Chapter IX: Book THE SECOND: 1810 to June, 1812 (3)

The principles laid down by Lord Wellesley were,[139] first, that the Roman Catholic disabilities should be immediately considered with a view to a conciliatory adjustment; secondly, that the Peninsular war should be prosecuted with adequate vigour. He submitted them himself to Lord Grey; and Mr. Canning offered them at his suggestion to Lord Liverpool, because his recent discussions with that Minister had produced so much ill blood that the intervention of a third person was deemed by Lord Wellesley to be more judicious and acceptable. But Lord Liverpool, in his own name and that of all his colleagues except Lord Melville, drily declined the proposal of becoming members of any Administration formed by Lord Wellesley, and thought, after all that had passed with his Lordship, that it was unnecessary to enter into any discussion of the principles he had submitted to them. Lord Melville answered in a separate memorandum. He was not less peremptory in his personal objections to Lord Wellesley, but to the principles he had suggested he felt none.

The answer of Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, adopted after due deliberation with their friends, Lords Lansdowne and Lauderdale, Messrs. Ponsonby, Tierney, and myself, was in substance as follows: an assurance of a disposition to give effect to the late vote of the House of Commons by the abandonment of every personal object; an unqualified promise of supporting any proposal made by any Ministers for the conciliatory adjustment of the Roman Catholic claims, with a warm compliment to Lord Wellesley for his powerful exertions in that cause; and a cautious postponement of all opinion on the more or less vigorous prosecution of the Peninsular war, as a question not of principle but of policy, to be regulated by temporary and fluctuating circumstances on which out of office it was impossible for them to pronounce. To this, however, was added an expression of doubt how far any increase of expenditure was practicable.

This paper, justly denominated by Mr. Ponsonby a “safe” answer, and as justly considered by Lord Wellesley as a favourable and conciliatory one, was delivered to the Prince Regent on May 24. On receiving it, and _before he had read it_, he exclaimed, “_What! a refusal?_” After reading it, and on being told by Lord Wellesley that it was satisfactory in that stage of the business, he gave him no authority to proceed, but professed to take time to consider of it. He employed that time in devising arguments to distort the answer into a refusal, in calumniating Lord Grey, in attempts to detach Mr. Canning from Lord Wellesley or to prevail on both to join the old Ministry, and in alarming Lord Liverpool and the Duke of York with the prospect of his rage at the Whigs and his vexation at his embarrassments terminating in madness. During this period of anger and intrigue, in which he frequently saw Mr. Sheridan, he urged the old Ministry to stand their ground and brave the House of Commons; and he pressed Lord Moira to form an Administration, without apprising Lord Wellesley—whose commission, however, he maintained, was only suspended and not concluded. Lord Moira prudently declined; but when the circumstance reached Lord Wellesley it confirmed the suspicions he had begun to harbour of the Regent’s insincerity, and furnished him with fresh motives for exacting, when subsequently employed by His Royal Highness, some more specific power and instructions than he had hitherto obtained. Displeased at discovering that the old Ministers, on the plea of retaining _pro tempore_ their offices, had long and frequent audiences of the Prince Regent, he and Lord Moira offered to hold the seals of office till some Administration should be formed. That offer was not accepted.

_T. Phillips, R.A. Pinx. 1812._

_Emery Walker Ph. Sc._]

In the meanwhile Lord Moira extracted from Lord Grey an explanation, or rather an accurate statement, of what he had said in the House of Lords on the disappointment of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, with the friendly view of satisfying the Prince that no personal affront to him had been offered or intended on that occasion.

The firmness of Lord Wellesley, the intervention of Lord Moira, and the opinion of others, especially the Duke of York and Lord Egremont[140] (the latter of whom avowed much political dislike to the two Lords, yet concurred in representing the services of both as essentially necessary to the country), at length prevailed on His Royal Highness with a bad grace to authorise Lord Wellesley to enter on a negotiation not only with Lord Grenville, but with Lord Grey, to whom he had chiefly taken an exception. In yielding, however, to this advice, he contrived to clog his offer with conditions, which he had the sagacity to foresee that the prudence or the high spirit of those with whom he negotiated would instantly reject. He did not direct Lord Wellesley to discuss measures and arrangements with the two Lords, but he directed him to annex as a condition and to stipulate that Lord Moira, Lord Erskine, and Mr. Canning should be members of the Cabinet;[141] and that to a Ministry so constituted they should recommend a certain number of members limited by previous arrangement or order from His Royal Highness.

Lord Wellesley, in delivering this proposal, intimated that Lord Melville should also be invited to a seat in the new Cabinet; that the Great Seal should be offered to Sir William Grant;[142] and that the Prince Regent would be gratified at Lord Eldon, though deprived of the Seal, being still retained in the Cabinet. To this proposal a refusal was drawn up by Lord Grenville and Lord Grey, and cordially approved of by all their leading friends in both Houses of Parliament. The grounds of their objections were strongly but respectfully stated to be a conviction that the plan was formed on a principle of disunion, that the proceeding was in itself novel and inconvenient, and the tendency of it would be to establish in the Cabinet itself a system of counteraction inconsistent with the prosecution of any uniform or beneficial course of policy.

On June 3 Lord Wellesley reported the failure of his negotiations, and recommended that some further explanations should be given; but he was informed by the Prince Regent that his powers had now ceased, and his commission was withdrawn. Lord Wellesley lost no time in informing the public, through the House of Lords, that his commission had been revoked; and in the course of his speech lamented that, “personal animosities, dreadful personal animosities,” had stood in the way of any advantageous and amicable arrangement. This strong phrase was applied by the public to the Prince Regent’s prejudices against Lord Grey; but when both Lord Moira and Lord Grenville acquitted Lord Wellesley of having meant any imputation on the Prince, and Lord Boringdon ascribed it, in Lord Wellesley’s absence, very awkwardly to inadvertence, the spirited little Marquis returned to the House, and, not satisfied with disclaiming the false meaning annexed in his words, declared explicitly that they studiously intended to stigmatise, and did, in truth, accurately describe, the feelings and conduct of the old Ministers towards him. A warm altercation ensued, in which Lord Wellesley expressed his scorn of his late colleagues in language which, if they had not then the wit to repel or confute, they afterwards showed they had the memory to retain and the disposition not easily to forgive.[143] Lord Moira, satisfied that all the above negotiations had failed from a misunderstanding, was still desirous to rectify it. With that view he sought opportunities of conversing, and wrote one or two notes to Lords Grey and Grenville, who civilly but distinctly declined pursuing the subject by unauthorised discussions. He was then furnished with full powers, and had an interview with the two Lords at his house in St. James’s Place on June 6, 1812.

To that interview it must be acknowledged that the two Lords went but ill prepared to bring matters to an amicable issue, and with some inclination, from a prospect of fresh and reviving embarrassments, to seize any plausible pretence for declining the proffered boon. Even had they been otherwise able to form an Administration, they had, from delicacy or from indolence, neglected to come to any agreement between themselves on some of the most important points connected with such arrangements. The Regent did not conceal his personal dislike to Lord Grey. To have selected him for the Treasury—an office which he never held, and which would have brought him more than any other into personal intercourse with the Regent—would certainly have provoked the indignation of the Court, and might, with some plausibility, be construed into an insult on the feelings of the Prince Regent. On the other hand, Lord Grenville had no disposition to surrender his auditorship, and our Parliamentary friends had still less to approve of his retaining it with the Treasury.[144] No third plan had been devised. Lord Moira had not, like Lord Wellesley, avowed a determination not to accept the Treasury. There were, indeed, circumstances, arising from the embarrassed state of his private affairs and his too compliant temper, which would have disqualified him for that office; but they were in their nature not very easy to be urged to him, and no plan not liable to inconvenience could be suggested in lieu of one, which, but for the objections alluded to, so obviously presented itself.

These difficulties, together with Lord Grey’s distrust of the Regent and Lord Grenville’s concealed, but not unreasonable, discontent with our parliamentary friends, indisposed both those Lords to any amicable termination of the negotiation. When, therefore, at the outset, Lord Moira refused to acquiesce in any removal of the great officers of the Household, or even to recognise the propriety of vesting any power of removing them in the Cabinet, they peremptorily declined accepting office with any such restriction; though Lord Moira was at great pains to assure them that the stipulation was entirely his own, and did not come from the Prince Regent.

The two Lords, no doubt, thought such a condition a less indelicate and more plausible ground of rupture, than others which they foresaw must arise in discussing the detail of arrangements. Unquestionably, as a ground of rejection, it had some advantages; it covered weaknesses in their own party, it screened them from the imputation of personal jealousies of those with whom they were to act; but, on the other hand, it did not expose the insincerity of the Court so manifestly as further progress in the negotiation might have done, and, like all pretexts contrived to keep out of sight the real motives of action, it rendered their conduct somewhat unintelligible to the public. They had, indeed, the satisfaction to find it approved by their House of Commons friends, with the exception of Mr. Whitbread, and by all their chief supporters in the Lords without one dissentient voice. Lord Darlington,[145] who had originally joined the Whigs through the influence of Carlton House, declared that had they acted otherwise they would have lost his support. Even Lord Erskine, who had endeavoured to render them more compliant, joined our meeting of June 7 at Lord Grenville’s, with an assurance that he would contribute to form no middle or neutral Administration, but “die in the political connection in which he had hitherto lived.” To this gallant determination, the conduct of Lord Moira, which afterwards reached my ears, may possibly have contributed. He had a few hours before informed Lord Erskine that in the Administration he was then projecting he intended to offer him the Presidentship, and not the Seals, which he destined to Sir William Grant. With an equal want of dexterity he had, about the same time, called on Lord Eldon to apprise him, as an old private friend, that he had no intention of offering him anything in his new Administration.

When Lord Wellesley had made some progress in his negotiations with the Whig Lords, and when he thought his project, though in its actual shape declined, might be so modified as to lead to an accommodation, the Prince Regent first suspended and then cancelled his powers. When Lord Moira had entirely failed in his negotiation and peremptorily rejected the principles on which alone the two Whig Lords would enter upon treaty, His Royal Highness continued his powers, and left him at liberty to form a Ministry of which he was quite satisfied the two obnoxious Lords would not be a part. Lord Moira was, indeed, sanguine. He hoped to form a Ministry, even though the Whigs refused to co-operate with him, without having recourse to the late Ministers, whom he continued to term “those fellows.” His first step was to offer Mr. Canning a seat in the Cabinet and a share in the arrangements for filling it. Mr. Canning, with certain conditions and reserves, accepted the offer. Lord Moira then commissioned Mr. Canning to persuade Lord Liverpool (a prominent Member of the late Cabinet, and consequently one of the “fellows” described by Lord Moira) to accede to his Ministry, which was nevertheless to be formed on a principle favourable to Catholic Emancipation.

This proposal Lord Liverpool naturally declined. He added that he had neither by word nor deed counteracted the object of the veto of [the] House of Commons for a new Ministry; and he somewhat carefully qualified his opinion on the Catholic question by observing that, although he should always vote against the measure, he was not precluded from supporting or even acting with a Ministry favourable to some further concessions to the Roman Catholics provided he, in other respects, concurred in their general politics. Lord Moira was not discouraged by Lord Liverpool’s refusal. He consulted Mr. Sheridan, but he offered him no seat in the Cabinet; he sent up express for Mr. Whitbread, entertained some strange hopes of that gentleman taking office, and gave him in return yet stranger, of Government espousing the cause of Parliamentary reform.

In the meanwhile he had authorised Mr. Canning to find four Cabinet Ministers, including himself. He spoke of the Duke of Norfolk and Lords Hardwicke, Erskine, and Egremont as four others on whom he (Lord Moira) could rely for active co-operation.[146] Few hours elapsed before Mr. Canning learnt that three of the above-mentioned Lords had declined every offer; and that Lord Egremont had never been consulted by Lord Moira, but only quoted by the Prince Regent as a man whose reluctance to take office he could, in case of great emergency, overrule. After sundry other meetings, which seemed devised for no practical purpose whatever, Lord Moira presented at Carlton House the meagre list of names suggested rather than procured by Mr. Canning.[147] The Prince Regent, glancing his eye carelessly over them, exclaimed: “You see, my dear Moira, they are chiefly Pittites; so the best way is to make up with the present men, and you may settle it all with Eldon and Liverpool, _who are waiting in the adjoining room_.” Lord Moira took his leave. The matter was as easily settled without him by the statesmen in waiting, and in ten minutes Lord Liverpool kissed hands as First Lord of the Treasury.

