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claimed he, " to defend this spot, the
prisoners
r shall not be suffered to escape."
The mob encouraged the soldiery, and
stood at hand to abet the rescue; and,
thus incited, the mutineers were pro-
ceeding to acts of absolute force, when
the prisoner himself came forward, and
addressed them. "Do not," said he,
"do not, I beseech you, offer vio-
lence to Major Windham, He is the
best of men; and even if you succeed
in rescuing me from my confinement,
I will again surrender myself into cus-
tody."

This declaration had some effect in appeasing the ferment of the assailants. The civil powers contributed their aid; and, by the coolness and intrepid wis dom of Mr Windham, the disturbance was at last allayed, without any consequences of more serious mischief. The battalion was thus reduced to order; and marched peaceably into the county of Suffolk.

But a fever, occasioned by a continuance for several hours in wet clothes, very shortly deprived the militia of Mr Windham's valuable services. His illness was long and dangerous, and it is supposed that his constitution never entirely overcame the ill effects which it left behind. When his strength began to return, he was advised to undertake a tour on the continent for the re-establishment of his health; and two years were accordingly employed. by him, in a journey through various parts of Switzerland and Italy. He returned to his native country in September 1780, on the eve of a general election.

On arriving at Norwich in his way home, he found that his friends, who had supposed him to be still upon the continent, had nevertheless nominated him as a candidate for the representa tion of the city in parliament. In three days the poll was to commence. Under the disadvantage of so short a preparation, their object was unfortu

nately defeated; but Mr Windham had the satisfaction to poll a very considerable body of voters, and to receive warm assurances of support for a fu ture occasion.

He now attached himself to the party of the Marquis of Rockingham, which already boasted the talents of Mr Fox, and of the celebrated Edmund Burke, to whom Mr Windham became a zealous friend, personal and political. This private intimacy was cemented by their intercourse at a society, then called the Literary Club, and claiming to itself at the present hour (for it still subsists) the title, par excellence, of The Club. Of this distinguished fraternity Dr Johnson was a member; and the high opinion entertained by that mighty veteran of the yet untried abilities of Mr Windham, may be gathered from a letter written in Dr Taylor's house at Ashbourne, which Mr Boswell has preser ved, and which contains the following remarkable eulogium :

"Mr Windham has been here to see me. He came, I think, forty miles out of his way; and staid about a day and a half; perhaps I may make the time shorter than it was. Such conversation I shall not have again, till I come back to the regions of literature; and there Windham is inter ig nes Luna minores.”

Shortly after the accession of the Rockingham ministry, Mr Windham declined an invitation from the Westminster election committee, to come forward as a candidate for that city on the next vacancy. The popular clamour, in that day as in the present, was loud and high for a parliamentary reform; and Mr Windham had too sincere an affection for the established constitution of the country in which he had been brought up, and too clear an insight into the perilous consequences of innovation in so radical an article as the composition of the House

of Commons, to purchase an honour, however flattering, by so hazardous a sacrifice to the ignorance, prejudice, and passion, of the people. He felt that the House of Commons is, upon the whole, a full representation of all classes of the people: not indeed an equal representation of all places, but, undoubtedly an equal representation of all interests, whether of talents, of land, of money, of merchandize, of manufactures, or of personal industry. He knew that the representatives of the people were governed by the people's voice, not indeed obeying it on each particular occasion, because, if the people must direct the votes on every public measure in detail, representa tives are useless interlopers; but pay. ing, on the whole, a fair deference to the sense of the people. But he distinguished the people from the mob. He doubtless understood the word people, in its real sense, as signifying, not the alehouse boors and unwashed artificers of country or town, but the great mass of rational, well-educated, and well-informed persons, who em ploy their understandings fairly in sub. jects of public concern. Theirs and theirs only are the opinions, which a member of parliament is called on to respect in the guidance of his political course. Nor could Mr Windham ceive that the British constitution, in point of fact, ever was what modern theorists, in the plenitude of their ignorance on historical points, have had the confidence to describe it: he knew that even in the earliest periods of our annals there never was, in reality, or in design, a general representation of the people; that, for hundreds of years, the parliaments, so far from being the peo ple's guardians, were the mere stewards of the crown; that boroughs, in all their present rottenness, were familiar to our ancestors, even from the days of the commonwealth ; and that to reorganize the House of Commons, on

the principle of general representation, would therefore be no restoration of ancient rights, but a new and dangerous experiment, demanded by no urgent necessity, enforced by no solid argument, and totally unsupported, even by that meanest of all recommendations, the recommendation of precedent. With such opinions, it cannot be matter of surprise that Mr Windham refused to accept a delegation from the noisy citizens of Palace-yard and Covent-garden.

