FOOTNOTES:

SECURING A MAJORITY.

A majority for the peace had to be insured before the preliminaries came before parliament. Grenville was dissatisfied with some of the articles, and would in any case have been too scrupulous for the work which had to be done. Bute was driven to apply to Henry Fox, whom both the king and he cordially disliked. Fox, who had previously sold his support to Bute at the price of a peerage for his wife, was offered Grenville's place as secretary of state and a peerage for himself, if he would take the management of the commons. "We must," George said, "call in bad men to govern bad men." Fox at once broke with the whigs and accepted the leadership, but he refused the seals, for he preferred to continue in the more lucrative office of paymaster of the forces, which he had used during the last six years as a means of amassing a great fortune. As paymaster he had large sums of public money in his hands to meet calls at fixed periods. Holders of the office were wont to employ such sums for their own benefit. Pitt would not do so, and left the office a poor man. Fox had no such scruples. During the war the government often obtained ready money by issuing bills at 20 per cent discount. Fox bought these bills with the publicmoney which lay in his hands. He also used the public money in operating in government stock and gained immense profits from the fluctuations of the funds, for as a minister he of course knew more about the chances of peace than the public.[60]Grenville was forced to resign the leadership to him, and the office of secretary to Halifax, and take the admiralty in exchange. Fox set about the business of securing a majority in the commons by bribing members. In one day £25,000 was paid out of the treasury, and it is said even so small a sum as £200 was not refused.

Encouraged by Fox's success, George gave the whigs a lesson on the fruits of opposition. The king, so the court party said, would be king; the prerogative was to shine out. Devonshire, the "prince of the whigs," was forced to resign the chamberlain's staff; the king treated him uncivilly and with his own hand struck his name from the list of privy councillors. The whigs were enraged at this high-handed proceeding. The Marquis of Rockingham resigned the bed-chamber, and George received his resignation with indifference. Worse was yet to come. Overtures were made to Pitt by the whigs who gathered round Cumberland, but he would not connect himself with them. They had defeated his policy, and though he desired Bute's removal, he would not help to turn him out in order to put Newcastle back in power.

THE TERMS OF PEACE.

The preliminaries of peace were signed on November 3, and laid before parliament on the 29th. France agreed to restore Minorca and to evacuate the territories of Hanover, Hesse, Brunswick, and Prussia. Both parties were to withdraw their troops from Germany. Dunkirk was to be dismantled. France resigned Canada, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton, together with some territory hitherto claimed as part of Louisiana. Spain ceded Florida and received back Havana and Manila. Portugal was restored to its position as before the war. Great Britain restored to France Belle Ile, Guadeloupe, Mariegalante, Martinique, and St. Lucia, and retained Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago. France was allowed a right of fishery in the gulf of St. Lawrence and on the Newfoundland coast, and received the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon as shelters, covenantingnot to fortify them. Spain gave up its claim to the Newfoundland fishery, agreed that the dispute concerning prizes should be settled by the courts, and acknowledged the right to cut logwood on the Bay of Honduras. In Africa England restored Goree to France and kept Senegal. In India France abandoned her pretensions to conquests since 1749, and received back the factories which she had at that date. As a compensation to Spain for the loss of Florida, France ceded to her Louisiana; a Spanish governor arrived there in 1766, but though Spain had posts and settlements in the province, she can scarcely be said to have ever had any effective hold upon it.

It was a glorious peace for Great Britain; it marks a signal epoch in her imperial history. But it was not so advantageous as she had a right to expect. Financially peace was desirable, for the national debt of Great Britain and Ireland, which before the war stood, as has already been stated, at £72,505,572, had risen to £132,716,049, but her resources were by no means exhausted; she could have continued the war without distress. It is fairly certain that better terms might have been obtained if the government had carried on the negotiations in a different spirit. Martinique, specially valuable to a maritime power, was surrendered without compensation; Manila was simply thrown away through careless haste; Goree, on which the French slave trade depended, might easily have been retained. Grenville protested against the surrender of Guadeloupe, and it was decided on when he was too ill to attend the council. Florida was a poor exchange for Havana, the richest of our conquests. Whether Pitt's policy of obtaining commercial monopolies by force of arms was economically sound, and whether the restoration of the French navy would have been impeded so materially by exclusion from the fishery as he believed, are questions on which we need not dwell here. The treaty must be judged according to the beliefs of the time. As it ceded valuable conquests without adequate compensation, and encouraged France again to enter on a naval and commercial policy by restoring to her Goree, colonies in the West Indies, and her factories in India, and by granting her a share in the fisheries, it was justly condemned as unsatisfactory. As regards the continental war, the change in Frederick's position was sufficient reason for our withdrawal from a quarrel which did not concernus. Yet he had some cause of complaint, for though the treaty provided that the French should evacuate his territories, it did not provide that the territories should be handed over to him. He gained possession of them without difficulty, but for that he owed no thanks to England. He believed that he had been betrayed and deserted, and adopted an unfriendly attitude, which was a hindrance to England's foreign policy in later years.

