( 32 ) |
The following holograph note, without date, probably belongs to the year 1805, and is interesting as being written by the future William IV. on behalf of the future George IV.:—
“The Prince desires you will meet at dinner here on Saturday the Eighteenth instant at six o’Clock Lord [illegible] and Sheridan. I hope I need not add how happy your presence will make me. I remain
Foreign politics during these years absorbed all the energies of Ministers, and diverted Pitt from those schemes of reform which undoubtedly lay near his heart. But the spirit of reform was awake, though it was crushed out of the plans of the Cabinet by stress of circumstance. The Opposition enjoyed more freedom and less responsibility. Creevey attached himself to that section of it which was foremost in hunting out abuses and proposing drastic measures of redress. At this time Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, was
1805.] | MELVILLE’S DISGRACE. | 33 |
“I have ever thought,” wrote Lord Fitzharris, “that an aiding cause in Pitt’s death, certainly one that tended to shorten his existence, was the result of the proceedings against his old friend and colleague Lord Melville.”
“. . . I am trying to learn my lesson as a future under-secretary or Secretary of the Treasury. . . . We had a famous debate on Sheridan’s motion: never anything was so hollow as the argument on our side. Sherry’s speech and reply were both excellent. In that part of his reply when he fired upon Pitt for his treachery to the Catholics, Pitt’s eyes started with defiance from their sockets, and seemed to tell him if he advanced an atom further he would have his life. Sherry left him a little alone and tickled him about the greatness of his mind and the good temper of Melville; and then he turned upon him again with redoubled fury. . . . Never has it fallen to my lot to hear such words before in publick or in private used by man to man.”
34 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. II. |
“. . . We have had indeed most famous sport with this same Leviathan, Lord Melville. His tumbling so soon was as unexpected by all of us as it was by himself or you. It was clear from the first that he was ruined sooner or later, but no one anticipated his defeat upon the first Attack, and supported as he was by the Addingtons as well as Pitts, and with the nostrum held out, too, of further enquiry by a secret Committee. The history of that celebrated night presents a wide field of attack upon Pitt under all the infinite difficulties of his situation; a clamour for reform in the expenditure of the publick money is at last found to be the touchstone of the House of Commons and of the publick. . . . Grey is to give notice immediately when we meet to bring in a bill appointing Commissioners to examine into abuses in the Army, in the Barracks—the Ordnance—the Commissariat Departments. This plan, if it is worth anything . . . must place Pitt in the cursedest dilemma possible. Can he refuse enquiry when it is so loudly called for? or, if he grants it, what must become of the Duke of York and the Greenwoods and Hammersleys and Delaneys, &c., &c., &c., whose tricks with money in these departments would whitewash those of Trotter by comparison. . . . I have no hesitation in saying that Pitt must be more than man to stand it. . . . You can form no notion of his fallen crest in the House of Commons—of his dolorous, distracted air. He betrayed Melville only to save himself, and so the Dundas’s think and say. His own ruin must come next, and that, I think, at no great distance. You may have perceived I have not deserted from my enquiries into less important jobs, although old Fordyce* got such assistance from Fox. The latter, I have reason to believe, repents most cursedly of that business. Grey and Whitbread have acted with unparalleled kindness to me. I mean to have another touch at Fordyce when we meet again. . . . At our
* John Fordyce, Esq., of Ayton, Berwickshire, Receiver-General of Land Tax in Scotland. He married Miss Catherine Maxwell of Monreith, sister of Jane, Duchess of Gordon. |
1805.] | THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOBS. | 35 |
“Upon my soul I don’t know what to say for myself in vindication of my apparently abominable neglect of you; but these are really tempestuous times, and I bother myself with too many things and too many thoughts, and I get irritable, and I believe I eat and drink too much. The upshot of the thing is, that day after day passes and my intentions to write to you, and to do other good things, pass too.
