Was it right, was it decent, for a CONFIDENTIAL SERVANT of the Crown to address the Prince of Wales to the following purport?
“SIR,
“After three months government without a King, and introducing a practitioner, with a memory as obsequious as his conduct was rash and unwarrantable. — it is at last discovered that your father is not qualified to perform the duties of the regal office; but do not imagine that you are on this account the less in my power. — I have taken care very early to inculcate my favourite maxim, that as Regent, any other individual in the kingdom was equally eligible with yourself. Will you accept the Regency as the creature of me and my party? Will you be the puppet, while I and my adherents conduct the master wires?
“I have been a tool, but am now resolved to resume a new character. If you refuse, I have a sharp and powerful weapon in my hands: I have erected a fortress in the very seat of power, a citadel which commands every avenue of your capital; it is completely stored with men, money, and provisions.
“From the moment of my dismission, I will intrench myself and adherents; and as the wheels of state at all times, in a limited monarchy, revolve with difficulty, I am resolved (notwithstanding my assurances to captivate popular applause) I am firmly resolved to clog and embarrass them by every means in my power. Under the specious banners of tenderness and respect for my sovereign and his consort, I will set up a fourth power, however incompatible it may be with the English constitution.
“Nor am I without the most sanguine hopes, that from the disagreeable conditions annexed to the Regency, you will be induced to refuse it.
“Conscious that you possess honour and manly spirit, one spark of which never inspired my breast, dishonourable hints and suspicions, which one gentleman would not tolerate from another, shall not be wanting.
“By these and other laudable means, I perhaps may be able to confirm myself perpetual dictator, and insure to myself and advisers the power and emoluments of government.”
After such an address, cloathed perhaps in treacherous and smooth words, to the only person whom our melancholy situation points out as your master, let us pause. — Will you deny that your cheek turned pale at being told that the Prince would accept the Regency, notwithstanding your insidious instructions? — you started like a guilty thing, bit your lip with anguish, and confessed you were undone!
When your new-modelled system is put into execution, when the harmless Regent is bound by disgraceful Restrictions, which were you to be his minister never would have been heard of; what defence have we against YOU, THE MOST PLAUSIBLE, FAIR SPOKEN, BUT MOST DANGEROUS YOUNG MAN THIS KINGDOM EVER BEHELD?
Will it be any protection against the active malignity of your mischievous intriguing spirit, to be told that you have secured the lords of the bedchamber, that a gentleman usher is in no danger of losing his place, and that a clerk of the kitchen shall not be dismissed?
Need you be told, with all your merits as a Financier and an economist, a reputation which by the most specious arts you stole but never deserved, need you be told, at what an expence you have secured a retreat for your party, and an opposition to the Regent?
But in this, as in every other instance of your life, you have the address to disguise a hateful ministerial measure under an alluring popular mask.
It would have been too shocking a sight for the good men of the City to see you, the paragon of moral rectitude, the phoenix of expiring chastity, creating court patronage, and confessing yourself the humble minion of a petticoat government.
From you, who stand forth to stem the torrent of corruption, to restore the exhausted finances of a kingdom, far be from you such an unhallowed purpose!
The dignity of the King’s person is to be preserved at every expence; the feelings of the nation are to be worked up to a sufficient pitch by a pathetic tale; iron tears run down the brazen face of Pluto; and we are betrayed to consent to a violation of the constitution!
So successful have your experiments been in imposing on the people of this country, that your fruitful mind is ever teeming with new projects of deceit, and as you have played your part so often without detection, you still persevere in mystery and delay without fear.
Gild but your poisonous pill with a thin outside of personal attachment, economy, or commercial advantage, and the undiscerning crowd swallow with avidity the nostrums, and the polished periods of the quack.
In politics, as in quackery, tumid promises, and irrational credulity resist and triumph over the evidence of the most stubborn facts.
Surrounded with disease and death, the deluded patient will scarcely bear to be told, that the remedy is as injurious as it is deceiving, and that the mountebank is a contemptible pretender.
Your countrymen, Sir, find with sorrow and surprize, that you substitute declamation for argument; that in opposition to plain facts which stare you in the face, you obtrude a numerical display of figures and false calculations; and instead of adopting a fair, open line of conduct, evade detection in the intricacies of a custom-house entry, pursue a dark and crooked path, and, secure in your virtuous majority, are mysterious, waspish, and insolent.
But the time is near at hand, when your character will be generally understood, and a plain man may venture to assert, that an immense unappropriated fund is no proof of skill in finance; that increasing burthens to diminish them, is a paradox in politics, and that the deranged and disordered state of France cannot possibly reflect any credit on you as a negociator or a statesman.
Yet with these barren materials have your professed panegyrists, who in their attempts to defend, so effectually damn your fame; with these crumbling materials have they essayed to build you a reputation, which a little time, a little experience, and a little common sense, levels to the ground.
The sudden reverse of your fortune holds forth an useful lesson to future ministers; it will teach them to shun those meretricious arts which you have so ineffectually practised, to procure the name without the essence of patriotism.
