borrowing from, i. 309. Slaughter's coffee-house, i. 75. Slave Trade, Fox and, iii. 340. Slavery, iv. 189 _seqq. _ Crusade against, iv. 93. (_See also_ West Indies, slavery in. ) Smith, Rev. John, sentenced to death, iv. 194. Smith, Sydney, on: Collection of tithes in Ireland, iv. 208, 210, 211. Spencer Perceval, iii. 341. "Smock races, " i. 72. Smollett and _Briton_, iii. 51. Smuggling in American colonies, iii. 83. Sobieski, Clementine, wife of James Stuart, ii. 199. Retires to convent, ii. 200. Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge founded, iv. 93. Somers, John, Lord, i. 47, 54. Accomplishes Union of England and Scotland, i. 84. Approves Septennial Bill, i. 147. Member of New Council, i. 101. Sketch of career, i. 147. Somerset, Charles Seymour, Duke of: sketch of, i. 42. Somerset, Charlotte, Duchess of, i. 42. Somerset, Elizabeth, Duchess of, i. 43. Somerville, Dr. Thomas, _History of Reign of Queen Anne_, i. 13. Somerville, Lord, house molested, ii. 217. Sophia Dorothea, wife of George I. , i. 6, 153. Banished to Castle of Ahlden, i. 7. Death, i. 267. Will, i. 269. Sophia, Electress of Hanover, i. 4, 5. South Sea Bill, i. 189, 190. South Sea Company, i. 187, 193; ii. 150. Petitions for relief, i. 194. Principle of, i. 194. Reconstituted, ii. 167. South Sea House, i. 186. South Sea victims, i. 194, 204. Spain: Claims Right of Search, ii. 151, 163, 245. Complaints against, i. 294. Demands constitutional government, iv. 40, 43. England and, trade disputes, ii. 150. In 1716, i. 154, 155. Portugal and, dispute between, ii. 35. Treaty of Utrecht and, i. 227. War declared against, ii. 178. Spean's Bridge, brush at, ii. 206. Spencer, John Charles, Earl, iv. 234. As Speaker, iv. 133. Chancellor of Exchequer, iv. 125. Declaration on Reform Bill, iv. 164. Motion on speech from Throne, iv. 104. On Government measure for Irish Tithe Question, iv. 211. On slavery in Colonies, iv. 195. Sketch of, iv. 125. Spies in Ireland in '98, iii. 314. Spithead, mutiny at, iii. 335. Stage Censorship, ii. 96 _seqq. _ Stair, John Dalrymple, Earl of: Character, i. 120, 225. Commands British troops, ii. 182. Recalled from French Court, i. 225. Stamp Act, iii. 87, 88. Repealed, iii. 103. Stanhope, Charles, and South Sea Company, i. 197, 200. Stanhope, Colonel (_see_ Harrington, Lord). Stanhope, James, Earl, iii. 339. Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 302. Death, i. 173. First Lord of Treasury and Chancellor of Exchequer, i. 165. Impeaches Duke of Ormond, i. 109. Mission to Vienna, i. 152. On funds and Queen Anne's health, i. 2. On Irish clergy, ii. 130. On Oxford, Earl of, i. 31. Recognized religious equality, i. 173. Second Secretary of State, i. 97, 99. Sketch of, i. 100. Stanhope, Lady Hester, iii. 339. Stanley, Lord (_see_ Derby, Earl of). States-General convoked, iii. 293. Steele, Sir Richard: Career, i. 38. Compared with Addison, i. 300. Death, i. 299. M. P. For Stockbridge, i. 52. On Somers, i. 147. On Whig and Tory, i. 17. Petition in favor of rebels, i. 137, 138. Tribute to Atterbury, i. 214. Stephen, Sir James, "Story of Nuncomar, " iii. 263. Sterne, Laurence, "Tristram Shandy, " ii. 299, 301. Sterne, Roger, ii. 299. Death, ii. 300. Stevenson, Dr. , keeps guard at Netherbow Gate, ii. 212. Stewart, Dugald, iv. 93. Stoke Pogis church-yard, ii. 