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BRITISH AND FOREIGN

HISTORY

For the Year 1801.

CHAPTER I.

Dissolution of the Ministry-Circumstances which were supposed to lead to that Event-General Character of the late Administration-New Ministry-Meeting of the Imperial Parliament- Speech from the ThroneDebates on the Address-in the House of Lords-in the House of Com

mons.

THE year 1801 was introduced by a circumstance, to which perhaps may be ultimately referred other events, not only interesting to this nation, but to the whole of Europe. An administration which had lasted upwards of seventeen years, which had established itself in defiance of the house of commons, had baffled, and at length subdued, a most formidable opposition, was suddenly dissolved; and on Friday the 11th of January Mr. Pitt gave in his resignation to his majesty, which was immediately followed by that of lord Grenville, earl Spencer, the lord chancellor, Mr. Dundas, and Mr. Windham.

Of the secret history of this transaction, little which may be deemed authentic has yet transpired. If we may judge of the different parts which certain members of that administration have Saken, it is not unreasonable to

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suppose, that a disunion of sentiment might exist among themselves on certain public measures, and particularly relative to a peace with the French republic. It has been said that Mr. Pitt was desirous of peace, but conceived himself not calculated for its accomplishment, after the rancorous hostility he had manifested towards the French nation, and even towards the person who now exercised the sovereignty there. has been said that he began to feel for the consequences; and that the difficulty of the financial arrangements, and particularly of finding taxes answerable to the expences of a protracted war, at length appeared in a formidable point of view, and induced the resolution of relinquishing a seat which he could no longer preserve with safety and with honour. the other hand, it has been whispered that a serious disagreement A 2

On

had

had long subsisted between a great personage and the two most active members of the ministry. The ground of the difference we have unde. stood to be the military arrangements; and it is said to have proceeded to such an extent as to determine Mr. Pitt to embrace the first opportunity of proving his strength in the cabinet, and of either holding the reins with the same uncontrolled authority at which his father aspired, or of resigning a situation no longer compatible with his feelings.

Whatever of credit we may attach to these different reports, the ostensible ground of resignation was the unfortunate question of Catholic emancipation, as it has been called; a question which we cannot but wish had never been agitated. In his ardour for accomplishing the projected union, Mr. Pitt, it is said, had engaged to the Irish catholics to achieve for them their object, in case the act of union should meet with no opposition on their parts; and he took one of the earliest opportunities of bringing it forward in the cabinet council. Two parties viewed the measure with abhorrence and with dread. The English clergy feared the increase of popery; and the Irish protestants were apprehensive for themselves, should they ever have to encounter a popish judge upon the bench, supported by a popish jury, summoned by a popish sheriff. Through what channel his majesty was influenced to oppose the measure, we are ignorant; but it is generally understood that through his interference the plan of the minister was defeated, and this was immediately followed by his resignation, and that of most of bis colleagues.

Of the character of this long ad

ministration an impartial judg ment will be formed by posterity. The retainers of a minister may erect statues, and pour out the grateful incense of adulation before that idol which has been the tutelar deity of their fortunes; but it is the page of history which alone will erect a durable monument, and which will consecrate the name of a minister to honour and immortality. To Mr. Pitt's admi. nistration the impartial historian cannot accord the praise of political consistency, of extended views, of liberal principles, and an enlarged and beneficial system of policy. Mr. Pitt entered upon his political career too early in life, and with a degree of popularity which was calculated to intoxicate a young and inexperienced mind. Early involved in the vortex of public business, his talents wanted the severe exercise of study to improve and mature them. He was deficient in some of the rudimental knowledge of a statesman; he had not contemplated with a nice attention those great examples which might have served as a model for his conduct in times of difficulty, nor had he accurately weighed and considered the delicate chain of political interests on which the safety of Europe depends. Thus thrown prematurely into public life, gifted by nature with extraordinary talents, among the first of which we may account a fluent, copious, and impressive eloquence, he yet was an unfinished politician. He would have excelled as an associate, though he was perhaps unequal to the situation of a principal; he was calculated for an admirable partisan, though he wanted the knowledge and capacity of a general. His measures therefore displayed the impetuosity but not

the

the vigour of youth; they had all the stratagem, but not the judge ment, of the experienced statesman. They were calculated to excite admiration rather than to ensure approbation; and, while men were astonished at the boldness of the design, they sometimes beheld with disappointment a poverty of execution. He entered upon undertakings of the greatest magnitude without sufficient information, and he abandoned them because he had not calculated upon the difficulties that were to be encountered. In every thing his object was to be distinguished; in every thing he must be a prominent character. Thus the statesman was lost in the projector; and in too eagerly pursuing fame, he lost that greatness to which, with more sober counsels, he might have attained.

