Chapter VII: Book XX: Chap. I (3)

“I don’t understand the arrangement which Government have made of the command of the troops there. I have hitherto considered them as a part of the army, and from the arrangement which I made with the Spanish government they cost us nothing but their pay, and all the money procured by bills was applicable to the service in this country. _The instructions to general Graham alter this entirely, and they have even gone so far as to desire him to take measures to supply the Spaniards with provisions from the Mediterranean, whereas I had insisted that the Spaniards should feed our troops. The first consequence of this arrangement will be that we shall have no more money from Cadiz._ I had considered the troops at Cadiz so much a part of my army that I had written to my brother to desire his opinion whether, if the French withdrew from Cadiz, when they should attack Portugal, he thought I might bring into Portugal, at least the troops, which I had sent there. But I consider this now to be at an end.”

No. 6.

_Lord Wellington to Mr. Stuart._

“_1st April, 1810._

“I agree with you respecting the disposition of the people of Lisbon. In fact all they wish for is to be saved from the French, and they were riotous last winter _because they imagined, with some reason, that we intended to abandon them_.”——“_The arrangement made by Government for the command at Cadiz will totally ruin us in the way of money._”

No. 7.

_Lord Wellington to Mr. Stuart._

“_April 20th, 1810._

“_The state of opinions in England is very unfavourable to the Peninsula. The ministers are as much alarmed as the public or as the opposition pretend to be, and they appear to be of opinion that I am inclined to fight a desperate battle, which is to answer no purpose. Their private letters are in some degree at variance with their public instructions, and I have called for an explanation of the former, which when it arrives will shew me more clearly what they intend. The instructions are clear enough, and I am willing to act under them, although they throw upon me the whole responsibility for bringing away the army in safety, after staying in the Peninsula till it will be necessary to evacuate it. But it will not answer in these times to receive private hints and opinions from ministers, which, if attended to, would lead to an act directly contrary to the spirit, and even to the letter of the public instructions; at the same time that, if not attended to, the danger of the responsibility imposed by the public instructions is increased tenfold._”

No. 8.

_Ditto to Ditto._

“_May, 1810._

“It is impossible for Portugal to aid in feeding Cadiz. We have neither money, nor provisions in this country, and the measures which they are adopting to feed the people there will positively oblige us to evacuate this country for want of money to support the army, and to perform the king’s engagements, unless the Government in England should enable us to remain by sending out large and regular supplies of specie. I have written fully to Government upon this subject.”

No. 9.

_General Graham to Mr. Stuart._

“_Isla, 22d May, 1810._

In reference to his command at Cadiz, says, “lord Liverpool has decided the doubt by declaring this a part of lord Wellington’s army, and saying it is the wish of Government that though I am second in command to him I should be left here for the present.” “_This is odd enough; I mean that it should not have been left to his judgement to decide where I was to be employed; one would think he could judge fully better according to circumstances than people in England._”

No. 10.

_Lord Wellington to Mr. Stuart._

“_June 5, 1810._

“_This letter will shew you the difficulties under which we labour for want of provisions and of money to buy them._” “_I am really ashamed of writing to the government_ (Portuguese) upon this subject (of the militia), feeling as I do that we owe them so much money which we are unable to pay. According to my account the military chest is now indebted to the chest of the aids nearly £400,000. At the same time I have no money to pay the army, which is approaching the end of the second month in arrears, and which ought to be paid in advance. The bât and forage to the officers for March is still due, and we are in debt every where.” “_The miserable and pitiful want of money prevents me from doing many things which might and ought to be done for the safety of the country._” “The corps ought to be assembled and placed in their stations. But want of provisions and money obliges me to leave them in winter-quarters till the last moment. _Yet if any thing fails, I shall not be forgiven._”

No. 11.

_Mr. Stuart to Lord Wellington._

“_June 9, 1810._

“I have received two letters from Government, the one relative to licenses, the other containing a letter from Mr. Harrison of the Treasury, addressed to colonel Bunbury, in which, after referring to the different estimates both for the British and Portuguese, and stating the sums at their disposal, _they not only conclude that we have more than is absolutely necessary, but state specie to be so scarce in England that we must not rely on further supplies from home, and must content ourselves with such sums as come from Gibraltar and Cadiz_,” &c. &c.

“From hand to mouth we may perhaps make shift, taking care to pay the Portuguese in kind and not in money, until the supplies, which the Treasury say in three or four months will be ready, are forthcoming. Government desire me to report to them any explanation which either your lordship or myself may be able to communicate on the subject of Mr. Harrison’s letter. As it principally relates to army finance, I do not feel myself quite competent to risk an opinion in opposition to what that gentleman has laid down. _I have, however, so often and so strongly written to them the embarrassment we all labour under, both respecting corn and money_, that there must be some misconception, or some inaccuracy has taken place in calculations which are so far invalidated by the fact, without obliging us to go into the detail necessary to find out what part of the statement is erroneous.”

No. 12.

