valued and too little studied by Pitt. In these, on the contrary, Newcastle was ever predominant. Pitt himself found some difficulty in obtaining a seat. At the last dissolution he had been returned for Aldeburgh in Yorkshire, a borough under Pelham control; and on accepting the Seals, and excluding the Duke of Newcastle from power, Pitt could not of course apply to His Grace for reelection; but he availed himself of the opening afforded by Sir George Lyttleton's peerage, and became a successful candidate for Sir George's seat at Oakhampton.

A few days had sufficed to complete the new arrangements, and on the 2d of December the Session was opened by a Speech from the Throne, which showed the hand of a new speech-maker. The uncourtly Addresses of the preceding summer were termed "signal proofs how "dearly my subjects tender my honour and that of my "Crown." The scheme of a national Militia, to which His Majesty was well known to be no friend, was recommended" to the care and diligence of my Parliament.” And, above all, His Majesty announced that he had given orders for the return of his Electoral troops in England to his dominions in Germany. But though George the Second, as a constitutional monarch, thus spoke to his Parliament in the language of his Ministers, he did not attempt in his private conversation to conceal his real sentiments. Thus on one occasion, being informed that an impudent printer was to be punished for publishing a spurious Royal Speech, he answered that he hoped the man's punishment would be of the mildest sort, because he had read both, and, as far as he understood either of them, he liked the spurious speech better than his own.*

For the Electoral troops in England, they had been encamped during the whole summer, the Hessians near Winchester, the Hanoverians near Maidstone. But when the cold season came on the magistrates were advised that they were not obliged by law to billet foreigners in public houses, nor the owners of such houses to receive them; thus the poor soldiers were left in their camps, exposed to the wind and rain, until the transports came

* Lord Waldegrave's Memoirs, p. 89. See also the Parliamentary History, vol. xv. p. 779.

1756.

DISMISSAL OF THE HANOVER TROOPS.

87

for their return.* Under all circumstances the conduct of these troops had been, not only free from all exception, but exemplary for their discipline, good order, and sobriety. But the imprudence of one of their chiefs had revived the clamours against them. One day a Hanoverian soldier buying four handkerchiefs at Maidstone took away the whole piece, which contained six. All parties have since allowed that the man did it by mistake, and without any design of fraud; but in the first impulse a robbery was sworn against him, and he was committed to jail. The commanding officer, Count Kilmanseg, ignorant of constitutional law, and much incensed at this instance of it, despatched an express with his complaint; and the Secretary of State, Lord Holderness, scarcely less ignorant than Kilmanseg, signed an arbitrary warrant for the soldier's release. In a few days, however, the rising popular voice gave both Holderness and his Master cause to repent his rashness, and, so far as they could, to disavow it. The angry Count was ordered to retire without taking leave, and the poor soldier to receive 300 lashes. This affair occurred, as indeed might be guessed from the pusillanimous termination to it, while the Duke of Newcastle was still at the head of the Government.

-

After the change, however, and when the King's speech had announced the recall of these Electoral troops, the new First Lord of the Treasury, the Duke of Devonshire, had inserted in the Lords' Address an expression of thanks to His Majesty for having brought them over. This seemed no undue or unreasonable compliment, since the King had summoned these troops to England at the express request of both Houses of Parliament. But the new First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl Temple, being confined to his bed by illness, had not been consulted on this clause in the Address. Much offended at the neglect, he appeared in the House of Lords at some risk to his health,―at the hazard of his life, as he declared,—to represent the grievous enormity and the fatal consequences

* H. Walpole to Sir H. Mann, November 4. 1756. Next Session the Secretary at War, Lord Barrington, brought in a Bill to remedy this defect in the law, and it passed without opposition.

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of the intended compliment. He delivered a long harangue, and then strode again out of the House; "with a thorough conviction," says Lord Waldegrave, "that "such weighty reasons must be quite unanswerable; nevertheless, on his departure, the Address was passed unanimously.

Pitt himself, almost from the day of his appointment, became bed-ridden with the gout, and could take but little part in the Parliamentary campaign. When he did appear, warm and repeated altercations passed between him and Fox, At Council his enemies accused him of being haughty and visionary; after one meeting Lord Granville exclaimed: "Pitt used to call me madman, "but I never was half so mad as he is!"*

The earliest business to which the House of Commons applied itself was the distress arising from the dearth of corn. On the very first day of the Session Resolutions were proposed, and passed to prohibit for a limited time the export of grain, flour, and biscuit. A Bill, in conformity with these Resolutions, was speedily carried, and an Address presented to the Crown, that an embargo might forthwith be laid upon all ships laden with such cargoes in the ports of Great Britain. By another measure for the same object,—to guard against the high price of bread, it was enacted, that for several months to come no spirits should be distilled from wheat or barley; a measure, however, which did not pass without strenuous opposition from the brewers.

