A.D. 1782.] DEMANDS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT CONCEDED. 297 there, when the new whig ministry assumed office. Scarcely of maintaining the royal authority, and even that might had arrived the new whig lord-lieutenant, the duke of Portland, a heavy half-Dutchman, of no talent or activity, but having the necessary whig qualification for high office, that of high revolutionary family. With him went colonel Richard Fitzpatrick, a much abler man, and a friend of Fox. not always avert danger. Such corruptions, to an enormous extent, and such further dangers, did afterwards arise, as was foreseen; but the case with the present ministry was one of simple necessity. England had committed the great error of refusing all concession to demanded rights in the case of America, and now lay apparently exhausted by the fight to compel submission, and with all Europe in arms against her. Ireland, aware of this, was in arms, and determined to profit by the crisis. Neither Ireland nor England was prepared for that union which took place years afterwards, and which was not effected without arduous labour and great pecuniary cost; to resist the present demand might cause the Irish agitators to look abroad; and France, Holland, and Spain would have only been too happy to have responded to an appeal from Ireland to aid her in assuming independence. The least evil was to put all such contingencies to flight by at once conceding the Irish demands. Fox, therefore, on the 17th of May, announced the intention of ministers at once to acknowledge the independence of Ireland by repealing the act of the 6th of George I. Fox, in his speech, declared that it was far better to have the Irish willing subjects to the crown than bitter enemies. The bill repealing the 6th of George I. accordingly passed both houses as a matter of course, and the effect upon Ireland was such, that in the first ebullition of the national Grattan had given notice that on the 16th of April he would move for the utter repeal of the acts destructive of the independent legislative rights of Ireland. Colonel Fitzpatrick immediately waited on lord Charlemont, and entreated him to induce Grattan, under the circumstances, to postpone his motion. Grattan, though ill at the time, would not listen to the request. On the appointed day, the house of commons having been expressly summoned by the speaker, Grattan rose, and, assuming the question already as carried, began, "I am now to address a free people. Ages have passed away, and this is the first moment in which you could be distinguished by that appellation. I have found Ireland on her knees; I have watched over her with an eternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injury to arms, from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift! spirit of Molyneux! your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation. In that new character I hail her, and, bowing to her august presence, I say, ESTO PERPETUA!" The speech was received with thunders of applause. It concluded with an address to the crown, declar-joy the Irish house of Commons voted one hundred thousand ing in the plainest, boldest language, that no body of men, except the Irish parliament, had a right to make laws by which that nation could be bound. The address was carried by acclamation; it was carried with nearly equal enthusiasm by the lords, and then both houses adjourned to await the decision of the English parliament and ministry. This was a serious position of affairs for the consideration of the new whig ministry. They were called on to declare, either that Ireland was part of the empire, and subject to the same laws, as regarded the empire, as Great Britain, or that it was distinctly a separate empire under the same king, just as Hanover was. The ministry of Rockingham have been severely blamed by one political party, and highly lauded by another, for conceding the claims of Ireland on that head so readily; for they came to the conclusion to yield them fully. They were by no means blind to the difficulties of the case, and to the evils that might arise from a decision either way. By conceding the entire independence of Ireland of our parliament and courts of law, they saw that there was but one individual that linked that country to Great Britain-and that was the king. Supposing Ireland should, some day, go a step further, and repudiate the sovereign, adopting the older dynasty, and the British parliament declined to furnish him troops for the recovery of his crown, Ireland would be lost to the empire altogether. Even whilst remaining attached by this single link, what influence was to maintain the royal power there in times of high discontent? To make Ireland move in cordial union with England, there might possibly require more than simple justice under certain circumstances of temptations from without, or factious agitation within. In that case, there would, in all probability, arise great corruption in the delegated government there, as the means pounds to raise twenty thousand seamen-a most timely grant; for the marquis of Rockingham wrote to the duke of Portland that government had ten ships-of-the-line with scarcely a man to put into them! The Irish commons, moreover, offered to grant Grattan, for his patriotic and successful exertions in this cause, a similar sum, to purchase him an estate. Grattan-though a poor man, his income at that time scarcely exceeding five hundred pounds a-year disinterestedly refused such a sum, and was only with difficulty induced ultimately to accept half of it. There were not wanting, however, those who strove to disturb the joy of Ireland, and the peace of England thus acquired, by sowing suspicions of the sincerity of England, and representing that the independence granted was spurious rather than real. Amongst these, Flood, the rival of Grattan in political and parliamentary life, took the lead. He seized on every little circumstance to create