The Impeachment of The House of Brunswick Part 4

"As a free horse needs no spur, so I stand in need of no inducement or douceur to lend my small a.s.sistance to the King or his friends in the present Administration."

That this was part of the general practice of the Government under George III. may be seen by the following extract from an infamous letter written about fifteen years later by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland: "No man can see the inconvenience of increasing the Peers more forcibly than myself, but the recommendation of many of those persons submitted to his Majesty for that honor, arose from the engagements taken up at the press of the moment to rescue questions upon which the English Government were very particularly anxious. My sentiments cannot but be the same with reference to the Privy Council and pensions, and I had not contracted any absolute engagements of recommendations either to peerage or pension, till difficulties arose which necessarily occasioned so much anxiety in his Majesty's Cabinet, that I must have been culpable in neglecting any possible means to secure a majority in the House of Commons."

A good story is told of the great Commoner Pitt's repartee to Fox (afterwards Lord Holland), in one of the debates of this period. "Pitt,"

says the _London Chronicle_, "in the heat of his declamation, proceeded so far as to attack the personal deformity of Fox; and represented his gloomy and lowering countenance, with the penthouse of his eye-brows, as Churchill phrases it, as a true introduction of his dark and double mind. Mr. Fox was nettled at this personal reflection, and the more so, perhaps, that it was as just as it was cutting. He therefore got up, and after inveighing bitterly against the indecency of his antagonist, in descending to remark on his bodily defects, observed that his figure was such as G.o.d Almighty had made it, and he could not look otherwise; and then, in a tone between the plaintive and indignant, cried out, 'How, gentlemen, shall I _look?_' Most of the members, apprehending that Mr.

Pitt had gone rather too far, were inclined to think that Mr. Fox had got the better of him. But Mr. Pitt started up, and with one of those happy turns, in which he so much excels, silenced his rival, and made him sit down with a countenance, if possible more abashed than formerly. '_Look!_ Sir,' said he--'_look_' as you _cannot_ look, if you _would--look_ as you _dare_ not look, if you _could--look_ like an _honest man_.'"

In the _London Chronicle_ for March, 1763, we find bitter complaints that since 1760, "every obsolete, useless place has been revived, and every occasion of increasing salaries seized with eagerness," and that a great Whig leader "has just condescended to stipulate for an additional salary, without power, as the price of his support to the Tory Government."

In March, 1763, George III. gave four s.h.i.+ps of war to the King of Sardinia at the national expense, and in August appears to have given a fifth vessel.

On the 23d of April, 1763, No. 45 of the _North Briton_, a journal which had been started in opposition to Lord Bute's paper, the _Briton_, was published, severely criticising the King's speech, and warmly attacking Lord Bute. This issue provoked the ministers to a course of the utmost illegality. A _general warrant_ to seize all persons concerned in the publication of the _North Briton_, without specifying their names, was immediately issued by the Secretary of State, and a number of printers and publishers were placed in custody, some of whom were not at all concerned in the obnoxious publication. Late on the night of the 29th of April, the messengers entered the house of John Wilkes, M.P. for Aylesbury (the author of the article in question), and produced their warrant, with which he refused to comply. On the following morning, however, he was carried before the Secretary of State, and committed a close prisoner to the Tower, his papers being previously seized and sealed, and all access to his person strictly prohibited. The warrant was clearly an illegal one, and had only been previously resorted to in one or two instances, and under very extraordinary circ.u.mstances, of which there were none in the present case. Wilkes's friends immediately obtained a writ of habeas corpus, which the ministers defeated by a mean subterfuge; and it was found necessary to obtain a second before they could bring the prisoner before the Court of King's Bench, by which he was set at liberty, on the ground of his privilege as a Member of Parliament. He then opened an angry correspondence, followed by actions at law, against the Secretaries of State, on the seizure of his papers, and for the wrongful arrest. These actions abated, although in the one for the seizure of the papers a verdict was given for 1,000 damages and costs. But in the mean time the Attorney-General had been directed to inst.i.tute a prosecution against Wilkes, in the King's Bench, for libel, and the King had ordered him, to be deprived of his commission as Colonel in the Buckinghams.h.i.+re Militia. The King further exhibited his resentment by depriving Lord Temple of the Lord-Lieutenancy of the same county, and striking his name out of the Council-book, for an expression of personal sympathy which had fallen from him. Worse than all, this King George III. actually deprived General A'Court, MP. for Heytesbury, of his commission as colonel of the 11th Dragoons, for having voted that the arrest of Wilkes was a breach of privilege. He also caused it to be intimated to General Conway, "that the King cannot trust his army in the hands of a man who votes in Parliament against him." The House of Commons ordered the _North Briton_ to be burned by the common hangman; but when the authorities attempted to carry out the sentence, the people a.s.sembled, rescued the number, and burned instead a large jack-boot, the popular hieroglyphic for the unpopular minister.

