SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

POLITICAL CORRESPONDENCE,

Correspondence of John. Fourth Duke of Bedford : selected from the Originals at Woburn Abbey. With an Introduction by Lord John Russell. Vol. III.

BIBLIOGRAPHY, Longman and Co. The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher ; the Text from a new Collation of the early Editions. With Notes, and a Biographical Memoir, by the Reverend Alexander

Dyce. In eleven volumes. Vol. XI Moron.

FICTION,

Walter Hamilton ; a Novel. By Mrs. C. D. Burdett, Author of English Fashion-

ablesAbroad," " At Home," &e. In three volumes. Yeaby.

THE BEDFORD CORRESPONDENCE.

THIS third volume concludes the Correspondence of John Fourth Duke of Bedford ; who, after all his patrician importance, his political influence, his personal activity, his troops of followers, and the high offices he ac- tually held, has only been preserved to posterity in the bitter " pickle " of Junius. The present selection from the archives of Woburn relates to the reign of George the Third ; commencing with the 1st of January 1761, soon after the King's accession, and coming down to November 1770, a few weeks before the death of the Duke himself. The public topics to which they relate are familiar enough to every one who is read in the history of the period. They embrace, with more or less fulness, the struggles in the Council between Pitt and Bute; the gradual increase of the favourite's power, till Pitt was forced out ; the rupture with Spain, and the treaty for the peace of 1762-3, of which there are very ample particulars, the Duke having conducted the negotiations as Am- bassador at Paris. The other public matters relate to the dirty and dis- graceful bargainings for place between King and politicians, that began with the flight of Bute and continued till the Duke of Bedford's death. 1. The Grenville Ministry ; which, finding the King was trying to under- mine it, knocked up a " row " in the closet, and, seeing the King's neces- sities, forced him to give way upon public matters and break his word to a private gentleman; the Duke of Bedford subsequently attending singly, "before he left town for the summer," and rating the King roundly enough, though, according to his own account, not with the violence attributed to him by popular report. 2. The first Rockingham Ministry ; whose weakness was such that the King had scarcely occasion to over- throw it. 3. The Chatham Ministry. 4. That Ministry which may be denominated first Grafton's and then North's ; and under which arose the celebrated case of the Middlesex Elections, the Letters of Junius, and the American War. The Duke of Bedford did not live to see the war : the allusions to the contests about the Middlesex elections are of the slightest kind, and would give a very false idea of them : the Bedford archives do not appear to contain any allusions to the Letters of Junius.

If not absolutely disappointing, the contents of this volume are not of a striking kind ; and really, after reading the other side of the medal, we do not see that the character which Junius has drawn is greatly changed —abstracting, of course, the malignant animus. The charge of bribery, brought by Junius against the Duke as Ambassador at Paris, may be readily enough dismissed as only echoing a vulgar suspicion. But these letters prove that, rightly or wrongly, the Duke of Bed- ford was not only inclined to give up more to the French than the public wished, but even than the Council at home, or than Bute and the King, who had turned out Pitt expressly to make peace. The personal friends—" the jockies, gamesters, gladiators, or buffoons "—with whose intimacy Junius reproaches him, are matters of eommon fame : the very names of his associates establish the fact ; and the two most notorious—the " jolly " Rigby, the infamous Sandwich— are the most frequent correspondents. Whether the Duke "supplied their vices, or relieved their beggary, at the expense of his country," must be left to individual judgment. These letters prove clearly enough that he "engaged in the interests and intrigues of his dependants." The sordid place-hunting objects that show uppermost in every negotiation, without even a veil to hide their nakedness, are quite sufficient to sup- port the charge of Junius. The letters would seem to intimate a weak- ness which Junius overlooked. Notwithstanding his hard common sense and close attention to his interests, his farmer-like tastes and his alleged "plainness," we should infer that John fourth Duke of Bedford was tickled by low flattery cleverly applied. " The jolly* companions every one" seem to have infused into him a notion that his own honour and dignity were ooncerned in getting them places. To such an extent was this carried, that the Duke actually wished to propose Rigby for Speaker. To do Rigby justice, his practical sagacity and knowledge of the world, as well as of his own transgressions, induced him instantly and urgently to crave his patron's permission to decline the proposition. (Correspondence, pp. 5449.) Considering how influential the interest and countenance of the Duke of Bedford were considered by the King and his friends, and the Minis- terial importance of the negotiations in which he was engaged, it is sin- gular how little of novelty or even of character these letters furnish. Some businesslike views from Sandwich, some rather vigorous sketches and stories from Rigby, with the House of Bedford version of things from them and the Duke, are about the extent of the correspondence. Per- haps the most interesting part of it is the Duke's account of two inter- views with the King, in letters to the Dake ofMarlborough. They seem, on his own showing, to have been as stormy as can well take place between sovereign and subjects, when the subjects have all the talk to themselves. Junin, declares that the Duke reproached the King "in plain terms with his duplicity, baseness, falsehood, treachery, and hypocrisy, repeatedly have him the lie, and left him in convulsions." Stories were rife about illness or some critical effort of nature (a copious sweat) following one of the interviews; the violence of demeanour was clearly coloured; the substance of the story seems not a great way from the truth. The charges were " plain " enough, and very like " the lie."

