The period of his introduction into the English Parliament was a fortunate one for a man of ability and ambition. The House never exhibited a more remarkable collection of public names. He nightly had the opportunity of hearing Pitt, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, Grey; and others, who, if not equal, followed with vigorous emulation. He took an occasional part in the debates, and showed at least that he benefited by example. In 1788, he was elected for the royal borough of Windsor. The great question of the regency suddenly occurred. The royal malady rendered a Parliamentary declaration necessary for carrying on the government. The question was difficult. To place the royal power in any other hands than the King's, even for a temporary purpose, required an Act of Parliament. But the King formed an essential portion of the legislature. He, however, now being disabled by mental incapacity from performing his royal functions, where was the substitute to be found? Fox, always reckless, and transported with eagerness to be in possession of the power which would be conferred on him by the regency of the Prince of Wales, was infatuated enough to declare, that the Prince had as express a right to assume the reins of government, and exercise the powers of sovereignty, during the royal incapacity, as if the King had actually died. This doctrine, so contrary to common sense, and even to Whig principles, astonished the House, and still more astonished the country. Pitt fell upon him immediately, with his usual vigour. The leader of Opposition had thrown himself open to attack, and his assailant was irresistible. Pitt dared him to give a reason for his doctrine; he pronounced it hostile to the law of the land, contradictory to the national rights, and, in fact, scarcely less than treason to the constitution.
On the other hand, he laid down with equal perspicuity and force the legal remedy, and pronounced, that where an unprovided difficulty of this order arose, the right of meeting it reverted to the nation, acting by its representatives the two Houses of Parliament, and that, so far as personal right was in question, the Prince had no more right to assume the throne than any other individual in the country.
Such is the blindness of party, and passion for power, that Fox, the great advocate of popular supremacy, was found sustaining, all but in words, that theory of divine right which had cost James II. his throne, whose denial formed the keystone of Whig principles, and whose confirmation would have authorized a despotism.
The decision was finally come to, that the political capacity of the monarch was constitutionally distinguished from his personal; and that, as in the case of an infant king, it had been taken for granted that the royal will had been expressed by the Privy Council, under the Great Seal; so, in the present instance of royal incapacity, it should also be expressed by the Privy Council, under the Great Seal. The question of right now being determined, the Chancellor was directed to affix the Great Seal to a bill creating the Prince of Wales Regent, with limited powers.
Those limitations were certainly formidable; and the chief matter of surprise now is, that the Whigs should have suffered the Regent to accept the office under such conditions. They prevented him from creating any peerage, or granting any office in reversion, or giving any office, pension, or salary, except during the royal pleasure, or disposing of any part of the royal estate. They took from him also the whole household, and the care of the King's person, his majesty being put in charge of the Queen, with power to remove any of the household. But the whole question has now passed away, and would be unimportant except for its bearing on the position of Ireland.
In 1789, the zeal of the Irish opposition, and the flexibility of some members of the Government combining, the Irish Parliament voted the regency to the Prince without any limitation whatever. This naturally directed the attention of ministers to the hazard of a collision between the two Parliaments. The King's fortunate recovery prevented all collision; but the danger was so apparent if the royal incapacity had continued, and opinion became so strongly inflamed in Ireland, that from this period must be dated the determination to unite both Parliaments in one legislature. For it was justly argued, that if the Irish Parliament might invest one individual with powers different from those intrusted to him by the English Parliament, it might in the same manner invest a different individual, the result of which might be a civil war, or a separation.
This rash resolution was, however, strongly opposed. Twenty-three of the peers, among whom was Lord Mornington, signed a protest against it, and the viceroy, the Marquess of Buckingham, refused to transmit the address to England. This increased the confusion: not only were the two legislatures at variance, but the Irish legislature passed a vote of censure on the viceroy.
The King's recovery extinguished the dissension at once, and the hand of government fell with severe but well-deserved penalty on its deserters in the season of difficulty. The rewards of the faithful were distributed with equal justice. Lord Mornington's active support of the viceroy was made known to the monarch, and he was evidently marked for royal favour. From this period he took a share in all the leading questions of the time. He supported Mr Wilberforce's motions for the abolition of the slave-trade.