Few men ever possessed in a greater degree than yourself the attracting glitter of tinsel, the gewgaw glare of foil, so attractive to women and children, but none were ever less qualified to pass through the trying furnace of the refiner; every criterion of sterling metal was wanting to stamp it into real value; the counterfeit is quickly discovered,
“his Majesty’s countenance no longer shines upon it,”
and it instantly ceases to be current.
You were seated at the helm in the prime of life, with strong hope, youthful ardour, family pride, and an indulgent King at your disposal.
With fair probability you might have looked forward to a long administration, and in a few years might have filled every department of church and state (if any such remained unfilled) with relations and family dependants.
You might have projected, in riper years and maturer judgment, future Irish Propositions, without submitting to the disagreeable necessity of turning them inside out.
A substitute for the Shop Tax might have been devised, when you had sufficiently gratified your spleen and ill-will against a particular description of men.
Without drawing on yourself the accusation of malice and obstinacy, you might in some other more ingenious way have gratified your revenge, under the cover of increasing the revenue; in time, perhaps, your pertinacious adherence to this hated and partial oppression might have been forgot.
Perhaps a second Commutation Bill (be not uneasy for I will not dwell long on the subject) a second Commutation Bill would have presented itself, and have enabled you to deceive the public by a visionary prospect of advantages it never produced.
For the sake of putting two or three millions into the pockets of a monopolizing company, who I confess have not been ungrateful to you, you were guilty of an unwarrantable deception, and transferred a valuable portion of commercial profit to foreign markets.
I will not deny that you told us, this your favourite master-stroke of shallow policy would extir
pate smuggling root and branch, and give us in tea (your favourite beverage) what you robbed us of for light; unfortunately the contraband trade revives with more than its usual vigour, and the sales at the India House feelingly tell us how cheap we are to expect our teas.
Had it been your happy lot to have remained longer in office, what advantageous prospects were in view! in time you might have matured into some apology for the insignificance of the abilities of your brother; his tutor at the Admiralty might not again have experienced so disgraceful a repulse at Westminster; the surly brow of the Chancellor might have been smoothed; the extravagant chimeras of the gunpowder genius restrained by a little common sense, and Camden sooner or later, after your repeated entreaties, might have been prevailed on to hold his tongue.
With such desirable events in view, how cruel is your disappointment? — alas, these enchanting prospects are no more! the fountain of your honour is dry, the source of your influence is deranged, and you already totter in your seat.
Your every hope is blasted, the wildness of despair succeeds to the insolence of office; and the sceptre which for more than three months you have so firmly grasped, you must, however reluctantly, at last resign after all your impotent endeavours to prevent another’s wielding it with success.
Like Mrs. Nicholson, you aim your knife at the constitution, wrapped up in the flimsy texture of loyalty and prudential caution, and I hope the destructive absurdity of the attempt will be defeated by the watchful guardians of the constitution, and the weakness of the hand which gives the blow.
Though the path of greatness and glory is barred against you as a minister and statesman for ever, nature, and indeed your education, have eminently qualified you for the bar; in the House, you are too well known to be able any longer to impose on the country gentlemen, your boasted majorities dwindle apace.
The Court of King’s Bench, where your friend presides, opens its friendly doors; with your tie-wig, your bag, and the fourth part of an hackney-coach, you may sink with safety into a respectable barrister.
Those arts which you have so unhappily exerted against your Prince and your country, will be valued by solicitors and attornies. — With pompous diction, studied phraseology, and hackney’d forms of words, you may sooth the slumbers of a puisne judge, and mislead a petty jury; you may command the attention of Lord Kenyon, and probably excite his gratitude. The Master of the Rolls will not turn up his nose at you, if the Chancellor, who complains of such an incumbrance, condescends to leave him any thing to do.
With all your powers of face, can you dare to assert that splendour and external dignity are proper, consistent, or even compatible with the horrors of coercion, the darkened room, the bold E —— — , and his desperate crew?
In pity, Sir, to human nature, in pity to the prostrate majesty of kings, tear not aside with a rude hand the wholesome veil which covers the misfortunes of our Sovereign, nor endeavour by mock-solemnity and a superfluous display of wretched pageantry, to throw a ridicule on national distress.
I said you were a dangerous young man; to which I will add, that you are a most daring and haughty one.
It is not your private life, correct beyond the example of modern times, it is not that forbidding unsocial virtue, for which you are indebted to the coldness of your constitution, that I have any right or inclination to censure.
The traits in your character, which excite the apprehensions of all unprejudiced men, are the specious buckram of sentiment, the sententious gravity, the sanctified grimace, and plausible exterior of self-importance; obstinacy, which no reasoning or expediency can convince; and a boundless ambition, which no private man can possess without danger to the community.
Against a combination of such dangerous qualities I would wish my countrymen to be guarded; a man of your description is so well qualified, as a minister, to ruin his country, under pretence of preserving it; and in opposition, so much in the habit of retarding the measures of government, by tampering with bedchamber women, and cultivating back-stairs influence, that you cannot be provided against too cautiously.