At home the peace was widely condemned. When parliament met on November 25, Bute's coach was attacked and he was in some danger. In the lords the address approving the preliminaries was passed without a division. In the commons the debate had begun when Pitt entered the house. He was suffering from gout, and was carried by his servants within the bar. Dressed in black velvet, and leaning on a crutch, he advanced slowly to his seat, his limbs swathed in wrappings, and his face pale with suffering. Yet he spoke for three hours and forty minutes. After declaring that he was unconnected with any party, he criticised the various articles of the treaty, pointing out that they surrendered maritime and commercial advantages which would have been doubly valuable because our gain would have been the loss of France. The treatment of Frederick he denounced as base and treacherous. The address was carried by 319 to 65. The definitive treaty was signed at Paris on February 10, 1763, and on the 15th Prussia and Austria made peace at Hubertsburg. The majority was largely obtained by corruption. Many members, however, no doubt welcomed the peace, even though they were not fully satisfied with its terms. The rout of the whigs was completed by their disunion; some who would have voted against the address were discouraged by Pitt's attitude of solitary independence.[61]The king had succeeded in breaking up the whig party, and there was no organised opposition. The court was triumphant. On hearing the result of the division, the princess-dowager is said to have exclaimed, "Now my son is King of England!" The victory was followed up by a general proscription of the whigs; Newcastle, Grafton, and Rockingham were dismissed from their lord-lieutenancies. Nor was vengeance confined to the great. All whigs who held places were deprived of them, and evenpoor clerks and excisemen lost the employments bestowed on them by whig ministers. Fox urged on the execution of this shameful business. Every effort was made to obtain congratulatory addresses on the peace from municipal bodies, and money was offered for them. London and several other places refused to be won over by any means.

THE CIDER TAX.

The unpopularity of the administration was heightened by its finance. Dashwood's scheme for the supplies included a loan of £3,000,000, which was negotiated on such extravagant terms that the scrip soon rose to a premium of 11 per cent. The loan was not open to public competition, it was distributed among the chief supporters of the government; nine of them, it is said, cleared each £20,000, Fox £10,000, and so on, while the nation lost £385,000 by the transaction. It was a new form of corruption, specially dangerous because indirect.[62]More general indignation was excited by the proposal of a tax of four shillings a hogshead on cider, to be paid by the maker and collected as an excise. The tax was excessive in amount, onerous in its conditions, and unfair in its incidence, for it fell equally on the poorest and the most valuable cider, and pressed solely on particular districts. It was, however, as an extension of the excise laws that it was specially offensive to public feeling. That was a matter on which Englishmen were extremely jealous. Thirty years before a proposal for an extended excise nearly wrecked the power of Sir Robert Walpole, who wisely yielded to the storm. By Dashwood's scheme farmers were liable to have the privacy of their homes invaded by the visits of excisemen. Disturbances broke out in the cider counties, and troops were moved into them. The excitement was general. London petitioned against the tax, and its example was followed by many other corporations and counties. Bute was violently assailed in print, by Wilkes in prose and by his friend Churchill in verse. A parliamentary opposition was organised; it was joined by Pitt and Temple, and had its headquarters at Wildman's tavern in Albemarle Street. Pitt spoke strongly against the tax in the commons. It was defended by Grenville, who in the course of his speech constantly demanded where another tax could belaid. Mimicking his querulous tone, Pitt repeated aloud the words of an old ditty, "Gentle shepherd, tell me where". The nickname, Gentle shepherd, stuck by Grenville. The bill passed the commons and was sent up to the lords. For the first time since the revolution the lords divided on a money-bill, and voted 49 against, to 83 for its committal.

A few days later, on April 7, Bute announced that ill-health compelled him to retire from office. The announcement caused general surprise, but he had for some weeks determined to retire, and had arranged with the king that Grenville should succeed him. That he should have taken office was, Pitt wrote, more astonishing than his departing from it.[63]He took office with the intention of carrying out the king's policy of breaking up the whig phalanx and bringing about a peace. Both objects were accomplished. Though still strong in votes in the commons, he had few allies of any weight, for Bedford was offended with him. The newly formed opposition caused him uneasiness, specially as it included Pitt and Temple; it was strong in the lords, and he feared its influence in their chamber.[64]Though his health was not materially affected, he was doubtless weary of a task which he must have learned was too great for his abilities. He knew that he was generally hated by the people, and feared that if he remained longer in office, his unpopularity would become injurious to the king. Before his resignation he provided handsomely for his relations and friends at the expense of the nation; reversions of £52,000 a year were distributed among them. Fox was rewarded by his creation as Baron Holland, and managed to keep the pay office for two years longer.

