Note 31 — Chapter III

Many of the letters that passed between the Opposition leaders during this negotiation are preserved among the Bedford MSS. They confirm substantially the narrative in the text. The Grenvilles appear from first to last to have been the real obstacles to any satisfactory arrangement. The Duke of Bedford would probably have been satisfied with such a share of power as would (to use his own words) “rescue the King and the country out of the hands of Lord Bute, and restore strength and energy to the Government upon a constitutional footing, free from favouritism and the guidance of a Minister not in a responsible employment.”—(MS. Letter to the Marquis of Rockingham, July 16.) He thought less of measures than of men, and his bold, sanguine turn of mind made him underrate the difficulties inseparable from a coalition. Mr. Grenville looked much further than the exclusion of Lord Bute. He concurred in the idea of an extended and comprehensive administration on the ostensible ground that such an administration was likeliest to be a permanent one, but his concurrence hinged on the condition “that a plan of measures should be adopted to the satisfaction of Lord Temple and himself, and particularly the capital measure of asserting and establishing the sovereignty of Great Britain over the Colonies,” which he insinuates had been purposely kept back by Lord Rockingham. This was the purport of the message brought from him by Mr. Rigby to Woburn.—(MS. Letter from Mr. Grenville to Mr. Rigby, July 16.) From the moment that his determination was made known, all hopes of union between the parties in Opposition were at an end.

The heartiness and warmth with which Lord Rockingham’s overtures were in the first instance received at Woburn, gave his disappointment additional bitterness. (Letter from Lord Albemarle to Mr. Rigby, July 23, Bedford MSS.) The unpleasant truth was thus also revealed to him, that his destiny was rather to correct and to advise than to administer the Government. Mr. Burke must have strangely deceived himself when he complimented the Marquis on his magnanimity in refusing office at the price of the abandonment of his friends. It was the union of the Bedford and Grenville parties that had broken up his administration and now alone prevented his reconstructing it, with the additional injury of almost destroying the Opposition. Indeed Lord Rockingham felt no little embarrassment how to give an ostensible explanation of his conduct, or to state the principles on which the Opposition ought to be conducted in future. (See his Letters to Mr. Dowdeswell.—Cavendish Debates, vol. i. Appendix 2, p. 583.) He had no feelings in common with his new allies beyond a distrust of the King, and hatred of Lord Bute. His political sympathies, and in some degree his personal friendships were with the Ministers. Thus he was brought into a false position, which made his course most difficult, and fully explains the following passage in one of his letters:—“You know I never disguised to my friends that I considered them as a forlorn hope, but that the maintenance of character and credit was in honour incumbent upon them, and would in the first place be a comfort to their own minds, and though it might appear improbable at present, yet it was not impossible that such conduct might ultimately prove the best policy.” The Duke of Richmond had strongly recommended the Marquis to come in without the Grenvilles and Bedfords (see the Duke’s Letter to Burke, in Burke, Coll. Corresp. vol. 1. p. 139): and it would seem that the party afterwards regretted that this advice had not been followed, though as long as the King continued unfavourable to them, it surely is more than doubtful that they would have succeeded better than in the preceding year.

Of the various accounts which have been published of these negotiations, Walpole’s is the most clear and impartial, as well as interesting. It is confirmed in all essential points both by Mr. Dowdeswell’s narrative in his life of his father, and the Duke of Bedford’s Private Journal,—authorities of equal authenticity, though proceeding from opposite political sources. Almon’s (Political Register, vol. i. pp. 201–208,) is justly condemned by Lord Rockingham as most unfair, and that nobleman is probably right in ascribing it to Lord Temple.—E.