CHAP. VIII.] WILBERFORCE AND PITT. 183 some deep political scheme, some trap, as they said, concealed under the pretence of England's humanity towards the negroes; and yet, while exciting this kind of speculation abroad, Mr. Pitt was disappointing the abolitionists at home. Habits of delay grew upon him as his health and spirits failed; and he omitted some acts, and lingered over some engagements, on behalf of the negroes, so as to justify doubts about his entire sincerity in the matter. On the other hand, no man was less able Wilberforce. than Wilberforce to understand business on a large scale, or comprehend how a Prime Minister must arrange his objects, and regulate his transactions. Wilberforce's own house was a chaos of disorder, and his days were broken up into snatches of business, piety, and social intercourse, which would have constituted a useless life but for the sublime purpose of humanity which bound it together. In the midst of this disorder, Wilberforce stood struck with admiration, at times, of his friend Pitt's sagacity, practical ability, and power of achievement; and yet, he could never let him alone about the one piece of business in which they were concerned together. It was probably necessary that Pitt should be reminded occasionally kept up to his professions and promises: but it was not necessary or advantageous that he should be teased, as Wilberforce undoubtedly teased him; and the cause may have suffered by it. Pitt was not the man to bear lecturing and teasing, and being dictated to; or if, from his own sweet temper and Wilberforce's goodness, he bore it, he could not like it, or be the better disposed by it. Wilberforce saw little or nothing beyond the cause to which he had devoted his life: and in the most innocent way, he would endanger the government, and harass the Minister, and push aside all business but his own, in a way which can be justified only in regard to questions of the most urgent exigency; and then, if controlled by petition or remonstrance which his affectionate heart and anxious conscience could not resist, he would mourn over the lack of principle and zeal in the Minister who had all the affairs of empire on his hands. It is clear that Pitt either promised too much or did too little: but it may be remembered that he was under a gentle compulsion from without which was out of all proportion to the zeal within; and inconsistency in profession and action was the natural, however mischievous, consequence. When the Grenville and Fox Ministry came in, it was one of the questions spread out before their eyes, on which they, as individuals, though not as a cabinet, were to take their side at the outset. The royal family were opposed to the aboltionists; and so was Mr. Windham; and some other members of the Cabinet were indifferent, or doubtful, or adverse: but Lords Grenville, 184 PROHIBITION NOT ABOLITION. [BOOK I. Spencer, and Henry Petty, were broadly favorable to the abolition of the slave-trade. As for Mr. Fox, he was "quite rampant and playful," says Wilberforce,1 “ as he was twenty-two years ago, when not under any awe of his opponents." He was under Colonial slavetrade pro no awe which prevented his speaking out; and in private he obtained the Prince's "word of honor not to stir adversely." There was little doubt about success in the Commons; and little hope from the Lords; but, to the surprise of the Premier, he found his strength there so great that he transcended in his speech the bounds of his measure, to prepare the way for a broader proposition afterwards. The measure now under their Lordships' notice was a Bill to prohibit hibited. the exportation of slaves from the British colonies, after the 1st of January, 1807; and its object was to prevent the employment of British capital and shipping in the foreign slavetrade. This Bill passed the Lords 2 so triumphantly that the Ministers at once determined to proceed. It was too late in the session to procure the passage of a Bill to prohibit the slavetrade altogether; but, as we have seen, Mr. Fox's condemnatory resolution was passed, almost by acclamation; and by it the House stood pledged to procure the abolition of the traffic, as soon as possible. If it should please Heaven, the abolitionists said, that Mr. Fox should live, and Lord Grenville rule for another year, the thing would be done. Mr. Fox did not live, nor Lord Grenville rule, another year; but the question was too far advanced ever to go back, or be lost sight of. In order to prevent such pushing of the trade before the next 1st of January as the fixing of that date would naturally occasion, a Bill was rapidly passed, before the end of the session, to prevent the employment of any fresh ships in the trade. Lord Sidmouth was one of the members of the Cabinet who could not, on this question, act with the leaders. He did not talk paradox or inhumanity, like Mr. Windham; but he could no more obtain a hearing from the abolitionists than if he had. Mr. Fox treated him with candor.4 "I see what you mean," he said. "You think that abolition is not abolition; and there is a good deal of truth in that." Lord Sidmouth's view was that, while much might be done for humanity, by regulation, on the coast of Africa, in the middle passage, and in the West Indies, it was rash beyond measure to prohibit the trade altogether; as the smuggling which must ensue would occasion more misery to the negroes than their race were at present undergoing. Twenty years after, Lord Sidmouth was able to point to the fulfilment of this prediction. By that time it was becoming 5 2 Hansard, vii. p. 236. 1 Life, iii. p. 259. 3 Ibid. p. 1145. 5 Ibid. p. 430. CHAP. VIII.] ACQUITTAL OF LORD MELVILLE. 185 known that the slave-trade had enormously increased, in consequence of the efforts to put it down; and that the miseries of the negroes had been fearfully aggravated. But, at the date of our history, no man, on any side of the question, seems to have seen what time and experience are now clearly revealing, that the only way to abolish the trade in slaves is to abolish slavery. While negro slavery exists, negroes will be obtained; and with the more desperation and cruelty, the more the traffic is interfered with by law. When, a few years later, the light broke in upon the abolitionists that this should have been their method and aim, they were humbled at this new instance of human blindness, and vexed that they had not asked for the whole at once, when they might as easily have obtained it as the part which they had gained; but it was yet some time before the bitter conviction reached their souls that their efforts of so many years had, at present, served only to aggravate the misery which they thought to annihilate. There is no need to regard their efforts as lost, and their noble energy as wasted. Their immediate object failed; as is the case, oftener than not, with express aims, while various unforeseen collateral benefits arise. They aggravated the slave-trade; but they led on mankind to the abolition of slavery itself; and placed before the eyes of the world a spectacle of a policy of morality which cannot but have an incalculable influence on the advancement of political and social morals wherever states and society exist. Mr. Fox said a few words, on occasion of the last motion he ever made in parliament, when moving his resolution against the Slave-trade, which show, in a way most touching to survivors, what was his view of the moral and political importance of the movement.1 "So fully am I impressed," he said, "with the vast importance and necessity of attaining what will be the object of my motion this day, that if, during the almost forty years that I have now had the honor of a seat in parliament, I had been so fortunate as to accomplish that, and that only, I should think I had done enough, and could retire from public life with comfort, and conscious satisfaction that I had done my duty.” con Acquittal Melville. Lord Melville's business was concluded this summer cluded so far as that a considerable majority of the Peers acquitted him under the ten heads of the im- of Lord peachment. The trial began in Westminster Hall on the 29th of April, and the votes were taken on the 12th of June, after sixteen days of trial. Among those who judged him, in and out of Westminster Hall, there were many who pitied his position — many who thought him an ill-used man many who thought him punished enough by exposure and suspense - and 2 Annual Register, 1806, p. 113. 1 Hansard, vii. p. 580. 2 186 of RESULTS OF THE MELVILLE AFFAIR. [BOOK I. not a few who, out of consideration to his family, his friends, and his peers, were glad that he should "get off." But it was felt at the time, and has been felt since, impossible that many, if any, should believe him actually innocent of the charges brought against him. That he was declared innocent by considerable majorities tended to bring into contempt and disrepute the House of Lords and trial by impeachment; and the tampering with the truth - the decision against evidence for unassigned reasons was gravely injurious to the morality of the time, and to the reputation of statesmanship in England. It was this which caused the grief of good men at the event of the impeachment, and not any mortification at the escape of the culprit. If such men had been capable of vindictiveness, they might have been satisfied; for Lord Melville was abundantly punished. He was not a man very sensitive honor; and he did not therefore suffer as most men of rank and education would have done in such a position. He was, as his friends said, "tough," in mind as in body; and he no more drooped, or secluded himself, or seemed aware of disgrace, than he grew thin, or gray, or feeble; but still he suffered. He was pushed aside from the life of activity and official excitement which he dearly loved; he was dethroned from his supremacy in Scotland, by his loss of patronage and personal honor; he had become a subject for taunts which he could not repel, nor, in his inmost heart, slight; and for ingratitude from some who were now too much scandalized to remember the benefits they had received from him when he was worshipped as a great man; and he lived to receive a long letter from Mr. Perceval, explaining that the reason why he could not ask Lord Melville to join his Ministry, where his talents would have been most acceptable, was, that such an accession would damage its character. He lived on, amidst wounded pride and reduction of the consequence he had loved so well-lived on, in apparent cheerfulness and unquestionable good-humor- even shaking hands heartily with Wilberforce, when, some years after, they met, face to face, in the narrow passage which leads from the Horse Guards to the Treasury; but, in spite of his toughness, he must have suf fered deeply; or, if he did not, his immunity was not that which would have been preferred to suffering by a highly honorable man. That he had been the means of lowering, throughout the world, the character of English statesmanship, would have poisoned the peace of such a man. The one good result which followed from the whole affair was the warning to official men (not to be honest, for it is hoped that such warning is never needed but) to be minutely accurate, to have no unauthorized secrets about the affairs of their office and to choose their underlings carefully, and superintend them dili CHAP. VIII.] DEATH OF MR. FOX. 187 gently. No such "inadvertency" as Lord Melville's has since occurred. 1 ness. On the 26th of July, Lord Sidmouth told his brother that Mr. Fox's situation was quite hopeless, though he Mr. Fox's illmight live some time. He called on the sick man, two days after, and found him cheerful-reading Virgil, goodhumored and friendly - his voice clear, his mind bright, but his aspect that of fatal disease. In two days more,2 Lord Ellenborough was writing to Lord Sidmouth of this illness being "a calamity of enormous magnitude;" and of the strong probability that the Cabinet must break up, through disunion among its members, if Fox should die. He mentions Lord Howick as having agreeably surprised him by his moderation in politics, and as being, from his administration of naval affairs, of inestimable importance to the government. In the middle of August, some cheering intelligence came from abroad, which raised the spirits of the Cabinet, and animated its weaker members to the hope that, by earnest striving and mutual forbearance, they might get on, when the life and soul of their body should have been taken away. On the 12th of September died Lord Thurlow the Death of Lord surly lawyer, who was hardly ever known to admire Thurlow. any one but Fox; and of whom Fox said that he wondered whether anybody was ever so wise as Lord Thurlow looked. The two men were leaving life together the one, honored by nobody, and disliked universally; the other, less honored perhaps than beloved; but beloved as few men are, even of those who live in quieter regions than those of politicalstrife. Fox died the next day, September 13th. Canning was Death of among those who had heard - what every one was in- Mr. Fox. quiring for the circumstances of his last days. He had wished to get home to St. Anne's Hill, where he thought he could breathe more easily. The physicians considered the journey impossible. The Duke of Devonshire recommended a removal to his villa at Chiswick, as a first stage. He could get no further, and died in a few days. If Canning could have foreseen how another statesman would, in an after-time, break down under an opposition like that which he had inflicted on Fox this summer, and would move to the same house for air and repose, and die in the same chamber, the prevision would have softened and solemnized his soul at once, and brought him to instant repentance for the most mischievous and petulant passage of his life. "Little did I think," 3 said the King to Lord Sidmouth, "that I should ever live to regret Mr. Fox's death." If he felt so, what must have been the grief of those who had long known and loved him, and who had expected for him now a few years of crowning 1 Life of Lord Sidmouth, ii. p. 431. 2 Ibid. p. 432. 3 Ibid. p. 435. |