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HARVARD 
COLLEGE 
LIBRARY 




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HARVARD 
COLLEGE 
LIBRARY 




CHARLES JAMES FOX 



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CHARLES JAMES FOX,, 

A POLITICAL STUDY 



BY 



J. L. Le B. HAMMOND 



METHUEN & CO. 

36 ESSEX STREET W.C. 

LONDON 
1903 




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PREFACE 

The author of this volume is one of many readers in whom 
Sir George Trevelyan's Early Life of Charles James Fox 
excited a sentiment which it is perhaps not an exaggeration 
to describe as a personal afTection for the great Whig states- 
man. The fulfilment of Sir George Trevelyan's promise to 
continue the story of that life is awaited with eager expecta- 
tion. This book is in no sense a biography. It is an 
attempt to portray the great ideas Fox stood for, to vindi- 
cate the essential consistency of his career, and to appreciate 
the magnanimous inspirations he gave to politics. If the 
aim of the bodk is not kept in mind, its proportions may 
strike the reader as unjust. No biographer of Fox could 
dismiss his early political career with the scant notice given 
it in these pages ; in any study of the part he played in those 
large controversies that have a permanent interest, a pre- 
ponderating importance must be assigned to the history of 
the struggle with the King, to the moral issues of the French 
war, and to the details of a momentous chapter in the 
relations of England and Ireland. These questions call for 
a minute treatment in a presentation of Fox as the champion, 
during the frenzied years of panic, of government by public 
discussion, and as one of the few Whigs who anticipated the 
great Liberal doctrine of national rights. 

The writer wishes to thank Mr. G. P. Gooch, who was 
kind enough to read the book in MS., for many valuable 




viii CONTENTS 



CHAPTER III 

FOX AND THE KING 



PACE 



The intenml weakness of the Government due to Shelbume's position. 
Rockingham's death. Resignation of Burke and Fox as a protest 
against the King's influence in the Cabinet. The Coalition. The 
motives that prompted it. The real issue the King's authority. 
The King's control of Pitt in vital issues throughout his career. 
Fox right in his aims but wrong in his taptics. The public be- 
wildered and suspicious. The Coalition Government and the India 
Bill. The great debacle of March 17S4. Fox's account of his 
motives in 1796. Demoralising effect of the struggle alike on Pitt 
and on the Rockinghams . • 52 



CHAPTER IV 

PARUAMENTARY REFORM 

Pitt drops Reform after one effort in Parliament in 1785. Difference 
between Pitt's view and Fox*s view of Reform. Fox on the strength 
of Democracy. The Reform Agitation suspended. Public opinion 
listless. The Opposition disqualified by its heterogeneous char- 
acter. With the Revolution public interest revives and a compact 
Opposition emerges from the quarrel between Fox and Burke. 
Grey's two Motions in 1793 and 1797. The difference between Fox 
and the Democrats. Fox against universal suffrage because it would 
enfranchise men who were not independent. His conception of 
dtisenship. Was Reform urgent ? The decay of the Yeoman class 
in England at the end of the eighteenth centuiy . •73 



CHAPTER V 

THE REIGN OF TERROR 

Comparison of the Agitation of 1793-94 with that of i7Sa A different 
social class, bat methods the same. The Government case destroyed 
by the great trials of 1794. Lord Roseberys justification. The 
Prosecutions in England and Scotland. The Coercion Bills of 1795. 
The Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The hard lot of the 



CONTENTS ix 



PACB 



Refbnners. Coleridge's letter on Thelwall. The efforts of the 
Opposition in Parliament Attempts to promote agitation in the 
oonntxy. Fox retires in 1797. His speech at the Whig Club on the 
Sovereignty of the People. His name removed from the Privy 
Coandl. Characteristics of his speeches against the Coercion . icx> 



CHAPTER VI 

FOX AND IRELAND 
I 

The rise of the national spirit in the seventies. Grattan's work. The 
Volunteer movement. The great triumph of 1782. Fox's attitude. 
Hb argument that no country was entitled to hold the sovereignty 
of another against its will. Proposal for commercial treaty declined 
by Grattan. The unfortunate agitation of 1782-83 over the reality 
of the concession of independence. Its results. The question settled 
by explicit Act of the British Parliament. The armed Convention of 
Volunteers. Fox firm against concession to men in arms. The Con- 
vention disperses ....... 146 



CHAPTER VII 

FOX AND IRELAND 

II . 

The importance of the Election of 1784 to Ireland. The delicate situation 
created by the arrangements of 1782 illustrated in the Regency crisis. 
Pitt's great commercial scheme. Fox's acrimonious opposition. The 
scheme drops. The keynote to Pitt's Irish policy his dread of an 
independent Ireland. Hence his resistance to reform and his flagrant 
increase of corruption. Concessions to Catholics in 1792 and 1793 
designed to avert more formidable danger of Parliamentary Reform. 
Pitt's treatment of the Catholic question before and after the Union 
shows that he subordinated everything to the necessity of arresting the 
morsd independence of Ireland. Fox's policy the exact opposite. 
His ideal an Ireland governed by Irish opinion and liberated from the 
Protestant ascendancy. His attitude to the Fitzwilliam incident and 
the Union. Justified in his view that English opinion and not Irish 
opinion was the real bar to Catholic emancipation. Fox unlike many 
Whigs who were Whigs everywhere except in Ireland . .167 



CHARLES JAMES FOX 



CHAPTER I 



PRELIMINARY 



Fox's youthful escapades in pleasure and politics. His education. 
His love of letters. His views about women. His friendships. 
His oratory. Disadvantages as a leader, (i) his private reputation, 
(2) his friendship with the Prince of Wales, (3) his recklessness, 
(4) his mistakes in tactics, e,g, the Coalition. His advocacy of 
unpopular causes not fatal to his influence. His characteristics, 
(i) courage, (2) high sense of honour and duty, (3) constancy. His 
relation to domestic problems. His attitude to Free Trade. The 
great champion of national justice and respect for freedom. 

MSOREL has remarked that public morality was low 
• in England, and private morality amongst public 
men still lower, during the years that immediately preceded 
the French Revolution. Fox's escapades must fill many pages 
in any survey of the follies and the dissolute manners of those 
days. It is a subject no true admirer of Fox would wish to 
shirk, and no man was less lenient in speaking of it, less 
anxious to defend it by prevarications or evasion, or less 
ready to brazen it out in a nonchalant effrontery than Fox 
himself in his later life. Concealment, indeed, would have 
been out of the question when a young man helps to gamble 
away a hundred and forty thousand pounds before he is 
twenty-four, attends so regularly at Newmarket as to make 
for himself the reputation of being the first handicapper in 
the country, keeps a faro bank that is the talk of the town, 




2 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

and lives his disordered life in the public eye, and, one might 
almost add, the public ear, even if there had been no George 
Selwyn to dog his young friend's follies, and no record at 
Brooks's to chronicle the ruinous bargains that he made 
with his whims and pleasures. If it was a mystery where 
Burke found the money to buy Beaconsfield, it was no 
mystery to anyone where Fox disposed of the thousands his 
father had amassed as Paymaster. The echoes of his youth 
clattered at his heels throughout his career, and his con- 
science and his enemies alike took care he should hear them. 
Fox's first interventions in public aflfairs were in character 
with the furious energy he displayed in that madcap dance 
of disedifying revels. He went into Parliament when he 
was twenty, with only two principles of public duty: the 
first, loyalty to what his father thought and wished; the 
second, the satisfaction of that self-willed and undisciplined 
nature his father had taken so much pains to develop. His 
father destined him for the Court party, and to the Court 
party he belonged, as far as his impatience of anything like 
restraint or caution would allow any party to claim or to 
use him. His natural eloquence made him a powerful 
recruit, but his headstrong and impetuous temperament, 
quick to mutiny, and always prompt to usurp the direction 
of affairs, made him the embarrassment of his leaders, and 
to his adversaries the most odious and full-blooded incarna- 
tion of the doctrine they hated. He played the "enfant 
terrible " to the insolence of a domineering faction. He was 
never so happy as he was when trying to underline just 
those issues his wiser leaders wished to leave obscure, and 
provoking encounters which prudence would have avoided. 
It was his quarrel with North, that North did not ride the 
doctrine of arbitrary and masterful government hard enough 
or far enough, and that there was something incomplete in 
his love of domestic violence, and his hatred of constitutional 
restraints. But self-will was not the only quality that was 
stronger in his nature than a dim sense of party discipline. 
Affection for his father was a supreme passion, and the first 



PRELIMINARY 3 

time he left North's Ministry it was to take up his family 
quarrel with the Court, and to oppose the Royal Marriage 
Act on which George had set his heart. It is a curious 
reflection that it was the speech in which he opposed.ihat 
Act that firet revealed his extraordinary gifts, and that even 
when a Minister in the Court party, Fox was^Jiated.and 
dre aded b y tbc K^Qfr *' Whethef Tie^aBetted the Royal 
policy or whether he thwarted it. Fox never managed to 
please his sovereign. The very heat with which the rising 
orator attacked Wilkes, and defended Lowther, was ominous 
and alarming in the eyes of a ruler who cherished every 
abuse in Church and State, and who felt an uneasy presenti- 
ment that to whatever purpose fire might be put for the 
moment, its ultimate destination was to burn rubbish."^ 

The father whom Fox loved with such a warm heart is 
scarcely less remembered for his corruption in the House of 
Commons, than for the infinite trouble he took to make his 
son a prodigy of selfishness and vanity. When he was 
eight years old, it was left to Fox to decide whether he 
would go to school at Wandsworth or Eton, and his father 
announced the result in one of the most characteristic 
sentences recorded in that astonishing family history. 
"Charles," he wrote, "determines to go to Wandsworth." 
Afterwards he decided to go to Eton, and again his decision 
was final ; when he was fourteen he was taken from school 
to the continent by his father, and taught all the mysteries 
of equivocal delights and self-indulgence in those places 
which boasted it their chief art that they made pleasure 
soft and various and voluptuous, and their chief attraction 
that their visitors pursued it without scruple or qualm. 
Fox of his own accord returned to Eton four months later, 
to distribute amongst his schoolfellows something of the 
mischief he had learnt. At Oxford, whither he went at 
fifteen. Fox made for himself a reputation for solid industry, 
which he treasured with pride in his later years, and de- 
veloped an unexpected enthusiasm for mathematics. Once 

* Sir George Trevelyan, Earfy Life oj C, /, Fox^ p. 490. 




4 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

again his father interfered, dragged him against his will from 
Oxford to the continent, and brought him back into contact 
with that life of dissipation and extravagance which the 
young man followed with all the fiery energy of his nature. 
No man has ever owed such a sinister debt to a father who 
loved him passionately. Young Pitt was taught by Chatham 
to declaim from a high chair to an imaginary audience of 
admirers. Lord Holland brought up Pitt's great rival as if 
no art were so indispensable or so elusive as the art of self- 
indulgence, and no emulation in life higher or better worth 
a struggle than a headlong rivalry in the chase of pleasure. 

Yet Fox in his worst days escaped the moral slavery 
that sooner or later overtakes almost all such careers. 
The particular pleasures he pursued are judged harshly and 
shunned and dreaded, not because such vices are necessarily 
the worst vices, for it is obvious that men may combine 
with an outward independence and composure a soul that is 
held in the tight grip of shameful passions, but because these 
habits tend to invade and overspread a man's nature until 
they become not merely a disturbing fragment of his life 
but the whole of it, stifling every generous sentiment and 
withering up every other taste and moral growth. Fox was 
dissolute, but not decadent In the midst of his wildest 
excesses, the spring of his prodigality was always an exuberant 
energy, not a sapless softness. His hilarity was as remote 
as possible from the dead laughter of the wan and morbid 
voluptuary; if he sowed his wild oats as fast, and as 
widely as a man can, he was very diflferent from such 
men as George Selwyn, who had no other oats to sow, and 
who lived out a life of monotonous bondage to an ignoble 
routine. It is impossible to place Fox or Fitzpatrick in the 
setting of that awful picture Diderot drew in Rameau's 
Nephew of the noisome wretchedness and corruption of a 
certain little world in Paris, where human nature was not 
only perverted or disarranged, but where everything that 
was healthy and robust had been suffocated and destroyed 
by the poisonous exhalations of the rank rottenness of 



PRELIMINARY 5 

society^ and sycophant and patron had reproduced the most 
horrible pestilence of Juvenal's Rome. Fox and Fitzpatrick 
never exiled their natural affections, and however riotously 
they lived, they always lived by their own standards of 
honour. They would no more have thought of telling a 
lie in earnest, or cheating at cards, in a society where that 
exercise was not unfrequently a profession, than they would 
have thought of declining a duel, or shrinking the challenge 
to brave the icy dangers of the Punch Bowl at Killarney. 
If they were less ingenuous than Harry Warrington, they 
had none of the craft of a Lord Castlewood. They were 
wild, boisterously extravagant, and insolently defiant of con- 
ventions and proprieties. They set a mischievous example, 
and scared every parent whose son came within the orbit 
of their fascinations. Such conduct is selfishness, and it 
spreads misery and ruin, but at least in this case it was not 
a selfishness that was cynical or brutal. 

These two men had one great saving gift: they had 
other household gods than excitement and adventure and 
wanton pleasure. The well-known story of Fox, that after 
an evening's gambling had ruined him, his friends (who 
feared that he might lay violent hands on himself) found 
him at home, buried deep in Herodotus, may be read as an 
allegory of his life. Fox might travel from Paris to Lyons 
to buy the most gorgeous waistcoat in France, but he carried 
Ariosto in his pocket, and in all that wild round of the 
Baiaes and the Capuas of Europe he found time to master 
Dante, to become one of the best linguists of his time, and 
to collect other treasures than ladies' keepsakes and flashing 
slippers, and the nomad fame of a reckless libertine. " For 
God's sake," he wrote from Italy to Fitzpatrick, "learn 
Italian as fast as you can to read Ariosto. There is more 
good poetry in Italian than in all other languages I under- 
stand put together. Make haste and read all these things 
that you may be fit to talk to Christians." In the boy who 
wrote that letter at eighteen, the pleasures to which his 
father had apprenticed him could never become a permanent 







6 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

tyranny and obsession, and to turn over the sympathetic 
pages in which Sir George Trevelyan describes Fox's passion 
for poetry, or his own letters to his nephew with their dis- 
cussions of literature, and scholarship, and art, or the de- 
lightful anecdotes that lived in the tenacious memory of 
Samuel Rogers, is to understand how from an education 
that ought to have produced a man like Harry Richmond's 
father. Fox rescued and carried off in triumph a character 
unsurpassed for constancy, and moral vigour, and mag- 
nanimous and chivalrous self-sacrifice. 

The love of poetry and scholarship was from the first 
a powerful element in Fox's nature. He loved and 
cherished all the great achievements of the mind even in 
the days when he seemed bent on making as poor and torn 
a thing as he could of his own life, and his own splendid 
talents. As he grew older the supremacy of those tastes 
was developed and established, though long after he joined 
the Rockinghams he still gambled. Just as in his unre- 
generate days he forgot the catastrophes that had beggared 
him so long as he had a play of Euripides within reach, 
so in his older days he found a very pleasant Lethe for 
crushing disappointments that would have made most men 
crabbed and morose, in the charms of his wife, his books, 
and his garden. In 1774 he was elected to the Literary 
Club, and associated with Dr. Johnson, and Gibbon, and 
Garrick, and Reynolds. He was always happy talking of 
the poets with scholars, and still happier as Dr. Johnson 
once complained, listening to men whose opinions he re- 
spected more than his own. In poetry he was for his time 
a singularly delicate critic. He worshipped Shakespeare, 
and Spenser, and Chaucer. Euripides he loved as passion- 
ately as he loved freedom, for he loved his very faults. 
"Euripides is the most precious thing left to us, and the 
most like Shakespeare," he once said to his nephew. 
During the brief time he was in office in 1806, he came into 
his rooms one morning, and found his secretary reading the 
Alcestis^ a play he had been unable to buy in Ireland, and 



PRELIMINARY 7 

he waited to see how Trotter would be aflfected by that 
passage which he never CQuld read himself without emotion, 
in which Alcestis takes farewell of her bridal - chamber. 
Homer he read incessantly, and with a rare insight. For 
Virgil he had a great admiration, and Mr. Lecky tells a 
story handed down by oral tradition, how the best scholar 
in the House of Commons leant across the floor of the 
House to prompt Pitt through a quotation from Virgil, at 
a time when their hostilities were particularly violent and 
unmeasured. In the early days of the illness which killed 
him, he had the fourth i£neid read over to him again and 
again by his secretary, and when he lay dying he asked 
Lord Holland to repeat that passionate prayer, with which 
the old and stricken Evander sent Pallas to the fatal battle. 

This great and imperishable world of dead men's thoughts 
was as real to him as the world of pleasure ever was, or 
the world of politics was ever to be. Rogers tells how one 
morning when he was in office, he was talking so eagerly 
about Dryden that he forgot he had to attend the King's 
levee, and only recollected it so late that he had to go in 
his ordinary clothes, reassuring himself with reflections that 
the King was too blind to notice how he was dressed. He 
would sooner have forgiven Pitt for his meanness over the 
Westminster Scrutiny than he would have forgiven Godwin 
for disparaging Racine. "It puts me quite into a passion : 
je veux contre eux faire un jour un gros livre, as Voltaire 
says. Even Dryden, who speaks with proper respect of 
Comeille and Moliire vilipends Racine. If ever I publish 
my edition of his works I will give it to him for it, you 
may depend." He was as anxious to know how Wakefield 
defended Porson's emendations, as he had ever been to 
know the odds at Newmarket, and one of his last acts 
was to read Crabbe's poems in manuscript. It was not 
surprising that a statesman whose recreations for the last 
years of his life were the library and the garden, thought 
the right thing to look to in appointing Irish Bishops was 
classical erudition, or that he considered a study of Euripides 




8 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

was the best preparation for public speaking, or that he said 
if he had a son, he would make him write Latin verses as 
the best way of learning the meaning of words. Had Fox 
not been in opposition almost all his life, scholarship and 
literature would have received a very different welcome in 
high places from the cold shoulder Pitt gave them. In art 
Fox had as keen opinions as in literature, and he adored all 
those masters, such as Guido and Domenichino, whose stars 
were in the ascendant in the eighteenth century, though they 
have since fallen a long distance from those heights in the 
public admiration. Modem taste would find more to its 
fancy in his judgment that Sir Joshua was at his worst in 
the grand style. It is impossible to imagine a more delightful 
life than the tranquil life Fox led in retirement with his 
books and his garden, talking to his neighbours about their 
turnips, and reading his favourite poets to a wife whom he 
always treated as his intellectual equal. Sir George Trevelyan 
has calculated that in a single winter, apart from his in- 
dustrious private studies, he read aloud to Mrs. Fox, Tasso, 
Ariosto, Milton, Spenser, Lucretius, Virgil, Homer, and 
Apollonius Rhodius. " Oh, how I wish," he once said, " that 
I could make up my mind to think it right to devote all 
the remaining part of my life to such subjects, and such 
only, and indeed I rather think I shall ; and yet, if there 
were a chance of re-establishing a strong Whig party, 
(however composed) — 

Non adeo has exosa manus victoria fiigit, 
Ut tanta quicquam pro spe tentare recusem." 

A glimpse into that life of Fox's letters is enough to 
repel the monstrous calumny quoted by Mr. Lecky, as the 
summary given by one of Fox's friends of his career. " He 
• had three passions — women, play, and politics. Yet he 
never formed a creditable connection with a woman. He 
squandered all his means at the gaming table, and except 
for eleven months, he was invariably in opposition." Sir 
George Trevelyan, who will not be accused of drawing down 



PRELIMINARY 9 

the curtain over Fox's escapades, and who does not pretend 
that his life as a young man was stricter than that of his 
boon companions, has shown that no man was more 
chivahx>us or more high-toned in his mode of thinking 
about women. He loved Homer "because he spoke well 
of women." In the House of Commons, whether Tory or 
Whig, he always stood between women and the cruel in- 
equalities of his time, such as the harsh law that punished 
the mother of an illegitimate child, and the brutal practice 
of burning women for the crime of coining, and when he 
stated his reasons against women's suffrage, reasons, which, 
under the conditions of the day, were good and valid, he 
repudiated with warmth the notion of the inferiority of 
women's judgment. When his mistress became his wife, he 
was the most unselfish and devoted of husbands. To argue 
that gambling was the ruling passion of his life, is to suggest 
that a habit which he abandoned before he was forty was 
more stubborn and enduring than a habit that was lifelong 
and ineradicable, and that his love of play survived his love 
of literature. 

There is one consideration that disperses that harsh and 
distorted view of Fox more effectually than the facts of his 
life or the evidence of the letters in which he spoke his 
mind, without restraint or equivocation. A worthless char- 
acter could never have won the friends that Fox made and 
kept Burke was not the man to largess his friendship, 
and he loved Fox with an affection that outlived in aliena- 
tion the days when they were comrades in arms in hard 
fought and disastrous warfare. Gibbon, who was hardly ever 
in his life in Fox's lobby, and hated most of his opinions, 
delighted in his society, and said of him : " Perhaps no 
human being was ever more perfectly exempt from the taint 
of malevolence, vanity, or falsehood." Dr. Johnson spon- 
taneously acknowledged him as his friend. The devotion 
he inspired in his followers had something of the temper of 
fanaticism. " There are only forty of them," said Thurlow, 
"but they would all be hung for Fox." Fitzpatrick, who 




10 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

was like a brother to him, was a singularly high-minded and 
chivalrous character. Fitzwilliam, a most honourable man 
who broke from his party, loved Fox as tenderly as Grey, 
a most honourable man who remained in the party. His 
example and his memory were idolised by Romilly and 
Francis Homer, and no man could want a finer laudation 
from a finer laudator than Fox received from Grattan : " A 
splendid authority and a great man ; his name excites 
tenderness and wonder; to do justice to that immortal 
person you must not limit your view to this country; his 
genius was not confined to England ; it acted three hundred 
miles ofT in breaking the chains of Ireland; it was seen 
three thousand miles ofT in communicating freedom to the 
Americans; it was visible, I know not how far ofT, in 
ameliorating the condition of the Indian ; it was discernible 
on the coast of Africa in accomplishing the abolition of the 
slave trade. You are to measure the magnitude of his mind 
by parallels of latitude. His heart was as soft as that of a 
woman; his intellect was adamant; his weaknesses were 
virtues; they protected him against the hard habit of a 
politician, and assisted nature to make him amiable and 
interesting." * 

There have indeed been few men to whom the adjective 
magnanimous could be so justly applied. Fox escaped all 
that is little in friendship and in enmity : his method of war- 
fare was never petty. During his visit to Paris in 1802 he 
impressed everyone with his bearing as a great English- 
man. Few passages describe him better than the account 
given by Madame Junot of his distress and indignation 
when at a French dinner -table someone put into Pitt's 
mouth a brutal expression about the French army in Egypt. 
" M. Fox change de physionomie avec une rapidit(^ que 
Ton ne peut d&rire. Ce n'^tait plus le tribun, Ic chef de 
Topposition de I'Angleterre, c'^tait le fr^re de M. Pitt, le 
secourant de sa parole au milieu d*un cercle d'ennemis, 
comme il Taurait secouru de son bras s'il Teut trouv6 seul 

' S/euh on IVar with Frtknct^ May 18 1 5, toI. iv. p. 382. 



PRELIMINARY 11 

attaqu^ par plusieurs." ^ He had good reasons for disliking 
Home Tooke, yet at a time when he hated going to London, 
he made the journey expressly in order to support Tooke*s 
claims to sit in the House of Commons although he was in 
orders. Perhaps the most complete triumph in his life of 
his sense of what he owed to respect for his mind and to 
the claims of an exacting sincerity in politics, was his 
action in opposing the motion to honour Pitt's memory 
in terms that spoke of him as an excellent statesman. 
With Fox's conduct on that occasion it is interesting to 
compare the message Burke sent from his deathbed to Fox 
himself. " Mrs. Burke presents her compliments to Mr. 
Fox, and thanks him for his obliging inquiries. Mrs. Burke 
communicated his letter to Mr. Burke, and by his desire 
has to inform Mr. Fox that it has cost Mr. Burke the most 
heartfelt pain to obey the stem voice of his duty in rending 
asunder a long friendship, but that he deemed this sacrifice 
necessary ; that his principles continue the same ; and that 
in whatever of life may yet remain to him, he conceives that 
he must look to others and not to himself. Mr. Burke is 
convinced that the principles which he has endeavoured to 
maintain are necessary to the welfare and dignity of his 
country, and that these principles can be enforced only by 
the general persuasion of his sincerity." It was a letter 
painful to write and painful to read, but it did honour to 
Burke and to Fox alike. 

Fox's intellectual pretensions have suffered from the 
constant and inevitable comparison with Burke, one of the 
greatest minds that were ever occupied with public affairs. 
The fragment of history which Fox wrote, and Lord Holland 
published, certainly did not add to his reputation except for 
conscientious exactness and thoroughness in his search after 
facts, and a fastidiousness in style which meant infinite pains 
and discipline. Fox's wisdom lay in a.SBacious_aad..large- 
hearted^liberalism, such as is to be found a century later 
in very few of the men who lay claim to that quality. His 

* Mimcires ae la Dtuhesse dCAbrantes^ vol. xiv. p. 294. 




12 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

speeches, with few exceptions, were the expression of that 
temper in all the varying and tangled conditions of human 
circumstance. De Quincey's disparagement of Fox by com- 
parison not only with Burke but with Windham, need not 
concern us very much, but it is curious to notice Hazlitt's 
contrast between B urke's " ifnagrjpativ#* " g^niin^ ^p^ Frfcv'g 
" practical " genius, and the particularly unfortunate example 
he gives o^ die contrast Hazlitt describes Burke as watching 
in the French war the passions of men unfolding themselves 
in new situations, and Fox as dogging the steps of the allies 
with his sutler's bag, his muster-roll, and his army estimates 
at his back. '' He said, you have only fifty thousand troops, 
the enemy have a hundred thousand, this place is dismantled, 
it can make no resistance: your troops were beaten last 
year, they must therefore be disheartened this." An apt 
speech to put into Fox's mouth in order to point Hazlitt's 
antithesis, but about as unrepresentative a speech as could 
be imagined. The truth is that in their calculations of the 
French Revolutionary war both Fox and Burke argued 
entirely from the spiritual character of the conflict It was 
/ Burke's a yg^ip^^nt; t^^^ if you could create and col lect a 

- great and gr#>n^g1ji>Q|hiiclagm, Q^jjfp ai^gf^r^ anH HUiQi^^ 

for order and monar( ;; h y , a p4 th 't golemn ^nti q^itie& JaLE^rope> 
you could ■caiah4hfr F» nd i - Revolution. It was Fox's argu- 

; ment that the moral energy of the passion for independence 
and f or s elPexpressiori. tlie national will of France, was a 
force so terrible that it i^as jqle to. Jtalk^of snhdning the 
sweep and play of its enthusiasm by any diplomatic, cpm- 

v.binatioQS. or by arraying against it a power derived from 
any impulse that was less permanent or less truly universal. 
The speech Hazlitt puts into Fox's mouth is not Fox's 
speech at all, it is the other side of Pitt's mechanical argu- 
ments for the war. Pitt slept on an easy pillow as he 
dreamt of France bankrupt, her finances exhausted, and her 
population ravaged by the war. Statistics, estimates, and 
budgets were his right arm and consolation ; in the minds 
of Fox and Burke alike they played a very small part on 



PRELIMINARY 13 

tfiat heroic battleground of passion and armed realities. 
Fox's common-sense was a conspicuous quality, and it made 
his general ideas luminous and phosphorescent; but they 
remained general ideas, general ideas of citizenship, of 
rdigious tolerance, of national rights, that he bequeathed to 
Liberalism, though the power with which he reinforced them 
by concrete argument sometimes obscured the truth that he 
approached the particular with the majesty of the universal. 
In one excellence, at any rate, and as long as nations 
are governed from elsewhere than from the study, it cannot 
remain a minor excellence. Fox's eminence is undisputed. 
Amongst the crowned sovereigns of debate he sits on a 
lofty throne. He grew by degrees, said Burke, in the 
hour of their quarrel, to fee the most wonderful debater the 
world ever saw, and Burke's judgment was scarcely thought 
exaggerated by the generation that heard him. Fox had 
nothing of Pitt's faultless regularity, his self-control and 
self-possession, his graceful and rolling harmonies, his gene- 
ralship in the marshalling of facts and arguments. His 
gestures were ungainly, his voice harsh, and between his 
impetuous eloquence and Pitt's ordered strategy there was 
all the difference that distinguished the Revolutionary levie 
en masse from the tyrant-led mercenaries marching on the 
French frontiers with the precision and the minute drill of 
the age of Frederic the Great. " It is no wonder that this 
difference between the rapidity of his feelings and the formal 
roundabout method of communicating them, should produce 
some disorder in his frame, that the throng of his ideas 
should try to overleap the narrow boundaries which confined 
them, and tumultuously break down their prison-doors, in- 
stead of waiting to be let out one by one, and following 
patiently at due intervals and with mock dignity, like poor 
dependants, in the train of words : — that he should express 
himself in hurried sentences, in involuntary exclamations, by 
vehement gestures, by sudden starts and bursts of passions. 
Everything showed the agitation of his mind. His tongue 
faltered, his voice became almost suffocated, and his face 




14 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

was bathed in tears. He was lost in the magnitude of his 
subject He reeled and staggered under the load of feeling 
which oppressed him. He rolled like the sea beaten by a 
tempest" * 

Pitt from his training and from his career came to regard 
the House of Commons as the supreme court of human 
justice, and the mastery of the House of Commons as 
almost the supreme end of human existence, the architectonic 
art Fox's personality was too impetuous to allow speech 
to be to him what it was to Pitt, the instrument of his 
ambitions; speech was for him the flood of his released 
ideas rather than the cold creation of his mind. More than 
any of his contemporaries he revealed himself transparently 
in his oratory, revealed his magnanimity, his generosity, his 
love of England, his implacable hatred of mean tyranny, his 
extravagances, his unbridled temper. Everyone remembers 
Aristotle's argument about the relations between political 
and military characteristics in states, — ^how oligarchies should 
excel in cavalry and hoplites, and democracies in light troops. 
There is a certain correspondence between the style of 
eloquence and the temperament of the orator. At any rate 
no man could have heard Fox's voice as he thundered 
against English misrule in India, or against Napoleon's 
perfidy and oppression in Switzerland and Holland, or 
against Prussia's treacherous rapacity in Poland, without 
feeling that tyranny could never have made that splendid 
storm of sound its own. It was eloquence very unlike that 
of Guido's counsel in the court at Rome, 

"Language that goes, goes easy as a glove, 
O'er good and evil, smoothens both to one." 

Not that Fox's speeches were merely a series of Philippics, 
for in that case he would not have been a great debater. 
They excelled in sharp-edged satire, in good-humoured 
raillery, in agile play with error, in a rare gift of penetration 
and of rapid discernment, which scattered like the morning 

» Hazlitt, CcUeeied Works, toI. Ui. p; 338. 



PRELIMINARY 15 

wind all the misty sophistries and confusions that collect in 
a debate. His consummate talent for stating a case with 
simplicity, clearness and a force that at first sight made it 
seem unanswerable was applied not less happily to his 
opponents' arguments than to his own. 

With all these gifts and fascinations of character and 
intellect, Fox only held office as a Liberal for eleven months, 
and judged by superficial standards he was a failure as a 
party leader. He never won the public ear. Respected by 
his enemies, worshipped by his friends, and remembered with 
affection by the scattered champions of freedom throughout 
Europe,^ he was reg^ded with a diffidence and an admira- 
tion half ashamed of itself by the public that had watched 
his moral escapades with dismay and astonishment. His 
age was the age of the growth of the followers of Wesley, 
and the tightening of the sense of private virtue. "Sir," 
said Thurlow to the worthless Prince of Wales, " your father 
will continue to be a popular king, as long as he continues 
to go to Church every Sunday, and to be faithful to that 
ugly woman, your mother; but you. Sir, will never be 
popular." Most of his subjects would have thought it an 
unwelcome bargain if George had strayed from a single one 
of his private virtues, and had flung open a single lattice of 
that dark and stagnant mind, where every notion that was 
mean and tyrannical was disciplined and nourished, to the 
wide daylight of freedom and integrity in public affairs, or 
a sense of the grandeur of a moral leadership in the enthu- 
siasms stirring the minds of men. He longed to subdue 
America ; he loved corruption ; he fondled every abuse ; he 
wished that no voice should be heard in his dominions but 
"the mingled voice of slavery and command"; his notion of 
government was arbitrary power, and he has left it on record 
that he would rather satisfy his hatred of Chatham, than save 
the Empire by Chatham's prowess ; his mind was a perpetual 
darkness of public injustice and cruelty and wrong. But he 

' Note an interesting account in Trotter's Memoir of Fox*s meeting with 
Kosdosko in Paris in 1802. 




16 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

was a correct husband, and a Christian of devout and seemly 
observance and an intolerant temper. Even to Wilberforce 
it was more important to be governed by a statesman whose 
private life was regular and strict than by a statesman who 
hated oppression and public iniquity. It is easy to imagine 
what a figure Fox, the retired bravo of gay and reckless 
fashion, presented to those grave and austere men, with their 
projects of enforcing the sanctity of Sunday by penal laws, 
with their rigorous asceticism, and their overbearing and 
hard-featured theology; a politician who played cards on 
Sunday could not expect much indulgence from men who 
thought it a cardinal sin in a moment of national peril, to 
employ Sunday in drilling volunteers. What these men did 
in reviving a certain pristine robustness in English life 
cannot easily be exaggerated, but their influence on public 
affairs was seldom on the side of justice and liberty. Wesley 
himself believed in coercing America, and he clung to the Irish 
Penal Code. Fox, who was outlawed by these guardians of 
public and private morality, had a virtue which is rare in 
politicians ; he brought to national policy an exacting sense 
of honour and good faith, a courage in rebuking national 
wrong, and a hatred of all the sophistries and sedatives which 
act as hemlock on the consciences of men who in private 
affairs are scrupulous and honest Few men are as high- 
toned in their judgment on public issues as they are high- 
principled in their private conduct, and there was no time 
when a mind that was sensitive for the public fame of 
England was a more precious possession than it was in the 
tumbling confusion of the foreign issues of George's reign. 

If his own habits scandalised the public. Fox suffered 
both in popularity and in character from his long and 
intimate association with the Prince of Wales. The Prince 
was a very attractive and engaging person, whose charms 
won for him many friends, though his inconstancy forbade 
him to be true to any of them. The intimacy of the great 
Whig leaders with this agreeable profligate was a grave 
misfortune to their party. To that intimacy were largely 



PRELIMINARY 17 

doe the factious inconsistencies into which Fox and Burke 
betrayed over the Regency question, an escapade in 
opportunism that brought great and deserved dis- 
credit on the quondam champions of popular control. The 
constitutional issues raised in the controversy between Fox 
and Pitt have never been decided, but it remains lamentably 
true that Fox and his party looked to the Prince to restore ,, 
them to power, and not even the just rancour with which 
they remembered how the King had treated them can 
excuse their readiness to resort to a method of revenging 
themselves on the King and on the public that was irrecon- 
cilable with their own doctrines. His friendship with the 
Prince of Wales led Fox into an embarrassment in which he 
can scarcely be acquitted of something worse than im- 
prudence. The Prince authorised Fox to deny that he was 
married to Mrs. Fitzherbert, a Catholic lady, at a time 
when rumour was persistent, and the Prince was applying to 
Parliament to sanction an increase in his allowance. Fox 
afterwards found that he had been deceived. To retract 
the statement involved all kinds of grave and critical issues, 
and the arguments for silence are obvious. Yet it is difficult 
to be persuaded that it was an honourable thing, however 
strong the pressure of reasons of state, to allow the House 
and the country to retain an impression Fox now knew to 
be false, affecting as it did the honour of Mrs. Fitzherbert, 
particularly as during the Regency debates, when Fox was 
ill and away, Dundas quoted his declaration on the subject 
as final. On discovering the truth Fox broke off his 
relations with the Prince, but unhappily only for a year, and 
it was not until the Revolution that he was really emanci- 
pated from that malignant star. Few enmities could have 
been as fatal to Fox's influence in the country as the friend- 
ship of Carlton House. Pitt bore a private character that 
was conspicuously blameless. Fox's irregularities were 
notorious. Pitt was heir to the lustre of a great and 
victorious name. Fox to the ignoble corruption that accom- 
panied the Peace of Paris. The contrast was already 




18 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

damaging enough before the public came to know Pitt as 
the statesman who had rescued a popular and respected 
King, and Fox as the bosom friend of a Prince who was 
known to be a gambler, a drunkard, and a rebel against the 
King's will, and of whom it was generally believed that he 
parodied, before an audience of his boon companions, the 
dreadful ravings of his father's delirium. 

Another serious infirmity was Fox's recklessness in 
debate. If he had been gifted with Pitt's sangfroid, his 
elaborate caution, his habit of feeling his way to the mind 
of the House of Commons, he would have avoided some of 
his chief embarrassments. He carried his heart on his 
sleeve, whilst Pitt left it doubtful whether he had a heart 
at all. No one who has read the debates of the critical 
days of the winter of 1783-84, or those of the great emer- 
gency of 1788, can doubt that if the art of managing the 
House of Commons were the sole art of politics, Pitt would 
have deserved all his successes, and Fox would have de- 
served all his failures. Pitt never lost his composure, and his 
skill and patient tact carried him through the most formid- 
able difficulties, whereas Fox, a great debater but not a 
great Parliamentary leader, threw away all his tactical 
advantages by his impetuous blunders. In this respect, 
it is true. Fox himself was not as great an offender as 
Burke, whose intemperate outbursts cost his party dear. 
In that pandemonium of folly and unworthy plausibilities, 
the Whigs' championship of the Prince of Wales on the 
Regency Bill, Burke was more reckless than anyone else, 
and everyone knows how on another occasion. Fox and 
Sheridan had to pull him down by his coat-tails when his 
fury was making a bad cause worse. It is important to 
remember Burke's character for ungovernable passion in 
debate, because the Whig leaders' neglect of him in all the 
Cabinets they formed, and the more numerous Cabinets they 
meditated forming, is one of the standing mysteries of the 
age. Is it to be attributed to that aristocratic exclusiveness 
which always hung about the Rockinghams as a party, and 




PRELIMINARY 19 

which Burke himself after all defended and praised more 
than most men ? Or is it due to the retinue of troublesome 
adventurers that formed Burke's train? Or is it to be 
explained on this very ground of Burke's rebellious and 
headstrong temper, his habit of flinging himself recklessly 
into the midst of indiscretions and angry follies, his im- 
practicability as a colleague, his aversions from those bargains 
with inferior minds that are the necessary condition of con- 
certed action in public affairs ? 

There is another characteristic not only of Fox, but of 
his times, that must not be overlooked in considering his 
pretensions to the gifts that are necessary to a leader. It is 
obvious that the success and the ominous and alarming con- 
sequences of the King's system of destroying parties, and the 
slowly-won doctrine of ministerial responsibility had a great 
psychological effect on the statesmen of the day. Fox was 
always haunted by the spectacle of Chatham's captivity and 
humiliation, that dreadful predicament of the Government of 
1766, in which the most masterful statesman in England was 
like a man striking blows, and giving orders in his sleep, 
paralysed, bewildered, and powerless. Burke and Fox had 
their own remedy for that evil, and these pages attempt to 
show that the great Coalition was not an act of faction, 
but a legitimate, if ill-advised application of that remedy. 
To men living in that atmosphere of Court intrigue two 
things seemed imperative, to restore and regenerate the 
party system, and to form one day an overwhelming adminis- 
tration able to defy and crush the King's conspiracies. 
Fox never took his eyes off that second method, and it led 
him into certain grave tactical mistakes. Throughout his 
career he was dominated by the notion that if once he could 
form a strong Ministry, he would give to English government 
a certain permanence and dignity in the eyes of Europe, and 
to the royal party its deathblow. Twice during North's 
Ministry there were suggestions of an accommodation with 
the Opposition, and in the first case Fox was clearly in 
favour of coming to terms. His letter to Rockingham in 




20 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

January 1779, and Richmond's letter to him of the following 
month, throw a very interesting light both on Fox's views of 
what was wanted, and also on his relations with the Rock- 
ingham party of which he was still formally independent^ 
Richmond's letter defending the refusal of the Rockinghams 
to entertain the rather shadowy overtures made by the agents 
of the Ministry is clear and convincing, and it is mournful 
to reflect how that resolute opponent of the Court learnt 
afterwards to embrace an illiberal and tyrannical policy. 

The letter Fox wrote to Rockingham shows how stroi)gly 
he felt that by taking office, and eliminating what Grattan 
would have called the ''notorious consciences," the Rock- 
inghams might obtain the control of policy. "You think you 
can best serve the country by continuing in a fruitless opposi- 
tion ; I think it impossible to serve it at all but by coming 
into power, and go even so far as to think it irreconcilable 
with the duty of a public man to refuse it, if offered to him 
in a manner consistent with his private honour, and so as to 
enable him to form fair hopes of doing essential service." 
This was Fox's opinion in 1779, and it was his opinion in 
the crisis of 1783. One ground of it was undoubtedly a 
natural self-confidence. Fox was no lounger or trifler in 
office: he never touched a card when he was a Whig 
Minister, and he threw himself into his administrative duties 
with a zeal and a punctuality that were infectious. He was 
the best informed politician on foreign affairs, and his 
despatches, his diplomacy, and his letter to Frederick in 
1784, are all characterised by great judgment and knowledge. 
It was not unreasonable for Fox to fancy that, with his 
commanding gifts, he would be the virtual master of a 
ministry of accommodations. At any rate that overwhelm- 
ing desire to form an effective ministry, a desire that must 
be considered in relation to the tactics and the conspiracies 
of the Court, explains Fox's readiness to think of a com- 
promise in 1779, his coalition with North in 1783, and the 
very mischievous mistake he made in 1806 of incorporating 

' MitMfialt amd C^rrtspomdenct^ voL i. pp. ao7, aij. 



PRELIMINARY 21 

Addington and the Chief Justice in his Cabinet — in the one 
case a politician of contrary principles, in the other an 
official who ought clearly never to be identified with the 
Executive Grovemment Homer did not exaggerate when 
be called the nomination of Ellenborough to a seat in the 
Cabinet, a " foul stain " on the new system of government. 

Many persons would argue that there was a force 
stronger than any of these in the elements that opposed 
and barred Fox's political career. They would say that 
he offended national sentiment mortally. It is true Fox 
never represented popular opinion. His d octrine of Parlia- 
mentary control of the King was not the doctrine of Ifiis 
own times, and in their resis tance t o that extreme theory 
ShelbunielCnd PilLiladThe general opinion of the nation 
bdiind them. But the alienation of public sentiment from 
Fox is often exaggerated. It is sometimes suggested that 
Fox's heroic opposition to the war with the French Revolu- 
tion had destroyed the power of his school of Whigs for 
a generation. Fox was of course for a time in sharp 
conflict with the mass of English opinion. A man who 
towers above a rabble of those passions that break through 
the " light sleep of revenge " cannot expect to become the 
idol of the nation. To hold the public confidence in 1794, 
a statesman had to humour the fable that England and 
Scotland were in mortal danger from domestic disaffection ; 
he had to accept all the arbitrary ideas of government that 
terror had set free from their prison-house of obscurity and 
neglect; he had to catch up and invigorate all the rabid 
and bloody phrases that belonged to a crusade for religion 
and the sacredness of social order, and the awe men felt 
for their customs and their habits, when they thought ther 
selves on the verge of the annihilating unknown. At 
time when Burke held it a dishonour to England 
French prisoners should be taken alive, it is easy to « 
what ferocity men drew in with their breath in commo 
Not all the prizes of heaven and earth would 
pensated Fox for such a transformation of his natu: 



y 




/ 

/ 



22 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

could not lower his tone or abate his splendid anger. But 
it is not true to say that Fox had doomed himself or his 
party to lifelong impotence by that valiant sincerity. When 
^ Pitt died in 1806 it was not to Windham, the apostle of 
Burke, or to Grenville, Pitt's right hand in the tyranny of 
I794> or to Addington, the favourite of the Court, that 
men looked for the defence of England: it was to Fox, 
the leader of that forlorn minority in 1794. The country, 
as Romilly said, had already recovered from its delusion 
about him, and the poem Wordsworth wrote during Fox's 
last illness is a lasting record of the emotions with which 
men who had rejected his opinions mourned the loss of a 
great power in England. There is little doubt that if Fox 
had lived, he would have played the part Pitt had played 
in the earlier war ; he would have rallied and concentrated 
the national resolution and tenacity for the great struggle 
with Napoleon, and he would have done it without pro- 
scribing freedom abroad, or silencing it at home. Lord 
Holland's misplaced admiration for Napoleon, and the 
behaviour of certain Whigs during the great war after 
Fox's death have made many persons forget that Fox, 
anxious as he rightly was for peace in 1806, was only 
ready to make peace on conditions that he thought would 
secure England against Napoleon's designs, and that there 
was no struggle in which his whole heart would have been 
more consistently engaged than the great struggle of the 
Peninsular War. 

Fox's place in English history does not depend on the 
changes and chances of office and popularity. There has 
been no career less adapted to those summary verdicts 
of juries that look only at legislative achievements and 
the reigns of Ministers, than the career of the great Liberal, 
who was thirty-seven years in politics, and about as many 
weeks in effective power. If English history owed nothing 
, to his championship of reform, it would still be infinitely 
the richer for his fidelity to conviction, and for a courage 
that was invincible and erect. His constancy to great 



4 



PRELIMINARY 23 . 

cause s, a quality never too common in politics, was a 
quality of sovereign virtue in Fox's day. Pitt's career was 
largely a career of apostacies ; and however vividly the 
conditions that palliated those apostacies are remembered, 
it is obvious that the continual spectacle of plausible 
desertions is not particularly favourable to public integrity. 
It is difficult to maintain a high tone in those popular dis- 
cussions that in the best circumstances tend to find the 
lower level of party convenience, when the first statesman 
of the day holds to office through a series of retreats and 
recantations. To recall the sinister memories of the com- 
binations and stratagems of party amongst the men who 
came before Fox and Burke, and then remember how 
strong and lofty a civic spirit animated Fox's sense of 
party, with its loyal adherence to great principlgg, is to 
understand how much the sincerity of English politics owes 
to his example. 

It is not too much to say that Fox did more than any 
man of his century to raise the standard of courage and 
duty in our public lif?. His resistance to Pitt during the 
closing years of the century must always command the 
admiration of the most enthusiastic adherents of his great 
rival's policy, and his letters show what a burden of sorrow 
and despair that struggle imposed on him. Nothing could 
be more false than to argue that Fox was in politics, as 
in private life, a gambler, sustained and flattered in the 
crash of his ambitions by some dancing thought of the 
somersaults of sudden fortune. It is clear from his letters 
that he was aware of having consigned his career, not to the 
chance of the die, but to a destiny as relentless as Nature's 
laws. A beaten minority has usually the consolation of 
knowing that, if its immediate hopes are gone, it can still 
serve its country by handing on a proud tradition of political 
courage, that becomes in time the common inheritance of 
England. Fox was denied that consolation, for he believed 
that Pitt's policy was finally destroying freedom in England, 
and that the tradition of his struggle would be to future 







j 



24 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

generations just what Cicero's was to Imperial Rome. 
These things alone would give a grandeur to his long 
resistance; but to fathom the depths of his bitter hatred 
of the policy he fought against, we must remember that 
he was pre-e minently,. English. He was not, like Turgot, 
and some of the great figures of that great century, one 
in whom the brotherhood of man, and the expansive hopes 
of human progress made faint and dim the border-lines of 
country. There has been no man in whom the love of 
dountry and the love of freedom were more passionately 
blended. In his huoyznt hopes of the Revolution he 
iaelighted to fancy that France was following in the steps 
/of England. He wished for reform and for the redress of 
wrong, to give to all his countrymen a share in his own 
enthusiasm for the distinctive civilisation of England. He 
had urged England to give the American colonies their 
freedom as the voluntary recognition of their rights, and not 
as part of some bargain in which the foreigner had a hand. 
He had struggled to make her record in India clean, and to 
make her name bright with the glory of the emancipation of 
laves. The French Revolution meant for him not only 
he fall of despotism, but the fall of a dynasty, whose hatred 
f England had produced an insomnia of intrigue in Europe. 
In a situation as desolate as could be. Fox never faltered, 
j^ for whatever he lacked, he never lacked courage. He rfc 
V4 mained true to his conscience under conditions in which 
many men of no mean calibre fail, and of those conditions 
it is worth while to give ao example. There is no obliga- 
tion which is harsher or more painful than the obligation to 
rebuke an act or a policy of violent injustice in a servant 
of the nation who is in the midst of danger and anxious 
responsibility. Fox and Burke did not shrink from that 
great ordeal, when Rodney, by his exactions and cruelties 
in St Eustatius, brought discredit on the flag that he had 
carried often and bravely to victory. The men who can rise,* 
as they rose, to the full height of that terrible duty are very 
rare at all times and in all nations, and statesmen who are 



PRELIMINARY 25 

fearless in every other crisis, will prefer to flatter crime rather 
than forfeit their popularity in such a cause. Alike in the 
case of Rodne)r's misconduct, and in that of the misconduct 
of a greater man than Rodney at Naples, Fox gave lasting 
and indisputable proof that his love for England's -honour 
was stem and unyielding, and not merely that gossamer 
patriotism which floats very prettily in the sunlight, and 
disappears with the first rustle of popular ill-will. 

Fox had his limitations, his omissions, his indolences. 
He lived in the midst of many hardships and injustices, 
that excited his sympathy, without stirring him to patient 
and unflagging exertion, and there were flagrant anomalies, / 
particularly in the administration of justice, lying outside ^ 
the arena of politics, which he was content to leave there 
with only a passing remonstrance. He never raised his 
voice against the rule of the squire which was stifling the 
civic spirit in the country, and with all his enthusiasm for a 
more popular system of government, he never applied his -s • 
mind industriously to the great problem of Parliamentary^^ N 
reform. But with all these shortcomings he remains one of j 
the chief heroes in the gallery of English freedom,. There ^ 
was scarcely a reforming movement in which he did not 
play his part He was the great protagonist of constitutional "^ 
freedom in its long and chequered struggle with a crafty 
king. He did more than any other important statesman to 
extend the range and improve the spirit of public discussion, / 
and to create a vigilant public opinion. He struck a power- 
ful blow at corrupt and clandestine government He left 
to a party that had inherited bad memories of religious 
proscription an ideal of absolute toleration. If he stood 
apart from the visions of the democrats, he had a great 
conception of the state as based on a wide citizenship, the 
attribute of personal independence, and he transformed the 
Whig principles of Locke into a system compatible with 
a genuine democracy. Except for three years when he 
renounced the struggle, he never allowed tyranny a blood- 
less victory over the most obscure of his countrymen, and 




26 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

it was he more than any other man who, through a famine 
of all the generous enthusiasms of England, kept alive the 
idea of English freedom as something splendid and very 
hardly won. 

But his achievements in the cause of domestic freedom 
were eclipsed by what he did to inspire a^npbler sentiment 
in relation to foreign rule. The century he lived in was 
marked by a great increase in England's responsibilities as 
a ruling nation, and it was marked top by the rise of a 
spirit in England that rebelled against a merely selfish and 
tyrannical instinct of rule, mitigated by reluctant conces- 
sions to the persevering discontent or turbulence of the 
governed Two movements helped to enlarge the horizon 
of political sympathy : one was the emergence of a great 
economic truth, the other was a moral revolution. The 
philosophy of trade which Adam Smith imported from 
France, and illuminated with his special genius, a philosophy 
even more remarkable for its political corollaries than its 
economic theorems, went to the very foundations of the 
established ideas about proprietary colonies. When it is 
remembered that Chatham said he would not allow a nail 
to be made in America without the leave of the English 
Parliament, and that Chatham's son learnt from Adam Smith 
that the energy and prosperity of one country are not in- 
jurious but beneficial to other countries, it is easy to see how 
the old selfish view of possessions was shaken to its very 
depths by the economic revolution. Pitt's name is associated 
with that revolution as the statesman who attempted to give 
it effect in legislation, and however little freedom has to 
thank him for, his splendid service to the fostering of 
enlightened notions on commerce is established beyond 
question or cavil. 

Fox has no share in those triumphs over ignorance and 
prejudice. He never quite threw off the fallacies of Pro- 
tection, and the best thing Pitt did for his country was 
done under the blazing fire of Fox's misapplied eloquence. 
But in the second great revolution he was the chief actor. 




PRELIMINARY 27 

If it fa human natuie, as Bentham says, to love power more 
dian Ubertyi few men can make of their own passion for 
Hborty the spell Fox cast over men's minds, or answer as 
he could, the proud rhapsodies of conquest with the proud er 
i topaodte of justke. There was something creative in the 
fierce energy with which he loved justice and freedom. It "^ 
was not to fotigue or to failure or to fear that he appealed ; 
he never made freedom a second-best, a policy of indolence 
or despair ; he gave it a pride and a fascinating splendour, 
and amid the worst misfortunes of his party, he defended 
diat cause, not with chastened apolc^es but with a stalwart 
defiance. What good reason is there, a contemporary of 
Fox might ask, why we should not use our acquisitions 
sddy for our own selfish ends, bind them by commercial 
exclusions, and proclaim that our will is paramount wherever 
we have the power to make and hold conquests ? There is 
one good reason, Pitt would have replied, and that is that 
the best way to foster trade and industry at home is to 
ibster trade and industry in your colonies, and that to shut 
oat competition from your markets abroad is to shut out 
customers from your markets at home. There is one good 
reason. Fox would have answered, the reason that rule 
irtiich is merely the exercise of force is barbarous ; that to ^ 
link your country's name with a system of tyranny is to link 
it with something which is infamous and brittle and short- 
lived, and that the value of government depends precisely 
on its capacity to give expression and independence to the 
genius and the character of the governed. 

In Fox's great defences of reform, of religious tolera- 
tion, of the extension of the franchise, this doctrine is 
always emerging. In his mind respect for personality 
iin^ied respect for nationality ; and to strangle the self- 
government of Ireland was as much a barbarism as to 
strangle the personal liberties of Englishmen by a sudden 
tyranny. He never forgot in speaking to Englishmen, that 
he spoke to men who were rulers, and exposed to the 
temptations of rulers. The dread of those temptations 




28 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

haunted his mind. Many men of his day regarded the 
coming democracy as the Garden of the Hesperides, and 
the era of spontaneous justice between peoples. It would 
be fanciful to suppose that Euripides' admirer had assimi- 
lated the spirit of sorrow and disillusictnment in which the 
/exiled poet watched the sad sunset of Athenian glory, but 
at any rate Fox nursed no daydreams of millenniuips and 
the summary flight of the evil forces of human nature. 
To him even democracy was a doubtful dawn, streaked 
with the red menace of the tempests and convulsions of 
human passion. Fox, like his disciple, Homer, hated the 
whole race of conquerors, and to him conquest was no less 
abhorrent if it were the act of a democracy, than if it were 
the act of a dynasty. He was not one of those who think 
of all dominion as romantic, and are satisfied that demo- 
cracy gains from it a larger range of vision, and a sublimity 
of spirit, and an exhilarating sentiment of sacred and 
scattered kinship throughout the world. Fox knew to what 
a hazard all that is fine in character is put the moment 
^ men and nations exult in the feeling that they hold an 
inexorable grip on the freedom of other peoples, and that 
their own pomp and importance in the world are the only 
things that stand between some subject population and the 
expression and development of its character. The events 
of Fox's lifetime all over the world were a standing warn- 
ing of the difficulty of making men feel the wrongs they 
inflict as keenly as they feel the wrongs they suffer. The 
history of India in his day was a standing warning that 
whilst men talked of governing dependencies by the public 
opinion of England, they often governed them by private 
and fragmentary interests, and that these direct interests bore 
down all the pressure of a spasmodic enthusiasm for justice 
and good government. The career of such men as Clare 
and Castlereagh was a monument to the truth that nations 
only govern white peoples by taking into partnership what 
is worst in the governed, by arming all the baser passions 
against the popular will, and fostering all the elements that 



/ 



/ 



4 



PRELIMINARY 29 

are ready to become part of a well-paid system of usurpa- 
tion and violent misrule. Fox saw all around him the 
portents of ^^..havpc domioation plays wiAtte character 
of_^B.{[gmnlng_peopIe; a school to mould states in the 
sensations of mastery, and arbitrary power. 

He saw too that if anything else than force was to rule 
the world, the main business of diplomacy must cease to 
be an exchange of peoples. He was the first great English 
statesman to extend to politics the doctrine of nationalism, 
to give a general application to the idea of national self- 
expression, to see — where other statesmen saw only the 
passive aggregates of accident or conquest — communities 
not incapable of a corporate will, and owning coUectjve 
traditio ns and other bonds besides obedience to a common 
sovereign. His one Sybil was an imaginative patriotism. 
For him a national civilisation was sacred because it 
represented the genius and the will of the people who 
made it Alone in Europe, he upheld that doctrine 
throughout the French war ; he upheld it when it was vio- 
lated by our allies in Poland, by our enemy in Switzerland 
and Holland, and by ourselves in proscribing the Revolu- 
tionary order in France. It was a doctrine that was odious 
to the dominant temper, and treasonable in the eyes of a 
Government that meditated prosecuting Fox, but contented 
itself with striking his name off the Privy Council. But 
it was the doctrine that inspired English policy for many 
generations after Fox's death ; and one of Fox's bitterest 
opponents in his lifetime is chiefly remembered in English 
history because he adopted Fox's principles in the Greek War 
of Independence. It is idle to talk of the career in which the 
most beneficent principle of foreign relations that struggled 
slowly into recognition during the nineteenth century, the 
right of a nation to be its own master, was first proclaimed 
by a great English statesman, as if it were sterile and 
profitless, and a mere brilliant apparition across the stage 
of public affairs. Fox was the valiant friend of freedom, 
justice, and equal law at home, but his name is still more 




30 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

illustrious because in a nation with great and distant posses- 
sions, with subjects dependent on the precarious mercy 
of their unknown rulers, his arm was always uplifted for 
the defenceless, and he never watched in a pale silence or 
a smothered anger the applause or the consummation of 
a public wrong. 



CHAPTER II 
FOX A^ THE KING 

The real nature of the stnagglt between the King and the Whigs. 
The King's system. His successes. His treatment of the first 
Rockingham Ministry. Chatham's behaviour. His Government 
His breakdown. His resignation. North's Ministry. The diffi- 
culties of the Opposition. The ^flferences b e tw e en Chatham and 
the Roddnghams. Fox's attachment to the Roddns^iams. Their 
programme laid down by Burke (i) an attack on corruption, (2) the 
control of the King. The history of the Economy Agitation, 1779 
to 1782. The years of public embarrassment and catastrophe. 
The victory of the Rockinghams in 1782. The great achievements 
of their brief Ministry. 

THE first two Georges, who spoke in broken English 
and left their hearts in Hanover, might have been 
sommoned to the throne expressly by Providence, in order 
to enable Walpole to lay the foundations of Parliamentary 
Government in England. Their infirmities fitted them to play 
to perfection a mute, but an invaluable part, in the develop- 
ment of the Constitution. The third George cast himself, or 
found himself cast by Bolingbroke for a more active rdle. 
His predecessors had been content to govern Hanover, and 
to reign over the domestic affairs of England. George III. 
meant to be an English ruler ; no lay figure in the develop- 
ment of Parliamentary Government, but its formidable 
antagonist and competitor ; the tyrant, and not the doge of 
the Cabinet. He set himself to acquire a power he had not 
inherited, when he inherited the rather empty splendour of 
the Crown, and Nattire, whilst withholding from him every 
gift of statesmanship, had enriched him with a combination 

81 




32 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

of qualities that were of sovereign value in the pursuit of 
such an object. He was English bom, he was pious, he was 
austerely proper, he husbanded for his one end in life, by a 
frugal respectability, all the popular favour his fathers had 
wasted on their pleasures ; he had craft, perseverance, and 
all the secrets of a pliant flattery; he had no private vice 
that could alienate his people, and no public virtue that 
could bar the meaner avenues to his ambition. What 
patriotism, or the love of justice, or friendship, or all the 
glitter of less noble passions was to others, that was auto- 
cracy to George ill. 

The struggle of a political party with such a king might 
easily have been rather squalid and ignoble, a dreary contest 
for selfish and private supremacies never raised above the 
level of sordid retaliations and frivolous chagrins. If the only 
question at issue was whether the king, or a small coterie of 
patrician families should distribute the prizes of a political 
power that meant little more than an array of sinecures, jobs, 
and instruments of plunder, it could scarcely be said that 
humanity was much the richer, or much the poorer for the 
triumphs of either. The names of the great Whig houses 
were not remembered for the protection of the poor, or the 
disarming of corruption, or the championship of public 
integrity. Office had been their object, not because they 
saw in it an opportunity of serving their country, or of 
achieving some great and necessary reform, but mainly be- 
cause they wished to see their own friends rather than the 
friends of others quartered on the public funds. But the 
grand struggle between George and his opponents was no 
mock battle of phantom principles between a grasping ruler 
on one side, and a handful of Bed fords, or Sandwiches, or 
Gowers on the other, jit was a struggle between a ruler whose 
whole sy^em of government was corruption, deceit, and the 
elimination of all public interest and control and a set of men 
who were resolved to cleanse the public administration, and 
to place the final authority in the hands of a Parliament that 
acknowledged its supreme responsibility to the nation. 



FOX AND THE KING 33 

It was in this party, the party led by Rockingham, and 
created by Edmund Burke as far as a party is created by 
ideas and the magnificence of a luminous indignation, that 
Fox's career as a Liberal began. He first acted with that 
party, soon after his final separation from Lord North's 
Ministry, and in a few years he was one of its leaders.^ It 
was a new party. If Burke had been told it was a new 
party he would have been outraged, for, like all reformers, 
he loved to picture his reform as a return to the normiotl and 
the recoveiy^f an old simplici^ from the misgrowths an 
perversions with which it was overlaid. This temper wa 
partictilarly characteristic of the Whigs. Fq;?^ jived to plead 
great causes, which the Whigs of tradition bad never dreamt^ 
of, and still he like^^fo" fancy himself in the strictest line of 
succession, and to trace his ancestry to the Revolution of 
i688. It is not surprising that Burke, in impeaching the 
new system of government, saw the advantages of that! 
dramatic rehabilitation of the past, which is one of the first 
devices of rhetoric. He might contrast, without fear, the 
results of the most selfish of Whig administrations with the 
ruinous consequences that had followed the appropriation of 
the Whig stock-in-trade by George III., for the new ruler 
had borrowed all that was vicious in the system of party, 
and none of its compensating virtues. If the Whigs had 
mastered the art of binding men to their interests by 
mercenary considerations, George was not one whit less 
accomplished in corruption, and his range was still more 
extended. If the Whigs had rested constitutional liberty 
on a party connection not always very sublime in its attach- 
ments or very generous in its range, George meant to 
establish clandestine government on the very foundations 

^ Note Fox's Correspondence y vol. iii. p. 199. " It is a sad thing, My dear 
Voung One, to come young and vigorous into an old, worn-out, jaded opposition : 
however if you can in any degree rajeunir it you will do in my opinion the 
greatest possible service to the country. I did this in some degree with the 
Rockinghams, but then every circumstance was as favourable to me, as it is 
otherwise to you" (Feb. 1802). Fox first voted with the Whigs in opposition to 
the Boston Port Bill, April 19, 1774. 

3 



^ 




34 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

of bribery and court favour. The Whig theory as restated 

Burke was, it is true, a theory of patrician government ; 

it implied an almost superstitious reverence for the precise 

plan of the existing Constitution ; it attached a ridiculous 

importance to hereditary rank, but it admitted the restraints 

of a public vigilance, it insisted on public integrity, it was 

animated by a high sense of honour, and of duty, and it did 

much to develop the spirit of public discussion. George, 

[ against whom this theory was invoked, was a caricature of 

I Bolingbroke's patriot king. He was not a monarch of the 

\order that uses the central power to protect the many from 

pie insolence and oppression of the governing few ; he did 

/not stand on some lofty eminence, high above the selfishness 

and the ignorance of his subjects. Of all the sovereigns in 

Europe who cherished political ambitions there was scarcely 

one who was less capable and not one who was more bigoted. 

Throughout the reign, the royal closet was always the safe 

refuge of every mean prejudice, that had been stripped 

and routed in discussion, and for every Englishman who 

cared for freedom or justice or public right or a wise 

tolerance, George was himself the first dragon to be slain. 

Burke and his ^CQnfpdfiratfi?^ ^fOJUghtJUs^ pretensions with 

that sujgr gme e nergy with which men fight to prevent the 

maladies of one generation from becoming the diseases 

of the next, and not with the sporadic efforts of a faction 

which finds its privileges challenged, and the paltry prizes 

of office in danger. 

The Rockingham party had a hard task before it. The 
atmosphere of public life was dim and misty, and there 
was no strong tradition of party discipline or party success 
to compete with the precedents the King had created, or 
to disperse the oppressive confusion and disorder of ideas. 
For twenty years, with one brief and rather ineffectual 
interruption, the King's new system had governed politics, 
and during those twenty years the great majority of 
politicians had at one time or another lent themselves, 
consciously or unconsciously, to his plausible designs. From 



FOX AND THE KING 35 

1 761 to 1765 the King had ruled through Bute and Gren- 
vQle. He had forced the peace of Paris on the country 
by means of unprecedented bribery, and had asserted his 
authority with a temerity that did not stop short of dis- 
missing soldiers from their places because they disapproved 
of the peace. For one year (July 1765 to 1766) the Govern- 
ment had been conducted on other principles. Rockingham 
had been made Prime Minister, because the King was 
piqued by Grenville and Pitt had refused to form a 
Ministry without Temple who was himself pledged to 
Grenville. The first Rockingham Ministry did three im- 
portant things in spite of the King. It carried a con- 
demnation of general warrants; it restored the officials 
who had been dismissed on account of their opposition to 
the peace ; and it repealed the Stamp Act. The last great 
measure was unfortunately accompanied by the Declaratory 
Act, asserting the right of England to tax America, a con- 
cession to English opinion which Mr. Lecky considers was 
indispensable. 

The Rockingham Ministry in the circumstances of its 
birth, its life, and its death was merely a concrete illus- 
tration of the strength of the King's system. Its great 
weakness from the first was the absence of Pitt. It was 
the supreme necessity of the moment that Pitt should 
join the Ministry, and yet the most lavish concessions left 
him aloof and constrained. He agreed with the policy of the 
Government ; he could have held any position he liked, and 
he rejected all overtures with an unconcealed and irritable 
suspicion.^ Rockingham never forgave him, and Pitt's con- 
duct in that crisis is probably the explanation of Burke's 
lasting dislike. This great public catastrophe may be ex- 
plained on various grounds. If individuals have no virtues, 
said Junius, their vices may be of use to us. No master of 
intrigue ever excelled George in the art of marshalling even 
the virtues of public men in the great army of public vices 

* ''Confidence/' he said, "is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom; 
yoath is the season of credulity.'* 




36 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

that rallied to his banner. Pitt had no taste for the smaller 
booties, and the tiny pomps, by which George won and kept 
his faithful servants, but his gorgeous vanity revelling in the 
buoyant consciousness of his importance was betrayed by a 
natural and just contempt for the whole system of family 
connections into a fatal allegiance to the King's plan. The 
cry of the dissolution of parties was the common cry of the 
King and of Pitt To the King it meant ministries eclectic, 
incoherent, and docile : to Pitt it meant the overthrow of the 
domination of a few proud, selfish houses, and the rule of 
sheer talent and popularity. When Burke was busy making 
straight lines in politics, separating men and forces by the 
definite dbtinction of opinion, Pitt saw nothing but the faint 
and dingy boundaries of family selfishness, and the dis- 
appointment of crestfallen factions. A miraculous com- 
bination of tact and good luck had thrown into the King's 
arms the one man who could really have destroyed him, 
the man whom he dreaded, as he afterwards came to dread 
Fox. 

In its career no less than in this misfortune that blighted 
its origin, the Rockingham Ministry reflects the influence 
of the King's policy. The most powerful statesman was 
kept out of the Ministry by the lustre of the new cry 
against the government of great families. The Minbtiy 
itself was overthrown by agents whose services were enlisted 
by a glamour of a very difierent kind. George, who did 
everything that flattery and a prodigal distribution of 
patronage could do, to make office a bed of roses for his 
favourites, spared no pains to make it a bed of brambles 
for Ministers he disliked He refused to create peers ; he 
encouraged insubordination in the Ministry ; and he brought 
into the field against his own Ministers all the energies 
of the King's friends. He allowed Lord Strange to spread 
the report that he was opposed to the repeal of the Stamp 
Act; the Chancellor and the Secretary of War, besides 
twelve of the King's household voted against that repeal, 
and the actual dismissal of the Ministry had been pre- 



FOX AND THE KING 37 

ceded by the open revolt of the Chancellor. The King's 
behaviour to Rockingham's second Ministry, and to the 
Coalition was a mere revival of the arts he had employed 
against Rockingham's first Government. 

The Government that succeeded was a Government after 
the King's own heart It included men from all parties. 
The King's friends held several strongholds; Conway left 
the Rockingham party to join it; Grafton, who became 
Minister of War, had already revolted from that party; 
Shelbume and Barr^ were closely attached to Pitt ; Camden, 
who had taken the popular side in the Wilkes case, and 
opposed the coercion of America, sat side by side with 
North, who was a brilliant advocate of the Court ; Pitt 
became Chatham, and soon learnt from bitter experience 
that there are ties more stifling than those of party, and 
that to make a Government miscellaneous is not necessarily 
to make it independent* If the King had ruled the 
elements, his enterprises could not have prospered more 
steadily. Chatham, stripped of most of Pitt's popularity, 
lost his health, the vigour if not the sanity of his judgment, 
and all but the semblance of control, and his colleagues, who 
had opposed him whilst he was still active, used the periods 
of an inscrutable silence, which began in a theatrical and 
morbid mystery, and ended in mortal paralysis, to do and 
to tolerate everything that Chatham himself would most 
strenuously have resisted. A Minister who had made his 
name dreaded on the heroic stage of the conflicts of Europe, 
was now reduced to a scramble for power with his own 
mediocre colleagues. In Chatham's Government all Pitt's 
qualities became diminutive, and his giant authority some- 
thing tottering and fragile. Prussia rejected his overtures 
for an alliance ; France forgot her terrors and annexed 
Corsica; with Pitt still nominally a King's Minister, Towns- 
hend carried his Act for taxing America, and the House 
of Commons declared its vote could exclude Wilkes per- 

* Burke might have had a seat in the Board of Trade, but he remained 
faithful to Rockingham. 




38 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

manently from Parliament In his wildest moments the 
King would never have hoped that under the aegis and 
fading glory of Pitt's name hs^ could accomplish all the 
projects that Pitt had so valiantly obstructed. 

Chatham only recovered his health to resign, and by one 
method or another, the Whig element in the Ministry was 
reduced, and the Court influence strengthened. Shelbume 
and other friends of Chatham disappeared to make way for 
the recognised champions of the Court, and when Grafton 
retired in 1770 he was succeeded by North, an adroit and 
skilful defender of everything that was precious to Greorge. 
Chatham was by this time disillusioned, and had taken into 
active opposition what credit still clung to the memories of 
Pitt ; the calamities of the nation were growing ; there was a 
palpable decay of national credit and power abroad, at home 
there was acute dissatisfaction in the country, in Parliament 
a fiery attack, in the Cabinet not a single commanding name, 
and yet the Court maintained its ascendency for the next 
twelve years. That fact alone b the best measure of the 
strength and tenacity of the system which the Rockingham 
party meant to destroy. 

The vicious supremacy of the Court which George had 
gradually built up, using all the materials at his disposal, 
the venality of one man, the social vanity of another, the 
pride or the public spirit of a third, was not the only obstacle 
to the success of the Rockingham party. The walled city 
was strong and powerful. The forces available for attack 
were not united. There were certain differences between 
Chatham, even the disillusioned Chatham, and the Rocking- 
ham Whigs. Chatham's daydream of a sublime patriotism 
dissolving all the lesser attachments and allegiances of politics 
and creating a powerful and independent Ministry was be- 
come something of a nightmare to a man who had served 
for two years in Grafton's Government, and had known that 
the dissolution of parties meant the consolidation of Court 
power. But neither party could bestow on the other an 
unequivocal confidence. To the Rockinghams, though Burke 



FOX AND THE KING 39 

had transformed the Whig creed and illuminated it with the 
radiant colours of a new public spirit, brushing out all the 
mere emblems of patrician houses, family connections were 
still an important and respectable part of the constitution ; 
the old musty alliances were not abolished, but they were 
transfigured into an association for great public ends; to 
Chatham they were at the best what Voltaire- said of the 
French land laws, the rubbish of a Gothic building fallen 
to ruins. A demagogue in the true and best sense of the 
word, Chatham was never on terms of a cordial alliance with 
the Rockinghams, whose sympathy with democracy was 
very limited^ He was much more public spirited than 
the Rockinghams over the Irish Absentee Tax. He 
despised their reliance on high-bom hegemonies in poli- 
tics; he rebelled against their moderation of tone and 
tactics,* and in spite of the mortifications he had suffered 
in the Government in which the King like Daedalus had 
constructed an inextricable labyrinth to bewilder his energies 
and dissipate his popularity, he never accepted their central 
doctrine of a strict discipline of party, designed to over- 
awe the Court. 

It can easily be understood that the fastidious Rock- 
inghams, on their side, felt some qualms about the noisy 
rhetoricians who rubbed shoulders with Chatham, and some 
diffidence, in the crusade against the Crown, about the 
sincerity of a statesman who had deserted the Whigs in 
the great crisis of 1765. Chatham as a leader had as 
many uncertain humours as Pompey, and the letters of 
Rockingham show how difficult it was to concert measures 
with a statesman of his imperious moods, his whimsical 
and sudden temper, his massive and lonely arrogance. Born 
to win battles rather than campaigns Chatham had enough 

* In 1770 Chatham had urged Rockingham to aim at strengthening the demo- 
cratic element in the Constitution (Lecky, vol. iii. p. 381). 

***The Marquess," he wrote, **is an honest and honourable man, but 
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." 




40 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

courage to assail a Government, and rebuke a people, but he 
had never learnt to observe or to enforce discipline. What 
was wanted if the Court influence was to be subdued was 
an energy, sustained and organised, carefully drilled and 
harnessed, and not the energy that swept with the lawless 
and ephemeral violence of a mighty storm. Hence it was 
that although as early as 1770 there was an alliance of all 
the sections of opposition against the Court, Chatham again 
and again exhibited this fundamental incapacity to act 
methodically with a party : an incapacity of which be gave 
a signal proof in January 1775 when he introduced a 
motion for the removal of the troops from Boston with- 
out giving the Rockinghams any notice whatever of his 
intentions.^ Where there ought to have been a united and 
vigorous assault on the colonial policy and the domestic 
corruptions of the Court, there was an opposition that Was 
fitful and fragmentary and unstable, interrupted once by a 
secession from Parliament, and only concentrated at rare 
intervals for particular ends.' This disruption of forces was 
evident enough even when the Chatham and the Rockingham 
parties were agreed. On some important measures they 
differed openly, as they differed on the propriety of recog- 
nising the independence of America. Thus when the acute 
struggle, in which Fox took part, occurred between the King 
and the Rockingham party, the King had three supreme 
advantages. His power was strongly laid from the mere fact 
that he had governed by corruption and intrigue so many 
years ; the Opposition were disunited and bewildered, neither 
Chatham nor Shelbume who succeeded him ever forming a 
cordial alliance with the Rockinghams; and the American 

' Albemarle, Life of Rockingham ^ vol. ii. p. 264. 

• Sir G. Savile's description, Nov. 1777, Albemarle, vol. ii. p. 323 : ** I say 
nothing of onr pttralytic state, on which you know my sentiments, and which is 
of itself sufficient to determine my judgment. Vou will know what I mean by 
the palsy when I describe it to be of that very peculiar and whimsical kind that 
when one side would move, the other is struck motionless ; and when the Utter 
is disposed to be vigorous and active, then the fit seizes the former ; and this 
sweet vicissitude is certain, constant, regular, and has lasted years.** 




FOX AND THE KING 41 

War had rdoforoed the King^s power with the popular 
paaskm tot ooerdi^ the rebels.^ 

The Rockingham party itself was divided on many 
qnertiooa, and Fox's views of Pariiamentary reform were ^ 
fiur mote m i^^reement with tliose of Chatham than they 
were witii those of his intimate allies. But the party 'Was 
tor the time, compact in opposition to the King» on a 
practical programme. It resolved the general condition of 
die straggle into two supreme issues. The first was the I 
establishment of the doctrine that Ministers were respon- 
able to F^lsament; the second, the destruction of the q^ 
apparatus of corruption, by which the ICing made him- 
sdf the master of Pailiament, and in a large d^;ree, of 
the constituei^ies. The House of Commons, as Erskine 
put it some years later, instead of being a control upon the 
Crown, was become the great engine of its power. To give ^ 
it its due position in the Constitution it was indispensable, 
first of all to destroy and disarm the faction, known as the 
King's friends, and to put into office a Ministry, resolved 
to bold its own against royal pressure, and to uphold the 
supremacy of Parliament; secondly, to make Parliament 
itself the embodiment of public spirit, and not the mere 
instrument of the King's pleasure. It was the King's policy 
to nullify the public control over Parliament as well as the 
control of Parliament over Government, to obtain a Parlia- 
ment unconnected with the people, and a Ministry uncon- * 
nected with Parliament It was this temper that had made 
him play such a strenuous part in the long contest between 
Wilkes and the House of Commons, whilst the best descrip- 
tion of his methods is to be found in Thoughts on the Present 
Discontent. " It behoves the people of England to consider 
how the House of Commons under the operation of these 

' Fox's opinion of the strength of the anti- American feeling : " Do not expect 
to find any change in politics when you arrive, for if you do, you will be most 
certainly disappointed. I can find nobody of our side but Lord Camden and 
Burke, who agree with me in desponding, but depend upon it we are right. 
We are and ever shall be as much proscribed as ever the Jacobites were formerly " 
(Letter to Fitzpatrick, War in AmerUa, Feb. 177S). 




42 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

examples must of necessity be constituted On the side of 
the Court will be, all honours, offices, emoluments, every sort 
of personal gratification to avarice o/ vanity ; and what is of 
more moment to most gentlemen, the means of growing by 
innumerable petty services to individuals, into a spreading 
interest for their country. On the other hand, let us suppose 
a person unconnected with the Court, and in opposition to 
its system. For his own person, no office, or emolument, or 
title; no promotion ecclesiastical, or civil, or military, or 
naval, for children, or brothers, or kindred. In vain an 
expiring interest in a borough calls for offices, or small 
livings, for the children of mayors, and aldermen, and capital 
burgesses. His court rival has them all. He can do an 
infinite number of acts of generosity and kindness, and even 
of public spirit He can procure indemnity from quarters. 
He can procure advantages in trade. He can get pardon for 
oflfences. He can obtain a thousand favours, and avert a 
thousand evils. He may, while he betrays every valuable 
interest of the kingdom, be a benefactor, a patron, a father, a 
g^uardian angel to his borough. The unfortunate independent 
member has nothing to offer, but harsh refusal, or pitiful 
excuse, or despondent representation of a hopeless interest 
Except from his private fortune, in which he may be equalled, 
perhaps exceeded, by his Court competitor, he has no way 
of showing any one good quality, or of making a single 
friend." ^ 

' Examples of the active part taken by the King in bribery, both in Psarlia- 
ment and outside, are given by Erskine May, e,^., Letter to Lord North oa 
1st March 1781 : " Mr. Robinson sent me the list of the speakers last night, 
and of the very good majority. I have this morning sent him ;f 6000, to be 
placed to the same purpose, as the sum transmitted on the a 1st of August." 
Again, i6th October 1779, he writes : ''If the Duke of Northumberland requires 
some gold pills for the Election, it would be wrong not to satisfy him.** Letter 
to Lord North, 17th April 1782 : "As to the immense expense of the General 
Election, it has quite surprised me : the sum is at least double what was ex- 
pended on any other General Election since I came to the throne." Lord North 
replies: "If Lord North had thought that the expense attending elections and 
re-elections in the years 1779, 1780, and 1781 would have amounted to ;f 72,000, 
he certainly would not have advised his Majesty to have embarked in anyfuch 




FOX AND THE KING 43 

The best description of the method by which the King 
tried to make himself the master of Parliament, by estab- 
lishing a dual administration, is also to be found in Thoughts 
an the Present Discontent. *^ A Minister of State will some- 
times keep himself totally estranged from all his colleagues ; 
will differ from them in their counsels, will privately traverse, 
and publicly oppose their measures, he will however continue 
in his employment Instead of suffering any mark of dis- 
pleasure, he will be disting^hed by an unbounded profusion 
of court rewards and caresses; because he does what is 
expected, and all that is expected, from men in office. He 
helps to keep some form of administration in being, and 
keeps it at the same time as weak and divided as possible." 
The King, in fine, was become a distinct party in the 
State. Over weak Ministers he was paramount; in the 
constituencies his power was enormous, and in Parliament 
he was represented and obeyed directly by the faction known 
as the " King's Friends." 

Burke and Fox were not agreed in 1779, ^^y more than \ 
they were at any other time in their lives, as to the proper 
method to secure the public and responsible character of 
Parliament Fox spoke and voted ^^jn^jstgntly ^ Pa^rlia. 
mentary Reform, and Burke spoke and voted as consistently 
against it. But Burke, Fox, Rockingham, and Richmond 
were all agreed on an immediate method of attack, a measure 
to check corruption ; and Burke, though he held the sena- 
torial theory of the House of Commons, was ready and 
eager to stimulate popular discussion in favour of such a 
reform, on the ground that this was a crisis that demanded 
the interposition of the nation. For the second evil, the 
remedy was summed up in Burke's language, " Government 
may in a great measure be restored, if any considerable 
bodies of men have honesty and resolution enough never to 

expense." And he proceeded to explain the reasons, which had induced him to 
H>cDd ;C50O0 at Bristol, ;f 8000 at Westminster, £^OQO in Surrey, ;^4000 in the 
Gty of London, and how the last General Election had altogether cost the Crown 
£S0|00O as well as certain pensions. 







44 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

accept administration unless the garrison of King's men, 
which is stationed, as in a citadel, to control and enslave 
it, be entirely broken and disbanded, and every work they 
have thrown up be levelled with the ground. The disposition 
of public men to keep this corps together, and to act under 
it, or to co-operate with it, is a touchstone by which eveiy 
administration ought in future to be judged." So Burke 
had written in 1770, and his words are the best interpretation 
of much that happened thirteen and fourteen years later. 

The history of the three years from 1779 to 1782 is 
largely the history of this reform agitation in the country. 
Its importance can scarcely be overestimated, as a symptom 
or as an influence in British politics.' Not only was it the 
most impressive, the most general, and the most nearly 
spontaneous of the public agitations of the eighteenth cen- 
tury ; it created the momentum that was needed to cany the 
great reforms of 17S2, and it made public discus^on a new 
power in England. The a^tation began with a meeting 
in York at the end of the year 1779, at which, after a long 
and open discussion, it was resolved to present a petition 
to Parliament in favour of economy. The petitioners " ob- 
served with grief, that notwithstanding the calamitous and 
impoverished condition of the nation, much public money 
had been improvidently squandered, that many individuals 
enjoyed sinecure places, efficient places with exorbitant emolu- 
ments, and pensions unmerited by public service to a large 
and still increasing amount, whence the Crown had acquired 
a great and unconstitutional influence, which, if not checked, 
might soon prove fatal to the liberties of this country. . . . 
They therefore appealing to the justice of the Commons, 
most earnestly requested, before any new burdens were laid 
upon the country, effectual measures might be taken by 
that House to inquire into and correct the gross abuses 
in the expenditure of public money, to reduce all exorbitant 
emoluments, to rescind and abolish all sinecure places and 

' The deujis of thii igititioii I Kbtc taken fiota the useful work of Mr. 
Jephson, Tit Hiittry af lk» Platftrm. 



FOX AND THE KING 45 

onmerited pensions, and to appropriate the produce to the 
necessities of the State." 

This Petition put into vigorous language precisely that 
sense of public danger which the Rockingham party had 
set itself to excite in the nation, and it limited its programme 
to the remedies in support of which that party was united. 
The adoption of the Petition was followed by a second 
important and startling event. The meeting decided to 
form a Committee "to carry on the necessary correspond- 
ence for effectually promoting the object of the Petition, 
and to prepare a plan of an Association on l^^l and con- 
stitutional grounds to support that laudable reform, and 
such other measures as may conduce to restore the freedom 
of Parliament" Other meetings soon followed. A county 
meeting for Hampshire was held at Winchester immediately 
after the York meeting, and a few days later a most influ- 
ential meeting of the nobility, gentry, clergy and freeholders 
of the County of Middlesex was held at Hackney, adopted 
a Petition in the terms of the Yorkshire Petition, and decided 
to establish a Committee to correspond with the Associations 
of other counties, and to open communications immediately 
with the County of York. In Wiltshire Shelburne and Fox 
were amongst the speakers, and Fox summed up the whole 
spirit of the agitation in one sentence, when he declared, 
that though he had made very many public speeches, this 
was the first time he had spoken to an uncorrupt assembly. 
The Yorks Petition was also adopted at County meetings 
in Surrey, Essex, Cumberland, Dorset, Gloucestershire, and 
Sussex, where the Duke of Richmond called the meeting 
himself because the Sheriff refused. But the most important 
meeting of all was held in Westminster Hall, February 1780, 
when Fox presided over a large and influential assembly, 
which included besides Burke, the Duke of Portland, the 
Cavendishes, Wilkes and Townshend. The meeting is his- 
torical, for it was the occasion on which Fox was first 
proposed as the future candidate for Westminster. This 
series of meetings made a profound impression on the Court 




46 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

and Parliament, and their importance was brought home 
to the House of Commons, when petitions for economical 
reform and honest government were presented from twenty- 
six counties in England, three in Wales, and from several 
considerable cities. 

