Chapter VII: Book THE SECOND: 1810 to June, 1812 (1)

N.B.—Written in 1818, 1819, 1820, 1821. Transcribed in 1824.

Lord Grenville, who lived near Windsor, had very early intelligence of the King’s disorder; I think the Prince of Wales apprised him of the character and probable duration of the complaint. It had been intended to prorogue Parliament, which stood for November 1, but not for the dispatch of business. The King was too ill to sign the Commission for that day, and the two Houses on their meeting _adjourned_ for a fortnight, and continued by successive adjournments to avoid the transaction of all business till December 13. The physicians had in the meanwhile been examined before the Privy Council, the report of the evidence had been laid before the two Houses on November 29, and the news of the King’s amendment and probable recovery was immediately afterwards very sedulously and generally circulated.

The Prince of Wales cautiously or scrupulously abstained from all political concert with the Opposition, till official communications should be made to him from Ministers or from Parliament. He pushed that delicacy so far that he did not see Mr. Sheridan, who being to the full as desirous of appearing, as of being, his adviser, was ludicrously anxious to cancel so mortifying a circumstance. I was at some pains to inform both Lord Grey and Lord Grenville of this circumstance, but it made them more negligent of Mr. Sheridan. In every rational view of the subject it should have furnished a fresh motive, as well as facilities, for fixing him in their interests. The goodwill of a man, alike brilliant in society and in Parliament and very formidable at Court, might have been propitiated and perhaps purchased at a very cheap rate, without any sacrifice of principle or any surrender of dignity. A word of cordiality, a mark of confidence, or even the homage of outward civility would have done it; Mr. Sheridan, apt to resent slights more than injuries, was, with all his impatience of real obligations, very sensible of petty kindnesses.[78] A small favour soothed his vanity, a great one offended his pride. Incapable of gratitude, he was yet never hard to please. His mortification at the Prince’s neglect would have rendered him more open to little attentions. But Lord Grenville never saw him, and Lord Grey was hardly civil to him when he did; the first, partly from a total want of habits with him, and partly from a certain austerity of manners which indisposed [him] to cultivate the society of dissolute men; the latter, from an honest but somewhat over-charged disdain of all trickery and artificial characters.

If Mr. Sheridan regarded his interests only, he must have perceived that favour with the Prince could alone promote them in a Ministry formed by those two Lords. If, as is most probable, he was on this, as on other occasions, swayed chiefly by his vanity, he must have panted for the opportunity of gratifying it, by making those who had slighted him so unmercifully feel his importance. When the Prince soon afterwards took an avowed interest in the proceedings of Parliament, and communicated to the two Lords his intention of employing them in the formation of his Ministry, he resumed his usual habits with Mr. Sheridan. No attempt to gain the confidence of the latter was even then made by Lord Grey or Lord Grenville. The arrangement suggested by himself seemed to disprove any sinister designs against the new Administration; yet it was coldly received, and, I believe, peremptorily rejected by Lord Grenville. Before the appointments were settled, and as if to relieve the new Government from the painful necessity of excluding such abilities from their Cabinet, Mr. Sheridan applied for the Secretaryship of Ireland. That office would have removed him during the greater part of the year from London. It bespoke, consequently, no premeditated design of securing by assiduity that much-dreaded ascendancy over the mind of the Prince, which, when admitted to his society, his long intimacy, delightful conversation, and exquisite wit, ever subservient to his purposes, enabled him to assume. There were indeed other and grave objections to the appointment. Perhaps they were insurmountable. But Lord Grenville and Lord Grey showed upon that and every other occasion a repugnance to consult or to court him, and possibly a disinclination to serve him, which he was too keen-sighted not to perceive and too vain not to resent.

I have related these circumstances somewhat out of the order of time, that I may not interrupt my narrative of events, which flowed from them but did not occur till a later period. Lord Grey did not conceal his chagrin at the inaction of the Prince during the first six weeks of his father’s incapacity. In the only audience I had with the Prince of Wales, he told me that he wished to avoid all reproach, but adhered firmly to his opinions of 1788. He let me see, however, that meddling tale-bearers had reported incautious expressions of Lord Grey to him. He mentioned him, nevertheless, with regard; and though he quoted a foolish song of Captain Morris, in which Grey had been styled, “The youth who tossed his head so high,” or some such phrase, he spoke of his impetuosity in terms not inconsistent with kind intentions or even with friendship and affection. Without saying anything positive, he was always very dexterous in conveying an impression to those he talked with.[79] Mine on this occasion was, that he would place his Government in the hands of the Whigs, but that he would take his own time and way of doing it, and that he had been nettled at the observations to which his delay had given rise, or in which their impatience had indulged.

An expression of Lord Grey had been officiously reported to the Prince as a communication to him. “If,” said Lord Grey, “the Prince would but hold up his finger, he would have everything his own way.” But the Prince conveyed to him and to Lord Grenville, through Mr. Adam, his determination not to see either of them. He hinted, at the same time, that they might serve him, by asking questions in Parliament concerning the steps taken by the Ministers to apprise him of the state of the King’s health and of the public affairs. To Mr. Adair,[80] who had injudiciously sought and obtained an audience, he spoke with acrimony of the two Lords and of the late Administration (Lord Moira and myself excepted). He seemed hurt at the impatience expressed at his supineness, and said, “They think me a nervous man; by God! they shall find me an _Homme de nerfs_,” with much that betrayed irritation and dislike.

