The following table shows what this disastrous war ultimately cost this country in mere money; no table can efficiently show its cost in blood and misery: —
Year.
Taxation.
Loans.
1775
£10,138,061
1776
10,266,405
£2,000,000
1777.
10,604,013
6,500,000
1778
10,732,405
6,000,000
1779
11,192,141
7,000,000
1780
12,265,214
12,000,000
1781
12,454,936
12,000,000
1782
12,593,297
13,500,000
1783
11,962,718
12,000,000
1784
12,905,519
12,879,341
1785
14,871,520
10,990,651
Total
£129,975,229
£93,869,992
The American war terminated in 1783; but as the loans of the two following years were raised to wind up the expenses of that struggle, it is proper they should be included. The total expense of the American war will stand thus: —
Taxes
£129,975,229
Loans
93,869,992
Advances by the Bank of England
110,000
Advances by the East India Company
3,200,000
Increase in the Unfunded Debt
5,170,273
Total
232,325,494
Deduct expense of a peace establishment
for eleven years, as it stood in 1774
113,142,403
Net cost of the American war
£119,183,091
In addition to this must be noted £1,340,000 voted as compensation to American loyalists in 1788, and £4,000 a year pension since, and even now, paid to the descendants of William Penn, amounting, with compound interest, to an enormous additional sum, even to the present date, without reckoning future liability. And this glorious colony parted from us in blood and shame, in consequence of a vain attempt to gratify the desire of the House of Brunswick to make New England contribute to their German greed as freely and as servilely as Old England had done.
Encouraged by the willingness with which his former debts had been discharged, George HI., in 1777, sent a second message, but this time for the larger sum of £600, -000, which was not only paid, but an additional allowance of £100,000 a year was voted to his Majesty, and £40,000 was given to the Landgrave of Hesse.
As an illustration of the barbarity of our laws, it is enough to say that, in 1777, Sarah Parker was burnt for counterfeiting silver coin. In June, 1786, Phoebe Harris was burnt for the same offence. And this in a reign when persons in high position, accused of murder, forgery, perjury, and robbery, escaped almost scot free.
In April, 1778, £60,000 a year was settled on the six younger princes, and £30,000 a year on the five princesses. These pensions, however, were professedly paid out of the King's Civil List, not avowedly in addition to it, as they are to-day. The Duke of Buckingham stated that in 1778, and again in 1782, the King threatened to abdicate. This threat, which, unfortunately, was never carried out, arose from the King's obstinate persistence in the worse than insane policy against the American colonies.
In December, 1779, in consequence of England needing Irish soldiers to make war on America, Ireland was graciously permitted to export Irish woollen manufactures. The indulgences, however, to Ireland – even while the Ministers of George III. were trying to enlist Irishmen to kill the English, Scotch, and Irish in America – were made most grudgingly. Pious Protestant George III. would not consent that any Irish Catholic should own one foot of freehold land; and Edmund Burke, in a letter to an Irish peer, says that it was "pride, arrogance, and a spirit of domination" which kept up "these unjust legal disabilities."
On the 8th February, 1780, Sir G. Savile presented the famous Yorkshire petition, signed by 8,000 freeholders, praying the House of Commons to inquire into the management and expenditure of public money, to reduce all exorbitant emoluments, and to abolish all sinecure places and unmerited pensions. Three days later, Edmund Burke proposed a reduction of the national taxation (which was then only a sixth part of its amount to-day), and a diminution of the power of the Crown. Burke was defeated, but shortly after, on the motion of Mr. Dunning, the House of Commons declared, by a majority of 18 against the Government, "That the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished."
On the 20th March, 1782, Lord North, in consequence of the impossibility of subduing the American colonies, determined to resign. The King opposed this to the last, declaring that no difficulties should induce him to consent to a peace acknowledging the Independence of America. "So distressing," says Jesse, "was the conflict which prevailed in the mind of George III., that he not only contemplated abandoning the Crown of England for the Electorate of Hanover, but orders had actually been issued to have the royal yacht in readiness for his flight." What a blessing to the country if he had really persevered in his resolution!