Fox and Burke were as active in Parliament as th^ 
had been in the country. Both of them made important 
speeches during the debates on the Petitions, and Burke 
drew up an elaborate plan of economical reform which was 
to serve the two great public purposes of retrenchment and 
the abolition of the sinecures by which the King maintained 
his corrupt influence. It is a striking illustration of the 
salutary alarm which the campaign had produced, that Burke 
actually carried the second reading of a Bill to give effect 
to his plan, though the Bill was lost in Committee. A still 
more imposing manifestation was decided on by the Reform 
party, and in February a joint scheme was arranged for 
collecting delegates in London from the various county 
Associations, to confer together and impress Parliament^ 
These delegates met frequently during March. The day 
on which the House of Commons was to take the Petitions 
into consideration was marked by a great speech from Fox 
to the Petitioners at Westminster, and the same evening 
the first great triumph of the Reform party was won, and 
Dunning^s famous motion, " That the influence of the Crown 
has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished," was 
carried by a majority of eighteen, and the House of Commons 
resolved that it was their duty " to provide, as far as may 
be, an immediate and effectual redress of the abuses com- 
plained of in the Petitions presented to this House from 
the different Counties, Cities, and Towns in the Kingdom." 

The new party had won a striking victory. Within less 
than a year from the opening of the campaign, with its full 
array of meetings and petitions, they had terrified a venal 
House of Commons into a protest against the system of royal 
rapine and secret tyranny, on which many of its members 

' Sheridan was one of these delegates. 



FOX AND THE KING 47 

depended for their places, and not a few for their livelihood. 
Two events occurred to check this triumphant progress; 
one was the explosion of the Gordon riots, the other the 
rapid and embarrassing growth of the programme of the 
Associations. The sinister consequences of the terror 
created by the inflammatory fEinaticism of the Protestant 
Associations, and the imbecile weakness of Lord North's 
Government, were felt throughout the rest of the reign 
of George ill. They certainly contributed to the panic of 
1 792-1 793, and their immediate result was to discredit all 
forms of popular agitation and concerted action, a result so 
marked and well defined that the Government were even sus- 
pected of refraining deliberately from a prompt suppression 
of disorder, with the object of creating a general prejudice 
against every form of political combination that was meant 
to bring pressure upon Parliament. The other cause of the 
sudden depression of the hopes of the new party was the 
more ambitious poli<^ pursued by some of the delegates, 
who proceeded to supplement their programme of economical 
reform by demanding annual Parliaments and fuller popular 
representation, with the result that several counties seceded, 
and the Rockingham Whigs found policies on which they were 
fundamentally divided thrust into the forefront of the agitation. 
The movement for reform was no longer concentrated, and 
men who had been awed into a momentary submission before 
its energies were dispersed, recovered their courage and deter- 
mined to stand by their iniquitous prizes. Thus it happened 
that though the Rockingham party had made the House of 
Commons pledge itself to reform in April 1780, it could not 
hold Parliament to that promise, and at the election in the 
same year, at which the King was particularly active, and 
particularly lavish, a House of Commons was returned, of 
which Horace Walpole wrote, "There are several new 
Members, but no novelty in style or totality of votes. The 
Court may have what number it chooses to buy." 

In spite of these considerable disappointments the 
Reform party persisted in its attacks, and Fox and Burke 




48 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

relaxed nothing of their resolute efforts. In 1781 Petitions 
for economical reform were presented from nine Counties, 
and from the City of Westminster.^ The motion in the 
House of Commons to refer the Petitions to a Committee 
of the whole House Was rejected, and the agitation for 
reform was lost in the general dismay over the growing 
disasters abroad. At last the pressure of the accumulated 
calamities of years of mismanagement, and of that supine 
incompetence which was a direct result of the King^s in- 
fluence became intolerable and irresistible. Lord North was 
driven from office by votes of censure which he could no 
longer defy ; an event the importance of which can only 
be appreciated when it is remembered that almost every 
Ministry that went out of office during the next thirty years, 
succumbed not to the displeasure of Parliament, but to the 
displeasure of the King. The formation of a Government 
by Rockingham in 1782 was not merely the climax, it was 
the direct result of the series of efforts in the country and 
in Parliament, by which Burke and Fox had struggled to 
destroy the fatal supremacy of the King. That struggle 
had obliged the King to choose as his Ministers men who 
were publicly pledged to destroy his corrupt authority, and 
it had created in the country so strong and indignant a 
public spirit, that the King could not hope to secure a 
more amenable House of Commons by a dissolution of 
Parliament 

The new Government was divided and shortlived, but it 
accomplished with some modifications one-half of the dual 
policy of the Rockingham party. It carried three great 
measures for making Parliament honest and independent: 
the first a Bill for excluding contractors from the House of 
Commons; the second a Bill for disfranchising Revenue 
Officers; and the third an abridged version of Burke's 
original scheme of economical reform. Each of these 
measures was a striking achievement, and taken together, 

> It was Fox who moved the adoption of the Petition at a public meeting in 
Westminster. 



FOX AND THE KING 49 

tliey form a Herculean record of prompt and energetic 
action in the £ace of a great puUic eviL The task was no 
easy one. To the King on his throne, to his creatures 
in Parliament, to his instruments in the Ministry, the 
charters of corruption were almost the only parts of the 
Parliamentary system that were congenial, and they were 
sacred. The House of Lords attempted to blunt the edge 
of the Contractors' Bill, but Fox stood manfully by the 
threatened clauses, and obliged the Lords to give way. In 
the case of Burke's measure of economical reform, the King 
was more successful, and it was due to his strong remon- 
strances that the original dimensions of the Bill were con- 
siderably reduced. But the pn^[ramme as it was actually 
carried was a gigantic reform. The Contractors' Bill struck 
a fatal blow at a very deadly form of corruption within and 
without the House of Commons.^ The Bill for disfranchis- 
ing Revenue Officers, disfranchised a number of men who 
had the most direct interest in keeping the Government in 
office, and who constituted, according to one account, a fifth 
part of the total electorate of the country.' Rockingham 
stated in the House of Lords that seventy elections chiefly 
depended on the votes of Revenue Officers. Burke's measure 
of economical reform, which effected a saving of more than 
£j2fiCO a year, limited the secret service money expended 
in the kingdom to ;{r 10,000, and abolished more than forty 
sinecures, usually held by Members of Parliament. "It also 
provided that until the pension list should be reduced to 

' " Lucrative contracts for the public service necessarily increased by the 
American War were found a convenient mode of enriching political supporters. 
A cootiact to supply rum or beef for the navy, was as great a prize for a member 
as a share in a loan or lottery. This species of reward was particularly accept- 
able to the commercial members of the House. Nor were its attractions confined 
to the members who enjoyed the contracts. Constituents being allowed to par- 
tidpate in their profits were zealous in supporting Government candidates" 
(Erskine May, ConUitutioncU History of England^ vol. i. p. 387). 

• According to one account, the Revenue Officers amounted to 40,000 or 
60,000 out of a total electorate of 300,000. The disqualification was removed in 
1868, when the proportion of Revenue Officers to the whole body of voters had 
become insignificant* 

4 




50 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

;C90,ooo, no pension above ;C300 a year should be granted ; 
that the whole amount of pensions bestowed in any year 
should not exceed ;C6oOy a list of which was directed to be 
laid before Parliament; that the entire pension list should 
afterwards be restricted to £9^,000 ; that no pension to any 
one person should exceed ;ffi200.*'^ The Rockingham 
Ministry lasted three months, but few Ministries, as Mr. 
Lecky remarks, have done so much to elevate and to purify 
English political life. It had proved the sincerity of that 
great agitation in which Fox first became the comrade of 
Burke, by carrying three great measures for reducing the 
purchasing power of the Crown, and for withdrawing politics 
from the eager market of a spurious and mercenary loyalty. 

NoU I. — It is only fair to add that these measures of 
the Rockingham Ministry, all of which were supported by 
Pitt, were supplemented by a great reform accomplished 
by Fox's rival in 1784. Before that time Ministers were 
in the habit of distributing beneficial shares and lottery 
tickets under the market price among their private friends 
and the Parliamentary supporters of the Government. Two 
flagrant examples of this practice occurred under Bute and 
Lord North. The second case, which occurred in 1781, was 
the subject of very vehement accusations by Rockingham, 
Fox, and Burke; Rockingham stating that "the loan was 
made merely for the purpose of corrupting the Parliament 
to support a wicked, impolitic, and ruinous war." When 
Lord North raised another loan in the following year, he 
adopted a system of close subscriptions. When Pitt was 
Prime Minister in 1784, he finally abolished the system of 
distributing shares in a loan. " When he desired to contract 
a loan, he gave public notice in the City through the Bank 
of England, that he would receive sealed proposals from all 
who wished to send them, and in order to guard against all 
partiality, they were opened in the presence of the Governor 
and Deputy-Governor of the Bank " (Lecky, Hist, of Eng.^ 

^ Erskiae May, vol i. p. 358. 



FOX AND THE KING 51 

v6L V. p. 292). Mr. Lecky points out that Pitt b {very 
much to be blamed for the prodigal use he made of another 
method of rewarding party services, the creation of peers. 
When he resigned office in 1801, he had created, or promoted 
upwards of 140 peers. 

Note 2. — ^The Irish Pension List remained unregulated 
down to 1793, when it had reached a sum of ;f 124,000. The 
hereditary revenues of the Crown in Ireland amounted to 
^£275,000, and were of course at the disposal of the Crown 
and largely employed for corrupt purposes. As early as 
1757 the Irish House of Commons had unanimously pro- 
tested agsunst the amount of the public revenue spent on 
Pensions. The Pension List was fixed in 1793 at ;£*! 74,000, 
and reduced twenty years later to ;f 80,000. It is interesting 
to notice that the entire Pension List for the United King- 
dom is now £7Sfioo. 




CHAPTER HI 

FOX AND THE KING 

The internal weakness of the Government due to Shelbume's position. 
Rockingham's death. Resignation of Burke and Fox as a protest 
against the King's influence in the Cabinet The Coalition. The 
motives that prompted it. The real issue the King's authority. 
The King's control of Pitt in vital issues throughout his career. 
Fox right in his aims but wrong in his tactics. The public be- 
wildered and suspicious. The Coalition Government and the 
India Bill. The great debacle of March 1784. Fox's account of 
his motives in 1796. Demoralising effect of the struggle alike on 
Pitt and on the Rockinghams. 

UNHAPPILY the Rockingham party which had 
succeeded brilliantly in one great object of its cam- 
paign had been baffled in the other ; it had struck a great 
blow at the corrupt influence of the Crown but it had not 
struck a fatal blow at the power the King exercised over 
his Ministries. It soon became clear that the reformers 
who had stormed the Cabinet were not its masters. The 
King was on stronger ground in resisting the efibrt to create 
an independent Ministry able to maintain itself against the 
pressure direct and indirect of the Court than he was in 
resisting the agitation against his system of Parliamentary 
bribery. The one struggle went on before the footlights; 
the other behind the scenes. The power of the popular 
indignation and alarm which Fox and Burke had developed 
and directed, like some newly discovered engine, against the 
organised abuses of the King's system, was a battering-ram 
in the hands of a party that was busy assailing all the out- 
works and defences of corruption and patronage ; but that 



POX AND THE KING 53 

occult tyranny which depended on the King's dexterity in 
controlling and estranging Ministers was something beyond 
the reach of its resounding blows. If public spirit gave the 
reformers the advantage in attacking the one form of court 
influence, the King's training in craft and intrigue, his long 
experience, his knowledge of the weaknesses of his Ministers, 
gave him the supreme advantage in defending the other. 
The spectacle Rockingham's administration presents in 
Parliament is a spectacle of the rapid and ruthless destruc- 
tion of a rotten system that was very dear to the King ; 
the spectacle it presents in the Cabinet is that of the 
triumphs of a nimble diplomacy which had explored and 
made its own all the vast range of the meaner motives of 
human nature. 

From the day of the formation of the Rockingham 
Government, Shelbume enjoyed an influence that was in- 
compatible with that strict unanimity in coercing the King 
which Burke had demanded as the condition of the restora- 
tion of political stability. For Shelbume as for Chatham 
the system which the King had tried to create, under which 
he kept his Ministries disintegrated, and hoped to divide and 
break up every body of collective opinion, possessed a certain 
fatal fascination. Both statesmen had the same weakness for 
a system that was dependent on the dissolution of parties, 
and the incoherence of Ministries. The King was wise 
enough when North was driven from office to send for 
Chatham's follower. Shelbume refused to form a Ministry 
and advised the King to send for Rockingham. Eventually 
Rockingham was invited to become Prime Minister, not 
directly by the King but through the agency of Shelbume. 
Rockingham, after some hesitation, agreed. The King had 
gained his first point, and the Rockingham party had made 
its first mistake in accepting Shelbume as its agent. Shel- 
bume made himself Secretary of State ; he put one of his 
followers. Dunning, into the Cabinet without consulting 
Rockingham, and he arranged with the King that Thurlow, 
the Kingfs docile Chancellor, should remain in office. As 




54 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

Fox truly said, it was clear that the Ministry was made up of 
two parts, one belonging to the King, and the other to the 
people. The discrepancies became more acute as time went 
on. The Chancellor stoutly resisted in the Cabinet and in the 
Lords all the Rockingham programme of economical reform. 
One of the Lords' amendments to the Contractors* Bill was 
actually moved by Dunning, whilst Thurlow took an open 
and conspicuous part in opposing the Bill, and Shelbume to 
the general astonishment was particularly friendly to Thurlow 
though he supported the Bill. On another occasion there 
were violent recriminations in the Lords between two mem- 
bers of the Government, Thurlow and Richmond. Both 
Shelbume and Thurlow again did their best to restrict 
Burke's Bill in the Cabinet, and instead of the united and 
resolute body forcing reform on the Court, which Burke and 
Fox had hoped for, the Cabinet was a divided body in which 
the King's interests were persistently upheld by a minority. 
Rockingham was Prime Minister, but it was to Shelbume 
that the King gave his confidence, communicating to him 
not only his disapproval of the Rockingham measures but 
his dislike of Rockingham's person. In such a situation it is 
not surprising that Fox wrote as early as April the 28th to 
Fitzpatrick, " Provided we can stay in long enough to have 
given a good stout blow to the influence of the Crown, I do 
not think it much signifies how soon we go out after, and 
leave him (Shelbume) and the Chancellor to make such a 
Government as they can, and this I think we shall be able 
to do." 

The King had already evaded the calamity that had once 
seemed imminent ; a united and compact Ministry. But the 
measure of his good fortune was still incomplete. Two 
months after Fox wrote to Fitzpatrick the letter quoted 
above, Rockingham was on his deathbed; Shelbume, the 
King's confidant and ally, became Prime Minister and the 
Rockingham party was scattered. Fox and Burke, the two 
greatest men in the party, left the Government ; so did Lord 
John; Cavendish, Portland, Sheridan, Althorp, Duncannon, 



FOX AND THE KING 55 

Townshendy and Lea ; but Richmond, Keppel, and Conway 
remained. Only a few years before the King had talked of 
retreating to Hanover, and now his enemies who had stormed 
the Cabinet with drums beating and flags flying, and had 
seemed so near to victory were themselves broken and dis- 
persed in precipitate confusion. A further disruption was to 
follow. The section of the Rockingham party which followed 
Fox into opposition was divided once again on the coalition 
between Fox and North, and the elements of the strong 
combination against the King's influence which had been so 
powerful and formidable in 1780 had dissipated their strength 
in two great party crises within two years. The King, it is 
true, was obliged to accept a Government in which Fox was 
paramount in 1782, but he got rid of it by means of a char- 
acteristic act of perfidy, and he upheld Pitt who took office 
when the Coalition Ministry was dismissed, in an unconstitu- 
tional defiance of the House of Commons. Fox's prediction 
in 1782 that the King was relying with reason on Pitt to 
revive his old system came true. Pitt acted in 1783 and 
1784 as the King's instrument, and extricated him from the 
danger of another submission to a strong and distasteful 
Ministry. The difference between the situation in 1780 and 
1783 was that the King in withstanding the principles for 
which the Rockingham party contended had against him in 
1780 all the strength of popular suspicion and indignation, 
whilst in 1783 those forces were on his side. The skill of the 
King, and the mistakes of his opponents had transferred the 
all^iance of public opinion from the Whigs to the Court. 
The Crown after a succession of bewildering surprises and 
public misfortunes had emerged from its strenuous contest 
with something of the prestige of the character Bolingbroke 
had assigned to it, and which the King had done nothing to 
earn. Its opponents, after striking one important blow, 
emerged with their reputations dimmed and their strength 
wasted in a poisonous climate of suspicion. 

The part Fox played in these momentous changes has 
been very severely condemned. His motive throughout seems 




56 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

to be quite clear and unequivocal. If he had stayed in Shel- 
bume's Government he would have frittered away his strength 
in an ineffectual opposition to forces that he could not hope 
to master, and he would have lent the authority of his name 
to a Government which he believed to be merely another 
instance of the King's system. Keppel who remained at the 
time resigned in January 1783, and Richmond, whilst he 
condemned Fox's action, complained repeatedly of Shel- 
bume's conduct as a colleague. Shelbume was influential 
enough as a Secretary of State in Rockingham's lifetime. 
He had induced Rockingham to agree to the grant of certain 
pensions to his friends, an act that injured very substantially 
the credit and the moral authority of an Administration 
which came into oflice with the cry of economical refonn. 
He had obstructed the very designs that belonged funda- 
mentally to the political mission of the Ministry. He had 
been counted on confidently by the King as the means of 
dissolving the formidable power of the Rockingham party 
within the Ministry. " From the language of T/Ir. Fitzpatrick 
it would seem that Lord Shelburne has no chance of being 
able to coalesce with Mr. Fox. It may not be necessary to 
remove him at once ; but if Lord Shelbume accepts the head 
of the Treasury, and is succeeded by Mr. Pitt as Secretary 
for the Home Department and British Dominions then it will 
be seen how far he will submit to it The quarrelling with 
the rest of the party as a party would not be wise.** Shel- 
bume as a Secretary of State had been able to thwart and 
disable the Rockingham Ministry, and. Fox had already 
resolved to resign before Rockingham's death; as Prime 
Minister he would have been irresistible. Fox himself was 
convinced that resignation was his duty. '' I have done r^t, 
I am sure I have, ... I am sure my staying would have 
been a means of deceiving the public and betraying my party, 
and these are things not to be done for the sake of any 
supposed temporary good." ^ 

The second step taken by Fox was still more momentous, 

* Buckin^iam Papers, i. 55. 



POX AND THE KING 57 

and it has been blamed much more severely. His secession 
left the House of Commons with three parties : Shelbume's 
party, reinforced now by William Pitt, North's party, and 
Fox's party. Shelbume made attempts to coalesce with 
each of the other two parties, and Pitt himself waited on Fox 
to ask the terms on which his alliance might be secured. 
Fox replied, very properly, that he would never serve under 
Shelbume. Shelbume's negotiations with North's followers, 
though not with North himself, were actually proceeding 
when Fox and North were brought into communication, with 
the result that the famous Coalition was formed, and Fox 
and North together drove the Shelbume Government out of '- 
office. 

In taking this second step Fox's motive is again quite 
intdligible. A coalition with Shelbume was out of the 
question. To have remained as an active or passive sup- 
porter of Shelbume was only possible if Fox believed 
there was a greater calamity to the state than the con- 
tinuance in office of a Ministry which he regarded as the 
King's instrament There is no reason to doubt that Fox 
was perfectly sincere when he said to Grafton upon Rock- 
ingham's death that he was convinced that Shelbume was as 
fully devoted to the views of the Court as Lord North ever 
had been. The central fact of the political situation in 1783 
was that it was not a policy but a system that Fox and 
Burke were opposing. Their first duty, they believed, was to 
destroy that system. If they had been merely resolved to 
oppose a particular concrete policy, they could have afforded 
to wait until that policy was matured. But the system 
which they were attacking grew stronger with every hour 
that it survived. Shelbume's Government was weak. But 
no one had thought Lord North's Government could live 
in 1770, and it took twelve years to turn it out of office. 
Burke and Fox were not merely anxious to carry particular 
reforms ; they believed that it was fundamentally necessary, 
if England was to have honest and stable government, to 
make it impossible for a Ministry to hold office if it was 




I 



58 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

merely a King's Ministry. That issue was to them the 
supreme issue in 1783. Was the condition of things under 
which the King had ruled through Bute and Grenville, 
undermined Rockingham's first Government, collected and 
destroyed all the talent he could inveigle into the Grafton 
Government, ruled again through twelve years of disaster 
and disgrace by means of North's docile weakness, and 
thwarted and broken up the Whig Government forced on 
him in 1782, to continue or to disappear? Shelbume was 
openly protesting that he could never consent that the King 
of England should be a King of the Mahrattas, and the 
whole plan of his administration was precisely the plan 
Burke and Fox had set out to destroy. 

To destroy that system Fox allied with North. An 
alliance in one sense, it was in another a capitulation, for 
Fox and Burke retained their original scheme, and North 
agreed to it North, in other words, lent his services and 
his influence to the enterprise on which Fox and Burke 
were resolved, and that enterprise was the destruction of 
the system under which North's own Ministry had been 
established and kept in office. If the object of Fox and 
Burke had been some object on which North was opposed to 
them, and they had sacrified that object to achieve office, 
their conduct would have deserved the blackest name. If it 
had been some policy which North did not accept at heart, 
and which he accepted outwardly for the sake of office, his 
conduct would be inexcusable. As it is, neither pique, nor 
ambition, nor the mean avarice of revenge need be invoked to 
explain a partnership for a common object of public im- 
portance. The one object on which North could act with 
Fox and Burke was precisely the object those statesmen had 
set before them some years earlier. The Rockingham party 
had meant to destroy the royal power in Government, and if 
that was taken as the dividing line in politics. North in the 
temper in which he was in 1783 was a proper and legitimate 
ally. To Burke and Fox that one issue was the dividing 
line. To destroy that influence they had laboured during 



^ 



FOX AND THE KING 59 

North's Ministry ; they had struggled during Rockingham's ; 
they had resigned office rather than be creatures of She!- 
bume's. They renounced no doctrine, they broke no pledge, 
they abandoned no object of public policy when they allied 
themselves with North in order to create an administration of 
the kind they had outlined several years before as the first 
need of the country. 

Before discussing the considerations so strong, as it turned 
out in the event, as to be paramount in condemnation of that 
momentous alliance, it is pertinent to notice some important 
facts that are essential to understanding Fox's conduct. 
First of all, no alliance was possible with Pitt or Shelburne. \ 
Each of these statesmen agreed with Fox on Parliamentary 
Reform, but Pitt, who had never accepted the Rockingham 
principle of subduing the King, was a steadfast colleague to 
Shelburne, and Shelburne was now the opponent of that prin- 
ciple. The Coalition Government acted steadily and strenu- 
ously on its professed principle. The King's most successful 
manoeuvre in adulterating the strong anti-prerogative char- 
acter of the Rockingham Ministry had been his arrangement 
with Shelburne to leave in the Government a foreign and 
corrosive element in the person of the unscrupulous Thurlow. 
The Coalition was strong enough to eliminate that sinister 
figure, and the Ministry was famous, if on no other ground, 
as the only Ministry between 1778-1792, in which Thurlow 
had to practise his intrigues in private life. Thurlow 
reappeared with Pitt's first Ministry. Fox vindicated ab- 
solutely his own sincerity by refusing to accept Thurlow 
for a colleague as the price of the King's favour. The 
Government carried through the House of Commons a 
great measure for abolishing a flagrant abuse in the most 
important field of England's foreign responsibilities, and 
it carried that measure against the King's wishes. Fox's 
Coalition Ministry did not, like Pitt's Ministries, surrender 
important measures to the King's influence. It was beaten 
by the King's intrigue in the Lords, and the unpardonable 
readiness of Pitt as Leader of the Opposition to become 




a 



60 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

an accessory, after the act, of that flagrant and despotic use 
of court influence. 

Secondly, how does Fox's belief in 1783 that the 
supreme necessity of the hour was to reduce the King's 
power to a mere semblance of control, look in the light of 
the subsequent history of the reign ? It is sometimes said 
that the King really lost his battle against the principle of 
Parliamentary control, though he won his battle against the 
Coalition. Pitt, it is urged, though he came into power by 
asserting as full blooded a doctrine of the royal prerogative 
as any Tory ever cherished, was in practice too strong for 
the King, and the King's Government ceased, only to be 
resumed during the Ministry of his incapable and idolised 
Addington. This is surely a misconception of the real 
meaning of the crusade against the King's influence. The 
Rockinghams had at least carried one great measure which 
the King hated. Did Pitt, who was Prime Minister for nearly 
twenty years, carry a single measure that the King hated ? 
He eflfected some splendid reforms in finance, but the only 
finance the King cared about was the sort of finance that 
the Rockinghams had dealt with in 1782, when they had 
sent tumbling all his fabric of corruption. Pitt might make 
commercial treaties or remit taxation, or introduce Free 
Trade. His achievements in regard to all these are cele- 
brated enough, but as long as he moved on such fields, the 
King neither cared nor understood what he was doing. But 
whatever Pitt's authority within certain boundaries, he was 
always at the end of a chain ; confronted with any wrong or 
infamy that George treasured, his energies were captive. In 
1782 Pitt was a vehement champion of Parliamentary Re- 
form. He held ofiice for twenty years without abolishing 
a single anomaly or enfranchising a single Englishman. He 
was a strenuous enemy of the Slave Trade, but during his 
long lease of unexampled power he struck at it with half- 
measures, and yet Fox in the four months of his pre- 
occupied administration whilst the sands of his life were 
running out, and his natural force abating, destroyed that 



FOX AND THE KING 61 

trade for ever with one blow of his flashing broadsword. 
Pitt knew in 1801 that Catholic Emancipation was vital to 
the contentment of Ireland, and to the safety of the Empire. 
Yet so fax was he from carrying that indispensable reform 
that after resigning office conscientiously because the King 
was against it, he offered within a month to resume office 
on the understanding that he would never raise the subject 
again, and he actually opposed the petition for Catholic 
Emancipation in 1804. 

Pitt did many things which the King regarded with the 
unintelligent indifference with which he would have watched 
the experiments of an astronomer ; he did others, such as 
making war on France, and suffocating free speech at home, 
which the King loved, as he loved anything that was 
stamped with his own royal hatred of liberty; he carried 
not a single reform that the King disliked.^ 

Fox's view in 1783, that the first thing to be done in 
English politics was to abolish the King's influence, was 
completely justified by the history of Pitt's Ministry, for in 
that Ministry the King had as absolute a veto on reform as 
if his Minister had been a Bute instead of a Pitt, a well- 
drilled and well-fed servant instead of one of the three 
greatest men in politics with a mind and a will of his own. 
For the King was paramount just when and where his 
influence in the exclusion of persons or policies was fatal. 
In 1804 the King, and the King alone, prevented the 
creation of the strongest Government English politics could 
provide. The crisis in 1804 was very different from the 
crisis in 1792 when Pitt blandly promised himself a short 
war and a rapid triumph. Napoleon was almost at the 
height of his pinnacled power. Pitt knew that it was 
indispensable to collect all the available strength into the 
Government, and he proposed to form a Ministry in which 
he should take the Treasury, Fox and Fitzwilliam should be 

' Note that Canning argued in iSoi against yielding to the King on Catholic 
Emancipation and staying in office, on the ground that so many concessions had 
already been made. 




-I 



62 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the Secretaries of State, Grey Secretary of War, and Gren- 
ville President of the Council To this arrangement Fox 
agreed. But the King was just as ready in 1804 as he had 
been in 1775 to subordinate the safety of England to his 
own masterful passions and resentments. In the American 
War he declare that no thought of the country would make 
him accept Chatham as Minister. In 1804 he would have 
let Napoleon do his worst rather than make Fox a Secretary 
of State. The King knew very well how to play on Pitt's 
personal vanity, and he combined flattery with menace, and 
appealed to his compassion. He agreed to accept Grenville 
but stood out against Fox. Fox urged Grenville and his 
friends to take office under Pitt, absolving Grenville from all 
personal obligations, but Grenville refused, and Pitt, his 
strength already waning under his long years of office, had 
to scrape together for as grave a crisis as an English 
Minister ever had to face, a Ministry of Nobodies. That 
hour, full of dreadful omens for a man of Pitt's patriot- 
ism, like that other hour when the use of the manoeuvre 
that had killed other reforming Ministries broke up Pitt's 
project of Catholic Emancipation, was a terrible retribution 
for his conduct in 1783. But it was not only Pitt, and not 
only the England of Pitt's day that paid dearly for leaving the 
supreme power of veto to a King who laid a heavy hand on 
all the enthusiasms that rose above the surface of selfish 
prejudice. As we trace the history of that demon which has 
pursued two nations, draining like some malignant vampire 
the life-blood of Ireland, and the public honour of England 
for a hundred years, it is impossible not to recollect with 
some bitter impatience that hour in which the mistakes of a 
set of politicians and the vanity of a young statesman com- 
bined to give to a tyrannical and improvident Court the 
final voice in the aflfairs of the nation. 

On this view Fox and Burke were right and Pitt was 
wrong in their estimates of the first public necessity of 1783. 
But if Pitt mistook the end, or deliberately pursued the 
wrong end. Fox mistook the means to the right end, with 



FOX AND THE KING 63 

results that are one of the saddest tragedies of history. 
Whilst Fox obtained by the Coalition a majority in the 
House of Commons, and further not merely a loyal and 
amenable, but also a very capable colleague, he lost the one 
weapon that was indispensable to him, the public confidence 
he had won by five years of incessant and courageous 
opposition to the Court. To Fox and Burke it was more 
important than it was to any other statesmen to keep very 
close to the public temper and to carry with them the 
popular confidence at every step. That reciprocal con- 
fidence was the secret of their power. They had done more 
than any other two men to create and sustain that great 
public agitation which is described in an earlier chapter; 
they had made of public opinion a new and formidable 
force, and without that weapon, weighted as they were 
with equivocal traditions of party, they would have been 
powerless in the face of the resources and the mercenaries 
of the Court. By the Coalition Fox received reinforce- 
ments that counted in Parliamentary battle, but he drove 
into the ranks of the enemy the popular opinion that 
was everything to him. If the King's power was to be 
destroyed, the support of popular opinion was essential to 
the crusaders. By the Coalition that support was not 
merely alienated, it was actually transferred to the King. 

Everyone of the phases through which Fox's quarrel 
with Shelbume passed was unintelligible and bewildering 
to a public that could understand the battle over pensions 
and bribery but was naturally quite unable to follow those 
more subtle conflicts which went on behind the curtain. 
The public Associations in the country adjourned for a 
year on the formation of the Rockingham Ministry, sus- 
pending their judgment, to watch events. The pensions 
Shelbume induced Rockingham to give to his friends were 
the first shock to the full confidence of the party that had 
clamoured with Fox for reform and a Spartan discipline 
in the public service. Fox's resignation was the next 
shock. To the outside world it looked fractious if not 




i 



64 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

factious, and Fox was judged harshly because the materials 
for judgment were incomplete and misleading. Patriotism 
and the proprieties of the Cabinet system sealed his lips on 
the most serious of all the incidents that had influenced his 
suspicions of Shelbume, the behaviour of that Minister in 
regard to the paper Franklin sent him discussing the 
possible cession of Canada to the United States. Fox's 
reasons for resigning must be accepted by everyone who 
has followed the correspondence of those months as sub- 
stantial and complete in their cumulative force, and perfectiy 
public spirited in their quality. He was beaten in the 
Cabinet on the question of the spontaneous recognition of 
the independence of the United States, a matter that he 
r^[arded as vital ; he had not been treated with the confi- 
dence due to him as a colleague by Shelbume, whose 
conduct in replying to an informal note from Franklin, 
without consulting anyone in the Cabinet but Dunning 
was censured as warmly by Richmond as by Fox, and he 
believed rightiy that the whole plan of coercing the Crown 
by a Ministry was betrayed by Shelbume's independent 
communications with the King. ^t 

These reasons were not only ample, they were impera- 
tive. But they were not reasons that could be displa)red 
in their full effect to the public, and Shelbume and Pitt 
(who joined the Ministry when Fox left it) combined to 
create the impression that Fox had only seceded out of 
pique because Shelburne was made Prime Minister instead of 
the undistinguished nobleman whom Fox and his party had 
nominated for that office. The whole affair therefore bore 
a very d oncerting aspect to men who had regarded Fox 
as a c fiterested politician, and it bore that aspect because 
it 1 p: snted in a twilight of mystery and false whispers. 
Kkingham party, it is true, put forward Portiand as 
[date for the reversion of Rockingham's office, and 
and I burne were very quick to turn that proposal 

t r own account by denouncing the inveterate taste of 
: rty Whigs for government by stately mediocrities. If 



FOX AND THE KING 65 

the only question was the question of the comparative 
abilities of Shelbume^nd Portland, the friends of Shelbume 
had it all their own way. Portland was suggested, because 
Fox and Richmond and Burke, the three ablest men in the 
party, were all very obnoxious to the King, and Portland 
was expected to fill the rdle which Rockingham had filled 
with consummate success, the rdle of a titular leader for 
which the most important gifts were not Parliamentary 
ability or eloquence, but tact, address, and the art of 
composing the quarrels and differences of party leaders. 
Rockingham was a politician of very ordinary stature but 
he had at least kept his party intact in circumstances that 
put no light strain on its discipline and endurance. Fox 
believed rightly or Mrrongly that Portland had much the 
same nature but, when the choice was made, it helped to 
divide that party still further because whilst it left Fox 
leader in the Commons, it did not offer to Richmond, who 
was fully conscious of his own strong claims on the party 
leadership, even the secondary compensation of the leader- 
ship in the Lords. 

t All the conditions therefore of the first breach with 
Shelbume, the esoteric character of the real and very 
momentous controversy, and the accidental circumstances 
which Pitt and Shelburne craftily pushed into the fore- 
ground, and represented as the governing issues contrived 
to give to a secession, which was prompted by public and 
honourable motives, the air of a rather frivolous and arid 
quarrel. The next event, the Coalition, gave a still greater 
shock to the public confidence in Fox. There had been 
coalitions before 1783, and coalitions in which the most 
discordant politicians had taken oflfice together. Twenty 
years later, it was generally believed to be not merely 
reasonable but actually a thing to be desired that Fox 
and Pitt should combine in forming a Ministry, though 
their opposition had been so bitter that Fox had declared 
that Pitt's shameful assaults on all the liberties of English- 
men had made violent resistance a question of prudence 
5 




66 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

and not of morality. Why was it then that the alliance 
between Fox and North staggered public opinion? The 
answer is to be found in the nature of the moral influence 
on which Fox had founded his public position. Most of the 
great political battles of the day were fought in Parliament 
Fox and his friends had organised their attack outside. 
They had made not merely the House of Commons, but 
the public platform ring with the crimes and follies of 
North's Government, and the whole system that made 
them possible. And for the public Associations that had 
listened to Fox's Philippics, the American War with all 
its losses and disgraces, the defiance of the people, and 
the corruption of Parliament were summed up and per- 
sonified in the statesman with whom Fox allied himself 
to attack Shelbume. All the forces of evil, against which 
Fox had led them, were identified in the eyes of the 
Associations, not with some impalpable and abstract system^ 
but with the concrete career, the personal character of North. 
/ Fox and Burk e^forgpt what a powerful and what a delicat e 
^ weapon they had constructed, To explain the new strat^y 
uT some amiable phrase such as "amicitiae sempiternx, 
inimicitiae placabiles," to justify it by parading North's 
loyalty as a colleague, to defend it by accusing men of 
whom the public knew no more than that they had served 
in a Ministry which had carried great economical reforms, 
might have passed as reasonable apologies amongst the 
initiated, to the outside public they were a combination 
of simpering pique and of unprincipled and unabashed 
ambition.^ The horror excited by the coalition of 1783 • is 
itself a signal proof of the success with which Fox had 

> The moral effect of the Coalition is seen in the History oj the Tw Acts^ 
xxxiii. 

**From that unhappy moment, we may date that want of conSdence in 
public men of all parties which is often expressed in terms not Teiy guarded, 
in the public meetings and resolutions of those who assemble to consider of 
grievances or to suggest remedies.*' 

' It is significant that Adam Smith, a friend of Shelbume, approved Fox's 
conduct in both crises. 




FOX AND THE KING 67 

made great political issues plain and tangible to the public, 
and was in itself, therefore, an unwelcome compliment to 
the energies of the great platform campaign. 

A certain odium attached again to the Coalition on 
account of the concrete issue of the attack. Fox's criticisms 
of the peace were doubtless sincere and perfectly intelligible. 
As Foreign Minister he had formed his own plans for 
strengthening England's position in negotiating, and if 
necessary for carrying on the war with France, Spain, and 
Holland. The first step to be taken in his opinion was 
the unconditional and unqualified acknowledgment of 
American independence; on that point he was ready to 
make instantaneous and complete surrender; on all others 
he was disposed to drive a stubborn bargain. Shelburne's 
general idea was precisely the counterpart Fox thought 
that, if the war went on, it would be an advantage to 
England to have recognised the independence of America. 
Shelbume thought that, by that acknowledgment, England 
would have given away in advance one of her main 
diplomatic weapons. Shelburne on the other hand was 
far more ready than Fox to make concessions on other 
matters : at one time he was not disinclined to surrender 
Gibraltar, a contingency Fox regarded with indignation and 
alarm. There were already growing up the two schools of 
foreign policy; the one, of which Fox was the leader, 
favourable to an alliance with the Northern Powers against 
the Bourbon Powers; the other, represented afterwards by 
Shelbume and Pitt, jealous of the Russian advance, and more 
inclined to act in concert with France. Hence Fox and 
Shelburne when they were in office together looked with 
different eyes on the negotiations. When the preliminaries 
of peace were published Fox objected to them on two 
grounds ; he thought a better peace might have been 
obtained, and he thought the King's system of government 
was to blame for the peace. It is now known that Vergennes 
thought seriously that if Fox came into power before the 
preliminaries were concluded, he would continue the war 




68 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

with France. Fox condemned the peace quite sincerely, 
and to ai^e that bis opposition was factious on the ground 
that he concluded a peace when he was Fore^ Secretary 
in the Coalition Ministry, without substantial alterations, is 
to forget that the preliminaries were binding. Fox certainly 
got better terms in detail for England than the terms he 
criticised, but it was impossible for him to reopen the 
negotiations. North again could conscientiously criticise 
the terms of peace. He believed that it was possible to 
rescue the American loyalists from the vengeance of their 
countrymen, and thou^ that is a belief which most persons 
nowadays, knowing the efforts made not only by Shelbume 
but also by Vei^^nes, will reject, there is nothing to 
suggest that North's ind^ation was hypocritical. But 
when Fox and North combined to censure the peace, how- 
ever genuine their motives might be, their action inevitably 
bore a rather invidious appearance to men who remembered 
how often Fox had accused North of wearing out the 
strength of the nation in a dishonourable war, and thought 
that if the peace was a reproach to England, the stigma of 
it belonged to Fox's ally rather than to his opponents. 

These circumstances all helped to alienate popular support 
from Fox by wrapping round him mystery and suspicion. 
Yet Fox and Lord John Cavendish were both re-elected with- 
out opposition when the Coalition Ministry was formed, and 
the King never thought of dissolving Parliament as a possible 
means of escape from that Ministry, two facts which show 
conclusively that there was as yet nothing like the popular 
tumult of anger and distrust which was to sweep the Whigs 
to the four winds in the following spring. But the Ministry, 
compact and loyal to its main object, had not behind it the 
weight of popular opinion that it needed for an encounter 
with the King and his battalions. Burke's mishap over the 
two clerks who had been rightly dismissed by Barr^, the 
effects of which were not quite obliterated by all Fox's adroit 
handling of an awkward situation, helped to increase the 
public mi^ving ; the grave mistake of asking for a great 




FOX AND THE KING 69 

revenue for the Prince of Wales was a further aggravation, and 
Pitt turned that diffidence to good account, as soon as Fox's 
celebrated India Bill was introduced. The Bill itself was a 
great and daring measure for dealing with a gigantic evil, 
but Pitt chose his ground for attacking it with a single eye to 
the prejudices the Coalition had excited. The grandees of 
the India Company were a formidable body; they were 
supported by a great unseen army of clients and dependants, 
and they were reinforced by all the Corporations who dreaded 
the first invasion of the rights of Charters. Pitt became their 
champion, and he attacked the Bill as an attempt to create 
a permanent Whig control, and to make Fox master of an 
illimitable patronage. The accusation came with a bad grace 
from a statesman whose colleague Dundas was for eighteen 
years to keep Scotland friendly and well-disposed by a 
judicious application of Indian prizes. But the blow told 
just because the Coalition was not trusted by the public, 
and an opposition which was neither scrupulous nor public- 
spirited leading an army of malcontents, whose antagonism 
to the Bill came from their pockets, succeeded in stamping 
the measure as a scheme of party tyranny on the minds of 
an electorate that was already puzzled by the mysterious 
strategy of the Rockinghams. 

The final catastrophe came from the Whigs themselves. 
When Pitt had sanctioned the King's infamous trick, had 
taken office with the support of the King's friends, and 
held it in a gross and arbitrary defiance of the House of 
Commons, the Opposition squandered all their resources of 
public indignation by the blunder they made in attacking the 
right of the Crown to dissolve Parliament, instead of con- 
centrating their energies on Pitt's unwarrantable pretension 
to retain office against the will of the House of Commons. 
Fox's error in thus putting himself in the wrong is the more to 
be deplored, because he was careful to put himself altogether 
in the right in the discussion of the possibilities of com- 
promise. During the early months of 1784 there was a 
general wish to put an end to the condition of Parliamentary 




J 



70 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

anarchy by forming a Ministry by arrangement between the 
two parties. Fox agreed to serve with Pitt, and said that 
Pitt might settle the question of Indian patronage as he 
pleased, if he would consent that the Government of India 
should be in England, and should be permanent for at least 
a given number of years. North was ready to stand aside, 
and to renounce all ambitions for office rather than prevent 
a union. But Fox first of all insisted that Pitt should 
acknowledge the control of Parliament by resigning, and 
secondly he resolutely resisted the admission of Thurlow. 
These stipulations were entirely honourable to Fox, and it 
would have been inconsistent on his part to accept anything 
less. Pitt by refusing his assent to them showed first of all 
that he put his personal vanity above the great principle of 
Parliamentary control, and secondly that he would be no 
party to eliminating the King's illicit influence. On the 
points in dispute Fox acted with magnanimity and with 
a strict regard to his public pledges, and his views of the 
needs of the country : Pitt cannot be acquitted of a violation 
of all the central principles of Parliamentary government 
and of condoning the King's perfidy to his Ministers. 
Yet what impressed the public most was that Pitt had 
refused to take a rich sinecure of ;£^3000 a year, that he had 
defied, with a valour that recalled his father, a powerful 
Opposition, and that the Opposition had thundered against 
an appeal to the country. There followed the elections of 
March and the sensational collapse of the Whigs routed by 
as miscellaneous an army as ever took the field, the indigna- 
tion of reformers, the disappointments of the Associations, 
the avarice and alarm of rich companies, and the triumphant 
agility of the King's friends. 

So ended finally the great struggle, and it ended with one 
of the mordant and mocking sarcasms of history. The King 
had snatched from the most dangerous and desperate of pre- 
dicaments an unearned lustre and an unexpected popularity ; 
Pitt carried into the ranks of the King's friends the moral 
influence he had won as the champion of Parliamentary 



FOX AND THE KING 71 

Refonn, and the enemy of secret influence ; the Rockinghams, 
their laborious savings scattered in two years, went out into 
a dreary world of suspicion to live as common borrowers, 
without substance and without credit, on sorry shifts and 
hazards. 

Lord Rosebery suggests that Fox felt throughout the 
rest of his career that in forming the Coalition he had 
done something which required defence. There is nothing 
in his correspondence that gives an inkling of moral remorse 
or misgiving, and a letter to his nephew, written twelve years 
later, contains a luminous record of his motives. " However 
except among ourselves and the few politicians who are 
philosophers, whether there is now any use in recurring to, 
or at least in dwelling much upon the transactions of 1784, 1 
much doubt. The party which those events should have 
bound together for ever are now scattered and dispersed, and 
the bulk of mankind, always judging by effects, will consider 
that as a bad bond of union which has been an ineffectual 
one. Perhaps therefore instead of saying now that the power 
of the House of Commons ought to be first restored, and its 
constitution considered afterwards, it would be better to 
invert the order and say Parliament should first be reformed, 
and then restored to its just influence. You will observe that 
I state these opinions as being mine now, in contradistinction 
to those times when the Whig party was only beaten but not 
dispersed and when I certainly was of a different opinion." ^ 

The effects of that struggle on both parties were 
momentous; they certainly sapped the vigour of Pitt's 

' Sept. 1796. Memorials and CorrespondUnce^ vol. iii. p. 135. See also 
Tol. iv. p. 40. '*No strong confederacy since the Restoration, perhaps not 
before, ever did exist without the accession of obnoxious persons : Shaftesbury, 
Buckingham in Charles 2nd's time ; Danby and many others at the time of 
the Revolution ; after the Revolution many more, and even Sutherland himself. 
In our times, first the Grenvilles with Lord Rockingham, and afterwards 
Ix>rd North with us. I know this last instance is always quoted against us 
because we were ultimately unsuccessful ; but after all that can be said, it will 
be difficult to show when the power of the Whigs ever made so strong a struggle 
against the Crown, the Crown being thoroughly in earnest and exerting all its 
resources." — Letter to Lauderdale. April 3, 1804. 




72 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

enthusiasm for Parliamentary reform, and they demoralised 
his opponents, whose strenuous and concentrated pursuit of 
very definite aims was now followed by a rather casual and 
haphazard existence. The energies of the party, devoted 
hitherto to two great objects of public policy, were frittered 
away for the next few years on a mistaken opposition to two 
great financial measures, and on the discreditable escapades 
of the Prince of Wales. 




CHAPTER IV 
FABLIABiENTARY REFORM 

Pitt drops Reform after one effort in Parliament in 1785. Difference 
be wee n Pitt's view and Fox's view of Reform. Fox on the strength 
of Democracy. The Reform Agitation suspended. Public opinion 
listless. The Opposition disqualified by its heterogeneous char- 
acter. With the Revolution public interest revives and a compact 
Opposition emeiges from the quarrel between Fox and Burke. 
Grey's two Motions in 1793 ^^^ I797- T^^ difference between Fox 
and the Democrats. Fox against universal suffrage because it 
would enfianchise men who were not independent His conception 
of citizenship. Was Reform urgent ? Tlie decay of the Yeoman 
class in England at the end of the eighteenth century. 

IT was all part of the curious satire which ended the 
struggle between Fox and the King that the triunriph 
in 1784 of the Minister, who had hitherto been associated 
more prominently with Parliamentary Reform than with any 
other project in politics, was to prove the worst misfortune 
that could overtake that infant cause. The Rockinghams 
who were beaten had left Parliamentary Reform an open s. ' 
question, Burke took one side, Fox the other ; Pitt who had 
inherited his father's enthusiasm for the extension of the 
franchise, came out of the 1784 election with flying colours 
only they were the colours of the King. The effect of the 
circumstances of his victory was seen both in the House of 
Commons, and in the country. In Parliament Pitt was the 
Minister who had defended the King's prerogative, and who 
bad royal almoners amongst his allies ; in the country he 
was still the champion of a reform to which the King and his 
representatives were incurably hostile. These conditions 

78 




74 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

acted and reacted on each other, for Pitt's virtual abandon- 
ment of Parliamentary Reform was accepted by his followers 
in the country as a proof of the present impracticability of 
those reforms, whilst the silence of the Associations left the 
friends of Parliamentary Reform in the House of Commons 
without stimulus or motive power. Pitt by becoming Prime 
Minister had muffled the agitation more effectually than it 
could have been muffled by any Ministry that was avowedly 
hostile. If the Prime Minister of England from 1784 had 
been a Minister distrusted by the people, the popular agita- 
tion for Parliamentary Reform would have continued ; if he 
had been a strong Minister who was ready to make that 
reform a Government measure, the reform would have been 
carried. As it was, Parliament remained inactive, and in the 
country an air of listless patience succeeded to the strenuous 
movements which had quickened and elevated public life a 
few years before. 

Pitt's solitary effort on behalf of the cause that had done 
so much to give him his public position was made in 1785. 
He proposed a specific scheme of reform which was to come 
into operation gradually. His new scheme was quite different 
from the earlier scheme of 1783 when he had proposed, as 
his father had suggested some years earlier, the addition of 
a hundred knights of the shire, and of representatives of the 
metropolis, and further that boroughs should be disfranchised 
when the majority of voters were convicted of gross corrup- 
tion and the innocent minority allowed to vote in the county 
elections. His proposal in 1785 would not have increased 
the size of the House of Commons. Thirty-six decayed 
boroughs returning seventy-two members were to be dis- 
franchised by their own voluntary application, and a million 
pounds were to be set apart for compensating the disfranchised 
boroughs, to be distributed by a special committee of the 
House of Commons amongst the several persons interested 
in the borough. The seventy-two members returned hitherto 
by these boroughs were to be added to the representation 
of the counties and the metropolis. The gradual correctim 




PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 75 

of the anomalies in the distribution of representatives was 
arranged by a system, which was to be permanent, of setting 
aside a sum of money to compensate other boroughs as their 
population languished, in order to transfer their representa- 
tion to growing towns which asked for a voice in Parliament 
The country constituencies were to be increased by the 
enfranchisement of copyholders. 

Fox supported Pitt in his general project, but took 
exception at once to two vicious principles in his scheme. 
He denounced the proposal to compensate the disfranchised 
boroughs as implying a mischievous view of the meaning 
of Parliamentary institutions. ''There was something 
injurious in holding out pecuniary temptations to an 
Englishman to relinquish his franchise, on the one hand, 
and a political principle which equally forbade it on 
another. He was uniformly of an opinion which, though 
not a popular one, he was ready to aver, that the right 
of governing was not property, but a trust; and that 
whatever was given for constitutional purposes should be 
resumed, when those purposes should no longer be carried 
into effect . . . The different parts of the plan would cer- 
tainly, in a Committee, be submitted to modification and 
amendment: but as it now stood, admitting only the first 
principle, every other part, and the means taken to attain 
the principle, were highly objectionable. He should not 
hesitate to declare that he would never agree to admit the 
purchasing from a majority of electors the property of the 
whole. In this he saw so much injustice, and so much 
repugnance to the true spirit of our constitution, that he 
would not entertain the idea for a moment." One of the 
details again of the proposal Fox had little difficulty in 
demolishing. Pitt proposed that the sum set aside for com- 
pensation should accumulate until it was large enough to 
tempt the owner of a decayed borough to sell his interest. 
The effect of such a decree, as Fox pointed out, was to put a 
premium on retaining possession, for the longer the owner 
kept the borough, the richer the ultimate spoil. These 




76 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

criticisms did not prevent Fox from supporting Pitfs motion 
for leave to bring in the Bill, but leave was refused by 248 to 
174 votes. Pitt abandoned the cause, and the next time he 
spoke on the subject it was as the avowed enemy of Parlia- 
mentary Reform. 

It is clear from Pitt's later speeches and it is expressly 
stated by one of his bi(^raphers, that he did not attach to 
Parliamentary Reform, after he had introduced his beneficent 
changes in regard to public loans, the importance he had 
attached to it in 1783 and 1784. The French Revolution made 
him a strenuous opponent of that reform, but long before 
that event his sentiments on the subject had become luke- 
warm and spiritless. The reason is apparent because it is 
part of his whole political temperament, his undivided allegi- 
ance to the plan of the British constitution as a perfect 
machine for governing a country easily and without disturb- 
ance. In 1783 and 1784 he saw the constitution hampered 
and vitiated by certain specific evils, and his remedy for 
those evils was the strengthening of the influences that 
checked public corruption and waste, and the gradual elimina- 
tion of some of the elements of mischief. It was in the form 
of this healing measure that he first welcomed the idea of 
Parliamentary Reform. In 1783, 1784, and 1785 some of the 
abuses which he hoped to correct by means of Parliamentary 
Reform had disappeared, partly in consequence of the 
reforms of Rockingham's Ministry, partly in consequence 
of his own. He was now Prime Minister himself, govemii^ 
without the instruments of bribery that were once the stock- 
in-trade of a Parliamentary leader, and he found himself 
able to carry at least some of the great financial reforms with 
which he was preoccupied. The popular discontent which 
had shown itself during the last years of the American War 
and the first years of Pitt's career had been charmed into a 
sanguine silence. The anarchy and confusion of those days 
had gone, and Pitt found that by means of his own qualities 
as Minister and his own reforms as an econombt, he had 
restored to the working of the constitution the sap and 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 77 

primitive vigour that he had thought could only be added to 
it by increasing the county representation. 

Fox never made a single motion for Parliamentary Reform, ) 
and never submitted a single project. It would scarcely be - 
accurate to say that any project was ever devised to which he 
gave an unqualified assent. Yet his attachment to Parliamen- 
tary Reform was far deeper, and far less adventitious than 
Pitt's, and it was not the mere accident that Pitt looked at 
the question after 1784 with the optimism of office, and Fox 
looked at it with the steadier eye of an Opposition leader, 
that made one of them abandon and the other retain his first 
enthusiasm. No doubt it was easier for Fox, whilst Pitt was 
turning rich nobodies into Peers at the most rapid rate 
in political history, to escape the genial illusion that all 
forms of undue influence had been banished from public 
life with Pitt's economical reforms. Indeed he said in 1797 
that the corrupt influence of the Crown had made enormous 
strides in destroying the power of electors since 1784, and he 
instanced the fact that four-fifths of the elective franchises 
of Scotland had fallen into the hands of government But 
the real cause of the difference between their views was a ^/ 
fundamental difference of temper . Pitt, who was to show 
himself to be a statesman of the class which "prefers to 
tolerate a great amount of injustice rather than create a small 
amount of disorder," regarded the question from the point of 
view of the effectn^^workinj; of the _to Fox 

brought to the subject an enthusiasm, to which Pitt was a 
stranger, for the idea of popular government. Parliamentary 
Reform was not in his view merely a means of brightening 

' Note Pitt's defence of himself, in 1793. **^° ^^ history of this country 
from the earliest period down to that in which I now speak, the number of 
electors have always been few in proportion to that of the great body of the 
people. My plan went to regulate the distribution of the right of electing 
members, to add some and to transfer others : when such was my plan, am I to 
be told that I have been an advocate for Parliamentary Reform, as if I had 
espoused the same side of the question which is now taken up by these honour- 
able gentlemen, and were now resisting that cause which I had formerly 
SQpported ? " 




y 



Y 



78 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

and improving the means of government; it was a means 
of giving a dignity to the nation, a tenacity to its will, a 
sense of self-respecting power, and of genuine community 
of interests to its population. In one of his first speeches 
on the question he said roundly that "that was the best 
government where the people had the greatest share in it." 

Fox certainly desired Parliamentary Reform because he 
thought without it the House of Commons would never be 
strong enough to control the Executive, or independent 
enough to resist the various forms of Court pressure. He 
stated this definitely in his letter to Lord Holland, and in 
his speeches to the Associations during the platform cam- 
paign. But he had further a great sense of the mor^l valu p 
of self-gov ernment, and his objection to the anomalies of 
the representation was not merely the objection that ad- 
ministration would be more energetic, and clean, and facile if 
they were removed, but the objection that political power 
ought to be more widely distributed. This was very vividly 
expressed in the last great speech he made on Parliamentary 
Reform in 1797. The opponents of Grey's scheme in that 
year argued from the danger of innovation in a great crisis, 
an argument to which Stein gave the best concrete reply a 
few years later when he abolished serfdom in Prussia, and 
inspired Prussia with the energy which later withstood 
Napoleon. Fox, laying stress on the great accession of 
moral strength which would follow from extending political 
rights defended Parliamentary Reform as a great defensive 
measure. " When we look at the democracies of the ancient 
world, we are compelled to acknowledge their oppressions to 
their dependencies, their horrible acts of injustice and of in- 
gratitude to their own citizens ; but they compel us also to 
admiration by their vigour, their constancy, their spirit, and 
their exertions in eyery great emergency in which they are 
called upon to act. ^We are compelled to own that it gives 
a power, of which no other form of government is capable. 
Why? Because it incorporates every man with the state, 
because it arouses everything that belongs to the soul as 




PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 79 

well as to the body of man: because it makes every 
individual feel that he is fighting for himself, and not for, 
another, that it is his own cause, his own safety, his own 
concern, his own dignity on the face of the earth, and his^ 
own interest on the identical soil which he has to maintain, ] 
and accordingly we find that whatever may be objected to ' 
them on account of the turbulency of the passions which 
they engender, their short duration, and their disgusting / 
vices, they have exacted from the common suffrage of S 
mankind the palm of strength and vigour. Who that reads 
the history of the Persian war — what boy, whose heart is 
warmed by the grand and sublime actions which the demo- 
cratic spirit produced, does not find in this principle the key 
to all the wonders which were achieved at Thermopylae, 
and elsewhere, and of which the recent and marvellous acts 
of the French people are pregnant examples? He sees 
that the principle of liberty only could create the sublime 
irresistible emotion; and it is in vain to deny, from the 
striking illustration that our own times have given, that the 
principle is eternal, and that it belongs to the heart of man. 
Shall we, then, refuse to take the benefit of this invigorating 
principle? Shall we refuse to take the benefit which the 
wisdom of our ancestors resolved that it should confer on the 
British constitution? With the knowledge that it can be 
reinfused into our system without violence, without disturb- 
ing any one of its parts, are we become so inert, so terrified, 
or so stupid, as to hesitate for one hour to restore ourselves 
to the health which it would be sure to give ? When we see 
the giant power that it confers upon others, we ought not to 
withhold it from Great Britain. How long is it since we 
were told in this House, that France was a blank in the 
map of Europe, and that she lay an easy prey to any 
power that might be disposed to divide or plunder her? 
Yet we see that by the mere force and spirit of this prin- 
ciple, France has brought all Europe at her feet Without 
disguising the vices of France, without overlooking the 
horrors that have been committed, and that have tarnished 




/ 



80 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the glory of the Revolution, it cannot be denied that they 
have exemplified the doctrine, that if you wish for p ower 
you must look tojiberty."^ This fundamental difference 
of temper, the difference between regarding Parliamentary 
Reform as a means to effective government, and regarding 
it as a means to extending self-government, explains the 
rapid exhaustion of Pitt's enthusiasm when in office for 
the cause he had championed so vigorously. Pitt had to 
encounter a hostile Crown, and hostile colleagues ; it may 
be that a stem resolution to make Parliamentary Reform 
a government measure would have overcome the objections 
of both, and if so Pitt never used all the resources at his 
disposal. Unfortunately the Opposition were in no better 
condition for pressing Parliamentary Reform. The great 
strength of the Rockinghams during North's Government had 
consisted first of all in their own definite pursuit of a particular 
concrete object of policy, and secondly in their supporters 
outside Parliament The Opposition between 1784 and 1790 
had neither of these advantages. Fox and North had united 
for a great public purpose, but that purpose could only be 
attained by taking and keeping office ; it was not a purpose 
like the Rockingham policy of economical reform which 
could be promoted by a popular agitation. The proper 
corollary to the Rockingham campaign would have been a 
campaign for Parliamentary Reform, but who were the 
Opposition to undertake it ? Fox believed in Parliamentary 
Reform and recognised its importance as a means of estab- 
lishing Parliamentary control. But his allies North, and 
Burke, the philosopher of the Rockingham party, were both 
against him, and the history of the Opposition to Pitt's 
Ministry between 1784 and 1790 is the history of a rather 
amorphous and incoherent Opposition, pursuing no definite 
scheme of reform, and seriously discredited by a fatal excur- 
sion into the province of court intrigue. 

That Opposition was united in one great public enterprise, 
the impeachment of Warren Hastings. On other questions 

* Sptechei^ vol. vL p. 353, Mmy 26, 1797. 




PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 81 

the only bond of union was a sense of indignation against 

Pitt, and the want of any stimulating cause acted with 

marked effect on the moral integrity and energy of Fox 

and his friends. Fox was probably less to blame than the 

public believed for the droll, sorry figure the Opposition cut 

in the R^ency debates, for the first mistakes were made 

while he was still in Italy, and he at least extinguished very 

promptly on his return the daring and extravagant scheme 

Loughborough had prepared for the Prince of Wales. But 

the most that can be said for Fox is that some of his friends 

acted more unwisely, and with less regard to their public 

principles than he was prepared to act, and that Pitt's 

motives for proposing certain restrictions on the Regent's 

powers were not much more public spirited than Fox's 

motives in declaring that the heir-apparent had an inherent 

right to assume the regency. The spectacle of a party, led 

by such men as Fox and Burke, greedily counting on the 

accession of a man like George iv. and postponing all 

their great principles to a reckless championship of his 

claims, is a rueful picture of the indignities to which the 

weaknesses of even great men will submit, and it was not too 

soon forgotten by the public. The Prince of Wales must 

have had some engaging qualities to have attracted the men 

who were his friends, but the association of the Whigs with 

his petulant and unseemly quarrels and his profligate 

demands for public money, whether it was due to the fact 

that, as Mr. Meredith makes one of his characters say, 

" human nature in the upper circle is particularly likable," 

or to a disposition to use the recognised political device of 

borrowing, for the opposition to the Court, the secondary 

glamour of the heir-apparent, was neither creditable nor 

beneficent The years that separated Pitt's triumph in 1784 

from the outbreak of the French Revolution are a barren 

and disappointing landscape to Fox's admirers. There was 

no positive disfigurement except the Regency Debate, for the 

opposition to the Irish Commercial Propositions and the 

French Treaty, however mistaken, was quite consistent with 
6 




82 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

his principles, and he remained faithful to his public causes 
when those causes came into debate.* But they mark an 
interval in his career, when as a party leader he had no 
direct and definite project in view, and when the bitter 
memory surrounding the collapse of 1784, and all his bruised 
and battered hopes of reform, and the vindictive meanness 
with which Pitt had pursued him through the inglorious 
passages of the Westminster Scrutiny lent a certain acrid 
and factious character to his conduct 

If the Parliamentary Opposition was disabled by its 
composition from making Parliamentary Reform a great 
issue, there was a further reason for inaction in the serene 
contentment of opinion outside Parliament The great 
public movement, into the fruits of which Pitt entered 
when he came into politics,* had ceased, and its last demon- 
stration had been a demonstration in favour of the Crown, 
and in opposition to the Coalition India Bill.* There 
followed one of those tranquil interludes when the public 
mind, after a tumult of restless energy, settles down again 
to the slow and patient vibrations characteristic of the 
easygoing temperament that is only provoked by con- 
Crete hardships. " Since the rejection of that motion " (the 
motion of 1785), said Mr. Wyvill in a letter he addressed 
to Pitt in July 1789, "trade has increased; stocks have 
risen ; the Finances have been reduced into good order, 
and Government has been steadily conducted on the prin- 
ciples of virtuous economy. In its eagerness to enjoy these 
blessings the nation forgets their precarious tenure; and 
as the benefits of your Administration are more extensively 

' He chtmpioiMd the Dissenters though they had voted agiinst him in 1784, 
see Pre&M to A Dtjmct ef Dr. Pritt and tht Rtfenurs »f Engiamd, 1^ the 
Re*. Chiiitophei WyviJl, Climlrnian of ihc Eate Comroitlee of the Auoctali<m of 
the County of York. Published 179*. 

' The agitation was of courw well nuuured, and its eHecti noticeable beibre 
Pitt took part in it. See tetter on Pitt'i aportKy from ParliamcDtaiy Reform. 

' Great meeting at Voric, 35tb Hay 1784. Lord rilzwilUun who was there 
and defended himself, charged Pitt with not belliE in eanett about Pailiamcatair 
Reform. ■ 




PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 83 

ezperienoed, it seems more generally disinclined to any 
great ParUamentuy change, though recommended even by 
your authority " The Opposition therefore could not have 
drawn upon tibe resources which had been the chief strength 
of the Rocldn^iams during North's Ministry, for there was 
no public opinion that could be stimulated into action. All 
the conditions inside and outside Parliament seemed to close 
the door on the one course that Fox could have taken to 
give expression to his fundamental views, an i^tation to 
strengthen the House of Commons by means of Parlia- 
mentary Reform. He had to lead a party in the exhausted 
air of old quarrels, and no man can lead a party under those 
conditions with v^ur, or imagination, or public usefulness. 

At the time of the French Revolution both these 
conditions changed. From the Parliamentary Opposition 
tliere emerged a party. The ties of common resent- 
ments and policies that had run their course were be- 
come a bondage and their dissolution transformed the 
Opposition, once an unwieldy and miscellaneous collection 
of genuine enthusiasms, jealousies, and of loyalties personal 
rather than public, into a compact body of men united 
on unequivocal issues, stimulated by a splendid cause, 
and released from all the disorderly and bewildering 
associations which had been formed by the accidents of 
time, or politics, or family histories. The new issue dis- 
solved attachments that were older than the Coalition; it 
alienated Burke as well as North, for it was the issue on 
which Fox and Burke had been divided in their first cam- 
paign, when Burke had restored the true meaning of 
aristocracy, and given the superannuated Whigs a great 
ideal of honest and merciful government, and Fox, like 
Richmond, had declared for popular representation, and 
championed doctrines that Burke and the patrician Whigs 
dreaded.^ For each of them the breach of a friendship 

^ There is an interesting conespondence in the Wjrvill Political Papers which 
shows the efforts made by the Yorkshire Association to meet the dislike of the 
Rockins^uns to Electoral Reform. 



/ 




84 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

formed and maintained in great crises of state, was one 
of those sorrows that are so bitter and so poignant as for 
ever to forbid reconciliation ; for in those fierce separations 
the unstinted sincerities and the passion of the friendship that 
is dead place an everlasting ban on all colder comradeship. 
But what Fox lost as a friend, and his loss was incalculable, 
he gained as a leader. From 1784 to 1790 there was an 
Opposition respectable in numbers, listless in temper, and cor- 
responding to no definite public policy on which men's minds 
in the country were fixed. From 1792 to 1797, when Fox 
seceded from Pai^ament, there was an Opposition insignifi- 
cant in numbers, strenuous with the courage of proscribed 
and persecuted convictions, and representing in the public 
life of the country the entire fabric of English freedom. 
The whole spirit of the House of Commons was changed 
and elevated in that brisk climate of real and exhilarating 
contest 

Outside Parliament there was a similar revival of public 
interest Pitt who had been regarded in 1784 as the 
champion of the doctrine of popular representation as against 
the aristocratical prejudice and caution of the Rocking- 
hams, had been moving further and further away from 
that world of ideas and discontents through which he had 
passed into his proud political eminence. The alienation 
was silent, but it was complete. It is significant that Mr. 
Wyvill's letter to him as early as 1787, suggesting that 
he should publish the scheme of his next Bill in order 
to allow of discussion, was never answered, though the 
relations of the writer with Pitt had been cordial and almost 
intimate, and Pitt had acted in concert with the Yorkshire 
Association at each step in his career down to the Reform 
Bill of 1785. Pitt had clearly made up his mind that there 
was no longer any body of substantial opinion behind the 
demand and the organisation with which he had allied his 
early fortunes, and his gradual abandonment of Reform 
was, no doubt, prompted as much by a belief that he was 
dealing with a nation that was convalescent, and on the 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 85 

hig^ road to full recovery from its grave and anxious 
disorder^ as by his natural disinclination to turn his hand 
again to an arduous enterprise that was uncongenial to 
the King and to a large proportion of his own supporters. 
But the ideas that had been abroad during the earlier 
agitation, ideas unattractive to Rockingham and positively 
distasteful and alarming to Burke, were still alive, and the 
French Revolution gave them an impetus and a sudden 
notoriety. The Society for Constitutional Information to 
which Pitt himself had belonged, had remained in exist- 
ence, if a languid existence, supported by Wyvill, Cartwright, 
and Home Tooke, and the excitement and speculative spirit 
that arose with the Revolution in France gave the Society a 
new alacrity and vigour. The agitation created by the Society 
was reinforced in 1791 when two societies were founded 
to represent respectively the aristocratic and the democratic 
enthusiasm for Reform, the " Friends of the People " with 
a subscription of five guineas a year, and the " London 
Corresponding Society" with a subscription of a penny a 
week. The latter society was the working-class wing of 
the Democratic movement, and as its founder Thomas 
Hardy observed,^ many of the reformers of 1782 were so 
dreadfully alarmed at the uncommon appearance of the 
reformers in 1792 that "they fled for shelter under the 
all-protecting wings of the Crown." But the traditions of 
the campaign of 1 780-1 782 had not been forgotten by 
reformers whose general attack on the vices of the existing 
system was bolder, more incisive, and more unqualified. 
There had been Corresponding Societies fifteen years before, 
and one of them had numbered Burke amongst its members ; 
the project of a great convention, more than once suggested 
in London, and actually carried out in Edinburgh during 
the next few years, had of course been one of the most 
effective demonstrations of the Economy campaign. All 
of these societies helped to stimulate a public curiosity 
about questions of reform, but the most important organ- 

* See Graham Wallas' Life of Place. 




86 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

isation, from the point of view of the Parliamentary 
Opposition, was the Society of the Friends of the People, 
a Society that separated itself ostentatiously from the 
more furious formulas of the democratic organisations, 
and turned a deaf ear to the new and eager vocabulary 
of freedom. This Society represented the left wing of 
the Whigs. Sincerely attached to Reform, it was in 
effect resuming the struggle with the Court at the point 
where it had been broken off in 1782; its remedies were 
all embraced in the ideas of continuity, development, 
restoration. 

The result of these changes of temper outside and inside 
the House of Commons was seen in two motions for Reform 
in 1793 and 1797, both made by Grey, who was hence- 
forth Fox's chief confederate. The procedure adopted in 
the Parliamentary attack in 1780, when the presenting of 
petitions was the preliminary to motions, was followed 
strictly, and Grey's motion in May 1793 was preceded by 
the introduction of various petitions from all parts of the 
country. One petition from Sheffield the House refused 
to receive on the ground that its language was unbecoming ; 
but Fox made an effective point in the debate by reminding 
the House that the present Lord Chancellor had defended 
a remonstrance from the City of London during the Wilkes 
Case in which it was declared that the House of Commons had 
forfeited its authority and that its subjects were not bound 
to obey its acts, on the ground that if the subject had the 
right to petition for a particular object, he had a right to 
urge any argument that was relevant The petition pre- 
sented by Grey, on making his motion, is important because 
it contained a statement of the condition of Parliamentary 
representation, that had been prepared after careful in- 
vestigation, and it gives us a curious picture of that 
constitution of which Burke thought all the moss and 
mortar immutable and divine. It showed that the control 
of Parliament was virtually in the hands of seventy -one 
peers and ninety -one commoners, who between them 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 87 

vetumed three hundied and six members to the House of 
Commons.^ 

Grey's motion for Reform was rejected by 282 to 41 
voCesw In 1797 he adopted a different method. Instead 
of asidng for a Committee to consider the various petitions 
submitted, he introduced a Bill of his own, and this Bill 
was a much bolder and larger plan than any scheme as yet 
submitted to the House of Commons. Grey proposed to 
increase the county members from ninety-two to one 
hundred and thirteen, by giving two members to each of 
the three ridings of the county of York, and by similar 

^ ** That at tbe piesent day the House of Commons does not fiUly and fidily 
icpmcn t the people of Enghuid. . . . That the nomher of representatives 



to the different counties is grossly disproportioned to their comparative 
edcnt, pqpnhitinn, and tmde. That the majority of your HonooraUe House is 
deded by less than 15,000 electors, whidi, even if the male adults in the 
kinfdom be estimated at so low a number as 3,000,000, is not more than the 
two-hundredth part of the people to be represented. Is it fitting that Rutland 
and Yorkshire should bear an equal rank in the scale of county representation ? 
Seventy members are returned for 35 places, ' in which it would be to trifle 
with the patience of your Honourable House to mention any number of votes 
whatever' — the elections at the places alluded to being notoriously a matter 
of fonn. 

'* 90 memben are returned by 46 places, in none of which the number of 
voters ejcoeeds 5a 

"37 members are returned by 19 places, in none of which the number of 
voters exceeds loa 

" $2 members are returned by 26 places, in none of which the number of 



"All which the petitioners expressed themselves ready to prove. 

" Religious opinions create an incapacity to vote. All Papists are excluded 
generally, and, by the operation of the test laws, Protestant dissenters are 
deprived of a voice in the election of representatives in about 30 boroughs. 

"A man possessed of. ;fiooo a year, arising from copyhold or leasehold 
for 99 years, trade, or public funds, is not thereby entitled to a vote. A man 
paying taxes to any amount, how great soever, for his domestic establishment 
does not thereby obtain a right to vote, unless resident in certain boroughs. 

" Eighty-four individuals, by their own immediate authority, send 157 
members to Parliament In addition to these, 150 more members are returned, 
not by the collected voice of those whom they appear to represent, but by the 
recommendation of 70 powerful individuals, and thus 154 patrons returned 
307 members, or a decided majority of the whole House."— Jephson, TAe 
Ha/form, vol. i. pp. 204, 205. 




88 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

additions to other large counties, and to admit copyholdeis 
and leaseholders for terms of years, as well as freeholders 
to the county franchise. In the boroughs he proposed 
uniform Household Suffrage. By the scheme, according to 
Fox, there would have been some 600,000 voters, whereas 
the petition presented four years earlier had shown that 
the majority of the House was elected by less than 15,000 
electors. Grey was defeated, after a debate in which all 
the honours fell to the Opposition, by 256 to 91 votes. 

The two speeches he made on this occasion give us the 
fullest insight into Fox's views on Parliamentary Reform, 
and all the questions that the Revolutionary agitation had 
brought to the troubled surface of political speculation. 
They show that his championship of reform was perfectly 
consecutive and consistent He regarded Parliamentary 
Reform in the light of a remedy provided by the British 
constitution, and he had as little sympathy as Burke himself 
with the doctrine that a fresh beginning should be made in 
constitution building. 

"Without attempting to follow his right honourable 
friend, when he proposed to soar into the skies, or dive 
into the deep, to encounter his metaphysical adversaries, 
because in such heights and depths the operations of the 
actors were too remote from view to be observed with much 
benefit, he would rest on practice, to which he was more 
attached, as being better understood. And if, by a peculiar 
interposition of Divine power, all the wisest men of every 
age and of every country could be collected into one 
assembly, he did not believe that their united wisdom would 
be capable of forming even a tolerable constitution. In 
this opinion he thought he was supported by the unvarying 
evidence of history and observation. Another opinion he 
held, no matter whether erroneous or not, for he stated it 
only as an illustration, namely, that the most skilful 
architect could not build, in the first instance, so com- 
modious a habitation as one that had been originally 
intended for some other use, and had been gradually 



v^ 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 89 

improved by successive alterations suggested by various 
inhabitants for its present purpose. If then, so simple a 
structure as a commodious habitation was so difficult in 
theory, how much more difficult the structure of a govern- 
ment ? " 1 

The difference between Fox and such Radicals as Paine 
was that Fox started from the Whig Revolution and Locke's / 
interpretation of it, whereas they started from an abstract ^Y 
individual right, which they regarded as positively outraged, 
and not merely imperfectly recognised, in the British con- 
stitution. Fox was perhaps more typical than anyone else 
of the quality which distinguished speculati on^on freedom 
in_England from speculation on freedom in France ; in the 
one case speculation centred round institutions, in the 
other round ideas. In the one case the right to demand 
reform was based on the fact that existing institutions 
were the instruments of freedom ; in the other that existing 
institutions were the contradiction of freedom. It was 
the chief pride of a Frenchman in the Revolution that he 
had discovered a new moral element ; it was the chief pride 
of an Englishman like Fox that the constitution of his 
country expressly recognised the doctrine of the Sovereignty 
of the People and the Rights of Man. Fox disliked all the 
eager talk of the extreme remedies of visionary democrats, 
because he believed it was misleading to the populace, and a 
useful pretext to the Government who wished to create a 
confusion and a prejudice in men's minds against all reform. 
He believed that what was wanted to give the people of the 
country real control of Government could be attained under / 
the aegis of the constitution, and he certainly believed also ^ 
that if this were not done, a period of anarchy and revolu- 
tion was imminent. 

Fox agreed with Burke in his admiration of the general 
plan of the constitution ; he differed fundamentally in his 
interpretation of it, and also in his appreciation of its virtues 

* Speech on Mr. Grey's Motion for a Reform in Parliament, May 7, 1793. 
Spteches^ vol. v. p. 109. 




90 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

of development That difTerence was fundamental because 
it was the difference between the doctrine of a benevolent 
and independent aristocracy and the doctrine of popular 
government It had been Burke's theory that the inter- 
position of the people was necessary in crises, but interposi- 
tion only in the sense that a very limited public opinion 
should be collected and organised outside Parliament Fox 
had argued from the first, and the events of forty years are 
his overwhelming justification, that popular representation 
was indispensable first of all to any sense of security against 
encroachment, and secondly to the adequate control of the 
Executive by the House of Commons. In 1793 the case 
for Reform was stronger and not weaker than the case in 
1782, and there was nothing in the political conditions to 
make a Reform agitation more dangerous than it had been 
when Pitt undertook it In 1780 England was at war, she 
had suffered great losses, she had ranged against her three 
European powers besides the revolted colonists, her finances 
were in confusion, order and authority in high places had 
collapsed, and the language of remonstrance in the country 
was often the language of menace and rebellion. A states- 
man who had argued for Parliamentary Reform in those 
crises had little ground for urging the state of the nation in 
1790 or in 1792, when, if England was on the verge of war, she 
was not single-handed, and when there was no symptom of 
the weakness of authority, like the Gordon Riots, as a reason 
against Parliamentary Reform. Even if Fox had confined 
his case for Reform to the arguments Pitt used in 1782, die 
case in 1790 was overwhelming. If anything were wanted 
to make that case complete, it was provided in the repressive 
legislation, shortly instituted by Pitt to stifle all discussion 
in a country which he had represented as contented and 
uncomplaining. 

But Fox's championship of Reform was not based only 
on Pitt's arguments of 1782. It was prompted, as has been 
shown from a quotation earlier in the chapter, by a keen 
sense of the power and authority which a nation draws 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 91 

firom an extended suflfrage, a sense which brought Fox 
into direct collision with the theory Burke had applied, 
even in his least timid and tentative moments, to the 
political troubles of the state. It was Burke's theory that 
the actual decision in political affairs should rest with a 
small minority of men, whose acts and standards should be 
known and discussed publicly, but whose independence of 
judgment should be expressly and clearly acknowledged. 
Fox boldly adopted the democ ratic theory of the rule of the 
majority. He repudiated the doctrine that every man had a 
right to a vote, but he repudiated on the other side the 
doctrine that the rights of the people were respected in an 
arrangement which restricted political power to an insignifi- 
cant fraction. He held that the people were entitled not 
only to immunity from actual oppression by the Govern- 
ment, but also to security against future oppression. The 
House of Commons existed in his view for a definite pur- 
pose, the purpose of protecting the interests of the whole 
kingdom against the usurpations and injustices of the 
Executive. Did it fulfil that purpose under a set of arrange- 
ments which left its election to fifteen thousand electors? 
According to Burke it did, because the best security against 
those evils was the rule of a benevolent oligarchy, which was 
restrained by a party system and formed a barrier against the 
ambition and corruption of the Crown on the one hand, and 
against the follies and the mischievous humours of the people 
on the other. According to Pitt it did, on the ground that 
the country showed no signs of dissatisfaction with his own 
rule, and the rumble of discontent came from quarters where 
the constitution itself and not the anomalies of representa- 
tion was challenged and disliked. Fox argued that it did 
not, because the whole experience of its working showed ^' 
that the only substantial and permanent defence against the 
Executive was to be found in calling into play the energy 
and the power of the mass of the people. 

This argument might appear to point to universal 
suffrage. Why if Fox talked of the paramount rights of 




J 



I 



92 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the majority, did he disagree with die extreme theory 
that every man had a right to a vote? The answer is 
that he started from the Whig theory of the social com- 
pact, and the revolutionaries started from the individual 
who had made no covenant and recognised no claims. 
Hence it came that the Whig Revolution was in Fox's 
eyes the confirmation of natural rights, whilst in Paine's 
eyes it was a violation of natural rights. Fox argued that 
every Englishman had a right to certain liberties described 
and guaranteed in the constitution ; he had also a right to 
be governed in the spirit of the contract betwen the people 
and its Government, and to security against infractions of his 
personal liberty and the waste or misuse of his contributions. 
This security he could only have if the decision in political 
issues rested with the majority. The value of that majority 
was therefore on this showing its deliberative value, die 
assumption being that the majority were more likely than a 
minority to make its decisions with a strict regard to the 
interests of the whole. But the value being deliberative, it 
followed that the majority must consist of persons who give 
their own free and unbribed opinion, and therefore Fox 
excluded voters who would thwart rather than reinforce the 
independent judgment of the community. He had in odier 
words a keen appreciation of the meaning of citizenship, and 
he wished to make the basis of the state a great commun ity 
of self-respecting and independent citiz ens, a consummation 
which he judged unattainable if the House of Commons 
represented a number of noblemen, rich commoners and 
corporations, and the patronage of the Crown, or if again it 
represented a population of which large sections were liable 
to corruption or other forms of pressure.^ 

^ This theory runs through the two great speeches he made in 1793 and 1797, 
from which it is worth while to quote a few important passages. 

*' A right honourable friend of his (Mr. >^^dham) had last night, in a Toy 
eloquent, but very whimsical speech, endeavoured to prove that the majority was 
generally wrong. But when he came to answer some objections of his own 
suggesting, he found himself reduced to say, that, when he differed from the 
majority, he would consider himself as equally independent of the dedsioQ of 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 93 

It is interesting to notice that Fox r^arded this agita- 
tion as the corollary to the Economy agitation. He quoted 
Savile, Camden, Chatham, and Burke's predictions in 1781 

that majority as one independent county member of the decision of another — 
which was just to say, that he would put an end to society ; for where every 
individual was independent of the will of the rest, no society could exist. It was 
singular for him to defend the decision of the majority, who had found it so 
often against him ; and he was in hopes that his right honourable friend would 
have shown him some easy way of solving the difficulty. His right honourable 
firiend said that a wise man would look first to the reason of the thing to be 
decided, then to force, or his power of carrying that decision into effect, but 
never to the majority. He would say, look first and look last at the reason of 
the thing, without considering whether the majority was likely to be for or 
against 3rou, and least of all to force. Mr. Fox admitted that the majority might 
sometimes oppress the minority, and that the minority might be justified in 
resisting such oppression, even by force ; but^as a general rule, though not 
without exception, the majority in every community must decide for the whole, 
because in human affiiirs there was no umpire but human reason. The presump- 
tion was also that the majority would be right ; for if five men were to decide by 
a majority, it was probable that the three would be right and the two wrong, of 
which, if they were to decide by force, there would be no probability at all. 
What was the criterion of truth but the general sense of mankind ? / Even in 
mathematics, we proceeded from certain axioms, of the truth of which we had no 
other proof but that all mankind agreed in believing them. If, then, what all 
men agreed on was admitted to be true, there was a strong presumption, that 
what many, or the majority, agreed on, was true likewise. Even reverence for 
antiquity resolved itself into this ; for what was it but consulting the decision of 
the majority, not of one or two generations, but of many, by the concurrence of 
which we justly thought that we arrived at greater certainty ?/ His objection 
to universal suffrage was not distrust of the decision of the majority, but because 
there was no practical mode of collecting such suffrage, and that by attempting 
it, what from the operation of hope on some, fear on others, and all the sinister 
means of influence that would so certainly be exerted, fewer individual opinions 
would be collected than by an appeal to a limited number. Therefore holding 
fast to the right of a majority to decide, and to the natural rights of man, as 
taught by the French, but much abused by their practice, he would resist 
universal suffrage." — Speech on Mr. Grey's Motion for a Reform in Parliament, 
May 7, 1793. ^ ol- V- P- 108. 

** Having thus shown that the House of Commons, as now constituted, was 
neither adequate to the due discharge of its duties at present, nor afforded any 
security that it would be so in future, what remained for him to answer but 
general topics of declamation ? He had sufficient confidence in the maxims he 
had early learned, and sufficient reverence for the authors from whom he learned 
them, to brave the ridicule now attempted to be thrown upon all who avowed 
opinions that, till very lately, had been received as the fundamental principles of 
liberty. He was ready to say with Locke, that government originated not only 




94 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

that no House of Commons would in future be powerful 
enough to control the Executive. From this point of 
view the part he took in the agitation for Parliamentary 

for, but from the people, and that the people were the legitimate sovereign in 
every community. If such writings as were now branded as subversive of all 
government had not been read and studied, would the Parliament of 1640 have 
done those great and glorious things, but for which we might be now receiving 
the mandates of a despot, like Germans, or any other slaves. A noble Lord 
(Momington) had discovered that Rousseau, in his Social Contract ^ had said a 
very extravagant thing. He was not very well qualified to judge, for he had 
found the beginning of the Social Contract so extravagant, that he could not read 
it through, but he believed it was one of the most extravagant of that author's 
works. He did not mean to say that the noble Lord had produced an 
extravagant saying from Rousseau as a novelty ; but it was somewhat remarkable, 
that an extravagant thing, from the most extravagant work of an extravagant 
foreign author, should be produced as an argument against a reform in the 
representation of the people of Great Britain. Reverence for antiquity was then 
appealed to, and gentlemen were asked, if they would consent to alter that which 
in former times had been productive of such important acquisitions to liberty. 
With equal propriety our ancestors might have been asked, if they would alter 
that constitution under which so great an acquisition to liberty as Magna Qiarta 
had been obtained ; and yet, after the acquisition of Magna Charta, the con- 
dition of this country had been such as was rather to be execrated and detested, 
than cherished and admired." — Speech on Mr. Grey's Motion for a Reform in 
Parliament, May 7, 1793. Vol. v. p. 115. 

