THE THIRD DUKE OF GRA.PTON.* Tass is a dreary and
a tragic book ; but its dreariness and tragedy diminish in no sense its historical value. It is dreary because the Duke of Grafton, Premier in 1765, did not embellish his pages with a single touch of character ; it is tragic because it records the disgrace of years which English- men would like to forget. But no man may claim the right of forgetfulness, and we can only welcome this authentic narrative as a priceless commentary upon England's folly. For if the reading of it is not an occasion of pride, it displays the real road taken by sanguine, well-meaning incompetence.
• Autobiography and Pokitical Correspondeno. of Augustus Henry, Third Duke of Grafton. Edited by Sir W. a. Aliso n. London: John Murray. [186.1
Indeed, it was a tragic time, and it is proof of England's buoyancy that she recovered from her disgrace. Lord Chat. ham, the one man who could and would have saved the country, was gouty and inaccessible. His door was resolutely closed against the most intimate of his colleagues. The Commons were without a leader, and ready to accept the miserable sophistries of Charles Townshend. The country, passing through a crisis of madness, applauded the worst insolence cast at our American Colonies. That America revolted is in no way strange ; rather it is honourable to her that she preserved some semblance of moderation. And who might have been the saviour of England ? The Duke of Grafton, a man of weak will, admirable purpose, and common intellect. Why he should have been marked out for a Cincinnatus, it is hopeless to explain ; but it is true that the country looked to him for salvation; it is also true that the country looked in vain.
The first question suggested by the publication of this autobiography concerns the reputation of the Duke of Grafton. Does his own account of a difficult time avail to whitewash him ? Assuredly it does not ; he remains the dangerous, incompetent statesman whom history has handed down to us. Of course he was not the monster painted by Junius ; but then the worst criminal never justifies the portrait of the political pamphleteer; on the contrary, he was a most estimable gentleman, who should have resigned himself to Newmarket, to the charms of Nancy Parsons, and the study of literature, which presently engrossed him. But he was not a statesman; for politics, indeed, he had not the smallest talent, and the wonder is that he was ever sum. moned from the country to share the counsels of Pitt. At every turn his weakness was apparent ; and his fault seems only greater when he confesses that he did not approve of Townshend's action. If you remember that Chatham was absent, and that the Duke of Grafton in some sort represented the great statesman, his weakness becomes inexcusable. He might have resigned and hastened a change of Ministry; he might (perhaps) have frightened hie colleagues into acquiescence. But no; he sat still, and was content to confide his displeasure to a diary. "No one of the Ministry," writes be, "had authority sufficient to advise the dismission of Mr. Chas. Townshend, and nothing less could have stopped the measure, Lord Chatham's absence being in this instance, as well as others, much to be lamented." Had he been a great man, as he was a great Duke, he would have usurped that authority himself. But he preferred the course of easy acquiescence, and he sedately permitted Town- shend to pursue a policy of wicked selfishness and inevitable ruin. Nor was he himself unconscious of his own crime. "What a retrospect for us," he wrote in 1767, "who now see Great Britain detested and insulted throughout Europe; threatened by a formidable enemy, and sinking under heavy and vexations taxes, the consequence of our repeated follies, if not of our iniquities !" What a retrospect, indeed! Yet the Duke of Grafton, knowing our monstrous policy, thought that he had accomplished his duty when he had warned the ' dying Chatham, and had himself agreed to the measures which were our country's undoing. And he pleads guilty to no greater sin than "want of foresight," a phrase which declares more eloquently than a hundred pages of argument that at the latter end of the eighteenth century no such quality was known as political responsibility.
So we get the best measure of the Duke of Grafton. He was half intelligent, wholly well-meaning; but he had not the slightest sense of responsibility. Sir William Anson, despite an anxiety to make the best of him, sums up his crime in a single quotation. "It was very provoking," said Shelburne to Fox, "for you to see Lord Camden and the Duke of Grafton come down with their lounging opinions te outvote you in the Cabinet." The Duke, in brief, was what the eighteenth century called a lounger. He was prepared to take an interest in anything or nothing, but he was not able to shake another's opinion or to frame for himself a determined policy. And it is jest such well meaning loungers as the Duke of Grafton who are beat fitted to ruin their country. He who assumes to be a leader of men assumes a task for whose failure nothing is an excuse. It is quite easy not to volunteer for the government of one's country, but once a man has volunteered, incapacit/ becomes a crime. When Junius threatened Grafton with the
scaffold, he was a mere rhetorician ; when he told him to return to his "easy insipid system," to "indulge the people," and "attend Newmarket," he was pointing out to him the only course which as a man and a patriot he could properly have pursued. But this course he did not pursue, and he proved once again that the fool is as great a danger to the State as the knave.
The Duke's own apology, then, avails not to clear his repu- tation. He must still descend to posterity as his country's enemy. But apart from his political indiscretion, he was an amiable gentleman and a good scholar. Our heart is softened to him in an instant when we find him advising Charles Fox to read Porson's new editions of the Medea and the Hecuba. Are there many country gentlemen living to-day, we wonder, who find a. change from Newmarket or Westminster in the study of Mayor's Tuvenal (let us say) or Munro's Lucretius? But the eighteenth century was the amateur's golden age. Scholar- ship was almost as important as horse-racing, and the American Colonies were lost to us, and France browbeat us at leisure, and even Holland flouted us, and our politicians gambled and read Euripides, and the strangest thing of all is that we have out- lived this bland dilettantism, and are to-day capable of greater sacrifice and of finer policy than ever we were in the heyday of aristocratic nonchalance.
And, incidentally, these memoirs of Grafton are a panegyric of our modern system. Party government has a thousand faults ; the invasion of democracy is not to be thought of without regret ; but at least we have rid ourselves of the " great houses." When Chatham strove to govern his country as a hero and a patriot should govern he was thwarted at every turn by the ducal families. Now it was the house of Bedford which he must conciliate; now it was the house of Cavendish ; but never could he take office or advise his King without obey- ing the dictate of a faction. And the factions were not expected to surrender a single garter for the glory of the country. Patriotism was eclipsed in the brilliance of ducal selfishness. The Whig and the Tory intrigued one with the other, in order that each might gain his individual end, and the con- sequence was unstable Ministries and national ruin. To-day the two great parties are opposed with a bitterness which is only sweetened by the country's peril; and to contemplate the career of Grafton is to feel a pride in our changed, imperfect system. For the strife of parties (not of factions) has quickened the responsibility and the patriotism of Ministers. We are not likely to tolerate again such politicians as Rigby, who makes a furtive appearance in this book, the creature of Bedford, and the man (in Junins's immortal phrase) of "awkward integrity." Nor are we likely again to endure the interference of such amiable failures as the Duke of Grafton. Nevertheless, it is worth while to study his career, and no book throws a more brilliant light on the years between 1766 and 1785 than this autobiography, admirably edited (as need not be said) by Sir William Anson.
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