Thoughts on the Present Discontents, and Speeches

I will not pretend to say that there is nothing at all in this mode of reasoning, because I will not assert that there is no difficulty in the art of government.  Undoubtedly the very best Administration must encounter a great deal of opposition, and the very worst will find more support than it deserves.  Sufficient appearances will never be wanting to those who have a mind to deceive themselves.  It is a fallacy in constant use with those who would level all things, and confound right with wrong, to insist upon the inconveniences which are attached to every choice, without taking into consideration the different weight and consequence of those inconveniences.  The question is not concerning absolute discontent or perfect satisfaction in Government, neither of which can be pure and unmixed at any time or upon any system.  The controversy is about that degree of good-humour in the people, which may possibly be attained, and ought certainly to be looked for.  While some politicians may be waiting to know whether the sense of every individual be against them, accurately distinguishing the vulgar from the better sort, drawing lines between the enterprises of a faction and the efforts of a people, they may chance to see the Government, which they are so nicely weighing, and dividing, and distinguishing, tumble to the ground in the midst of their wise deliberation.  Prudent men, when so great an object as the security of Government, or even its peace, is at stake, will not run the risk of a decision which may be fatal to it.  They who can read the political sky will seen a hurricane in a cloud no bigger than a hand at the very edge of the horizon, and will run into the first harbour.  No lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom.  They are a matter incapable of exact definition.  But, though no man can draw a stroke between the confines of day and night, yet light and darkness are upon the whole tolerably distinguishable.  Nor will it be impossible for a Prince to find out such a mode of government, and such persons to administer it, as will give a great degree of content to his people, without any curious and anxious research for that abstract, universal, perfect harmony, which, while he is seeking, he abandons those means of ordinary tranquillity which are in his power without any research at all.

It is not more the duty than it is the interest of a Prince to aim at giving tranquillity to his Government.  If those who advise him may have an interest in disorder and confusion.  If the opinion of the people is against them, they will naturally wish that it should have no prevalence.  Here it is that the people must on their part show themselves sensible of their own value.  Their whole importance, in the first instance, and afterwards their whole freedom, is at stake.  Their freedom cannot long survive their importance.  Here it is that the natural strength of the kingdom, the great peers, the leading landed gentlemen, the opulent merchants and manufacturers, the substantial yeomanry, must interpose, to rescue their Prince, themselves, and their posterity.

We are at present at issue upon this point.  We are in the great crisis of this contention, and the part which men take, one way or other, will serve to discriminate their characters and their principles.  Until the matter is decided, the country will remain in its present confusion.  For while a system of Administration is attempted, entirely repugnant to the genius of the people, and not conformable to the plan of their Government, everything must necessarily be disordered for a time, until this system destroys the constitution, or the constitution gets the better of this system.

There is, in my opinion, a peculiar venom and malignity in this political distemper beyond any that I have heard or read of.  In former lines the projectors of arbitrary Government attacked only the liberties of their country, a design surely mischievous enough to have satisfied a mind of the most unruly ambition.  But a system unfavourable to freedom may be so formed as considerably to exalt the grandeur of the State, and men may find in the pride and splendour of that prosperity some sort of consolation for the loss of their solid privileges.  Indeed, the increase of the power of the State has often been urged by artful men, as a pretext for some abridgment of the public liberty.  But the scheme of the junto under consideration not only strikes a palsy into every nerve of our free constitution, but in the same degree benumbs and stupefies the whole executive power, rendering Government in all its grand operations languid, uncertain, ineffective, making Ministers fearful of attempting, and incapable of executing, any useful plan of domestic arrangement, or of foreign politics.  It tends to produce neither the security of a free Government, nor the energy of a Monarchy that is absolute.  Accordingly, the Crown has dwindled away in proportion to the unnatural and turgid growth of this excrescence on the Court.