• "The Doke of Bedford liked a jolly companion."—LoRD JOHN RUSSELL; Introduction. " I should not have troubled you with this account by flying packet, had not a much more national affair intervened. We have long been apprehensive (I mean the King's Ministers) that Lord Bute had for some time past been operating mis- chief with the King; and Mr. Grenville and I so long ago as the beginning of last week, took the liberty to mention to the King our suspicions: to which we could obtain no more satisfactory answer but that he would explain himself more fully hereafter. But it having transpired on Thursday night that a negotiation was actually then carrying on, through the channel of the Duke of Cumberland, with Mr. Pitt, Lord Temple, Duke of Newcastle, and most of the Opposition, and Lord Bute, we found it absolutely necessary, in the perilous circumstances of the times, when rebellion was actually in the centre of the metropolis, and I, a Peer of Parliament, debarred from taking my seat there, and arraigned by a mob for having given my vote there according to my conscience and opinion, to inquire of his Majesty his intentions with regard to our continuance in his service. We could obtain no further explanation than his intentions to change his Adminis- tration, but without alleging any fault we had committed towards him, or inform- ing when or by whom we were to be replaced. I took the liberty to remind the King upon what conditions, proposed by himself—namely, the excluding Lord Bute from his presence and any participation in public affairs—I was called by him into his service, and how very unfaithfully these conditions had been kept with me. I showed him the immediate necessity of forming an Administration of some kind or other, when all rule and authority was trampled on, and his govern- ment net at nought; and how little proper we, who had lost his confidence by the artifices of his favourite, were to reinstate, in the last act of our administration, order and tranquillity in the distempered state things now were. I therefore en- treated him, for his own sake, the public's, our own, and his future Ministers', to fix our successors immediately. I assured him that the same harmony which had subsisted between us until the present time did and would continue. Thus I left him, as did all the rest, without being able to get an explicit answer."

The King, unable to form a Ministry, was obliged to succumb : but he renewed his intrigues, though not, as is now known, with Bute; and the Duke renewed the attack alone. He writes as follows to the Duke of Marlborough.

" Streatham, 13th June 1765.

" I promised you, my dear Lord, to let you know if anything material should occur before I left this place to go to Woburn; and I thought it probable some- thing would, as I was determined to have an explanation with the King before my ab- senting myself from court for so long a term as a month, as I hope not to be obliged to come to this part of the world before the 15th of July. I accordingly went into the closet yesterday; and, after some prefatory discourse, and receiving his orders about business now depending in council, I took the liberty to desire leave to re- capitulate to him what had passed between him and his Ministers, from the time he avowed the design of changing his Administration to their being called back again by him to resume their functions. Whether his countenance and support had not been promised them? Whether this promise had been kept? but, on the contrary, whether all those who are our most bitter enemies had not been coun- tenanced by him in public? and whether we and our friends had not met with a treatment directly opposite to this? Whether he is not in his retirement beset with our avowed enemies? Whether the Earl of Bute's representing the Ministers in a bad light to him, either by himself or his emissaries, is not an interfering (at least indirectly) in public councils? Does not this favourite, by interfering in this manner, and not daring to take a responsible employment, act with the utmost hazard to himself? and, which is of more consequence, risk the King's quiet and the safety of the public? What must be the opinion of the public here, and of Europe in general ? Having received no satisfactory answer to any of these questions, nor indeed any other but that Lord Bute was not at all consulted, and that he had never done me any ill offices with his Majesty, I proceeded to beseech him to permit his authority and his favour and countenance to go together; and if the last can't be given to his present Ministers, to transfer to others that au- thority, which must be useless in their hands unless strengthened by the former. I assured him that we thought ourselves unfortunate in having lost his good opinion; but that we were conscious of our own good intentions, and that his Ma. jesty is misled by misrepresentations. This is the whole that passed; which is indeed by no means satisfactory to me."

