Life of William, Earl of Shelburne/Volume 1/Chapter 12

by Edmond George Petty-Fitzmaurice

 

CHAPTER XII

 

THE DIVIDED OPPOSITION

 

1770-1771

 

Losses, dissensions, profligacy, and folly were the causes, according to Walpole, which in the course of 1770 ruined the prospects of the Opposition.^[1] Their dissensions alone, even if unaided by other circumstances, would have been sufficient to produce that result. The extreme violence of the language of the Old Whigs—especially in the House of Commons^[2]—the savage attacks of Junius^[3] on the King, and the want of character of Wilkes, were together beginning to produce their inevitable consequence—a reaction. "Not a dozen counties and only a few boroughs," so Walpole observed, "had petitioned;^[4] and the greater part of England, all Scotland to a man, and Wales were against them.^[5] The Old Whigs becoming alarmed, wished to draw back, after having voted for the motion of Rockingham, "that the House of Commons in the exercise of its judicature in matters of election is bound to judge according to the law of the land, and the known and established law and custom of Parliament, which is part thereof." Shelburne wished that the Opposition should break with Wilkes, but at the same time carry on the political campaign against the Court with vigour, especially in Parliament. An angry altercation took place at his house between the leaders of the Opposition, the consequences of which were only remedied by the interposition of Chatham, who at that time was affecting great cordiality towards Rockingham.^[6] The Opposition in consequence gave a united vote on the bill introduced by Chatham, reversing the adjudications of the House of Commons against Wilkes,^[7] and for his motion condemning the royal answer to the Remonstrance of the City of London on the King's inattention to their petition regarding the Middlesex Election.^[8]

"It is gravely told us," Shelburne said on this last occasion, "that the answer lately given to the City Address is similar to the answers given by Charles I., Charles II., James II., and Queen Anne, to similar applications of their subjects for redress of grievances. But are some of the princes here named ranked in the catalogue of excellent sovereigns? Are they venerated as the parents or despised as the betrayers of their people, and is there no instance upon record which suits the present occasion but instances from the reign of the Stuarts? My lords, since examples from history are to be quoted let me tell you of one that does honour to the English name, and reflects new lustre upon the hero of the Revolution. Let me tell you of the Kentish Petition, in compliance with which William III. dissolved the Parliament, to let the nation see he had no double game to play, and to shew that as he had no interest separate from the interest of his subjects, all parliaments were alike acceptable to him that were agreeable to the wishes of the Kingdom.^[9] Here is a precedent for royalty, if precedents must be talked of in opposition to common sense; and happy would it be for this country, if it was carefully attended to by our silent Ministers! When I first came into administration, a new tax happened to be agitated, and I was called upon to defend it. My silence was considered as incapacity, and some at this moment wilfully dumb, triumphed not a little because I made no reply. In my turn, therefore, I call upon them to say something in their own favour, something that may savour of modesty, though it does not relish of wisdom; that the world may at least suppose they think themselves in the right, however much their conduct may prove them indefensible. What! still silent? Let them still continue so—I see upon what they depend—but let them take care. National resentment, though slow, is dreadful; and the public is a wolf, which if it does not even bite, will certainly worry a profligate ministry into justice. A noble lord, who spoke just now, harped upon an expression dropt by a noble Earl, relative to secret influence, and seemed to call for an explanation of that phrase. I will explain it to that noble lord.^[10] That secret influence is exercised by the measures adopted by a set of men who, on his Majesty's accession to the throne of these realms, enlisted under the banners of the Earl of Bute; who impudently call themselves the King's Friends, but who are in reality nobody's friends but their own; who have acted without principle with every Administration, sometimes supporting them and sometimes betraying them, according as it served their views of interest; who have directed their attention more to intrigues, and their own emoluments, than the good of the public. This is that secret influence; and if that noble lord, or his adherents, want to be further informed, I refer them to an excellent pamphlet just published, called 'Thoughts on the Causes of the present Discontents.'"^[11]

