767 1761-1763 RESULT OF THE SEVEN YEARS WAR which she had lost. In India, France received back the towns which had been taken from her, but she could not regain the influence which had passed from her, and England thus retained her predominance in India as well as in America. Frederick complained bitterly that England had abandoned him ; yet he suffered little loss in consequence. His enemies gave up their attempt to destroy him, and almost at the same time that peace was signed by England with France and Spain at Paris, he signed the peace of Hubertsburg, which left him in full possession of his dominions. The result of the Seven Years' War was briefly this, that the British race had become predominant in North America, and that the Prussia of Frederick the Great maintained itself against all its enemies. 4. The King and the Tories. 1762–1763.—In placing Bute in office George III. made his first attempt to break the power of the Whigs. He had already gathered round him the country gentry whose ancestors had formed the strength of the Tory party in the reign of Anne, and who, now that Jacobitism was extinct, were delighted to transfer their devotion to a Hanoverian king who would lead them against the great landowners. They were joined by certain discontented Whigs, and out of this combination sprung up a new Tory Party. Parties vary in their aims from time to time without changing their names, and the new Tory Party ceasing to regard the Dissenters as dangerous, no longer asked for special legislation against them. The principle which now bound the Tories to the King and to one another was their abhorrence of the Whig connection. They constantly declaimed against the party system, generally holding it to be better that George III. should give office to such ministers as he held fit, than that ministers should be appointed at the dictation of the leaders of a parliamentary party. 5. The King's Friends. The principle upheld by the Tories was so far legitimate that Parliamentary parties in those days were not, as is now the case, combinations of members of Parliament holding definite political opinions and constantly appealing for support to the large masses of their countrymen by whom those opinions are shared. The plain fact was that they were composed of wealthy and influential men who, by the possession of boroughs, gained seats in Parliament for men who would vote for them whether they thought them to be right or wrong, and who, if they could obtain office, gained more votes by the attraction of the patronage of which they had the disposal. George III., therefore, if he wished to gain his ends, had to follow their example. He consequently resolved to rely on members of Parliament known as the king's friends, who voted as he bade them, simply because they thought that he, and not the Whig Lords, would, in future, distribute honours and patronage. In this way George III. deserted the part of a constitutional king to reap the advantages of a party leader, being able, no doubt, to plead that the Whigs had ceased to be a constitutional party and had established themselves in power less by argument than by the possession of patronage. George's attempt to change the balance of politics could not, however, succeed at Bute's ministry did not last long. He was a Scotchman, and at that time Scotchmen were very unpopular in England, besides which there were scandals afloat, entirely untrue, about his relations with the king's mother, the Princess of Wales. Mobs insulted and frightened him. He had not sufficient abilities to fill the post of a Prime Minister, and being, unlike Newcastle, aware of his own defects, on April 8, 1763, he suddenly resigned. once. 6. The Three Whig Parties. 1763.-By this time the king had no longer a united Whig party to contend against. The bulk of the Whigs, indeed, held together, and having selected Lord Rockingham as their leader in the place of Newcastle, had in many ways gained by the change. It is true that Rockingham was not a man of much ability, and was so shy that he seldom ventured to speak in public; but he was incorruptible himself, and detested the work of corrupting others. Those who followed him renounced the evil ways dear to Newcastle. What these Whigs gained in character they lost in influence over a House of Commons in which many members wanted to be bribed, and did not want to be persuaded. A second party followed the Duke of Bedford. Bedford himself was an independent, though not a very wise politician, but his followers simply put themselves up to auction. The Bedfords, as they were called, understanding that they would command better terms if they hung together, intimated to those who wished for their votes that they would have to buy all, or none. A third party followed Pitt's brother-in-law, George Grenville. Grenville was a thorough man of business, and quite honest; but he had little knowledge of mankind. He had quarrelled with Pitt because, whilst Pitt thought of the glories of the war, he himself shrank from its enormous costliness, the national debt having nearly doubled during its progress, rising to more than 132,000,000l. He had, therefore, after Pitt's resignation and Newcastle's fall, supported Bute, and, now that the king was compelled to choose between Rockingham, Bedford and Grenville, he naturally selected 1763 GENERAL WARRANTS 769 Grenville as Prime Minister, as having seceded from the great Whig connection. 7. Grenville and Wilkes. 1763-1764.