William Pitt and the Great War by John Holland Rose (book club reads txt) 📕

[555] Pretyman MSS.

[556] "Mems. of Fox," iii, 150; "Grattan Mems.," iv, 435.

[557] Virgil, "Aen.," xii, 189-91. "As for me, I will neither bid the

Italians obey the Trojans, nor do I seek a new sovereignty. Let both

peoples, unsubdued, submit to an eternal compact with equal laws." The

correct reading is "Nec mihi regna peto," which Pitt altered to "nova."

[558] Pitt MSS., 196, 320.

[559] Pretyman MSS. See "Cornwallis Corresp.," iii, 125, 210, for

Unionist sentiment in Cork.

[560] Pitt MSS., 189.

[561] "Cornwallis Corresp.," iii, 52, 54; Hunt, "Pol. Hist. of England,"

x, 447.

[562] B.M. Add. MSS., 35455.

[563] B.M. Add. MSS., 35455.

[564] "Life of Wilberforce," ii, 227.

[565] These were boroughs in which all holders of tenements where a pot

could be boiled had votes. See Porritt, ii, 186, 350.

[566] "Castlereagh Corresp.," iv, 8-10.

[567] "Cornwallis Corresp.," iii, 101, 102, 226; "Castlereagh Corresp.,"

iii, 260; Plowden (ii, 550), without proof, denies the existence of

Downshire's fund.

[568] "Castlereagh Corresp.," iii, 135, 226. On the proposed changes in

the Catechism there is a long _précis_ in the Pretyman MSS., being a

summary of the correspondence of Lords Castlereagh and Hobart with

Archbishop Troy and Bishop Moylan.

[569] B.M. Add. MSS., 35455; "Dropmore P.," vi, 121.

[570] "Castlereagh Corresp.," iii, 263, 278.

[571] M. Mac Donagh, "The Viceroy's Post-Bag," 43-53; "Cornwallis

Corresp.," iii, 245, 251-6, 267, 318-21.

    It is well known that no quiet could subsist in a country where

    there is not a Church Establishment.--GEORGE III TO ADDINGTON,

    _29th January 1801_.

On 25th September 1800 Pitt wrote to the Lord Chancellor, Loughborough,

then in attendance on the King at Weymouth, requesting his presence at a

Cabinet meeting in order to discuss the Catholic Question and proposals

respecting tithes and a provision for the Catholic and Dissenting

clergy. Five days later he explained to his colleagues the main

proposal. In place of the Oaths of Supremacy and Abjuration he desired

to impose on members of Parliament and officials merely the Oath of

Allegiance, which would be no bar to Romanists. The change won the

approval of all the Ministers present except Loughborough. He strongly

objected to the proposal, upheld the present exclusive system, and

demurred to any change affecting Roman Catholics except a commutation of

tithes, a measure which he had in preparation. His colleagues,

astonished at this firm opposition from the erstwhile Presbyterian of

East Lothian, begged him to elaborate his Tithe Bill, and indulged the

hope that further inquiry would weaken his resistance to the larger

Reform. They did not know Loughborough.

There is a curious reference in one of Pitt's letters, of October 1798,

to Loughborough as the Keeper of the King's conscience.[572] The phrase

has an ironical ring well suited to the character of him who called it

forth. Now, in his sixty-seventh year, he had run through the gamut of

political professions. An adept in the art of changing sides, he, as

Alexander Wedderburn, had earned the contempt or envy of all rivals. Yet

such was the grace of his curves and the skill of his explanations that

a new turn caused less surprise than admiration. Unlike his rival,

Thurlow, who stormed ahead, Wedderburn trimmed his sails for every

breeze and showed up best in light airs. Making few friends, he had few

inveterate enemies; but one of them, Churchill, limned him as

    Adopting arts by which gay villains rise

    And reach the heights which honest men despise;

    Mute at the Bar and in the Senate loud,

    Dull 'mong the dullest, proudest of the proud,

    A pert prim prater of the northern race,

    Guilt in his heart, and famine in his face.

This was before Wedderburn had wormed himself into favour with Lord

North and won the office of Solicitor-General (1778). Two years later he

became Lord Loughborough, a title which Fox ascribed to his rancorous

abuse of the American colonists. Figuring next as a member of the

Fox-North Administration, he did not long share the misfortunes of his

colleagues, for he alone of his colleagues contrived not to offend

either the King or Pitt. This sleekness had its reward. The perversities

of Thurlow having led to his fall in 1792, Loughborough became Lord

Chancellor. His sage counsels heightened his reputation; and in October

1794 Pitt assigned to him the delicate task of seeing Earl Fitzwilliam

and Grattan in order to smooth over the difficulties attending the union

with the Old Whigs. At his house in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury, occurred

some of the conferences which ensured Fitzwilliam's acceptance of the

Irish Viceroyalty. Loughborough urged Pitt to do all in his power to

prevent a rupture with the Portland Whigs or the Irish people. Counsels

of conciliation then flowed from his lips and were treasured up. In

fact, Pitt seems to have felt no suspicion of him despite his

courtier-like ways and his constant attendance on the King. For

Loughborough, like Dundas, had outlived the evil reputation of an

earlier time. The Marquis of Buckingham, writing to Grenville on an

awkward episode affecting Lord Berkeley, advised him to consult

Loughborough as a man of discretion and undoubted private honour.[573]

Neither Pitt nor Grenville knew that Loughborough had played them false

in 1795. The man who urged them to send Fitzwilliam to Dublin with the

olive-branch soon tendered to George III official advice of an exactly

opposite tenour, namely, that assent to Catholic Emancipation would

involve a violation of the Coronation Oath. A day or two later he stated

to Rose that he had given to the King wholly different counsels, to the

effect that the Coronation Oath did not apply to the question at issue,

which referred to a legislative enactment, not to an act of the King in

his executive capacity.[574] Two other legal authorities unequivocally

declared for this view of the case.