“Our campaign for the last six weeks has been a marvellous one. . . . The country has surprised me as much as the votes of the 8th and 10th, and these meetings and resolutions have brought us safe into port, as far, at least, as relates to Melville. Pitt, too, is greatly, if not irreparably damaged by Melville’s defeat and by certain irregularities of his own. Whitbread’s select committee has done great additional injury to Melville, and has got sufficient matter established for a resolution against Pitt. The latter has confessed that he lent £40,000 to Boyd, Benfield and Co. out of money voted for Navy services, in order to enable them to make good their instalments upon Omnium. He has admitted, too, that he advanced them £100,000 in order to enable them to make a purchase for Government, at a time that he was informed by the Bank of their approaching ruin. A great part of that sum is now a debt to Government in consequence of their bankruptcy. This is a damned unpopular business—to advance publick money to two members of Parliament, who are bankrupts, too. It is a damned thing, too, for the friends and admirers of this once great man, to see him sent for by
36 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. II. |
“. . . Bennet† has been here, and is now returned to Bath. He is most desirous to know you, and I promised I would write to you and mention him by way of introduction. He is most amiable, occasionally most boring, but at all times most upright and honorable. Make him introduce you to Lord and Lady Tankerville. The former is very fond of me; he is a haughty, honorable man—has lived at one time in the heart of political leaders—was the friend of Lansdowne—has been in office several times, and is now a misanthrope, but very communicative and entertaining when he likes his man. His only remaining passion is for clever men, of which description he considers himself as one, tho’ certainly unjustly. Lady Tankerville has perhaps as much merit as any
* Hon. James Abercromby: Speaker 1835-9: created Lord Dunfermline 1839: died 1858. † Hon. H. G. Bennet, M.P., 2nd son of 4th Earl of Tankerville. |
1805.] | THE RADICALS MAKE THE PACE. | 37 |
“. . . You must know that I came out of the battle of the session] very sick of it and of my leaders. It appears to me we had Pitt upon his very last legs, and might have destroyed him upon the spot; instead of which, every opportunity for so doing was either lost or converted to a contrary purpose. Could the most inveterate enemy of Pitt have wished for anything better than to find him lending £40,000, appropriated by law to particular publick purposes, to two bankrupt merchant members of parliament who voted always with him?† and could the most pertinacious derider of Fox’s political folly have dared to conceive that Fox on such an occasion should acquit Pitt of all corruption, and should add likewise this sentiment to his opinion, that to have so detected him in corruption would have made him (Fox) the most miserable of men? . . . In short, between ourselves, my dear Doctor, I believe that Fox has no principle about publick money, and that he would give it away, if he had the power, in any way or for any job quite as disgusting as the worst of Pitt’s. It is a painful conclusion this to come to, and dreadfully diminishes one’s parliamentary amusement. You can have no conception how feverish I became about Fox’s conduct during this damned Athol business‡ I talked at him
* She was Emma, daughter and co-heiress of Sir James Colebrooke, Bart. † Boyd, Benfield and Co., to whom Pitt advanced the sum named out of money voted for Navy services. They were Government agents, and shortly afterwards went bankrupt. ‡ The 3rd Duke of Athol having inherited the sovereignty of the Isle of Man through his wife, daughter and heiress of his uncle, the |
38 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. II. |
The following notes are without date, but the allusion to Tom Sheridan’s bride shows that they belong to the summer of 1805.
“You must make my excuse to the Lord Mayor. Pray vouch that you should have brought me, but my cold is really so bad that I should infallibly lay myself up if I attempted to go. Here are pure air, quiet and innocence, and everything that suits me.
“Pray let me caution you not to expose yourself to the air after Dinner, as I find malicious people disposed to attribute to wine what was clearly the mere effect of the atmosphere. My last hour to your Ladies, as I am certainly going to die; till when, however,
2nd Duke, sold the same in 1765 to the Government for £70,000 and a pension of £2000 for their joint lives, but reserving their land rents. The 4th Duke, after two failures, succeeded in getting a bill through Parliament in 1805, settling one-fourth of the customs of the island upon him and the heirs general of James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby. The bill was vigorously opposed, and Creevey denounced it as a job. The fourth of the customs was subsequently commuted for £409,000. |
1805.] | THE SHERIDANS. | 39 |
“If you don’t leave town to-morrow, come and eat your mutton with me in George St. and meet Adam and McMahon, and more than all, my Son and Daughter.
“Mrs. Creevey will excuse you at my request, and you will be a Piece of a Lion to have seen so early Mrs. T. S.,* whom I think lovely and engaging and interesting beyond measure, and, as far as I can judge, with a most superior understanding.
“I left Hester about two hours ago: she violently expects you. Remember we have a bed for you, a fishing rod for Creevey on Monday morning. If you will stay over Monday, Hester and Richmond Hill will make you quite well, and there are, not cockney, but classical Lions for Creevey to see. . . .”
It is difficult in these later days to realise the degree in which Royal personages were allowed, and even expected, to interfere with politics and the work of Parliament under the Hanoverian dynasty. It is notorious that, George III. having evinced his determination to have a Tory Cabinet, the Heir Apparent chose his friends and counsellors from the Whig Opposition, trafficking in seats in Parliament as keenly as any boroughmonger of them all. Among others whom he sought to enlist in his Parliamentary party
* Sheridan’s only son, Tom [1775-1817], married Caroline Henrietta Callander in 1805. She was a celebrated beauty, wrote three novels which had some popularity, and was the mother of four sons and three beautiful daughters—Mrs. Blackwood, afterwards Lady Dufferin, and lastly, Countess of Gifford; The Hon. Mrs. Norton, afterwards Lady Stirling-Maxwell of Keir; and the youngest, the Duchess of Somerset, Queen of Beauty at the Eglinton Tournament. |
40 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. II. |
“I have just received your letter. . . . It has indeed very much surprised me, and I am afraid my answer to it will occasion as much surprise in you. I cannot express to you how much flattered I am by the honor which the Prince of Wales does me. No event in the whole course of my life has been so gratifying to me. . . . I have formed no resolution to keep out of Parliament; on the contrary, it has long been my intention and is still my wish, to obtain a seat in the House, though not immediately.* If I had been a member from the beginning of the
* He was elected member for Queenborough in 1806, on taking office as Solicitor-General in “All the Talents.” |
1805.] | ROMILLY DECLINES PARLIAMENT. | 41 |
42 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. II. |
“I have for some time meditated writing to you, more, I confess, in the hope of procuring an answer, than with that of being able to communicate anything that can interest you from this country, altho’ it affords me a great deal of amusement as a traveller.
