Routledge Library of British Political History

Volume 1: Labour and Radical Politics 1762-1937

S. Maccoby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781136449123
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

This is volume 1 of the set ^English Radicalism (1935-1961). Reissuing the epic undertaking of Dr S. Maccoby, these volumes cover the story of English Radicalism from its origins right through to its questionable end. By Combining new sources with the old and often long forgotten, the volumes provide an impressive history of radicalism and shed light on the course of English political development. The six volumes are arranged chronologically from 1762 through to the perceived end of British Radicalism in the mid-twentieth century.

CHAPTER VIII

FALKLAND ISLANDS, PRESS, AND “PATRIOT MAGISTRATES”, 1770–1

“The journey of the Princess Dowager to Germany is indeed an extraordinary circumstance…. It is much canvassed and sifted, and yet perhaps she was only in search of a little repose from the torrents of abuse that have been poured upon her for some years. Yesterday they publicly sung about the streets a ballad, the burthen of which was, the cow has left her calf. With all this we are grown very quiet, and Lord North’s behaviour is so sensible and moderate that he offends nobody.”

Horace Walpole, June 15, 1770.

“Will you descend so low, will you so shamefully betray the King’s Honour, as to make it matter of negotiation whether his Majesty’s possessions shall be restored to him or not? The Ministry … have taken pains to possess the public with an opinion, that the Spanish Court have constantly disavowed the proceedings of their Governor, than which there never was a more ABSOLUTE, A MORE PALPABLE FALSEHOOD. When the first communication was made by the Court of Madrid, of their being apprised of the taking of the Falkland Islands, was it accompanied with an offer of restitution instant, of immediate satisfaction, and the punishment of the Spanish governor. If it was not, they have adopted the act as their own….

“After what I have said, it will probably be given out, that I am for hurrying the nation at all events into a war with Spain. But I disclaim such counsel. Let us have peace, but let it be honourable, let it be secure. A patched up peace will not do. It will not satisfy the nation, though it may be approved of by P—I——t. I am as tender of the effusion of human blood, as the noble Lord who dwelt so long upon the miseries of war. If the bloody politics of some noble Lords had been followed; England, and every quarter of his Majesty’s dominions would have been glutted with blood—the blood of our own countrymen.

“When one considers who are the men by whom a war, in the outset, must be conducted, who but must wish for peace? The strength and preparations of the House of Bourbon are known; the defenceless unprepared condition of this country is notorious….”

From Lord Ch——m’s memorable Speech on a late Motion (made November 22,1770).

“His Majesty went to the House Wednesday, and prorogued the Parliament. We were in the Park when he returned, and as there was no hired mob, people had an opportunity of showing their own sentiments, and he passed ’midst the acclamations of a great concourse of people. In the evening a mob was hired, which attacked Lord North’s house, and also Sir Fletcher Norton’s and broke all their windows; no justice of peace or constable to be found. The horse-guards were ready saddled, in case they were wanted; probably the mob heard of it, so they went off without pulling down Lord North’s house, which some think was intended. The Lord Mayor and Oliver were released, the City patriots illuminated; but we were quiet here, without exposing ourselves by putting up candles.”

An anti-patriot account of May 8, 1771, sent to James Harris, Jr., M.P.

THE Falkland Islands affair, which was to awake new hope in the Opposition, assumed a steadily increasing place in public attention from June 6, 1770, when the first, hardly-credited reports appeared,¹ until the furious Parliamentary exchanges marking the Session of November 13, 1770 to May 8, 1771. It was, of course, only gradually, as increasing information seemed to confirm the first accounts of Spanish aggression and of Bourbon readiness to attempt, while Britain was entangled in American disputes, a national “humiliation” even profounder than that on Corsica, that the Opposition made its main battleground of the Falkland Isles. In June and July 1770 “patriot” feeling was concentrated on such things nearer home as Beckford’s death and statue, and his successful replacement, as Lord Mayor, by the now amenable Trecothick, and as City member, by Richard Oliver, Treasurer of the Bill of Rights Society.² In August, again, such matters as the Rt. Hon. George Onslow’s renewed attempt to break Horne by lawsuit,³ Junius’s assault on Lord North,⁴ and the Yorkshire preparations to call a County Meeting in condemnation of Ministers, were the leading political topics.⁵ From September, however, the tension with Spain began gradually to outstrip other subjects in the public mind as the newspapers filled with the results of the effort to enlist or press sufficient sailors for a naval armament, intended by Government to display to the Spaniards and their French allies the dangers of delaying evacuation of the Falklands, and apology for having encroached there.¹ When, on October 10th, one of the two Opposition clubs ruling Westminster resolved on giving a lead to the country by staging a Westminster Electors’ meeting on October 31st, a fortnight before the reassembly of Parliament, the cause alleged was not now merely “the invasion of the sacred rights and liberties of the people at home” but also “the attack of our territories abroad”, an attack ascribed presumably to the Government’s failings.²

