Chapter VIII: Book THE SECOND: 1810 to June, 1812 (2)

The remainder of the Session was chiefly occupied with discussions on the state of our circulation and questions relating to paper and bullion. The merit of Mr. Horner in the investigation of this intricate subject, and still more in his honest, zealous, and firm maintenance of those principles which he was satisfied were sound, can hardly be appreciated, now that the prejudices he had to contend with have expired, and the truths he combated for have proved victorious upon experience and are generally admitted as incontrovertible and even obvious.[104] So far was this from being the case at the time, that his doctrines were deemed theoretical and visionary, and his conduct impracticable, hazardous to the country, and ruinous to himself. He seemed to sacrifice the fairest objects of ambition, and to incur at the outset of his public life the private enmity of large bodies of men and great unpopularity with the public, by a patient, diligent, and determined inquiry into matters which, little attractive in their nature, led him, as he well knew, to conclusions unpalatable to powerful individuals as well as to the Bank and the Government. He foresaw that his opinions on this subject must lose him the seat in Parliament which he then held.

Such was the repugnance felt at that time to doctrines now universally approved, that I was assured by Lord Lansdowne that the borough of Calne would hardly have chosen the Chairman of the Bullion Committee for their representative, even if he had been supported by that recommendation to which on all other occasions they have uniformly deferred. The dread of the consequences of fair dealing and honesty, or rather the persuasion of the convenience of paying for everything in fluctuating and depreciated paper, was not confined to the vulgar. All the supporters of the war, and some who, without approving its origin, profited by the spirit of speculation to which its continuance gave occasion, were for preserving a hazardous and dishonest system which, according to the fashionable jargon of that day, afforded “such facilities to the operations of the State.”

Lord King,[105] who thoroughly understood the whole subject of exchanges and currency, devised a method by no means ill calculated to defeat the system and disconcert its supporters. He determined to enforce the strict letter of his leases, and call for the payment of rent in the lawful coin of the kingdom. Injudiciously for his object, he sent a circular to that purpose to his tenants, while Parliament was yet sitting. The question was thus brought in the first instance before a tribunal competent to make or alter the law, instead of one which had no authority but to enforce it. Lord Stanhope, by some accident, obtained very early intelligence of this proceeding. He was a zealous promoter of the paper system, with views very different from those entertained or professed by its other advocates. He was the first to call the attention of Parliament to the consequences of Lord King’s demand on his tenants. The bill he presented to the House of Lords, without actually declaring banknotes legal tender, deprived the creditor, to whom they were offered in payment, of all legal remedy whatever. The measure, though entirely altered in form, received in substance the sanction of Parliament. Had Lord King postponed his circular a few weeks longer, either two prices would have been established in the markets, all the facilities, as they were called, annihilated, or the Parliament would have been called upon to interfere in the matter, in a case where no political object could have been imputed to those who exacted their rights.

_J. Hoppner, R.A. Pinx._

_Emery Walker Ph. Sc._]

Lord Chesterfield, a man of very large landed property, blindly attached to the politics of the Court, but living in some measure in retirement from it, was on the point of issuing a similar demand on his tenantry, when Lord King’s operations brought the subject before the public. Lord Stanhope, who had panegyrised the system of _assignats_ in France, very consistently liked the banknotes in England; and when I told him that he expected them to have the same effect in England, he whispered, with a suppressed chuckle, in my ear: “And if they take property from the drones and give it to the bees, where, my dear _Citoyen_, is the great harm of that?” He had also invented an ingenious device for preventing forgeries. He always delighted in the application of science to any political purposes. The hopes of that experiment being adopted very possibly inflamed his zeal in support of a paper currency.

The Prince Regent (whether from real ignorance of the question, from dread of unpopularity, or, as is most probable, from an incipient disposition to court his Ministers and detach himself from Opposition, I know not) disliked the prospect of any resumption of cash payments. Though originally averse to the Spanish expeditions and perhaps to the cause of the insurgents, who mixed too much of the froth, at least, if not of the essence, of liberty in their productions to make them palatable to princely appetites, he grew by degrees interested in the war from the successes in Portugal and from the discussion of military details and promotions, always delightful to Royal ears.

This growing inclination to prosecute the war with vigour tended, no doubt, to reconcile him to his Ministers in preference to their opponents, though it failed to secure his support of Lord Wellesley in his breach with his colleagues on that very subject. His conduct on two affairs of less importance foreboded an approaching alteration in his feelings towards public men, by indicating a disposition in him to accommodate differences with those who were now his official Ministers, but whom he had hitherto termed and thought his personal enemies. The first was the Berkeley Peerage; the other, the claim of Mr. Palmer for remuneration for the invention of mail coaches.

The Prince of Wales had taken a strong interest in establishing the validity of Lord Berkeley’s marriage; he had even promised him, before his death, to indemnify his son for any unfavourable decision which might occur, by conferring an earldom upon him whenever it should be in his power.[106] When, however, the claim was heard, though he and the other Royal Princes had been eager in the cause even to indecency, he gradually became colder and colder; when it terminated in a decision[107] against the marriage, he either did not venture or did not choose to renew any promise to the lady or the young man. He was, however, fully justified, perhaps he was really determined, by the detection of falsehoods in Lady Berkeley’s testimony and the undeniable exposure of the badness of the case.

