History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3

812

See an extraordinary passage in Pellew's Life of Sidmouth, vol. i. p. 334.

813

This decline in the abilities of official men was noticed by Burke, in 1770, as a necessary consequence of the new system. Compare Thoughts on the Present Discontents (Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 149) with his striking summary (Parl. Hist. vol. xvi. p. 879) of the degeneracy during the first nine years of George III. ‘Thus situated, the question at last was not, who could do the public business best, but who would undertake to do it at all. Men of talents and integrity would not accept of employments where they were neither allowed to exercise their judgment nor display the rectitude of their hearts.’ In 1780, when the evil had become still more obvious, the same great observer denounced it in his celebrated address to his Bristol constituents. ‘At present,’ he says, ‘it is the plan of the court to make its servants insignificant.’ Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 257. See further Parr's Works, vol. iii. pp. 256, 260, 261.

814

The military success of his administration is related in very strong language, but not unfairly, in Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. iv. pp. 108, 185, 186, and see the admirable summary in Brougham's Statesmen, vol. i. pp. 33, 34: and for evidence of the fear with which he inspired the enemies of England, compare Mahon, vol. v. p. 165 note; Bedford Correspond. vol. iii. pp. 87, 246, 247; Walpole's Letters to Mann, vol. i. p. 304, edit. 1843; Walpole's Mem. of George III. vol. ii. p. 232; and the reluctant admission in Georgel, Mémoires, vol. i. pp. 79, 80.

815

Lord Brougham (Sketches of Statesmen, vol. i. pp. 22, 33) has published striking evidence of what he calls ‘the truly savage feelings’ with which George III. regarded Lord Chatham (compare Russell's Mem. of Fox, vol. i. p. 129). Indeed, the sentiments of the king were even displayed in the arrangements at the funeral of the great minister. Note in Adolphus's Hist. of George III. vol. ii. p. 568; and for other evidence of ill-will, see two notes from the king to Lord North, in Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. vi. appendix, pp. lii. liv.; The Grenville Papers, vol. ii. p. 386; Bancroft's American Revolution, vol. i. p. 438.

816

Lord Brougham (Sketches of Statesmen, vol. i. p. 219) says: ‘It may be questioned if any politician, in any age, ever knew so thoroughly the various interests and the exact position of all the countries with which his own had dealings to conduct or relations to maintain.’ See also Parr's Works, vol. iv. pp. 14, 15; Russell's Mem. of Fox, vol. i. pp. 320, 321, vol. ii. pp. 91, 243; Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. i. p. 338.

817

Burke, even after the French Revolution, said, that Fox ‘was of the most artless, candid, open, and benevolent disposition, disinterested in the extreme; of a temper mild and placable even to a fault, without one drop of gall in his whole constitution.’ Speech on the Army Estimates in 1790, in Parl. Hist. vol. xxviii. p. 356. For further evidence, compare Alison's Hist. of Europe, vol. vii. p. 171; Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. i. pp. 3, 273; Trotter's Mem. of Fox, pp. xi. xii., 24, 178, 415.

818

Adolphus's Hist. of George III. vol. vi. p. 692. A singular circumstance connected with this wanton outrage is related in the Mem. of Holcroft, vol. iii. p. 60.

819

Compare Adolphus's Hist. of George III. vol. iv. pp. 107, 108, with Russell's Mem. of Fox, vol. i. pp. 191, 287, 288, vol. ii. p. 44. Dutens, who had much intercourse with English politicians, heard of the threat of abdication in 1784. Dutens's Mémoires, vol. iii. p. 104. Lord Holland says, that during the fatal illness of Fox, ‘the king had watched the progress of Mr. Fox's disorder. He could hardly suppress his indecent exultation at his death.’ Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. ii. p. 49.

820

In 1725, the Duke of Wharton, in a letter to the Pretender, after mentioning some proceedings in the Commons, adds, ‘In the House of Lords our number is so small, that any behaviour there will be immaterial.’ Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. ii. appendix, p. xxiii. See also, respecting the greater strength of the Tories in the House of Commons, Somers Tracts, vol. xi. p. 242, vol. xiii. pp. 524, 531; Campbell's Chancellors, vol. iv. p. 158; Campbell's Chief-Justices, vol. ii. p. 156.

