Charles Fox

“ It is impossible to do other than admire the farsightedness of that great statesman, Charles Fox, with his blue coat and yellow waistcoat, in this manly, sensible, and telling address. Time has nearly brought round the state of things that he desired to see, and if disembodied spirits can take an interest in things earthly, it will be no small addition to his present state of bliss to discover almost the realization of suggestions made sixty years ago, before the Browns of this period were conceived, and while the Rolphs were puling infants. ”

“ No human being, he adds, was ever more free from every trace of malignity, vanity, or falsehood. The combination of so many admirable qualities of public and private character, sufficiently accounts for the fact that no English statesman, during so long a period of adverse fortune, retained so many attached friends and zealous adherents, as Charles Fox. ”

“ Charles James Fox died September 13, 1806. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time, having assumed office on the 5th February, shortly after the death of William Pitt. Wordsworth's sadness on this occasion, his recognition of Fox as great and good, and as "a Power" that was "passing from the earth," may have been due partly to personal and political sympathy, but also probably to Fox's appreciation of the better [Pg 49] side of the French Revolution, and to his welcoming the pacific proposals of Talleyrand, perhaps also to his efforts for the abolition of slavery. ”

“ But a punctilious sense of personal dignity was no part of the character of Henry Fox.
We have not time to enumerate all the other men of weight who were, by some tie or other, attached to the Government. We may mention Hardwicke, reputed the first lawyer of the age; Legge, reputed the first financier of the age; the acute and ready Oswald; the bold and humorous Nugent; Charles Townshend, the most brilliant and versatile of mankind; Elliot, Barrington, North, Pratt. ”

“ He lives with the horse, stinks, talks, and thinks of nothing but the stable, and is not a very good companion’ (Trevelyan, Early Life of Charles James Fox, p. 276) . After a short time at Westminster School, Fox was gazetted to a cornetcy in the 1st or king's dragoon guards in 1770, from which he was promoted lieutenant into the 38th regiment in 1773. This regiment was then quartered at Boston in America, and Henry Fox served all through the war of American independence. ”

“ Very different from the "Fox" of Kinderhook was Charles James Fox of England who died a hundred years ago. Strangely enough he was a great Whig, though Whig in England was not the same as Whig in the United States. He was a fine scholar and high statesman; some say, "the greatest debater the world ever saw."
Different still was George Fox of England who died two hundred years ago—one of the purest, best men that ever lived. The Quakers or Friends started from him. He went everywhere preaching the simple teaching of the Bible and against trusting to forms and ceremonies. ”

“ His fortune was made when he secured, through the kindness of Miss Bellamy, who pitied him for his ill-success in play-writing and recommended him to Fox, the post of private chaplain to Lady Caroline Fox, and became domesticated in her family, where he taught Lady Sarah Lennox to declaim and Charles James Fox to read. At the end of 1757 Fox was sent to Eton, and Francis accompanied him to assist the boy in his studies. The father, Henry Fox, best known as Lord Holland, found the Irish tutor a useful ally. ”

“ Does he understand his place, either as a soldier or a justice of the peace? For he tells you here that I went aside with him, and told him what a design I had in hand, and how serviceable he might be for my design: that I could raise forty [252] thousand men in an hour's time, bring in King Charles, and involve the nation in blood. He saith, moreover, that he would have aided me out of the country, but I would not go; and therefore he committed me to prison for want of sureties for the good behaviour, as the mittimus declares. ”

“ In domestic politics Fox had no time to do more than insist on the abolition of the slave trade. He, like Pitt, was compelled to bow to the king’s invincible determination not to allow the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. When a French adventurer calling himself Guillet de la Gevrillière, whom Fox at first “did the honour to take for a spy,” came to him with a scheme for the murder of Napoleon, he sent a warning on the 20th of February to Talleyrand. ”