Such could not be his motive for withdrawing all his usual countenance and promised support from Mr. Palmer. The claim of that gentleman, containing an implied censure of Mr. Pitt, was always bitterly resisted by that Minister’s adherents; but the Prince of Wales had warmly espoused it, and had been active and eager in instigating Colonel Palmer to prosecute it.[108] The claim itself, if not strictly and literally just, was in my judgment irresistible on the honour and policy of the country.[109]

The shrewd in our party left Parliament in the summer of 1811 with more apprehensions of the Prince Regent’s designs than confidence in his late professions. If his resolution to exclude the Whigs from office was not actually taken before the Session was closed, I have good reason to believe that even then, or very shortly afterwards, he harboured a project of dividing them, and forming a Ministry composed indiscriminately of various parties in Parliament. There were reports, very soon after the Prorogation, of a rupture between the Prince Regent and Mr. Perceval, and of an endeavour on the part of the Prince to form a Ministry through Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning. I know not what, nor indeed that anything, passed.

There were, however, symptoms of a disposition in the Court to feel the pulse of individuals in all parties. Mr. Sheridan during the recess saw me frequently, and questioned me much whether the Duke of Bedford, myself, and any old Foxite would be disposed to accept of high office in a Government, in the formation of which Lord Grey and Lord Grenville were not chiefly consulted. I discouraged all such projects. I cannot tell how far they were suggestions of his own or concerted with the Prince Regent. I told him explicitly that unless Lord Grey or Lord Grenville, as the heads of our party, or Mr. Ponsonby, as leader of it in the House of Commons, were sent to in the first instance, any offer to bring in the Whigs would appear insidious; that I for one, and probably all men of weight who professed attachment to the principles of Mr. Fox, would have nothing to do with it in that shape. We could not and would not separate from Lord Grenville, after his consistent and honourable conduct. Lord Grey or our leader in the House of Commons were the only other channels through which any offer could with propriety be conveyed to the party. Lord Grey and Lord Grenville had been sent for and actually employed last year. None but Mr. Ponsonby, with a view of confirming his authority in the House of Commons and consulting him in the first instance on the practicability of conducting the business in that assembly, could now be sent for, without the appearance or indeed the reality of an affront to the two Lords, whom the Prince Regent had so recently acknowledged as the heads of the party and the men to whom, on a change, he intended to entrust the management of public affairs. If, therefore, the Prince Regent intended to form an Administration of his old friends the Whigs, he would send directly to one of these three persons. Should he send for any other member of the party, it would obviously indicate a design of weakening the party he affected to favour. Such was the substance of my answer in more than one conversation which Mr. Sheridan had sought with me.[110]

The Regent, or those immediately about him, had frequent conversations on similar topics with Mr. Adam. Their art, or Mr. Adam’s own sanguine nature, completely cajoled him. He was satisfied that an entire change at the expiration of the restrictions was intended. He diligently laboured to impress that conviction upon us all: first, from sincerely believing and wishing it himself, and, secondly, with a view, which always led him too far, of surmounting the difficulty immediately before him, and getting the pecuniary arrangements connected with the Regency passed with little opposition in the ensuing Session of Parliament.

General Fox[111] died in the summer of 1811. He was a kind, affectionate, and reasonable man, without brilliant talents or extraordinary attainments, and with very bounded ambition; he had opinions on public matters more favourable to freedom than is common in his profession, and a stronger mind than his friends, or perhaps he himself, ever suspected. His professional habits were formed in the school of Sir Guy Carleton[112] and Lord Cornwallis, men who, whatever were their military merits, deserve to be remembered as the first in our army who systematically disclaimed for themselves and discountenanced in others all jobs and embezzlement.

I had at this time no intelligence of the war or of foreign negotiations but such as Gazettes, Parliamentary papers, and common Journals supply. I therefore abstain from relating the events in Spain, and the changes which were gradually taking place in the politics of Russia during the summer and autumn of 1811. I did, indeed, my utmost in private correspondence with Spaniards to soften that jealousy which was naturally, but unwisely and unjustly, felt at our interference.[113]

In the meanwhile the retreat of Massena, though admirably conducted by that General and by Ney, had justified the foresight and relieved the embarrassments of Lord Wellington. Our prospects in the Peninsula were improved. The forced exclusion of all British manufactures from the rest of Europe (the _Continental System_, as it was called), imposed on Russia by intimidation and by the ascendancy which Napoleon fondly imagined he had personally acquired over Alexander, was so much at variance with the interests both of nations and individuals, that even where the Governments were cordially subservient to the views of France, they found it impracticable to maintain so unnatural a policy. Alexander, who had not had the courage to support the interests of his Empire against the pretensions of France, began to discover that even “Autocracy” itself would not enable him to execute treaties which he had been base enough to sign against the obvious policy, wishes, and murmurs of his subjects. The Russians themselves felt the ignominy of submitting to the dictates of a foreign power, though willingly enforced by their Czar, when they discovered that an obedience to those dictates would prevent the sale of their produce and involve the proprietors of land in distress and ruin.