This was early in December. Lord Grey set off soon afterwards to Lady Grey, who was brought to bed in Northumberland. The Prince began to speak with less reserve of his resentment at Mr. Perceval’s conduct. Some manœuvres, and among them the introduction of the Chancellor[81] to the King as a _medical expedient_, practised by the Queen, the Ministers, and the physicians, without any concert with the Prince, greatly exasperated him. He now saw Mr. Sheridan frequently, and those connected with his Household avowed their intention of voting against Mr. Perceval’s resolutions. They no longer scrupled to consult with the Whigs on the means of securing an attendance. Their efforts, however, did little against the first resolutions, which related to the mode of supplying the deficiency of the Regal power, and which were carried on December 20, 1810, by 269 to 157.

In the debate Mr. Perceval displayed some talent and more spirit. Several of the Grenville branch of Opposition, as well as Mr. Canning, voted with Ministers; they both, however, announced an intention of opposing some, if not all, the restrictions which Mr. Perceval meant to impose. The reverence for a precedent from which Mr. Pitt had derived popularity in 1788, together with some faint hopes of the King’s recovery, outweighed the influence of Carlton House and the strong objections to a clumsy and unconstitutional contrivance. The latter were nevertheless enforced in an argumentative speech of Mr. Horner, which remained unanswered in debate, and is not much weakened by the written but unspoken oration attributed in _Cobbett’s Register_ to Mr. Croker. On the same day Mr. Perceval apprised the Prince of Wales officially of his intended motion. The Prince concerted his answer with Mr. Sheridan, and the Princes of the Blood Royal signed and printed a sort of remonstrance to the measure.[82]

In the House of Lords, Lord Grenville supported the resolutions; Lord Grey was absent. The management of the debate on the part of Opposition fell on Lord Lansdowne and myself, and we flattered ourselves that the constitutional objections to the strange proceeding resorted to were as clearly stated and as forcibly urged in our speeches and protest as they had been either in 1788 or in the House of Commons. For the learning and research I was chiefly indebted to Mr. Allen, who, assisted by some letters written by Doctor Lawrence and printed in _Cobbett’s Register_ in 1803 and 1804, furnished me and Mr. Horner with many views of the subject and precedents from our early history strictly in point, which had escaped the researches of Lord Loughborough, Mr. Burke, and Mr. Hargrave in 1788.

The subsequent resolutions in favour of restricting the Prince Regent were carried by smaller majorities. The House of Commons had been called over. The prospect of the Prince’s accession to power grew more certain; his hostility to Mr. Perceval more apparent. There were, therefore, stronger motives for resisting the second than the first string of resolutions. They passed, however, though by scanty majorities, such as 24, 16, 19. The fifth resolution was amended in a particular of some importance, on the motion of Lord Gower, by a majority of 13, the Ministry voting in the minority. Nothing remarkable occurred in the discussions. Lord Grenville’s friends did not deem it necessary to sacrifice the views of the party and the substantial object of a Government, founded on the principles they approved, to a pedantic, technical, and almost superstitious reverence for his arguments of 1788; when, if the question was the same, the circumstances of the country and the reasons of State were entirely dissimilar. Mr. Sheridan was observed to be neither brilliant in his oratory nor cordial or zealous in his conduct.

In the House of Lords, Lord Grenville allowed himself to be more harassed by former opinions than was convenient to his party purposes, or indeed at all necessary to the preservation of any reasonable or substantial consistency. In deference to an ideal, prudish, and pedantic notion of nominal rather than real consistency, he confined all his opposition to particular words. He thus enabled Lord Liverpool, after the Committee had, upon Lord Lansdowne’s motion, omitted the mention of restrictions in the first resolution, in which Lord Grenville concurred, to reconcile him to voting with Ministers on the other subsequent questions, by moving himself to omit some few words to which Lord Grenville had taken exception and having the whole in a shape which that Lord was pledged to support. Lord Liverpool seized the moment and mode of accomplishing his purpose with admirable quickness and dexterity; and as two peers, Lord Ashburton,[83] from simplicity and blind reliance on Lord Grenville, and Lord Auckland,[84] from a want of address truly unaccountable in so old a politician, followed Lord Grenville’s vote and opinion against his interests and his wishes, our small majority was lost. The resolutions passed the Committee in a shape somewhat less consistent with themselves, but sufficient to secure the objects of Mr. Perceval and the concurrence of the House of Commons.

On Committees no proxies are allowed; on the Report the Ministerialists called for them, with a hope of reinstating the words which Lord Lansdowne’s motion in the Committee had omitted. We determined to resist the use of proxies. But our objections could not arise till they were called for; they could not be called for till a division; and according to parliamentary usage, at least in the Lords, no speech can be made and no question put during a division. It followed that when our teller, Lord Lauderdale, peremptorily refused to mark them, a scene of great embarrassment ensued. We were like the characters in _The Critic_, at a “deadlock.” The altercation and confusion increased, and I am afraid I clenched my fist, and, upon a peer offering to rise, swore aloud that, “By God, no man should speak!” At length one of the tellers, who had alone the right to open their mouths, moved an adjournment during pleasure, and on the House being resumed, the discussion on the propriety of receiving proxies commenced. We insisted that none had been called for in 1788. We had little else to allege in favour of our doctrine, for the notion (however constitutional) that we were a Convention and not a Parliament, was at variance with the recent decision of the House.

