and supported by that secret influence I have mentioned, and by the industry of those very dependants; first by secret treachery, then by official influence, afterwards in public councils. A long train of these practices has at length unwillingly convinced me that there is something behind the throne greater than the King himself." In Grafton he expressed himself completely deceived. There was in his conduct from the time of my being taken ill, a gradual deviation from everything that had been settled and solemnly agreed to by his Grace both as to measures and men, till at last.there were not left two planks together of the ship which had been originally launched." He strenuously supported an inquiry into the expenditure which had caused the King's debts, intimating very clearly that in his judgment the debts had been incurred in corrupting the representatives, and he asked whether the Sovereign' means, by drawing the pursestrings of his subjects, to spread corruption through the people, to procure a Parliament like a packed jury, ready to acquit his ministers at all adventures? 93 When the King made his famous answer rebuking the Corporation of London for the disrespectful language of their petition, Chatham moved a resolution censuring those who had advised the King to give such an answer, on the ground that the legal right of the subject to petition for redress of grievances had been indiscriminately checked and reprimanded. Quoting from Robertson, he reminded the House of Lords how Charles V. had once 'cajoled and seduced' the peers of Castile to join him in overturning that part of the Cortes which represented the people; how 'they were weak enough to adopt, and base enough to be flattered with an expectation that by assisting their master in this iniquitous purpose they would increase their own strength and importance,' and how, as a just and natural consequence, they soon exchanged the constitutional authority of peers for the titular vanity of grandees.'5 He reprobated with the utmost vehemence the patient attitude of the Ministry towards Spain; spoke of that Power in language which could only have been used on the supposition that war with her was inevitable

422.

Chatham Correspondence, iii.

2 Ibid. pp. 423, 425.

Ibid. pp. 424, 426.

Ibid. p. 453.

• Ibid. p. 372.

C. II.

OVERTURES TO ROCKINGHAM.

165

and desirable, blamed the ministers severely for the neglect into which they had suffered the naval and military services to fall, enumerated in a speech of great power and knowledge the different measures that were required to restore them to efficiency, and at the same time, with his usual independence, denounced the conduct of Wilkes and of the popular party, who by raising an outcry against the system of pressgangs were crippling the strength of the nation.'

...

Chatham at this time took great pains to effect an union with the other Whigs, and especially with Rockingham, and he appears to have become at last sensible of the error he had made in so often discarding or repudiating their assistance. His old distinctive doctrine of the necessity of breaking up parties now disappears. There are men who, if their own services were forgotten, ought to have an hereditary merit with the House of Hanover. . . . I would not wish the favours of the Crown to flow invariably in one channel. But there are some distinctions which are inherent in the nature of things. There is a distinction between right and wrong-between Whig and Tory. . . An administration must be popular that it may begin with reputation. It must be strong within itself that it may proceed with vigour and decision.' No sound ministry could be maintained by fraud or even by exclusive systems of family connections or powerful friendships, but at the same time he was careful to add that no one valued more that honourable connection which arises from a disinterested concurrence in opinion upon public measures, or from the sacred bond of private friendship and esteem.' Of Rockingham himself, both in public and private, he spoke with deep respect. As for Lord Rockingham,' he wrote to Calcraft, I have a firm reliance on his zeal for liberty, and will not separate from him.'3 His whole language,' he wrote, in another letter, after an interview with Rockingham,' was as I expected, honourable, just, and sensible. My esteem and con

18.

1 Chatham Correspondence, iv. 2

2 Ibid. iv. 17, 18.

Ibid. iii. 439. In one of the last speeches Chatham made (Dec. 5, 1777), there is a remarkable passage which can be construed into little less than a confession that the line

which he had adopted about party government in the first years of the reign was a mistake. For fifteen years,' he said, 'there had been a system at St. James's of breaking all connections, of extinguishing all principle. A few men had got an ascendency where no man should

fidence in his lordship's upright intentions grow from every conversation with him." In seconding a motion of Rockingham he took occasion to say that he wished this to be considered as a public demonstration of his cordial union with that statesman. There has been a time, my lords,' he added, 'when those who wished well to neither of us, who wished to see us separated for ever, found a sufficient gratification for their malignity against us both. But that time is happily at an end. The friends of this country will, I doubt not, hear with pleasure that the noble lord and his friends are now united with me and mine, upon a principle which, I trust, will make our union indissoluble. .. No ministerial artifices, no private offers, no secret seduction, can divide us.'2

The picture was somewhat overcoloured. The correspondence of Chatham himself, and the correspondence of Burke, who was the most confidential as he was by far the ablest friend of Rockingham, suffices to show that the jealousy that once divided the two parties was by no means extinct. On the Rockingham side there was some very natural personal resentment, and also a constant fear lest Chatham should resume his old policy of breaking up that strong party organisation which in the opinion of Burke was the sole method of putting an end to the impotence of successive administrations and restraining the influence of the Crown. On the side of Chatham, there was a stronger sympathy with the democratic element in the country, and a proneness to employ stronger language and to resort to more energetic measures than the Rockinghams desired. The Marquis,' he wrote in one of his letters, is an honest and honourable man, but "moderation, moderation," is

have a personal ascendency; by the executive powers of the State being at their command they had been furnished with the means of creating divisions. This brought pliable men, not capable men, into the highest and most responsible situations, and to such men was the government of this once glorious empire now entrusted.'Thackeray's Life of Chatham, ii. 343.