FOOTNOTES:[35]Chatham Correspondence, ii., 69n.[36]Dutens,Mémoires d'un voyageur, i., 178-79.[37]Parliamentary Hist., xv., 1044-47.[38]Newcastle to Bedford, July 2, 1761;Bedford Correspondence, iii., 19.[39]Newcastle to Hardwicke, Aug. 17, 1761, Add. MS. 32,927, f. 68;Bedford Correspondence, iii., 36-42.[40]Bristol to Pitt, Aug. 31, 1761, Add. MS. 32,927, ff. 285-87.[41]Stanley to Pitt, Sept. 2, 1761, Add. MS. 32,928, f. 14.[42]Stanley to Pitt, Sept. 6, 1761,ibid., ff. 1, 148, 179.[43]Stanley to Pitt, Sept. 8, 1761,ibid., f. 40.[44]Ibid., f. 225, printed inThe Grenville Papers, i., 386-87.[45]Newcastle to Hardwicke, Sept. 20, 1761, Add. MS. 32,928, f. 260.[46]Stanley to Pitt, dated Sept. 14, 1761, received the 21st,ibid., f. 148.[47]Newcastle to Hardwicke, Sept. 21, 1761,ibid., ff. 303-6.[48]Stanley to Pitt, dated Sept. 19, 1761, received the 25th,ibid., f. 245.[49]Newcastle to Hardwicke, Sept. 26, 1761,ibid., f. 362.[50]The disposition of the naval force fit for service on Sept. 15, 1761, was: At home and within call, 54 ships of the line and 58 frigates; with Saunders, 11 of the line and 12 frigates; East Indies, 14 of the line; Jamaica, 6; Leeward islands, 8; North America, 6; other plantations, 2; convoys and cruisers, 4; total, 105 of the line. Men wanting to complete ships at home, 15,490 (Add. MS. 32,928, f. 185). France could not have had more than 42 ships of the line (Mahan,Influence of Sea Power, p. 312). Spain had 49 of the line fit for service, but insufficiently manned (Coxe,Bourbon Kings of Spain, iii., 245, ed. 1813).[51]Minutes of Council, Oct. 2, 1761, Add. MS. 32,929, ff. 18-28.[52]Newcastle to Hardwicke, Nov. 9, 1761, Add. MS. 32,929, f. 143.[53]Annual Register, iv. (1761), 48.[54]Bisset,Memoirs of Sir A. Mitchell, ii., 283, 286, 294sq.;Buckinghamshire Correspondence, i., 47-52; Adolphus,Hist. of the Reign of George III., i., App. 5, 79-83.[55]Newcastle to Devonshire, April 10, 1762, Add. MS. 32,937, ff. 11, 87.[56]Add. MS. 32,938, ff. 18, 50, 105sq., 239, 262, 304, 425.[57]Newcastle to Cumberland, May 26, 1762, Add. MS. 32,939 f. 5.[58]Newcastle to Pitt, 1762, MS. Pitt Papers, 25, R.O.; Temple to Pitt, Oct. 3, 1762,ibid., 61.[59]As regards Manila, seeHist. MSS. Comm. Rep., vii., 316sq.[60]Fox's Memoir inLife and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, i., 72-73.[61]A. von Ruville,William Pitt und Graf Bute, pp. 55-56.[62]Parl. Hist., xv., 1305;History of the Late Minority, p. 96; May,Constitutional History, i., 382-83.[63]Pitt to Newcastle, April 9, 1763, Add. MS. 32,948, f. 84. Bute resigned on the 11th.[64]Newcastle to Lord Kinnoul, June 3, 1763, Add. MS. 32,949, f. 15.

[35]Chatham Correspondence, ii., 69n.

[36]Dutens,Mémoires d'un voyageur, i., 178-79.

[37]Parliamentary Hist., xv., 1044-47.

[38]Newcastle to Bedford, July 2, 1761;Bedford Correspondence, iii., 19.

[39]Newcastle to Hardwicke, Aug. 17, 1761, Add. MS. 32,927, f. 68;Bedford Correspondence, iii., 36-42.

[40]Bristol to Pitt, Aug. 31, 1761, Add. MS. 32,927, ff. 285-87.

[41]Stanley to Pitt, Sept. 2, 1761, Add. MS. 32,928, f. 14.

[42]Stanley to Pitt, Sept. 6, 1761,ibid., ff. 1, 148, 179.

[43]Stanley to Pitt, Sept. 8, 1761,ibid., f. 40.

[44]Ibid., f. 225, printed inThe Grenville Papers, i., 386-87.

[45]Newcastle to Hardwicke, Sept. 20, 1761, Add. MS. 32,928, f. 260.

[46]Stanley to Pitt, dated Sept. 14, 1761, received the 21st,ibid., f. 148.

[47]Newcastle to Hardwicke, Sept. 21, 1761,ibid., ff. 303-6.

