1807-1810

N.B.—Copied in 1824. Written between December, 1817, and December, 1818.

In the latter end of the Session of 1808 the public attention was diverted from domestic occurrences, and indeed from Parliament itself, to events on the Peninsula of Spain. They changed the aspect of affairs both at home and abroad, and led ultimately to those extraordinary revolutions by which the next seven years were distinguished. These notes are devoted to English politics, and however some documents and recollections within my reach might illustrate the history of Spain during that period, it is my intention to confine myself _here_ to such occurrences as have immediate reference to our domestic parties. Some account, however, of the campaigns on the Peninsula is necessary, to explain the state of parties in England and the character and circumstances of those who took a part in them.

I have not hitherto adverted to the emigration of the Court of Lisbon to the Brazils, though it took place in November, 1807, and was much connected with English politics.[1] It was in truth so interwoven with the state in which our armies found that part of the Peninsula, that in relating the ensuing campaign I must have fallen into some repetition. The Portuguese Minister, the Chevalier d’Aranjo (who was all along suspected of promoting the designs of the French, and was certainly in secret correspondence with them, though possibly, and indeed probably, with the somewhat less criminal design of deceiving them), always assured me that the Prince Regent of Portugal would, as he was in policy bound to do, submit to almost anything to avoid a French invasion; but that whenever he despaired of averting that calamity, he would throw himself into the arms of the English, and emigrate to Rio Janeiro with all his family and Court, rather than hold a nominal and precarious authority under a French garrison in his own dominions. This previous view of the subject, not Lord Strangford’s[2] negotiations, induced him to resort to that measure; and he was on board the ship before that Minister landed, and under weigh, if he had not actually crossed the bar, before he had any interview with the person who in a public dispatch strongly implies that his previous representations and promises, if not an audience on November 28 in Lisbon, had prevailed on him to embark.[3]

Lord Strangford arrived in London with the news of the safe departure of the Court from the Tagus, before the official intelligence which he had sent by another ship reached the office. He had leisure during his voyage to improve the story he had invented, and he made the whole so dramatic that Mr. Canning, in the first fervour of gratitude, gave him a riband; promised him the appointment to Rio Janeiro; offered him an Irish earldom, which, as Mr. Canning expressed it, he had the _modesty_ to refuse; and above all pressed him most earnestly to write a full account of the animating tale he had related in the shape of a dispatch, and to date it, “_Off the Tagus_.” He accordingly complied; and in observance of the rules of fiction which both as a poet and a politician he had studied and practised so successfully

Servetur ad imum Qualis ab incepto processerit,

he composed an epistle in Reddish’s Hotel, St. James’s Street, as true, or rather as false, as the date of it. It was published, while the ink of the original was yet wet, in the official Gazette of the country![4] Mr. Canning must have been thunderstruck when he received the original dispatch, and discovered many variations in the second edition. He was, however, either too vain to acknowledge himself a dupe or too good-natured to expose the impostor. So far, therefore, from disavowing Lord Strangford, he appointed him Minister to Rio Janeiro, where, notwithstanding his detected falsehoods and other misconduct, he was continued for many years against the better judgment of his various employers, through the contrivances of the Portuguese Ambassador, Souza[5] (Count Funchal), and the interest of his relation and protector, the Duke of Northumberland. Mr. Brougham, who saw him frequently, did not spare him in the _Morning Chronicle_; indeed, he dwelt so much on the subject that I intimated to him and to Mr. Perry, the proprietor, that it was growing tiresome. Whether by the contrivance of Mr. Brougham to avenge himself of this criticism, or by pure accident, I know not, but certain it is that Lord Strangford has always imputed those just but severe strictures on his conduct to me, and with exquisite judgment complained to Mr. Brougham, the real author, of the malignity and inveteracy with which they were penned.

To return, however, to my narrative. Some regiments, detached from Sicily to co-operate with a squadron for compelling the Portuguese and Russian fleets on the Tagus to surrender in case the Prince of Brazil had not determined to sail for America, were on the coast; an expedition, which I have already adverted to as prepared during our Ministry, was at Cork[6]; and a small army, sent to the King of Sweden under the command of Sir John Moore, was released from that service by the dis-agreements which occurred between that King and the English general. All these forces were ready to act when the intelligence of the revolution in Spain reached England.[7]

It was brought thither at the end of May, or beginning of June, 1808, from the Asturias by Matarosa and Don Andres de la Vega: the first, a young nobleman afterwards better known by the name of Count Torreno; the latter, a provincial lawyer, who united to considerable sagacity and unblemished integrity great sobriety of judgment and a character capable of inspiring and of feeling confidence. He afterwards laboured to counteract the effects of that suspicion which both in and out of Cortes was estranging the Spaniards from their allies; but he died of the yellow fever at Cadiz before he acquired all the fame he deserved, and before the healing qualities of his temper could be applied to the prevention of those calamities which the return of King Ferdinand so unexpectedly produced. His modest character and inferior rank, the extreme youth of Matarosa, and the comparative insignificance of the province of the Asturias, made our Government hesitate till the arrival of the Galician and Andalusian deputies, men not equal in capacity, but of higher rank by birth or station. Admiral Apodaca, though, in truth, selected to screen him from the resentment of the multitude for having signed a proclamation favourable to the French and not for any proof of zeal against them, had a very prepossessing appearance, and a manner which announced more knowledge of the world and talents of business than he really possessed. These circumstances, and a confirmation of the simultaneous rising throughout Spain on St. Ferdinand’s Day (May 25), determined our Government to afford all possible aid to the first popular resistance which the aggressions of Napoleon had encountered. Mr. Whitbread and some other Whigs, but especially that genuine though sober lover of freedom “wherever pleaded,” Mr. Horner,[8] caught the flame which such a contest was likely to kindle in every generous breast. Lord Grey, while his first impressions were yet warm, wrote me word that had he been in office I should have been despatched to the insurgents without loss of time. Some of the Ministers were less sanguine than the public; and Lord Westmorland,[9] in a phrase characteristic of his feelings and taste, said, “The Spaniards had got into a d——d scrape, and if we did not look sharp they would drag us into it too.”

Count Florida Blanca[10] and my amiable, philosophical friend, Don Gaspar Melchior de Jovellanos,[11] on acceding to the cause of the insurgents, wrote to me to convey the intelligence to our Government. I forwarded their respective letters, with a translation, to the Secretary of State’s office, and a copy of my answers, in which I pointedly disclaimed all connection or influence with any Ministry, but expressed my private conviction that every Englishman in or out of our Councils would be forward in assisting Spain in so arduous and so honourable a struggle. I observed that Mr. Canning took very slight notice of these communications, which, considering the character and station of the writers, were not unimportant. I have since ascertained that he took umbrage at my writing to the Under-Secretary of State and not to himself, which I did from an unwillingness to give my correspondence too great an air of importance or an appearance of obtruding either inquiry or opinion of mine on the Government.

On my applying soon afterwards for a passport to travel in Spain, he wrote me a letter of misplaced admonition; which I answered in a way to show him that I should regulate myself by my own notions of propriety without considering his, and that I did not conceive a Secretary of State, in granting a passport to an English gentleman, had any authority or occasion to read him a lecture as to his intercourse with foreigners. This little incident and other traits which occurred at the same time were indications of that personal vanity and flippancy which have often obstructed his ambitious designs by raising him enemies most unnecessarily, and which are the real defects of his character rather than weaknesses of a baser nature at that time very generally, but at all times very falsely, imputed to him. In our party Lord Grenville, swayed by Mr. Wickham,[12] who deemed French armies invincible, and Mr. Brougham, who had written himself into a persuasion that everything which postponed peace must terminate in disaster, took in the course of the summer a very despondent view of the contest on the Peninsula; but the Duke of Norfolk was the only man who in 1808 publicly deprecated the policy of assisting the Spaniards. The Convention of Cintra, the retreat of Sir John Moore, the defeat and the dispersion of the Spanish armies, and the arguments in the _Edinburgh Review_, converted many to the same opinion in the course of a few months. Even Mr. Windham, with all his ardour for war and hatred of the French, was at moments startled at the apparition of liberty which the patriots occasionally summoned to their aid, and at a subsequent period was scared at the notion of resisting Napoleon himself by anything approaching to democratical principles.

The troops I have described above[13] were employed in the first instance and in the absence of Sir John Moore, who was personally detained some time in Sweden, to rescue Portugal from the French. They were placed for that purpose under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley. The King disapproved of entrusting so important an expedition to a General so low in the list. He insisted on some older officer superseding him if the force were augmented. These objections of His Majesty led to the appointments of Sir Hew Dalrymple and Sir Harry Burrard, which occasioned no little confusion. The brilliant battle of Vimiero and the Convention of Cintra,[14] which, though it sacrificed some advantages, at least liberated the west coast of the Peninsula from all French armies, are all matters of history.