Amongst the many rhymed squibs the following is worth repet.i.tion:--

"Because the _North Briton_ inflamed the whole nation, To flames they commit it to show detestation; But throughout old England how joy would have spread, Had the real North Briton been burnt in its stead!"

The North Briton of the last line is, of course, the Scotch Earl Bute.

As an ill.u.s.tration of the then disgraceful state of the English law, it is enough to notice that Lord Halifax, the Secretary of State, by availing himself of his privileges as a peer, managed to delay John Wilkes in his action from June, 1763, to November, 1764; and then, Wilkes having been outlawed, the n.o.ble Earl appeared and pleaded the outlawry as a bar to further proceedings. Ultimately, after five years'

delay, Wilkes annulled the outlawry, and recovered 4,000 damages against Lord Halifax. For a few months Wilkes was the popular idol, and, had he been a man of real earnestness and integrity, might have taken a permanently leading position in the State.

In August, 1763, Frederick, Duke of York, was born. He was created Prince Bishop of Osnaburg before he could speak. The King and Queen were much dissatisfied because the clergy of the diocese, who did not dispute the baby bishop's ability to attend to the souls of his flock, yet refused to entrust to him the irresponsible guardians.h.i.+p of the episcopal funds. This bishopric had actually been kept vacant by the King nearly three years, in order that he might not give it to the Duke of York or Duke of c.u.mberland. The income was about 25,000 a year, and it was to secure this Prince Bishopric for the Duke of c.u.mberland that George II. burdened the country with several subsidies to petty European sovereigns.

The King's sister, Augusta, was, like the rest of the Brunswick family, on extremely bad terms with her mother, the Princess of Wales. The Princess Augusta was married on January 16th, 1764, to the hereditary Prince of Brunswick, who received 80,000, besides 8,000 a year for becoming the husband of one of our Royal Family. In addition to this, George III. and Queen Charlotte insulted the newly-married couple, who returned the insult with interest. Pleasant people, these Brunswicks!

In March, 1764, the first steps were taken in the endeavor to impose taxes on the American colonies, an endeavor which at length resulted in their famous rebellion. The commanders of our s.h.i.+ps of war on the American coast were sworn in to act as revenue officers, the consequence of which was the frequently illegal seizures of s.h.i.+ps and cargoes without any means of redress for the Americans in their own colony. As though to add to the rising disaffection, Mr. Grenville proposed a new stamp-tax. As soon as the Stamp Act reached Boston, the s.h.i.+ps in the harbor hung their colors half-mast high, the bells-were rung m.u.f.fled, the Act of Parliament was reprinted with a death's head for t.i.tle, and sold in the streets as the "Folly of England and Ruin of America." The Americans refused to use stamped paper. The Government distributors of stamps were either forced to return to England, or were obliged to renounce publicly and upon oath their official employment; and, when the matter was again brought before the English House of Commons, Pitt denied the right of Parliament to levy taxation on persons who had no right to representation, and exclaimed: "I rejoice that America has resisted; three millions of people so dead to all feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest." The supporters of the Government actually advanced the ridiculously absurd and most monstrous pretension that America was in law represented in Parliament as part of the manor of East Greenwich.

The Earl of Abercorn and Lord Harcourt appear to have been consulted by the Queen as to the effect of the previous marriage of George III. with Hannah Lightfoot, who seems to have been got rid of by some arrangement for a second marriage between her and a Mr. Axford, to whom a sum of money was paid. It is alleged that this was done without the knowledge of the King, who entreated Lord Chatham to discover where the Quakeress had gone. No fresh communication, however, took place between George III. and Hannah Lightfoot; and the King's first attack of insanity, which took place in 1764, is strongly suggested to have followed the more than doubts as to the legality of the second marriage and the legitimacy of the Royal Family. Hannah Lightfoot died in the winter of 1764, and in the early part of the year 1765, the King being then scarcely sane, a second ceremony of marriage with the Queen was privately performed by the Rev. Dr. Wilmot at Kew palace. Hannah Lightfoot left children by George III., but of these nothing is known.

