The Political History of England – Vol XI

CHAPTER IV.

PERCEVAL AND LIVERPOOL

The administration of Perceval, covering the period from October, 1809, to May, 1812, coincided with a lull in the continental war save in the Peninsula, though it saw no pause in the progress of French annexation. Nor was it marked by many events of historical interest in domestic affairs. When parliament was opened on January 23, 1810, it was natural that attention should chiefly be devoted to the Walcheren expedition, which the opposition illogically and unscrupulously contrived to use to disparage the operations of Sir Arthur Wellesley, now Viscount Wellington, in Spain. Grenville, who argued with some reason that 40,000 British troops could have been employed to far better purpose in North Germany, would have been on stronger ground if he had complained that for want of them the British army had been unable to occupy Madrid. Castlereagh, indeed, had confessed to Wellesley that he could not spare the necessary reinforcements, after the reserves had been exhausted in Walcheren; but it is by no means certain that Wellesley could have collected provisions enough to feed a much larger force, or specie enough to pay for them. Liverpool was driven in reply to Grenville to magnify the value of the capture of Flushing, as the necessary basis of the naval armaments which Napoleon had intended to launch against England from the Scheldt. The government was also defended by the young Robert Peel, lately elected to parliament. As the calamity was irreparable, a committee of the whole house spent most of its time on a constitutional question, regarding a private memorandum placed before the king by Chatham in his own defence. So irregular a proceeding was properly condemned, and Chatham resigned the mastership of the ordnance, but the policy of the Walcheren expedition was approved by a vote of the house of commons. Mulgrave received the office Chatham had vacated, and was himself succeeded by Yorke at the admiralty.

Parliament was next occupied by a question of privilege, in which Sir Francis Burdett, member for Westminster, then a favourite of the democracy, played a part resembling that of John Wilkes a generation earlier. Burdett had been for fourteen years a member of parliament, and had been conspicuous from the first for the vehemence of his opposition to the government, and more especially to its supposed infringements of the liberty of the subject. He had more recently taken an active part on behalf of Wardle's attack on the Duke of York and had supported the charges of ministerial corruption in the previous session. On the present occasion one John Gale Jones, president of a debating club, had published in a notice of debate the terms of a resolution which his club had passed, condemning in extravagant language the exclusion of strangers from the house of commons. This was treated as a breach of privilege, and Jones was sent to Newgate by order of the house itself. Burdett, in a violent letter to Cobbett's Register, challenged the right of the house to imprison Jones by its own authority, and, after a fierce debate lasting two nights, was adjudged by the house, on April 5, to have been guilty of a still more scandalous libel. Accordingly, the speaker issued a warrant for his committal to the Tower. Burdett declared his resolution to resist arrest, the populace mustered in his defence, the riot act was read, and he was conveyed to prison by a strong military escort, on whose return more serious riots broke out, and were not quelled without bloodshed. On his release at the end of the session a repetition of these scenes was prevented by the simple expedient of bringing him home by water. During his imprisonment he wrote an offensive letter to the speaker, and his colleague, Lord Cochrane, presented a violently worded petition from his Westminster constituents. In the following year he sued the speaker and the sergeant-at-arms in the court of king's bench, which decided against him on the ground that a power of commitment was necessary for the maintenance of the dignity of the house of commons, and its decision was confirmed, on appeal, by the court of exchequer chamber and the house of lords.

THE CURRENCY QUESTION.