The interior Ministry are sensible that war is a situation which sets in its full light the value of the hearts of a people, and they well know that the beginning of the importance of the people must be the end of theirs.  For this reason they discover upon all occasions the utmost fear of everything which by possibility may lead to such an event.  I do not mean that they manifest any of that pious fear which is backward to commit the safety of the country to the dubious experiment of war.  Such a fear, being the tender sensation of virtue, excited, as it is regulated, by reason, frequently shows itself in a seasonable boldness, which keeps danger at a distance, by seeming to despise it.  Their fear betrays to the first glance of the eye its true cause and its real object.  Foreign powers, confident in the knowledge of their character, have not scrupled to violate the most solemn treaties; and, in defiance of them, to make conquests in the midst of a general peace, and in the heart of Europe.  Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the professed enemies of the freedom of mankind, in defiance of those who were formerly its professed defenders.  We have had just claims upon the same powers—rights which ought to have been sacred to them as well as to us, as they had their origin in our lenity and generosity towards France and Spain in the day of their great humiliation.  Such I call the ransom of Manilla, and the demand on France for the East India prisoners.  But these powers put a just confidence in their resource of the double Cabinet.  These demands (one of them, at least) are hastening fast towards an acquittal by prescription.  Oblivion begins to spread her cobwebs over all our spirited remonstrances.  Some of the most valuable branches of our trade are also on the point of perishing from the same cause.  I do not mean those branches which bear without the hand of the vine-dresser; I mean those which the policy of treaties had formerly secured to us; I mean to mark and distinguish the trade of Portugal, the loss of which, and the power of the Cabal, have one and the same era.

If, by any chance, the Ministers who stand before the curtain possess or affect any spirit, it makes little or no impression.  Foreign Courts and Ministers, who were among the first to discover and to profit by this invention of the double Cabinet, attended very little to their remonstrances.  They know that those shadows of Ministers have nothing to do in the ultimate disposal of things.  Jealousies and animosities are sedulously nourished in the outward Administration, and have been even considered as a causa sine qua non in its constitution: thence foreign Courts have a certainty, that nothing can be done by common counsel in this nation.  If one of those Ministers officially takes up a business with spirit, it serves only the better to signalise the meanness of the rest, and the discord of them all.  His colleagues in office are in haste to shake him off, and to disclaim the whole of his proceedings.  Of this nature was that astonishing transaction, in which Lord Rochford, our Ambassador at Paris, remonstrated against the attempt upon Corsica, in consequence of a direct authority from Lord Shelburne.  This remonstrance the French Minister treated with the contempt that was natural; as he was assured, from the Ambassador of his Court to ours, that these orders of Lord Shelburne were not supported by the rest of the (I had like to have said British) Administration.  Lord Rochford, a man of spirit, could not endure this situation.  The consequences were, however, curious.  He returns from Paris, and comes home full of anger.  Lord Shelburne, who gave the orders, is obliged to give up the seals.  Lord Rochford, who obeyed these orders, receives them.  He goes, however, into another department of the same office, that he might not be obliged officially to acquiesce in one situation, under what he had officially remonstrated against in another.  At Paris, the Duke of Choiseul considered this office arrangement as a compliment to him: here it was spoke of as an attention to the delicacy of Lord Rochford.  But whether the compliment was to one or both, to this nation it was the same.  By this transaction the condition of our Court lay exposed in all its nakedness.  Our office correspondence has lost all pretence to authenticity; British policy is brought into derision in those nations, that a while ago trembled at the power of our arms, whilst they looked up with confidence to the equity, firmness, and candour, which shone in all our negotiations.  I represent this matter exactly in the light in which it has been universally received.

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Such has been the aspect of our foreign politics under the influence of a double Cabinet.  With such an arrangement at Court, it is impossible it should have been otherwise.  Nor is it possible that this scheme should have a better effect upon the government of our dependencies, the first, the dearest, and most delicate objects of the interior policy of this empire.  The Colonies know that Administration is separated from the Court, divided within itself, and detested by the nation.  The double Cabinet has, in both the parts of it, shown the most malignant dispositions towards them, without being able to do them the smallest mischief.

They are convinced, by sufficient experience, that no plan, either of lenity or rigour, can be pursued with uniformity and perseverance.  Therefore they turn their eyes entirely from Great Britain, where they have neither dependence on friendship nor apprehension from enmity.  They look to themselves, and their own arrangements.  They grow every day into alienation from this country; and whilst they are becoming disconnected with our Government, we have not the consolation to find that they are even friendly in their new independence.  Nothing can equal the futility, the weakness, the rashness, the timidity, the perpetual contradiction, in the management of our affairs in that part of the world.  A volume might be written on this melancholy subject; but it were better to leave it entirely to the reflections of the reader himself, than not to treat it in the extent it deserves.

In what manner our domestic economy is affected by this system, it is needless to explain.  It is the perpetual subject of their own complaints.

The Court party resolve the whole into faction.  Having said something before upon this subject, I shall only observe here, that, when they give this account of the prevalence of faction, they present no very favourable aspect of the confidence of the people in their own Government.  They may be assured, that however they amuse themselves with a variety of projects for substituting something else in the place of that great and only foundation of Government, the confidence of the people, every attempt will but make their condition worse.  When men imagine that their food is only a cover for poison, and when they neither love nor trust the hand that serves it, it is not the name of the roast beef of Old England that will persuade them to sit down to the table that is spread for them.  When the people conceive that laws, and tribunals, and even popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends of their institution, they find in those names of degenerated establishments only new motives to discontent.  Those bodies, which, when full of life and beauty, lay in their arms and were their joy and comfort; when dead and putrid, become but the more loathsome from remembrance of former endearments.  A sullen gloom, and furious disorder, prevail by fits: the nation loses its relish for peace and prosperity, as it did in that season of fulness which opened our troubles in the time of Charles the First.  A species of men to whom a state of order would become a sentence of obscurity, are nourished into a dangerous magnitude by the heat of intestine disturbances; and it is no wonder that, by a sort of sinister piety, they cherish, in their turn, the disorders which are the parents of all their consequence.  Superficial observers consider such persons as the cause of the public uneasiness, when, in truth, they are nothing more than the effect of it.  Good men look upon this distracted scene with sorrow and indignation.  Their hands are tied behind them.  They are despoiled of all the power which might enable them to reconcile the strength of Government with the rights of the people.  They stand in a most distressing alternative.  But in the election among evils they hope better things from temporary confusion, than from established servitude.  In the mean time, the voice of law is not to be heard.  Fierce licentiousness begets violent restraints.  The military arm is the sole reliance; and then, call your constitution what you please, it is the sword that governs.  The civil power, like every other that calls in the aid of an ally stronger than itself, perishes by the assistance it receives.  But the contrivers of this scheme of Government will not trust solely to the military power, because they are cunning men.  Their restless and crooked spirit drives them to rake in the dirt of every kind of expedient.  Unable to rule the multitude, they endeavour to raise divisions amongst them.  One mob is hired to destroy another; a procedure which at once encourages the boldness of the populace, and justly increases their discontent.  Men become pensioners of state on account of their abilities in the array of riot, and the discipline of confusion.  Government is put under the disgraceful necessity of protecting from the severity of the laws that very licentiousness, which the laws had been before violated to repress.  Everything partakes of the original disorder.  Anarchy predominates without freedom, and servitude without submission or subordination.  These are the consequences inevitable to our public peace, from the scheme of rendering the executory Government at once odious and feeble; of freeing Administration from the constitutional and salutary control of Parliament, and inventing for it a new control, unknown to the constitution, an interior Cabinet; which brings the whole body of Government into confusion and contempt.