_Wellington to Stuart._

“_June, 1810._

“I received from the Secretary of State a copy of Mr. Hamilton’s letter to colonel Bunbury, and we have completely refuted him. He took an estimate made for September, October, and November, as the rate of expense for eight months, without adverting to the alteration of circumstances occasioned by change of position, increase of price, of numbers, &c., _and then concluded upon his own statement, that we ought to have money in hand, (having included in it by the bye some sums which we had not received,) notwithstanding that our distress had been complained of by every post, and I had particularly desired, in December, that £200,000 might be sent out, and a sum monthly equal in amount to the increased Portuguese subsidy_.”

No. 13.

_Ditto to Ditto._

“_June, 1810._

“All our militia in these provinces [_Tras os Montes and Entre Minho y Douro_] are disposable, and we might throw them upon the enemy’s flank in advance in these quarters [_Leon_] and increase our means of defence here and to the north of the Tagus very much indeed. _But we cannot collect them as an army, nor move them without money and magazines, and I am upon my last legs in regard to both._”

No. 14.

_Wellington to Stuart._

“_November, 1810._

“_I have repeatedly written to government respecting the pecuniary wants of Portugal, but hitherto without effect._”

No. 15.

_Ditto to Ditto._

“_December 22._

“It is useless to expect more money from England, as the desire of economy has overcome even the fears of the Ministers, _and they have gone so far as to desire me to send home the transports in order to save money_!”

No. 16.

_Ditto to Ditto._

“_28th January, 1811._

“I think the Portuguese are still looking to assistance from England, and I have written to the king’s Government strongly upon the subject in their favour. But I _should deceive myself if I believed we shall get any thing, and them if I were to tell them we should; they must, therefore, look to their own resources_.”

No. 17.

_Ditto to Ditto._

_In reference to the Portuguese intrigue against him._

“_18th February, 1811._

“I think also that they will be supported in the Brazils, and _I have no reason to believe that I shall be supported in England_.”

No. 18.

_Ditto to Ditto._

“_13th April, 1811._

“_If the Government choose to undertake large services and not supply us with sufficient pecuniary means, and leave to me the distribution of the means with which they do supply us, I must exercise my own judgement upon the distribution for which I am to be responsible._”

No. 19.

_Lord Wellington to Mr. Stuart._

“_4th July, 1811._

“The pay of the British troops is now nearly two months in arrears, instead of being paid one month in advance, according to his majesty’s regulations. The muleteers, upon whose services the army depends almost as much as upon those of the soldiers, are six months in arrears; _there are now bills to a large amount drawn by the commissioners in the country on the commissary at Lisbon still remaining unpaid, by which delay the credit of the British army and government is much impaired_, and you are aware of the pressing demands of the Portuguese government for specie. There is but little money in hand to be applied to the several services; _there is no prospect that any will be sent from England, and the supplies derived from the negociation of bills upon the treasury at Cadiz and Lisbon have been gradually decreasing_.”

No. 20.

_Lord Wellington to Lord Wellesley._

“_26th July, 1811._

“Although there are, I understand, provisions in Lisbon, in sufficient quantities to last the inhabitants and army for a year, about 12 or 14,000 Portuguese troops which I have on the right bank of the Tagus are literally starving; even those in the cantonments on the Tagus cannot get bread, because the government have not money to pay for means of transport. _The soldiers in the hospitals die because the government have not money to pay for the hospital necessaries for them; and it is really disgusting to reflect upon the detail of the distresses occasioned by the lamentable want of funds to support the machine which we have put in motion._”

“Either Great Britain is interested in maintaining the war in the Peninsula, or she is not. If she is, there can be no doubt of the expediency of making an effort to put in motion against the enemy the largest force which the Peninsula can produce. The Spaniards would not allow, I believe, of that active interference by us in their affairs which might affect and ameliorate their circumstances, _but that cannot be a reason for doing nothing_. Subsidies given without stipulating for the performance of specific services would, in my opinion, answer no purpose.”

No. 21.

_Mr. Sydenham to Mr. Stuart._

“_27th September, 1811._

“I take great shame to myself for having neglected so long writing to you, &c. but in truth I did not wish to write to you until I could give you some notion of the result of my mission and the measures which our government would have adopted in consequence of the information and opinion which I brought with me from Portugal, but _God knows how long I am to wait if I do not write to you until I could give you the information which you must naturally be so anxious to receive_. _From week to week I have anxiously expected that something would be concluded, and I as regularly deferred writing; however I am now so much in your debt that I am afraid you will attribute my silence to inattention rather than to the uncertainty and indecision of our further proceedings._ During the ten days agreeable voyage in the Armide I arranged all the papers of information which I had procured in Portugal, and I made out a paper on which I expressed in plain and strong terms all I thought regarding the state of affairs both in Portugal and Spain. These papers, together with the notes which I procured from lord Wellington and yourself, appeared to me to comprehend every thing which the ministers could possibly require, both to form a deliberate opinion upon every part of the subject and to shape their future measures. The letters which I had written to lord Wellesley during my absence from England, and which had been regularly submitted to the prince, had prepared them for most of the opinions which I had to enforce on my arrival. _Lord Wellesley perfectly coincided in all the leading points_, and a short paper of proposals was prepared for the consideration of the cabinet, supported by the most interesting papers which I brought from Portugal.”

