those who are supposed to be connected with the Government. Mr. Pitt must recollect that though I have ever thought it unfortunate that he had early engaged himself in this measure, he ought to lay his thoughts before the House; that out of personal regard to him I would avoid giving any opinion to any one on the opening of the door to Parliamentary Reform, except to him; therefore I am certain Mr. Pitt cannot suspect my having influenced any one on the occasion. If others choose, for base ends, to impute such a conduct to me, I must bear it as former false suggestions." 1 He proceeded to say that every man ought to vote according to his own opinion; and warned Mr. Pitt that "there are questions men will not, by friendship, be biassed to adopt." This incident is significant. Mr. Pitt apprehended the exertion of the influence of the Crown to defeat his measure. The king was aware of the suspicions attaching to himself; but while promising not to interfere, he could not refrain from intimating that the measure would be defeated, as indeed it was, — without his interference. The extent to which the preponderating influence of the Crown was recognized during this period, is exPreponderating influence emplified by the political relations of parties to his Majesty and to the Prince of Wales, on the occasion of the king's illness in 1788.2 At that time ministers enjoyed the entire confidence of the king, and commanded an irresistible majority in Parliament; yet was it well understood by both parties, that the first act of the Regent would be to dismiss his father's ministers, and take into his councils the leaders of the Opposition. Thus even the party which protested against the influence of the Crown was quite prepared to use it, and by its aid to brave a hostile majority in Parliament, as Mr. Pitt had successfully done a few years before.

of the Crown.

1 Tomline's Life of Pitt, ii. 40.

2 See Chapter III.

8 Tomline's Life of Pitt, ii. 480.

At length Mr. Pitt's fall itself, like his rise, was due to the king's personal will; and was brought about in Mr. Pitt's fall. the same way as many previous political events, by irresponsible councils. There is reason to believe that Mr. Pitt's unbending temper, increased in stubbornness by his longcontinued supremacy in Parliament, and in the cabinet, had become distasteful to the king. His Majesty loved power at least as much as his minister, and was tenacious of his authority, even over those in whom he had confidence. Mr. Pitt's power had nearly overshadowed his own; and there were not wanting opinions amongst friends of the king, and rivals of the statesman, that the latter had "an overweening ambition, great and opiniative presumption, and perhaps not quite constitutional ideas with regard to the respect and attention due to the Crown." 2

8

1801.

While this feeling existed in regard to Mr. Pitt, his Majesty was greatly agitated by events which at once Catholic aroused his sensitive jealousy of councils to which Question, he had not been admitted, and his conscientious scruples. Mr. Pitt and his colleagues thought it necessary to inaugurate the Union of Ireland, by concessions to the Roman Catholics; and had been, for some time, deliberating upon a measure to effect that object. Upon this question, the king had long entertained a very decided opinion. So far back as 1795, he had consulted termined opLord Kenyon as to the obligations of his coronation oath; and though his lordship's opinions were not quite decisive upon this point, his Majesty was persuaded that he was morally restrained, by that oath, from assenting

The king's de

position to it.

1 27th Feb., 1801. "I was told this evening, by Pelham, that his Majesty had for a long time since been dissatisfied with Pitt's, and particularly with Lord Grenville's authoritative manners' towards him, and that an alteration in his ministry had long been in his mind.” — Lord Malmesbury's Correspondence, iv. 24.

2 Lord Malmesbury's Correspondence, iv. 35.

8 See Chapter XII., on Civil and Religious Liberty.

They were published by Dr. Phillpotts (afterwards Bishop of Exeter) in

to any further measures for the relief of the Roman Catholics. Long before the ministers had so far matured their proposal as to be prepared to submit it for his Majesty's approval, he had been made acquainted with their intentions. In September, 1800, Lord Loughborough had shown him a letter from Mr. Pitt upon the subject; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the suggestion of Lord Auckland, had also informed the king that a scheme was in contemplation, which was represented as dangerous to the Church.1 In December, the Lord Chancellor communicated to his Majesty an elaborate paper against the Roman Catholic claims; 2 and Dr. Stuart, Archbishop of Armagh, a son of the king's old favorite, Lord Bute, — increased his Majesty's repugnance to the measure which the ministers were preparing. The king immediately took counsel with some of the opponents of the Catholic claims; and without waiting for any communication from Mr. Pitt, lost no time in declaring his own opinion upon the measure. At his levée on the 28th January, 1801, he told Mr. Windham, the Secretaryat-War, "that he should consider any person who voted for it, as personally indisposed towards him." 4 On the same occasion he said to Mr. Dundas, "I shall reckon any man my personal enemy, who proposes any such measure. most Jacobinical thing I ever heard of!" On the 29th, he wrote to Mr. Addington, the Speaker, desiring him to "open Mr. Pitt's eyes on the danger arising from the agitat

22.

