198 MILITARY AFFAIRS. [BOOK I. He was clever; and evi theless speculated upon with interest. dently resolved to devote his abilities to political life. He is represented as having been in those days serious and modest; and if this was true, he deserved the interest he excited. He had failed in the contest for Cambridge University, against Lord Henry Petty, on the coming in of the Grenville Ministry; and his failure was supposed to be mainly owing to his modest and conscientious diffidence in declaring himself on the Slave-trade question, by which he was imagined not to be an abolitionist, while he in fact was one. Young as he was, he was now on the eve of office. It is interesting to look back on this his first crossing of the threshold of the House, where his voice is now, in his old age, still heard as vigorous as ever. It was not long subdued by diffidence and modesty; and his ability was not of a kind to grow old, any more than to grow great and noble. Of all kinds of ability, ingenuity is perhaps the least likely to expand into genius, or to exhaust itself with years. While one after another of the rising statesmen of his youth has sunk under the weight of political care sunk into madness, suicide, induced disease, and premature death - Lord Palmerston remains the last, apparently as easy as he once was diffident, and far more gay and boyish, it would seem, than when, as 66 a lad," he took his seat in the great Council of the nation at Christmas, 1806. partment. The condition and conduct of military affairs, and the state Military de- of the finances, were the most prominent subjects of interest on the meeting of the new parliament. The differences of opinion about the character of the best military defence were as broad and deep as ever. Some leaders still believed that volunteering should be discouraged, and the army made a state machine, the military defence of the State being wholly separated from its political life; while others dreaded the extinction of political life in the process, and the crushing of popular liberties under the state machine of a separate military organization. These believed that if national institutions were rendered valuable, and if citizens were trained to value them, there could be little doubt or difficulty about their adequate defence; while nothing could be so fatal to the hope of national welfare and even of national existence, as the practice of deputing to an uninterested hireling force the preservation of what every man should feel personal solicitude in preserving. It was the implication of this principle in the opposite methods of military policy that gave the interest to the researches and debates of this winter. Very opposite stories were told at the time; but there was soon no doubt whatever that the new policy of enlisting for terms of years, and of improving in other respects the condition and prospects of the soldiery, was working well. A greater CHAP. IX.] EXPOSURE OF FRAUDS. 199 number of recruits, of a higher order, and at a lower bounty, was raised than under the old method; and desertion was diminishing, month by month. Results now began to appear from the inquiry into military administration ordered in Mr. Pitt's time. Abuses which might match with those in the navy were brought to light. Some friends of the Grenville ministry would have had them conciliate the King and the Duke of York by letting this subject drop; but the best and bravest of the cabinet would not consent to this, though they did not follow up the inquiry with all the spirit they had shown in Opposition. A magnificent army contractor, named Davison,1 a banker, and colonel of a regiment of volunteers, had been for some time living in prodigious style, buying estates, pictures, and wines, and giving dinners which the Prince of Wales and his brothers honored with their presence; and the poor soldiers had been all the while shivering with cold in their sordid barrack-rooms; their coals having gone to light Davison's fires, and their blankets to thicken his carpets. He was found to have pocketed 307. in every 1007. charged for coals, on the mere stated prices, besides having bought his coals in summer when they were cheap, and sold them in winter when they were dear. He was made to disgorge a large portion of his wealth, and to refund upwards of 18,000l. on his commission alone; and he was imprisoned in Newgate. The abuse charged against Lord Melville and his underling of using large sums (in this case amounting to millions) of the public money for intervals of time without interest was proved to have reached an enormous height in the military department; gross frauds of various kinds were exposed: and the exposure did some good; but it was extremely difficult to establish a better system. Men of family and of fashion, who did not know how to take care of themselves, and to maintain their station, otherwise than by holding offices which they turned over to deputies, were placed in positions of trust which should have been filled by men of business, and the mischiefs of such a system of appointment could not be undone or guarded against in a day. As for the actual force of the country, when all deduc- Force of the tions were made from Mr. Windham's calculations country. which the keen sight of party spirit could exhibit grounds for, there remained a vast disposable force. Fifty thousand men could at any time be furnished for any great continental expedition. Long lines of martello towers were still built along our coasts, though many people felt that the battle of Trafalgar had secured us from all danger of invasion, and though a patriot poet was teaching us to sing 1 Annual Register, 1807, p. 101. 200 FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES. "Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is on the mountain wave, [BOOK I. The idea of fortifying ourselves at home seems still to have been the prominent one; and the new ordnance grants were expended on such projects; but our means of aggression, or rather of defence on foreign soil, were on the increase; and the peace-ministry of Lord Grenville made a very creditable appearance in parliament at the beginning of 1807. Financial 1 It was understood that a grand new financial scheme was to be brought forward early in the session; 1 and as soon as scheme. the debate on the peace negotiation was finished, Lord Henry Petty explained what the scheme was. It was Lord Grenville's plan; and it only showed that he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer knew no more of finance than most other men in parliament. It had been thought before the Peace of Amiens, that taxation had been carried as far as it could go; and it did appear as if no more articles remained to be taxed, and that the only thing to be done was to increase the existing imposts. The sum paid into the Exchequer in 1801, as the entire produce of the taxes, was a little more than 34,000,000l.; while in 1806, it had been nearly 56,000,0007. As there must be some limit to the application of this method, the present ministers devised a new Sinking Fund, which they unaccountably fancied