Then followed an abstract of the proposals, after which Mr. Sydenham continues thus:—

“I really conceived that all this would have been concluded in a week, _but a month has elapsed, and nothing has yet been done_.” “Campbell will be able to tell you that I have done every thing in my power _to get people here to attend to their real interests in Portugal_, and I have clamoured for money, money, money in every office to which I have had access. To all my clamour and all my arguments I have invariably received the same answer ‘that the thing is impossible.’ The prince himself certainly appears to be _à la hauteur des circonstances_, and has expressed his determination to make every exertion to promote the good cause in the Peninsula. _Lord Wellesley has a perfect comprehension of the subject in its fullest extent, and is fully aware of the several measures which Great Britain ought and could adopt. But such is the state of parties and such the condition of the present government that I really despair of witnessing any decided and adequate effort on our part to save the Peninsula. The present feeling appears to be that we have done mighty things, and all that is in our power; that the rest must be left to all-bounteous Providence, and that if we do not succeed we must console ourselves by the reflection that Providence has not been so propitious as we deserved. This feeling you will allow is wonderfully moral and Christian-like, but still nothing will be done until we have a more vigorous military system, and a ministry capable of directing the resources of the nation to something nobler than a war of descents and embarkations._” “Nothing can be more satisfactory than the state of affairs in the north; all that I am afraid of is that we have not a ministry capable of taking advantage of so fine a prospect.”

Mr. Sydenham’s statement of the opinions of Lord Wellesley at the time of the negociations which ended in that lord’s retirement in February, is as follows:—

“1st. That Lord Wellesley was the only man in power who had a just view of affairs in the Peninsula, or a military thought amongst them.”

“2nd. That he did not agree with Perceval that they were to shut the door against the Catholics, neither did he agree with Grenville that they were to be conciliated by emancipation without securities.”

“3rd. That with respect to the Peninsula, he rejected the notion that we were to withdraw from the Peninsula to husband our resources at home, _but he thought a great deal more both in men and money could be done than the Percevals admitted, and he could no longer act under Perceval with credit, or comfort, or use to the country_.”

No. 22.

_Extract of a letter from Mr. Hamilton, Under-Secretary of State._

“_April 9th, 1810._

“I hope by next mail will be sent something more satisfactory and useful than we have yet done by way of instructions, _but I am afraid the late_ O. P. _riots have occupied all the thoughts of our great men here, so as to make them, or at least some of them, forget more distant but not less interesting concerns_. With respect to the evils you allude to as arising from the inefficiency of the Portuguese government, the people here are by no means so satisfied of their existence (to a great degree) as you who are on the spot. _Here we judge only of the results, the details we read over, but being unable to remedy, forget them the next day._”

No. 23.

_Lord Wellington to Mr. Stuart._

“_6th May, 1812._

“In regard to money for the Portuguese government, I begged Mr. Bisset to suggest to you, that if you were not satisfied with the sum he was enabled to supply, you should make your complaint on the subject to the king’s government. I am not the minister of finance, nor is the commissary-general. _It is the duty of the king’s ministers to provide supplies for the service, and not to undertake a service for which they cannot provide adequate supplies of money and every other requisite. They have thrown upon me a very unpleasant task, in leaving to me to decide what proportion of the money which comes into the hands of the commissary-general, shall be applied to the service of the British army; and what shall be paid to the king’s minister, in order to enable him to make good the king’s engagements to the Portuguese government; and at the same time that they have laid upon me this task, and have left me to carry on the war as I could, they have by their orders cut off some of the resources which I had._”

“_The British army have not been paid for nearly three months. We owe nearly a year’s hire to the muleteers of the army. We are in debt for supplies in all parts of the country; and we are on the point of failing in our payments for some supplies essentially necessary to both armies, which cannot be procured excepting with ready money._”

No. 24.

[Sidenote: Vol. iv. p. 178.]

The following extracts are of a late date, but being retrospective, and to the point, are proper to be inserted here. In 1813 lord Castlereagh complained of some proceedings described in my history, as having been adopted by lord Wellington and Mr. Stuart, to feed the army in 1810 and 1811, and his censure elicited the letters from which these extracts are given.

No. 25.

_Lord Wellington to Mr. Stuart._

“_3d May, 1813._

“I have read your letter, No. 2, 28th April, in which you have enclosed some papers transmitted by lord Castlereagh, including a letter from the Board of Trade in regard to the purchases of corn made by your authority in concert with me, in Brazil, America, and Egypt. When I see a letter from the Board of Trade, I am convinced that the latter complaint originates with the jobbing British merchants at Lisbon; and although _I am delighted to see the Government turn their attention to the subject, as it will eventually save me a great deal of trouble, I am quite convinced that if we had not adopted, nearly three years ago, the system of measures now disapproved of, not only would Lisbon and the army and this part of the Peninsula have been starved; but if we had, according to the suggestions of the commander-in-chief, and the Treasury, and the Board of Trade, carried on transactions of a similar nature through the sharks at Lisbon, above referred to, calling themselves British merchants, the expense of the army crippled in its operations, and depending upon those who, I verily believe, are the worst subjects that his Majesty has; and enormous as that expense is, it would have been very much increased._”

“In regard to the particular subject under consideration, it is obvious to me that the authorities in England have taken a very confined view of the question.”