Charles James Fox, who now came into power for a brief space, had, says Jesse, "taught himself to look upon his sovereign as a mere dull, obstinate, half-crazed, and narrow-minded bigot; a Prince whose shallow understanding had never been improved by education, whose prejudices it was impossible to remove, and whose resentments it would be idle to endeavor to soften."
In 1784, George, Prince of Wales, was over head and ears in debt, and the King, who appears to have hated him, refusing any aid, he resorted to threats. Dr. Doran says: "A conversation is spoken of as having passed between the Queen and the Minister, in which he is reported as having said, 'I much fear, your Majesty, that the Prince, in his wild moments, may allow expressions to escape him that may be injurious to the Crown.' – 'There is little fear of that,' was the alleged reply of the Queen; 'he is too well aware of the consequences of such a course of conduct to himself. As regards that point, therefore, I can rely upon him.'" Jesse says of the Prince of Wales, that between eighteen and twenty, "to be carried home drunk, or to be taken into custody by the watch, were apparently no unfrequent episodes in the career of the Heir to the Throne. Under the auspices of his weak and frivolous uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, the Prince's conversation is said to have been a compound of the slang of grooms and the wanton vocabulary of a brothel." "When we hunt together," said the King to the Duke of Gloucester, "neither my son nor my brother speak to me; and lately, when the chase ended at a little village where there was but a single post-chaise to be hired, my son and brother got into it, and drove off, leaving me to go home in a cart, if I could find one." And this is the family Mr. Disraeli holds up for Englishmen to worship!
In July, 1782, Lord Shelburne came into office; but he "always complained that the King had tricked and deserted him," and had "secretly connived at his downfall." He resigned office on the 24th February, 1783. An attempt was made to form a Coalition Ministry, under the Duke of Portland. The King complained of being treated with personal incivility, and the attempt failed. On the 23d March, the Prince of Wales, at the Queen's Drawing-room, said: "The King had refused to accept the coalition, but by God he should be made to agree to it." Under the great excitement the King's health gave way. The Prince, says Jesse, was a member of Brooks's Club, where, as Walpole tells us, the members were not only "strangely licentious" in their talk about their sovereign, but in their zeal for the interests of the heartless young Prince "even wagered on the duration of the King's reign." The King repeated his threat of abandoning the Throne, and retiring to his Hanoverian dominions; and told the Lord-Advocate, Dundas, that he had obtained the consent of the Queen to his taking this extraordinary step. Young William Pitt refusing twice to accept the Premiership, Fox and Lord North came again into power. £30,000 was voted for the Prince of Wales's debts, and a similar sum to enable him to furnish his house. The "unnatural" Coalition Ministry did not last long. Fox introduced his famous India Bill. The King, regarding it as a blow at the power of the Crown, caballed and canvassed the Peers against it. "The welfare of thirty millions of people was overlooked in, the excitement produced by selfish interests, by party zeal, and officious loyalty." "Instantly," writes Lord Macaulay, "a troop of Lords of the Bedchamber, of Bishops who wished to be translated, and of Scotch peers who wished to be reelected, made haste to change sides." The Bill had passed the Commons by large majorities. The King opposed it like a partisan, and when it was defeated in the Lords, cried, "Thank God! it is all over; the House has thrown out the Bill, so there is an end of Mr. Fox." The Ministers not resigning, as the King expected they would, his Majesty dismissed them at once, sending to Lord North in the middle of the night for his seals of office.
On the 19th December, 1783, William Pitt, then twenty-four years of age, became Prime Minister of England. The House of Commons passed a resolution, on the motion of Lord Surrey, remonstrating with the King for having permitted his sacred name to be unconstitutionally used in order to influence the deliberations of Parliament. More than once the Commons petitioned the King to dismiss Pitt from office. Pitt, with large majorities against him, wished to resign; but George III. said, "If you resign, Mr. Pitt, I must resign too," and he again threatened, in the event of defeat, to abandon England, and retire to his Hanoverian dominions. Now our monarch, if a king, would, have no Hanoverian dominions to retire to.