Lord Stanhope,[85] however, drew a very ingenious inference from the form of a proxy, which is grounded on “_the permission of our Lord the King, that Session obtained_,” or some such words. He contended the privilege could not be exerted in a case where it was manifest from the matter in hand that the permission on which it rested could never have been given. This argument, whether plausible or really sound, was sufficient to satisfy what Lord Stanhope called “the Whig majority of Peers.” Those present deserved that appellation, and proved that “_les absents ont tort_,” by voting that the proxies, which would have placed them in a minority, were inadmissible.[86] The resolution was, I think, tenable and perhaps constitutional, but it was voted by persons who probably did not require that recommendation to make it go down. Lord Stanhope, delighted alike with the uproar and the success, embraced me with his long arms as we went downstairs, and whispered in my ear, “This, my dear _Citoyen_, is rare fun. If I could often have such nights as these, I would live in the House of Lords: it is such high fun.”

This was on January 4, 1811. On the 5th, Lord Liverpool moved back the original words of the first resolution, and they were admitted without a division. It was a singular coincidence that these debates, arising from the lunacy of the King, were attended by another monarch who had been deposed in substance, if not in form, for a similar calamity. The King of Sweden[87] was under the Throne during the greater part of these discussions.

On January 6, in compliance with commands conveyed through Mr. Adam, Lord Grenville had an audience of the Prince of Wales at Carlton House. His Royal Highness began by informing him that he must consider the communication as made jointly to him and to Lord Grey, the latter unluckily being not yet returned from Northumberland. His immediate object was advice how to frame an answer to the address which would shortly be presented to him by both Houses. He then spoke with much apparent feeling of the embarrassments of his own situation, adverted to the difficulties of forming a strong Government for the conduct of affairs in the House of Commons, condemned all exclusions of persons, and after acknowledging some personal dislike of Mr. Canning and glancing at the grounds of it, _viz._, his intimacy with the Princess, he indicated the convenience and almost recommended a coalition with him. He spoke more directly of his wish to reinstate the Duke of York, and he conversed on public and foreign measures, in the judgment of Lord Grenville, both ably and satisfactorily. There was sufficient concurrence of opinion on these topics between him and Lord Grenville to remove all apprehension of a separate will in the Court and the Ministry, should the Whigs possess the latter.

At the close of the conversation he directed Lord Grenville to consult with Lord Grey and Lord Moira, and referred to him and to them the propriety of forming a new Administration and the consideration of the means of completing it; adding, that he hoped all their arrangements might be prepared by the time he assumed the functions of Regent under the authority of the Act of Parliament. Lord Grenville, after stating generally his view of public affairs, declined entering into the details of arrangements till further communication with Lord Grey and those of his friends immediately conversant with the House of Commons; he deemed it, however, an act of fairness and duty to state explicitly his views of one subject, on which the Prince of Wales had dwelt with so much emotion and honourable feeling—the reinstatement of the Duke of York. He deplored, he said, the treatment the Duke had met with; he had almost said, could such an expression be pardoned, that he felt compassion for him, for he had been, in his judgment, misrepresented and slandered. But notwithstanding the concurrence of many of his best friends in this view of what had passed, he feared that the obstacles to the reinstatement of the Duke of York, arising from the temper of the House of Commons and from the prejudices and opinions of the great body of the public, and of the Whigs more especially, were quite insurmountable. He would cheerfully consult with others on that subject, and certainly with an earnest desire to further His Royal Highness’s wishes, but he could not conceal from him that he had little hope of finding it practicable to reinstate the Duke of York as Commander-in-Chief.

Such was the substance of that conversation as related to me by Lord Grenville himself. He lost no time in communicating the result of this audience to his friends in town; and I endeavoured on that occasion to impress on his mind the necessity of prosecuting the Spanish war, and the propriety of discountenancing by some legislative acts the disposition, too prevalent in our Courts, of harassing and if possible crushing the liberty of the press. These were the two points on which I thought our leading Whigs of that day stood most in need of admonition, and I believe Mr. Horner and Sir Samuel Romilly agreed with me.

On Wednesday, January 9, Lord Grey arrived in London. The Prince saw him next day, and was yet more communicative than he had been with Lord Grenville. The result, on the subject of the Duke of York, was nearly the same. When the Prince of Wales suggested that the accession of Mr. Canning would strengthen his new Government in the House of Commons, Lord Grey, ever artless, open, and manly, exposed the impolicy of weakening the attachment of old friends by a precarious connection with new or doubtful ones. The Prince, either designedly or accidentally, touched on a subject of some embarrassment—Lord Grenville’s auditorship.[88] He hinted at the difficulty or even impossibility of uniting it again with the Treasury. He very pertinently remarked that Lord Grenville’s recent correspondence with Mr. Perceval, in which he had scrupled to draw an order for the issue of monies upon a warrant from the Treasury, added to the embarrassment, by showing that one of these offices was in certain cases a check upon the other.