[48]Stanley to Pitt, dated Sept. 19, 1761, received the 25th,ibid., f. 245.

[49]Newcastle to Hardwicke, Sept. 26, 1761,ibid., f. 362.

[50]The disposition of the naval force fit for service on Sept. 15, 1761, was: At home and within call, 54 ships of the line and 58 frigates; with Saunders, 11 of the line and 12 frigates; East Indies, 14 of the line; Jamaica, 6; Leeward islands, 8; North America, 6; other plantations, 2; convoys and cruisers, 4; total, 105 of the line. Men wanting to complete ships at home, 15,490 (Add. MS. 32,928, f. 185). France could not have had more than 42 ships of the line (Mahan,Influence of Sea Power, p. 312). Spain had 49 of the line fit for service, but insufficiently manned (Coxe,Bourbon Kings of Spain, iii., 245, ed. 1813).

[51]Minutes of Council, Oct. 2, 1761, Add. MS. 32,929, ff. 18-28.

[52]Newcastle to Hardwicke, Nov. 9, 1761, Add. MS. 32,929, f. 143.

[53]Annual Register, iv. (1761), 48.

[54]Bisset,Memoirs of Sir A. Mitchell, ii., 283, 286, 294sq.;Buckinghamshire Correspondence, i., 47-52; Adolphus,Hist. of the Reign of George III., i., App. 5, 79-83.

[55]Newcastle to Devonshire, April 10, 1762, Add. MS. 32,937, ff. 11, 87.

[56]Add. MS. 32,938, ff. 18, 50, 105sq., 239, 262, 304, 425.

[57]Newcastle to Cumberland, May 26, 1762, Add. MS. 32,939 f. 5.

[58]Newcastle to Pitt, 1762, MS. Pitt Papers, 25, R.O.; Temple to Pitt, Oct. 3, 1762,ibid., 61.

[59]As regards Manila, seeHist. MSS. Comm. Rep., vii., 316sq.

[60]Fox's Memoir inLife and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, i., 72-73.

[61]A. von Ruville,William Pitt und Graf Bute, pp. 55-56.

[62]Parl. Hist., xv., 1305;History of the Late Minority, p. 96; May,Constitutional History, i., 382-83.

[63]Pitt to Newcastle, April 9, 1763, Add. MS. 32,948, f. 84. Bute resigned on the 11th.

[64]Newcastle to Lord Kinnoul, June 3, 1763, Add. MS. 32,949, f. 15.

THE GRENVILLE ADMINISTRATION.

The king appears to have received Bute's resignation without regret; indeed it was remarked that the day before it was announced he was in unusually good spirits, "like a person just emancipated".[65]Bute had done all that he could do for him as prime minister; he had cleared the ground for the establishment of the king's system of government; the whig oligarchy was disorganised and overthrown, and the war was at an end. George could not have wished to keep a minister in office who was hated by his people; that would have been contrary to the idea of a patriot king, and would in time have made him unpopular. Nor was he perhaps altogether satisfied with Bute's conduct in office; for in later life he observed that he was "deficient in political firmness".[66]Bute was to continue to be useful to him in another capacity in which political firmness was not so important; he was to be the king's private adviser, and help him to select and manage his responsible ministers. Through his instrumentality, George had already secured a set of ministers who would, they both believed, be content to carry out the king's will. Grenville, though he had opposed Bute in the cabinet with reference to the negotiations with France, professed that as prime minister he would try to win his complete approval, and with only one exception allowed Bute to form his administration for him. Bute and his master thought they had secured a useful tool, a subservient and hard-working drudge. They were mistaken in their man; Grenville was independent and self-confident. He took the two offices of first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. Dashwood retired with Bute and the barony of Despencer was called out of abeyance in his favour. Halifax and Egremont remained secretaries of state and Henley lord chancellor. Bedford distrusted Bute and refused to take office. The new administration promised to exercise economy, and Grenville took care that the pledge should be redeemed. Its frugality did not make it popular; it did not command the confidence of the nation, and was generally considered a feeble continuation of its predecessor.

The king prorogued parliament on April 19, 1763; his speech described the peace as honourable to his crown, and claimed, or at least implied, that it had induced the enemies of the Prussian king "to agree to a peace which he had approved". On the 23rd appeared No. 45 of theNorth Britonwith a violent denunciation of the speech. It declared that the king had given "the sanction of his sacred name to the most odious measures and to the most unjustifiable public declarations from a throne ever renowned for truth, honour, and unsullied virtue". That the ministers were responsible for the king's speech was well understood, and was clearly recognised in the article. George took the article as conveying an accusation of falsehood against himself personally, and there was some excuse for this interpretation of it. Other numbers of the paper had been violent, and had been passed by without notice. His present ministers were not deficient in political firmness; he ordered them to prosecute the writer. Halifax thereupon issued a general warrant, that is a warrant directed against persons not named, ordering the king's messengers to search for the authors, printers, and publishers of theNorth Briton, arrest them and seize their papers. Warrants of this kind to be executed on persons not named, without evidence of their identity or guilt, had hitherto been held lawful, but they were subversive of the liberty of the subject and contrary to the spirit of the constitution. During three days forty-nine persons were arrested under this warrant. Among them were the avowed publisher of theNorth Briton, the printer, and his workmen. They declared that Wilkes was the author.