Yet the errors of Mr. Pitt were rather errors of judgment than of principle. The little and factious calumny which would ascribe to him a deliberate plan to overthrow the liberties of his country is to be despised. He disliked liberty only when it thwarted his views; and he sported occasionally with the constitution of his country, only to serve the little purposes of party, the exigencies of the moment. He is charged, with equal injustice perhaps, with having extended the system of parliamentary corruption. It does not appear that such a charge is well founded on the contrary, the influence which he employed appears to have been of a more open and direct nature than that which was established either by Walpole or lord North. He lavished the honours of the peerage, it is true, with an unsparing hand, and some new offices were created. But the system of bribery, under the co

lour of participating in the loan, was laid aside; nor does it appear, on the whole, that the pension list was immoderately enlarged.

So inapplicable indeed is the charge of pursuing despotism on a system, that the great misfortune of this administration was, that they were totally without any plan or sy stem whatever. It was a temporising make-shift administration, which pursued no measures whatever with consistency. Genius, like virtue, yields not to times, or humours, or circumstances, but makes them all ultimately subservient to its own enlarged and liberal system of policy; but Mr. Pitt's administration was best characterised by a favourite phrase of his own, existing circumstances. His first political project was a parliamentary reform, but he discovered that existing circumstances would not admit it. He undertook to extinguish the national debt; he concluded by doubling it. He prided himself upon being the minister of peace; he soon experienced an inordinate passion for war. Thus, one part of his administration was a contradiction of another; one system served as a practical refutation of the preceding; and it is a well-known fact, that a measure of the highest national importance, which had been ordered in the afternoon, has been revoked the succeeding morning.

The same inconsistency is observable in the causes, or rather excuses, for the late war. At one time it was a war voluntarily undertaken in the true spirit of antient chivalry "for religion, monarchy, and social order;" at another, we were forced into it by the aggression of our adversaries. period it was carried on to procure indemnity for the past, and security for the future;" at another, for the express purpose of restoring

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restoring the house of Bourbon. In the negotiation at Paris, the şine qua non was the restoration of the Netherlands to the emperor of Germany; in the answer to the overture of Bonaparte, it was the re-establishment of monarchy in France. Contrary to the policy of all wise statesmen, who embrace the moment of good fortune to secure the most advantageous terms, our ministers were haughty and insolent in success, and abject in ill-fortune; they negotiated only when their allies were beaten off the field.

The war, rashly provoked, was weakly conducted. It was the undoubted policy of Great-Britain to þave maintained, if possible, during the continental distractions, a dignified neutrality. The longer we could abstain from interfering in the dispute, the longer our finances could be preserved unimpaired, the better it must have been for the country at large. History would have instructed any man conversant in it, that a state of anarchy, such as France exhibited at the period to which we allude, could not long endure. Contending factions, like the armed men of Cadmus, must have successively destroyed each other; and if our time be interference could at any useful in restoring order, it would have been at the time when the nation should be sick of contest, of blood, and of atrocity. An external coalition for an indefinite end, an end which most Frenchmen concluded naturally could be only the dismemberment of the country, served internally to unite the nation; and a maxim of Mazarine, illustrated by a vulgar example, might have instructed modern po

liticians in the folly and inefficacy of the undertaking.

When great statesmen however, urged by ambition, or propelled by circumstances, undertake a project of this nature, they have been always careful to calculate the force of the contending parties. This, the event proved, was neglected in the present instance. If unable by their own powers to subjugate the country so circumstanced, or if even doubtful of their force, they have endeavoured to act in concert with some of the great factions, which divide the nation itself. This course of policy was evidently neglected; the coalesced powers formed a league only with the outcasts of the nation, a few miserable exiles, who were neither respectable for nor for character; pertalents sons held in detestation by the people at large, and formidable only to the party with whom they asso ciated.

If a war with France was inevitable, the mode in which this was carried on was the most injudicious that could be devised. Even the recent contest with America might have convinced the British ministry, and their allies, how nugatory is the attempt to make an impression on the interior of a country which is totally adverse to its invaders. In the famous succession war, a war only exceeded in absurdity by that in which we have been recently engaged, the great earl of Peterborough informed his employers, that with the forces under his command he could march through Spain almost without opposition, but that he was not able to retain in subjection a single province. The example of the crafty Catharine

*That of two mastiffs, which tore each other before the common chemy of both (the bull) made its appearance,

might

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