Thomas Grenville

“ His indomitable spirit rose up stronger and stronger under the load of public hatred. He fought out the battle obstinately to the end. On the last reading he had a sharp altercation with his brother-in-law, the last of their many sharp altercations. Pitt thundered in his loftiest tones against the man who had wished to dip the ermine of a British King in the blood of the British people. Grenville replied with his wonted intrepidity and asperity. ”

“ The members of the House of Commons can cough an orator down, or can walk away to dinner; and they were by no means sparing in the use of these privileges when Grenville was on his legs. But the poor young King had to endure all this eloquence with mournful civility. To the end of his life he continued to talk with horror of Grenville’s orations. ”

“ Grenville and Lord Malmesbury. Want of power, and want of will—fear, hesitation, and imbecility—were so conspicuous in the conduct of these Courts, as to destroy all confidence in their professions. The character drawn by Lord Malmesbury of the King of Prussia—which the reader will find confirmed in the subsequent communications of Mr. Grenville—shows how little reliance, under any circumstances, could be placed on His Majesty's co-operation.
MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE TO LORD GRENVILLE.
(Private.) ”

“ Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville, and Mr. Pepper Arden, afterwards Lord Alvanley.
MR. FOX TO MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE.
Dear Grenville,
I am exceedingly obliged to you for your kind letter; and indeed, if political transactions put one out of humour with many, they make one love the few who do act and think right so much better that it is some compensation. I understand a messenger is just going, by whom I send this letter; he will bring you others, from whence you will learn that your brother is going Lord-Lieutenant to Ireland. ”

“ Henry VIII. ‘If a man be not permitted to change his political opinions—when he has arrived at years of discretion—he must be born a Solomon.’—
W. F. Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, (vol. viii, p. 237) . The Grenvilles and their Influence on the Political Aspect of the Georgian Reigns.—The Public and Literary Life of the Right Honourable Thomas Grenville.—History of the Grenville Library.
It was the singular fortune of Thomas Grenville to belong to a family which has given almost half a score of ministers to England; to possess in himself large diplomatic ability ”

“ Grenville could see nothing but the bill. Pitt boasted that England was victorious at once in America, in India, and in Germany, the umpire of the Continent, the mistress of the sea. Grenville cast up the subsidies, sighed over the army extraordinaries, and groaned in spirit to think that the nation had borrowed eight millions in one year.
With a ministry thus divided it was not difficult for Bute to deal. Legge was the first who fell. He had given offence to the young King in the late reign, by refusing to support a creature of Bute at a Hampshire election. ”

“ While Pitt was thus absent from Parliament, Grenville proposed a measure destined to produce a great revolution, the effects of which will long be felt by the whole human race. We speak of the act for imposing stamp duties on the North American colonies. The plan was eminently characteristic of its author. Every feature of the parent was found in the child. A timid statesman would have shrunk from a step, of which Walpole, at a time when the colonies were far less powerful, had said: "He who shall propose it will be a much bolder man than I." But the nature of Grenville was insensible to fear. ”

“ Thomas Pitt came under Grenville's influence at the fiercest moment of this rancour, and seems to have been the only person on record who was fascinated by him. Thomas writes of him with affectionate enthusiasm long after his death, and in his life waged his wars with zeal. One of these led to a quarrel with Horace Walpole, arising out of the dismissal of Conway, which produced a lengthy correspondence, still extant. But to become the disciple of George Grenville it was necessary to abhor William Pitt. Thomas took the test without difficulty, and adhered to it conscientiously. ”

“ Such were the views of the Duke of Bedford and of the Earl of Hardwicke; but no member of the government held these opinions so strongly as George Grenville, the treasurer of the navy. George Grenville was brother-in-law of Pitt, and had always been reckoned one of Pitt’s personal and political friends. But it is difficult to conceive two men of talents and integrity more utterly unlike each other. Pitt, as his sister often said, knew nothing accurately except Spenser’s Fairy Queen. He had never applied himself steadily to any branch of knowledge. ”