Chatham, however, was not inclined to take so favourable a view of the publication of Burke mentioned by Shelburne. He considered, nor did he stand alone, that it was "calculated for no one end but to deify Lord Rockingham and to insinuate that Mahomet," in other words Burke himself, "was his prophet."^[12] At the same time the timidity of the Whig Jupiter was making itself more felt every day. When Chatham proposed an address praying for a dissolution of Parliament, so weak was the support he received from Rockingham's followers that the motion was rejected by sixty to twenty. Their conduct on this occasion was the more marked, as during the debate Shelburne closely followed the line of argument used by Sir George Savile in the House of Commons, showing that the fact of Luttrell sitting and voting for Middlesex, ipso facto invalidated the proceedings of Parliament. Lord Egmont contrasting this language with that of Chatham, said that the two opposition statesmen had used inconsistent expressions, for Chatham had dwelt on the disorders in America as rendering a dissolution necessary; Shelburne he said had "blabbed" what Chatham had not dared to "confess." This gave Shelburne the opportunity, while expressing his general concurrence with Chatham, of once more condemning the ministerial policy in America in emphatic terms.^[13]

On May 18th, Richmond brought forward a series of resolutions condemnatory of the American policy of the Government.^[14] The debate which followed was one of the most violent of the time. When speaking on the bill for reversing the adjudications against Wilkes, Shelburne had said that North, by giving Luttrell an appointment under the Crown, in order to enable him to vacate his seat and appear as a candidate for Middlesex, had acted unconstitutionally and ought to be impeached.^[15] Hillsborough now retaliated, and said that not North, but the minister who had refused to assert the authority of the Crown over the Colonies, ought to be impeached. Shelburne answered by accusing the Government of wishing to establish a royal despotism both at home and in America, and to silence free discussion within the walls of Parliament. "Under these circumstances," he said, "it might become necessary for the Opposition to mark their sense of the situation by ceasing to attend the House." Gower thereupon told Shelburne that the Opposition might please themselves, and appealed to his majority, which he knew he could safely do, to support him against the taunts of speakers whom he said he despised.^[16]

Liberty indeed, as Shelburne had said, was threatened in England and America alike. Alarmed at the news which reached them of renewed disturbances at Boston, the Ministers on the 6th July issued an Order in Council, directing "that the rendezvous of his Majesty's ships stationed in North America should be in the harbour of Boston, and that the fortress should be put into a respectable state of defence, and garrisoned by the King's regular troops."^[17] In this condition of affairs Chatham hurried up to London. "I was in town on Wednesday last," he wrote to Calcraft, "saw Lord Rockingham, and learnt nothing more than I knew before; namely, that the Marquis is an honest and honourable man, but that 'moderation, moderation!' is the burden of the song among the body. For myself, I am resolved to be in earnest for the public, and shall be a scarecrow of violence to the gentle warblers of the grove, the moderate Whigs and temperate statesmen."^[18]

The party thus sarcastically alluded to took an early opportunity of justifying the taunts levelled at them, and made even their own followers doubt, not only their wisdom, but even their sincerity.^[19] A great opposition meeting had been summoned for the last days of September in Yorkshire. When the day arrived, "Mr. Charles Turner proposed a new remonstrance, but, to the surprise of the most zealous, Sir George Savile talked with much moderation, and Lord John Cavendish occasioned greater astonishment by advising the assembly to expect by decency redress from the King. The assembly, not knowing how to decipher this change of language, broke up in perplexity."^[20] Chatham, disgusted at these vacillations, appears to have resolved to cultivate more friendly relations with Shelburne than he had done for some time previously.^[21] Only a few days before the Yorkshire meeting he had written to him as follows: "It is with extreme pleasure that I learn, by the kind favour of your Lordship's letter, that you are arrived in England, if this wretched island is still to be called by a once-respected name. I was counting the hours till I could be assured of your return towards these parts; which from the information at Shelburne House I understood was to be about this time. I trust I need not say, that to see your Lordship is at all times a truly sincere and sensible satisfaction to me. In the present melancholy and most perilous moment, the friends of the public and of each other cannot meet too soon. The dangers from abroad are great; but to men, even those will never supersede the fixed determination to pursue inflexibly reparation for our rights at home, and security against the like future violations. I wait anxiously to learn the result of the meeting at York. I trust it will aim right; but nothing, I expect, will hit the mark full but the City of London, where the constitution is not yet called faction, and where the modern dictionary does not yet enough prevail to proscribe the word remonstrance."^[22]

 

Chatham was probably hoping to be able to reconstruct the Ministry of 1767 with Shelburne as his principal colleague. In the event of war he was the inevitable minister, and war at this moment seemed most likely, owing to the aggressive attitude assumed by Spain in the matter of the Falkland Islands, where the English settlement at Port Egmont had been seized by an expedition under Don Francesco Buccarelli. The news had first arrived in England in June, and when the details became known the public indignation knew no bounds.