It is singular that while the successful war in Spain and the rupture between Russia and France—the two great sources of the subsequent triumph over Napoleon—were opening themselves in 1811, the only English Minister from whose sagacity either of them in any degree flowed was gradually separating himself from his colleagues. This was Lord Wellesley.[114] As Ambassador and Secretary of State he had given to the councils of Spain and to our military exertions some statesmanlike consistency of design. He had also, with no little dexterity, and (as I have been assured) without consulting his colleagues, detached General Bernadotte, then Crown Prince of Sweden, from his connection with France;[115] he thereby ensured the co-operation of a power which might have intimidated Russia from hostilities with Napoleon, and which did in fact ultimately determine Alexander, when wavering and even yielding, to persevere in resistance to the invaders. Some of his other projects, such as a negotiation for peace with the Police Minister Fouché, and a foolish scheme of rescuing King Ferdinand from his captivity by means of an adventurer called Kolli,[116] were not equally fortunate or well conceived.

But whatever were the merits or the blemishes of his designs abroad, he was at this time meditating a line of policy at home which would have led to great changes in office—to a renewal of his connection with Mr. Canning, and not improbably to a union between him and the Whigs in power under the Prince Regent. He had more genius than prudence, more spirit than principle, and manifestly despised his colleagues as much as they dreaded him. Unlike most English politicians, he was rather a statesman than a man of business, and more capable of doing extraordinary things well than conducting ordinary transactions with safety or propriety.

He was reported to have ingratiated himself during the summer with the Prince Regent, and with the exception of an unqualified zeal in the prosecution of the Spanish war, the natural growth of his early interest in that contest, and of his connection with Lord Wellington, his opinions on public questions seemed to smooth the way to a coalition with those to whom His Royal Highness was expected to entrust the management of his affairs.[117] When, however, he tendered his resignation early in 1812, he discovered that an inclination to Whigs or to liberal policy was no strong recommendation to the Prince Regent. He learnt with yet more chagrin that his brother would not hazard a rupture with the Ministers, even in support of the remonstrances which he (Lord Wellesley) had made, if not at his instigation, at least on his behalf, for further succours and supplies. I know not whether to blame or to commend him. A commander on service is not lightly to lend himself to party in a struggle for power at home. He may, nay, he must, prefer serving under those to whom he is chiefly bound by affection and gratitude and those with whom he cordially agrees and co-operates; but he must not make a national cause subservient to their views of ambition at home, unless he thinks their possession of power not only useful, but indispensably necessary, to its maintenance and its success.

Lord Wellington, therefore, on the turn of fortune in Spain, did right not to sacrifice his own station and growing fame and the national interest to the object of securing or replacing his brother in power, even though that brother should have forfeited it by his zealous exertions to minister to his glory abroad. Who shall blame him for not hesitating between such important public considerations and his own private affections? Possibly, however, Lord Wellesley, and certainly his adherents, were hurt that so little was done by Lord Wellington to avert the necessity of so painful an option. They significantly remarked that the sacrifice was made with so very good a grace, as not only to answer the calls of duty, but to suppress every symptom of pain or reluctance in performing it. Lord Wellesley, to whose partiality and affection his brother had been indebted for his promotion, fame, and success, would have acquired, said his friends, if placed in a similar predicament, the same praise of heroic duty, but it would have cost him much more to obtain it. Whether such insinuations were well founded or not, it is certain that after that period a coolness between the brothers ensued, and it must be acknowledged that subsequent transactions will not exonerate Lord Wellington of the charges of indifference or want of feeling by proving such defects to be quite foreign to his character.

Lord Wellesley treated Mr. Perceval and the other Ministers with manifest scorn and contempt. In a subsequent altercation between him and Lord Harrowby in the House of Lords, respecting the differences in Cabinet while he remained among them, his superiority in wit, spirit, vigour, and eloquence was most decisive. Yet when, on Lord Boringdon’s motion for an efficient Administration, he was expected to vindicate his own motives and conduct, and to explain at large his views of domestic and foreign policy, though he had come down with mighty ostentation, dressed and decorated, as his usage was, for the delivery of a great speech, his nerves failed him entirely, and he allowed the question to go to a division without uttering one word. So universal was the persuasion that he was, on that day, to outdo himself, and so positive was the expectation of his speaking, that some one, on the Chancellor’s return from the House, asked, without the ceremony of a previous inquiry whether he had spoken or not, “What was the style of Lord Wellesley’s speech?” “I think in that of Tacitus,” replied Lord Eldon.

He was, indeed, a most _uncertain_ speaker in every sense of the word. After studiously announcing his intentions of speaking, and repeating his views and arguments and illustrations in private to friend and to foe, he not unfrequently sat silent. When he did rise, it was often doubtful which side he would espouse, what topics he would select, and whether he would treat them with ability and eloquence or lapse into frothy, trite, and unmeaning declamation, or entangle himself in some metaphysical disquisition which he was quite unequal to unravel or expound. His allusions were more classical than apposite, and his language that of a polite scholar even to a fault. His wit was elaborate and far-fetched, but well and neatly executed. He was sometimes illogical, and I have known him pompous, empty, and unsatisfactory. Yet there was a smack, a fancy of greatness in all he did: and though in his speeches, his manners, and his actions he was very open to ridicule, those who smiled and even laughed could not despise him.