Lord John Russell intimates that these are the only authentic accounts of the two interviews,—seeming to mean original. It is not necessary to allude to other parts of the Correspondence, in which known public facts are so unconsciously represented by wish and bias as to take on an air contrary to the reality, as a proof that original and authentic reports are not always to be relied upon : for the fact is, the Duke of Bedford did not know what he was about. To go first in a sort of posse comitatus, and then alone to the closet, with a species of bill of indictment, in which lying and treachery form the main charges—to speak if not to read them, and categorically put the Sovereign to the question—is an affront from a subject to a crowned head only to be paralleled by the Scotch preachers and Mary Stuart. If the reader wishes to see how a gentleman can convict his sovereign of being a betrayer and a liar, without the formality of an indictment or the rigmarole of an opening speech, he may read in Walpole the story of the Marquis of Rockingham and Lord Strange.

The famous reply of Beckford to the King, when he carried up the City remonstrance, has been denied. The story goes that the Lord Mayor fell into confusion, could only stammer, and that Wilkes invented the speech to support the City dignity. The testimony of Rigby, who was an ear-witness, sets this tale at rest.

" Pay Office, 23d Hay 1770.

" I am just come from Court; where the insolence of Beckford has exceeded all his or the City's past exploits. The remonstrance was read by the Town-Clerk; to which the King read a very proper answer; and then, very much, I believe, to his Majesty's surprise, as well as of everyhody else, my Lord Mayor made a speech, vindicating the citizens from any impertinent intentions towards the King, and violently arraigning those Ministers who should endeavour to prejudice his royal mind against the City. This is the first attempt ever made to hold a colloquy with the King by any subject, and is indecent to the highest degree."

Among the private letters are several from the Marquis of Tavistock ; a young nobleman whose virtues fixed the attention of his age in a re- markable degree, and whose death, by a fall from his horse in hunting, was lamented as almost a national misfortune. The letters do not exhi- bit any striking marks of ability ; but they display spirit, a high sense of honour, domestic affections, and very kindly feelings. Here is one that he writes to his father in the case of a dearth.

"MARQUIS OF TAVISTOCK TO THE DUKE OF BEDFORD.

Houghton Park, 22d Oct. 1766.

"My dearest Father—As I had always rather have your advice upon everything of consequence I mean to do, so I would undoubtedly inform you of everything I have done, in hopes of having your approbation of it. The distresses of the MEWp mon people in our neighbourhood are so very great, and I think I may say their submission to them makes them so deserving of relief, that I am doing what you did a few years ago when you had a large stock of wheat by yon. My crop was large this year, and yields tolerably well; so I shall begin on Monday next selling out to poor_people having families at 58. per bushel, under the same regulations as you did at Woburn. This will be an infinite relief to them, and very fair price for me as a fanner. I shall also buy next market-day about ?en loads of rye, which they will be very glad to take of me (a bushel at a time) for the same price I shall give for it; so by mixing these together they will have excellent bread at a pretty fair _price. When you set out for Bath, I thought the extravagant price of wheat would cease from the exportation and distillery being stopped, and there- fore did not mention this to you; but since that time our markets have rose up- wards of S8. per load; I sold my own wheat for grinding (and it is not the very best) for 318., and some sold for 34s. and 35s. Nothing can have been more quiet than the behaviour of our people has been: though they have suffered very much, not the smallest grumbling or discontent. I hope, my dearest father, you will ap- prove of what I have done: indeed, my only distress was, that I should do it when it can't be done by you, for I understand from Miller you have no wheat by you: however, I am sure this will be a great help to all the country, and Woburn and its neighbourhood will come in for a share. Surely wheat must fall when the sowing is over, and then I shall carry mine to market as usual. I have taken such pains to explain my reasons to you, that I have hardly room left to assure my mother of my love. We have Lord Newbattle, Mr. Crawford, Lady Albe- marle, and Miss W. with us; which is for us a house full of company. The weather is delightful, and Lady T. perfectly well. T. There is one letter of agreeable pleasantry in the collection from David Hume, written to Mr. Neville, the Duke's secretary, during the embassy to Paris, when the historian virtually held a similar post under Lord Hertford. The M. de Pinto of the letter had furnished the Duke with some information respecting the French East India Company.