As Secretary of State, Shelburne had attempted by a firm line of conduct to check the aggressive designs of the Bourbon Courts, but the divisions in the Cabinet and the perpetual changes in the Secretary of State's office had rendered a consistent foreign policy impossible. France had seized Corsica; Spain had evaded the payment of the Manilla ransom, and now committed an act of overt hostility; and Prussia, the old ally of England, had been thrown into the arms of Russia, and in conjunction with her was now planning the dismemberment of Poland and the invasion of Turkey. In England itself a vague sense of insecurity was spreading, which made a reasonable policy difficult in the face of recurring fits of excitement, and stimulated a demand for increased naval and military expenditure to provide for eventualities in which it was foreseen the country would stand alone.

The vacillations of the Ministry were endless, for their counsels were divided. Lord North wished for peace; Weymouth expected that war must sooner or later result, and wrote meaningless despatches capable of either a peaceful or a warlike interpretation, in order to be able to keep his place, whether North or Chatham carried the day. Rochfort, by his outspoken zeal against France, almost restored the tottering credit of the war party in that country. "Milord Weymouth ne parle point," said Choiseul, "et Milord Rochfort parle trop. Le Ministère ne veut pas faire la guerre, et ne sait pas faire la paix."^[23] Shelburne accordingly had an easy task in denouncing the ministerial hesitations and the defenceless condition in which the country, without a fleet worthy of the name and bereft of every alliance, was situated.^[24] "My Lords," he said, "it is extremely evident whether we commence a war with Spain, or tamely crouch under the insults of that haughty kingdom, whether we spiritedly draw the sword, or purchase an inglorious security by the sacrifice of our national honour, that we shall neither be united at home nor respected abroad till the reins of government are lodged with men who have some little pretensions to common sense and common honesty. Had our Ministers, my Lords, even the wish to act with wisdom, they have not the ability. The mere possession of their places does not give them a capacity to understand or a resolution to execute. They have received no instruction in the real schools of business, and ignorant of everything but their own interests, they look down from their accidental elevation, confused, astonished, terrified. Ashamed to descend and yet afraid to act on the lofty pinnacle of power, the welfare, the reputation of the kingdom is hourly given up; nothing is attended to but the preservation of their official emoluments, and so these emoluments can be preserved, they are deaf to the execrations of their indignant countrymen. For these reasons, my Lords, necessary as a war with Spain may be, who could wish to leave the direction of so important a business in such feeble, in such incompetent hands? Indeed, if there was a likelihood that the difficulty of conducting the military operations of an injured people would force them from the employments they disgrace, it would be actually worth our while to commence a war, merely for the purpose of gaining a fresh administration. But while the baneful influence of the Northern Star continues, peace or war must be equally indifferent, the public will be plundered and betrayed; the glory of the British Crown will be eclipsed and the queen of nations made an object of ridicule to every potentate in Europe."^[25]

The above speech gives no inadequate idea of the violence which party-spirit had reached, on one occasion nearly bringing the two Houses into collision. A motion had been carried, in the midst of general confusion and in the teeth of a fierce opposition, to clear the Upper House of strangers, in order to prevent the weakness of the fortifications of Gibraltar—the subject of debate—being made known to the world. The members of the House of Commons were removed with the other strangers. On returning to their own House they carried a retaliatory motion. Mutual forbearance ultimately smoothed the difficulty, but the occasion is still recollected owing to the caricature of Lord Marchmont and Lord Denbigh, given by Barré in the House of Commons when describing the scene in the Upper House. "I could not suppose," he said, "that a single Peer remained. It seemed as if the mob had broke in, and they certainly acted in a very extraordinary manner. One of the heads of this mob—for there were two—was a Scotchman. I heard him call out several times: Clear the Hoose! Clear the Hoose! The face of the other was hardly human; for he had contrived to put on a nose of enormous size, that disfigured him completely." ^[26]