Lord Grey and Lord Grenville drew up without delay an answer to the two Houses, which was to be delivered on the 11th. The draft arrived at Carlton House as the Prince was sitting down to dinner on the 10th, and, as ill-fortune would have it, Mr. Sheridan dined with him on that day. The paper became the topic of conversation and criticism after dinner. According to the report of Mr. Adam, who was present, Mr. Sheridan inveighed against the substance and ridiculed both the composition and the authors, till the Prince swore he would not send it and requested Mr. Sheridan to alter it or to frame a new one. He seized with great avidity and emphatically approved of a remark made by that gentleman, for which, to say the truth, there was some foundation. “It was impossible,” said Sheridan, “for a man who, like Lord Grenville, had voted for the first resolutions and even for some of the most offensive restrictions, to frame such an answer as would suit a Prince who wished to convey his unequivocal disapprobation of both.” The Prince sent back the paper with many alterations and comments, and much underlined; and he directed the two Lords to improve the form, but to incorporate the substance of his interlineations and remarks into the answer.

In the meanwhile, or rather at the same moment, Mr. Adam brought this account to Lord Grey at my house in Pall Mall.[89] He related with some asperity the behaviour of Mr. Sheridan, who shortly afterwards followed him. Lord Grey, with great dignity but with much propriety and good temper, observing that it was impossible for him or Lord Grenville to be responsible for sentiments they had not written, drove off to Camelford House. Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Adam, flushed with wine and irritated by dispute, argued the question over again with considerable warmth. Mr. Sheridan at first alleged that he did not know that the two Lords had been directly and exclusively entrusted to draw up the paper; but Mr. Adam contended, and indeed proved, that Mr. Sheridan was fully aware of it. Mr. Sheridan then maintained, with some plausibility, that till they were actually Ministers they were not technically in a responsible situation, and that Lord Grenville’s circumstances not only did not confer an exclusive right to advise on such a subject, but actually disqualified him from doing so with effect or propriety. The two Lords withdrew their paper, and one of Mr. Sheridan’s composition was delivered. It expressed strongly enough, but not very happily either in thought or in language, the Prince’s disapprobation of the late proceedings.

Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, not satisfied with barely withdrawing their paper, deemed it more fair and honourable to explain, at this very early stage of their official connection with the Prince Regent, their sense of the indignity and inconvenience which might arise from the interference of unauthorised advisers in transactions for which they should be practically and constitutionally responsible. Such a declaration, however open, was bold and injudicious; for it was not absolutely called for, though it might be justified by the occasion. Yet had they explained themselves in an audience with the Prince Regent, the firmness of their tone and the soundness of the principle they had to enforce might have produced some salutary impression on His Royal Highness: though they could hardly have prevented occasional recurrence of such events with a Prince of natural levity, whose habits were formed to very familiar intercourse not only with Mr. Sheridan but with many persons much further removed from the character and capacity of ostensible advisers. But the passion for pen and ink was strong upon Lord Grenville during the whole of that season. It outweighed every other consideration. The two Lords sent a laboured remonstrance to the Prince, in which he was taken to task for his conduct. The respective duties of a Minister who advises and of a Prince who is advised were expounded in a manner highly constitutional, but not withal very conciliatory from two statesmen on the eve of their appointment.

There can be little doubt that the first use made of this paper was to show it to Mr. Sheridan. There can be as little that he, sore at the whole transaction, bitterly ridiculed the performance, and laboured to affix on the authors of it the design of riding the Prince with a sharp curb and stinging lash which they had not even the caution to conceal till they had reached the saddle. “He antedates the hatred due to power,” said Pope to Lord Cobham; and the same thought was applied in fifty different ways to his relation Lord Grenville by Mr. Sheridan, who, in venting his resentment on this unlucky affair, gave an impression of the haughty demeanour of the two Whig Lords which he could never afterwards efface from the mind of the Regent. He wrote a long narrative of what passed in a letter to me.[90]

I have dwelt more on this occurrence, because I am persuaded that it indisposed the Regent’s mind, and had a great effect in determining his subsequent conduct. He professed himself, however, so anxious to remove all misunderstanding that he condescended to come to me in the gout and to explain for near three hours at my couch side in Pall Mall the whole proceeding. He assured me that he looked forward with eagerness to the two Lords completing their arrangements; and that he was satisfied that on nothing, except the answer regarding the restrictions, he should ever wish to consult with anybody but Lord Grenville and those with whom he acted. Notwithstanding these assurances, there is reason to suspect that he complained of the two Lords to others besides Mr. Sheridan, for Lord Yarmouth[91] made some significant remarks on their imagining themselves more necessary to the Regent than they really were.

The difficulties in forming a Ministry were great. The Grenvilles desired to negotiate with Mr. Canning; others of our party, and Mr. Whitbread in particular, would never have been brought to consent to it. Lord Grenville was also unwilling either to resign his auditorship or to relinquish the Treasury. In the course of discussion on the latter point his evil genius dipped him again in pen and ink, and he argued for his profits and places in a manner which, though neither unreasonable nor unnatural, was more becoming a merchant than a statesman aspiring to power and fame. Such a man should consider even fair-earned emolument as a secondary and sometimes an incompatible object. Mr. Whitbread was not less stubborn or less offensive in his resistance to any union, direct or indirect, of the two offices. He acknowledged all danger from such a measure, either in itself or as a precedent, to be a mere chimera; he did not even dwell much on the violation of constitutional principle which it seemed to involve. The practical advantage of a Whig Administration, he owned, far outweighed all such considerations; but he had, it seemed, in public and private, held language on this and similar topics, which would expose him to the charge of inconsistency, should he acquiesce in any such arrangements. Having put a question, he said, the year before, to Mr. Perceval, whether Mr. Yorke received his salary as teller while First Lord of the Admiralty, and having been answered in the negative, he could never bring himself to defend Lord Grenville’s receiving the salary of auditor while he was First Lord of the Treasury.