'' I have always deprecated universal suffrage, not so much on account of the 
confusion to which it would lead, as because I think that we should in reality 
lose the very object which we desire to obtain ; because I think it would in its 
nature embarrass, and prevent the deliberative voice of the country from being 
heard. I do not think that you augment the deliberative body of the people by 
counting all the heads, but that in truth you confer on individuals, by this means, 
the power of drawing forth numbers, who, without deliberation, would implicitly 
act upon their will. My opinion b, that the best plan of representation is that 
which shall bring into activity the greatest number of independent voters, and 
that that is defective which would bring forth those whose situation and condi- 
tion take from them the power of deliberation. I can have no conception of 
that being a good plan of election which should enable individuals to bring 
regiments to the poll. I hope gentlemen will not smile if I endeavour to 
illustrate my position by referring to the example of the other sex. In all the 
theories and projects of the most absurd speculation, it has never been suggested 
that it would be advisable to extend the elective suffrage to the female sex ; and 
yet, justly respecting, as we must do, the mental powers, the acquirements, the 
discrimination, and the talents of the women of England, in the present im- 
proved state of society — knowing the opportunities which they have for acquiring 
knowledge — that they have interests as dear and as important as our own, it 
must be the genuine feeling of every gentleman who bears me, that all the 




PARLIABIENTARY REFORM 95 

Refonn was the logical sequel of twenty years of public life 
as a liberal ; it was all part of his attack on die Crown. He 
had fought the Crown by die Economy campsugn, the only 



sapeiior dmet of the femak sex of England must be more capable of ezerdiing 
the el c Ui f c aoffiafe with delibeimtion and pro p riety, than the uninformed 
indrridiiali of the lowest dasa of men to whom the advocates of universal saffirage 
would extend it. And jet, why has it never been imagined that the ri^t of 
electioa should be extended to %romen? Why! but because by the law of 
nations, and perhaps also by the law of nature, that sex is dependent on ours ; 
and because, therefore, their voices would be governed by the relation in whidb 
they stand in society. Therefore it is. Sir, that with the exceptions of com* 
pames, in whidi the rig|it of voting merely affects property, it has never been in 
the contemplation of the most absurd theorists to extend the elective franchise to 
the other sex. The desideratum to be obtained, is independent voters, and that, 
I My, would be a defective system that should bring reghnents of soldiers, of 
servants, and of persons whose ow condition necessarily curbed the independ- 
ence of their minds. That , tha^ I take to be the most perfect system^ whid i 
Shan indode the greatest number cif indep«>dent electors, and exdnde the 
g^m^tmmt TOPbcr of thosc who are necessarily by their condition dependent I 
think that the (dan of my honourable friend draws this line as discreetly as it can 
be drawn, and it by no means approaches to universal suffrage. It would 
neither admit, except in particular instances, soldiers nor servants. Universal 
suffrage would extend the right to three millions of men, but there are not more 
than seven hundred thousand houses that would come within the plan of my 
honourable friend ; and when it, is considered, that out of these some are the 
property of minors, and that some persons have two or more houses, it would fix 
the munber of voters for Great Britain at about six hundred thousand ; and I call 
upon gentlemen to say, whether this would not be suffidently extensive for de- 
liberation on the one hand, and yet suffidentiy limited for order on the other. 
This has no similarity with universal sufirage; and yet, taking the number of 
representatives as they^now stand, it would give to every member about fifteen 
hundred constituents." — Speech on Mr. Grey's Motion for a Reform in Parlia- 
ment, May 26, 1797. Vol. vi. pp. 363, 364. 

" Sir, I have done. I have given my advice. I propose the remedy, and 
fi&tal will it be for England if pride and prejudice much longer continue to oppose 
it. The remedy which is proposed is simple, easy, and practicable ; it does not 
touch the vitals of the constitution ; and I sincerely believe it will restore us to 
peace and harmony. Do you not think that you must come to parliamentary 
reform soon ; and is it not better to come to it now when you have the power of 
deliberation, than when, perhaps, it may he extorted from you by convulsion ? 
There is as yet time to frame it with freedom and discussion ; it will even yet 
go to the people with the grace and favour of a spontaneous act. What will it 
be when it is extorted from you with indignation and violence ? God forbid 
that this should be the case I but now b the moment to prevent it ; and now, I 
say, wisdom and policy recommend it to you, when you may enter into all the 
considerations to which it leads, rather than to postpone it to a time when you 




/ 



96 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

one of his strategies in which he led an army that was 
successful. He had fought it by the Coalition, a scheme 
abortive, misconducted, and ineffectual. He fought it last by 
attempting to arm the nation with the power and dignity of 
democracy. The Crown conquered, but it is idle to refuse 
to the vanquished the credit of a single purpose pursued 
valiantly through misunderstanding, unpopularity, and the 
bleak monotony of failure. 

To Fox the great issue raised by Parliamentary Reform 
was the issue of the protection of the governed from tfie 
incompetence or the ambitions of the Government The 
gross defects in Parliamentary representation meant Ae 
a^randisement of the influence of the Crown, and the 
paralysis of the energies and integrity of administration. In 
both respects every one of the years during which Pitt 
discouraged or opposed Reform aggravated instead of modi- 
fying the abuses he was anxious to destroy when 6rst be 
won public support as a reformer, Pitt himself was deceived 
like the people, into mistaking the harmonious operation of 

will have DOthing to considet but the aumber and the force of thow who demutd 
it. Il is asked, whether libertjr has not gUDcd mach of kte yean, and whether 
the popular branch ought not, therefore, to be content 7 To this I antwei, that 
if liberty has gained much, power ha* gained more. Power has been indefatig- 
able and unwearied In its encroachments. Everything has mn in that directioo 
through the whole course of the present rdgn. This wm the o^Hnion of Sir 
George Savite, of the Marquis of Rockingham, and of all the virtuous men who, ia 
th«r public life, proved themselves to be advocates for the rights of the people. 
They saw and deplored the tendency of the court ; they saw that there was a 
detetmiDcd ipirit in the secret advisers of the crown to advance its power, and to 
encourage no administiation that should not bend itself to that pursuit. Accord- 
ingly, through the whole leign, no administration which cherished notkms of « 
different kind has been permitted to last, and nothing, therefore, or next to 
nothing, has been gained to the side of the people, but everything to the crown 
in the course of the reign. During the whole of tliis period we have had no tnore 
than three adminisirations, one for twelve monihs, one for nine, and one for 
three months, that acted upon the popular principle of the early past of this 
century ; nothing, therefore, 1 lay, has been gained to the people, while the 
consinDi current has run towards the crown ; and God knows what is to be tbe 
consequence, both to the crown and country I I believe that we are come to the 
last moment of possible remedy."— Speech on Mr, Grey's Motion for Reform in 
Parliament, May a6, 1797. Vol. vi. pp. 36S, 369. 




PARLIAMENTARV REFOR3I 97 

government, for the final solution of the profalems of gorers- 
ment The great increase of vaumbttarcs was lapitEy 
redistributing the population and b rin g ii ^ oev <lfiwf»H aad 
problems into politics, and it is impossible ever to kzscv 
what England lost by the incapacity of aAmmteaeaga 
during the last years of the eighteenth century. It vas 
during these years that a silent revolutioo was a cc o mpK Aed 
which gradually extinguished in England the most ^abbc 
and the most robust of all the dements of a natioo. By the 
neglect or the mistaken treatment of the great prMans o( 
the Poor Law, agriculture, punishment, and edncatioo, the 
aristocracy, which Burke had thought the ideal system for 
governing England, stamped its rule as inadequate and 
mischievous. Its epitaph is written in the ruin of the 
yeoman class in England. To Pitt, whose whole Hfe was 
spent in the House of Commons, and for whom the oontrc4 
of majorities came to be almost a sovereign end of exirt- 
ence, the England he governed was a small electorate trjit 
returned him with constant majorities, and a Parliarserrt 
which he controlled by his eloquence and b>' a discretion -Ji be 
enough to yield most projects to stubborn prejudice. There 
was an aspect of England that was unknown to the master 
of the House of Commons. The oligarchy was becoming 
closer ; the country was losing the priceless benefit of an 
independent peasantry; the towns were still under the rule 
of corrupt corporations ; ^ the disproportion between popula- 
tion and citizens was becoming more glaring, and scarcely 
anywhere did there survive a ci\'ic spirit. To complete the 
catastrophes that were silently accumulating the materials 
for revolution or decay, Pitt himself extinguished the one 
great characteristic and saving quality of English politics, the 
spirit of free discussion. 

The Parliamentary oligarchy had outlived its day of use- 

^ Leslie Stephen, Utilitarians^ vol. L p. 99. ** Municipal iastitutionj were 
almost at their last point of decay. Manchester and Birminghani were two of the 
largest and most rapidly growing towns. By the end of the century Manchester 
had a population of 90,000, and Birmingham of 70,00a Both were ruled, so f;ir 
as they were ruled, by the remnants of old manorial institutions." 

7 




98 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

fulness. It had neither the vigour, nor the knowledge, nor 
the sympathy to cany on the great work of government 
Pitt argued that it was virtually representative of the public 
opinion of the nation, but there is evidence that in one great 
question in which Pitt himself was interested for many years, 
Parliament was some distance behind public opinion. In 
1788 there were presented to Parliament 103 petitions, or 
twice as many petitions as had ever before been presented 
on any question, in favour of the abolition of the Slave 
Trade; they included petitions from most of the leading 
corporations of England and Scotland. The agitation grew, 
and in 1792 the petitions had increased to 519; there were 
Associations in many provincial towns, and large numbers 
of English persons preferred to deny themselves sugar rather 
than use slave labour. Yet when in 1791 Wilbcrforce moved 
for leave to bring in a Bill to prevent the further importation 
of slaves into the British West Indies, thou^ be was sup- 
ported by Pitt, Fox, and Burke, he was defeated by 163 
to 88,' and it was not till Fox came into office in 1806 that 
the trade was destroyed. 

The truth is that an oligarchy like that which existed at 
the end of the century was the best of all institutions for the 
use and aggrandisement of particular interests, and those 
interests could safely defy an opinion which was mocked 
with the name of representation, though it had no means of 
making itself heard or felt in the House of Commons. Those 

< It ii interesting (o notice that in (peaking on the subject in April 1793, Tax 
refeired to the public agitation, and said it wai bound to go on. "He did not 
mean to ny that gentlemen ought to be induced by a fiear of thit ion to vote 
against a measure which they thought wrong in theii conscience* ; but they nuMt 
not imagine the agilalioD of the aubject would be over. It wai impossible to 
luppose it No man however romantic in the cauie of tlaveiy, however entluni' 
aatic for injustice, could be so wild ai to bncy (hat either the conntiy ot the 
friends of abolition in the House, would let this trade go on nndittnibed far 
eight yean longer." Cp. RonuUy's letter on the rejection of Wilberibtce^ 
motion, 1791. "We have but one consolation under this disgrace i it b a 
consolation however which is itself the source ot another qiede* of disgncc. 
It is thai the House of Commons is not a national assembly, and certainly does 
nol speak the sense of the nation." — Remilfy Mtmairs, i. 435. 




PAIULIAMENTARY REFORM 99 

interests made a stout fight against all reform, and the 
greatest interest of all, the landlord interest, was paramount 
in Parliament, where its mistakes or its selfishness were 
responsible for some of the most mischievous Acts that were 
ever adopted. Fox did not see much further than his 
contemporaries in many of these matters, though he showed 
that he was able to detach himself from the general pre- 
judices of die landlord class by his attack on the Game 
Laws as ^'a mass of insufferable tyranny," and by his 
proposal to give die occupier his just rights over the game 
on the ground he occupied. But the best proof that 
Fox's remedy for die disorder of the state was the right 
remedy was provided in 1832 when Reform regenerated 
F^liament, and produced in a few years die great amend- 
ment of the Poor Law and the Municipal Reform BUI. If 
that energy had been added to Parliament forty years earlier 
England might have been spared some of the worst passages 
in her history, and some of the gravest of her social diseases. 




CHAPTER V 

THE REIGN OF TERROR 

Comparison of the AgJUtion of 1793-94 with that of 1780. A di^rent 
social class, but methods the same. The Government cue 
destroyed by the great triab of 1794. Lord Rosebeiy's justifiat- 
tion. The Prosecutions in England and Scotland. The Coercion 
Bills of 1795' l^e Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act The 
hard lot of the Refonners. Coleridge's letter on ThelwalL The 
efioTts of the Opposition in Parliament Attempts to promote 
Station in the countiy. Fox retires in 1797. His speech at the 
Whig Club on the Sovereignty of the People. His name removed 
from the Privy ComidL Characteristics of his speeches against 
the Coercion. 

IT is at first sight a ciirious irony that the man who struck 
the severest blow in the eighteenth century not merely 
at the spirit of reform, but at all the elementary rights of 
public discussion, was the statesman who became Prime 
Minister after taking part in an agitation in which abuse 
of the Court was unsparing, and the assertion of popular 
rights was uncompromising and resonant It is ai^ued tliat 
no comparison is possible between the a^tation of the 
nineties, and the agitation which bad shaken a new eno^ 
into public life during the closing years of the American 
War, The discussions which Pitt set himself to extinguish 
by all the means a British Government can employ are 
regarded as essentially distinct from the earlier discussions 
from which Pitt himself had drawn his chief support as a 
politician. It is true that the new movement was a move- 
ment along a different stratum of English society, but it is 
emphatically untrue to say that the earlier campa^ aflbrds 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 101 

no parallel to the language of complaint and the methods of 
die agitation, which Pitt contrived to stifle in a long series of 
persecutions and enactments during the last ten years of the 
century. The case is carefully considered in a pamphlet I 
published in 1796 (^The History of the Two Acts) in which • 
the writer recalls the violence of various statements and 
protests that belong to the earlier campaign ; in particular 
the threat thrown out by Chatham, " It is now necessary V 
to instruct the Throne in the language of truth." "I 
might," says the writer, " multiply quotations of this kind ; 
it was the common language of Parliament, from whence it 
descended to books, newspapers, pamphlets, and common 
conversation ; it was the popular creed adopted by the Ameri- 
cans at war, and by the English who were discontented. It 
is mentioned here neither with approbation nor censure : it 
may be wrong to appeal too often to the ' extreme medicine 
of the constitution,' it may be wrong to carry jealousy to an 
excess, for it is apt to become a blind and hateful passion. 
But enough appears upon record to show that such doctrines 
are not new nor the growth of France : are not to be traced 
to the fields of Islington, nor to the shops of the majestic 
booksellers of the people " (xxviii). 

The truth is, as anyone who reads the accounts of the 
earlier campaigns can soon discover, that there was as 
much brimstone and gunpowder in the language of those 
campaigns, as in the language which Pitt afterwards tried 
to represent as the spirit of social arson and disorder.^ 
When Chatham said, " Rather than the nation should 
surrender its birthright, I hope I shall see the question 
brought to issue fairly between people and Government," 
he could scarcely be regarded as confining himself to the 
conventional asperities of party warfare. It was held to be 
rank treason in 1793 to question the integrity of Parliament, 
or its title to speak for the nation through representatives 

* This comparison between the Economy agitation of 1780 and the Reform 
agitation of 1793 was suggested to me by Mr. D. L. Savory who has a mono- 
graph in MS. on the subject of the Societies. 




102 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

chosen by a few peers and influential commoners, who drew 
no distinction between their nomination to a borough and 
any other form of property they might have to dispose of.^ 
Yet it was the constant refrain of the reformers in 1780 
that Parliament was venal, incompetent, and without creden- 
tials to represent the people of Great Britain. It was the 
chief criticism of the societies during the Revolution that 
they were attempting to collect, in the form of a Convention, 
a new means of government in the nation, which would 
rival the authority of Parliament The argument was 
not less pertinent to the Great Convention of 1780, when 
the several county committees were invited to send delegates 
to London to confer t(^ether on the most effective way of 
supporting the petitions for economical reform,' and it must 
be remembered that North's supporters ui^ed this very 
argument against that Convention. Wyvill's letter on 
the subject is an interesting record of its object. " Each 
county, city, and town, having first associated separatdy 
and apart, the whole body of petitioners in due time may 
be collected, and firmly consolidated in one great ' National 
Association ' ; the obvious consequence of which must be 
certain and complete success to the constitutional refonn 
proposed by the people." The very idea of association 
and co-operation was regarded as criminal in the societies 
that were persecuted by Pitt, but Pitt himself under cross- 
examination was driven alter some ineffectual prevarications 
to admit that he had attended a meeting in 1783 at which 
delegates were present from various societies for promoting 
Parliamentary Reform. Pitt was eloquent about die enormity 

' The chairmui o! the Wigton Public meeting mcndoned in lending ■ petition 
agumt the Two Bills of 1795 thai the electors had never leen their menba ind 
did not know his addie^ 

' Sheridan made a very happy use of this argument in 1793, compaiing tb* 
proposed mnvention of 1794 with the convention held in 1780. "We make k 
boast of equal laws. If these men are to be considered as guilty of high trBUOO, 
let us have some retrospective, and whatever in that case may happen to me, bit 
Majesty will at leatt derive some benefit tince he will Iherdiy get rid of a majori^ 
uf his present Cabinet" 




THE REIGN OF TERROR 103 

of appaKiig to the people against Parliament in 1793, but 
there aie any number of instances in which this idea of 
appealing to the people as the ultima ratio of flouted 
discontent found a grim and defiant expression in the 
eailier agitations. 

Three examples may well be quoted. One is the 
language of Lord Carysfo4t in a letter to the Gentlemen/'^ 
of the Huntingdonshire C<»nmittee : ^ The people must work 
their own salvation. Every measure of public benefit must 
spring from them. No Minister however profligate^ no 
Parliament however corrupt can stand in opposition to their 
collective force. An authentic declaration of the sense of 
the nation must have decisive weight In this light I 
consider the petitions which have been sent up by so many 
counties and principal towns ; and when backed by a national 
association, maintained by committees of correspondence, I 
cannot conceive that Aey can be resisted." — Feb. 1780. 

Another is the language of the Duke of Richmond in 1783 : 
** I have no hesitation in saying that from every consideration 
which I have been able to give to this great question, that 
for many years has occupied my mind, and from every 
day's experience to the present hour I am more and more 
convinced, that the restoring the right of voting universally 
to every man not incapacitated by nature for want of reason, 
or by law for the commission of crimes, together with annual 
elections, is die only reform that can be efiectual and perma- 
nent I am further convinced, diat it is the only reform 
that is practicable. The lesser reform (alluding to Mr. Pitt's 
motion in the House of Commons) has been attempted with 
every possible advantage in its favour; not only from the 
zealous support of the advocates for a more equal one, but 
from the assistance of men of great weight both in and 
out of power. But with all those temperaments and helps 
it has failed; not one proselyte has been gained from 
corruption, nor has the least ray of hope been held out 
from any quarter, that the House of Commons was inclined 
to adopt any other mode of reform. The weight of cor- 




104 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

ruption has crushed this more gentle, as it would have 
defeated any more efficacious plan in the same circum- 
stances. From that quarter, therefore, I have nothing to 
hope. It is from the people at large that I expect any 
good, and I am convinced that the only way to make 
them feel that they are really concerned in the business, 
is to contend for their full, clear, and indisputable rights 
of universal representation. But in the more liberal and 
great plan of universal representation a clear and distinct 
principle at once appears, that cannot lead us wrong. Not 
CONVENIENCY but RIGHT. If it is not a maxim of 
our Constitution, that a British subject is to be governed 
only by laws to which he has consented by himself or his 
representative, we should instantly abandon the error; but 
if it is the essential of Freedom, founded on the eternal 
principles of justice and wisdom, and our unalienable birth- 
right, we should not hesitate in asserting it. Let us then 
but determine to act upon this broad principle of giving 
to every man his own, and we shall immediately get rid 
of all the perplexities to which the narrow notions of 
partiality and exclusion must ever be subject"^ 

The third is the speech of a less celebrated gentleman 
made at a general meeting of the freeholders of the County 
of Cambridge in March 25, 1780, published and preserved in 
a collection of pamphlets. " Many instances may be brought 
from History of Kings who have been solemnly deposed for 
not performing the duties of their office, and for infringing 
the liberties of the people. But the last great revolution 
of our government is a decisive precedent that subjects may 
alter their rulers, and that kings must expect allegiance no 
longer than they deserve it. Besides, when after all the 
waste of blood and treasure which the present calamitous 
war has occasioned, we are called upon to risk the last stake 
we possess for the service of our country, it surely becomes 
us to inquire whether we have a country. For I do not call 

' From a letter from the Duke of Richmond to Lieut. -Colonel Sharman, 
Chairman of the Committee of Correspondence at Belfast, dated Aug. 15, 17^3* 




THE REIGN OF TERROR 105 

the air we bfeathe, nor the soil we trample upon a country, 
nor the scanty fare which supports you for daily toils, but I 
call that a country in which men possess an equal share in 
their own government and privil^^ which are inviolable: 
he t h e r e fore that lays before you the noble rights which 
are inherent in you, as Englishmen stimulates you most 
effectively to their defence. • . . The House of Commons 
has but a subordinate existence: it is the organ of the 
people's voice; the creature of their will, and when we 
elect it we have a right to choose in what d^^ree and 
under what modifications we will delegate our own unalien- 
able rights." ^ 

Pitt, it is true, represented the agitation for Parliamentary 
Reform as part of some gigantic conspiracy against the state, 
in which projects of riot and rebellion were disguised under 
the comparatively blameless banner, which ten years earlier 
had floated over the enthusiasms of his youth. That account 
might have been accepted if it had not been disproved by 
the result of the Government's own action. The House of 
Commons in the kind of terror that inevitably overtook an 
assembly of rich men, legislating as the nominees of a few 
peers, and holding their seats as so much personal property, 
when the dreaded passion for reform had invaded the artisan 
and the shopkeeper, brought credulous and terrified minds 
to the investigation of the Secret Committee's report on the 
popular societies, and the phantom of a stealthy insurrection 
was as good a party whip as any paymaster in the King's 
service. The Committee that investigated the papers con- 
sisted exclusively of supporters of the Government, and it 
contained, not only Pitt, Dundas, and the grim hero of the 
Scottish persecutions, the Lord Advocate, but the two chief 

' Note that at centenary festival of Revolutionary Society in 1788, the basis 
of society was declared to be — 

"I. That all civil and political authority is derived from the people. 

" 2. That the abuse of power justifies resistance. 

"3. That the rights of private judgment, liberty of conscience, trial by jury, 
freedom of the press, and freedom of election ought ever to be held sacred and 
in\*iolable.'* 




106 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

victims of the panic, Windham and Burke himself. Its 
report was brought up by Pitt, and the House of Commons 
ap^ed by 146 votes to 28 to suspend the Habeas Corpus 
Act Unhappily for Pitt's credit, all the evidence which in 
a few hours convinced a small committee of his followers in 
the House of Commons that the state was in danger was 
afterwards submitted to a jury in a famous series of trials. 
The result was to show that the conspirators desired just 
what they had always professed to desire, a reform of the 
House of Commons, and an English jury unlike a Scotch 
jury had not learnt yet to oblige the Government by calling 
that demand High Treason.' 

The struggle during these years between the governing 
classes and the revolutionary societies was the old stru^le 
between the men who lived on the constitution and those 
who lived under it ; the movement for reform was the in- 
surgent spirit of discontent with a set of political arrange- 
ments that were quite inadequate for the needs of the 
community. But there is one great difference in the accidents 
of its conduct If North had been able in 1780 to throw into 
prison anyone who spoke the plain truth about the vices and 
absurdities of the Parliamentary representation, or the dimen- 
sions of corruption, Pitt and his father, as well as Fox, 
Burke, and Shelbume, would have been within the reach of 
the long arm of authority. Pitt was able to do in 1794. 
what North could not have done in 1780 precisely because 

' The judge congratulaUd the juiy on theii verdicL Grey wrote to hi* wife, 
" If Hardy ii huiged there h no safety for anyone : innocence do longer aflbidi 
protection to penons obnoxioui to Ihoie in power, and I do not know bow iomi 
it may come my turn." Lord Rosebery defends FHit and coercion on the groond 
■hat ' ' it was impoaaible to speak with confidence of the population of England. 
All that was Iciiown was an enonnous circulation of the world of Paine, an exten- 
sive manu&ctory of small-amis, a connderaUe and undefinable amount of fiinive 
organ isatioD." It would surely be truer to say that no GoTernnient ever had neb 
nppociDnities of knowing all about an agitation. The " furtive otgaiuMtion ' wai 
modelled on Piit'i own precedents in 1783 1 the magistrates were lealous and 
industrious in exploring, and Pitt's spies were ubiquitous. Furtha ibe toeietiet 
courted publidly : there is something aggressive in the way they advcrtiied tbcir 
proceedings. 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 107 

the middle classes who were friendly to the one agitation 
were apprehensive of the other. The middle classes would 
have resisted in 1780 the tyranny Pitt created in 1794; but 
in the panic which followed the outrages of the French 
Revolution there danced before their terrified vision the 
phantom of a class that they regarded as an upstart in politics 
organising on a great scale an outbreak like the Gordon 
Riots. The support the middle classes gave to the Govern- 
ment is no justification of its tyranny, and no confirmation 
of its attempt to prove that the agitations were seditious, in 
any other sense than that in which all movements of reform 
are described by their opponents in that summary phrase. 
It would be truer to say that that support is itself a charge 
against the Government, for it was the result of a concerted 
and deliberate attempt to inspire the country with an un- 
reasoning terror in the interests not of the constitution, but 
of the classes that trembled for obnoxious and threatened 
prerogatives. Nothing could be more congenial to the society 
that hated all reform than a general atmosphere of confusion 
and alarm in which men who had no interest in the injustices 
of the existing system mistook all criticism and discontent 
for the savagery of the sansculottes. Dundas was honest 
enough to admit that he thought it a pity that all the 
apparatus of coercion had not been in existence and in use 
in 1780, a genial suggestion for Pitt who might in that case 
have found himself in the pillory. 

The Government, probably against Pitt's better mind,^ 
resolved to repress all opposition by force, and to do that 
they set themselves industriously to circulate fictitious stories 
of secret rebellion, and to encourage official and unofficial 
violence against innocent and honourable men who allowed 
themselves to speculate at all on political questions. They 
began with the proclamation in the winter of 1792 calling 
upon magistrates to explore the public-houses for scraps of 
casual sedition. In the case of the great state trials of 
1794 they made an attempt to poison the public mind, 

1 Lord Campbell attributes the persecution chiefly to Lord Loughborough. 




108 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

which has been condemned in unsparing language by Lord 
Campbell. The Secret Committee, that is to say a Minis- 
terial Committee in the House of Commons, declared " that 
3 treacherous and detestable conspiracy had been found for 
subverting the existing taws and constitution, and for intro> 
ducing the system of anarchy and confusion which had lately 
prevailed in France," and this recital was quoted as proof of 
the guilt of Thomas Hardy and his associates when on their 
trial for High Treason. This monstrous attempt to prejudice 
a criminal trial would, if men had not lost their beads, have 
recoiled on the Government, for it was the result of that 
trial to show that the Secret Committee's report was entirely 
false. But the proceeding was quite characteristic of the 
methods of the Government who persisted in calling every 
reformer a Jacobin and a traitor, and who succeeded in 
carrying the repressive laws of 1794 into execution precisely 
because the country magistrates were all under the influence 
of the class terror which had produced the Acts themselves. 
The Government made themselves the interpreters of the 
terror of the governing classes, and instead of announcing 
that they were determined to suppress all criticism by coer- 
cion, represented, fraudulently, as the event showed, all 
criticism as implying sedition. 

In another respect the acquiescence in the suppression of 
criticism was an argument against that suppression. The 
danger to the constitution during these years from the 
efforts of the reformers was insignificant, for the general 
temper was impatient and fearful of all criticism and specu- 
lation. The forces of an immobile selfishness have never 
marshalled such an army of defence as that which had 
rallied to the cause of authority. During the American War 
a weak Government had maintained itself for years against 
all attacks though the aristocracy were divided and the middle 
classes were eager for reform. During the war against the 
French Republic the Government had much more on its side 
than the Court with its powers of punishment and reward; 
it was supported by the aristocracy with its scattered and 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 109 

outi^ng dependants, by the magistrates, who still had a 
t^t hand on all local life and pursuits, and by the middle 
classes whose demure discontents had vanished in their 
dreams of guillotines. When Fox urged that it might be 
an advantage to Scotland to adopt in part the English law 
rather than transport honest men for the crime of thinking 
the existing Parliamentary representation imperfect, Dundas 
boasted that the man who made such a proposal in Scotland 
would never escape alive. It was to hunt down a small 
minority whose opinions, so far from casting a fatal spell 
over the English mind, exposed those who held them to a 
social persecution, that all the liberties of England were 
withdrawn. 

It would be unreasonable to pretend that the Government 
daring these years had no need for vigilance or alarm. The 
popular meetings were a distraction and an embarrassment 
to Pitt just as the county meetings had been to North during 
a war in which the governing classes thought as much was 
at stake as Pitt believed to be at stake in the struggle with 
France. Even Chatham had argued that the separation of 
America from Great Britain would mark the banning of 
the decline of Britain's greatness. There was acute Irish 
discontent which broke out into rebellion, just as there was 
acute Irish discontent only stopping short of rebellion in 
1782. Further the popular meetings were organised by a 
different order in society, an order with which the Govern- 
ment had no sympathy and with which they were genuinely 
alarmed ; they were in truth the beginnings of political de- 
mocracy ; their language, though not more violent than the 
language used during the American War, was coloured by 
the startling phrases of the French Revolution, and before 
war broke out, embassies were sent to the French Conven- 
tion, which were, to say the least of it, neither discreet nor 
respectful in their allusions to the existing regime in Eng- 
land. The Government were alive too to the sharp pro- 
vocations of distress and high prices, and men who had 
helped to foment discontent in other days, trembled before 




no CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the mysterious menace of that French Revolution which 
Pitt described in a brilliant phrase as "the liquid fire of 
Jacobinism." But with the fullest recognition of their diffi- 
culties, it is impossible to acquit them of stimulating the 
cruelties of panic, and of using that panic to make an 
unwarrantable invasion of all the rights and liberties of 
Englishmen, It was the essence of their case that there 
were treasonable enterprises meditated by bodies of dis- 
afTected Englishmen who meant to give assistance to the 
French. That hypothesis has been completely destroyed. 
The London Corresponding Society itself, which no language 
was harsh enough to describe, was engaged at the moment 
of its forcible dissolution in iSoi, after persecution bad made 
it a secret organbation, in discussing the advisability of 
volunteering for resistance to the expected French invasion. 
When all the extraordinary equipment of inquisition is 
remembered, the vast ramification of a system which made 
every scavenger a detective, the zeal of the magistrates, the 
organisation of official and unofficial informers, the most 
remarkable fact about the French war is the insignificant 
quantity of treason that was discovered in a population that 
was often in great scarcity.' 

Fox judged his countrymen much more truly than Pitt, 
when he ai^ed that Englishmen would never look to 
foreign intervention to right their wrongs, or offer to invaders 
any other welcome than armed resistance. The Govero- 
ment used these legendary conspiracies to make all public 
meetings impossible though they had already discovered 
that they could punish inflammatory criticisms by imprison- 
ment under the ordinary law, and it must not be forgotten 
that every blow struck at freedom, during these years, multi- 
plied and a^ravated popular grievances that were serious 
and sensible. Even men who cared as little about freedom 
■ As Mce» to tbe Home Office Record* b prohibited to itiidcsia. It k 
impotsble to meuure aactlf the tectet evidence on which Pitt kctcd, bat it b 
sigiufiant thai JacluoD, k French eminuy who vidied England in 1793 to Me 
what were the prospects oF democratic help in case of invasion, Tound the tcmK 
very diiicouraging. Lecky, Irtland, vol. iii. p. 333. 




THE REIGN OP TERROR 111 

as the frightened landlords of 1794 might have doubted the 
wisdom of so terrible a confession that their own rule and 
the liberties of England could live together no longer. 

These were the conditions under which the Reign of 
Terror was instituted in England and Scotland. The pro- 
ceedings began with prosecutions under the existing law. 
John Frost, one of Pitt's former associates in the cause of 
Parliamentary Reform, was sentenced to six months' im- 
prisonment for a few words of desultory republicanism in 
a private conversation at a coffee-house. A Nonconformist 
minister at Plymouth was sentenced to four years' imprison- 
ment for saying in a sermon that the King was placed upon 
the throne on condition of keeping certain laws and rules, 
and that if he did not keep them, he had no more right to 
the crown than the Stuarts had. Several bill-stickers, who 
could neither read nor write, were sent to prison for six 
months for posting a proclamation by the London Corre- 
sponding Society, declaring, in reply to certain accusations 
by the Loyal Association against Republicans and Levellers, 
that the Society stood for the purity of the Constitution. 
A doctor named William Hudson was sentenced to two 
years' imprisonment for "seditious words in a coffee-house 
after dinner after two large glasses of punch." These 
prosecutions, and very many others were the result of 
the inquisition which the Government called upon the 
magistrates to establish in all the restaurants and public- 
houses. They are eclipsed by the larger pageants of tyranny 
for which the Government had to thank Dundas and his 
tools in Scotland, and on which Pitt publicly congratulated 
judges whose names are still remembered with horror. 

Thomas Muir, a brilliant young advocate had interested 
himself in the efforts to stimulate attention in Scotland 
in political questions. He had helped to form a society in 
Glasgow called "the Friends of the Constitution and of 
the People," to co-operate with the Whig " Friends of the 
People" in London, a society to which no one was ad- 
mitted until he had signed a declaration of his allegiance 



112 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

to the Government of Great Britain as established in King, 
L/irds, and Commons. He had addressed various meetings, 
and it was clear even from hostile witnesses, that his 
language was moderate, and his policy not much difTerent 
from the policy which Pitt had recommended in 1782. He 
was indicted for sedition ; the jury, chosen by the judges, 
consisted of men belonging to Associations that had already 
condemned him by public resolutions as an enemy of the 
constitution, and the Lord Justice Clerk, instead of summing 
up, made a speech to show that any criticism of the Govern- 
ment, or of the Parliamentary representation was sedition. 
This " coarse and dexterous ruffian," as Lord Cockbum has 
called faim, asked the jury to consider whether Mr. Muir's 
conduct appeared to them, as it appeared to him, to be 
sedition. " As Mr. Muir has brought many witnesses to 
prove his general good behaviour, and his recommending 
peaceable measures and petitions to Parliament, it is your 
business to judge how far this should operate in his favour, 
in opposition to the evidence on the other side, 

"Mr. Muir might have known that no attention could 
be paid to such a rabble. What right had they to repre- 
sentation 7 He could have told them that the Parliament 
would never listen to their petition. How could they think 
of it? A government in every country should be just like 
a corporation ; and in this country, it is made up of th^ 
landed interest, which alone has a right to be represented ; 
as for the rabble, who have nothii^ but personal property, 
what hold has the nation of them ? What security for the 
payment of their taxes? They may pack up all their 
property on their backs, and leave the country in the 
twinkling of an eye, but landed property cannot be re- 
moved. 

"The tendency of such a conduct was certainly to 
produce a spirit of revolt; and if what was demanded 
should be refused, to take it by force. 

"Mr. Muir's plan of discouraging revolt, and all sort of 
tumult, was certainly political : for until everything was ripe 




THE KBI6N OF TERROR 118 

for a general tnsurrectioa, any tumult or disorder could only 
tend, as he himself said, to ruin his cause; he was in the 
meantime, however, evidently poisoning the minds of the 
common people, and preparing them for rebellion. 

"Gentlemen, you will take the whole into your con- 
sideration. I now leave it with you, and have no doubt 
of your returning such a verdict as will do you honour." ^ 

The language of the judges after the verdict had been 
given showed that they were worthy colleagues of Lord 
Justice Braxfield. One of them, Lord Swinton, remarked 
that ''now that torture" was ''happily abolished "* there was 
no punishment adequate for Mr. Muir's offence, and that the 
Roman law which must for these purposes be considered 
the Scottish common law, had left it to their discretion to 
send Mr. Muir to the gallows, to throw him to wild beasts, 
or to transport him.' The Lord Justice Clerk himself in a 
final display of the serene and impartial majesty of the law, 
said that the applause in court, which had broken out at 
the end of a manly and able defence by Muir had convinced 
him that it would be dangerous to leave Mr. Muir in the 
country, and that the only question was whether he should 
be transported for life or for fourteen years. The milder 
alternative was chosen, and Muir was sent to Botany Bay 
with convicted felons, for no other crime ' than for that of 
demanding a reform which Pitt had urged whilst we were at 
war with America and with half of Europe, and which the 
Duke of Richmond had championed in the Lords when the 
Gordon Riots were making a Bedlam of the capital. Muir 
was punished because the law was administered in Scotland 
so as to make the existing arrangements for Parliamentary 
representation, and the integ^ty of the Scottish corporations, 
byewords for corruption, secure from all criticism. It was 
of that trial that William Pitt, who knew the law, and knew 
the meaning of agitations for Parliamentary reform, declared 

* P. 231, S/aU Trials, vol. xxiii. ' P. 234. 

' There was not a word or a sentiment in Muir's speeches which had not 
been spoken in Parliament, or expressed in resolutions by Pitt's sodetiea. 
S 




114 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

that " no doubt could be entertained either of the legality 
of the trials under review or of the propriety of the manner 
in which the Lords of Justiciary had exercised their dis- 
cretion upon this occasion. He thought that the judges 
would have been highly culpable if, vested as they were 
with discretionary powers, they had not employed them for 
the present punishment of such daring delinquents, and the 
suppression of doctrines so dangerous to the country." ^ 

The Scottish judges were soon to show that they were 
just as ready to punish other "daring delinquents" of the 
same kind. A Mr. Palmer was indicted at Perth for 
circulating a seditious libel. By way of adding a certain 
incidental finesse to the extraordinary injustice with which 
Muir had been treated, the Lord Advocate had actually 
urged as a proof against him that a letter was found in his 
papers addressed to Mr. Palmer, who was then awaiting 
trial, thus contriving to strike a simultaneous blow at two 
persons. It was shown that Palmer's only offence consisted 
in circulating a pamphlet, which he had not written himself, 
containing not a single expression to which parallel could 
not be found in Burke's own speeches. The trial itself 
differed little from that of Muir. Witnesses were brow- 
beaten, and Lord Abercromby, in summing up, maintained 
in the form of an indignant question that it was sedition to 
assert that the people had a right to universal suffrage. 
Palmer was sentenced to seven years' transportation. The 
other victims of that "discretionary power" which Pitt 
thought had been so wisely exercised against Muir, were 
Skirving, Margarot, and Gerrald. Skirving was the Secretaiy 
of the great Convention which had been assembled at Edin* 
burgh in January 1793, in imitation of the Convention in 
London ten years earlier, for the purpose of demanding 
Parliamentary Reform. The Convention adopted various 
ridiculous titles and flourishes from the new French 

* Pitt also refused to see anything objectionable in the choice by the presiding 
judge (according to Scotch law at that time) of jurors who belonged to an 
Association that had already condemned Muir. 




THE REIGN OF TERROR 115 

vocabulary, and it provoked the authorities by asserting 
that it would refuse to disperse; but its meetings were 
e xtr e m ely orderly, its language not more violent than 
language that had been held ten years earlier, and the only 
disturbance was created by the police. Skirving, Margarot, 
and Gerrald were all tried for sedition, in the same spirit, 
and by the same methods^ as Muir and Palmer, and 
sentenced to fourteen years* transportation each. Margarot 
and Gerrald were delegates from the London Corresponding 
Society, and it was a piece of good fortune for the Govern- 
ment that they had brought themselves within reach of the 
discretionary powers of the Scottish judges. 

One more trial that occurred before the Government 
suspended the Habeas Corpus Act must be mentioned 
because it illustrates the circumstances that gave rise to 
the rumours of armed insurrection. A Mr. Walker, an 
eminently respectable citizen, and a valiant Liberal, was 
indicted with six other persons at Lancaster for a conspiracy 
to overthrow the constitution and Government, and to aid 
and abet the French in case they should invade this king- 
dom. The trial took place in April. The chief charge 
against Mr. Walker was that he had purchased arms for 
the purpose of rebellion. It was proved that Mr. Walker 
had purchased a few firearms, as a very necessary precaution 
for the defence of his house against the violence of the 
loyalist associations, and the witness on whom the Govern- 
ment relied was convicted of perjury, Mr. Walker being 
" honourably acquitted." 

Hitherto the Government had conducted their campaign 
under the ordinary law, confining themselves to issuing 
alarmist proclamations, to stimulating the vigilance and 
the zeal of the magistrates, and to encouraging an " organ- 
isation " of loyalist associations which was very active in 

' Gerrald objected to one juryman on the ground that he had already 
declared in private conversation that he would condemn any member of the 
British Convention. The objection was dismissed, and the Lord Justice Clerk 
remarked, "As this objection is stated, I hope there is not a gentleman of the 
jury or any man in this court who has not expressed the same sentiment." 




116 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

denouncing reformers. In May 1794 they adopted excep- 
tional measures. The prosecutions had not silenced the 
platform, for there had been meetings at Leeds, Wake- 
field, Bradford, Halifax, and Sheffield, and a great meeting 
at Chalk Farm, and arrangements were in progress for a 
great convention in London, in spite of the discouragement 
of the " Friends of the People," who thought such a project 
might help the Government Suddenly, the papers of the 
Corresponding Society, and the Constitutional Society were 
seized. Some dozen of their members were sent to the 
Tower to await their trial for High Treason, and Pitt 
proposed the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act on the 
strength of a report of the secret Committee of his sup- 
porters in Parliament on the captured documents. There 
had been nothing before this to show that there was any 
conspiracy, except the conviction of a wretched spy Watt, 
whose enterprises were more a subject for contempt than 
alarm. The other convictions signified nothing more than 
the condemnation by selected juries and judges of the type 
of Braxfield, of all criticism of the Parliamentary representa- 
tion. But in May 1794 the Government declared the state 
to be in danger, and they took two extreme steps to impress 
the nation with the reality of the vast conspiracy they 
pictured. They invoked all the most solemn terrors of the 
law, and they withdrew all the guarantees of responsible 
justice and personal freedom. It is important to remember 
the exact sequence of events, for the tyranny of the Govern- 
ment has been excused on the ground that it repre- 
sented "not the coercion of a people by the government, 
but the coercion of a government by the people." * Pitt, in 
proposing the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, drew a 
picture of a hideous conspiracy that had been at work 
sometimes by silent machinations, sometimes by open 
intimidation, for two years, arranging to build up a con- 
vention that should replace the existing constitution. He 
noted that the conspirators had formed corresponding 

1 Lord Rosebeiy, Uft 0/ Pitt, p. 167. 




THE REIGN OF TERROR 117 

m 

societies in the large manufacturing towns, which they 
thought likely, because of their ** ignorant and profligate '' 
populatkm, to welcome their project of rebellion. This was 
the ridiculous l^t in which Pitt represented the operations 
of a society that had naturally looked to the large towns 
where there was no Parliamentary representation for an 
enthusiastic support of the cause of reform. It would be 
easy enough to understand such language from the sup- 
porter of the Government who argued that ''the very 
advanced price at which seats were now represented to 
be sold, was not (if true) a proof of its corruption, but of 
the increasing wealth and prosperity of the country/' ^ But 
a Prime Minister who persuades Parliament to suspend the 
Habeas Corpus Act by such a description of the nation's 
danger, can scarcely be exonerated from any share in 
creating the public terror which Lord Rosebery represents as 
" coercing " the Government. 

In the trials of Thomas Hardy and Home Tooke the 
Government had every opportunity of making good their 
accusations. It was their contention that these Societies, 
whilst in their open documents they abjured violence and 
demanded reform, were busy with clandestine insurrection. 
The books of the Corresponding Society and the Constitu- 
tional Society had been seized without warning. The 
secretary was arrested so suddenly that his wife died 
afterwards in consequence of the shock, and his house was 
turned inside out for proofs and compromising records 
The whole array of soft-slippered spies and mercenary 
eavesdroppers who had insinuated themselves into various 
branches of the Corresponding Society, and had tried to 
tempt hot-headed enthusiasts into spasmodic treason were 
passed through the witness-box to do their worst. Prisoners, 
untried and unaccused, were recalled from the cells into 
which they had been swept by the Government, when the 
normal restraints of the law had been suspended, to face 
the sudden severities of cross-examination. For eight days 

^ Mr. Anstruther. 




118 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the issue was discussed ; all the archives of the Society ^ were 
submitted to the full light of the public view ; all the secrets 
of the meetings, correspondence, routine, and programmes 
were extracted ; all the hoardings of private treachery and the 
greedy accumulations of eager informers, whose reputation 
and rewards were involved in a conviction, were arrayed in an 
imposing column of slander and suspicion, and the hypothesis 
on which the Government rested their case was shattered 
and laid bare. If the arguments by which Pitt justified his 
destruction of freedom were correct in fact, the ringleaders of 
the two obnoxious Societies could never have survived that 
minute and rigorous scrutiny into everything they had said, 
or written, or planned, or whispered amongst friends. 

In spite of this rebuff the Government persisted in its 
alarmist policy, and one of its members only wished that 
the jury had been as wise as he. The Habeas Corpus Act 
was suspended from May 23rd 1794 to July ist 1795, and 
the Government made use of their Bill to send a number of 
men to prison, and keep them there without trial. The 
London Corresponding Society held a meeting in April 
1795, and another against Place's advice in October 1795.' 
The second meeting was held three days before the opening 
of Parliament By this time there was a strong popular 
opinion running against the Government, due to great and 
real distress, and the pressure of taxation. Wheat had gone 
up from fifty-eight shillings a quarter in February to one 
hundred and eight shillings. There were disorderly demon- 
strations, and the King made his way to Parliament, amidst 
loud cries of " No Pitt," '' No famine," and unhappily a small 
stone or bullet broke one of the windows' of the King^s 
carriage. The King behaved with the courage and sang- 
froid that he had shown during the Gordon riots. The 
whole thing had no more to do with Jacobinism than the 

' A gremt deal was made by the Government of the preparationt for arming 
but it was proved at the trials that these preparations were merely in sdf-defienoe 
against lo>'alist rioters. One reform association had annoanced itself in the 
by public advertisement as a "military association." 

» Mr. Graham Wallas' Lift of Place^ p. 2$. 



THE REIGN OP TERROR 119 

protests against the American War during its last years. It 
was the bdiaviour of a proletiuriat that was threatened with 
starvation. But it was just what the Government wanted, 
and two Bills were rapidly introduced which finally silenced 
the platfiarm. One Bill, the Treasonable Practices Bill, was 
introduced by Grenville into the Lords, and the other, the 
Seditious Meetings Bill was introduced by Pitt into the 
Commons. The former of these Bills introduced a new law 
of treason. " The proof of overt acts of treason was now to 
be dispensed with ; and any person compassing and devising 
the death, bodily harm, or restraint of the King, or his 
depositk>n, or the levying of war upon him, in order to 
compel him to change his measures or counsels, or who 
should express such designs by any printing, writing, 
preaching, or malicious and advised speaking, should suffer 
the penalties of high treason.^ Any person who by writing, 
printing, preaching, or speaking should incite the people to 
hatred or contempt of his Majesty, or the established 
government and constitution of the realm, would be liable 
to the penalties of a high misdemeanour ; and on a second 
conviction, to banishment or transportation. The act was 
to remain in force during the life bf the King, and till the end 
of the next session after his decease." ' 

The second Bill provided that no meeting, not convened 
by the sheriff or other local authorities was to take place 
until notice had been given by seven householders and 
sent to the magistrate. The magistrate was to attend the 
meeting, and anyone who prevented his going might suffer 
death without benefit of clergy. His powers at the meeting 
were paramount If any speaker said anything likely to 
excite hatred or contempt of his Majesty or the Govern- 
ment, or the constitution, he was to be apprehended, and 
resistance was to be a felony punishable by death. The 
magistrate could break up a meeting, and was completely 

^ The provision concerning preaching and advised speaking was afterwards 
omitted. 

* Erskine May, Cmstiintianai History ofEngUmd, vol. ii. p. 318. 




120 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

indemnified for any loss of life or wounds that might happen 
in his efforts to dbperse it Further, any rooms in which 
debating societies met were to be licensed by two magis- 
trates, and a magistrate could enter at any time. This 
Bill was to continue in force for three years. It is im- 
portant to remember that before introducing these Bilb 
the Government had found in the case of Henry Yorke 
who was tried in July 1795, and sentenced to two years' 
imprisonment on a charge of conspiring to defame the 
House of Commons, and to excite a spirit of disaflfcction 
and sedition amongst the people, that they could punish 
platform speeches under existing laws. Yorke was a youth 
of twenty-two, and Rooke, before whom he was tried, 
admitted that his speech, made at Sheffield the previous 
year, would have been innocent, if it had been made at 
another time. Sir James Fitz-James Stephen remarks that 
this was the first instance of a prosecution in which the law 
of conspiracy was applied to seditious offences. 

The Acts put an end for the time to all public discussion, 
for to hint that Birmingham with its 70,000 inhabitants had 
as good a right to be represented in the House of Commons as 
a decayed borough with half a dozen electors was to render 
oneself liable to a prosecution for sedition. The London 
Corresponding Society tried to evade the Act by sending 
delegates to address small meetings, but the attempt broke 
down, and when in 1 796 they tried to hold a public meeting 
the magistrates arrested some of the chief speakers, and 
dispersed the meeting. But the final blow had not yet 
been struck. In 1798 the Habeas Corpus Act was again 
suspended, and the following year Pitt carried a Bill to 
suppress the societies of United Englishmen, United Britons, 
United Scotsmen, United Irishmen, and the London Corre- 
sponding Society. The latter Bill contained a provision that 
any society which should act in separate or distinct branches 
should be deemed and taken to be an unlawful combination 
and confederacy, and that any persons maintaining corre- 
spondence or intercourse with it should be deemed guilty of 




THE REIGN OF TERROR 121 

an unlawful combination and confederacy, the penalty for 
which was seven years' transportation. The same year the 
Seditious Meetings Act expired, but in April 1801, the 
Government renewed the suspension of the Habeas Corpus 
Act (the suspension of 1798 expiring early that year), and 
revived the Seditious Meetings Act by a Bill of a single 
section. The sacrifice of English freedom was now com- 
plete, and we may say of Pitt, adapting Swift's language 
about something else, that he had asked of the nation all the 
good qualities of its mind as the price of the maintenance of 
the governing classes, '^ which perhaps for a less purchase 
would be thought but an indifferent bargain." 

In that first dark chapter of the struggle between the 
governing classes and democracy in England, a struggle that 
lasted,^ with much the same methods, long after the French 
war was over, there is one illuminating page, for it is enriched 
by the record of a virtue which has never quite disappeared 
from English politics, the patient heroism of resistance. 
Persecution almost always produces eccentricities, exaggera- 
tions, fanaticisms morbid, theatrical, bizarre, sharpened and 
separated from the gentler influences of the normal and 
tranquil energies of society. Persecuted men tend to hold 
their convictions not only with tenacity but with acrimony. 
These types are not wanting in the Revolutionary struggle. 
But of the men who then went to prison, or to Botany Bay, 
or to a moral exile' at home, there is this to be said, that 

^ Liverpool, who suspended the Habeas Corpus Act in 1817, was President of 
the Board of Trade (as Hawkesbury) in Pitt's Government in 1794. 

> I am indebted to Mr. John B. Chubb for leave to print the following 
pathetic letter from S. T. Coleridge to Mr. Chubb's great-grandfather, which 
shows how terrible was the social ban on reformers : — 

Addressed to Mr. John Chubb, Bridgewater, in 1797 or 1798. 

Dear Sir, — I write to you on the subject of ThelwalL He has found by 
experience that neither his own health or that of his wife and children can be 
preserved in London; and were it otherwise, 3ret his income is inadequate to 
maintain him there. He is therefore under the necessity of fixing his residence 
in the country. But by his particular exertions in the propagation of those prin- 
ciples, which we hold sacred and of the highest importance, he has become, as 
you well know, particularly unpopular, through every part of the kingdom— in 




122 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

they risked everything for the cause of freedom, that t!tey 
had to master every kind of fear and selfish passion, that 
they gave their lives to work neglected by all others, the 
education of a class that had known nothing of politics, that 
they were strangers to all personal ambitions, and that they 
bore their hard lot, in some cases almost as terrible a lot 
as the imagination can picture, with a manly and intrepid 
composure. Many of the reformers were working men like 

every part of the kingdom therefore some odium and inconvenience must be 
incurred by those who should be instrumental in procuring him a cottage there — 
but are Truth and Liberty of so little importance that we owe no sacrifice to 
them ? And because with talents very great, and disinterestedness undoubted, he 
has evinced himself in activity of courage, superior to any other patriot, must his 
country for this be made a wilderness of Mrater to him ? — There are many reasons 
for his preferring this to any other part of the kingdom, he will here find the 
society of men equal to himself in talents, and probably superior in acquired 
knowledge-— of men, who differ from each other very widely in many very im- 
portant opinions yet unite in the one great duty of unbounded ioUroMCi. If the day 
of darkness and tempest should come, it is most probable, that the influence of T. 
would be very great on the lower classes — it may therefore prove of no mean 
utility to the cause of Truth and Humanity, that he had spent some years in a 
society, where his natural impetuosity had been disciplined into patience, and 
salutary scepticism, and the slow energies of a calculating spirit 

But who shall get him a cottage here ? I have no power, and T. Poole is 
precluded from it by the dreadful state of his poor Mother's health and by his 
connection with the Benefit Club — the utilities of which he estimates very high, 
and these, he thinks, would be materially affected by any activity in fiivor of T. 
— Besides, has he not already taken his share of odium ? has he not already 
almost alienated, certainly very much cooled, the affections of some oi hs 
relations, by his exertions on my account ? And why should ono man do a//? 
But, it must be left to every man's private mind to determine, whether or no his 
particular circumstances do or do not justify him in keeping aloof firom all inter- 
ference in such subjects. J. T. is now at Swansea, and ezptets an answer from 
me respecting the possibility of his settling here, and he requested me to write to 
you. I have done it — and you will be so kind (if in your power, io-day) to give 
me one or two lines, briefly informing me whether or no your particular ctrcmn* 
stances enable you to exert yourself in taking a cottage for him — anymlUrt 5 or 
6 miles round Stowey. He means to live in perfect retirement — neither taking 
pupils or anything else. . . • 

It is painful to ask that of a person which he may find it equally distresang 
to grant or deny — (But I do not ask anjrthing ; but simply lay before yaa. the 
calculations on our side of the subject — ). Your own mind will immediately 
suggest those on the other side — and I doubt not, you will decide according to 
the preponderance.— Bclie\'e me with respect, etc S. T. Colbridgb. 



THE REIGN OP TERROR 123 

Hardy (a shoemaker), but some of the ringleaders were men 
of the middle class. Gerrald was the son of wealthy parents ; 
Mai^^arot, the son of a general merchant and wine importer ; 
Joyce, a pupil of Dr. Price's and the author of an arithmetic ; 
Bonney, an attorney; Sharp, an engraver; Kyd, a man of 
letters ; Richter, son of an artist ; and Holcr^ft, a dramatist ^ 
To understand what it meant to be a Liberal from 1794 
to 1800 we must not look merely at the ferocities of the 
statute-book. The country was under a vast system of 
espionage, and the whole army of officials, deprived of their 
votes by the Rockingham Ministry, were so many agents, 
scattered throughout the country, enforcing the displeasure 
or the strong will of the Government. Liberalism meant, in 
many professions, a career closed abruptly;^ for men and 
women of the middle class it meant separation from their 
friends by a yawning chasm of intolerance and terror, for the 
obscure and the defenceless it meant perhaps dreary years of 
languishing existence in prison, without trial or notice. The 
organisation of loyalist mobs, the concrete expression of a 
militant sycophancy, enlisted great numbers of informers 
and destroyed Dr. Priestley's house in 1791, amidst the 
scandalous indifference of the magistrates ; they afterwards 
destroyed Mr. Walker's house in Manchester, and arranged 
other riots in other parts of the country. They attempted in 
vain to provoke Fox's neighbours to attack his house. The 
men who opened their mouths against Pitt's policy for ten 
years had to face risk of imprisonment, social ostracism, the 
mercenary violence of Milo's bullies, and every species of 
slander on their motives. There were men and women of all 
ranks who chose that bitter persecution, rather than seek 
refuge or reward in a guilty silence, and a state can rely 
on no stouter quality to resist invasion or decay than the 
texture of which such temperaments are made. 

In the great work of resistance the Parliamentary 
Opposition played their part courageously. Their position 
differed from that of the enthusiasts outside, who believed 

* See M. Angellicr's Bums, 




124 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

that however many of its missionaries might fall in the first 
conflicts the cause of popular government was irresistible, 
and its triumph would mean the final establishment of 
freedom and justice. Fox and his friends had many alarms 
about the issue of the popular movement The Whig wing 
of the Reform movement deprecated a great many of the 
demonstrations of the popular societies, partly as a question 
of tactics, for they knew that the Government welcomed any 
pretext for repression, but partly also because they were 
afraid that the struggle between the Government and the 
extreme theories might end in anarchy and confusion. Fox 
had the advantages and the disadvantages of his position as 
Parliamentary leader. He defended English freedom widi 
a passion which belonged to his profound sense of the 
grandeur of England, but his views of the great issue unlike 
the enthusiasm of the democrats embraced a keen appreciation 
of all the traditions of English public life and party conflicts. 
It was in the name of the history of England that he fought 
the whole series of the Government's tyrannies, but to many 
of his allies outside Parliament that history was not a great 
achievement to be defended, but a great usurpation to be 
undone. Fox and his friends regarded the constitution 
with the pride of men who felt that their party had invented 
its structure, and that it was adequate for the protection of 
the nation in emergencies. He was indignant with the 
societies who sent messages to the French Convention dis- 
paraging the English constitution, on the one hand, and 
was much more indignant with the Grovemment for making 
haste to show that the constitution was not a genuine pro- 
tection for Englishmen's liberties on the other.* There was 

* " He had signed a declaration of attachment to the constitntioii, became he 
thought it of importance at the present moment to let fordgners, and espectally 
the French, see that men of all descriptions were firmly attadied to it ; tluU they 
had been grossly deceived by the addresses from this country, whidi told then 
that their doctrines were very generally adopted here ; that they had been de- 
ceived by the ministers' proclamations, stating that there was great danger from 
their doctrines ; that they had been deceived by the alarms expressed by some of 
his own friends." 



THE KEIGN OF TKRSOm 125 



seldom any mutual omliiimr e bttouji Fok aad ttc^ 
extreme democrats, except daring &e ^pUIki against 
the 1795 Bflls.^ On one norasinn Hcxoe Tcxike io pn>- 
posing a toast at a dmner caDed tbe Jttmli i Mi of tiie ^mcs 
in the nx>m to his assertiGo that Fufiamcnt vas a sink <tf 
corruption, and, he added, *tfae Paffi am o iUiy Oppositioo 
is a sink of corniptioo." Fox fingfat the battle with a 
strenuous zeal which disserved all lesser animosities, partly 
because he believed that everythii^ precioiis to Ei^;lisfanien 
was at stake, partly because he could not bear that less 
powerful men should suffer imprisooment or other forms of 
punishment for holding ofnmons that he could avow in com- 
parative safety. But he fought it widiont the hdp of those 
illusions about human nature, and the r^nd triumjA of 
justice which sustained many of the stoute s t hearts in those 
days of martyrdom. 

It is fortunate that before the panic became acute in 
England, the Opposition won a bloodless victory of supreme 
importance. Fox's Libel Bill was carried through both 
Houses in 1792. In the famous case of the Dean of St 
Asaph, Dr. Shipley, who had reconmiended a pamphlet by Sir 

' Cf. Resolution of the Loodoii Gxre^xxidiDg Society at their meeting in 
Maiylebone Fields, 1795 (see HisUny cf the Two Ads, p. 653): "That the 
thanks of this meeting be given to the RighL Hon. Charles James Fox, M.P., 
for his firm, determined, and unequivocal opposition to these Bills both in and 
out of Parliament. And more especially for his manly and constitutional de- 
claration, * That neither the Commons, nor the Lords, nor the King, nor the 
three combined as the Legislature, can be considered as having power to enslave 
the people ; but that they may either separately, or unitedly do such acts as 
would justify the resistance of the people.' " 

Cf. also Memorials and Correspondence , vol. iii. p. 1 35 (1796) : " At present I 
think that we ought to go further towards agreeing with the democratic or 
popular party than at any former period ; for the following reasons : — Wc, as u 
party, I fear, can do nothing, and the contest must be between the Court anil 
the Democrats. These last, without our assbtance, will be either too weak to 
resist the Court, — and then comes Mr. Hume's Euthanasia, which you and I 
think the worst of all events, — or if they are strong enough, being wholly un- 
mixed with any aristocratic leaven, and full of resentment against us for not 
joining them, will go probably to greater excesses, and bring on the only slutc 
of things which can make a man doubt whether the despotism of monarchy in 
the worst of all evils.'* 




126 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

William Jones entitled A Dialogue between a Gentleman and 
a Fartnery to a society of reformers, it had been laid down by 
Lord Mansfield that the question of whether a publication 
was libellous or not was a pure question of law, to be decided 
by the judges, and that all the jury had to decide was 
whether the defendant had or had not published it If this 
judgment had been left as the final decision ''the Star 
Chamber," says Lord Campbell, " might have been re-estab- 
lished in this country." Fox's famous Bill established 
expressly the right of the jury to decide the guilt or inno- 
cence of the publication as well as its authorship, and 
thereby restored the freedom of the press which would 
otherwise have been at the mercy of the judges. The Act 
passed as a Declaratory Act, and it is to Pitt's credit that, 
however careless he was afterwards about freedom, he gave 
Fox his frank and cordial support in this momentous matter. 
Lord Camden had been an ardent supporter of this doctrine 
for half a century, but the man who did most towards 
effecting this triumph in 1792 was Erskine, who had been 
Dr. Shipley's counsel. "Erskine," says Lord Campbell, 
** saved the liberties of his country." It can at least be said 
of him without exaggeration that during the darkest hours 
of the Reign of Terror, all the energies of his splendid genius 
and patriotism were spent in the brave and disinterested 
championship of freedom, and that no one achievement 
during those years did so much to check the fatal devasta- 
tions of a spirit which threatened finally to extinguish the 
rights of Englishmen, as Erskine's immortal defence of 
Thomas Hardy and Home Tooke. Like his friends he made 
his sacrifice to duty. Just as his brother Henry Erskine 
preferred to speak his mind, rather than hold, by an in- 
glorious silence, his office of Dean of the Faculty at Edin- 
burgh, so Thomas Erskine chose to defend Paine, and lose 
the Attorney-Generalship to the Prince of Wales. M. Ribot 
has finely said of Erskine that the love of liberty was part 
of his talent It is at any rate true that that passion has left 
his career, in spite of a vanity that lent itself to an easy and 



THE KEI6N OF TERROR 127 

efiective rUSaaic, a soblime and immortal memoiy to Us 
country. 

Unh^ipily, Fox's Libd Bin was the solitary Pariia- 
mentary soooess of the Oi^oatioo, and widi tliat exotpdon^/^ 
its histioty is the history of an heme but inrlBnchml resst- 
ance to the cruelties of panic and sdfishnesa. That resist- 
ance was mainly a resistance in Pariiament, and the brunt 
of the fight fell upon Fox, Sheridan, and Grey in the 
Commons, and Lansdowne,^ Lauderdale^ Stanhope, and 
Bedford in the Lords. It is (mly necessary to lode at the 
division lists to understand how hopeless a task the Opposi- 
tion had undertaken. There were two debates in Ifarch 
1794 on the infamous Scottish trials, and the Opposition 
was supported by 32 votes and 46 votes to 171 and 152 
votes respectively. The minority cm the first division on 
the Repeal of tiie Habeas Corpus Act in May 1794 was 
39 to 201 ; on Sheridan's motion to repeal the suspension 
in January 1795 it was 41 to 185. The same month the Bill 
for continuing the suspension was carried by 239 to 53. 
In the stem fight against the Treason and Sedition Bills in 
1795, the best vote for the Opposition was 70 to 269, and 
in Fox's last effort before his despairing secession, on his 
proposal to repeal the Treason and Sedition Bills, in 1797, 
he mustered 52 votes to 260. 

The struggle was for the most part in Parliament, but 
there was one great effort to stimulate remonstrances in the 
country. Fox had argued during the discussion of the Bill 
for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, that Pitt had no 
right to adopt such a revolutionary measure without taking 
the sense of the country, and in the autumn of 1795 ^^ 
Opposition decided that the method of protest, which had 
been used with great effect in the American War, must be 

* It is interesting to notice the gndnal tentative " rapprochement " between A^ 
Fox and Sbelbume, who had become Lord Lansdowne. The Intter memories 
of 1783 were only slowly sponged out by Lansdowne's stout and fearless opposi- 
tion to the French war and domestic oppression, a record that justifies his 
epitaph as a man who never feared the people. Fox dined with him for the first 
time in 1795. 




128 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

employed against the proposal for the final extinction of the 
platform. The precedents of those times were evidently 
very much in the minds of the leaders of the Opposition, 
who knew what it meant to place the Government of the 
day beyond the reach of criticism, and Lord Derby had 
declared that public meetings had shortened the American 
War. There was a further stimulus to concerted action of 
this kind. The Government had, in Fox's words, an 
"alliance out of doors," i^. a great organisation made up 
partly of disinterested and frightened patriots, but largely 
of contractors, officials, dependants, which asserted that the 
country approved of the Government's Bills. A great meeting 
of the Whig Club was held in November 1795 with Bedford 
in the chair, and Fox said there ought to be meetings every- 
where, and a resolution was passed that meetings of the 
people in their respective districts should be immediately 
called for the purpose of petitioning Parliament against the 
.^Bill.^ The result was an agitation of some dimensk>ns, 
though unhappily it did not influence the House of 
Commons. Fox himself presided over a mass meeting in 
^' Palace Yard, Westminster, on the i6th of November. The 
London Corresponding Society held a great meeting a few 
days earlier, and other meetings, including one at Edin- 
burgh, were held in various parts of the country. According 
to the History of the Two Acts, sixty-five petitions were 
presented for the Bill with 30,000 signatures, and ninety-four 
petitions against with over 130,000. An amusing example 
is given in that publication of the influence of Government 
officials, in a letter analysing the signatures to a counter- 
petition in favour of the Bills from Portsmouth, which 
showed that the petition was signed by forty-seven persons, 
and every one of them was either a contractor, or a revenue 
officer, or a public official in the service of the Grovemment 
The Whig Club held another meeting on 19th October 1795,* 
at which Fox declared that the sense of the country had 

* Jephson, History of the Two Acts, vol. L p. 209. 
^ History of thi Two Acts, p. 7Sa 




THE REIGN OF TERROR 129 

been roused, and that they must form an association such 
as Erskine, who was in the chair at the meeting, had sug- 
gested, for obtaining the repeal of the two Acts. The 
Annual Register corroborates this view. " Never had there 
appeared in the memory of the oldest man, so firm and de- 
cided a plurality of adversaries to the ministerial measures, 
as on this occasion: the interest of the public seemed so 
deeply at stake, that individuals not only of the decent, but 
of the most vulgar professions, gave up a considerable 
portion of their time and occupations in attending the 
numerous meetings that were called in every part of 
the kingdom, to the proposed intent of counteracting this 
attempt of the Ministry." It is difficult not to believe that 
this is an exaggerated account, though it is evident that 
there was a considerable opposition to the Government's 
proposals. The territorial power however was overwhelm- \ 
ing, and the Government could aflTord to neglect the petitions 
against the Bill. "You will easily suppose that, in both 
Houses, we have opposed as strenuously as we were able 
(though with very small numbers) these Bills, upon their 
first introduction; but we have not thought this enough, 
and we are endeavouring at public meetings, and petitions 
against them in many parts of the country ; how successful 
we shall be I know not ; perhaps I am not very sanguine, 
but I feel myself quite sure it is right to try * and I hope 
you will agree with me, that, upon such an occasion it is 
an act of duty to brave all the calumny that will be thrown 
upon us on account of the countenance which we shall be 
represented as giving to the Corresponding Society and 
others, who are supposed to wish the overthrow of the 
Monarchy. There appears to me to be no choice at present 
but between an absolute surrender of the liberties of the 
people, and a vigorous exertion, attended, I admit, with 
considerable hazard, at a time like the present." ^ 

" I have just time to tell you that our meeting yesterday 
succeeded beyond my hopes, incredibly numerous, yet very 

* Memorials and Correspondence^ vol. iii. p. 124, Nov. 15, 1795. 
9 




130 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

peaceable. The House of Commons is very bad indeed, 
and really seems to like these violent measures, which I 
consider as a symptom that the country, or at least the 
higher classes, are of the same opinion. However it is clear 
that here we have the popularity, and I suspect we shall 
have it universally among the lower classes. I need not 
tell you how much I dislike this state of things; but I 
cannot submit quite passively to Mr. Hume's Euthanasia 
which is coming on very fast." ^ 

" However, I must just tell you that I think the country 
behaved better than I expected upon the subject of the 
bills, and that, except in Yorkshire (a most material excep- 
tion, I admit), we have the people with us everywhere, in 
some parts of course more, and in others less decidedly. 
I take it we are strongest in and about the Metropolis. 
We made very bad divisions in the House of Commons, 
but nevertheless, I think we are much more of an opposition 
than we have been of late years. Thurlow came out at last, 
and though I do not think this a circumstance likely to 
have so much effect as some suppose, still, it is something. 
You will easily conceive that the existing circumstances (Pitt's 
favourite phrase) have made Lansdowne more cordial with 
us all than formerly, and I should hope the Duke of Leeds, 
Lord Moira, and other outlying parts of opposition, will 
soon see the necessity of acting more in concert, and if 
the public cry continues to be with us, I have no doubt 
but they will. Pitt certainly meant to parry our attacks, 
by the message from the King relative to peace, but how for 
that will answer his purpose I doubt much ; I think not at 
all, unless he really gets peace, and as to the question 
whether he will get it or not, I think it so doubtful that 
I have altered my opinion upon it several times." * 

'' I do not know what to write to you about our politics 
here. The whole country seems dead, and yet they certainly 
showed some spirit while the Bills were pending; and I 

* Memorials and Correspondence^ vol. iii. p. 126, Nov. 17, 1 795. 
^ Ibid,^ vol. iii. pp. 127, 128, Dec. 24, 1795. 




THE REIGN OF TERROR 181 

cannot hdp flattering mysdf that the great coldness at 
present is owing to people being in expectation and doubt 
with respect to what Pitt means to do in regard to peace.^ ^ 

Two interesting facts about this agitation are worth 
notice. The first is that the practice followed in the economy 
agitation by which speakers who were hostile to the views 
of the meeting were given a fair hearing was carefully 
observed) and Lord Hood was listened to without any dis- 
order at Fox's tremendous meeting in Palace Yard. The 
second is that as the anti-Reform campaign assumed in 
many cases the character of an anti-Dissenter Campaign, 
a fact that was partly due to the Liberal enthusiasm of 
Dr. Priestley and Dr. Price, it is not without importance, 
in view of the argument that the Test and Corporation Acts 
were virtually inoperative, to notice that at the Bedford 
County Meeting to oppose the Bills, the speakers insisted 
on the injustice of committing such vast authority to a 
magistrate or a sheriff, when those offices were closed against 
Dissenters. 

In 1797 Fox thought the struggle was over and the 
doom of the liberties of his country finally sealed. During 
the American War the Whigs had chosen a secession from 
Parliament in 1776' as a dramatic protest, and Fox had 
an additional argument for secession in 1797 in the impo- 
tence to which, in his eyes, Pitt had reduced Parliament 
He consoled Grey five years later for his father's peerage 
by remarking that the House of Commons had in a great 
measure ceased to be a place of much importance. '' I am 
very much concerned indeed to hear of your father's peerage, 
more especially as I understand it vexes you very much, 
It is undoubtedly a provoking event : but according to my 
notions, the constitution of the country is declining so rapidly, 
that the House of Commons has in great measure ceased, 
and will shortly entirely cease to be a place of much import- 

^ Memorials and Carrespondencif vol. iii. pp. 129, 130, Feb. 18, 1796. 
' On that occasion Fox was against secession, vide letter to Rockingham, 
October 1776. Mtntorials and Correspondence , vol. i. p. 145. 




132 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

ance. The whole, if not gone is going, and this considera- 
tion ought to make us less concerned about the particular 
situation (in regard to the public) in wtiich we may be 
placed. The only glimmering of hope which I see is from 
^ the Court, when that shall fall into other hands, and the 
, 'J. Court without any invidious consideration of particular char- 
' acters, is a miserable foundation to build a system of Liberty 
and Reform upon."' The next three years of his life were 
spent in a tranquil and contented retirement in which Fox 
could half forget the miseries of his country amid the congenial 
and absorbing consolations of scholarship and literature. 
There ts something that sums up all the irresistible fascina- 
tion of Fox's nature in the picture of that hard and brave 
combat s^inst oppression and injustice followed I^ the 
strenuous and contented calm, in which he discusses with 
his friends the supremacy of Homer and Vii^l, or the 
attractions of Euripides and Ovid, or Person's CommenUay 
on the Hecuba,, or asks a friend to interpret some obscurities 
in Moschus and Bion, or proposes to Wakefield a plan for 
a Greek dictionary suggested to him by the plan of a 
French dictionary which he had found mentioned in Con- 
dorcet's Life of Voltaire, or defends himself with an aphorism 
from Cicero for shooting partridges. There is not a trace 
in these transports over Homer, or Cicero, or Chaucer, or 
Ariosto, or in his little tournaments over questions of prosody, 
and metre, and the rival beauties of favourite poets, of the 
chagrin which many a man would have felt in the barren 
prospect of political exile that opened up to a statesman 
who twenty years earlier had won the proud supremacy 
of the House of Commons. In 1800 he left his retreat to 
censure the rejection by the Government of Napoleon's over^ 
tures, an act which few of Pitt's admirers now defend ; and 
after one of the greatest speeches he ever made in Parliament, 
he found himself in a minority of 64 to 265. A few days 
later he was back again in his peaceful diversions, speculat- 
ing on Person's brilliant emendations, calculating what Ovid 

> I.etter to Grcf, iSoi. MtmtruUs »md Ct mif md t iu*, toL ilL p^ 341. 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 133 

owed to ApoUonius, or Horace to Theocritus, and dismissing 
his intervention in politics with a few lines from Lycophron. 
"You have heard from the newspapers of course, of my 
going to the House of Commons last month. I did it 
more in consequence of the opinions of others than from 
my own ; and when I came back, and read the lines 1451-53 
of Lycophron 

Ti fiaKpa rXjifiMv tts avriKOovs irtrpaSy 
JUs KVfsa K»(f>0Vf €is vairas tvtnrXriTidas 
Ba{»f fcfvov ^rtiXXova'a fuurroKot fcporov; 

I thought them very apposite to what I had been about. 
In the last of the three, particularly, there is something of 
comic, that diverted me, at my expense, very much." ^ 

Wakefield with whom he carried on this vigorous cor- 
respondence was in prison, serving a sentence of two years 
imposed on him for publishing a political pamphlet in reply 
to the Bishop of Llandaif. Wakefield's own sentence was 
cruelly severe, but the punishment of Cuthell for selling a 
few copies of the pamphlet was simply barbarous. Cuthell 
was the publisher of Wakefield's Lucretius and other classical 
works, and the printer of Wakefield's political pamphlet 
sent him a few copies which he kept for sale in ignorance 
of their contents. Fox did his best to obtain for Wakefield 
a mitigation of some of the discomforts of prison life, and 
also to secure some manuscripts for him that he wanted from 
private libraries. Wakefield died very soon after his release. 

Fox abstained from Parliament during those years, but 
he made a few speeches. He spoke at a dinner of the 
Whig Club on May 1st 1798, and summed up in two sen- 
tences the Liberal attitude to the dangers and misfortunes 
of the nation. " A malign influence unfortunately prevails 
over the conduct of the national defence ; but the inference 
is not that we should be slack, or remiss, or inactive in 
resisting the enemy. The true inference is that the Friends 
of Liberty should, with the spirit and zeal that belong to 

^ Letter to Wakefield, March 12, 1800. Memorials and Correspondence^ 
vol. iv. p. 379. 




134 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

their manly character, exert themselves in averting a foreign 
yoke : never forgetting that in happier and more favourable 
times, it will be equally their duty to use every effort to shake 
off* the yoke of our English tyrants." At the same dinner, 
the Duke of Norfolk, who presided, gave the toast of *' Our 
sovereign — the people," and for that little demonstration 
of Liberalism he was dismissed by the Crown from the 
Lord-Lieutenancy of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Fox 
had two strong motives for replying to this blow from the 
Grovernment. The first was his natural objection to allowii^ 
a friend to suffer for opinions he held himself, and his second 
was that the growth of all the doctrines and habits of arbi- 
trary power made the assertion of the Whig theory of the 
constitution a matter of imperative duty. He accordingly 
went to the Whig Club to make a speech in which he 
developed and completed the argument of the sovereignty 
of the people, showing that the House of Hanover had no 
right to the throne unless that argument was valid, and 
concluded his speech by proposing the toast that had cost 
Norfolk his Lord - Lieutenancy. Pitt replied by striking 
him off" the Privy Council, refusing to adopt the advice of 
some of his friends who hoped to see Fox sent to the 
Tower. 

Three things are conspicuous in Fox's speeches against 
Pitt's series of coercions. They are all illustrations of his 
political temperament The first is the strong and steady 
light of a commonsense which pierced and penetrated all 
the rumours and phantoms of dark sedition that terrified 
the House of Commons. When the secret Committee with 
scared faces and trembling hands brought up the report by 
means of which the Government carried the suspension of 
the Habeas Corpus Act, Fox pointed out that the Committee 
were solemnly producing as proofs of conspiracies, documents 
and proclamations that had been published in all the papers. 
Half the manifestoes had been known to all the world 
for several months, and, as it turned out. Fox's prompt sus- 
picions that the interpretations the Committee put upon 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 135 

other documents which had hitherto been private were 
mbleading and alarmist, proved to be correct in every 
detail. Pitt himself must have been a good deal shaken by 
all these false alarms, for he solemnly declared that there 
was more reason in the conspiracies of 1794 for suspending 
the Habeas Corpus Act than there had been in the rebellion 
of 171 5, and the invasion of 1745.^ Fox showed that if the 
Government were right in arguing that the country was 
united in love and attachment to the constitution, what 
they were doing was " to suspend one of the grandest prin- 
ciples of the constitution of England, until there should be 
found no man within the kingdom tinctured with discontent, 
or who cherished the desire of reform." The convention to 
which the alarmists referred with a haggard terror was 
merely a meeting of delegates, and it might be established 
for good or for bad purposes. At the worst such a con- 
vention was no cause for alarm. ** If they meant by their 
intended convention to overawe the country at a moment 
of such unprecedented strength as the Government now 
possessed, he would say that they were fit for Bedlam, and 
Bedlam only. So perfectly and entirely was it possible for 
magistrates, in every part of the kingdom, to execute the 
laws, that he would venture to say, that if any man or men, 
at such a convention, committed any illegal act, he or they 
might be sent to prison, and tried for the offence as securely 
as if no convention existed." The truth is that discipline 
was never easier to maintain than it was during those years, 
and if there is any justification for coercion, it can surely 
only be the impossibility or the difficulty of securing 
obedience to the law. The meetings of the popular 
societies were most orderly, in spite of the efforts of Govern- 
ment spies to foment violence, and the only disturbances 
were created by Mr. Reeves* counter-organisation. It was 
probably partly due to the fact that Fox had taken more 
part in public meetings than any statesman of his rank, that 
he was much less apt than Pitt to class all the democratic 

' Pariioffieniaty History ^ 31. 570. 




136 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

reformers in one large category of dangerous and treason- 
able persons. Pitt saw Jacobins everywhere, disguising 
their projects of treason under the cloak of constitutional 
reform. Fox saw that this view was unjust and ridiculous, 
unjust because it condemned, as insincere, men who had 
suffered for their opinions, such as Gerrald, to whom Fox 
paid a fine tribute in Parliament, and ridiculous because it 
assumed that great masses of men were all engaged in a 
stupendous and organised hypocrisy. If Pitt's view were 
correct, and it was the view of a man who had never been 
in contact with the new classes that were beginning to force 
their way into politics, and who was genuinely afraid of 
them, 30,000 men must have been assembled for the express 
purpose of concealing their real object^ 

The second characteristic of Fox's speeches on these 
Bills is his profound sense of the sacredness and the moral 
value of freedom. Windham talked of "submitting to the 
inconveniences that may possibly arise from the suspension 
of the Habeas Corpus Act," * and this paltry view of a 
measure which placed all hostile or critical opinion at the 
mercy of the Government, illustrates as vividly as anything 
else the demoralisation that overtook the governing classes. 
Men like Windham were living during these years on the 
edge of their emotions, and in the giddy paroxysms of 
their terror they lost hold of all stable convictions about 
freedom or justice. Fox towered above that desolating 
anarchy of panic, because all his ideas of the English con- 
stitution were held by the inflexible grip of reverent con- 
viction and habit To the Government it seemed a small 
matter to stifle all discussion, and to imprison men by leitres 
de cachet ; to Fox in whose ^yts England stood for all the 
things that were most English in the world, that process 
was trampling out, under the heel of a panic that was 
largely selflshness, all the most precious qualities of English 
civilisation. It is signiflcant that there was no orator 
who appealed as Fox did to the calendar of England's great 

' Fox's SptecJus^ vol. vi. ' Pariiamtniary History^ ja 549. 




THE REIGN OF TERROR 137 

men ; to the memory of Burke in the days when his large 
sanity and charity of mind made him the champion of the 
colonists, to Savile, to Rockingham, and not least of all to 
Chatham, whose eccentricities Fox was the first to forget in 
his admiration for the massive personality that had humbled 
England's Bourbon enemies, and kept brisk, and strong, and 
robust the temper of independence and self-respect at home. 
To a man of Fox's temperament, the extinction of that great 
institution of free discussion, which had made such a lasting 
impression on Voltaire as the predominant virtue of public 
life in England, was a sombre and awful tragedy and the 
sacrifice of half the grandeur of his nation. He knew that 
the Terror was making a wilderness of the civilisation of his 
country, and even if he had been wrong instead of being 
right, as the event proved him to be right, in thinking there 
was no danger to warrant such a sacrifice, it was no common 
achievement in those days to remember what England owed 
to freedom. In that sable hour when all their old ideas of 
liberty flitted through men's minds as idle and trivial day- 
dreams, Fox still realised that there was something precious 
and divine in the spirit the Government was setting itself to 
destroy, and that sentiment gave passion and energy to his 
resistance, and to his defeat a very bitter sorrow. He saw 
opening up that social abyss between the governing classes 
and democracy which it took a generation of misery and 
fierce discord and the dreadful lesson of Peterloo to bridge 
over. Two passages from Fox's speeches are enough to 
show how thoroughly he had grasped the value of free dis- 
cussion in England. 