The death of Lord Rockingham, and the succession of Lord Shelburne to the head of the treasury, shortly determined Mr Fox and Mr Burke to resign their offices; and the friends of Mr Windham therefore continued in opposition until, by the coalition of Mr Fox and Lord North, the Shelburne administration was dragged from the helm, and the opposition, under the nominal supremacy of the Duke of Portland, arrived at the direction of affairs. On Lord Northington's appointment to the lieutenancy of Ireland, Mr Windham accepted the office of chief secretary. "I am only

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afraid," said he to his friend Dr John son," that I shall not be able to prevail upon myself to do all the services which will be expected of me in my new post. perNay, sir," answered the doctor humourously," do not be afraid; you will make a very pretty rascal in time." But (whether from this repugnance to discreditable services, or from some other cause not dis tinctly known,) Mr Windham thought proper to resign his office in August 1782, having held it about four months. Mr Hardy, in his Life of Lord Char lemont, has the following interesting anecdote of Mr Windham's popular behaviour, during the short period of his ministry under the lord lieutenant : "A few days previous to his leaving Ireland, a gentleman waited on him, with a strong letter of recommendation

from Mr Burke, requesting Mr Windham would embrace an opportunity of presenting him with some little preferment, that might fall in the gift of government. Mr Windham assured the gentleman he should be happy to present a person, so strongly recommended by Mr Burke, with a much greater piece of preferment than that requested; but that it was his fixed determination, should he remain in the secretaryship, of which he had some doubts, to give every place in his power to Irishmen; as he had long been persuaded that the natives had the best right to the bread of their own land."

year

In this he took his master's degree at Oxford.

The India Bill of Mr Fox, at the close of 1783, after long and obstinate debates, occasioned the downfall of that statesman and his party; and Mr. Pitt, who now presided at the treasury, thought it expedient, in the following March, to dissolve the House of Commons. Mr Windham, at the general election, presented himself, a second time, as a candidate for the city of Norwich, and, after a close contest with the Honourable Henry Hobart, was returned to parliament.

His first speech in the House of Commons was on the Westminster scrutiny; but no satisfactory report has been preserved, either of this essay, or of his second display, which was in opposition to Mr Pitt's shop-tax. It was his principle to resist all partial taxation: He was of opinion that the weight of every tax should be distributed at once among the whole community.

That department of public affairs, on which the mind of Mr Windham appeared to be most ardently and constantly employed, was the military defence of the country. In 1786, he was among the successful opposers of a plan, suggested by ministers, for for

tifying the dock-yards of Portsmouth and Plymouth. To fortifications in general he had the strongest objections, on account not only of their enormous expence, but of their ultimate insecu rity. The only defence of this description which he approved was the Martello Tower, a structure of comparatively small expence, and incapable of producing any great advantage to an enemy, even in the event of its capture.

Nor

On the impeachment of Mr Has. tings, Mr Windham supported the charges with much ability. Of his. opinions on this subject we shall attempt no detail, because the question was personal and temporary. shall we dwell on the assistance which he rendered to his party, towards the close of the year 1788, in their vigor ous vindication of the right of the heir apparent to exercise the regency, during the continuance of an indisposi tion which affected the capacity of the sovereign. The restoration of his majesty's health superseded the neces sity of any legislative provision at that period.

That dread of foreign philosophy and foreign corruption, which was always remarkable in the constitution of Mr Windham, now began to mani fest itself in his parliamentary speeches. There are some animals, of nerves so exquisitely fine, that, even under a sunny sky, they can feel that alteration in the temperature of the atmosphere which prepares and announces the coming of storms. Mr Windham seems to have had a political sensibility of this kind; for, while the clouds of the French revolution were still far. distant and high in the air, he had begun to forebode and shrink from the yet invisible mischief. Mr Flood, in the beginning of March 1790, had made a motion, having for its object a reform in parliament. This motion Mr Windham earnestly opposed, in

strict consistence with the opinions declared in his earlier life. He made use of many powerful reasons, which were acknowledged by Mr Pitt to contain "much ingenuity, and in some respects as much wisdom and argument as he had ever heard within the walls of that house." But, above all things, Mr Windham deprecated the influence of those "swarms of strange, impracticable notions, which had lately been wafted over to us from the continent to prey like locusts on the finest flowers of our soil, and to destroy the boasted beauty and verdure of our constitution."

Mr Windham, at the general election in the summer of 1790, was again chosen for Norwich. He strenuously reprobated the conduct of ministers, in the disputes about Oczakow and Nootka Sound: and in such times as the present it is worth while to notice, that, about the beginning of the year 1791, he gave his most cordial support to Mr Mitford's bill for the relief of catholics.