After the matter had been discussed among us with great pertinacity and some asperity on both sides, it was at last compromised, I know not how, by the two Lords. Other difficulties in the distribution of places no doubt occurred, but many I have forgotten, and many never reached me. Gout continued to confine me to my bed for some time. Lord Grey acted throughout with judgment, temper, and firmness: he gave no reasonable cause of dissatisfaction to recent and younger partisans; he conciliated and gratified the old friends of Mr. Fox.

I had some scruples about the Spanish war. Lord Grenville, from economy, Lord Grey, from a propensity to criticise military movements, were disposed to contemplate it with less hope, and possibly with less zeal, than myself. But as they agreed on the immediate necessity of supplying Lord Wellington’s army with reinforcements and vigorously supporting the plans in which he was engaged, I saw no reason for reviving the shades of difference we might have had on the origin or early progress of the war, nor for exacting a previous concurrence of opinion in certain contingencies which had not yet occurred. I was willing to take my chance of the zeal which the conduct and management of the war would inevitably have inspired in such ardent and sanguine minds as Lord Grey’s and Mr. Whitbread’s.

While, however, delays occurred in forming a new Ministry, those in possession did not remain inactive. Favoured by the Queen, and aided by at least one of the physicians, they worked with great assiduity and address on the affections, the fear, the vanity, and, some say, the pecuniary interests of the Prince of Wales. At one time, the King’s disorder had taken a new turn, seemed to hold out great hopes of a speedy recovery, or was likely to terminate ere long in a restoration of his intellect or in death. At another, the pressure of public business called for a stable Government, and the financial operations of the State could not be conducted with safety or advantage till the persons entrusted with the confidence of the executive Government were known. The effect of a clamour against Roman Catholics, the popularity which Mr. Perceval might give to the Princess, the consequences of any change on the King’s health, and, above all, the reproaches to which the Prince would thereupon be exposed, were artfully insinuated by the partisans of the Ministers and the Queen, and perhaps really felt by others who had more direct influence over his mind as well as the opportunity of impressing their views in softer moments. The Minister was admitted to the presence of the King, and the Queen wrote instantly an account of the interview to her son. I was not allowed to copy the letter, but the substance of it was as follows: “To assure her dearest son that she was persuaded he would be highly gratified to hear that the King was improved in health; that he had seen Mr. Perceval, who was much satisfied with his whole appearance; that he had held a reasonable conversation, and inquired with great interest about all that had been done; that he had expressed himself with kindness towards the Prince, and pleased at his conduct _pending the business_.” She added that she “avoided all delay in conveying such agreeable information.”

The Prince, though aware of the artifice, and even diverted at the formal expression of, _pending the business_, which he shrewdly observed was “no woman’s phrase, but a lawyer’s,” was nevertheless much agitated and intimidated by the letter. Such fears were said to be improved upon by Sir Henry Halford,[92] who repeated observations to the King, affected to dread the consequences of any change of Ministers, not only on the disorder, but on the life, of the King, and is much belied if he did not convert his professional access to the Prince of Wales to purposes purely political. The Duke of Cumberland observed in a letter, “Vaughan (Sir Henry Halford) has behaved nobly by us all.” I cannot vouch for the fact of his active interference, but accounts of it reached me through channels worthy of credit, and they were generally believed.

On January 21, 1811, Lord Grey and Lord Grenville informed the Prince Regent by letter that they were ready to undertake the Government, but advised him to institute a fresh inquiry into the state of the King’s health; and if it should appear probable that His Majesty would be able to resume the exercise of the Regal functions _within a few weeks_, then and in that case, they recommended him not to change the Ministers; though they disclaimed all approbation, much less adoption, of their system of policy being implied from their recommendation, or from the Prince Regent’s compliance with it by continuing them in office. If the result of the inquiry was different, they then repeated their readiness to submit without delay to the Prince Regent the appointments which they should recommend to His Royal Highness.

On the evening of the 25th, the Prince Regent, after stating to Lord Moira, Lord Hutchinson, and Mr. Adam the agitation of his mind and imploring them to do justice to his feelings, sent the two last to Camelford House to inform Lord Grey and Lord Grenville that, in consequence of the report of physicians and the probability of the King’s recovery, he had resolved not to remove the Ministers; he expressed his hopes that the two Lords would approve of his determination and his sense of the disinterested as well as judicious advice they had given. He afterwards saw them, Mr. Ponsonby, myself, and others; referred his determination merely and exclusively to the report of the King’s health, which, whether true or false, would, he said, subject him to so much reproach if he did anything to aggravate his disorder, that he must continue for a while with men whom he hated and despised. He then proceeded to abuse them without measure, and in many particulars without justice, declaring that he never had and never could “break bread” in the house of any one of them. His public reception of Mr. Perceval with the resolution of the two Houses was not only cold but offensive. When a Privy Council was held at Carlton House and he took the oath of Regency, the bust of Mr. Fox was ostentatiously displayed in the apartment.