“ On the 30th, the Dutch fleet surrendered, and hoisted the Orange flag. In order, probably, to give more weight and effect to a mission which had for its object the restoration of the Stadtholder, it was proposed that Lord Grenville should undertake an embassy to Holland, and that Mr. Thomas Grenville (who had [Pg 442] in the interim returned home) should proceed to St. Petersburg.
LORD GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Dropmore, Sept. ”

“ In 1749 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Wyndham, by whom he had a large family. His son, the second Earl Temple, was created marquess, and his grandson duke, of Buckingham. Another son was William, afterwards Lord 581 Grenville. Another, Thomas Grenville (1755-1846) , who was, with one interval, a member of parliament from 1780 to 1818, and for a few months during 1806 and 1807 president of the board of control and first lord of the admiralty, is perhaps more famous as a book-collector than as a statesman; he bequeathed his large and valuable library to the British Museum. ”

“ Not only his friends, however, but Grenville, and Grenville's adherents, answered, with one voice, that the question was not personal, that a great constitutional principle was at stake, and that they would not take office while a man eminently qualified to render service to the commonwealth was placed under a ban merely because he was disliked at Court. All that was left to Pitt was to construct a government out of the wreck of Addington's feeble administration. ”

“ The subject of the latter, which was addressed to Lord Wycombe, was the excesses of the military in Ireland.
[245] Lord Minto mentions him in Paris, in a letter dated 1793. ‘Fish Crawfurd, with whom Madame du Deffand, being blind, was in love, was of the party the other day’ (Life and Letters of Sir G. Elliot) .
[246] The Right Hon. Thomas Grenville (1755–1846) , second son of George Grenville and brother of Lord Grenville. He was sent on an embassy to Berlin in order to persuade the King to join England against the French. ”

“ Charles Townshend was asked what he thought of the new administration. "It is," said he, "mere lutestring; pretty summer wear. It will never do for the winter."
At this conjuncture Lord Rockingham had the wisdom to discern the value, and secure the aid, of an ally, who, to eloquence surpassing the eloquence of Pitt, and to industry which shamed the industry of Grenville, united an amplitude of comprehension to which neither Pitt nor [Pg 656] Grenville could lay claim. A young Irishman had, some time before, come over to push his fortune in London. He had written much for the booksellers ”

“ Conway’s or my own sentiments, Grenville persisted in the interview. I went accordingly to Mr. Thomas Pitt’s. It happened to be the evening of the riot on burning the North Briton. Grenville arrived in the most ridiculous and extraordinary disorder I ever saw. He could scarce articulate for passion. One would have thought the City had been taken by storm and the guards cut to pieces. Yet this was not a panic. It was rage to see authority set at nought while he was minister. His subsequent conduct gave evidence that this was his sensation: no man ever bore power with more pride. ”

“ It was probable that Pitt, the great Whig connection, and the multitude, would all be on the same side. The favourite had professed to hold in abhorrence those means by which preceding ministers had kept the House of Commons in good humour. He now began to think that he had been too scrupulous. His Utopian visions were at an end. It was necessary, not only to bribe, but to bribe more shamelessly and flagitiously than his predecessors, in order to make up for lost time. A majority must be secured, no matter by what means. Could Grenville do this? ”

“ All power was from the people; but to the Parliament the whole power of the people had been delegated. No Oxonian divine had ever, even in the years which immediately followed the Restoration, demanded for the King so abject, so unreasoning a homage, as Grenville, on what he considered as the purest Whig principles, demanded for the Parliament. As he wished to see the Parliament despotic over the nation, so he wished to see it also despotic over the Court. In his view the Prime Minister, possessed of the confidence of the House of Commons, ought to be mayor of the Palace. ”

