March 28th. The Cider-bill had now laboured through the Commons, and was read for the second time by the Lords. Lord Hardwicke spoke and voted against it; but was answered well, and with severity, by Lord Marchmont.301 Lord Mansfield made a bad trimming speech, but voted for the bill. Lord Lyttelton302 spoke well against it. Lord Pomfret heaped panegyrics on the Favourite, whose own speech was languid and unargumentative. The Tory Lords who belong chiefly to the western counties were most of them against the bill, as were nine of the Bishops; but the bill was committed by a majority of 71 to 39.
It was read the third time on the 30th, and was attacked with energy by the Duke of Grafton; by Lord Dartmouth303 with decency and propriety; by Lord Lyttelton, though with censures on the political pamphlets of the time; and by the Duke of Newcastle, who complimented the rising generation. It having been reported that, on hearing the City would petition the King against the bill, as they had both Houses, on the ground of the bill being calculated to extend the excise, Lord Bute had sent word to the leading men of the City, that if they would drop their petition, the bill should be repealed the next session, he thought it necessary to explain the foundation of that report; he had only sent word, he said, that if the bill proved a bad one, which he did not believe it would, he would try to get it repealed. This was one of his best speeches, though not divested of pomp, and with much affected contempt of popularity. Lord Ravensworth expressed great scorn of the City assuming the dictatorial tone. Lord Denbigh was still more bitter, and spoke with so much wit and applause that in very few days he was made a Lord of the Bedchamber. Lord Temple having in both debates been very personal to the Favourite, and having declared in favour of excise, as Lord Bute had against it, Lord Denbigh said he hoped the King, to please the City, would remove the Minister who was against excise, and place that Lord who was for it at the head of the Treasury. The bill was passed, sixty-two lords being for it, thirty-eight against it. After the first debate, the Lords Oxford, Foley, and Willoughby protested; the first and last of the King’s bedchamber. After the second debate, the Duke of Bolton,304 Earl Temple, and Lord Fortescue protested.
Immediately after the House rose the Sheriffs hurried to St. James’s; and, though at so unusual an hour, and without having previously asked leave, presented to the King a petition not to pass the bill; but he passed it the very next morning.
Few political clouds seemed less big with mischief than this storm, unnaturally conjured up, and little likely to last; for what principle of union could there be in common between the City of London and two or three distant counties whose apples were to be taxed? The spell, excise, was pronounced, but had lost its terrors. They who sounded loudest the alarm, neither were alarmed, nor expected to breathe much dread into others. But there was a frame of nerves more easily thrown into disorder; fear seized on the Favourite; he said, “We shall have thirty thousand men come down to St. James’s!” The assault that had been made on him the first day of the session had left a lasting impression; and he had showed, early in the reign, that fortitude was not a ruling ingredient in his composition. He had appointed himself a guard of bruisers the day of his attending the King into the City in 1761, when Mr. Pitt made his insolent parade thither at the same time. Now, bating the slight distemperature occasioned by the cider-tax, England seemed to be willingly, and submissively, prostrate at the Favourite’s feet. Would she have rebelled for a partial tax, after acquiescing in the peace? Fear does not calculate, but lumps apprehensions in the gross. The panic was taken, and on the 7th of April, to the surprise of mankind, it was notified that Lord Bute intended to resign the next day, and to retire for his health, not being able to go through the fatigue of business.