In his letter to Mr. Perceval announcing his determination to preserve him in office, he pointedly declared that an apprehension of interfering with the progress of his father’s recovery was the consideration which _alone_ dictated that decision. He lamented the situation in which the Regency Bill had placed him, said of it that it was most difficult to reconcile it to the principles of the Constitution, and broadly hinted throughout that nothing but peculiar circumstances could have brought him to any communication or concert with men so obnoxious to him. They, however, lacked some of that high and jealous honour which distinguished Lord Grey, and were not so alive as Lord Grenville to the necessity of preserving the constitutional relation of Prince and Ministry in all its purity. Foreseeing the practical consequences of their temporary continuance in office, they submitted without a murmur to the indignity of being disavowed and reviled. They consoled themselves with the prospect of riveting their power, either by intimidating or cajoling the person who, in the first instance, conferred it upon them so ungraciously and so reluctantly.

Such seems to me the solution of their conduct. With respect to the Prince Regent, I am inclined to believe that the motives he alleged had really some weight in determining him, though some that he suppressed had as much or more. Persons, indeed, have carried their refinement in suspicion so far as to imagine that the Queen’s letter, the interviews with Lord Grey and Lord Grenville and with their friends, and the rudeness to Mr. Perceval, were all parts of a scheme, concerted like the plot of a comedy with the Duke of Cumberland, the Lord Chancellor, the Queen, and the Prince Regent; and that the resolution to connect himself with those whom he affected to style his enemies was taken very early, and produced by the high offers which Mr. Perceval made in the arrangement for the Household, and by the suggestions which the Royal Family, and even the mad King himself, were instructed to make to him during the fortnight in which Lord Grey and Lord Grenville were occupied in preparing a Ministry. Such duplicity is surely incredible, especially as it would have been unnecessary. It is, however, true that the old King’s wishes on one important point were urged by himself in an interview with the Prince Regent, _viz._, on the reinstatement of the Duke of York. The facility with which the Ministers engaged to comply with that measure formed a strong contrast, in the mind of the Regent, with the scruples and hesitations of Lord Grey and Lord Grenville on the subject.

Whether he ascribed the backwardness of the two Lords to want of will or want of power, he drew, no doubt, an inference unfavourable to the Whigs, as either from principle less compliant with the wishes of a Court, or from the state of parties less capable of promoting them. The position into which the Regent had cast himself, whether from design or accident, was, while it lasted, peculiarly adapted to secure the gratification of any personal object he had in view. One party was full of devices to obtain his favour; the other, of forbearance not to forfeit it. This did not escape the friends of the Duke of York; and Lord Lauderdale, in particular, saw the advantage of the conjuncture for obtaining his reinstatement. He urged that measure, which in all sincerity he thought just and wise, with more warmth of friendship to the Duke than consideration for the interests of the party to which he belonged. He persuaded others, and perhaps himself, that by allowing it to be accomplished during that intermediate state of Ministry and Opposition, the Whigs might escape the unpopularity of doing it with the public and the odium of resisting it with the Prince Regent. Mr. Sheridan, with more shrewdness and pleasantry, advised the Regent to wait till his father’s predicted recovery should enable him to resume his functions, and then to urge _him_ to adopt the measure.

The Duke of York behaved with dignity, delicacy, and propriety. He avowed his hopes of ultimate reinstatement, but he deprecated so unpopular an act at the commencement of his brother’s administration of affairs. The Regent, however, urged by his family, encouraged by his Ministers, prompted by his pride, and swayed by some generosity of affection, replaced him.

Lord Milton,[93] against the wishes of many of our party, moved an address in censure of this step. He divided only 47. It must be acknowledged that among that small number were to be found some of the best names in the House of Commons.

The impression made on the Regent by Lord Grenville’s reluctance, Mr. Perceval’s cordial support, and Lord Milton’s open opposition, to a measure vindicating the honour of his family and earnestly desired by himself, was, no doubt, like that avowed by King William to the Duke of Wharton. “After all,” said King William, “the Tories are the best Ministers for a King.” “Yes,” replied the Duke, “but Your Majesty is not King of the Tories.”[94] It was the endeavour of Mr. Perceval to preclude the application of such a reply, and to make the Regent as much King of the Tories as of the Whigs; and in that endeavour he signally succeeded. The Regent kept up for some time his usual habits of private intercourse with members of the Opposition. He dined at Lord Grey’s upon his own invitation. He there authorised Lord Hutchinson to insinuate his good wishes, if not actually to use his name, in canvassing the Irish Peerage in favour of Lord Leitrim, the Whig candidate for a representative seat in the House of Lords, then vacant. His situation, as it respected our party, was indeed most anomalous. When he avowed any hostility to his ostensible Ministers, we were bound by the fundamental principles of our party to condemn his conduct as unconstitutional; when he betrayed any approbation of them, we were not backward in stigmatising his conduct as unsteady, insincere, and deceitful to us. Such a state of things could not last, and his cordiality with the Whigs, whether real or affected in the outset, visibly declined during the summer. I have been prolix in relating the facts, and rigidly scrupulous in conveying my impression of the motives of the Prince Regent, because I am satisfied that his character will be judged by posterity, or at least that portion of posterity which forms the future political circle of England, with reference to his conduct during this period of his life.