Nor were measures wanting, either from the House of Commons or the Government, towards the vigorous prosecution of the war. 55,000 men were granted for the sea service, and 45,000 for the land; and reinforcements were despatched to the Earl of Loudoun, the new Commander-in-Chief in the American plantations, while fresh regiments were raising at home. The total supplies granted for the current year amounted to 8,300,0007., the National Funded Debt being at the outset of the war about 72,000,000l., and having decreased but 6,000,0007. in the seven years of peace since the Treaty of Aix-laChapelle.†

* Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 116.

† Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, book v. ch. 3.

1757.

MILITIA BILLS.

89

It was also at this period that Pitt commenced his bold, yet, as it proved, most safe and wise policy, of raising Highland regiments from the lately disaffected clans. I have already alluded to this measure by anticipation *; let me now add only the glowing words which Chatham himself applied to it in retrospect. "My Lords, we "should not want men in a good cause. I remember "how I employed the very rebels in the service and de"fence of their country. They were reclaimed by this means; they fought our battles; they cheerfully bled "in defence of those liberties which they had attempted "to overthrow but a few years before!"†

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Another measure of public defence was the new modelling of a national Militia. A Bill for this object, which Pitt proposed, had passed the Commons' House in a former Session, but was rejected in the Lords, mainly by the interposition of Lord Hardwicke. It continued, however, a favourite object with Pitt, and was again introduced by Colonel George Townshend, eldest son of Lord Townshend, and brother of Charles. There was a strong disposition in the House that the new Militia might be exercised on Sundays, according to the practice of several states abroad, as, for example, several Protestant cantons of Switzerland. Pitt himself gave a guarded consent to such a scheme ‡, and the Church at this time remained apparently, if not consenting, at least passive, but petitions against it came in from several bodies of Protestant Dissenters, and the design was dropped.

*See vol. iii. p. 18.

† Speech in the House of Lords, December 2. 1777. See Thackeray's Life, vol. ii. p. 339.

"What if they should be exercised on Sundays after Church? "unless the Clergy or Dissenters disapproved it; he would retract "this proposal if it gave offence." (Pitt's speech, December 8. 1755. -Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 449.) In the Upper House none of the Bishops appear to have raised any objection to the Sunday exercising, but Lord Hardwicke said in the course of his speech: "If this institution should be established by a law, I will venture to "foretell, that, notwithstanding the injunction to go to Church, it "will be a constant fair and scene of jollity in the several parishes "where those exercises are kept, and the face of religion will soon "be abolished in this country." See the corrected report in the Parliamentary History, vol. xv. p. 739.

After many discussions in the Commons, the Bill was sent to the Upper House, where it underwent several amendments, especially the reduction of the number of militia-men to one half of what the Commons had proposed, namely, to 32,340 for England and Wales; and thus the measure became law. During its agitation and its progress it had been most highly popular with the nation at large. No sooner had it passed, however, than it was discovered to press heavily on the very persons who had clamoured for it; and the tide of national feeling was completely turned. Several tumults on this account ensued in the course of the year; at Sevenoaks, for example, the mansion of the Duke of Dorset, Lord Lieutenant of the county, was in danger from the mob*; and it is scarcely possible to conceive how high the popular discontent would have risen had the popular desire in favour of the Bill as it stood in the Commons been indulged to its full extent.

Still greater was the chance of popular disfavour when, in the course of the Session, Pitt brought down a message from His Majesty, asking for aid in the defence of his Electoral dominions; and when, in pursuance of this message, Pitt rose to move a grant of 200,000l. It passed without any opposition, but not without many sneers. Fox, above all, was forward in denouncing the inconsistency between Pitt's former philippics and his present proposals. It was, no doubt, easy to contrast the very strong expressions which Pitt had often let fall against Hanover with the no less strong expressions that he now began to use in its behalf,-such as that Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire, -or that he would conquer America in Germany! Yet, making some allowance (and I own no small one) for oratorical exaggerations, and for Pitt's natural vehemence of temper, there appears no real divergence of principles or conduct, Pitt's principles were consistently such as before his admission to the Cabinet he had explained them to the

* Earl Stanhope to Mr. Pitt, October 3. 1757, and Mr. Pitt's reply. See Appendix. In the former debates on this Bill Horace Walpole tells us that "Lord Stanhope spoke well on its behalf." (Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 45.)