The circumstances relating to them were well sifted at the time, and I know of no private or unpublished fact which would further illustrate them. The success in Portugal, however incomplete, was considered by all as necessarily the forerunner of some more extensive undertaking, but the Generals there employed were for different reasons incapacitated from the command of any immediate and greater expedition. The appointment of a commander became the subject of much public speculation and anxiety, and no doubt of as much secret deliberation and private intrigue. The popular writers affected to apprehend that the Duke of York was destined by Court favour to that important service. It is indeed probable that his father countenanced such pretensions; and till the subsequent career of Sir Arthur Wellesley enabled him without self-disparagement to acquiesce in any appointment founded on a series of triumphs, it is natural to suppose that a Prince of the Blood at the head of the army was somewhat unwilling to admit his failures to be disqualifications for a command to which no rival could aspire on the plea of any splendid or popular success. The public, and the Ministry perhaps, thought otherwise. Cobbett and other writers employed their memory and their wit to expose his incapacity in the field; and a pamphlet, written in a mysterious tone of insinuation and menace, prepared a way for the charges which were afterwards preferred against him. It proceeded from a cabal, with which some persons in the Duke of Kent’s family were reported to have a connection. Ministers possibly were not displeased at having it in their power to plead the existence of popular clamour and prejudice against an appointment, which for many stronger but less courtly reasons they wished to avoid. But Sir John Moore, the only person whom they could venture to recommend to so extensive and important a command, never enjoyed their confidence either before or after his appointment.[15] His support at home in case of misfortune must have appeared to him precarious, and he assumed the command in a temper of distrust very natural, and in some views laudable, but not very propitious to the success of a cause depending more upon passion than calculation, nor encouraging to a people whose main resource consisted in an inward and rooted persuasion that they were invincible.

With great and very unusual qualities of understanding and disposition, Sir John Moore was perhaps less adapted to the command to which he was appointed than to any other to which his destiny could have called him. He was, indeed, the most accomplished soldier in our army. He united firmness, knowledge, and sagacity, to great military skill and zeal for his profession and his country. He had shown decision of character in the field of action, and never betrayed any want of it in such commands as he had been entrusted with. Nor was this all. The attachment of numerous, and among them the most sensible, officers in the army, and the veneration in which his memory was held by them even after his disaster and death, cannot be accounted for by the active praise of his relations and countrymen,[16] but prove that he really possessed those virtues which confer on a commander an authority over the opinions and wishes as well as the actions of his followers. But as he could not feel, so neither could he inspire, confidence in any but a regular force. His affections were limited to British officers, and he was either unwilling or unable to court the goodwill or humour the weaknesses of any other. His high spirit would not stoop to countenance either absurdity or exaggeration; he disdained, perhaps he undervalued, the advantages which, in a moment of national ferment, some extravagance of hopes and even of expressions may produce.[17] He knew the superiority of English troops over the undisciplined and ill-officered bands of their allies; and if not childishly complacent in displaying, he was at least at no pains to conceal, his sentiments on that subject.

He could not rely on the statements or depend on the skill of the Spaniards with whom he came in contact, and he soon let them know that he had made that discovery. Anxious not to forfeit his military reputation, he probably expressed less ardour in the cause than he evinced apprehension of reproach should he risk the safety of so large a British force; and the tone of circumspection and diffidence at headquarters spread through the army, and tended, no doubt, to produce in some degree that backwardness to co-operate with them in the natives, which he quotes so often in his notes and correspondence as a proof of their want of enthusiasm. In the last and most important epoch of his life he put himself in the right in all his differences with others; but it is observable that, though in the right, he did always differ with those whose co-operation and concert were most necessary to his success.

Before he took the command of the army, Ministers should have sent him to the Spanish Governments then forming, or should have selected at his recommendation some military man with whom he was in the habits of confidence. The choice, however, fell on my friend, Mr. Frere,[18] a man of a warm and generous disposition, of singular and original wit, and of great literary accomplishments, who was zealous in the cause of Spain. He had, it is true, contributed to our rupture with that country in 1804 and to the scandalous capture of the frigates; but his personal quarrel with the Prince of the Peace[19] might well be expected to atone for all such offences, in the eyes of a nation irritated even to madness against that favourite. His anti-Gallican spirit, too, somewhat extravagant elsewhere, was congenial with the feelings of Spaniards, and not unlikely to inspire them with confidence in him.

These considerations and his intimacy with Mr. Canning were his recommendations. He had no other: with all his ardour, reading, talents, and humour, he was a bad man of business. His manners, repulsive at all times to new acquaintance, became yet more so when the importance of the affairs in which he was engaged rendered him absent and pompous. Thus distant to some and suspicious of all, he was often the dupe of low and designing men, and yet oftener of his own imagination. He had no knowledge of men’s characters, and even when he adopted their ideas and approved of their conduct, was neither communicative nor cordial in his official intercourse with them. His habitual absence assumed, when he was in a public capacity, the appearance of haughty demeanour and self-sufficiency; and though entirely exempt from such vices, he preferred incurring the imputation of them to the acknowledgment of the more venial infirmities of inattention, indolence, or forgetfulness. In his correspondence with Sir John Moore he showed great want of judgment in collecting intelligence, was unaccountably remiss in conveying such as he did collect, and culpably presumptuous and offensive in the tone and substance of his advice and remonstrances.

The General, from the commencement, was disposed to remain on or near the frontiers of Portugal, and averse to any forward movement, especially after the discomfiture of Blake in Biscay and Castanos in Arragon. He wavered, however, either from want of accurate intelligence or from the earnest representations of Mr. Frere. By that irresolution some time was lost in forming his junction with Sir David Baird,[20] who had landed at Coruña; and between the project of retreating by Portugal or Galicia the necessary preparations were completed in neither. When it was determined to retreat through Galicia, Admiral de Courcy, who commanded at Coruña, was directed to prepare the transports at that port _or_ at Vigo, according to his judgment as to which port was most favourable for the embarkation of troops in the face of an enemy. On that subject no seaman could doubt. Ships can anchor in Vigo Bay beyond the reach of cannon, and, even if driven from thence, the islands at the mouth of the harbour afford water for an army and a road with tolerable anchorage for a fleet, where they could lie for a favourable wind in safety from any attack but such as supposes a superiority at sea in the enemy.

Thither, therefore, most of the transports were sent early in December, 1808, and there Sir Samuel Hood, detached with a large squadron of men-of-war, found them. While they lay there, that is, for more than a month, the wind continued from the eastward, and would have rendered it difficult and tedious for them to beat up to Coruña. Sir John Moore, before he left Lugo on January 9, sent orders to Vigo to bring the transports to Coruña, but the messenger lost the dispatch and arrived without it. Captain Capel,[21] however, on the 13th or 14th, received another and private letter from the army. There was a hasty note on the cover, written, I think, in pencil, and nearly obliterated by the carriage and damp weather. It mentioned the orders to retreat on Coruña, and after some consultation Sir Samuel Hood inferred from it that the lost dispatch must have contained orders to sail from that port. The wind, as if to favour that design, suddenly changed to the south and south-west. It blew fresh, but the whole fleet weighed anchor, put to sea, and actually entered the Bay of Coruña on the evening of the 15th, with a stiff breeze which, both from its strength and direction, would have impeded, if not prevented, its sailing out of the same bay in the face of an enemy.

Sir John Moore had been there four days, and the French army had come up to him more than forty-eight hours before the transports arrived. Had the wind that brought them continued, they would scarcely have improved the prospects of the English army. But during the night of the 15th and the ensuing day, while the battle was yet fighting, it came round more and more to the eastward, and was so favourable in the afternoon that the greater part of the troops, though in considerable confusion, were not only on board, but actually at sea the very night of the action, which did not commence till about midday on the 16th. The General, who, after a painful campaign, had fallen as it closed, was “buried sadly” at dead of night, and left, as the melancholy dirge expresses it, “to his glory”: which, however, is not only commemorated in that very beautiful composition, and in the Latin inscription written by Dr. Parr on his monument at Coruña, but must live in the recollection of the English army, and be preserved by every impartial historian of the time.

The particulars I have related prove, indeed, that the transports should either never have been sent to Vigo, or the retreat should have been made upon that place; not perhaps from Lugo, but from Astorga by Orense and Tuy. The country through which that road lies is comparatively fertile, and it had been less exhausted by the recent passage of troops. The roads are less practicable, and the cannon of both the flying and pursuing armies must have been left behind. But Vigo is a port admirably adapted for the embarkation of troops. The preference given to Coruña, which nothing but the most signal good fortune prevented from being fatal to fleet and army, and the irresolution between November 16 and December 5, seem the only mistakes that military critics can discover in the unfortunate but arduous campaign of Sir John Moore. The vagueness, inaccuracy, and contradictions of the intelligence he received sufficiently account for the latter. It was, in truth, more extraordinary that he was not led into yet greater embarrassments, than that he incurred inconveniences from the expectations held out to him by the Spaniards, the sudden dispersion of all their armies, and the contradictory statements by which it was attempted to conceal the extent, nature, and consequences of those disasters.