A letter from General FitzPatrick[95] to his brother Lord Ossory proves that experienced observers formed upon the same data a different judgment, and as it is more favourable to His Royal Highness than my own, I subjoin it, that his reputation may have the benefit of so indulgent a testimony from a man of acknowledged sagacity and honour, accurately informed, and not swayed by any prepossession in his favour.

_Thursday._

DEAR BROTHER,

I have had two very long audiences at Carlton House, and have
consequently been let into the minute details of _all_ that
has passed, as well as _all_ the letters, papers, etc., that
have been written in the course of the transactions that have
preceded the Prince’s final determination not to make any
change in the Government. Much as I was prepossessed that
his decision had been wrong, both with respect to his own
character, to the public interests, and towards the persons
to whom he had given his confidence, I must confess that he
has succeeded in convincing me that under the very particular
and unexampled difficulties of his situation, he has adopted
the only line of conduct he possibly could, without exposing
himself to the most odious imputations of destroying the
sanguine hopes of his father’s recovery and even endangering
his life, in order to establish an inefficient and feeble
Government, probably of very short duration, and of no power to
act with any real advantage to the public interests, or to face
or struggle with any of the difficulties which threaten the
security of the _chose publique_ from all quarters. In taking
this resolution, however, though he cannot be justly charged
with having departed from the rules of honour or _bonne foi_,
it is certainly unfortunate for himself that he did not make a
more early communication of it to those to whom he had given
his confidence, as it throws upon his conduct the appearance
of weakness, unsteadiness, and failure in point of firmness,
to which many will be more inclined to ascribe it than to the
motives of filial duty and affection upon which he himself
entirely founds it. This decision they themselves (I mean the
two G.G.’s)[96] had recommended at an earlier period in case of
a prospect of speedy recovery: and that case is now represented
to the Prince to be arrived. Upon the whole, however, it is
evident that he is the victim of a Court intrigue, managed by
the Queen and the Ladies of Windsor, a treacherous brother—the
D. of C.,[97] and an intriguing, meddling physician.

He is, in his present temper, as much indisposed and, in his
heart, as adverse to his Ministers as possible; but how long
this disposition may endure is somewhat doubtful, for if the
King be really so far recovered as to become an actor in the
conspiracy himself, he will be as tractable as they can wish
him. If you are inclined not to give him credit for all the
filial piety he professes, his anxiety to do what his father
will approve is (whether through fear or affection) excessive.
He is already in the full conviction that the King, having
been made acquainted with the state of things, has expressed
his perfect reliance upon the Prince of Wales doing whatever
is most right and proper in his situation. I believe all the
physicians do sincerely think the recovery probable, though
perhaps not, as Halford has said, highly so in _three months_;
but surely it does appear most strange that the Chancellor and
Perceval should be permitted to see and talk upon business
with him, and one of the physicians hold an intercourse upon
politics with him, when he is not sufficiently recovered to be
allowed to see the Queen or any one of his family. The leaders
of Opposition suppress their disappointment (if they feel any),
as becomes them. As to the number of guests who were invited
and ready to fall to with craving appetites, it is natural
they should feel a little as Sancho did upon the physicians
ordering every dish to be removed from the table. As none of
the feast would have come to my share, I could, of course, feel
no disappointment. You do me justice in believing that I needed
no great stock of philosophy to be contented with _otium_
even _sine dignitate_, excepting that of closing my political
career—what the course of my life seemed little to have fitted
me for an independent Knight of the Shire[98] in the House of
Commons. My love to all your house. I rejoice to hear V. S.[99]
is going on well.

Yours affectly.

R. F.

General Fitzpatrick had refused all office on the ground of his declining health. He retained his good sense and pleasant conversation, but he suspected that the vigour of his mind was somewhat impaired. The above letter certainly betrays a facility of belief in the professions of the great, for which in his more active days he was by no means remarkable.

I now return to the events of Parliament in the Session of 1811.

A circular letter was written by Mr. Secretary Pole[100] to the magistrates of Ireland, requiring them to arrest and commit to prison such persons as had published any notice for electing any delegate or representative to a Catholic Convention, styled in the said circular, in virtue of an Irish Act of 33 Geo. III., an unlawful assembly.[101] The Act, however, authorised no such proceeding, though it made electing such a Convention, or voting in it, a misdemeanour. The doctrine and practice inculcated and recommended in this circular raised many of those questions which were afterwards more ably urged and better understood, in 1817, on the motion of Lord Grey on the circular of Lord Sidmouth. The legal part of the question was touched upon in our debates, but I was not sufficiently informed or confident enough in my own opinion to do it full justice. However, I entered a short protest on the Journals, in which the power of a magistrate to hold to bail for a misdemeanour, which does not amount to a breach of the peace, is peremptorily denied. It is not printed in the Registers, but it was approved of by that cautious lawyer, Sir Arthur Pigott; and Lord Chancellor Eldon acknowledged to me in private that the law of Secretary Pole’s letter was indefensible, and he even called it “_slovenly_” on his legs.

There was in the measure some appearance of a design to involve the Government of the Regent as soon as possible in an altercation with the Roman Catholic body, but Mr. Wellesley Pole was not likely to be a party to such a design; and as the most anti-Catholic members of the Administration disdained all previous knowledge of the proceeding, it is reasonable to infer that such a suspicion, though plausible, was not justified by the fact.