“The town of Dublin is full of fine buildings, fine streets, &c., but so ill placed and imperfectly finished as to give it the appearance of a great piece of patchwork, made up without skill and without attention. The Custom House is, however, an exception, and in every respect a noble edifice, in which there is no fault to be found except that old Beresford† is sumptuously lodged in it.
“The Union is become generally unpopular—more
* Chancellor of the Exchequer in “All the Talents,” 1806-7, and afterwards 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne. † The Right Hon. John Beresford [1737-1805], for many years chairman of the Revenue Board of Ireland, greatly relied on by Pitt in affairs of Irish administration. He died 5th November, 1805. |
1805.] | IRISH AFFAIRS. | 43 |
“Many thanks for your letter, which it would have given me pleasure to receive anywhere, but particularly in the remote district of Munster where it found me, meditating upon the means of converting bogs into fields, rocks into quarries, and (not the least difficult of metamorphoses) Irish peasants into efficient labourers. We have, at the other extremity of the island, got into a more civilised region. Downshire is the Yorkshire of Ireland—the same universal appearance of wealth and industry, and even of neatness and comfort, prevails.
“The shops here are full of prints and songs against Castlereagh, the leavings of the election, which has produced a general effect throughout Ireland. I am far from thinking the elections here will be so completely under the controll of Govt. as many of their adversaries, as well as friends, suppose. There is in most counties a rising spirit of independence, and the weight of the Catholic interest will be strongly felt. I have been myself strongly sollicited by a number of freeholders of the Co. of Kerry to offer myself at the gen. election, nor should I have the least doubt of success, if I had not other views,
* Viscount Castlereagh [1769-1822] had been returned as Whig member for county Down in 1790, the election costing his father the almost incredible sum of £60,000. He joined the Tories in 1795, became Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1797, and incurred the hatred of many of his countrymen by the ardour and success with which he forwarded Pitt’s project of the Union, by buying up borough-mongers. But he was a strong advocate of Roman Catholic emancipation, and retired with Pitt when George III. set his veto upon the measure to which Pitt was pledged. He took office under Addington as President of the Board of Controul in 1802, and lost his seat on seeking re-election in 1805 when he was appointed War Minister under Pitt. |
44 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. II. |
“What great events are passing on the Continent. It is terrible to think that Pitt has so much of the fate of England and of Europe in his hands. I understand there has been some disagreement with Russia in consequence of the D. of Y. being intended for the command of a combined army of Russians and English, against which the Court of Petersburgh remonstrated. How disgracefull to be indebted to a foreign court for teaching us commonsense and our own interest at such a crisis!”
At Christmastide, 1805, Pitt received his deathblow. He had staked the existence of his country and the freedom of Europe upon the coalition of Austria, Russia, and England against Bonaparte and the destructive energies of France. But before these formidable allies could come into line, even before the British force had embarked for Germany, Napoleon swept through the Black Forest with 100,000 men. The Austrian commander Mack, posted on the Iller from Ulm to Memmingen, was surprised, taken in rear, and laid down his arms on 19th October, Werneck’s corps having done the like the day before to Murat. By the end of the month the Austrian field force of 80,000 was no more. When rumours reached Pitt of the capitulation of Ulm—“Don’t believe it,” he exclaimed; “it is all a fiction.” Next day the terrible news received confirmation; the shock could not be repaired, even by the glorious intelligence which arrived four days later of the destruction of the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar. That, indeed, revived shattered hopes for the moment, but it was followed closely by the news of Austerlitz, where the second partner in the coalition had been crushed with
1805.] | ULM AND AUSTERLITZ. | 45 |
“. . . Your details, which I had received from no other person, have left no doubt upon my mind. Of the delay of fresh intelligence I think nothing. I remember the same thing happened after the battle of Ulm, when the same inferences were drawn from it, and the opportunity taken to circulate the same reports of the defeat of the French. It seems Robert Ward sent to all the newspapers the paragraphs which you wd. see, asserting the Russian capitulation and Count Palfy’s letters to be forgeries; and this, I am assured, without the least authority for doing so, except his own foolish belief. All this, I agree with you, is as much calculated to hurt Pitt, when it is completely exposed, as the disasters themselves, and the folly of doing it is inconceivable. If the defeat of the 2nd* was as calamitous as I believe it to have been, it is nonsense to talk any more of Continental confederacies. The game is too desperate even for Pitt himself, desperate as he is; and the King of Prussia certainly would not expose himself alone, which in the first instance he must do, to all the power and vengeance of France. I am more inclined to think that they [Pitt’s Cabinet] really do flatter themselves against all evidence into a belief in these renewed battles and consequent changes of fortune. There is nothing too absurd for them in a military view. They are naturally confident and sanguine, and this is their last hope.”
* At Austerlitz. |
≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |