1768.

AFFAIR OF LORD BOTTETORT.

in that letter we find Lord Chatham glanced at as brandishing a crutch."*

It may be asked, since Lord Chatham was now wholly unable to fulfil the duties of Prime Minister or even of Lord Privy Seal, why did he not resign his post? He did not resign his post for the very reason that he did not fulfil his duties. His mind was almost equally incapable of either effort. It was only, as we have seen, with the utmost agony and tremblings that he so lately the most intrepid of statesmen could speak or think of any public affairs whatever; nor was he ever impelled to that agony but on some most special and unavoidable occasion,- - when close pressed by a letter from the King, or by a visit from a colleague.

Once, however, on such an occasion, in January 1768, Lord Chatham did express his desire to resign. A nobleman of the house of Berkeley, Lord Bottetort, was concerned in some copper-works in Gloucestershire; and a charter was required to pass the Privy Seal, but as there were some objections made, it was requisite in the first place to hear the parties. For this task Lord Chatham, then confined to his sick-room at Hayes, was of course unfit. Lady Chatham would not venture even to name the subject to her lord. Impatient of delay, Lord Bottetort threatened to lay his complaint before the House of Peers. An expedient was then suggested by the Duke of Grafton and Lord Camden, that the Privy Seal should be put into commission for the purpose of deciding this case, and immediately afterwards be restored to Lord Chatham. When at last Lady Chatham was most reluctantly induced to consult the invalid, he bade her say, that he feared it could not be for the King's service that he should continue long to hold the Privy Seal. These few words gave great alarm not only to his colleagues but to his Sovereign. Grafton and Camden in their letters most anxiously besought him to forego his resignation. The King himself wrote to him as follows: "I am thoroughly con* See Woodfall's Junius, vol. ii. p. 474. ed. 1812.

"vinced of the utility you are of to my service; for though "confined to your house, your name has been sufficient to "enable my administration to proceed. I therefore in the "most earnest manner call on you to continue in your em"ployment.' ."* Yielding to these wishes Lord Chatham suffered the expedient proposed to take effect; and after the decision on Lord Bottetort's business, the Privy Seal was returned to him at Hayes by the hands of Lord Camden and a deputation from the Privy Council.

During this time there had been proceeding a short and not important winter Session, chiefly memorable for a measure which was termed the Nullum Tempus Bill. It took its rise from some recent transactions in Cumberland and Westmoreland. There the Portland family enjoyed the Honour of Penrith by a grant from King William the Third; and they had likewise for almost seventy years possessed the adjoining forest of Inglewood, though not strictly included in the terms of the original grant. In the local politics they had for their antagonist Sir James Lowther, a man of princely fortune and state in these counties, but hateful from his overbearing and tyrannical temper, and still more hateful to many persons as the son-in-law of the Earl of Bute. Sir James now determined to avail himself of the ancient legal maxim that the rights either of Crown or Church are not lost by any lapse of time: NULLUM TEMPUS OCCURRIT REGI VEL ECCLESIÆ. He solicited a lease of the King's interest in the forest of Inglewood, and this lease was too readily and too partially yielded by the Ministry, not displeased to mortify a political opponent as the Duke of Portland had now become. It may well be imagined how odious was the aspect, how loud the clamour, that a much-respected family, wellknown for its zeal in the Protestant Succession, should be thus disturbed in property, perhaps in the first instance acquired without right, but certainly during many years enjoyed without molestation. In this state of public feeling Sir George Savile, one of the Members for Yorkshire, and

* Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 318.

1768.

THE PARLIAMENT DISSOLVED.

199

already conspicuous in the ranks of Opposition, brought forward a measure commonly called the Nullum Tempus Bill, for securing the property of a subject at any time after sixty years' possession from any dormant pretension of the Crown. Lord North and the other Ministers did not venture to withstand this measure openly, but they pleaded the impropriety of the time · - at the very close of a Parliament, - and they requested postponement till the next. Even on this special and chosen ground they only prevailed by a majority of twenty -- 134 against 114. And when in the ensuing year the Bill was introduced again, it was allowed to pass quietly and almost as a matter of course.