821

Compare Vernon Correspond. vol. iii. p. 149, with Burnet's Own Time, vol. iv. p. 504. Burnet says, ‘All the Jacobites joined to support the pretensions of the Commons.’ The Commons complained that the Lords had shown ‘such an indulgence to the person accused as is not to be paralleled in any parliamentary proceedings.’ Parl. Hist. vol. v. p. 1294. See also their angry remonstrance, pp. 1314, 1315.

822

Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. iii. p. 122.

823

‘Content, 47; non-content, 92.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xii. p. 711. Mr. Phillimore (Mem. of Lyttleton, vol. i. p. 213) ascribes this to the exertions of Lord Hardwicke; but the state of parties in the upper house is sufficient explanation; and even in 1735 it was said that ‘the Lords were betwixt the devil and the deep sea,’ the devil being Walpole. Marchmont Papers, vol. ii. p. 59. Compare Bishop Newton's Life of Himself, p. 60.

824

See an account of some of its provisions in Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. pp. 80, 81. The object of the bill is frankly stated in Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 1349, where we are informed that ‘as the farther discouragement and even ruin of the dissenters was thought necessary for accomplishing this scheme, it was begun with the famous Schism Bill.’

825

By 237 to 126. Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 1351.

826

Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 83; Bunbury's Correspond. of Hanmer, p. 48. The bill was carried in the Lords by 77 against 72.

827

‘If we scrutinize the votes of the peers from the period of the revolution to the death of George II., we shall find a very great majority of the old English nobility to have been the advocates of Whig principles.’ Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. p. 363.

828

Compare Harris's Life of Hardwicke, vol. iii. p. 519, with the conversation between Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Hervey, in Hervey's Mem. of George II. vol. ii. p. 251, edit. 1848.

829

Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. pp. 363, 364, 365, 463; Parl. Hist. vol. xviii. p. 1418, vol. xxiv. p. 493, vol. xxvii. p. 1069, vol. xxix. pp. 1334, 1494, vol. xxxiii. pp. 90, 602, 1315.

830

This was too notorious to be denied; and in the House of Commons, in 1800, Nicholls taunted the Government with ‘holding out a peerage, or elevation to a higher rank in the peerage, to every man who could procure a nomination to a certain number of seats in parliament.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxxv. p. 762. So, too, Sheridan, in 1792, said (vol. xxix. p. 1333), ‘In this country peerages had been bartered for election interest.’

831

On this great influx of lawyers into the House of Lords, most of whom zealously advocated arbitrary principles, see Belsham's Hist. of Great Britain, vol. vii. pp. 266, 267; Adolphus's Hist. of George III. vol. iii. p. 363; Parl. Hist. vol. xxxv. p. 1523.

832

It was foretold at the time, that the effect of the numerous creations made during Pitt's power would be to lower the House of Lords. Compare Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 76, with Erskine's speech in Parl. Hist. vol. xxix. p. 1330; and see Sheridan's speech, vol. xxxiii. p. 1197. But their language, indignant as it is, was restrained by a desire of not wholly breaking with the court. Other men, who were more independent in their position, and cared nothing for the chance of future office, expressed themselves in terms such as had never before been heard within the walls of Parliament. Rolle, for instance, declared that ‘there had been persons created peers during the present minister's power, who were not fit to be his grooms.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxvii. p. 1198. Out of doors, the feeling of contempt was equally strong; see Life of Cartwright, vol. i. p. 278; and see the remark even of the courtly Sir W. Jones, on the increasing disregard for learning shown by ‘the nobles of our days.’ Preface to Persian Grammar, in Jones's Works, vol. ii. p. 125.

833

In his Thoughts on French Affairs, written in 1791, he says, ‘At no period in the history of England have so few peers been taken out of trade, or from families newly created by commerce.’ Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 566. Indeed, according to Sir Nathaniel Wraxall (Posthumous Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 66, 67, Lond. 1836), the only instance when George III. broke this rule was when Smith the banker was made Lord Carrington. Wraxall is an indifferent authority, and there may be other cases; but they were certainly very few, and I cannot call any to mind.