He had tendered his resignation in January; it was not accepted till March.[118] While he was yet nominally in office, and before the restrictions on the Regency had expired, Mr. Perceval proposed the Civil List and the regulation of the Household. The arrangement was purposely complicated and infinitely more expensive to the country than the circumstances justified, or than either the party who proposed or the party who acquiesced in could sincerely approve. Mr. Tierney had the honesty to say so, and perhaps had the shrewdness even then to perceive what it now seems strange should have escaped the observation of any man, that the sums granted for the Privy Purse and Household were sufficient, not only to provide for the wants, but to purchase the favour of the Prince Regent. Some semblance, however, of consistency and honour was to be preserved. The Prince Regent was in a manner pledged, on the expiration of the restrictions, to make some overture to the Whigs. He was too well acquainted with the characters of the men with whom he had to deal, and indeed too great an adept in that sort of game, not to devise in a moment a method of making the offer, which secured its rejection. He wrote the following letter to the Duke of York.[119]...

Lord Grey and Lord Grenville requested twenty-four hours to consult their friends, and to consider of the answer to the overture contained in the letter above recited from the Prince Regent to the Duke of York. Lord Lansdowne, Lord Lauderdale, Mr. Ponsonby, and myself met them at Mr. Thomas Grenville’s, when they produced a written paper, the composition of Lord Grenville, which they proposed to transmit to the Duke of York. The overture contained in the letter to the Duke of York was, as the reader must have perceived, in substance, nothing more than an invitation to Lord Grey and Lord Grenville and some others recommended by them, to accept office with an Administration whose measures and system they had uniformly and strenuously opposed, and whose persons and behaviour the Prince Regent himself, only a year before, had indecently reviled in every company and affected to resent in a manner full as warm as any indignity, purely political, could justify.

The proposed answer was very decisive, but unnecessarily long. It was unadvisedly explicit on every topic which had been artfully introduced into the Prince Regent’s letter; in short, it was an elaborate manifesto of the two Lords on all political questions on which they differed with Ministers. It contained a sort of creed on the Spanish war, the Orders in Council, the paper system, and the Roman Catholic claims, to which none but their own friends, and not all of them, could implicitly have subscribed. The Prince Regent’s letter was no doubt framed with a design of provoking the two Lords to recapitulate opinions which the writer, whoever he was, thought to be impracticable and knew to be unpopular.

The prospect of their accession to power had been contemplated with some apprehension by those who felt zealous in the cause and gratified by the glories of the Spanish war. Such persons had been confirmed in their apprehensions, by the very injudicious language of some of Lord Grenville’s connections, as well as by enemies[120] who studiously repeated such language and industriously circulated the report that the first consequence of their elevation to power would be the recall of every British soldier from the Peninsula. The notion of resuming cash payments was, at that time, to the full as unpopular. Speculators, who profited by a system of improvident dishonesty and lavish expenditure, affected to regard the principles of the Bullion Committee[121] as purely chimerical, and the statesmen who espoused them as sacrificing the national prosperity to the theories of political economists.

In their first sketch of an answer the two Lords fell into the snare prepared for them. They avowed all these opinions so unpalatable to the public, and they enforced them in an authoritative tone little calculated to soothe or to convince. In the views insinuated about the Spanish alliance and war, I for one could not have concurred. The unqualified declaration of their principles respecting both our currency and trade, though perfectly sound, seemed highly unreasonable; and the authoritative tone in which they announced their views would have exposed them to the censure of exacting an implicit compliance with all their opinions from the Court and the public, at a time when both were avowedly desirous of softening down differences, for the purpose of forming what is called a strong, but often proves to be a very weak, Administration. Lord Lansdowne, with his usual judgment, perceived the impolicy of so copious a manifesto, and, with more than his usual energy, urged the necessity of shortening the letter and confining the grounds of refusal to that which formed the most obvious and insurmountable bar to a coalition between Mr. Perceval and the Whigs, _viz._, their opposite views of the Roman Catholic question and the system of government in Ireland. Accordingly the following answer was drawn up and afterwards delivered by Lords Grey and Grenville to the Duke of York....[122]

The Duke of York took minutes of the conversation which occurred on the two Lords delivering this answer in writing to him. He very candidly submitted those minutes to their inspection, and they made such explanations and comments on the Duke’s report of what they said, as precluded the possibility of a misunderstanding. The Duke contended that the letter was not an overture to them to form a part of Mr. Perceval’s Administration, or even to coalesce with that gentleman as Minister, but to concur in forming a new Administration on a broad basis; and he urged, as a proof of his view of the subject, that he had been selected to convey the communication, in order that the person so employed might not be designated as the head of the new Administration. These distinctions, immaterial in themselves, were set aside by Lord Grey observing that the answer given was to the written statement which they had seen, and if it should appear to the Prince Regent that they had misunderstood the meaning of that paper, he might rectify the mistake. In the meanwhile they adhered to their answer. Here ended the negotiation. Lord Castlereagh was in a few days appointed Secretary of State in the place of Lord Wellesley.[123]

The answer of Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, and the tone and temper in which it was conveyed, were very generally approved of. Many no doubt rejoiced at so open a breach between them and the Prince Regent, and none probably more than His Royal Highness himself. Yet friend and foe, Whig and Tory, directly or indirectly acknowledged that to such an overture no other answer could have been given with honour. The form was yet more unobjectionable. The language, however, of the party, and possibly of some of the leaders, was not perhaps equally irreproachable and certainly not equally judicious. In conversations, speeches, and publications there was much personal asperity and some indecorous satire and invective. Those who had early opportunities of studying the character of the Prince should have known that personal slights were more deeply felt and more certainly resented by him than real indignities, injuries, or ill-usage.

His more recent acquaintances had sagacity enough to discover that secret very soon, and dexterity enough to act upon it. They bore tales of much that was said, and of more that was never said, to his disparagement by the principal characters in Opposition. Studiously directing his attention to the numberless lampoons that appeared, they affixed to each whatever name it was most their interest to render obnoxious. I knew more than one instance of persons passing at Carlton House for the authors or instigators of the very epigrams or paragraphs they had deprecated, lamented, and condemned. Lord Grey unquestionably felt great indignation. Ever open, artless, and impetuous, he could not stop to conceal it. The coarse and unmannerly phrases imputed to him were, indeed, never uttered; but his unguarded exposure of the Prince Regent’s duplicity in all companies, and his severe animadversion in the House of Lords on the defection of Lord Cholmondeley and the few insignificant sycophants who followed him, sank deep in the Royal mind. The new Court was henceforward _to the full as intent as the old one_ on excluding the Whigs from all office, favour, or power.

Although the offences of Lord Grey, owing to the high station he filled in the eyes of men, were more important, and, owing to early personal jealousies between him and the Prince of Wales, were less easily pardoned than those of others, such indiscretions were not confined to him. We all incurred the guilt, if not the odium, of charging His Royal Highness with ingratitude and perfidy. We all encouraged every species of satire against him and his mistress. He retorted in language to the full as unmeasured, and in assertions much more unfounded. He drove Lord Lauderdale to the necessity, first, of remonstrating with him, and afterwards, of absenting himself, by bursting forth suddenly, intemperately, and violently against his political friends—a scene rendered memorable by having excited the tears of the young Princess Charlotte, who was present, and yet more so by those tears becoming the subject of Lord Byron’s verse.[124]

That extraordinary young man had satirised and ridiculed me, in common with many others, in his _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, under a very erroneous impression that I had written or caused to be written the criticism on his first publication in the _Edinburgh Review_[125]; whereas it was from that printed _Review_ that I first learnt the existence of the poems, or indeed of the author, whose title I had thought was extinct. My friend Mr. Rogers knew this circumstance; he asked me if I objected to his repeating it to Lord Byron. I answered: “Far from it, provided he repeated it as he had heard it from me, a fact related in accidental conversation, and not a message or explanation sent from me to Lord Byron.” Mr. Rogers soon afterwards informed me that Lord Byron wished to speak in Parliament against the Frame-breaking Bill, and that he was anxious to learn the forms and to consult some peer in Opposition. Mr. Rogers asked me if I would allow him to introduce me to the young poet. I willingly and warmly acquiesced, gave him what assistance I could, and received from him a very handsome and well-written letter. His speech was full of fancy, wit, and invective, but not exempt from affectation nor well reasoned, nor at all suited to our common notions of Parliamentary eloquence. His fastidious and artificial taste and his over-irritable temper would, I think, have prevented him from ever excelling in Parliament.

This accidental intercourse about his first speech led to our acquaintance and even friendly familiarity, which was never interrupted. I have mentioned it because everything relating to him excites curiosity; and the uniformly courteous, I might almost say grateful, manner in which he acknowledged and returned my trifling services, amounting to little more than ordinary civility, shows a sensibility and kindness for imaginary favours in one who was unhappily too often suspected, with reason, of an extreme susceptibility to slight, and even imaginary, injuries. His speech and his verses on Princess Charlotte’s tears fixed his politics, and he was[126] upon system invariably attached to the party and principles of the Whigs. Mr. Rogers himself, on the unexpected conduct of the Prince Regent, put one of the many witty epigrams he is in the habit of uttering into verse, and the lines found their way into the newspapers. Another poet, Mr. Moore, with more party zeal and Irish humour than worldly prudence, parodied the Prince Regent’s letter to the Duke of York. His friend, Lord Moira, approved of the conduct of Lord Grey and Lord Grenville in declining the overture; he even drew out an answer, which he wished them to adopt and communicated to me for that purpose. It required, indeed, some further explanation; but it insisted, even in a more authoritative tone than the paper they sent, on the impossibility of their _entering into the Cabinet_ of a Ministry whose measures they had uniformly _reprobated_.

The two Irish brothers Lord Donoughmore and Lord Hutchinson kept no measures with the Court. The Regent was so exasperated at their language, that he affected to lament that he was not a private man and able to call one of them at least to account for a personal affront. Perhaps a more accurate knowledge of that family’s proficiency in pistols might, on reflection, reconcile His Royal Highness to the privations of his exalted station.

The unfortunate breach between the Roman Catholics of Ireland and their able supporter Lord Grenville, effected by the machinations of Dr. Milner,[127] who had shamelessly disavowed him, had rendered it necessary to place the petitions of that body in other hands. Lord Grey, I believed, had declined them some time before; and when I was sounded on the subject I told them that, if offered, I should not refuse them; but that for my sake, and still more for their own, I wished them to deliver their petitions to some one less connected with Lord Grenville and more disposed to approve of, as well as not to combat, their objections to the veto[128] and to the restrictions, which topic would not improbably be introduced into the debate.

They pitched on Lord Donoughmore, the representative of that Protestant family which had first and most uniformly espoused their cause, and one who at the time of the Union and at the formation of Lord Fitzwilliam’s Administration had been, as I believe, the channel of communication between them and the Government. He accepted the commission of pleading their cause in Parliament with cheerfulness, and he executed it with considerable ability. If in judgment there was some deficiency, there was an abundant supply of that which Irishmen and Roman Catholics value more—spirit and even violence. His personalities to the Regent and to Lady Hertford were somewhat too coarse for our English palates; but his excuse of so great a breach of decorum was this. He had been twice the channel to convey direct or implicit promises which had been violated, and to excite expectations which had been disappointed. Had he submitted a third time, without open and unqualified hostility to those who had deceived him, he thought his own honour might be questioned by his countrymen. He preferred deserving the reproach of rudeness and indelicacy to incurring even the suspicion of duplicity and treachery. Whatever be the value of such an apology, the Irish Catholics so far justified his speculations that they warmly applauded his vehemence and personality, and in _an evil hour for themselves_ embodied the most offensive passages of his speech into resolutions at their various meetings throughout Ireland. Some years afterwards their writers in Ireland most falsely attributed this conduct to the instigation of their Parliamentary friends in England. I believe that neither Lord Grey, Lord Grenville, Lord Lansdowne, myself, Mr. Ponsonby, Mr. Grattan, Mr. Tierney, Mr. Canning, nor any one active Member of Parliament, had the slightest intimation of their intention to propose such intemperate resolutions; I am sure that we one and all lamented and condemned them when adopted.

Even those among us who were most indignant at the conduct of the Prince Regent felt that it was not good policy in the Roman Catholics to express their sense of it too warmly, much less in the coarse, revolting, and scurrilously personal libel. In the Commons Mr. Grattan was more temperate as well as more eloquent, but not much more successful. The majorities of both Houses, though not very great, and weakened by the loss of Lord Wellesley and his few adherents, showed that in the opinion of politicians the Prince Regent had joined the Anti-Catholic faction, or that Mr. Perceval had contrived to fix himself permanently in power. He seemed, indeed, determined to exact a yet stronger proof of the attachment of his followers, by insisting on their adherence to the Orders in Council,[129] which were involving us in hostilities with North America, ruining our commerce, and impoverishing our manufacturers in a way that excited universal distress and clamour, and threatened to produce defalcation in our revenue and insurrection in the country.

But this infatuated course of policy was suddenly arrested by one of those unforeseen events which, springing from small, private, and unconnected causes, have, in their consequences, the greatest effect on the fate of nations and [the] happiness of mankind. A madman of the name of Bellingham had been, or thought he had been, aggrieved by some of our public agents abroad. He was full of resentment at the supposed injury, and yet more at the neglect with which his importunate remonstrances had been treated by persons in power and their respective offices in England. If his own account is to be trusted, he devoted some person in high rank and office as an atonement for his wrongs; but was nearly indifferent on whom answering that description his vengeance might fall. He pitched on Mr. Perceval the Prime Minister, or Lord Granville Leveson,[130] who was Ambassador in Russia at the time certain claims in indemnification of losses sustained by him at Archangel had been presented without effect to the Russian and English Governments, without any positive personal enmity to either of those individuals. He determined, however, to sacrifice the first of the two who should come within his reach. Accordingly, with this view, he took his stand on May 11, 1812, in the lobby of the House of Commons, of which both were members, with two small loaded pistols in his pocket; he sat patiently near the door till Mr. Perceval made his appearance, and then, approaching him without gesticulation or violence, shot him through the heart. His victim staggered and fell, exclaiming, “I am murdered,” or, “The villain has murdered me,” or words to that effect, and never spoke more.

The whole scene and many of the circumstances recalled the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham by Felton, and in nothing did it resemble it more than in the cool composure of the assassin, who, I think, resumed his seat, but certainly made no effort to escape. On making inquiry after “the villain,” when the agitation had subsided, he surrendered himself without a struggle. On the spot, on the first examination, and on the trial, he avowed the deed; and though he called himself an unfortunate man, he seemed neither to repent nor to feel much anxiety to vindicate his motives or to avoid the consequences of his crime.

I was talking to Lord Spencer in the House of Lords, when we heard either the report of pistols or the scream of horror which the perpetration of the crime had excited. I recollect exclaiming, “What is that?” and being told, after a short interval, that it was a madman who thought himself the Duke of Norfolk and frequently molested the Courts of Justice with his pretensions. It was not long, however, before a figure, pale and breathless, rushed into the House, and, leaning on the bar, repeated twice or thrice, “He is murdered; I saw him dead.” “Who?” “Where are we to go to assist?” was reiterated from many present; and some minutes, I think, elapsed before we actually learnt that it was Mr. Perceval who was killed. The consternation was great; the appearance of most present ghastly. I remember I wondered to myself whether my face was as much altered as those of the persons around me—a thought which proves (as what indeed does not?) the accuracy and truth of the observation of Shakespeare on our feelings.