“ Here are the soldiers of Marston Moor and Dunbar; Cromwell and his household; Desborough and Monk; the quartering of regicides and the "new era" under the second Charles. At every point we have vivid scenes in courts, in prisons, in churches, and in inns. People of all classes and sorts talk in their natural tongue in these pages. Fox has little dramatic power, but everything which furthers, or hinders his earthly mission interests him and gets caught in his narrative. Pepys and Evelyn have readier pens, but Fox had many points of contact with the England of those days which they lacked. ”

“ Fox made many mistakes, due in some cases to vehemence of temperament, and in others only to be ascribed to want of sagacity. That he fought unpopular causes is a very insufficient explanation of his failure as a practical statesman. He could have profited by the reaction which followed popular excitement but for his bad reputation and his want of discretion.
During the eight years between his expulsion from office in 1774 and the fall of Lord North’s ministry in March 1782 he may indeed be said to have done one very great thing in politics. ”

“ In 1776, when he was leading the resistance to Lord North’s colonial policy, he “neither abandoned gaming nor his rakish life. He was seldom in bed before five in the morning nor out of it before two at noon.” At the most important crisis of his life in 1783, he almost made an ostentation of disorder and of indifference not only to appearances, but even to decency. Horace Walpole has drawn a picture of him at that time which Lord Holland, Fox’s beloved and admiring nephew, speaking from his early recollections of his uncle, confesses has “some justification.” ”

“ Henry, the younger, who married Georgina, daughter of the Duke of Richmond, and was himself created, in 1763, Baron Holland of Farley. Of the children of that marriage Charles James Fox was the third son, born on the 24th of January, 1749. The second son had died in infancy.
Henry Fox inherited Tory opinions. He was regarded by George II. as a good man of business, and was made Secretary of War in 1754, when Charles James, whose cleverness made him a favoured child, was five years old. In the next year Henry Fox was Secretary of State for the Southern Department. ”

“ He was the last man in the world to act on the worldly-wise maxim that an enemy should always be treated as if he may one day be a friend, and a friend as if he might become an enemy. On the 29th of November 1779 Fox was wounded in a duel with Mr William Adam, a supporter of Lord North’s whom he had savagely denounced. ”

“ During the violent conflict over the Middlesex election (see Wilkes, John) he took the unpopular side, and vehemently asserted the right of the House of Commons to exclude Wilkes. In 1772 during the proceedings against Crosby and Oliver—a part of the “Wilkes and liberty” agitation—he and Lord North were attacked by a mob and rolled in the mud. But Fox’s character was incompatible with ministerial service under King George III. The king, himself a man of orderly life, detested him as a gambler and a rake. And Fox was too independent to please a master who expected obedience. ”

“ A statesman whose words have to be interpreted by an esoteric meaning cannot fairly complain if he is often misunderstood. In 1788 he travelled in Italy, but returned in haste on hearing of the illness of the king. Fox supported the claim of the prince of Wales to the regency as a right, a doctrine which provoked Pitt into declaring that he would “unwhig the gentleman for the rest of his life.” ”

“ From this time till 1689 she resided at Swarthmore, and was several times fined for permitting meetings to take place at her house. Towards the end of the year she spent some months in or near London with her husband, and then returned home. In January 1691 George Fox died, and from this time his widow, although she continued to take great interest in the affairs of the Society of Friends, does not appear to have been actively employed. ”

“ Fox describes her as a ‘very tender woman’ (Journal, ed. 1765, p. 6) , and she is usually considered to have been the first person to accept the peculiar doctrines of quakerism. It was not until 1650, although she probably preached earlier, that she formally received ‘the gift of the ministry,’ and she has the honour of being the first woman who was recorded as a quaker minister. ”

“ She was a deeply pious woman, and with the concurrence of her husband opened her house to religious persons. In her autobiography she states that ‘she hoped she did well, but often feared she was short of the right way, and in this way enquired twenty years.’ During the winter of 1652 George Fox was received by her, and at a meeting in her house converted her and most of the family to his views. On his return from holding the assizes, Judge Fell acquiesced in her acceptance of quakerism and gave the quakers the use of Swarthmore Hall for their meetings. ”

