1763. POLICY OF BUTE. 109 had ceased to be minister, that influence continued. Finding that Grenville was not likely to prove the pliant tool he had expected to find him, it seems that, within a few weeks after his resignation, he made overtures to Pitt* with the view of supplanting his own nominee; and Grenville appears to have remonstrated strongly with his royal master for permitting Bute's interference with public affairs.† This clandestine correspondence continued, however, for some time, but is stated, on good authority, to have wholly ceased with the dissolution of the Grenville government. Duration of tration. Bute's administration must be dated from the retirement of Pitt in October, 1761, although he became nominally First Minis- Bute's administer on succeeding Newcastle, at the head of the Treasury, in the following summer. signed in April, 1763.‡ K. cannot live without my Lord B.; if he goes out anywhere, he stops, when he comes back, to ask of the yeomen of the guard my Lord B. is come yet, and that his lords, or people that are with him, look as mad as can be at it. The mob have a good story of the D. of Devonshire, that he went first to light the K., and the K. followed, leaning upon Lord B.'s shoulder; upon. which the Duke turned about, and desired to know which he was waiting upon?'-The Countess Temple to Earl Temple, December 17, 1762. - Grenville Correspondence. Duke of Newcastle to Earl of Hardwicke, June 30, 1763.— Rockingham Correspondence. Lord Bute makes many hugger-mugger visits to Richmond, in a way neither creditable to his master nor himself.'-Earl of Hardwicke to Hon. C. Yorke, July 26, 1761.- Rockingham Correspondence. He re The opinion of the first Lord Holland that, subsequently to the formation of the Rockingham administration, Lord Bute was not consulted in private by the King, was most decided; and as he lived in intimacy with Bute, his belief on that point is of value.' Mr. Allen in Lord John Russell's recently published Memoirs and Correspondence of Right Hon. Charles James Fox, vol. i. p. 67.-See also in the same page Lord Holland's letter to Mr. Ellis, November 11, 1765, to the same effect. This is corroborated by Bute's complaint of the King's ingratitude. The system of governing by secret. influence, of which Bute was the first minister, if not the original author, was carried on by other agents long after Bute had ceased to have any connection with the politics of the Court. 110 SERVICES OF FOX. CH. III. The principal act of this short administration has been already discussed; and if an indifferent peace is preferable to the most successful war, the successor of Pitt so far conferred a benefit upon the country. In the other great object of his policy he was not equally fortunate. We are ill-informed as to the extent to which Bute proposed to carry his scheme of prerogative. To suppose that he meant to follow the example of Strafford in superseding parliamentary government, and setting up the will of the Crown in its stead, is to deny him credit for ordinary knowledge of history, and of the temper and character of the times in which he lived. But a politician so shallow as Bute, might have thought that the exercise of a wide discretion by the Sovereign in the choice of his public servants, was compatible with the character and pretensions of a popular legislature. In fact, he did believe, at first, that the strength of the public men of England really lay in the corruption of the House of Commons; and, consequently, that by restoring purity and freedom to the electoral system, he should obtain a representative assembly submissive to the pleasure of the Crown. On discovering his mistake, he went into the opposite extreme. Final retirement of Fox. Bute's resignation was happily accompanied by the final retirement from public life of that notorious minister, whose practised hand had lately been employed in carrying through the Government measures by such violent and shameful means, as would, in sterner times, have cost him his head. But, instead of impeachment, Fox was to retire with honours and rewards. Some dispute, indeed, arose between the contracting parties as to the terms upon which Fox had undertaken to carry the peace. Bute considered that a peerage, together with a sinecure office for life,* which he had received * Writer of the Tallies and Clerk of the Rolls in Ireland. 1763. THE FIRST LORD HOLLAND. 