PROCEEDINGS IN WILKES'S CASE.

Wilkes was arrested under the general warrant on the 30th, and carried before the secretaries of state; his house was searched and his papers seized. He was committed to the Tower. He hoped, he said, that he might have the room in which Egremont's father had been confined as a rebel, and,referring to the popular belief as to the consequences of the dirty habits of Bute's fellow-countrymen, in any case, one which had not been tenanted by a Scot. Temple at once applied on his behalf for a writ ofhabeas corpus, which was granted by Pratt, chief justice of the common pleas, but as Wilkes was no longer in the custody of the messengers, they could not produce him. He was kept in close confinement; Temple and the Duke of Grafton who went to see him were not admitted, and even his solicitor was denied access to him. A new writ was issued, and on May 3 he was brought before the court of common pleas. He pleaded his privilege as a member of parliament. Pratt delivered judgment on the 6th and decided that he was entitled to the privilege of parliament, which extended to all offences save treason, felony, and breach of the peace. The other judges concurred, and he was set at liberty. The crowd which had collected in Westminster Hall received the result of the trial with loud applause, and escorted Wilkes to his house in Great George Street. Meanwhile Egremont had in the king's name ordered Temple, the lord lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, to deprive Wilkes of his commission as colonel of the Bucks militia. In forwarding this order to Wilkes, Temple added some complimentary expressions, and on the 7th the earl was dismissed both from his lieutenancy and the privy council.

Several persons who were arrested on the general warrant brought actions against the messengers. In the first of these suits Pratt, setting aside evil precedents, declared general warrants to be illegal. A master-printer obtained £400 damages, one journeyman £300, and others £200. Wilkes sued Wood, the under-secretary of state, for ransacking his house, and the jury awarded him £1,000 damages. He also began actions for false imprisonment against the two secretaries of state. His suit against Egremont was cut short by the earl's death on August 20. Halifax took advantage of various legal devices to delay the hearing of the suit against himself, and it was not decided until six years later. Temple, who had paid Wilkes's law expenses, wished him to avoid giving further cause of offence. Wilkes, however, set up a press in his own house, reprinted theNorth Britonin volumes, and printed other matter also. The arbitrary proceedings of the government in this case excited much adverse feeling, especially in London, and gavea fresh impetus to the discontent in the cider districts. They were attributed to Bute's influence. In some western villages a man in Scottish dress led about an ass decorated with a blue ribbon and wearing a paper crown; and at Exeter an effigy of Bute remained hanging on a gibbet for a fortnight, no one daring to remove it.

MINISTERIAL CHANGES.

George, though at first well pleased with the new administration, soon saw that it lacked strength. He made an attempt to enlist Hardwicke and Newcastle, but they would not take office without their party. Bute advised an offer to Bedford, who declared that he would not join the government unless Bute would undertake to retire, not only from the court, but from London. Negotiations were also carried on with Pitt, whom Bute was most anxious to secure for the king. Pitt made it clearly understood that he would not take office with Bedford, the man most responsible for the peace, nor would he come in alone. In spite of Pitt's objection to him, Bedford, who did not care for office, advised the king to take him. George was dissatisfied with his ministers; he was annoyed by their unpopularity and by the growth of a spirit of turbulence among the lower classes, and personally was wearied by the constant interviews and the long harangues which Grenville inflicted upon him. Bute, too, was not finding Grenville so anxious to win his approval as he expected, and on Egremont's death had an interview with Pitt. The result was satisfactory; and George, much to Grenville's disgust, told him that he meant to ask Pitt to enter the administration, and would "do it as cheap as he could," with as few changes as possible. Pitt had an interview with the king on August 27. Both evidently thought that there was nothing to prevent him from taking office, and he communicated with Devonshire, Newcastle, and Rockingham. The next day George seems to have changed his mind; he told Grenville that Pitt's terms were too hard. Bute is said to have instigated this change, and it is probable that both he and the king were disappointed at finding that Pitt meant to bring in with him several of the whig leaders. Pitt had a second interview with the king on the 29th, and George is said to have closed it with the words: "Well, Mr. Pitt, I see this will not do. My honour is concerned and I must support it." Pitt's proposals were probably exaggerated by the ministerial party. It is certain that he proposed several changes, and the admission of some of the leading whigs, and that either he or the king suggested Temple for the treasury. George had made up his mind before the interview that it would probably be useless. Both he and Bute would gladly have secured Pitt's support, but they wanted him to take office alone, or at least not with a party. George had no mind for another whig administration with Pitt as its master-spirit.