“It appears to me to be extraordinary that when lord Castlereagh read the statement that the commissary-general had in his stores a supply of corn and flour to last 100,000 men for nine months, he should not have adverted to the fact, that the greatest part of the Portuguese subsidy, indeed all in the last year, but £600,000, was paid in kind, and principally in corn, and that he should not have seen that a supply for 100,000 men for nine months was not exorbitant under these circumstances. Then the Government appears to me to have forgotten all that passed on the particular subject of your purchases. _The advantage derived from them in saving a starving people during the scarcity of 1810-1811; in bringing large sums into the military chest which otherwise would not have found their way there; and in positive profit of money._”——“If all this be true, which I believe you have it in your power to prove, I cannot understand why Government find fault with these transactions, unless it is that they are betrayed into disapprobation of them by merchants who are interested in their being discontinued. _I admit that your time and mine would be much better employed than in speculation of corn, &c. But when it is necessary to carry on an extensive system of war with one-sixth of the money in specie which would be necessary to carry it on, we must consider questions and adopt measures of this sort, and we ought to have the confidence and support of the Government in adopting them._ It is only the other day that I recommended to my brother something of the same kind to assist in paying the Spanish subsidy; and I have adopted measures in respect to corn and other articles in Gallicia, with a view to get a little money for the army in that quarter. _If these measures were not adopted, not only would it be impossible to perform the king’s engagement, but even to support our own army._”

_Mr. Stuart to Mr. Hamilton._

“_8th May._

“Though I thank you for the letter from the Admiralty contained in yours of the 21st April, I propose rather to refer Government to the communication of lord Wellington and the admiral, by whose desire I originally adverted to the subject, than to continue my representations of the consequences to be expected from a state of things the navy department are not disposed to remedy. My private letter to lord Castlereagh, enclosing lord Wellington’s observations on the letter from the Treasury, will, I think, satisfy his lordship that the arrangements which had been adopted for the supply of the army and population of this country are of more importance than is generally imagined. _I am indeed convinced that if they had been left to private merchants, and that I had not taken the measures which are condemned, the army must have embarked, and a famine must have taken place._”

Now if these complaints thus made in the duke’s letters, written at the time, were unfounded, his Grace’s present letter is, for so much, a defence of Mr. Perceval; if they were not unfounded his present letter is worth nothing, unless as a proof, that with him, the memory of good is longer-lived than the memory of ill. But in either supposition the complaints are of historical interest, as shewing the difficulties, real or supposed, under which the general laboured. They are also sound vouchers for my historical assertions, because no man but the duke could have contradicted them; no man could have doubted their accuracy on less authority than his own declaration; and no man could have been so hardy as to put to him the direct question of their correctness.

Mr. Perceval objects to my quoting lord Wellesley’s manifesto, because that nobleman expressed sorrow at its appearance, and denied that he had composed it. But the very passage of lord Wellesley’s speech on which Mr. Perceval relies, proves, that the sentiments and opinions of the manifesto were really entertained by lord Wellesley, who repudiates the style only, and regrets, not that the statement appeared, but that it should have appeared at the moment when Mr. Perceval had been killed. The expression of this very natural feeling he, however, took care to guard from any mistake, by reasserting his contempt for Mr. Perceval’s political character. Thus he identified his opinions with those contained in the manifesto. And this view of the matter is confirmed by those extracts which I have given from the correspondence of Mr. Sydenham, no mean authority, for he was a man of high honour and great capacity; and he was the confidential agent employed by lord Wellesley, to ascertain and report upon the feelings and views of lord Wellington, with respect to the war; and also upon those obstacles to his success, which were daily arising, either from the conduct of the ministers at home, or from the intrigues of their diplomatists abroad.

[Sidenote: See Extract. No. 15]

[Sidenote: Do. No. 7.]

[Sidenote: Do. No. 10.]

[Sidenote: Do. No. 17.]

Thus it appears that if lord Wellington’s complaints, as exhibited in these extracts, were unfounded, they were at least so plausible as to mislead Mr. Sydenham on the spot, and lord Wellesley at a distance, and I may well be excused if they also deceived me. But was I deceived? Am I to be condemned as an historian, because lord Wellington, in the evening of his life, and in the ease and fulness of his glory, generously forgets the crosses, and remembers only the benefits of by-gone years? It may be said indeed, that his difficulties were real, and yet the government not to blame, seeing that it could not relieve them. To this I can oppose the ordering away of the transports, on which, in case of failure, the safety of the army depended! To this I can oppose the discrepancy between the public and private instructions of the ministers! To this I can oppose those most bitter passages, “_If any thing fails I shall not be forgiven_,” and “_I have no reason to believe that I shall be supported in England_.”

