208 Ch. 6. 1765 CONDUCT OF BEDFORD AND GRENVILLE. pride, his prerogative; for all these were aimed at by the alleged hostility to the Princess Dowager. Neither Bedford nor Grenville were capable of devising or of instigating the fraud which had been thus successfully practised upon their royal master; but it is difficult to acquit them altogether of the responsibility which attaches to accessories after the fact. Their eagerness to depress and mortify Bute made them willing to believe any tale, however improbable, which should flatter their animosity. Grenville, indeed, expressed surprise" when Halifax informed him that he had the King's sanction for inserting words to exclude the Princess; but he seems to have taken no pains to inquire respecting the reasons or motives which influenced His Majesty in such an extraordinary determination. A contemporary historian attributes the conduct of the ministers in this transaction to a desire for popularity; but though no motive could be too mean for the Halifaxes and the Sandwiches, the two principal ministers had little regard to mere popular applause. The Duke of Bedford had never courted it; and now that he was about to relinquish office, it is not likely that he would become a candidate for tribunitial honours. The chief act of his life, the negotiation of the peace of Paris, had been steadily pursued in opposition to public opinion; and while the regency bill was GRENVILLE'S CONTEMPT FOR POPULARITY. passing through Parliament, we shall presently see, that he disregarded popularity, even to the hazard of his life, in procuring the rejection of a foolish, but specious measure, which had received the sanction of the Lower House. Grenville carried his contempt of popularity to a fault. The people were represented in the Commons' House, and he knew no other exponent of their will. His measures, exactly adjusted to principle and precedent, were never qualified by any consideration of expediency. Had he been in Walpole's place in 1733, he would have braved a revolution rather than give up the excise scheme; and, after the fatal character of his colonial policy had been fully developed in 1770, he declared his opinion unaltered, and his determination, if he had the power, to enforce that policy, confirmed. 209 Ch. 6. 1765 undeceived. The King was soon undeceived. The very day The king is after the Lords had amended the regency bill at the instance of Halifax, the Lord Chancellor, who had been no party to these shameful intrigues for the exclusion of the Princess, in an audience of His Majesty, undeceived him as to the grounds upon which he had been induced to give his sanction to the late important alterations of the bill. The King, in the greatest perturbation, sent for Grenville, told him how he had been betrayed, and entreated him to get the obnoxious clause expunged. But the chief minister, having only a few days before rated His Majesty in no measured terms for having presumed, in his absence, to advise with 210 Ch. 6. 1765 Conduct of field. LORD MANSFIELD'S CONDUCT the Chancellor on a clause in the bill, felt no disposition to extricate him from this painful dilemma. He coldly declined to interfere, on the technical ground that the alteration in the bill had been made by His Majesty's authority. He would only go so far as to say, that if it was proposed in the House of Commons to insert the name of the Princess, he would not object to it. Lord Mansfield, who had been also summoned, though not a member of the Cabinet Council, entered the closet after Grenville had retired. But the Chief Justice was the last man in the empire, although perhaps the most able, to aid his Sovereign in such an exigency. His authority, derived from established pre-eminence as a statesman, no less than from the great office which he filled with such distinction, would doubtless have enabled him, even at this stage of the proceeding, to save the House of Parliament, of which he was the most illustrious ornament, from discredit; and his royal master who, at least, had never betrayed or insulted him, from unmerited anguish and mortification. Mansfield, however, was incapable of generosity; and his conduct, on this occasion, was consistent with the mean and selfish policy which marked his whole career. Early in the debate he might have prevented all this scandal, had he supported the Chancellor in opposing the doctrine of the Bedford party that the King's mother was not a P See Addenda H, p. 240. ON THE REGENCY BILL. member of the royal family. But on that occasion, instead of at once avowing the only opinion on the subject which such an intellect could entertain, the Chief Justice seemed to make a parade of his pusillanimity by declining to reveal the opinion which he admitted having formed. The young King, affected even to tears by the painful position in which he was placed, in vain, therefore, relied on the wisdom and loyalty of an exalted councillor who had long renounced the objects of political ambition. Mansfield's reply to the earnest and touching appeal addressed to him by his Sovereign had been concerted with Grenville before he entered the closet. It was in harmony with that of the minister. The House of Lords could not stultify itself. The First Lord of the Treasury could not ask one House of Parliament to reverse what the Secretary of State had proposed to another House of Parliament by command. Thus, with a refined and heartless mockery, it was made to appear that this unfortunate measure had emanated altogether from His Majesty's will and pleasure. The whole responsibility was to be thrown upon him. It is not surprising that the King was agitated with the strongest emotion. A perfectly sound mind might, under such circumstances, have been distracted; but when it is considered that George the Third had only just recovered from a fit of mental aberation, the wonder is that the excitement to which he was subjected did not produce a return of his malady. Ch. 6. 1765 211 212 Grenville. INFLEXIBILITY OF GRENVILLE. Ch. 6. The King, with that tenacity of purpose which belonged to him, still persevered with Grenville. 1765 The king and He expressed in gracious and winning terms an entire confidence in his minister's fidelity and zeal. The bill was now in the Commons, and Mr. Morton, Chief Justice of Chester, a gentleman known to be in the confidence of the Princess, had given notice of a motion to insert the name of Her Royal Highness when the bill was committed. Was that motion to be supported or opposed by His Majesty's ministers? And His Majesty desired Grenville freely to give him his opinion upon the question. The reply was that Her Royal Highness had better authorise somebody to say that she was perfectly well satisfied with what had already passed, and to decline this motion. The King, dissembling his chagrin, affected to acquiesce in the expediency of such a course, though he said he could take no part in the affair. Notwithstanding this rebuff, the King did not yet abandon all hope of melting the obduracy of his minister. On the next day, when Morton's motion was to be made, he treated Grenville with marked attention, and 'expressed more approbation of his conduct than he had done for a long time.'r Intrigues with the opposition. But while he thus flattered and amused the head of the Government, the King carried on a clandestine correspondence with the Opposition. Thwarted |