DAVID HUME TO ME. NEVILLE.

" Manifold have been thepersecutions, dear Sir, which the unhappy Jews, in several ages, have suffered from the misguided zeal of the Christians; but there has at last arisen a Jew capable of avenging his injured nation, and striking terror into their proud oppressors: this formidable Jew is Monsieur de Pinto; and the unhappy Christian, who is chiefly exposed to all the effects of his cruelty is your humble servant. He says, that you promised to mention him to me; I do not remember that you did: he says, that he has done the most signal services to England, while the Duke of Bedford was Ambassador here; I do not question it, but they are unknown to me: he says that he is poor, and most have a pension for his reward; I wish he may obtain it, but I cannot assist him: he sends me letters, which I transmit to you, but I cannot oblige you to answer them: he says, that Lord Hertford must get justice done him, if the Duke of Bedford neglects him; I do not believe that the Duke of Bedford neglects anybody that has done him service: he grows angry; I exhort him to patience. " This, dear Sir, is a very abridged account of the dialogue which passes every day. between M. Pinto and me; that is, every day when he can break in upon me and lay hold of me: when he catches Lord Hertford, he is very copious on the same subject; but when he seizes poor Lord Beauchamp, his Lordship has good reason to curse the day he was born mild and gentle, and made incapable of doing or saying a harsh thing. " But, to be serious with regard to the man: I imagine, from what he tells me, and from a letter of yours which he showed me, that he had endeavoured to be useful to the Duke of Bedford and you during the negotiations of the peace: per- haps he was useful in some particulars, but to what extent you best know; and I am certain that you neither forget nor neglect him,though you have not answered his multiplied letters. I should not think that it at all lay upon me to solicit you in his behalf, or even to write to you about him, had I not been forced by his con- stant teasing, which I could no otherwise get rid of. If the Duke of Bedford .thinks him entitled to no reward, you would do Oda family a great service by telling him so at once: if the Duke intends to do him service, he would be very happy to have the encouragement of some hint in his favour. I only beg of you to excuse my meddling at all in this affair; which I am sensible does not belong to me, and which I should have avoided had it not been in this manner extorted from me.

" I am, &c. DAVID Hums."

The Correspondence of the Duke of Bedford is only one feature of this volume. The Introduction by Lord John Russell is another, and just now perhaps a more attractive section. Formally, and indeed sub- stantially, it is an historical review of the early part of the reign of George the Third, especially of the ten years over which the Correspondence extends. The critical impartiality of the historian is somewhat impaired by the objects of the noble author; one of which is to defend the cha- racter of his ancestor against the assaults of Junius ; the other, to enforce the necessity of party for the protection of public virtue and the public interests. In the historical portion, Lord John condenses the known facts and the usual conclusions into abrief, rapid, and readable summary, but telling nothing new in fact and eliciting nothing new in opinion. The treachery, hypocrisy, and falsehood of the King, are well developed: .the narrow views and personal objects of the Whig party are handled, but somewhat gingerly. The thorough corruption, the shameless profli- gacy, the absence of all sense of principle and almost of decency in the mass of the politicians of that day, are quietly sunk. Two great points are overlooked altogether,—first, that the "party " which George the Third set himself to destroy was an insolent, corrupt, and grasping oligarchy, utterly regardless of the people, personally affronting to the King, and rudely trampling upon the rights of the Crown, without any public mo- tives of action, or even that clannish sense of attachment to a standard which may supply their place—except, indeed, a robber-like fidelity to the " gang," which was necessary to enable them to pillage successfully : second, that "we still have judgment here "—that the personal treachery and falsehood of George the Third, and his kingly obstinacy, reacted upon himself, embittering his days, destroying his reason, and risking his life.