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After having stated, as shortly as I am able, the effects of this system on our foreign affairs, on the policy of our Government with regard to our dependencies, and on the interior economy of the Commonwealth; there remains only, in this part of my design, to say something of the grand principle which first recommended this system at Court.  The pretence was to prevent the King from being enslaved by a faction, and made a prisoner in his closet.  This scheme might have been expected to answer at least its own end, and to indemnify the King, in his personal capacity, for all the confusion into which it has thrown his Government.  But has it in reality answered this purpose?  I am sure, if it had, every affectionate subject would have one motive for enduring with patience all the evils which attend it.

In order to come at the truth in this matter, it may not be amiss to consider it somewhat in detail.  I speak here of the King, and not of the Crown; the interests of which we have already touched.  Independent of that greatness which a King possesses merely by being a representative of the national dignity, the things in which he may have an individual interest seem to be these: wealth accumulated; wealth spent in magnificence, pleasure, or beneficence; personal respect and attention; and above all, private ease and repose of mind.  These compose the inventory of prosperous circumstances, whether they regard a Prince or a subject; their enjoyments differing only in the scale upon which they are formed.

Suppose then we were to ask, whether the King has been richer than his predecessors in accumulated wealth, since the establishment of the plan of Favouritism?  I believe it will be found that the picture of royal indigence which our Court has presented until this year, has been truly humiliating.  Nor has it been relieved from this unseemly distress, but by means which have hazarded the affection of the people, and shaken their confidence in Parliament.  If the public treasures had been exhausted in magnificence and splendour, this distress would have been accounted for, and in some measure justified.  Nothing would be more unworthy of this nation, than with a mean and mechanical rule, to mete out the splendour of the Crown.  Indeed, I have found very few persons disposed to so ungenerous a procedure.  But the generality of people, it must be confessed, do feel a good deal mortified, when they compare the wants of the Court with its expenses.  They do not behold the cause of this distress in any part of the apparatus of Royal magnificence.  In all this, they see nothing but the operations of parsimony, attended with all the consequences of profusion.  Nothing expended, nothing saved.  Their wonder is increased by their knowledge, that besides the revenue settled on his Majesty’s Civil List to the amount of £800,000 a year, he has a farther aid, from a large pension list, near £90,000 a year, in Ireland; from the produce of the Duchy of Lancaster (which we are told has been greatly improved); from the revenue of the Duchy of Cornwall; from the American quit-rents; from the four and a half per cent. duty in the Leeward Islands; this last worth to be sure considerably more than £40,000 a year.  The whole is certainly not much short of a million annually.

These are revenues within the knowledge and cognizance of our national Councils.  We have no direct right to examine into the receipts from his Majesty’s German Dominions, and the Bishopric of Osnaburg.  This is unquestionably true.  But that which is not within the province of Parliament, is yet within the sphere of every man’s own reflection.  If a foreign Prince resided amongst us, the state of his revenues could not fail of becoming the subject of our speculation.  Filled with an anxious concern for whatever regards the welfare of our Sovereign, it is impossible, in considering the miserable circumstances into which he has been brought, that this obvious topic should be entirely passed over.  There is an opinion universal, that these revenues produce something not inconsiderable, clear of all charges and establishments.  This produce the people do not believe to be hoarded, nor perceive to be spent.  It is accounted for in the only manner it can, by supposing that it is drawn away, for the support of that Court faction, which, whilst it distresses the nation, impoverishes the Prince in every one of his resources.  I once more caution the reader, that I do not urge this consideration concerning the foreign revenue, as if I supposed we had a direct right to examine into the expenditure of any part of it; but solely for the purpose of showing how little this system of Favouritism has been advantageous to the Monarch himself; which, without magnificence, has sunk him into a state of unnatural poverty; at the same time that he possessed every means of affluence, from ample revenues, both in this country and in other parts of his dominions.