While, however, the determined attitude of the country and of the Opposition ultimately forced the Government to show a bold front against Spain, it did not have the effect of bringing Chatham into office, and a rupture at this time all but ensued between him and the City, on the support of which he had always hitherto been able to reckon. In accordance with the practice of the time, press warrants had been issued to man the fleet. The City authorities, at the instigation of Wilkes, opposed them. Chatham strongly condemned their conduct. "There is reason, I perceive," he writes to Shelburne, "to fear a race of frivolous and ill-placed popularity about press warrants. I am determined to resist this ill-judged attempt to shake the public safety. In this state of things, I shall persevere to do my duty to my country, determined by principle, though unanimated by hope. As to what the City now intends to do, I wish to hear nothing of it; resolved to applaud and defend what I think right, and to disapprove what shall appear to me wrong and untenable. All the rest is to me, my dear Lord, nothing." He even suggested that the refractory aldermen should be brought to the Bar of the House of Lords. This suggestion was eagerly seized hold of by his enemies in the City. "Your Lordship may easily imagine," writes Shelburne, "that every art of exaggeration and misrepresentation has been employed to create mischief in the City, on the foundation of what dropped from you the other day, of calling aldermen to the Bar. However, I have reason to believe that the principles of our friends there, as well as their weight, are much too steady to be so affected."^[27] It is perhaps one of the most striking proofs of Chatham's influence that he was able to induce the City to accept his advice.

Disaster after disaster now befell the Opposition. The death of Beckford and of Granby was followed by that of Grenville. Temple in consequence announced his intention of retiring into private life, while Camden wavered, uncertain to what political leader he should attach his fortunes.^[28]

"You were in the House of Lords," writes Chatham to Calcraft; "was ever such a state of things, or two such things as omnipotence and imbecility ever joined before? Lord Temple declined attending, and Lord Camden, you perceived, stayed away. Matters are hastening to some crisis, in the interior of the thing called Opposition. I think all is ruined, and am determined to be found in my post when destruction falls upon us. The times are pollution in the very quintessence, and the little manœuvres in opposition behind the scenes are deplorable. I will bring matters before it is long to an explanation; and if Burke's picture of juries and of that mode of justice be to be adopted, I will separate from so unorthodox a congregation."^[29]

Conscious of the divisions of his opponents, North vigorously pushed the advantage they gave him. There is nothing so successful as success. The fall of Choiseul in 1770, on whose co-operation Spain had reckoned, enabled him to make a convention on the subject of the Falkland Islands. War was thereby avoided. Wilkes continued to grow in unpopularity, while the illiberal policy pursued towards the American Colonies undoubtedly met with the approbation of the country. The Bedford connection was practically broken up by the death of the Duke; but his followers, led by Sandwich and Rigby, the former of whom now became Secretary of State in the place of Weymouth, continued to support the Administration, and were gradually absorbed into the majority. At the same time the acceptance of the Privy Seal by Suffolk, and the retirement of Temple, was followed by the transfer to the Court of the support of the former friends of George Grenville.^[30] The desertion of Wedderburn from the party of Rockingham, in order to become Solicitor-General, marked clearly which way the tide was running. By February 17th, 1771, of the three great Whig connections, the Grenvilles, the Bedfords, and the Pelhams, which at the beginning of the reign had ruled the country, two had joined the Court, and the third, diminished in numbers and in credit, was engaged, like the Greeks of Byzantium, in domestic quarrels while the enemy stood at the gates.

The only question on which the Opposition could act together was that of the Falkland Islands, and here their own violence defeated the objects they had in view. By the convention with Spain a practical return to the Uti possidetis had been made. The attack on Port Egmont was disavowed, and the settlement itself restored, while at the same time any claim of right which the Spanish King might have to the islands was allowed to be reserved. There were indeed many objections to be urged against this settlement, as Shelburne pointed out in a speech of great force during the debate in the House of Lords on February 14th.^[31] It could fairly be said that a reservation similar to that just mentioned had never before appeared in any public instrument between independent nations, that any assertion whatsoever of an English right of sovereignty had been studiously avoided in the convention, that the whole question was liable to be reopened at any moment, that the conduct of the Government had been a mixture of weakness and violence throughout the whole negotiation, that the Manilla Ransom had been entirely forgotten, that the Spanish reparation might have been more complete, and that more advantageous arrangements might have been concluded without precipitating the country into the calamities of war. But these and similar arguments, which Shelburne and the other Opposition peers embodied in an elaborate protest against the congratulatory address to the Crown moved by the Duke of Newcastle, scarcely justified their description of the concession made to the King of Spain in terms which might have been applied to the surrender of the Isle of Wight to France, but not to the reservation of a shadowy claim to a barren island in the midst of the ocean.

