104 WHIG PREDOMINANCE ASSAILED. CH. III. precedent in the intemperate conduct of the great Whig statesman when enraged at the factious opposition which his Excise scheme had encountered. But it was enough to involve a man in this latter proscription that his relation or his patron had given cause of offence. The vengeance of the Court could condescend upon the humblest victims; and individuals in the lowest departments of the public service, excisemen and tide-waiters, were deprived of their bread because they had procured their appointments through the interest of some Lord or Member of Parliament who did not approve of the preliminary treaty. To these proceedings, Fox had the baseness and cruelty to lend himself; nor was his mercenary zeal for persecution restrained except by the limits of the law itself. He would have gone on to annul the patents of the last reign had he not been stopped by the warning of the law officers. Triumph of the The Court, triumphant, believed that their object was finally attained. Now, indeed, my son is King!' exclaimed the Princess Dowager, when she heard of the suborned vote of the House of Commons. 'Never more,' said the son, shall those Whig grandees be admitted to power.' But though Parliament had been tampered with, the great nobility insulted, and small men ruined, prerogative, so far from having its ascendancy secured, was in fact not advanced a step. These measures had, indeed, an effect just the contrary to that for which they were intended; instead of erasing party distinctions, and teaching public men to look for preferment to the Crown alone, they revived that old party spirit which had languished for nearly half a century. The entire predominance of the Whig interest at the accession of the House of Hanover left room for jealousies to spring up in the bosom of the party itself; and the schism which took place in the year following that event, under the 1763. POLICY OF GEORGE THE THIRD. Third. 105 guidance of the Earl of Sunderland, had never yet been healed. The opposite party, divided again into Tories and Jacobites, were unable to profit by these dissensions, and whatever changes took place in administration, whether Walpole or Newcastle were driven from power, their places were generally supplied from the great Whig connection. Policy of George the Third, coming to the throne George the with advantages which neither of his predecessors possessed, might, indeed, have abolished those old party distinctions which there was no longer any plausible pretence for maintaining. But instead of inviting to his service able and eminent men, without reference to the obsolete banners under which they had been ranged, the course which His Majesty pursued made it sufficiently plain, that his idea of suppressing party distinctions meant no more than the suppression of that great constitutional party whose leading principle it was to restrain monarchical power. Even this design was not hopeless, had it been attempted with caution and tact. The nation was disgusted with party, which, for the last twenty years, had meant an unprincipled struggle for place and power. The Whigs had no hold on public favour; they were considered, not without justice, as a proud and selfish aristocracy; and George the Third might have calculated on popular sympathy in shaking off the irksome domination of a few great families which had oppressed his predecessors, if he had not outraged popular prejudices by the means which he employed. A combination of two characters most odious to the English taste-a reputed minion and a Scot-was set up as the minister whom the King delighted to honour. That Great Commoner, as the people loved to call him, who owed his elevation to the favour of his countrymen, and who had justified their confidence. by elevating the English name to the height of power 106 Corruption BUTE'S ATTEMPT TO BRIBE THE CITY. сн. III. and grandeur, was set aside, to make way for this worthless upstart. A man whose public life had been an unbroken tenor of rapacity, and who had neither done, nor affected to do, aught for the benefit of his country, was put forward as the unscrupulous agent of a system founded on the ruin of all that was great and noble. Such was the repulsive form which government by prerogative had been made to assume. The Earl of Bute, sensible at last of the formidable hostilities which he had provoked, courted extended. popular approbation in support of his policy. The same means by which a parliamentary sanction had been obtained, were now put in force to procure addresses from municipal corporations in favour of the peace. Five hundred pounds were stated to be the lowest price of an address. The city were offered a bribe in the shape of fourteen thousand pounds towards the expenses of their new bridge; but that great corporation, which had taken a leading part in supporting the war policy of Pitt, and had made large profits by the war, was uncompromising in its opposition to the Court. It devolved, also, upon the new administration to provide means for defraying the expenses Financial measures. of that war, in the glory of which they had no participation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was Sir Francis Dashwood, a profligate man of fashion, without official or even ordinary political experience. A loan of three millions and a half was negotiated with so much ignorance of the money market, that the new stock rose almost immediately ten per cent.; and thus a sum of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds so easily became the profit of the speculators, that the public, not improbably in those times, were as much disposed to attribute such a result to malversation, as to incompetency on the * Anecdotes of the Earl of Chatham, vol. i. 1763. RESIGNATION OF BUTE. 107 part of the Government. The Ways and Means by which the interest of the new debt were to be provided for, were devised with similar folly. Upon cider, a home product of a particular district, was to be imposed the burden created by the late war; and this tax, equally impolitic and unjust, was to be raised by means of the Excise-a machinery so obnoxious, that the attempt even to make use of it had almost overthrown the great administration of Walpole, in the plenitude of its power. The voice of the country was loud against the new scheme of taxation; but, like the clamour of 1733, was directed chiefly against its interference with the liberty of the subject. Pitt, who knew little or nothing of finance, instead of exposing the real objections to the measure, represented with great eloquence the popular prejudice; but the House of Commons being so constituted as to be equally impervious to clamour from without and eloquence within, adopted the proposition of the Government by a majority which would have been sufficient to sanction the wisest and most patriotic measures. At this juncture, to the surprise of all men, the chief of the administration, and the founder Resignation of of that system of government upon which Earl Bute. it was based, announced his resignation. The reason, publicly assigned by Bute, for a step so abrupt and unexpected, was ill health-a pretence which appears to have been without any foundation. Want of support in the Cabinet of his own selection was stated by him, in a private letter, as the real cause of his retirement. But his motives, like those of other men in other actions of life, were probably a mixture of reasons and feelings which he himself could hardly define. The difficulties of Government must have been painfully sensible in his inexperienced and incompetent hands. A formidable opposition was growing up in Parliament; the unpopularity of the 108 GEORGE GRENVILLE. CH. III. minister out of doors was so great that he thought it necessary to go abroad in disguise, or attended by a body-guard of pugilists. Libels-which have tormented even the loftiest minds-assailed him with pitiless rancour. On the other hand, the inducements held out by office were much diminished. From a poor Scotch lord, to whom the emoluments of a place in the household of the Prince of Wales had been a principal means of subsistence, he had become, by the death of his wife's father, Mr. Wortley Montague, one of the wealthiest among the nobility; and his personal ambition had been gratified by the highest distinction which his Sovereign could confer. Yet, with all these reasons for retirement, it is probable that Bute intended only to withdraw for a time, until the storm should have blown over. This construction of the favoured minister's sudden retreat from power, would seem to be borne out by the nomination of his successor. George Grenville was, at his instance, and by previous concert, immediately appointed to the head of the Government; and Bute, who had, a few months previously, unceremoniously thrust this minister out of the Cabinet for the convenience of his temporary arrangement with Fox, might well have calculated on displacing him again, if it suited his purpose to do so; while Grenville's talents and political position could hardly have suggested any apprehension of rivalry to his patron. Grenville becomes Prime Minister. The prevalent opinion of the time was, that Bute's retirement was simulated; that he merely withdrew behind the scenes, directing everything as before, but preferring irresponsible to responsible power. It seems certain that Bute did not intend to resign power with office. He calculated on his influence with the King,* and, for a certain period after he *Mrs. Ryde was here yesterday; she is acquainted with a brother of one of the yeomen of the guard, and he tells her the |