LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

of the past twenty years, including the loss of America, had come from the system of weak and divided ministries, which gave the king such great opportunity for wreaking his evil will. He had himself been a member of such a ministry, which had fallen seven months ago. When the king singled out Shelburne for his confidence, Fox naturally concluded that Shelburne was to be made to play the royal game, as North had been made to play it for so many years. This was very unjust to Shelburne, but there is no doubt that Fox was perfectly honest in his belief. It seemed to him that the present state of things must be brought to an end, at whatever cost. A ministry strong enough to curb the king could be formed only by a coalescence of two out of the three existing parties. A coalescence of Old and New Whigs had been tried last spring, and failed. It only remained now to try the effect of a coalescence of Old Whigs and Tories.

      Such was doubtless the chief motive of Fox in this extraordinary move. The conduct of North seems harder to explain, but it was probably due to a reaction of feeling on his part. He had done violence to his own convictions out of weak compassion for George III., and had carried on the American war for four years after he had been thoroughly convinced that peace ought to be made. Remorse for this is said to have haunted him to the end of his life. When in his old age he became blind, he bore this misfortune with his customary lightness of heart; and one day, meeting the veteran Barré, who had also lost his eyesight, he exclaimed, with his unfailing wit, "Well, colonel, in spite of all our differences, I suppose there are no two men in England who would be gladder to see each other than you and I." But while Lord North could jest about his blindness, the memory of his ill-judged subservience to the king was something that he could not laugh away, and among his nearest friends he was sometimes heard to reproach himself bitterly. When, therefore, in 1783, he told Fox that he fully agreed with him in thinking that the royal power ought to be curbed, he was doubtless speaking the truth. No man had a better right to such an opinion than he had gained through sore experience. In his own ministry, as he said to Fox, he took the system as he found it, and had not vigour and resolution enough to put an end to it; but he was now quite convinced that in such a country as England, while the king should be treated with all outward show of respect, he ought on no account to be allowed to exercise any real power.

      Now this was in 1783 the paramount political question in England, just as much as the question of secession was paramount in the United States in 1861. Other questions could be postponed; the question of curbing the king could not. Upon this all-important point North had come to agree with Fox; and as the principal motive of their coalition may be thus explained, the historian is not called upon to lay too much stress upon the lower motives assigned in profusion by their political enemies. This explanation, however, does not quite cover the case. The mass of the Tories would never follow North in an avowed attempt to curb the king, but they agreed with the followers of Fox, though not with Fox himself, in holy horror of parliamentary reform, and were alarmed by a recent declaration of Shelburne that the suffrage must be extended so as to admit a hundred new county members. Thus while the two leaders were urged to coalescence by one motive, their followers were largely swayed by another, and this added much to the mystery and general unintelligibleness of the movement. In taking this step Fox made the mistake which was characteristic of the Old Whig party. He gave too little heed to the great public outside the walls of the House of Commons. The coalition, once made, was very strong in Parliament, but it mystified and scandalized the people, and this popular disapproval by and by made it easy for the king to overthrow it.

      Fall of Shelburne's ministry.

      It was agreed to choose the treaty as the occasion for the combined attack upon the Shelburne ministry. North, as the minister who had conducted the unsuccessful war, was bound to oppose the treaty, in any case. It would not do for him to admit that better terms could not have been made. The treaty was also very unpopular with Fox's party, and with the nation at large. It was thought that too much territory had been conceded to the Americans, and fault was found with the article on the fisheries. But the point which excited most indignation was the virtual abandonment of the loyalists, for here the honour of England was felt to be at stake. On this ground the treaty was emphatically condemned by Burke, Sheridan, and Wilberforce, no less than by North. It was ably defended in the Commons by Pitt, and in the Lords by Shelburne himself, who argued that he had but the alternative of accepting the terms as they stood, or continuing the war; and since it had come to this, he said, without spilling a drop of blood, or incurring one fifth of the expense of a year's campaign, the comfort and happiness of the American loyalists could be easily secured. By this he meant that, should America fail to make good their losses, it was far better for England to indemnify them herself than to prolong indefinitely a bloody and ruinous struggle. As we shall hereafter see, this liberal and enlightened policy was the one which England really pursued, so far as practicable, and her honour was completely saved. That Shelburne and Pitt were quite right there can now be little doubt. But argument was of no avail against the resistless power of the coalition. On the 17th of February Lord John Cavendish moved an amendment to the ministerial address on the treaty, refusing to approve it. On the 21st he moved a further amendment condemning the treaty. Both motions were carried, and on the 24th Lord Shelburne resigned. He did not dissolve Parliament and appeal to the country, partly because he was aware of his personal unpopularity, and partly because, in spite of the general disgust at the coalition, there was little doubt that on the particular question of the treaty the public opinion agreed with the majority in Parliament, and not with the ministry. For this reason, Pitt, though personally popular, saw that it was no time for him to take the first place in the government, and when the king proceeded to offer it to him he declined.

      The king's wrath.

      The treaty is adopted, after all, by the coalition ministry, which presently falls.

      For more than five weeks, while the treasury was nearly empty, and the question of peace or war still hung in the balance, England was without a regular government, while the angry king went hunting for some one who would consent to be his prime minister. He was determined not to submit to the coalition. He was naturally enraged at Lord North for turning against him. Meeting one day North's father, Lord Guilford, he went up to him, tragically wringing his hands, and exclaimed in accents of woe, "Did I ever think, my Lord Guilford, that your son would thus have betrayed me into the hands of Mr. Fox?" He appealed in vain to Lord Gower, and then to Lord Temple, to form a ministry. Lord Gower suggested that perhaps Thomas Pitt, cousin of William, might be willing to serve. "I desired him," said the king, "to apply to Mr. Thomas Pitt, or Mr. Thomas anybody." It was of no use. By the 2d of April Parliament had become furious at the delay, and George was obliged to yield. The Duke of Portland was brought in as nominal prime minister, with Fox as foreign secretary, North as secretary for home and colonies, Cavendish as chancellor of the exchequer, and Keppel as first lord of the admiralty. The only Tory in the cabinet, excepting North, was Lord Stormont, who became president of the council. The commissioners, Fitzherbert and Oswald, were recalled from Paris, and the Duke of Manchester and David Hartley, son of the great philosopher, were appointed in their stead. Negotiations continued through the spring and summer. Attempts were made to change some of the articles, especially the obnoxious article concerning the loyalists, but all to no purpose. Hartley's attempt to negotiate a mutually advantageous commercial treaty with America also came to nothing. The definitive treaty which was finally signed on the 3d of September, 1783, was an exact transcript of the treaty which Shelburne had made, and for making which the present ministers had succeeded in turning him out of office. No more emphatic justification of Shelburne's conduct of this business could possibly have been obtained.

      The coalition ministry did not long survive the final signing of the treaty. The events of the next few months are curiously instructive as showing the quiet and stealthy way in which a political revolution may be consummated in a thoroughly conservative and constitutional country. Early in the winter session of Parliament Fox brought in his famous bill for organizing the government of the great empire which Clive and Hastings had built up in India. Popular indignation at the ministry had been strengthened by its adopting the same treaty of peace for the making of which it had assaulted Shelburne; and now, on the passage of the India Bill by the House of Commons, there was a great outcry. Many provisions of the bill were exceedingly unpopular, and its chief object was alleged to be the concentration of the immense patronage of India into the hands of the old Whig families. With the popular feeling thus warmly enlisted

Скачать книгу