" The honourable and learned gentleman, in one part of 
his speech, and only in one, seemed to have a reference to 
the bill before the House. The honourable and learned 
gentleman admitted that the House was going to make a 
sacrifice by the measure before them; but had contended 
that what was retained of the rights of the people was still 
of higher value ; the history of governments was certainly 
better than theory; in this, therefore, he agreed with the 




138 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

honourable and learned gentleman. He did not, however, 
agree with him, that what they were to retain was superior 
to what they had to lose, if the bill were passed into a law. 
That which was to be taken away was the foundation of the 
building. It might, indeed, be said, that there were beautiful 
parts of the building still left. The same might be said of 
another building that was undermined : ' Here is a beautiful 
saloon, there is a fine drawing-room ; here are el^^nt paint- 
ings, there elegant and superb furniture ; here an extensive 
and well-chosen library.* But if the foundation was under- 
mined, there could be nothing to rest upon, and the whole 
edifice must soon fall to the ground. Such would be the 
case with our constitution if the bill should pass into a law. 
Our government was valuable, because it was free. What, 
he begged gentlemen to ask themselves, were the funda- 
mental parts of a free government ? He knew there was a 
difference of opinion upon that subject [His own opinion 
was that freedom did not depend upon the executive govern- 
ment, nor upon the administration of justice, nor upon any 
one particular or distinct part, nor even upon forms so much 
as it did upon the general freedom of speech and of writingT 
With regard to freedom of speech, the bill before the House 
was a direct attack upon that freedom. No man dreaded 
the use of a universal proposition more than he did himself; 
he must nevertheless say, that speech ought to be com- 
pletely free, without any res^aint whatever, in any govern- 
ment pretending to be free. \ By being completely free, be 
did not mean that a person should not be liable to punish- 
ment for abusing that freedom, but he meant) freedom in 
the first instance/^ The press was so at present, and he re- 
joiced it was so ; what he meant was^that any man might 
write and print what he pleased, althoujgh he was liable to 
be punished, if he abused that freedom j this he called per- 
fect freedom in the first instance. If this was necessary 
with regard to the press, it was still more so with regard to 
speech. An imprimatur had been talked of, and it would 
be dreadful enough ; but a dicatur would be still more 




THE REIGN OF TERROR 139 

horrible. No man had been daring enough to say, that the 
press should not be free : but the bill before them did not, 
uideed, punish a man for speaking, it prevented him from \ 
speaking. UFor his own part, he had never heard of any f 
danger arising to a free state from the freedom of the ^ 
press, or freedom of speech ; so far from it, he was perfectly > 
clear that a free state could not exisf without bothu) The \ 
honourable and learned gentleman had said, would they 
not preserve the remainder by giving up this liberty? He 
admitted, that, by passing of the bill, the people would have 
lost a great deal. A great deal 1 (said Mr. Fox,) Aye, all 
that is worth preserving. For you will have lost the spirit, 
the fire, the freedom, the boldness, the energy of the British 
character, and with them its best virtue. I say jit is not the | 
written law of the constitution of England, it is not the law ; 
that is to be found in books, that has constituted the true \ 
principle of freedom in any country, at any time. No! it is -^ 
the energy, the boldness of a man's mind, which prompts him 
to speak, not in private, but in large and popular assemblies, 
that constitutes, that creates, in a state, the spirit of freedom. 
This is the principle which gives life to liberty : without it 
the human character is a stranger to freedom. , If you suffer 
the liberty of speech to be wrested from you, you will then 
have lost the freedom, the energy, the boldness of the British 
character. It has been said, that the right honourable 
gentleman rose to his present eminence by the influence of 
popular favour, and that he is now kicking away the ladder 
by which he mounted to power. Whether such was the 
mode by which the right honourable gentleman attained his 
present situation I am a little inclined to question ; but I 
can have no doubt that if this bill shall pass, England 
herself will have thrown away that ladder, by which she 
has risen to wealth, (but that is the last consideration,) to 
honour, to happiness, and to fame. Along with energy of 
thinking and liberty of speech, she will forfeit the comforts 
of her situation, and the digfnity of her character, those 
blessings which they have secured to her at home, and the 




140 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

rank by which she has been distinguished among the nations. 
These were the sources of her splendour, and the foundation 
of her greatness — 

. . . Sic fortis Etruria crevit 
Scilicit et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma."^ 

" Do you think that you gain a proseI)rte where you silence 
a declaimer ? No ; you have only by preventing the declara- 
tion of grievances in a constitutional way forced men to more 
pernicious modes of coming at relief. In proportion as 
opinions are open they are innocent and harmless. ^ Opinions 
become dangerous to a state only when persecution makes it 
necessary for the people to communicate their ideas under 
the bond of secrecy? Do you believe it possible that the 
calamity which now rages in Ireland would have come to its 
present height, if the people had been allowed to meet and 
divulge their grievances ? Publicity makes it impossible for 
artifice to succeed, and designs of a hostile nature lose 
their danger by the certainty of exposure. But it is said 
that these bills will expire in a few years ; that they will 
expire when we shall have peace and tranquillity restored to 
us. What a sentiment to inculcate! You tell the people, 
that when everything goes well, when they are happy and 
comfortable, then they may meet freely, to recognise their 
happiness, and pass eulogiums on their government ; but that 
in a moment of war and calamity, of distrust and misconduct, 
it is not permitted them to meet together, because then, 
instead of eulogising, they might think proper to condemn 
\ ministers. What a mockery is this ! What an insult to say 
that this is preserving to the people the right of petition I 
To tell them that they shall have a right to applaud, a right 
to rejoice, a right to meet when they are happy, but not 
a right to condemn, not a right to deplore their misfortunes, 
not a right to suggest a remedy! I hate these insidious 
modes of undermining and libelling the constitution of the 

^ Speech on Treason and Sedition Bills, Nov. 25, 1795. Spuekds^ voL ti. 
pp. 44-46. 



THE REIGN OF TERROR 141 

country. If you mean to say, that the mixed and balanced 
government of England is good only for holidays and sun- 
shine, but that it is inapplicable to a day of distress and diffi- 
culty, say so. If you mean that freedom is not as conducive 
to order and strength as it is to happiness, say so ; and I 
¥all enter the lists with you, and contend, that among all 
the other advantages arising from liberty, are the advant^es 
of order and strength in a supereminent degree, and that 
too, in the moment when they are most wanted. Liberty is n. 
order. Liberty is strength. Good God, Sir, am I, on this ^ 
day, to be called upon to illustrate the glorious and soothing 
doctrine ? Look round the world and admire, as you must, 
the instructive spectacle! You will see that liberty not 
only is power and order, but that it is power and order 
predominant and invincible ; that it derides all other sources 
of strength ; that the heart of man has no impulse, and can 
have none that dares to stand in competition with it ; and 
if, as Englishmen, we know how to respect its value, surely 
the present is the moment of all others, when we ought to 
secure its invigorating alliance. Whether we look at our 
relative situation with regard to foreign powers, with regard 
to the situation of the sister kingdom, and with regard to 
our own internal affairs, there never was a moment when 
national strength was so much demanded, and when it was 
so incumbent upon us to call forth and embody all the ' 
vigour of the nation, by rousing, animating, and embodying 
all the love of liberty that used to characterize the country, ' 
and which, I trust, is not yet totally extinct Is this a . * ' 
moment to diminish our strength, by indisposing all that 
part of the nation whose hearts glow with ardour for their 
original rights, but who feel with indignation that they are \ 
trampled upon and overthrown? Is not this a moment 
when, in addition to every other emotion, freedom should 
be roused as an ally, a supplementary force, and a substitute 
for all the other weak and inefficient levies that have been 
suggested in its stead ? Have we not been nearly reduced 
to a situation, when it was too perilous, perhaps, to take the 



r 




142 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

right course ? May we not be again called upon for exer- 
tions that will demand the union of every hand and every 
heart in the kingdom ? What might not this House do, if 
this House had the opinion of the country with it? ^^Do 
not let us say, then, that we are to increase the force of the 
country by stifling opinion. It is only by promoting it, by 
giving facility to its expression, by meeting it with open 
hearts, by incorporating ourselves with the sense of the 
nation, that we can again revive that firm and compact 
power pf British strength, that sprung but of British 
liberty." J^* 

Anodier illustration of Fox's political temperament was 
his extreme suspicion of Pitt and Pitt's Parliamentary 
methods. It must be remembered that the Rockingham 
party into which he came in the seventies was bom during 
the paralysis of the House of Commons. Throughout Fox's 
career there was no principle he held more stoutly than the 
principle of Parliamentary control of Ministers, and it was 
with the tenacity and vigilance of a political leader who 
believed that principle to be indispensable to sound and 
honest government that he pursued all Pitt's measures. It 
is possible that he carried to an extreme his personal 
suspicion of Pitt's motives, a suspicion that prevented him 
from ever supporting Pitt except in the maintenance and 
increase of the navy. But his suspicions were at any rate 
sincere as is evident from his private correspondence. He 
certainly regarded the alarmist policy of the Government 
from beginning to end as a deliberate attempt to excite 
fear, and to turn that fear to good account by consolidating 
the power of the Government. Pitt's motives were probably 
mixed ; he was never so completely mastered by the panic 
as were Burke and Windham, and it is difficult to believe 
that a statesman who subordinated all his principles at one 
time or another to the maintenance of power, believing quite 
sincerely that it was more important that he should hold 

' Speech on the Treason and Sedition Bills, May 23, 1797. Spackes^ toL n. 
PP- 335-337. 




THE REIGN OF TERROR 148 

office than that these principles should be carried into effect, 
was not alive to the obvious opportunity of silencing criticism. 
It must be remembered that die principle of Parliamentaiy 
control was all this while struggling into politics, and that 
the demand for a docile and uncritical House of Commons 
in 1794 or 1797 had no more justification in the eyes of men 
who thought the principle important than the same demand 
when it was addressed to the Opposition during the American 
War, at which time Pitt was as deaf and scornful to it as 
anyone else. To forget that this conflict was necessary \/ 
during all these years is to misunderstand entirely the whole 
spirit of Fox's career. 

There is one further comment to be made on the opposi- 
tion to Pitt's domestic policy, and that is that it must be 
kept in mind in considering England's foreign policy. To 
Fox the career of oppression abroad was intimately con- 
nected with designs on freedom at home. That had 
been his view of the American War, and it was a view 
he shared with Chatham, who rejoiced that America had 
resisted and withdrew his son from the army rather than 
allow him to serve against the colonists, and with Rich- 
mond who said in 1775 ^^^ **thG only thing that could 
restore commonsense to his country was feeling the dread- 
ful consequences which must soon follow such diabolical \ 
measures." It is worth while to quote Fox's speech in 1777 
in resisting the Bill for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act \ . 
in America. 

" Mr. Fox said that the bill served as a kind of key, or 
index to the design that ministers had been for some years 
manifestly forming, the objects of which they rendered visible 
from time to time, as opportunity served, as circumstances 
proved favourable, or as protection increased and power 
strengthened. It resembled, he said, the first scene in the 
fifth act of a play, when some important transaction or cir- 
cumstance, aflfecting the chief personages in the drama, comes 
to be revealed, and points directly to the denouement. This 
plan had been long visible, and however covertly hid, or 




144 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

artfully held back out of sight, was uniformly adopted, and 
steadily pursued : it was nothing less than robbing America 
of her franchises, as a previous step to the introduction of 
the same system of government into this country ; and, in 
fine, of spreading arbitrary dominion over all the territories 
belonging to the British crowa" ^ 

It must be remembered again that if Pitt's language 
during the French war alternated between the language of 
a European crusade and that of British policy, he had taken 
into his Government, in Windham, the fiercest representative 
of the school that had excommunicated democracy and called 
for a counter-revolution. It arg^ues a want of an elementary 
sense of proportion, and an elementary sense of justice to 
forget, in judging the harsh extremities of Fox's censures, 
and the bitter language in which to private friends he com- 
mented on the issues of a policy that he thought fatal to his 
country, that the enterprises to which he could wish no 
success were enterprises which he connected indissolubly with 
the collapse of liberty at home. He believed that if England 
conquered America, or dismembered France, or forced the 
French people back under masters they had disowned those 
victories would be followed by a sinister and shameful con- 
quest of her own people. He fought the French war and 
domestic tyranny alike with a love of country that consumed 
all care for the "darling popularity" which he had once 
counted the chief prize of public life.* 

* speeches^ vol. i. p. 67, Feb. 10, 1777. 

' *'As for myself," said Mr. Fox, " let gentlemen catechise me as much as they 
please ; let them spread papers, stating me to be the enemy of my coantiy ; let them 
blacken me as much as they please ; let them even be successful, if they can, in 
their endeavours to make me odious to my countrymen ; still will I persist in doing 
my duty to the public, and never relinquish it but with my life. I am not vain 
enough to suppose, that any efforts of mine have contributed much to the spirit 
and the energy which has been manifested in this country ; I should be proud to 
think they had ; I should be glad to learn that any efforts of mine had contri- 
buted to awaken my countrymen to a sense of the value of their own freedom. 
A great orator, whose chief defect has frequently been stated to be vanity, has 
said, NobiU Jusjurandum juravi, m quid omitUrtm ut RupuhUem dmique smhm 
n't. That is far from being my opinion of myself: but ambitious I am to pie- 




THE REIGK OF TERROR 145 

senre the liberties of my country. I have therefore opposed these bills ; and I 
tmst the spirit of the country will resent them, especially as they are avowedly 
only a part of what is intended for them by those ministers, who have brought on 
the present distresses of the country.'* — Speech on Treason and Sedition Bills, 
I^cc 3, 1795. SpeicheSt vol. vi. p. 74. 

Cf. also Homer's opinion, " In the most formidable moments of the French 
military power my dread never was of its prevailing against us in this island by 
conquest, but of the inroads that our system of defence was making upon the 
constitutional forms of our parliamentary government, and upon the constitutional 
habits of the English commons.'* — Homer, Correspcndence^ vol. ii. p. 315, 
Feb. 27, 1816. 



10 




CHAPTER VI 
FOX AND IRELAND 

I 

The rise of the national spirit in the seventies. Grattan's work. The 
Volunteer movement The great triumph of 1782. Fox's attitude. 
His argument that no country was entitled to hold the sovereignty 
of another against its wilL Proposal for commercial treaty declined 
by Grattan. The unfortunate agitation of 1782-83 over the reality 
of the concession of independence. Its results. The question 
settled by explicit Act of the British Parliament The armed 
Convention of Volunteers. Fox firm against concession to men in 
arms. The Convention disperses. 

" A T Y wish is that the whole people of Ireland should 
IVX have the same principles, the same system, the 
same operation of government, and though it may be a 
subordinate consideration, that all classes should have an 
equal share of emolument ; in other words I would have the 
whole Irish government regulated by Irish notions, and Irish 
prejudices ; and I firmly believe, according to another Irish 
expression, the more she is under the Irish government, the 
more will she be bound to English interests." — Speech in 
the House of Commons, March 23, 1797, vol, vi, p. 318. 

Ireland presented in the reign of Geot^e HI. two great 
questions to Irishmen and Englishmen. Was it possible to 
establish a responsible and national government in Ireland, 
and was it possible to reconcile the creation of such a govern- 
ment with the maintenance of English interests? There 
were two great men, Grattan in Ireland, and Fox in England, 



FOX AND IRELAND 147 

who answered that question in the affirmative. There were 
similarities between them. Grattan was three years older 
than Fox ; they were close friends ; from 1777 when they 
met at Lord Moira*s they acted usually in concert; they 
differed on the French war but agreed on almost every other 
question in politics; they were both struck off the Privy 
Council, and both of them after a brilliantly successful 
beginning in politics spent the long remainder of their 
days in forlorn minorities. 

When Grattan entered the Irish House of Commons in 
1775 one important concession had already been wrung from 
England in the Octennial Bill, passed in 1768^ in return for 
an augmentation of the Irish army. But the Parliamentary 
rights of Ireland were extremely imperfect.* Parliament 
could only legislate by submitting heads of Bills to the Irish 
Privy Council, which in turn transmitted them in the form of 
a Bill, if it did not choose to suppress them, to a Committee of 
the English Privy Council who altered it at its discretion and 
then returned the Bill to the Irish House in which the heads 
of the Bill had been drafted. The Irish Parliament had no 
power of amending this Bill ; it could only accept or reject it. 
It is important to notice that it was at the hands of the 
English Privy Council that the first Irish proposal to mitigate 
the Penal Code perished in 1708. Whilst the Irish Parlia- 
ment possessed only the power of suggesting legislation, the 
British Parliament claimed the right of binding Ireland by 
its acts, a right which it had used, without mercy, to destroy 
all the most important manufactures of Ireland. Subject to 
all the selfish prejudices of a Parliament in which she was 
unrepresented, Ireland had none of the securities of justice 
which protected the individual in England. There was no 
Habeas Corpus Act and no Irish Mutiny Act The judges 
were removable at the pleasure of the Crown, and the right of 
supreme and final jurisdiction in Irish cases had been taken 
from the Irish House of Lords and transferred to that of 

* The Parliament of George II. had sat for thirty-three years. 
' Lecky, Ireland^ ii. 52. 




148 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

England. Most of the prizes of office in Church and state 
went to Englishmen, and the Irish Pension List was the most 
convenient and the least embarrassing of all the resources on 
which an English sovereign, or an English Minister could draw 
to oblige a mistress, or a foreign ambassador, or a political 
client. The Parliament was for the most part a Parliament 
of marionnettes, set in motion at one time by a few " under- 
takers," at another by direct agents of the Castle, whose 
corrupt services to England were paid out of the taxes of 
Ireland. 

Besides these political disabilities under which the nation 
suffered, there was a long and grim catalogue of disabilities 
by which the majority of the nation was punished for its 
religion. The Penal Code remained on the statute-book in 
all its bloody ferocity, the charter of Protestant perse- 
cution, rivalling in adroit brutality the most infamous of 
the intolerances applied by a Church that had never affected 
to respect private judgment Not a hovel could escape the 
penetrating vigilance of a cruelty that had ransacked in its 
ingenious energy the whole range of men's hopes and suffer- 
ings in order to make the religion of most Irishmen a daily 
martyrdom. ** A machine of wise and elaborate contrivance," 
as Burke described the code, '* and as well fitted for the op- 
pression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and 
the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever pro- 
ceeded from the perverted ingenuity of men.'' Catholics 
were excluded from all public life, from almost all profies- 
sions,^ from the navy and army, and they could not even 
hold the position of watchman or gamekeeper. They could 
not buy land or hold leases for more than thirty-one years ; 
the few Catholic landowners who remained had no freedom 
of bequest, and if the eldest son became a Protestant, die 
estate was settled on him, and his father became a life 
tenant To convert a Protestant to Catholicism was a penal 
offence; a Catholic could not have his child tat^t by 

* The notorious Lord Clare was the son of a Catholic who tamed Pvotestaot 

in order to become a barrister. 



FOX AND IRELAND 149 

or leave his children to the care of Catholics if 
he died when they were minors; he could not possess a 
horse worth more than five pounds; and except under 
partiqilar conditions he could not live in Galway or Limerick. 
A Protestant who discovered that a Catholic had secretly 
purchased landed estate, or had so improved his farm that the 
profits exceeded one-third of the rent, could take possession 
of the estate or the farm. All the vast resources of avarice, 
meanness, insidious cruelty, and diabolical spite had been 
plundered in those centuries of Protestant rapine to accumu- 
late that savage trophy, a trophy that stood between Ireland 
and a national civilisation. 

The outlook for Irish nationalism was not as leaden and 
inclement as the mere recital of these facts would suggest 
The Penal Laws were the creations of an intolerance which 
had largely subsided, and the fact that Ireland was still 
Catholic showed that however heavily the country paid fen* 
their existence by expatriation or the depression of her 
energies and occasional scandals and atrocities, the laws 
for the most part were only half-heartedly applied. The 
truth was that Ireland had begun to emerge from the 
devastations of conquest into a new phase, the gradual 
growth of a larger sentiment of corporate life. Cowed 
and down-trodden, the Catholic population was yet loyal, 
and a transformation like that which attached Anglicanism 
to the House of Brunswick had changed the temper of the 
proscribed Church in Ireland. All the leading Catholics 
presented an address to Lord Halifax in 1762, asking per- 
mission to enrol their people for the service of the Crown, 
and though the Government rejected the application, it sup- 
ported a proposal to enrol seven Catholic regiments in the 
allied army of Portugal. " Formerly," wrote Irish Chancellor 
Bowes to a prominent English politician, "Protestant or 
Papist were the key-words ; they are now court or country, 
referring still to constitutional grievances." ^ This new spirit 
of nationalism received a powerful impulse from the American 

' Lecky, History of Ir€la$td^ ii. 59. 




150 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

War. The year that Grattan entered Parliament the first 
blood was shed in the quarrel with the American colonists, 
and North had begun the war which had consequences for 
Ireland not much less momentous than its consequences to 
America. 

Grattan saw that if Ireland was to become a nation again, 
there were two things to be accomplished. It was impera- 
tive that the Government of Ireland should be Irish, and 
that the system by which the majority of Irishmen were a 
proscribed population should be finally destroyed. The 
American War produced a great national movement in Ire- 
land, and it reduced the English Government to a degree 
of reasonableness and moderation which no persuasion could 
have inspired. These two effects continued to make the five 
years from 1775 to 1782 a rapid and sensational series of 
triumphs for Grattan's cause; they armed him with the 
inspirations of Irish Unity and all the political embarrass- 
ments of the English Government One immediate effect 
of this spirit was the Relief Act passed in the Irish Parlia- 
ment in 1779, which enabled Catholics to take land on a 
999 years' lease and to inherit land in the same way as Pro- 
testants, and abolished the odious practice of allowing the 
eldest son to secure the heritage of his Catholic father^s 
estate by becoming a Protestant Burke wrote to Pary, the 
Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, when the Act was 
passed, "You are now beginning to have a country,'' and 
the next few years showed how true was his prediction. 
In 1780 a small measure of Catholic relief in England 
produced the Gordon riots ; in Ireland, where Protestant 
prejudice had been sharpened for centuries on all the rough 
edges of fear and political ufipii, this first instalment of 
toleration produced only one strong protest outside Paiiia- 
ment, a petition from the Corporation of Cork. Lord 
Charlemont, an incorruptible and stalwart Whig, who was un- 
happily opposed to Catholic emancipation, very rightly attri- 
buted to Grattan a great part of the change of the Protestant 
temper, but the movement of sentiment which followed during 



FOX AND IRELAND 151 

the next few years was a spontaneous sense of national unity. 
The great volunteer organisation which arose in 1779 during 
the fears of a French invasion, when it was clear the Govern- 
ment could not defend Ireland, was the result of a common 
determination in which all religious discords disappeared. 
Catholics were not enrolled at first but they sul^cribed 
liberally to its expense,^ and Grattan won a triumph that 
is historical at the great meeting of the delegates of 143 
corps of Ulster volunteers on February 15, 1782, assembled 
in full uniform in the great church of Dungannon. On 
Grattan's motion this great representative body of the most 
Protestant province in Ireland resolved with only two dis« 
sentients that "we hold the right of private judgment in 
matters of religion to be equally sacred in others as in 
ourselves ; that as men, and as Irishmen, as Christians and 
as Protestants, we rejoice in the relaxation of the Penal 
Laws against our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and that 
we conceive the measure to be fraught with the happiest 
consequences to the union and the prosperity of the in- 
habitants of Ireland." That event shows that during the 
struggle for independence the Protestants outside Parlia- 
ment had caught something of Grattan's spirit of toleration, 
and that Grattan was more representative of the volunteers 
than Flood and Charlemont The result was seen in the 
further instalment of relief in 1782 when two Bills were 
carried through the Irish Parliament repealing some of the 
barbarous enactments against Catholics, allowing them to 
keep horses worth more than £s, and to become school- 
masters and private tutors if they took an oath of allegiance 
and took no Protestant pupils. " The question," said Grattan, 
who wished to go further and give the Catholics political 
rights, " is not whether we shall show mercy to the Roman 
Catholics, but whether we shall mould the inhabitants of 
Ireland into a people ; for so long as we exclude Catholics 

■ 

' At the critical time of 1781 a Roman Catholic merchant of Cork offered 
to the Government, on behalf of himself and his friends, 12,000 guineas for 
defence. 




152 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

from natural liberty and the common rights of men, we are 
not a people ; we may triumph over them but other nations 
will triumph over us." 

The events that were bridging over this ugly chasm in 
Irish life were giving Ireland a new authority and import- 
ance in her general relations to England. The volunteers 
were primarily a measure of defence against invasion ; they 
rapidly became the most formidable of all the measures of 
remonstrance against misgovemment, and the withholding 
of Irish rights. Grattan, as a leader of a small party of 
independent men, whom the Castle could not hope to buy, 
was a great moral force in politics, but the armed delibera- 
tions of 50,000 volunteers who had saved their shores from 
invasion, gave to all his splendid oratory a new resonance 
and an imposing strength. The English Government repre- 
sented the extreme school of supremacy, and the surrender 
of authority was no more congenial to North or to Hills- 
borough in Ireland than in America. But the force behind 
the demand was irresistible. In 1779 North decided that 
it would be dangerous to resist any longer the agitation in 
Ireland for free trade, an agitation in which the volunteers 
played a conspicuous part and in the course of which, in 
spite of all Grattan's efforts, there was an outbreak of 
violence in Dublin. Resolving to yield he resolved to yield 
handsomely, and his Bills in 1779 and 1780 destroyed the 
whole fabric of commercial restrictions by which Irish trade 
had been so cruelly disabled. The Acts prohibiting the 
Irish from exporting their woollen manufactures and their 
glass were repealed, and the trade of the colonies was 
thrown open to them. In 1780 the English Privy Council 
accepted the Bill of the Irish Parliament for relieving the 
Irish Dissenters from the Test Act and the following year 
it sanctioned the Habeas Corpus Bill which the national 
party had carried through the Irish Parliament 

These successes had been won by Grattan's party under 
a Government at Whitehall which was constitutionally hostile, 
and which used all the arts of corruption to oppose its pro- 



FOX AND IRELAND 158 

gress. In 1782 the conditions changed. North's government 
disappeared and the Rockingham government that succeeded 
it contained the two English statesmen who were most 
friendly to the popular movement in Ireland, Burke, who 
never forgot that he was an Irishman, and Fox, who had 
formed an attachment with Grattan and admired warmly 
his general aim and his great gifts, whilst Rockingham 
himself was a close friend of Charlemont the leader of the 
volunteers. The circumstances under which the new Grovem- 
ment took office were critical and delicate. The last letters 
written by Carlisle, who had as Viceroy since December 1780 
shown a great deal more insight and judgment than hia 
predecessor, laid stress on the overwhelming antagonism in 
Ireland to the doctrine of British supremacy. Grattan had 
moved an address in February 1782 declaring the inde- 
pendence of the Irish legislature, and though a motion for 
postponing the question had been carried, it was well known 
that he had the whole body of Irish opinion at his back. 
Grand juries in almost every county had passed resolutions 
asserting the right of Ireland to legislative independence, 
and the great meeting of the Ulster volunteers had resolved 
unanimously on 15th February that "a claim of any body 
of men other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland 
to make laws to bind this kingdom is unconstitutional, illegal, 
and a grievance." Grattan was to bring forward his motion 
again in April, and Carlisle wrote to Hillsborough towards 
the end of March, " I have in former letters observed to 
your lordship that my Government on every other point has 
the support of a most respectable and very large majority, 
and even resisted this particular question in several shapes 
in the course of the present session, but that under the 
universal eagerness which has taken place through the 
kingdom to have this claim decided, I cannot expect 
the friends of administration to sacrifice for ever their 
weight among their countrymen by a resistance which 
would possibly lead to serious consequences." 

Grattan was to move his declaration on i6th April; the 




154 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

new Government took office on 23rd of March; and on the 
first day of the meeting of the English Parliament, Eden 
the late Chief Secretary made a speech in the English 
House of Commons stating that it was no longer possible 
to resist the Irish declaration of rights, and giving notice 
of his intention to move a repeal of the obnoxious Declara- 
tory Act. Eden's intervention was designed to embarrass 
the Government in revenge for their conduct in removing 
Carlisle from the Lord-Lieutenancy of the East Riding of 
Yorkshire, and restoring Carmarthen whom North had 
dismissed because he had supported a motion for an 
inquiry into expenditure. Fox replied to Eden very 
promptly and severely, pointing out that he had come over 
post-haste to give notice of a motion reopening claims of 
the Irish Parliament which in Office he had consistently 
resisted, and arguing that it was a good criterion of the 
government which Eden had pronounced so effective and 
capable that Grattan, Charlemont, Burgh, Flood, and 
Yelverton had been in opposition. He ended by laying 
down very emphatically his view of the question at issue 
between the two countries, and by stating that the Govern- 
ment intended to take Irish affairs into consideration at 
once. " Had his majesty's present ministers ever been 
advocates for nominal dignity, had they held out principles 
of coercion, had they either in regard to America, or to any 
other part of what was formerly the British dominions, 
avowed principles that savoured of severity or despotism, 
he should not at all wonder at their intentions being 
doubted; but as, on the contrary, they had uniformly 
avowed and acted upon doctrines of a directly opposite 
tendency, he thought them entitled to some degree of 
credit and confidence, and the more especially as he had 
so repeatedly and so expressly reprobated that sort of 
government, which rested upon deceiving the people in 
any instance whatever. He held all attempts to deceive 
and delude a country to be not more base in themselves, 
than weak, absurd, and impolitic, and so far was he from 



FOX AND IRELAND 155 

thinking that Great Britain had a right to govern Ireland, 
if she did not chuse to be governed by us, that he 
maintained no country that ever had existed or did exist, 
had a right to hold the sovereignty of another, ^against the 
will and consent of that other." ^ 

The state of Ireland made it difficult for a new Government 
to act or to parley with dignity, and Fox and Rocking^iam 
tried to persuade Grattan and Charlemont to postpone the 
imminent declaration, and give them time to deliberate. 
Their wish was eminently natural, for Portland and Fitz- 
patrick the new Viceroy and Chief Secretary only arrived 
in Dublin on April the 14th. But Irish sentiment, so 
often stemmed and turned aside, was now moving in a 
groundswell of elation and hope. Grattan refused, and 
on the i6th of April he made that imperishable speech 
in which he saluted Ireland as a free people, and admired 
the ** heaven - directed steps by which she had proceeded 
until the whole faculty of the nation was braced up to 
the act of her own deliverance." The address passed 
unanimously ; the volunteers pledged themselves to uphold 
tlie House of Commons in its demands, and all the credit 
and dignity of Ireland inside and outside of Parliament were 
involved in the recognition of Irish independence. Grattan 
knew the risks he was running, for if England had refused 
there would have been war and the final alienation of the 
Irish people from England, a contingency he always 
dreaded. He wrote earnestly to Fox saying that he felt 
it his duty to place before him his opinions because they 
" concurred with the settled sense of the Irish nation," and 
laying down definitely the sum of the Irish demand. It 
would of course have been unwarrantable for Fox to have 
pledged the Government to any definite policy, and he was 
very careful in his replies to observe all the restraints that 
were proper to a Cabinet Minister discussing subjects that were 
in the department of a colleague. But the correspondence, 
though Grattan professed only to write to him " as the first 

^ Fox's Spuches^ vol. iL pp. 56, 57. 




156 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

man in England " was really a useful result of their mutual 
confidence, and Fox was making every effort to persuade 
Grattan to agree some day to accept office, a proposal 
Grattan so far accepted as to say he would, under some 
circumstances, be willing to '' take any part in the Adminis- 
tration provided it was not emolumentary." 

Fox himself would have preferred to make an arrange- 
ment giving Ireland legislative independence for internal 
affairs, and reserving to England a control of foreign matters. 
His private letters to Fitzpatrick make this clear. ^ I own I 
still adhere to my opinion, that giving way in everything, 
without any treaty or agreement which shall be binding 
upon both countries, can answer no end but that of obtain- 
ing quiet for a few months. You know how strongly some 
people here object to a Parliamentary Commission, and yet 
I see no other tolerable way out of the business. We who 
are for it should have been very much strengthened, if we 
had had the Duke of Portland's opinion for such a measurCi 
and if it is not his opinion, we should have been glad to 
relinquish it and to adopt his ideas, if we knew them. As 
the matter now stands, I am very apprehensive of mis- 
understandings. The answer to the Address ought neither 
to please or displease any, otherwise than as the laying of 
the addresses before the English Parliament certainly seems 
to look to the repeal of English statutes. But when they 
are laid, you will probably expect us to take some step 
upon them ; whereas we think, we ought to wait till some- 
thing is done with you, or at least till we hear from you. 
My opinion is clear for giving them all that they ask, bat 
for giving it them so as to secure us from further demands, 
and at the same time to have some clear understanding with 
respect to what we are to expect from Ireland, in return for 
the protection and assistance which she receives from those 
fleets which cost us such enormous sums, and her nothing.** ^ 

" I really begin to have hopes that this business will 
terminate better than I had expected; and that with a 

^ Corrtspandence^ vol. i. pp. 411, 412. 



FOX AND IRELAND 157 

concession of internal legislation as a preliminary, accom- 
panied with a modification of Poynings' Law and of a 
temporary Mutiny Bill, we may be able to treat of other 
matters, so amicably, as to produce an arrangement that 
will preserve the connection between the two countries." ^ 

But the crisis had left the Irish people in no humour to 
treat except on the basis of the full recognition of independ- 
ence. It is evident from Fox's correspondence that he had 
made up his mind that the wishes of Ireland must be 
granted, but he hoped that the Irish Parliament itself might 
propose a negotiation on other matters, if its internal 
authority were acknowledged. This hope was falsified by 
events, and the Government resolved to concede the four 
demands of the Irish Parliament; to repeal the Declaratory 
Act of George i., to abandon the appellate jurisdiction of 
the English House of Lords, to consent to such a modifica- 
tion of Poynings' laws as would annihilate the exceptional 
powers of the Privy Council, and to limit the Mutiny Act 
Fox's speech in announcing the policy of the Government 
was illustrative of the whole spirit of his Irish policy. He 
began by emphasising his distinction between internal and 
external legislation : " It was downright tyranny to make 
laws for the internal government of a people, who were not 
represented among those by whom such laws were made." 
External legislation was the province of the British legis- 
lature, and if that right had not been abused, it would never 
have been challenged. "The best and most eflfectual way 
to have kept it alive would have been, not to have made use 
of it." This authority had been employed against Ireland 
as an instrument of oppression, by establishing impolitic 
monopoly in trade, and the result was the distresses and 
injuries that had armed the volunteers. He was not yield- 
ing to force in repealing the obnoxious Act, but to the 
wishes of Ireland which had suffered under the oppressive 
use of that authority. 

" For his part, he had rather see Ireland totally separated 

* Correspondence^ vol. i. pp. 417, 418. 




158 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

from the crown of England than kept in obedience only by 
force. Unwilling subjects are little better than enemies ; it 
would be better not to have subjects at all, than to have 
such as would be continually on the watch to seize the 
opportunity of making themselves free. If this country 
should attempt to coerce Ireland, and succeed in the attempt, 
the consequence would be, that, at the breaking out of every 
war with any foreign power, the first step must be to send 
troops over to secure Ireland, instead of calling upon her to 
give a willing support to the common cause." ^ 

*' Ireland had spoken out, and clearly and plainly stated 
what she wanted ; he would be as open with her, and though 
he might perhaps have been better pleased, if the mode of 
asking had been different, still he would meet her upon her 
own terms, and give her everything she wanted, in the way 
which she herself seemed to wish for it She therefore 
could have no reason to complain ; the terms acceded to by 
England, were proposed by herself, and all her wishes would 
now be gratified in the way which she herself liked best 
But as it was possible, that if nothing more was to be done, 
than what he had stated to be his intention, Ireland might 
perhaps think of fresh g^rievances, and rise yearly in her 
demands, it was fit and proper that something should be 
now done towards establishing on a firm and solid basis the 
future connection of the two kingdoms. But that was not to 
be proposed by him here in parliament; it would be the 
duty of the crown to look to that ; the business might be 
first begun by his majesty's servants in Ireland ; and if after- 
wards it should be necessary to enter into a treaty, com- 
missioners might be sent from the British parliament, or 
from the crown, to enter upon it, and bring the negotiation 
to a happy issue, by giving mutual satisfaction to boA 
countries, and establishing a treaty which should be sancti- 
fied by the most solemn forms of the constitutions of both 
countries. 

''Notwithstanding this country was parting with what 

^ Spetch^s^ voL ii« p. 62. 



FOX AND IRELAND 159 

she had hitherto held and exercised, still he could not look 
upon this day as a day of humiliation to her ; she was giving 
up what it was just she should give up ; and in so doing, she 
was offering a sacrifice to justice : fear, he declared, was out 
of the question. He said he entertained no gloomy thoughts 
with respect to Ireland : he had not a doubt but she would 
be satisfied with the manner in which England was about to 
comply with her demands ; and that in afTection, as well as 
in interest, they would be but one people. If any man 
entertained gloomy ideas, he desired him to look at the 
concluding paragraph of the Irish addresses, where he 
would find, that the Irish people and Parliament were filled 
with the most earnest desire to support England, to have 
the same enemy and the same friend, in a word, to stand or 
fall with England. He desired gentlemen to look forward 
to that happy period, when Ireland should experience the 
blessings that attend freedom of trade and constitution; 
when by the richness and fertility of her soil, the industry of 
her manufacturers, and the increase of her population, she 
shduld become a powerful country; then might England 
look for powerful assistance in seamen to man her fleets, and 
soldiers to fight her battles. England renouncing all right 
to legislate for Ireland, the latter would most cordially 
support the former as a friend whom she loved; if this 
country, on the other hand, was to assume the powers of 
making laws for Ireland, she must only make an enemy 
instead of a friend ; for where there was not a community of 
interests, and a mutual regard for those interests, there the 
party whose interests were sacrificed became an enemy. The 
intestine divisions of Ireland were no more; the religious 
prejudices of the age were forgotten, and the Roman 
Catholics being restored to the rights of men and citizens, 
would become an accession of strength and wealth to the 
empire at large, instead of being a burthen to the land that 
bore them." * 

The governing principle of Fox's conduct in making the 

' Speeches^ vol. ii. pp. 64, 65. 




160 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

unqualified concession is quite clear and unmistakable. He 
believed that it was indispensable to England to win the 
confidence of the Irish people, and that if once that con- 
fidence were won Ireland would be loyally attached to the 
connection.^ In this respect, as in almost all others, his views 
were identical with those of Grattan, in whose mind the wish 
to keep Ireland loyal to Great Britain was a constant pre- 
occupation. " He was desirous above all things, next to the 
liberty of this country, not to accustom the Irish mind to an 
alien and suspicious habit with regard to Great Britain." 
The second of the two resolutions in which Fox laid down 
the policy of the Government in the House of Commons had 
recommended that "such measures should be taken as 
should be most conducive to the establishing, by mutual 
consent, the connection between this kingdom, and the 
kingdom of Ireland, upon a solid and permanent basis." 
Shelbume and Portland were both anxious to carry out 
some plan by which the general superintending power of 
England would be restored, but it is evident from Fox's 
letters not less than from his speeches that he was convinced 
that once the Irish demand for unqualified independence 
was proved to be inflexible, no other arrangement could be 
wisely made. The Irish patriot party were too jealous of 
their newly won rights even to entertain the notion of a 
commercial treaty, and Fitzpatrick was authorised to dis- 
avow in the Irish Parliament any intention of bringing 
forward further measures grounded on the second resolu- 
tion in the British Parliament Portland's secret letter to 
Shelbume a few days later shows that he still cherished the 
hope of re-establishing British supremacy in external matters, 
and Shelbume received the idea with alacrity. Portland soon 
found that nothing could be done with the Irish Parliament 
His letter was written without Fitzpatrick's knowledge, but 
some rumours of his plan may have got abroad in Ireland. 

' Fox's epigram in opposing the commercial propositions, ** I would tmst 
everything to Ireland's generosity but nothing to Ireland's prudence, " if imhappy 
in that particular application summed up this feeling. 



FOX AND IRELAND 161 

Fox himself was unequivocally opposed to any such attempt, 
and throughout the crisis Grattan's confidence in him never 
wavered. Pitt afterwards quoted Portland's despatch to 
Shelbume as a proof that the Rockingham Government did 
not r^;ard thdr settlement as final, but Fox's letter to Fitz- 
patrick of February 19, 1799, reviewing the whole proceeding 
is a complete refutation of Pitt's ai^ment^ Fox at any rate 
never shared any of Portland's designs, and Grattan's letter 
to Fitzpatrick, written in February 1800,' contains a passage 
which places on record the lasting impression of sincerity 
both Fox and Fitzpatrick made on him. " I perfectly recol- 
lect the conversation you state to have taken place in the 
House of Commons between you and Mr. Flood, and the very 
fair and honourable part which you took through the whole 
of that business ; and however English Cabinets or English 
Secretaries have sometimes been disingenuous to Ireland, I 
feel a pleasing recollection even now, that there were two 
with whom I was connected, you and Mr. Fox, in whose 
open dealing our country and all her friends might repose 
entire confidence." 

The instantaneous result of the great concession was most 
gratifying to Fox and to Grattan. The Irish Parliament 
promptly voted ;£" 100,000 to furnish 20,000 additional sailors 
for the British navy, and presented an address to the Lord- 
Lieutenant "requesting that a day of public thanksgiving 
may be appointed to return thanks to the Divine Providence 
for the many blessings of late bestowed on this kingdom, 
and particularly for that union, harmony, and cordial affec- 
tion, happily subsisting between the two kingdoms of Great 
Britain and Ireland, whose interests are inseparably the 
same." A few months later the Irish Parliament acceded 
to the request of the English Government, and authorised 
the King to withdraw from Ireland an additional force of 
5000 men. The language of Parliament was the language 
of the volunteers. Grattan's great services were recognised 

^ Mentcrials and Corresfxmcknce^ vol. i. p. 432. 
' Memoirs of Henry Graitan^ vol. ii. pp. 284-291. 
II 




162 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

by a gift of ;£'50,ocx), and everywhere the concession was 
regarded as final and complete. 

This general spirit of gratitude and rejoicing was un- 
happily disturbed before many months had passed by 
Flood's stratagems in Ireland, and one or two unfortunate 
accidents in England. Flood's share in the great national 
triumph of 1782 was rather jejune and arid. He had been in 
the Government during Grattan's brilliant beginnings in the 
House of Commons, and the popular supremacy had passed 
to the larger spirit and more catholic aspirations of his 
young rival, who had never known the silence or the eclipses 
of office. He had played a great part in the last few years, 
but it was Grattan who was always before the footlights. It 
is difficult to separate his bitter quarrel with Grattan from all 
suspicion of personal jealousy, and the agitation he excited 
in Ireland after the concession had been made by the English 
Government did untold mischief. During the discussion on 
the address Flood had described as superfluous or possibly 
dangerous the clause which stated " that there will no longer 
exist any constitutional question between the two nations 
that can disturb their material tranquillity." He did not 
vote against the clause, but two lawyers in the House main- 
tained that the British Parliament in repealing the Declar- 
atory Act which asserted the legislative or judicial power 
of Great Britain over Ireland did not annul the assumed 
right of the British Parliament to legislate for Ireland. 
Grattan combated this doctrine furiously, and with good 
reason. The credit of the Irish Parliament and the credit 
of his own party were at stake, for the Irish Parliament had 
said that repeal was sufficient, and Grattan had explicitly 
stated to Fox more than once in his letters that repeal 
was all that Ireland asked. Unfortunately various events 
happened in England to inflame the suspicions with which 
Flood had poisoned the hour of triumph. By the care- 
lessness of a subordinate clerk, Ireland was included to 
the British Acts of Parliament; an Irish case was decided 
by Lord Mansfield because it had come up for appeal before 




FOX AND IRELAND 163 

the late Act had passed ; an obscure Peer proposed in the 
British House of Lords to introduce a Bill asserting the 
right ot Parliament to control Irish trade, and with Rodking- 
ham's death there was a new Viceroy, and rumours of new 
legislation. The cumulative result was to excite a profound 
mi^ving in Ireland, and Grattan, who knew how mis- 
chievous it was to encourage the idea in England that 
Ireland was never satisfied, found himself displaced by 
Flood in the popular confidence. The genial jubilations of 
Ireland were suddenly followed by an ague of malignant 
suspicion. Temple who succeeded Portland strongly re- 
commended Shelbume to satisfy the demand for specific 
renunciation, and the whole matter was finally decided in 
the beginning of 1783 by a most explicit Act of Parliament. 
Fox, who was now out of office, supported that Act, but he 
repudiated indignantly the notion that his own Act was 
incomplete, or that the repudiation of British supremacy 
was not unequivocal and plain. He and Grattan were 
entirely of the same temper. 

The whole controversy did great mischief in Ireland 
where a hurricane of suspicion and discontent was the 
worst weather for the new Parliament to start in. It was 
followed by a general spirit of dissatisfaction, which 
expressed itself in the ranks of the volunteers, and led to 
a further breach between Flood and Grattan. The general 
character of the volunteer organisation had by this time 
undergone a considerable change, and some of the popular 
leaders, such as Charlemont and Grattan, were not a little 
apprehensive of its pretensions to influence Parliament. It 
was now freely said that the Irish Parliament in accepting 
the 1782 settlement as final had betrayed the country, and 
that the volunteers, by taking up Flood's demand for an 
express renunciation, had saved Ireland. The volunteers 
showed no disposition to disband, and they began to assume 
the character of an armed public opinion outside Parlia- 
ment That Parliament was in urgent need of reform, and 
that it was hopelessly unrepresentative and inadequate was 




164 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

apparent, and there was no more ardent champion of reform 
than Grattan. But the whole series of the proceedings 
during the autumn of 1783 were of the nature of a conflict 
between Parliament and the volunteers, and Flood after 
attacking Grattan's successful efforts to dissuade Parliament 
from any unfriendly behaviour to England, as in the con- 
troversy over the proposal to reduce the army, was working 
up a threatening acrimony outside. Flood himself was an 
infinitely less liberal-minded man than Grattan, for all his 
schemes of reform shut out the Catholics, and his fiery 
Irish passion never lost its exclusively Protestant colour. 
But during this agitation he was the militant reformer, 
whilst Grattan was determined to prevent disorder and 
maintain the dignity of Parliament, and there was no 
question which of the two policies would attract the popular 
support 

Fox was now in office again, in the Coalition Government, 
and his own counsel was clear. The volunteers arranged to 
hold a great convention in Dublin in November, when Parlia- 
ment had assembled, and to frame a plan of reform, and 
to demand those rights without which the " forms of a free 
nation would be a curse." The supreme importance of the 
plan rested on the fact that the convention was a conven- 
tion of armed men, and Fox, whilst he never suggested 
that the meeting should be forbidden, insisted very firmly 
that no Government could grant a reform demanded at the 
sword's point. He relied on Grattan's " int^[rity and love 
of his country" to prevent a military revolution, and be 
exhorted Northington, the Viceroy, to show firmness in 
rejecting all petitions from " Pretorian bands." With 
regard to the " volunteers and their delegates, I want words 
to express to you how critical, in the genuine sense of the 
word, I conceive the present moment to be. Unless they 
dissolve in a reasonable time, Government, and even the 
name of it, must be at an end ; this I think will hardly be 
disputed. Now, it appears to me that upon the event of 
the present session of this Parliament, this question will 



FOX AND IRELAND 166 

entirely dqpend. If they are treated as they ought to be, 
if you show JirmnesSy and that firmness is seconded by the 
aristocracy and ParUament, I look to their dissolution as a 
certain, and not very distant event If otherwise, I reckon 
their government, or rather their anarchy as firmly estab- 
lished, as such a thing is capable of being: but your 
Government certainly, as completely annihilated. If you ask 
me what I mean by firmness, I have no scruple in saying 
that I mean it in the strictest sense, and understand by it 
a determination not to be swayed in any the slightest degree 
by the Volunteers, nor even to attend to any petition that 
may come from them." The Convention met, but Charle- 
mont who disliked the project wisely decided to become a 
del^[ate, and to use his influence to moderate its behaviour. 
The madcap Bishop of Deny had hoped to be elected 
President and had talked of bloodshed, but to his mortifi- 
cation the Convention chose Charlemont. A measure of 
reform was agreed upon. Flood proposed that he should 
at once proceed to Parliament and ask for leave to bring 
in a Bill embodying that measure, the Convention not to 
adjourn till the fate of the motion was known. This plan, 
disapproved of by Charlemont, was adopted ; Flood made his 
motion in volunteer uniform with the result that Fox had 
hoped for. There was strong resentment against this form 
of pressure, and Yelverton's motion that the House should 
refuse to take into consideration a Bill that came from men 
with arms in their hands was carried by 157 to 77 votes. 
Grattan supported the proposal to consider the Bill on its 
merits, but he voted for a subsequent resolution that "it 
had become necessary to declare that the House would 
maintain its just rights and privileges against all encroach- 
ments whatever." Charlemont persuaded the volunteers to 
adjourn till the Monday following the debate, and when they 
met he was supported by Flood in his policy of moderation, 
and in spite of the Bishop of Derry, he persuaded the Con- 
vention to adjourn sine die after recording once again its 
belief in the urgent necessity of Parliamentary reform. 




168 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

of 1782, and to the spirit in which Grattan set himself to 
develop and improve the emancipated Parliament. The 
settlement of 1782 was not to the mind of any English 
Minister, and Fox himself, as we have seen, had been eager 
to arrange the difficulties between England and Ireland by 
conceding full internal control to Ireland, and reserving a 
certain supremacy in matters of commerce and foreign policy 
to Great Britain. In this as in many other things Fox had 
in view some solution of the kind to which statesmen of a 
later century have turned. But North's obedience to the 
Court had stripped England bare, and the Government that 
took office in 1782 had to choose between war with Ireland 
and the unreserved acknowledgment of her independence. 
Grattan would probably have been wiser to agree to enter 
at least into a commercial treaty in 1782, and such a treaty 
would have completed rather than have diminished the great 
achievement of that year. But he chose otherwise, and a 
situation was created which involved indisputably certain 
considerable risks and difficulties in the formal relations of 
the two countries. 

These difficulties were illustrated in 1789 when the Irish 
Parliament and the English Parliament took different courses 
over the Regency ; for the Irish Parliament inspired partly 
by a premature confidence in the Prince of Wales' professions 
of affection for Ireland, and partly by a wish to assert its 
independence, invited him to assume the full powers of the 
Crown. The King's recovery cut short any embarrassments 
that might have arisen, but the incident was an illustration of 
possible difficulty. Another difficulty was the question of 
commercial policy, and no critic of Pitt's Irish policy will ever 
grudge him the fullest and loudest praise for his bold attempt 
in 1785 to put an end to all risks of tariflfwars, and to confer 
a great advantage on both countries by his series of Com* 
mercial Propositions. In their first form the Propositions 
were submitted to the Irish Parliament, and agreed to; cm 
their introduction into the British Parliament they were vehe- 
mently attacked by Fox, Sheridan, North, and by Eden, yffbo 



FOX AND IRELAND 169 

was regarded as a great authority on questions of Irish trade. 

The protests from English manufacturers, who were as rigidly 
attached to their monopolies as were the landowners in the 
fight over the com laws sixty years later, followed in long 
and angry array, and Pitt was obliged to make various con- 
cessions which increased his Propositions from eleven to 
twenty, and imposed restrictions on the Irish Parliament that 
Grattan and his friends regarded with a very jealous resent- 
ment. In their original form the Propositions had asked 
nothing more from Ireland than a conditional contribution to 
the navy, " whatever surplus the revenue produced above the 
sum of ;^656,ooo in each year of peace wherein the annual 
revenue shall equal the annual expense, and in each year of 
war without regard to such equality, should be appropriated 
towards the support of the naval force of the Empire in such 
a manner as the Parliament of this kingdom shall direct." 
The precise condition attached to this contribution was 
arranged as a concession to Grattan who saw the great 
advantage of giving an English Government for the first time 
an interest in economy in Ireland. But the Propositions as 
they returned to Ireland imposed certain serious limits on 
Ireland's rights of external legislation, and at the same time 
they reduced the benefits to accrue to Ireland. Grattan 
turned against them, and Pitt's scheme perished amidst the 
bonfires of the delighted capital of Ireland. It was a great 
and enlightened measure, and it is not easy to acquit Fox and 
the other Whigs of something worse than an ignorance 
of political economy, in their opposition to it. Pitt had 
displaced Fox, as Grattan had displaced Flood in the 
popular estimate of the two nations, and in both cases a 
certain personal rancour obsessed, if it did not determine, the 
mind in which the rejected politician approached the scheme 
of a successful rival. The collapse of the plan was a great 
misfortune, but it is easy to exaggerate the significance of 
its failure. As a matter of fact, the Irish Parliament never 
interfered with British commerce, and the next overtures 
for a commercial treaty came from Grattan in 1794, and it 




170 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

was Pitt who gave them a cold shoulder.^ The failure of 
Pitt's attempt aflfected his own temper towards Ireland and 
the temper of other politicians, but its actual results were 
important only because of their psychological consequences, 
and it was not followed by any disturbance of British com- 
mercial arrangements by the Irish Parliament 

Pitt's objection to the situation created by the Act of 
1782 went far beyond a consciousness of risks and embar- 
rassments in commerce and the formal relations of the 
two countries. The entire scheme of Irish policy of 
which these great concessions were an integral part was 
repugnant to him. Grattan and Fox both looked forward 
to a nationalist government in Ireland; they pictured the 
dissolution of all the obstacles which religion or privilege 
opposed to that hope in the expanding temper of national 
pride, and they believed that a self-governing and self- 
respecting Ireland would be a cordial friend to Great Britain. 
For Pitt the prospect of the development of Irish patriotism 
had nothing but terror; the nationalism which Fox and 
Grattan wished to develop was in his eyes something to be 
destroyed, and the barriers they wished to overthrow were to 
him the tightly-drawn cordon of English interests, not to be 
broken down without putting the English connection to 
imminent hazard. It is this fundamental difference between 
his view and that of Fox which explains their Irish polides. 
Pitt never harboured any sectarian prejudices, he disliked 
corruption, and he did more than most men to check some of 
its worst forms in English politics. Yet all these things were 
subordinated to his supreme principle that the British con- 
nection depended upon arresting and checking the giowth of 
a vigorous temper of patriotism in Ireland. His mind always 
loitered round this central idea of governing Ireland through 
her worst passions instead of letting her govern herself throi^ 
her best passions, because he thought the alternatives wete 
British supremacy or Irish independence. British influence 
rested in his judgment on a slippery margin of inequalities 

^ Lecky, History of Inland^ voL iii. p. 2^9. 



FOX AND IRELAND 171 

and asoeadendeSy whereas Fox believed that it could find no 
odier fidondation than Irish contentment and self-respect It 
followed that resistance to all the better impulses in Irish 
politics belonged inevitably if reluctantly to the main prin- 
dples of Pitt's policy, and that Grattan's chief obstacle, as a 
reformer, was the determination of a statesman, who was 
regarded in England as a sworn enemy of corruption, to 
maintain intact all the outworks of a system of government 
by largesses and organised bribery. 

This becomes quite clear by considering how Pitt treated 
from 1784 to the Union all the main issues of Irish politics. 
Grattan's programme was lai^ly the pn^amme which the 
Rockingham Whigs had carried in England, with the addition 
of Parliam e ntary r eform and Cat holic rel ief. That pro- 
gramme conflicted with Pitt's ideas of controlling the Irish 
Parliament and of maintaining the supremacy of a group 
that had a direct and palpable interest in English rule It 
was the result of this obsession in Pitt's mind that Grattan, 
the first Irishman of his time for whom the triumph of 1782 
ought to have opened up a long and active career, was 
almost invariably in opposition, and that the concessions 
made to his demands were only made because they happened 
to suit rather than to contradict for the moment Pitt's govern- 
ing idea. Grattan wanted to make the Irish Parliament the 
responsible organ of Irish opinion, and to do so it was neces- 
sary to eliminate corruption, to have as Ministers men who 
were ready to make Parliament morally independent of 
the Castle, as it was formally independent of England, to 
make Parliament really representative by a wise reform, 
and to abolish all the remaining bans and stigmas on the 
Catholic majority. Pitt wanted to keep the Irish Parliament 
in the leash and, quite consistently from that point of view, 
he was chiefly exercised about the best way of preserving 
and protecting the arts and methods of control. The men 
who were opposed to the national spirit of Ireland were the 
men to be supported ; the machinery of clandestine cor- 
ruption which Grattan wanted to destroy was the resource 




172 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

by which the men who were interested in upholding British 
influence maintained themselves in power ; the imperfections 
of the representation were indispensable to the control of 
Dublin Castle, and the religious divisions of Ireland were to 
be used skilfully as means to her management It followed 
that during the long years that Pitt was Prime Minister the 
Irish Government was in the hands of men who not only 
resisted all retrenchment, but positively created pensions and 
offices in order to increase their influence. 

Grattan described the system of Irish Grovemment 
in 1792 as "a rank and vile and simple and absolute 
Government, rendered so by means that make every part of 
it vicious and abominable; practically and essentially the 
opposite of the British Constitution." ''By this trade of 
Parliament," he said, "the King is absolute. His will is 
signified by both Houses of Parliament, who are now as 
much an instrument in his hand as a bayonet in the hands 
of a regiment Suppose General Washington to ring his 
bell, and order his servants out of livery, to take their seats 
in Congress — ^you can apply the instance." ^ Fitzgibbon, 
who afterwards became Clare,' laid it down as an axiom that 
the only security which could exist for national concurrence 
was a permanent and commanding influence of the English 
executive in the councils of the day. He made no secret of 
the means by which this influence was to be obtained, for he 
openly boasted that half a million had been spent to secure 
an address to Lord Townshend, and that if necessary that 
sum would be spent again. In this spirit the Irish Govern* 
ment opposed all Grattan's Bills for limiting the number of 
pensions, for limiting the number of placemen in the House 
of Commons, for the disfranchisement of custom house and 
revenue officers, and of course all proposals for electoral 

* I.ecky, History of Ireland^ vol. iii. p. 82. 

' Fitzgihbon had supported Grattan in 1782, and it was the CoftUtkm Govcni- 
ment that made him Attorney-General. Fox distrusted him then, but GrmttAn 
approved the appointment. His Tory sympathies rapidly developed, and be 
broke witli Grallan after 1785. 



FOX AND IRELAND 178 

reform. During Pitt's Ministry in England the Irish Govern- 
ment was stubbornly resisting all the measures for purifying 
the Irish House of Commons which Pitt had supported in 
the British House of Commons, and Grattan was not refuted 
in 1789 when he accused the Government of creating new 
pensions to the amount of ;f 16,000 a year between 1784 and 
1789, of distributing many of those pensions in the House 
of Commons, and of creating a large number of sinecures 
and other salaries. That year the Irish pension list had risen 
to more than ;^ioo,ooo a year, although the English pension 
list had been restricted by the Rockingham Government 
to ;^95/xx). The sale of peerages was an open secret 
Grattan's great speech in 1790 summed up the policy of the 
Irish Government. 

"First contemplate your state, and then consider your 
danger. Above two-thirds of the returns to this House are 
private property — of those returns many actually this very 
moment sold to the Ministers ; the number of placemen and 
pensioners sitting in this House equal to near one-half of the 
whole efficient body; the increase of that number within 
these last twenty years greater than all the counties in 
Ireland. The bills that do exist in England, and should 
have shocked you back to your original principles, and are 
necessary to purge the public weal, and to defend you not 
only against the Minister, but yourselves, — pension bill, place 
bill, and others, systematically resisted. The corruptions 
these laws would guard against, in a most extraordinary 
manner resorted to by the present Ministers of the Crown, 
and not only resorted to, but made the sole instrument of their 
Government. The laws which depart from the first principles 
of the Constitution, Excise, Riot Act, Police Bill, readily 
adopted, and obstinately maintained — the counteracting 
clauses — the responsibility of the Minister a shadow — the 
majesty of the people, like the Constitution, frittered out of 
your Court — some of the populace had gone too far — the 
Court availed itself of popular excesses to cry down con- 
stitutional principles ; they began with a contempt of popu- 




174 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

larity — they proceeded to a contempt of fame, and they now 
vibrate on the last string, a contempt of virtue; and yet 
these were checks not only in a constitutional public, but in 
certain connections ; these generally supported the Minister, 
and occasionally checked his enormities. 

"Against this refuge, — against the power of the Irish 
community in general, and this force in particular, is the 
present policy directed. It is a policy which would govern 
this country by salary distinct from power, or by power 
distinct from responsibility. No sturdy tribune of a con- 
stitutional public, — no check in an independent nobility.'' ^ 

The tardy concessions made by the Government in 1793 
are so far from disagreeing with this account of their general 
policy that they are a positive illustration of it The 
Government had two motives for the reforms they intro- 
duced in that year which restricted the pension list and 
incapacitated placemen and pensioners from sitting in Par- 
liament First of all they were genuinely alarmed. The 
discontent of the country under the constant refusal of 
Parliamentary Reform, and the agitation of the United 
Irishmen and that of the Whig Club formed in 1790 by 
Grattan and the Ponsonbys frightened the Government into 
conceding the lesser reform as a means of averting the 
greater. Secondly they saw rather further than the patriotic 
party; they divined, as it proved only too truly, that the 
second concession might be a means of aggrandising rather 
than of weakening their influence. The majority of seats 
in the Irish Parliament were nomination boroughs, and the 
effect of compelling members who accepted office under 
the Crown to vacate their seats was really to give the 
Government facilities for changing the composition of F^- 
liament. These facilities were used mercilessly in die 
great day of corruption which finally overthrew the Irish 
Parliament. Buckingham had grasped this point as early as 
1789, and had recommended the adoption by the Govern- 
ment of Forbes' Place Bill as a means of strengthenii^ 

' GrattaD, Memoirs^ voL iii. pp. 445, 446. 



FOX AND IRELAND 175 

their own hands. Except for the admission of Catholics 
to the suffrage in 1793 which must be considered later, the 
Irish Government were uniformly hostile to Parliamentary 
reform in its lai^^er shape. In 1784, in 1785, in 1793, in 
1794, and in 1797 measures of Parliamentary reform were 
introduced in the House of Commons, and the Government 
on each occasion threw all their weight into the scale against 
them. The Bill which the Government threw out in 1794 
proposed to add a third member to each of the thirty-two 
counties, and to the cities of Dublin and Cork, and to open 
die boroughs by extending the right of voting in them to 
all ;£'io freeholders in a specified section in the adjoining 
country. It was shown beyond any possibility of refutation 
that 124 of the 300 members of Parliament were nominated 
by 52 peers, and 64 by 36 commoners. It is clear from a 
private letter to Lord Hobart, Chief Secretary, from Pamell 
that the time when this Bill was rejected was a time of 
complete tranquillity. No wonder a Government that had 
the ordinary notions of English politicians about the right 
way of subordinating Ireland, refused to surrender a system 
which simplified so conveniently all the channels and 
avenues of corruption. As early as 1784 the question of 
Parliamentary Reform brought about an encounter between 
the reformers and Fitzgibbon, when the latter, by what 
Erskine and most lawyers considered a flagrant illegality, 
proceeded against the sheriff of the County of Dublin who 
had summoned a meeting to elect delegates to a con- 
vention, for contempt of Court. This convention, it must 
be remembered, was quite unlike the convention to which 
Fox had objected, because it was not a meeting of volunteers, 
but a convention of unarmed civilians. 

The treatment of the Catholic question, again, illustrates 
very clearly the main lines of Pitt's policy. Pitt, as it is 
often said by his biographers, was quite liberal and broad- 
minded in his own views of Catholicism and religious 
disabilities. He had all an economist's dislike of re- 
strictions which served no purpose, but he had none of 




176 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the passion for tolerance and freedom of opinion in itself 
which has influenced such men as Fox and John Stuart 
Mill. The only question the condition of the Catholics 
presented to his mind was whether the recognition or the 
refusal of the Catholic claims was the more likely to produce 
a docile Parliament, and to facilitate the management of 
Ireland. The Protestant ascendancy was in his opinion 
indispensable to British supremacy, and in his letter to 
Orde in 1784 he makes it quite clear that the only secret 
of government was the art of division. At that time Pitt 
was really anxious to admit some measure of Parliamentary 
Reform in Ireland, a wish he soon abandoned, and in writing 
to Orde he expressed his own feelings about the Catholics 
very explicitly. " On every account, too much pains cannot 
be taken to encourage the salutary jealousy of the designs of 
the Catholics which b^ns to show itself. That capital line 
of division will rend asunder the whole fabric which has been 
rearing. Finally, too, in my opinion, the Protestant interest 
must be the bond of union between Ireland and this country.** ^ 

"I am aware of the arguments against giving way in 
any degree. It is feared that we shall disgust those who 
are now the chief support of Government, by showing a 
disposition to admit what many of them are personally 
interested in opposing; that a reform from which the 
Catholics are excluded (which beyond a doubt they must 
be) will give them fresh ground for dissatisfaction, and 
that perhaps a reform in the representation would render 
Parliament too subservient to the prejudices or opinions of 
the Irish nation to acquiesce in an English Government"* 

''The line to which my mind at present inclines (open 
to whatever new observations or arguments may be sug* 
gested to me) is to give Ireland an almost unlimited 
communication of commercial advantages, if we can receive 
in return some security that her strength and riches will 
be our benefit, and that she will contribute from time to 

^ Pitt to Orde, Sept. 25, 1784. Lord Ashbourne's FUt^ p. 9^ 
* Pitt to Orde, Sept. 19, 1784. Lord Ashbourne's Piit^ p- 88. 




FOX AND IRELAND 177 

time in their increasing; proportions to the common exi- 
gencies of the Empire; and having by holding out this, 
removed^ I trust, every temptation to Ireland to consider 
her interests as separate from England, to be ready, while 
we discountenance wild and unconstitutional attempts, which 
strike at the root of all authority, to give real efficacy 
and popularity to the Government by acceding (if such a 
line can be found) to a prudent and temperate reform of 
Parliament, which may guard against, or gradually cure, 
real defects and mischiefs, may show a sufficient r^fard to 
the interests and even prejudices of individuals who are 
concerned, and may unite the Protestant interest in ex- 
cluding the Catholics from any share in the representation 
or the government of the country." ^ 

There is a melancholy interest in recollecting how the 
writer of this letter found himself drawn by the theory of 
maintaining British influence by means of direct interests 
further and further into iniquities, until it became in Mr. 
Lecky's language the firm resolution of the Government 
steadily and deliberately to increase the corruption of 
Parliament. In 1784 Pitt was anxious to foment jealousy 
of the Catholics in Ireland. Nine years later events had 
convinced the English Government that it would be wiser 
to concede than to resist the Catholic demand. They were 
terrified by the prospect of an alliance between the Catholics 
and the Republican Presbyterians of the North. Pitt and 
Fundas resolved that concession was ''the most likely plan 
to preserve the security and tranquillity of a British and 
Protestant interest." Fitzgibbon and the Irish officials 
were still against all concessions, but the English Govern- 
ment who had trusted to the effect of religious differences 
to dissipate Irish agitations, found themselves in danger from 
a union of Catholics and Presbyterians in favour of Catholic 
relief and Parliamentary reform. The nationalist ideal in 
Ireland was to make the Irish Parliament independent, and 

1 Pitt to Rutland, October 7, 1784. Lecky, ffistory of Ireland^ vol. ii. 
pp. 413, 414. 
12 




178 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

supreme, and amenable to Irish opinion. The English 
Government thought, and thought rightly, in 1792 and 
1793, that to withhold all concessions from the Catholics 
was enormously to strengthen an agitation which they had 
good reason, with the memory of 1 782-1783, to regard with 
alarm. They modified their original plans in deference to 
the prejudices of the Irish Government, but during 1792 
and 1793 ^h^y carried measures of relief which nothing 
short of genuine fear would have extorted. 

In 1792 a Relief Bill was carried with the support 
of the Government It enabled Catholics to be solicitors, 
and to practise at the Bar, although they could not become 
King's Counsel, or Judges; it removed restrictions on the 
number of apprentices permitted to Catholic trade, and 
repealed the laws forbidding barristers to marry Catholics, 
and solicitors to educate their children as Catholics. The 
concessions were a small instalment compared with the 
lavish scale on which relief was given the following year. 
In 1793 the Government gave Catholics the Parliamentary 
vote, allowed them to keep arms on certain conditions, and 
to hold all civil and military offices from which they were 
not specifically excluded. The same Bill described the 
privileges which were still withheld. Catholics could not 
sit in Parliament, or be Privy Councillors, King's Counsel, 
SheriiTs, or Generals of the StaiT, and they were excluded 
from almost all Government and judicial positions. Three 
things must be noticed in regard to thb measure. Although 
Pitt's Irish Ministers had represented to him that Protestant 
Ireland would never agree to emancipation, only one vote 
was given against the second reading of the Bill, and its 
clauses were carried by overwhelming majorities. The 
second is that the Government resisted and rejected an 
amendment to admit Catholics to Parliament The third 
is that the instantaneous effect of the concession was the 
dissolution of the Catholic Convention. 

There is nothing in the concessions to the Catholics in 
1792 and 1793 which interrupts this general explanation of 




FOX AND IRELAND 179 

Pitf s polky as a policy of maintaining English interests by 
Irish divisions. Those concessions were made to avert the 
greater calamity of a triumphant national movement, purify- 
ing Parliament, and giving to the demand for reform the 
same irresistible force which won for Parliament its formal 
independence. In conceding certain rights to the Catholics 
for which the Presbyterian reformers were clamouring the 
English Grovemment was pursuing as inflexibly as ever its 
main object of resisting all reform that might weaken its con- 
trol over Irish policy. In defending their concessions to Irish 
Ministers they made this quite clear. ** The idea of our 
wishing to play what you call a Catholic game is really 
extravagant. We have thought only of what was the most 
likely plan to preserve the security and tranquillity of a 
British and Protestant interest" ^ Dundas, in another letter 
spoke of the apprehension of a union between the Catholics 
and Dissenters which would be '' fatal to the present frame of 
Irish Government."^ Pitt was constantly returning to the 
question of how best they could protect the present system. 
It was this alliance which seemed imminent between the 
disappointed and republican Presbyterians and the dis- 
satisfied but anti-republican Catholics that determined the 
English Government to try to detach the Catholics from the 
demand for Parliamentary Reform, in which Catholics and 
Presbyterians had joined. To give the Catholics the vote was 
not running nearly such a risk as a Government would run 
in admitting Parliamentary Reform ; for the secret of control 
was the art of managing Parliament, and it was the sovereign 
advantage of the present frame of Irish Government that the 
Parliament was in the hands of the Castle. There were one 
hundred and ninety placemen who voted automatically with 
the Government in a Parliament of three hundred.* 

Pitt and Dundas in their private letters showed that 
they considered that Catholic relief would not undermine 

' Pitt to Westmorland, 1792. Lecky, History of Irtland^ vol. iii. p. 56. 
' Lccky, History of Ireland ^ vol. iii. p. 58. 
' IhitL^ vol. iii p. 82. 




180 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the supremacy of the Castle. Only once had Parliament 
broken away, when the prospect of a Regency made the 
politicians who looked to the Castle for their salaries think 
it was time to make their accommodations with the pro- 
spective masters of patronage and sinecures. That escapade 
had been followed by the creation of sixteen new offices, and 
the constant and varied accumulation of new methods of 
corruption had enormously strengthened the Government's 
grasp of Parliament That grasp was not weakened by 
conceding the Catholic vote, and the Government took care 
to give to their reforms nothing of the healing influence of 
a conciliatory temper which might have developed Irish 
patriotism. If their policy had been based on anytidng 
but a calculation of the best way to group and disperse their 
friends and enemies, they would not have kept in office the 
bitter opponents of the policy they had initiated. As it 
was, the moral value to Ireland of these reforms was very 
largely destroyed by the conduct of the Irish Ministers. In 
the King's speech there were smiling and cordial phrases of 
goodwill for the Catholics; in the mouth of Fitzgibbon, 
the chief agent of the policies and the conceptions of the 
Castle, there was nothing but the language of insolent 
and implacable malice. The English Government were 
giving the Catholics large and substantial concessions with 
one hand; with the other they kept in office as their 
Minister a politician who made it his deliberate object first 
of all to provoke a spirit hostile to all concessions, and 
secondly to poison all the charity and grace of the conces- 
sions, when they were made, by his own malignant invective. 
During 1792 Fitzgibbon exerted all his energies to secure 
public petitions and resolutions from grand juries against 
Catholic relief; newspapers were paid to circulate calumnies 
on the Catholics, and in the words of Richard Burke ** Every 
man nearly in proportion to his connection with or depend- 
ence upon the Castle (and few of any other sort) expressed 
the most bitter, I may s^y, bloody animosities against the 
Catholics." The same Government that gave the Catholics 



FOX AND IRELAND 181 

the vote kept in office the author of the most monstrous 
scheme for reviving the civil wars of Christianity, and fresh 
from his hideous triumphs they made him Earl of Clare. 

For a few months only in all these years was Ireland 
governed on the principles of honest and responsible govern- 
ment, and in the sense of the Irish people. In 1794 
Portland, Fitzwilliam, Spencer and Windham joined the 
Government, and Fitzwilliam became Viceroy of Ireland, 
an event the significance of which can be realised when it 
is stated that Fitzwilliam's Irish policy was not the policy 
of Pitt, but the policy of Fox. The details of Fitzwilliam's 
relation to Pitt, their misunderstandings, their charges, and 
their recriminations are not relevant to this chapter, except 
as they bear directly on Pitt's Irish policy. It is enough 
to say on Pitt's side that Fitzwilliam's friends in the Cabinet 
sustained Pitt's interpretation of the understanding on which 
Fitzwilliam was sent to Ireland,^ and on Fitzwilliam's side 
that Grattan left a most positive statement recorded by his 
son of the words used by Pitt in describing his policy on the 
Irish question. " Not to bring it forward as a Government 
measure, but if Government were pressed to yield it." " At 
the meeting between Mr. Grattan and Mr. Pitt the latter 
was very plain and very civil in his manner. Mr. Grattan 
stated to him what his party desired and mentioned the 
measures that he thought Ireland required; the essential 
one was the Catholic question. Mr. Pitt upon this remarked 
' Ireland has already got much.' Mr. Grattan did not tell 
him how she got it, and they did not enter into the details 
of the Catholic question, but Mr. Grattan put it down upon 
paper, in reply to which Mr. Pitt used these words, *Not 
to bring it forward as a Government measure, but if Govern- 
ment were pressed to yield it.'"' Everything pointed to a 
change of system in the Irish Government when Fitzwilliam 

^ See Memorandum, printed in large part in Lord Ashbourne's PUt^ dtKvn 
up by Grenville, embodying the Cabinet's recollections of the oral arrangements 
with Fitzwilliam. 

' Memoin of Henry Grattan^ vol. iv. p. 177. 




182 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

became Viceroy. Fitzwilliam's own sentiments and his friend- 
ship with Grattan were well known ; Grattan himself was 
invited over to England and consulted by Pitt, and Portland 
whose duplicity was unsuspected by the Irish said to Grattan, 
" I have taken office, and I have done so because I knew 
there was to be an entire change of system." Fitzwilliam 
came to Ireland at the beginning of 1795 and the hope of 
the new system dispersed even the gloom of the prospects 
of invasion. At last Ireland seemed within sight of the 
great object on which her truest sons had so long set their 
hearts. Grattan had recommended the removal of Fitz- 
gibbon and other ministers who were pledged to corruption 
and intolerance ; the Catholic demand was looked upon as 
already gained, and in a burst of that loyal generosity which 
Ireland exhibited whenever justice was done to her, the 
Irish Parliament raised the combined force of militia and 
r^rulars to a little more than forty thousand men, and 
carried on Grattan's motion a vote of ;f 200,000 for the 
British Navy. All the evidence proves that Fitzwilliam 
was quite right in his report to the Government that there 
would be no serious opposition in Ireland to the grant of 
the Catholic demand ; and that if it were conceded it would 
be safe and possible to raise a force of yeomanry cavalry, 
mainly Catholic, for the defence of Ireland. 

Fitzwilliam's regime opened amidst general rejoicings, and 
the Protestant Corporation of Londonderry presented an 
address expressing a wish to see all Ireland united in one 
interest Fitzwilliam acted promptiy in the spirit of his 
mission. He did not remove Clare, but he removed some of 
the minor ministers who were conspicuously associated with 
Clare's policy, and had by means of nepotism and comiptioo 
almost incorporated themselves as a permanent part of Irish 
Government. Unhappily for both countries this temper of 
hope was in a few weeks to disappear in what has been 
called the east wind of English prejudice which has blown 
so many a message of discord to Ireland. The English 
Cabinet began to urge strongly the arguments against 



FOX AND IRELAND 183 

Catholic emancipation which would suggest themselves to 
men whose policy was the policy already outlined in this 
chapter. Portland argued that it was not in accordance 
with Gommonsense and with human nature to suppose that if 
the Cathdics were admitted to Parliament they would not use 
all their influence to overthrow the oligarchical monopolies 
in the boroughs in which the right of election was vested in 
not more than twelve electors. ''I want to preserve the 
Protestant establishment in Church and State, and am willing 
and desirous to give the Catholics every right and every benefit 
which good subjects are entitled to, but I wish not to attempt 
it until I can be sure that the present establishment in 
Church and State is unquestionably secured, and that the 
participation to which I would admit the Catholics would be 
as little likely to be called in question." Fitzwilliam and the 
Government at home laid stress on different clauses in the 
former's instructions. Fitzwilliam understood that he was 
not to bring forward the Catholic question, but that if the 
demand for it was overwhelming he was not to oppose it ; 
the Government at home understood his instructions to 
mean that he was to do his utmost to prevent its discussion. 
Fitzwilliam found the temper of the country running very 
strongly for emancipation. On January 15 he told the 
Government that he would accede to the demand unless he 
received peremptory instructions to the contrary. The 
Government gave no such instructions and allowed the 
Irish Parliament to meet, and Fitzwilliam understood that 
he was not to oppose the demand. He put himself in 
communication with Grattan, who was to present the 
Catholic petition, and Grattan agreed to postpone it till 
February 16, in order that the English Government should 
have the opportunity of limiting the concession if they 
thought proper. On February 18 the English Government 
censured Fitzwilliam, and on February 23 they recalled 
him.^ 

So perished Grattan's hope of an honest and national 

' The main point at issue was the dismissal of Beresford. 




184 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

government in Ireland. The east wind had done more 
than scatter Fitzwilliam's promises ; it had driven the Catholic 
expectations overseas. But the Government's work was 
not done. They were not content with throwing all their 
influence into the scale against Grattan's Bill for admitting 
Catholics to Parliament They deliberately set themselves 
to fill the rdle, which Clare had filled for some years, and to 
work up all the rancours and animosities of religion for 
political ends. The Red Indian savagery of Clare's Pro- 
testantism became the accepted and recognised type of the 
Government's policy, and the secret instructions given to 
Fitzwilliam's successor, Camden, deputed to him the august 
and imperial mission of exciting a religious war in Ireland. 
During the debate on Grattan's Bill, which the Government 
defeated by 1 5 5 votes to 84, the Government did not attempt 
to deny that Protestant opinion in Ireland was in favour of 
emancipation, or that they were doing their best to inflame 
religious hatreds. The fostering of a salutary jealousy of 
the Catholics which had been Pitt's policy for governing 
Ireland in 1784 was once again eleven years later the English 
expedient for preserving the Protestant and British interest, 
and the public efforts of Clare whose furious energies had 
been spent in this business of religious arson were duly 
marked by promotion in the peerage. In the summer of 
1785, the most bitter of the intriguers against Fitzwilliam, 
the most venomous of the antagonists of Catholic relief, the 
most unscrupulous of the opponents of Parliamentary reform, 
and the most outspoken of the enemies of Irish freedom was 
made a Viscount by the Government that had promised 
Grattan, through the perjured mouth of Portland, that the 
bad old system had been finally abandoned. The United 
Irishmen had thrown off every vestige of religious prejudice 
to create a common patriotism. The British Government 
had no policy but a grindstone on which to sharpen the 
prejudices and hatreds which patriotism had dulled and 
blunted. 

The bitter sequel is well known. All further demands for 



FOX AND IRELAND 185 

reform and for Catholic emancipation were sternly refused, 
though the demand for Catholic emancipation was power- 
fully supported by a Protestant Bishop and General Loftus, 
and though Lord Moira stated that there was not a gentle- 
man in Ireland who did not anxiously wish that the Catholics 
should be admitted to a full and unreserved participation of 
every right that was enjoyed by their fellow-subjects of the 
Established Church. Portland in a letter to Camden in 
March 1797 distinctly stated that the English Cabinet were 
opposed to any further concession to the Catholics, and that 
they would be guided entirely in this matter by the friends 
and supporters of the Protestant interest and the present 
Establishment, a formal phrase to describe Lord Clare. 
Some English Ministers were evidently alive to the dreadful 
risk they were running, and the vehement attacks on the 
Catholics were varied by friendly overtures in the matter 
of education. But the only answer to the demand for 
reform were proclamations of Martial Law and Coercion 
Bills, and by 1798 the Government were reaping in the great 
Rebellion the harvest they had sown, when they had scattered 
broadcast hopelessness and bitter feuds. The Rebellion was 
the effect of many causes. Some of the leaders had from 
the first been separatists, and their inspirations came not 
from English misrule but from the ideas of the Revolution. 
The scale of the Rebellion was the direct and immediate 
result of rancid hopes, crestfallen aspirations, and a patriot- 
ism taught to despair of justice from England. Its miserable 
story of atrocities, savagery on both sides, and the revival 
of a form of torture is no part of this chapter, and it is only 
necessary to remark that Clare who had driven Fitzwilliam 
out of Ireland in 1795 drove Abercromby ^ out of Ireland in 
1798, because as Commander-in-Chief he had issued a rebuke 
to his troops, and sternly denounced a barbarous cruelty. 

^ It is interesting to notice that the same impression was made on another 
lamous General as that made on Sir Ralph Abercromby. Sir John Moore was 
in Ireland in 1798 and said to Grattan, '* If I were an Irishman, I should be a 
rebel." — Life of Grattan^ vol. iv, p. 393. 




186 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

The Union, in its methods and its principles, was the 
logical climax of the policy Pitt had pursued in Ireland 
In every phase it had been his consistent aim to keep the 
control of Irish policy in the hands of the English Govern- 
ment, and in his wish to check the development of a strong 
and national Parliament in Dublin, he had shown no mercy 
to his own reputation or to the public morality of Irish 
politics. Pitt bore Ireland no ill-will ; to the bristling 
problems of Irish commerce he brought the most enlightened 
mind of his day, and in considering his long career of resist- 
ance to reform, and his final destruction of freedom, the 
courage and the statesmanship of his proposals for Free 
Trade must never be forgotten. But the prospect of a 
vigorous nationalism made him tremble for the English con- 
nection, and he held that no method of averting that danger 
was unlawful. The Act of Union was the final stage in this 
policy, and the prodigal bribery which carried it was merely 
a dramatic and concentrated application on a grand scale 
of the familiar methods of Dublin Castle. The scale was 
munificent and unique, and history cannot match the 
mighty pageant of corruption, intimidation, and perfidy 
which marked the fifth Act of Grattan's Parliament The 
patriots fought sternly to the last, and their leader, abandon- 
ing his forlorn retreat, returned to Parliament with crippled 
health, and covered with the wounds of calumny and in* 
gratitude, to illuminate, by one last effort of his splendid 
genius, the closing hours of the Parliament which seventeen 
years before had borrowed from his triumphs a new vitality 
and an unconquered hope. Too weak to stand, he sat in 
the faded uniform of the volunteers, itself a sad allegory 
of the faded expectations that once had sparkled before that 
resolute army of Ireland's sons. That uniform reminded 
men in the hour of the degradation of Parliament, that only 
a few years ago the regeneration of that Parliament seem ed 
as certain as the morning's sunrise. It reminded them that 
Irishmen who now looked in each other's faces across the 
smoke of civil war and the bloody mists of torture and 



FOX AND IRELAND 187 

rebellion, had only a few years back stood side by side in 
a bracing comradeship, and forgotten in the name of Irish- 
men their centuries of hatred. Frankh'n signed the treaty 
with France which made America independent, in the coat 
he wore when the British House of Commons rejected his 
appeal for the colonists. Grattan made his last fight for 
his doomed and dying Parliament in the uniform that had 
gleamed with the splendour of Ireland's day of liberation. 

The first effort of the Unionists failed, and the glittering 
house-tops of Dublin proclaimed in 1799 that patriotism had 
conquered.' But the English Government never relaxed its 
efforts. No form of bribery was forgotten. The Protestants 
were told that their establishment could only be saved by 
Union. The Catholics were told that the English Cabinet 
was in favour of Catholic emancipation with the Union, 
and against it without a Union. Every minister or oFRcial 
who preferred his country to Pitt's bribes was dismissed ; 
and plans were discussed for increasing by manipulation the 
patronage which rewarded apostacy. The whole system and 
mechanism of administration in every comer of Ireland was 
directed to one supreme purpose ; the elimination of every 
official who opposed the Union. A million and a quarter 
were spent in buying out the patrons of the boroughs ; 
twenty^two peers were created ; the whole spirit of reverence 
for the law was destroyed by making the bench the reward 
of every parasite who would take Castlereagh's secret service 
money to write on the side of the Union. By 1800 the 
Government had succeeded in their object, and the wall of 
Irish corruption had been built high enough to withstand 
the tide of Irish patriotism. The constitution of Ireland was 
destroyed by a foreign power just as certainly as was the 
constitution of Poland. Everyone remembers Comwallis's 
exclamations of moral horror in the midst of this odious 
world of the bribers and the bribed, but Pitt's composure 
never deserted him, and in January 1799 the very man who 

' The Union Act wu tejecied in 1799 b^ 109 to 104. In tSoo Cutknaeh's 
retolutioii in farour of union ms earned bf 160 to 117. 




188 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

was creating this fearful commerce in perfidy and office 
declared in the House of Commons that there would be no 
Union without the full and free consent of both countries.^ 
By corruption Pitt had first imprisoned, and then poisoned, 
and had now destroyed the Irish Parliament The final 
transaction Mr. Lecky has summed up in one terrible 
sentence, '' Scarcely any element or aggravation of political 
immorality was wanting, and the term honour if it be 
applied to such men as Castlereagh and Pitt ceases to have 
any real meaning in Politics." * 

For several years before the Union, Pitt had been 
meditating the destruction of the Irish Parliament as the 
only means of averting the danger of the growth of a Parlia- 
ment morally, and not only formally independent In his 
speeches on the Union he laid stress on the danger of conflict 
of opinion, and he made it clear that this was his govermng 
notion. His reply to Grey's demand for an appeal to the 
Irish people is instructive, i Boo, Apr. 22 : ** They said last 
year when the Parliament was against the Union * reject it ' : 
they tell us this night when we know the Parliament have 
voted the Union * appeal to the people.' I never can consent 
to such doctrine. There may be occasions but they will ever 
be few, when an appeal to the people is the just mode of 
proceeding on important subjects. The present is not a fit 
moment to appeal to the people of Ireland when, if we 
did so, the whole economy of our legislative system, the 
customary proceedings in cases which involve the rights and 
liberties of the people, the jurisprudence of the country 
would be thrown into confusion, and all this at a moment 
when we are about to effect that which the Parliament of 
Great Britain has declared essential to the peace of Ireland, 
and to the safety of the Empire." 

That Pitt was opposed to Catholic emancipation without 

^ ParKamtniary History ^ voL xxxiv. p. 329. Lord Downihize was i c mo tc d 
from the Privy Council for joining in a letter to Castlereagh urging that a petition 
should be presented declaring the real sense of the freeholders. 

' Leaden of Irish Opinion ^ p. 182. 



