CHAP. disposal of that money, neither will I." "Then," VII. rejoined Fox, "I shall not know how to talk to mem1754. bers of parliament, when some may have received gratifications, others not." Fox inquired further, how the next parliament, of which the election drew near, was to be secured. "My brother," said Newcastle, "had settled it all." Fox declined the place offered him and remained secretary at war. His friends congratulated him on his escape, for they said of the Duke of Newcastle: He makes no promise but to break it, The inefficient Holdernesse was transferred to the Northern Department; and Sir Thomas Robinson, a dull pedant, lately a subordinate at the Board of Trade, was selected for the Southern, with the management of the new House of Commons. "The duke," said Pitt, "might as well send his jackboot to lead us." The House abounded in noted men, Besides Pitt, and Fox, and Murray, the heroes of a hundred magnificent debates, there was "the univer sally able" George Grenville; the solemn Sir George Lyttelton, known as a historian and poet and orator; Hillsborough, industrious, precise, well meaning, but without sagacity; the arrogant, unstable Sackville, proud of his birth, ambitious of the highest stations; the amiable, candid, irresolute Conway; Charles 'The Duke of Newcastle, a Tale, in the Works of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, i. 11, 12. VII. Townshend, confident in his ability, and flushed with CHAP. success. Then, too, the young Lord North, well educated, abounding in good-humor, made his entrance 1754. into public life with such universal favor, that every company resounded with the praises of his parts and merit. But Newcastle had computed what he might dare; at the elections, corruption had returned a majority devoted to the minister who was incapable of settled purposes or consistent conduct. The period when the English aristocracy ruled with the least admixture of royalty or popularity was the period when the British empire was the worst governed. One day, a member, who owed his seat to bribery, defended himself in a speech full of wit, humor, and buffoonery, which kept the House in a continued roar of laughter. With all the fire of his eloquence, and in the highest tone of grandeur, Pitt, incensed against his patron, gave a rebuke to their mirth. "The dignity of the House of Commons," he cried, "has, by gradations, been diminishing for years, till now we are brought to the very brink of the precipice, where, if ever, a stand must be made, unless you will degenerate into a little assembly, serving no other purpose than to register the arbitrary edicts of one too powerful subject." "We are designed to be an appendix to I know not what; I have no name for it,"meaning the House of Lords. Thus did Pitt oppose to corrupt influence his genius and his gift of speaking well. Sir Thomas Robinson, on the same day, called on his majority to show spirit. "Can gentlemen," he demanded, "can Fox in Waldegrave's Memoirs, 147. VII. 66 CHAP. merchants, can the House bear, if eloquence alone is to carry it? I hope words alone will not prevail;"1 1754. and the majority came to his aid. Even Fox, who despised care for the constitution as the object of narrow minds,"2 complained to the heir of the Duke of Devonshire, that, "taking all share of power from the Commons is not the way to preserve Whig liberty. The Lords stand between the crown and the privilege of both peers and commons;" "after we are nothing," he continued, addressing the great chieftains of the Whig clans, "you will not long continue what you wish to be." George the Second, the aged king, was even more impatient of this thraldom to the aristocracy, which would not leave him a negative, still less an option in the choice of his servants. "The English notions of liberty," thought he, "must be somewhat singular, when the chief of the nobility choose rather to be the dependents and followers of a Duke of Newcastle than to be the friends and counsellors of their sovereign." The king was too old to resist; but the first political lessons which his grandson, Prince George, received at Leicester House, were such a use of the forms of the British constitution as should emancipate the royal authority from its humiliating dependence on a few great families. Thus Pitt and Prince George became allies, moving from most opposite points against the same influence-Pitt wishing to increase the force of popular representation, and Leicester House to recover independence for the prerogative. These tendencies foreshadowed an impending Walpole's Memoirs of George II. i. 355. Waldegrave's Memoirs, 20 and 152. 4 Ibid. 133. VII. change in the great Whig party of England. The CHAP. fires had gone out; the ashes on its altars were grown cold. It must be renovated or given over to dissolu- 1754. tion. It had accomplished its original purposes, and was relapsing into a state of chaos. Now that the principle of its former cohesion and activity had exhausted its power, and that it rested only on its traditions, intestine divisions and new combinations would necessarily follow. The Whigs had, by the Revolution of 1688, adjusted a compromise between the liberty of the industrial classes and the old feudal aristocracy, giving internal rest after a long conflict. With cold and unimpassioned judgment they had seated the House of Hanover on the English throne, in the person of a lewd, vulgar and ill-bred prince, who was neither born nor educated among them, nor spoke their language, nor understood their constitution; and who yet passively gave the name of his House as a watchword for toleration in the church, freedom of thinking and of speech, the security of property under the sanction of law, the safe enjoyment of English liberty. They had defended this wise and deliberate act against the wounded hereditary affections and the monarchical propensities of the rural districts of the nation; till at last their fundamental measures had ceased to clash with the sentiment of the people, and the whole aristocracy had accepted their doctrines. Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, called himself a Whig, was one of the brightest ornaments of the party, and after Hardwicke, their oracle on questions of law. Cumberland, Newcastle, Devonshire, Bedford, Halifax, and the Marquis of Rockingham, were all reputed Whigs. Whigs. So were George and Charles Townshend, the young Lord North, Gren VII. CHAP. ville, Conway and Sackville. On the vital elements of civil liberty, the noble families which led the seve1754. ral factions had no systematic opinions. They knew not that America, which demanded their attention, would amalgamate the cause of royalty and oligarchy, and create parties in England on questions which the Revolution of 1688 had not even considered. It was because the Whig party at this time had proposed to itself nothing great to accomplish, that it was possible for a man like Newcastle to be at its head; with others like Holdernesse, and the dull Sir Thomas Robinson, for the secretaries of state. The new system of governing America became one of the first objects of their attention; and, with the inconsiderate levity, rashness, and want of principle that mark imbecile men in the conduct of affairs, they were ever ready to furnish precedents for future measures of oppression. The Newcastle ministry proceeded without regard to method, consistency, or law. The province of New York had replied to the condemnation of its policy, contained in Sir Danvers Osborne's instructions, by a well-founded impeachment of Clinton for embezzling public funds and concealing it by false accounts; for gaining undue profits from extravagant grants of lands, and grants to himself under fictitious names; and for selling civil and military offices. These grave accusations were neg lected. But the province had also complained that its legislature had been directed to obey the king's instructions. They insisted that such instructions, though a rule of conduct to his governor, were not the measure of obedience to the people; that the rule of |