The moment the Opposition were deprived of this subject of declamation, their quarrels began afresh. The decisions of Mansfield were not only at this period—to his eternal glory—laying the foundation of English commercial law, but were also obtaining a more doubtful celebrity by sapping the right of juries to be the judges of the intention of a libel. At the close of 1770, Glyn unsuccessfully proposed a committee to "inquire into the administration of criminal justice, and the proceedings of the judges in Westminster Hall, particularly in cases relating to the liberty of the press and the constitutional power and duty of juries," while Chatham in the Upper House engaged in a review of the legal arguments of Mansfield, as imprudent as it was improper. He would have done well to have recollected the warning of Barre, that were retired soldiers "to attempt to teach Mansfield law, the lawyers might come with their long gowns and their shaven crowns, to teach him how to encamp, how to draw up an army and storm a breach."^[32] As it was, he only escaped a crushing defeat by the moral cowardice of the Lord Chief Justice himself, who shrunk from the encounter.

It is beyond doubt that the statutory powers vested in Parliament over the judges are powers to be exercised with the utmost discrimination, and that points of law should not be raised in Parliament except in connection with a motion for the dismissal of an offending judge. The arguments of Chatham in the Upper House, and of the friends of Shelburne in the Lower House, were more than sufficient to support a vote of censure, and this was clearly the course they ought to have adopted. A committee could only be the means of keeping a vote of censure hanging in terrorem over the head of Mansfield for a considerable period, and was in itself an unfit tribunal to decide on the conduct of the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench. It must at the same time be recollected that from the earliest times the House of Commons had exercised a quasi-judicial power, and that on the second day of every session a Grand Committee on the Courts of Justice was appointed as a matter of course. This committee, in a period when life and limb were not safe from judges holding their offices at the pleasure of the Crown, had been of no little use in protecting civil and religious liberty from arbitrary inroads. The jurisdiction it claimed was extensive, and the journals of the House still record how in 1667 Chief Justice Keeling was summoned to the Bar on the report of this committee, to account for "certain innovations in trials of men for their lives and deaths, and because in some particular cases' restraints had been put upon juries."^[33] When the law had secured a permanent tenure to the judges, the committee, though still appointed, ceased to have more than a nominal existence. It was nevertheless open to the Opposition to argue that the same dangers against which the security had been devised were about once more to grow up in even subtler shapes; and for that reason Glyn, before moving on the 6th of December for the appointment of a select committee, moved that the Clerk "should read the entry in the votes of November 14th, ordering that the Grand Committee on the Courts of Justice should sit every Saturday afternoon in the House."^[34]

Not having succeeded in getting a committee appointed, the Opposition had to settle what course they would pursue. The supporters of Rockingham announced their intention of introducing an "Enacting" Bill; the friends of Shelburne refused to vote for it, unless it was made declaratory of the existing right of juries to find on the whole case. "My arguments," says Barré, "not being stamped with the name of Rockingham, were disapproved of."^[35] "The object of Lord Chatham," writes Burke to Dowdeswell, "is to prevent you doing anything useful."^[36] "The bill of Dowdeswell," says Chatham, "is a compound of connection, tyranny and absurdity."^[37] It was by expressions such as these that the Opposition showed their mutual affection. Of the two measures an Enacting Bill would perhaps have stood the better chance of passing into law; either proposal, however, was almost equally certain to be rejected by the majority; while an admission that the law as laid down by Mansfield was not incorrect was likely to be used as an argument in the future, in order to prove that even the Opposition acknowledged that the decision "as to libel or no libel" rested with the judge: the very position against which Glyn and Dunning had argued in speeches of great force and learning.^[38] Be that as it may, the result of these dissensions was that Dowdeswell persevered with his bill, and on March 7th was beaten by a majority of 146. "You see, my Lord," writes Barré to Chatham, "what a glorious day yesterday was for the Opposition, and particularly for its leaders! Nothing under the humour of a Swift or a Rabelais can describe it to you. I went down to the House very angry with them, but in less than an hour they forced me to pity them. Poor things! They told me that they would never do the like again."^[39]