FOX AND IRELAND 189 

the Uniony because he thought it would produce a new 
distribution of political forces in Ireland is clear from the 
instructions given to Castlereagh, and also from his speech 
in 1805. In 1799 Canning hinted that if the Union were 
not carried, it might be necessary to revive the old Penal 
code against the Catholics.^ Pitt's own spirit was well 
illustrated by his remark to Pamell, in 1794, when Pamell 
was rejoicing at the union of the Irish Catholics with the 
Protestants, " Very true, Sir, but the question is, whose will 
theybe?"« 

Pitt's conduct showed how complete was this obses- 
sion in his mind. He gave no express ^promise to the 
Catholics, but he allowed the Catholics to be given the 
impression that the Cabinet would strongly support the 
emancipation if the Union were carried. He made no 
attempt to break down the King's prejudice of which he 
knew before the Union, and though he resigned when the 
King refused to agree to emancipation, he offered spon- 
taneously within three weeks, to abandon the question 
altogether. In 1805 he made a strong speech against it, 
and argued that it would be fatal to emancipate the 
Catholics unless there was a general concurrence of opinion 
in their favour. There were two other important Catholic 
questions besides that of the disqualification for office ; the 
commutation of tithe, and the provision for the jCatholic 
clergy, and though Pitt had given some attention to them, 
he never lifted a finger to deal with them. It is impossible 
to suppose that a Minister of Pitt's extraordinary capacity 
could have been so callous to a great question in which 
his honour was intimately involved, if it had not been 
that his main policy was to destroy the Irish Parliament 

^ Lecky, History of Ireland^ vol. v. p. 243. 

> Cf. Pitt's Speeches^ vol. iv. (1805) p. loi. " But, sir, deeply as I felt that 
satisfaction (the ist Catholic relief bill) I also felt that in no possible case, 
previous to the Union could the privilege now demanded be given consistently 
with a due regard to the protestant interest in Ireland, to the internal tranquillity 
of that kingdom, the frame and structure of our constitution, and the probability 
of the permanent connexion of Ireland with the country." 




190 CHARLES JAMES POX 

and that everything else seem^ of quite subordinate 
importance. 

Pitfs sentiments on Irish politics were predominant 
amongst English statesmen, but they were fundamentally 
repugnant to Fox's temperament. All Fox's sympathies 
were 'with Grattan. Fox had abandoned with r^^t the 
policy of reserving for England a controlling voice over 
Ireland's foreign affairs, but he had never wished to check 
or thwart the free play of Irish opinion, in the Irish 
Parliament, on Irish affairs. He believed with Burke tiiat 
once Ireland had a Parliament responsible to Irish opinion^ 
all the lesser motives of faction and sectarian bigotry would 
disappear in a generous patriotism, and that^4f Ireland were 
her own mistress, she would be a loyal friend to Great 
Britain. The few months he was in office he relied on 
Grattan and the independent members, instead of building 
up a corrupt interest to protect English influence in the 
Irish Parliament. It is particularly interesting to notke 
the welcome Fox gave in 1782 to the idea of a Cabinet 
Council in Ireland, and to contrast with it Portland's horror 
of the same idea in 1795.^ 

The situation created by the events of 1782 made it 
almost impossible for an English statesman out of office to 
help Ireland. Formally, Irish affairs were outside the range 
of English public opinion, and to appeal to English public 
opinion against the Irish administration was to infringe the 
new compact with Ireland. Accordingly, for several yean 
the contest was limited to Ireland, and it was under the 
form of a purely Irish conflict that the English Government 
arrayed its forces against Grattan. But the extraordinary 
scale of the bribery which followed the Regency dispute, 
and the Government's determined resistance to reform, 
decided Grattan and his friends to adopt more vigorous 
measures. The Whig Club was formed in Dublin to act 
as a centre of opposition, and a few years later Grattan, 

^ Correspondemet vol. i. p. 392. For Portland, see Lecky, IrtUtmd^ voL liL 

p. 330- '*' 



:'A 



FOX AND IRELAND 191 

who had hitherto been very jealous of English intervention, 
encouraged Fox to raise Irish questions at Westminster. 
The recall of Fitzwilliam gave Fox an opportunity of 
discussing Irish affairs without any impropriety, and on 
May 19, 1795, he made a speech on that subject in which 
he laid down his views very clearly on Irish policy.^ 

The subject of the debate was a motion by Mr. Jekyll, 
" That an humble address be presented to his majesty, that 
he will be graciously pleased to direct that there be laid 
before this House such part of the correspondence between 
his majesty's ministers and Earl Fitzwilliam, late Lord- 
Lieutenant of Ireland, as relates to the motives and grounds 
of his lordship's recal from the government of the said 
kingdom, during a session, in which the two Houses of 
Parliament had voted their confidence in him, and their 
approbation of his conduct, and had granted supplies for 
the general exigencies of the state, with a munificence un- 
paralleled in the annals of that country." 

^ Cf. Memcrials and Correspimdence^ vol. iiL pp. lOD-ioi. "In a post* 
script to the last letter I wrote you, I told yon a report of the Mmistry here 
having disavowed FitzMrilliam ; I did not then believe it, bnt it is tnmed 
out to be true, to a greater extent even than the report He is to come 
home immediately, and states himself publicly to have been betrayed and 
deserted, not only by Pitt, but by the Duke of Portland. The business wiU 
I hope be made public soon in all its parts. At present it is very unintelligible, 
but I feel myself quite sure that Fitzwilliam will turn out to be as much in the 
right in all its points, as he is clearly so, in my judgment, with respect to the 
measures about which the difference between him and the Ministry b said to be 
the widest. I am told they gave out that the Catholic Bill is the real cause of 
his recall and that the question of Beresford Attorney-General, etc is com- 
paratively of no consequence. Now as to the Catholic Bill, it is not only right 
in principle, but after all that was given to the Catholics two years ago, it seems 
little short of madness to dispute (and at such a time as this) about the very little 
which remains to be given them. To suppose it possible that now that they are 
electors they will long submit to be ineligible to Parliament, appears to me to be 
absurd beyond measure, but commonsense seems to be totally lost out of the 
councils of this devoted country. In Ireland there Ls, as you may suppose, the 
greatest agitation ; addresses from all parts marking respect and attachment to 
Fiuwilliam and his system, and implying of course the contrary to his successor, 
whoever he may be, and to the old system which he is to revive. I think this 
business has made great impression here, but whether it will have any effect 
God knows." 




192 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

" Some persons might, perhaps, object to this motion, as 
the very words of it conveyed an idea, that it was dangerous 
to suffer any inquiry whatever to take place, as it stated 
circumstances, which went to infer that Ireland was in 
danger. The conduct of Earl Fitzwilliam was certainly very 
dangerous. But to whom was it dangerous ? To the people 
of Ireland ? By no means. It was dangerous only to the 
few individuals whose plan it was to govern Ireland by 
corruption : it was dangerous to those who held the interest 
and the sentiments of the people of that country in contempt, 
and therefore the cause of the removal of the noble earl upon 
that principle was easily perceived. The noble earl was, he 
believed, the only person who had the good fortune to 
obtain the applause of all the catholics and dissenters of 
Ireland ; the only person who, since the accession of the 
house of Brunswick, had been able to unite all parties in 
that kingdom; and that, perhaps, to his majesty's present 
advisers, was a sufficient reason for his recal. Here Mr. 
Fox entered into a short history of facts with r^;ard to the 
administration of Earl Fitzwilliam in Ireland ; as also of the 
applications which were made to the throne by delegates 
from that country on behalf of the catholics, and maintained 
the right which the House of Commons of Great Britain had 
to institute inquiries into public matters which related to 
the interests of both. He was of opinion, that what had 
been allowed to the catholics in that country and in this, so 
far as it went, was highly proper ; but that while there was 
any distinction made between them and the protestants with 
regard to political rights, they would still continue to have 
claims upon the justice of the legislature. His opinion indeed 
was well known to those who had done him the honour 
to attend to him ; it was, that at all times, in all countries, 
and upon all occasions, there should be no distinctions in 
political rights, on account of religious opinions." ^ 

" The next point to be considered, was the opinion which 
the mass of the people of a country entertained of the 

^ Speeches t voL v. pp. 460, 461. 




FOX AND IBELAND 193 

goverament under which they lived. He knew there were 
some who affected to despise that idea ; but they were weak, 
shallow, miserable politicians. He knew that Ireland was 
in that respect in a very dangerous condition, /it was 
essential to the welfare of a country that the common people 
should have a veneration for its laws. This was by no 
means the case in Ireland; and why? Because the law 
was there regarded as an instrument of oppression, and 
as having been made upon a principle of pitiful monopoly, 
and not for the general protection, welfare, and happiness of 
the mass of the people./ It was too common there for the 
lower class of the people to resist the execution of the laws. 
Theft itself was not regarded by them with the same 
abhorrence as with us. Indeed, if we would have the mass 
of mankind regard our laws with veneration, we must make 
them feel the benefits of them; shew them that they are 
equal, and alike administered to all without distinction. It 
was this principle which made the laws of England so much 
the object of our admiration ; it was this which made the 
people parties, as it were, in the execution of the laws ; for 
when anyone infringed them, a prosecution against him was 
generally a popular measure. What he said with regard to 
laws, was also applicable to religion. He would have 
religious toleration as equal as the laws of England, and 
that all men should be estimated in society by their morals 
and not by the mode of religious worship. To root out 
prejudices altogether was not a thing to be accomplished 
at once ; but it was a thing to be attempted, and every step 
towards it would be an advantage to the country!y Such 
was the plan of Earl Fitzwilliam, which, instead of being 
aided, as it ought, was thwarted by the measures of our 
ministers.J They had renewed the old plan of corruption, 
v'hich had made the government of that country odious; 
this was too well authenticated to be doubted : it had been 
stated publicly in the House of Commons there, by a gentle- 
man whose talents were highly eminent, and for whom, 
notwithstanding some little differences upon political sub- 
13 




194 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

jects, he had a high esteem, (he meant Mr. Grattan); that 
gentleman had stated that peerages in Ireland, instead of 
being a matter of honour, were an article of sale : that they 
were purchased from the corruption of seats in the House 
of Commons. He had heard much of the influence of the 
crown in this country. He believed it to be as great as it 
was ever stated to be. But in Ireland corruption had been 
publicly avowed and acted upon. Such a government must 
certainly be in a very decrepid state, and therefore any plan 
for the relief of the people was highly necessary. What, then, 
were we to think of ministers, who held out an encouragement 
at one time for such a plan, and afterwards recalled a lord- 
lieutenant for attempting to carry it into execution ? " ^ 

Fox's next return to Irish aflairs was made in 1797. 
That year opened with all the omens of the dreadful struggle 
which preceded the Union. Both Fox and Grattan looked 
with despair on the policy of severities which the Irish 
Government initiated in March when they issued a proclama- 
tion virtually placing all Ulster under martial law. Grattan 
made a great protest in the Irish House of Commons, and he 
urged Fox to make a similar protest at Westminster. Fox 
was evidently sensible of all the objections that would be 
urged by Pitt to the discussion of Irish matters in the Eng- 
lish Parliament, and he was very careful in his long and 
important speech to make the grounds of his intervention 
clear. It was his chief argument that the continual action 
of the English Cabinet, and its notorious corruption in 
Ireland had defeated the object of the great concessions of 
1782. "An opinion prevails in Ireland, that whatever may 
have been the intention with which that measure was 
adopted, it has not produced a free and independent 
legislature, but that the advantages which the form of a 
free constitution seemed to promise, have been counter- 
acted by the influence of the executive government and of 
the British cabinet." * 

" It is even matter of notoriety, too, that a regular system 

* SpuckiSt vol. V. pp. 464-466. ' Ibid, voL vi pw 308. 

\ 



FOX AND IRELAND 195 

was then devised for enslaving Ireland, A person of high 
consideration was known to say, that half a million of 
money had been expended to quell an opposition in Ireland, 
and that as much more must be expended to bring the 
legislature of that country to a proper temper. . . . 'You 
have granted us," said the people, 'an independent legis- 
lature, independent certainly of your parliament, but 
dependent upon your executive government,' The con- 
cession, therefore, they viewed not as a blessing, but as a 
mockery and an insult" • 

Fox went on to show how complete was the dependence 
of the Irish Parliament on the English Cabinet ; it was 
everywhere known, when Fitzwilliam went to Dublin, that 
Catholic emancipation would be carried by the Irish Farlia- 
meot: the Government then recalled Fitzwilliam, and de- 
feated Catholic emancipation. "What was this but the 
most insulting display of the dependence of the Irish l^is- 
lature ? ' This fact alone justified the criticism of what was 
really the conduct of the English Cabinet, whose influence 
had been used to sow dissension in Ireland, and " even the 
concessions which were extended to the catholics, were con- 
ducted upon a plan which seemed studiously intended by 
government to damp the joy of their success." The country 
was by this time confronted with the dreadful prospect of 
a war with Ireland, and what ought to be the policy? It 
ought to be the reverse of that Fitt had followed. " Before 
I proceed, I must here beg leave pointedly to express my 
abhorrence of the maxim divide et impera, and especially 
that by such a truly diabolical maxim, the government of 
Ireland should be regulated; on the contrary, I am con- 
vinced, that in order to render Ireland happy in herself, 
and useful in her connection with this country, every idea 
of ruling by division ought to be relinquished, and that the 
object of government should he to effect a complete union 
of all ranks of men." * 

The Catholics had a right to all the privileges possessed 
' Spuckts, *ol. vi. pp. 308, 309. • Ikii. voL fL p. 3101 







196 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

by the Protestants. Catholics and Protestants alike suffered 
under the inadequacy of Parliament, and the people of 
Ireland had a real grievance against the English Cabinet 
" In fact, we now are precisely at the point in which we 
stood in 1774 with America, and the question is, Whether 
we are to attempt to retain Ireland by force, instead of 
endeavouring to gain her by concessions, and to conciliate 
her by conferring on her the substantial blessings of a free 
constitution ? " ^ After describing the severities practised in 
Ireland, Fox proceeded to describe his own policy. " But it 
may be said, what is to be done ? My general principle is 
to restore peace on principles of peace, and to make con- 
cessions on principles of concession. I wish members to 
read that celebrated speech of Mr. Burke on the subject of 
such concessions. Let them read that beautiful display of 
eloquence, and at the same time of sound reasoning, and 
they will find in it all those principles which it is my wish 
to have adopted. There is another expression of that gentle- 
man's, I believe, in his letter to the people of Bristol In 
that letter he says, that 'that is a free government which 
the people who live under it conceive to be so.' Apply this 
to Ireland ; make it such a government as the people shall 
conceive to be a free one." * 

" I know of no way of governing mankind but by con- 
ciliating them ; and according to the forcible way which the 
Irish have of expressing their meaning, ' I know of no mode 
of governing the people, but by letting them have their 
own way.' And what shall we lose by it? If Ireland is 
governed by conceding to all her ways and wishes, will she 
be less useful to Great Britain? What is she now? Little 
more than a diversion for the enemy."* 

Fox's plan of secession from Parliament is to be r e g retted 

^ Speeches, vol. vi. p. 314. * JHd, vol. tL p. 316. 

* Ibid., vol. vi. p. 317. This speech was made on March 23, 1797. la lUj 
1797 Cornwallis refused the Viceroyalty and Commandership-in-Chief became the 
Government would not agree to Catholic emancipation. The meetiiig of Che 
Whig Club in Dublin thanked Fox. See GratUm Mtwrnn^ vol. it. p. 276. 




FOX AND IRELAND 197 

on many grounds ; his refusal to abandon it to oppose the 
Union in Parliament is not only to be regretted, but to be 
condemned. No Englishman possessed so much of the 
confidence of the independent Irishmen, no Englishman 
was saturated more thoroughly with the sympathy and 
respect for nationality which was so conspicuously wanting 
in the English treatment of Ireland, no Englishman owed 
to his reputation as certainly as Fox owed it, a direct and 
immediate protest against the destruction of the Parliament 
of 1782. Fox had lost none of his affection for Ireland, and 
to show his regard for Grattan, who was struck off the 
Privy Council on a false charge of conspiracy, concocted by 
a Government spy in 1798, he went to the Whig Club to 
propose his health, a mark of sympathy Grattan very much 
appreciated amidst all the persecutions he was suffering.^ 
But the fatal fatigue and despair of those years of his life 
kept him inactive at St. Anne's Hill whilst Grey and Sheridan 
fought the Union in Parliament. Fox made no secret of 
his views, and he busied himself in fortifying Lord Holland 
with arguments against the Union, a form of vicarious 
protest which was an indifferent substitute for his own 
vehement indignation. He spoke against the Union at the 
Whig Club in May 1 800, and the grounds of his objections 
are clearly stated there and in his letters to Grattan and 
Holland. 

" I own I think, according to the plan with which you 
have set out, that you ought to attend the Union, nor do 
I feel much any of your objections, I mean to attendance, 
for in all those to the Union I agree with you entirely. 
If it were only for the state of representation in their 
House of Commons, I should object to it, but when you 
add the state of the country it is the most monstrous propo- 
sition that ever was made. What has given rise to the 
report of my being for it I cannot guess, as exclusive of 
temporary objections I never had the least liking to the 
measure, though I confess I have less attended to the 

^ Portlmnd wanted to prosecute Gimttan. 




198 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

arguments /n? and can than perhaps I otherwise should have 
done, from a full conviction that it was completely impossible. 
You know, I dare say, that my general principle in politics 
is very much against the one and indivisibU^ and if I were 
to allow myself a leaning to any extreme it would be to 
that of Federalism. Pray therefore, whenever you hear my 
opinion mentioned, declare for me my decided disapproba- 
tion, not that I would have my wish to have this known 
a reason for your attendance, however, if otherwise you wish 
to stay away." ^ 

What reason is there, it may be asked, for supposing 
that Fox and Grattan were right in thinking it was possible 
to develop a national government in Ireland which would 
be neither inadequate for Ireland nor hazardous for England? 
Three facts must be remembered in considering that ques- 
tion. One is that the sentiment of nationality in Ireland 
was strong and vivid enough during the years of Grattan*s 
Parliament to lull the conflicts of religion, and that the 
Irish Parliament would have conceded to the Catholics the 
right to vote and sit in Parliament, if the influence of the 
Government had not been exerted against them. All 
the evidence shows that Fitzwilliam judged correctly when 
he said that Ireland wanted Catholic emancipation, and 
that Grattan's proud boast in moving the Roman Catholic 
Bill, that the people of Ireland stood acquitted, was no 
fraudulent claim. " The Protestants of Ireland are willing ; 
vast numbers of them have petitioned. The great cities are 
willing; the great mercantile interests are willing. The 
cabinet of England is the bar to the freedom of the 
Catholics, and the dispute is no longer a question between 
the Protestant and Catholic, but between the British Minister 
and the Irish nation."' During the years between the 
granting of the Irish Parliament and the recall of FitzwiUiam, 
Ireland made a remarkable advance in prosperity. Theie 

' To Lord Holland, Memorials and Corresf&mUmi^ vol. iiu pp. 150^ 151. 
Cf. also Grattan* s Memoirs ^ voL v. p. 196 and vol. hr. p. 435. 
' Sptickts^ vol. iu. p. 191. 



FOX AND IRELAND 199 

has never been a time in Irish history when the tones of 
religious discord were so subdued and muffled in Irish 
politics. The Presbyterians of Ulster were friendly to the 
Catholics, and Grattan presented a Catholic petition against 
that part of the Maynooth College scheme which restricted 
the college to Catholics. " One fact," says Mr. Lecky, " is 
as certain as anything in Irish history — that if the Catholic 
question was not settled in 1795 rather than in 1829, it is 
the English Government and the English Government alone 
that was responsible for the delay." 

The second fact is that all the evidence shows that there 
was no serious thought of rebellion amongst the Catholics in 
Ireland until after the recall of Fitzwilliam, This is clear from 
the report of the Committee of the Irish House of Commons, 
and from the evidence at the trials." The whole genius of 
Catholicism, it must be remembered, was hostile to the 
Revolution, and it needed all the provocations of disappoint- 
ment to estrange the Catholics into an alliance with Re- 
publicanism. Until the recall of Fitzwilliam theRevolutionary 
spirit was limited to the Presl^erians. As for the other 
discontents of Ireland, it must be remembered that the long 
resistance of the Government to all reform had had the very 
worst effects on the popular temper, and that if the south 
wind blew all the Revolutionary ideas into Ireland, the 
cast wind had long been blowing ideas that were littie 
likely to attach Ireland to English rule. There is nothing 
to show that if the Irish Parliament had been reformed 
there would have been such disaffection as to be a real 
danger to the connection. With reform steadily resisted, 
corruption steadily increased, the extinction of the buoyant 
hopes of Fitzwilliam's rule, and the scandalous neglect of 
the defence of Ireland, rebellion became inevitable. Grattan's 
policy of destroying corruption, promoting reform, and re- 
dressing the grievance of the tithes, the most onerous of the 
material grievances of the poor, never had a trial ; but at 

' See Meraciii on Hutety ef Unittd /risAmttf by O'Connoi Uacncviii and 



r 




^'-.«« ^ « 



200 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

least he could show that Ireland had never received a kind- 
ness from England without showing a responsive loyalty. 

Was Fox unreasonable when he argued that English 
opinion would listen less wisely than Irish opinion to the 
wants of Ireland ? The first chapter of Irish history after 
the Union gives the answer. In 1795 Ireland was prepared 
for Catholic emancipation. In 1805 Pitt himself urged as 
a chief argument against it the overwhelming hostility of 
English opinion.^ Two men so unlike in some respects 
as Greorge ill. and the Duke of Richmond were Unionists 
precisely because they believed that the Union was the most 
effectual way of defeating Catholic emancipation, and their 
anticipations were only too literally fulfilled. Pitt argued 
in 1805 that the mass of opinion in all classes was against 
emancipation, and it must be remembered that if Dr. Price's 
toleration represented the temper of many Dissenters, Wes- 
ley's approval of the ferocious Penal Code was shared by 
the great majority of the Evangelical party, who inherited 
his narrow intolerance as well as his splendid devotion* So 
strong was this pressure of hostile sentiment that Fox 
himself was powerless to do anything for the Catholics when 
he came into office, though he promised to support any 
motion that was made on their behalf, and take the probable 
consequence of a breakdown of the Government' 

The truth is that the Union handed over the political 
control of Ireland to a public opinion which had neither 
sympathy nor knowledge. For a century a people in whom 
the love of the soil is passionate has been governed by a 
people from whose nature that strong and deep emotion 

^ Parliamentary Debates, vol. iv. p. 1020. 

' An ambassador has left on record a conversation in which Fox said that he 
had promised the King, when he took office, not to raise the Catholic queitioiL 
If this is accurate Fox is to be blamed. Lord Rosebery compares this ptonise 
with Pitt's conduct, but (i) between the time of Pitt's promise and that of Fox's 
alleged promise there occurred the division of 1805 ; (a) Fox did not vndeftake 
to oppose Catholic emancipation, on the contrary he promised Mr. Rjan to 
support any motion that was introduced. All Fox's moral influence was tfaiovo 
on the side of emancipation ; Pitt actually inflamed English opposition. 



FOX AND IRELAND 201 

was finally hurried and whirled away in the excitement, and 
bewildering changes, and sudden appetites of the Industrial 
Revolution ; a people supremely Catholic by a people rigidly 
Protestant; a people that reverences its tragedies, and 
memories, and the dust of its lost battles as if they were 
precious and divine, by a people that is not careful to 
distinguish between sensibility and an idle and vacant 
sentimentalism. The distresses and wants of Ireland have 
sounded strangely in the ears of a nation that lived in a 
different universe of cares and faiths and passions, and 
the hopes and lamentations the Irish sea tosses wearily from 
shore to shore are vain and wistful voices in an unknown 
tongue. 

Fox's own Irish policy never had a trial. His hands 
were tied in 1782 by the exhaustion of England and the 
breathless precipitancy of Grattan, or he would certainly 
have attempted to give Ireland internal freedom without the 
risks and inconveniences of an absolute surrender. He 
wished the grant of full autonomy and responsible self- 
government to Ireland to be combined with a treaty for 
r^^lating the commercial relations of the two countries 
and Ireland's contribution to the fleet That scheme was 
impracticable in the peculiar conditions under which Fox 
took office in 1782, and he was wise enough to know, 
after North's escapade, the danger of delaying concessions 
until the storm had burst, and reform was the trembling 
answer to the thunderbolt. The recollection of his wishes 
in 1782 is the severest reproach to his opposition three years 
later to Pitt's Propositions. His policy never had a trial, 
for Ireland never had responsible government ; the develop- 
ment from the conditions left her by conquest to the 
conditions which could satisfy a national spirit was arrested, 
and Parliament, formally independent, was never out of the 
power of the English Ministry. If Fox had been Prime 
Minister instead of Pitt the Irish Parliament would have 
escaped that stagnant chapter which preceded and allowed 
its dissolution. Those Englishmen who wished well to 




202 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the best impulses in Irish politics had no place in the 
administration of the scheme of 1782. 

It was a complaint of Irishmen that many ministers who 
were good Whigs in England were very indifferent Whigs in 
Ireland. Fox never joined that company of truants. No- 
where in all his speeches does his redoubtable liberalism ring 
more clear than in his passionate hatred of the spirit that 
shrank from the better mind of Ireland and condemned his 
country to all the weary cycles of intrigue, hypocrisy, and the 
hollow formulas of an unloved rule. The notion of ascendancy 
was for him the poison of politics, whether the subject people 
was Protestant or Catholic, the colonists or the conquered 
populations of the Empire. His Ireland was not the Ireland 
of the Anglo-Irish, not the Ireland of Charlemont and 
Flood, an Ireland governed by an austere and democratic 
Protestantism, still less the Ireland of Clare or Duigenan, 
an Ireland scourged by a maenad Protestantism and held 
tight in a corrupt supremacy. He looked further than 
Grattan, for Grattan always wished to preserve the Protes- 
tant establishment, and it is evident from Fox's language 
that he did not think that establishment lasting. His eye 
was much more alert than Pitt's for all the depravities 
of the system of ascendancy ; he knew the price a nation 
pays in self-respect and integrity for a government that is 
in a state of permanent conspiracy against the national will ; 
he knew the peril of allowing an habitual contempt for law 
and justice to grow and harden in the popular mind. 
"Why," he asked in 179S, "is the law not respected in 
Ireland ? Because it is regarded as an instrument of oppres- 
sion, and as having been made upon a principle of pitiful 
monopoly, and not for the general protection, welfare, and 
happiness of the Irish people." " Is that miserable mono- 
polising minority," he asked in 1797, " to be put in the balance 
with the preservation of the Empire, and the happiness of a 
whole people ? " " The Protestant ascendancy," he said in 
1805, "has been compared to a garrison in Ireland. It is 
not in our power to add to the strength of that ganrisoo, 



FOX AND IRELAND 



203 



but I would convert the besiegers themselves into the 
garrison." Fox failed, for between his sovereign remedies 
and the misery of Ireland, there thronged the whole multi- 
tude of doubts and prejudices, the dim-eyed hesitations of 
charitable politicians, the inexorable rapacity of a pre- 
dominant religion, and the superstitions that bound the 
King to the hearts of the least tolerant of his subjects in an 
iron embrace. Almost alone of all the ministers who busied 
themselves with Ireland Fox always loved and feared the 
spirit of freedom, and that temper distinguished him from 
a IcMig line of statesmen to whom England owes solid 
and substantial reform, and Ireland nothing but those 
eternal memories of wrong that are the solemn sacrament 
of trampled nations. 




CHAPTER VIII 
COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 

The quarrel with America. Its causes. The trade difficulty. Disputes 
come to a head in 1774, the year of Fox's dismissal from office. 
Fox not a Free Trader, but he argued like Adam Smith that 
America would be agricultural. His strong opinion that a con- 
quered America would be worse than separation. Qose connection 
between that struggle and domestic struggle. Fox's view of the 
Quebec Bill in 1791. His criticism justified. The problem in 
India. Fox's Bill. Pitt's Bill. The impeachment of Warren 
Hastings. The slave trade. The development of public o|union. 
The apologies for the trade, the feelings of the colonies. Pitt'^ 
early enthusiasm and later vacillation. Fox's decisive ResohitioD 
in 1806. 

WHEN Fox came into politics the triumphant genius 
of Chatham, and the prowess of Clive and W<dfe 
had made the question of the future relations of England 
to her colonies and possessions the main question of her 
external policy. It was a question that lay at the veiy 
root of public life, and on the way it was answered de- 
pended more than the future of the colonies and possessions 
themselves. The quarrel between England and America 
was only another phase of the quarrel between the Court 
and popular freedom, and the great public issues involved 
in the methods and principles of the government of India 
raised in a particularly momentous form the whole question 
of arbitrary or responsible administration. 

Were England's colonies to be subdued to her will, and 
were her conquests to be administered by private and 
irresponsible despots, and to be held arbitrarily ? Was the 




COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 205 

temper of the country to be numb and quite indifferent to 
the conduct of the rulers and the fate of the ruled ? Those 
were the questions English politicians had to face. It was 
no accident of faction that ranged Chatham and the Rock- 
inghams on one side, and the King's party on the other in 
a controversy that crept into every nook and cranny of the 
political life of the country, and threw its shadow across 
the whole field of its public energies. 

The steps which led up to the American War it is un- 
necessary to describe or to examine intimately here. The 
whole story is well known even if its lesson is not always 
well remembered by the descendants of the men who broke 
up the Empire. In America untrustworthy agents, pro- 
consuls out of sympathy with the dominant ideas of the 
stem and uncongenial community where they held the 
King's authority, colonists not always conciliatory or reason- 
able; in England ministries fearful of surrendering any 
margin of their rights, making concessions at the moment 
when they could do no good, rather than when they could 
prevent some harm, and habitually misunderstanding the 
temper and the strength of the forces they were provoking ; a 
king in whom the love of country was silenced by the passion 
for binding resolute men to his will, and a people tenacious 
and obstinate in enforcing its supremacy against mutiny 
and defiance ; these were the dramatis persotuE in a trilogy 
that represented as tragically as any masterpiece on the 
Greek stage the ancient dispensation of insolent prosperity, 
and signal punishment. Sir George Trevelyan has de- 
scribed in one of the most powerful pages of his History 
of the American Revolution the deep-lying causes that led 
ultimately to the separation of the thirteen colonies from 
the mother country. The colonies themselves were com- 
munities of men who had grown hardy and rugged in the 
rough school of adversity and struggle; they had been 
engaged in a mortal combat with savage man and with 
savage nature ; they lived in a moral atmosphere that was 
arctic to all the elegant fopperies of long - established 




208 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

discoveries ; the economic principle of Free Trade, the 
principle which implies that English trade gains instead 
of loses by the development of trade in other countries, and 
the political principle that the value of the colonies to the 
mother country depends absolutely on their enjoyment of 
internal freedom. The one principle was in its cradle, and 
no one would have struggled harder to stifle it than 
Chatham, who disliked Burke's Free Trade ideas and 
wished for a minute control of American trade; and the 
other the nation learnt after a bitter lesson when it had 
buried the British flag in thirteen colonies. 

Fox had less of a past than most men in this momentous 
quarrel ; for though he held a subordinate office in North's 
Government at the beginning of 1774, he had never spoken 
in favour of any measure of coercion. That year was the 
year of his father's death, his own expulsion from office, 
and his emancipation from the worst of the influences that 
surrounded him in politics and pleasure. It did not take 
long to show that the welcome the Rockinghams gave him, 
and the friendship with which Burke honoured him were 
not squandered on a mere political adventurer. With his 
opposition to the American War Fox began a reformed 
career, a career of devotion to great causes that has not 
yet been surpassed in our history. The part Burke 
played in turning the eye of that impetuous soul to the 
strong and steady light of a great public ideal was acknow- 
ledged without stint or reservation in that immortal scene, 
nearly twenty years later, which closed, amidst the first 
thunderclaps of the Revolution one of the most honourable 
of all the friendships of politics. The pupil of the Rocking^ 
hams, Fox soon became the informal leader of the Opposition, 
and during the next seven years he bore the brunt of the 
attack. He refused to join in the secession of 1776, and 
the fear he inspired is revealed in the well-known letter 
in which George ill. urged North to take advantage of 
Fox's visit to Paris to hurry on Parliamentary business. 
His speeches during those years were thought by many 




COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 209 

who heard him to be the best he ever made, and he threw 
himself heart and soul into a cause which he believed to 
be the cause of liberty in England as certainly as it was 
the cause of liberty in America. 

The moment when Fox crossed the House in 1774 
was the deciding point in the chief American issue. Nine 
years earlier Grenville, who made the mistake of reading 
the despatches from his colonial Governors, had tightened 
the administration of those trade laws, which were the 
concrete embodiment of the mercantile theory, and 
imposed the Stamp Act There followed protests in the 
colonies and the break -down, from other causes, of the 
Ministry at home. In 176/ the Rockingham Ministry, in 
the face of the King's displeasure, relaxed the commercial 
regulations, and repealed the Stamp Act, whilst asserting 
in the Declaratory Act that England had authority over 
the colonies both in legislation and taxation. The Rock- 
inghams always argued that the restoration of friendly 
feeling in America showed that, although they had re- 
tained the right of taxation, they had undone the mischief 
which had followed on its exercise. To maintain that 
spirit in the midst of the constitutional disputes which 
had arisen between the Governors and the Assemblies 
required tact and foresight, and the brilliant Minister who 
became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1767 had little of 
either. All the discontents excited by the raising of the 
constitutional issue had found a more or less violent expres- 
sion in the colonies, and even Chatham complained in his 
correspondence of "the infatuation of New York, and of 
the disobedience to the Mutiny Act, which will justly 
create a ferment here, open a fair field to the arraigners of 
America, and leave no room to any to say a word in their 
defence." In May 1767 Townshend brought in his famous 
measure suspending the legislative functions of the New 
York Assembly till the Mutiny Act should be complied 
with, establishing a Board of Commissioners with large 

powers to superintend the execution of the laws relating to 
14 




210 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

trade, and raising a trifling revenue by various small custom 
duties. The quarrel grew hotter. There were non-importa- 
tion agreements in America : several of the colonial Assem- 
blies were dissolved, on account of resolutions condemning 
the proceeding's of the English Government, and the home 
Government replied in January 1769 by carrying an address, 
suggesting the revival of an old law of Henry VIII. which 
empowered the Governors to bring colonists accused of 
treason to England for their trial. Next year the Govern- 
ment decided to try a compromise. They repealed all the 
duties except that on tea, and it was only by a majority 
of one in the Cabinet that the tea tax was retained. The 
famous scenes at Boston ; the appointment of Committees 
in Massachusetts and Virginia to investigate colonial 
grievances ; the hearing of the petition of Massachusetts 
for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver; Wedderbum's 
terrific denunciation of Franklin, these are so many stages 
in the development of the final chapter of the quarrel. 
In 1774 the Government set itself to break down the dis- 
obedience of Massachusetts by force, and three coercive 
Bills were carried through Parliament ; one closed the port 
of Boston, another remodelled the Charter of Massachusetts, 
so as to transfer executive and judicial authority to the 
Crown, and the third arranged that persons accused of 
particular offences might be sent out of the Colony for 
trial. By these measures the door was shut on compromise 
and accommodations, and the issue was fairly laid between 
the rival obstinacies of two very stubborn peoples. 

Fox was not a Free Trader, but he shared with the 
great Free Trader a belief that rescued him from one of 
the dominant apprehensions in the English mind. Like 
Adam Smith he argued that America would be an agricul- 
tural state, and not an industrial competitor to the mother 
country. 

" He could not see that American independency would 
so soon rise as the honourable gentleman imagined, to 
maritime pre-eminence. The Americans could have no 




COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 211 

inducement to hunt for territory abroad, when what they 
quietly possessed would be more than they could occupy 
and cultivate. They would find the advantages of conquest 
unequal to those of agriculture; and remembering that 
man had naturally a predilection for tiie enjoyment of 
landed property, they would find it impossible, in a country 
where land was to be had for nothing, to propagate a spirit 
of manufacture and commerce. Every American, more or 
less, would become the tiller and planter, and the country 
might, in some future and distant period, be the Arcadia, 
but it could never be the Britain of the world" ^ 

Protected by this lateral defence from some of the bad 
commercial arguments, he was, from the first, entirely free 
from the bad political reasons for coercing America, for 
he grasped the great truth that political freedom was the 
essential condition of a sound and beneficent or a permanent j 
colonial system. He saw at once that it should be the 
sovereign end of British statesmanship to empty the relation- 
ship between the colonies and the mother country of any 
notion that would do violence to the self-respect of the 
former. To many Englishmen that notion was the whole 
value of the colonial relationship. There was much in 
the history of America between the Peace of Paris and the 
explosions of rebellion at Boston to explain the sympathy 
the Court excited for its policy of coercion. It needed 
courage and foresight when the mass of the nation called 
for the spur to declare that colonial policy must be ridden 
on the snafHe. There was enough of the old Adam in the 
English nature, outside the Court, to make the language of 
mastery and supremacy ring very pleasantly in the ear, when 
the colonists were flinging the tea into Boston harbour, and 
defying the mother country to do her worst. Of the great 
Englishmen who set themselves against those passions not 
one was more constant or more determined than Fox from 
the day he opposed the coercion measures of 1774, to the day 
North's Government was driven from office. The resistance 

> Sp€€ctui^ vol. i. p. 124. 




212 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

to the war produced some of Burke's greatest aphorisms 
and some of Chatham's most splendid oratory, but nowhere 

y was the whole issue stated more compactly or more com- 
pletely than in Fox's declaration in 1774, " I take this to 

. be the question, Whether America is to be governed by 

^ force or management," or in his declaration in October 1776, 
"the noble lord who moved the amendment said that we 

\ were in the dilemma of conquering or abandoning America ; 
if we are reduced to that, I am for abandoning America." 

Whether this particular dispute could have been settled 
by management will never be positively known, for it was 
not till February 1778, or three years after Burke's great 
\ motion for conciliating America, that North introduced his 
propositions for redressing everything the colonists com- 
plained of. Much had happened in the interval, and there 
were memories over and above the common bitterness of 
war, in a struggle between men of the same race in 
which the mother country had borrowed allies not only from 
Hanoverian barracks, but even from Indian wigwams. By 
the Declaration of Independence in 1776 the thirteen 
colonies had been committed to resistance, and most im- 
portant of all were the treaties signed between France and 
America a few weeks before North made his motion* 
During the war the military fortunes of the colonbts were 
sometimes nearly desperate ; the moral determination of a 
very large part wavered, and the Declaration of Independ- 
ence struggled through many hesitations and misgivings, 
for the old sentiment had died hard ; but the alliance with 
France was a decisive event. If the colonies were now 
finally lost to the Empire, it was at any rate some consolation 
to the Opposition to know they had resisted every measure 
that had exasperated the colonial spirit, and that the 
catalogue of follies which had thrown the Americans into 
the arms of England's inveterate enemies was no longer than 
the catalogue of their own defeat in the lobbies. 

Was that loss final and certain in 1778? Chatham thought 
the catastrophe so terrible that a supreme efTort must be 




COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 213 

made to avert it, and though he had carried his opposition 
to the policy of coercing the colonists to the extreme point 
of withdrawing his son from the army, he believed it would 
be less calamitous to subdue the colonies than to release / 
them from their relationship with England. The Rocking- / 
hams thought otherwise. To Fox a conquered America 
meant not merely a useless but a mischievous empire, and 
to persbt in the attempt to conquer America was to aggran- 
dise France and Spain. '^ What have been the advantages," 
he asked two years before, '' of America to this kingdom ? 
Extent of trade, increase of commercial advantage, and a 
numerous people growing up in the same ideas and senti- 
ments as ourselves. Now, Sir, would those advantages 
accrue to us, if America was conquered ? Not one of them. 
Such a possession of America must be secured by a 
standing army; and that, let me observe, must be a very 
considerable army. Consider, Sir, that that army must be V 
cut off from the intercourse of social liberty here, and accus- 
tomed, in every instance, to bow down and break the spirits 
of men, to trample on the rights, and to live on the spoils 
cruelly wrung from the sweat and labour of their fellow- 
subjects ; — such an army, employed for such purposes, and 
paid by such means, for supporting such principles, would 
be a very proper instrument to effect points of a greater, 
or at least more favourite importance nearer home ; points, 
perhaps, very unfavourable to the liberties of this country." ^ 

All the energy Fox had thrown into his resistance to the /• 
American War, he threw into the prosecution of the war with 
France, and in November 1778 he summed up in a fine 
appeal, ending with a curiously Thucydidean passage, the 
nature of the war with France, and that of the war with 
America, " You have now two wars before you, of which you '* 
must choose one, for both you cannot support. The war 
against America has been hitherto carried on against her 
alone, unassisted by any ally; notwithstanding she stood 
alone, you have been obliged uniformly to increase your 

^ Nov. 6, 1776. speeches^ vol. i. p. 6i. 




•.-•J* 



v\ 



214 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

exertions, and to push your eflbrts to the extent of your 
power, without being able to bring it to any favourable 
issue ; you have exerted all your strength hitherto without 
effect, and you cannot now divide a force found already 
inadequate to its object; my opinion is for withdrawing 
your forces from America entirely, for a defensive war you 
never can think of; a defensive war would ruin this nation 
at any time and in any circumstances ; an offensive war is 
pointed out as proper for this country ; our situation points 
it out, and the spirit of the nation impels us to attack rather 
than defence; attack France, then, for she is your object; 
the nature of the war with her is quite different ^j the war 
against America is against your own countrymen; that 
against France is against your inveterate enemy and rival ; 
every blow you strike in America is against yourselves, even 
though you should be able, which you never will be, to force 
them to submit ; every stroke against France is of advantage 
to you ;;the more you lower her scale, the more your own 
rises, and the more the Americans will be detached from her 
as useless to them: even your victories over America are 
favourable to France, from what they must cost you in men 
and money ; your victories over France will be felt by her 
ally ; America must be conquered in France; France never 
can be conquered in America. 

'^ The war of the Americans is a war of passion ; it is of 
such a nature as to be supported by the most powerful 
virtues, love of liberty and of country, and at the same 
time by those passions in the human heart which give 
courage, strength, and perseverance to man i the spirit of 
revenge for the injuries you have done them, of retaliation 
for the hardships inflicted on them, and of opposition to the. 
unjust powers you would have exercised over them ; every- 
thing combines to animate them to this war, and such a war 
is without end ; for whatever obstinacy enthusiasm ever in* 
spired man with, you will now have to contend with In 
America; no matter what gives birth to that enthusiasm, 
whether the name of religion or of liberty, the effects are the 



COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 216 

same ; it inspires a spirit that is unconquerable and solicitous 
to undergo difficulties and dangers ; and as long as there is 
a man in America, so long will you have him against you 
in the field. 

"The war of France is of another sort; the war of ^ 
France is a war of interest ; it was interest that first induced 
her to engage in it, and it is by that same interest that she 
will measure its continuance ; turn your face at once against 
her, attack her wherever she is exposed, crush her commerce 
wherever you can, make her feel heavy and immediate dis- 
tress throughout the nation, and the people will soon cry 
out to their government Whilst the advantages she 
promises herself are remote and uncertain, inflict present 
evils and distresses upon her subjects; the people will become 
discontented and clamorous, she wilt find the having entered 
into this business a bad bargain, and you will force her to 
desert an ally that brings so much trouble and distress, and 
the advantages of whose alliance may never take effect" ^ 

Fox was an indefatigable and a singularly accurate critic 
of the wretched administration of North's Grovemment ; he 
felt acutely the humiliation of allowing the enemy's fleet 
to command the Channel and threaten the coasts ; and he 
spared no pains to drive an incompetent First Lord of the 
Admiralty from office, and at the time the danger was at ^ 
its height he frequented the ports, and lived partly on ship- 
board. In a letter to Fitzpatrick he described the emotions 
he felt at the spectacle of a great English fleet making ready 
for battle, and the affection and delight inspired in him by 
the navy throughout his career were never more conspicuous 
than they were during these perilous months. It is re- ^ 
markable that in the days when he mistrusted Pitt the most. 
Fox never voted against any proposal to strengthen the 
navy,' and it is not unreasonable to suppose that this was 
partly due to the fact that no Whig was ever quite sure of 
the use to which an army might be put by the Court at home. 

^ Nov. 26, 1778. Speeches^ vol i. pp. 136, 137. 
* Cf. p. 296. 




216 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

The violence with which Fox opposed the war with 
America has been censured by Mr. Lecky who draws a 
distinction between the spirit of Fox's opposition and that 
of Chatham's. It is a distinction rather difficult to discern. 
Chatham's name possessed a weight to which that of no other 
Englishman could pretend, and it was no light matter for a 
man whose words carried across the Channel and across the 
Atlantic to rejoice publicly that America had resisted, to 
declare that the American cause was the cause of freedom, 
and to predict that there would be foreign intervention. 
The truth is that Fox and Chatham knew very well that 
the cause of colonial freedom was also the cause of English 
freedom. In October 1776 when the American fortunes 
seemed desperate Horace Walpole wondered that any 
friend to British freedom could view with equanimity the 
subjection of America. If that year had seen the extinction 
of American resistance, the King's system would have been 
fastened almost indissolubly on English politics. How fiau*, 
as it was, that system had hardened may be gathered from 
the tenacity with which it survived a blacker period of 
humiliation and failure than that through which Chatham 
had driven France. The Opposition were fighting a thank- 
less battle, for all the instincts of a high-spirited people 
fortified the folly of the Court, but it was a battle to decide 
whether the King should finally rule and ruin England.^ 

' It is interesting to notice some of the divisions — 
April 1774. BUI for regulating charter of Massachusetts carried by 239 to 64 
Feb. 1775. Fox's Amendment to Address . . defeated l^ 3^4 »» 105 

Mar. 1775. Bill for restraining Commerce of New England 

carried by 21$ „ 61 
Nov. 1776. Motion for revision of laws by which Americans think 

themselves aggrieved defeated by 109 „ 47 

Dec 1777. Fox's motion for inquiring into the state of the nation 

defeated by 178 „ ^ 
Feb. 1778. Fox's motion that no more of the old corps be sent out 

of the Kingdom defeated by 269 „ 165 

(The only time Gibbon voted against American 
War. See Gibbon^ s Memoirs^ ed. by Dr. Birk- 
beck Hill, p. 324.) 



COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 217 



The same idea of colonial freedom entirely governed 
Fox's attitude to the question of the government of Canada 
to which Pitt addressed himself, after long and useful inquiry, 
in 1791. When Pitt introduced his Quebec Bill Fox re- 
mlb'ked that it was of course too early to pronounce on the 
scheme, but ** he was willing to declare that the giving to a 
country so far distant from England a legislature and the 
power of governing for itself would exceedingly prepossess 
him in favour of every part of the plan. He did not hesitate 
to say that if a local legislature was liberally formed, that 
circumstance would incline him much to overlook defects 
in the other regulations because he was convinced that the 
only means of retaining distant colonies with advantage was 
to enable them to govern themselves." ^ 

In the same spirit he said later that ''Canada must be 
preserved in its adherence to Great Britain by the choice of 
its inhabitants, and it could not possibly be kept by any 
other means." It is interesting to notice that the first effect 
of Pitt's Bill was to introduce a large number of loyalist 
immigrants from the States, men who had hitherto been 
deterred from making Canada their home because they 
thought it would be governed autocratically.' Pitt's scheme 
lasted down to the Rebellion, and it is instructive to notice 
that the very arrangements Fox criticised in Parliament 
were those that ultimately led to the break-down. Pitt 

Nov. 1778. Amendment to Address defeated by 2a6 to 107 

Nov. 1779. „ „ . . „ 233 „ 134 

Nov. 1780. „ „ . . ,, 212 „ 130 

May 1781. Motion for Peace ... ,, 106 „ 72 

June 1 78 1. Motion on State of American War (Pitt spoke in fiivour) 

defeated by 172 „ 99 
Nov. 1781. Motion for delaying supplies . . „ 172 ,, 77 

Jan. 1782. Fox's motion of censure on First Lord of Admiralty 

defeated by 236 „ 217 
Feb. 1782. Conway's motion for putting an end to the war 

defeiCted by 194 „ 193 
Msur. 1782. Cavendish's vote of censure . . „ 226 ,,216 

^ Speeches^ vol. iv. p. 202. 
' See Kingsford's History of Canada^ voL vii. p. 223. 




218 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

divided Canada into two provinces, establishing in each an 
elective Assembly and a Council which was to be partly 
hereditary and partly nominee. He also reserved a sevepth 
of the Crown lands for the Protestant clergy. Fox depre- 
cated the division of the colony, as tending to split up 
French and English, in a cautious speech which showed 
that he was fully alive to the difficulties of the situation; 
but the provisions r^arding the Council and the Assembly, 
and the reservations for the Protestant clergy he opposed 
very sternly. He considered the qualification of £$ a vote 
for the Assembly too high, and the number of members 
inadequate (sixteen for Lower and thirty for Upper Canada), 
whilst he condemned the whole plan of creating hereditary 
honours in a British colony, and all the arrangements re- 
specting religious endowment. Pitt said it was the intention 
of these provisions to enable the Governor to endow the 
Protestant clergy of the Established Church, and he added 
it might possibly be proposed to send a bishop to sit in the 
Legislative Council. Fox replied that it would be better to 
establish the Roman Catholic religion or the Presbyterian 
religion; that the amount reserved for the clergy was ex- 
cessive, and that the idea of sending a bishop to sit on the 
Legislative Council was " in every point of view unjustifiable." 
The quarrel over these religious reservations was one of the 
chief difficulties in Upper Canada thirty and forty years 
later. Fox persuaded Pitt to increase the number of the 
Assembly for Lower Canada from sixteen to thirty, but on 
the subject of the Council he found Pitt quite intractable. 
Burke who made many speeches on the Bill, but scarcely 
any about it, supported Pitt's idea of an hereditary CouncQ 
very warmly, as did Wilberforce who said these new 
aristocrats might be only sapling^ at first, but they would 
one day become forests. Fox argued that it was unreason- 
able to transplant the idea of an hereditary order into a 
British colony, and that if the Legislative Council was to 
be quite dependent on the Governor the whole purpose of 
popular government was defeated. Fox himself proposed 



COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 219 

that the Council should be elective with a high qualification, 
both for a seat and a vote. The chief cause of irritation in 
Canada during the disturbances forty years later was that 
the representatives of the provinces had no control over 
Ministers, and by the Act which put Lord Durham's recom- 
mendations into force, the division into the two Canadas 
was abolished, and the arrangements Fox had criticised 
were superseded by an elective Council. 

A very different problem faced England in the East 
where she was brought into contact with a whole universe 
of unknown and dissimilar races through the agency of a 
trading company. Were her interests as a vicarious ruler fai 
that vast world to be left to the destructive avarice of com- 
merce, and was England to acknowledge no obligations to 
the myriads of tribes, the broken fragments of the Mogul 
Empire, in whom the white adventurers of all countries saw 
nothing but means to their aggrandisement, and the subjects 
of a very rough and profitable dominion ? Since that time 
British rule in India may have often been mistaken, mal- 
adroit, shortsighted ; it may suffer from the tendency of a 
bureaucracy to stiffen into formal and rigid policies, and 
from its reluctance to explore resolutely new conditions, 
or to delegate any part of its authority, or it may 
suffer from the supine negligence which is too often the 
temper of a democracy governing despotically a huge 
population of whose history and gigantic philosophies it 
knows nothing. But at least British rule has not been 
chartered rapacity, and it has been based on the express 
repudiation of all the loose and sinister morality men like 
Warren Hastings were only too ready to apply to political 
emergency. That that question was so answered is due to 
Burke and Fox, more than to any other two men in 
history. 

To understand how deep and fast-dyed was the horror 
the study he made, as a member of the Select Committee, 
of Indian Government printed on Burke's mind, it is only 
necessary to remember that the first time an India Bill 




220 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

came into the House of Commons whilst he was a member, 
Burke defended with the zeal and passion he seldom with- 
held from the cause of prescriptive right, the immunity of 
the India Company from all interference by the Govern- 
ment That was in 1773, when North carried the first Bill 
that infringed the Company's Charter. By that Bill the 
chief judicial offices in India were made appointments of 
the Crown, and a Governor-General of Bengal, Behar and 
Orissa with a Council of four was to be appointed for five 
years by the Act, and though these appointments were to 
revert afterwards to the Directors, they were subject to the 
approbation of the Crown. This Bill was supported by 
some of the proprietors of the Company, as well as by 
Clive, whose first career of brilliant victories and private 
plunder had been followed, and in the eyes of Burke 
redeemed, by a second career of strict integrity and austere 
rule devoted to checking conquest and expansion, and 
to eliminating corruption from the Company's service. In 
many respects a drastic measure, the Bill was a tentative 
approach to the maxim Chatham had laid down, that the 
government and revenues of the territories of the East 
India Company should be assumed by the Crown, and that 
nothing but their trading privileges should be left to the 
Company. It is curious to reflect in the light of later 
history that the Bill was supported by Fox, and opposed 
by Burke, and that it was that Bill which made Warren 
Hastings the first Governor-General of Bengal, and Francis, 
his lifelong enemy, one of his Council of four. 

The next great effort to reform the Government of India 
led to very different results, for it destroyed the men who 
had the hardihood to make it. The famous Bill of 1783 is 
generally understood to have been Burke's handiwork, and 
it is certain that both Fox and Burke threw themselves 
into the project with the resolute enthusiasm of strong and 
militant conviction. The evils for which they had to find a 
remedy were on a grandiose scale, and they had been pub- 
lished from the housetops of India and England. Two select 



COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 221 

Committees had sat, one with Burke as its most prominent 
member, the other, a secret Committee, with Dundas as its 
chairman, and their reports were an unsparing revelation of 
the fraudulent disorder that marked the Company's rule in 
India, and it is only fair to add, a monument to the con- 
scientious public spirit of the men who had investigated that 
painful field of research. During Rockingham's Govern- 
ment these reports had been printed, and the House of 
Commons adopted a number of condemnatory resolutions, 
amongst others one ordering the Directors to recall Warren 
Hastings, an order the Directors had obeyed and the pro- 
prietors, on Rockingham's death, had n^^tived. 

This was the condition of things the Coalition Ministry 
had to encounter and the India Bills were one of the two great 
contributions Fox and Burke made to the cause of honest 
and merciful Government in India. It was an inevitable 
result of the system which made the government of India 
to so many generations a question of dividends and patron- 
age and influence, that a vested interest was created at 
home in the abuses of Indian administration. The chief 
obstacle to Clive's wise reform for abolishing private trading 
among the officials was the eager rapacity of the proprietors, 
who called for their twelve and a half per cent, and wished 
their servants to supplement deficiencies in their salaries at 
the expense of the governed. Everyone who had made a 
fortune, or hoped to make a fortune, or who had relations 
who had made a fortune or hoped to make a fortune was 
an enemy to reform, and boroughs and all the merchandise 
of politics at home were in the market for men who had 
gone out to India poor, and had returned staggering under 
the weight of their ill-gotten gains. As long as India was 
governed by men who regarded the country not as their 
home, nor as some great illuminated theatre of all their 
own virtues and vices, in which they might naturally have 
a motive to display their virtues, but solely as the field 
of picturesque plunder in which they were to make their 
private fortunes and gain all the public prizes private 




222 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

fortunes could buy, so long was there a corrupt interest at 
home to support and defend corrupt government abroad. 
In India there was as yet no strong tradition of public 
integrity, and .no strong motive to just and conscientious 
administration, and at home there was a combination whose 
tie was allegiance not to some public cause but to private 
interests, a combination ubiquitous, persistent, rich, power- 
fully handled, a direct menace to the state. The whole 
fabric of honest government was assailed by that species 
of influence which inevitably arises whenever politics abroad 
are blended with the master spirit of unscrupulous and 
impatient finance. 

Great efforts were made by Pitt and Thurlow to con- 
vince the country that Fox and Burke were not acting as 
sincere reformers, but merely as very grasping party men, 
when they tried to overthrow this whole system and 
extricate the government of India from these sinuous and 
stubborn clutches. It was a charge easily made, and not 
too easily refuted by statesmen who had bewildered the 
public by the coalition. Yet no accusation could have 
been more remote. The interests Fox and Burke were 
attacking were extremely powerful, and the crusaders 
refused to listen to certain overtures made to them in which 
it was suggested that the course the Bill had to travel 
would be a good deal easier if the project of impeachii^ 
Warren Hastings were laid aside. Fox and Burke knew 
well enough what forces were arrayed against them. In a 
private letter in which he had no reason to dissemble his 
mind Fox said, " If I had considered nothing but keeping 
my power, it was the safest way to leave things as they 
are, or to propose some trifling alteration, and I am not at 
all ignorant of the political dangers which I run by this 
bold measure ; but whether I succeed or no, I shall always 
be glad that I attempted, because I know I have done no 
more than I was bound to do, in risking my power and 
that of my friends, when the happiness of so many millions 
is at stake/' But apart from these private testimonfes, to 




COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 223 

suppose Fox and Burke were not in earnest is to suppose 
them masters of a solemn and portentous hypocrisy such 
as the whole history of politics has rarely produced. The 
general complaint against Fox was not that he was too 
sparing, but that he was too prodigal with his own senti- 
ments in his speeches, that he never acquired the reticence 
which is so important a quality in a public man in the 
public eye, and that his dangerous eloquence betra)red him 
into a risky and inopportune candour. His whole career of 
indiscreet enthusiasms is the final answer to the hypothesis 
that the indignation with which he described the infamies 
done in the name of England, or the appeal he made to the 
public opinion of England to redeem that good name, in 
one of the finest speeches he ever delivered in the House of . 
Commons, were merely the stage lighting of simulated 
passion, and the gorgeous disguise of party avarice. The 
truth is that Fox was never more convinced of anything 
in his life than he was of the value of his Bill, and 
he looked forward eagerly to that Bill as the justifica- 
tion of the Coalition. Nor again is it easy to believe 
that all the resonant phrases, with which Burke fed and 
inflamed his accumulated anger over the wrongs of Hast- 
ings' victims, were nothing more than the rhetoric of 
designing faction. That the picture Burke had of India 
with its sacred and immemorial antiquities rifled and pro- 
faned by men to whom they were common plunder, was 
overdrawn may be true, but that it was a wilful imposition, 
no spontaneous product but an artificial creation for ends no 
more exalted than the aggrandisement of party, is simply 
incredible. Of Burke it may truly be said that the story 
he had read in the reports to the Committee on Indian 
government haunted his mind as incessantly and as sadly 
as the wrongrs of Calas haunted the mind of Voltaire. 

Of Fox's Bills for establishing just and honest government 
in India, one was concerned with methods of administration 
and was virtually adopted by Pitt a year later, but the other, 
the Bill that led to the defeat of the Coalition Government, 




224 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

went to the very root of the existing system. It is not 
difficult to follow the process of reasoning which created the 
new scheme of Indian Government. The rule of the Com- 
pany Fox regarded as incorrigibly bad. It had been con- 
demned in two reports, and the best illustration of the 
weakness of the existing arrangements was to be seen in 
the position of Warren Hastings who, as Governor of Bengal, 
had defied the House of Commons and had been supported 
by the Court of Proprietors in withstanding the authority of 
the Directors. Fox believed it to be impossible to reform 
the Government of India unless the present system was 
abolished, and a substantial control exercised over the ad- 
ministration of India. " If he were totally unacquainted 
with the transactions in India, which had brought on the 
company's calamities, he was of opinion that he could ai^e, 
a priori^ that they would happen ; because, from the con- 
stitution of the company, nothing else could happen. But 
with the mass of evidence that the secret committee had 
laid on the table, it would be madness to persevere in a 
system of government that had been attended with such 
fatal consequences. It had been truly remarked by a learned 
gentleman last year, (Mr. Dundas,) that if a man wished to 
read the finest system of ethics, policy, and humanity, he 
would find it in the letters of the court of directors to the 
company's servants abroad ; but if the reverse of all this 
should be looked for, it might be found in the manner in 
which the orders of the directors were observed in India ; 
for there, inhumanity, false policy, peculation, and brutality 
were to be discovered in almost every step; orders were 
given on one side ; they were disobeyed on the other ; and 
the whole was crowned with impunity." ^ 

But where was the control to be established? Some 
reformers, such as Dundas, argued that it should be in India. 
To that Fox objected very strenuously. Experience had 
shown conclusively, he argued, that the final and complete 
responsibility for the government of India must be at home, 

* Sptiches^ vol. ii. p. 203. 




COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 225 

and fhat it was too risky to leave power and authority in 
an official surrounded by all the temptations of India. Two 
conditions he r^arded as indispensable to reform. The 
final authority must be at home, and there must be some 
element and promise of permanence in the system of govern- 
ment. 

To secure these objects Fox proposed to supersede the 
Court of Directors by a Board of seven Commissioners ; the 
first Commissioners to be named in the Bill, and future ap- 
pointments to the Board to be vested in the Crown. These 
Commissioners were to sit for four years. There was also 
to be a subordinate body of nine assistant directors chosen 
by the Legislature from among the largest proprietors, for 
the purpose of managing the details of commerce. The 
proceedings of these bodies were to be entirely public, and 
they were to be kept most carefully in records for the in- 
spection of both Houses of Parliament Similarly all the 
officials in India were to keep careful minutes of all their 
transactions for the information of Parliament Publicity 
and responsibility to Parliament were the central principles 
of Fox's remedy for the misgovemment of India. The ideas 
underlying the Bill were borrowed largely from North's 
suggestions during the last year of his Ministry. North had 
proposed that the power of the Govemor-Greneral should be 
strengthened, and that a tribunal should be established in 
England for the purpose of exercising jurisdiction over all 
servants of the Company in India. Fox rejected the first 
of these ideas, and applied the second. The principle of 
nominating officials by Act of Parliament had of course 
been adopted in the Regulating Act of 1773, by which 
Parliament appointed Warren Hastings as Governor-General, 
and appointed his council of four. It was clear that this 
scheme was vulnerable in many particulars. It was in the 
first place a fairly direct and complete subversion of the 
Charter of the Company. Pitt attacked it vigorously on 
this ground, and all Banks and other great corporations 
quickly took alarm and set up a furious clamour. Fox 
>5 




226 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

defended himself against these charges of rapine by declar- 
ing boldly that respect for her good name as well as pity for 
millions of lives that were at her mercy, made it impossible 
for England to treat the right of a chartered company to 
empire as irrevocable. "What is the end of all govern- 
ment? Certainly the happiness of the governed. Others 
may hold other opinions ; but this is mine, and I proclaim 
it What are we to think of a government, whose good 
fortune is supposed to spring from the calamities of its 
subjects, whose aggrandisement grows out of the miseries 
of mankind? This is the kind of government exercised 
under the East India company upon the natives of Indostan ; 
and the subversion of that infamous government is the main 
object of the bill in question. But in the progress of accom- 
plishing this end, it is objected that the charter of the 
company should not be violated ; and upon this point, Sir, 
I shall deliver my opinion without disguise. A charter is 
a trust to one or more persons for some given benefit. If 
this trust be abused, if the benefit be not obtained, and its 
failure arises from palpable guilt, or (what in this case is 
full as bad) from palpable ignorance or mismanagement, 
will any man gravely say, that trust should not be resumed, 
and delivered to other hands, more especially in the case of 
the East India company, whose manner of executing this 
trust, whose laxity and languor produced, and tend to pro- 
duce consequences diametrically opposite to the ends of 
confiding that trust, and of the institution for which it was 
granted ? — I beg of gentlemen to be aware of the lengths 
to which their arguments upon the intangibility of thb 
charter may be carried. Every syllable virtually impeaches 
the establishment by which we sit in this House, in the 
enjoyment of this freedom, and of every other blessing ct 
our government. These kind of arguments are batteries 
against the main pillar of the British constitution. Some 
men are consistent with their own private opinions, and 
discover the inheritance of family maxims, when they ques- 
tion the principles of the revolution ; but I have no scruple 




COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 227 

in subscribing to the articles of that creed which produced 
it Sovereigns are sacred, and reverence is due to every 
king : yet, with all my attachments to the person of a first 
magistrate, had I lived in the reign of James the Second, I 
should most certainly have contributed my efforts, and borne 
part in those illustrious struggles which vindicated an empire 
from hereditary servitude, and recorded this valuable doc- 
trine, ' that trust abused is revocable.' 

" No man. Sir, will tell me, that a trust to a company of 
merchants, stands upon the solemn and sanctified ground by 
which a trust is committed to a monarch ; and I am at a 
loss to reconcile the conduct of men who approve that re- 
sumption of violated trust, which rescued and re-established 
our unparalleled and admirable constitution with a thousand 
valuable improvements and advantages at the Revolution, 
and who, at this moment, rise up the champions of the East 
India company's charter, although the incapacity and incom- 
petence of that company to a due and adequate discharge 
of the trust deposited in them by that charter, are themes of 
ridicule and contempt to all the world; and although, in 
consequence of their mismanagement, connivance, and im- 
becility, combined with the wickedness of their servants, the 
very name of an Englishman is detested, even to a proverb, 
through all Asia, and the national character is become 
degraded and dishonoured.^ To rescue that name from 
odium, and redeem this character from disgrace, are some 
of the objects of the present bill; and gentlemen should, 
indeed, gravely weigh their opposition to a measure which, 
with a thousand other points not less valuable, aims at the 
attainment of these objects."* 

The second of the two characteristics of the Bill most 
loudly attacked was the method of appointing the Commis- 
sioners. The criticisms on this part of the scheme were 
contradictory, for some objected that it was meant to give 

> Ty^enty years earlier, it must be remembered, Chatham had tiid that 
'* India teems vnth iniquities so rank as to smell to earth and heaven." 
' Speeches^ vol. ii. pp. 238-24a 




228 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

a permanent supremacy to the Whig party, whilst others 
argued that it would increase the influence of the Crown. 
The method chosen was not novel, for it was the method 
adopted in the only previous measure for controlling mis- 
government in India. It would certainly have been wiser 
not to have nominated seven party men, but no eighteenth 
century government would have acted otherwise, and no 
Minister was more careful to make patronage a composite 
element of party government than Pitt who exclaimed very 
loudly against Fox's conduct It was complained of Fox 
by his Irish clients that he refused to keep half as strict an 
eye as Pitt on party considerations in making appointments, 
and that Whigs suffered an injustice in consequence. The 
other objection seems to be more weighty, for the Bill would 
have transferred all Indian patronage to the Crown after 
four years, and would have been some compensation for the 
offices the Rockinghams had abolished. But this objection 
applied to any scheme that took the control out of the hands 
of the Company, and Fox considered it imperative to with- 
draw that control. 

Neither of these objections had any relation to the 
welfare of India, but they were the whole stock-in-trade of 
the Opposition, and the debates were concerned exclus- 
ively with them. It was their weight that vanquished the 
Coalition Government ; the phantom of a power that held 
chartered rights in no respect terrified every corporation; 
the prospect of a more powerful Crown incensed Fox's old 
supporters ; the spectacle of a Whig aristocracy that should 
be a rival to the Crown terrified the Court Pitt played 
skilfully, and unscrupulously, and successfully on these 
humours and consternations. But there was an objection 
to the Bill considered in a light in which the Oppositioo 
never considered it, as a Bill for reforming the government 
of India. In their haste to take the government of India 
out of the hands of a mercenary interest, Fox and Burke 
were placing it in the hands of an untried authority, bringing 
a mind quite fresh and raw to the bewildering problems of 



COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 229 

Indian administration. The integrity of the new Commis* 
sioners was indisputable, but their qnalififatiops bq;an and 
ended with their honesty. Such a scheme was a desptnic 
remedy, for it was the scheme of men who were conscions 
that no remedy which was not desperate could be eflcctiie. 
Yet it is obvious that deliberate mi^novemment was not 
the only evil to which India was liable. To redress old 
injustices and to shelter India against future injnstioe Fox 
made careful and detailed provision, and many of his anange- 
ments were afterwards adopted in Pitfs legislation. But 
what protection had India under his sdieme against an 
improvident or a mistaken administration ? To jdaoe great 
authority in a Governor-General ¥ras to run the risks of his 
moral collapse, but to turn to account at the same time the 
advantages of his special experience. What was wanted was 
a scheme under which the knowledge that had been acquired 
of Indian life and habits should be applied to the govern- 
ment of India without the dangers of an irresponsible ad- 
ministration. He would be a bold man who would argue 
that there has been no waste of Indian resources under an 
alien government that has been in many respects singularly 
conscientious. The native optimism of bureaucracy, how- 
ever honourable and public-spirited, is not a temper very 
tolerant of those local customs and prejudices which make 
up so much of the life-blood of every people. Both Burke 
and Fox showed in their speeches that they realised how 
important it was to treat those customs and prejudices with 
respect and patience, but it would probably be agreed 
that Pitt's scheme, under which India was governed down 
to 1858 by a dual system, establishing a new department 
of government as a Board of Control over the Directors of 
the Company, came nearer than Fox's scheme to fulfilling 
the conditions of an intelligent administration. 

Fox's India Bill, in spite of the momentous political 
catastrophe that was its climax, has been eclipsed by the 
dramatic splendour of the second great blow the Whigs 
struck for good government and integrity in the East. The 




230 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

impeachment of Warren Hastings will always remain a 
subject of controversy. To some it is a signal example of 
ingratitude to a great public servant, to others it is a signal 
example of the courageous and patriotic vindication of a 
high standard of national conduct The issue raises in its 
acutest form the whole question of the mutual dealings of 
peoples. Hastings was no freebooter ; his crimes were the 
public crimes of a man who in his private dealings respected 
honour and morality, and in his public dealings respected 
neither. 

There is indeed an aspect of his administration which is 
rarely remembered in English discussion, the view set out by 
Mr. Romesh Dutt in his careful study of Indian Economics^ 
that Warren Hastings' internal legislation was mistaken and 
destructive, and did lasting injury. But we may grant that 
his intentions to the men he ruled were benevolent, and that 
he did his best to shield them from individual rapacity. 
The circumstances again of his crimes were peculiar. The 
analogy of the Roman Empire has been applied very mis- 
chievously and very ignorantly to England's relations with 
communities and states that belong to the same order of 
civilisation as herself, as if the England of this and of the 
last century were the solitary beacon of enlightened and 
stable government in the general darkness and confusion of 
the human race. But in her contact with the dissolving 
fabric of* Asiatic government it is true to say that England 
has found herself roughly in the position Rome occupied at 
one time in the world. And if it is to be assumed that on 
the whole the growth and preponderance of British power 
was a contingency to be preferred to the rule of any other 
foreign invader, or to the perpetual anarchy that followed 
on the collapse of the Mogul Empire, in what sort of a 
temper are we to judge the crimes which marked the 
beginning and the consolidation of that power? It will 
certainly be agreed that if we take any standard at all of 
morality, it is impossible to characterise in half tones the 
things Warren Hastings did. The unprovoked attack on 



COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 281 

the Rohillas, the tacit sanction given to the brutalities of 
our native allies in a quarrel that was not ours, the extor- 
tions he practised on Cheyt Singh, and the treatment of the 
Nawab of Oude, all these were part of a policy in which 
violence and fraud had an undisputed ascendancy, and, 
although Warren Hastings' reputation has gained by recent 
researches, his greatest biographer admits that he was singu- 
larly blind to the immorality of these proceedings. He 
recognised no distinctions of right and wrong, justice or 
injustice in the critical emergencies that put our Indian 
Empire to the hazard. Elsewhere our fortunes were over- 
cast In one continent the English flag had been struck, 
and all over Europe the English name had lost half its 
terror and authority. In that anxious and sombre hour 
Warren Hastings thought he had but one duty in India, to 
keep, to strengthen, and to fortify British power, and to save 
the Company by any method or any crime. If there was a 
tribe whose spirit or whose nascent power he feared, he was 
quite ready to ally himself with a savage ruler, and to allow 
British troops to be accomplices in the work of massacre 
and rapine. If he was in desperate straits for money to 
prosecute a war or to maintain a government, he was quite 
as extortionate as an Indian Rajah with an exhausted 
Exchequer and a helpless population. In a word this 
western ruler encountered enemies, rivals, and the tides of 
peril and adversity with the moral shamelessness of the 
East. 

To decide whether these crimes are to be condoned, 
we must resolutely ask ourselves whether it was a better 
thing to found and keep an Empire by such means (an 
Empire which since its establishment is generally admitted 
to be less of a misfortune than any other issue to the 
desperate complications of India) than not to found or keep 
it at all. Fox and Burke at any rate would have had no 
difficulty in replying to that searching question. For them 
the whole justification of our Indian rule was precisely that 
its methods and its spirit were not the methods and the 




232 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

spirit Warren Hastings borrowed from rival rulers in the 
East "Conquest," said Fox, "gives no right to the con- 
queror to be a tyrant," and this aphorism distinguished 
British rule in India from that of native despotism. The 
value of our system of government depended on its observ- 
ance of a more exacting standard of public morality and 
good faith than the standard we found in any Asiatic 
government,^ and a proconsul who forgot that he had to 
maintain this moral supremacy reduced the English rule to 
a mere scramble for territory and illicit dominion. Nor was 
it likely that men living in the midst of riches wrung from 
India would overlook the likelihood that, if once the over- 
riding of morality were sanctioned in governors whose aims 
and purposes were public, it would be difficult to enforce 
any morality upon governors whose irregularities were 
private and personally sordid. For Fox and Burke the 
principle of honest dealing was of paramount importance, 
and no political advantage could outweigh the moral 
damage done in weakening or discrediting it* They 
made a stout effort to secure good government of our 
possessions, but if the final choice was between no 
Indian possessions at all, and possessions acquired on 
Warren Hastings' principles, they would certainly have 
chosen to leave those vast territories to anarchy and dis- 
order rather than capture and hold them for civilisation 
under a black flag. 

^ ''That the maintenance of an inviolable character for moderation, good 
faith, and scrupulous regard to treaty, ought to have been the simple grounds on 
which the British government should have endeavoured to establish an infl n c nct 
superior to that of other Europeans over the minds of the native powers in India ; 
and that the danger and discredit arising from the forfeiture of this pre-emincnoe, 
could not be compensated by the temporary success of any plan of violence or 
injustice." — One of resolutions of House of Commons, May 28, 1782. 

' " He felt himself thoroughly justified in contending that, in spite of any 
narrow principle which temporary distress or local circumstances might team to 
call for, such as keeping the mogul out of the hands of the French, or of Tippoo 
Sultan, it ill became a nation of great weight and character, like Great Britain, 
to depart from general systems, founded in wisdom and in justice, for any such 
petty considerations." — Speeches^ vol. iii. pp. 195, 196. 



COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 233 

There was one field in which Fox's championship of the 
oppressed was successful, even if its success was rather long 
delayed. There are few more interesting psychological 
studies than that of the movement and shades of eighteenth 
century opinion on the slave trade. Chatham, in many 
respects the greatest statesman of the century, wished to 
develop that trade as an important part of England's com- 
merce. Lord Dartmouth, a pious evangelical was strongly 
averse to checking "a traffic so beneficial to the nation," 
and, though Wesley applauded Wilberforce's exertions, 
WhitefieSd was a strong supporter of slavery, and with the 
help of Lady Huntingdon, he did a good deal to intro- 
duce it into Georgia. An interesting controversy arose in 
the religious world over the whole subject. Some persons, 
like Whitefield, favoured slavery, because they thought it 
brought great remote and inaccessible populations within 
the reach of Christian missionaries, whilst others had qualms 
about baptizing or converting slaves, on the ground that 
slavery was unobjectionable for pagans, but inappropriate 
for Christians ; a distinction corresponding to that made 
by the Greeks between Greeks and barbarians. It was 
solemnly suggested that baptism would invalidate the l^al 
title of the master to his slave, but the alarm inspired by 
so ominous a superstition was dispersed by a timely de- 
claration from the Bishop of London, to the effect that 
" Christianity and the embracing of the Gospel does not 
make the least alteration in public property." 

The interests involved were very extensive, and they 
were not limited to England, for though some of the 
colonies disliked the slave trade, and accused England of 
forcing it upon them, there were others that regarded the 
slave trade as the basis of their prosperity. The West 
Indian planters who passed harsh legislation for the treat- 
ment of slaves in the colonies were largely represented 
in England by rich and absentee owners. The Court 
was inevitably and strenuously hostile to humane reform. 
It was no light matter to develop a strong public opinion 




234 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

in the midst of all these adverse influences, and the men 
who did it are remembered with veneration and gratitude. 
To Granville Sharp, Zachary Macaulay, and Clarkson is 
chiefly due the credit for those careful and laborious 
researches which placed before the public eye the dreadful 
picture of the Middle Passage, and all the unfathomable 
and inarticulate misery of the slave trade. That trade 
meant the rooting up in a century of more than three 
millions of negroes, captured in slave hunts, crowded into 
vessels where the regular mortality among strong men was 
seventeen per hundred, and transported with every circum- 
stance of brutality and suflering to islands where almost 
any form of punishment or coercion was legitimate. It 
was proved in one trial that a master of a slave ship might 
throw a hundred and thirty slaves into the sea, without 
raising any issue more important than the precise distri- 
bution of costs and losses. 

Wilberforce was the protagonist of the abolitionists in 
Parliament, and in spite of innumerable disappointments 
and vexations, he lived to carry his g^reat project to 
success. The eflect of this crusade upon public opinion is 
seen in the number of petitions, 103 in 1788, and $^9 ^^ 
1792, in the protests against the slave trade from the Corpora- 
tions of London, Bristol, and many large towns, and in a 
widespread agreement to leave ofl^ the use of sugar as a 
product of slave labour. 

There was no matter in which Fox engaged that was 
nearer to his heart than the abolition of the slave trade. 
When Pitt brought the question before the House of Com- 
mons in 1788, in place of Wilberforce who was ill, Fox 
stated that he had meant to take it up himself, but that on 
hearing Wilber force's intentions he had come to the con- 
clusion that proposals for reform would come with more 
authority from Wilberforce than from himself. The subject 
had been brought before the Privy Council for enquiry, and 
Fox argrued that the enquiry should have been an enquiry by 
the House of Commons. There were at this time three 




COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 235 

courses proposed, immediate abolition, gradual abolition, or 
regulation of the slave trade. The agitation was wisely 
limited to the slave trade, because the abolition of slavery 
would have raised the old American difficulties with the 
colonies, and the first step towards getting rid of slavery was 
to abolish the commerce in slaves. Fox's own opinions on 
these various courses was stated emphatically in the first 
debate, ** He had no scruple to declare in the onset that his 
opinion of this momentous business was that the slave trade 
ought not to be regulated but destroyed." 

The friends of the slave trade, who were very powerful in 
Parliament, supported by the Bishops and most of Pitt's col- 
leagues, were in no want of plausible apologies. They argued 
that the trade was not responsible for the condition of the 
slaves, for the traders merely brought negroes who were already 
slaves, either prisoners of war, or men condemned for witchcraft 
or adultery ; they pleaded the commercial importance of the 
trade, its value to England, and the danger of letting it slip 
into the hands of foreigners ; they described it as the nursery 
of the navy ; the sugar planters were helpless without slave 
labour, and the Newfoundland fisheries wanted a slave 
population to eat the refuse of the fish they caught Accusa- 
tions of inhumanity were warmly repulsed, one of the 
Bishops being particularly conspicuous in combating im- 
putations on the character of the planters under whose rule 
there was so high a death-rate among the slaves that the 
planters argued that without the slave trade slave labour 
would become extinct. Some enthusiasts went to the extreme 
length of maintaining that the plight of the slaves was better 
than that of the lower orders in England. Fox was not 
likely to treat these arguments with much patience or mercy. 
He was very severe on the hypocrisy which pretended that 
we were serving some great moral purpose in sanctioning 
slavery as a punishment for adultery, which was a far worse 
offence in England, where marriage was a regular institution, 
than in Africa where it was not, or " for witchcraft which we 
know to be no crime at all." The argument that slavery was 




236 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

necessary for our commerce he disputed on its own merits, 
though he refused to admit that any argument based on 
the prosperity of the country could justify a stupendous 
crime against humanity. The contention that we should be 
abandoning a lucrative trade to other countries, and that if 
profit was to be made out of all this human suffering we 
might as well make the profit as anyone else, Fox compared 
to the reflections of a person addicted to felony, but now 
conscious of his first guilt, who found himself driven to 
robbing someone in the highway, because he knew that if he 
spared his victim someone else would rob him. ** If it was a 
trade founded in violence and injustice. Great Britain ought 
to wash her hands of it at any rate : nor was the practice of 
other countries anything at all to the question. • . . Mere 
gain was not a motive for a great country to rest on as a 
justification of any measure ; it was not the first purpose of a 
well-regulated government ; honour was its superior as much 
as justice was superior to honour." 

There was no man who hated more cordially the spirit 
which is very full of our national greatness, and very fearful 
of risking anything in any great cause. ** As the first nation 
in Europe, we ought to set the example, and in the cause 
of justice and humanity, to claim the post of honour— of 
danger if there were any." i Another argument that was com- 
monly used was the argument that the colonies would con- 
trive to create an illicit trade in foreign vessels. " If it were 
true," answered Fox, "that they would be supplied by 
foreign ships, — Dutch or American, no matter what^ — ^in 
God's name let them in any ships but ours I Let us wash 
our hands of the guilt of the trade. If other nations would 
commit robbery and murder, that was no reason why we 
should imbrue our hands in blood." * 

Several speakers argued that if the slave trade were 
abolished the colonies would be finally alienated, one of them 
remarking that it " would be a breach of the compact that 
tied the colonies to the Mother Country," and another warn- 

^ SpeeiheSf vol. iv. p. 402. ' IM* vol. iv. p^ 400. 



COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 237 

tng the House that "by want of temperance and prudent 
conduct we had lost America." Fox's reply was prompt 
and resolute. He did not agree with Francis that it would 
be no serious loss if the colonies broke away. He regarded 
the loss of America as a great misfortune, and he would 
regard the loss of the West Indian colonies as a great 
misfortune. The advantages however of the connection to 
the West Indies were great and palpable, and he did not 
think the colonies would sacrifice that connection for the 
sake of the slave trade. " Next it was said, we owe much 
to the West Indies. If we do, let us pay what we owe, or 
say that we cannot ; but let us not say that the kidnapping of 
240,000 negroes is a fit compensation from Great Britain to 
her colonies. ... I am not much alarmed by the possibility 
of our islands getting into habits of intimacy with foreigners ; 
but if they should be so infatuated as to prefer the continu- 
ance of this detestable and pernicious trade to their connec- 
tion with this country, I would not vote a shilling of the 
money of my constituents to coerce them. This I have 
always said and always thought, and always I was using 
something like the coward's threat being persuaded, that 
they would consider the loss of our connection, and the 
advantages they derive from it, as the most formidable 
threat that could be made to them."' 

In the last years of the century the champions of all good 
causes had to sustain a hard struggle beneath dark and 
inexorable skies. Wilberforce's great cause was no exception. 
In 1788 it had looked as if the triumph of the cause was 
imminent, and a temporary measure was passed that year 
to mitigate the horrors of the Middle Fass:^. From that 
year the prospects grew steadily worse. Pitfs colleagues, 
Dundas, Thurlow, and Jenkinson, fought abolition by every 
kind of device, and the French Revolution and the French 
war reinforced selfishness with panic. In 1791 Wilberforce 
was beaten by 163 to 88, in 1792 a motion for immediate 
abolition was defeated in favour of gradual abolition, and 

' Speteket, vol. iv. p. 401. 



/ 




238 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

when the House of Commons agreed that the trade should 
cease in 1796, the House of Lords rejected the bill. During 
the next few years there was strong opposition to eveiy 
proposal that meant the sacrifice of a lucrative trade, and the 
alienation of the colonies. Pitt himself, whose speech in 
favour of immediate abolition in 1792 had won the ecstatic 
admiration of Fox and Grey, dissuaded the abolitionists 
from pressing the question, and actually allowed the trade 
to revive and increase under the British flag. In the war the 
naval ascendancy of England had destroyed the slave trade 
to the French and Dutch colonies, and, when these colonies 
passed under the British flag, Pitt refused to prevent the 
resumption of a trade which no one had stigmatised more 
sternly than he. The result was a brisk activity. " It was 
computed that under the Administration of Pitt, the English 
slave trade more than doubled, and that the number of 
negroes imported annually in English ships rose from 2S1OCX) 
to 57,000." Wilberforce declared in 1802 that the trade had 
been carried, especially of late years, to a greater extent than 
at any former period of our history. In 1804 the political 
conditions improved, and Wilberforce wished to bring in a 
resolution forbidding any further importation of slaves into 
the conquered colonies, but Pitt prevented him by promising 
to issue a Royal Proclamation, a promise he fulfilled rather 
more than a year later. When Fox came into office all this in- 
decision and vacillation ended. Mr. Lecky quotes the remark 
that " had Pitt perilled his political existence on the issue, no 
rational man can doubt that an amount of guilt, of misery, of 
disgrace, and of loss would have been spared to England 
and to the civilised world such as no other man ever had it 
in his power to arrest."^ In 1788 Pitt had branded the slave 
trade as detestable, and by 1806 that trade was not only in 
existence but enormously extended. Fox came into office 
in February. He died in September, and he was too ill to 
attend Parliament after June. He had all Pitt's difficulties, 
the war, a hostile Court, a divided Cabinet But it was 

* Lecky, England^ vol. v. p. 344. 



COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES 239 

known that he was in earnest, and in the few months left to 
him of life, he did what Pitt had failed to do in fifteen years 
of office. He carried two Acts, one forbidding the employ- 
ment of British seamen, ships, or capital in the foreign slave 
trade ; the other forbidding the employment in the colonial 
slave trade of any shipping not already engaged in it, and he 
carried through both Houses of Parliament a resolution 
pledging Parliament to proceed with all practicable expedi- 
tion to the total abolition of the British slave trade; a 
resolution carried into full eflfect next year. In his speech 
on that motion he made that often quoted declaration, which 
is perhaps his most fitting epitaph. " So fully am I im- 
pressed with the vast importance and necessity of attaining 
what will be the object of my motion this night, that if 
during the almost forty years that I have had the honour of 
a seat in parliament, 1 had been so fortunate as to accom- 
plish that, and that only, I should think I had done enough, 
and could retire from public life with comfort and the 
conscious satisfaction that I had done my duty."' 
' Sfetihis, vol. vi, p. 659, 




CHAPTER IX 

FOX AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

The Revolution diflferent from contemporary revolutions. Barkers 
passionate interest. He came to glorify the ancient r^ime. Fox 
saw more clearly the collapse of government Fox's great dis- 
tinction that he kept his faith in the Revolution long after its 
excesses had alienated those who had begun by admiring it His 
correct judgment of the extenuating circums{ances of the Terror, 
and of the strength of the Revolutionary sentiment. 