We have already intimated that Lord John's defence of his ancestor against Junius is not very successful. What he does attempt, indeed, is chiefly confined to the private scandals, into which Junius was pro- voked to advance by the silly interference of Sir William Draper, or to the defence of the Duke's having been corrupted by the French. For the more important and public portions of the attack he refers to Lord Brougham's defence ; which, it strikes us, consisted in little more than general declamation. Indeed, it would not be easy to overthrow the main charges,—that the Duke had not a proper sense of the historical dignity of bis position ; that his most intimate personal friends and followers were disreputable profligates, whose intimacy was a disgrace to any man ; and that he lowered the glory of his name and the dignity of his rank by _turning politics into a sordid trade of bargains for his dependents, if not for himself It is not to be denied that there is onesided male- 'volence and exaggeration in Junius : but he was an avowed and bitter enemy, not a philosophic judge—we no more look for fairness in a party aeesilant than in a party orator. In this case selection is not only allowable, but is the essence of certain arts. We do not expect a display of the agremens of life in the Tenth Satire of Juvenal, nor re- quire the Anacreontic lyrist to paint the pains of getting sober as well as the pleasures of getting drunk. It is sufficient for the purpose that the artistical selection is true as far as it goes; and this truth obtains in Junius. He does not admit the narrow stolid virtues which the Duke appears to have possessed ; he does not ascribe any weight to the jovial disposition which the Duke is said to have had,—though we must con- fess we find no trace of it in his letters, but on the contrary, rather a stiff, awkward, almost sullen self-importance ; the satirist makes no allowance for the low state of public and private morality in which the Duke was born and bred, and he chose to bring him to a standard which his nature and his times would not bear. This is the true defence of the Duke ; not abuse of his assailant, or of anonymous writers, still less panegyrics on his virtues, more exaggerated but less able than the de- scription of his vices. And, after all, mere falsehood quickly perishes : if there had been nothing in Junins's character of the Duke of Bedford but "the flaunting colours of the daub to attract the eye of the vulgar," it would not have been necessary, some seventy or eighty years after its appearance, for a Lord Chancellor and a Prime Minister to enter the lists against the "anonymous libeller," and we must take leave to say not with perfect success.

But Lord John Russell, not satisfied with defence and panegyric, must needs wander out of his way to institute a depredatory comparison be- tween his ancestor and a celebrated contemporary, aggrandizing Woburn at the expense of Chesterfield House. Here we have the two Houses compared.

" These extracts give some idea of the pursuits, occupations, and amusements, of John Duke of Bedford. Warm and eager in his disposition, of a social and cheerful temper, be devoted himself with ardour to political affairs, enjoyed with keen delight the .playhouse or the opera, and then turned with equal animation to see his oats carried, or join in a game of cricket. He was in many respects a great contrast to the Earl of Chesterfield. That accomplished and witty person was often right in his political views, and always pointed in the expression of his opinions: the Duke of Bedford was sometimes very right, and sometimes ex- ceedingly wrong, but his study of the subject was always better than the lan-

e of his speeches. Lord Chesterfield endeavoured to imitate the profligacy,

e levity, the neglect of moral duties, of the French nobility: the Duke of Bed- ford liked a jolly companion and an athletic game, but was deeply artaehed to the religion of his country and the society of his own family. Lord Chesterfield endeavoured, though in vain, to teach his son the arts of intrigue and a tone of clever insincerity upon all subjects: the Duke of Bedford attained his utmost wishes when he saw his son married to a virtuous woman and in the enjoyment of domestic happiness. The want of practical religion and morals, which Lord Chesterfield herd up to imitation, conducted the French nobility to the guillotine and emigration: the honesty, the attachment to his religion, the country habits, the love of home, the activity in rural business and rural sports, in which the Duke of Bedford and others of his class delighted, preserved the English aristo- cracy from a flood which swept over half of Europe, laying prostrate the highest of her palaces and scattering the ashes of the most sacred of her monuments."

Had this appeared in Punch, it might have passed as a satire on "clap- trap" and "fine writing." Certainly there never was a more unapt com- parison than Lord John's. The literary fault may be pardoned as an error in taste, and the overweening family pretensions as a moral weak- ness ; but the attempt to reverse the deliberate judgment of three genera- tions on historical characters, by a private dictum, is resented as an affront to the reader's understanding. The morals of Chesterfield were much more decorous, if not any better essentially, than those of the Duke of Bedford's associates. In point of acquirement or ability, comprehen• siveness, penetration, foresight, knowledge of history and of men—in short, of statesmanship—there can be no comparison between Chesterfield and the Fourth or any Duke of Bedford that has yet lived.