A transcendent genius would, I think, have done more than this great officer accomplished; but very few would have displayed more firmness or so much sagacity. Less of either of those qualities would have betrayed him into a situation which, without serving the cause of Spain, must have terminated in the surrender or annihilation of the English army. His view of affairs appeared at the time to some, and among them to myself, to be dictated by an unwarrantable indifference in the cause and an excess of circumspection, amounting to timidity, in council. But subsequent disclosures prove such circumspection to have been necessary. It reflects honour on his discernment, without in the smallest tittle detracting from his zeal in the service of his country. He formed a just estimate of the effects of his advance; it exposed his army to be attacked and almost surrounded by superior numbers, but by bringing the whole disposable French force northwards, it gave the Spaniards a chance, and deferred the invasion of the Andalusias. In his last melancholy letter, written three days before his death, he seems to repent of having departed from his original determination of retreating from Salamanca through Portugal.[22] But the movement which he regrets saved Spain, though it did so, perhaps, chiefly in consequence of the Austrian war, of which he was not apprised.[23] Seville and Cadiz would have inevitably fallen had the French corps pressed forward through Estremadura and La Mancha. They were recalled on the alarm of Sir John Moore’s advance into Old Castile. It was consequently some time before the French could resume offensive operations in the south. The hostility of the peasantry and the increase of the irregular bands or guerillas harassed their communications, when their armies were spread over so large a surface.

Numerous though not very formidable armies were collected by the Spaniards in the south, and that sanguine officer, Sir Robert Wilson,[24] with a miserable band of ragamuffins called the “Lusitanian Legion,” contrived, by threatening proclamations, letters purposely thrown in the way of the enemy, and other devices, to preserve Ciudad Rodrigo from attack and to keep on the alert a French force considerable enough to have taken that fortress and made a fatal inroad on Portugal itself. He remained where he was, in spite of the orders of Sir John Cradock[25] and the remonstrances of almost every English officer with whom he communicated. The value of this service can only be estimated by those who were in the country at the time. Such was the consternation at Lisbon that his retreat would have been the signal for embarking every British soldier in that capital or its neighbourhood.

The result of this campaign produced disappointment and dismay in England. Sir John Moore was in habits and opinions more connected with the Whigs than with their opponents. He was sincerely lamented by that party; and in vindicating his memory, sometimes from reasonable criticism, at others from malevolent aspersions, many members of it were hurried into disparaging a cause in which they thought he had been sacrificed by Ministers. Mr. Canning was compelled to give up his friend Mr. Frere in debate. He did so with much emotion in manner, but without assigning those reasons in his defence which might have been urged with truth, though probably with little public effect. He was recalled, and Lord Wellesley appointed Ambassador to Spain. Mr. Frere, though mortified, loitered on at Seville, accepted a title from the Junta, which he was permitted by our Court to bear anywhere _out of England_,[26] and would not have quitted Spain if the progress of the French had not driven him to the coast.

I was in Spain during the whole Session of 1809, and was fortunate in being so. All minds in England were engrossed with the inquiry into the conduct of the Duke of York and the examination, among other bad characters, of his mistress, Mrs. Clarke. It was a disgusting business, and I am unacquainted with the details. The intemperate defiance to which Mr. Charles Yorke and the Ministers resorted, his own sanguine temper and hasty assertion of a negative proposition, and, I am afraid I must add, the injudicious management of Mr. Adam,[27] both before and during the investigation, combined with the unpopularity which an apprehension of his commanding an expedition had produced, were the leading causes of a result unfavourable to the Commander-in-Chief. His case, though exempt from moral turpitude, legal guilt, or dishonourable feeling, was yet indefensible in public. He was compelled to resign. Sir David Dundas,[28] who succeeded him, was considered, how truly I know not, as his creature: and the Army was thought to be as much under his direction, through the connivance of the King and the subserviency of that General after his removal, as before.

The accusation originated in a cabal of disappointed and malignant men, among whom were to be found Captain Dodd, aide-de-camp to the Duke of Kent, and Mr. Glennie, an officer of Engineers, formerly treated with some harshness by the Duke of Richmond. They availed themselves of disclosures, true and false, made to them in moments of passion by a Mrs. Clarke, a mistress discarded by the Duke of York and defrauded of the annuity to which a direct promise had entitled her. The woman, however, acted more from interest and vanity than malignity or revenge. She was at first averse to any public exposure of His Royal Highness, and only desirous to extort the money which she thought her due, and which, in honour as well as policy, ought never to have been withheld. Irritated afterwards by the taunts of the Duke’s advisers and partisans, and tickled by the success of her personal charms and flippant repartees in the House of Commons, she ransacked her memory for every private transaction and confidential conversation on the subject of promotions, and related them, with great apparent accuracy and perspicuity and without asperity or exaggeration, to the public.

All the popular writers, Tory as well as Whig, Methodist as well as Jacobin, joined in representing the testimony as conclusive of corruption. The country was in a flame. There had never hitherto (at least in our time) been any measure hostile to the Court so popular as the inquiry and censure of the Duke of York. Colonel Wardle, who conducted it, of mean capacity and meaner disposition, was remarkable for nothing but the atrocities he had perpetrated and encouraged against the Irish insurgents in 1797; he was a party to the designs and a tool in the hands of that little knot of discontented officers with whom the proceeding originated.[29] Other members in pursuit of popularity were led into too much co-operation with them; and Lord Folkestone,[30] a man of integrity, honour, and understanding, perhaps the most formidable of the Duke’s opponents, got so much entangled in an amour with Mrs. Clarke, that he might have made allowance for weaknesses of which he found himself, even at the moment of arraigning them, very susceptible.

Many Whigs, though they disdained all connection with such associates as Colonel Wardle and Mrs. Clarke, thought they were not bound to show much forbearance towards one who abhorred their principles and had sapped their power; much less to incur the offence and odium of screening what, if not delinquency, was at least impropriety of conduct, for the sake of riveting in authority a Prince who would never exert it in their favour. “We have for once,” said Lord Althorp,[31] a spirited young man, keen in sport and in politics, “the people in full cry against the Court, and we are fools if we do not ride up to the hounds.” The older and more sober members of the party, especially the Cavendishes and those who recollected the Duke of York’s good qualities when they agreed with him on politics in 1788, were inclined to adopt a more magnanimous but less popular policy; but the Whigs as a body took no distinct or manly tone whatever on this embarrassing occasion. The different sides they espoused proved that no leader had any authority over them, and perhaps the violence of some and the irresolution of others proved as clearly that not one of them had the qualities requisite to assume it. Mr. Ponsonby[32] sunk in the estimation of the party, and the party sunk yet more in the estimation of the public.

During the remainder of the Session many motions were brought forward with a view of courting popularity or allaying the ferment of men’s minds. Ministers were arraigned by name for interfering with elections and other corrupt practices; bills for abolishing sinecures, reducing pensions, and reforming Parliament were announced, and one with many alterations by the Ministry for the further prevention of bribery was passed, though with little benefit to the public. On the whole these discussions did harm. The exaggeration of the reformers, on one side, and the scandalous admission and defence of many practices grossly improper, on the other, lowered the House of Commons without strengthening the people, and thereby weakened the only weapon which can be used with any efficacy against the silent but steady encroachments of Regal and Ministerial power.

During this period Ministers were not united. The shrewd among their opponents perceived both in their speeches and their measures strange symptoms of difference, if not disunion. The fatal expedition to Walcheren was evidently adopted as a compromise, but in its consequences widened and proclaimed the breach. Lord Castlereagh was not consulted by his colleague, Mr. Canning, on the affairs of Spain, and a diversion in the north of Europe, strongly urged by the Austrians, was, in the shape of an expedition to Walcheren, resorted to as an expedient to prevent his interference with projects relating to the Peninsula, where the nature of his views was likely to create (and in one or two instances did actually create) considerable embarrassment. During the retreat of Sir John Moore he had sent a Sir George Smith with a small force to Cadiz, to secure by negotiation, and in certain cases by force, the Spanish squadron there.[33] That object was not, I suspect, even communicated to Mr. Canning; it was certainly mistaken and unknown by Mr. Frere, and when suspected by the Junta, pointedly and sincerely disclaimed by Mr. Frere. Whether right or wrong, a measure so offensive to the Spanish was inconsistent with all our professions, and not of a piece with any of the other transactions in that country. Sir Sidney Smith[34] likewise had received instructions in the Brazils from Lord Castlereagh, which justified him in adopting a line directly contrary to that which Lord Strangford, in obedience to Mr. Canning, was pursuing.

To prevent such conflicts of authority, it seems that the notable device of giving Lord Castlereagh some expedition entirely his own was hit upon.[35] The enterprise on the Scheldt originated with him at a time when so little cordiality subsisted between him and Mr. Canning, that the latter had applied to the Duke of Portland to remove him from his office, and declared that his continuance in it was incompatible with his own possession of the Foreign Seals. The removal of Lord Castlereagh had been agreed to, but was deferred on various pretences of the Duke of Portland and Lord Camden.

The expedition originated with a Minister thus circumstanced, and, as it were, secretly condemned by his colleagues. Lord Chatham[36] was entrusted with the command, at whose suggestion I know not. The appointment was certainly a strange and unfortunate one. His countenance and carriage, indeed, bespoke high spirit and genius, and such qualities might readily have been expected from the brother of Mr. Pitt and the son of Lord Chatham. But his life had hitherto belied all such appearances and expectations. He had never spoken in Parliament, and in the high offices he had filled had been remarkable for nothing but procrastination and inactivity. Alike insensible to the glories shed on his name by his father and the favours showered upon him by his brother, he sold the monument raised to the first Lord Chatham at Burton Pynsent[37] for a few pounds to a neighbouring apothecary; and he remained in office with Mr. Addington when all Mr. Pitt’s personal friends retired with him in 1801. Injuries, real or supposed, made a deeper impression on his mind; he never forgave Lord Melville for urging his removal from the Admiralty in 1795, and he hardly excused his brother for complying with that suggestion, though his indolence in office had rendered it unavoidable and become so notorious that he was nicknamed by the Navy, from the hours he kept, _The Late Lord Chatham_. He had imperceptibly risen to be an old General in the Army; for, with the exception of the disastrous descent at the Helder in 1799, and possibly a part of the siege of Gibraltar, he had never seen any service,[38] and for more than twenty-five years had discharged no military duties whatever. Yet he now assumed the command of the largest expedition which ever left our coast with as much indifference as he had voted in Parliament and received the emoluments of the Admiralty, the Presidentship, or the Ordnance, during the last twenty-three years of his life.

The calamities of the expedition are matter for history. The Navy ascribed the failure to Lord Chatham; his conduct at the Admiralty was not forgotten by them, and Sir Home Popham,[39] who had instigated the expedition and devised many of the plans, was not sorry to shift the whole blame on the execution rather than the design. No exploit was performed sufficient to reconcile the public to so unexpected an appointment as that of Lord Chatham. When, however, he was examined in the House of Commons, the stateliness of his deportment, the firmness and compass of his voice, his self-possession, dignity, and dexterity, persuaded some who were no mean judges that the necessity of exertion would have discovered in him great parliamentary talents, though command in the field had drawn forth no display of military genius. He delivered clandestinely to the King a paper justifying himself, and in some degree inculpating the Navy, and even the Admiralty. Lord Mulgrave[40] repelled the charge in the House of Lords with spirit; but Lord Chatham, who was obliged to retire from his office, never opened his lips, but on his examination.

The expedition to Walcheren occasioned changes in France as well as in England. Napoleon was on the Danube. Fouché,[41] Minister of the Interior, on the first alarm of our descent on the coast of Holland, raised, without communicating the step to the Emperor, a large body of national guards. They were of some service at Antwerp; but the circumstance, together with a negotiation with Lord Wellesley soon afterwards for peace, which was carried on by an agent of Fouché without the participation of his colleagues or of the Emperor himself, gave Napoleon great umbrage.[42] He thought his Minister too powerful and too busy; and though his conduct on the invasion of Walcheren had been serviceable to France, it furnished a motive for dismissing him.

In England, Lord Castlereagh, mortified at the complete discomfiture of his favourite project, found that he had been all along sacrificed by his colleagues, and, partly from calculation, partly from anger, resigned. Mr. Canning had done so the day before, either because Lord Castlereagh had not been apprised of the intention of removing him, or because he had not been removed. The duel between these two Ministers, the challenge, correspondence, and circumstances which led to it, were all printed, published, and canvassed at the time. Lord Castlereagh, in his rage, sought a mode of redress not well suited to the injury, and perhaps he did not select the real offender. For if the concealment, not the conception, of the design of removing him constituted the offence, with the Duke of Portland and Lord Camden, not Mr. Canning, rested the guilt of the concealment. Mr. Canning pressed them to disclose it; he possibly, and even probably, thought that they had disclosed it. The conduct of Lord Castlereagh, who was an excellent marksman, and had practised with pistols to qualify himself for the Irish House of Commons, seemed dictated by a thirst of vengeance rather than a sense of wounded honour.[43] “A gentleman,” observed Mr. Windham, “does not fight to avenge his political wrongs, but to vindicate his character. Here is an injury, and possibly some duplicity, of which Lord Castlereagh has a right to complain; but there has been no aspersion on his reputation, no insult which demands reparation or satisfaction.”

Nevertheless, the proof of spirit, where very unwarrantably none had hitherto been supposed to reside, raised the character of the man, and even softened the unpopularity he had incurred by the disastrous expedition to Walcheren.[44] On the other hand, no explanation of Mr. Canning could do away the impression in the world that he had acted unfairly and treacherously by his colleague. He sunk in the same proportion as his rival rose in public estimation, and particularly in the House of Commons. It was whimsically observed that the first two Irishmen that had ever sat together in an English _Cabinet_ terminated their differences in the _field_.

The day after the duel Mr. Perceval wrote to Lord Grey and Lord Grenville, the former of whom was in Northumberland, the latter in Cornwall. His letter mentioned the intention of the Duke of Portland to resign in consequence of bad health, and stated His Majesty’s authority to Lord Liverpool and himself to communicate with the two Lords, “for the purpose of forming an extended and combined Administration”; he then expressed his hopes that they would come to town to forward, with as little delay as possible, that important object, and apprise him of their arrival. He also mentioned Lord Castlereagh’s and Mr. Secretary Canning’s intentions of resigning.

Lord Grey construed this letter as containing _His Majesty’s authority_ to Mr. Perceval to communicate with him, and _Mr. Perceval’s_ hopes that he would come up to town and avoid loss of time in forwarding the object of forming a combined Administration. He therefore contented himself with declaring that such a union was impossible; and thinking his appearance in London might occasion delay in forming a settled Government, remained in the country, after requesting Mr. Perceval to lay before His Majesty his humble entreaties that His Majesty would not attribute his conduct to any want of attachment or diminished zeal in his service.

Lord Grenville, thinking that Mr. Perceval’s letter contained an express signification of His Majesty’s pleasure that he should come up to London, left Cornwall; but immediately on his arrival at Camelford House wrote to Mr. Perceval to decline the proposed communication, from a conviction that it would be productive of no public advantage. He disclaimed in his letter all personal hostilities and all desire of prolonging political differences, and hinted at his opinions on the Catholic question, by declaring that it was “his wish and the duty of every loyal subject to compose, not enflame, the divisions of the Empire.” “His accession to the Administration,” he observed, “could not contribute to that object, and could only be considered as a dereliction of public principles. The retreat of some members from the Ministry made no difference; his objections not being to persons, but to the principles of the Government itself and the circumstances attending its appointment.” He then closed the letter with the usual assurances of zeal and attachment to His Majesty.

Mr. Perceval, in a reply to Lord Grenville studiously polite and conciliatory, endeavoured to mark his sense of the different conduct of Lord Grey; and though that conduct arose from a different construction put by the two Lords on the phraseology of Mr. Perceval’s first overture, there was some apprehension in Lord Grey’s mind lest an inference of more substantial difference in their views might be drawn from it. Such a consequence was, however, entirely avoided. It happened fortunately enough that the conduct of each on this occasion seemed to refute the calumnies on their respective characters, which had of late been most sedulously propagated by their enemies. Lord Grenville, so often styled by the courtiers stiff, unbending, and repulsive, came up to town on the summons, though his purpose was to decline the proffered negotiation. Lord Grey, on the contrary, who had most unaccountably been accused by the demagogues of an undue appetite for office, did not even wait to consult his friends, but, at the risk of offending the King, peremptorily and instantly declined all communication, and remained at the distance of three hundred miles. Their answers were approved by the party in a manner highly creditable to the disinterestedness of so large a body of men. Nor were they unpalatable to the public at large. The doctrine that all politicians will sacrifice principle to office had been recently inculcated with great industry. The country was gratified, as it should be, at a practical refutation of that false and degrading supposition. Lord Westmorland, to whose understanding a combined Administration and a loss of place were synonymous, remarked on this transaction, “What an escape the country has had!”

Lord Grey communicated his answer to the Prince of Wales, and Lord Grenville apprised him of his also, before they were publicly known. When I called at Carlton House I found His Royal Highness exceedingly pleased at this attention, and mightily disposed to thrust himself into some negotiation either for a coalition or a new Administration. With that view he had offered his services to the King, and expressed a readiness to go down to Windsor; but his father in a short and dry answer declined the offer, reminding him of some assurance, formerly made (probably at the time of our dismissal from office), of never interfering in political arrangements unless _expressly requested_ to do so by His Majesty. Lord St. Vincent, to whom the Prince of Wales showed this letter of His Majesty, said: “I admire it, sir, as a masterpiece in its way; it is the best attorney letter I ever read.”

Mr. Sheridan took me to Carlton House to see this correspondence. He told me in the anteroom that I should like the Prince’s letter extremely. “The fact is,” added he, “the Prince had drawn it out at first himself, but in a way that would never have done, awkward in expression, forgetful of things that had passed, and pledging himself to others in future that would have been the devil and all. I contrived, however, just by hinting a thing here and there, to recast the whole, and he is delighted with it; because having drawn the original sketch he fancies the picture his own, though I left none of the outline and the colouring was never his own.”