Has this system provided better for the treatment becoming his high and sacred character, and secured the King from those disgusts attached to the necessity of employing men who are not personally agreeable?  This is a topic upon which for many reasons I could wish to be silent; but the pretence of securing against such causes of uneasiness, is the corner-stone of the Court party.  It has however so happened, that if I were to fix upon any one point, in which this system has been more particularly and shamefully blameable, the effects which it has produced would justify me in choosing for that point its tendency to degrade the personal dignity of the Sovereign, and to expose him to a thousand contradictions and mortifications.  It is but too evident in what manner these projectors of Royal greatness have fulfilled all their magnificent promises.  Without recapitulating all the circumstances of the reign, every one of which is more or less a melancholy proof of the truth of what I have advanced, let us consider the language of the Court but a few years ago, concerning most of the persons now in the external Administration: let me ask, whether any enemy to the personal feelings of the Sovereign, could possibly contrive a keener instrument of mortification, and degradation of all dignity, than almost every part and member of the present arrangement?  Nor, in the whole course of our history, has any compliance with the will of the people ever been known to extort from any Prince a greater contradiction to all his own declared affections and dislikes, than that which is now adopted, in direct opposition to every thing the people approve and desire.

An opinion prevails, that greatness has been more than once advised to submit to certain condescensions towards individuals, which have been denied to the entreaties of a nation.  For the meanest and most dependent instrument of this system knows, that there are hours when its existence may depend upon his adherence to it; and he takes his advantage accordingly.  Indeed it is a law of nature, that whoever is necessary to what we have made our object, is sure, in some way, or in some time or other, to become our master.  All this however is submitted to, in order to avoid that monstrous evil of governing in concurrence with the opinion of the people.  For it seems to be laid down as a maxim, that a King has some sort of interest in giving uneasiness to his subjects: that all who are pleasing to them, are to be of course disagreeable to him: that as soon as the persons who are odious at Court are known to be odious to the people, it is snatched at as a lucky occasion of showering down upon them all kinds of emoluments and honours.  None are considered as well-wishers to the Crown, but those who advised to some unpopular course of action; none capable of serving it, but those who are obliged to call at every instant upon all its power for the safety of their lives.  None are supposed to be fit priests in the temple of Government, but the persons who are compelled to fly into it for sanctuary.  Such is the effect of this refined project; such is ever the result of all the contrivances which are used to free men from the servitude of their reason, and from the necessity of ordering their affairs according to their evident interests.  These contrivances oblige them to run into a real and ruinous servitude, in order to avoid a supposed restraint that might be attended with advantage.

If therefore this system has so ill answered its own grand pretence of saving the King from the necessity of employing persons disagreeable to him, has it given more peace and tranquillity to his Majesty’s private hours?  No, most certainly.  The father of his people cannot possibly enjoy repose, while his family is in such a state of distraction.  Then what has the Crown or the King profited by all this fine-wrought scheme?  Is he more rich, or more splendid, or more powerful, or more at his ease, by so many labours and contrivances?  Have they not beggared his Exchequer, tarnished the splendour of his Court, sunk his dignity, galled his feelings, discomposed the whole order and happiness of his private life?

It will be very hard, I believe, to state in what respect the King has profited by that faction which presumptuously choose to call themselves his friends.

If particular men had grown into an attachment, by the distinguished honour of the society of their Sovereign, and, by being the partakers of his amusements, came sometimes to prefer the gratification of his personal inclinations to the support of his high character, the thing would be very natural, and it would be excusable enough.  But the pleasant part of the story is, that these King’s friends have no more ground for usurping such a title, than a resident freeholder in Cumberland or in Cornwall.  They are only known to their Sovereign by kissing his hand, for the offices, pensions, and grants into which they have deceived his benignity.  May no storm ever come, which will put the firmness of their attachment to the proof; and which, in the midst of confusions and terrors, and sufferings, may demonstrate the eternal difference between a true and severe friend to the Monarchy, and a slippery sycophant of the Court; Quantum infido scurræ distabit amicus!