doubts of the English carrying out the concession faithfully. He seized on an imprudent motion of the earl of Abingdon, in the peers, and still more vivaciously on the decision of an appeal from Ireland, in the court of King's Bench, by lord Mansfield. The case had remained over, and it was deemed impracticable to send it back to Ireland, though nearly finished before the act of repeal. Fox explained the case, and made the most explicit declaration of the "full, complete, absolute, and perpetual surrender of the British legislative and judicial supremacy over Ireland." But the suspicions had been too adroitly infused to be removed without a fresh and still more positive act, which was passed in the next session. The claims of Ireland appearing, for the moment, to be happily satisfied, ministers now proceeded to carry out those reforms for which they had loudly called during the many years that they had been in opposition. They adopted and introduced the bills of Sir Philip Jennings Clarke and Mr. Carew for excluding contractors from the house of commons, and revenue officers from voting at elections. The bill against the contractors passed the commons with little opposition; but the ministers immediately felt the mischief of allowing lord Thurlow to retain his place of chancellor. He opposed the measure vehemently, and divided the house upon it. Lord Mansfield gave it his cordial resistance, and the new lord Ashburton, though made so by the present administration, tacked to it a clause exempting all gentlemen who merely contracted for the produce of their estates. The clause, however, was lopped away again on the return of the bill to the commons, and the act passed without it. The bill for disqualifying revenue officers was opposed with equal pertinacity by Thurlow and Mansfield; though lord Rockingham stated that the elections in seventy boroughs depended chiefly on revenue officers, and that nearly twelve thousand of such officers created by the late ministry had votes in other places. The bill passed, after exempting all officers who held their posts for life, and therefore were charitably supposed to be beyond the reach of undue influence, as if no such thing as promotion had its effect. At this favourable crisis, Wilkes seized the opportunity to move that the resolution of 1769, annulling his election for Middlesex, and all the subsequent proceedings founded upon it, should be expunged from the journals of the house, and he succeeded; but Charles Fox incurred the inextinguishable resentment of Wilkes by opposing the motion, on the ground that the house ought to possess the privilege of expelling such members as it deemed unworthy of a seat. Byng, the other member for Middlesex, seconded Wilkes, and lord North as firmly opposed him, but the motion was carried by one hundred and fifteen votes against forty seven. On the 15th of April a message was sent down to both houses from the king, in conformity to his pledge to the new ministry, with regard to Mr. Burke's plan of economical reform, which it proposed should be a measure of effectual retrenchment, and to include his majesty's own civil list. Lord Shelburne, in communicating it to the lords, moved an address of thanks, assuring the house that this was no mere ministerial message, but was the genuine language of the king himself, proceeding from the heart. Burke, in the commons, used more exuberant terms of eulogy, declaring that "it was the best of messages to the best of people from the best of kings!" Early in May he moved for leave to bring in his bill on the subject, and then most of the promised wonders of reform and retrenchment vanished. It was but another example of the marvellous effect of office in shrinking up the brave demands of patriots in opposition. Numbers of those things which Burke had for years denounced as monstrous, nowhere appeared in the scheme of curtail as the organ of these cabinet ministers than as the independent framer of his own bill. The duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster and the principality of Wales were at once cut out of his scheme of reform. That of supplying the royal household by contract was abandoned; the ordnance office, in the hands of the duke of Richmond, was not to be touched, nor the treasurer of the household's office; and some other of the royal establishments, which were mere sinecures, were left, the Mint, &c. But he succeeded in lopping off the third secretary of state, which had been created for the American colonies, and was useless now they were virtually gone; the lords of trade and plantations; the lords of police in Scotland; the principal officers of the great wardrobe, jewel office, treasurer of the chamber, cofferer of the household, six clerks of the board of green cloth-in all, about a dozen useless offices were swept away, and Burke shed tears of joy at such a sweeping out of the dens of corruption. It was, indeed, something to have made such an inroad into these tabooed regions of royal waste and aristocratic plunder, yet what a falling off from Burke's long-vaunted demands! Instead of the saving of two hundred thousand pounds ayear, which he proposed in 1779, he now effected only a saving of about seventy-two thousand pounds. The pension list was vigorously revised. No pension was to exceed three hundred a-year, and not more than six hundred was to be granted in pensions in any one year; the names of the persons to whom they were granted to be laid before parliament in twenty days after the beginning of each session, until the amount in the pension list should reach ninety thousand pounds. The secret service money was, at the same time, limited; and a solemn oath was to be administered to the secretaries of state regarding its proper employment. It may be imagined what were the consternation and the disgust of the large class which had been revelling on these misappropriated funds of the nation. Burke, in a letter, describes feelingly the gauntlet