In 1784, £60,000 was voted by Parliament to defray the King's debts. In consequence of the large debts of the Prince of Wales, an interview was arranged at Carlton House, on the 27th April, 1785, between the Prince and Lord Malmesbury. The King, the Prince said, had desired him to send in an exact statement of his debts; there was one item, however, of £25,000, on which the Prince of Wales would give no information. If it were a debt, argued the King, which his son was ashamed to explain, it was one which he ought not to defray. The Prince threatened to go abroad, saying, "I am ruined if I stay in England. I shall disgrace myself as a man; my father hates me, and has hated me since I was seven years old… We are too wide asunder to ever meet. The King has deceived me; he has made me deceive others. I cannot trust him, and he will not believe me." And this is the Brunswick family to which the English nation are required to be blindly loyal!
In 1785, George, Prince of Wales, was married to a Roman Catholic lady, Mrs. Fitzherbert, a widow. It is of course known that the Prince treated the lady badly. This was not his first experience, the history of Mary Robinson forming but one amongst a long list of shabby liaisons. A question having arisen before the House of Commons, during a discussion on the debts owing by the Prince, Charles James Fox, on the written authority of the Prince, denied that any marriage, regular or irregular, had ever taken place, and termed it ah invention… destitute of the slightest foundation. Mr. Fox's denial was made on the distinct written authority of the Prince, who offered, through Fox, to give in the House of Lords the "fullest assurances of the utter falsehood" of the allegation; although not only does everybody know to-day that the denial was untrue, but in point of fact the fullest proofs of the denied marriage exist at this very moment in the custody of Messrs. Coutts, the bankers. Out of all the Brunswicks England has been cursed with, George I. is the only one against whom there is no charge of wanton falsehood to his ministers or subjects, and it is fairly probable that his character for such truthfulness was preserved by his utter inability to lie in our language.
Not only did George, Prince of Wales, thus deny his marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert, but repeated voluntarily the denial after he became King George IV. Despite this denial, the King's executors, the Duke of Wellington and Sir William Knighton, were compelled by Mrs. Fitzherbert to admit the proofs. The marriage took place on the 21st December, 1785, and Mrs. Fitzherbert being a Roman Catholic, the legal effect was to bar Prince George and prevent him ever becoming the lawful King of England. The documents above referred to as being at Coutts's include – 1. The marriage certificate. 2. A letter written by the Prince of Wales acknowledging the marriage. 3. A will, signed by him, also acknowledging it, and other documents. And yet George, our King, whom Mr. Disraeli praises, authorized Charles James Fox to declare the rumor of his marriage "a low, malicious falsehood;" and then the Prince went to Mrs. Fitzherbert, and, like a mean, lying hypocrite as he was, said, "O Maria, only conceive what Fox did yesterday; he went down to the House and denied that you and I were man and wife."
Although when George, Prince of Wales, had attained his majority, he had an allowance of £50,000 a year, £60,000 to furnish Carlton House, and an additional £40,000 for cash to start with, yet he was soon after deep in debt. In 1787, £160,000 was voted, and a portion of the Prince's debts was paid. £20,000 further was added as a vote for Carlton House. Thackeray says: "Lovers of long sums have added up the millions and millions which in the course of his brilliant existence this single Prince consumed. Besides his income of £50,000, £70,000, £100,000, £120,000 a year, we read of three applications to Parliament; debts to the amount of £160,000, of £650,000, besides mysterious foreign loans, whereof he pocketed the proceeds. What did he do for all this money? Why was he to have it? If he had been a manufacturing town, or a populous rural district, or an army of five thousand men, he would not have cost more. He, one solitary stout man, who did not toil, nor spin, nor fight – what had any mortal done that he should be pampered so?"
The proposed impeachment of Warren Hastings, which actually commenced on February 13th, 1788, and which did not conclude until eight years afterwards, excited considerable feeling, it being roundly alleged that Court protection had been purchased by the late Governor-General of India, by means of a large diamond presented to the King. The following rhymed squib tells its own story. It was sung about the streets to the tune of "Derry Down": —
"I'll sing you a song of a diamond so fine,
That soon in the crown of the monarch will shine;
Of its size and its value the whole country rings,
By Hastings bestowed on the best of all Kings.
Derry down, &c.
"From India this jewel was lately brought o'er,
Though sunk in the sea, it was found on the shore,
And just in the nick to St. James's it got,
Convey'd in a bag by the brave Major Scott
Derry down, &c
"Lord Sydney stepp'd forth, when the tidings were known —
It's his office to carry such news to the throne; —
Though quite out of breath, to the closet he ran,
And stammer'd with joy ere his tale he began.
Derry down, &c.
"'Here's a jewel, my liege, there's none such in the land;
Major Scott, with three bows, put it into my hand:
And he swore, when he gave it, the wise ones were bit,
For it never was shown to Dundas or to Pitt.'
Derry down, &c.
"'For Dundas,' cried our sovereign, 'unpolished and rough,
Give him a Scotch pebble, it's more than enough.
And jewels to Pitt, Hastings justly refuses,
For he has already more gifts than he uses.
Derry down, &c.
"'But run, Jenky, run!' adds the King in delight,
'Bring the Queen and Princesses here for a sight;
They never would pardon the negligence shown,
If we kept from their knowledge so glorious a stone.
Derry down, &c.
"'But guard the door, Jenky, no credit we'll win,
If the Prince in a frolic should chance to step in:
The boy to such secrets of State we'll ne'er call,
Let him wait till he gets our crown, income, and all.
Derry down, &c.
"In the Princesses run, and surprised cry, 'O la!
'Tis big as the egg of a pigeon, papa!' —
'And a pigeon of plumage worth plucking is he,'
Replies our good monarch, 'who sent it to me.'
Derry down, &c.
"Madame Schwellenberg peep'd through the door at a chink,
And tipp'd on the diamond a sly German wink;
As much as to say, 'Can we ever be cruel
To him who has sent us so glorious a jewel?'
Derry down, &c.
"Now God save the Queen! while the people I teach,
How the King may grow rich while the Commons impeach;
Then let nabobs go plunder, and rob as they will,
And throw in their diamonds as grist to his mill.
Derry down, &c."
It was believed that the King had received not one diamond, but a large quantity, and that they were to be the purchase-money of Hastings's acquittal. Caricatures on the subject were to be seen in the window of every print-shop. In one of these Hastings was represented wheeling away in a barrow the King, with his crown and sceptre, observing, "What a man buys, he may sell;" and, in another, the King was exhibited on his knees, with his mouth wide open, and Warren Hastings pitching diamonds into it. Many other prints, some of them bearing evidence of the style of the best caricaturists of the day, kept up the agitation on this subject. It happened that there was a quack in the town, who pretended to eat stones, and bills of his exhibition were placarded on the walls, headed, in large letters, "The great stone-eater!" The caricaturists took the hint, and drew the King with a diamond between his teeth, and a heap of others before him, with the inscription, "The greatest stone-eater!"
We borrow a few sentences from Lord Macaulay to enable our readers to judge, in brief space, the nature of Warren Hastings's position, standing impeached, as he did, on a long string of charges, some of them most terrible in their implication of violence, falsehood, fraud, and rapacity. Macaulay thus pictures the situation between the civilized Christian and his tributaries: "On one side was a band of English functionaries, daring, intelligent, eager to be rich. On the other side was a great native population, helpless, timid, and accustomed to crouch under oppression." "When some new act of rapacity was resisted there came war; but a war of Bengalees against Englishmen was like a war of sheep against wolves, of men against demons." There was a long period before any one dreamed that justice and morality should be features of English rule in India. "During the interval, the business of a servant of the Company was simply to wring out of the natives a hundred or two hundred thousand pounds as speedily as possible, that he might return home before his constitution had suffered from the heat, to marry a peer's daughter, to buy rotten boroughs in Cornwall, and to give balls in St. James's Square." Hastings was compelled to turn his attention to foreign affairs. The object of his diplomacy was at this time simply to get money. The finances of his government were in an embarrassed state, and this embarrassment he was determined to relieve by some means, fair or foul. The principle which directed all his dealings with his neighbors is fully expressed by the old motto of one of the great predatory families of Teviotdale: "Thou shalt want ere I want." He seems to have laid it down, as a fundamental proposition which could not be disputed, that, when he had not as many lacs of rupees as the public service required, he was to take them from anybody who had. One thing, indeed, is to be said in excuse for him. The pressure applied to him by his employers at home was such as only the highest virtue could have withstood, such as left him no choice except to commit great wrongs, or to resign his high post, and with that post all his hopes of fortune and distinction. Hastings was in need of funds to carry on the government of Bengal, and to send remittances to London; and Sujah Dowlah had an ample revenue. Sujah Dowlah was bent on subjugating the Rohillas; and Hastings had at his disposal the only force by which the Rohillas could be subjugated. It was