who could not fail to see the weaknesses he ostentatiously
displayed, Fox was, not unnaturally, suspected as being immoral
and untrustworthy. Therefore when he came into collision with
the will of the king he failed to secure the confidence of the nation
which was his only support. Nor ought any critical admirer
of Fox to deny that George III. was not wholly wrong when
he said that the great orator “was totally destitute of discretion
and sound judgment.” Fox made many mistakes, due in some
cases to vehemence of temperament, and in others only to be
ascribed to want of sagacity. That he fought unpopular causes
is a very insufficient explanation of his failure as a practical
statesman. He could have profited by the reaction which
followed popular excitement but for his bad reputation and his
want of discretion.
During the eight years between his expulsion from office in 1774 and the fall of Lord North’s ministry in March 1782 he may indeed be said to have done one very great thing in politics. He planted the seed of the modern Liberal party as opposed to the pure Whigs. In political allegiance he became a member of the Rockingham party and worked in alliance with the marquis and with Burke, whose influence on him was great. In opposing the attempt to coerce the American colonists, and in assailing the waste and corruption of Lord North’s administration, as well as the undue influence of the crown, he was at one with the Rockingham Whigs. During the agitation against corruption, and in favour of honest management of the public money, which was very strong between 1779 and 1782, he and they worked heartily together. It had a considerable effect, and prepared the way for the reforms begun by Burke and continued by Pitt. But if Fox learnt much from Burke he learnt with originality. He declined to accept the revolution settlement as final, or to think with Burke that the constitution of the House of Commons could not be bettered. Fox acquired the conviction that, if the House was to be made an efficient instrument for restraining the interference of the king and for securing good government, it must cease to be filled to a very large extent by the nominees of boroughmongers and the treasury. He became a strong advocate for parliamentary reform. In all ways he was the ardent advocate of what have in later times been known as “Liberal causes,” the removal of all religious disabilities and tests, the suppression of private interests which hampered the public good, the abolition of the slave trade, and the emancipation of all classes and races of men from the strict control of authority.
A detailed account of his activity from 1774 to 1782 would entail the mention of every crisis of the American War of Independence and of every serious debate in parliament. Throughout the struggle Fox was uniformly opposed to the coercion of the colonies and was the untiring critic of Lord North. While the result must be held to prove that he was right, he prepared future difficulties for himself by the fury of his language. He was the last man in the world to act on the worldly-wise maxim that an enemy should always be treated as if he may one day be a friend, and a friend as if he might become an enemy. On the 29th of November 1779 Fox was wounded in a duel with Mr William Adam, a supporter of Lord North’s whom he had savagely denounced. He assailed Lord North with unmeasured invective, directed not only at his policy but at his personal character, though he well knew that the prime minister was an amiable though pliable man, who remained in office against his own wish, in deference to the king who appealed to his loyalty. When the disasters of the American war had at last made a change of ministry necessary, and the king applied to the Whigs, through the intermediary of Lord Shelburne, Fox made a very serious mistake in persuading the marquess of Rockingham not to insist on dealing directly with the sovereign. The result was the formation of a cabinet belonging, in Fox’s own words, partly to the king and partly to the country—that is to say, partly of Whigs who wished to restrain the king, and partly of the king’s friends, represented by Lord Shelburne, whose real function was to baffle the Whigs. Dissensions began from the first, and were peculiarly acute between Shelburne and Fox, the two secretaries of state. The old division of duties by which the southern secretary had the correspondence with the colonies and the western powers of Europe, and the northern secretary with the others, had been abolished on the formation of the Rockingham cabinet. All foreign affairs were entrusted to Fox. Lord Shelburne meddled in the negotiations for the peace at Paris. He also persuaded his colleagues to grant some rather scandalous pensions, and Fox’s acquiescence in this abuse after his recent agitation against Lord North’s waste did him injury. When the marquess of Rockingham died on the 1st of July 1782, and the king offered the premiership to Shelburne, Fox resigned, and was followed by a part of the Rockingham Whigs.
In refusing to serve under Shelburne he was undoubtedly consistent, but his next step was ruinous to himself and his party. On the 14th of February 1783 he formed a coalition with Lord North, based as they declared on “mutual goodwill and confidence.” Plausible excuses were made for the alliance, but to the country at large this union, formed with a man whom he had denounced for years, had the appearance of an unscrupulous conspiracy to obtain office on any terms. In the House of Commons the coalition was strong enough to drive Shelburne from office on the 24th of February. The king made a prolonged resistance to the pressure put on him to accept Fox and North as his ministers (see Pitt, William). On the 2nd of April he was constrained to submit to the formation of a new ministry, in which the duke of Portland was prime minister and Fox and North were secretaries of state. The new administration was ill liked by some of the followers of both. Fox increased its unpopularity both in the House and in the country by consenting against the wish of most of his colleagues to ask for the grant of a sum of £100,000 a year to the prince of Wales. The act had the appearance of a deliberate offence to the king, who was on bad terms with his son. The magnitude of the sum, and his acquiescence in the grant of pensions by the Shelburne ministry, convinced the country that his zeal for economy was hypocritical. The introduction of the India Bill in November 1783 alarmed many vested interests, and offended the king by the provision which gave the patronage of India to a commission to be named by the ministry and removable only by parliament. The coalition, and Fox in particular, were assailed in a torrent of most telling invective and caricature. Encouraged by the growing unpopularity of his ministers, George III. gave it to be understood that he would not look upon any member of the House of Lords who voted for the India Bill as his friend. The bill was thrown out in the upper House on the 17th of December, and next day the king dismissed his ministers.
Fox now went into opposition again. The remainder of his life may be divided into four portions—his opposition to Pitt during the session of 1784; his parliamentary activity till his secession in 1797; his retirement till 1800; his return to activity and his short tenure of office before his death in 1806. During the first of these periods he deepened his unpopularity by assailing the undoubted prerogatives of the crown, by claiming for the House of Commons the right to override not only the king and the Lords but the opinion of the country, and by resisting a dissolution. This last pretension came very ill from a statesman who in 1780 had advocated yearly elections. He lost ground daily before the steady good judgment and unblemished character of Pitt. When parliament was dissolved at the end of the session of 1784, the country showed its sentiments by unseating 180 of the followers of Fox and North. Immense harm was done to both by the publication of a book called The Beauties of Fox, North and Burke, a compilation of their abuse of one another in recent years.
Fox himself was elected for Westminster with fewer votes than Admiral Lord Hood, but with a majority over the ministerial candidate, Sir Cecil Wray. The election was marked by an amazing outflow of caricatures and squibs, by weeks of rioting in which Lord Hood’s sailors fought pitched battles in St James’s Street with Fox’s hackney coachmen, and by the intrepid canvassing of Whig ladies. The beautiful duchess of Devonshire