he had to run in proceeding with his reform. "I was loaded," he says, "with hatred for everything withheld, and with obloquy for everything given." What, however, brought unjust odium on him, but just reproach on the cabinet, was, that lord Rockingham made haste, before the bill was passed, to grant enormous pensions to his supporters and colleagues, lord Ashburton and colonel Barré. This latter ardent patriot, who, whilst Burke's bill was in consideration, said it did not go far enough in reform, now willingly pocketed three thousand two hundred pounds a-year, as a pension, beside the salary of his office! Such were the men with whom Burke had to act in the business of reform, and we shall soon see that, in matters of parliamentary reform, they were still worse. In the house of lords, Thurlow again attacked the bill, supported by lords Mansfield and Loughborough; but it passed, and Burke immediately gave an illustrious proof of his disinterestedness, by bringing in a bill for regulating and reducing the enormous emoluments of his own office, the paymastership of the forces. This was a brilliant contrast to the conduct of Henry Fox, first lord Holland, Charles Fox's father, who held it snugly and pertinaciously for a long term of years, making the best of it and its opportunities for amassing money. Burke, on A.D. 1782.] MOTION OF PITT FOR PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. the other hand, the poorest man that ever held that office, relentlessly cut it down, and then proceeded to give up the profits on clothing the pensioners, as treasurer of Chelsea Hospital, amounting to seven hundred a-year, and, by a new contract, saved to the country six hundred a-year. Amid all the abuse which had been poured on the later conduct of Burke, these are instances of patriotism rare indeed in those who can better afford them. In addition to these reforms, lord Shelburne introduced and carried a bill, compelling such people as held patent places in the colonies, or anywhere abroad, to reside there, and discharge the duties. 299 by twenty votes. Burke and Townshend had been persuaded to absent themselves; but, on the subject soon after being incidentally introduced when Burke happened to be present, he sprang up, and attacked Pitt with a scream of passion, "swearing," according to a letter of Sheridan, “that parliament was, and always had been, what it ought to be, and that all people who wanted to reform it sought to overturn the constitution." There were other motions introduced on the subject of reform-one by Sawbridge, for the shortening of parliament, and by lord Mahon, to prevent bribery at elections; but their fate was the same as Pitt's motion, and, indeed, the repulse of that seemed to From economical and colonial, ministers proceeded to have damaged the ministers. Fox complained of the thinparliamentary reform. Sir Harbord Harbord had intro-ness of the attendance, the indifference of members to questions of reform, and the shameful conduct of the lords, where the duke of Richmond had been opposed and deserted on all sides. duced, before their accession to office, a bill to disfranchise the rotten borough of Cricklade, in Wiltshire, as Shoreham had already been disfranchised. The new ministry supported it, with the exception of their strange colleague, Thurlow, whom they ought to have insisted on being dismissed. Cricklade was a thoroughly venal borough, regularly sold to some East Indian nabob; and Mr. Frederick Montagu, in the debate, quoted lord Chatham's remark on Shoreham, which had also been the purchased lair of Indian corruptionists, that he "was glad to find the borough of Shoreham likely to be removed from Bengal to its ancient situation in the county of Sussex." The success with Cricklade encouraged William Pitt to bring forward a motion for a general reform of parliament. This he did on the 7th of May, and was seconded by Wilkes' old ally, Alderman Sawbridge. Pitt did not venture to talk of a bill, but only to propose a committee to consider the subject. This was granted; but it was soon apparent that nothing could be done. The ministers were wholly at variance on the subject-some went one length, and some another; many of them were as determined against all parliamentary reform as any tories-in fact, it would be difficult, with our notions of reformers, to class the leading so-called whigs as anything but conservative. Many of them, Rockingham, the prime minister, especially, held much borough influence. He was utterly opposed, in secret, to all such reforms. Burke, economical reformer, was impatiently hostile to reform of boroughs, for he had been ejected by an independent constituency, and was now the nominee of lord Rockingham. Thomas Pitt, Pitt's brother, and Thomas Townshend, secretary at war, were open opponents. Pitt himself would hear nothing of repealing the septennial act; but it is to us a curious sight to see this afterwards, and for so many years, determined tory minister battling for parliamentary reform against socalled whigs and reformers. He was for sweeping away all rotten boroughs, those tools with which he subsequently worked so at his will; he went for equalising the whole representation, for destroying the influence of the treasury, of the hereditary right assumed by the aristocracy, and, by disfranchising the rotten boroughs, sweeping the house of the creatures of the India House. He was zealously supported by Fox, Sheridan, Sir George Saville; and the duke of Richmond, in the lords, warmly commended the movement; but the motion had the fate that might have been expected-it was negatived, but only But the matters most important, and in which the Rockingham ministry succeeded the best, were those of attempting to accomplish the peace with America, and with the continental nations on which they had so long and so loudly insisted. Fox first tried his diplomatic genius with the Dutch, whom he could, as he boasted, soon conciliate; but, to his