The bold and sagacious conduct of Pitt, in protecting the royal rights in the Regency, had established his power on the King's recovery. The Whigs had lost all hope of possession, and they turned in their despair to the work of faction. Their cry was now Parliamentary Reform. No cry was ever more insincere, more idly raised, carried on in a more utter defiance of principle, or consummated more in the spirit of a juggler, who, while he is bewildering the vulgar eye with his tricks, is only thinking of the pocket. The Reform Bill has since passed, but the moral of the event is still well worth our recollection. The Whigs themselves had been the great boroughmongers; but boroughmongering had at length failed to bring them into power, and they had recourse to clamour and confederacy with the rabble. Still, in every instance when they came in sight of power, the cry was silenced, and they discovered that it was "not the proper time." At length, in 1830, they raised the clamour once more; the ministry, (rendered unpopular by the Popish question,) were thrown out; the Whigs were, for the first time, compelled to keep their promise, and the whole system of representation was changed. But the change was suicidal: the old champion of Reform, Lord Grey himself, was the first to suffer. The Reform ministry was crushed by a new power, and Lord Grey was crushed along with it. Whiggism was extinguished; the Whig of the present day has no more resemblance to the Whig of Fox's day, than the squatter has to the planter. The rudeness and rashness of Radicalism supplies its place, and the stately and steady march of the landed interest exists no more.
Lord Mornington's speech, in 1793, placed the question in its true point of view. He declared that the consequence of the proposed measure of Reform must be, to change the very genius and spirit of the British government; to break up the combination of those elementary principles of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, which, judiciously associated, formed the constitution. He then referred, with great force, to the practical working of that constitution which this measure was intended to overthrow. "Never," said he, and his language was at once eloquent and true, "have the natural ends of society been so effectually accomplished, as under the government which is thus to be subverted. Under the existing constitution, the life of every individual is sacred, by the equal spirit of the law; by the pure administration of justice; by the institution of juries; and by the equitable exercise of that prerogative which is the brightest ornament of the crown the power of mitigating the rigour of criminal judgments, and of causing justice to be executed in mercy."
He forcibly pronounced the constitution to contain all "the principles of stability; for it could neither be abused by the subject, nor invaded by the crown." It provided, in an unexampled degree, for the protection of life, liberty, and property. In its legislative action it impartially allowed every public interest to have its representative in Parliament; in its national action it insured the prosperity of the empire; for that prosperity had never been so distinguished as since the constitution had assumed full power; and, by protecting every man in the exercise of his industry, it had given a spur to national and intellectual enterprise and activity, of which the world had never before seen an example. And was this all to be hazarded for the sake of gratifying a party, who always shrank from the measure when in power, and who always renewed it only as a means of recall from their political exile?
His biographer rashly denies the reality of those dangers, and says, that the Reform Act has not produced any of the calamities which his lordship then saw in such ominous prospect. But to this the natural answer is, that the Reform Bill is little more than a dozen years old; that though the power of property in so great a country as England, and the voice of common sense in a country of such general and solid knowledge, could not be extinguished at once; and though the national character forbade our following the example and the rapidity of a French revolution; still, that great evil has been done that a democratic tendency has been introduced into the constitution that Radicalism has assumed a place and a shape in public deliberations that faction beards and browbeats the legitimate authorities of public counsel that low agitators are suffered to carry on the full insolence of intrigue with a dangerous impunity and that the pressure from without too often becomes paramount to the wisdom from within.
At the same time, we fully admit that there were abuses in the ancient system, offensive to the natural sense of justice; that the sale of seats was contrary to principle; and that the dependence of members on individual patrons was a violation of legislative liberty. But whose was the criminality? not that of the constitution, but of the faction; not that of the enfeebled law, but of the local supremacy of Whig influence. Property is the true, and in fact the only safe pledge of legislative power; and if Manchester and the other great manufacturing towns had possessed, five hundred years ago, the property which they have acquired within the last fifty there can be no doubt that representatives would have been allotted to them. There can be as little doubt, that in 1830, or in a quarter of a century before, they ought to have had representatives; but the true evil has been in the sweeping nature of the change. Still, we will hope the best; we have strong faith in the fortunes of England, and shall rejoice to see that our fears have been vain.