He again turned to Bedford and told him that Pitt had stipulated that he was to have no office, even about the court, at that time, though in future years he might be permitted to hold a court appointment, and that no favour should be shown to any one concerned in the peace. George may well have believed that this was the meaning of Pitt's words. Even so, he should not have divulged anything which took place in his closet, specially if it was likely to make mischief; he was, however, in serious difficulties. His device succeeded. Though Bedford was already aware that Pitt would not act with him, he was piqued at this fresh declaration of hostility; he agreed to take office, and, on September 9, was appointed president of the council in succession to Lord Granville who died in the previous January. He was considered head of the administration. The Earl of Sandwich became secretary of state and took the northern department, and Lord Hillsborough succeeded Lord Shelburne as president of the board of trade. Sandwich had official experience, and was neither idle nor incapable, though unprincipled and extremely profligate; Hillsborough was deficient in tact and judgment. Shelburne had been one of Bute's followers, and arranged his bargains with Fox, who accused him of having deceived him. He was employed in the late negotiations with Pitt, resigned office on their failure, and attached himself to Pitt. The king was completely in the hands of Bedford and Grenville, his only defence against an administration composed of whig magnates. They used their power to force him to send Bute out of London. This insolent conduct was specially reprehensible in the case of Grenville, who owed his advancement to Bute's recommendation. Grenville continued to weary the king with interviews; he worried him with his disputes with his colleagues, and irritated him beyond endurance by suggestions, which were not ill-founded, that he was still under Bute's influence. "Good God,Mr. Grenville," the poor king exclaimed, "am I to be suspected after all I have done?"

Parliament met on November 15, and the government at once made an attack on Wilkes. In the lords, Sandwich complained of two profane and obscene pieces printed in his private press,An Essay on Womanand a paraphrase of theVeni Creator. There was no evidence of publication; a few copies only were printed, evidently for private circulation, and one of them was obtained by tampering with a workman. Even if publication had been proved, there would still have been no reason for the lords' interference; for obscene and profane publications were punishable by law. But the ministers were anxious to obtain support for their measures of revenge. The name of Bishop Warburton of Gloucester was attached in mockery to notes in theEssay on Woman, and with his concurrence the case was brought before the house as a breach of privilege. The lords lent themselves to this transparent device; they petitioned the king to command the prosecution of Wilkes and, later, when he was out of their reach, ordered that he should be confined for his offence against themselves. Their proceedings excited public ridicule. That Sandwich should complain of obscenity and profanity, and should censure Wilkes, a fellow-monk of Dashwood's debauched fraternity, for indulging in them was, indeed, a case of Satan rebuking sin. At a performance of the "Beggar's Opera" at Covent Garden theatre the audience caught up with delight Macheath's words, "That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me I own surprised me," and Sandwich became generally known as Jemmy Twitcher.

WILKES EXPELLED FROM PARLIAMENT.

On the same day as the proceedings in the lords, Grenville brought a message from the king to the commons informing them of what had been done in Wilkes's case. They voted, 273 to 111, that theNorth Briton, No. 45, was a false and seditious libel, and ordered that it should be burnt by the common hangman. In the course of the debate, Martin, who had lately been secretary to the treasury, called Wilkes a cowardly and malignant scoundrel. The next day, the 16th, they fought a duel with pistols in the ring in Hyde Park; they had no seconds and each fired twice. Martin's second shot wounded Wilkes dangerously. In his absence the commons discussed his plea of privilege. Pitt strongly urged the house to maintain its privileges.Parliament, he said, had no right to surrender them; if it did so it would endanger its own freedom and infringe upon the rights of the people. As for Wilkes personally, Pitt was anxious to show that he did not approve of Temple's support of him, and called him "the blasphemer of his God and the libeller of his king". The house voted by 258 to 133 that privilege of parliament does not extend to seditious libels, and ought not to obstruct the ordinary course of the law in such cases. In itself this was an excellent decision. Parliamentary privileges had increased to a mischievous extent. By the abandonment of many of them, such as certain invidious exemptions from the course of law which it claimed for its members, the exclusion of strangers from its debates, and the prohibition of reporting, parliament has gained in dignity and purity, and has confirmed the liberties of the people. Nevertheless, though the abandonment of privilege was in itself a step in a right direction, it was reprehensible in Wilkes's case, because it was anex post factomeasure, designed to meet a special case, and vindictive in its intention.