agreed that an English army should be lent to Nabob Vizier, and that for the loan he should pay four hundred thousand pounds sterling, besides defraying all the charge of the troops while employed in his service. "I really cannot see," says Mr. Gleig, "upon what grounds, either of political or moral justice, this proposition deserves to be stigmatized as infamous." If we understand the meaning of words, it is infamous to commit a wicked action for hire, and it is wicked to engage in war without provocation. In this particular war, scarcely one aggravating circumstance was wanting. The object of the Rohilla war was this, to deprive a large population, who had never done us the least harm, of a good government, and to place them, against their will, under an execrably bad one… The horrors of Indian war were let loose on the fair valleys and cities of Rohilcund. The whole country was in a blaze. More than a hundred thousand people fled from their homes to pestilential jungles, preferring famine, and fever, and the haunts of tigers, to the tyranny of him to whom an English and a Christian government had, for shameful lucre, sold their substance, and their blood, and the honor of their wives and daughters… Mr. Hastings had only to put down by main force the brave struggles of innocent men fighting for their liberty. Their military resistance crushed, his duties ended; and he had then only to fold his arms and look on, while their villages were burned, their children butchered, and their women violated… We hasten to the end of this sad and disgraceful story. The war ceased. The finest population in India was subjected to a greedy, cowardly, cruel tyrant. Commerce and agriculture languished. The rich province which had tempted the cupidity of Sujah Dowlah became the most miserable part even of his miserable dominions. Yet is the injured nation not extinct. At long intervals gleams of its ancient spirit have flashed forth; and even at this day valor, and self-respect, and a chivalrous feeling rare among Asiatics, and a bitter remembrance of the great crime of England, distinguish that noble Afghan race."
Partly in consequence of the proposed legislation by Fox on the affairs of the East India Company, and partly from personal antagonism, members of the Indian Council hostile to Governor-General Hastings were sent out to India.
Amongst his most prominent antagonists was Francis, the reputed author of Junius's Letters. It was to Francis especially that the Maharajah Nuncomar of Bengal addressed himself. "He put into the hands of Francis, with great ceremony, a paper containing several charges of the most serious description. By this document Hastings was accused of putting offices up to sale, and of receiving bribes for suffering offenders to escape. In particular, it was alleged that Mahommed Reza Khan had been dismissed with impunity, in consideration of a great sum paid to the Governor-General… He stated that Hastings had received a large sum for appointing Rajah Goordas treasurer of the Nabob's household, and for committing the care of his Highness's person to Munny Begum. He put in a letter purporting to bear the seal of the Munny Begum, for the purpose of establishing the truth of his story."
Much evidence was taken before the Indian Council, where there was considerable conflict between the friends and enemies of Hastings. "The majority, however, voted that the charge was made out; that Hastings had corruptly received between thirty and forty thousand pounds; and that he ought to be compelled to refund."
Now, however, comes an item darker and more disgraceful, if possible than what had preceded.
"On a sudden, Calcutta was astounded by the news that Nuncomar had been taken up on a charge of felony, committed, and thrown into the common jail. The crime imputed to him was, that six years before he had forged a bond. The ostensible prosecutor was a native. But it was then, and still is, the opinion of everybody, idiots and biographers excepted, that Hastings was the real mover in the business." The Chief-Justice Impey, one of Hastings's creatures, pushed on a mock trial; "a verdict of Guilty was returned, and the Chief-Justice pronounced sentence of death on the prisoner… Of Impey's conduct it is impossible to speak too severely. He acted unjustly in refusing to respite Nuncomar. No rational man can doubt that he took this course in order to gratify the Governor-General. If we had ever had any doubts on that point, they would have been dispelled by a letter which Mr. Gleig has published. Hastings, three or four years later, described Impey as the man 'to whose support he was at one time indebted for the safety of his fortune, honor, and reputation.' These strong words can refer only to the case of Nuncomar; and they must mean that Impey hanged Nuncomar in order to support Hastings. It is therefore our deliberate opinion that Impey, sitting as a judge, put a man unjustly to death in order to serve a political purpose."