289. Stow, "Survey of London" quoted on penny post, i. 78. Strafford, Lord, charges against, i. 109. Stratford de Redcliffe, Viscount, iv. 32. Streets of London in 1714, i. 70. Strickland, Francis, supports Young Pretender, ii. 205. Stuart, Cardinal Henry, death, ii. 234. Stuart, Charles Edward, Young Pretender: Advantages on his side, ii. 208, 209, 218, 221. Adventures after Culloden, ii. 226. At siege of Gaeta, ii. 29, 201, 203. Birth, ii. 199. Education, ii. 201, 202. Enters Holyrood, ii. 214. Humanity during campaign, ii. 215, 217. In London, iii. 14. Later career, ii. 233, 234. March into England, ii. 217. Marches on Edinburgh, ii. 210, 213. Proclamation, ii. 206. Rebellion of 1745, ii. 204 _seqq. _ Retreats, ii. 223. Wishes to advance on London, ii. 222. Stuart influence on literature, ii. 234. Stuart, James Francis Edward (Old Pretender), i. 4. Character, i. 126. Dismisses Bolingbroke, i. 131. Embarks for Scotland, i. 120. Life of exile, ii. 199, 201. On South Sea scheme, i. 200. Proclaimed in Dundee, i. 123. Rebellion in favor of, i. 118. Returns to France, i. 128. Rumors of, i. 264. Sketch of, i. 9 _seqq. _ Stuart standard set up at Braemer, i. 121, 123. Sugar Act of 1733, iii. 83. Sullivan, iii. 179. Sully, advice to Henry IV. , i. 13. Sumner, Dr. , Head-master of Harrow, iii. 217. Sunderland, Charles, Earl of, i. 54. Accusations against Townshend and Walpole, i. 164. Death, i. 206. Motion implicating him in South Sea scheme, i. 199. Plot against Walpole, i. 207. Speech in favor of South Sea Bill, i. 191. Viceroy of Ireland, i. 97. Suraj ud Dowlah: Black Hole of Calcutta, ii. 266. Captured and killed, ii. 273. Character, ii. 266. Death, iii. 250. Declares war against English, iii. 249. Swetenham, Captain, ii. 207. Swift, Jonathan, Dean of St. Patrick's: Attitude towards Irish, i. 243. Character, ii. 237. Death, ii. 236. Defends Treaty of Utrecht, i. 96. Dialogue between Whig and Tory, i. 219. "Drapier's Letters, " i. 240, 242, 247. "Gulliver's Travels, " i. 302. Lampoons, ii. 102. Letter to Lord Peterborough, i. 36. Letter to Sheridan on Walpole, i. 306. On Arbuthnot, ii. 21. On Bolingbroke, i. 26, 28. On Condition of Church, ii. 129. On Marlborough, i. 24. On Oxford, Earl of, i. 31, 168. On Queen Anne's health, i. 1, 36. On Somerset, Duke of, i. 43. On William Congreve, i. 299. Patron of Berkeley, ii. 293. Poems on South Sea mania, i. 202. Reception of Carteret, i. 235. Sketch of, i. 35. Stella and, ii. 236. Swinburne, "A Jacobite's Exile, " ii. 235. Talbot, Charles, Lord Chancellor, ii. 9, 81. Talleyrand: Dines with William IV. , iv. 117. On Alexander Hamilton, ii. 248; iv. 281. Tea tax introduced by Townshend, iii. 113. Telford, Thomas, death, iv. 282. Temple, John, iii. 155. Temple, Richard Grenville, Earl, iii. 26. Action on India Bill, iii. 234. Persuades Pitt to refuse office, iii. 73, 93. Removed from Lord-Lieutenancy, iii. 64. Resigns office, iii. 236. Shows King's speech to Wilkes, iii. 57. Supports Wilkes, iii. 116. Ten-pound franchise, iv. 130. Tenterden, Chief Justice, decision in Cobbett prosecution, iv. 157. Test Act: Debate on proposed repeal, ii. 176. Repeal proposed, ii. 110. Repealed, iv. 52, 67. Thackeray, W. M. , iv. 286. Description of Hanover, i. 55. On George IV. , iii. 242. On interview of George IV. And Sir Walter Scott, iv. 