It is true, that he had at times declared, that as soon as he had made the peace, he would quit his post; but few had heard the declaration, and fewer believed it. The Ministers knew nothing of his intention till the day before it was publicly notified; and Fox was so entirely out of the secret, that he reproached the Earl bitterly for leaving him in that ignorance and dilemma. The Favourite’s own speeches in Parliament expressing a wish of retirement had rather confirmed men in the opinion that he had no thoughts of it. No one act had had the least air of his giving up his power, nor had any measures been taken to replace him or carry on the present system; but the best comment on his behaviour at that moment was his subsequent conduct. The fondness he retained for power, his intrigues to preserve it, the confusion he helped to throw into almost every succeeding system, and his impotent and dark attempts to hang on the wheels of Government, which he only clogged, and to which he dreaded even being suspected of recommending drivers, all proved that neither virtue nor philosophy had the honour of dictating his retreat; but that fear, and fear only, was the immediate, inconsiderate, and precipitate cause of his resignation.305
Yet let me not be thought to lament this weak man’s pusillanimity. I am condemning his want of policy, but rejoice at it. Had he been firm to himself, there was an end of the constitution! The hearts of Englishmen were corrupt and sold, and the best heads amongst them toiled in the cause of Despotism. A happy panic blew up the system of absolute power when it had lasted but five months; and a trifling Opposition overturned in a fortnight the work of that majority which a fortnight had purchased. Yet the struggle was not over. The rod fell into abler and more resolute hands; the mercenaries were not disbanded, though the commander-in-chief ran away. Fortunately he became incompatible with his successors; and liberty owed its salvation, not to its friends, but to discord among the conspirators.
I have mentioned how utterly Fox was disconcerted at this unexpected resignation. His first movement was to press Lord Bute to retain the Treasury, at least for six months. That attempt was fruitless. His next step was to secure his own peerage. Again was he astonished to be told that he had agreed to cede the Pay-office on going into the House of Lords. This he peremptorily denied. But he had dealt with a worthy pupil of his own. Lord Shelburne, who had negotiated between him and Lord Bute, when Fox undertook the conduct of the House of Commons, had told the Earl that Fox would quit the Pay-office for a peerage; but Fox had only stipulated to give his support for that reward. He now broke out against his scholar, reproached him for concealing Lord Bute’s intention of retiring, and spoke of Shelburne to everybody as a perfidious and infamous liar; those were his usual words. The probability was, that Shelburne intended to slip into the Pay-office himself. The Favourite, who would have declared Fox his successor, excused Lord Shelburne to him, and, in his pedantic style, called the secrecy he had observed a pious fraud; for Fox, he said, he knew would not have engaged in the management of the Parliament, had he been apprized that he (Bute) intended to retire, and it had been necessary to the King’s affairs that Fox should carry them through the session. This very offer of the Treasury to Fox showed how little the Favourite had taken any measures for carrying on his master’s business for the future, and corroborates the presumption that a sudden panic was the immediate cause of his retreat.
Fox refusing to accept them, the post of First Lord of the Treasury and the Seals of Chancellor of the Exchequer were, on April 8, the very day on which the Favourite resigned, bestowed on George Grenville. Sir Francis Dashwood was removed to the Great Wardrobe; and the barony of Despencer, then in abeyance between him and his nephew, Sir Thomas Stapleton, was granted to him: the one to repair, the other to decorate his fall.
Some other promotions were made of the Favourite’s and Fox’s adherents; and, to strengthen the new system, many favours were heaped on the Duke of Bedford’s dependents. Of the first sorts was the preferment of Oswald to be Vice-Treasurer of Ireland; of Hunter306 and Harris to the Treasury; of Lord Digby307 to the Admiralty; to which board were added, by Grenville, Lord Howe308 and young Thomas Pitt.309 The Earl of Northumberland was named to the chief government of Ireland, which had been offered to, and refused by, Lord Granby, who, as I hinted before, was now appointed Master of the Ordnance; from which old Marshal Ligonier was by force removed, but softened with a pension, which he refused to accept till accompanied with an English peerage. General Townshend,310 though only a Major-General, was made Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance; Lord Harcourt311 replaced Lord Northumberland as Chamberlain to the Queen; and, in the room of the former, Lord Weymouth was made her Master of the Horse. The Duke of Queensberry312 succeeded the deceased Lord Tweedale as Justice-General of Scotland: the Seal was given to the Duke of Athol,313 and the Privy Seal to Mr. Mackenzie, the Favourite’s brother. John Pitt314 was turned out to make room for Sir Edmund