The Opposition being in this distracted and divided condition, it was natural that not a day went by without some fresh illustration of the omnipotence of the King's Friends. Rights actually in dispute in the courts of law were summarily disposed of by Act of Parliament in order to favour a private speculation of the Adams, the well-known architects, then in high favour at Court, and to humiliate the City, which claimed the foreshore at the point where the former proposed to erect the building afterwards called the Adelphi. The famous proceedings against the printers of the Parliamentary debates were the next exploit of the majority. Against the Durham Yard Embankment Bill Shelburne signed a separate protest, and his friends were conspicuous in the House of Commons in their opposition to those who, in the words of Chatham, "had called up a conflict of high and sacred jurisdiction between Parliament and the City of London."^[40] It became clear that there was hardly any measure, however unwise, which the King and his advisers were not ready to attempt and a subservient majority anxious to accept. Shelburne hoped as a pis aller to rally the various sections of the Whig party in an effort to obtain a dissolution. Temple was willing to leave his retirement for the purpose of making the motion,^[41] but Camden considered the attempt impolitic,^[42] and Rockingham hesitated.^[43] "Unreasonable refinements in some, and tergiversations in others,"^[44] destroyed every hope of success. But even an immediate dissolution of Parliament would at best have been a doubtful remedy. The Court would probably have secured as large a majority in the next as it possessed in the present Parliament, nor could any real and permanent alteration have been produced except by recourse to the Reform of the House of Commons. "I never heard a reflecting man doubt," writes Shelburne to Chatham, " on the county representation being the greatest restorative possible of the constitution."^[45] "I have mentioned the shortening of the durations of Parliaments to your Lordship more than once, but I have scrupled telling you how very much I have been pressed upon it, until I saw it coincided with your Lordship's general views for the public."^[46] But these ideas only terrified Burke, and when Sawbridge proposed a motion for triennial Parliaments, it was rejected by 105 to 54; "the Rockingham party," says Walpole, "not liking the measure. The idea at best was not quite disapproved, but the execution not much desired by any."^[47]

In the midst of the contests just described Lady Shelburne died, and Shelburne himself, whose health had since been suffering severely, resolved to leave England as soon as his duties allowed him to do so.^[48] "I am heartily sorry," he writes on April 25th, "for the result of the several communications your Lordship has made of your wishes and those of the friends of the public. It is not my business, still less my inclination, to judge the motives of any; the public, however, necessarily will; and I greatly fear the consequence will either be general despondency, or very ill-judged violence. … In this situation I have given the necessary orders for my journey, and hope to be gone in the course of next week, persuaded your Lordship can have no further commands for your humble servant."^[49]

On May the 11th accordingly Shelburne, accompanied by Barré, started on his journey.

 

1. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., iv. 40.
2. Ibid. iv. 42.
3. It is not my intention to enter into the controversy about the authorship of Junius (which will probably cease at the same time as that about the man in the Iron Mask), more especially as I believe that all the attempts which have been made at various times to fix the authorship either on Lord Shelburne himself or on one of his entourage have hopelessly failed. The statements made by Mrs. Serres in her Life of Dr. Wilmot, in which she tries to prove an intimate connection between that gentleman and Lord Shelburne, the former of whom is put forward as the true Junius, I believe to be entirely false. There are no letters at Lansdowne House from Dr. Wilmot, and the documents which appear in the Appendix to Mrs. Serres' book were considered by the late Mr. Twisleton to have been, if not forged, at least tampered with. I may mention that in a conversation which I had with Mr. Twisleton he told me that he had sometimes been puzzled at the abuse of Lord Shelburne by Junius as contrasted with his praise of Lord Chatham (e.g. the letter of Junius to Chatham, January 2nd, 1768). It was clear, Mr. Twisleton said, that Junius could not have known the friendship which existed between the two statesmen. If, however, the view put forward above, viz. that from the end of 1767 to the middle of 1770 a certain coolness existed between them, the difficulty at once disappears; while assuming Junius, as was most likely the case, to have been under the influence of Lord Temple, nothing would have been more characteristic of the latter than to attempt to widen the breach between his brother-in-law, whose friendship he was at that time sedulously courting, and his only dangerous rival in that brother-in-law's favour.

   Whether Lord Shelburne knew who the author of Junius was is a separate question. The only evidence of any importance bearing upon it, is that mentioned further on in this work, which, without attaching too much importance to particular words, it is impossible to put summarily out of court, except on the supposition that Sir R. Philips invented the whole story. The fact mentioned by Mr. Wade in the Introduction to his edition of the letters of Junius, viz. that the third Lord Lansdowne had not had the secret confided to him, proves nothing beyond the fact itself, more especially as it is not clear that he was aware that his father was preparing memoirs at the period of his death.