-At first the king got on well with Grenville, as they were both inclined to take highhanded proceedings with those who criticised the Government. John Wilkes, a member of the House of Commons, blamed the king's speech in No. 45 of the North Briton. The king ordered the prosecution of all concerned in the article, and Lord Halifax, as Secretary of State, issued a warrant for the apprehension of its authors, printers, and publishers. Such a warrant was called a general warrant, because it did not specify the name of any particular person who was to be arrested. On this warrant Wilkes was arrested and sent to the Tower. On May 6, however, he was discharged by Pratt, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, on the ground that, by his privilege as a member of Parliament, he was protected from arrest, except for treason, felony, or breach of the peace. Not long afterwards Pratt declared general warrants to be illegal, though there had been several examples of their use. In November, 1763, the House of Commons, urged on by the king and Grenville, voted No. 45 of the North Briton to be a libel, whilst the House of Lords attacked Wilkes on the ground that in the notes of an indecent poem called An Essay on Woman, of which he was the author, he had assailed Bishop Warburton, a member of that House. Wilkes, indeed, had never published the poem, but its existence was betrayed by Lord Sandwich, one of the Bedford party, who had been a boon companion of Wilkes, and whose life was as profligate as Wilkes's own. On January 19, 1764, the House of Commons expelled Wilkes on account of No. 45, and on February 21, in the Court of King's Bench, a verdict was recorded against him both as a libeller and as the author of an obscene poem. Attempts having been made to get rid of him by challenging him to fight duels, he escaped to France and was outlawed by the Court. 8. George III. and Grenville. 1763–1764. -- Wilkes became suddenly popular because of his indomitable resistance to a king who was at that time unpopular. George III. had shown strength of will, but as yet he had been merely striving for mastery, without proposing any policy which could strike the imaginations of his subjects. All officials who voted against him were dismissed, even when their offices were not political. George III. was as self-willed and dictatorial as Grenville himself, and soon ceased to be on good terms with the Prime Minister. In September, 1763, Grenville, to increase the number of his supporters in the House of Commons, admitted the Duke of Bedford and his followers to office, but Bedford soon made himself even more disagreeable to the King than Grenville. George III., weary of his ministers, made overtures to Pitt to come to his help, but for a long time they remained without effect, and much as he now disliked both Grenville and Bedford he was compelled to keep them in office. 9. The Stamp Act. 1765.-One measure indeed of Grenville's secured the warm support of the king. Since the late war, not only was England burdened with a greatly increased debt, but it had become desirable that a large military force should be kept up for the defence of her increased dominions. The army in America amounted to 10,000 men, and Grenville thought that the 1765-1766 THE STAMP ACT 771 colonists ought to pay the expenses of a force of which they were to have the chief benefit-especially as the former war had been carried on in their behalf. If it had been possible, he would have preferred that the money needed should have been granted by the colonists themselves. It was, however, extremely improbable that this would be done. There was no general assembly of the American colonies with which the home Government could treat. Each colony had its own separate assembly, and experience had shown that each colony, even when it granted money at all, was always unwilling to make a grant for the common service of the colonies as a whole. Each, in fact, looked after its own interests; Virginia, for instance, not having any wish to provide against a danger threatening Massachusetts, nor Massachusetts any wish to provide against a danger threatening Virginia. Grenville accordingly thought that the only authority to which all the colonies would bow was that of the British Parliament, and, in 1765, he obtained without difficulty the assent of Parliament to a Stamp Act, calculated to raise about 100,000l., by a duty on stamps to be placed on legal documents in America. 10. The Rockingham Ministry. 1765. Before news could arrive of the effect of the Stamp Act in America, the king had been so exasperated by the rudeness with which Grenville and Bedford treated him that, much as he disliked Rockingham and the old Whigs, he placed them in office until he could find an opportunity of getting rid of them as well. The new ministers were weak, not only because the king disliked them and intrigued against them, but because they refused to resort to bribery, and were therefore unpopular with the members who wanted to be bribed. Nor had they any one amongst them of commanding ability, whilst Pitt, whom Rockingham asked to join him, refused to have anything to do with the old Whigs, whom he detested as cordially as did the king. II. The Rockingham Ministry and the Repeal of the Stamp Act. 1766.-Before Parliament met in December, news reached England that the Americans had refused to accept the stamped papers sent out to them, and had riotously attacked the officers whose duty it was to distribute them. The British Parliament, in fact, had put itself into the position occupied by Charles I. when he levied ship-money (see p. 523). It was as desirable in the eighteenth century that Americans should pay for the army necessary for their protection as it had been desirable in the seventeenth that Englishmen should pay for the fleet then needed to defend their coasts. |