8

The

1 Lord Sidmouth's Life, i. 315; Lord Malmesbury's Corresp., iv. 16, 17,

2 Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vi. 306, 322, et seq.; Rose's Corresp., i. 299.

8 Castlereagh's Corresp., iv. 83.

4 Lord Malmesbury's Corresp., iv. 2. His Lordship in relating this circumstance, states that Pitt had communicated the measure on the previous day; but it appears from Lord Sidmouth's Life, that this communication was not received by the king until Sunday the 1st Feb., though Lord Grenville and Mr. Dundas had already spoken to his Majesty upon the subject. - Life, i. 285, 287.

5 Wilberforce's Diary; Life, iii. 7; Court and Cabinets of Geo. III., iii. 126; Life of Lord Sidmouth, i. 280; Rose's Corresp., i. 303.

1

ing this improper question." Mr. Addington undertook this. commission, and thought he had dissuaded Mr. Pitt from proceeding with a measure, to which the king entertained insuperable objections. But if at first inclined to yield, Mr. Pitt, after consulting the cabinet and other political friends, determined to take his stand, as a responsible minister, upon the advice he was about to tender to the king.

Mr. Canning is said to have advised Mr. Pitt not to give way on this occasion. It was his opinion, "that for several years so many concessions had been made, and so many important measures overruled, from the king's opposition to them, that Government had been weakened exceedingly; and if on this particular occasion a stand was not made, Pitt would retain only a nominal power, while the real one would pass into the hands of those who influenced the king's mind and opinion, out of sight." "

fuses to aban

Whether sharing this opinion or not, Mr. Pitt himself was too deeply impressed with the necessity of Mr. Pitt rethe measure, and perhaps too much committed to don it, and the Catholics, to withdraw it. It appears, how- resigns. ever, that he might have been induced to give way, if he could have obtained an assurance from his Majesty, that ministers should not be opposed by the king's friends in Parliament. On the 1st February, he made the formal communication to the king, which his Majesty had, for several days, been expecting. The king had been aware of Mr. Pitt's determination before he received this letter, and had wished Mr. Addington, even then, to form a new administration. By Mr. Addington's advice a kind but most unbending answer was returned to Mr. Pitt, in which his Majesty declared that a "principle of duty must prevent him from discussing any proposition tending to destroy the

1 The king to Mr. Addington; Life of Lord Sidmouth, i. 286, 287.

2 Life of Lord Sidmouth, i. 287.

8 Malmesbury's Corresp., iv. 5.

4 Rose's Corresp., i. 394, 399.

groundwork of our happy constitution." The intensity of the king's feeling on the subject was displayed by what he said, about this time, to the Duke of Portland: "Were he to agree to it, he should betray his trust, and forfeit his crown; that it might bring the framers of it to the gibbet." His trusty counsellor replied: "he was sure the king had rather suffer martyrdom, than submit to this measure.' In vain did Mr. Addington endeavor to accommodate these differences. Mr. Pitt, being as inflexible as the king, resigned; and Mr. Addington was intrusted with the task of forming an anti-Catholic administration; while an active canvass was undertaken by the courtiers against the Catholic cause, as a matter personal to the king himself.3

Mr. Pitt's

ment of the Catholic question.

Mr. Pitt has been justly blamed for having so long concealed his intentions from the king. His Majesty mismanage himself complained to Lord Grenville, that the question had been under consideration since the month of August, though never communicated to him till Sunday, the 1st February; and stated his own belief, that if the unfortunate cause of disunion had been openly mentioned to him "in the beginning, he should have been able to avert it entirely." 4 Whether this delay arose, as Lord Malmesbury has suggested, "either from indolence," or from want of a "sufficient and due attention to the king's pleasure," it was assuredly a serious error of judgment. It cannot, indeed, be maintained that it was Mr. Pitt's duty to take his Majesty's pleasure, before any bill had been agreed upon by the cabinet; but his reticence,

1 The king to Mr. Pitt, 1st Feb., 1801; Lord Sidmouth's Life, i. 291. All the correspondence between the king and Mr. Pitt is published in Dr. Phillpotts's Pamphlet, 1827, and in the Quarterly Review, xxxvi. 290, and part of it in Lord Sidmouth's Life; Rose's Corresp., ii. 286, et seq., 303, 309. 2 Lord Malmesbury's Corresp., iv. 46.

8 Ibid., iv. 6; Castlereagh's Corresp., iv. 34; Court and Cabinets of Geo. III., iii. 128; Mem. of Fox, iii. 252; Life of Lord Sidmouth, i. 85, &c. 4 King to Lord Sidmouth, Feb. 7th; Lord Sidmouth's Life, 298. 5 Lord Malmesbury's Corresp., iv. 2.