The young senator's exertions, on this occasion, confirmed the opinion already entertained of him in high quarters. He was shortly after sworn in as a member of the Privy Council in England, and was made one of the commissioners for the affairs of India. Pitt's memorable India Bill, in 1784, had appointed a board of six commissioners for Indian affairs, who were to be privy councillors, with one of the secretaries of state at their head. The board were to be appointed by the King, and removable at his pleasure. They were invested with the control of all the revenue, and civil and military officers of the Company. The directors were obliged to lay before them all papers relative to the management of their affairs. The commissioners were to return the papers of the directors within fourteen days, if approved of, or if not, to assign their reasons. The despatches so agreed on, were then to be sent to India.
It seems not improbable that this appointment was intended as the preparative of the Earl for higher objects in the same department. At all events, it directed his attention to Indian topics, and gave him the due portion of that practical knowledge, without which genius only bewilders, and enterprise is thrown away.
We have to fight our way against this biographer, who takes a rambling and revolutionary view of all the chief transactions of the time. In this spirit, he denies or doubts the necessity of the French war. We deny that it was possible to avert it. It may be true, that if England had been faithless to her compacts, and had suffered her allies to be trampled on, she might, for awhile, have avoided actual collision. But, could this have been done with honour; and what is national honour but a national necessity? Holland, the old ally of England, was actually invaded; and the first English troops that set foot upon the Continent, were sent in compliance with our treaty, and for the simple protection of our ally. No one will contend, and no one has ever contended, that England had a right to make a government for France; or that the fury of her factions, however they might startle and disgust mankind, was a ground for teaching morality at the point of the sword. But there can be no more legitimate cause of war than the obligations of treaties, the protection of the weak against the powerful, and the preservation of the general balance of European power.
In the instance of Holland, too, there was the additional and most efficient reason, viz. that the possession of her ports and arsenals by France must largely increase the danger of England. But when it is further remembered, that France declared the determination to make war upon all monarchies, that she aimed at establishing an universal republic, that she pronounced all kings tyrants and all subjects slaves; and that, offering her assistance to every insurrectionary people, she ostentatiously proclaimed her plan of revolutionizing the world who can doubt that national safety consisted in resisting the doctrines, in repelling the arms, and in crushing the conspiracies which would have made England a field of civil slaughter, and left of her glory and her power nothing but a name?
It is, however, a curious instance of personal zeal, to find the biographer applauding as the sentiments of his hero, the opinions which he deprecates as the policy of England; and admitting that the war was wise, righteous, and inevitable; that it raised the name of England to the highest rank: and that it preserved us from "the pest of a godless, levelling democracy."
It has been the habit of writers like the present, to conceive that the French Revolution was hailed with general joy by England. Even before the death of the king, the contrary is the fact: the rabble, the factions, and the more bustling and bitter portion of the sectaries, unquestionably exulted in the popular insurrection, and the general weakening of the monarchy. But all the genuinely religious portion of the people, all the honest and high-minded, all the travelled and well-informed, adopted a just conception of the whole event from the beginning. The religious pronounced it atheistic, the honest illegal, and the travelled as the mere furious outburst of a populace mad for plunder and incapable of freedom. But the death of the king excited a unanimous burst of horror; and there never was a public act received with more universal approbation than the dismissal of the French ambassador, M. Chauvelin, by a royal order to quit the country within eight days. The note was officially sent by Lord Grenville, but was stamped with the energy of Pitt. It was as follows:
"I am charged to notify to you, sir, that the character with which you have been vested at this court, and the functions of which have been so long suspended, being now utterly terminated by the fatal death of his most Christian Majesty, you have no more any public character here, the King can no longer, after such an event, permit your residence here; his Majesty has thought fit to order that you should retire from this kingdom within the term of eight days. And I herewith transmit to you a copy of the order, which his Majesty, in his Privy Council, has given to this effect. I send you a passport for yourself and your suite, and I shall not fail to take all the necessary steps, in order that you may return to France with all the attentions which are due to the character of minister-plenipotentiary, which you have exercised at this court. I have the honour to be, &c.