No sooner was I admitted and seated than a scene ensued, which would really have been worthy of Mr. Sheridan’s pencil, if he had not himself performed a part in the original. The Prince produced the paper with great complacency, and began by informing me that he was sure I should like it, “For,” said he, “Sheridan will excuse me, but though he is a clever fellow at such things, I must say he had drawn up a d——d bad paper on this occasion. I just took the form and outline, but I have altered it myself, and was obliged to do so.” He then read it over sentence by sentence, and almost at every word he turned to Mr. Sheridan and said: “You know it stood so and so, but I altered it,” or, “You will allow that’s better, Sheridan?” To all which Mr. Sheridan nodded assent. I left the house without being deeply impressed with the value of the article contended for, but utterly at a loss to decide to whom the merit, such as it was, belonged.

Lord Grenville communicated the correspondence relative to Mr. Perceval’s overture, as it was called, to Lord Sidmouth, who said, “The result of that step was such as was naturally to have been expected.” He hoped, however, that Lord Grey and Lord Grenville were disposed to afford “satisfaction and confidence” to the King’s mind on the Catholic question, to which Lord Grenville gave no answer.

Soon afterwards Lord Sidmouth had to return the compliment, and communicated an overture made to him of a very singular nature through Lord Chatham. It was to ask him to influence his brother-in-law, Mr. Bragge Bathurst,[45] and Mr. Hobhouse,[46] to take office. The communication was stated to be authorised and desired by the King and Mr. Perceval; but there was not one word in it expressive of a wish to have the assistance of Lord Sidmouth himself. It was of course rejected: his friends would not separate from him; but Lord Sidmouth expressed a disinclination to listen to any proposals that did not include the Whigs, unless it was ascertained that they adhered inflexibly to a measure on which the King could not give way. Mr. Perceval told Lord Sidmouth, very _frankly_ at least, that his motive for desiring the aid of his friends _without him_ was the unsurmountable personal objection felt to Lord Sidmouth himself by some whose support was necessary to the Government.

Lord Sidmouth, though chagrined at so preposterous a proposal and so unmannerly an explanation of it, was yet very earnest in extorting from Lord Grenville some declaration on the subject of the Catholics, that is, the views and intentions of the Whigs as to what he termed _setting the King’s mind at ease_. Lord Grenville very prudently answered that to the principle of Mr. Perceval’s Government, that is, to a pledge in itself unconstitutional, he could not directly or indirectly ever become a party; but that it was not possible to enter into further explanations of his views or of his possible conduct on the subject of Irish Catholics in all the various circumstances that might arise; nor could any answer be given to general phrases, such as _setting the King’s mind at ease_, and the like, it not being known what would be required for that purpose.

On the death of the Duke of Portland, Lord Grenville was chosen Chancellor of the University of Oxford. It was considered as a triumph at the time, though it was perhaps owing to a persuasion in that learned body that the object of their choice would ere long be Minister of the country; though there was some sagacity in an apprehension of Lord Cowper’s that it might have a pernicious effect on Lord Grenville’s opinions even in Opposition, and yet worse if he should obtain power on all subjects connected with the Church.[47] To remove, as far as he could with honour and consistency, the jealousies entertained of his principles respecting the Roman Catholics, he wrote and printed a letter on the subject. It contained a firm exposition of his opinions, and in point of composition did him great credit; but it revived the agitation of details which it would have been more advantageous to postpone till further progress was made in the main measure, and it seemed in some degree to pledge him to support _the Veto_, which in a few years he acknowledged to be impracticable and, though desirable, not absolutely necessary. He valued the distinction of the Chancellorship very highly. The unbiassed suffrages of a learned and pious body were, in his estimation, so many testimonies to literature, taste, integrity, and virtue. Who, therefore, of an honest mind but was gratified at seeing a man who had sacrificed so much to a sense of public duty rewarded at last by a favourite and innocent object of ambition?

I was not myself altogether insensible to an appointment, however comparatively humble, which, upon the death of the Duke of Portland, was conferred upon me by the Corporation of Nottingham. They chose me Recorder, from respect to the memory of Mr. Fox and a persuasion that I should never abandon his principles.

In November, 1809, died John Henry, second Marquess of Lansdowne,[48] after possessing that title about four years, during which time he never took any part in debate nor even voted in the House of Lords. He had been harassed by Government or by individuals in Ireland for his incautious expression of violent political opinions a short time before he succeeded to his title. The lady, whom he avowed as his wife immediately upon his father’s death, was not sorry to draw him nearer to the winning side. He was a very accomplished man, with much general knowledge, but yet more wit and eloquence, though both were of a very laboured kind. He had more singularity of conduct than originality of thought, but he had much of the latter. He was neither ambitious nor designing, and but for suspicion might have been a good man. But he had perversely persuaded himself, and some errors in his education had taught him, to guard against every kind affection of the heart—a quarter in which he was not by nature very vulnerable.

I owe much of the little useful knowledge I possess to the habits I acquired in an intimate intercourse with him—perhaps, among other things, the faculty, such as it is, of writing these memoirs. It is true he afterwards used me and mine unkindly and unjustly; but it was not without a pang that I saw a person from whom I had derived so much amusement and instruction, and with whom I had lived in such friendship, sinking at the age of forty-two or forty-three into an untimely grave. He told me a fortnight before his death that he was not fool enough to imagine that he was ever to rise from that couch; and after some sarcastic irony on the received notions of religion in which he was apt to indulge, he assured me that the thoughts of approaching death had never kept him awake for a minute, though he had been aware of it for more than two months. “I am surprised at this,” he added, “for when in health I should have guessed that such a conviction would have harassed me exceedingly; it is true, however, there is some little lethargy in my complaint, and that may contribute to account for it.” He composed an epitaph for himself, beginning,

Here lies drowned in his armchair,

and he fixed therein upon the period of his decease as well as described the mode very nearly as it happened.[49]

Lord Henry Petty[50] was by this event removed to the House of Lords. He was the best hope of the Whig party in the Commons; and he himself evidently at first considered the accession of a princely fortune and a seat in the House of Lords as a loss, till in a few years the solid comforts of those possessions compensated for the uncertain objects with which his ambition had occasionally dazzled his judgment.

An opinion, grounded, I suspect, on their wishes, had gone forth among the Whigs that Mr. G. Ponsonby[51] was desirous to retire from Parliament, or at least from the prominent station, which, in compliance with the earnest solicitation of friends, he had consented to occupy. His nephew, Lord Ponsonby, confirmed the report; but Mr. Ponsonby himself, on being questioned by Lord Grey, “stated distinctly his _wish_ to continue leader, if Lord Grey and Lord Grenville did not object to it.” The Duke of Bedford, at my instance, brought in Mr. Brougham, who, from his eloquence, knowledge, zeal, and activity, was a prodigious accession to that party whose principles he had espoused and in a variety of ways very ably maintained. He had, indeed, spoken of late very coldly of the Catholic question, and very contemptuously of Parliament; but when offered a seat, on the sole understanding that he was neither adverse to the concessions to the Roman Catholics nor to an immediate agitation of them in Parliament, he accepted it without hesitation. His conduct there I shall have occasion to remark; but with the exception of a few evening visits during the Walcheren inquiry, he henceforth studiously and unaccountably avoided my society. For full six years I had no political or private intercourse with a man whom I had been so anxious to place and so successful in placing in the House of Commons,[52] and who never assigned, nor, I believe, could assign, any motive for dropping all habits and connection with me.

His treatment of Mr. Horner, though more easily accounted for, was more unpardonable. They were of the same age, education, habits, and pursuits: in capacity and application nearly equal, but in temper and disposition very unlike. Mr. Horner, whose every feeling sprung from a warm heart and whose lightest actions were regulated by a well-considered sense of duty, promoted and rejoiced at every advancement of his friend towards distinction and celebrity. He was zealous in forwarding his interests, and ready to co-operate with cordiality in maintenance of the public principles which they professed in common. Not so Mr. Brougham. He visibly estranged himself from his early friend and companion. Where a shade of difference existed, he loved to bring it out rather than soften it down; and in all dealings with or about Mr. Horner, showed such want of affection that the high, though gentle, spirit of the other perceived it, and without stooping to any grovelling act of resentment, disdained to court a friendship which he saw he could not preserve. To others Mr. Horner endeared himself more and more every day, and with the House ingratiated himself very perceptibly. Had his health, fortune, and life permitted, he would soon have commanded the affections of his party, and acquired a great ascendancy in Parliament, by the variety of his attainments, the simple earnestness of his manner, the benevolence and sweetness of his disposition, and the inflexible integrity which was as firmly rooted in his mind as it was indicated in his stern and manly, but not repulsive, countenance.

Mr. Brougham, by his unwearied exertions and wonderful powers, made himself formidable to his enemies; he was frequently very serviceable to his cause, and occasionally popular out of doors. The House did not like him, but they always feared and sometimes admired him. Had the management of the Walcheren inquiry devolved upon him, he thought, and perhaps justly, that the result would have been a censure on the Ministers.