With all the apparent purity of your principles and declarations, with all your affected scruples, you are not ashamed to practise the corrupt arts of the most profligate minister, and to dabble in the most despicable manoeuvres.
If it should be your fate hereafter to slumber away your old age in the Upper House,
“In vulgum ambiguas spargere voces,”
shall be your motto; while a starched puritan with a hand in each pocket, and a double-faced Janus, looking like Mr. Wilkes two ways at once, shall be your characteristic supporters.
With what decency, with what propriety could you be so insolent as to introduce the mention of the King’s private property, when you knew at the same time (yes, and your confidential Secretary well knew), that the Prince could not, without your good-natured officiousness, have the least controul over it?
It was a cruel piece of policy; but like every other action of your life, carried a seducing fair-faced reason on the surface of it, which, at the same time it played your old game of catching popular applause, wounded the feelings of a Prince, out of whose power you had put it ever to employ you, by this outrage on his character as a gentleman or a man.
It was one of those convenient legal inuendos, which I presume you learnt at the Temple, by which a skilful cross-examining counsel might irreparably injure a man’s good name, without saying one word against it.
The uncorrupt, the virtuous young man, wishes for nothing more than to guard this ample provision for the Royal Offspring, he (heaven protect him!) had no purpose to answer by circulating this vile aspersion, he could have no views in sowing the seeds of suspicion and distrust in the public mind.
What but the most amiable motives could influence his conduct, by inculcating the necessity of preventing the Prince from robbing his father?
But, Sir, I trust a generous nation will be as ready to give credit to a young Prince, the lawful successor of his father, as to a Minister, who sacrifices every thing to a selfish love of office, whose administration commenced in fraud, continued in delusion, and ends in endeavours to mould the sacred forms of our constitution into a democratic aristocracy, or a consular republic.
It is the fashion for you and your friends to lament in strains of pity,
“that worst of insolence,”
the licentious conduct of the Prince.
Every one, with the feelings and passions of a man, must allow for his age and situation. Fettered in the disgusting forms of royalty, he cannot gratify his wishes in the nuptial path: But nature, (perhaps I speak unintelligible to you) all powerful nature will vindicate her rights.
He loves a fine woman, enjoys the amusements of the turf, and spends his income as becomes a Prince, in encouraging the arts, in splendour, elegance, and taste.
The science of accumulation he may learn and practise at some remote period; and however his expences may exceed his income, he has very fair precedents for messages to the Commons for more money.
You are said occasionally to amuse your leisure hours with a novel; perhaps, while you have been sipping your tea, Fielding’s Tom Jones has occasionally occupied your attention.
Is it possible that you can have caught some congenial traits in the character of Blifil, and that you think them worthy of imitation?
While Jones was indulging the generous propensities of youthful ardour, and experiencing the amiable weakness of human nature, his good, chaste, moral, sober friend Blifil was ruining him with his benefactor Allworthy, and conspiring against his fame, his fortune, and his life.
But it is time to take my leave, which I shall do with a short question.
You say you will not oppose the Regent, but when you think he does wrong: — Shall you ever think an administration which you do not direct can do right?
After this declaration, which has left such ample room for subterfuge, can we be surprized to see you conducting a regular preconcerted plan o
f opposition?
The kind condoler, the cabinet counsellor of a father and a mother, will reconcile his duty to his interest, and harrass and perplex the measures of their son.
In this case, you may again expect to hear from
AN ENGLISHMAN.
A LETTER TO WILLIAM EDEN, ESQ ON THE SUBJECT OF HIS TO THE EARL OF CARLISLE; THE IRISH TRADE.
I venture to expose my own weakness, rather than be wanting at this Time to my country.
MOLYNEAUX.
A LETTER TO WILLIAM EDEN, Esq.
Dublin, December 6, 1779.
SIR,
I HAVE read your printed letter to Lord Carlisle, on the representations of Ireland respecting a FREE TRADE; — I own, I at first thought it rather ominous, when I saw the name of a late commissioner to America prefixed to a work, the subject of which involves in it a question concerning the RIGHTS OF A PEOPLE. — I find, however, I had little reason to be alarmed; for though you do not seem to possess, like my countryman Burke, all the patriot warmth that glows for general liberty, yet you do not appear, in the common acceptation of the word, an enemy to this kingdom: — there is something that looks at least like candour in your sentiments; your style is gentlemanly; and your meaning, where it is not enveloped in words, and obscured by explanation, may, I think, be comprehended. However, I am of opinion, that if you had understood a little the subject you had undertaken to discuss, your pamphlet would have been more compleat. I shall make no apology for this letter, for though your’s is addressed to your private friend, and public colleague in negotiation, yet, Sir, as it has been published, and I presume with your approbation, it is now a candidate subject to praise or censure from every individual who may, like you, have “leisure to advert to the printed accounts of some occurrences which have lately engaged the public attention:”
Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan Page 92