4. On the subject of the Middlesex Election.
5. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., iv. 41.
6. Chatham Correspondence, iii. 437, 438, "I am a stranger to any particular incident at Lord Shelburne's, not being supplied with over much communication." Chatham to Calcraft, March 30th, 1770.
7. Parliamentary History, xvi. 955, May 1st.
8. The royal answer was, "As the case is entirely new, I will take time to consider of it, and will transmit an answer to you by one of my principal Secretaries of State." In two days Lord Weymouth wrote to the Sheriffs to know how their message was authenticated, and what the nature had been of the assembly in which it was drawn up. The Sheriffs went the next morning with a verbal message, and insisted on being admitted to an audience to deliver it. Alderman Townshend told the King he came by direction of the Livery in Common Hall assembled; the King replied, "I will consider of the answer you have given me." Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., iv. 93.
9. On April 29th, 1701. It asked the Home of Commons to lay aside its differences and to show no distrust to the King.
10. Lord Mansfield and Lord Chatham are the persons alluded to.
11. Parliamentary History, xvi. 966, May 4th, 1770.
12. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., iv. 120.
13. Ibid. iv. 149; Parliamentary History, xvi. 978, May 14th, 1770.
14. Parliamentary History, xvi. 1010, May 18th, 1770. On March 5th, 1770, Lord North had proposed a bill in keeping with the terms of Lord Hillsborough's Circular, repealing all the duties of 1767 except that on tea. The measure passed after meeting the resistance of the whole Opposition—so far as the exception of tea was concerned—in the House of Commons. Being a Money Bill, it was not discussed in the House of Lords.
15. Parliamentary History, xvi. 966.
16. Ibid. xvi. 1026.
17. By a curious coincidence these disturbances took place on March 5th, 1770, the same day on which Lord North introduced his bill in the House of Commons.
18. Chatham Correspondence, iii. 469.
19. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., iv. 175.
20. Ibid. iv. 174, 175.
21. No correspondence had passed between Chatham and Shelburne between December 22nd, 1767, and September 29th, 1770, with the exception of one very stiff and formal letter on April 28th of the latter year. See too the letter of Chatham to Calcraft, March 30th, 1770, already quoted.
22. Chatham to Shelburne, September 29th, 1770.
23. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., iv. 185.
24. Parliamentary History, xvi. 114, November 22nd, 1770. As to the condition of the fleet at this period, see the extraordinary revelations of Lord Sandwich in 1775. Parl. Hist. xviii. 284.
25. The allusion is to the rising influence of the Empress Catherine.
26. Cavendish Debates, ii. 162.
27. Shelburne to Chatham, November 26th, 1770.
28. Richmond to Rockingham, December 1779.
29. Chatham to Calcraft, November 28th, 1770.
30. Lord Sandwich became Secretary of State on December 19th, 1770; but on January 11th, 1771, was transferred to the Admiralty in the place of Lord Hawke. Lord Halifax then became Secretary of State, but dying in the June following, was succeeded by Lord Suffolk. The Privy Seal was then given to the Duke of Grafton, who, however, refused to attend the meetings of the Cabinet.
31. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., iv. 275, "Lord Shelburne spoke better than he had ever done."
32. Parliamentary History, xvi. 1294.
33. Journals of the House of Commons, 1667, ix. 4, 22, 37. My attention was called to the above facts by Mr. Bristowe, Q.C., M.P.
34. Almon, ix. 30.
35. Barré to Chatham, February 2ist, 1771.
36. Burke to Dowdeswell, February 1st, 1771.
37. Chatham to Barré, February 21st, 1771.
38. Parliamentary History, xvi. 1275.
39. Barré to Chatham, March 8th, 1771.
40. Parliamentary History, xvii. 40. Chatham to Barré, March 21st, 1771.
41. Shelburne to Chatham, April 9th, 1771.
42. Camden to Chatham, April 24th, 1771.
43. Rockingham to Chatham, April 26th, 1771.
44. Chatham to Shelburne, April 24th, 1771.
45. Shelburne to Chatham, February 25th, 1771.
46. Shelburne to Chatham, April 9th, 1774.
47. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III., iv. 320.
48. Chatham to Barré, February 20th, 1771. Shelburne to Chatham, February 25th, 1771. Lady Shelburne died on January 5th, 1771.
49. Shelburne to Chatham, April 25th, 1771.