infinite chagrin, that calculating people were so elated by the recent ill success of the English, and relied so completely on the powerful fleets of France and Spain to protect their trade and islands, that they returned a contemptuous answer, declaring that they could not treat without their allies. Still more mortifying was his repulse by the Americans. His offers of negotiation for peace were received with a haughty indifference by congress, and he was again referred to France. It was a just punishment for the unmeasured encouragement and extravagant eulogies which he and his colleagues of the opposition had so long conferred on the Americans. They had spared no terms which could debase their native country and exalt America-which could represent England as exhausted and America as invincible; England as mean and tyrannical, America as noble and magnanimous. They had been feeding a vanity ready enough to kindle of itself, and had, in truth, as had been bitterly remarked by their predecessors in office, really fought for the congress in parliament much better than the English generals and admirals had fought against it. They had now procured a resolution of the house of commons, presented by the whole house in a body to the king, and therefore, by him assented to, although reluctantly, that England could not and would not continue the war. Under these circumstances, congress treated their old friends and advisers with the coolest contempt, at the very time that the American army was destitute of food, of clothingof almost everything, and could no more fight than it could draw a doit from the empty treasury of congress. General Greene, as commander of the northern army, was writing, "For upwards of two months more than one-third of our men have been entirely naked, with nothing but a breech cloth about them, and never came out of their tents; and the rest were as ragged as wolves. Our condition was little better; our beef was perfect carrion, and frequently we had none." Washington described his men as exactly in the same condition, and added, "You may rely upon it, that the patience and long-suffering of this army are almost exhausted, and that there never was so great a spirit of discontent as at this instant. It is high time for a peace." Yet at this moment the congress, careless of its army, or whether it dispersed or not, because the whig ministers of England had determined to fight no more, behaved to their old friends and eulogists with the most supreme scorn. A minister of genius would, at this moment, have by their years of inconsiderate language. When they dreamt only of damaging their official opponents, they were in reality damaging and humbling themselves. Fox now had recourse to the mediations of Russia and Austria. The czarina and the emperor Joseph, equally with the Dutch convinced of the fallen fortunes of England, insulted her whilst pretending to serve her. At the same time, Fox dispatched to Paris Thomas Grenville, to propose, as the basis of a treaty, the concession of the independence of the United A.D. 1782.] LORD SHELBURNE ACCEPTS THE PREMIERSHIP. the speeches of himself and co-oppositionists, which had so long extolled the enemies of England, and represented her so low and so completely on the brink of ruin, Rockingham, who was failing when he took office, died on the 1st of July. Fox, who was a violent anti-Shelburneite, instantly threw up office on the king sending for Shelburne, and upon that nobleman accepting the position of premier. Burke, lord John Cavendish, and John Townshend, did the same. Thomas Townshend took Fox's place as foreign secretary, lord Grantham succeeded lord Shelburne as home secretary, William Pitt now came in as chancellor of the exchequer, in the place of lord John Cavendish. Barré took Burke's post of paymaster of the forces, and Dundas stepped into 301 soon to do. Fox, on his part, came in for very severe censure, for being one of a ministry who, whilst professing to put an end to administrative corruption, and engaged in cutting down pensions, granted the enormous ones of colonel Barré and lord Ashburton; whilst they received with coldness the news of a most splendid victory of Rodney over De Grasse, which we have now to detail, and conferred on him only a pension of two thousand a-year, because he was a tory. In fact, whilst Fox had been vainly making overtures of peace to the European powers and to America, Rodney had been showing that there wanted only three or four really able men at the head of our ministry, our army and navy, to turn again the tide of victory toward England Barré's as treasurer of the navy. Other changes took place; | in all its greatness. To add to these mortifications of Fox, the duke of Portland, a firm Rockinghamite, resigned the lord-lieutenantcy of Ireland, which George Grenville, now lord Temple, the nephew of the late lord Temple, took. Mr. Pepper Arden became solicitor-general, and Sir George Yonge secretary of war, in place of Thomas Townshend, now secretary of state, in place of Fox. The resigned Rockinghamites were by no means resigned in their tempers. Fox was gone out in the deepest poverty and embarrassment, and attacked his late colleagues bitterly. He declared that Shelburne could be base enough to coalesce even with lord North, the very thing Fox himself was so VOL. V.-No. 234. the king, disgusted at the humiliations which he considered the overtures made by Fox to the French, Dutch, Spaniards, and Americans brought with them, had, with evident satisfaction, accepted his resignation. The king prorogued parliament immediately on the formation of the new ministry, the session ending on the 11th of July. Scarcely was the Rockingham administration formed when they determined to recall England's ablest admiral, Sir George Rodney, and they carried this into execution in May of this year, and appointed admiral Pigott in his stead. Lord Keppel, who had shown himself so sensitive in his own case, |