The most important subject of internal policy discussed in the session of 1810 was the state of the currency. Since 1797 cash payments had been suspended, the issue of banknotes had been nearly doubled, and the price of commodities had risen enormously. Whether these results had in their turn promoted the expansion of foreign commerce and internal industry was vigorously disputed by two rival schools of economists. The one thing certain was the increasing scarcity of specie, and the serious loss incurred in its provision for the service of the army in the Peninsula. Francis Horner, then rising to eminence, obtained the appointment of what became known as the "bullion committee" to inquire into the anomalous conditions thus created, and took a leading part in the preparation of its celebrated report, published on September 20. The committee arrived at the conclusion that the high price of gold was mainly due to excess in the paper-currency, and not, as alleged, to a drain of gold for the continental war. They attributed that excess to "the want of a sufficient check and control in the issues of paper from the Bank of England, and originally to the suspension of cash-payments, which removed the natural and true control". While allowing that paper could not be rendered suddenly convertible into specie without dislocating the entire business of the country, they recommended that an early provision should be made by parliament for terminating the suspension of cash-payments at the end of two years. These conclusions were combated by Castlereagh and Vansittart, who afterwards, in 1811, succeeded in carrying several counter-resolutions, of which the general effect was to explain the admitted rise in the price of gold, for the most part by the exclusion of British trade from the continent, and the consequent export of the precious metals in lieu of British manufactures. The last resolution, while it recognised the wisdom of restoring cash-payments as soon as it could safely be done, affirmed it to be "highly inexpedient and dangerous to fix a definite period for the removal of the restriction on cash-payments prior to the conclusion of a definitive treaty of peace". These counsels prevailed, and the restriction was not actually removed until Peel's act was passed in July, 1819.

The last domestic event in the inglorious annals of 1810 was the final lapse of the king into mental derangement in the month of November. For more than six years his sight had been failing, but he had suffered no return of insanity since 1804. Now he lost both his sight and his reason. This event, impending for some time, was precipitated by the illness and death of the Princess Amelia, his favourite daughter, and was perhaps aggravated by the Walcheren expedition and the disgrace of the Duke of York. Parliament met on November 1, and was adjourned more than once before a committee was appointed to examine the royal physicians. Acting on their report, the ministers proposed and carried resolutions declaring the king's incapacity, and the right and duty of the two houses to provide for the emergency. It was also determined to define by act of parliament the powers to be exercised in the king's name and behalf. This implied a limitation of the regent's authority, and was resented by the Prince of Wales and his friends. Perceval, however, was able to rely on the precedent of 1788, to which Grenville, for one, had been a party, and, after considerable opposition, the prince was made regent under several temporary restrictions. With certain exceptions, he was precluded from granting any peerage or office tenable for life; the royal property was vested in trustees for the king's benefit, and the personal care of the king was entrusted to the queen, with the advice of a council. In this form, the regency bill was passed on February 4, 1811, after a protest from the other sons of George III. and violent attacks upon Eldon by Grenville and Grey. On the 5th, the regent took the oaths before the privy council, but, in accepting the restrictions, he delicately expressed regret that he should not have been trusted to impose upon himself proper limitations for the exercise of royal patronage. The interregnum thus established was to be provisional only, and was to cease on February 1, 1812, but the queen and her private council, with the concurrence of the privy council, were empowered to annul it at any time, by announcing the king's recovery, when he could resume his powers by proclamation.

THE REGENCY BILL.

The hopes of the opposition had been greatly excited by the prospect of a regency, and it was generally expected that a change of ministry would be its immediate consequence. Private communications had, in fact, passed between the prince and the whig lords, Grenville and Grey, but they were rendered nugatory by the dictatorial tone assumed by those lords and by the unwillingness of the prince to dispense with the advice of Moira and Sheridan. The two whig lords had by the prince's desire prepared a reply to the address from the houses of parliament, preparatory to the regency bill. Grenville had voted in favour of the restriction on the creation of peers, and it is therefore not surprising that the reply which he and Grey drafted appeared to the prince too weak in its protest against the limitations. He therefore adopted in its stead another reply which Sheridan had composed for him. The two lords thereupon addressed to the prince a remonstrance, which practically claimed for themselves the right of responsible ministers to be the sole advisers of their prince. This remonstrance provoked the ridicule of Sheridan, and certainly did not please the prince, who since the fall of the Grenville ministry had refused to be regarded as a "party man". The regent, accordingly, gave Perceval to understand that he intended to retain his present ministers, but solely on the ground that he was unwilling to do anything which might retard his father's recovery, or distress him when he should come to himself. This reason was probably genuine. The king appeared to be recovering; he had had several interviews with Perceval and Eldon, and had made inquiries as to the prince's intentions. Soon, however, the malady took a turn for the worse, and the physicians came to the conclusion that it was permanent.41