Look I so pale, Lord Dorset, as the rest?

is an exclamation of one of his characters, on hearing in a large company of the violent death of the Duke of Clarence.[131]

The peers were coming in very fast, and I think we took some precautions to inform Lord Arden[132] of the event. All expressed horror; some few seemed to ponder on the changes likely to ensue; and more were manifestly apprehensive that the crime was connected with extensive designs, and the result of conspiracies which the state of the country rendered by no means improbable. The House of Commons had adjourned. The House of Lords has been censured and ridiculed for not doing so too; perhaps it was the best course. Yet to quit the spot on the report of a crime committed within the precincts of Parliament, without inquiry into the fact or comment upon it, seemed to many peers, and among them, I own, to me, an unnatural and undignified and almost a dastardly proceeding. We had, therefore, the fact deposed to at the bar; but when we had resolved to ground some proceeding thereupon, it must be acknowledged that we found some difficulty in devising any in form and substance unobjectionable. We passed an address unanimously to the Prince Regent, praying him little more than to enforce the laws. Lord Radnor wrote and Lord Chancellor moved it. Most of the peers present accompanied it to Carlton House. It is to be observed that the Lords were not aware of the character and condition of the assassin. They who blame our proceeding should reflect what would have been their own impression, and what the inferences in the public, had the murder turned out to be a part of any extensive design, and the two Houses, on the perpetration of it, had dispersed themselves, without daring to express their sense of the outrage or a determination to investigate the causes of it.

The Old Bailey Sessions were sitting, and the assassin was brought to immediate trial. He applied for delay to bring witnesses from a distance in proof of his insanity. He was denied that indulgence, condemned on the 15th, and executed on May 18, within one week of the perpetration of the murder. Such hurry was by many thought harsh and illegal, and by more injudicious and improper. Insanity, or at least insanity of a certain sort, by the law of England exempts the accused from a verdict of guilty. The wisdom of such mercy may reasonably be questioned; but whatever the law wisely or unwisely admits to be a vindication of the act, the accused should be allowed full opportunity of proving in his defence. It was, therefore, shrewdly suspected that there was more dread of a Prime Minister’s murderer escaping than reverence for the forms of law in the refusal to postpone the trial. Whether from this consideration, from the distress of the times, from the acrimonious spirit of Mr. Perceval’s politics, or from that composed courage in the sufferer, which in spite of reason seldom fails to conciliate favour even for a criminal, certain it is, that among the crowds who thronged to the execution of Bellingham more commiseration was shown for the culprit than for his victim. Women were struck with his fine and manly person. Strange tales of his amorous complexion, whispered abroad, did not weaken that favourable impression. They were currently repeated at this day,[133] and I am sorry to acknowledge that at the distance of some years the name of Bellingham was far from unpopular in London.

In truth, the death of Mr. Perceval was hailed as a deliverance in various parts of the country. Some classes, whose habits should have taught them to reject any consolation drawn from the commission of a horrible crime and should also have bespoken more sympathy for so religious a man, could hardly conceal their delight at the prospect of the removal of those worldly evils under which they were labouring. One of the leading manufacturers of Birmingham, a strict Dissenter, who had come up to London with petitions against the Orders in Council, lamented to me, with a demure countenance and a subdued voice, the wickedness of the times on which he had been cast, where, he said, as the coaches arrived in various parts of the kingdom, the intelligence of the murder of a fellow creature had been received with more exultation than horror, and even in some places greeted with savage shouts of un-Christian joy. “It is indeed disgusting; and yet,” added he, with an arch, puritanical smile, “it proves the sad condition of the poor manufacturers, and it cannot be denied that, in the present critical state of the question on the Orders in Council, the finger of a benevolent Providence is visible in this horrible event.”

The result, however, so confidently anticipated, would hardly have ensued had the vigilance and perseverance of Mr. Brougham been relaxed. He braved the censure of enemies and shocked the more timid and more gentle of his friends, by resolutely insisting, without regard to the feelings of individuals or the convenience of the Government, on the immediate relinquishment of the Orders in Council, before Mr. Perceval was cold in his grave or the arrangements for a new Ministry in any forwardness at Court. To that wise and firm, but at the same time somewhat odious conduct, the country is indebted for a revision of a system, unjust to other nations and ruinous to itself. Mr. Perceval had too much spirit to be intimidated, and too much bigotry to be convinced, by the clamour or the sufferings of the people. Had he lived, he would, no doubt, have persisted, at the peril of his own power, as well as of the prosperity of the kingdom, in the injudicious and violent measures he had from zeal and ignorance so hastily adopted.[134]

He was a man of principle, integrity, and courage; and though a bitter persecutor of such political and religious principles as he without much painful inquiry or dispassionate reflection disapproved, he was indulgent to his friends and liberal of his money. In business he was diligent, attentive, and distinct. It is true that even the eminent post he reached never enabled him to soar to the higher regions of eloquence; but in debate he was acute, judicious, and, above all, intrepid and ready. “He is not,” said Mr. Grattan, “a ship-of-the-line, but he carries many guns, is tight built, and is out in all weathers.” He had, indeed, the length, but was said not to have the learning, belonging to his profession. Prolixity was his great fault as a speaker; propensity to retaliation and attack his chief error as a Minister in Parliament. His virtues and his vices rendered him the most mischievous and dangerous man who had guided our councils for a century. Nothing but a dread that my words may be distorted into an attempt to palliate an atrocious crime makes me hesitate in pronouncing his death (as in my conscience I think it) a very fortunate event for the glory, happiness, and independence of my country. More changes were expected from it than actually took place.

In returning from the House of Lords I met Lord Grey, and took that early opportunity of expressing to him my sense of the importance of coming to an understanding with Lord Moira, Lord Wellesley, and Mr. Canning, before the Prince Regent had sent either to them or to us, and while we could negotiate a junction on the footing of perfect equality without the advantage on either side which an ostensible preference given by the Court would confer. He was by no means averse to a junction with any or all of them on honourable principles. He had no objection to speak to Lord Moira; but he doubted whether that was a proper moment for any negotiation with Mr. Canning, to whom I saw he retained much repugnance. He was yet more decidedly averse to making the first overture to him or to Lord Wellesley, from a notion of dignity to which I deferred, but which appeared to me to be mistaken and misplaced. He enjoined me to mention my notions to no one, and I obeyed him. Is it judging by the event, to attribute our subsequent exclusion from office to the want of such early understanding with the other public men then unemployed? Had we caught up and harnessed beforehand all the Ministers at grass, the Prince Regent could hardly have ventured in any conveyance but such as we had to offer him. I am, indeed, satisfied that _his_ chief object throughout was to prevent the admission of the Whigs to office. But if on applying to Lord Wellesley or Lord Moira, he had found those two noblemen in actual concert with the Whigs and bound in honour and inclined from interest and principle to act with them, he could scarcely have framed a proposal which would not have led either to a joint Administration, or to a union of many separate powers in an Opposition too formidable for the rump of Mr. Perceval’s Cabinet to encounter.

The Prince Regent began by directing Lord Liverpool to communicate with Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning on the means of strengthening the existing Administration, by associating to it persons who agreed most nearly and generally in the principles on which it had been conducted; but though he disclaimed all principles of exclusion, he authorised no proposal to persons connected with Opposition. This endeavour failed.[135] Mr. Canning, who waived all personal objections to Lord Castlereagh as Lord Castlereagh had also done to him, thought, however, that his personal and public character would incur a loss and the Government derive no strength, from his accession to a Ministry which resisted all consideration of the Catholic question after he had declared himself anxious to press that measure on Parliament and the public.

Lord Wellesley yet more pointedly declined any association with the Ministry, while their opinions on the laws affecting Roman Catholics remained unchanged. He apprehended too great a difference of sentiment on the conduct and management of the Peninsular war subsisted between him and Mr. Perceval’s colleagues, to render any renewal of connection with them in office advantageous to the public or acceptable to himself. He suggested at the end of his letter the propriety, necessity, and practicability of the admission of some of the Whigs into office; manifestly implying that the want of authority on that head was one of his objections to the commission of Lord Liverpool from the Prince Regent.[136]

Lord Wellesley was on this, and throughout the correspondence that ensued, more conciliatory to the Whigs than Mr. Canning. He was evidently more disposed to act with a party with whom he had never been connected, than with those from whom he had recently separated with some avowed, and more concealed, asperity and contempt. These feelings of animosity were considerably inflamed by the polemical tone he assumed in his correspondence, and yet more by the indecent haste with which he published his letters and answers. Lord Liverpool assured me that he read the letter to him of May 21, printed in the newspaper called the _Times_, before he had received, or at least before he had broken the seal of, the original. The scheme for strengthening the old Ministry being thus defeated, the opinion that it could not maintain itself grew more general.

Mr. Stuart Wortley,[137] a friend of Mr. Canning, though related to Lady Liverpool, moved the House of Commons on May 21 to address the Regent to, “form an efficient Administration.” Such motions, in substance and intention interfering in the choice of Ministers by the executive Government and always offensive to a Court, have been often negatived, when made by Whigs, as unconstitutional encroachments on the prerogative. Small middle parties and detached place-hunters, being factions who derive great advantage from an unlimited and uncontrolled choice of servants in the Crown, are almost invariably foremost in resisting them. On this occasion, however, the address to that purpose was moved by a Tory country gentleman, and was supported by Mr. Canning. The Whigs concurred with it, and it was carried by a majority of four. Ministers were compelled to tender their resignation, and the Prince Regent constrained to make some demonstration of an effort to supply their place.

If I were to attempt to thread the labyrinth of his intrigues and devices, my readers would be perplexed with the intricacy and weary of the length of the narrative. Some prominent facts are quite sufficient to detect the nature of the design, which was, to elude the wishes of the House of Commons, to preserve as nearly as possible the Administration then in power, to divide or to degrade any public men who had contributed to discomfit Mr. Perceval’s remaining colleagues, and to exclude all the Whigs, but more especially Lord Grey, from all share of power. To compass these ends, his first artifice was to authorise Lord Wellesley _to ascertain the views and dispositions of all parties with regard to certain principles, previously to the formation of any plans of Administration_, and _then_ to lay before him a plan for an Administration adapted to the crisis of affairs, but _not directly to form any Ministry_.[138]