Yet while Lord North’s Government was busy with naval preparations, the “patriots”, not yet capable of raising the cry against “capitulation to the House of Bourbon” which later Anglo-Spanish negotiations brought, found their principal emergency-opportunities, in adding opposition to press-gang abuses to their other efforts for “liberty”. On October 26th, for example, Wilkes, officiating as sitting Alderman at Guildhall, ordered the discharge of a barber impressed under an Admiralty warrant,³ and early in December Brass Crosby, the new Lord Mayor, announced that he would no longer authorise press-gang activities within his jurisdiction by backing Admiralty warrants.⁴ There had been a number of scandalous press-gang scenes that had led to great criticism of Lord Mayor Trecothick’s more compliant attitude,⁵ and the City, which had done its best to stimulate voluntary naval recruiting by leading the municipalities in offering to naval volunteers bounties additional to those of the Government,⁶felt that it needed not to fear the imputation of lack, of patriotism.

Meanwhile a characteristic Wilkes manifestation, ostensibly in the name of the electors of Westminster, had been staged on October 31st in the hope of influencing members of Parliament, due to reassemble on November 13th. The accounts contain some hints that the Opposition politicians, looking principally to the streets, were already watchful of Wilkes, whose attitude towards the finances of the Bill of Rights Society left something to be desired. Here is a characteristic account which shows what “patriotism” was then busy with:¹

This morning (October 31st), about ten, a prodigious number of people crowded into Westminster hall, which continued to fill till noon, when Mr. Wilkes came into the hall, attended by Mr. Sawbridge, and having received several huzzas, he ascended the stairs, and after informing the company of the intent of their present meeting, he began to read a paper of instructions to their members, the purport of which was, That as petitions, addresses, and remonstrance to the throne, for a redress of grievances hitherto unprecedented, had been of late despised, and by the advice of evil counsellors, dismissed from the throne; therefore, that their representatives be instructed to move for an impeachment of Henry North, commonly called Lord North, as not only the contriver and schemer, but even the carrier into execution of these cruel and unconstitutional machinations.

Mr. Sawbridge opposed the instructions, for this reason, “That Lord North, having places and pensions at his disposal, was at the head of a set of people, against whom the nation had evident reason to complain; that in the house of Lords he had the Bishops and the Scots peers; and all the placemen in the house of Commons on his side; that if his conduct were brought into question in either or both houses, he would be acquitted, and they precluded from any complaint hereafter.” He therefore moved for a remonstrance, and the question being put, it was carried in the affirmative. A committee went out to draw it up, and returned with it in half an hour, the heads of which were—

1. That a bill be brought in and passed for establishing triennial parliaments.

2. That his M——y would remove from his presence and councils all his ministers and secretaries of state, particularly Lord M[ansfield] and not admit a Scotsman into the administration.

3. That a law be made that the electors of Great Britain be empowered to chuse any representatives they think proper, without regard to any sentence whatsoever.