I say I can oppose these passages from the duke’s letters, but I need them not. Lord Wellesley, a man of acknowledged talent, practised in governing, well acquainted with the resources of England, and actually a member of the administration at the time, was placed in a better position, to make a sound judgement than lord Wellington; lord Wellesley, an ambitious man, delighting in power, and naturally anxious to direct the political measures, while his brother wielded the military strength of the state; lord Wellesley, tempted to keep office by natural inclination, by actual possession, by every motive that could stir ambition and soothe the whisperings of conscience, actually quitted the cabinet

_Because he could not prevail on Mr. Perceval to support the war as it ought to be supported, and he could therefore no longer act under him with credit, or comfort, or use to the country;_

_Because the war could be maintained on a far greater scale than Mr. Perceval maintained it, and it was dishonest to the allies and unsafe not to do it;_

_Because the cabinet, and he particularized Mr. Perceval as of a mean capacity, had neither ability and knowledge to devise a good plan, nor temper and discretion to adopt another’s plan._

Do I depend even upon this authority? No! In lord Wellington’s letter, stress is laid upon the word _specie_, the want of which, it is implied, was the only distress, because bank notes would not pass on the continent; but several extracts speak of corn and hospital stores, and the transport vessels ordered home were chiefly paid in paper. Notes certainly would not pass on the continent, nor in England neither, for their nominal value, and why? Because they were not money; they were the signs of debt; the signs that the labour, and property, and happiness, of unborn millions, were recklessly forestalled, by bad ministers, to meet the exigency of the moment. Now admitting, which I do not, that this exigency was real and unavoidable; admitting, which I do not, that one generation has a right to mortgage the labour and prosperity of another and unborn generation, it still remains a question, whether a minister, only empowered by a corrupt oligarchy, has such a right. And there can be no excuse for a man who, while protesting that the country was unable to support the war, as it ought to be supported, continued that war, and thus proceeded to sink the nation in hopeless debt, and risk the loss of her armies, and her honour, at the same time; there is no excuse for that man who, while denying the ability of the country, to support her troops abroad, did yet uphold all manner of corruption and extravagance at home.

There was no specie, because the fictitious ruinous incontrovertible paper money system had driven it away, and who more forward than Mr. Perceval to maintain and extend that system—the bane of the happiness and morals of the country; a system which then gave power and riches to evil men, but has since plunged thousands upon thousands into ruin and misery; a system which, swinging like a pendulum between high taxes and low prices, at every oscillation strikes down the laborious part of the community, spreading desolation far and wide and threatening to break up the very foundations of society. And why did Mr. Perceval thus nourish the accursed thing? Was it that one bad king might be placed on the throne of France; another on the throne of Spain; a third on the throne of Naples? That Italy might be the prey of the barbarian, or, last, not least, that the hateful power of the English oligarchy, which he called social order and legitimate rights, might be confirmed? But lo! his narrow capacity! what has been the result? In the former countries insurrection, civil war, and hostile invasion, followed by the free use of the axe and the cord, the torture and the secret dungeon; and in England it would have been the same, if her people, more powerful and enlightened in their generation, had not torn the baleful oppression down, to be in due time trampled to dust as it deserves.

_Mr. Perceval was pre-eminently an “honest, zealous, and able servant of the king!”_

[Sidenote: See Extract, No. 23.]

To be the servant of the monarch is not then to be the servant of the people. For if the country could not afford to support the war, as it ought to be supported, without detriment to greater interests, the war should have been given up; or the minister, who felt oppressed by the difficulty, should have resigned his place to those who thought differently. “_It is the duty of the king’s ministers to provide supplies for the service, and not to undertake a service for which they cannot provide adequate supplies of money and every other requisite!_” These are the words of Wellington, and wise words they are. Did Mr. Perceval act on this maxim? No! he suffered the war to starve on “_one-sixth of the money necessary to keep it up_,” and would neither withdraw from the contest, nor resign the conduct of it to lord Wellesley, who, with a full knowledge of the subject, declared himself able and willing to support it efficiently. Nay, Mr. Perceval, while professing his inability to furnish Wellington efficiently for one war in the Peninsula, was by his orders in council, those complicated specimens of political insolence, folly, and fraud, provoking a new and unjust war with America, which was sure to render the supply of that in the Peninsula more difficult than ever.

[Sidenote: See Extract No. 20]

But how could the real resources of the country for supplying the war be known, until all possible economy was used in the expenditure upon objects of less importance? Was there any economy used by Mr. Perceval? Was not that the blooming period of places, pensions, sinecures, and jobbing contracts? Did not the government and all belonging thereto, then shout and revel in their extravagance? Did not corruption the most extensive and the most sordid overspread the land? Was not that the palmy state of the system which the indignant nation has since risen in its moral strength to reform? Why did not Mr. Perceval reduce the home and the colonial expenses, admit the necessity of honest retrenchment, and then manfully call upon the people of England to bear the real burthen of the war, because it was necessary, and because their money was fairly expended to sustain their honour and their true interests? This would have been the conduct of an able, zealous, and faithful servant of the country; and am I to be silenced by a phrase, when I charge with a narrow, factious, and contemptible policy and a desire to keep himself in power, the man, who supported and extended this system of corruption at home, clinging to it as a child clings to its nurse, while the armies of his country were languishing abroad for that assistance which his pitiful genius could not perceive the means of providing, and which, if he had been capable of seeing it, his more pitiful system of administration would not have suffered him to furnish. Profuseness and corruption marked Mr. Perceval’s government at home, but the army withered for want abroad; the loan-contractors got fat in London, but the soldiers in hospital died because there was no money to provide for their necessities. The funds of the country could not supply both, and so he directed his economy against the troops, and reserved his extravagance to nourish the foul abuses at home, and this is to be a pre-eminently “_honest, zealous, and able servant of the king_!”