Whether in the autumn and winter of 1800 Loughborough's secret counsels

had much effect on the King may be doubted; for George, in his letter of

6th February 1795 to Pitt, declared Catholic Emancipation to be "beyond

the decision of any Cabinet of Ministers." As for the Church

Establishment, it was essential to every State, and must be maintained

intact. When George had once framed a resolve, it was hopeless to try to

change it. Moreover, during the debates on the Union, early in 1799, he

remarked to Dundas at Court that he hoped the Cabinet was not pledged to

anything in favour of the Romanists. "No," was the wary reply, "that

will be a matter for future consideration." Thereupon he set forth his

scruples respecting the Coronation Oath. Dundas sought to allay them by

observing that the Oath referred, not to his executive actions, but only

to his assent to an act of the Legislature, a matter even then taken for

granted. The remark, far from soothing the King, elicited the shrewd

retort, "None of your Scotch metaphysics, Mr. Dundas! None of your

Scotch metaphysics!"

The action of Loughborough, then, can only have put an edge on the

King's resolve; and all speculation as to the exact nature of his

"intrigues" at Weymouth or at Windsor is futile. In truth a collision

between the King and Pitt on this topic was inevitable. The marvel is

that there had been no serious friction during the past eighteen years.

Probably the knowledge that a Fox Cabinet, dominated by the Prince of

Wales, was the only alternative to Pitt had exerted a chastening

influence on the once headstrong monarch; but now even that spectre

faded away before the more potent wraith of mangled Protestantism. The

King was a sincerely religious man in his own narrow way; and arguments

about the Coronation Oath were as useless with him as discussions on

Modernism are with Pius X.

Pitt therefore kept his plans secret. But we must here digress to notice

an assertion to the contrary. Malmesbury avers that Loughborough, while

at Weymouth in the autumn of 1800, informed his cousin, Auckland, and

the Archbishop of Canterbury of the danger to the Established Church;

that the latter wrote to the King, who thereupon upbraided Pitt. Now, it

is highly probable that Auckland knew nothing of the matter until the

end of January 1801,[575] and the secret almost certainly did not come

to light until then, when the Archbishop, Auckland's brother-in-law, was

a prey to nervous anxieties resulting from recent and agitating news.

Further, no such letter from the King to Pitt is extant either at the

Public Record Office, Orwell Park, or Chevening; and if the proposals

were known to George why did he fume at Pitt and Castlereagh on 28th

January for springing the mine upon him? Finally, if the King, while at

Weymouth, blamed Pitt for bringing the matter forward, why did

Malmesbury censure him for keeping it secret? It is well to probe these

absurdities, for they reveal the untrustworthiness of the Earl on this

question.

To revert to Pitt's procedure; there were two arguments on which he must

have relied for convincing the King of the need of granting Catholic

Emancipation. Firstly, the Irish Catholics had, on the whole, behaved

with marked loyalty and moderation during the wearisome debates on the

Union at Dublin, a course of conduct markedly different from the acrid

and factious tactics of the privileged Protestant Episcopalians.

Secondly, as the summer of 1800 waned to autumn, the position of Great

Britain became almost desperate. Her ally, Austria, had lost Lombardy

and was fighting a losing game in Swabia. Russia had not only left the

Second Coalition, but was threatening England with a renewal of the

Armed Neutrality League. At home a bad harvest was sending up corn to

famine prices; and sedition again raised its head. In such a case would

not a patriotic ruler waive his objections to a measure essential not

only to peace and quiet in Ireland, but to the stability of the United

Kingdom? The latter consideration derived added force from the fact that

Bonaparte, fresh from his triumphs in Italy, was inaugurating a policy

of conciliation which promised to end the long ferment in the west of

France and to make of her a really united nation. While he was allaying

Jacobinical zeal and royalist bigotry, could Britons afford to keep up

internal causes of friction, and, disunited among themselves, face a

hostile world in arms? In such an emergency would not the King waive

even his conscientious scruples, and at the cost of some qualms pacify

and consolidate his nominally united realms?

For it was certain that the Irish Catholics would not rest now that the

boon of Emancipation was well within reach. Pitt and Cornwallis had

aroused their hopes. While not openly promising that the portals at

Westminster should be thrown open to Roman Catholics, Ministers had

allowed hints to go forth definite enough to influence opinion,

especially in Cork, Tipperary, and Galway. In fact, Castlereagh assured

Pitt that the help of Catholics had turned the wavering scales in favour

of Union.[576] The claims of honour therefore required that Pitt should

do all in his power to requite the services of a great body of men, long

depressed and maligned, who, when tempted by the foreigner to revolt,

had on the whole shown remarkable patience and fidelity. The pressure of

this problem was too much for the scanty strength of Pitt. Worried by

private financial needs, and distressed at the bewildering change in

European affairs, he broke down in health in September-October; and a

period of rest