IT was small blame to any man that he misunderstood 
the energy or the direction of the forces which were 
destined to " shake the dead from living man/' and to build 
a new nation on the broken splendour of old France. The 
portents of the French Revolution were strange and bafHing 
to eyes that had seen revolutions everywhere. In America 
a colony was become a people; in Poland periodical 
convulsions had opened the chapter which was to close 
with the life of that unhappy kingdom ; in Sweden a king 
had overturned the constitution, and as a crowned dema- 
gogue had defied the ambitions of Russia ; in the scattered 
dominions of Austria old rights and privil^es had dis- 
appeared before the reforming impulses and the preci^ritate 
mistakes of a beneficent pedant. It was a generation of 
political catastrophe, of benevolent coups d^Aat. But the 
French Revolution, though Louis sometimes talked of saving 
France himself, as if he hoped to ride and subdue the 
forces of her wild enthusiasm, was unlike any of the pro- 
cesses which were changing the face of other European 
states. The Revolution was not the act of a Government, 

240 




FOX AND FRENCH REVOLUTION 241 

it was the consequence of the breakdown of govemmoitt. 
The administrative order had collapsed ; public affiuis were 
in confusion amidst bankrupt finances and the slow ruin of 
decay ; and a new religion was flashing into the minds of 
men the power and the inspiration which were irrevocably 
gone from the lifeless forms of an exhausted system. If 
France had left the beaten track rf human knowledge 
marching into the unseen with the rapture and exaltation 
of a new faith, it is little wonder that the men who watched 
her career could find nothing in the familiar stars to teach 
them its meaning or its goal 

Contemporary Europe did not attach mudi importance 
to the first acts of the Revolutionary drama. "Rie internal 
disturbances of one nation in that genial comity of envious 
and intriguing states were generally important only as 
offering an opportunity to others for aggrandisement That 
France should be preoccupied involuntarily at Paris was 
a welcome accident for Powers whose preoccupations in 
Poland were anything but involuntary. Even the English 
Government did not expect much more than a passing crisis 
which for the time would' disable France as a continental 
Power, and eventually liberalise her institutions. But there 
were two men, Fox and Burke, who knew from the first that 
the revolution going on in France was destined to have 
much larger consequences for that nation than such con- 
sequences as spring from local revolutions, and their 
sympathies were absorbed in its fortunes. 

Burke grasped two great truths about the Revolution. 
He saw that in separating past and present by an impassable 
chasm, in making a new France with an even and unbroken 
surface, in laying a pitiless hand on local privil^;e and crooked 
rights, the enthusiasts who were improvising a constitution 
were making a highway for an usurper. Burke saw this as ' 
clearly as did Mirabeau. He conjured up the vision of a 
Napoleon ten years before Napoleon became consul. He 
saw ako that if Europe was to join battle with the Revolu- 
tion, she must fight under the flag of an ideal in the strength 
i6 




242 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

of an austere faith ; there must be no afterthoughts of acquisi- 
tion, no side glances at rich lands, and no wistful dreams of 
extended frontiers and new subjects. The forces of a moral 
Niagara were not to be stemmed or held or turned aside by 
the puny hands of crafty sovereigns whose first care was to 
direct its destructive energy into channels where it might 
serve their private ambitions. All this Burke saw and pro- 
claimed with that eloquence which made even his errors 
sublime, tt is unhappily the case that if he had seen neither 
of these truths the Europe and England of his day would 
have lost nothing. The things he saw never influenced 
Europe or England for the better in their policy ; where his 
judgment was wrong and his vision circumscribed, he lent to 
squalid causes and mean ambitions the might and majesty 
of a pure faith, and a massive eloquence. Never have the 
unlucky accidents of fortune given such a Peter the Hermit 
to reaction, superstition, and the terror and the prejudice of 
a dying order. 

It is clear that even if Fox and Burke had agreed in 
their calculations of the Revolution, they would have differed 
in their moral verdict. Whereas Fox, as we have seen, had 
never accepted the existing constitution as final and divine, 
Burke's whole soul shrank from the prospect of the tiniest 
change. To disfranchise a single borough was to bring 
England to the threshold of popular madness and anarchy. 
A revolution which swept away orders and privil^es in 
instants of its irresistible progress was a blinding avalanche 
to a man who could not watch without dismay the slow and 
gentle advance of sure-footed reform. To such a temper the 
Revolution was nothing but wanton anarchy destroying an 
clysium of good government and benevolent designs. Its 
first mission was destruction, and few men have feared the 
gods with so pious an awe as Burke felt for property and 
established order. It laid the axe at the root of inequalities, 
and Burke had that reverence for the hierarchies of this 
world that only comes from the conviction that they are made 
in another. Its heroes and martyrs were just the men he 



FOX AND FRENCH REVOLUTION 245 

ments of the royal power. To say that .Fox understood 
all the impulses and energies of the French Revolution 
would be to attribute to him an insight and a penetration 
denied to all other Englishmen of his time. He said himself 
he never understiood Rousseau's Social Contract — the flam- 
ing bible of the Revolution. But to argue that his constant, 
recurrence to the subject of the Whig Revolution shows 
that he knew no other standards or measurements for liberty 
is to overlook the purpose for which he quoted it as an 
example. No English Whig could tolerate the French^ ^ 
Monarchy. Burke contrived not only to tolerate but very 
nearly to worship it He did so by substituting for the 
actual institutions of France certain fanciful images of his 
own — by converting what was in truth a wilderness into a 
smiling Eden of prosperous order. Ecouihawed^aiid showed ^ 
triumphantly, that as far as the destruction of the old 
system was concerned, the French Revolution deserved 
the sympathy of the Whigs who, likfiJBurke» glorified the 
memory of 1688. 

In disputing whether it was a good or a bad thing that 
the old system had fallen, Burke and Fox were both 
applying Whig doctrines — with the difference that Fox 
appreciated, more fully than Burke, the conditions of 

the case. But what of all that came after? What of the 

• « . . ■ 

rapid crises which turned French history into a series of 
dissolving views, in which men and types and governments 
appeared for an instant, only to be blotted out and to leave 
the surface vacant for some new apparition ? To all these 
bewildering phases of the Revolution Burke and Fox 
brought very different minds. For the Revolution had 
flung violently into the midst of live controversy and 
speculation those very questions on which the Whigs had 
agreed to differ in mutual tolerance. The English Whigs 
were agreed in withstanding George. There was 00 unity 
in their views of the limits of the constitution. Burke made 
the existing order in England an absolute type; to him 
freedom and popular contentment were summed up in the 




246 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

\ maintenance of the precise details of the English consti- 
tution; Parliamentary Reform was as much the enemy as 
royal ambition, for the stability he cherished was threatened 
by both. Fox on the other hand had voted and spoken 
for Parliamentary Reform^ and as early as 1783 had traversed 
^Burke's favourite doctrine by declaring that " it was the best 
government where the people had the greatest share in it" 
He held that the constitution was to be judged, like all other 
things mortal, by its relation to the popular welfare. Burke 
. made it the type of a rational manly freedom in all countries. 
Fox had that great and saving sense of relativity which is 
perhaps, more than anything else, the intellectual secret of 
Liberalism, and which vanished by some extraordinary 
misfortune from Burke's mind with the first rustle of tbt 

\ Revolution. He resolutely combated the doctrine that every 
constitution must be good or bad according as it resembled 
or differed from the English constitution of 1789. He re- 
fused to believe that freedom knew only one type, and to 
condemn France for seeking to create another. He showed 
that it was as ridiculous for Burke always to fling the heroes 
and lawgivers of English reform at the heads of the National 
Assembly, as it was for the National Assembly to harp 00 
Lycurgus and Solon. The English constitution, he re- 
minded Burke, was the product of native experience and 
idea, not an importation from Rome or Greece. In all 
these respects Fox and Burke moved in different atmo- 
spheres. The one was essentially Liberal, the other exclus- 
ively Whig. The one welcomed, whilst the other dreaded 
experiment. Fox was hospitable to all those new hopes 
and aspirations, which inspired the revolt against the bonds 
of the Middle Ages, whilst Burke faced and hated them as 
a militant anarchy. 

It is Burke's chief distinction, as a discerning Wh^ 
that he dreaded the Revolution before a single bone had 
been broken or a single castle burnt to the ground. It is 

V Fox's chief distinction, as an intrepid Liberal, that he 
believed in the Revolution long afler its first promise 



FOX AND FRENCH REVOLUTION 247 

seemed to have perished in violence and crime. Read a' 
century after the event, the story of the September massa cres 
chills and freezes the first enthusiasm with wkich we follow 
the fortunes of the Revolution. How did it sound in the 
ears of contemporaries ? The English aristocracy of that 
day had lived in close and constant touch with the brilliant 
society whose most brilliant members were in their graves 
or in prison or in exile before the end of 1792. Jox 
himself had the gentlest and tenderest of natures. The 
very exubeirahce'bf Tiis first hope might have tempted him 
to renounce, with all the bitterness of disillusioned generosity, 
tlfie principles those excesses had disfig^ured and deformed. 
He knew well enough what the cause of French liberty 
must suffer in public opinion from atrocities which would 
add the indignation of moderate men to the fear and 
jealousy of men who trembled in sympathy for their own 
privileges. Well might he write that "the horrors of the"^ 
2nd of September were the most heartbreaking event that 
had ever happened to those who like himself were funda- 
mentally and unalterably attached to the true cause." ^ 

Yet he brought to these horrifying events something of 
the clear sight and discriminating judgment of posterity.. 
He grasped two great truths which contemporary spectators 
were too ready to pass over in oblivion, without which 
French affairs could not be rightly judged. The first is'^ 
that those excesses were no sudden outburst of a new and 
strange spirit — the demon of Revolution — ^which held life 
cheap and gloated over cruelty with bloodshot eyes. When 
Louis XVIII. fled from the Tuileries in 18 14 he left behind 
him a list of men who were to have been punished if the 
^migr^s had succeeded: 34 deputies to be quartered; 103 
to be broken on the wheel ; 254 to be hanged, and 348 
to be sent to the galleys.* This was mere cold-blooded 

* Correspondence ^ vol. ii. p. 37 1. Letter to his nephew. 

^ The full list is given in the article '' Ration monarchique pendant la 
Revolution" in vol. ix. p. 44 of the Review La R^lution franfoise, 
M. Spronck, the author of the article, quotes the dictum '* La Revolution se 
dcfendait, la Reaction sc vengeait." 




248 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

revenge and not a slaughter planned like the crimes of 
the Revolution in national panic. Life was held, jj^ scant 
respect under the old regime. Few things could be more 
savage than the spirit of the old laws of France. A 
picturesque illustration of their brutality is given by Mr. 
Morley in his book on Voltaire.* In 1762 Morellet pub- 
lished a selection of the most cruel and revolting portions 
of the procedure of the Holy Office, drawn from the 
Directorium Inquisitorium of Eymeric, a grand Inquisitor 
of the fourteenth century. " Malesherbes in giving Morellet 
the requisite permission to print his Manual had amazed 
his friend by telling him, that though he might suppose he 
was giving to the world a collection of extraordinary facts 
and unheard of processes, yet in truth the jurisprudence of 
Eymeric and his inquisition was, as nearly as possible, 
identical with the criminal jurisprudence of France at that 
very moment." Many, who wept over the Church hrrause 
her possessions were seized, and her priests driven irom 
their homes, forgot her own iron and inexorable cruelty 
in the heyday of her strength and her prosperity. In a 
society where men and women were sent to the stake, or 
to the wheel, or to torture for speaking against the Virgin 
Mary, it was not strange that a populace beside itself with 
suspicion, panic, and unruly dominion thought the life of 
man of little account and the forms of justice not very 
precious. Men were pitiless; they were grown up under 
a pitiless law. Their terror and revenges were cruel and 
savage, but they had at least an august example in a 
Church fearful for her privilege and unforgiving to her 
adversaries, who had seemed to have forgo tten for all t ime 
her sublime message ^mcrcy-to mankind. The crimes of 
the Revolution will never be judged too lightly ; Fox' never 
excused them, but he saw it was unjust to atfajbut e to the 
\seven devils of democracy vices'^uid wickedness.wbich were 
far older than the Revolution. It is indeed the truest, and 
in one sense the bitterest condemnation of the crimes of 

» Voltaire, p. 228. 




FOX AND FRENCH REVOLUTION 249 

the Revolution whether at home or abroad, that they were' 
not new but the crimes of old France. Fox saw this 



truth, which escaped Burke; l ^e divined also the intim ate 
relation wKch existed between the excesses and the dread 



■flF-i«ia»»«M«ift «■ 



of invasion.^ It is now known that the success or the failure, 
of the invaders was followed almost automatically by the 
tightening or the relaxation of the spirit of slaughter at home. 
Revenge itself has something of the gentle touch of mercy 
by the side of panic, and it was panic more than anything 
else which splashed Paris with the blood of her children. 

It was a true instinct that kept Fox amidst all these ' 
horrors unalterably attached to the cause of the Revolution.. 
Let us remember how its iU:st J^cts must have struck him. 
He saw a great assembly of men drawn from all parts of 
France calling for religious toleration, demanding that no 
man should be arrested except in cases provided for by 
law, asserting that the free communication of ideas and of 
opinions was one of the most precious of the rights c)f men, 
abolishing a cruel criminal procedure, destroying the system 
under which judges bought their office from the king, and 
declaring that the nation itself was sovereign. He saw, in'^ 
a word, the downfall of feudalism. We can understand 
with what rapture of hope and confidence Fox, who had 
fought so many losing battles for freedom, watched what 
seemed the spontaneous triumph of Liberalism and Humanity 
in the very citadel of despotism. It was no difficult matter, 
to satirise all these professions, when the hour of violence 
and slaughter came. Toleration when men must accept a 
dictatorship or go to the guillotine, no more arbitrary 
punishment and the spectre of the Revolutionary Tribunal 
perpetually darkening Paris, the free commerce of ideas 
and no persuasion but the bloody will of the sansculotte I 

* Cf. speeches^ vol. v. p. 157. "Those who were concerned in framing the 
infamous manifestoes of the Duke of Brunswick, those who negotiated the treaty 
of Pilnitz, the impartial voice of posterity will pronounce to have been the 
principal authors of all those enormities which have afflicted humanity, and 
desolated Europe." 




250 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

It is easy to laugh over the patriots and philosophers dis- 
cussing the metaphysics of revolution, and the rights of 
man, with the red-handed mob of Paris at their doors, and 
revolutions they never dreamt of rumbling over France. 
Yet we who can judge of these things from afar know 
:' that Fox was right when he stubbornly believed the collapse 
;' of the old system to have been the greatest thing that had 
happened in the world. Bloodshed and violence, murder 
and sudden death did not make up the Revolution, they 
divided but did not distinguish the new from the old, and 
the final triumph of the new order meant that tfae right s 
of nations conquered the rights of kings, and that the 
unnoticed millions of France were become the people, of 
France. With the Revolution there came into politics a 
spirit, of justice which inspired all the movements of the 
\ nineteenth century, and was destined to create not only a 
new social France but a new political Europe. XIlQ.Fl3aich 
Revolution gave morality a place in politics. Fox was 
right in his view that its ideas^ fantastic, vapouring^ and 
trivial as their expression often seemed, outweighed the 
curses its excesses brought on humanity. The cataclysm 
which produced the September massacres produced also 
the Code Napoleon. Those ideas were enduring things, and 
not the transient apparitions of a mad philosophy. 

Even the Paris that massacred, and rioted, and wrote 
its own shame in blood and injustice with a mad defiance, 
for all Europe to see, that bowed its head for tyrants from 
Robespierre to Napoleon, groaned and slew and died 
beneath the gleam of the dawn. We can see this because 
we are not blinded by the violence which was nature's 
retribution on grey-headed failure. Fox saw it in the midst 
of all the bloodstained shapes the Revolution bore. He 
knew that the cause of the Revolution was the cause of 
human liberty, that it was the cause of the French nation, 
and that there was at any rate one method by which the 
spirit of that Revolution could not be exorcised or crushed, 
the method of proscription and a conspiracy of kings. 




CHAPTER X 
FOX« POUCY IN 1792 

Fox's earlier view of France. His anti-Bourbon sentiment. How far 
justified? The Revolution transforms the diplomatic arrange- 
ments of Europe. Fox's view of the Coalition. The questions at 
issue between France and England in 1 792-93. Pitt's relations 
with Chauvelin and Maret. Fox's relations tnth Chauvelin and 
Talleyrand. Danton's policy. Fox's opposition to the war. Pitf s 
illusions about its gravity. 

FOX'S conduct in opposing the French Commercial 
Treaty of 1786 and the war of 1793 has been spoken 
of as one of his '' amazing vagaries." Such a charge argues 
a curious blindness to the grounds of his policy before the 
Revolution, and to the reasons which made him five years 
earlier speak of France as "the inevitable enemy." The 
spirit of his earlier policy may be summed up as the spirit 
of a peaceful Chatham. Peaceful it emphatically was. Fox 
hated war, and the mimicry of war; he hated war for 
conquest and for trade ; he hated too a peremptory and 
domineering insolence in foreign aflairs. His immortal 
speech on Pitt's mistake over Oczakow is perhaps the 
most tremendous chastisement that has ever been given 
to that diplomacy of which Hazlitt said that its bark is 
worse than its bite. No man was ever so merciless to 
vfipti. But Fox's peace was not the peace of isolation. 
He had all the Whig hatred of the Bute tradition and 
that Peace of Paris which had made his father so notorious. 
He held that England should play an active and a con- 
stant part in Europe in the maintenance of the ^ balance of 

261 




252 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

power." "By the balance .gf..jjfljver he meant, not that 
every state should be kept precisely to its existing frontiers, 
but that no state should be allowed to become a danger 
to the rest." To him, as to other Whigs, there was one 
dynasty which appeared to aim at that supremacy. The 
Bourbons seemed to him the "bad sleepers" of Europe. 
He saw their handiwork whenever troubles arose, and 
he thought the vigilance of their ambition must be en- 
countered by a diplomacy as constant, and as vigilant. 
This view made him as anxious as Chatham had been for 
a Russian alliance, it made him indignant that a French 
attack had been invited by the policy which distracted our 
energies and spent our resources in the American quarrel, 
it made him support strongly Pitt's action m Holland in 
1789, and oppose as strongly Pitt's Commercial Treaty in 
1786. France, he argued, was our Jnfiyitabk^.CDemy ; for 
behind every Cabinet at Versailles there were the master 
forces of Bourbon ambition. 

That Fox carried this view to an extreme point in his 
opposition to the Commercial Treaty, and that Pitt and Shel- 
burne formed a more enlightened judgment, may readily be 
admitted. But his view of the French system of foreign policy 
was not unreasonable. The two great French Ministers 
under the Bourbon regime in Fox's lifetime were £|(oiseuI 
(1763- 1 770) and Vergennes. Choiseul's whole aim bgid been 
to strengthen France for a war with England, which he re- 
garded as certain, and with that object to build up within 
the Austro- French alliance a combination of Bourbon powers. 
The renewal of the family compact was a concrete example 
of his policy. Vergennes, who became foreign minister in 
1774 risked and finally ruined the finances of his country in 
opposition to Turgot's advice, because the American War 
gave a favourable opportunity of attacking England. These 
things and, in particular, the disingenuous conduct Ver- 
gennes had practised towards England were still fresh in the 
minds of English politicians when Vergennes reversed his 
policy with the idea of forming an Anglo-French opposition 



FOX'S POLICY IN 1792 253 

to Russian expansion in the East of Europe, and the Com- 
mercial Treaty was made. ?px's ^Hcjrjiad been to make 
diplomatic connections in order _ to ..oialiojti^n . . Engjand's 
position in E urope, ai\d to preserve her from ^p nyessity of 
a standing army. That position he thought to be threatened 
by the power which had been uniformly hostile, since he 
knew anything of English politics. There loomed up per- 
petually before his mind the spectacle of a restless, hostile 
France, marking her progress through alliances, combina- 
tions, defections, and intrigue by the chart of a constant and 
unalterable ambition. 

With the Revolution this spectacle disappeared. The 
B ourbon policy w as gone, however much of the Bourbon 
spirit of warfare still hung about France. Fox recognised at 
once that the Revolution had laid the spectre which had 
haunted his dreams for so many years. Writing on July 
30, 1789, to Fitzpatrick he said, " If you go without my 
seeing you pray say something civil for me to the Duke of 
Orleans whose conduct seems to have been perfect, and tell 
him and Lauzun, that all my prepossessions against French 
connections for this country will be at an end, and indeed 
most part of my European system of politics will be altered, 
if this Revolution has the consequences that I expect" That 
the Revolution was to leave France a constant force on the 
side of morality and moderation in European politics was an 
expectation events were very soon to dispel, though, with 
the exception of her conduct in Avignon, Revolutionary 
France was not a warlike France before she was provoked. 
That Fox was literally correct in believing that the Bourbon 
policy was over, events were to prove within six m^inthit. 
The chief illustration of that aggressive policy which \vu\ 
aimed at creating a solidarity of anti-English intereslH tuul 
been the family compact. In January 1790 there wa» a 
dispute between England and Spain over the ntntun: of tlwj 
English settlement of Nootka Sound on Vanc/yuvcr'i* hlatui. 
If Revolutionary France had continued the diplomatist; tm/ii- 
tions of Bourbon France, the family oumy'dCi would l»av« 




254 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

been carried out, and there would have been war 
England. But the National Assembly did not agree to 
execute that instrument and Spain conceded Pitt's demands. 
There was a party in the Assembly that wanted war with 
England, the aristocratic party which was concerned for the 
interests of the French monarchy. With the majority of the 
Assembly there was open repugnance to a step that would 
have seemed to imply continuity of the foreign policy rf a 
discredited dynasty. Fox may have been right or he may 
have been wrong in regarding Bourbon France in 178/85 
the inevitable enemy, and in opposing war with Revolution- 
ary France in 1792. To speak of his ''amazing vagaries" is 
to overlook the Revolution which had burnt up along, with 
the rubbish and emblems of the old order, the family compact 
which held the Bourbons together. 

The truth is that if any moral was to be drawn from that 
doctrine of the balance of power which had inspired Fox's 
suspicions of France before 1789, it should have prompted 
Englishmen to see danger in a very different quarter in 1792. 
Bourbon France had been a danger to the balance of power 
because she adopted certain principles of foreign policy idiich 
threatened the independence of other nations. But no prin* 
ciples could be imagined more directly subversive of the 
rights of nations and of the established order of Europe than 
the principles on which Austria and Prussia acted when they 
invaded France after the declaration of Filnitz and the 
Brunswick manifesto. Their pretensions to interfere in the 
internal affairs of France were accompanied by very formid- 
able designs of aggrandisement, for they aimed at nothing 
less than the partition of France. When Pitt argued for war 
in January 1793, in order to preserve the balance of power 
from French aggression. Fox asked very justly why he had 
not interfered to protect that same principle from Austr^ 
and Prussia six months earlier. That Pitt knew the aims of 
the allies is clear from Grenville's letter of November 7, 1792, 
to his brother, *' I bless God that we had the wit to keep our- 
selves out of the glorious enterprise of the combined armies, 



FOX'S POLICY IN 1792 255 

and that we were not tempted by the hope of sharing the 
spoils in the division of France, nor by the prospect of 
crushing all democratical principles all over the world at one 
blow." It is difficult to imagine any single event which 
would have given such a shock to the whole system of 
Europe as the partition of France, which, amongst other 
things, would have made Austria and Prussia into maritime 
powers, and yet Pitt's Cabinet were ready to see it con- 
summated not merely in indiflference but with something 
very much like sympathy. When France drove out her 
enemies and began to cherish dreams of conquest of her own, 
her ambitions were treated as immediate dangers. If despotic 
powers liked to dismember one kingdom, and to start out to 
dismember another, the vigilant policeman of Europe could 
watch undismayed and undispleased. 

Fox saw clearly the dangers of t^ ^e Coalit ion. He saw 
first of all that it i mplied a right of in tmerenceHiat was fatal 
to the independence of nationsT Tie saw also that it could 
only act as a lash on the spirit and the wild terrors of France. 
His policy was not a policy of neutrality, but a policy of 
mediation. He wished England to mediate in order to 
protest against a dangerous doctrine, to save France from 
an unjust war, and Europe from the scourge of bex. retalia- 
tions. " His opinion was, that from the moment they knew 
a league was formed against France, this country ought to 
have interfered ; France had justice completely on her side 
when we by a prudent negotiation with the other powers 
might have prevented the horrid scenes which were after- 
wards exhibited, and saved, too, the necessity of being 
reduced to our present situation. We should by this have 
held out to Europe a lesson of moderation, of justice, and of 
dignity, worthy of a great empire ; this was his opinion with 
respect to the conduct which ought to have been adopted, 
but it was what ministers had neglected. There was one 
general advantage, however, resulting from this; it taught 
the proudest men in this world that there was an energy in 
the cause of justice which when once supported, nothing could 



256 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

defeat. Thank God, nature had been true to herself; tyranny 
had been defeated, and those who had fought for freedom 
were triumphant!" It is curious to observe that Pitt did 
attempt in a tentative manner, and very late in the day, to 
carry out some scheme of this kind. He produced in 1800 a 
paper containing instructions to the British Minister at St 
Petersburg, sent at the end of the year 1792, to interest 
Russia to join with England in a joint mediation to avert the 
evils of a general war. When this paper was made public 
Fox approved cordially of the instructions but remarked 
very justly that, as they were never acted on and the paper 
never communicated to France, they were a dead letter.^ 
Pitt, by expelling Chauvelin three weeks later, cut short the 
experiment. 

Pitt had not acted in the autumn of 1792 to prevent the 
invasion of France. By the end of 1792, England wa& no 
longer interested merely as a European power in the 
struggle on the continent, for two definite questions had 
brought her into direct controversy with France. The first 
was the opening of the Scheldt and the danger to Holland, 
the second the decree of November 19. It is doubtful whether 
cither of these questions, even if France had refused satis- 
faction or explanation, would necessarily have involved war. 
The opening of the Scheldt affected both our rommefcial in- 
terests and our treaty pledges to Holland. As far as our com- 
mercial interests were concerned it must be noticed first that 
Pitt himself had been ready in 1784 to encourage Joseph IL 
to insist on the opening of the Scheldt, and secondly that by 
the Peace of Vienna which closed this very war the Scheldt 

^ Nfr. Lecky makes an extraordinary comment on this speech in voL vii. p^ 
166 of his History of England in the XVIIItk Century, He says that though 
tills paper was never communicated to France its proposab were identical with 
tho^ which were announced in the correspondence with Chauvelin. Fnnoe vai 
already at war with Prussia and Austria, and what Fox had propoied and wbil 
Pitt had suggested in this paper was the active use of the good offices of Fnglf"** 
tu hrin^ that war to an end, and not a mere assurance that England herself would 
not meddle with the domestic concerns of France. In the correspondence Mr. 
Lccky refers to, the English Government disclaimed any project of i 
but tnaJe no offer of mediation. 




FOX'S POLICY IN 1792 257 

was finally declared open. As for our treaty pledges, Holland 
did not call upon us to make war, and, at the very time war 
broke out, n^otiations were actually proceeding under the 
sanction of Lord Auckland, our representative at the Hague, 
between the Dutch and Dumouriez. The second point at 
issue was t;bedecree^of, November 19, a general decree promis- 
ing " fraternity and assistance to all peoples w ho shall wish to 
recover their liberty " adopted in Kaste al!er"the discussion 
of a particular appeal for help from the people of Mayence. 
Maret explained to Pitt on December ist that the decree 
merely applied to Powers at war with France. Pitt replied 
that, if such an interpretation could be given, its effects would 
be excellent The decree itself, like so many decrees adopted 
by the Convention, was not a deliberate declaration of the 
Government, but one of the extravagances of a democracy in 
long clothes ; it was the motion of a private meml>er, 3is- 
approved of by many of the more experienced members, and 
about as responsible as the motion which was adopted to 
change the name of Bordeaux. Unfortunately the intrigues 
of French emissaries in English politics gave it an exagger- 
ated importance in the eyes of the English Government. 

The question between Fox and the Government was not 
whether these things were worth a war, but whether it was 
worth while to try to prevent a war, or if thatAScerc impossible 
to try to define and limit it by q^Qtiatipn. Fox proposed in 
December that a Minister should be sent to Paris to treat with 
the provisional Government. His motion^ was negatived 
without a division. But there seems some evidence that Pitt 
was very near acting upon it, for the Record Office contains the 
imperfect draft of two despatches intended for someone pro- 
ceeding as envoy to France, referred by Mr. Oscar Browning 
to December 1792. The strongest proof of the wisdom of 
Fox's policy is seen in the recapitulation of the events just 

^ ''That an humble address be presented to his majesty, that his majesty 
will be graciously pleased to give direction that a minister may be sent to Paris 
to treat with those persons who exercise provisionally the functions of executive 
government in France, touching such points as may be in discussion, between 
his majesty and his allies and the French nation." 

17 




258 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

preceding the outbreak of war. On December ist Pitt had 
an interview with Maret, in which he urged that either Marct 
or someone else should be authorised by the French Govern- 
ment to confer with the English Government Pitt clearly 
thought that if this were done peace was still possible. The 
French Executive Council refused to replace Chauvelin, who 
was obnoxious to Pitt, as their agent for conferring with the 
English Government. Pitt, on this, refused to speak with 
Maret on state affairs. But on January 22nd the French 
Government, in reply to Chauvelin's complaints that his 
position was intolerable, decided to recall him, and sent Marct 
as Charg^ d'Affaires to London to prepare the way for 
Dumouriez, who after treating with the Dutch was to come 
to London to treat with the English Government What 
Pitt desired on December ist, as a possible means of 
averting war, was thus accomplished on January 22nd. 
Unhappily before Maret had arrived, and before Pitt knew 
of the decision of the French Government, Chauvelin had 
been ordered to leave England. 

Of Pitt's anxiety to avoid war there can be no doubt in 
the mind of anyone who has read the account of those 
momentous months in ^monVs Life of MareL Few stories 
are more tragical than that story of the fluctuating hopes of 
peace, with Pitt holding out against the Court, his Cabinet, 
and public clamour : Fox and Sheridan using all the influence 
of their sympathy with the Revolution to persuade Chauvelin 
to urge his Government to retract the November De cr ee; 
Maret untiring, hopeful, and adroit in the cause of peace: 
Chauvelin, a vain coxcomb, full of airs and pompous imper- 
tinences, busy with stupid intrigue and the fancied triumphs 
of his arts, admiring his own awkward and fatal follies : Le 
Brun dreading and disliking war, overborne by Brissot and 
the stronger Girondins : the very storms of the sea interfering 
at the most critical moment to dislocate the most hopefid 
negotiations. Of the part Chauvelin played in those months 
it would be diflicult to speak too harshly. After doing all the 
mischief in his power whilst he still represented the French 




FOX'S POLICY IN 1792 259 

Government, he did two fatal things on leaving England. On 
January 23 the Government ordered him to leave England 
in eight days. He left the next day, twelve hours before the 
despatch came from Paris announcing that Maret was 
appointed to succeed him and instructing him to give this 
news to Grenville. Chauvelin received this despatch on his 
way to Dover, and ignored it, and he and Maret passed each 
other in the night. Maret arrived on January 30, to find 
himself hampered by Chauvelin's conduct in disobeying the 
orders he had received. Chauvelin hurried to Paris, and by 
inflaming the opinion of France provoked the declaration of 
war. It was just when the man whom Pitt had trusted had 
been sent to London and the man whom he justly suspected 
had been allowed to resign by the French Government that 
war broke out^ 

To understand exactly Fox's attitude in the winter of 
1792-93 it is necessary to notice Talleyrand's proceedings 
in London. Chauvelin represented all the chimerical ideas 
of the Gironde; Talleyrand the sanity and foresight of 
Danton. Talleyrand was in constant touch with the Oppo- 
sition, and all his efforts were directed to restraining the 
aggressive and crusading spirit in French politics. Dr. 
Robinet has placed Talleyrand's intimate connection with 
Danton beyond all reasonable doubt.' Dr. Robinet goes 
further and thinks that Danton himself was in communi- 
cation with Fox and Sheridan during his visit to England 
in the month of August 1792.^ It was Danton's policy to 
enlist on the side of France against the Coalition all the 
sentiment that was friendly to France or unsympathetic 
to the allies. If this object was to be effected, the doctrine 
of the armed propaganda must be abjured. Hence Danton 
and Talleyrand looked with impatience on all the wild 
language of such men as Brissot and Clootz. Later, it is 

^ It was the opinion of so good a judge as Maret that even at the last moment 
war might still have been avoided. Bat note Malmesbury*! letter to Elliot, January 
21 » 1793 ' *' War is a measure decided on, but don't proclaim it in the North 
before it is known in the South." * Danton imigri^ pp. 12-16 and 27a 

' Ibid, p. 29. This is only inference, see Bailee's Ikmian, 




262 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

to open up with England in May 1793, n^otiations that were 
divested of their slender hopes of success by the revolution 
of June and the fall of Danton. 

Fox's policy can therefore only be condemned by those 
who condemn the policy which Pitt professed to follow. 
The question to be decided is whether his own conduct or 
the conduct Fox advised was the more likely to give effect 
to the opinions Pitt expressed when he disclaimed all inten- 
tion of interfering in the internal affairs of France, when he 
avowed a strict neutrality in the quarrel between the Coali- 
tion and France, and when he argued that England should 
do her best to keep out of the war. Pitt clearly thought 
peace possible on December i, he presumably thought peace 
desirable to the end. All his hopes indeed and the use of 
his special gifts were bound up in the maintenance of peace, 
for foreign affairs were a field of politics in which Pitt had 
suffered his only great reverse. When war breaks out it is 
easy to point to provocations on the other side. Pitt, it will 
be admitted, had provocations in the opening of the Scheldt, 
in the decree of November, in the extravagant welcome given 
to private Englishmen at the Bar of the Convention, in the 
activity of the French emissaries in England, and in the lan- 
guage used by French orators about the English Government, 
almost as bitter and as reckless as Burke's language about 
the French nation. The one act which was not a provoca- 
tion was that on which Pitt retaliated by sending Chauvelin 
out of the country. But if a man thinks war a misfortune 
for his country the provocations he has received are not the 
measure of the wisdom of his action. He has to show not 
that he yielded to a just resentment in declaring war, bat 
that he spared no effort to save his country from what be 
regarded as a disaster to his country. What is to be said of 
a Minister, who thinking war a calamity, having set in 
motion one process for preventing war by his message to St 
Petersburg, having left open another avenue of escape in 
his indirect communications with the French Govemment 
and the conversations between Dumouriez and the Dutch, 



FOX'S POLICY IN 1792 263 

made war certain before his own expedients to avert it had 
been tried by expelling Chauvelin and offering what was 
construed into an affront to France. The dispute in the 
Nootka Sound affair had dragged on for six months. The 
first decree that Pitt complained of had been adopted on 
November i6, and by January 24 Pitt had taken the fatal 
step. Yet there had not been wanting during those weeks 
hopeful signs of peace. If Pitt had been strong enough to 
withstand the King and to negotiate directly with the French 
Government, he would have given his own policy a fair trial 
under conditions that were at any rate not hopeless. 

There was one theory on which Pitt was right in his 
action and wrong in his profession, and Fox was wrong in 
both. It was the theory that war with a Revolutionary 
Grovemment on any pretext was a duty just because it was 
a Revolutionary Government Burke, Windham, and their 
supporters who held this theory denounced the proposal to 
treat with bloodstained Ministers, and blushed for every hour 
of peace as a longdrawn infamy to England, the recreant 
Meroz in the day of Europe's battles. If their theory was 
right, Pitt was right in expelling Chauvelin. But judged by 
the same theory he was wrong in inviting the French 
Government through Maret to send an authorised agent to 
London, for in doing so he recognised the authority of the 
men whom Burke wished to treat as savages. If that theory 
was right Pitt was right in refusing to define his quarrel 
with France, for in doing so he distinguished the French 
Government from all other Governments, and made so purely 
domestic a concern, as the execution of their king, the occasion 
of war. On the same theory he was wrong in professing 
neutrality and an indifference to the internal affairs of France, 
and in holding any communications with Maret The best de- 
scription of Fox's proposal is that it would have distinguished 
Pitt from Burke, that it would have distinguished a war for 
specified objects from a war of conquest, that it would have 
distinguished England's cause from the cause of the crowned 
freebooters, whose armies France had driven back across her 



264 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

frontiers, and that it would have left open all those doors to 
peace which Burke would have closed for ever. The truest 
comment on Pitt's final act is that it could only be defended 
on the assumption that his own policy throughout had been 
wrong, and that Burke's policy throughout had been right 

All Fox's efforts in the winter of 1792-93 were directed 
to two points. The first, to secure a definite negotiation 
with France, the second that our quarrel should be distin- 
guished from that of the Coalition by a specific statement 
of our grievances and our objects.^ 

^ Tenns of the Amendment, moved on Febnuuy 12. That we leuii, with 
the utmost concern, that the assembly, who now exercise the powers of govern- 
ment in France, have directed the commission of acts of hostility against the 
persons and property of his Majesty's subjects, and that they have actually 
declared war against his Majesty and the United Provinces ; that we humbly beg 
leave to assure his Majesty, that his Majesty's fiiithiul Commons will exert them- 
selves with the utmost zeal in the maintenance of the honour of his Majesty's 
crown, and the vindication of the rights of his people ; and nothing shall be 
vranting on their part that can contribute to that firm and effectual support wbidi 
his Majesty has so much reason to expect from a brave and loyal people, m 
repelling every hostile attempt against this country, and in such other exeftioos 
as may be necessary to induce France to consent to such terms of pscification as 
may be consistent with the honour of his Majesty's crown, the security of hii 
allies, and the interests of his people. 

Tex/ of Resolutions moved by Mr, Fox on Februcay 18, 1793. 

I. That it is not for the honour or interests of Great Britain to make war 
upon France on account of the internal circumstances of that country, for the 
purpose either of suppressing or punishing any opinions and principles, howeipcr 
pernicious in their tendency which may prevail there, or of establishing among 
the French people any particular form of government. 

II. That the particular complaints which have been stated against the 
conduct of the French government are not of a nature to justify war in the first 
instance, without having attempted to obtain redress by negodation. 

III. That it appears to this House, that in the late negodation between hii 
Majesty's ministers, and the agents of the French government, the said minium 
did not take such measures as were likely to procure redress, without a niptore, 
of the grievances of which they complained ; and particularly that they never 
stated distinctly to the French government any terms and conditions, the 
accession to which, on the part of France, would induce his Majesty to pc tJt f ue 
in a system of neutrality. 

IV. That it does not appear that the security of Europe, and the rights of 
independent nations, which have been stated as grounds of war agpinst Fmoe, 
have been attended to by his Majesty's ministers in the case of Poland, in the 
invasion of which unhappy country both in the last year, and more ieoently» the 




FOX'S POLICY IN 1792 265 

He saw that if these measures were not adopted, England's 
war with France would degenerate into a war for a counter- 
revolution. He had not long to wait for the dismal fulfil- 
ment of his warnings.^ 

most open contempt of the law of nations, and the most unjustifiable spirit of 
aggrandizement has been manifested, without having produced, as &r as appears 
to this House, any remonstrance from his Majesty's ministers. 

V. That it is the duty of his Majesty's ministers, in the present crisis, to 
advise his Majesty against entering into engagements which may prevent Great 
Britain from making a separate peace, whenever the interests of his Majesty and 
his people may render such a measure advisable, or which may countenance an 
opinion in Europe, that his Majesty is acting in concert with other powers, for 
the unjustifiable purpose of compelling the people of France to submit to a form 
of government not approved by that nation. 

^ Pitt's speech, July lo, 1794. " If the honourable gentleman meant that the 
object of the war, as expressed by ministers, was the destruction of the Jacobin 
government in France, he for his part should readily admit that it had been dis- 
tinctly avowed : that it was still distinctly avowed, and could not be receded from : 
• . . The object was neither to be heightened by new grounds of success, nor 
relinquished from any temporary failures in the means of its attainment: and 
was one which he would never depart from as absolutely necessary to the 
security, and preservation of this country and her allies. It was not a war 
of extermination, as the honourable gentleman had called it, nor was its object 
the conquest of France, but the emancipation of that unhappy country: not 
the destruction of an enemy, but the overthrow of an usurpation hostile to this 
and every other government in Europe, and destructive, even to the last ex- 
tremity of ruin, to France itself. It was impossible to forget that this was the 
object of the war, as distinctly avowed in his Majesty's speech, and recognised 
by the House in a variety of proceedings, taken after solemn debate and de- 
liberate consideration : no man of common candour could therefore misrepresent 
it. Let the right honourable member suppose that all France was united in 
support of the present system, yet he would be forced to declare his detestation 
of it : nor could any argument lead him to believe, that a numerous and en- 
lightened people willingly submitted to the most severe and sanguinary despotism 
that ever stained the page of history. It was impossible to put an end to thb 
most furious tyranny, without destroying the present government of France* 
The manner in which the honourable gentleman had mentioned this country, 
and her allies by the appellation of despots, Mr. Pitt remarked, was a mode of 
speech so exactly copied from the French, that he was even surprised that the 
honourable gentleman used it, who, though sometimes their apologist, had often 
been obliged to reprobate their actions. Who were those that the honourable 
gentleman joined with the French in calling despots ? The regular powers of 
Europe, Great Britain and her allies, united in one common cause, using the 
most vigorous endeavours to open to France the means to work its own safety, 
and for restoring order and prosperity to that distracted country." 



f 



268 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the falling of the Bastille it was the D eclaration of Pil nitz 
that made him tremble for humanity. The one event spilt 
the first blood in a revolution which transfigured France, 
and made her liberation crimson. The other was the first 
murmur of the fear and arrogance of palaces, to bf^foUowed 
by the Brunswick Manifesto and the invasion of France. 
In the midst of these events Burke saw danger to civilisation 
nowhere but in the new and s^ange shape of a lawless 
political enthusiasm, which he pictured as Anarchy marching 
through Europe. What Fox feared was not this new-bom 
hope of freedom and happiness, but the much older monster 
of conquest and ambition, which had already laid its grasp 
on distracted Poland, and now threatened with the same 
fate distracted France. If Burke foresaw the Empire, Fox 
foresaw the Holy Alliance, and the Congress of Aix-la- 
Chapelle. The principles Burke hated and dreaded became 
ultimately the foundation of Western Liberalism. The 
dangers Fox dreaded have been a constant menace to 
national freedom. Burke triumphed; the nation listened 
and believed; he led a rabble, and won the unwelcome 
admiration of the King. In the Revolutionary wars of 
twenty years, which made and unmade states and frontiers, 
and left a black and riven Europe, first one side and then 
the other fought in the name of the right to settle the 
destinies of foreign nations. Fox was beaten and all but a 
small remnant of his life was spent in preaching to men 
whose ears were deaf. But for a century the Liberals of 
Europe have embraced the great doctrine of natiQZialisin 
which he first maintained, and for the greater part .of. that 
century England chose as the settled basis of her goHcy 
the wisdom which the wise men of Fox's day rejected. 

The French Revolution opened the century in which 
nationality as a principle won its place in political opinion. 
Fox championed that principle fearlessly in its first clash 
with the old world. It was largely his vivid sense of 
nationalism, his jealous belief that E ngland had a ve ry 
special civilisation of her own, that made him insist from 




FOX AND NATIONALISM 269 

the first, that England's interests were bound up with the 
triumph ofUie^doctrineth^^ 

and develop its own civilisation was sacred. He looked on the 
struggle of France to maintain her just rights against Europe, 
in the spirit in which Englishmen afterwards looked on the 
struggle of Europe against Napoleon, and English Liberals 
watched the struggle of the captive nations to break through 
the prison bars of the Mettemich system. The spirit that 
made English Liberals welcome the independence of Greece, 
the regeneration of Italy, the emancipation of Belgium, and 
all the revolts of the nineteenth century against foreign rule, 
made Fox withstand the claim of Europe to force France 
back again under the heels of a fallen despotism. It is not 
curious that the doctrine he fought for fell strangely on the 
ears of polite Europe. No century had been quite so busy 
as the eighteenth century with the royal traffic in states 
and peoples. In that incessant hum, peoples might be 
thankful when they were instruments and not immediate 
plunder. When the Emperor wished to exchange Lorraine 
for Tuscany, or the Netherlands for Bavaria ; when crowned 
heads arranged to divide Poland or Sweden; when do- 
minions were rounded off here, and kingdoms severed there, 
kings and ministers might haggle and bai^^ain and cheat, 
the populations that changed masters were so much random 
merchandise. Such an Areopagus^ was scarcely likely to 
give much of a hearing to the claim of Revolutionary 
France to rearrange her own aiTairs, a claim denied to 
old oligarchies now made by an insurgent people flout- 
ing thrones, and principalities, and powers. The partition 
of Poland was typical of the spirit of the eighteenth 
century. The making of Italy of that of the nineteenth. 
Fox belonged to the nineteenth. To understand in how 
chilling and ungenial an air he maintained the sentiments 
that half a century later were the sentiments of England, 
it is only necessary to read the letters of Grenville in 1792 
and to see there not a continental despot but an English 
statesman, wishing well to the expedition on which the 



272 CHARLES JAMES POX 

her neighbours, who woishippcid..tfae,X<udoiis^g2E!^s^ mon- 
archy; religion and established^ order. The RevoliitioD 
was an atrocity, which outn^[ed eveiy l iving king, j^ pom 
St James's tp St Petersburg. TTie'waunSetween Europe and 
France was in this view a civil war. France was an out- 
law, and the armies of Europe were the implacable Eumeni- 
des, hunting a parricide government Until that punish- 
ment was complete and the overthrown orders restored, the 
stable civilisation of Europe was in danger. The war was 
waged to oblige France to conform to a civilisation from 
which she had fallen away, to her own misery and shame. 
It is the basis of this argument that the internal civilisation 
;of a state is a proper subject for the interference and con- 
trol of other nations, who believe their own to be better. 

There was the same great conflict of ideas in Frendi 
politics. The Revolution opened with declarations of the 
most scrupulous respect for the rights and sensilnlities of 
nations. By the Fourth Article of the decree on peace and 
war, the Constituent Assembly had renounced in May 1790 
all ideas of conquest, and all designs of in t er f erence with 
the liberty of any people. To this mood there succeeded 
the fiery propagandism of the Girondins, the wild deliriums 
of universal liberation, the mischievous fantasies of men 
like Brissot who, in M. Aulard's language, ** munidpalisait 
TEurope," a phrase that is not inappropriate to Burke. 
Robespierre, who afterwards defended this view of foreign 
relations against Danton, warned Brissot at that time that 
no one liked armed missionaries and that the first im- 
pulse of nature was to treat them as enemies.^ The best 
expression of liberal sentiment comes from a man whose 
flexible conscience learnt to condone wholesale conquest: 
it is to be found in Talleyrand's paper of November I793i 
published by Dr. Robinet among the "pieces justificatives" 
to his Danton Amigri, '' On a appris, enfin, que la veritable 
primatie, la seule utile et raisonnable, la seule qui convienne 

^ Aulard, l^tudes et le9ons sur la Revolution frmn^aise. " La dipkmuuie dn 
premier comitcf de salut public." 




FOX AND NATIONALISM 278 

k des hommes libres et ^lair^s, est d'etre m&itre chez soi 
et de n'avoir jamais la ridicule et funeste pretention de 
r^tre chez les autres ." Riir||^ *ff ?Bi"^ ^^'^ tO hfi *Tftn JTl fr** 
tampions of armed propagfanda and also in the apologists 

L-^ ^r XT-.-^Jn^— »-- -— ^ i:^^ ^^A. XT ^1^ ^^— — .^-. 



later of Napoleon s aggrandisement Napoleon was conquer- 
i ng, but It wa s t he triumph of a crusade ; he was crushing the 
in dependence of other peoples, but h^ waa givingr th<>fn as^t- 
of infinitely better laws and institutions than they h ad ever 
known. His armies swept through Europe, but though 
t&ey carried fire and sword from country to country, they 
carried too the energies of a just and sublime civilisation^ 
the arts of a new and diviner government Burke wished 
E ngland to be t he soldier of c iviti^t ion, ^nd fcf .^'"^ 
ciyilisatiqn was tihe jcdld-jawJer. T he Burkes of Fre nch 
demociacy wished France^to be the. .aokJior pf civ ilisation^ 
and for them civilisation m^mxt.the new. order. 

What again was the apology for the Mettemich system 
but the same argument, that the foreign civilisation imposed 
on Austria's dominions was better than any national 
civilisation the inhabitants of those dominions could create ? 
Mettemich and the statesmen and diplomatists of Eiux)pe 
who were accessories to his policy in 1815, and those who 
defended his system, in the agitations and tumults in which 
it was at last to perish, did not admit that they were 
wantonly repressing freedom and just aspirations. They 
argued that they were taking the best measures for the 
happiness of the very populations who fancied themselves 
the ill-used victims of dispositions that were in truth bene- 
volent. They would have said in Burke's language that 
their subjects had a manly, regulated liberty, that civilisa- 
tion was an order they must learn to accept and not try 
to create; that their headstrong impulses would bring 
infinite suffering upon themselves, if they were not governed 
as subject peoples: they could only really be free when 
they were kept in leading strings. There is nothing in the 
world so unselfish as tyranny. 

There will always be men who are disposed to postpone 

18 



274 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

national freedom to the interests of material order, and who 
shut their eyes to the boundaries of nationality, in their 
passion to stamp a particular character on unwilling peoples. 
Their language in one century was the language of a mystic 
crusade, bringing the wrath of Heaven upon a rebellious 
nation ; in another the less glittering tones of pseudo-scientific 
prose, the arguments of men to whom all government is a 
function of police, and the life of a nation a mere symmetry 
of administrative excellence and precision. A hundred 
years after Burke, there have been men who thought they 
had found a lye to wash out all the hues and colours that 
distinguish nations. To such natures the only test is the 
mechanical, and judged superficially by that test many 
a nationalist movement is disappointing enough. It is to 
the credit of the Liberals of 1848 that they answered such 
arguments boldly with the belief that self-government is 
better than good government It is the essence of the 
Liberal temperament that it believes a freedom which goes 
in rags to be preferable to all the gracious luxuries of slavery; 
and that it holds the varieties and discrepancies of civilisation 
to be better for mankind than a prim monotony of drilled 
perfection. It would be wrong to underrate the obstacles 
of prejudice and fear, the memories of the Revolutionary 
wars which the Liberals of the nineteenth century had to 
overcome, when they maintained that the Niag^a of national 
sentiment should be used to drive the wheels and engines of 
civilisation, against the argument that those engines were 
designed for no other purpose than to keep that sentiment 
under. But what were their difficulties compared with those 
Fox faced in 1792? His generation knew nothing of the 
moral forces of this new element in politics. The Liberals 
of 1 848 had behind them a tradition of popular reforms snd 
the spectre of democracy had lost half its terrors. The 
Whigs of 1792 were not even agreed that any measure of 
Parliamentary reform was desirable. The Liberals of 1848 
had seen one great act of national emancipation carried oat 
by the joint efforts of three European Powers in a distant 




FOX AND NATIONALISM 275 

sea. In 1792 there had been no people in Europe released 
from foreign rule to accustom men's minds to the idea of 
nationality; the European monarchs were not allies but 
enemies of the claim of France, and the country where the 
experiment was to be tried was not distant, but at her very 
doors. In 1848 there was no immediate menace to the 
interests of any English class, and England could breathe 
freely whilst she played the part of the friend of freedom. 
In 1792 the governing classes of England saw their own 
doom in the resounding ruin of the old order in France, and 
behind the figure of Burke with his hand uplifted to heaven 
there mustered and trembled all the creeping things in 
politics, their eyes fixed on their quit-rents and their mono- 
polies, and all the treasures and luxuries of earth. 

It was an easy thing again for Wordsworth to write the 
indignation of a high-minded Spaniard in 18 10, when 
Napoleon said he was conquering Spain for her good : it ;was 
not an easy thins: for Fox to write the indignation of a l^gh- 
minded Frenchman in 1792 wlien Burke called on Jgyrope 
to conquer her for her good. The high-minded Spaniard 
was our ally; the high-minded Frenchman was our enemy. 
The civilisation of the high-minded Spaniard was outwardly 
order; the civilisation of the high-minded^ Frenchman was 
outwardly disorder. On the Duke of Brunswick's banners 
there gleamed all the emblems the rulers of England loved ; 
on Napoleon's all the emblems they hated. The bravery 
that withstood Napoleon when he seemed invincible is the 
solitary good thing in a generation of political disaster 
to England. To understand Fox's bravery in 1793 we 
must forget all that we know now of the &evolution» the 
bad and brittle system Burke hoped to restore, and the 
splendid tenacity of France^ and rememhpr.alnna that the 
governing classes of England not only longed to destroy the 
Revolution but thought that task simple. We know to-day 
that there was no instance in which the claim to control a 
foreign nation was less justified, if judged by the material 
tests of order and happiness, than the instance in which 




276 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

Burke urged that claim, and that there was no instance in 
which tj^ere was so much to fortify a claim, which Liberals 
can never acknowledge, as in the case of Napoleon's aggres* 
sions; the England of Fox's generation forgot the back- 
ground in the blood and fire that they saw before them. 
Unless all these things are kept in mind, it is impossible to 
appreciate the clear-eyed courage with which Fox maintain ed 
that it mattered not whether the inte malcmnsa 35a of 

France was good or bad; it wag thi> natinp^| gyjl^yatifin 

of France, and it was therefore the.. y*g^^* *'^*'fTF*^ of 
Europe to hold it sacred.^ There have been men enough 
since 1792 to sneer at respect for nationality as a mere 
ribbon of idle and trivial sentiment. Fox had to withstand 
not merely selfishness or ambition or a thin-lipped cynidsm 
but the Protean shapes of a panic so tremendous that oon- 
quest, partition, the breaking of treaties, and infinite .war 
were looked upon even by honest men as mere scarecrows 
compared with the danger that threatened humanity if 
France was left to make her Revolution unmolested. 

In such an atmosphere of terror it needed no little dis- 
cernment to understand that a challenged civilisation most 
trust to something else than the sword to protect itself from 
a moral invasion of ideas. Burtce and Windham thought 
that England must wage a war h Fautrance on the itjpaa of 
the Revolution. Fox saw that what ever else the sw ofd 
could decide, it could not decide the justice or the social 
beneficence or the endurance of the Revoluti onary civi lisatjon, 
any more than the pillory or the dungeon could clefSmine 
where truth lay in the quarrels of doctrine. The Revolutio n, 
as Burke saw, in so far as it summed up new hopes a nd 
notions of justice, was not local just because it w as spirit ual 
That was the reason, Burke argued, for treating it by the 
concerted methods of a European pdHceT J:« ox die wjthe 

* "lie thought the present stale of government in France anything ntherthan 
an object of imitation ; but he maintained as a principle inviolable that the 
government of every independent state nvas to be settled by those who were to 
live under it, and not by foreign force." — Feb. I, 1793. Sfeeckts^ vtlL v. pw 21. 



FOX AND NATIONALISM 277 

orofounjdec.. moral that for thi s reason it w as all the more 
important to treat it as an opinion which could only be 

■ ■ -mill II _.--■— ~ .•>-^*--"*' * I I ■ I I ,!■ ■ I — — ^^1— w— ,^^L 

beaten out of the field, by creating a public opinion w iich 
wo uld prefer something else. On this reasoning the e xcesses 
of the R evolution were an argument against making war upon 
it, for the mo re unattr active its ideas the les^ ips tl^^'^aBg er 
o ii moral con tagionT^Burke^ though t those very excesses an 
argument fox war. The best comment on Fox's belief was 
the readiness with which the English nation accepted out 
of sheer horror the iniquitous oppression Pitt and Dundas 
instituted in England and Scotland. No sword could avert 
the ideas of the Revolution from England half as successfully 
as the reflected glare of the red skies of Paris. 

I n the panic of I7Q^. men traced all the j ma r d iy of 
France to the first concessions made W^flie "ki ng, an d they 
argued that, to protect civilisatio n^ its champions mus t stop 
aU reform, and attack with, rarhinp anH hlnHp^^n »f|g| ideas 
t hat spread confusion, ^gg^arg^ed that the true protection 
was to be found in competing with those ideas for popular 
allegiance. He saw, that is, in ^^ R ,^Qluti0l]li ft irrflSOn fo*' 
gran ting, not jFor withholding reforms just bgcj^us^ hg.saw 
that if the Revolution made a univers al appea l, the rulers of 
Ewrppe must give ^hnr p^^pl^'' ^ /^fY*'i;e*i»f/%«^ »t%ai- ^u^ ^^^^a 

tojgreserye, more precious in their eyes than all the pros- 
pects the Revolution oflered. To make war upon the 
Revolution was not to convince men that its ideas were illu- 
sory, to redress their grievances was to convince them that 
th eir o wn laws were worth pres erving. If the Revolution 
was esdl, it was to be kept from other countries by op- 
posing to it the spiritual ^n^^rgigg nf ^ frt^ p^pk ?"^^- 
ested in maintaining a civilisatiou they yr^^ pypiid..ty^ pall 
their^pwn* If it was attractive it was important to teach 
the nation that peoples had as much reason as their rulers 
to dread it. Napoleon's profligate ambition which attacked 
the things which the people of Spain prized, and not only 
their rulers, ultimately raised up against his military 
aggression the very barrier which Fox saw rightly to be 



278 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the only barrier against the moral invasions of the Revolution. 
The essence of this argument was a profound belief that the 
highest human interests demanded that the com£Stiti2P ^f 
the ideas of civilisation should be peaceful and not warlike. 
Fox saw that the necessities and the mor al standards of 
humanity, and not the violence of Revolutionary or reaction- 
ary warrior would decide where either civilisation should 
prevail. This conspicuously modern idea has often vanished 
from men's minds, when they cast about for some high 
principle on which to condone or defend actions that were 
due to the much less deliberate impulses of passion and 
revenge. The wars of the French Revolution showed how 
truly Fox had judged. Of all the Powers that drew the 
sword on France in 1792, the only one that gained a single 
advantage to compensate the losses of that struggle acted 
precisely on Fox's principle. When Stein abolished serfdom 
in Prussia, the motive power behind that reform was the 

"• ... ...«•• .•>>^ . ^•m^^m^mr I intern va^BHBMBVI^ 

appreciation of the great truth that Prussia must have a 
civilisation which the ordinary Prussian thoufiil^itjworth 
while to defend. The sword itself did not save a single 
community from the moral invasion Burke dreaded. Spain 
resisted that invasion when it became aggression, because 
Napoleon attacked something the p6ople of Spain cherished. 
Prussia ultimately resisted it because Stein gave the people 
of Prussia something they cherished. Belgium chose French 
government and persisted in that choice right through the 
Revolutionary wars, just because the Belgians had much moie 
reason to like French civilisation than Austrian. Prussia left 
the Code Napoldon in the Rhenish Provinces in 1814 just 
because it was better and more congenial to the population 
than the best institutions Prussia could give them. Reform, 
so far from capitulating to the Revolution, was the only way 
of resisting it. 

It may be argued that the very failure of Burke ^ proj ect 
proved the correctness of his principle^ that the civilisation 
of revolutionary France was infinitely better than the 
civilisation of feudal Europe, that the Revolutionary wars 




FOX AND NATIONALISM 279 

sprea d what was the high e r civilis ation, and that war there- 
fore did make the award, different though that award was 
from what Burke expected, between two civilisations. This 
is surely a superficial view. What made Italy, Belgium, and 
Greece recover their freedom was the fact that the peoples 
of Italy, Be lgium, and Greece found a ci^isation they pre- 
ferred to the civilisation thiey had been forced to five^ un^er. 
What made the cause of the Revol ution tri umph in France 
after the Restoration, was t he fact that its o^lisation satis- 
fied, whilst the restored civilisation did no t satisty'"^te 
aspirations of the people. It was spontaneous choice and 
not compulsion that ultimately settled these questions. 
Amongst free peoples, or peoples capable of freedom, it 
is that moral supremacy which decides in the long-run 
whether a particular nation chooses one civilisation or 
another. The France of Rousseau or Voltaire had moral 
inspirations for Europe, not less vivid or lasting than those 
of the France of Napoleon. It is not her prowess on the 
battlefield that has given France her proud eminence in great 
causes. She had led the mind of Europe long before the 
Jacobin armies overran her frontiers, and the first rapture 
excited by 1789 is the best support of Mirabeau's argument, 
that a peaceful revolution would spread democracy more 
than any war. 

There was another important respect in which Fox saw 
far more clearly than did most of his contemporaries into 
the consequences of Pitt's policy. He hated and fought the 
whole plan of making war on the Revolution, instead of on 
the aggressions of France, by means of subsidised coalitions, 
because he knew that by that plan England was definitely 
ranged, for a much longer period than most men imagined. 
against freedom, not only in France but in Europe. Pitt, 
who had Turgot's zeal for improvement, had no attachment 
to freedom, and he looked upon foreigfn politics as the art of 
carrying on the government of Europe, just as he looked upon 
domestic politics as the art of carrying on the government of 
England, with the minimum of friction or disturbance, or of 



280 CHARLES JAMES FOX 



concrete hardship to the governed. Under Pitf s 
land'sj:ausejnjlHf ^pg was es g^"^^'^^ V ^he cauap of <!ynagtig«^ 
apd only casually and r;^ryly the g^^*^ of freedonL £uu 
w ished it to be the cause of freedom^ and only the cam e of 
dynasties when djoiastieg wer e protecti^^ g fi eedom. It was 
the resulto? the course that Pitt followed that for thirty years 
England pursued a policy in Europe of which it is not an unfair 
description to say, that the c hief plorv of hef forpyrg pQllcy 
eiti^v^^2n]*^ifitrri '" f^^^n^s^gr It. The first consequence of 
Pitt's policy and Pitt's subsidies was the second partition of 
Poland, and there was a bitter truth in Fox's satire that in 
crushing Kosciusko the King of Prussia was carrying out 
the spirit of the policy to which Pitt committed England.^ 
Pitt himself had as little respect as the King of Prussia for 
the rights or the sensibilities of peoples. He pr o posed 
without the slightest provocation to destroy the Republic of 
Genoa and to add Genoa to the swollen possessions of the 
Hapsburgs, and, when this design was abandoned from fear 
of Russian jealousy, the annexation of Genoa to Sardinia 
was substituted for it He proposed to place Belgium 
against its will under Holland, and this scheme was prized 
by his successors as one of the chief treasures of his states- 
manship. In all his dispositions for battle against the 
Revolution and against Napoleon, he proceeded on the 
assumption that the peoples of Europe might be n^lected, 
if the sovereigns of Europe could be bribed or threatened 
into war, and that the cause of social order was the cause of 
dynastic expansion. 

The first fruits of this policy were seen after 1814. 
It had been Pitt's leading idea that nothing was a crime 
if it aggrandised Austria as a rival to France. After 18 14 
the foreign policy of England was the foreign policy of 
Austria, the foreign policy of the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle^ 
and the rehabilitation of precarious tyranny. Plunder, and 
robbery, and the breaking of faith were not only condoned but 
encouraged, where they were the acts of men who had some 

* See Fox*s S/^eiAes, voL v. p. 404. 



FOX AND NATIONALISM 281 

immediate interest in maintaining their inheritance or their 
lawless acquisitions against the murmuring hopes of freedom. 
An English fleet helped to batter down the will of Norway 
and to compel her to take Bernadotte as her master. In 
Hanover torture and the wheel were restored without a 
protest At Madrid, at Naples, and at Turin, the English 
Minister was Metternich's loyal ally, in his attempt to suffo- 
cate constitutional government and to expand the authority 
of Austria. When the Bourbon convolvulus stretched once 
more round the bruised ambitions of constitutional freedom 
in Naples and in Spain, no English Minister intervened 
either at Naples,^where intervention was easy, or at Madrid, 
where it was difficult, to protect populations from the worst 
effects of that blighting and deadly embrace. Encouraged 
by Austria, and not discouraged by England, the Ferdinands 
set to work with blithe alacrity to destroy the Constitutions 
that had been promised to their subjects, whilst English 
diplomacy was used, happily in vain, to induce Sardinia to 
accept Mettemich's dangerous alliance. The policy on 
which England and Austria agreed in 1814 was Pitt's policy 
of making Europe a continent of garrisons. It was in Fox's 
spirit that a generation later English diplomatists were all 
eager to make Europe a continent of peoples. 



CHAPTER XII 

FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 

Pitt's policy outwardly contradictory, but essentially consistent. He 
thought restoration of monarchy meant the reduction of French 
power. Fox opposes the policy as — (i) imjust interference, (2) 
aggrandising France. Peace of Amiens. Difference between 
Fox and Pitt in second war. Pitt looks to the East and Fox to 
Europe. The great Coalition and Austerlitz. Fox and V^dham 
on military system. Last effort to make peace with France. 
Charges against Fox's patriotism. 

PITT was no devotee of the idea of a crusade, for if he 
had none of Fox's respect for the sensibilities of 
peoples, he had none of Burke's overwhelming passion for 
the established order in France. His one preoccupation 
was the deliverance of English interests frooL the. jneoaoe 
of French supremacy in the Low Countries. But though 
he did not share the passions Burke in voked^ fift ^tiought 
he might use them : popular panics or popular enthusiasms 
were forces that statesmen who were subject to neither 
could make their instruments, and Pi tt knew well how 
to play on both. If his utterances and conduct were taken 
in order, nothing could be more inconsistent or erratic than 
Pitt's policy throughout the war. When the war broke out. 
Pitt denied that it was a war for effecting a domestic re- 
volution in France. By January 1794 three important things 
had happened. The French had been driven out of the 
Austrian Netherlands; they had formally superseded the 
November decree offering assistance to foreign peoples by 
a decree disclaiming interference with their neighbours. 
(April 13, 1793,) ^nd they had made private overtures 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 283 

through Maret to the English GovernmenL Yet the King's 
speech began with a declaration, " we are engaged in a 
contest on the issues of which depend the maintenance of 
our constitution, laws, and religion, and the security of all 
civil society." The war was at this stage a war against 
revolutionary principles in France. Fox was beaten by 
two hundred and seventy-nine to fifty-nine votes in his 
amendment to the address, " To state the determination of 
this House to support his Majesty in the measures necessary 
to maintain the honour and independence of the Crown, and 
to provide for the defence and safety of the nation : but at the 
same time to advise his Majesty to take the earliest means 
of concluding a peace with the French nation, on such terms 
as it may be reasonable and prudent for us to insist on. 
That whenever such terms can be obtained we trust that no 
obstacle to the acceptance of them will arise from any con- 
siderations respecting the form or nature of the Government 
which may prevail in France." By December 1795 the 
Government had completely changed its tone, and was 
ready to listen to proposals, and by October 1796, (after 
the break-down of some indirect negotiations with Bar- 
thdlemy,) it announced that it had actually taken steps for 
a negotiation. Yet in the interval between 1794 and 1796 
nothing had happened to make it easier or safer to 
treat: France was back again in Belgium, her armies had 
won Holland and the mountain passes of Spain and Pied- 
mont, and Prussia had fallen away from the Coalition. The 
negotiations collapsed, and when next a proposal came from 
France in 1799 it was rejected, on the ground that it came 
from a revolutionary Government, though it was precisely 
with the same Government that the Peace of Amiens was 
signed the following year. 

But behind all these contradictions there was a perfectly 
consistent policy, Pitt wanted to reduce France to her 
original limits ; and though he had none of Burke's feelings 
about an unanointed Republic, he made the re-establishment 
of monarchy his end, because he came to identify that 




284 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

re-establishment with the restoration of the old limits of 
France. After seven years of war for this object, Pitt was 
obliged to relinquish it and to support a peace that left 
France infinitely more powerful than she was in 1793 or 
1794, when he talked of a war of extermination. But until 
that day of exhaustion came he fought for his one end, 
the evacuation of Belgium, by every means in his power. 
He used the ambitions and the rapacities of the large states, 
and the weakness of the small. He stimulated and tried 
to direct the territorial appetites of Austria ; he flung sub- 
sidies to the Emperor and to Prussia ; he bullied Denmark, 
Tuscany, and Genoa; he threatened Switzerland; he was 
ready to help the ^migr^ in recovering their privil^fes, 
or to help the Powers to appropriate French territory.* The 
Quiberon expedition and its sequel were to Fox an act 
of meanness and folly, to Burke an act of treachery, to 
Pitt they were merely an experiment Pitt thought 
that an alliance with the Royalists and Constitutionalists 
might help him to re-establish monarchy in France : when he 
found the ^migr^s' support worthless, and their pretensions 
exorbitant, he abandoned the whole project of making their 
cause his own. Fox saw in that alliance an unmistakable 
sign that our war was a war of internal interference ; Burke 
saw in it a sacred pledge to the men whose lost rights he 
wished to see restored. To Pitt it was neither of these 
things ; it was one of various methods of attacking France, 
and a method to be employed without adopting all the 
implications of Burke's fiery spirit of crusade, or promising 
the ^migr^s restitution in a France still intact 

As he used his material in France or in Europe, so Pitt 
used and moulded his material at home. The more the 
public was terrified by the idea of domestic sedition, the more 
resolute for war was its temper. The repression of domestic 
liberty was in this sense a measure of defence ; it inflamed 

^ It was this energy in bribery that made France regard England as fdme 
damn^e of the Coalition. Between March and September 1793 ^^^ made ten 
difTerent treaties. 

( 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 285 

the sense of danger, and thereby invigorated the passion for 
war. Till war came Burke's wild appeals were an embarrass- 
ment, for Pitt still hoped to preserve peace. When war had 
broken out, Pitt saw in the spirit Burke had roused the 
very energy that he wanted to sustain the national deter- 
mination. His oracles were not the oracles of Burke, but he 
was well content to have at his back a people who accepted 
them. There came a time when the pressure of want, and 
the continual prospect of defeat on the continent, and the 
collapse of all Pitt's prophecies of rapid triumph created a 
demand for peace. Pitt, more indefatigable than the public, 
found it necessary to humour the popular temper by talking 
of his readiness to negotiate, but in his conduct of the 
negotiations his chief care was to make the right impression 
on the public mind at home. He used the first negotiations 
through Malmesbury to discover the true condition of things 
in France, and to convince his countrymen that France 
was still incurably warlike. In 1795 he thought the 
recovery of Belg^ium still possible, and that all he had 
to do was to rekindle the popular enthusiasm at home, 
which misfortune had gone far to extinguish. In 1796 the 
difficulty was no longer the state of the popular mind at 
home. The exhaustion of England seemed complete, and 
Pitt brought himself to face the necessity of ceding Belgium. 
Pitt's policy is therefore quite consistent and intelligrible. 
It was summed up in his own quotation, 

"Potuit quae plurima virtus 
Esse, fuit : toto certatum est corpore regni." 

Pitt believed that it was fatal to England to leave France 
in possession of Belgium,^ a contingency English statesmen 
had always regarded as a supreme danger. To restore 
France to her frontiers was the sovereign end of his policy ; 
the means to that end were the restoration of monarchy, 
the co-operation of allies whose minds were only occupied 

^ The ultimate settlement of the question — the neutralisation of Belgium — was 
foreshadowed by Talleyrand. 



286 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

with their several ambitions, the intimidation^ and if 
necessary the extermination of small states, the creation 
at home of a stubborn and merciless temper. France 
must be fought until she was beaten or England was 
exhausted. As long as one Power, and that the great 
maritime Power, kept up the struggle, France was still 
mortal. In 1796, and again in 1801, he thought England 
was too much exhausted to continue the struggle. The 
various discrepancies in Pitt's own account of his policy, 
and the contradictory things he did are thus all reconciled 
in one supreme purpose; they all belong to the tenacity 
with which he clung to a project he held to be indispensable 
to the national safety. He failed, because France was more 
resolute than he thought, arid' ISecause he could only bring 
into the field against her national enthusiasm the forces 
of a worn-out system, and the arms of sovereigns incapable 
of combining in any cause but that of plunder. 

To Fox this spirit of a war against the^evolutionary 
principles, the spirit Burke inflamed by his ceaseless Jqopreca- 
tions on democracy^ and Pitt encoura^d in his declarati ons 
in Parliament, was the mortal enemy of his o wn c ountry. 
The claim to control the internal arrangements of France 
he regarded as unjust, fatal to all sound policy, and in par- 
ticular most menacing to English interests. If that claim 
were once acknowledged in the case of France, what was 
there to prevent its application to the case of England? 
If England once sanctioned the principle on which.. the 
continental sovereigns made war on France^., shcjmuld 
ally herself definitely with a concerted efioct to ^^ ppfiess 
reform, and no one of Fox's temperament or sympathies 
could consider such a contingency as anything but a cata- 
strophe for his country. This was the dominant issue in 
Fox's mind in the war that began in_ij rQ2. and e n ded in 180 0^ 
for amidst all the miscellaneous motives that crowded into 
the popular enthusiasm for war, such as the hopes of spoil 
and the desire to retaliate on the aggressions of 1780, the 
passion for a righteous crusade had a distinctness and a 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 287 

grandeur of its own. It was against this principle, which he 
regarded as another expression of the general spirit of 
tyranny, that exhibited itself in the domestic legislation 
of 1 794, that Fox fought with the veliemence he displayed 
in combating the force of reaction in other fields. It was 
the object of his several motions from 1792 to 1797, to 
e^ablish the principle that the form of government in France 
should^ not be an obstacle to peace. The importance he 
attached to this" principle has been shown in a previous 
chapter, but it is worth while to reproduce two extracts from 
his speeches. 

" In his mind, a war against opinions was in no one 
instance, and could not be, either just or pardonable. A 
war of self-defence against acts he could understand, he 
could explain, and he could justify ; but no war against 
minions could be supported by reason or by justice : it was 
drawing the sword of the inquisition. How could we blame 
all those abominable acts of bloodshed and torture, which 
had been committed from time to time under the specious 
name of religion, when we ourselves had the presumption to 
wage a similar war ? Who would say, that all the blood that 
had been spilt from the fury of religious enthusiasm, might 
not have been made to flow from the pure but misguided 
motive of correcting opinions, when we ourselves thus dared 
to dip our hands in the blood of our fellow-creatures, on 
the mere pretext of correcting the errors of opinion ? We 
must change all the doctrines that we had been taught 
to cherish about religious persecution and intolerance; 
we must begin to venerate the authors of the holy 
inquisition, and consider them as pious and pure men, who 
committed their murders for the beneficent purpose of 
correcting the heresies, which they considered as so abomin- 
able, and restoring the blessings of what they conceived 
to be the only true system of Christianity. In the same 
manner, the present war against opinions was to be entitled 
to our esteem, and its authors to be venerated for their 
morality. In this war they also were great conquerors; 



X 




288 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

they had lost towns, cities, nay kingdoms, they had squan- 
dered a hundred millions of money, they had lost one 
hundred thousand men, they had lost their allies, they had 
lost the cause of the emigrants, they had lost the throne 
to the family of the Bourbons, — but they had gained a 
set of rather better opinions to France." ^ 

''Sir, there are many persons who think and lament 
that the peace is a glorious one for France. If the peace 
be glorious for France, without being inglorious to England, 
it will not give me any concern that it is so. Upon this 
point, the feelings and opinions of men must depend in 
a great measure upon their conceptions of the causes of 
the war. If one of the objects of the war was the restora- 
tion of the antient despotism of France, than which I defy 
any man to produce in the history of the world a more 
accursed one ; if, I say, that was one of the objects of the 
war, why then, I say, it is to me an additional recommenda- 
tion of the peace, that it has been obtained without the 
accomplishment of such an object My undisguised opinion 
is, that if the coalition for the restoration of the Bourbons 
had succeeded, the consequences would have been amongst 
all the kings of Europe a perpetual guarantee against all 
people who might be oppressed by any of them in any 
part of the world. All countries, therefore, must be benefited 
by the failure of such a project, but none more so than Great 
Britain. To the people of this country the consequences 
would have been fatal. Refer to the page of history. Had 
the coalition in the reign of Charles I. established such a 
guarantee, would the liberties of the people have been 
preserved against the house of Stuart, or would Hampden 
have gained the immortal victory he did ? To come lower 
down : had such a guarantee existed in later times, would 
the Revolution of 1688 have been able to maintain itself? 
I say, therefore, that there could not have been any greater 
misfortune to the world than the success of that coalition 
for restoring the Bourbons to the crown of France.*' • 

^ Speeches^ vol. v. p. 496. ' Ibid, vol. vi. p. 459. 




FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 289 

But Fox was not only fighting for the recognition of the 
right of a nation to determine its own form of government. 
He was fighting, as he believed, for the defence of England 
against France. To talk of Fox as the victim of an anti- 
patriotic bias and a statesman who always thought his 
country in the wrong, is to ignore all his speeches on the 
French war. No man s poke mo re bi tterly of the crim es 
of France. A'statesman w'ho' described the state of France 
from 1792 to 1795 as a state of tyranny intolerable beyond 
that of any, perhaps, that ever was experienced in the 
history of man, can scarcely be accused of passing lightly 
over the darker side of the Revolution. As for Fren ch 
ag^andisement abroad, Fox denounced it with a force 
aad siocerity that men who condon^ .the seizure Ql Roland 
could only simulate. 

'' Sir, in all this, I am not justifying the French — I am 
not striving to absolve them from blame, either in their 
internal or external policy. I think, on the contrary, that 
their successive rulers have been as bad and as execrable, 
in various instances, as any of the most despotic and un- 
principled governments that the world ever saw. I I think 
it impossible, Sir, that it should have been otherwise. It 
was not to be expected that the French, when once engaged 
in foreign wars, should not endeavour to spread destruction 
around them, and to form plans of aggrandizement and 
plunder on every side. Men bred in the school of the house 
of Bourbon could not be expected to act otherwise. They 
could not have lived so long under their antient masters, 
without imbibing the restless ambition, the perfidy, and the 
insatiable spirit of the race. They have imitated the prac- 
tice of their great prototype, and, through their whole career 
of mischief and of crimes, have done no more than servilely 
trace the steps of their own Louis XIV. If they have over- 
run countries and ravaged them, they have done it upon 
Bourbon principles. If they have ruined and dethroned 
sovereigns, it is entirely after the Bourbon manner. If they 
have even fraternised with the people of foreign countries, 
19 



290 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

and pretended to make their cause their own, they have 
only faithfully followed the Bourbon example. They have 
constantly had Louis, the grand monarque, in thdr eye: 
But it may be said, that this example was long ago, ajtid 
that we ought not to refer to a period so distant True, 
it is a distant period as applied to the man, but not so 
to the principle. The principle was never extinct; nor 
has its operation been suspended in France, except, 
perhaps, for a short interval, during the administration of 
Cardinal Fleury; and my complaint against the republic 
of France is, not that she has generate new crimes, not 
that she has promulgated new mischief, but that she has 
adopted and acted upon the principles which have been 
so fatal to Europe, under the practice of the house of 
Bourbon." ^ 

But what was the best way of defending English 
interests ? Fox was afraid, as he jSatf L himself^ of Fren ch 
power, but not of French principles. Windham, who joined 
the Cabinet in 1794, was much more afraid of French 
principles than of French power.' Pitt saw all the advan- 
tages to be gained from making the war a struggle with 
the Revolutionary order in France. He was proscribing 
the French Government, and he was enlisting all the 
emotions of horror and indignation that Jacobinism had 
excited in the population at home. To Fox this course 
was objectionable, not only on general grounds, but 
also because it united France ; it was a war, not on 
her possessions, but on her independence. c ^lSg ing 
not merely her ambition or her pride, bu t the very in- 
stinct of self-preservation. It was at the moment of 
France's greatest danger, that the military power was 

* speeches, vul. vi. p. 391 (Feb 3, 1800). 

' " In his idea, the conquest of Britain by Louis xvi. would bf no 
have been a calamity equal to the propagation of French prindplet. In the 
case, our persons might perhaps have been safe ; aU morality, order, and reUpon, 
would be totally overthrown in the other. This would be a war /rv ems ei 
focis to the greatest extent." — WindkanCs Spackes^ voL i. p. 231 (Feb. i, 
1793). 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 291 

bom which was afterwards used so disastrously for 
Europe.^ 

Fox always held that France had been made a great 
military nation by her enemies, who had called out the 
tremendous enei^ies of a national resistance.' If Europe 
threw France on her own resources, France would win. 
And though Fox sometimes mistook the temper of the 
French Government, he measured much more justly than 
Pitt her strength and endurance, and the increase of wealth 
the Revolution brought. Pitt himself was exceedingly well- 
informed by his spies, but he preferred to believe the Royal- 
ists, who were always predicting a counter-revolution in 
France, or the paralysis or the repentance of the French 
people. Fox protested very emphatically against the policy 
of co-operating with the allies as champions of social order. 
He argued that English interests were not identical with the 
interests of the other powers, and he saw that the European 

^ X793i 23 Ao{lt. D6cret of Convention. Art. i. D^ ce moment jusqu'a celui 
ou les ennemis anront ^t^ chass^ du territoire de la r^publique, tons les Francais 
sont en requisition permanent pour le service des arm^ 

Les jeunes gens iront au combat ; les hommes mari^ fbrgeront les armes et 
transporteront les subsistances ; les femmes feront des tentes, des habits, et 
serviront dans les hopitaux ; les enfants malleront le vieux linge en charpie ; les 
viellards se feront porter sur les places publiques pour exciter le courage des 
guerriers, la haine des rois, et le d^voument k la r^publique. 

^ " The noble lord next alludes to the principles and power of France. For 
my own part, I never had much dread of French principles, though I certainly 
have no slight apprehension of French power. Of the influence of France upon 
the continent, I am as sensible as any man can be ; but this is an effect which I 
do not impute to the peace but to the war. It is the right honourable gentleman 
himself who has been the greatest curse of the country by this aggrandisement of 
France. To France we may apply what that gentleman applied formerly on 
another occasion— -we may say, 

Me Tenedon, Chrysenque, et Cyllan ApolUnis urbes, 
Et Scyron cepisse. 
He is the great prominent cause of all this greatness of the French republic. 
How did we come into this situation? By maintaining a war upon grounds 
originally unjust. It was this that excited a spirit of proud independence on the 
part of the enemy : it was this that lent him such resistless vigour : it was this 
that gave them energy and spirit, that roused them to such efforts, that inspired 
them with a patriotism and a zeal which no opposition could check, and no 
resistance subdue," — Speeches^ vol. vi. p. 463 (Nov. 3, 1801). 



292 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

sovereigns were very indifferent guardians of pubHc right 
He showed that they could not protect their own mis- 
governed possessions, Belgium and Italy, that their private 
schemes were far dearer to them than any common purpose 
of a European coalition, and that to take them into partner- 
ship in a crusade was to assume that governments, whose first 
preoccupation was the partition of Poland, had all Burke's 
austere and disinterested reverence for the cause of order 
and religion. 

For the consequences of such a coalition he was terri- 
fied, and justly, as the events showed. A little more than 
a year after the declaration of war, Pitt had to confess, 
in asking the House of Commons to agree to a subsidy 
of ;C2, 500,000 to the King of Prussia, that nothing short 
of bribery would keep this zealous champion of social 
order and public right in the field against the Revolution. 
When the money had been paid, the King of Prussia took 
advantage of an ambiguous expression in the treaty to keep 
the troops, for whose hire he had been paid, inactive on the 
Upper Rhine, and, not a month after the transaction had 
been completed, he marched those troops, that were meant 
to crush France, to Warsaw, to crush Kosciusko, and make 
sure that he would get his fair share in the second division 
of Poland. In two years from the outbreak of the war, 
Prussia had not only deserted the Coalition, but concluded a 
treaty with the outlawed French Government, in which she 
arranged to hand over certain of her provinces west of the 
Rhine. From that day down to the signing of the Peace of 
Amiens, Prussia took no part in the war against France, and 
she was once actually at war with England herself as one 
of the Northern Powers concerned in the disputes of 1801. 
In August 1796 she made a general treaty with France 
providing for the cession of the left bank of the Rhine. 
Pitt had allied himself with Prussia to protect the cause 
of order from France; the only effect of that aDiance 
down to the Peace of Amiens was to make it rather easier 
for Prussia to complete her flagitious designs of robbery 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 293 

in Poland. It was on that object that the British subsidy 
was spent 

How did Pitt's policy fare in the case of the second great 
ally? Pitt was ready, not merely to ally England with 
Austria for the protection of order, but to ag^pandise 
Austria by allowing her to receive annexations in Northern 
France, as well as Alsace, and in 1793 when the Allies 
began a war of conquest Pitt allowed Austria to treat Cond^ 
as Austrian territory. By 1794 Austria, in spite of English 
remonstrances, had abandoned the Netherlands, the only 
part of Austrian territory which England had anyjnterest in 
helping to defend. Six months later, Austria had withdrawn 
her troops behind the Rhine, and England had to evacuate 
Holland, and by 1795 Austria would certainly have re- 
linquished the struggle if she had not been stimulated by 
financial aid from Great Britain, and by the Russian offer 
of a large share in the spoils of Poland. It had been the 
assumption of Pitt's policy that Austria and Prussia had an 
equal interest with Great Britain in the war against the 
Revolution. Three years after the war broke out, neither 
of those Powers wished to fight France, and the reason that 
induced one of them to keep the field was not any sense 
of danger from France and French principles, but the 
attraction of robbery in the Easts Austria remained at 
war, but in spite of the Archduke Charles' great victory 
over Jourdain in August 1796, she agreed the next year, 
after Napoleon's successes in Italy, to make the Treaty 
of Campo Formio with France. That Treaty is the best 
comment on Pitt's policy of subsidising Austria and Prussia. 
Austria ceded her possessions in the Netherlands, though in 
1796 England had broken off negotiations with France on 
the ground that she could not in fairness to Austria agree to 
the French demand for Belgium. She was a willing accom- 
plice in as iniquitous a transaction as Napoleon ever com- 
mitted in the bargain over Venice; she showed that the 
Power Pitt wished to aggrandise as the defender of the rights 
of Europe, had not enough public spirit to act as the defender 



294 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

of the interests of Germany. An Emperor who sacrificed 
Germany to Austria was scarcely likely to postpone Austria's 
interests to those of Europe. Austria and Prussia had 
already shown that they were not merely willing but eager 
to divide the territory of European states as a more profit- 
able occupation than fighting France. The Treaty of Campo 
Formio was a Treaty in which Austria divided with France 
herself the spoil of Napoleon's victories. 