[Sidenote: See further on, Second Extracts, No. 4.]

[Sidenote: Ditto, No. 6]

[Sidenote: See further on, Second Extracts, No. 7.]

This was the man who projected to establish fortresses to awe London and other great towns. This was the man who could not support the war in Spain, but who did support the tithe war in Ireland, and who persecuted the press of England with a ferocity that at last defeated its own object. This was the man who called down vindictive punishment on the head of the poor tinman, Hamlyn of Plymouth, because, in his ignorant simplicity, he openly offered money to a minister for a place; and this also was the man who sheltered himself from investigation, under the vote of an unreformed House of Commons, when Mr. Maddocks solemnly offered to prove at the bar, that he, Mr. Perceval, had been privy to, and connived at a transaction, more corrupt and far more mischievous and illegal in its aim than that of the poor tinman. This is the Mr. Perceval who, after asserting, with a view to obtain heavier punishment on Hamlyn, the distinguished purity of the public men of his day, called for that heavy punishment on Hamlyn for the sake of public justice, and yet took shelter himself from that public justice under a vote of an unreformed house, and suffered Mr. Ponsonby to defend that vote by the plea that such foul transactions were as “_glaring as the sun at noon-day_.” And this man is not to be called factious!

Mr. Perceval the younger in his first letter to me says, “_the good name of my father is the only inheritance he left to his children_.” A melancholy inheritance indeed if it be so, and that he refers to his public reputation. But I find that during his life the minister Perceval had salaries to the amount of about eight thousand a-year, and the reversion of a place worth twelve thousand a-year, then enjoyed by his brother, lord Arden. And also I find that after his death, his family received a grant of fifty thousand pounds, and three thousand a-year from the public money. Nay, Mr. Perceval the son, forgetting his former observation, partly founds his father’s claim to reputation upon this large amount of money so given to his family. Money and praise he says were profusely bestowed, money to the family, praise to the father, wherefore Mr. Perceval must have been an admirable minister! Admirable proof!

[Sidenote: Ditto, No. 5]

But was he praised and regretted by an admiring grateful people? No! the people rejoiced at his death. Bonfires and illuminations signalized their joy in the country, and in London many would have rescued his murderer; a multitude even blessed him on the scaffold. No! He was not praised by the English people, for they had felt his heavy griping hand; nor by the people of Ireland, for they had groaned under his harsh, his unmitigated bigotry. Who then praised him? Why his coadjutors in evil, his colleagues in misrule; the majority of a corrupt House of Commons, the nominees of the borough faction in England, of the Orange faction in Ireland; those factions by which he ruled and had his political being, by whose support, and for whose corrupt interests he run his public “career of unmixed evil,” unmixed, unless the extreme narrowness of his capacity, which led him to push his horrid system forward too fast for its stability, may be called a good.

[Sidenote: See further on, Second Extracts, No. 7.]

By the nominees of such factions, by men placed in the situation, but without the conscience of Mr. Quentin Dick, Mr. Perceval was praised, and the grant of money to his family was carried; but there were many to oppose the grant even in that house of corruption. The grant was a ministerial measure, and carried, as such, by the same means, and by the same men, which, and who, had so long baffled the desire of the nation for catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. And yet the people! emphatically, the people! have since wrung those measures from the factions; aye! and the same people loathe the very memory of the minister who would have denied both for ever, if it had been in his power.

“_Mr. Perceval’s bigotry taught him to oppress Ireland, but his religion did not deter him from passing a law to prevent the introduction of medicines into France during a pestilence._”

This passage is, by the younger Mr. Perceval, pronounced to be utterly untrue, because bark is only _one medicine_, and not _medicines_; because there was no raging deadly general pestilence in France at the time; and because the measure was only retaliation for Napoleon’s Milan and Berlin decrees, a sort of war which even Quakers might wink at. What the extent of a Quaker’s conscience on such occasions may be I know not, since I have heard of one, who, while professing his hatred of blood-shedding, told the mate of his ship that if he did not port his helm, he would not run down his enemy’s boat. But this I do know, that Napoleon’s decrees were retaliation for our paper blockades; that both sides gave licenses for a traffic in objects which were convenient to them, while they denied to unoffending neutrals their natural rights of commerce; that to war against hospitals is inhuman, unchristianlike, and uncivilized, and that the avowal of the principle is more abhorrent than even the act. The avowed principle in this case was to distress the enemy. It was known that the French were in great want of bark, therefore it was resolved they should not have it, unless Napoleon gave up his great scheme of policy called the continental system. Now men do not want Jesuit’s bark unless to cure disease, and to prevent them from getting it, was literally to war against hospitals. It was no metaphor of Mr. Whitbread’s, it was a plain truth.