The sensation on that subject both in and out of Parliament was exceedingly strong. Many members were unquestionably inclined to express their disapprobation of the expedition by a vote at the commencement of the Session, who, in the course of the long investigation, were prevailed upon to suppress their opinions, by a persuasion that time had somewhat softened the indignation of their constituents and that a censure would inevitably change the government of the country. Lord Porchester,[53] who conducted the business in the Commons, though honest, firm, and eloquent, was not skilful in the examination of witnesses. Mr. Ponsonby was not more adroit nor more expeditious. Mr. Brougham was more intent on exposing their oversights and errors in private, than in rectifying them in public. Yet the ingenuity and imagery of Mr. Windham’s speeches must have delighted, and the sound argument and plain sense of Mr. Tierney’s convinced, the audience. The vote, therefore, of approbation was scarcely more at variance with the wishes of the minority and the expectations of the public, than with the real opinions of the majority who passed it. It was the strongest practical argument ever furnished for a reform of Parliament: for the House of Commons on that disgraceful occasion spoke neither the sense of the people whom it represented, nor even of the individuals who composed its body.

_Sir H. Raeburn, R.A. Pinx 1812._

_Emery Walker Ph. Sc._]

Pending the inquiry, the House of Lords was more than usually inactive. We could not with prudence or even with propriety take up the same subject; and the public was so engrossed with it that no other would have excited much interest. Lord Grenville, Lord Grey, and Lord Lauderdale[54] opposed the thanks to Lord Wellington for the victory of Talavera. The two last, much to my regret, entered a protest to the vote. Lord Wellesley spoke for the first time in the character of a Minister, and he spoke with feeling, vivacity, and effect. He was designated for Secretary for the War Department, in room of Lord Castlereagh, by Mr. Canning; but had in the meanwhile been sent by him [as] Ambassador to Spain, where, after indulging his bad taste in a few silly bravadoes, he showed in essentials much foresight, and took a more accurate and comprehensive view of the policy of the country to which he was accredited, than is usual in an English diplomatist, and than could have been expected in so short a residence. On the rejection of the overtures to the Whigs, Mr. Perceval offered him the Foreign Seals. Mr. Canning and his friends were not a little mortified at his accepting them. Lord Liverpool, who had successively held the Foreign and Home Department, succeeded Lord Castlereagh in the third Secretaryship; and Mr. Ryder[55] replaced him, after Mr. Yorke had refused to resume that office which he had filled during Mr. Addington’s Administration with some credit for talents for business.

The melancholy death of Mr. Eden[56] in January, 1810, induced his father, Lord Auckland, to absent himself from Parliament, and vacated a Tellership of the Exchequer. It was rumoured at first that Mr. Perceval would give it to another son of Lord Auckland’s; but though Mr. Perceval was not devoid of that sort of liberality, it was not likely to make him so far overstep the line of political interest. The Admiralty was vacated by Lord Mulgrave succeeding to the Ordnance, which Lord Chatham had been compelled to relinquish; and Mr. Yorke[57] was induced to accept the Admiralty by the provision for life, which the Tellership, offered with it, afforded.

On the first report of his vacating his seat for Cambridgeshire, a hair-brained, zealous man of the name of Goodwin, without any connection or acquaintance with the county, apprised the freeholders in an anonymous advertisement that a Whig candidate would start; and thus prevailed upon Lord Francis Osborne to come forward, who was chosen with little expense—a circumstance not less surprising from his gallantry in furnishing Mr. Goodwin, without any previous acquaintance with him, with an unlimited credit on his banker. This anecdote, hardly worth preserving, shows how activity and decision carry points little expected, and was at the time an indication of the unpopularity of Ministry.

Much of the Session and more of the public attention were occupied on questions of privilege. They had been very unadvisably raised by the imprisonment of one Gale Jones,[58] who had written against the exclusion of strangers from the House; and they were further provoked and kept up by Sir Francis Burdett. He denied in the most offensive form he could devise the right of the House to imprison. He forgot that he had, the year before, directed papers to be seized and other powers to be exerted, which, supposing no authority in Parliament to punish, could hardly be legal and certainly could not be enforced. As Gale Jones had been imprisoned, the House could not with decency overlook yet more flagrant conduct in a member. Sir Francis Burdett was sent to the Tower. Disturbances in the town, division among the Whigs, division of public attention from the incapacity and misconduct of Ministers, and great diminution of confidence in the House of Commons, were the natural consequences of this ill-timed execution of an arbitrary power, which, though in some cases necessary to the preservation of Parliament, can scarcely ever be expedient except against the inroads of some other authority in the State. The privileges of the Commons are intended as means of defence against power, not as weapons of offence against liberty or even licentiousness. Such powers must indeed be discretionary. But the representative body, when it assumes an attitude of menace towards the people, perverts such instruments to purposes for which they were never entrusted to it, and runs considerable hazard of having them wrested from their hands.

The last efforts of Mr. Windham in Parliament were in support of its unquestionable privileges and of the unseasonable and unwarrantable exercise of them on this occasion. He had been during the whole of the Session at war with the public prints and reporters. Upon the exclusion of strangers, whence directly or indirectly flowed all the embarrassing questions concerning privilege, both he and Mr. Tierney had expressed themselves in a way which gave great offence to that class of men, who had been of late years, and are still, actuated by a common feeling, an _esprit de corps_, not altogether so favourable to liberty or advantageous to the cause of truth as formidable to those with whom they chance to be displeased. They suppressed for a time the speeches of both these gentlemen.[59] Cobbett disclosed some particulars of Mr. Windham’s intercourse with him, from which it would seem that Mr. Windham was not so incapable of courting a good word from the newspapers as he pretended, and, above all, was not likely to be indifferent to the menaced omission of his name in debates. He had often corrected his speeches, and consulted both the taste and convenience of the reporters, by speaking from the place in the House which they had informed him was best adapted to his voice and delivery. The gratification derived from his eloquence, which the spite of these little men had for a season interrupted, was soon irretrievably lost. He died lamented and admired in the beginning of June, 1810.

Mr. Malone printed a short sketch of his life and character. It is probably very correct; it is certainly very insipid. Mr. Windham left behind him some treatises on scientific subjects, and many volumes of a journal, begun, it is said, at the instance of Dr. Johnson.[60] It was entrusted to Mr. G. Ellis,[61] who, with a view of writing a life of Mr. Windham, made many extracts from it, which I have seen. I am told that Mr. Windham mentions in his journal, his having prayed fervently for the soul of Dr. Johnson in Switzerland many years after that great writer’s death. It is, I believe, well ascertained that previous to the operation on which his own death ensued, he took the Sacrament privately at a distant church.[62] Such circumstances prove that the extreme aversion he always manifested to anything bordering on impiety in conversation was not merely dictated by taste, decorum, or good breeding, but the result of a real sense of religion. If Crawford had “known” (says General FitzPatrick, in a letter to me of September 30, 1810) “more of Windham, he would not have been surprised at his strict observance of the ceremonies of religion. He held the _profession_ of it to be a high moral duty, as did Burke, and I believe neither of them ever allowed their sincerity to be questioned.”

I hope the Christian reader will not be scandalised, or the sceptical disposed to scoff at my mentioning these circumstances; it is useful to record the various sentiments held by men of integrity and capacity on such topics in the same age. The religious and irreligious may learn from thence to have less confidence in their own persuasion and more toleration for opinions in which they do not concur. The passages[63] extracted by Mr. G. Ellis from Mr. Windham’s journal, and, as I am informed, all the other parts of that work, relate rather to the history of his studies, his feelings, and his understanding, than to any actual events of his life or public occurrences of his time. Self-examination and self-reproach, magnificent projects and poor performances, designs of study and periods of idleness, irresolution, and remorse, form a lamentable picture of an infirm mind; and though there are some paragraphs remarkable for their eloquence, and more observations worth the attention of a metaphysician, the total absence of all affection and, with the exception of Dr. Johnson, of all admiration or deference for others, deprives this painful exposure of all his inmost thoughts and feelings of anything like interest for the man. Few, it would appear, have been less satisfied, but none more exclusively occupied with themselves, than Mr. Windham. On that subject he is minute even to tediousness, plaintive and melancholy almost to insanity. _Pauvre humanité!_

Mr. Perceval’s unnecessary grant of £100,000 to the clergy[64] led me and Mr. Allen[65] to examine the history of the first-fruits and tenths. We thought that we had discovered that the Crown was empowered, and even enjoined by law, to make a new valuation of them, and to appropriate the amount of the revenue which would arise from such a measure to the objects of Queen Anne’s Bounty. I moved a string of resolutions to that purpose, but was discomfited by the production of a clause in an Act of George I., which had, I believe, been originally introduced into the Bill by some manœuvre or contrivance, and which certainly bore little or no reference to the title thereof. It was discovered by the learned Bench about twenty-four hours before I came down to the House; and as I had communicated the substance and, I think, the form of my resolutions to them, their policy was more conspicuous than their candour in withholding this discovery from my notice till my speech was delivered and my motion made.

In June Lord Grey moved an address on the state of the nation. The object of the motion was to recapitulate the dangers of the country; to expose the rashness of our policy, foreign and domestic; and to record the public principles of himself and his friends by marking, on one hand, the difference between the system he recommended and that pursued by the Government, and on the other, a line of separation between himself and those reformers who were for circumscribing the powers of Parliament as well as altering fundamentally the basis of the representation. In all parts of this address, even those which glanced at a moderate reform of Parliament, Lord Grenville, though absent from illness, signified his concurrence. I, who voted for the motion, had some slight objection to parts of it, and entertained great doubt of the necessity or policy of any such laboured declaration of our political creed. Lord Erskine and the Duke of Norfolk courted popularity by expressing doubts on the privilege question; but neither the one nor the other had the courage to contend manfully with Lord Grey and resort to the only arguments by which their opinions could be plausibly maintained. They therefore involved themselves in generalities, or entangled the question in legal subtleties.

At the latter end of this Session Lord Lauderdale objected to a flagrant job in favour of Mr. Walter Scott’s brother; Lord Melville defended it on the score of rewarding poetical genius; and I, after ironically congratulating Lord Melville on his tardy conversion to the beauties of poetry, to which he had shown himself so insensible in the instance of his countryman Burns, acquiesced in the propriety of rewarding Walter Scott, but deprecated a job injurious to the public service in favour of his brother. When I visited Scotland in the summer the irritable bard would not deign to speak to me, and even closed his mouth when he perceived me listening to the good stories he was telling at the other end of the table at a club where I met him at Edinburgh.[66]

Both the theatres had been burnt down in the autumn of 1808 and the spring of 1809.[67] Notwithstanding the losses of Mr. Kemble, which were in some degree repaired by the Duke of Northumberland, who on this and some other rare occasions capriciously belied his general character by an act of useful generosity, Covent Garden Theatre was rebuilt and opened in 1810. An attempt was made to raise the prices. An unusual number of private boxes, and the introduction of an Italian singer on the stage, rendered that innovation yet more unpalatable to the public. They thought an undue advantage was taken of that entire monopoly which the hopeless state of the Drury Lane Theatre concerns virtually conferred on Covent Garden.

The taste for expensive exhibitions, the real or nominal change in the value of money, and the increased salary of the actors, did indeed seem to justify some advance in the price of admission. But the managers were injudicious in their mode of proposing the innovation, of resisting the clamours of the audience, and of yielding piecemeal to their demands. Prejudice and hissing became clamour; clamour was soon exasperated into riot; and riot, when headed by Mr. Clifford,[68] a Roman Catholic lawyer of considerable name, seemed likely, in the apprehension of many, to swell into political sedition, and become the prelude or instrument of more mischief than disturbing a play or keeping down the price of theatrical exhibitions.[69]

The apprehension was groundless; though it must be acknowledged that the pretension of affixing a price to anything by popular clamour was one of fearful example, and Mr. Clifford was a man capable, both from temper and talents, of harbouring and executing very mischievous designs. Impatience of the unjust disabilities under which his sect labours had reconciled him to violent opinions in politics; and unrestrained habits of intemperance had inflamed the malignity of a disposition not originally amiable, without impairing the very acute perceptions and strong intellect with which Nature had endowed him. He was, however, pacified by the submission of the managers, seemed to bear his triumph meekly, and if he entertained any project of engrafting further designs on the popularity to which he had raised himself, he did not live to develop them. The drams, which were unable to extinguish his spirit or drown his reason, undermined his bodily constitution, and brought him in the middle of life and in possession of all his faculties to an untimely grave soon after the unenviable distinction he had obtained.

If in the unprofitable career of such men moralists may find a warning against the indulgence of sensual or malignant passions, legislators and statesmen may learn the impolicy of converting by laws of exclusion those faculties, which in the service of the State might improve the happiness and raise the glory of the country, into engines of torment to the possessors, and of mischief to the Commonwealth. This incident (which was called O.P., or Old Prices) probably suggested to many minds the necessity of another theatre, and thereby facilitated the completion of an undertaking in which I was soon afterwards subordinately engaged, _viz._, the rebuilding of Drury Lane Play-house, and procuring an Act of Parliament to constitute the subscribers a Joint Stock Company for that purpose.

At the close of this year, 1810, the disorder to which the King had been frequently subject recurred with such violence as to incapacitate him from discharging the functions of his situation, and ultimately to become confirmed insanity without any hope of recovery. In preserving some facts connected with his complaint, and in making some remarks on his character, I trust to the reports of others rather than to my own personal observation. My direct intercourse with George III. was very slight, and chiefly confined to mere form and civility. He inherited from his mother a scrofulous habit, which, when malignant, not unfrequently terminates in madness. Such instances had, I believe, occurred in the Saxe-Gotha family, from which Frederick, Prince of Wales, unfortunately selected his consort.

There was a story current, that a disposition to lunacy was apprehended in the King’s illness of 1765. Letters from the King soon afterwards, speaking of medical injunctions to him to abstain from business,[70] and a passage in Smollett’s _Continuation_, mysteriously worded and yet more mysteriously cancelled in most but not all the copies, give, it is said, some colour to the report. If his son’s account of his behaviour in the riots of 1780 and at the dissolution of Lord North’s Ministry can be credited, strong symptoms of derangement appeared on both those occasions. He announced, on both, a design of retiring to Hanover. Disgust at the scenes of 1780, and chagrin at the events of 1782, might indeed, in both instances, rationally account for so hasty a resolution; but the disproportionate earnestness about trifles, especially the liveries of his servants when he should arrive in Germany (circumstances which I have heard His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales describe with more vivacity than filial grace), could hardly be reconciled with the possession of a sound judgment. Throughout life his manner was hurried, his conversation on indifferent subjects rapid and incoherent, on persons detracting and malicious. When constrained to business he was clear and decisive; but he often betrayed the narrowest prejudices on things and that constitutional suspicion of mankind which is so frequent a concomitant of a disordered understanding. Mr. Fox, in his first interview with the King, remarked that he had a “very mad look in his eyes.” They were without question singularly unsteady, through their extreme short-sightedness, and the continued see-saw motion of his body seemed to account for that defect. In the Coalition Administration his conduct in Cabinet was one day so strange that on his leaving the room, which he did with levity and abruptness, Lord John Cavendish observed, “His Majesty is certainly wrong in the upper story.”[71]

In 1788 a positive derangement of intellect was discovered and acknowledged. Since that period he had two very decided relapses, and perhaps he was never afterwards entirely free from occasional aberrations of mind, though they were sufficiently controlled to escape the notice of the public and the interference of Ministers. The recollection of his first illness and the dread of its return gave for some time great ascendancy to those about him, and combined with his alarm at the French Revolution to render him accommodating and even submissive to Mr. Pitt for many years. But when the secession seemed to disband the party whom he dreaded, George III. insensibly reverted to his early habits of intrigue and duplicity, thwarted many little projects of his ostensible Ministers, fortified subordinate agents in their hostility to others, and finally drove his confidential servants to resign by a passionate and obstinate resistance to a measure long in contemplation and of great national importance.[72] No sooner had he released himself from the constraint of Mr. Pitt’s Administration than a virulent attack of his disorder occurred. The appointments necessary to complete the new Ministry were suspended for some weeks in consequence of his incapacity, and Lord Chancellor Rosslyn had the hardihood to make him sign a Commission to pass the Brown Bread Bill while he was actually under the control of keepers. His relapses afterwards were frequent. Lord Sidmouth has more than once acknowledged to me, that the uncertainty of the King’s health was his chief, if not only, motive for resigning in 1804, and not facing the coalition of Fox, Pitt, and Grenville, which, had he remained in office, would have speedily ensued.

In 1806 the King was kept on his good behaviour by his fears of a Ministry which he had considered as hostile to him and favourable to his son. He confined himself strictly to business, and indeed his intercourse with all of us was so rare that it could not be difficult for him to suppress any morbid delusion during the few hours, which once in the course of a fortnight he allotted to audiences of the members of his Cabinet. The gentleman who conducted his correspondence was Colonel Taylor,[73] a man of discretion and judgment, who had many obvious and possibly some secret (though not dishonourable) motives for concealing any infirmity of the kind. For myself, in my last, and indeed only, audience, when I delivered up the Privy Seal, His Majesty was so hurried that I felt it a relief to quit the room. I will not say that his conversation denoted madness, but certainly the subsequent insanity of any man, who had spoken in the way and with the gestures he then did, could never have surprised me.

In the autumn of 1810 the approaching death of Princess Amelia deeply afflicted him. That affliction was followed by a paroxysm which terminated in confirmed insanity. It was an affecting coincidence, that the dawn of his reviving reason in 1788 had been marked by the strong emotions of natural affection at the accidental sight of the very daughter whose illness occasioned this last and fatal relapse. She was said to be his favourite child; but he had much tenderness for all his daughters, as well [as] for the Duke of York, and perhaps the Duke of Cambridge: he had little, if any, for his other children. In the early part of his reign he had shown himself harsh, unkind, and vindictive to his brothers. He was cold, jealous, and unjust to the Prince of Wales in his childhood; distant and suspicious ever afterwards.