The same cause led to the collapse of the next great 
concerted movement against France, the combination be- 
tween England, Russia, and Austria in 1799. The first 
moment of success showed that whereas Russia wished to 
restore the original Governments in Italy, Austria was only 
thinking of extending her dominions. This difference 
paralysed the efforts of the allies, and made it impossible 
for Suvoroff to take advantage of the victory of the Trebia, 
which left France more exposed to attack than she had been 
since 1793. The result was a compromise s^^reed to between 
Russia, England, and Austria. As soon as the French 
armies were destroyed, Austria was to reduce the Italian 
fortresses; the Russians and Austrians were to conquer 
Switzerland and to invade France, and a combined British 
and Russian force was to attack Holland. This plan was 
dislocated at the last moment by Austria, who resumed 
her original scheme of trying to retake Belgium, in order to 
exchange it for Bavaria, and the campaign of the summer 
and autumn was ruined by a selfishness on her part which 
nearly amounted to treachery. Russia, the most zealous in 
the scheme of 1799, fell away, only to learn in the descent 
on Holland that the Duke of York's incapacity was almost 
as embarrassing as Austria's bad faith. In the last stru^^e 
against Napoleon, before the Treaty of Amiens, Pitt only 
induced Austria to keep the field by promising her part of 
Piedmont and further subsidies, on condition that she did 
not make a separate peace with France before the end of 
February 1801. On Christmas day 1800, the Emperor, find- 
ing Pitt could not save Vienna, agreed to make that separate 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 295 

peace, and by that peace, he ceded nothing that belonged to 
Austria, but a great deal that belonged to Germany. This 
was Pitt's stout bulwark against disorder and rapine. 

Fox's private correspondence, — ^the letters of despair, — 
puts it beyond doubt that he was absolutely sincere in the 
belief that Pitt's policy in the war meant ruin to England, 
and that his opposition had nothing in it of faction or self- 
interest It is probable that in one sense he overrated the 
influence of Pitt's Philippics against the French Government, 
and that he considered France to be more pacific than she 
really was. He wrote in August 1795, " Peace is the wish of 
the French, of Italy, Spain, Germany, and all the world, and 
Great Britain is alone the cause of preventing its accom- 
plishment, and this not from any point of honour, or even 
interest, but merely lest there should be an example in the 
modem world of a great and powerful republic." In 1796 
he certainly thought Pitt to blame for the failure of the 
negotiations, and convinced himself that Pitt was not in 
earnest in professing to wish for peace. The extravagant 
and intolerable demands of the French Government in 1797 
he interpreted as meaning that it was impossible for Ministers, 
who had proscribed the French Revolution and made them- 
selves so bitterly mistrusted, to make peace with any French 
Government. The most recent investigations into the 
negotiations conducted by Lord Malmesbury seem to confirm 
Fox's suspicions of Pitt's conduct.^ For the rupture of the 
negotiations on that occasion in 1797 the responsibility of the 
French Government is absolute and indisputable, and from 
that time down to 1799, when Napoleon's overtures were 
rejected, there were no motions for peace in Parliament, and 
Fox was living in retirement. 

In 1800 came Napoleon's overtures, addressed to George 
III., and the reply from Grenville which impeached the 
method of internal taxation in France, argued that the best 
and most natural pledge would be the restoration of that 
line of princes, which for so many years maintained the 

^ See DormaD, History of the Empire. 



296 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

French nation in prosperity at home and in consideration 
abroad, and assured Napoleon that His Majesty '' forms no 
claim to prescribe to France what shall be the form of her 
Government" From any point of view the actual language 
of the answer was singularly maladroit Whether it was a 
wise or a foolish thing to reject Napoleon's advances it was 
the height of impolicy to lecture France about her domestic 
arrangements, and the use Napoleon made of it was to 
publish the answer broadcast in France, and to put himself 
in the right with all his countrymen. The debate that 
followed is chiefly remarkable for the allusions Pitt and 
Dundas made to the negotiations of 1796 and 1797, 
allusions that confirmed Fox's contemporary account of 
their motives, and for the masterpiece of irresistible reason- 
ing and savage satire, in which Fox exposed the folly and 
the insolence of Grenville's language. By the terms of that 
answer Grenville had made the restoration of the Bourbons 
the object of the war, and the vitality of Pitt's illusions about 
the strength of the Revolutionary sentiment was shown 
by the hopes and plans he built in 1 800 on the assumption 
that a Royalist rising was probable in France, or a mutiny 
in the fleet at Brest. 

To understand Fox's opposition to Pitt during the war, 
we must further remember all the circumstances of the con- 
temporary domestic struggle.^ Pitt had been in the eyes of 
Fox and Burke the chief agent in protecting the rights of the 
Crown and the increased authority it had acquired during a 
disastrous fight ; and the whole theory of the responsibility of 
Ministers was still a doubtful issue. When this is remem- 
bered, it is easy to understand why the Opposition disliked, 
where they did not actually resist, projects for increasing the 
militia force and building barracks, whilst they encouraged 
expenditure on the navy. Fox never opposed any scheme 
for increasing the navy. In the American war he was the 

^ Fox certainly carried his criticisms of Pitt's mistakes to an unwise point in 
the crisis of the Mutiny in 1797. That mutiny, it must be remembered, in 
sidcring the parallel in chap, v., came after the Coercion Acts. 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 297 

most active and vigilant critic of the blunders and indolence of 
the Admiralty. In the French war he insisted very strongly 
on the necessity of reforming our method of construction, 
and said it would be "a most criminal neglect, if care was 
not taken to set on foot the building of new ships upon the 
improved construction, in every dock of the kingdom, and 
indeed wherever it was possible; and this, he trusted, would 
be the first measure of the new board of admiralty," * 

To Fox the navy was the great national service, but 
there were also obvious political considerations in the opposi- 
tion of the Whigs to the extension of military discipline, 
the survival of Blackstone's fear of the results of separating 
soldiers from the civilian population, and keeping them in 
distinct camps and barracks. Just as the Tories had always 
remembered Cromwell's military despotism, so the Whigs 
always remembered the army James 11. maintained without 
the consent of Parliament, Fox believed the navy to be 
our great security against invasion, but he also believed that 
Pitt's military schemes had some other end in view, or might 
be put to some other purpose than the defence of the 
country against its foreign enemies. 

All these apprehensions were very real to Fox, and they 
explain quite clearly his conduct between 1792 and 1800. 
To Pitt the great danger was the predominance of France 
in the Low Countries, and it was to averting that danger 
that ail his energies were directed. To Fox the great 
dangers were, first, the triumph of a reactionary coalition, 
secondly, the aggrandisement of France by a policy which 
laid her neighbours at her feet. How far were Fox's fears 
just i" He thought that if the Coalition succeeded in restoring 
the Bourbons, there would be a general conspiracy against 
domestic reform in every country, England was the only 
great Power that was governed in any sense by public dis- 
cussion. If the reactionary Courts succeeded in suppressing 
reform in France, would not every great reform movement 
in England have to struggle against the general opinion of 
' SptMhts, vol. r, p. 353. 



I 



298 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the Courts of Europe and not merely against the obstacles 
of the Court of St. James's? Fox certainly thought this 
would be the result, and the language of his public speeches 
was not more emphatic than the language of his private 
correspondence. "A greater evil," he wrote in June i79Sf 
" than the restoration of the Bourbons to the world in general, 
and England in particular, can hardly happen."^ At the 
end of the Napoleonic war England behaved with great 
magnanimity to France, but English diplomacy was at the 
best a passive partner with Metternich in repressing internal 
movements in the states of Europe. By that time the 
reforms introduced by Napoleon, under a system of conquests 
that was shameless and indefensible, had been too firmly 
established to be eradicated finally, but a general system of 
combined repression in 1793 or 1796 would have started 
under more promising auspices. Interference with England 
would have meant war, perhaps war with all Europe, but 
the fact that English opinion would have resisted any foreign 
pretensions, did not get rid of the obvious danger of 
associating the government of a free country with the 
tyrannical governments of the continent, in a stru^le against 
movements of internal reform. 

Fox had another end in view in his policy at this period 
He believed that in proscribing the French Government Pitt 
had thrown away his power of making peace. In these 
circumstances it was of the first importance to the countiy 
that there should be a set of statesmen who had no part 
in that proscription, otherwise the rancorous suspicions which 
had grown up between the two Governments might be a 
perpetual obstacle to peace. Fox probably exag g erated 
Pitt's obstinacy, for the statesman who had retreated fiooi 
his public challenge to Russia over Oczakow was not likely 
to make his personal pride an insuperable barrier to treating 
with the French Government. As a matter of fact, Pitt 
conquered the natural repugnance he must have felt to such 
a course when he thought England too exhausted to con- 

^ Correspondence^ vol. iii. p. 116. 



i 




FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 299 

tinue the war, and few men have shown more fortitude in 
facing humiliation than he showed in 1797. But Fox was 
right in thinking that, in the general atmosphere of im- 
placable hostility on both sides of the Channel, it was an 
advantage to England to have a party capable of taking 
office, which could treat with the Revolutionary Government 
without exposing the nation to a public indignity. 

Fox's opposition to the war between 1792 and 1800 
belongs therefore fundamentally to his whole career. He 
believed the policy of proscribing a foreign government was 
unjust, and dangerous to England ; he believed that in co- 
operating with the allies Pitt was provoking a contest with 
the supreme energy of a national spirit, without calling into 
play any passion more lasting or effectual than an inter- 
mittent dynastic interest; he believed that the method of 
resistance Pitt had chosen was a method that aggrandised 
France, desolated England, sanctioned and justified all the 
ideas of foreign tyranny, and demanded of his countrymen 
the sacrifice of their political freedom. To Fox it was just 
as much England's sovereign interest that that policy should 
be abandoned, as it was to Pitt that Belgium should be 
wrested from France. 

With the rupture of the Peace of Amiens a new set of 
issues presented itself to English politicians. The great 
moral principle that had been the battleground between Fox 
and Burke was no longer in question, for the right of 
France to settle her own afTairs, assailed in Grenville's 
despatch of 1800, had been formally recognised in the Peace 
of Amiens. In May 1803 the peace broke down, and 
England began her long and final struggle with Napoleon's 
insatiable appetites. That Napoleon's pretensions were in- 
tolerable, and his design of absorbing the whole power of 
Europe a policy to be fought by all the means of diplomacy 
and arms, was common ground amongst the leading poli- 
ticians of England. Fox's main difference with Addington 
in 1803 was that he thought the English Government had 
chosen the wrong ground for making war at a time when 




300 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

it was of the gravest importance to impress Europe that 
England's quarrel with Napoleon was not selfish, but a quarrel 
in which she was the protagonist of the freedom and the 
rights of Europe. By the treaty of Amiens we were bound 
to give up Malta to the order of St. John, when certain 
conditions had been fulfilled. By May 1804, when war broke 
out, these conditions had been carried out. But many things 
had happened in the interval. Napoleon, pursuing in peace 
the restless ambitions of the war, had committed a series of 
infamous aggressions on Switzerland and Holland, and the 
English Government were cognisant of his secret plan for 
attacking England in the East. 

The English Government, resting its case on these and 
other symptoms of Napoleon's hostility and aggressive de- 
signs, refused to give up Malta. Fox blamed this refusal. 
First of all he thought it morally indefensible. France had 
broken no article of the treaty, and we were retaliating 
on conduct we had not made a ground for war, by a 
distinct breach of our pledges. In the great speech in 
May 1803, in which Fox declared his views, he repudiated 
emphatically the idea that England had no right to go 
to war for the protection of Switzerland and Holland. 
He was always a much stronger adherent than Pitt of 
the doctrine of intervention in the affairs of Europe, and 
he held that independent powers were entitled, even if 
they were not bound, to interfere to prevent the destruction 
of a state by its neighbours. In the case of Poland, he 
thought England and France should have said to the three 
dividing powers, " You are doing an act, dreadful in itself, 
most dangerous in its consequences, most pernicious in its 
precedents, and although neither of us has any treaty or 
connection with Poland, we will prevent the division you are 
about to make of that kingdom." The only question to be 
considered was the practicability of intervention, and thoi;^ 
Fox did not think intervention would have succeeded in 
the case of Switzerland, he blamed the Government for not 
remonstrating strongly against Napoleon's infamous conduct 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 301 

That conduct he denounced in the strongest language. " The 
French government was bound by treaty, as well as by 
every principle of justice, to withdraw their troops from 
Switzerland, to leave that country to itself, even with the 
miserable government they had established in it, and to 
respect its independence. During their dominion in that 
country they had formed a constitution there utterly repug- 
nant to the principles, and odious to the feelings, of the 
people. The moment their troops were withdrawn, the people 
of Switzerland, by an insurrection founded on the truest 
principles of justice, rose and overturned that constitution. 
The French interposed to restore it, and, bad as the system 
was, the manner of their interfering to restore it, was, if 
possible, worse." ^ 

" Were I a master of the use of colours, and could 
paint with skill, I would take the darkest to delineate the 
conduct of France towards Holland. It certainly has been 
worse treated by her than any other country whatever. 
Holland has not only suffered all the evils of war which are 
unavoidable ; but when peace came, to turn that country, in 
defiance of a positive treaty with her, into a depdt for French 
troops, for the mere purpose, I sincerely believe, of making the 
Dutch pay the expence of maintaining them, was an act no 
less despicable for its meanness, than hateful for its atrocity." ' 

He regarded again with indignation Napoleon's imper- 
tinent demands for the expulsion of French royalists from 
England. " The demand that we should send out of this 
country persons obnoxious to the government of France, is 
made upon a most false and most dangerous principle. If 
it could be so established between the two states, that we 
should send away from England every person whom it 
might please the French government to call a rebel; and 
that reciprocally to please us, France should send away erciy 
person obnoxious to the ministers of this country ; and if it 
were possible to conceive the still further extension of this 
' Sptickts, voL vi p. 493 (M»y 34, 1803). 
> Ibid. vol. vi. p. 495 (Miy 24. '8o3)- 



/ 



302 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

principle among the other governments of Europe, evoy 
unfortunate man, who might either from sentiment, connec- 
tion, or accident, have been led or driven into some act 
of resistance, would be exposed to the same dangers, and 
incur the same penalties, as if he had been taken in actual 
arms against his country. The union of the two govern- 
ments of England and France would effectually preclude 
him from any asylum any where, and would hunt him from 
the face of the globe. To give up men of this description, 
therefore, would be the worst and basest act I am capable 
of conceiving. No man, I believe, is more a lover of peace 
than I am. No one, perhaps, — and I hope not to be sus- 
pected at this time of bearing hard upon an unfortunate 
and fallen family, when I say it, — no one, perhaps, politically 
speaking, has less respect than I have for the house of 
Bourbon; yet I am ready to declare, that for that family, 
nay, for the worst prince of that family, if among them 
there should be a bad one, I should be ready to draw 
my sword and to go to war, rather than comply with a 
demand to withdraw from him the hospitality to which he 
had trusted." ^ 

While the peace lasted. Fox certainly miscalculated the 
possibilities of war. It is curious to notice, in the light of 
the great commercial duel into which the struggle between 
England and France developed, the strongest reason he gave 
for expecting peace. In writing to Grey he remarked in 
December 1 802, " You may depend upon it that commerce, 
and especially colonial commerce is now the principal object, 
and upon these subjects they have a stupid admiration of 
our systems of the worst kind, slave trade, prohibitions, 
protecting duties, etc. However bad their systems may 
be France must in some degree recover her commerce, and 
the more she does, the more will she be afraid of war with 
England."' The difference between his view and that of 
Pitt's after the rupture of the Peace of Amiens, was not so 

> speeches^ vol. vi. p. 501 (May 24, 1803). 

' Afemotials and Corresfondcuce^ vol. iii. p. 38 1. 




FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 303 

much that he wanted peace, and Pitt wanted war, as that 
he disagreed with Pitt on the relative importance of the 
European and the Eastern struggle. Napoleon's attack was 
to be twofold. It was to be an attempt, partly by annexa- 
tion, partly by intimidation, partly by die creation of puppet 
governments, mocked with the vain names of separate 
peoples, and partly by a gigantic scheme of commercial 
exclusions to consolidate the continent of Europe against 
England. It was also to be an assault on our Eastern 
possessions, as the climax of a series of intrigues in Egypt. 
It is strange that Pitt, who kept a more constant eye than 
Fox on Napoleon's designs in the East, had been much 
less reluctant than Fox to cede Malta, in the Treaty 
arrangements of Amiens : Fox made no secret that he would 
have liked to retain Malta instead of Trinidad, whereas Pitt 
preferred the latter. Fox would have liked to keep Malta, 
or still more Minorca, because he thought the possession 
of one of those islands would strengthen England's position 
in Europe. But the very consideration that made him regret 
the loss of Malta made him deprecate a war in order to 
retain Malta after we had promised to give it up, for such 
a course, in his opinion, could only alienate Europe from 
her proper interest in our quarrel with Napoleon. By March 
1804 Pitt had made up his mind that Napoleon must be 
fought instantly, and that it would be fatal to play into 
his hands by giving up Malta in order to carry out a treaty 
which, he maintained. Napoleon had broken in spirit He 
defended this course by pointing to Napoleon's tricks for 
re-establishing himself in Egypt. Fox ai^ed that a Govern- 
ment that had submitted to every encroachment of French 
ambition, which had left Holland and Switzerland to their 
fate, and all the smaller states of Europe under the dominion 
or influence of France, could not hope to persuade Europe 
that the fate of Malta was an object of interest to Europe. 
Pitt saw in imagination the gorgeous plans Napoleon had 
formed for a great Oriental Empire, and the retention of 
Malta he considered indispensable if that project was to be 



304 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

defeated. Fox attached much more importance to the play 
of forces in Europe, and he was less dismayed by the 
prospect of danger in the East than by the prospect of 
Napoleon's mastery over a passive Europe. 

The speeches Fox made on May 24 and May 27 sum 
up his ideas of the right method of fighting Napoleon. The 
new Tsar of Russia was that strange combination of dreams, 
noble fancies, and religious terrors, Alexander the first: a 
sovereign who was to play almost every rdle in Europe, 
from quixotic Liberal to fanatical despot, whose diplomacy 
was one day to protect the hopes of constitutionalisn^ in 
Spain and Italy, and another to bind the prejudices of the 
continental courts with a mystical oath to the common 
cause of tyranny. Fox thought that England might find 
in Alexander's impulsive nature an ally in the struggle 
for the restoration of Europe. He proposed that the 
Government should accept Russian mediation between 
England and France, and though the motion was opposed 
by Lord Hawkesbury on behalf of the Government the 
same Minister declared, when Pitt had taken the same side 
as Fox, that the Government were ready to accept that 
mediation. " To obtain his good offices for the restoration 
of peace, is, in my opinion, of more real consequence to us, 
and to all Europe, than our possessing Malta under any 
circumstances. But is there not great probability of our 
being enabled, through these means, to preserve and con- 
solidate the peace on a much broader basis than that of 
settling the present dispute concerning Malta? Suppose 
that illustrious prince were not only to guarantee Malta, 
but were to enter into guarantees upon a still more 
extensive principle — to guarantee Egypt to the Turks, for 
instance. Would not that be worth a thousand Maltas? 
I go still further. By what I have heard of the Emperor 
of Russia, from a quarter on which I think I can rely, he is 
disposed also to look to the freedom of Switzerland and of 
Holland. I do firmly believe, that under his mediation and 
guarantee, undertaken upon a large scale, not only Switzerland 




FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 805 

and Holland, but perhaps even Spain, might recover their 
independence, and afford you thus an additional security 
for peace, or assistance in any renewal of the contest On 
these large and liberal principles of policy, other powers 
might be brought to concur with you ; whereaSj^ if you are 
seen to pursue nothing but your own sordid separate 
interest, you will obtain no cordial assistance, and you 
will conclude no solid pacification."^ 

This particular project failed, biit the speech is interest- 
ing as illustrating Fox's general ideas on the Napoleonic 
war. He believed that it was of the first importance to 
convince the peoples of Europe that their interests were 
identical with those of England, and that they were not the 
pawns of her ambition. Even the good wishes, he said, of 
the small states who could not give any immediate assbt- 
ance were not to be despised. To gain the public confidence 
of Europe it was necessary first of all, to put England con- 
spicuously in the right, in any quarrel or negotiation wjth 
Napoleon. Napoleon himself was as skilful as he was un- 
scrupulous, in so arranging his dispositions as to impress 
upon his own nation the conviction that war was not of 
his seeking. It was bad policy for England to do anything 
to confirm that impression in the minds of other nations by 
taking her stand on the wrong points, and by appearing to 
refuse any overtures for peace. Secondly the whole plan of 
stimulating, rather than reinforcing resistance to Napoleon 
was mistaken, for two reasons : first it looked as if England 
had her own private ends to serve in spending her millions 
in keeping Europe in a state of war ; secondly no resistance 
to Napoleon that was not spontaneous could really be 
effective. The system of subsidising the continent to make 
war against Jacobin principles, in the last great war, had in 
Fox's opinion almost annihilated the influence of England 
on the continent Fox had always argued that if France 
threw Europe on her resources, France would be beaten : 
the best hope for England lay in winning the confidence of 

> Spuches, voL v. p. 519 (May 24, 1803). 
20 



\ 



306 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the peoples of Europe, and in giving prompt assistance to 
any people whose self-respect revolted against Napoleon's 
pretensions. These ideas underlay his speeches and his 
letters, and they find expression in the Memoir written by 
Sir Robert Adair of his mission to the Court of Vienna 
when Fox was Foreign Secretary. " My first audience of 
the Emperor was on the eighteenth of June i8o6| for the 
delivery of my credentials, and my first confidential con- 
ference with his minister immediately followed. In this 
interview I laid open to him without reserve the whole 
course of policy intended to be pursued by the new 
Government. I told him explicitly that the system of 
forcing or persuading foreign powers, by means of subsidies, 
to enter into wars against their own conception of their 
interests, if ever it had been acted upon by England, was 
now effectually renounced ; but that at the same time, and 
particularly with reference to the present situation iA 
Austria, if she should feel herself in real danger from fresh 
exactions and injuries on the part of France, we were not 
the less determined to assist her in a defensive war ; and I 
did not neglect to repeat to him Mr. Fox's last words to 
me, ' that Austria did not appear sufficiently aware of her 
danger ' " (p. 1 3). 

The assumption of Fox's criticism of Pitt's policy was 
that that policy of enlisting a miscellaneous collection of 
motives, the rapacity of one power, the jealousy of another, 
the pride of a third, was really arming England much less 
effectually than an appeal to the single impulse of self- 
preser\'ation. Pitt had played on all the humours of the 
Courts : Fox wished to rely solely on the sense of danger 
and self-respect. Pitt, by arraying against France forces 
which were inadequate because they were various and un- 
certain, had laid one power after another at her feet Fox 
wished France to be fought by the arms of powers that 
were erect and resolute as England herself, fighting 
consciously for nothing less than their own salvation. It 
is hazardous to speculate on the view dead men would 




I 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 307 

take of any particular question, but it seems as certain as 
most things can be that if Fox had lived on to the days 
of the Peninsula war and the German rising, his opinions 
would have been those of Horner,^ and he would have seen 
in the insurgent nationalism of Spain and the awakening 
of a proud spirit in Germany just the forces he had relied on 
for that mortal struggle. 

Neither Pitt nor Fox lived to see even the first Act of I 
that great drama of retribution. In 1804 and 1805 ^^ ^^ 
two great differences. Pitt tried a third coalition: Russia, 
anxious for the h^emony in a crusade for freedom : Austria, 
wasted, doubtful and unready: Prussia, torn by fear and 
mean ambitioa The coalition ended in Austerlitz, and the 
death of Pitt. The chief arguments in its favour are, first, 
that it was a great concerted effort on the part of three 
Powers for a specific and honourable end, die rescue of 
Holland and Switzerland, a very different coalition from 
that of 1793, and secondly that it acted as a powerful o 
distraction at the time Napoleon was preparing for the 
invasion of England. The chief argument against it was 
Fox's argument that Austria, who was only induced to join 

^ Horner's Letter, July 1808, on the Spanish Rising. "It is quite a new 
experiment, in which the powers are for the first time to be tried of a vast regolar 
army, and an enthusiastic people. The circumstances are very fiivourable on 
both sides ; this is indeed the very crisis of the fate of Europe, and the event 
(either way) will perhaps be the most decisive test of the genius and effects of the 
French Revolution. The one result would revive our original persuasion, in its 
first ardour, that the people are not to be subdued by foreign troops, unless the 
love of their country is lost in a contempt of their government. The other would 
sink me in final despair of ever living to see prosperity or liberty again in any 
part of Europe" (vol. i. p. 427). 

Homer's Letter in 181 3 on the German Rising. " I cannot hesitate now in 
believing, that the determination of the French military force, and the insurrec- 
lion of national spirit in the North of Germany, form a new conjuncture, in which 
the Whigs ought to adopt the war system, upon the very same principle which 
prompted them to stigmatise it as unjust in 1793, '^^ ^ premature in 1803. 
The crisis of Spanish politics in May 1808 seemed to me the first turn of things 
in a contrary direction : and I have never ceased to lament that our party took a 
course, so inconsistent with the true Whig principles of continental policy, so 
revolting to the popular feelings of the country, and to every true feeling for the 
liberties and independence of mankind '* (vol. ii. p. 158). 



308 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the coalition by a subsidy of ;f 3,000,000, was unprepared, 
and that to stimulate her to precipitate war, against the 
better judgment of her best Ministers was only to aggrandise 
further the power of France.^ Prussia held her hand and 
intrigued with both sides, and next year when Fox was in 
office the English Government had to declare war on her 
for seizing Hanover, acting, as Fox said, as the minister c{ 
the rapacity of her master, uniting all that was contemptible 
in slavety with all that was hateful in robbery. 
Zl The second great difference was over the question of 

military defence. Pitt's method was to increase and develop 
the volunteers and militia. Fox wanted to arm the peasantry 
of the country and also to reform the army system by sub- 
stituting service for a fixed period for service for life, and 
making the army more attractive in other ways as a career. 
He argued that for ordinary military purposes regulars were 
incomparably more effective, that the improvement of tiie 
regular army should be the first consideration, and that Pitt's 
plans for extending the volunteer system had told seriously 
on recruiting for the army. For purposes of defence an 
armed peasantry would be the most formidable weapon. 
" It should be recollected, that the great defence of a country 
consists of an armed people. The enemy may have a large 
disciplined army, and so may you to resist him; but that 
from which you would derive your great advantage, that 
which always must form the powerful opponent of the 
invading army, would be an armed peasantry. That should 
be your principal defence. It is like the weapon with which 
nature furnishes animals for their protection. It is the great 
bulwark of a country. You might thus have an aid in every 

' Letter to Adair, Octol)cr 6, 1805. " Afy opinion for refiisiag Uie almAf » 
clear : whether Bonaparte actually gets it in money or in maoey^B worth, thit is, 
increase of greatness and dominion, it comes to the same thing. . • • CanoeniBg 
the conduct of the war there can lie no difference ; bat the truth is, that mnf vtf 
at this time, unless well concerted and directed rather to fiitiure succesMS than to 
the present, and more in the nature of a sap than a ccmp di maim^ is nooseBse^ 
and for such a war neither we nor our allies are by any means prepaicd.** 
— Mentorials and CarrcspotuUtut^ voL W. p. 117. 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 309 

village and town, more numerous and effective than your 
volunteers; and you might put the country in such a state 
of defence, that the enemy, even after a victory, should he 
obtain one, over your regular army in the field, would 
not send out a detachment to forage, or for any other 
purpose, without exposing them to be shot at from every 
hedge, from every cottage, from every enclosure — by men, 
not dressed so as to be easily perceivable, not wearing those 
coloured garments which would put the enemy's troops on 
their guard." • 

These ideas were partly carried out when Fox came into 
office, and the Government of which he was a member, 
besides attempting to take the army out of the mischievous 
control of the King, introduced some most beneficent 
reforms: they abolished the system of recruiting for life, 
and substituted for it a system by which men were recruited 
for seven years, with certain inducements to re-enlist for a 
further period ; they made punishment in the army less 
brutal; and they reduced the expenses of the volunteer 
system. 

The few months Fox was in office are memorable for 
the last effort to make peace between England and France. 
The negotiations arose out of Fox's letter to Talleyrand 
informing him that a stranger had called at the P'oreign 
Office with news of a plot for the assassination of Napoleon, 
but the actual suggestion for a negotiation came from 
France. Fox was never very sanguine of the result, and 
at the end of April he wrote to the Duke of Bedford, "All 
negotiation with France is now, I understand, at an end. 
We insisted on negotiating jointly with Russia; they on a 
separate negotiation." On this point, however. Napoleon 
gave way. The British Government was much embarrassed 
by the strange conduct of the Russian plenipotentiary, whose 
action in making a separate peace was disowned by the 
Russian Government, but the actual difference over which 
the negotiations broke down was the question of Sidly. 

' Feb. 1804. Sfeeehts, vol. vi, pp. S43. S44- 



i 



f 



310 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

All hopes of peace were really over before Fox died, for 
Napoleon's demand for Sicily he resisted with the same 
inflexible tenacity that had made Vergennes call him more 
than twenty years before, un fagot (twines. Napoleon 
wanted the island because of his plans in the East, but 
even if Fox had not grasped its importance in relation to 
the war with Napoleon he would have been uncompromising 
in resisting a principle of diplomacy which he had justly 
stigmatised as robbery. The negotiations convinced Fox 
that Napoleon was insincere in affecting to wish for peace 
and that the war must be prosecuted resolutely, and the 
nation settled down to that long struggle in which the 
stubborn temper of England was at last rewarded by the 
awakening of a national spirit in Napoleon's victims. 

Fox's attitude during this war has been spoken of by 
some of his critics as unpatriotic. The principles that 
inspired his conduct throughout have been carefully 
cussed in this chapter, but it is worth while to 
rather further the meaning of a charge which is often 
brought against politicians with a criminal carelessness. To 
many persons patriotism is merely preferring )rour country 
to other countries, a virtue which is unborn in nine men 
out of ten, and is not acquired by prayer or vigil or fasting 
or self-discipline in the small minority that is bom without 
it Politicians must expect a rather more searching light 
to play on their motives and their actions. Do they love 
their country more than their own power, their own fame 
amongst their countrymen, and their own complaisance to 
persons whom they like to please? Judged by that test 
North must be convicted of a want of patriotism, when he 
persisted in a course he thought mistaken and injurious to 
his country from a criminal deference to the wishes of the 
King. Judged by that test what is to be said of the conduct 
of Pitt and of Fox in 1804? Fitt went out of office in 1801, 
and as early as March 1803 ^^^ feeble and embarrassed 
Addington made overtures for a coalition. The troubles and 
IxTils of the nation were growing. Pitt's brother, the incom- 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 311 

petent Chatham, was to be Prime Minister, and Pitt and 
Addington Joint Secretaries of State. Pitt laughed at the 
proposal. " Reaily," he said, with what Lord Rosebery calls 
good-natured irony, " I had not the curiosity to ask what I 
■was to be." A month later Addington offered the Premier- 
ship to Pitt, and Pitt who had taken into his Cabinet men 
compared with whom Addington was almost distinguished, 
proposed to give Addington an honorary office in the Lords. 
In other words Pitt though he considered the incompetence 
of the Government a serious danger to the country, was not 
willing to save the country unless he was Prime Minister, 
and unless Addington, with whom he had developed a 
quarrel on personal and not on public grounds, was ex- 
cluded. Addington was a man of mediocre ability and 
odious opinions, and no one of importance except Warren 
Hastings ever thought him a capable Minbter. But Pitt 
acted towards him, as Sir G. C. Lewis said, in a manner that 
reduced public duty to a question of private feeling and 
personal delicacy. It would be ridiculous to close one's eyes 
to the extenuating circumstances, to Pitt's moral mastery 
of the House of Commons, and his great history as Prime 
Minister, but it is impossible not to remember that two men 
as great as Pitt, his father and Fox, were much less exacting 
in laying down the terms on which they were ready to save 
the state. 

Whatever may be thought of the spirit in which Pitt 
considered the overtures from Addington, there can be only 
one opinion of his conduct when he formed a Ministry in 
1S04. He drew up the scheme of a comprehensive Cabinet, 
including Fox, FitzwilUam, and Grey, accompanying the 
scheme with a message to the King that he wished him to 
understand distinctly that if the King objected to Fox and 
Grenvillc and their friends, he was quite ready to form a 
Government without them. The surrender was as spon- 
taneous as Pitt's surrender of the Catholics three years 
earlier. The King, who never let any care for England dim 
his private hatreds, saw his opportunity at once, and insisted 



312 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

on the exclusion of Fox. If Pitt had wanted, he could have 
made it impossible to form a Ministry without Fox, as 
Grenville did two years later, but to do that would have 
been to put pressure on the King, and to do what was 
harder still for that proud nature, confess that Fox was 
indispensable. It was too hard a thing to demand of him, 
and he chose to humour the King, and flatter himself with 
the confidence he did not feel. " His kindness for the aged 
King," says Lord Rosebery, " was to prove a cruel obstacle 
in his path." The sentence scarcely does justice to the 
national interests involved. It was not only Pitt who 
suffered, it was the country, for Pitt himself considered 
that the first thing the country needed was a Govemment 
embracing all the available talent. What he did in effect 
was to postpone his patriotism to two other motives, hb 
affection for the King, an affection that led him to send 
court loungers into the field against Napoleon's trained 
generals, and a dislike to own that he was inadequate^ 
single-handed, to the tremendous problem of the hour. His 
temptation, let us admit, was severe, but it remains that he 
succumbed. 

Such was Pitt's conduct, and how did Fox behave? Fox 
and Grenville had agreed not to take office separately, as 
they would thereby make themselves accessories to the 
system of court proscriptions. Fox spontaneously absolved 
Grenville from that compact, and when Pitt informed him 
through an intermediary that the King would not admit 
him, and would admit Grenville, Fox said he was too old 
for office, that he hoped his friends would join Pitt, and that 
in that event he would support the new Govemment. It 
was scarcely the answer of a man, as Fox has often been 
painted, who allowed an acrid sense of disappointment or an 
ungovernable party passion to blunt his consciousness of 
what he owed his country. 

It is necessary to go into this field of motives and rival 
impulses in politicians' minds because no charge is flung so 
ignorantly or so recklessly as that of want of patriotisoL 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 313 

Few persons stop to think what they mean by it They do 
not pretend that Fox or Pitt or Burke or Chatham would 
have betrayed England in cold blood for money, or decora- 
tions, or for the satisfaction of some personal spite. If they 
mean that no one of those four men kept in strict subjec- 
tion, every moment of his life, all the little acrimonies and 
ambitions that turn a man's mind from his duty to his 
country, their contention is not likely to be disputed by 
anyone who remembers Chatham's behaviour in 1766, the 
behaviour of Fox and Burke in 1789, or the behaviour of 
Pitt in 1784, 1803, and 1804. They were all mortal men, 
and not one of them lived every moment of his life in the 
transcendent transports of patriotism, any more than he 
lived it in the transports of any other virtue; but they 
were all men who loved their country and dedicated their 
great talents to its service. Fox, it has sometimes been said, 
loved justice better than his country. It would be truer to 
say he never thought that the interests of justice and those 
of his country could be long separated. When he rejoiced 
in the failure of the attempt to subdue America, or the failure 
of the first confederacy against France, he rejoiced in the 
collapse of a project that he considered just as ruinous to 
England as to America or France. There is nothing that 
conflicts with Fox's reputation for patriotism in the passages 
from his letters which record his joy over the failure of the 
Quiberon expedition or the American War unless Chatham's 
rejoicings over American resistance are criminal, but the 
passage that has made the deepest impression on the public 
mind is the passage in which he said to Grey in 1801, 
". . . . the truth is I am gone something further in hate to 
the English Government than perhaps you and the rest of my 
friends are, and certainly further than can with prudence be 
avowed. The triumph of the French Government over the 
English does in fact afford me a degree of pleasure which it 
is very difficult to disguise." * Most persons remember the 
sentence and forget the circumstances under which this 

' Mimoriaii and Carrtsfondtiut, vqL iiL p. 349. 



314 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

sentence was written. Fox never said that he rejoiced that 
the peace was a bad one for England, and he expressly 
stated in that very letter that the reason he welcomed the 
peace was that he knew, if it were delayed, it would be worse. 
All that he welcomed was the humiliation of a party that 
had called him a traitor for suggesting that peace should be 
made on terms far less adverse to England, that had taken 
his name off the Privy Council, that had been unsparing in 
its use of the rougher expedients of party malice, and that 
had omitted no means of fomenting public mistrust and 
public hatred of him. For several years Fox had been the 
daily target of offensive and indecent caricatures and lam- 
poons; he had been held up to public odium as a puUu 
enemy, an association under the patronage of the Govern- 
ment had incited mobs to break his house in, and he had 
had to encounter all that an intolerant majority, and its 
retinue of base and savage passion, could do to make life 
intolerable. It would have been more large-minded to have 
forgotten all that persecution in the hour of a sombre peace, 
but it is rather hard to erect the fugitive pleasure Fox took 
in the mortification of that party into a serious and solemn 
impeachment of his patriotism. 

There is one other canon of patriotism which must 
be remembered in discussing this question. Some persons 
argue that it is unpatriotic to oppose a Government during 
a war ; an argument which means that whatever one party 
may think good for the state, all others must accept on pain 
of being thought bad patriots. If this is to be accepted as 
the standard, Pitt is just as guilty as Fox, for Pitt opposed 
the American war when our condition was just as critical 
as in the French war, and Pitt, Chatham, Fox, Burke, and 
Windham all alike stand condemned. The opposition to 
the Government from 1792 to 1800 is to be distinguished 
from that from 1804 ^o 1806, and some persons whilst 
thinking the first opposition creditable and intelligible, think 
the second, the opposition of Fox, Windham, and GrenviUe, 
mere faction. Why, if Fox and his allies did not disapprove 



FOX AND THE FRENCH WAR 315 

of the war with Napoleon did they oppose Pitt's Government 
in 1804? The reason is that Fox was opposing not only 
the whole plan of Pitt's subsidised coalitions, not only a 
military system, which he and Windham condemned and 
afterwards reformed, but also the principle of the King's 
supremacy. Was that a mere secondary domestic issue? 
Not in Pitt's opinion in 17S2 when he opposed North's 
Government during the American War, and expressly as- 
cribed all our misfortune to the King's influence. Not in 
Fox's opinion in 1S04 when the King's influence was allowed 
to weaken ministers, to destroy policies, and to overrule the 
moral pledges of Pitt himself. In both cases the supremacy 
of the Court was the central mischief and disorder of the 
State. 



CHAPTER XIII 
RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 

The disabilities of Dissenters, Protestant and Catholic^ in Geoige the 
Third's Reign, (i) Test and Corporation Acts* (a) Penal laws. 
Fox's great efforts to secure religious freedom. Contrast between 
(i) Burke and Pitt and (2) Burke and Fox. 

THE pageants of religious war^ and spectacular perseco- 
tion belong to the age of a single-eyed fanatidsin 
which knows no persuasion but the sharp edge of torture, 
and no fear in life or death but the infinite terror with which 
Catholic legend filled the mind of men who had thrown 
aside all the rest of its doctfines. Incessant, agilc^ pliant, 
that restless spirit still hovered round the courts of Europe 
in the last half of the eighteenth century ; but it no longer 
governed their policy. Catholic powers were allied with 
Mohammedan, religion blessed, but did not declare war; 
heresy found a nook or a refuge in every nation, in some, 
in the gay haunts o^ fashion or rich splendour, and the 
question that troubled the minds of thinking men was the 
lawfulness or the expediency of restraining opinion, not 
in order to scatter more widely the hopes of happiness 
in another world, but to strengthen the fabric of cntlerly 
government in this. The intolerance of Governments was 
no longer the pitiless rapture that gave an ecstasy to suffer- 
ing and persecution, it was the weapon of a statecraft that 
was cold, circumspect, and pre-eminently secular. 

Of no country was this truer than it was of England 

* Mr. Lecky considers the Peace of Westphalia to have put an end to religioas 

wars. 

316 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 317 

where two great acts of public policy had struck a fatal 
blow at the rigid doctrine of uniformity. By the Union 
with Scotland a heretic Church was acknowledged as the 
official Church of North Britain ; and in Canada a wise 
Minister, anticipating the policy that has made her British, 
gave Quebec the religion of her choice, though that religion 
was still branded by English law as criminal, and still 
dreaded by English opinion as darkness and oppression, 
and the very symbol of Jacobite disorder. The condition 
of England seemed favourable to toleration. George IIL 
had ascended the throne, in the midst of a vigilant Pro- 
testantism but a rather leisurely Christianity, in an age in 
which the memories of the Protestant Revolution were still 
vigorous, but in which spiritual energy had shown little 
alacrity or passion, until Wesley and Whitefield had set out 
to preach repentance and to shake England from her 
slumber. That rather languid piety had been no bad 
friend to toleration. Other causes, too, contributed to make 
governments hospitable to various creeds. There was now 
no religious body in England hostile to the Hanover settle- 
ment; the High Church party had abandoned alike its 
extreme pretensions and its disaffection to the dynasty ; the 
Catholics whose numbers had shrunk were loyal and well 
disposed ; the Nonconformists were the staunch allies of a 
House to protect which they had taken up arms in spite of 
the law ; and what religious emotion there was in England 
rallied all creeds to a throne that no one of them any longer 
dreaded. The storms of religious passion which had swept 
over politics, crashing on Protestant and on Catholic in turn, 
with the implacable vengeance of a conquering faith, seemed 
to have spent their fury, and to have left England at last 
with the tranquil surface of a glassy sea. 

In such a condition of things it is not surprising that 
persistent efforts were made to bring the Statute Book o( 
England, which was still crowded with the bloody decrees 
of dead sovereigns, and the bloody legacies of quarrels that 
good men hoped were dead, into some correspondence with 



318 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the more enlightened sentiments of the times. Refoimers, 
as often happens in a country that boasts that it finds 
justice in rough compromise and practical evasion, had pre- 
ferred to make glosses and erasures where a bolder policy 
would have blotted out some penal measure. The sanctity 
of religion was still maintained by the barbarity of the 
legal punishments to avenge it Catholics were incapacitated 
by law from inheriting or purchasing land; priests were 
liable to perpetual imprisonment for saying mass, and in- 
formers entitled to a reward for exposing them. None ot 
the Statutes requiring conformity with the Church of 
England had been repealed, though the Toleration Act 
relieved dissenting ministers from the restrictions imposed 
by the Act of Uniformity and the Conventicle Act, and 
exempted all persons from penalties on taking the oath of 
allegiance and supremacy and making a declaration against 
transubstantiation. Catholics and Unitarians were left out- 
side of the shelter of this Act. The Test and Corporation 
Acts, by which all persons holding office under the Crown, 
or municipal office, were obliged to take the Sacrament, re« 
mained on the Statute Book ; the one Act passed in 1673 
to exclude Roman Catholic Ministers from the King's 
Councils, the other, passed twelve years earlier, when the 
Restoration had brought the Churchmen into power. Under 
these Acts, Catholic and Protestant Dissenters both suffered, 
for though the Protestant Dissenters had supported the 
Test Act, in order to maintain Protestant supremacy in 
England, they had found it no easy matter to escape from 
the toils in which they had allowed the Church to imprison 
them. But for thirty years a yearly Act of Indemnity had 
been passed for Protestant Dissenters who had held office 
contrary to this Act. The law exacted conformity, but 
condoned nonconformity. The Penal Laws of England, 
as Chatham said, were so many bloodhounds held in leash. 
In the long struggle to remove the civil disabilities of Dis- 
senters, and to destroy the Penal Laws, Fox almost alone 
of our great statesmen never gave a vote against religious 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 319 

freedom, and scarcely ever gave a silent vote in its 
defence. 

Unfortunately, in the midst of the promising conditions 
under which the reign opened, there were two influences 
which were strongly adverse. The Church of England, 
grasping the difference between George III. and hb prede- 
cessors developed a sudden enthusiasm for the Hanover 
settlement, which resulted in a close alliance between an 
obstinate and superstitious king, and a Church that was 
greedy of power but had hitherto looked elsewhere for its 
secular auxiliaries. Church and State became something 
more than a formal association when George represented the 
State and the Church regulated his odd and unattractive 
conscience. The House of Hanover came to stand for the 
ascendancy of the very Church that had treated it for two 
reigns with suspicion and dislike. The other influence was 
the influence that stifled liberty in every form during the last 
half of this disastrous reign. No sect or creed excited the 
fears of Governments in 1760, in 1770, or 1780,^ but with 
the agitations of the Revolution, men saw danger in every 
concession to heterodoxy, and dissenter became a synonym 
for jacobin. The convulsions across the Channel were all 
traced to the spirit of rebellious atheism, and the con- 
spicuous and honourable part played by Price and Priestley 
at home helped to identify dissent and sedition in the eyes 
of statesmen to whom religion was neither true nor false, 
but merely order or discontent. These forces conquered, and 
in a reign in which the Church produced a Paley, and the 
world a Fox, intolerance in Church and State maintained 
its central citadels against the assaults of both. 

Two measures of emancipation were carried during Lord 
North's Ministry, the Ministry, by the odd accident of politics, 
in which toleration won almost its solitary successes. The 

Mt is noticeable that an objection was raised to the Protestant Dissenters 
Relief Bill in 1779 on the ground that it was a time of tumult and distress, 
but the objection carried no weight for the Bill passed its second reading almost 
unanimously. 



320 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

Toleration Act had exempted dissenting minbters £roiii 
the obligation to subscribe to certain of the Thirty-nine 
Articles which expressed the distinctive doctrines of the 
Church of England. In 1772 Sir Henry Hc^hton proposed 
and carried through the House of Commons, with little 
opposition, a Bill e xempting dissenting ministers from sub- 
scription to any of the Thirty-ni ne Artic les. The Bill 
though supported by Chatham, Richmond, Camden, and 
Mansfield, was rejected in the Lords by a majority of 73, 
and the following year the Lords rejected a similar Bill a 
second time. In 1779 Sir Henry Hoghton passed his Bi ll 
in the Commons, but, under the pressure of a petition troro 
the University of Oxford, North proposed to enact a simple 
test of Christianity and fidelity to the Bible; this amend- 
ment was accepted, and, in this revised form the Bill pleased 
both Houses. The discussion brought out the fundamental 
differences between Burke and Fox ; Burke, who had spoken 
for Sir Henry Hoghton's Bill both times, strongly •"pp^'^ 
the imposition of this test, whereas Fox as stroogly^bjjected 
to the doctrine that the state had a right to impose any te st 
at all. 

The other measure of emancipation was Sir Georgie 
Savile's Bill for relieving Roman Catholics from some of the 
barbarous penalties to which they were liable; perpetual 
imprisonment for saying mass, the prohibition to acquire 
land by purchase, and the forfeiture of the estates of Roman 
Catholic heirs educated abroad to the next Protestant heir. 
The melancholy sequel of this Act is well known. Dandas 
having promised to bring in a Bill the following yeax to 
extend the provisions of this Act to Scotland, the virulent 
Protestants of that country organised a series of riots, 
destroyed chapels and houses, defied the magistrates, and 
established a reign of terror. Dundas postponed his Bill 
on the ground that it was an unkindness to the Catholics 
themselves to persevere with a measure which would only 
inflame still further the Scottish prejudice against them. 
To this course Fox strongly objected, urging that instead 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 821 

of merely compensating the unfortunate Catholics for their 
losses. Parliament ought to pursue its original plan of 
abolishing^ the penal l aws. ** It became the honour and the 
humanity, as well as the dignity of Parliament to repeal the 
penal laws against them, and not be deterred by insurrec- 
tions in a small comer of their Empire from doing an act 
of common justice." Fox's policy was not adopted, and the 
rioters were left masters of the field in Scotland This fatal 
surrender to anarchy did not long remain unpunished. The 
leaders of Anti-Catholic fanaticism, not content with one 
sensational triumph, set themselves to reverse the English 
measure by the methods that had averted the Scottish 
measure : petitions were presented to Parliament, by mem- 
bers who were escorted to the House of Commons by 
disorderly mobs who assailed the foremost leaden of eman- 
cipation and laid si^e to the House of Commons. 

There was worse to follow. The fury of the mob ava Tan 
th g capi tal, and^Qndon was for days ffuaLMfuta-A riot in 
which all the elements of disorder, and the halludnations of 
religious bigotry, the savagery of a rabble in the ascendant, 
the spirit of purposeless destruction, and the hope of plunder 
combined to make a pandemonium of all that is most 
diabolical in human nature. The collapse of authority was 
parUy redeemed by the dignified bearing of Parliament. 
The House of Commons met and adjourned, not without 
some bitter speeches from Fox and Burke on the failure of 

the Government to suppjrQ$9 disprd fflTi , y><^_ ^ ^ *WtfW^ of 
t he m ob "that had degraded England in the fight of 
Europe." In the Lords, Richmond and Shelburoe attributed 
all the trouble to the Quebec Bill, and Shelbume pressed fior 
its repeal. This concession was refused, but from the div 
cussion in the House of Commons, when the rioters had at 
last abandoned the furious work of pillage and dcstnictJMi^ 
more from the stupor of drunkenness and {dqrsical fatigue 
than from the intervention of the magistrates^ it is clear 
that there was some disposition to regard Sir George 
Savile's Bill as dangerously generous to the OMtfAiuL 

21 



322 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

Burke, who was never more sublime than in such a crisis 
as that of the Gordon tumults, set himself with Fox to 
check this spirjiji;. of nervous suspicion, but a bill restraining 
Catholics from teaching Protestants was carried through 
the Commons, and only lost in the Lords because the 
Bishops objected to an amendment, qualifying its provisions, 
inserted by the Lord Chancellor. 

Only two other measures relating to religious toleration 
were carried during Fox's lifetime. In 1792 the disalnlities 
of the Episcopalians in Scotland were abolished, and a year 
. ^^ earlier a Bill was carried tVymngh ParVtamf^f ^u^^ « pm, 
testing_Catholic Dl$senters.".iroaL the4)fioaLfitatutes. The 
persons to whom the Bill applied were Catholics who pro- 
tested against the Pope's temporal authority, and his ri^^t 
to excommunicate kings and absolve subjects from their 
allegiance, as well as the right alleged to be assumed by 
Roman Catholics of not keeping faith with Dissenters. The 
penal statutes which were no longer to apply to these 
Catholics occupied nearly seventy pages in Bum's Ecclesias- 
tical Law. As an example of their severity, Mr. Mitford the 
mover of this Bill reminded the House that a Catholic priest 
was liable to suffer death for persuading others to adopt his 
religion. The Bill encountered no opposition of the kind 
which had asserted itself so sensationally in the country, but 
not in the House of Commons, twelve years earlier. But Fox 
argued very strenuously against limiting the relief promised 
by the Bill to any one set of Catholics. The Bill did not 
propose to confer on Catholics the right of holding any 
oflice, but merely the right of holding opinions, and it was 
monstrous that any man should be liable to the death 
penalty for holding particular religious views. Fox con- 
trasted the general toleration of Prussia, France, America, 
and Holland with the parsimonious indulgence of a measure 
that still kept these bloody laws over the heads of men 
whose only offence was their religion. Few of those states- 
men who rejected Fox's central_argume nt that the punis h- 
mcnt or restraint of" opinion was indefensible were, in their 




RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 828 | 

hearts, unfriendly to the proposal to extend the Bill, and Pitt 
expressed a hope that all the severer laws would be repealed. 
B urke, the most cautious in a dmitting innovation, and the 
m ost uncompromising in denying the right to toleratio n, had 
always befriended the Catholics, and at the moment the Bill 
was under discussion, his normal goodwill had warmed in to 
pa ssionate sympathy from his horror of the f T^fpi#*n» fho 

Catholic Churrh had rftrftived in France at the hatirig of 

t he Revolutio n. Fox's efforts to extend the Bill and to 
eliminate certain very odious provisions were unavailing. 
In the Lords the Bill was amended for the better by a 
Bishop. Two years later a similar Bill for Scotland was 
carried without opposition. 

In 1792 Fox made an heroic effort to repeal certain 
pejial laws^afTectiog i-J^liginnQ npinlnng^ a^^ BrWgJITg *" P^^- 
c ujar on the Unitarian s. All the circumstances frowned on 
him. The terror inspired by the French Revolution had 
now penetrated the governing classes ; the Unitarians were 
an old sect, but they had suddenly become important by 
large accessions from the Presbyterians; t^sicJIfiadfiCa. were 
known as strong political reformers. ^Yiib^^^tly "^^^flr"**"** 
about French experiments; and the revival of religious 
enthusiasm that had followed the work of Wesley and 
Whitefield had not made it easier for men who denied 
the Trinity to win the indulgence of that grave school 
which mingled with its devoted philanthropy the morose 
theology of exclusive salvation and all its grim machinery 
of savage and eternal punishment. Fox's effort was 
resisted hv_Pitt ar^cj by B ufk ^T and seconded by North, 
who rigidly excluded Dissenters from civil office but con- 
demned as mere persecution the law which made it penal to 
reject the doctrine of the Trinity. Pitt laid stress mainly on 
the danger of innovation in critical times. The laws were 
not likely to be turned to practical oppression, and it was 
a rash experiment to give any countenance to ^ sec^ th at 
was_jiotprip^Usly-JjnjWendl^ Church and Kin g. But the 
sternest and most intractable opponent was Burke. The 



\ 



324 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

proposal loomed up before his angry vision, like some hideou s 
monster which had been fashi oned bv collecting and com- 
bining every doctrine and eveiy principle he hate d mos t in 
the world. Even Montesquieu, after seeing at work all the 
civil embarrassments that were prompted by spiritual interests^ 
had laid it down that a ma^strate should not admit a new 
religion. Burke who sixteen years before the Notables had 
been summoned had said that infidels were never to be 
tolerated, and who soon learnt to call every Frenchman who 
was not in arms against his own country an atheist, found 
himself invited to give quarter to a sect whose religion he 
hated, and whose politics he dreaded, in the name of a prin- 
ciple he had consistently denied, and in the heyday of a 
Revolution, whose climax he believed to be anarchy, and 
Hvhose origin he believed to be a blasphemous unbelief. All^ 
the horrors of new doctrines in theology fjHf^ ir»>p^lif«^ 
danced before him like lesser demons of the Revolution. 
He proudly replied to Fox*s appeal for "toleration that 
Parliament had never declared itself on toleration or per- 
secution, it had decided each particular application of relief 
on the actual circumstances of the case, and in this instance 
the circumstances made it madness to grant the claim of a 
dangerous and seditious sect Fox made a fine and im* 
passioned defence of complete toleration, but he was beaten 
by 143 to 63 votes, and the legal toleration of Unitarians 
was only established twenty years later. 

The other great agitation in which Fox played a leading 
part raised a different issue. By the Toleration Act and 
the Protestant Dissenters Relief Act the recognised Non- 
conformist bodies had won freedom of worship and organisa- 
tion. The Test and Corporation Acts excluded them from 
certain civil employments. On paper these disabilities 
stretched right through the public life of the country out* 
side Parliament. A Nonconformist who refused to take the 
Anglican sacrament could not hold any office under the 
Crown, a commission in the army or navy, a civil office or 
seat in a corporation, nor could he take part in the direc- 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 325 

tion of the Bank of England, of the India, or Russian, or 
South Sea, or Turkish companies. These Acts operating in 
a country with two established religions produced some 
ludicrous anomalies. A Nonconformist could vote for Parlia- 
ment, and could sit in Parliament ; outside rarliament he 
was disqualified for the meanest offices under a corporation. 
' A member of the Established Presbyterian Church in Scot- 
land could not hold office in England under the Crown, 
unless he communicated with the Established Anglican 
Church, thereby associating himself with a religion which he 
could not hold in Scotland without suflTering disabilities. 
The penalties on the Statute Book for the violation of these 
Acts were very brutal, depriving the offender of almost all 
his rights at law. The Acts were constantly evaded, and 
annual Acts of Indemnity were passed to protect persons who 
broke them, but Beaufoy showed that they were no protection 
to men who conscientiously refused to take the Sacrament. 
The common fear of political Catholicism in Ireland led to 
the repeal of all Acts against Protestants in that country in 
1779. In England the alarm which had produced this 
concerted method of defence disappeared too soon to impel 
the Anglican Protestants to remove the disabilities of the 
Protestant dissenters, and the trials of strength in George lll.'s 
reign were not influenced by a religious panic that in this 
case alone might have been salutary in its effects. Three 
attempts were made to repeal the Acts. The first, a motion 
made by Beaufoy, in 1787, was defeated by 176 to 98; 
the second, also made by Beaufoy in 1789, by 122 to 103 ; 
the third, made by Fox in 1790, by 294 to 105; whilst a 
proposal made by Sir Gilbert Elliot in 1791 to repeal the 
Test Act, as far as it related to Scotland, was defeated by 
149 to 62, The Acts were finally repealed in 1828, though 
even then the opposition was represented by 193 votes in a 
House of 430. 

The case against the Acts was presented with unanswer- 
able force by Fox and Beaufoy. The points of attack 
were many and various. First of all the Acta vrere a peal 



I 



326 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

hardship to Dissenters. If the annual Acts of Indemnity 
had been a perfectly valid protection, and Beaufoy could 
show that they were not, the Dissenters were still entitled 
to complain that their religion was branded with a public 
stigma. The Dissenters were, by universal admission, a 
loyal and an orderly section of the community. They had 
taken up arms to defend the Hanover djmasty in 1745, 
and their only reward had been an Act of Parliament 
pardoning demonstrations of fidelity to the throne, which 
the law forbade to all but Anglicans. The Acts under 
which they suffered had been placed on the Statute Book 
with their own co-operation, and it was a mean and un- 
worthy policy for the Established Church to turn to thdr 
own oppression the measures they had assented to when 
there was a danger of the overthrow of Protestantism. 
These Acts were a weakness to the country because they 
imposed disabilities on such men as John Howard, and 
deprived the nation of the services of conscientious, industri- 
ous, and public-spirited Englishmen. They were a discredit 
to England because France, a Catholic country, admitted 
Protestants, and Sweden, a Protestant country, admitted 
Catholics to the army and the fleet, whilst England, a 
Protestant country, could not even throw open her services 
to all Protestants. The Jacobite spectre had been finally 
laid, and the State only suffered by retaining, as symbols 
of disunion, institutions originally due to a political danger 
that had vanished. An embarrassment to the State these 
Acts did a real injury to religion. The profanation of the 
Sacrament implied in making it a test for office was 
described in a powerful passage by Beaufoy whose speech 
in moving the repeal of the Acts in 1789 was an utterance 
of remarkable power. " The Saviour of the world instituted 
the Eucharist in commemoration of His death, an event so 
tremendous that nature afflicted, hid herself in darkness, 
but the British legislature has made it a qualification for 
gauging beer barrels and soapboilers' tubs, for writing 
custom house tickets and debentures, and for seizing 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 327 

smui^Ied tea. The mind is oppressed with ideas so mis- 
shapen, and monstrous. Sacrilege, hateful as it always is, 
never before assumed an appearance so hideous and 
deformed," All these arguments gave a peculiar force to 
the demand for the repeal of the Test Acts, a demand 
which Fox placed on the boldest ground of all, urging now 
as at all times that the State had no right to make any 
inquisition into a man's opinions, and to punish or to 
disqualify him on any other ground than that of his overt 
actions. 

The attitude of the three other leading statesmen was 
pre-eminently characteristic. North roundly declared that 
the Test and Corporation Acts were indispensable to the 
safety of the Established Church, and that the Established 
Church was indispensable to the safety of the nation. The 
Dissenters enjoyed freedom and what they now asked for 
wa.s civil power. The Church was no longer intolerant, and 
it would be an ungrateful act to deprive her after she had 
survived all the assaults of popery, and had corrected her 
own errors, of the necessary defences SLgainst other dangers. 
As for the example of France, the unlimited choice of 
Ministers and officials was one of the inddentat advantages 
despotism possessed over free constitutions, Pitt's conduct 
was determined entirely by the Bishops, whose opinions he 
asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to collect and com- 
municate to him. Ten out of twelve prelates decided against 
renouncing these temporal privileges, and Pitt decided to 
resist the demand, though the Nonconformists who made it 
had lately given him a stout support against the Coalition. 
His speech was partly devoted to answering Fox's main 
principle of the injustice of basing civil disabilities on 
religious opinions. The State had the unquestionable 
right to choose its own ofHcials, and to lay down any 
standard it thought proper. This particular restriction 
was designed to uphold the Ecclesiastical constitution ; it 
merely disquali6ed Nonconformists who carried their hos- 
tility to the Established Church to the extreme point of 



328 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

refusing to communicate with that Church, and the con- 
sequences of removing it might be fatal and widespread, 
for Nonconformists might proceed to attack other privileges 
enjoyed by the Anglican Church and even the Elstablish- 
ment itself. To the last argument Fox replied in the spirit 
of the most liberal Churchman of the day, William Palqr, 
that if ever the Nonconformists were in a majority, the 
Church, in his opinion, ought to be disestablished in favour 
of a Church that represented the bulk of the nation. 

To Burke it was a difficult matter for decision. He 
was acutely sensible of the indignity offered to religion m 
making a very solemn act and profession the qualification 
for civil employment, and he proposed to substitute as the 
single test an oath of fidelity to the constitution. He was 
strenuously opposed on the other hand to the doctrine 
that the state could not investigate men's opinions. In 
his speech against the motion in 1791 he explained that 
ten years earlier he would have voted for repeal ; that in 
1787 and 1789 he had stayed away because he could not 
decide how to act, and that the writings and speeches of 
Dissenters, in particular of Dr. Priestley and Dr. Prices in 
the last two years, had convinced him of the necessity of 
maintaining the test It is noticeable that in 1791, amongit 
the men who spoke and voted against repeal was Wflliam 
Wilberforce. 

It may be argued that in practice no great harm resulted 
from the failure of these several eflbrts to abolish the dvfl 
monopolies and the minatory laws by which the estab* 
lishment was protected, and that the policy of an illogical 
caution was not an unwise one. The days of acute per- 
secution were over, and no serious mischief was caused fay 
postponing for a generation the full civil recognition of 
Dissenters and the abolition of penal laws, of which the 
worst that could be said was that they disgraced the Statute 
Book. It is surely truer to say that a very rare oppor- 
tunity presented itself in George's reign, and how much 
was lost by the neglect of that opportunity can never be 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 329 

exactly appreciated. The very arguments used in favour 
of retaining the penal laws were the strongest arguments 
for their abolition* If they were too terrible to be used, 
the Bishops who clung to them were defirading religion by 
the most hideous of scarecrows, and if there was dai^;er to 
religion in withdrawing them it was obvkras that the state 
needed some deterrent for offences against religion whkh 
statesmen would not be ashamed to apply. 'What is 
connivance," said Burke when men defended tfie com- 
pulsion put upon the Dissenters to subscribe to some of 
the articles, '*what is connivance but a relaxation of 
slavery?" "What," we may ask in reply to him, *was 
neglect in this matter but a relaxation of barbarity?" A 
wise statesman uses the sober moods of a people to guard 
against the hour of delirium. It was at the best a doubtful 
statesmanship to leave on the Statute Book, on tfie ground 
that they were virtually inoperative, laws which no one in 
Parliament could defend and no magistrate would enforce, 
if he saw any means of evasion. The history of England 
no less than the history of France in the last half of the 
century had shown that private malevolence or religious 
prejudice or political acrimony might stand on their right 
to every letter of those musty charters of vindictive intol- 
erance, which men had fancied were laid aside for all time. 
When Stanhope introduced his Toleration Bill in 1789 he 
was able to show that within the last twenty-six years one 
or other of the persecuting laws had been enforced in no 
less than thirty cases. There was a special danger too at 
the end of the eighteenth century from the strict Sabba- 
tarian doctrines of the Methodists ; the laws of Elizabeth 
for compelling the observance of Sunday were particularly 
severe, and a Society had been formed under Wilberforce 
in 1789 for enforcing them. It was idle to argue as if the 
dragon of intolerance were finally destroyed when men 
remembered how, ten years earlier, in the very capital of 
England and in Scotland, it had scattered havoc, and ruin, 
and frantic confusion. Before dismissing this agitation as 



330 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

unimportant practically, however creditable to the men who 
initiated it, it is necessary to remember what were the 
hazards religious toleration ran, how recent were the latest 
explosions of bigotry, and the eflfect on the minds of men 
of leaving on the Statute Book, at a time when the dynasty 
stood in no danger and religion had disowned persecution, 
the bloody rubrics of a Christianity that had taught men 
to be loyal and devout in a dungeon or at the stake. 
The spirit of toleration is not so rapid or so sturdy a 
growth that men can be foi^ven lightly, for leavii^; it 
exposed to the pestilent exhalations of dead and withered 
superstition. 

It is surely an equally mistaken view to suppose that 
no mischief was done by leaving the legal injustices of the 
Test and Corporation Acts to the rough adjustments of 
evasion and commonsense irregularity. Those Acts were 
the most palpable of all the symbols of the political 
ascendancy of the Church, and the political inferiority of 
Dissent. To have abolished them in 1789, instead of in 
1828, would not merely have been to admit to civil rights 
a number of men, who chafed under an unjust exclusion, 
to have struck down fences and barriers, that the very 
Bishops no longer excused forty years later; it would 
have done something to check, instead of perpetuatingi a 
spirit of disunion that had come into politics before 1789, 
and certainly did not go out of politics in 1828. What 
has been the curse of the Established Church, if it has 
not been, that for one man like Jeremy Taylor or 
William Paley, it has produced thousands of men like 
Bishop Horsley, that it has for the most part clung to 
every fragment and particle of political privilege with an 
idolatrous attachment that has not always left it very 
much reverence for its spiritual obligations, that its lack 
of independence has betrayed it into an indiscriminate 
mendicancy, that it has been sadly reluctant and afraid 
to trust the success of its cause to the energy of its truth 
and the devotion of its ministers, that it has merged its 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 331 

own interests so wholly in the integrity of a comprehensive 
scheme of prerogative and oppression, that its political 
history is largely the story of a long-drawn resistance to 
the progress of humane and beneficent opinion? Few 
again will deny that if Nonconformity inherited from 
those struggles a robust calibre, an austere hardihood diat 
despised the countenance and the patronising graces of 
power, a sympathy with men or opinions under the heel 
of political or social tyranny, it inherited too a certain 
adventitious rancour, and a temper a little bleak and un- 
gracious. That Fox and Beaufoy were right in thinking 
the stability of the constitution was in no danger from 
the abolition of a sacramental test imposed on exdaemen 
and tide-waiters, and that the apprehensions of men like 
North and Burke were unfounded will not now be disputed 
If that view had been accepted in 1789, and these badges 
of an odious supremacy destroyed, a great blow would 
have been struck at a system which has throughout a 
century menaced and weakened the social solidity of 
England. As it was, the demand for a redress of griev- 
ances that were felt very passionately and discussed in all 
parts of the country was rejected by a majority that did 
not even pretend that the Dissenters were disaffected to 
the state or unfriendly to the Establishment^ and the 
consequences of that refusal have not yet disappeared from 
men and from societies that still cherish their lines^ of ill- 
used privilege, or bitterly remembered wrong. 

It was no accident of political circumstance tiiat made 
Fox, unlike Pitt, and Burke, and North, vote alwaj^s for 
r eli^ous freedom. He was the first great English states man 
whose reverence for toler atfon was absolu te. In a genera- 
tion of pHnbsopEers and politicians that had always reserved 
the right to banish some sect, or proscribe some opinion, he 
was content with no ideal of freedom that fell short of a 
limitless and irrevocable hospitality. The Whig party, 
before his day, was anti-Catholic, and even Locke himself 
had argued that the state could not tolerate Papists, men 




332 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

who, in popular opinion, believed that they were above the 
law, relieved from their allegiance to the throne, and exempt 
from all obligations to keep faith with heretics.^ Fox did 
not merely support every proposal to give a fuller toleration 
to Catholics ; he declared boldly at the very time that the 
Gordon ri«ts had convulsed London that ^*he could not 
think the papists' religion incompatible with government nor 
civil liberty; because, in looking round the world, he saw 
that in Switzerland, where democracy reigned universally 
in the fullest measure, it flourished most in cantons pro- 
fessing that religion." The Unitarians were a friendless 
sect They had been persecuted alike under Cromwell and 
under Charles II. They were often regarded as atheists, men 
whom Locke had said were " not at all to be tolerated," to 
whom Rousseau had refused admission in his Social Contract, 
and whom Burke had described as " the infidels or the outlaws 
of the Constitution, not of this country, but of the human 
race." It was of these men that Fox said with a resonant 
defiance, " Dr. South in speaking of them has traced their 
pedigree from wretch to wretch back to the devil himsdC 
These descendants of the devil are my clients.* Perhaps 
the most striking of all the illustrations of Fox's temper of 
tolerance was his reply to a rhetorical question in the debate 
on the Test and Corporation Acts, during the speech of a 
Mr. Powys. "With regard to the principles of toleration 
advanced by the right honourable gentleman, the right 
hon. gentleman did not seem to be aware to what an 
extent they might be pushed, and that it was not the 
dissenters alone who would be entitled to hold oflfices of 
trust and power if the principles he had laid down and 
argued upon were to be admitted, but dissenters of every 
denomination; the Jew, the Mahometan, the disciples of 
Brama, Confucius, and of every head of a sectary. (Mr. 
Fox cried * Hear, hear y Fox alone never turned from 
his ideal of religious equality to pay a sidelong tribute 

* Even Milton himself, it must be remcmbcredi denied toleration to Papists, 
on the ground that ihcy were idolaters. 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 333 

to popular prejudice, however reasonable, or popular fear, 
however genuine. 

There is a very modern flavour about the arguments by 
which Fox supported, in a generation in which even Voltaire 
had assigned the control of religion to the civil magistrate, 
his contention that the State had no right to interfere with 
religious opinion,' He was the first great statesman to 
understand how essential to freedom is absolute religious 
liberty .' The least that society could be expected to secure 
to ^ the indiv idual was the right to hold his opinion un- 
molested, or, as he put it, in the language of his day, what- 
ever rights man surrendered to society, in return for its 
advantages, the right to his opinion was inalienable. " It 
had been said by some persons that although toleration 
was, of itself, abstractly matter of justice, yet, that in 
political speculation, it should never be allowed to entrench 
upon, or endanger existing establishments. The converse 
of this appeared to him to be true policy and that ttp " 
defence of any establishment wh^ver should be built^on 
principles repugnant to toleration. Tpleration was not to be 
regarded as a thing convenient and useful to a state, but a 
thing in itself caaentially right and just. He therefore laid 
it down as his principle that those who lived in a State 
where there was an establishment of religion could fairly be 
bound only by that part of the establishment which was 
consistent with the pure principles of toleration. What 
then were those principles? On what were they founded? 
On the fundamental, inalienable rights of men. It was true 
there were some rights man should give up, for the sake of 
securing others in a state of society. Kut it was true also 
that he should give up but a portion of his natural rights, 
in order that he might have a government for the protection 
of the remainder. But /to call on man to give up his 

' " Mis sentimeni was that the stale had ik> right to inquire into the o|aiuon( 
of people eiihei political or relieious."— Cath. Dissenters Relief Bill, Feb. 1791. 
Vol. iv. p. 145. 

^ " The lime he hoped would come when retifious liberty would be u geiKT- 
ally enjoyed and considered to be as essential as civU libeiQ'." — /dm, p, 149, 



334 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

r#>if^'r^^|c right*' waa to r^" "" ^^"^ W ^? ^^^ t which wa s 

impossible. He would say that no state could compel it, 

no state ought to require it — ^because it was not in the power 

of man to comply with that requisition." ^ / To Fox that only 

was a free state in which no speculative opinion involved 

either the risk of punishment, or the stigma of forfeited 

rights. 

f The state could only interfere with opinion on one of two 

I grounds. The first was that the government was infallible, 

I and could decide the truth of religion. This theory was not 

{maintained. "Mr. Fox wished, as the establishment de- 

Ipended on acts of parliament, to know who gave them a 

Iright to decide upon religious opinions, and by what modd 

(could they ascertain which opinions were right and which 

wrong? It was said by some, that the pope was infallible, 

by others the church and council were infallible, but none 

had ever contended that that House was infallible; they 

might subject men to fines and penalties for being better 

than themselves, at all events, only for diflTering from 

them, in their mode of worshipping the Ddty."* "The 

truth of religion was not a subject for the discussion of 

parliament, their duty only was to sanction that which was 

most universally approved, and to allow it the emoluments 

of the state. A conviction of the reasonableness of such 

a procedure, dictated so much liberality in the religions 

establishments at the union, as well as the more recent 

establishment of the Roman catholic religion in Canada."' 

The second was that the state could judge better than 
the individual of the consequences likely to follow from his 

opinions. But this inqnUffinn w:^<s g^l^fyr tyranny. The 

state might crush opinions by persecuti on, but it con M 
not dissuade men from them. " Persecution, indeed, ori- 
ginally might be allowed to proceed on this principle of 

' Fox's Motion for the Repeal of Certain Pena] Statntes, May 1792. Vol 
iv. p. 419. 

' Catholic Dissenters Relief Bill. Vol. iv. p. 149. 

' Motion for the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, March 3, 1790. 
Vol. iv. p. 64. 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 385 

kindness — ^to promote an unity of religious opinion, and 
to prevent error in the important matters of Christian belief. 
But did persecution ever succeed in this humane and truly 
charitable design? Never. Toleration, on the other hand, 
was founded on the broad and liberal basis of reason and 
philosophy. It consisted in a just diffidence of our own 
particular opinion, and recommended universal charity and 
forbearance to the world around us. The true friend of 
toleration ought never to impute evil intentions to another, 
whose opinions might, in his apprehension, be attended with 
dangerous consequences. The man professing such opinions 
might not be aware of any evil attached to his principles ; 
and therefore to ascribe to such a person any hostile inten- 
tion, when his opinions only might be liable to exception, 
was but the height of illiberality and uncharitableness. 

" Thus, much obloquy and unfounded calumny had been 
used to asperse the character of the Roman catholics, on 
account of the supposed tendency of their religious tenets 
to the commission of murder, treason, and every other 
species of horrid crimes, from a principle of conscience. 
What was this, but a base imputation of evil intentions, 
from the uncharitable opinions entertained of that profession 
as a sect ? He lamented their errors, rejected their opinions, 
which appeared dangerous ; was ready to confide in their 
good professions ; and was willing to appeal to the experi- 
ence of this enlightened age, if they had not been accused 
unjustly, and condemned uncharitably. For, would any 
man say that every duty of morality was not practised in 
those countries in which the Roman catholic religion was 
established and professed ? Would it not be an imputation 
as palpably false, as it would be illiberal, for any one to utter 
such a foul, unmerited, and indiscriminate calumny? But 
this was always the haughty, arrogant, and illiberal language 
of persecution, which led men to judge uncharitably, and to 
act with bitter intolerance. Persecution always said, ' I 
know the consequences of your opinion better than you 
know them yourselves.' But the language of toleration was 




836 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

always amicable, liberal, and just; it confessed its doubtSi 
and acknowledged its ignorance. It said, ' Though I dislike 
your opinions, because I think them dangerous, 3ret, since 
you profess such opinions, I will not believe you can think 
such dangerous inferences flow from them, which strike my 
attention so forcibly.' This was truly a just and legitimate 
mode of reasoning, always less liable to error, and more 
adapted to human affairs. When we argued d pasieripri, 
judging from the fruit to the tree, from the effect to the 
cause, we were not so subject to deviate into error and false- 
hood, as when we pursued the contrary method of argument 
Yet, persecution had always reasoned from cause to effect, 
from opinion to action, which proved generally erroneous; 
while toleration led us invariably to form just conclusions 
by judging from actions and not from opinions. Hence 
every political and religious test was extremely absurd; 
and the only test, in his opinion, to be adopted, oug^t to be 
a man's actions." ^ 

"In this country, it was well known, that there was in 
the establishment a sect termed Methodists, to whom it was 
imputed that they held a doctrine that some were of the 
elect, and some reprobated ; a doctrine prim/t facu as bad 
as could be supposed to be entertained, because it was full 
as hostile to morality, as the absolution of the pope ; but, 
he would not therefore condemn Methodists, and think that 
they ought to be persecuted. His mode of looking at the 
matter was this: he concluded that they who held such 
doctrines did not see the same evil consequences as appealed 
to him likely to follow from them. He knew that tha« had 
existed many of the Methodist persuasion, as worthy, as 
good, and as exemplary characters as ever lived of any sect 
or description." - 

Fox saw too that whatever tests or discriminations woe 
employed, religious tests were as useless as they were unjust 

* Mcjtion for the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Much 2, t79a 
Vol. iv. pp. 58 and 59. 

' Catholic Dissenters Relief Bill, March I, 1 791. V(4. iv. p. 15a 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 337 

Who were excluded? Conscientious men to whom the 
taking of the Sacrament to qualify for office was a profana- 
tion. Were they necessarily bad citizens ? " With regard 
to the test act, he thought that the best argument which 
could be used in its favour was, that if it had but little good 
effect, it had also little bad. In his opinion, it was altogether 
inadequate to the end which it had in view. The purport 
of it was, to protect the established church, by excluding 
from office every man who did not declare himself well 
affected to that church. But a professed enemy to the 
hierarchy might go to the communion table, and afterwards 
say, that in complying with a form enjoined by law, he had 
not changed his opinion, nor, as he conceived, incurred any 
religious obligation whatever. There were many men, not 
of the established church, to whose services their country 
had a claim. Ought any such man to be examined before 
he came into office, touching his private opinions ? Was it 
not sufficient, that he did his duty as a good citizen ? Might 
he not say, without incurring any disability, ' I am not a 
friend to the church of England, but I am a friend to the 
constitution, and on religious subjects must be permitted to 
think and act as I please.' Ought their country to be 
deprived of the benefit which she might derive from the 
talents of such men, and his majesty prevented from dis- 
pensing the favours of the crown, except to one description 
of his subjects? But whom did the test exclude? the 
irreligious man, the man of profligate principles, or the man 
of no principle at all? Quite the contrary; to such men 
the road to power was open; the test excluded only the 
man of tender conscience ; the man who thought religion 
so distinct from all temporal affairs, that he held it improper 
to profess any religious opinion whatever, for the sake of 
a civil office. Was a tender conscience inconsistent with the 
character of an honest man ? Or did a high sense of religion 
show that he was unfit to be trusted?"' His condemns- 

' Motion for the Repeal of the Test u)d CoiponitioD AcU, H*y 8, 1789. 
Vol. iv. p. 6. 




1 1 i*n ^ If ^ « 



338 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

tion was restrospective. In times when there was danger 
from Catholics the test ought to have been made political, 

and not religious. 

He saw that in»n1pranrf> waQ a ii»>p^]^ny^ ^ |)|g Mfr"i 

for it excluded or drove out good citizens, and he illustrated 
this by the injury done' lo France by the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes. " The constitution, both civil and 
astical, previous to this period, had remained ui 
and unimpaired; there existed no test; protestants and 
catholics were indiscriminately admitted into civil and mili- 
tary offices ; but by that rash measure, liberality and txden- 
tion were thrown away; the arts and manufactures weie 
driven into other countries, to flourish in a more genial 
soil and under a milder form of government This should 
serve as a caution to the church of England. Persecution 
might prevail for a time, but it generally terminated in ibe 
punishment of its abettors." ^ It also deprived the nation 
of the stimulating effects of free discussion. *' Since that 
time it (the church) had flourished and improved ; but how? 
By toleration and moderate behaviour. And how had these 
been produced ? By the members of the established church 
being forced to hear the arguments of the dissenters ; by 
their being obliged to oppose argument to argument, instead 
of imposing silence by the strong hand of power ; by that 
modest confidence in the truth of their own tenets and 
charity for those of others, which the collision of opinions 
in open and liberal discussion among men living under the 
same government, and equally protected by it, never bikd 
to produce."^ His whole career shows that no man had a 
clearer appreciation than Fox of what England owed to that 
atmosphere of intellectual conflict which had left such a 
lasting impression on Voltaire. 

There is one modem idea that neither he nor anyone 
else in politics had yet appreciated, for he assume d in ri l 

' Motion for the Repeal of the Test and Corpoimtion Acts, March 2, 179QL 
Vol. iv. p. 65. 

' Sf^eches^ vol. iv. p. 5. 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 339 

higarguments the necessity for some religious establishment. 
Bu^ he wns resolutely opposed ta ajiy method of maintaining 
that establishment which pressed on ariy man's conscience. 
Oqe method of maintaining it was the method of requiring 
subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles at the Universities, 
and Fox both spoke and told as early as 1773 for a motion 
to go into Committee to consider the abolition of such 
subscription, stating as his chief reason the mischief and the 
danger of making boys subscribe to articles of religion which 
they could not possibly understand. He showed, in that 
discussion as in all others, an angry impatience of the 
prevarications which would explain away the meaning of 
solemn and portentous acts of religion. His dislike of tests 
led him to support the petition of some Broad Church 
clergymen in 1774 to be relieved of the obligation to sub- 
scribe to anything but the Bible, an appeal to which Burke 
replied with rather damaging ridicule, and which the House 
of Commons rejected without a division. 

It is in the argument between Fox and Burke that the 
controversy becomes heroic. There is little that is impres- 
sive in an intolerance which is merely sectarianism, for, at 
the best, it combines with religious enthusiasm the atmo- 
sphere of a not very august rivalry, and a rather undigni6ed 
emulation. The human mind is not very likely to bow 
down before the spectacle of a Bishop whose supreme notion 
of religion it is that a Nonconformist shall never be a mayor. 
The spectacle loses nothing of its rather mean proportions, 
when we know that a still stronger motive than this bizarre 
form of religious zeal was a very unmistakable spirit of time- 
serving and servility to a sovereign in whose mind hatred of 
Nonconformists had the tenacity of superstition. Nor is the 
intolerance embodied in Pitt's opposition to reform a very 
imposing quality. For his subordination of his own views 
to the king's prejudices in 1787 there was not even the 
apology his admirers offer for his abandonment of the cause 
of the Irish Catholics ; the nation was tranquil, the King was 
not senile, his alarms were no part of a general panic, or 



/ 



340 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

the prejudices of grey-haired decrepitude. But Pitt's oppo- 
sition was not throughout mere deference to the obstinate 
will of George and to the sectarian impulses of the Bishops. 
He came to oppose reform deliberately, on the ground of a 
political prudence, which made him regard Dissenters with 
some suspicion, as bad subjects, and the relaxation of civil 
control of opinion as dangerous to the stability of the state. 
The diflference between him and Fox, in this respect, was 
that l^ox believed with^ T.nr1f^g il^^\ fii^^^^^*- ^^^ *^» fn jiy^ir 
a d anger,'5ut that dissent subject^ to frlp^mnrt^ nw^A ^i^ 
a bilities might be a dan ger " It was not the diversity of 
M^pinions, which cannot be avoided, but the refusal of tdefa- 
\tion to those that are of diflferent opinions which might have 
been granted that has produced all the bustles and wars 
Vthat have been in the Christian world on account of religion." 
Intolerance that was ashamed to display itself in all its 
colours, and was dressed up in the trivial jealousies of sects, 
or wore a disguise of civil discipline, was rather a dowdy and 
unpretentious figure. In Burke as in Rousseau there re^ 
appeared something of the splendour o fthe old persqc utions : 
in his mouth intolerance spoke not in iSEieTnictious voice of 
sectarianism, nor in the balanced undertones of political 
caution, but with the very sorcery of a passionate humanity. 
Burke would have punished error in.Jtbe^SilUCitjStuAugustiDe 
would have punished it, ** Quid enim est pejor, mors animz 
quam libertas erroris ? " He would never consent to subject 
one set of Christians to disabilities, just because another set 
desired some advantages. He would never allow Roman 
Catholics to suffer because their doctrines were unpopular 
and because most persons in England were Protestant He 
would have chosen some other test than a sacrament to pro- 
tect the Established Church. Intoleraace wa$ .SKJttiUUtfstic 
a weapon to be wasted on the minor quarrel s of Christia nity. 
Burke reserved it for the free-thinker, and in tha t comb at he 
used it without mercy. Christianity, in all the range of its 
accepted forms, was to him what Catholicism had been to 
Innocent; it was not a mere system of speculative truth, 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 341 

nor a mere system of moral discipline, it was universal 
civilisation itself, the whole category of human conduct, and 
hope, and consolation, the indispensable interpretation of 
human life. He regarded the speculative energy of the 
eighteenth century with much the same horror as the founder 
of the Inquisition felt for the first movements of an inde- 
pendent intellectual life in the great unity Catholicism had 
so brilliantly established. The free-thinker was not merely 
a turbulent citizen or a profane mocker, he was the enemy 
of the human race, he was a conspirator against the peac e 
and happiness of the world, he was a rebel not against this 
form or that form, not against one rule or another, but^ 
against the common splendour of mankind. " f^ave as 
qiany sorts of religion as you find in your country, there is 
a reasonable worship in them all ; the gthcrs, the infide ls, 
ar e out laws of the_constitution — not of this country.Jiut of 
the human race. They are nevtTi pgver ^" *^ giippnrtt^ 
n ever tn he tpJ Fjrfil-pd. These are the wicked dissenters you 
ought to fear ; these are the people against whom you ought 
to aim the shafts of law; these are the men to whom, 
arrayed in all the terrors of government, I would say, 'You 
shall not degrade us into brutes ' ; these men, these factious 
men are thrust objects of vengeance, nQtJiig_conscientiou3 
liissenter ; these men who would take away whatever 
ennobles the rank or consoles the misfortunes of human 
nature by breaking off that connexion of observances, of 
affections, of hopes and fears, which bind us to the Divinity, 
and constitute the glorious and distinguishing prerogative of 
humanity — that of being a religious creature ; against thesel 
1 would have the laws rise in all their majesty of terrors to 
fulminate against such vain and impious wretches, and to 
awe them into impotence by the only dread they can fear or 
believe, to learn that awful lesson 'Discite justitiam montti, 
et non temnerc divos.' " ' 

It was a picturesque onslaught on men Burke had never 
wished or tried to understand. It implied a strange failure to 
' U^orii, vol. ii. p. 473. 