29. On interview of George IV. With Wellington, Lyndhurst, and Peel, iv. 78. On Laurence Sterne, ii. 302. On Swift's character, ii. 237, 238. Thames frozen (1716), i. 154. Thames Tunnel, iv. 93. Thistlewood, plots to assassinate Ministers, iv. 15. Thomas, --, iii. 179. Thornhill, Sir James, i. 68. Thurlow, Lord, iii. 228. Thynne, Thomas, Lord, i. 8. Tippu, English make treaty with, iii. 266. Tithe question, Ireland, iv. 207 _seqq. _, 216, 220. Government proposal on, iv. 211, 245. Tobacco, excise duty on, i. 316. Tolbooth fired, ii. 64. Tone, Matthew, fights under Humbert, iii. 324. Tone, Theobald Wolfe, iv. 206. Death, iii. 327. Letter to his wife, iii. 324. Marriage, iii. 311. Project for colony in South Sea island, iii. 310. Scheme for French invasion of Ireland, iii. 311. Sketch of, iii. 309 _seqq. _ Tonson, Jacob, Secretary to Kit-Kat Club, i. 74. Torcy, Marquis de, Secretary of State, France, i. 110. Tories: Attitude towards restoration of Stuarts, i. 16, 19. Doctrines, i. 17 _seqq. _ Jacobitism and, iii. 24. Old school of, iv. 241. Origin of name, i. 17. Peace of Utrecht and, i. 92. Toulon: Retaken by French, iii. 304. Welcomes English fleet, iii. 303. Townshend, Alderman, opposes Wilkes, iii. 136. Townshend, Audrey, Marchioness of, iii. 110. Townshend, Charles ("Weathercock"), i. 99. Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 109. Character, iii. 110. Death, iii. 113. Introduces tea tax for America, iii. 113. Townshend, Charles, Viscount: Accompanies King to Hanover, i. 237. Dismissed, i. 164. President of Council, i. 182. Resigns office, i. 304. Secretary of State, i. 97, 278. Sketch of, i. 99. Trading Guilds, origin of, iv. 255. Trafalgar, battle of, iii. 337. Traill, H. D. , on Laurence Sterne, ii. 302. Treaties (_see_ under various titles). Trichinopoly: Besieged, ii. 262. Relieved, ii. 264. Triennial Parliament Acts, i. 145. Triple Alliance, i. 161, 163. Tucker, Dean, on mutinous colonies, iii. 163. Tullibardine: Dies in Tower, ii. 232. Supports Young Pretender, ii. 205, 206. Turkey in 1716, i. 154. Ulm, capitulation of, iii. 338. Union, Scotland's attitude towards, i. 83. University College Charter, iv. 261. University of London, Charter, iv. 261. Upper Ossory, John, Earl of, iii. 36. Utrecht, Treaty of, i. 95, 157, 227, 263. Campeachy logwood question and, i. 295. Tories and, i. 92. Trade disputes and, ii. 150. Will of Charles II. And, ii. 27. Valley Forge, iii. 183. Vanhomrigh, Esther (Vanessa), i. 36. Alters her will, ii. 294. Vansittart, Governor of East India Company, iii. 251. Advice on quarrel of Nawab and Ellis, iii. 252. Vendôme, Duc de, i. 100. Character, i. 158. Verazani forms settlement in Canada, ii. 283. Verden ceded to Hanover, i. 161. Verona Congress and Holy Alliance, iv. 39, 42, 45. Victoria, Princess Alexandrina: Birth, iii. 348. Heir-presumptive, iv. 101. William IV, and, iv. 117, 118. Vienna, Congress of, iv. 38. Vienna, Treaty of, i. 295; ii. 30. Virginia protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90. Voltaire, epigram on Byng, ii. 298. Von Steuben in America, iii. 183. Vote by ballot proposed, iv. 131. Wade, General, clans surrender arms to, ii. 209. Wales, Prince of (_see_ Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, and George IV. ). Walkenshaw, Miss, ii. 233. Walmoden, Mme. , ii. 48, 