ONE:In the Christmas recess Chatham hastened to Bath, to improve his health for the campaign of the ensuing Session; but when Parliament met again, in the middle of January, 1767, Ministers were in consternation at his not reappearing. The Duke of Grafton and Beckford, who were his most devoted adherents, were thunderstruck. They found it impossible to keep in order the heterogeneous elements of the Cabinet. All the hostile qualities, which would have lain still under the hand of the great magician, bristled up, and came boldly out. The spirit of Bedford, of Newcastle, and of Rockingham, was active in their partisans, and gathered courage to do mischief. Lord Shelburne and the Duke of Grafton became estranged; Charles Townshend, who had as much ambition and eccentricity as talent, began to show airs, and aim at supremacy. Grafton implored Chatham to come to town if possible, and when that was declared impracticable, to allow him to go down, and consult with him in his sick chamber. But he was informed that the Minister was equally unable to move or to consult.
FORE:He struck his pony with the fringed end of the horse-hair lariat that hung around his pommel, and cantered on in the direction of the post. The pony had been found among the foot-hills, without any[Pg 218] trouble. That, at any rate, had been a stroke of luck. He had led it into the fort just at the end of guard-mounting, and had met a party of riders going out.
FORE:He immediately made use of the opportunity with great skill. In his reply he urged that Fox was announcing a doctrine destructive of the Constitution; that he was denying the right by which Parliament had placed the present family on the throne, and he asserted that the Prince of Wales had no more natural right to assume the regency than any other individual. This led to the severest censures of the Premier by Burke, who declared that Pitt was making himself a dictator, and changing the succession to the regal power in England from hereditary to elective. The same doctrine was announced and combated in the Lords; but there, though Thurlow was silent, waiting to see how matters would go before he hazarded an opinion, Loughborough boldly supported Fox's doctrine, and declared that had the derangement of the king taken place during the non-existence of Parliament, the prince undoubtedly would have been warranted in issuing writs and summoning one. On the 15th of December the Duke of York and his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, both spoke on the question, expressing their sense of the inexpediency of pressing the delicate question of right, and stating that Parliament could proceed to invest the Prince of Wales with the powers of the regency without waiting, as they certainly could not appoint any one else. Thurlow had by this time found that he had no chance with the Whigs, and he now, with unblushing assurance, took the part of Pitt, though every one knew why he had been hanging back till this moment. He declared that he could not see how Parliament could avoid coming to some conclusion on the question of right, seeing that it had been raised. At the same time, he made a most pretendedly pious defence of the rights of the king against the prince and the Whigs, exclaiming"When I forget my king, may God forget me!" John Wilkes, who was standing in a knot of spectators near the throne, and within a few feet of Thurlow, expressed his disgust at this duplicity in his characteristically vigorous fashion.