/ 



342 CHARLES JAMES FOX 

appreciate the extent to which the process of decomposition 
in Europe had already set in, and a strange exaggeration of 
the solidarity of a Christianity to whose divisions, as Mr. 
Morley once said, liberty owes as much as charity owes to 
her agreements. But it has a sombre grandeur of its own, 
by the side of the frivolous waste of the energy of religions 
fervour spent on the civil wars of English Christianity, and 
it marked out Burke unmistakably as the champion of the 
cause of traditional authority, when the battle was no longer 
one of dialectic, or satire, or invective, but of armed and 
merciless passion. 

Burke's greatest biographer has shown that the refusal 
of toleration to free thought, and his u ncompromising hat ied 
of men whom he roughly classified a s atheis ts, were all part 
of a political temperament that postponea truth itse lf to 
peace, and made order and repose the great criterion of 
political success. It is not fanciful to argue, that the con- 
verse of all this is to be seen in Fox, and that the statesman 
who preferred freedom to order ascribed naturally to the 
free exercise of human opinion the sanctity with which 
Burke invested established belief. His attack on the dvil 
entrenchment of orthodoxy was not that of a flippant in- 
difTerence ; it was that of a reverence as deep and pas- 
sionate as the reverence with which Burke defended those 
entrenchments. To Foi^ the human mind was as sacr ed 
las the Christian synthesis was sacred to Burke. To Burke 
I opinions, which were riot Tus~bpinions, were consecrated by 
\custom, to Fox they were consecrated by sincerity. To 
93urke it was intolerable that inquisitive or bewildered men 
should unfasten convictions that were the golden gates of 
social peace and harmony, in a spirit of prying curiosity or 
intellectual daring. To Fox it was intolerable that a single 
opinion should live on the sufferance of the barbarism that 
had produced the Gordon riots, or on the judgments of 
' prelates with a vested interest in injustice, or on the veiy 
Boeotian intellect of such a ruler as George III. If Burke 
had a great conception in asking Christianity to forswear 



RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 



343 



its internecine quarrels, in defence of social order, Fox had 
a greater in asking Christianity to lay aside its secular 
weapons, in respect for the spirit of truth. It was a new 
thing for the Irish Protestant to be told in the magnificent 
, language of Burke that religion was such a sacred thing 
that Christians must not persecute each other. It was a 
much newer thing for a good many besides an Irish Protestant 
or an English Bishop, to be told that religion was such a 
sacred thing that the state must not attempt to control it. 
In the effort to impress that truth upon his generation, the 
truth he first taught to English Liberalism, Fox summoned 
to his aid all the best qualities of his implacable magnanimity. 
A statesman who would have scorned to drive a bargain 
with his conscience, or to play a part before it, he was 
relentlessly at war with a system that fostered or rewarded 
hypocrisy, and encouraged men to persuade themselves that 
ceremonies were mere pantomimes, if they were the condition 
of civil advancement. If he fought relentlessly against all 
the sophistries by which statesmen who disowned persecution 
still perpetuated the intolerance of the dead, it was just 
because no statesman had combined so passionately as he, 
respect for the rights of man with respect for the rights 
of reason. 



I 



APPENDICES 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Russell's Memorials and Correspondence of C. J. Fox. 
1- Russell's Life and Times of C J. Fox. 

V Trevelyan's Early History of C. J. Fox. 

Trevelyan's American Revolution. Part 1. 1766 to 1776. 
Speeches of C. J. Fox. 6 volumes. 1815. 
Trotter's Memoirs of Fox. 181 1. 

V Leclty's History of England in the Eighteenth Century. 
Erskine May's Constitutional History of England. 

Comewall Lewis' Administrations of Great Britain from 178310 1830. 
Prior's Life of Burke. 
Burke's Correspondence. 

Morley's Edmund Burke, a Historical Study. 1867. 
Morley's Burke. (English Men of Letters.) 
Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelbume, 
Rosebery's PitL 
Stanhope's Life of Pitt 

Ashbourne's Some Chapters of the Life of Pitt. 
Albemarle's Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham. 
Lady Minto's Life of Sir G. Elliot. 
Life of Earl Grey, by his Son. 
Rae's Life of Sheridan. 
Wilberforce's Life and Letters. 
Private Papers of William Wilberforce. 
Stapleton's Life of Canning. 
Stephen's Life of Home Tooke. 
Twiss' Life of Eldon. 
Grattan's Life, by Henry Grattan. 
/ Graham Wallas' Life of Place. 



346 APPENDICES 

Rutt's Life of Priestley. 

Moncure Conway's Life of Paine. 

Homer's Memoir of Francis Homer. 

Life of Romilly. 

Life of Mackintosh, by his Son. 

Lyall's Warren Hastings. 

Life of Franklin. 

Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors. 

Major Cartwrighf s Life, by his Niece. 

Wolfe Tone's Autobiography. 

Boswell's Life of Johnson. 

Holland's Memoirs of the Whig Party. 

Franklin's Works. Edited by Bigelow. 

Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George in. 

Walpole's Last Journals. 

Walpole's Letters. 

Wraxall's Historical and Posthumous Memoirs. 

Duke of Buckingham's Courts and Cabinets of George lu. 

Diaries and Correspondence of Lord Malmesbury. 

Lord Colchester's Diary and Correspondence. 

Jephson*s History of the Platform. 

Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand. 

History of the Westminster Election. 1784. 

Smith's English Jacobins. 

History of the Two Acts. 

The Wyvill Papers. 

Lecky's History of Ireland in the XVHIth Century. 

Lecky's Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland. (New editioii, 

1903) 
C. Litton Falkiner, Studies in Irish History and Biography. 1902. 

Auguste Angellier, Robert Bums. 

Samuel Rogers' Table Talk. 

Gibbon's Letters. 

Gibbon's Memoirs of his Life and Writings. 

Sorel, Europe et la Revolution fran9aise. 

Aulard, Etudes et lemons sur la Revolution. 

Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire g^n^rale. 

Ernouf, Maret 

The Causes of the War of 1792, by J. H. Clapham. 1S99. 



APPENDICES 847 

La Revolution frangaise, revue historique modeme et €x>ntem- 

poraine. 
Robinet, Danton £migr^ 
Belloc's Danton. 
Beeslejr's Danton. 
J. Holland Rose, Life of Napoleon. 

TABLE OF PRINCIPAL DATES 

1 749. Fox's birth. 

1757- Fox goes to Eton. 

1763. His father takes him on his first tour. 

1764. He goes to Hertford College, Oxford 
1768. Elected for Midhurst 

1770. Becomes Jimior Lord of Admiralty in North's Government 
His violent speeches over the Middlesex Election and the 
dispute with the City make him intensely unpopular, and 
he is stoned by the populace at the Lord Mayor's trial 
1772. Feb, Fox resigns office to oppose Royal Marriage Act 

At the end of the year returns to the Ministry as Junior 
Lord of the Treasury. 
1774. Dismissed from office. 

He opposes Boston Port Bill and other coercive measures of 
Government 
1775-1782. Fox makes speeches against the American War. 
1776. American Declaration of Independence. 

1778. Death of Chatham. 

Sir George Savile's Bill for Relief of Roman Catholics. 

1779. Economy agitation begins. Fox makes many speeches for 

economical reform in this and following years. Active 
agitation in the country. Sir Henry Hoghton's Bill for 
relieving dissenting ministers. 
Ireland. Catholic Relief Act. Volunteer movement begins. 

1780. ApriL Dunning's motion "that the influence of the crown 

has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished " 
carried by 233 to 215. 
June, Gordon Riots. 
1782. March, North resigns. 

Rockmgham Prime Minister. Fox Foreign Secretary. 




348 APPENDICES 

1782. Measures against corruption passed. 

May, Fox moves Resolution recognising independence of 

Irish Parliament 
Pitt's motion for Parliamentary Reform supported by Fox, 

rejected by 161 to 141. 
July, Rockingham dies. Shelbume Prime Minister. Fox 

and Burke resign. Pitt becomes Chancellor of the 

Exchequer. 
Ireland. Further Catholic Relief Acts passed. 

1783. Jan, Peace with America and France. England acknow- 

ledges independence of United States. 

Feh, Coalition between Fox and North. Their amendment 
disapproving peace carried by 207 to 190. 

April, Coalition Government with Portland as Prime 
Minister. 

May, Pitt's motion for Parliamentary Reform supported bj 
Fox, rejected by 293 to 149. 

Nov. Fox's India Bill carried through Commons, but re- 
jected in Lords by 95 to 76. Coalition Ministry dis- 
missed Dec. 18. Pitt becomes Prime Minister. 

Ireland. Great Convention of Volunteers. Irish Parliament 
refuses to be intimidated into carrying reform. 

1784. March, Dissolution. Coalition lose 160 seats. Debates on 

the Westminster Scrutiny. 
July, Pitt's India Bill carried. Fox opposes it 

1785. Feb,-May, Pitt's Irish Propositions opposed by Fox and 

North, modified, and finally withdrawn. 
April, Pitt's motion for Parliamentary Reform supported by 

Fox but lost by 248 to 174. 
Pitt supports Fox's motion for Impeadmient of Warren 

Hastings on Benares charge, which is carried by 119 

to 79. House of Commons appoints Committee for 

Impeachment next year. 

1787. Commercial Treaty with France, opposed by Fox and Buike. 
Beaufoy's first attempt to repeal Test and Corporation Acts. 

Fox supports, Pitt opposes repeal. 

1788. Feb, Trial of Warren Hastings begins. 
Slave trade debates. 

Dec, Debates on the R^ency lasting several weeks. 



APPENDICES 349 

j8g. Beaufoy*s second motion for repeal of Test and Corporation 
Acts. 

Debates on Abolition of slave Irade. 
rgo. Fox's motion for repeal of Test and Corporation Acts. 

Dispute with Spain over Nootka Sound, Pitt supported by 
the Opposition. 
rgr. Catholic Dissenters Relief Bill. Quebec Bill. 

March. Separation between Fox and Burke. 

April. Wilberforce's motion for Abolition of slave trade 
supported by Fox and Pitt defeated by 163 to 88. 

" Friends of the People " and London Corresponding Society 
formed, 
rga. Fox's Libel Bill passed. 

Fox's motion to repeal Penal Statutes rejected by 142 to 63. 

Debates on slave trade, motion for gradual abolition carried 
in Commons defeated in Lords. 

Some abortive negotiations for coalition between Pitt and 
Fox. 

Aug, 10. Storming of the Tuileries. Louis xvi. deposed. 
Grenville recalls Cower. Chauvelin remains in England. 
September massacres. November decree. Pitt sees 
Maret Dec. I. Parliament meets Dec. 13. Fox's motion 
for sending a Minister to Paris negatived. 

Ireland. Concessions to Roman Catholics. 
f93- /■*"■ 21. French King executed, /an. 2i. Le Brun sends de- 
spatch to Chauvelin conciliatory to England. Chauvelin 
recalled and Maret to be chargi d'affaires. Jan. a^ 
Chauvelin ordered by the English Government to leaT« 
England in eight days. /an. 15. Chauvelin leaves. 
yan. 30. Maret arrives. 

/^e6. 1. Convention declares war on England and Holland 

Ff6. 18. Fox's resolution on war defeated by 370 to 44. 

Afa}: Grey's motion for Parliamentary Reform defeated by 
aSj to 41. 

Aug., Sept., and lattr. Treason trials. Muir, Palmer and 
others transported. 

Ireland. Catholic Relief, including suflrage. 
794. Ftb. Debate on slave trade. 

May. Habeas Corpus Act suspended by 183 to 33. 



1 




350 APPENDICES 

1794. July. Fitzwilliam, Windham, and Portland join ttie Govern- 

ment. 

Oct,y Dec, Hardy, Home Tooke and others tried for treason 
and acquitted. 

Dec, Wilberforce, a supporter of the war, moves an amend- 
ment to the Address, but is defeated by 240 to 73. 

1795. ya^f. Grey secures 86 votes against 269 for motion for 

peace. 

Feb, 23. Fitzwilliam's recall from Ireland. 

Feb, Debate on slave trade. 

May, Debate on recall of Fitzwilliam. 

June, Warren Hastings acquitted. Burke retires from Parlia- 
ment 

Nov. Treason and Sedition Bills passed. Vigorous opposidoo. 

1796. Unsuccessful negotiations with Directorate. 

Feb, Grey's motion for peace with France lost by 189 to sa 

Debates on slave trade. 

May. Fox's motion on conduct of war lost by 216 to 42. 

1797. Unsuccessful negotiations with France. 

March, Fox's motion on state of Ireland lost by 220 to S4. 
May, Fox's motion for repeal of Treason aiKi Sedition Bills 

lost by 260 to 52. Grey's motion for Parliamentary 

Reform lost by 256 to 91. 
May, Mutiny at the Nore. 
July, Burke's death. Fox in retirement 

1798. Fox in retirement May, His name struck off the Privy 

Council for toast at the Whig Club. Irish Rebellion. 

1799. Fox in retirement 

1800. Fox in retirement, but comes up to move motion of censure 

on answer to Napoleon's overtiu-es. Motion lost by 265 
to 64. 
July, Act of Union. 

1 801. March, Pitt resigns. Addington becomes Prime Minister. 
March 25. Grey's motion on the state of the nation lost by 

291 to 105. 
Oct, Preliminaries of peace signed. 

1802. March, Peace of Amiens signed. 

Fox goes to Paris to consult records for his history. 

1 803. May, War breaks out with France. 



APPENDICES 



351 



T803. May 34. Grey's amendment to Address supported by Fox, 
defeated by 398 to 67. 
Afay a;. Fox's motion for the mediation of Russia opposed 
by Government, but afterwards on Pitt's advice accepted. 
1S04. April. Fox's motion on defence of the country supported by 
Pitt, lost by 256 to 204. 
May. Addington resigns. Pitt becomes Prime Minister. 
1805. Fox's motion for Catholic Emancipation opposed by Pitt, lost 
by 336 to 134. 
Juru. Grey's motion on state of public affairs lost by 161 

to no. 
Dec. Battle of Austerlitz. 
1S06. Jan, Death of PitL Grenville becomes Prime Minister with 
Fox as Foreign Secretary. 
Negotiations with Napoleon. 
May. Limited service in the army earned on Windham's 

motion by 354 to 135. 
June. Fox's motion for abolishing slave trade carried by 114 

to IS. 
Sept. 13. Death of Fox. 



TABLE OF EVENTS TO ILLUSTRATE CHAPTER X 



Aug. Grenville contempUtet epoch of 
Ckt. Lord Effii^ham stops nq^ro in- 



Nbv. Report of design of Rochun- 
beau to raise insuireclions in 
Nctheilinds and Holland sent by 
Grenville to Gower. 



Jutu. Flight of King to Varoint*. 
Aug. 37. DeduatioD of Pilniti. 

Oct. I. Second NatknuJ AMOnbly 

Oct. 31. Decree agunst emignnts. 
Nmi. Assembly thanks Brituh Nation 

and "Mr." Effingham. 
Nim. Gowec not reusiuiiig ; thinks 

Grenville's report not nnjikelj. 
Nob. CIooIi bannguei AMcmbly, de- 
ing despotic powcn, inclod- 
ngknd. Dim ' — -* 



. 10. Search for contraband goods 
in French legation promptly 
apolt^ised for. 

ween /an. lo and 30. Hirsinger 
acknowledges courtesy of Gren- 
ville, but is suspicions of Eogland's 



"79a. 



ing Eogui 




352 



APPENDICES 



1792. England. 

intentions, though Grenville as- 
sures him they will abstain from 
interference. 

fan, 20. Hirsinger presented to King, 
received cordially but "frankly." 



Jem, 31. Opening of Parliament King's 
Speech antici{)ates continuance of 
present tranquillity and advises re- 
duction of forces. Fox approves. 

Jan, and Feb. Talleyrand tries to ob- 
tain assurances of neutrality in 
case of war between France and 
Emperor, and urges alliance. Re- 
ceived courteously, but fiuls to 
obtain formal answer. Recom- 
mends sending a young intelligent 
Minister to England. 

Feb. 17. Pitt in Budget Speech antici- 
pates fifteen years' peace with 
assurance. 



March 9. Grenville tells Cower to con- 
fine himself to assurance of 
friendly sentiments. 



April. Disputes between English and 
French sailors on coast of Mala- 
bar settled easily. 



1792. 



Francb. 



April. Pitt assures commercial de- 
putation that England will take 
no part in war. Government 
issues proclamation affirming 
strict neutrality of England. 

May^ June, July, Chauvehn writes no 
grounds for doubting England's 
pacific disposition. 

May. Thurlow dismissed. Chau- 
velin writes this advantageous to 
France. 

Mc^. Government issues proclama- 
tion against seditious writings. 
Chauvelin protests. 



fan, 24. Talleyrand sent 00 minMO to 
England. 



March. Giroodin Ministij in power. 
March I. Emperor Leopold 11. £es. 



March la Talleyrand returns SKtii6ed 
to France. 

April 1 1. Gower writes French BGn- 
istiv anxious to be on good terms 
with England. 

April 19. Chauvelin sent as Minister to 
England with Do Rovaimy and 
Tafie3rrand. Instructed to ob- 
tain positive assurances of neo- 
trality in event of war, and to 
sup;est a defensive alliance and 
raise a loan. 

April 2a France declares war on Em- 
peror. 

ApriL Gower writes French army voj 
feeble. 

Aprils May ^ June. French armies mi- 
succosfuL 

March-fuly. Queen conesponds widi 
foreign powers. 



fune 13. King 
isters. 



Giroodin Min- 



APPENDICES 



?. England. 

K15. End of Session. King's Speech 
ajitici^In peace. 
Abortive attempl lo bring about 
coalition of Piu and Fox. 

t iS. Chauvclin presents memorial 
inveighing against conduct of in- 
vading sovereigns, and urging 
Elnglish Government to interfere. 
Grenville replies will abstain from 
al! interference. 



/tttu 20. Tuileries besieged. 

July 14. Memorial from King urging 

allies 10 inlerfere. 
July 16. Dulce of Brunswick at Cob- 

IcnTi issues proclamation. 
Aug. 4. Gower writes for instructions. 



jlug, 17. Govemment recalls Gower, 
but adheres to strict neutrality. 
Cbauvelin remains in England, 
not officially recognised. 



Aug. 10. Ttuleries stormed. 

King dethroned and im- 

pnsoned. 
National Convention iumrooned. 

(^g/r.—lAvisseand Rambaud. "The 
Govermnent Cry to reassure Eu- 
rope by eiplaining this revolution, 
and promising to punish any 
Frenchman who should interfere 
in the political discussions of an 
allied or neuirafpeopfe." Special 
relcrence lo England. ) 

Avg, 16. English deputation congiatu- 
Utcs French Assembly on events 



Aug. 21. Government issues circular to 
Powers, slating recall of Gowei 

' eutrality. 



Sepl. 10. Grenville sends note 
perial and Neapolitan n 
with formal assurances that 
murderers of French King or 
Queen shall not receive an asylum. 
13 



Aug. 33. Longwy captured by Prus- 

Sift. 2. Verdun taken. 

S^, 3-4. September massacre&. 

Sift. 10. War declared against King of 

Sardinia. 
S^. 13, 14. Allies obtain ) 

of Aieonne pass. 
Sift, 30. &ttle i^ Vklni}, 




354 



APPENDICES 



1792. 



England. 



End of Sept, Lords of the Admiralty 
reduce numbers of seamen. 
Chauvelin writes, if England 
treated with consideration and 
France behaves well, the Re- 
public will be recognised. 
Many French agents over in 
England. 



Oct, 22. Du Rovaray urges Grenville to 
recognise Republic. 

Oct. 30. Qiauvelin authorised by Le 
Brun to repudiate idea of annexa- 
tion of Belgium and Holland. 

Nov, 6. Grenville writes Auckland 
urging neutrality on the Dutch. 

Nffo, 7. Confidential letter of Grenville 
rejoicing in neutrality and hoping 
for retrenchment 

All Nov, Distress, riots, and republi- 
can propaganda. 

Nov, 13. Formal declaration sent to 
States General assuring Holland 
of determination to execute treaty 
of 1788. 

Nao, 13. Letters of instruction to am- 
bassadors at Berlin and Vienna 
authorising them to break silence 
on French af&drs. 



1792. Francb. 

S^, 21. National Coareiitioii nieefs 
and proclaims Republic. 

End oiS^, Savoy ooiiq[iiered. Nice 
annexed. 

Sept, 28. Custine marcfaei into Ger- 
many. 

Sept, JO. Allies retreat 

Spires taken by Cosdiie. 
Verdun and Loogwy letikai. 

Oct, 4. Custine enters Worms. 
Oct, 21 . Custine enters Mayence. 



Nov, 6. Battle of Jenmpei. 



Nov. 29. Chauvelin urges Grenville to 

recognise the Republic. 
All De£, Naval activity. 



Nov, 



Nov, 
Nov, 

Nov. 



Nov, 
Nov, 

Nov, 



French eimboats ask peimisaoo 

from Holland to «il np SdiddL 

Are refused. 

14. French enter BniSKli. 

14. MoUoodoff crowci PdUi 

frontier. 

16. ResolutioDS of Ezecalife 

Council abolishing as oootniy to 

the laws of nature the exdosivt 

navigation (rf the Scheldt aid 

Mense, and aathoriaof^ FicDdi 

armies to poime Aw^fciittis eica 

to Holland. 

middle. Maret sent on secret nb- 

sion to England. 

19. Decree of Cooventioo |iio- 

mising assistance to any natna 

desiring to regain liberty. 

28. Antwerp capitulates. 

English ^ Deputation at Bw of 

Convention. 



Dec, beginning oL Eastadie dcaaandi 
passage through Maestridit 



APPENDICES 



D<i. a. Maiet hw interriew with Piti \ 
explains away decree of Novembei 
i6 ; Piit fcieiull;, pioposes seciei 
negodatioD. 

Dtt. 4- Grenville writes Aucliland say- 
ing His Majesty has thought it 
recessaiy to arm in view of French 
CDodacl, and urges Holland to do 
likewise, Id resist illegal demands 



1793. FRANCt. 

I>ie. early. Cusdne driven 

Getttiaoy. 
Die. 3. NamuT taken. 



Dti. 3- French vessels sail up Scheldt. 



I Holland. Not a " formed 

Die. 9. French Ministers reiiise pro- 
posal for secret negoliationi ; will 
act only through Chauvdin. 



Du, 13. Alien Bill introduced. 

Da. 13. Amcncimenl of Fox urging 
that England should treat with 
France negatived by 390 to 50. 

Dte. 15. Maret has interview with Pitt, 
explains decision of December 9. 



Ilingness to interfere ir 



aflairs 



Dt!. 31. Grenville answers Chauvelin's 
note of 17th, says King has no 
oliicial intercourse with Fiance, 
but slates English views ; aoDot 
consent to France breaking treaties 



Dtt. 15. Decree of C 

countries occupied bjr French 
arms the soverei^ty tA the people 
is to be proclamied, and those 
who will not accept it treated ai 



Dtc. 19. Marel leaves England. 

Dei. 37. Chauvelin presents peremp- 
tory note to Grenville asking if 
England is neutral or hostile- 
France will nol attack Holland if 
Holland is neutral. 

Die. 29. Pitt sends proposal to Russia 
to make joint representations to 
Fiance (not known tilt iSoo). 

Die. 19. Russian ambassador pioposes 
conceit with his court on French 
affairs. 

Grenville expresses willingness 
to oppose French 



Die. 35. Aucklaod thinks that the wortt 






Dk. 31. French Minitter for Navy 
send* violent ebcular to KBpotta 
•bout impcndiiig war wMi £1^- 
Und. 




356 



APPENDICES 



1792. England. 

and annulling political system ; 
will remain friendly if France 
gives up aggression. 

1793. 

Jan, 7. Chauvelin sends note asserting 
official character and complaining 
of Alien Act. 

Jan, 8. Grenville returns note ; diplo- 
matic character assumed inad- 
missible. 

J<m, 12. Imperial and Prussian am- 
bassadors inform Grenville of 
approaching partition of Poland. 
Grenville replies England can 
have nothing to do with it. 

Jan, 13. Chauvelin presents friendly 
note from Lebrun. Executive 
Council wish for friendly relations 
and accredited representative, and 
send formal letter of credence to 
Chauvelin. Decree of November 
19 explained away ; opening of 
Scheldt defended as of vital im- 
portance to Belgium, and as a 
right unjustly sacrificed by Em- 
peror: if England and Holland 
dissatisfied they must negotiate 
with Belgium. France renounces 
conquest, will restore independ- 
ence to Belgium when liberty 
consolidated. If England con- 
tinues hostile, will fight with 
regret, without fear. 

Jan, 18 and 20. Grenville sends per- 
emptory notes; pronounces French 
explanations unsatisfiEurtory, says 
England will persist in measures 
for security of self and allies, and 
refuses to recognise Chauvelin 
officially. 

Jan, 22. Grenville writes to Auckland 
that he has private information 
from Paris that next French cam- 
paign will be against Holland. 



1792. 



Francb. 



1793. 

Jan, I. Dumouriez anives in Ptris. 



Jan, 12. Brissot for Diplomatic Com- 
mittee presents report to Anembly 
accusing British Government of 
malevofence and urging demand 
for repeal of Alien Act and ex- 
planation of armaments. 

Jan. 13. Convention orders amung of 
Slips and constmction of new 
ones. 



Jan, 18. Auckland writes that he heais 
from banker Hope that invaaoo 
of Holland determined on. 



Jan, 24. Chauvelin ordered to leave 
within eight days. 

Jan, 25. Chauvelin leaves, receiving 
despatch of 22nd on the way. 



Jan, 21. King executed. 

Jan, 22. Le Bnm sends despatch to 
Chauvelin recalling hhn as Us 
credentials were not veodvtd. 
Conciliatory tone. Fiendi widb 
for peace. Maret coming over as 
Ckargi itAffairu. 

Jan, 23. Auckland writes 70^000 Ant- 
trians coming to Low CoanbioL 
Dutch difficmt to move. 



APPENDICES 



1793. England. 

Jan, 18. Correspondence 

King's Minislets and Chaovelin 
Jaid before PBilUmcnt and aug- 
mentatioQ of forces demanded. 
Reinhaid (Secrctaiy of Eojba^) 
writes lo Le Brin urging a piciRc 
overluie : feeling cooling. 
Jan. 30. Mfliet arrives. 



Ftb. 


4. Grenville wtii«s Auckland 

but England can only neguliale 
on Ictms mentioned to Chauvelin ; 
M«rel ordered to quit England 
and no agent of Enecuiive Council 

%. Grenville writes lo Eden u^ng 
understanding with Austria to 
make peace with France if she 


Fib. 


Fdi. 


will give up conquests. 
7. Marel quits London Uid re- 
ceives news of declaialion of war 
at Calais. 



. I. Qiauvelin having arrived, the 
Convention declares war against 
England and Holland. 



r 



INDEX 



AbcTcromby, Sic Ralph, nnd Irish Rt- 

hellion, 185. 
Abeicioiaby, Lord, at Palmer's trial, 

114. 
Adaii, Sic Robert, Memttr, 306 ; Fox s 

lelter to, 308, 
Addin^on, zo, 3Z, 60, 299 ; overtures 

Aii-la-Chap«lle, Congress of, 280. 

Albemncle, Lt/t ef Rackiagham, 40. 

Aleiander of Russia, Fox hopes for 
medialion, 304. 

AJthorp, Lord, 54. 

America, 340; quarrel with, 204 fT.; 
origin of war with, 20J ; Fo* opposes 
war with, loS ; Fox nn war with, 
aro, 213-114; Declaration of Jn> 
dependence, III; Independence, 
Chatham's and Foil's views on, 313 ; 
divisions in House of Commons dur- 
ing war, 316-217; War. 313, 314: 
t^uarrd with, 351 \ Rdigious Tulera^ 
tlon in, 322 ', War, 66, 100, loS, 109, 
127, 129. 130, 131, 143. 

Amieiu, Peace of, 383, 292, 294 ; rup- 
ture of, 299, 302, 303. 

Angcllier, M., Burns, 123. 

Anslculher, Mr., 117, 

Antoinette, Marie, Burke on, 293. 

Ariosto. 5, 8. 133. 

Army, Whigs and, 215, 297. 

Army Reform, Fox on, 30S-309 ; altera- 
tion of system during his last Govern- 
menl, 309. 

Art. Fox and. 8. 

Ashbourne, Lord, Fill, 176, t8t. 

Assembly, Constituent (French), 27a. 

Assembly, National (French), 346, 2J4. 

Associations, Loyal, ill. 

Auckland, Lord, 154, 168, 357. 

Aulard, ^A., 373. 

Ausierliti, 307, 

Austria, 367, 173, 280-381, 384; re- 
forms in, 240; invasion of Fntne«, 



354-255 ; conduct in lirst two coali- 
tions, 293, 394 ; Fox's policy towards, 
306 ; joins thiid Coalition, 307. 

Barre, 37, 68. 

Banh^lemy, 383. 

Bavaria, 269, 294. 

Beaufoy, J31 ; motions for repeal of 

Test and Corporation Acts, 325-326 ; 

speech in moving repeal quoted, 

3i6-327. 
Bedford, Duke of, 261, 309; redsls 

domestic coercion, 127, 118. 
Belgium, 360, 369, 27S, 379, 180, 283, 

292, 293, 394, 299 ! importance of 

wresting from France in Pitt's eyes, 

3S4, 385, 399. 
Be Hoc, Dan/an, 259. 
Beresford, Irish Attorney- General, 191. 
Birmingham. 97. 
Bishops, 333 ; against abolition of slave 

trade. 335 ; against repeal of Test 

and Corporalion Acts, 337. 
Blackslone, 297. 



Bolingbtoke, 31, 34, SS- 
Bonaparte. See Naf 
Bonney, 133. 






Boston. 310, 3it ! Port Bill, 33, lio. 
Bourbons, 67, 137, aSl, 389-290, 296, 

303 ; Fox's enmity to, «5a^as4 ; 

policy gone with Revolution, 253- 

254 ; Fox 00 restoration of, 388, 397, 

398. 
Bowes, Irish Chancellor, 149. 
Biaxfifld, Lord Justice. 116: speech at 

Muir*! trial, 113-113; Tnuuk at 

Gerrald'a trial, 1 1 5. 
Brisaot, 358 ; wild language, 3S9i S^n. 
Broad Church, cle^ymen'i petition 

nipported by Fox, 339. 
Brownine, Mr. Oicar, 157. 
ck, Duke of, 275; 



Budcingfaam Papen, $6. 



360 



INDEX 



Buckingham, Earl of, 174. 

Burgh, 154. 

Burke, Edmund, 2, 8$, 292, 296, 313, 
314 ; friendship for Fox, 9, 50, 208 ; 
desithbed mesaige to Fox, 11 ; com- 
pared with Fox, 11-12; on Fox's 
oratory, 13 ; recklessness in debate, 
18 ; neglect of, by Whig leaders, 18- 
19 ; on French prisoners, 21 ; on 
Rodney at St. Eustatius, 24 ; creates 
Rockingham party, 33; restates 
Whig theory, 33. 34, 38, 39 ; dislike 
of Chatham, 35 ; £uthful to Rocking- 
ham, 36 ; despondent about American 
War, 41 ; description of King's sys- 
tem in Thoughts on Present Discon- 
tent^ 41-43; remedy for corruption, 
43-44; economy agitation, 45, 46, 
93 ; Bill for economy lost, 46 ; 
measure of economical reform carried, 
48, 49; opposes loan system, 50; 
leaves Government after Rocking- 
ham's death, 54 ; and the Coalition, 
57-^3 ; obnoxious to King, 65 ; and 
clerks dismissed by Barr^, 08 ; against 
Parliamentary Reform, 80; breach 
with Fox, 83-84, 208; favours 
benevolent oligarchy, 91 ; victim of 
panic, 142 ; on Secret Committee, 
106 ; attachment to existing constitu- 
tion, 86, 88, 89 ; on interposition of 
people, 90 ; supports Wilberforce on 
motion about slave importation, 98 ; 
on Irish Penal Code, 148 ; on Irish 
Catholic Relief, 150; on Irish afBurs, 
153* 190; and Free Trade, 208; 
motion for conciliating America, 212 ; 
champion of colonists, 137, 196; 
and Quebec Bill, 218; and Indian 
affairs, 219 ff.; and India Bill of 
1783, 220; on Select Committee 
about Indian Government, 221, 223 ; 
and Warren Hastings, 231-232 ; and 
French Revolution, 241-249; glori- 
fication of old order, 242-243, 282 ; 
views on French Revolution com- 
pared with Fox*s, 244-246 ; dread of 
change, 242 ff. ; ideal of government, 
244 ; extravagant language, 262 ; 
against treating with France, 263- 
264 ; horror of Revolutionary princi- 
ples, 266, 268, 271, 285, 286; view 
of French Revolution, 271-272; 
view of Revolutionary war, 273, 275, 
276, 278, 279, 283; and Quiberon 
expedition, 284 ; in favour of Pro- 
testant Dissenters Relief Bill, but 
favours test, 320; Gordon riots, | 



I 32I1 322; befriends Catholics, 323; 
strongly against repeal of laws a^unst 
Uniunans, 323-324 ; and Test and 
Corporation Acts, 328, 331 ; and 
compulsion on Dissenters to subscribe 
to Articles, 329 ; honor of atheiiti 
and free-thinkers, 322, 341-^42; viewi 
on toleration compared with Fox's, 
339-342. 

Burke, Richard, i8a 

Bute, Lord, 35, 50, 58, 61, 251. 

Cambridge, Speech at meeting of Free- 
holders on ri|^ts of the people^ 
104. 

Camden, Lord, 37, 41, 93, 126^ 185, 

320. 
Campbell, Lord, 107, 126. 
Campo Formio, Treaty of, 293, 394. 
Canada (see aJso Quebec BUI), 64; 

Fox on Government o( 217-118; 

rebellion, 217; establiahaient of 

Roman Catholic relig;ion in, 317, 

334- 
Canning, 39, 61 ; and the Union, 189. 

Canterbury, Archbisbop of^ eoUeds 
opinions on Test and Caqtoiation 
Acts for Pitt, 327. 

Carlisle, Lord, Viceroy of Ixelaiid, IJJ, 

154. 
Carmarthen, Lord, 154. 

Cartwright, 85. 

Carysfoot, Lord, on appealing to the 
people, 103. 

Castlereagh, Lord, 38 ; in Ireland* 187, 
188, i^ 

Catholics, Roman (see also Rdie( 
Catholic, Emancipation, Catholic, 
and Caiiada), loyalty o( 140, 317; 
disabilities in Engund, 318; <b- 
abilities in Ireland 148, 149; BQl 
to restrain from teaching Procestami 
lost, 322 ; Fox in finvoor of tolcntioa 

to, 333-335- 
Cavendish, Lord John, 54, 68, si 7. 

Cavendishes, 45. 

Charlemont, Lord. 150, 151, 151, 154, 
163, 202 ; president of VSonteer 
Convention, 165. 

Charles, Archduke, 293. 

Chatham, First Lord, 53, 93, 204,205, 
251, 252, 31X, 313, 314; KiK^i 
hatred of, 15; on American tnde^ 
26 ; refuses to join first Rockingbam 
Ministry, 35 ; pUvs into lung^ 
^^<^<1^ 35> 30 ; his (^vemaient, 37 ; 
break-down, 37; resijpution, y^\ 
differences with Rockingham^ 3$^ 



39, 4°; ■ demigogue in best scnsp, 
39 ; disadvantages u > collogue, 
39, 40 ; on inRucDce of Crown, 101 ) 
allilude towards America, 143, 306, 
307, 209, 212; on AmericaD trade, 
208 ; against American independ- 
ence, 109, 212, 213: opposilion to 
wai compared with Foi^, Zl6; ud 
East India Company, 220, 227 ; on 
slave trade, 233 ; on Penal Laws, 
318; supports Protestant Dissenleis 
Relief Bill, 310. 

Chatham, Second Laid, 311. 

Chaacer, 6, 132. 

Chaurelin, 356 ; replaced by Maret, 
2j8 : mischievous conduct, 2J9, 261 ; 
expulsion of, 258, 262, 263. 

Cbeyi Singh, 231. 

Choiseul, 252. 

Chubb, John, letter of Coleridge to, 

131-122. 

Church uf England, 326 ; enthusiasm 
for House of Hanover, 319 ; Test 
and Corporation Acts declared in- 
dispensable to, 327-32S ; Fox on 
Disestablishment of, 32S ; evil effect 
on, of Acts, 330. 

Cicero, 132. 244. 

Qare, Lord, 28, 148, 175, '8», 20X: 
tnade Attorney-General by Coalition 
Government, 172 ; opposition to 
Catholic relief, 180, 181 ; becomes 
Lord Claie, 181 ; becomes a Viscount, 
184: gets rid of Aberciomby, 185. 

Clarkion, Z34. 

Clerk, Lord Justice. See Biaxfield, 
Lord Justice. 

Clive, l^rd, 104, azo. 2>i. 

Clooti, Anacbaisis, 259. 

Coalition, between Pox and North, 19, 
'o. SS. 57 f', 96, 3»7 i fatal to Fox's 
influence, 63. 63 tf. f Fox's later 
views on, 71 ; disastrous to the party, 
72. 

Coalition, European, against France, 
255, 259, 260, 264, 271, 2S3, 284, 
289, 292, 297 : second Coalition 
{■799). »94 ; third Coalition (rSos), 
307. 308, 31s. 

Coalition Government, 59, 164, 172, 
223 ; break up of, 69 ; and India, 
221 ff. ; wrecked by India Bill, 
328. 

Cockbum. Lord, on Lord Justice 
Braifield. 112. 

Code Napoleon, 350. 279. 

Coleridge. S. T,, letter to Mr. Chubb 
about ThelwoU, iii-izz. 1 



I Committee, Secret, on (edition, loj, 
I 106, toS, 116, 134. 
Committees, Select, on Indian Giivem- 

ment, 219, 221, 323. 
Company, East India (see «lio India), 

220, 225 ; evils of rule, 321 ; con- 
demned by Fox, 224. 
Conde, 293. 
Condorcct, 132. 
Contractors' Bill, 48, 49. 
Conventicle Act, 31S. 
Convention, French, 109, 124, 237, 

36 1 ; Englishmen at bar, s6l. 
Conventions, British, of 17S0, 102; of 

'793t 114; Irish, Volanteer, 165- 

166 i Catholic, 178. 
Conway, 37, 55, ai?. 
Corneille, 7. 
Comwallis, Lord, 1S7 ; refuses ^'ice' 

royalty of Ireland, 196. 
Court. See George ill. 
Crabbe, Fox and, 7. 
Cromwell. 297. 333. 
Culhell. Wakefield's publisher, 133. 

Danton, 262, 3G6, 273 ; foreign policy, 

259, 260, 361. 
Dartmouth, Lord, and stave trade. 

Declaratory Act, Amencao, 35, ao6, 

209. 
Declaratorr Act, Irish, 157, 163. 
Decree, French, of I^vember 19, 

1792, 357, 258, 261, 261, 2821 

renouncing interference, 261 ; of 

August 23, 1793, 291. 
Democracy, Fox no illusions about, 

38 ; Fox on strength of, 78, 79. 
Democrats, Fox and, 89, 125. 
Denmark, 2S4. 
De Quinccy, disparagement of Fox, 

Derby, Lord, 128. 
Derty, Bishop of, 165. 
Dbcstablishment, F(»x on, 328. 
Dissenters (see also various Bills and 

Acts), Font's championship of, 8a; 

disabilities of, 318, 314-iaSi 326; 

loyalty to House of Hanover, 317, 

326 ; identified with Jacobins, 319 ; 

hated by George III., 339: Ktl'i 

^suspicion of, 340. 
Dorman, History efllu Empirt, 295. 
Dotvnihire, Lord, 18S. 
Dryden, anecdote about Fox and, 7. 
Duigenan, 202. 
Dumouriei, 237, 2j8, 36a. 
Duncanoon, Lord, 54. 



r X 




362 



INDEX 



Dundas, 17, 69, 109, 1 11, 277, 296; 
Catholic Relief in Ireland, 177; 
chairman of India Committee, 221 ; 
and Indian reform, 224; and slave 
trade, 237 ; Catholic relief in Scot- 
land, 320; on Secret Committee, 
10^ ; on agitation of 1780, 107. 

Dundas, Loid Advocate, 105, 1 14. 

Dungannon, 151. 

Dunning, 53, 54, 64 ; hb motion for 
restricting power of Crown, 46. 

Durham, Ix>rd, 219. 

Dutt, Mr. Romesh, on Warren Hastings, 
230. 

Economy agitation, 43-46, 85, 93, 
95 ; great public meetings, 45 ; peti- 
tions to Parliament, 46, ^ ; delegates 
sent to London, 46 ; growth of pro- 
gramme, 47* 

Eden, William. See Auckland, Lord. 

Egypt, 303. 304. 

EUenborough, Lord, 21. 

Elliot, Sir Gilbert, 259; motion to 
repeal Test Act for Scotland, 325. 

Emancipation, Catholic, King's hos- 
tility to, 61, 62, 189, 200; Pitt's 
attitude, 61, 62, 188, 189; Fitz- 
william's conduct, 182-183 > opposi- 
tion of English Government, 184- 
185, 198 ; used as bribe for Union, 
187, 189; Fox's attitude, 195, 196, 

, 200. 

Emigres, French, 243; intended ven- 
geance, 247 ; Quiberon expedition, 
284. 

Emmet, 199. 

Episcopalians, Scottish, disabilities re- 
moved, 322. 

Emouf, Life o/Maret, 258. 

Erskine, Henry, 126. 

Erskine, Thomas, 41, 129, 175; de- 
fence of Dr. Shipley and of (lome 
Tooke and of Hardy, 126. 

Euripides, 6, 7, 28, 132. 

Fitzgibbon. See Clare, Lord. 

Fitzherbert, Mrs., 17. 

Fitzpatrick, 41, 54, 56, 156, 215, 
253 ; excesses and love of literature, 
4, 5 ; friendship for Fox, 10 ; Chief 
Secretary of Ireland, i<5, 160, l6l. 

Fitzwilliam, Lord, 61, 82, 198, 199, 
311 ; friendship for Fox, 10; joins 
Government in 1794, 181 ; conduct 
as Viceroy, 182 ; recall, 183 ; Fox 
on recall, 191, 195. 

Fleuf)', Cardinal, 290. 



Flood, 151, 154, 161, 169^ 902 ; ^nml 
with Gimttan, i6a ; agitation in lie- 
land, 163-166. 

Forbes, 174. 

Fox, Qiarles James — 

( 1 ) Education, chancteristics, tmlcstK 
mistakes, career, 1-30. 

(2) Fox in opposition with the Rock- 
inghams, 1774-1782. Eoonomy 
agitation, 45 ft ; war with Amefict, 
24, 208-216; Goidoii riots, 320- 
322. 

(3) Fox in office with Rocktnghms, 
1782, March to July. Rdbcmi 
carried, 48-50; ooDceaion of in- 
dependence to Irish Plariiaiiieiii, 
1 53-161 ; quarrel with Shelfanne, 
53ff*> 63 ff.; resijg n atio n, 54. 

(4) Fox in oppositioQ to Shdhome, 
July 1782 to Febmmiy 1783. Mo- 
tives of ojppositioD, SJh57i *Bp- 
ports exnhat leoognitiaii of Iriv 
mdepenoence, 163; joins widi 
North to censore peace, 67. 

(5) Fox in office with North (in 
Coalition Government), April 17S3 
to December 1783. Irelajid, Vol- 
unteer Convention, 164-166 ; ladii 
Bill, 69, 220-229. 

(6) Fox in opposition to Pitt, Dccen- 
her 1783 to March 1791 (qoarnl 
with Burke). Fox's puty rooted 
at elections, 70; supports Fulii- 
mentarv Reform, 75; oppOMS 
Pitt's India Bill, 223, 229 ; s^h 
ports impeachment of Hartinp, 
229-232; opposes Irish Conner- 
cial I'Topontions, 169, 201 ; op- 
poses French Commercial TVnty, 
251, 252; in R»ncy Defaatci^ 
81 ; breuh with &rke, 84 S np* 
ports measores of Religiooi Toler- 
ation, 325 ffi; OQ Qnebec Bill, 
217-219. 

(7) Fox in oppositioQ firom 1791 to 
Peace of Amiens, Mardi 1802. 
(Pitt Prime Minister to Maich 
i8oi,Addington afterwards.) Sap- 
ports Grey's motions for Avlis- 
mentary Reform, 1793 and 1797, 
86-88, 9»-96; on FitxwiUian*k 
recall. Union, and Catholic qoes- 

tion, 190-203; ghMnpi^Aip of 

Unitarians, 323-324; 00 sbft 
tnule, 237-23^; French Hevolo- 
tion, see Chapter IX. ; Fkadb 
war, proposal to send Ministcff to 
France, 257 ; relations with TUky- 



INDEX 



Fax, Charies Junes — antinrntd. 

land anil Chintelin, 158-261 ; 
unemlinenl to address and lesol- 
ulions or February 179;, 264-165 ; 
oppaaXioa lo wu ogBiiUI RevolU' 
llomiy opinions, 386 ff. : cnn- 
demnatioD of French ■ggresuiui, 
289: on peace in 1796 and 1797, 
295-296 : on danger of icstotation 
of Bourbons, 397 ff. ; 0[q>osc< 
domestic coercion, 109, IJ3-131, 
>34-'45: his retirement, 131-1331 
(track off Piivy Coundl, 134. 

(8) Fos in opposition fiom Peace of 
Amiens to death of Pitt. Januaf 
1806. (Pitt replaced Addbgiol 
as Prime Minister. May 1&14, 
Differences with Addington, 399 
on question of Malta, 300 ; 01 
Napoleon's conduct, 300-302 : 
dillercncc between his and Pitt's 
iriew on struggle with Napoleon, 
303-306; on third Coalition, 307 ; 
on military defence, 30S ; on 
Catholic emandpalion, 2t>2. 

(9) Fox in office with Grenville, 
February 1806 to September iSoG. 
Junction with Addington and 
Ellenborongh, 20-11 ; sbve trade, 
238-239 1 negotiations with Napol' 
eon, 309-310; anny reform, 309. 

Fox, Mis., 8, 9. 

France. Sec Chaptcn IX,, X,, xr,, 

and XII. fiassim. 
Francis, 220, 237. 
Fianltlin, 64, 1S7, 210. 
Free trade, 26. 60, so?. 208 ; Pitt and, 

1S6: Fox and, 210. 
Friends of the People, 85, 86, 116 

{Scottish bnuich, III). 
Frost, John, sentenced, III. 

Game Laws, Foi on, 99. 

Gairick, 6. 

Genoa. Republic of, 280, 2S4. 

George i., 31. 

George 11., 31, 147- 

Geoi^e III., 16S, 203, 244, 268, 317, 
315. 318. 339. 340, 34J ! popularity 
and character, 15 ; autocratic temper, 
31, 32 ; his system and struggle with 
the Whigs. 32, 33 ; makes use of 
Chatham, 36 ; conduct to first Rock- 
ingham Ministry, 36 ; Burke's de- 
scription of hi^ system, 41-43; 
bribery, 42 ; power over second 
Rockingham Ministry, J3-59 ; uses 
Shelbume to divide Gdiinet, 53 ; 



s Pitt 1 



S6« 



SS-fc: 

letter about Shelbume, 56; hatRd 
of Fox, 62 ; cottiaee duiinc riots, 
iiS; against Catholic emanapation, 
61, 61, 189, 100 : fear of Fni, aoS : 
his system at slake in American War. 
205, 2t6 i Napoleon's overtures to, 
295 1 insists on exclusion of F01, 
311-312: influence of, 3t J; alliance 
with Church, 319. 

German rising, J07. 

Germany, 294, >9J, 

Gerralil. 123, 136: trial and sentence, 
114-115, 

Gibbon, 6 ; description of Fox, 9 1 and 
American War, S16. 

GLbiallar, 67. 

Girondins, 258, 259, 272. 

Gordon riots, 47, 90, t07, ItJ, 118, 
150. 3a«. 333.34a- 

Gialton, Duke of, 37, 38, 571 hi» 
Government, jS. 

Gratlan, panegyric on Foi, 10; career, 
1^, 147; views on Ireland, 150: 
tnumph It Dunginnon. IJi > on 
Catholic riehls, tji ; movn deelai- 
ation of independence. 153?.; leltrr 
lo Fox. 155; confidence in Fox, 
161 ; receives gift of i£'50,lX)0, 16] ; 
quarrel with Flood, 163-163; ^'*' 
placed by Flood in pofrular eonli- 
dence, 163 ; gainst aptalion for 
explicit repeal, 161 ff.; his Parlia- 
ment after 1781, 167 ff. ; Irish Com- 
mercial Pioposiitans, 169 ; propoail 
for commercial treaty in 1 794, l£g ; 
programmefor Ireland, 171 ; cWlefd 
by Government, 171: speech on 
Irish coriupiion, 173-174 ; statement 
nboul Fitiwilliam, iSi ; advice lo 
FittwiUiam, 181; motion lot miit 
to Britlih navy, iSa ; pceMDta Oalh- 
olie petition, 1831 Bill foradmlttliig 
Catholics lo PaiUament, 184 1 hope* 
destroyed by recall of FltxwilliuB, 
1S3 ; oppoMs Union, 186, 187 ; Qi|ea 
Foi to raise tilth queUtoof at Weit- 
minster, 191, 194; ptoteiti ani&tt 
martial law, 194 1 atitick off PiJvjr 
Council, 197 ; speech on Catbolk 
relief, 198; prexnU CatboUc peti- 
tion, 199 i poUcy nerer had a bria], 
199; on Protestant estaUtshmcnl, 

Greece, 39, 369, ■7C^ 179- 



='95> Ji<i 3141 httc abiMt alliea. 



A 




364 



INDEX 



254-255 ; answer to Napoleon, 296 ; 
coalition with Fox, 312. 
Grey, 62, 131, 132, 238, 303, 311, 313 ; 
friendship for Fox, 10; scheme of 
reform, 78 ; motions for Parliament- 
ary Reform, 86-88 ; on Hardy's trial, 
106 ; opposes coercion, 127 ; opposes 
the Union, 188. 

Habeas Corpus Act, 147 ; extension to 
Ireland, 152; Fox's speech on sus- 
pension in America, 143 ; suspension 
of, in England and Scotland, 106, 
116, 117, 118, 127, 134, 13s, 
136. 

Halifax, Lord, 149. 

Hampden, Fox on, 288. 

Hanover, 308; House of, 319; settle- 
ment, 317,319. 

Hapsburgs, 28a 

Hardy, Thomas, 106, 123 ; founder of 
London Corresponding Society, 85 ; 
trial of, 108, 117, 118. 

Hastings, Warren, 80, 219, 222, 223, 
225, 311 ; Governor-General of Ben- 
gal, 2^ ; directors ordered to recall 
him, 221 ; proprietors negative recall, 
224 ; impeachment of, 230 ; conduct 
of, 230-232. 

Hawkesbury, Lord, 237, 304. 

Hazlitt, 251 ; comparison of Fox and 
Burke, 12; description of Fox's 
oratory, 13, 14. 

Hillsborough, Lord, 152, 153. 

History ^ Parliamentary^ 1 35, 136, 
188. 

Hobart, Lord, 175. 

Hoghton, Sir Henry, 32a 

Holcroft, 123. 

Holland, First Lord, 208, 251 ; evil 
influence on his son, 3, 4. 

Holland, Third I^rd, 7, ii, 78 ; admir- 
ation for Napoleon, 22 ; Fox's letter 
to, about Union, 197-198. 

Holland (see also Scheldt), 244, 252, 
256, 257, 260, 270. 280, 283, 293, 
294, 300, 301, 303, 304, 305, 307; 
toleration in, 322. 

Homer, 7, 8, 9, 132. 

Hood, Lord, 131. 

Homer, Francis, 10, 28 ; on domestic 
tyranny, 145 ; on Spanish and Ger- 
man risings, 307. 

Horslcy, Bishop, 330. 

Ilowarid, John, 32(5. 

Hudson, William, sentence, XI I. 

Huntingdon, Lady, and slaver>-, 233. 

Hutchinson, 210. 



Indemnitv, Acts of^ 319* 32c 

IndepencUince, Amerioin UedantiGn 
of, 2x2. 

Independence of Irish Parliament, 
agitation for, X53; Gntkan moves, 
155 ; English Government concedes, 
157; Fox's views on, 1566L; im- 
mediate result of concession, 161 ; 
demand for express recognition, 162- 
166 ; explicit Act of English Parlia- 
ment, 163. 

India, Government of (see also Com- 
pany, India Bill, India, and Com- 
mittees, Select), 70, 219; Keith's 
effort to reform, 220 ; effort of Coali- 
tion Ministry, 221 ff. ; abiues of, 
221 ; Pitt's sdieme, 229. 

India Bill of 1773, 220^ 225. 

India Bill of 1783, 220-229; Pro- 
visions of, 225; critidsnis of, 225, 
227-229. 

India Bill of 1784, 223, 229. 

Innocent, Pope, 340. 

Italy, 269, 270, 279, 292, 293, 295, 304. 

Jackson, French emissary, xia 
~ames 11., 227, 297. 

ekvll, Mr., 191. 

enkinson. See Hawkesbory, Loid. 

ephson, History 0/ thi Piatform^ 44, 

Johnson, Dr., on Fox, 6, 9. 
ones. Sir W., pamphlet !^, 126. 
oseph 11., 256. 
buraain, 293. 
oyce, X23, 
unius, 35. 
unot, Madame, anecdote of Fooc, la 

Keppel, 55, 56. 
Kosciusko, 15, 280, 292. 
Kyd, 123. 

Lansdowne, Lord. See Shelbunie. 

Lauderdale, Lord, letter to, 71 ; icsntt 
coercion, 127. 

Lauzun, 253. 

Lea, 55. 

Le Brun, 258, 260, 261. 

Lecky, Mr., 8, no, X47, 149, 170, I77» 
X79, X89, 190,256,317; on Dedaia. 
tory Act, 35 ; on second Roddng- 
ham Ministi^, 50 ; on Pitt, 50^ 51 ; 
on the Union, x88 ; on Catbolk 
question in Ireland, X99 ; on Fob's 
oppc^ition to American War, 2x6; 
on Pitt and slave trade, ajS. 

Leeds, Duke of, 13a 



INDEX 



8«9 



Levis, SiiG. C, 311. 

Libel Bill, Km's, 135-127. 

Lisle, 244. 

Uterary Club, Fax elected to, 6. 

Liteiature, Fox's love of, 5-9, 13 j, 133. 

LUndaff, Bishop of, 133. 

Locke, 25, 89, 93, 340 ; against tolera- 
tion to Papists, 331 ; or atheists, 333. 

Loftus, General, support* Catholic 
emanripation, 185. 

London, Bishop of, and slave trade, 
a33- 

Lotraine, 169. 

Liou^borough, Lord, Si, 107, zio. 

Louu XIV., 389, 290. 

Louis XVI., 240, 343, 39a 

Louis xvui., 347. 

Low Countries. See Netherlands. 

Lycophron, Foi quotes, 133. 

MacauUy, Zachary, 234. 

Macnevin, 199. 

Maleshecbes, 248. 

Malmesbury, lard, 359, 285, 295. 

Malta and Peace of Amiens, 300, 303, 
304. 

Manchester, 97. 

Mansfield, Lord, 126, 162, 32a 

Maret, 257, 358, 259, 283 ; ' 

with Kit, 257, 258, 360 ; sent as 
Chargi d'aflaircs, 258 ; arrives too 
late, 359 ; dealings with Pitt, 263. 

Margaiol, 123 ; trial and sentence, 

Massachusetts, 3ia. 

May, Erskitie, 42, 119. 

Mayence, 257. 

Maynooth, 199. 

Meredith, Mr,, quoted, 8t. 

Methodists, strict Sabbatarians, 329 ; 

Fox on, 336. 
Metlemich, 269, 37°. '73. 281, 298. 
Middle Passage. Sec Slave Trade. 
Military system. See Army. 
Mill, J. S., 175. 
Millon, 8 ; against toleration to Papists, 

332- 
Minotca, 303. 
Mirabcaii. 341, 279. 
Miifotd, Mr., and Catholic Relief Bill, 

322. 
Moini, Lord, 130, 147, 185. 
Moli^re, 7. 
Montesquieu, 314. 
Moore, Sir John, and Iri.sh Rebellion, 

18s. 
Morellet, 24S. 
Morley, Mr., 248, 342. 



Momington, Lord, 94. 
Muir, Thoinas, helps found Sodet}- in 
Glasgow, III; iiial and sentence. 

Municipal Reform Bill, 99. 
Mutiny Act, American, 209. 
Mutiny Act, Irish, 147, 
Mutiny of 1797, 396. 

Nantes, Edict of, 338. 

Napoleon, 14, 22, 61, 62, 78, 132, 341, 
350, 363, 266, 269, 373, 37J, 276, 
277, 37s, 279. 280, 293, 294, 307, 
312, 315 ; power broken by national- 
ism, 370; overtures in 1799, 295- 
296 ; aggressive designs during Peace 
of Amiens, 299-300; Fo> on his 
conduct in Switierland and HolLuid, 
and his demand for expulsion of 
Royalists from England, 300-301; 
designs in the East, 303 ; Fox's ideas ' 
of how 10 fight Napoleon, 304-306; 
plot fof asEiassination revealed by 
FoK, 309 ; negotiations with Fox, 
309-310. 

Navy, Fox and, 315, 296, 297. 

Netherlands, 269, 282, 393, 397. 

Nonconformists. See D^colers. 

Nootka Sound, 253, 263. 

Noifolk, Duke ol; dismissed from Lord 
Lieutenancy, 134. 

North, Lord, 37, 47, S3t S7> 59. 68, 70, 
83, 102, 106, 109. 153, 1S4. 168. 
30I, 308, an, 315, 310, 315 : Prime 
Minister, 38 ; letters to King on 
bribery, 42 ; driven ftotn office, 48 ; 
loans, 50 ; coalition with Fox, J7 fT. ; 
against Parliamentary Reform, 80 ; 
concessions to Irish demands for Free 
Trade, 1 53 ; motion for rcdteisiiw 
colonists' grievances, 313 : India Bill 
of 1773, 2JO, 225 ; on Indian leform, 
335 ; successes of religious toleration 
under. 319 : modifies Protestant Dis- 
senteis Relief Bill, 320; seconds Fox's 
proposal for relief for Unitarians, 323 ; 
opposes repeal of Test and Corpora- 
tion Ads, 327, 331. 

Northington, 164. 
Norway, 28 1. 

O'Connor, t99. 
Octennial Bill, 147. 
Ociahow, 251, 29S. 

Ode, Htt'ii letters to, 17^; 
Orleans, Duke of, 253. 
Oude, Nawab of, 331. 




366 



INDEX 



Paine, Thomas, 89, 106. 

Paley, William, 319, 328, 33a 

Palmer, trial and sentence of, 114. 

Paris, Peace of, 35, 211, 251. 

Parliament, Irish. See Independence 
of. 

Parliamentaiy Reform, English, Rock- 
inghams divided on, 41 ; supported 
by Fox not by Burke, 43 ; aropped 
by Pitt after 1785, 73 ff. ; his pro- 
posal in 1785, y^ff. ; Fox's attitude, 
77 ; Whigs divided about, 80 ; agita- 
tion in country dies down, 82 ; re- 
vives with the Revolution, 84 ff. ; 
Gr^s motions in 1793 ^^^ I797i 
86-88 ; petition presented b^ G^cy, 
87 ; Fox supports Grey's motion, 88 ; 
his views on, 89-^ ; compared with 
Burke and Pitt, 91 ; need for reform 
not appreciated by Pitt, 97 ff. ; com- 
parison of agitation in 1793-1794 
with that of 1780, 100 ff. ; measures 
of repression, 105, 120. 

Parliamentary Reform, Irish, demand 
by volunteers, 163-166 ; Grattan's 
programme, 171 ; English Govern- 
ment opposes, 175 ; Pitt's attitude, 
176; Cauiolic concessions designed 
to avert Parliamentary Reform, 179. 

Pamell, 175, 189. 

Pary, 150. 

Patriotism, charges against Fox's, 310- 
315. 

Penal Code, Irish, 147, 148, 200. 

Penal Laws of England (see also Dis- 
senters and Catholics), 318, 321, 322 ; 
evils resulting from, 328-330. 

Peninsula war, 307. 

Pension List, 49, 50, 51. 

Pension List, Irish, 51, 148, 173. 

Peterloo, 137. 

Piedmont, 283, 294. 

Pilnitz, 249, 254, 268. 

Pitt, the elder. See Chatham. 

Pitt, William, the younger, education, 
4 ; quotation from Virgil, 7 ; motion 
to honour his memory, 1 1 ; oratory 
compared with Fox's, 13 ; character, 
17 ; mastery of the House of Com- 
mons, 18, 97, 311; apostacies, 23; 
and Adam Smith, 26 ; great reforms, 
50 ; used by the King, 55 ; in Shel- 
burne's party, 56, 57, 59 ; controlled 
by the King as Prime Minister, 60, 
61 ; takes ofRcc on fall of Coalition 
Government, 69; abortive negotia- 
tions with Fox, 70 ; effect of struggle 
with Coalition on, 71 ; proposalfor 



ParliAmentuy Refonn in 1785, 74; 
drops Parliamentary Refonu, 76£; 
his defence, 77 ; his views of Parlia- 
mentary Refonn, 90^ 91, 98; do- 
mestic coercion, 100-103, 105 £, 
131, X34, X43, 277 ; embar«»d bf 
popolu' meetings, loo, ixo ; prancs- 
tions, 1 1 X ff. ; defends Scotcti tmh, 
113 -X 14; suspension of Habeu 
Corpus, 116- 117, 127; Seditioai 
Meetings Bill, 119; supports Fob's 
Libel Bill, 126; shaken by 6be 
i^l^^"^* I35~<3^» Fooe's sttspicioM 
of, 142; his Irish policy, 167- itt, 
170 ff., 194, 195, 201 ; Commeidsl 
Propositions, 168-170; dread of an 
independent Ireland, 170; oppoKi 
reforms, 171, X72, 173 ; and Catiiolic 
question, 175-180^ 184; and Fits- 
William, x8i ; consults Gnttan, 181- 
182 ; and the Union, 186-188 ; and 
Catholic emancipatran, 188-189, 
200; and Canada, 217-218; 00 
Fox's India Bill, 222, 225, 228; 
Pitt's India Bill, 223, 229 ; Imngs op 
slave trade question in 1788, 234; 
speaks for abolition, 238; allovs 
trade to increase, 238 ; and Ocsakow, 
251 ; and war in 1793, 254-266; in- 
structions to Minister at St. Peteis- 
burg, 256, 262; expels ChanveliD, 
256, 262, 263 ; and the Scheldt in 
1784, 256; and Maiet, 257-260; 
anxious to avoid war, 258 ; policy m 
I793> 262-264; speech on warwidi 
France in 1794, 265 ; miscalculated 
gravity of contest, 12, 266^ 270; 
results of his policy, 279-281 ; policy 
outwardly contradictory, 282-283 ; 
really consistent, 283-2iS6; use of 
horror of Jacobinism, 284-285, 290 ; 
importance of Belgium to, 28c; 
policy of European raalition, aoi ff, ; 
belief in Royalists, 291 ; subsidy to 
Prussia, 292 ; subsidises Anttria, 
293 ; policy of second Coalition, 294 ; 
conduct in negotiations of 1796-1797 
criticised by Fox, 295; mistakei 
strength of Revolutionary sentiment 
296; Fox's opposition, 296 ff.; pat- 
riotic fortitude m treating with Fnnoe 
in 1797, 298-299; views after Pmoe 
of Amiens, 300, 302-304; vol^ 
criticised by Fox, 3136 ; thinl Coali- 
tion and death, 22, 307; on arajr 
system, 308 ; Addington's orertaici 
in 1803, 310-3x1 ; conduct in fofSM- 
tion of Ministry in 1804, 6 1, 62, 31 it 



Ill ; iind in other cruies, Jij-J'S : 
uvours lepeal of severer liws itgainst 
Catholics, 313 ; oppoies repeal of 
penal laws against Unitarians, 323 ; 
and of Test And Corporation Acts, 
327-328; views on toleration com- 
paied with Fcra'i, 331, 339-340- 

Place, 85. llS. 

Place Bill, Koiben, 174. 

Poland, 240, 241, 264, 369, sSo, 192, 
293. 

PoDsonbys, 174. 

Poor Law, 99. 

Person, 7, 1 32. 

Portland, Duke of, 45, 54, 163, 190, 
>9', '97 ; proposed as Prime Minis- 
ter instead of Shelbumc, 64, 65 ; 
Viceroy of Ireland, 155, 156, 160, 
161 ; on Catholic Emaccipatioo, 181- 
185. 

Powya, Mr., 33a. 

Poynings' Law, 157. 

Presbylerians. 323, 325, 

Price, Dr., 82, 113, 131, 200, 319, 
328. 

Priestley, Dr., 123, 131, 319, 328. 

Prince ofWalcs, 69. 72, 81, 126, 168; 
Thurlow's remark to, 1;; intimacy 
with Whigs, 16, 17 ; authorises Fox 
to deny marriage, 17. 

Privy Council, Fox slmck off, 314; 
Graltan sUiiclt off, 197. 

Fropositions, Irish Commercial, 81, 
ibo. 2ot ; proposed by Pitt, and 
attacked l^ Fox, and dropped, 168- 
169. 

Protestant Dissenters Relief Bill, 319, 
314 ; brought forward by Sir Henry 
Hoghton, supported by fax, 320, 

Protesting Catholic Dissenters Relief 
Bill, Fox on, 322, 333, 334, 336. 

Prussia, 37, 78. 267, 271, 278, 2S3, 
284, 293. 294, 307, 308. 322! in- 
vasion of France, 254, 255 ; conduct 
in first two Coalitions. 292 ; joins 
third Coalition, 307 ; Fox makes ¥rar 

Quebec Bill of 1774, 317, 321. 
Quebec Bill of 1791, 217. 
Quiberon expedition, 2&(, 313. 

Racine, Fox on, 7. 
Rebellion, CanaiJian, 217. 
kcbellior, lii.sli, iSj, 199. 
Reeves, Mr., 133. 

Reform, Parliamentary. See Parlia- 
mentary Reform. 



EX 867 

Regency Debates, 17, 18, Si ; in Ire- 
land, 16S, I So, 19a 

Register, Annual, 129. 

Relief, Catholic (see also Calholics), 
Irish, in 1779, 150; in 17S2, 151. 
1711 in i79'-'793. "74, 178. 179! 
Pitt's views on, 176, 177, '89 i 
see also Emancipation, Catholic ; 
English, Sir G. Savile's Relief BUI, 
320; Protesting Catholic Dissenten 
Iteiief Bill, 322, 323. 

Revenue officers disfranchised, 48, 49. 

Revolution, French, 237, ;66, 268. 272, 
276, 277, 279 ; unhke contemporary 
revolutions, 240, 241 ; Burke's view 
of, 241 If. ; Fox's view of, 24, 243 tT. ; 
Fox retained belief in, despite ex- 
cesses, 247-350; excesses no new 
feature, 248 ; due to panic, 249 ; 
results of, 250 ; changes France's 
foreign policy, 253-254; effect on 
France, 271 ; Fox against making 
war on, 277 fT. ; terror inspired by, 
in governing classes, 323. 

Rftiiiulienfnincaut, la, 347. 

Revolution, Whig, 89, 92, a43, 245, 
267, i83. 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 6, S. 

Ribot, M., on Erskine, 126. 

Richmond, Duke of, 43, 45, 54, 55, S^, 
^> 65, 83, 113, 320, 32i ; letter to 
Fox, 20 ; on imivcrtal suffrage, 103 ; 
reasons for approving the Union, 

Richter, 123. 

Robespierre, 350, 261. 272. 

Robinet, Dr., on ,Danton, 259, 260. 

Rockingham, I^rd, 35, 39. 43, 50, 53, 
56,65.85, 9<i, 131, 137, 153, 163; 
letter to, from Fox, 19, ao ; Kings 
dislike of, 54; death, 54. 

Rockingham, First Ministry, 35, 58 ; 
relations to Americai, 206, 207. "09. 
213 ; Second Ministry, 48, 49, 50, 
52 ff., 113, 153. 161: 1 
corruption, 4S-50; 
Haslmgs. 221. 

Rockingham party, iS, 64, 142, 171, 
Z05, 20S; created by Buike, 32: 
slruggle with King, 34 ff.; differ- 
ences with Chatham, 38-40; divided 
on Parliamentary Reform, 4t ; pro. 
giamme, 41 ; scalfercd after Rock- 
iiighani's dealh, 54, 55 ; break up 
after Coalition d^biule, 71. 

Rodnw, Lord, Fox and Burke oounte 
conduct, 14. 



1 



V^e 




368 



INDEX 



Rogers, Samuel, 6; anecdote about 
Fox and lev^, 7. 

Rohillas, 2^1. 

Romilly, Sir Samuel, 10, 22 ; on slave 
trade, 98. 

Rooke, 120. 

Rosebery, Lord, 311, 312; on Coali- 
tion, 71 ; defence of Pitt's coercion, 
106, 116, 117; compares Pitt and 
Fox, on Catholic Emancipation, 
20a 

Rousseau, 94, 245, 271, 279, 332, 34a 

Russia, 240, 253, 256, 267, 293, 298 ; 
Fox's policy of alliance with, 67, 
252 ; in second Coalition, 294 ; Fox 
hopes for mediation, 304 ; joins third 
CcKEdition, 307 ; in joint negotiations 
of 1806, 309. 

Rutland, Duke of, Pitt's letter to, 

177. 
R3^an, Mr., Fox's letter to, 200. 

Sabbatarianism, 16, 329. 

St. Anne's Hill, 197. 

St. Asaph, Dean of. See Dr. Shipley. 

St. Augustine on religious toleration, 

340. 
St. Eustatius, Rodney at, 24. 
Sardinia, 280, 281. 
Savile, Sir G., 93, 96, 137 ; Relief Bill, 

320, 321. 
Savory, Mr. D. L., loi. 
Scheldt, opening of, 256, 263. 
Scotland (see also Trials), Union with, 

317; anti-Catholic riots, 320-321; 

disabilities of Episcopalians, 322; 

Catholic Relief Bill, 323. 
Sedition Bill. See Treason. 
Selwyn, George, 2, 4. 
September massacres, 247, 250. 
Shakespeare, 6. 
Shakespeare Tavern, Fox*s speech at, 

267. 
Sharman, Colonel, Richmond's letter 

to, 104. 
Sharpe, 123. 
Sharpe, Granville, 234. 
Sheffield Petition, 86. 
Shelbume, Lord, 37, 38, 40, 63, 106, 

130, 160, 161, 163, 252, 321 ; in 

Economy agitation, 45 ; conduct in 

Second Rockingham Ministry, 53, 

54, 64, 6sf[.; Prime Minister, 54; 

his party, 57 ; projected coalitions, 

57 ; views on foreign policy, 67 ; 

resists Pitt's coercion in Lords, 127 ; 

** rapprochement" with Fox, and 

epitaph, 127. 



Sheridan Richard, 18, 46, 54, los, 258, 
259 ; opposes ooerdon, 127 ; opposes 
Union, 197; opposes French wv, 
260 ; relations with Chauvelin, 258- 
26a 

Shipley, Dr., prosecutioQ of, 125, ia6i 

Sicily, 309, 31a 

Skirving, trial and sentence, 114, 115. 

Slave trade, 60, 233-2^ joz; coo- 
troversy amongst religUms petsons 
on, 233 ; interests involved, 233 ; 
horrors of Middle Piassage eip owd, 
234; public agitation aod petitions 
against, 98, 234; Fox's views on, 
234-235 ; apologies made for, 235 ; 
Fox's answer, 236-237 ; measnie of 
1788, 237 ; motions for hnmediate 
abolition defeated, 237, 238; in- 
creases under Pitt's administmtioB, 
a 18 ; Fox's Acts and Resolntion m 
1806, 239^ 

Smith, Adam, influence on Pitt, 26; 
approved of Fox's oondnct at time of 
Coalition, 66 ; on America, aia 

Smith, William, 26a 

Society for Conistitutional Infonnation, 
8^; papers seized, Il6^ 117. 

Society for enforcement of oboetvanee 
of Sunday, 329. 

Society, London Cone s popdiiifc 8$* 
III, 115, 1x8, 120^ 128k 129: papcB 
seized, 116, 1x7; supprened, laob 
dissolution, 1 10 ; thanks Fox, 125. 

Society, Revolutionaiy, basis dedsnd 
at centenary, 105. 

Societies — 
United Britons, 1 
„ Englislunen, | 
, , Scotchmen, I 
See also United Irishmen. 

Sorel, M., i. 

South, Dr., and Unitarians, 33a. 

Spain, 213, 253, 270b 275. 277. ^ 
283, 29?, 304, W5. 

Spencer, Lord, x8i. 

Spenser, 6, 8. 

Spronck, M., 247. 

Stamp Act, 35, 36, 209. 

Sunhope, Lord, 127, 329. 

Stein, 78, 278. 

Stephen, Mr. Leslie, 97. 

Stephen, Sir Tames Fits- James, laa 

Strange, Lord, 36. 

SuvorofT, 294. 

Sweden, 240, 269, 326. 

Swinton, Lord, XX3. 

Switzerland, 270, 284, 294, 300^ 301, 

303, 304, 307, 333- 



laa 



Talleyrand, 3S5, 309 ; in England, 359- 

361 ; on ageiesiian, 272. 
Tea tax, Arocricsn, 210. 
Temple, Lord, 35, 163. 
T«st and Corpoiation Acts, 131, 318, 

^34i 336, 338 ; disabililies imposed 

T787,' 

■7891 1790, 315 ; case for icpeal 
urged hy Fox and Beaufoy, 535-326 ; 
North against repeal, 317 ; Pitt 
aeainst repeal, 337 ; Burke on, 338 ; 
effects of, 330-331 ! dcliate on, 332 ; 
Foil's speech on Test Act, 337. 

Tbelwall, 111-113. 

Thoughts an Ike Frmitl DisiOttltnl. 
See Buike. 

Thurlow, Lord, 9, 15, 53, 54, 39, Jo, 
a»a, ^37- 

Tolcraiion Act, 318, 330, 314. 

Toleration Bill of 1789, Lord Stan- 
hope's, 339. 

Toolie, Home, 85 ; Fox's journey lo 
London on behalf of, 11; trial of, 
117, iiS; on railiamentBty Opposi- 
tion, us. 

Townshcnd, Charles, 37, a 

Townshend, ' - -- 

Townshend, 

Treason and Sedition Acts, introduced, 
lig, 137 i Sedition Act renewed, 
HI J Fox's speeches on, 137-142, 
144-143. See also Two Ads, Ha- 
toryo/lhi. 

Treaty, French Cotnmerdal, 81, 351, 
353. 

Trevelyan, Sir George, on King's hatred 
of Fox, 3 ! on Foi's love of poetry, 
6, 8 ; on Fox's attitude lo women, 
9 1 on American War, 303. 

Trials, during Pitt's domestic coeicion, 
Frost, III ; Nonconformist Minister 
at Plymouth, lll; Hudson, 111; 
Muir, 111-114; Palmer. 1I4; Skir- 
ving, Ma^prot, and Geiratd, lij; 
Walker, 115; Watl, 116; Hardy 
and ilorneTooke, 117 ; Vorke, I30i 
Wakefield and Culhell, 133. 

Trotter, 7, 15. 

Turgot, 24, 243, 252, 279. 

Tuscany, 269, 284. 

Two Act!, History cf Ihe, 66, 101, 135, 
128. 

Tyrol, 370. 

Uniformity, Act of, 318. 
Union, with Ireland, 171, 194 ; natural 
> policy, 186; re- 



jected by Irish Farliamenl in 1799, 
187; carried in 1800, 187 ! Pitt's 
speeches on, 18S ; Fox on, 197-198 ; 
results of, 300-201. 

Union, with Scotland, 317. 

Unitarians, 318; Fox's attempt 00 
behalf of, 333 -3M. 33^. 334: op- 
posed by Put and Burke, 323, 324 1 
pcisecutions of, 333. 

United Irishmen, 130, 174, 184, 199. 

Uoiversities, 320; Faxon subscription 
of Thirty- nine Articles at, 339. 

Vancouver's Island, 353. 

Venice, 393. 

Vergennes, 67, 68, 253 ; on Fox, 310. 

Vienna, 294 ; settlements of, 356, 270 ; 
Adair's mis^on lo, in 1806, 306. 

Virgil, 7, 8. 13a. 

Voltaire, 39, 137. 333, 34S, 379, 333, 
338- 

Volunteers, Irish, 151, 152, 155; de- 
clare for toleration, Ijl ; demand 
Parliamentary Reform, 1G3 ; try Co 
overawe Irish Parliament, 164-166 ; 
Great Convention, 164-166; db- 
solves, 165, 

Wakefield, Gilbert, 7, 132; imptiioa- 

mcnt. 133. 
Walker, Mr., trial and acquittal, 115; 

house destroyed, 133. 
Wallas, Graham, L0t ef Plact, 85. 



Walpole, Horace, 47; 
W«, 216. 



Wesley, John, 15, 16, aoc^ 133, 317, 

m- 

Westminster, meeling in Economjr 
Agitation, 45 ; Fox pr(q)oied aa 
candidate, 45 ; petition for economi- 
cal reform, ^ ; scrutiny, 83 ; mass 
mectincin 1795, 138. 

WesLmoiland, Lord, 179, 



Whig Houses, 33 ; theory of govern- 
ment as restated by Burke, 33, 34 ; 
and Regency deljates, 81 ; sony 
figure from 1784-1790, 80 ; and 
India, 339 ff. ; and French Reroln- 
lion, 83, 245, 146; and the Bour- 
bons, 351, 3S3; and amiy, 315, 
296, 397 i anti-Catholic before Fox 
and Burke, 331. 




370 



INDEX 



Whig Club, meeting in 1795, 128; 

Fox's speeches at, in 1798, 133-134 ; 

Fox proposes Grattan's health at, 

197 ; speech at, on Union, 197. 
Whig Club, Irish, 174, 190; thanks 

Fox, 196. 
Whitefield, George, 233, 317, 323. 
Wilberforce, William, 16, 98, 328, 

329 ; on Canadian Government, 218 ; 

on slave trade, 233, 234, 237, 238. 
Wilkes, 3, 37, 41, 86. 
Windham, William, 12, 22, 92, 142, 

144, 263, 276, 314, 315 ; on Secret 

Committee, 106 ; on coercion, 136 ; 

joins Government in 1794, i8x ; 



thought conatiest of Ed^tnd kato 
be dreaded than invasion of Fiend 
principles, 29a 
Women, Fox's attitude towards, 9; 
Fox on women's snffiage, 9, % 

PS- 
Wordsworth, 22, 275. 

Wvvill, Rev. Christopher, 82, 85, 102; 

letter to Htt, 82, 84. 

Yelverton, 154, 165. 
York, Duke oif, 294. 
York, Petition from, for eoooomj, 

44. 
Yorke, Henry, trial and lentence, laa 



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12 



Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 



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36 



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" ~ " br HmWi* ComM. 



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38 



Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 



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CASTING OF NETS. 
Bslfeur (Andrew). BY STROKE OF 

SWORD. 
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CHEAP JACK ZITA. 
KITTY ALONE. 
URITH. 

THE BROOM SQUIRE. 
IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
NOEML 
A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES. Illustrated. 



LITTLE TirPENNY. 

WINEFRED. 

THE FROBISHERS. 

THE (DUEEN OF LOVE. 

Barr (Robert). JENNIE BAXTER. 

IN THE MIDST OF ALARMS. 

THE COUNTESS TERLA. 

THE MUTABLE MANY. 

Benson (B. P.). DODO. 

THE VINTAGE. 

BrontSCChartotts). SHIRLEY. 

Brownsll (C L.). THE HEART OF 

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Caffyn (Mrs.). ANNE MAULEVSRSR. 



40 



Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue 



Cum (Bernard). THE LAKE OF 

WINE. 
Clifford (Mrs. W. K.). A FLASH OF 

SUMMER. 
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. 

Corbett (Julian). A BUSINESS IN 
GREAT WATERS. 

Croker (Mrs. B. M.). ANGEL. 

A STATE SECRET. 

PE^»GY OF THE BARTONS. 

JOHANNA. 

thinte i Allffbleri). THE DIVINE 

COMEDY(Cary). 
DovleJA. Cooan). ROUND THE RED 

Duncan (Sara Jeannette). A VOYAGE 
OF CONSOLATION. 

THOSE DELIGHTFUL AMERICANS. 

Bllot (Qeorgw). THE MILL ON THE 
FLOSS. 

nndUter (Jana H.). THE GREEN 
GRAVES OF BALGOWRIE. 

aallon(Tom). RICKERBVS .^OLLY. 

Oaskell(Mrs.). CRANFORD. 

MARY BARTON. 

NORTH AND SOUTH. 

Gerard (Dorethea). HOLY MATRI- 
MONY. 

THE CONQUEST OF LONDON. 

MADE OF MONEY. 

Olsslnjr(O). THE TOWN TRAVELLER. 

THE CROWN OF LIFE. 

Olanrille (Ernest). THE INCA'S 
TREASURE. 

THE KLOOF BRIDE. 

Oleli: (Charles). HUNTER'S CRUISE. 

Orimm (The Brothers). GRIMM'S 

FAIRY TALES. 
Hope (Anthony). A MAN OF MARK. 
A CHANGE OF AIR. 
THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT 

ANTONIO. 
PHROSO. 
THE DOLLY DIALOGUES. 

Homnnff (E. W.). DEAD MEN TELL 
NO TALES. 

Ingraham (J. H.). THE THRONE OF 
DAVID. 

LeQueux(W.). THE HUNCHBACK OF 

WESTMINSTER. 

Levett-YeaU (S. K.). THE TRAITOR'S 

WAY. 
Linton (E. Lynn). THE TRUE HIS- 

TORY OF JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 
Lvall(Bdna). DERRICK VAUGHAN. 
Malet (Lucas). THE CARISSIMA. 
A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION. 
Mann (Mrs.). MRS. PETER HOWARD. 
A LOST ESTATE. 
THE CEDAR STAR. 
ONE ANOTHER'S BURDENS. 
Marchmont (A. W.). MISER HOAD- 

LEY'S SECRET. 
A MOMENT'S ERROR. 
Marryat (CapUIn). PETER SIMPLE. 
JACOB FAITHFUL 



Marsh (Richard). A METAMORPHOSIS. 

THE TWICKENHAM PEERAGX. 

THE GODDESS. 

THE JOSS. 

Mason (A. B. W.\ CLEMENTINA. 

Mathers (Helen). HONEY. 

GRIFF OF GRIFFITHSCOURT 

SAM'S SWEETHKART. 

Meade (Mrs. L. T.). DRIFT. 

Mltford(BertrBni). THE SIGN OF THE 

SPIDER. 
Montresor(P. P.). THE ALIEN. 
Morrison (Arthur). THE HOLE IN 

THE WALL. 
NesMt(E.) THE RED HOUSE. 
Norris(W. B.). HIS GRACE. 
GILES INGILBY. 
THE CREDIT OF THE COUNTY. 
LORD LEONARD THE LUCKLESS. 
MATTHEW AUSTIN. 
CLARISSA FURIOSA. 
Ollphant(Mrs.j. THE LADY'S WALK 
SIR ROBERT S FORTUNE. 
THE PRODIGALS. 
THE TWO MARYS. 

Oppenhelm(B. P.). BfASTER OF MEX. 
Parker (aiihert). THE POMP OF THE 

laviletteS 
when valmondcame to pontiac 
the trail of the sword. 

PembertoQ (Max). THE FOOTSTEPS 

OF A THRONE. 
I CROWN THEE KING. 

Phinpotts (Bden). THE HUMAN BOY. 
CHILDREN OF THE MIST. 
THE POACHER'S WIFE. 
THE RIVER. 

'Q' (A. T. QatUer CoochX THE 
WHITE WOLF. 

>^JE?(^* P«^>- A SON OF THE STATE. 

LOST PROPERTY. 

GEORGE and THE GENERAL. 

Russell (W. Clark). ABANDONED. 

A MARRIAGE AT SEA 

MY DANISH SWEETHEART. 

HIS ISLAND PRINCESS. 

Serffeant (Adeline). THE MASTER OF 

BEECHWOOD. 
BARBARA'S MONEY. 
THE YELLOW DIAMOND. 
THE LOVE THAT OVERCAME. 



HANDLEY (^OSS. 
SPORTING TOUR. 



Surtees (R* S.). 
MR. SPONGE'S 
ASK MAMMA. 

WalfordCMrs. L. B.). MR. SMITH. 

COUSrNS. 

THE BABY*S GRANDMOTHER. 

WalhM»(aeneralLew). BEN-HUR. 
THE FAIR GOD. 

Watson (H. B. Marriott). THE ADVEN* 

TURERS. 

Weekes(A.B.). PRISONERS OF WAR. 

Wells (H. a.X THE SEA LADY. 

White (Percy). A PASSIONATE 
PILGRIM. 



I 



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