The lords agreed in the decision of the commons, though a protest against the surrender of privilege was signed by seventeen peers. On December 3, the day fixed for the burning of No. 45 in front of the Royal Exchange, a large mob broke the windows of the sheriff's coach and pelted the constables. Encouraged by gentlemen at the windows of neighbouring houses, they tore a large part of the paper from the executioner with shouts of "Wilkes and liberty," carried it in triumph outside Temple Bar, the boundary of the city, and there made a bonfire into which they threw a jack-boot and a petticoat, the popular emblems of Bute and the Princess of Wales. Yet Wilkes was in an unpleasant position. A Scot went to his house intending to murder him; was arrested and found insane. A summons was sent to him to appear at the bar of the house of commons; his surgeons stated that he was too ill to attend, and a later day was fixed. Before it came he went off secretly to Paris, and while there excused himself from obedience to the order of the house by sending a medical certificate. The commons refused to give any weight to it, declared him in contempt, and guilty of a seditious libel, and on January 19, 1764, expelled him the house. An information was laid against him in the court ofking's bench for reprinting and publishing No. 45; he was convicted and, as he did not appear to receive sentence, was outlawed.

While little sympathy seems to have been felt for Wilkes personally, except among the lower classes, the attack upon him was widely resented because it was regarded as an encroachment on national liberty. Parliament was not in accord with public feeling. A strong effort was made to induce the commons to declare that general warrants were illegal. Pitt acknowledged that he had issued them during the war, when it was necessary to find out and remove suspected persons; but no such necessity existed at present, and he urged the house to do justice to the nation, the constitution, and the law, by condemning them. The ministers managed to shelve the question, but carried the adjournment only by 234 to 218. Though on other matters they commanded a large majority, several members from whom they expected support voted against them in the debates arising out of Wilkes's arrest. Among these were General Conway and Colonel Barré. Conway, the brother of the Earl of Hertford, had gained much credit in the war in Germany; he was a dashing officer and a respectable general, a man of refined tastes and high principles. As a politician he was thoroughly honest, of small ability and utterly wanting in decision of character. He was the dearest friend of Horace Walpole; and Walpole, who regarded politics in a personal light, exercised an unfortunate influence upon him. Barré, who had served with distinction in Canada, was a coarse man, eloquent, and feared by his opponents on account of his remarkable power of invective. He sat for one of Shelburne's boroughs, and believing himself slighted by Pitt, attacked him vehemently in the house on his resignation of office. As a supporter of Bute he was appointed adjutant-general and governor of Stirling, posts worth £4,000 a year. George, who regarded a vote against the ministers in this matter as a personal affront to himself, was determined that all who held either military or civil appointments should clearly understand that they could not continue to serve him if they opposed his policy in parliament. With Bedford's approval, Conway, Barré, and with them General A'Court, who had also voted in the minority, were deprived of their commands, and Shelburne, Barré's patron, was dismissed from his office as aide-de-camp to the king. Barré followed Shelburne's example in attaching himself to Pitt.

GRENVILLE'S ECONOMY.

These dismissals violated the most valuable of the privileges of parliament, freedom of speech and immunity from royal coercion. It was a well-established constitutional rule that the king should not take notice of anything which passed in parliament and that no member should suffer for his speeches or votes. This rule had been broken in the last reign when, in 1733, two officers lost their commands and, in 1735, Pitt his cornetcy for acting with the opposition. On the present occasion the responsibility for its violation rests on Grenville at least as much as on the king himself. Parliament took little notice of this infringement upon its privileges, though on the first day of the session, 1765, Granby pleased the army by some sharp remarks on the dismission of officers on account of their votes in parliament.[67]Encouraged by their success against Wilkes, the ministers waged war on political libels. A large number ofex officioinformations, or accusations presented by the attorney-general on which the person accused was brought to trial without the previous finding of a grand jury, were laid against printers and others during the course of the year. As this looked like persecution, it excited popular anger. One bookseller who was sentenced to stand in the pillory in New-palace-yard, Westminster, drove thither in a hackney coach numbered 45, and was cheered by a crowd estimated at 10,000 persons. Two hundred guineas was collected for him, and the mob hung a jack-boot and a "Scotch bonnet" on a gibbet and then burnt them.

Grenville insisted on economy in the national expenditure; it was needful, for during the late war the public debt had risen from £72,500,000 to £132,700,000, and the country was heavily taxed. His budget stood in honourable contrast to the finance of the late administration; it did not propose lotteries or a private loan, and it included an advantageous bargain with the Bank of England for the renewal of its charter. Yet in some matters his economy was short-sighted and peddling. He starved the naval estimates. During the war many ships were built hastily of timber insufficiently seasoned, and had fallen into so bad a condition that half their original cost was needed for the repair of their hulls; there were too few workmen in the dockyards, and the stores were empty of sails, rigging, andcordage. Lord Egmont, the first lord of the admiralty, represented the necessity for a large expenditure on the navy, but Grenville would not hear of it. So, too, in less important matters, he grudged spending money on the police of London, and highway robbery and other crimes of violence were insufficiently checked, and he even refused so small a sum as £20,000 which the king wanted for the purchase of some land at the back of Buckingham House, the site of part of the present Grosvenor Place, in order that the garden which he was then making might not be overlooked.

