ONE:Fox introduced his first Bill on the 20th of November. All went smoothly, and the second reading was ordered for that day week. Then the storm burst. Mr. Grenville (afterwards Lord Grenville) described the Bill as a scheme to put the Company into the hands of Ministers, and to annihilate the prerogatives of the Crown at the same time. He denounced it as one of the most daring and dangerous attempts that had ever been brought into that House. He moved that it should lie over till after Christmas, and there was a strong phalanx ready to support him. Grenville did not press the motion to a division, and the Bill was read a second time on the 27th, when a vehement and long debate took place. Pitt put forth his whole strength against it, Fox for it, and it was carried by two hundred and twenty-nine votes against one hundred and twenty. On the 1st of December it was moved that the Bill be committed, when the Opposition was equally determined. On this occasion Burke, who had made himself profoundly acquainted with Indian affairs, took the lead, and delivered one of his very finest speeches, full of information and eloquence. Pitt resisted the going into Committee with all his power, and pledged himself, if the House would throw out the Bill, to bring in another just as efficacious, and at the same time devoid of its danger. The debate, like the former one, did not close till half-past four in the morning, and then it was with a triumphant majority of two hundred and seventeen against one hundred and three. The Bill, thus carried by such majorities through the Commons, was carried up to the Lords, on the 9th of December, by Fox, accompanied by a numerous body of the Commoners, and it was considered as certain of passing there; but the king and his party, exasperated at the resolute conduct of the Commons, had gone to such lengths to quash the Bill in the Lords as are rarely resorted to by the Crown. As in the Lower House, so here, it was allowed to be read the first time without dividing; but it was attacked with an ominous solemnity by Thurlow, the Duke of Richmond, and Lord Temple, who, since his recall from the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, had thrown himself into the Opposition with peculiar vivacity. It was known that he had been frequently closeted with the king of late, and he bluntly declared the Bill infamous. As a matter of fact, he had urged the king to use his personal influence with the House of Lords. Thurlow went further, and, fixing one of his most solemn glances on the Prince of Wales, who was sitting in the House to vote for the Bill, declared that if this measure passed, the crown of England would not be worth wearing;[303] and that if the king allowed it to become law, he would, in fact, have taken it from his head and put it on that of Mr. Fox. On the 15th, when the Bill was proposed for the second reading, the royal proceedings against it were brought at once to light. The Duke of Portland rose and said, before going into the question, he was bound to notice a report which was confidently in circulation, and which, if true, vitally affected the constitution of the country. This was no less than that the king had written a note to Lord Temple, stating that "his Majesty would deem those who voted for the Bill not only not his friends, but his enemies; and that if Lord Temple could put this into still stronger language, he had full authority to do so."The General Election of 1784 secured for Pitt a prolonged tenure of power. The king, in opening the Session, could not repress the air of triumph, and congratulated the Houses on the declared sense of his people, not forgetting to designate Fox's India Bill as a most unconstitutional measure. In fact, no one was so delighted as the king. He had contemplated the victory of Fox and his friends over Pitt with actual horror. He had never liked Fox, and the violent and overbearing manner in which he had endeavoured to compel the king to dismiss his Ministers had increased his aversion into dread and repugnance. In his letters to Pitt he had said, "If these desperate and factious men succeed, my line is a clear one, to which I have fortitude to submit." Again: "Should not the Lords stand boldly forth, this Constitution must soon be changed; for if the two remaining privileges of the Crown are infringed, that of negativing the Bills which have passed both Houses of Parliament, and that of naming the Ministers to be employed, I cannot but feel, as far as regards my person, that I can be no longer of utility to this country, nor can with honour, remain in the island." In fact, George was menacing, a second time, a retreat to Hanover; a step, however, which he was not very likely to adopt. The sentiment which the words really express is his horror of the heavy yoke of the great Whig Houses. The Addresses from both Houses of Parliament expressed equal satisfaction in the change, Pitt's triumphant majority having now rejected the amendments of the Opposition.
ONE:This succession of adverse circumstances induced Bolingbroke to dispatch a messenger to London to inform the Earl of Mar of them, and to state that, as the English Jacobites would not stir without assistance from abroad, and as no such help could be had, he would see that nothing as yet could be attempted. But when the messenger arrived in London, he learnt from Erasmus Lewis, Oxford's late secretary, and a very active partisan of the Jacobites, that Mar was already gone to raise the Highlands, if we are to believe the Duke of Berwick, at the especial suggestion of the Pretender himself, though he had, on the 23rd of September, in writing to Bolingbroke, expressed the necessity of the Scots waiting till they heard further from him. If that was so, it was at once traitorous towards his supporters and very ill-advised, and was another proof to Bolingbroke of the unsafe parties with whom he was embarked in this hopeless enterprise."Shall you go with them?" asked Cairness.
ONE:
