Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third (Vol. 1-4). Horace Walpole
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of the “Lettres, Mémoires, et Négotiations du Chevalier d’Eon,” &c.—Lord Clive appointed Governor General of India.—Contest at Cambridge.—Philip Earl of Hardwicke.—Jeremiah Dyson.
While men were taken up with the politics of the age, there was a Minister so smitten with the exploded usages of barbarous times, that he thought of nothing less than reviving the feudal system. This was the Earl of Egmont,446 who had actually drawn up a plan for establishing that absurd kind of government in the island of St. John.447 He printed several copies of his scheme, and sent them about to his brother peers. And so little were they masters of the subject, and so great was the inattention of the Ministry to the outlying parts of our empire, that his Lordship, in the following year, had prevailed with the Council to suffer him to make the experiment, if General Conway had not chanced to arrive at Council and expose the folly of such an undertaking, which occasioned its being laid aside. Lord Egmont was such a passionate admirer of those noble tenures and customs, that he rebuilt his house at Enmere in Somersetshire in the guise of a castle, moated it round, and prepared it to defend itself with cross-bows and arrows, against the time in which the fabric and use of gunpowder shall be forgotten.
On the 9th Mr. Grenville opened the budget, fully, for brevity was not his failing; but he did it with art and ability too, though not disguising how much he was hurt by abuse. He said it had been written in pamphlets that 400,000l. a year was dealt out in pensions; pretending that the accusation had been levelled against the profusion of those granted in Ireland, which he denied to be so great as alleged, particularly in that bestowed on Lord Sandwich, which, as I have said, had been stopped. But in truth the charge had been levelled against that sort of corruption in England; and on that he chose to be silent. Much art, he said, had been used to dissuade people from subscribing to the loans of Government; but no new money was to be raised,—no lottery; the latter to be kept in reserve for another exigence. He hoped, therefore, people would engage in the funds, as if monied men would not keep their cash a year longer, when it must be borrowed! He took great merit on the revenue being managed with more frugality than in the late reign, and on the increase of the customs, particularly in the duties on tea, though the increase of trade had much more share in that rise than his regulations. He stated the debt incurred by the late war at sixty-four millions already funded, and nine that were not. But above all he praised, and justly, the reduction of the demands from Germany. They amounted to 1,354,803l. and upwards, of which 103,355l. had only been allowed. 263,211l. had been suspended, and 988,237l.448 had been struck off. The time had been limited for the demands to be brought in, or more would have been asked from that quarter: and yet our taxes, he said, exceeded by three millions what they did in 1754. He then opened his, famous shall I call it, or fatal, plan for collecting a revenue from America;449 a plan which, though it took place in the session I am describing, I will not unfold here; for though the regulation was enacted now, the consequences did not appear to this country till the winter following. I shall be obliged to say so much on that head hereafter, that to avoid repetition, and to introduce the detail where it will come in with more propriety, and be more useful to the reader, I shall pass it over now;—and would to God that at the moment I am writing, at the end of 1768, the subject was not only fresh, but threatening a scene of long and terrible calamity both to England and her colonies! His object, he said, was to make them maintain their own army. Till the last war they had never contributed to their army at all. The extraordinaries of the American war had cost England 36,000l. a year. He had, additionally, a plan for preventing the colonies from trading directly to France, Holland, Portugal, or the French islands. Thus did this pedlar in revenue confound the tranquillity both of America and Great Britain; and to realize farthings, set both countries at variance, at the risk of treasure, human lives, liberty, and common and mutual preservation.
On the 12th, at the East India House, which had been a theatre of disputes and clashing interests, Mr. Amyand,450 having quarrelled with Sullivan, the leader of the faction opposite to Lord Clive, suddenly proposed to give the government of Bengal, with full powers over their affairs, to that Lord, if he would undertake the commission. Lord Clive, then present, said, this motion was totally unexpected; yet would he accept the offer, if a board of directors on whom he could depend should be chosen. The election was then at hand. The train caught so rapidly, that it was proposed directly to invest him with his jaguire, which had been voted as precipitately too, if somebody451 had not observed that a lawsuit being commenced on that subject, the law must decide it.