Oh! exclaims Mr. Perceval, there was no deadly raging general pestilence! What then? Is not the principle the same? Must millions suffer, must the earth be cumbered with carcasses, before the christian statesman will deviate from his barbarous policy? Is a momentary expediency to set aside the principle in such a case? Oh! no! by no means! exclaims the pious minister Perceval. My policy is just, and humane; fixed on immutable truths emanating directly from true religion, and quite consonant to the christian dispensation; the sick people shall have bark, I am far from wishing to prevent them from getting bark. God forbid! I am not so inhuman. Yes, they shall have bark, but their ruler must first submit to me. “Port thy helm,” quoth the Quaker, “or thee wilt miss her, friend!” War against hospitals! Oh! No! “I do not war against the hospital, I see the black flag waving over it and I respect it; to be sure: I throw my shells on to it continually, but that is not to hurt the sick, it is only to make the governor capitulate.” And this is the pious sophistry by which the christian Mr. Perceval is to be defended!

But Mr. Cobbett was in favour of this measure! Listen to him! By all means! Let us hear Mr. Cobbett; let us hear his “vigorous sentences,” his opinions, his proofs, his arguments, the overflowings of his “true English spirit and feeling” upon the subject of Mr. Perceval’s administration. Yes! yes! I will listen to Mr. Cobbett, and what is more, I will yield implicit belief to Mr. Cobbett, where I cannot, with any feeling of truth, refute his arguments and assertions.

Mr. Cobbett defended the Jesuit’s bark bill upon the avowed ground that it was to assert our sovereignty of the seas, not our actual power on that element, but our right to rule there as we listed. That is to say, that the other people of the world were not to dare traffic, not to dare move upon that high road of nations, not to presume to push their commercial intercourse with each other, nay, not even to communicate save under the controul and with the license of England. Now, if we are endowed by Heaven with such a right, in the name of all that is patriotic and English, let it be maintained. Yet it seems a strange plea in justification of the christian Mr. Perceval—it seems strange that he should be applauded for prohibiting the use of bark to the sick people of Portugal and Spain, and France, Holland, Flanders, Italy, and the Ionian islands, for to all these countries the prohibition extended, on the ground of our right to domineer on the wide sea; and that he should also be applauded for declaiming against the cruelty, the ambition, the domineering spirit of Napoleon. I suppose we were appointed by heaven to rule on the ocean according to our caprice, and Napoleon had only the devil to sanction his power over the continent. We were christians, “truly British christians,” as the Tory phrase goes; and he was an infidel, a Corsican infidel. Nevertheless we joined together, each under our different dispensations, yes, we joined together, we agreed to trample upon the rest of the world; and that trade, which we would not allow to neutrals, we, by mutual licenses, carried on ourselves, until it was discovered that the sick wanted bark, sorely wanted it; then we, the truly British christians, prohibited that article. We deprived the sick people of the succour of bark; and without any imputation on our christianity, no doubt because the tenets of our faith permit us to be merciless to our enemies, provided a quaker winks at the act! Truly the logic, the justice, and the christianity of this position, seem to be on a par.

All sufferings lead to sickness, but we must make our enemies suffer, if we wish to get the better of them, let them give up the contest and their sufferings will cease: wherefore there is nothing in this stopping of medicine. This is Mr. Cobbett’s argument, and Mr. Cobbett’s words are adopted by Mr. Perceval’s son. To inflict suffering on the enemy was then the object of the measure, and of course the wider the suffering spread the more desirable the measure. Now suffering of mind as well as of body must be here meant, because the dead and dying are not those who can of themselves oblige the government of a great nation to give up a war; it must be the dread of such sufferings increasing, that disposes the great body of the people to stop the career of their rulers. Let us then torture our prisoners; let us destroy towns with all their inhabitants; burn ships at sea with all their crews; carry off children and women, and torment them until their friends offer peace to save them. Why do we not? Is it because we dread retaliation? or because it is abhorrent to the usages of christian nations? The former undoubtedly, if the younger Mr. Perceval’s argument adopted from Cobbett is just; the latter if there is such a thing as christian principle. That principle once sacrificed to expediency, there is nothing to limit the extent of cruelty in war.

So much for Mr. Cobbett upon the Jesuit’s bark bill, but one swallow does not make a summer; his “true English spirit and feeling” breaks out on other occasions regarding Mr. Perceval’s policy, and there, being quite unable to find any weakness in him, I am content to take him as a guide. Something more, however, there is, to advance on the subject of the Jesuit’s bark bill, ere I yield to the temptation of enlivening my pages with Cobbett’s “vigorous sentences.”

[Sidenote: Hansard’s Debates.]

Mr. Wilberforce, no small name amongst religious men and no very rigorous opponent of ministers, described this measure in the house, as a bill “_which might add to the ferocity and unfeeling character of the contest, but could not possibly put an end to the contest_.”

Mr. Grattan said, “_we might refuse our Jesuit’s bark to the French soldiers; we might inflict pains and penalties, by the acrimony of our statutes, upon those who were saved from the severity of war; but the calculation was contemptible_.”