Before February, 1812, when the restrictions expired, and a permanent regency bill was passed, the prince drifted further away from his former advisers, and had been pacified by the loyal attitude of Perceval and Eldon. Further overtures were conveyed to the whig lords through a letter from the prince regent to the Duke of York, in which he declared that he had "no predilections to indulge or resentments to gratify," but only a concern for the public good, towards which he desired the co-operation of some of his old whig friends, indicating Grenville and Grey. They declined in a letter to the Duke of York, alleging differences on grounds of policy too deep to admit of a coalition. Eldon, on his part, expressed a similar conviction, but the regent never fully forgave what he regarded as their desertion. Wellesley, who was strongly opposed to Perceval's policy of maintaining the catholic disabilities, resigned the secretaryship of foreign affairs, protesting against the feeble support given to his brother in the Peninsula, and was succeeded by Castlereagh. In April Sidmouth became president of the council in place of Camden, who remained in the cabinet without office; and in the next month, on May 11, Perceval was assassinated in the lobby of the house of commons by a man named Bellingham, who had an imaginary grievance against the government.

A very general and sincere tribute of respect was paid by the house to Perceval's memory, for, though his statesmanship was of the second order, he was far more than a tory partisan; he was an excellent debater, and a thoroughly honest politician, and his private character was above all reproach or suspicion. The cabinet was bewildered by his death, and a fresh attempt was made to strengthen it by the simple inclusion of Canning as well as Wellesley. Wellesley stipulated that the catholic question should be left open, and that the war should be prosecuted with the entire resources of the country, while Canning declined co-operation on the ground of the catholic question alone. No agreement being found possible, the house of commons stepped in and addressed the regent, begging him to form a strong and efficient administration, commanding the confidence of all classes. He replied by sending for Wellesley, offering him the premiership and entrusting him with the formation of a comprehensive ministry; but Wellesley soon found that Liverpool and his adherents would not serve under him at all, while Grenville and Grey, who secretly condemned the Peninsular war, would only serve on conditions which he could not grant. Once more, the regent treated directly with these haughty whigs, now including Moira, to whom he committed the task of forming an administration. Grenville and Grey raised difficulties about the appointments in the royal household, which they wished to include in the political changes, and the negotiation was broken off. The regent at last fell back on Liverpool, a capable and conciliatory minister, who adopted Perceval's colleagues, and a spell of tory administration set in which remained unbroken for no less than fifteen years. Had more tact been shown on all sides, had the whigs been less peremptory in their demands, and had the trivial household question never arisen, the course of the war, if not of European history, might, whether for good or evil, have been profoundly modified.

SOCIAL REFORMS.

During the later period of Perceval's administration, from 1811 to 1812, the strife of politics had been mainly concentrated on the regency question, the chance of ministerial changes, and the fortunes of the war in Spain. But it must not be supposed that social questions were neglected, even in the darkest days of the war, however meagre the legislative fruits may appear. Session after session, Romilly pressed forward reforms of the criminal law, the institution of penitential houses in the nature of reformatories, and the abolition of state lotteries. Others laboured, and with greater success, to remedy the delays and reduce the arrears in the court of chancery. Constant efforts were made to expose defalcations in the revenue, to curtail exorbitant salaries, and to put down electioneering corruption. In 1809 Erskine introduced a bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals. In 1810 there were earnest, if somewhat futile, debates on spiritual destitution, the non-residence and poverty of the clergy, and the scarcity of places of worship. Moreover, early in 1811, a premonitory symptom of the repeal movement caused some anxiety in Ireland. It took the form of a scheme for a representative assembly to sit in Dublin, and manage the affairs of the Roman catholic population, under colour of framing petitions to parliament, and seeking redress of grievances. It was, of course, to consist of Roman catholics only, and to include Roman catholic bishops. The Irish government wisely suppressed the scheme, and Perceval justified their action, on the ground that a representative assembly in Dublin, with such aims in view, bordered upon an illicit legislature.