The expenditure on the American colonies and the irregularities by which they evaded their legal obligations, were offensive to his frugal and orderly temperament; he proposed to enforce their obligations, and to draw from the colonies some part of their cost to the mother-country. The colonies occupied a long and comparatively narrow tract of country stretching for seventeen hundred miles along the Atlantic. They differed in character. In the northern colonies the puritan element was strong, and the chief sources of wealth were commerce and farming. The southern colonies had cavalier traditions, and their wealth was chiefly derived from plantations which were cultivated by slave labour. Though puritanism as a religious force was well-nigh extinct in the New England provinces, it affected the temper of the people; they set a high value on speech-making and fine words, and were litigious and obstinate; lawyers were plentiful among them, and had much influence. As a whole the colonies were impatient of control and jealous of interference. Their constitutions differed in various points; in some the governor was appointed by the crown, in others by the proprietary. All alike enjoyed a large measure of personal and political freedom: they had the form and substance of the British constitution; they had representative assemblies in which they taxed themselves for their domestic purposes, chose most of their own magistrates, and paid them all; and it was seldom that their legislation was interfered with except with respect to commerce.

RESTRICTIONS ON COLONIAL TRADE.

The freedom which they enjoyed did not extend to commerce and manufactures. In those matters the policy of Great Britain was founded on the "mercantile theory," then universally accepted, and was directed towards securing a monopolyof trade. Other countries pursued a like policy towards their colonies, though they treated them with far less liberality. The restrictions placed by Great Britain on colonial trade were based on the Navigation acts of 1660 and later years, which were originally aimed at the maritime power of the Dutch. Briefly, they confined trade with the colonies to English or colonial ships; the Americans were debarred from exporting a number of the most important products of their country, their tobacco, grain, sugar, hides, and timber for masts, except to Great Britain; no foreign ship might enter their harbours, nor, with certain exceptions, could they import foreign merchandise, except in ships sailing directly from England. Various acts debarred them from manufactures which would have entered into competition with English goods; they depended on the mother-country for the commonest and most necessary things, for their cloth, hardware, and a host of manufactured articles. Port duties were imposed by England, and were collected by officers of the customs, whose business it was to prevent contraband trading. These duties were not imposed for the sake of revenue, but for the regulation of trade; and the whole system of restrictions was founded on the idea that colonies should be made to serve the interest of the mother-country by giving its merchants and manufacturers the monopoly of the colonial market.

The colonies received some compensations for the restrictions placed upon their industry and commerce. With certain exceptions their trade was free. While some of their products were confined to the British market, they had the monopoly of that market; no Englishman, for example, might buy tobacco which did not come from America or Bermuda. Their export trade to England was encouraged by bounties, and, though their foreign imports generally had to come to them through England, a system of drawbacks, by which the duties were remitted on exportation to America, enabled them to buy continental goods more cheaply than they could be bought in England. Nothing indeed can be further from the truth than the idea that England's treatment of her colonies was harsh or illiberal. Unfortunately the mercantile theory set up an opposition between the interests of a mother-country and her colonies. A far more important mitigation of the restrictions imposed on the colonies than anythat came from English liberality, was derived from the constant violation of them. Few English statesmen knew or cared to know anything about colonial affairs. Left to themselves the American colonies grew rich. Their merchants, especially in New England, carried on a brisk and extremely profitable contraband trade. In exchange for lumber, fish, and cattle the New England merchants obtained sugar and molasses, and bullion from the French and Spanish colonies; and vast quantities of rum were distilled in Boston and exported to Africa to be used in the slave trade.

England was not altogether a loser by these transactions. The richer a Boston merchant became, the more British goods did he import, and as he had to pay for them in bullion, his contraband trade enabled him to meet his obligations. These advantages were indirect, the loss to the English West India merchants was obvious and heavy. In order to protect them an attempt was made in 1733 to stop this contraband trade by the imposition of heavy duties; but the profits of the trade were so large that the revenue officers found it to their interest to be careless or actually conniving, and scarcely any duties were paid. On an average the American customs cost England from £7,000 to £8,000 a year and did not bring in quite £2,000. During the war the contraband trade afforded the French useful supplies, and in 1760 Pitt ordered the colonial governors to punish those who traded with the enemy. More power was placed in the hands of the revenue officers by the issue of writs of assistance enabling them to search for dutiable articles in any place without alleging specific information. These writs were lawful and were specially justifiable in time of war. Their lawfulness was unsuccessfully disputed before the superior court of Massachusetts by a lawyer named Otis, an eloquent speaker, singularly devoid of moderation. His speech, in which rhetoric is more conspicuous than a knowledge of law, attacked the commercial legislation of parliament generally; it was much admired, and has been regarded by some Americans as the first step towards revolution.

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