Chatham Correspondence, iii. 481. 2 Ibid. p. 408. Lord Fitzwilliam reported to Rockingham, November 1769, a conversation in which Chatham said: For my own part I am

grown old, and find myself unable to fill any office of business; but this I am resolved upon, that I will not even sit at council but to meet the friends of Lord Rockingham; whatever differences may have been between us they must be forgotten. The state of the nation is such that all private animosities must subside. He, and he alone, has a knot of spotless friends such as ought to govern this kingdom.' See too a similar conversation reported by the Duke of Portland.-Albemarle's Life of Rockingham, ii. 142, 143.

ся. М.

TRIUMPH OF THE GOVERNMENT.

6

167

the burden of the song among the body. For myself I am resolved to be in earnest for the public, and shall be a scarecrow of violence to the gentle warblers of the grove, the moderate Whigs and temperate statesmen.'1 Still in public the two parties were agreed, and a coalition was formed against the Government which once would have been invincible. As Philip Francis afterwards wrote, North succeeded to what I believe he himself and every man in the kingdom at that time thought a forlorn hope.' Chatham, Rockingham, Grenville, and Temple were united under the same banner, while a fever of public opinion had been excited in the country by the Middlesex election which had never been paralleled since the fall of Walpole.

The result was the complete triumph of the Government. The influence of the Court was now so great, and its attractive power so irresistible, that in both Houses it commanded a steady and unflinching majority. The House of Lords, which in the case of the Aylesbury electors under Queen Anne, had obtained a most legitimate popularity by its defence of the rights of electors against the usurpations of the Commons, now carried every resolution of the Ministers by a large majority. It abdicated one of its most important functions by formally declining to take any step in the Middlesex election, on the ground that its interference would be unconstitutional; and for some time, in order to diminish as much as possible the effects of the eloquence of Chatham, it carefully excluded all strangers from its debates. In spite of the coalition of the scattered fragments of the Whig party; in spite of the petitions which poured in from every part of the country against the Government; in spite of America, of Corsica, and of the Falkland Islands; in spite of the manifest decline of the reputation of England, which had recently been so great, and of the naval and military services, which had recently been so efficient, the majority of the Government was unbroken. In Lord North the King had found a servant of admirable tact, ability, and knowledge, and new recruits were speedily obtained. The Great Seal having been placed for

Chatham Correspondence, iii. 468.

2 See the autobiographical sketch

in Parkes and Merivale's Life of Francis, i. 362.

about a year in Commission, was bestowed on Bathurst, who, though an undistinguished lawyer and insignificant politician, held it for more than seven years. Lord Granby, who was the most popular of the recent seceders from the ministry, died in October 1770. George Grenville died in the following month, and three months later, Lord Suffolk, who pretended to lead the Grenville party, abandoned all his former principles, and joined the ministry as Privy Seal. Whately, the most confidential friend of Grenville, took the same course. The chief members of the Bedford faction had already gone over, and the Duke, who had for some time been excluded from public life by blindness and ill-health, died in the beginning of 1771. Sir Edward Hawke was replaced at the Admiralty by Lord Sandwich. Grafton, who had once professed to be the most devoted follower of Chatham, solemnly pledged himself, in a speech in May 1770, never again to act with him in public business,' and a year later, when Lord Suffolk, on the death of Halifax, exchanged the office of Privy Seal for that of Secretary of State, he accepted the vacant post, though with the characteristic condition that he should not be required to attend the Cabinet.2 Thurlow, who was advanced to the position of Attorney-General, showed an amount of legal and debating power which restored the strength of the ministry in the department where it was most weak, and, to the astonishment and scandal even of the corrupt assembly at St. Stephen's, he was soon joined by Wedderburn. This very able Scotchman-one of the ablest and most corrupt of the many able and corrupt lawyers who in the eighteenth century were conspicuous in English politics-though he first entered Parliament under the patronage of Bute, had for some time been one of the most conspicuous of the opponents of the Court. His repeated and eloquent denunciations of the American policy of the Government, his magnificent defence of the rights of electors in the case of the Middlesex election, and his resignation of his borough seat because its patron was opposed to the popular cause, had made him one of the idols of the people. Clive, who was at this time in opposition, at once provided him with a new seat. His name was a favourite toast at the popular banquets. The City of London voted him 2 Chatham Correspondence, iv. 179.

Bedford Correspondence, iii. 412.