Except for the war in the Spanish peninsula, and the war between Russia and the Porte on the Danube, the year 1810 was marked by undisturbed peace throughout the continent of Europe. France continued to make annexations, but they were at the expense of her allies, not of her enemies. Her supremacy was signalised in a striking way by the marriage of her parvenu emperor, whose divorce the pope still refused to recognise, with Maria Louisa, daughter of the Emperor of Austria. Though thirteen out of twenty-six cardinals present in Paris declined to attend it, this marriage was a masterstroke of Talleyrand's diplomacy; it secured the benevolent neutrality of Austria for the next three years, and weakened the counsels of the allies during the negotiations of 1814-15. But it went far to estrange the Tsar of Russia, who, though he had courteously declined Napoleon's overtures for the hand of his own sister, was greatly offended on discovering that another matrimonial alliance had been contracted by his would-be brother-in-law before his reply could be received.

It was only within the limits of the French empire that Napoleon's authority had been sufficient to enforce the rigorous exclusion of British goods. His allies, including Sweden, which closed her ports to British products in January, 1810, and declared war on Great Britain in the following November, had adopted the continental system; but administrative weakness, and the obvious interest that every people had in its infraction, rendered its operation partial. Napoleon, determined to enforce the system in spite of every obstacle, met this difficulty by placing in immediate subjection to the French crown the territories where British goods were imported. The first ally to suffer was his own brother, Louis, King of Holland. His refusal to enforce Napoleon's orders against the admission of British goods was followed at once by a forced cession of part of Holland to France and the establishment of French control at the custom houses, and shortly afterwards by the despatch of French troops into Holland and its annexation to France on July 9, 1810. In December the French dominion over the North Sea coast was extended by the annexation of a corner of Germany, including the coast as far as the Danish frontier, and the town of Lübeck on the Baltic. As a result of this annexation, the duchy of Oldenburg, held by a branch of the Russian imperial family, ceased to exist. The act was a conspicuous breach of the treaty of Tilsit, which Napoleon considered himself at liberty to disregard, as Russia had shown by her conduct during the campaign of 1809 that she was no longer more than a nominal ally of France. At last, on January 12, 1811, Russia asserted her independence in fiscal matters by an order which declared her ports open to all vessels sailing under a neutral flag, and imposed a duty on many French products. Still the course of French annexation crept onwards, and quietly absorbed the republic of Vallais in Switzerland, which had been a great centre of smuggling.

THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM.

Meanwhile, the restrictions and prohibitions which formed the continental system were made more and more severe. By the Trianon tariff of August, 1810, heavy duties were levied on colonial products, and by the Fontainebleau decree of October 18 all goods of British origin were to be seized and publicly burned. In November a special tribunal was created to try offenders against the continental system. Nevertheless, the fiscal and foreign policy of France at this date alike show how far the continental system had failed in its object, and to what extreme lengths it had become necessary to push it in order to give it a chance of success. The strain of the system on English commerce was immense, but the burden fell far more heavily on the continental nations. Colonial produce rose to enormous prices in France, Germany, and Italy, especially after the introduction of the Trianon tariff, and a subject or ally of the French emperor had to pay ten times as much for his morning cup of coffee as his enemy in London. The German opposition to Napoleon had failed in 1809 mainly through the political apathy of the German nation. Napoleon's fiscal measures were the surest way of bringing that apathy to an end, and converting it into hostility.