XXII. 1787. granted, they might acquire a dangerous ascen- BOOK dency in corporations; and an exclusive corporation interest in the hands of the dissenters was a very different thing from the liberty of sitting in that house on the free choice of the general mass of electors. It was now indeed asserted that they had no such object in contemplation. But it was necessary to take into the account the real springs by which human affairs were regulated, and not to depend upon the security of words in contradistinction to the tenor and tendency of actions. There were persons amongst the dissenters who would not admit any ecclesiastical establishment to be necessary. Against such persons it became the legislature to be upon their guard. He had indeed an high opinion of the merits of dissenters; but they already enjoyed every mental privilege, every freedom to serve GoD according to their consciences, in the most ample degree." The motion of Mr. Beaufoy was powerfully supported by Mr. Fox, who magnanimously declared, "that, whatever personal reason he might have to complain of the recent conduct of the dissenters, he would never lose sight of the great principles of civil and religious liberty, on which the present application to the house was founded. He had considered himself as honored in acting with them on many former occasions, and he acknowledged the general tenor of their political conduct BOOK to be in the highest degree meritorious. In his XXII. 1787. opinion, it was very unwise in any case to take religion for a test in politics; and he averred, that the maxims advanced by Mr. Pitt were such, that though he declined persecution in words, he admitted the whole extent of it in principle." Upon a division, after a long debate, the numbers appeared, for the motion 100, against it 178. This was by no means, considering the opposition of the minister to the motion, a discouraging division on the first effort. But the dissenters were in the last degree astonished and chagrined at the part taken by Mr. Pitt in this debate, it being almost universally understood by them that the application would at least not be discountenanced by him. And the expressions used by him in the previous conferences held with the leading dissenters, though far from amounting to a promise of support, were considered as certain indications of a favorable disposition. Doubtless Mr. Pitt found, in the progress of the business, obstacles in the way of the repeal which he had not at first apprehended; and he flattered himself that his public professions of regard and esteem for the dissenters would so far sooth and conciliate their minds as to reconcile them to the disappointment they sustained. But the most refined address, and the greatest ability in the management of business, may easily be over-rated. It was not possible for XXII. 1787. Mr. Pitt, on this grand question, to stand well at BOOK once with the court and with the dissenters. The dissenters clearly perceived the difference between the situation of Mr. Pitt and that of his predecessor sir Robert Walpole, when the last application for a repeal of the Test was made on their part above fifty years before. That wise minister, though his judgment was decidedly in favor of the repeal abstractedly considered, was justly apprehensive of clamors which would have been unquestionably raised at that turbulent period against a measure, as the consequence of which the weak, the bigoted, and the factious, would have joined in vociferating that the CHURCH was in DANGER. It was an experiment at that time not worth the risk; and the minister chose the least of the two evils, condescending himself to talk absurdly, in order to prevent others from acting mischievously. But that senseless and terrific clamor had long since become a mere brutum fulmen. The application of the dissenters in the present instance was in unison with the general sense of the public and of the parliament, or at least not inconsistent with it; and a slight degree of countenance only from the court would have sufficed to ensure the success of the motion: nor, on the other hand, was the opposition of the court so openly and decidedly hostile as to preclude the idea of future attempts.* The opposition of Mr. Pitt to the repeal of the Test Laws was the first grand deviation in his conduct from the funda BOOK XXII. 1787. The attention of the house and of the nation rent nature. was soon transferred to a subject of a very diffeWhen the prince of Wales attained tion for the the age of majority, A. D. 1783, the sum of fifty Applica payment of of Wales's debts. the prince thousand pounds per annum only was allotted to him out of the civil-list revenue to defray the entire expence of his establishment. Considering the numerous salaries payable to the officers of his household, this sum was manifestly inadequate to the just support of his rank and situation in life; and the then ministers, Mr. Fox and lord North, mental principles of Whiggism. Sir Robert Walpole, wisely declining to enter into the merits of those odious laws, rested his opposition as minister wholly upon the impolicy of agitating in times so contentious so contentious a question ;-in his private judgment he was well known to be decidedly hostile to them. But Mr. Pitt's arguments were founded on the most narrow conceptions of national policy, and to him the excellent and applicable reasonings recorded in the immortal writings of the great Roman historian must have appeared, if he ever made them the subject of his reflection, false or futile. "Cœtum et seditiones appellavit quod vos rogassent ut legem in se latam temporibus duris in pace et florente ac beata republica abrogaretis. VERBA MAGNA quæ rei augendæ causa, conquirantur et hæc et alia esse scio.-Ego enim quemadmodum ex his legibus quæ non in tempus aliquod, sed perpetuæ utilitatis causa in æternum latæ sunt, nullam abrogari debere fateor, nisi quam aut usus coarguit, aut status aliquis reipublicæ inutilem fecit: sic quas tempora aliqua desiderarunt leges mortales, ita ut dicam et temporibus ipsis mutabiles esse video." LIV. lib. xxxiv. § 5, 6. XXII. 1787. strongly insisted upon the necessity of fixing the BOOK revenue of the prince at one hundred thousand pounds per annum, which the late king had enjoyed as prince of Wales at a period when the civil list produced two hundred thousand pounds per annum less than at present. To this the sovereign positively objected; and the prince, in order to prevent disagreeable consequences, gene. rously declared, that he chose to depend upon the spontaneous bounty of the king. The obvious result of this miserable œconomy was, that the prince, in the four years which were now elapsed, had contracted debts to a large amount,—his negligence as to pecuniary concerns being perhaps increased by the consciousness of the extreme difficulty and apparent impossibility of contracting his expences within the narrow limits of his inThe public, not sufficiently adverting to these circumstances, censured the prince with a too rigid severity for the heedlessness and prodigality of his conduct. The general prejudice was much heightened by the habitual and confidential intercourse maintained by the prince with the great leaders of the late unpopular administration. It was also too notorious to admit of disguise or palliation, that the prince was exempt from none of those youthful indiscretions and excesses by which men of high rank in early life are for the most part so unhappily characterized. come. |