In the winter of 1764, and spring of 1765, George III. was, in diplomatic language, laboring under an indisposition; in truth, he was mad. Her present Gracious Majesty often labors under an indisposition, but no loyal subject would suggest any sort of doubt as to her mental condition. A Bill was introduced in 1764 in the House of Lords, to provide for a Regency in case of the recurrence of any similar attack.

In the discussion on this Bill, a doubt arose as to who were to be regarded as the Royal Family; fortunately, the Law Lords limited it to the descendants of George II. If a similar definition prevailed to-day, we should, perhaps, not be obliged to pay the pensions to the Duke of Cambridge and Princess Mary, which they at present receive as members of the Royal Family.

On the 80th of October, 1765, William, Duke of c.u.mberland, the King's uncle, died. Dr. Doran says of him: "As he grew in manhood, his heart became hardened; he had no affection for his family, nor fondness for the army, for which he affected attachment. When his brother (Prince Frederick) died, pleasure, not pain, made his heart throb, as he sarcastically exclaimed, 'It's a great blow to the country, but I hope it will recover in time.' He was the author of what was called 'the b.l.o.o.d.y mutiny act.' 'He was dissolute and a gambler.' After the 'disgraceful surrender of Hanover and the infamous convention of Kloster-seven,' his father George II. said of him, 'Behold the son who has ruined me, and disgraced himself.'" His own nephew, George III., believed the Duke to be capable of murder. The Dukes of c.u.mberland in this Brunswick family have had a most unfortunate reputation.

In 1766, William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, brother of the King, married Maria, Countess-Dowager of Waldegrave.

This marriage was at the time repudiated by the rest of the Royal Family.

In October of the same year Caroline Matilda, the King's sister, married Christian, King of Denmark, an unfeeling, dissolute brute. Our Princess, who lived very unhappily, was afterwards accused of adultery, and rescued from punishment by a British man-of-war.

In the autumn of 1766, in consequence of the high price of provisions and taxes, large gatherings took place in many parts of the kingdom; these a.s.semblages were dispersed with considerable loss of life, of course by the military, which the House of Brunswick was not slow to use in checking political manifestations. At Derby the people were charged by the cavalry, at Colton eight were shot dead, in Gloucesters.h.i.+re many lives were lost; in fact, from Exeter to Berwick-on-Tweed there was one ferment of discontent and disaffection. The people were heavily taxed, the aristocracy corrupt and careless. As an instance of the madness of the governing cla.s.ses, it is sufficient to point out that in 1767, while taxation was increasing, the landed gentry, who were rapidly appropriating common lands under Private Enclosure Acts, most audaciously reduced the land tax by one-fourth. During the first thirty-seven years of the reign of George III., there were no less than 1,532 Enclosure Acts pa.s.sed, affecting in all 2,804,197 acres of land fliched from the nation by a few families. Wealth took and poverty lost; riches got land without burden, and labor inherited burden in lieu of land. It is worth notice that in the early part of the reign of George III., land yielding about a sixth or seventh of its present rental, paid the same nominal tax that it does to-day, the actual amount paid at the present time being however smaller through redemption; and yet then the annual interest on the National Debt was under 4,500,000, while to-day it is over 26,000,000. Then the King's Civil List covered all the expenses of our State ministers and diplomatic representatives; to-day, an enormous additional sum is required, and a Prime Minister professing economy, and well versed in history, has actually the audacity to pretend that the country gains by its present Civil List arrangement.

In 1769 George III. announced to his faithful Commons he owed half a million. John Wilkes and a few others protested, but the money was voted.

In 1770 King George III. succeeded in making several b.u.t.tons at Kew, and as this is, as far as I am aware, the most useful work of his life, I desire to give it full prominence. His son, afterwards George IV., made a s...o...b..ckle. No other useful product has resulted directly from the efforts of any male of the family.