76, 304. Walpole, Baron, i. 224. Walpole, Horace, Earl of Orford: Account of his father (1742), ii. 189. Acquainted with Paris, iii. 293. Contrasts Townshend with Burke, iii. 112. Description of George I. , i. 58. Description of Lord Hillsborough, iii. 148. Description of Mme. Kilmansegge, i. 7. Eulogy of Queen Charlotte, iii. 12. Maiden speech in defence of his father, ii. 195. On Bute's Administration, iii. 28. On Carteret, i. 235. On Chesterfield's speeches, ii. 5. On Coronation of George III. , iii. 12. On dinner hour, iii. 18. On James Stuart, i. 11. On Lord George Gordon, iii. 193. On Whitefield's eloquence, ii. 139. On Wilkes's career, iii. 137. Walpole, Horatio, Lord: Ambassador to Paris, i. 237, 238, 291. Moves Address on Convention, ii. 171. Recalled from Paris, i. 304. Walpole, Sir Robert, Earl of Orford: Accepts war policy, ii. 180. Administration, i. 224 _seqq. _, 305. Address to George II. , i. 280. Advice to Princesses, ii. 126. At Houghton, i. 196; ii. 195. At Queen Caroline's death-bed, ii. 119. Attacks Peerage Bill, i. 176. Attempts to get influence of James Stuart, ii. 186. Attitude towards financial reform, ii. 36. Bill to adjust affairs of South Sea Company, i. 203, 205. Chairman of Committee of Secrecy, i. 105, 106, 168. Character, i. 165; ii. 8, 18, 196. Charges against, ii. 187, 195. Conduct on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 80. Correspondence with Townshend, i. 252. Corruption under, i. 231; ii. 13, 19, 90, 195; iii. 25. Created Earl of Orford, ii. 190. Death, ii. 196. First great finance minister, i. 229. Fiscal policy, i. 230, 309, 311 _seqq. _ Foreign policy, i. 229, 236, 292, 305; ii. 24, 31, 149. Hails George II. King, i. 275. Health in 1742, ii. 188. Made K. B. , i. 252. Made K. G. , i. 252. Masterly inactivity, ii. 24, 31, 36. Moves Address (1715), i. 103. On Frederick, Prince of Wales, ii. 71. On Queen's illness, ii. 115. On Royal family, ii. 74. On South Sea Company, i. 188, 196. Paymaster-General, i. 97, 181. Pleads against war with Spain, ii. 155, 159. Quarrel with Townshend, i. 304. Relations with stage, ii. 95. Resigns office, i. 164; ii. 190. Restored to office, i. 278. Secretary of State for Scotland, i. 250. Settles dispute between Spain and Portugal, ii. 35. Sketch of career, i. 32; ii. 196. Speech on Bolingbroke, ii. 15. Speech on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 86. Speech on secession from Commons, ii. 174. War declared against Spain, ii. 178. Results of, ii. 183. War of Independence, ii. 43. War of Polish Succession, ii. 23 _seqq. _ War of the Succession, purpose of, i. 92. War passion, ii. 148. War with Spain, iii. 29. Ward, Artemus, iii. 179. Ward, Henry, resolution on Irish State Church, iv. 212, 213, 214. Ward, Ned, ballad on Marlborough's return to England, i. 53. Ward, Plumer, author of "Tremaine, " iv. 213. Ward, Sir John, petition on South Sea Company, i. 203. Wardle, Colonel, iii. 338. Warren, General, iii. 176. Washington, George: Character, iii. 188. Commands Continental army, iii. 181. Disapproves of Boston exploit, iii. 161, 163. Fires first shot against enemy, ii. 285. First President of American Republic, iii. 189. Sketch of career, iii. 180. Watson, Admiral, commands fleet against Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269. "Waverers, " iv. 