The period now approached, which was to separate Mr Windham from most of the friends of his youth, and give a new colour and complexion to his life. The French revolution had excited so universal a ferment in the country, that party had almost every where degenerated into faction, and none but the rashly violent, either in favour of popular misrule on the one hand, or in support of degrading oppression on the other, were deemed by the world at large to be useful, or even tolerable members of society. Party spirit delights in a nick-name; and each side had its cant appellation, by which to mark the adversary. The friends of the revolution were indiscriminately stigmatized with the title of Jacobins; and the supporters of the existing order of things, who dreaded the inroad of French arms, and still more of French arts, were ridiculed

with the contemptuous designation of Alarmists.

The shocking atrocities of that bloody period, enrolled among the Alarmists, not only the friends of the government, but many also who had been champions of the popular cause. Among these, were the Duke of Portland, the Earls Fitzwilliam and Spencer, Mr Burke, and Mr Windham. A proclamation having been issued by government, in May 1792, against seditious assemblies, a meeting was called in Norfolk, for the purpose of expressing a concurrence in the principle and mode of the prohibition. On this occasion, Mr Windham came forward in the most explicit manner, to avow his approbation of the course which ministers had adopted, assigning, as the ground of his support to the proclamation, these three reasons: "The mischievous and general dissemination of writings tending to disgust the people with their government:-the existence of clubs, where delusive remedies were projected for imaginary ills :-and the correspondence of those societies with others of the most dangerous character in Paris."

The doctrines of Mr Windham were painfully illustrated, in the massacre of the French royal family, and in the concomitant putrages, by which this country was involved in the war of 1793. To that war, and to every effort of ministers for the suppression of seditious practices at home, he gave his cordial and active support, in concert with the friends, whom we have before mentioned as seceders from the old body of opposition. Accordingly, in the spring of 1794, Mr Pitt made overtures to them, to coalesce with the existing administration; which were finally accepted, though not without much hesitation on the part of Mr Windham. It was his opinion, that more effectual service might be rendered to government, by supporters out

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of office, than by persons avowedly belonging to the public councils; with this further advantage, that, by preserving their separate agency, they would still be at liberty to declare themselves against any particular measure, which they might chance to disapprove. To these sentiments the Duke of Portland seems likewise to have inclined. But Mr Burke was of a different way of thinking; he conceived, that the usefulness of his friends to their country would greatly depend upon their power over the measures of administration. His advice at length prevailed and Mr Windham accepted the post of secretary at war, to which, in consideration of his great merits, the honour of a seat in the cabinet was now for the first time annexed.

His constituents at Norwich were many of them greatly incensed at his acceptance of office; and when he went down to be re-elected, he found himself opposed by a party, in favour of the late Mr Mingay, a gentleman of rank and reputation at the bar. Mr Windham succeeded by a large majority; but was roughly received by the mob, with whom the war was extremely unpopular. When he was chaired in the evening, one of the rabble had the audacity to hurl a stone against him; but, with his usual agility, he avoided the blow, and, springing from his chair into the crowd, seized the of. render, whom he delivered into the custody of an officer.

Various and angry have been the opinions, to which the political conduct of Mr Windham, on this occasion, has given birth. The first question arises, as to the propriety of his relinquishing the party to whom he had belonged; and the second, as to the fitness of his accepting a situation in the government.

For ourselves, we confess that, of

all the virtues, which a statesman car possess, there is none which we value so little, as what is commonly called consistency. To persevere, under all circumstances, and at all hazards, in one course, because it is the course which was first selected, constitutes, in the usual acceptation of the term, a consistent statesman. To us, such conduct appears to savour of obstinacy, rather than of probity. If we inhabited a world, where fortune was unchangeable, we might conceive that mind ought to be unchangeable also; that policy once discovered, would continue to be policy for ever; that experience could add no instruction, and time bring no improvement. But, liv. ing, as we do, in the midst of a scene proverbially mutable,-in an age, when, by the vast diffusion of the means of knowledge, opinions are propagated and reared in a single summer, which of old would have required the growth of ages, in a country where the vehicle of the state is liable at every instant to be swayed more or less from its direct road by pertinacious prejudices on the one hand, and ignorant rashness on the other, how can we justify the presumptuous confidence, that the speculations of youth will be for ever adequate to the emergencies of age, or warrant the idle expectation, that the sea and the storm will hush themselves at the dignity of our command! In governing ourselves indeed, we have certain rules to guide us, rules immutable as their divine Author: but, in civil government, the government of our fellow creatures, we are left to the unaided light of our own feeble understandings; we have no laws, but those which human experience has provided. In a science so imperfect, this experi ence is daily making new discoveries; and it is worse than folly to say, that, because the lesson, which she has already taught us is, as far as it goes,

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