In 1770 Henry, Duke of c.u.mberland, the King's brother, was sued by Lord Grosvenor for crim. con., and had to pay 10,000 damages. This same Henry, in the following year, went through the form of marriage with a Mrs. Horton, which marriage, being repudiated by the Court, troubled him but little, and in the lifetime of the lady contracted a second alliance, which gave rise to the famous Olivia Serres legitimacy issue.

The Royal Marriage Act, a most infamous measure for ensuring the perpetuation of vice, and said to be the result of the Lightfoot experience, was introduced to Parliament by a message from George III, on the 20th February, 1772, twelve days after the death of the Princess-Dowager, of Wales. George III. wrote to Lord North on the 26th February: "I expect every nerve to be strained to carry the Bill. It is not a question relating to the Administration, but personally to myself, therefore I have a right to expect a hearty support from every one in my service, and I shall remember defaulters."

In May, 1773, the East India Company, having to come before Parliament for borrowing powers, a select committee was appointed, whose inquiries laid open cases of rapacity and treachery involving the highest personages, and a resolution was carried in the House of Commons affirming that Lord Clive had dishonorably possessed himself of 234,000 at the time of the deposition of Surajah Dowlah, and the establishment of Meer Jaffier. Besides this, it was proved that Lord Clive received several other large sums in succeeding years. Phillimore describes this transaction, in terrific language, as one of "disgusting and sordid turpitude," declaring that "individual members of the English Government were to be paid for their treachery by a hire, the amount of which is almost incredible." A few years after this exposure, Lord Clive committed suicide.

On the 18th of December, 1773, the celebrated cargoes of tea were thrown over in Boston Harbor. The tea duty was a trifling one, but was unfortunately insisted upon by the King's Government as an a.s.sertion of the right of the British Parliament to tax the unrepresented American colonies, a right the colonists strenuously and successfully denied.

The news of the firm att.i.tude of the Bay State colonists arrived in England early in March, 1774, and Lord North's Government, urged by the King, first deprived Boston of her privileges as a port; secondly, took away from the State of Ma.s.sachusetts the whole of the executive powers granted by the charter of William III., and vested the nomination of magistrates of every kind in the King, or royally-appointed Governor; and thirdly, carried an enactment authorizing persons accused of political offences committed in Boston to be sent home to England to be tried.

These monstrous statutes provoked the most decided resistance; all the other American colonists joined with Boston, and a solemn league and covenant was entered into for suspending all commercial intercourse with Great Britain until the obnoxious acts were repealed. On the 5th of Sept., 1774, a congress of fifty-one representatives from twelve old colonies a.s.sembled in Philadelphia. The instructions given to them disclaimed every idea of independence, recognized the const.i.tutional authority of the mother country, and acknowledged the prerogatives of the crown; but unanimously declared that they would never give up the rights and liberties derived to them from their ancestors as British subjects, and p.r.o.nounced the late acts relative to the colony of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay to be unconst.i.tutional, oppressive and dangerous. The first public act of the congress was a resolution declarative of their favorable disposition towards the colony above mentioned; and, by subsequent resolutions, they formally approved the opposition it had given to the obnoxious acts, and declared that, if an attempt were made to carry them into execution by force, the colony should be supported by all America.

The following extract is from the "Address of the Twelve United Provinces to the Inhabitants of Great Britain," when force was actually used:--"We can retire beyond the reach of your navy, and, without any sensible diminution of the necessaries of life, enjoy a luxury, which from that period you will want--_the luxury of being free_."

On the 16th of November, 1775, Edmund Burke proposed the renunciation on the part of Great Britain of the exercise of taxation in America, the repeal of the obnoxious duty on tea, and a general pardon for past political offenders. This was directly opposed by the King, who had lists brought to him of how the members spoke and voted, and was negatived in the House of Commons by 210 votes against 105. On the 20th November, after consultation with George III., Lord North introduced a Bill by which all trade and commerce with the thirteen United colonies were interdicted. It authorized the seizure, whether in harbor or on the high seas, of all vessels laden with American property, and by a cruel stretch of refined tyranny it rendered all persons taken on board American vessels liable to be entered as sailors on board British s.h.i.+ps of war, and to serve (if required) against their own countrymen. About the same time, as we learn by a "secret" dispatch from Lord Dartmouth to General Howe, the King had been unmanly enough to apply to the Czarina of Russia for the loan of 20,000 Russian soldiers to enable him to crush his English subjects in the American colonies. As yet the Americans had made no claim for independence. They were only pet.i.tioners for justice.