“ I partook of her kindly hospitality, was shown over her particularly cosy house, gardens, and hothouses, and meditated, on my return journey, upon many particulars I learnt for the first time as to the early history of Fox; realizing what a consensus there was between the experiences of all illuminati. I smiled once and again over the quaint title of one of Fox's books which my venerable friend had quoted to me—viz., "A Battle-door for Teachers and Professors to learn Plural and Singular. You to Many, and Thou to One ”

“ The old division of duties by which the southern secretary had the correspondence with the colonies and the western powers of Europe, and the northern secretary with the others, had been abolished on the formation of the Rockingham cabinet. All foreign affairs were entrusted to Fox. Lord Shelburne meddled in the negotiations for the peace at Paris. He also persuaded his colleagues to grant some rather scandalous pensions, and Fox’s acquiescence in this abuse after his recent agitation against Lord North’s waste did him injury. ”

“ A feeling of much bitterness had developed among the American Friends against their brethren in England, and especially against ‘George Fox and his papers of wholesome advice,’ and, hearing that Fox and some of his immediate followers were coming to America, Burneyeat set himself the task of allaying ill-feeling, and was so successful that when Fox and his companions landed they received a hearty welcome from the colonists, nor through the whole of their protracted stay does there appear to have been the slightest display of animosity. ”

“ Charles’s connection with those ladies might be vicious, but at a moment when that connection was upon the point of being finally and irrevocably dissolved, to concern himself about their future welfare and to recommend them to his brother with earnest tenderness was virtue. It is not for the interest of morality that the good and evil actions, even of bad men, should be confounded. His affection for the Duke of Gloucester and for the Duchess of Orleans seems to have been sincere and cordial. ”

“ James, Duke of Monmouth, was the eldest of the late king’s natural children. In the early parts of his life he held the first place in his father’s affections; and even in the height of Charles’s displeasure at his political conduct, attentive observers thought they could discern that the traces of paternal tenderness were by no means effaced. Appearing at court in the bloom of youth, with a beautiful figure and engaging manners, known to be the darling of the monarch, it is no wonder that he was early assailed by the arts of flattery ”

“ Obedience without reserve, an abhorrence of all resistance, as contrary to the tenets of their religion, are the principles which they professed in their addresses, their sermons, and their decrees at Oxford; and surely nothing short of such principles could make men esteem the latter years of Charles II., and the opening of the reign of his successor, an era of national happiness and exemplary government. ”

“ This last pretension came very ill from a statesman who in 1780 had advocated yearly elections. He lost ground daily before the steady good judgment and unblemished character of Pitt. When parliament was dissolved at the end of the session of 1784, the country showed its sentiments by unseating 180 of the followers of Fox and North. Immense harm was done to both by the publication of a book called The Beauties of Fox, North and Burke, a compilation of their abuse of one another in recent years. ”

“ In 1677 George Fox stayed and held religious meetings at Furly's house in Rotterdam, and Furly then accompanied Fox, Keith, and others through a great part of Holland and Germany, acting as an interpreter. ”

“ No measure was ever attended with more complete success. The most flattering addresses poured in from all parts of the kingdom; divine right, and indiscriminate obedience, were everywhere the favourite doctrines; and men seemed to vie with each other who should have the honour of the greatest share in the glorious work of slavery, by securing to the king, for the present, and after him to the duke, absolute and uncontrollable power. ”

“ Those, at least, who consider the royal prerogative as vested in the king, not for his sake but for that of his subjects, must consider the one of these questions as much above the other in dignity as the rights of the public are more valuable than those of an individual. In this view the prerogatives of the crown are, in substance and effect, the rights of the people; and these rights of the people were not to be sacrificed to the purpose of preserving the succession to the most favoured prince much less to one who, on account of his religious persuasion, was justly feared and suspected. ”