173. Webster, "Duchess of Malfi" quoted, iv. 11. Wedderburn, Alexander, Solicitor-General, iii. 149. Denounces Franklin, iii. 156, 157. On using military against mob, iii. 207. Sketch of, iii. 158. Speech on Middlesex election petition, iii. 131. "Weekly Political Register, " Cobbett's article in, iv. 156, 157. Wellesley, Arthur (_see_ Wellington, Duke of). Wellesley, Garret, Earl of Mornington, iii. 341. Wellesley, Richard C. , Marquis of: Resigns Vice-royalty of Ireland, iv. 73. Sketch of career, iv. 72. Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of: Accompanies George IV. To Waterloo, iv. 28. At opening of Liverpool and Manchester railway, iv. 103. Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 54, 56, 75, 106. Attitude towards Municipal Bill, iv. 260. Attitude towards Parliamentary reform, iv. 52. Attitude towards Queen Caroline, iv. 7. Character, iv. 120. Declines to form ministry, iv. 177. Duel with Lord Winchilsea, iv. 81. Interview with King on Catholic emancipation, iv. 77. Prime Minister, iv. 67, 100. Represents England at Congress of Verona, iv. 41, 42. Resigns office, iv. 113. Secretary for Foreign Affairs, iv. 238. Sketch of, iii. 341 _seqq. _ Speech against Reform Bill, iv. 169. Speech on Parliamentary reform, iv. 108. Supports Poor Law Bill, iv. 229. Unpopular, iv. 153. Welsh Copper and Lead Company, and South Sea Company, i. 193. Wentworth, Lady, describes house in Golden Square, i. 70. Wesley, Charles, ii. 128, 137, 145. Accompanies John to Georgia, ii. 134. On Revivalist meetings, ii. 139. Wesley, John: Breaks away from Moravians, ii. 140. Breaks from discipline of Church of England, ii. 142. Character, ii. 134, 135, 137, 142. Dispute with Whitefield, ii. 139. Marriage, ii. 137. Organization, ii. 140. Sketch of, ii. 127 _seqq. _ Visits Georgia, ii. 127. Wesleyan Movement, account of, ii. 127 _seqq. _ In United States, ii. 144. Revivalist meetings, ii. 138. West Indian Planters, grant to, iv. 198, 200. West Indies, slavery in, iv. 190 _seqq. _ Abolished, iv. 199, 200. Westminster Hall, iv. 268. Booths in, i. 64. Explosion in, ii. 45. Wetherell, Sir Charles, obstructs Reform Bill, iv. 163. Rescued from rioters, iv. 197. Weymouth, Lord, letter to magistrate in case of riot, iii. 120, 124. Wharncliffe, Lord, amendment to Reform Bill, iv. 169. Wharton, Duke of: Character, i. 264. Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 191, 198. Whately, --, private secretary to George Grenville, iii. 153. Whately, William, iii. 155. Wheler, appointed Governor-General, iii. 264. Whigs: Ascendency, iii. 24. Attitude towards Hanoverian Succession, i. 16. Doctrines, i. 17 _seqq. _ Foreign policy (1716), i. 157. Nobles and Reform Bill, iv. 178. Origin of name, i. 17. Whitbread, efforts to inquire into troubles in Ireland, iii. 319. Whitefield, George, ii. 128, 137, 145. Disputes with Wesley, ii. 139. Oratory, ii. 139. White's chocolate-house, i. 76. Widdrington, Lord, a prisoner, i. 137, 138. Wilberforce, William: Later years, iv. 280. Supports Queen Caroline, iv. 6. Votes against Dundas, iii. 338. West-Indian Slavery and, iv. 191, 193, 194. Wilkes, John: Arrested, iii. 59. At King's Bench, iii. 119. Attack on, iii. 64, 66. Brings actions against Lord Halifax and Wood, iii. 63. Candidate for Parliament, iii. 116, 117, 126, 137. Catholic Relief