It was understood, on this revival of the old Ministry, that Government, as such, was to take no part on the Catholic question: that a subject, which had agitated the public for years, was to be considered by those who directed the councils of the nation as matter of indifference, on which they were not to concert any line of conduct whatever. Persons in office were to give their votes on that question, without paying or exacting any deference or compliance from their colleagues or subordinate officers. The only accession to the Ministry consisted of Lord Sidmouth and some few of his friends.[148]

Thus an address moved by a partisan of Mr. Canning,[149] and carried by the assistance of the Whigs, for the purpose of forcing either or both into the Cabinet, terminated by riveting those against whom it was directed more securely than ever in power, and procuring a share of it to the only faction in Parliament which had concurred in resisting the motion. Lord Liverpool assured me that he had been on the point of setting off on a tour on the Wye, and that from the period of the vote in [the] Commons to the failure of Lord Moira’s negotiations with Lord Grey, he had never directly nor indirectly obstructed the formation of a new, or endeavoured to preserve, the old Administration. I gave and give full credit to his assertion, and, with the exception of Lord Eldon, I believe the same might be said of most of his colleagues. Strong disinclination to office in the two Whig Lords; perhaps some little tincture of pride, mingled with manners unconciliatory to strangers; the unsurmountable barrier of opinion on the Catholic question between many of the parties concerned; the secret contrivances of Sheridan to make his power felt; the generous but somewhat unintelligible endeavour of Lord Moira to screen the Regent from all odium; and above all the private determination of the latter, steadily pursued through many byways and winding paths, to exclude the Whigs and Lord Grey in particular—were the real causes which defeated the formation of a new Ministry.

The Regent, to mark his satisfaction with Lord Moira, threw the Collar of St. George round his neck and embraced him with tears; which, it is whispered, His Royal Highness has the prerogative of shedding at pleasure. Lord Moira was soon afterwards named Governor-General of India.[150] Though the tool of others’ duplicity, and, in some measure, the dupe of his own refinements in loyalty, his motives were friendly to the Whigs, honest to the country, kind to the Prince, and creditable to his own character on the score of generosity but not of sagacity.

I have been minute in relating the above transactions. The secret motives of the parties were not obvious to distant observers, and much misunderstood at the time. The statements made in the House of Lords never reached the public. Even if they had, little would have been learnt from them. On one occasion, Lord Grey having characterised Lord Moira’s character as chivalrous, Moira understood the phrase as a reflection on his understanding. A debate ensued, which their respective, or rather common, friends were better pleased to leave without intelligible comment than to prolong at the hazard of a quarrel. The negotiations expose the hostility of the Prince Regent to the Whigs. They thereby furnish a clue to his previous proceedings and an explanation of his subsequent conduct. They discover the relations in which parties stood to one another; and thereby exhibit a picture of the politics of the time, and portraits of those most prominent in them.

Writers have often represented such negotiations as little more or less than a barefaced scramble for places, a contest of ambition in some few, and of avarice in more. In those I have witnessed there has been generally among leading statesmen much less appetite for office, much less ambition and avarice, than more respectable passions. In that here related, not only Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, but Lord Wellesley, Mr. Canning, and even Lord Liverpool, seem throughout to have foregone the prospect of place and power for a creditable and sometimes an overstrained and fastidious regard to character and consistency. Every one of them might have obtained office by the sacrifice either of connections or opinions. Possibly they were reprehensible for some portion of pride, vanity, or resentment; but nobody with an appearance of reason could impute to any one of them, on this occasion, either an inordinate desire of power or a grovelling passion for place or emolument.

The adulation bestowed on living Princes is disgusting; the admiration for high station and rank, common to most, and especially to professional men, is adverse to the cause of truth and often ridiculous. The habit of ascribing great designs and elevated motives to all the actions of public characters, so prevalent in courtly writers, is not only false and foolish but mischievous. On the other hand, the passion in which vulgar minds indulge of levelling all public characters to their own standard, and branding indiscriminately the leaders and followers of all parties with the meanest selfishness, is equally false, nearly as foolish, and much more mischievous. Far from showing sagacity, it betrays an ignorance of mankind as well as malignity of disposition. Instead of deterring men from corruption by the exposure of vice, it extinguishes one of the strongest incentives to virtue, posthumous fame; and it reconciles the world to the practice of iniquity by representing it to be universal and unavoidable.

The re-establishment of the old Ministry under Lord Liverpool was a new epoch. I defer the relation of the remaining events of the year and the Session of 1812 to another chapter.