MASSEY'S REIGN OF GEORGE THE THIRD.*
Ix preparing the present volume of his history, Mr. Massey has been aided by information derived from private sources. Mr.
Frederic Locker, in particular, has placed at his disposal the ma- terials collected by his father, with the sanction of the Royal Family, for a life of George the Third. From this source alone he has obtained many curious and interesting particulars relating both to the public transactions and secret history of this reign. The extensive correspondence of the first Lord Bolton, who was for many years in office, and who, especially during the earlier period of Pitt's administration, was in confidential intercourse with that celebrated statesman, has also been laid under contribu-
tion. With the aid of these and other private collections, and of the ordinary historical documents, Mr. Massey has constructed what appears to us a correct presentment of the leading events and transactions of that portion of the Third George's reign which intervened between 1781-1793.
The volume opens with an account of the military operations in the Carolinas, with the treason of Arnold and the execution of Andre, a gallant and accomplished officer, who had unfortunately assumed a character "which neither professional zeal-nor patriotic ardour can quite reconcile with that of an officer and a gentle- man," and who according to all the laws and usages of war, had, it can scarcely be doubted, incurred the penalty of death as a spy. This sad event occurred in 1780. In the following year, Lord Cornwallis, unsupported in Carolina, retired into Virginia. Arrived in Virginia and receiving orders to send back the troops or employ them in a new diversion on the Chesapeake and the Susquehanna, he adopted the alternative of returning the detach- ments to New York." Taking possession of York Town and Gloucester, he proceeded to throw up works. Sir Henry Clinton now promised him a reinforcement of five thousand troops with twenty-three sail of the line. " Relying on this promise Corn- wallis made no attempt to impede the advance of the allies." The siege was conducted by Washington himself. On the 15th Oc- tober the works were entirely destroyed ; the succours which were to have left New York ten days before, had not yet arrived; and after frequent repulses of the- enemy by repeated sorties, Earl Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington. This capitulation was the last great event of the American war ; though more than a twelvemonth elapsed before the preliminaries of peace were signed. The struggle was over. America was free. We find it difficult to understand Mr. Massey's judgment of the war of In- dependence. He supports England's assumption to tax her de- pendencies; he maintains that she did so in pursuance of the right reserved expressly in their charters ; he declares that the rigorous execution of their right did notjustify the colonies in throwing off their allegiance ; he affirms that their insurrection was not a sufficient reason for immediate concession or military forbearance ; yet he stigmatizes the war as illiberal and unjust, and the maxims which regulated the commercial policy of England as selfish and tyrannical. Now surely the principle that taxation and representation are coextensive, and that the former cannot exist without the latter underlies the whole structure of the British Constitution. It is ita informing spirit and vivifying idea. Its violation by George III. and his Ministers furnished Chatham and Fox with their most cogent argument, and clothed with the triple armour, which our great poet celebrates, the American vindicators of the good old cause which English patriotism had long since consecrated. Surely, too, if the war was, as Mr. Massey concedes, "illiberal and unjust," Washington and his countrymen had no alternative but to meet it with armed re- sistance.
France and Spain had engaged in hostilities with Great Bri- tain, avowedly to assist the American people in their struggle for liberty. In 1782, a separate peace was concluded, not without some manoeuvring on the part of the American Commissioners between Great Britain and the United States. Rodney's splendid victory over the French now compelled them to abandon their ambitious hopes ; and America's defection from the common cause left both France and Spain without a motive or pretext 'for con- tinuing the war. Treaties with both these countries were, there- fore, concluded on the basis of the peace of 1763.