“ On the back of Sheridan's own copy of this Answer, I find, written by him, the following words "Grenville's and Grey's proposed Answer from the Prince to the Address of the two Houses,—very flimsy, and attempting to cover Grenville's conduct and consistency in supporting the present Restrictions at the expense of the Prince." ”

“ Every thing had gone against him. That party which he clearly preferred to every other, the 30party of George Grenville, had been scattered by the death of its chief; and Lord Suffolk had led the greater part of it over to the ministerial benches. The ferment produced by the Middlesex election had gone down. Every faction must have been alike an object of aversion to Junius. His opinions on domestic affairs separated him from the ministry; his opinions on colonial affairs from the opposition. ”

“ The language of Grenville, on the other hand, was such as Strafford might have used at the council table of Charles the First, when news came of the resistance to the liturgy at Edinburgh. The colonists were traitors; those who excused them were little better. ”

“ In February 1782 Grenville was returned to parliament as member for the borough of Buckingham, and in the following September he became secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, who at this time was his brother, Earl Temple, afterwards marquess of Buckingham. He left office in June 1783, but in the following December he became paymaster-general of the forces under his cousin, William Pitt, and in 1786 vice-president of the committee of trade. ”

“ As member of Parliament, first for Cornwall, then for Launceston, Grenville supported Sir John Eliot and the opposition, and his intimacy with Eliot was life-long. In 1639, however, he appears as a royalist going to the Scottish War in the train of Charles I. The reasons of this change of front are unknown, but Grenville’s honour was above suspicion, and he must have entirely convinced himself that he was doing right. At any rate he was a very valuable recruit to the royalist cause, being “the most generally loved man in Cornwall.” ”

“ No man would have been quicker to lay down such a principle than Grenville, but it is clear that on this occasion he did not observe it, and to maintain that he did so would be to mistake the nature of the man. ”

“ In one important qualification Grenville himself acknowledged his deficiency. ‘I am not competent,’ he says in a letter to his brother, ‘to the management of men. I never was so naturally, and toil and anxiety more and more unfit me for it’ (The Court and Cabinets of George III, iv. 133) . Though not a great orator, Grenville was a successful speaker in the House of Lords, where his weighty and sonorous speeches, though sometimes long and tedious, were listened to with attention. ”

“ The king made various attempts to induce Pitt to come to his rescue by forming a ministry, but without success, and at last had recourse to the marquis of Rockingham, on whose agreeing to accept office Grenville was dismissed July 1765. He never again held office, and died on the 13th of November 1770. ”

“ Grenville's reasons for abandoning the opposition are obscure. In 1639, when the king raised an army against the Scots, he manifested the greatest alacrity in his cause. ‘I go with joy and comfort,’ he wrote, ‘to venture a life in as good a cause and with as good company as ever Englishman did ; and I do take God to witness, if I were to choose a death it should be no other but this’ (Thurloe State Papers, i. 2 ; cf. Nugent, Life of Hampden, ii. 193) . In the Long parliament Grenville again represented the county of Cornwall, but took no part in its debates. ”

“ He understood well the rights of his own country and those of the crown. He was eminently prepared to discover approaching danger and sound a timely alarm. He was fully competent to probe the intrigues and venality of designing men although the broad Atlantic rolled between him and them.
Mr. Grenville was the master spirit of the British ministry. He determined to put in practice his long cherished theory of taxing the American Colonies. The alarm was soon spread from the north to the south. Appeals for redress, petitions and remonstrances, numerously signed, were forwarded to Parliament. ”

“ But he was soon released; he went to France and Italy, and after visiting England in disguise passed some time in Holland. He was excepted by parliament from pardon in 1648, and after the king’s execution he was with Charles II. in France and elsewhere until some unfounded accusation which he brought against Edward Hyde, afterwards earl of Clarendon, led to his removal from court. He died in 1658, and was buried at Ghent. In 1644, when Grenville deserted the parliamentary party, a proclamation was put out against him ”