The Parliament which had now approached its Septennial period was on the 11th of March dissolved. In the General Election which ensued the buying and selling of seats was probably more prevalent, and certainly more public and notorious, than in any former. Indeed it had begun even before the Dissolution took place. The Mayor and Aldermen of Oxford had written word to their Members that they should be re-elected if they would pay 7,500l. to discharge the debts of the Corporation. With proper spirit the Members laid the case before the House, and the House committed the peccant Mayor and Aldermen to Newgate for five days, when, having acknowledged their guilt, and asked pardon, they were discharged, being first, however, severely reprimanded by the Speaker at the Bar and on their knees. But their punishment had little effect as an example, even upon themselves. During their very imprisonment, as is said, they completed another bargain for their borough with the Duke of Marlborough and the Earl of Abingdon. Lord Chesterfield writes to his son in December 1767: "I have "looked out for some venal borough for you, and I spoke "to a borough-jobber and offered five and twenty hundred "pounds for a secure seat in Parliament, but he laughed at "my offer, and said that there was no such thing as a borough "to be had now, for that the rich East and West Indians "had secured them all at the rate of 3,0001. at least, but many

"at 4,0007.; and two or three that he knew at 5,000l." — Some weeks later we are told on the same authority, that "George "Selwyn has sold his borough of Ludgershall to two Mem"bers for 90007."* - In the borough of Northampton, it is said, that a contested election and the petition which followed it cost Earl Spencer no less than 70,000l.** Some of the humbler boroughs which acted for themselves had commissioned attorneys (one of these was Hickey, that "most blunt, "pleasant creature," as Goldsmith terms him,) to ride about the country and ply for bidders. But, although the assertion may be deemed a bold one, no place at these elections could vie in venality with Shoreham. There bribery had been reduced to a system, and the electors combined in a confederacy for the equal partition of whatever money was received. And as in the first age of the Apostles all things had been common among their followers, so this confederacy by a most profane and irreverent misapplication of the name called itself the "Christian Club." These scandalous practices, though long continued, were not brought to light until 1771, when one of the Members having died, and a new election ensuing, a Committee of the House investigated and disclosed the whole case. By an Act of Parliament in the same year the members of the Christian Club were deprived of their votes, and the franchise was extended from the small town of Shoreham to the adjacent Hundreds. ***

It was not merely by selling and buying that these elections were distinguished; tumults also and riots occurred in several places. The cause appears to have been the high price, which still continued, of provisions, and the consequent resentment of the people, though they scarcely knew against what or whom.

Among the new accessions to the House of Commons at

Letters to his son, December 19. 1767, and April 12. 1768. **Note by Sir Denis Le Marchant to Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 198. *** Parl. Hist. vol. xvi. p. 1346-1355. The doings at Shoreham have supplied Foote with his main points for the character of Touchit and the borough of Bribe'em in his play of The Nabob.

1768. MR. DUNNING, THE NEW MEMBER FOR CALNE. 201

this juncture by far the most eminent in ability was John Dunning. Of humble parentage and most mean appearance, this remarkable man was born in 1731 at Ashburton, from whence in after years he derived his Baron's title, to that town's honour and his own. When called to the Bar he speedily shot above all competitors in Westminster Hall. In January 1768 he was appointed Solicitor General; and in the March following, through the influence of Lord Shelburne, he was returned for Calne. Wilkes had been one of his earlier clients; a circumstance which embarrassed and in a great measure silenced him during the first few years of his Parliamentary career. He was a man both of quick parts and strong passions; in his politics a zealous Whig. As an orator none ever laboured under greater disadvantages of voice and manner; but those disadvantages were most successfully retrieved by his wondrous powers of reasoning, his keen invective, and his ready wit. At the trial of the Duchess of Kingston for bigamy, when he appeared as counsel against her Grace, Hannah More who was present thus describes him: "His manner is insufferably bad; coughing "and spitting at every word; but his sense and expression "pointed to the last degree. He made her Grace shed bitter "tears." Still more striking is the impression which he made upon Chatham at their earliest interview in 1770. "He is another being," thus Chatham writes to Shelburne, 66 from any I have known of the profession. I will 66 sum up his character as it strikes me upon the honour of a "first conversation. Mr. Dunning is not a lawyer, at the 66 'same time that he is the law itself!"*

But greatly as Dunning surpassed in ability every other accession to the House of Commons at this time, there was one as far beyond him in popular acceptance and applause. This was no other than John Wilkes. At the Dissolution of Parliament he had returned to England determined to push his fortune either with the Court or with the country. Finding his overtures to the first for pardon slighted, he boldly * Letter, December 3. 1770. Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 41.