The administration of Lord North, meanwhile, attacked by the eloquence of Fox, of Burke, and of Pitt, who alike sympathized • A History of England during the Reign of George the Third. By William Massey, M.P. Vol. III. Published by John W. Parker. with the cause of American independence, had been broken up. For a series of years, Lord North had served the King with a slavish fidelity, " supporting measures which he believed to be ruinous by means which he knew to be unconstitutional and cor- rupt." Mr. Massey forcibly sketches the position of the country on George the Third's accession. He shows us the exclusive pre- dominance of the Whig oligarchy, with its opposing factions, the decay of .the constituencies, the corruption of the electors, the increase of nomination boroughs, the servility of Parliament, the Doge of Venice character of the Crown. George I. and George II. were unable to assert their kingly prerogative. George i however, determined to liberate himself from the yoke imposed on his predecessors ; and his main object " during nearly the first half of his long reign was to free the Crown from the dictation of the Revolution families." To effect this purpose open war was soon found to be unavailable, " and after having given out on his accession, that government by bribery and corruption was at an end, he ruled for the first twenty years of his reign by a system of bribery and corruption more regular and extensive than had ever been attempted in the worst days of the Hanover succession." The secret management of the House of Commons was placed under the immediate control of the King, who by means of ob- scure and unrecognized agents worked "that great engine of cor- ruption, which thenceforth acquired the more decent name of In- fluence." The struggle in which the King maintained his supe- riority over the haughty barons of the Revolution continued for ten years. When Lord North consented to be the obsequious agent of the Court, the services of the "King's Friends," as the jobbers and place-hunters were called, were no longer required. They existed, however, for a time, as a disembodied corps, ready on an emergency to resume their organization, but destined on Pitt's accession to power to disappear as a separate party ; being then absorbed among the regular supporters of government. Lord North's Administration lasted twelve years. , During this
period the King lost a splendid portion of his dominions, added one hundred and fifteen millions to the Debt, engaged in war with three of the maritime Powers of Europe, saw himself assailed by his former allies, and reduced the prestige of England. so low that her flag was no longer a protection to the property of her merchants. Mr. Massey describes Lord North's Administration as the worst " which has directed. the affairs of this empire since that infamous Cabinet known by the name of Cabal." It was succeeded by that of Lord Rockingham, owing principally to whose firmness measures were carried, during a brief Ministerial existence of three months, which did more to restrain the undue influence of the Crown and to check the corruption of Parliament than anything which had been done between the Revolution and the great Act of 1832." On Rockingham's death, the vacant office of First Minister was offered to Lord Shelburne by the King. Fox, who had adeused this nobleman of duplicity and reserve in the Paris negotiations, resigned. He was followed by Lord John Cavendish, who was, like himself, a Cabinet Minister, and by eight members of the Government, one of whom was the illus- trious Burke. In Mr. Massey's judgment, Fox's conduct in quit- ting office in 1782 was wayward and factious. He equally con- demns his conduct in the following year, when he joined. the ill- judged Coalition, arranged chiefly through the agency of Towns- hend, Burke,North, and Eden.
On the conclusion of the peace with America and her European allies, the affairs of the East, where the military genius of Clive had compensated England for the loss of her Western colonies, by the acquisition of a new empire, urgently pressed for adjustment. In 1784, soon after the commencement of the session, Fox brought forward his India Bill, of which the reputed author was Burke. This bill not only sought to deprive the Company of political power, but to annul its commercial privileges. It was violently opposed. Triumphant in the Commons it was rejected by the Lords. The King, who was anxious to get rid of his Ministers, determined that the bill should not become law. Earl Temple accordingly, was directed or "allowed" by his Majesty to say, that whoever voted for the India Bill would be considered by the King as an enemy. This unconstitutional procedure was fol- lowed by the contemptuous dismissal of North and Fox. No more memorable struggle says our historian had taken place within the walls of the House of Commons since the days of the Long Parliament. The India policy of the Coalition determined the fate of parties and the general character of the British Go- vernment for nearly fifty years.
