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Home Domestic Affairs, 1760-1815 1760-1815; Part 4 |
1760-1815; Part 4In Pitt (now created Earl of Chatham), the new prime minister, George III found a statesman more congenial to him, for Pitt was hostile to all parties, and declared his intention of governing according to the king's wishes. But illness soon incapacitated him, and it was then that Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer, reopened the American question by his foolish duties. In composition Chatham's ministry was, as a contemporary described it, "a piece of mosaic ", made up of politicians from different factions, and on Chatham's final retirement from office, in 1768, the ministry was left - if the change of metaphor may be allowed - like a ship without a rudder. The Duke of Grafton, a young man of thirty-two, who succeeded Chatham as the leader of the ministry, was a person of "lounging opinions", and more at home on a racecourse than at a cabinet meeting. During Grafton's tenure of power the House of Commons, under the leadership of his ministry, expelled Wilkes for having written to a newspaper a letter which both Houses declared to be libellous. The county of Middlesex, however, continued to elect him, and the House of Commons kept on expelling him. But at length, on the fourth occasion, the House of Commons declared his opponent to be elected (Wilkes, on the fourth occasion, had received 1143 votes and his opponent only 296. But the House decided that his opponent "ought to have been elected", and therefore declared him the duly elected member), a flagrantly unconstitutional action which produced a dangerous riot, Wilkes being a popular hero. For this and other actions Grafton and the ministry were unsparingly attacked in some letters - the Letters of Junius - the authorship of which is still disputed, and which had considerable influence at the time (No writer, it has been said, ever surpassed "Junius" in condensed and virulent invective. Amongst others, Lord George Sackville, Grattan, Burke, Gibbon, Lord Chatham, Lord Temple, the brother of George Grenville, and Sir Philip Francis have been credited with the authorship of the letters; the two last-named seem to be the least unlikely). Finally, the ministry was criticized by Chatham, its former leader, for its foreign policy, and Grafton accordingly resigned in 1770.At last George was supreme, and for the next twelve years, from 1770 to 1782, he was really his own prime minister. The nominal head of the Government was Lord North, a good-humoured, easygoing, tactful person, who was quite content to leave the initiative in policy and even the details of administration to the king (On two occasions the king actually summoned and presided over a cabinet meeting, delivering on the first occasion a "discourse" which " took up near an hour in delivering"). The chief interest of this Government lies in its policy towards the American colonies, with which we have dealt elsewhere. With large majorities in both Houses (The king always took a very active interest in elections, but especially at this period. Thus one of the members for the city of London died in 1779; at " forty-two minutes past 6 p.m." on the same day that the member died the king wrote to Lord North about the vacancy. In the election of 1774, Lord North, acting for the king, bought the six seats in Cornwall which Lord Falmouth controlled, for 2500 guineas each, Lord North complaining that Lord Falmouth was "rather shabby in desiring guineas rather than pounds"; whilst at Windsor - which at that time was hostile to the ministry - the king had six houses, which he rented in the town, entered in the names of six of his servants so as to create six votes in his favour), with its policy approved by the nation, with the enthusiastic support of the Tories, and only a divided Whig opposition to attack it, the position of the ministry was for long unassailable. |
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