would work to the extinction of debt. The old sinking fund was nominally in operation; but, since 1792, the Commissioners of the Debt had been borrowing with one hand while paying with the othercreating new debt in order to extinguish the old. In a sort of imitation of this, the war expenditure beyond the amount of the taxes that is, about 11,000,000l. per annum was to be met by a system of borrowing, with scarcely any aid from taxation. The fallacy lay in that word "scarcely." As nothing could come out of nothing, this 11,000,000l. must come out of something; and the ministerial mistake was in supposing that that something might, by twisting and turning, be reduced to an amount exceedingly small. The plan was to raise the money by loan; 2 to set apart from it, with help from the war taxes, an amount equal to a tenth of it, of which half (or 5 per cent.) would pay interest and cost of management, while the other 5 per cent. would form a sinking fund which would, in fourteen years, pay off the principal. The amount drawn from the war taxes was, of course, taken from the revenue of the year, though it was called a mortgage on those taxes; and the call for it had to be met somehow. It was to be met by a supplementary loan; which again was to be 1 Hansard, viii. pp. 564-597. 2 Official Paper, Annual Register, 1807, p. 620. CHAP. IX.] ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. 201 extinguished by a sinking fund of 1 per cent. This 1 per cent., and the interest of the supplementary loan, were to be met somehow; and that somehow was to be by new taxes. The plan went out with its authors; and there is, therefore, no need to dwell on it further; but there were more able financiers than Lord Grenville and his young Chancellor of the Exchequer, who explained at the time that there would be waste, instead of economy,1 in the twistings and turnings of the plan; and that at the end of the fourteen years, the nation would have been some millions the worse for the money not having been raised in a direct manner by taxation. The payment of interest, and of postponed, which is always compound, interest; and the having finally to pay in a time of peace when the funds are high, money borrowed when the funds were low, would be ultimately so much additional burden to the nation. The consequences of the heavy taxation which had now gone on for many years were cruelly felt, and were visible, we are told,2 to the traveller passing along the roads and through the villages of our islands. Wages were nominally high, and still rising; but prices, though fluctuating, were on the whole rising in a greater proportion than wages. Pauperism was on the increase; and the burden of the poor-rates grew heavier at the same time with every other kind of taxation. It was obvious at a glance that the working classes were less well clothed, and more anxious and moody; their places of recreation were closed or deserted; and those who returned to any familiar place after an absence of a few years, found pale and grave faces by the wayside, and missed the old cheerfulness and mirth. There was little yet of the intolerable misery which was to come in a few years more; but the decline in the popular condition which is a necessary consequence of a protracted war was now distinctly recognized; and sinking funds were tending rather to sink the tax-payers than the debts of the country. In such a state of things, the Grenville ministry gained and deserved no credit as financiers. Lord Henry Petty was thoroughly in earnest in his advocacy of his scheme, and presented it very powerfully; but it would not bear examination beyond the walls of parliament. Abolition of trade. We have seen that Parliament stood pledged to abolish the Slave-trade at the earliest opportunity. It was now done, as far as Parliament could do it. On the 2d of the slaveJanuary, Lord Grenville brought in the promised Bill for the Abolition of the Slave-trade. The King's sons immediately exerted themselves to canvass against it. Lord Eldon pronounced it impracticable, because abolition of the African trade would bring after it a demand for abolition in the West Indies. 1 Hamilton's Inquiry into the National Debt. 2 Annual Register, 1807, p. 106. 202 THE KING'S SONS. 2 [BOOK I. All the old objections were renewed; and with the more urgency as the crisis drew near. The pledged zeal of the Prime Minister might be thought to settle the matter. But his Bill could not be considered safe while some members of his Cabinet were opposed to it; and we find Lord Sidmouth on this occasion proposing,1 not to cease stealing men and women, but to build churches for the stolen people, and teach them the Christian religion, as held by their ravishers; and to let them marry in the land of bondage, after having snatched them from their natural homes, in their own country. The "young Duke of Gloucester," as he was The Princes. then called by the veterans in the cause, saw the im pious folly of this trifling; and he told, simply and briefly, what he had seen of the trade and its consequences. His cousins, the Dukes of Clarence and Sussex,3 came forward as the spokesmen of their family on the question; and a miserable exhibition it was. Men's hearts might well fail them when they saw such an opening of the political life of the King's sons; when they saw how meagre was the intellect, and how sordid the sentiment, brought to bear on a question which could not but elicit the generosity of youth and the magnanimity of high station, if such generosity and magnanimity had been there. But whatever ardor there was, was on behalf of the traders and planters; and if there was indignation, it was at the idea that France might profit by our rectitude and humanity. These manifestations, and the sly and yet boastful activity of the Dukes of York and Cumberland in helping to overthrow the Administration, are the first scenes in the political life of the King's younger sons. What the position and conduct of the eldest were, we have seen. The best men perceived the least to hope for from the royal family. The sentiment of the country and of parliament was now, however, too strong for even royal upholders of the traffic in slaves. In the morning of the decisive day in the Lords, Mr. Wilberforce and Lord Grenville counted above seventy peers on whose votes they might surely reckon. The Minister's stately mind and manners relaxed into a mood positively genial; and he, for once, let men see that he could feel the glow of hope and the bliss of aspiration, like other men. His speeches towards the conclusion of this great controversy are as ardent as his friend Fox could well have made. He was not too sanguine. At five in the morning of the 6th of February, the decisive vote was taken, when the Bill was supported by a majority of 100 to 36.4 Lord St. Vincent, who held with his lost friend, Nelson, that Abolition of the Slave-trade was a "damnable and cursed doctrine," held only by hypocrites, entered his solemn and final protest against this measure of national ruin, 1 Hansard, viii. p. 668. 3 Ibid. viii. pp. 664, 683; iii. p. 235. 2 Ibid. p. 665. |