834

Nicholls, who knew him, says, ‘The political knowledge of Mr. Burke might be considered almost as an encyclopædia; every man who approached him received instruction from his stores.’ Nicholls's Recollections, vol. i. p. 20.

835

‘The excursions of his genius are immense. His imperial fancy has laid all nature under tribute, and has collected riches from every scene of the creation, and every walk of art.’ Works of Robert Hall, London, 1846, p. 196. So, too, Wilberforce says of him, ‘He had come late into Parliament, and had had time to lay in vast stores of knowledge. The field from which he drew his illustrations was magnificent. Like the fabled object of the fairy's favours, whenever he opened his mouth pearls and diamonds dropped from him.’ Life of Wilberforce, vol. i. p. 159.

836

Lord Thurlow is said to have declared, what I suppose is now the general opinion of competent judges, that the fame of Burke would survive that of Pitt and Fox. Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 169. But the noblest eulogy on Burke was pronounced by a man far greater than Thurlow. In 1790, Fox stated in the House of Commons, ‘that if he were to put all the political information which he had learnt from books, all which he had gained from science, and all which any knowledge of the world and its affairs had taught him, into one scale, and the improvement which he had derived from his right hon. friend's instruction and conversation were placed in the other, he should be at a loss to decide to which to give the preference.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxviii. p. 363.

837

Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chief-Justices, vol. ii. p. 443) says, ‘Burke, a philosophic statesman, deeply imbued with the scientific principles of jurisprudence.’ See also, on his knowledge of law, Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 131; and Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. i. p. 230.

838

Barry, in his celebrated Letter to the Dilettanti Society, regrets that Burke should have been diverted from the study of the fine arts into the pursuit of politics, because he had one of those ‘minds of an admirable expansion and catholicity, so as to embrace the whole concerns of art, ancient as well as modern, domestic as well as foreign.’ Barry's Works, vol. ii. p. 538, 4to, 1809. In the Annual Register for 1798, p. 329, 2nd edit., it is stated that Sir Joshua Reynolds ‘deemed Burke the best judge of pictures that he ever knew.’ See further Works of Sir J. Reynolds, Lond. 1846, vol. i. p. 185; and Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. p. 257. A somewhat curious conversation between Burke and Reynolds, on a point of art, is preserved in Holcroft's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 276, 277.

839

See a letter from Winstanley, the Camden Professor of Ancient History, in Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. pp. 390, 391, and in Prior's Life of Burke, p. 427. Winstanley writes, ‘It would have been exceedingly difficult to have met with a person who knew more of the philosophy, the history, and filiation of languages, or of the principles of etymological deduction, than Mr. Burke.’

840

Adam Smith told Burke, ‘after they had conversed on subjects of political economy, that he was the only man who, without communication, thought on these topics exactly as he did.’ Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. p. 429; and see Prior's Life of Burke, p. 58; and on his knowledge of political economy, Brougham's Sketches of Statesmen, vol. i. p. 205.

841

‘Politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part.’ Observations on a late State of the Nation, in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 113. Hence the distinction he had constantly in view between the generalizations of philosophy, which ought to be impregnable, and those of politics, which must be fluctuating; and hence in his noble work, Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents, he says (vol. i. p. 136), ‘No lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom. They are a matter incapable of exact definition.’ See also p. 151, on which he grounds his defence of the spirit of party; it being evident that if truth were the prime object of the political art, the idea of party, as such, would be indefensible. Compare with this the difference between ‘la vérité en soi’ and ‘la vérité sociale,’ as expounded by M. Rey in his Science Sociale, vol. ii. p. 322, Paris, 1842.