In general his virtues were not of an engaging nor his endowments of a dazzling character. He had a bad opinion of mankind, a contracted but by no means a feeble view of every subject. With a nature so little attractive, without one brilliant qualification, and during a reign marked by disasters, how did he contrive to win the affections of many and popularity with the great mass of his subjects? After due allowance be made for the childish love of Princes so prevalent in England, and the systematic policy of the demagogues in vilifying Parliament rather than the Crown, other causes must still be sought for to explain so extraordinary a phenomenon. He said indeed himself, with as much contempt for the public, but with more point, than was usual in his conversation: “I have been the most unpopular and most popular King in England; but I owed the first to my Minister, Lord Bute, and I owe the second to my son, the Prince of Wales.” But there were other reasons. He was a regular, decorous, church-going family man. The practice of the austerer virtues was not to be imputed in him to any coldness of constitution. He was of an amorous complexion, and many involuntary avowals made during his derangements proved that his fidelity never arose from any blind partiality to the personal charms of the Queen, but from a sense of duty and propriety.[74] Whatever be the moral value of such self-denial, the people of England were then, and, I believe, still are, disposed to pay it full as much homage as it deserves in persons whose high stations render it of difficult attainment and wholesome example.

The King had, however, virtues of a higher order, great decision and consistency and courage, both personal and political. He adhered firmly to the principles of government that he approved, and he was steady in the protection of those who supported him in them. He never lost sight of his objects; and could he have found Ministers as firm or as obstinate as himself, he would never have surrendered a measure, as he certainly never changed an opinion. He said, indeed, to every American Minister who was accredited to him, “I was the last man in England to acknowledge your independence, and I will be the last to disturb it”; but if he ever repented of his conduct, it was in submitting to that peace, not in fomenting and persisting so long in the war. “As to the question,” says he, in a letter to Mr. Fox, of August, 1783, “whether I wish to receive a Minister from America, I certainly can never express its being agreeable to me; indeed, I should think it wisest for both parties to have only agents who can settle any matter of commerce; but so far I cannot help adding, that I shall ever have a bad opinion of any Englishman who would accept being an accredited Minister for that revolted State, which certainly for years cannot establish a stable Government.”[75]

He not only cherished obstinacy in himself, but admired and inculcated it in others. In spite of his vaunted Christianity, he despised a man who was not irreconcilable in his enmities as well as constant in his friendships, and he exacted not only consistent conduct but an adherence to the prejudices of education and family. This persuasion, combining with a propensity common to all old men, led him in the latter end of his life to estimate individuals by his recollection of the characters of their fathers rather than by observation on theirs. He himself rigidly conformed to the rule he expected in others. The absurd German notions of birth, imbibed in childhood, recurred with double force upon his mind in his old age. By them he regulated his sense of duty and his opinion of men. He fortified his morbid prejudices against Roman Catholics by a reference to the Protestant maxims of his House. He judged of the fitness for high station by rank rather than by talent, and he hailed the appointment of two Archbishops,[76] whom from their connections he called _gentlemen_, as a triumph for the Church and a consolation to himself. Descent from an early enemy or obscurity of birth were in his eyes such offences, that, with the exception of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Addington, he was seldom prevailed upon to pardon either, even in persons who were subservient or necessary to his views.

His conduct with respect to Hanover was irreproachable. He never diverted the revenue of that country to any personal or British object; he never sacrificed any British treasure or English objects to Hanoverian policy; he never converted his distinct authority as Elector into the means of thwarting an obnoxious Minister at home, or enforcing wishes which as King of England he was compelled to conceal. His behaviour to Sir James Craufurd and other Englishmen, who had broken their parole and escaped from France, reflects much honour upon him; as Napoleon had furnished examples of a less scrupulous policy, and the violence of the times, as well as the temper of his Ministers, would have enabled him to follow them without reproach or animadversion. “If a gentleman,” he observed, “had derived indulgence from a promise, even to usurped authority, he was bound in honour to abide by it, however illegal the original detention or the conditions might be.” George III. adhered to this principle, and would never receive any officer or English traveller who had violated it. These are the two best traits I knew of him, and for that reason I have faithfully recorded them.[77]

To sum up his character: he was a man of principle, honest and anxious in forming his rule of action, sagacious in the application and steady in the observance of it; but then his views were narrow and mischievous, his judgments warped, and his feelings illiberal. His distrust of mankind made him deem insincerity necessary and justifiable. He practised dissimulation, and in some few instances simulation likewise, without scruple. If he had the heart of a courageous and the talents of a dexterous or shrewd man, he wanted the enlarged understanding which constitutes wisdom, as well as all elevation and refinement of sentiment which shed so much lustre on rank. He was, too, a stranger to every generous affection which renders a Prince either amiable or benevolent. There was nothing great, nothing kind, nothing open, nothing graceful in his character or manners.

Those who look to the objects for which Governments are instituted must pronounce him an inglorious, if not a pernicious, sovereign of a free country; but more (and I fear they are not few) who contemplate the preservation and perhaps the extension of the monarchical branch of our Constitution more as the end than the means of public administration, will, with some justice, regard George III. as a sensible man, and an able, useful, and fortunate Prince.

INTRODUCTION TO BOOK THE SECOND

The shock occasioned by the death of Princess Amelia, which occurred in November, 1810, put an end to any hopes that may have existed of George III.’s recovery. His intellect, already failing under the weight of years, finally gave way, and it became necessary to appoint a Regent to carry on the business of the country. The physicians still gave hopes of ultimate recovery, and the Bill which Mr. Perceval presented to the House of Commons was based on this supposition. The functions of the Crown were to be placed temporarily in the hands of the Prince of Wales, but subject to restrictions which would materially limit the scope of his powers. The Prince consulted Lords Grey and Grenville in January, 1811, as to the written protest he was preparing for presentation to Mr. Perceval; but already signs of disagreement began to appear between the Regent and the party with whom he had habitually acted. A suggestion for the reinstatement of the Duke of York as Commander-in-Chief received scant encouragement from the two Lords; while the fact of its prompt and favourable reception by the Ministers went far to reconcile the Prince to his new advisers. The retention of the latter in office was all-important to the Queen, and every ounce of influence which she possessed over her son was thrown into the balance on their behalf. Assisted by the doctors, she represented the state of the King’s health as entirely dependent on the actions of the Regent. Certain it is that the fear of in any way jeopardising the precarious existence of his father weighed heavily with the Prince, when the time arrived (February 1, 1812) for the expiration of the restrictions.

In Spain Wellington’s policy of masterly inaction had fulfilled its purpose during the winter of 1810. It was impossible for Massena to maintain his position in Portugal owing to the lack of local supplies, and the English were able to resume the offensive after the arrival of reinforcements from home. Some success was obtained by the French armies in the south, where Soult captured Seville, laid siege to Cadiz, and commenced his march northwards. He was checked, however, by the success of General Graham over the besiegers of Cadiz, and returned to resume the blockade of that town. The victories of Fuentes d’Onoro and Albuera maintained the superiority of the English in the field; but owing to the junction of Soult and Marmont (who had taken over Massena’s command) during the autumn of 1811, it was not until early in 1812 that Wellington was able to capture the fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos, and secure his base in Portugal from the possibility of attack.

In the north Napoleon was making vast preparations for bringing the Czar to his senses, and revenging himself on him for the defection of Russia from his commercial system—that favourite scheme of the French Emperor for humbling the pride of Great Britain by injuring her commerce. Prussia, now under the guidance of Count Hardenberg, maintained a vacillating policy, and finally, through fear of standing alone, was forced into a treaty with France whereby she was to furnish troops to further Napoleon’s schemes. Austria was also driven to conclude a hollow treaty of the same kind, and Russia was thus left alone to resist the attack of the all-conquering despot.

Much suffering and misery were rife among the lower classes in England during the winter of 1811. Trade was at its lowest ebb. The effects of Napoleon’s decrees against English commerce and the Orders in Council, issued by the Cabinet as a means of retaliation, fell heavily on the manufacturing districts. The United States, furious at the interference with their carrying trade, forbade all commercial transactions with England or France; and though the English Cabinet took steps to meet their views by exempting them from the operation of the measure, the American Government declared war in 1812. The Orders in Council were repealed, through the efforts of Mr. Brougham, soon after Mr. Perceval’s death; but the news reached the United States too late to prevent the conflict.

Lord Wellesley resigned his office of Foreign Secretary in February, 1812. The Prince Regent renewed his negotiations with the Whig party, communicating with Lords Grey and Grenville by means of the Duke of York. No result was arrived at, and Lord Castlereagh was appointed to succeed Lord Wellesley. The whole question of the government of the country was, however, shortly reopened. On May 11 Mr. Perceval, the Prime Minister, was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham, a ruined merchant, of whose sanity there was great doubt. The Prince Regent was now forced to decide finally to which party he would give his confidence. Lord Holland gives a detailed account of the intrigues and negotiations which took place at this time. Enough to mention here that after communications with all parties, in which Lords Liverpool, Wellesley, and Moira successively took a prominent part, the Prince retained the Tory party in power, and gave Lord Liverpool full powers to form an Administration on the same basis as that which had carried on the business of the country up to the time of Mr. Perceval’s death.