111 on assuming the management of the House of Commons, was sufficient reward for the services of a few months, and that he was bound to resign his place of Paymaster. Fox, however, insisted that the peerage was simply the consideration for carrying the peace, and that this contract did not affect his vested interests in office. Lord Shelburne, a young man just entered upon public life, and who had been employed in negotiating the bargain between Bute and Fox, was appealed to, and admitted that, in his zeal for the public service, he had wilfully misrepresented to his chief the terms upon which Fox had consented to act. Bute excused his falsehood as a pious fraud. The fraud indeed, as Fox observed, was plain enough, but the piety was not so obvious. The result of course was, that Fox retained the lucrative place of Paymaster, out of which he had made his fortune, in addition to the peerage and the sinecure. Character of the me It has been the fashion of historians to deal leniently with the character of the first Lord Holland. The splendour of his son's reputation, the associations which surround mory of the late inheritor of his title, and the softening effect of time, relieve the harsh traits of the principal figure in this family of statesmen. Fox has, indeed, been described as a political adventurer; and this is the epithet usually employed when it is intended to cast the most offensive contumely upon a public man. But it is not easy to understand why it should be disreputable to take to public business as a profession, any more than to law, or medicine, or science, or art, or even letters. A tradesman's son who becomes Lord Chancellor is not necessarily assumed to have risen by unworthy means. Why should the same person be vilified if, by giving his talents and industry another direction, he should have attained the position of a Secretary of State? Can it be suggested that political science is a less arduous study than law or physic; or that no one can undertake it with credit who has not a certain position in society? If this term, political adventurer,' is intended to apply to every man who enters upon public life without private fortune, or any occupation which may enable him to maintain an independent position, it includes many of the greatest statesmen the country has produced since the Revolution. We may instance such names as Craggs, Walpole, Chatham and his son, Burke, Canning, Horner, and Huskisson. These men, and many others, who might be named, were in this sense political adventurers. The class of politicians to whom the phrase, in its opprobrious sense, is more appropriate, comprises those persons who, without any vocation for public business beyond the accident of birth or family connection, betake themselves to political pursuits, often for no other purpose than that of being provided for by employment in the public service. The public offices have always been occupied chiefly by such persons; and nothing but the jealousy of Parliament, and the increased vigilance of public opinion, have checked their intrusion into the higher departments of the State in preference to unpatronised merit. In fact, any man who enters upon political life with the same object that he would enter upon a regular profession, is an adventurer; but of this class, as many start from a position as from previous obscurity. History affords no ground for an invidious distinction in the quality and character of the public men who have come from different classes of society. The elder Fox and his great rival both entered upon public life as adventurers, inasmuch as neither was independent in respect of fortune. Fox had already dissipated his small patrimony; and the private fortune of Pitt was 100l. a year. Each of these men successively filled an office, the irregular emoluments of which, in time of war, were sufficient Fox and Pitt compared. 1763. THEIR RESPECTIVE CHARACTERS. 113 in a few years to create a considerable fortune. The Paymaster was entitled by usage of office to receive, in addition to his salary, a per centage upon all subsidies granted to foreign powers, and to retain in his hands, at a time when the rate of interest was five per cent., a balance of public money amounting to at least one hundred thousand pounds. The average perquisites of this office during the periods when it was held by Pitt and Fox can hardly have been less than 20,000l. a year. The salary was two thousand. Pitt, on his accession to this office, declined to receive any more than the salary; he directed the balance of public moneys to be transferred from the private credit of the Paymaster to the Exchequer; and the per centages on the subsidies he altogether renounced. Yet when he quitted office, his necessities obliged him to accept an allowance of 1,000l. a year from his brother-in-law, Lord Temple. The perquisites of office during a single twelvemonth would have sufficed to realise the capital value of this annuity. But Pitt, with notions of honour and delicacy too pure and refined for the comprehension of ordinary men, scorned to touch public money to which he felt that he had no legitimate claim, and preferred, for the relief of his necessities, to endure the weight of private obligation. Fox pursued a different conduct. The enormous gains of the Pay Office were to him, throughout his public career, a paramount consideration; the example of Pitt, whom he succeeded in this office, had not the slightest effect upon his coarse and venal nature; the self-denial of a noble integrity would appear to him as a freak of romance or ostentation; and the low morality of the times would rather admire the worldly wisdom of Fox than appreciate the magnanimity of his predecessor in office. Fox realised a large fortune from the profits of the Pay Office; and it is certain that he took to public life as a means of repairing his shattered fortunes. |