842

In 1780 he plainly told the House of Commons that ‘the people are the masters. They have only to express their wants at large and in gross. We are the expert artists; we are the skilful workmen, to shape their desires into perfect form, and to fit the utensil to the use. They are the sufferers, they tell the symptoms of the complaint; but we know the exact seat of the disease, and how to apply the remedy according to the rules of art. How shocking would it be to see us pervert our skill into a sinister and servile dexterity, for the purpose of evading our duty, and defrauding our employers, who are our natural lords, of the object of their just expectations!’ Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 254. In 1777, in his Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (Works, vol. i. p. 216), ‘In effect, to follow, not to force, the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, – is the true end of legislature.’ In his Letter on the Duration of Parliament (vol. ii. p. 430), ‘It would be dreadful, indeed, if there was any power in the nation capable of resisting its unanimous desire, or even the desire of any very great and decided majority of the people. The people may be deceived in their choice of an object. But I can scarcely conceive any choice they can make to be so very mischievous, as the existence of any human force capable of resisting it.’ So, too, he says (vol. i. pp. 125, 214), that when government and the people differ, government is generally in the wrong: compare pp. 217, 218, 276, vol. ii. p. 440. And to give only one more instance, but a very decisive one, he, in 1772, when speaking on a Bill respecting the Importation and Exportation of Corn, said, ‘On this occasion I give way to the present Bill, not because I approve of the measure in itself, but because I think it prudent to yield to the spirit of the times. The people will have it so; and it is not for their representatives to say nay. I cannot, however, help entering my protest against the general principles of policy on which it is supported, because I think them extremely dangerous.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. p. 480.

843

The effect which Burke's profound views produced in the House of Commons, where, however, few men were able to understand them in their full extent, is described by Dr. Hay, who was present at one of his great speeches; which, he says, ‘seemed a kind of new political philosophy.’ Burke's Correspond. vol. i. p. 103. Compare a letter from Lee, written in the same year, 1766, in Forster's Life of Goldsmith, vol. ii. pp. 38, 39; and in Bunbury's Correspond. of Hanmer, p. 458.

844

Burke was never weary of attacking the common argument, that, because a country has long flourished under some particular custom, therefore the custom must be good. See an admirable instance of this in his speech on the power of the attorney-general to file informations ex officio; where he likens such reasoners to the father of Scriblerus, who ‘venerated the rust and canker which exalted a brazen pot-lid into the shield of a hero.’ He adds: ‘But, sir, we are told that the time during which this power existed, is the time during which monarchy most flourished: and what, then, can no two things subsist together but as cause and effect? May not a man have enjoyed better health during the time that he walked with an oaken stick, than afterwards, when he changed it for a cane, without supposing, like the Druids, that there are occult virtues in oak, and that the stick and the health were cause and effect?’ Parl. Hist. vol. xvi. pp. 1190, 1191.

845

This, as Mr. Cooke truly says, is an instance of aristocratic prejudice; but it is certain that a hint from George III. would have remedied the shameful neglect. Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. p. 277, 278.

846

It is easy to imagine how George III. must have been offended by such sentiments as these: ‘I am not of the opinion of those gentlemen who are against disturbing the public repose; I like a clamour whenever there is an abuse. The fire-bell at midnight disturbs your sleep, but it keeps you from being burnt in your bed. The hue and cry alarms the county, but preserves all the property of the province.’ Burke's speech on Prosecutions for Libels, in 1771, in Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. p. 54.

847

He moved their repeal. Parl. Hist. vol. xxvi. p. 1169. Even Lord Chatham issued, in 1766, a proclamation against forestallers and regraters, very much to the admiration of Lord Mahon, who says, ‘Lord Chatham acted with characteristic energy.’ Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. v. p. 166. More than thirty years later, and after Burke's death, Lord Kenyon, then chief-justice, eulogised these preposterous laws. Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. i. p. 167. Compare Adolphus's Hist. of George III. vol. vii. p. 406; and Cockburn's Memorials of his Time, Edinb. 1856, p. 73.

848

‘That liberality in the commercial system, which, I trust, will one day be adopted.’ Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 223. And, in his letter to Burgh (Ibid. vol. ii. p. 409), ‘But that to which I attached myself the most particularly, was to fix the principle of a free trade in all the ports of these islands, as founded in justice, and beneficial to the whole; but principally to this, the seat of the supreme power.’