The City of London applied to Parliament for more money for their new bridge at Blackfriars. James Grenville objected to it. Dr. Hay broke out and abused the Common Council, whose late behaviour, he said, entitled them to no favour. He alluded to their thanking their members for voting against general warrants. This produced as warm language in return from Beckford and Onslow. George Grenville interposed, and said, the question was not whether the City deserved money, but whether it could be afforded. That their temporary bridge having been burnt by accident, they ought to have a gift of six or seven thousand pounds. Sir William Baker452 in disdain moved to adjourn, that they might not accept it.
The printers of the London Evening Post and Gazetteer were called before the House of Lords, on a complaint made by the Earl of Marchmont, for printing a letter (written by Wilkes) reflecting on the Earl of Hertford, ambassador at Paris, for employing David Hume the historian as his secretary, and representing the embassy as totally of Scotch complexion. Wilkes, then an outlaw, and in France, had gone to the Earl’s chapel, who treated him civilly, but neither returned his visits nor invited him to dinner, which it was impossible he should do, representing the person of the King so grievously outraged by that libeller. Lord Marchmont proposed to inflict a fine of 100l. on each printer. Lord Weymouth said fifty were sufficient; not more had been imposed on a printer of a spurious speech for the King. Lord Temple put them in mind how much himself and the Duke of Cumberland had been abused; and in answer to the Duke of Bedford, who had complained that names were now printed at length, said, that practice had been begun when himself and Mr. Pitt had resigned the last time. The Duke of Richmond said, he remembered that the period in which the Duke of Cumberland had been most traduced, was in the year 1757. Lord Temple and Mr. Pitt were then in power. The truth was, no side had abstained from invectives when out of place. The difference was, that no attempt was made to punish the authors and printers but under the administration of Grenville, Lord Sandwich, and that set.
On the 23rd of March appeared one of the most extraordinary books ever published, and though written by a foreigner, and in French, by no means inferior in detraction to the North Britons. It was a large quarto, called Lettres, Mémoires, et Négotiations particulières du Chevalier d’Eon, &c.: and contained the history of his employments, troubles, quarrel with Monsieur de Guerchy, and his own wonderfully imprudent and insolent letters to the Duc de Praslin, the second Minister in power at the Court at Versailles. The contempt expressed for the Comte de Guerchy was transcendant; but yet this was not the most reprehensible part of the work. With the most indefensible wantonness, D’Eon had inserted the childishly fond, but friendly letters, of his patron the Duc de Nivernois. With still greater indiscretion, he published others of an intimate friend employed in the office of the Secretary of State at Versailles, in which that friend, in confidence, had familiarly censured his masters: and with the most abominable treachery D’Eon added confidential letters between the Ducs de Nivernois and Praslin, in which, though with goodwill towards him, they spoke of their intimate friend Monsieur de Guerchy with much contemptuous pity, which might be excused between such near friends, though never to be pardoned by Guerchy. These letters D’Eon, when trusted with the Duc de Nivernois’s keys, had stolen or copied. To such lengths blind, headstrong revenge had driven the mad, unprincipled wretch! But what satisfaction did it create here, to read, under the hands of the chief Ministers in France, to how low an ebb that Court was sunk in abilities! the two Dukes owning to one another that their poor Guerchy, as they called him, was yet the fittest man they had to employ. Among such a heap of baseness great parts appeared; and it seemed lucky for his Court that a man so likely to be raised, and so capable of any treachery, unbosomed himself before he was possessed of more important secrets. In some instances, as in a letter to his mother, D’Eon seemed to have worked himself up to a pitch of frenzy; throughout, to be swayed by intolerable vanity.453 The blow to Guerchy was heavy and cruel; and scarcely less mortifying to the Duc de Nivernois. Praslin, a hard, unfeeling