Pitt was twenty-four years of age when he became First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. The latter office he had already held under the evanescent administration of Lord Shelburne. Towards this inheritor of an illustrious name, English sympathy stimulated by the reviving sentiment of loyalty, gravitated steadily. Regarded as the champion of the royal pre- rogative, and the restorer of a national regime, Pitt won the suf- frages of the people, and ere long triumphed over the oligarchical faction. A long and brilliant career was now before him. We have recently pointed out the contrast between Pitt as a peace minister and Pitt as a war minister. As a peace minister, he is associated in policy with the foremost statesmen of any time. As a m war minister, he ha been claimed as the representative of the bigot and obstructive, the Tadpole and Taper corporation. As a peace minister, he was remarkably successful; as a war minister, he was a ludicrous failure. His India Bill, his financial opera- tions, that of the Sinking Fundoeoxnesezted ; his commercial treaty with France, his scheme for the consolidation of the Customs and Excise, testify to the effective character of his Administration, during its pacific period. Various Acts passed for the relief of the Roman Catholics, the proposed liberation of commerce in Ireland, his maintenance against Fox of the "right of Parliament to supply the temporary defect of the Royal authority," show his spontaneously liberal and popular tendencies. In moving for a committee of inquiry in 1782, into the state of the Representation of the country, Pitt plainly indicated the reform that was needed. "The abolition of rotten boroughs and the substitution of real constituencies were the primary and essential objects." On the other hand, Mr. Massey shows that when in 1783, Pitt introduced a definite plan of reform, the expedients which he recommended neither fulfilled the condition of improving the representation of the people, nor supplied any remedy for corrupt practices. The following year, he again brought forward a measure of Parlia- mentary reform. " His ideas," says Mr. Massey, " were simple and sound ; but the machinery was futile and absurd." " The principle was the one which Chatham had always maintained, the increase of the county representation by the extinction of the small and decayed boroughs." At this period, it must be remembered that the utmost diversity of opinion on this paramount question, divided the Whig party. The Duke of Richmond favoured annual parliaments and uni- versal suffrage. Fox was far more moderate in his views. Burke thought the constitution of the House of Commons in- capable of improvement. " Lord Rockingham hesitated, and Lord John Cavendish doubted." The great social differences between the time of which we are speaking, and our own epoch should also be remembered. The large manufacturing towns, now the seats of po- litical intelligence and skilled industry, were then, for the most part, scattered hamlets. In the open boroughs, the election pro- ceedings were accompanied with every circumstance of disgrace ; while iu the counties alone, if we except the metropolis, " were to be found the public spirit and independence which redeemed the election franchise from contempt." " It was," continues our author " to the meetings which had been held in almost every county hall in the kingdom that the removal of the late Ad- ministration, the discontinuance of the American war, together with the wise and patriotic Legislation which had lately taken place, were to be mainly attributed." Pitt's attempts at reform, all miscarried. The Whigs neglected. the golden opportunity of restoring and improving Representative Government. The French revolution supervened, which terrified men of Liberal convictions into recantation, caused the nation to rally round the throne and the altar, changed Pitt into the minister of unjust and violent repression, and postponed the settlement of the great Reform question for nearly half a century. At this conjuncture Mr. Massey's third volume closes. It contains a succession of important inci- dents, or a variety of valuable statements into which we cannot enter. To the notices of Edmund Burke, the advocate of free commerce, the vindicator of religious liberty, the reformer of the civil establishment ; to the passages which describe the career of Fox, down to the period at which the volume leaves us ; to the account of the trial of Hastings ; to that of the factious alliance of the Whig leaders with the unworthy Prince of Wales ; to the sad story of the poor blind king ; and the narrative connected with the progress and consequences of the French Revolution, we can only now direct attention. Mr. Massey will be found to tell his tale in a plain, straightforward way, with a fluent, agreeable utterance. Original power, in any high sense of the word he has none. He is neither philosopher nor artist. He cannot make the past live ; he cannot make you feel strongly for, or with the men that controlled or animated it. But he does give you a lucid connected narrative, which you read with pleasure ; and from which you derive information. For such a service we are grateful.
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