He was answered by Grenville and Sir John Philipps; but Lord Howe,440 though a Lord of the Admiralty, spoke against the adjournment. Elliot said, if there must be a victim, they might have a hecatomb of Ministers who had signed such warrants. These warrants, it seemed, had stalked about unknown to Mr. Pitt, who had been Secretary of State, and to Mr. Yorke, Attorney-General.
Colonel Barré ridiculed Lord Barrington, Elliot, and Grenville, with much humour. “Lord Granby thinks,” added he, “that no Secretary of State will venture on these warrants after Pratt’s opinion; but Grenville says that opinion was undue, erroneous, and precipitate.” For himself, he esteemed the professors of the law, but detested the profession. Pratt he commended; and said, “shall France deride our languor when her Parliaments are making such strides towards liberty?”
At five in the morning the House divided, and the adjournment was carried by 232 against 218; a majority of only fourteen. The world expected that the Ministers would resign—at least endeavour to treat.441
The offensive behaviour of Norton in the preceding debate, brought out a story very characteristic of his unfeeling nature. When Dr. Hensey was condemned for treason in the last reign, Lord Mansfield asked Pratt, the Attorney-General, when he would have him executed? Pratt, struck with compassion, could not bring himself to fix the day. Lord Mansfield then asked Norton, who, turning to the prisoner, said, “Doctor, when will it be agreeable to you to be executed?”442
While mankind expected that the Opposition would vigorously pursue the advantage of so large an increase of their numbers, day after day, and week after week slipped away without their exerting one symptom of spirit or activity. No motions were made, no inquiries set on foot, no zeal expressed to keep up the passions and hopes of the party. Without doors all hearts were with them, and ready to second their attempts with clamour and applause. At first they seemed to expect that the Ministers would come and lay their places at their feet. The dream itself was over before an effort was made to realise it. Not a pamphlet was written, not a meeting was held, to concert farther measures. A supineness unparalleled! but to be accounted for from the composition of that minority. Pitt affected to be courted to discountenance party, and to be placed at the head of everything without seeming to desire it. He despised Newcastle, and resented the manner in which he had been treated by that Duke, by Devonshire, by Hardwicke, and the Yorkes. Charles Yorke was, besides, incompatible with Pitt’s friend, the Chief Justice Pratt, as the Chancellor’s seal was equally the object of both. Lord Temple, the soul of faction, was detested by the whole party, except by his own small connection. Charles Townshend was attached to nobody, and trusted by nobody. Legge was industrious, but not spirited: he could negotiate for himself, but not for a party. Conway had singly meant to arraign the warrants, and had no thought of dipping in faction. Some were too fair, and others too dirty, to take the general steps that might lead to the good of the whole party: and thus, where there was no concert, and in truth but few able men, there could be no consequences but inactivity and defeat. That defeat fell heavy on the most conscientious, who having offended the Court by their opposition, were thus exposed a sacrifice to its resentments.
Nor was this conduct, I doubt, solely founded on inability and outward disunion. Pitt might expect to be again sent for by Lord Bute, and was unwilling to be clogged with numerous dependents, odious to the Favourite, and distasteful to himself. He and Lord Temple had far more rancour against their brother, George Grenville, than against Lord Bute; and Pitt, at least, had never been personal against the Favourite, who, with all his resentment to Lord Temple, as the instigator of Wilkes, had received more recent stabs from George Grenville. Whether during this suspension of hostilities, any negotiation was renewed, I do not pretend to say; nor is it important, as it certainly had no effect, unless that material one of cooling the growing party.
The Ministers, on the other hand, wore a good countenance, and were as alert as their adversaries were supine and lifeless. To procure votes, to work underground, to write letters, dispatch messengers, and collect all possible forces, this was the fort and excellence of Sandwich’s genius. He and Rigby were desperate, and Grenville little less so. They soon perceived the want of discipline in the enemy’s troops, and the insufficiency of their commanders. With some address of their own, and with the defect of it in their opponents, they weathered the session, obtained full power, and showed that they dared to make use of it despotically.
On the very day of the last great debate in the House of Commons, Lord Lyttelton, seconded by the Duke of Grafton, acquainted the Lords that on the following Tuesday he should lay a complaint before them against a new book called Droit le Roi. This pestilent treatise was a collection from old statutes and obsolete customs of the darkest and most arbitrary ages of whatever tended, or had tended, to show and uphold the prerogative of the Crown. The fulsome flattery and servility of ancient lawyers in every reign were amassed together, and shoved upon the world as the standing law of England; no retrospect had to all the immunities obtained since by the Civil War, by the Revolution, and by various other struggles of Parliaments with the Crown. Such a code obtruded on the Crown, as a codicil to the stretch of General Warrants, spoke for itself. It was incense laid on an altar erected to power on which human sacrifices had already been offered. Without metaphor, such a compilation proved that prerogative must have been the object of the Court before such gross adulation could dare to step forth in the face of both Houses of Parliament. The author was one Brecknock, a retainer of the law, and a hackney writer. As no attempt was made to prove whether he wrote by instigation, it remained problematic. Certain it is, that he soon afterwards attached himself to the Earl of Northumberland.443
On the 21st, Lord Lyttelton made his complaint, and moved for a censure of the book as Jacobitical, and violating the Bill of Rights, and the Revolution. Ministers, he said, ought to have taken notice of it; but they who had fallen so severely on seditious pamphlets, had overlooked this tract, so subversive of all liberty. Lord Dartmouth treated the book with still more severity. Lord Halifax affected to go farther, but complained of Lord Lyttelton for not acquainting him with his intention. Lord Marchmont to the censure proposed to tack a compliment to the King on his love of liberty; for so servile are some men, that they cannot condemn flattery without making use of it.444 The book, thus attacked on one side and given up on the other, was sentenced to be burnt, and the author ordered to be taken into custody. The latter part of the sentence nobody took any pains to execute.
On the 24th, the Lords communicated their resolutions to the other House, who concurred in the same judgment.
On February the 21st, Sir John Philipps, as he had before acquainted the House he would, moved for leave to bring in a bill to ascertain the power of Secretaries of State in granting warrants—a line almost impossible to draw. Treason was to be kept in awe on one side; the Ministers themselves on the other. Nor could this boon to liberty but be suspicious when offered by a hand so rankly Jacobite! The Ministers had made their use of the idea, and desired no such bill: and the Opposition were not forward to let them draw such a bill. It was therefore dropped with scorn by both sides of the House; and yet the Court afterwards affected to talk of this bill as a tender made to liberty, and rejected by its advocates.
The same day was Wilkes found guilty in the King’s Bench, of being author of the North Briton, and of the Essay on Woman.
The City of London, to honour the steadiness and services of Mr. Pratt, the other Chief Justice, presented him with the freedom of the City, and thanked their own Representatives for their behaviour on the question of the warrants.
On the 6th of March, it was agreed to amend the Marriage bill by another bill, as Mr. Yorke had proposed: and the same day died his father, and the father of the Bill, Philip Earl of Hardwicke; a man who, during his power, had coloured over very confined parts, and very few virtues, with a gravity that was construed into both, as it served the purpose of himself or his dependents. Pride, revenge, and avarice were his true features; and whatever pictures shall be drawn of him where those lines do not predominate, will be unlike, false, and flattering. To conceal all knowledge of his vast wealth, his sons did not prove his will till the memory of him was faded away.445
CHAPTER XXVII.