Mr. Whitbread characterized the bill as “_a most abominable measure calculated to hold the country up to universal execration_. _It united in itself detestable cruelty with absurd policy._”

Lord Holland combatted the principle of the bill, which he said “_would distress the women and children of Spain and Portugal more than the enemy_.”

Lord Grenville “_cautioned the house to look well at the consideration they were to receive as the price of the honour, justice, and humanity of the country_.”

Then alluding to the speech of Lord Mulgrave (who, repudiating the flimsy veil of the bill being merely a commercial regulation, boldly avowed that it was an exercise of our right to resort to whatever mode of warfare was adopted against us) Lord Grenville, I say, observed, that such a doctrine did not a little surprise him. “_If_,” said he, “_we are at war with the Red Indians, are we to scalp our enemies because the Indians scalp our men? When Lyons was attacked by Robespierre he directed his cannon more especially against the hospital of that city than against any other part, the destruction of it gave delight to his sanguinary inhuman disposition. In adopting the present measure we endeavour to assimilate ourselves to that monster of inhumanity, for what else is the bill but a cannon directed against the hospitals on the continent._”

[Sidenote: Hansard’s Debates.]

But all this, says Mr. Perceval the younger, is but “declamatory invective, the answered and refuted fallacies of a minister’s opponents in debate.” And yet Mr. Perceval, who thus assumes that all the opposition speeches were fallacies, does very complacently quote lord Bathurst’s speech in defence of the measure, and thus, in a most compendious manner, decides the question. Bellarmin says yes! exclaimed an obscure Scotch preacher to his congregation, Bellarmin says yes! but I say no! and Bellarmin being thus confuted, we’ll proceed. Even so Mr. Perceval. But I am not to be confuted so concisely as Bellarmin. Lord Erskine, after hearing lord Bathurst’s explanation, maintained that “_the bill was contrary to the dictates of religion and the principles of humanity_,” and this, he said, he felt so strongly, that he was “resolved _to embody his opinion in the shape of a protest that it might go down in a record to posterity_.” It is also a fact not to be disregarded in this case, that the bishops, who were constant in voting for all other ministerial measures, wisely and religiously abstained from attending the discussions of this bill. Lord Erskine was as good as his word, eleven other lords joined him, and their protests contained the following deliberate and solemn testimony against the bill.

“Because _the Jesuit’s bark, the exportation of which is prohibited by this bill_, has been found, by long experience, to be a specific for many dangerous diseases which war has a tendency to spread and exasperate; _and because to employ as an engine of war the privation of the only remedy for some of the greatest sufferings which war is capable of inflicting, is manifestly repugnant to the principles of the Christian religion, contrary to humanity, and not to be justified by any practice of civilised nations_.

“Because _the means to which recourse has been hitherto had in war, have no analogy to the barbarous enactments of this bill, inasmuch as it is not even contended that the privations to be created by it, have any tendency whatever to self-defence, or to compel the enemy to a restoration of peace, the only legitimate object by which the infliction of the calamities of war can in any manner be justified_.”

Such was the religious, moral, and political character, given to this bill of Mr. Perceval’s, by our own statesmen. Let us now hear the yet more solemnly recorded opinion of the statesmen of another nation upon Mr. Perceval’s orders in council, of which this formed a part. In the American president’s message to Congress, the following passages occur.

“The government of Great Britain had already introduced into her commerce during war, a system _which at once violating the rights of other nations, and resting on a mass of perjury and forgery, unknown to other times, was making an unfortunate progress, in undermining those principles of morality and religion, which are the best foundations of national happiness_.”

One more testimony. Napoleon, whose authority, whatever Mr. Perceval and men of his stamp may think, will always have a wonderful influence; Napoleon, at St. Helena, declared, “that posterity would more bitterly reproach Mr. Pitt for the hideous school he left behind him, than for any of his own acts; _a school marked by its insolent machiavelism, its profound immorality, its cold egotism, its contempt for the well-being of men and the justice of things_.” Mr. Perceval was an eminent champion of this hideous school, which we thus find the leading men of England, France, and America, uniting to condemn. And shall a musty Latin proverb protect such a politician from the avenging page of history? The human mind is not to be so fettered. Already the work of retribution is in progress.

Mr. Perceval the younger, with something of fatuity, hath called up Mr. Cobbett to testify to his father’s political merit. Commending that rugged monitor of evil statesmen for his “_vigorous sentences_,” for his “_real English spirit and feeling_,” he cannot now demur to his authority; let him then read and reflect deeply on the following passages from that eminent writer’s works, and he may perhaps discover, that to defend his father’s political reputation with success will prove a difficult and complicate task. If the passages are painful to Mr. Perceval, if the lesson is severe, I am not to blame. It is not I but himself who has called up the mighty seer, and if the stern grim spirit, thus invoked, will not cease to speak until all be told, it is not my fault.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: History of George IV.]

EXTRACTS FROM MR. COBBETT’S WRITINGS.

_Extract 1.—Of Mr. Perceval’s harshness._