849

Prior's Life of Burke, p. 467; Burke's Works, vol. i. pp. 263–271, 537–561, vol. ii. pp. 431–447. He refutes (vol. i. p. 548) the notion that the coronation oath was intended to bind the crown in its legislative capacity. Compare Mem. of Mackintosh, vol. i. pp. 170, 171, with Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 134.

850

Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. pp. 435, 436, vol. xx. p. 306. See also Burke's Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 17, 18; and Prior's Life of Burke, p. 143.

851

Burke's Works, vol. i. pp. 261, 262, part of his speech at Bristol.

852

Prior's Life of Burke, p. 317. See also his admirable remarks, in Works, vol. ii. p. 417; and his speech, in Parl. Hist. vol. xxviii. p. 146.

853

On this increasing cruelty of the English laws, compare Parr's Works, vol. iv. pp. 150, 259, with Parl. Hist. vol. xxii. p. 271, vol. xxiv. p. 1222, vol. xxvi. p. 1057, vol. xxviii. p. 143; and, in regard to the execution of them, see Life of Romilly, by Himself, vol. i. p. 65; and Alison's Hist. of Europe, vol. ix. p. 620.

854

In one short speech (Parl. Hist. vol. xx. pp. 150, 151), he has almost exhausted the arguments against enlistment for life.

855

In 1806, that is nine years after the death of Burke, parliament first authorized enlistment for a term of years. See an account of the debates in Alison's Hist. of Europe, vol. vii. pp. 380–391. Compare Nichols's Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century, vol. v. p. 475; and Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. ii. p. 116.

856

Prior's Life of Burke, p. 316; Parl. Hist. vol. xxvii. p. 502, vol. xxviii. pp. 69, 96; and Life of Wilberforce, vol. i. pp. 152, 171, contain evidence of his animosity against the slave-trade, and a more than sufficient answer to the ill-natured, and, what is worse, the ignorant, remark about Burke, in the Duke of Buckingham's Mem. of George III. vol. i. p. 350.

857

On the respect which George III. felt for the slave-trade, see note 259 to this chapter. I might also have quoted the testimony of Lord Brougham: ‘The court was decidedly against abolition. George III. always regarded the question with abhorrence, as savouring of innovation.’ Brougham's Statesmen, vol. ii. p. 104. Compare Combe's North America, vol. i. p. 332.

858

Burke's Works, vol. ii. pp. 490–496; Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. pp. 44–55, a very able speech, delivered in 1771. Compare a letter to Dowdeswell, in Burke's Correspond. vol. i. pp. 251, 252.

859

The arguments of Burke anticipated, by more than twenty years, Fox's celebrated Libel Bill, which was not passed till 1792; although, in 1752, juries had begun, in spite of the judges, to return general verdicts on the merits. See Campbell's Chancellors, vol. v. pp. 238, 243, 341–345, vol. vi. p. 210; and Meyer, Institutions Judiciaires, vol. ii. pp. 204, 205, Paris, 1823.

860

Mr. Farr, in his valuable essay on the statistics of the civil service (in Journal of Statist. Soc. vol. xii. pp. 103–125), calls Burke ‘one of the first and ablest financial reformers in parliament,’ p. 104. The truth, however, is, that he was not only one of the first, but the first. He was the first man who laid before parliament a general and systematic scheme for diminishing the expenses of government; and his preliminary speech on that occasion is one of the finest of all his compositions.

861

Prior's Life of Burke, pp. 206, 234. See also, on the retrenchments he effected, Sinclair's Hist. of the Revenue, vol. ii. pp. 84, 85; Burke's Correspond. vol. iii. p. 14; and Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. pp. 57–60.

862

In 1788, Lord Rockingham said, in the House of Lords, ‘Instead of calling the war, the war of parliament, or of the people, it was called the king's war, his majesty's favourite war.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xix. p. 857. Compare Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. p. 235, with the pungent remarks in Walpole's George III. vol. iv. p. 114. Nicholls (Recollections, vol. i. p. 35) says: ‘The war was considered as the war of the king personally. Those who supported it were called the king's friends; while those who wished the country to pause, and reconsider the propriety of persevering in the contest, were branded as disloyal.’