In order to crush out the spirit of liberty in the American colonies, the Government of George III., in February, 1776, hired 17,000 men from the Landgrave and Hereditary Prince of Hesse Ca.s.sel, and from the Duke of Brunswick. Besides these, there were levies of troops out of George III.'s Hanoverian dominions, and that nothing might be wanting to our glory, the King's agents stirred up the Cherokee and Creek Indians to scalp, ravish, and plunder the disaffected colonists. Jesse says: "The newly arrived troops comprised several thousand kidnapped German soldiers, whom the cupidity of the Duke of Brunswick, of the Landgrave of Hesse Ca.s.sel, and other German Princes, had induced to let out for hire to the British Government.... Frederick of Prussia not only denounced the traffic as a most scandalous one, but wherever, it is said, the unfortunate hirelings had occasion to march through any part of his dominions, used to levy a toll upon them, as if they had been so many head of bullocks.... They had been sold, he said, as cattle, and therefore he was ent.i.tled to exact the toll."

The consequence of all this was, on the 4th of July, 1776, the famous declaration of the American Congress. "The history of the reigning sovereign, they said, was a history of repeated injuries and usurpations. So evidently was it his intention to establish an absolute despotism, that it had become their duty, as well as their right, to secure themselves against further aggressions.... In every stage of these oppressions," proceeds the Declaration, "we have pet.i.tioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our pet.i.tions have been answered only by repeated injuries.

"A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." And the United Colonies solemnly declare themselves to be "free and independent States."

In 1777, during this American war, Earl Chatham, in one of his grand speeches, after denouncing "the traffic and barter driven with every little pitiful German Prince that sells his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country," adds: "The mercenary aid on which you rely, irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, whom you overrun with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms, never! never! never!" In reply to Lord Suffolk, who had said, in reference to employing the Indians, that "we were justified in using all the means which G.o.d and nature had put into our hands," "I am astonished," exclaimed Lord Chatham, as he rose, "shocked, to hear such principles confessed, to hear them avowed in this House, or in this country; principles equally unconst.i.tutional, inhuman, and un-Christian. _That G.o.d and Nature put into our hands!_ I know not what idea that Lord may entertain of G.o.d and Nature, but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! attribute the sacred sanction of G.o.d and nature to the ma.s.sacres of the Indian scalping-knife, to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, roasting, and eating; literally, my Lords, eating the mangled victims of his barbarous battles!"

And yet even after this we find George III. writing to Lord North, on the 22d of June, 1779: "I do not yet despair that, with Clinton's activity, and the Indians in their rear, the provinces will soon now submit."

Actually so late as the 27th of November, 1781, after the surrender of Cornwallis, we find George III. saying that "retaining a firm confidence in the wisdom and protection of Divine Providence," he should be able "by the valor of his fleets and armies to conquer America." Fox, in the House of Commons, denounced this speech of the King's as one "breathing vengeance, blood, misery, and rancor;" and "as containing the sentiments of some arbitrary, despotic, hard-hearted, and unfeeling monarch, who, having involved his subjects in a ruinous and unnatural war, to glut his feelings of revenge, was determined to persevere in it in spite of calamity." "Divest the speech," said he, "of its official forms, and what was its purport? 'Our losses in America have been most calamitous; the blood of my subjects has flowed in copious streams; the treasures of Great Britain have been wantonly lavished; the load of taxes imposed on an over-burthened country is become intolerable; my rage for conquest is unquenched; my revenge unsated; nor can anything except the total subjugation of my American subjects allay my animosity.'"

The following table shows what this disastrous war ultimately cost this country in mere money; no table can efficiently show its cost in blood and misery:--

Year.

Taxation.

Loans.

1775 10,138,061

1776 10,266,405 2,000,000

1777.

10,604,013 6,500,000

1778 10,732,405 6,000,000

1779 11,192,141 7,000,000

1780 12,265,214 12,000,000

1781 12,454,936 12,000,000

1782 12,593,297 13,500,000