Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third (Vol. 1-4). Horace Walpole
loose an hundred and forty thousand French to overrun the Low Countries and Portugal. If there was any odium from the German war, he begged it might fall on him; though he had never seen a contractor, yet he would not disculpate himself by censuring others; and he spoke in mitigation of the blame thrown on the Treasury, owning he thought some little might have been saved, but not suspecting them of dishonesty. Yet, were an inquiry moved, he would second it; he would screen nobody. After the King of Prussia had been so ill-treated on our account, would we throw such a power out of our alliance, only to save three or four hundred thousand pounds? But he thought he had heard the army was not to be recalled—was transported to find Lord Granby was going to it. Himself was the only man that agreed with the whole administration, for he approved both of war in Germany and war in Portugal; and he was so far from meditating opposition, that he should regard the man who would revive parties as an enemy to his country. Himself had contributed to annihilate party, but it had not been to pave the way for those who only intended to substitute one party to another.218 Should the least cloud arise between London and Berlin, he prayed for temper and reconciliation. He wished to move that the continuation of the subsidy to Prussia might be added to the vote of credit; but it did not become him to move for more than was asked by the King’s servants: yet he wished the vote of credit had been greater, and knew the Duke of Newcastle wished so too. He should rejoice to see the session closed with the grant of a large sum of money, because England could not well treat but at the head of all her force. Russia had acceded to Prussia—how much wiser to give money to that monarch now, when he is in a better situation, than, as you would do, if he were still more distressed! Nay, that little teazing incident, Sweden, was removed by dread of the Czar. Sweden is a free nation, but factions and a corrupted senate have lowered it from the great figure it made an hundred years ago. Act now, continued he, upon a great system, while it is in your power! A million more would be a pittance to place you at the head of Europe, and enable you to treat with efficacy and dignity. Save it not in this last critical year! Give the million to the war at large, and add three, four, or five hundred thousand pounds more to Portugal; or avow to the House of Bourbon that you are not able to treat at the head of your allies.
This speech, so artful, elevated, so much in character, and so distressful to the Junto that were endeavouring to steal disgrace upon themselves and their country in the face of the world, by setting up one war against another, and dividing the attention of the public, till impotence and mismanagement should render peace welcome,—this speech did Colonel Barré attempt to answer; and did answer it, only in length. He was sensible that he had disgusted mankind by his indecent brutality to so great a statesman: his friends had told him that his invectives, illiberal as they had been, were reckoned the produce of study; and that he must shine in cool argument, lest he should be thought a bully rather than an orator. If they apprehended this, the result of their lessons was a proof that their apprehensions had not been ill-founded. Nothing could be more cold and dull than Barré’s reply to Mr. Pitt. It revenged the latter for the former insult. Calvert,219 a mad volunteer, who always spoke what he thought, and sometimes thought justly, was so struck with Barré’s phlegmatic impropriety, that he told the House it had put him in mind of a poet, who being at sea in a tempest, and being missed while all hands were on deck, was found half asleep in the cabin; and, being asked why he did not assist to save the ship, replied, he was thinking how to describe the storm?220 The money was voted, and nothing more of consequence passed that session in Parliament.
Both Houses thus complaisant and submissive, there wanted but the office of prime minister to glut the Favourite’s ambition: and no wonder that he, who had dared to strike the name of the first monarch in military glory in Europe from the list of Great Britain’s pensioners, only to gratify the feminine piques of the backstairs; and who had ventured successfully to remove Mr. Pitt from the command of that country which he had saved, restored, exalted;—no wonder such a Phaëton should drive over a ridiculous old dotard, who had ever been in everybody’s way, and whose feeble hands were still struggling for power, when the most he ought to have expected, was, that his flattery and obsequiousness might have moved charity to leave him an appearance of credit. It was absurd for him to stay in place; insolent to attempt to stay there by force, and impudent to pretend to patriotism when driven out with contempt. Against his will he was preserved from having a share in the infamy of the ensuing peace.
May 14th, the Duke221 acquainted the King that he would resign, who answered coldly, “Then, my Lord, I must fill up your place as well as I can.” Still Newcastle lingered; and, as he owned afterwards to the Duke of Cumberland, his friends had laboured to prevent the fatal blow. Lord Mansfield, he said, had pleaded with Lord Bute for above an hour, and could not extract from him a wish that the Duke should continue in the Treasury. Fox asked Lord Mansfield if this was true? He replied, “Not an hour, for I soon saw it was to no purpose.”
Thus disgraced, and disgracing himself, on the 26th the Duke of Newcastle resigned: and he, who had begun the world with heading mobs against the ministers of Queen Anne; who had braved the Heir-apparent222 of the new family, and forced himself upon him as godfather to his son; who had recovered that Prince’s favour, and preserved power under him at the expense of every minister whom that Prince preferred; and who had been a victorious rival of another Prince of Wales;223 was now buffeted from a fourth Court224 by a very suitable competitor, and was reduced in his tottering old age to have recourse to those mobs and that popularity which had raised him fifty years before; and as almost the individual crisis was revolved, with a scandalous treaty and a new prospect of arbitrary power, it looked as if Newcastle thought himself young again, because the times of his youth were returned, and he was obliged to act with boys!
Such pains, however, had been taken to disjoint his faction, that his exit from power was by no means attended with consolatory circumstances. The Duke of Devonshire would not resign, though he declared he would seldom or never go to council. Fox had warned him not to be too hasty in embarking in a party in which Pitt must be a principal actor; and remembering his Grace how large a share Pitt had had in planting the Tories at Court, and that, speaking of Legge, Pitt had said, “I will have no more ear for Whig grievances.” The rest of Newcastle’s friends were as little disposed to follow him: but that he might taste the full mortification of being deserted by those whom he had most obliged, whom he had most courted and most patronized, the clergy gave the most conspicuous example of ingratitude. For thirty years Newcastle had had the almost sole disposal of ecclesiastic preferments, and consequently had raised numbers of men from penury and the meanest birth to the highest honours and amplest incomes in their profession. At this very period there were not three bishops on the bench who did not owe their mitres to him. His first levée after his fall was attended but by one bishop,225 Cornwallis of Lichfield; who being a man of quality, and by his birth entitled to expect a greater rise, did but reflect the more shame on those who owed everything to favour, and scarce one of them anything to abilities.
The conduct of Lord Bute was not more wise than that of Newcastle. Instead of sheltering himself under that old man’s name from whatever danger there might be in making peace, the Earl was driving together all those whom he ought to have kept divided, and really seemed jealous lest himself should not have the whole odium of sacrificing the glories and conquests of the war; an infatuation that so far excuses him, as he must have thought he did a service to his country in restoring peace: but what must his understanding have been if he could think that peace would be a benefit, let the terms be what they would? He supposed, too, that Newcastle, having in opposition to Pitt declared for peace, could not retract, and be against the peace. This was not knowing Newcastle or mankind. The situation, too, was materially changed: the weight of Russia was transferred from the hostile to the friendly scale; Martinico was fallen; and Europe could scarce amass the symptom of a fleet. A mind less versatile than Newcastle’s could not want arguments against a precipitate treaty. Yet was it not Newcastle, nor a scandalous treaty that shook the Favourite’s power. It was his ignorance of the world; it was a head unadapted to government, and rendered still less proper for it by morose and recluse pride, and a heart that was not formed to bear up a weak head, that made him embark imprudently, and retreat as unadvisedly.
Lord Bute, on the resignation of the Duke of Newcastle, was immediately declared First Lord of the Treasury. George Grenville succeeded him as Secretary of State, and Sir Francis Dashwood was made his Chancellor of the Exchequer; a