During the greater part of the Session of Parliament I was employed in a Committee to inquire into the circumstances of the death of one _Culver_, a debtor, in the Marshalsea prison. There were strong suspicions that the wretched man had been starved to death. The evidence given before our Committee was so indistinct and contradictory that we could not agree on a report; and the mere evidence which we did report did not lead to any further Parliamentary proceeding, either in the treatment of the deceased prisoner or the conduct of the Coroner’s jury. The exposure, however, of the state of the prison, which was in ruin, and where persons convicted of the most disgusting offences were associated with the unfortunate debtors during the day and then shut up with one another during the night, led no doubt to the speedy completion of a new prison. Such a building had been declared necessary many years before, but more progress was made in the course of the ensuing twelve months than in twelve years preceding the inquiry.

As some prospect of a change of Ministry still existed, I was anxious to pledge myself, and such others as were willing to support me, to some revision of the proceedings in cases of libel. The _ex officio_ informations[102] are indefensible in reason and very liable to abuse. If the Whigs obtained the Ministry, I thought they might, and I was sure they ought to, regulate and perhaps to suppress them, according to the original intention at the Revolution of 1688. When parties, however, are in office, though they may be sincerely determined never to abuse, they are seldom disposed voluntarily to surrender or curtail any of their powers, unless in a manner compelled to do so by recent declarations in favour of such reforms. I wished so to compel them. As I had sat in Cabinet with Lord Ellenborough,[103] and, though not blind to his defects, enjoyed his conversation in private society, and respected some talents and many virtues in his public character, I hoped and laboured, in moving for a return of the _ex officio_ informations, to avoid every topic or even phrase which could irritate his temper, so sore on everything that distantly approached a reflection on the practice of his Court. I failed in my endeavours. He treated me with intolerable rudeness, which I was obliged to repel with equal asperity and, I think, with much greater success.

We never afterwards had any altercation in public, and we both retained a certain goodwill and respect for one another; but the language which passed produced a degree of estrangement which, I believe, we both lamented, but which we were both too proud to correct. He was a man of an honest but violent temper, of profound rather than various learning, of powerful but not persuasive eloquence, of strong but by no means of enlarged understanding. If he was not quite so intrepid or so inflexible as he would have had us believe, so neither was he so harsh or ill-natured as he appeared. Sarcasms and invectives were always on his lips; but they were the accidental effervescence of spleen, impatience, or wit, not the sediments of malignity, from which his heart was generally clear. One of his defects was a habit of complaining of the insufficiency of his income and the narrowness of his circumstances. He was never sparing of expense; and yet he has recently (I write in 1819) left a considerable fortune, which proves his profits to have been not only ample but splendid.

Lord Sidmouth, to ingratiate himself with the Church, had introduced a bill to deprive Dissenting Ministers of their exemption from serving in the Militia, unless they could procure a certificate from respectable householders belonging to their congregation. On the first notice I sounded the alarm on the hazard of meddling with the Toleration Act. The appeal was heard, and his Lordship’s bill, which was held in abhorrence by the Methodists, served only to display the numbers and improve the organisation of that powerful sect. For some days no places were to be had in the stage coaches and diligences of the kingdom; all were occupied with petitions to Parliament against the measure proposed by Lord Sidmouth. On the day fixed for the debate such innumerable petitions were presented by Lord Grey, Lord Erskine, Lord Stanhope, myself, and others, that not only the table was filled, but the House was filled with parchment. The peers could hardly get to the doors, the avenues were so crowded with men of grave deportment and puritanical aspect; when there, they had almost equal difficulty in gaining their seats, for loads of parchment encumbered and obstructed their way to them. Lord Sidmouth, with a bad grace, was obliged to yield. In the result, religious liberty was a gainer. To pacify the alarms which had been raised and the passions which had been excited, several important concessions were successively granted in subsequent Sessions to the various Protestant Dissenters of England.

Many of their leading men came to thank me in person. All I requested of them, in return, was to assist me in extending to any other class of Dissenters the full enjoyment of their civil and political rights. They promised they would do so; and when in 1812 and 1813 I claimed their promise in favour of the Roman Catholic Dissenters, I found them as good as their word.

Parliament this year showed an inclination to discountenance flogging in the Army. A clause to substitute at discretion imprisonment for that degrading and cruel punishment was introduced into the Mutiny Bill. This tardy and imperfect triumph of mercy over cruelty and of reason over habit and prejudice was in a very great degree owing to the zealous and disinterested exertions, though occasionally ill-timed, of Sir Francis Burdett. He had, at all times, the great merit of feeling with sincerity and expressing without fear great indignation and horror of all personal cruelty and oppression. This and a sweetness of temper and manner were his best, perhaps his only good, qualities in public life. In political intercourse with individuals or parties he was, chiefly from facility, little to be relied upon. His opinions, whenever they were intelligible, were equally repugnant to reason and subversive of all free or, at least, of all Parliamentary Government. He hated the Whigs and the Revolution as much as the abuses in our representation, and more than any prerogatives of the Crown; and would have reduced the functions of the House of Commons, even if modelled to his theory of excellence, to the two functions of granting money to the Crown and occasionally impeaching a Minister for corrupt or illegal practices.