for Scotland and, iii. 195. Churchill and, iii. 55. Committed to Tower, iii. 60. Death, iii. 139. Duel with Martin, iii. 66. Elected Alderman for Farringdon Without, iii. 134. Elected Lord Mayor, iii. 137. Elected Sheriff, iii. 136. Expelled from House, iii. 130. Interview with Johnson, iii. 138. Later life, iii. 137. Liberated from prison, iii. 135. Literary executor to Churchill, iii. 69. M. P. For Aylesbury, iii. 49, 51. _North Briton_ and, iii. 52, 55, 57. On rioters, iii. 209. Outlawed, iii. 68. Released by Judge Pratt, iii. 60, 63. Sketch of, iii. 48 _seqq. _ Summoned before Commons, iii. 135. William III. , opinion of Duke of Marlborough, i. 24. William IV. : Accession, iv. 96. Assents to Bill for Abolition of Slavery, iv. 199. Attitude towards Duke of Wellington, iv. 115. Attitude towards Irish State Church, iv. 219. Attitude towards Ministry (1831), iv. 151. Attitude towards Reform, iv. 172, 173, 175, 179, 181. Character, iv. 98, 114, 115, 120, 293. Conduct as admiral, iv. 115. Conduct to Mrs. Fitzherbert, iv. 88. Death, iv. 293. Dismisses Whig Government and sends for Sir Robert Peel, iv. 235. Illness, iv. 289. Lord High Admiral, iv. 60, 96. Marries Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, iv. 97. Mrs. Jordan and, iv. 97. Opens Parliament (1831), iv. 154. Orangeism and, iv. 279. Popular, iv. 153, 154. Prayers for, iv. 292. Raises his children to Peerage, iv. 114. Sanctions Reform Bill, iv. 132. Speech from Throne (1830), iv. 100, 103, 108. Speech from Throne (1831), iv. 172. Speeches at state dinners, iv. 116, 117. Unconventionalities, iv. 118. Unpopular, iv. 179. Williamson, Dr. Hugh, iii. 154. Will's coffee-house, i. 75. Wilmington, Lord (_see_ Compton, Sir Spencer). Wilmot, Olivia, sketch of, iv. 286. Wilmot, Robert, on grievances against Spaniards, ii. 154. Wilson, Alexander, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Bill against, ii. 66, 68. Wilson's execution and Porteous riots, ii. 60, 61. Winchilsea, Earl of: Duel with Duke of Wellington, iv. 81. On Princess Anne's Dowry, ii. 44, 45. Letter on Duke of Wellington and Catholic Emancipation, iv. 80. Window tax, iii. 239. Wine-drinking in Georgian era, iii. 20. Wintoun, Earl of, a prisoner, i. 137. Escapes, i. 142. Witherington, Matilda, wife of Wolfe Tone, iii. 311, 329. Wolfe, James: At Culloden, ii. 227, 282. Character, ii. 282. Death, ii. 290. Monument, ii. 290. Wood, Alderman, supports Queen Caroline, iv. 5. Wood, William, patent for copper coins, i. 164, 241, 244. Withdrawn, i. 248. Wooster, --, iii. 179. Wray, Sir Cecil, opponent of Fox at Westminster, iii. 238. Writs of Assistance, iii. 84, 86. Wyndham, Sir William: Announces secession from Commons, ii. 173. Death, ii. 179. Leader of Tories, i. 287. On grievances against Spaniards, ii. 156. On Salt Tax, i. 313. Sketch of, i. 288; ii. 179. Speech on repeal of Septennial Act, ii. 12. Wynn, Sir Walter Williams, supports Young Pretender, ii. 221. Wynn, Watkin Williams, argument against long Parliaments, ii. 12. Yale College, places in lists, iii. 77. York, Frederick Augustus, Duke of: Death, iv. 60. Public career, iv. 60. York in 1714, i. 79. Yorktown, Cornwallis surrenders at, iii. 184. Young, Arthur, travels in France, iii. 293. Zinzendorf, Count von, founds Moravian sect, ii. 134. Zoological Gardens opened, iv. 93.