Encouraged by success, a few years later, Hastings, upon the most unfair pretext, made war upon and plundered the Rajah of Benares, and a little later subjected the eunuchs of the Begums of Oude to physical torture, to make them confess where the royal treasure was hidden.
It is evident from Miss Burney's diary that the King and Queen warmly championed the cause of Warren Hastings, who, after a wearisome impeachment, was acquitted.
In 1788, the King's insanity assumed a more violent form than usual, and on a report from the Privy Council, the subject was brought before Parliament. In the Commons, Pitt and the Tory party contended that the right of providing for the government of the country in cases where the monarch was unable to perform his duties, belonged to the nation at large, to be exercised by its representatives in Parliament. Fox and the Whigs, on the other hand, maintained that the Prince of Wales possessed the inherent right to assume the government. Pitt, seizing this argument as it fell from Fox, said, at the moment, to the member seated nearest to him, "I'll unwhig the gentleman for the rest of his life."
During the discussions on the Regency Bill, Lord Thurlow, who was then Lord Chancellor, acted the political rat, and coquetted with both parties. When the King's recovery was announced by the royal physicians, Thurlow, to cover his treachery, made an extravagant speech in defence of Pitt's views, and one laudatory of the King. After enumerating the rewards received from the King, he said, "and if I forget the monarch who has thus befriended me, may my great Creator forget me." John Wilkes, who was present in the House of Lords, said, in a stage aside, audible to many of the peers, "Forget you! he will see you damned first." Phillimore, describing Lord Chancellor Thurlow, says that he – "either from an instinctive delight in all that was brutal" (which did not prevent him from being a gross hypocrite), "or from a desire to please George III. – supported the Slave Trade, and the horrors of the Middle Passage, with the uncompromising ferocity of a Liverpool merchant or a Guinea captain."
It appears that the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York exhibited what was considered somewhat indecent eagerness to have the King declared irrecoverably insane, and on more than one occasion the Queen refused to allow either of these Royal Princes access to the King's person, on the ground that their violent conduct retarded his recovery. The Prince of Wales and Duke of York protested in writing against the Queen's hostility to them, and published the protest. Happy family, these Brunswicks! Dr. Doran declares: "There was assuredly no decency in the conduct of the Heir-apparent, or of his next brother. They were gaily flying from club to club, party to party, and did not take the trouble even to assume the sentiment which they could not feel. 'If we were together,' says Lord Granville, in a letter inserted in his Memoirs, 'I would tell you some particulars of the Prince of Wales's behavior to the King and Queen, within these few days, that would make your blood run cold.' It was said that if the King could only recover and learn what had been said and done during his illness, he would hear enough to drive him again into insanity. The conduct of his eldest sons was marked by its savage inhumanity." Jesse says: "The fact is a painful one to relate, that on the 4th December – the day on which Parliament assembled, and when the King's malady was at its worst – the graceless youth (the Duke of York) not only held a meeting of the opposition at his own house, but afterwards proceeded to the House of Lords, in order to hear the depositions of the royal physicians read, and to listen to the painful details of his father's lunacy. Moreover the same evening we track both the brothers (the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York) to Brooks's, where in a circle of boon companions, as irreverent as themselves, they are said to have been in the habit of indulging in the most shocking indecencies, of which the King's derangement was the topic. On such occasions, we are told, not only did they turn their parents into ridicule, and blab the secrets of the chamber of sickness at Windsor, but the Prince even went to such unnatural lengths as to employ his talents for mimicry, in which he was surpassed by few of his contemporaries, in imitating the ravings and gestures of his stricken father. As for the Duke of York, we are assured that 'the brutality of the stupid sot disgusted even the most profligate of his associates.'" Even after the King's return to reason had been vouched by the physicians, William Grenville, writing to Lord Buckingham, says that the two princes "amused themselves with spreading the report that the King was still out of his mind." When the great thanksgiving for the King's recovery took place at Saint Paul's, the conduct of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, in the Cathedral itself, is described "as having been in the highest degree irreverent, if not indecent." Sir William Young writes to Lord Buckingham, "The day will come when Englishmen will bring these Princes to their senses." Alas for England, the day has not yet come!