4. That no general warrants be ever issued, even in case of manning a fleet, or recruiting the army.

5. That a law be made for appealing to a superior court….

When Ministers composed the most vigorous King’s Speech the nation had heard for years and their master read it at Parliament’s re-opening on November 13th, it can hardly be pretended that it was because there was reason to fear the Parliamentary results of the Westminster demonstration of October 31st or of previous Opposition display in Yorkshire during September. From the Court’s point of view, indeed, both events had allowed encouraging signs of impatience with mere vulgar clap-trap to be perceived among the Opposition¹ so that Junius’s attack on Lord North, dated August 22nd, and his onslaught on the very unpopular Mansfield, dated November 14th, were possibly graver Governmental pre-occupations. And in view of developments soon after Parliament commenced business, it may well be that the vigorous language on the conduct of Spain used in the King’s Speech,² and the anxiety to put as good a face as possible on American affairs,³ had some relation to notions of forestalling criticism from Lord Chatham. Chatham, in fact, opened the Session as Ministers’ most dangerous and persistent foe not merely on the now rather threadbare topic of the Middlesex election or the newer one of Lord Mansfield’s conduct of Press trials, but on the really heady theme of England’s abasement by the House of Bourbon. Thus, on November 22nd, when the Duke of Richmond moved for the production of papers relative to the Falkland Islands dispute and Ministers declined to consider such a course at a delicate stage of critical negotiations, Chatham delivered himself of an anti-Ministerial philippic in his best style, a philippic widely reproduced and read as Lord C——m’s memorable Speech on a late Motion. Its effects seem to have helped the Government as little as Camden’s criticism of Mansfield’s Press trial methods, made on a Chatham motion of December 5th,¹ or the violence shown on December 10th by the badgered Majority in both Houses who found a Commons debate on December 9th, again in virtual arraignment of Mansfield, succeeded next day in the Lords by Opposition charges alleging the defencelessness of Gibraltar.² On December 11th Ministers had a particularly bad day in the Commons, where landed members resented the proposal to raise the Land-Tax to 4s. in the pound before war was declared, and the Minority continued to declaim upon danger to Gibraltar and Jamaica.³ And over Ministers’ Christmas Recess hung the black shadow of certain war with Spain and France unless Madrid consented to save the British Government’s face. Even if peace were preserved, the prospect was merely that Spain’s grudging concessions would still leave Government exposed to Opposition taunts of cowardice and Opposition complaints of millions thrown away for a worthless and dishonourable result.

Thanks to war-hesitations in France, where the Duke of Choiseul’s fall proved decisive, the Spanish Ministers thought it prudent to allow their London Ambassador to sign the really advantageous terms procurable there on January 22, 1771, the very day Parliament reassembled.⁴ But the fact that Spain, after seizing the Falklands and causing England huge expenses in war-preparations, got off without reparations and actually entitled, after evacuation and British re-occupation, to renew legal claims upon the Islands, seemed bound to help the Opposition mightily. The Government might have strengthened itself by finding place for the Grenville connection, now bereft of its leader and thoroughly tired of “patriot” company,¹ and for purchasable lawyers like Thurlow and Wedderburn.² It might argue the folly of drenching the world in blood and spending money like water on a point of punctilio in an affair of remote and desert islands, whose strategic worth had been greatly over-estimated and which were, in any case, to be restored to British occupation under the terms signed. Yet Junius, when he showed in another famous letter how the long-continued Opposition attacks ought to be conducted, was felt to have inflicted such poisoned wounds that Dr. Johnson, who had helped the Government considerably in 1770 with the False Alarm, was straightway applied to for a counter-irritant that took the form of Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting Falkland’s Islands.³ This literary warfare now deserves some attention though it may be observed in passing that the high point of an obstinately-contested Parliamentary battle was the Commons d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• PREFACE
• I “Wilkes and Liberty”, 1762–4
• II The King and Grenville, 1764–5
• III The Rockingham and Chatham Governments
• IV Chatham in Eclipse
• V Wilkes and his Supporters, 1768–9
• VI The Agitation Spreads
• VII The Opposition shoots its Bolt
• VIII Falkland Islands, Press, and “Patriot Magistrates”, 1770–1
• IX “Patriot” Dissensions, 1771–2
• X India and America, 1773–4
• XI From Bad to Worse in America, 1774–5
• XII American Independence declared
• XIII Saratoga and the War with France, 1777–8
• XIV Opposition refuses Coalition, 1778–9
• XV The Demand for “Public Oeconomy”, 1779–80
• XVI The Gordon Riots
• XVII The 1780 General Election and After
• XVIII The War grows Intolerable
• XIX Rockingham, Shelburne and Coalition, 1782–3
• XX The Fox-North Coalition and its India Bill, 1783
• XXI The “virtuous young Minister”, 1784
• XXII Pitt’s first two Sessions as Majority Premier
• XXIII Workmen and their Employers
• XXIV The Challenge to the Church
• XXV Opinion on Rent and Landlords
• XXVI Philanthropy in regard to the “Oppressed”
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX