"

perpetual cause of dissension. "Affection," he wrote, "wili "follow complaisance, gentle usage, and not too rough and unqualified an exercise of our influence. The reverse of this lost us the Republic." But the British Government demanded advantages which the Dutch would not grant. Later on, William Eden, who had been rewarded for his diplomatic labours at Paris by an Irish barony, with the title of Auckland, and succeeded Malmesbury as ambassador at the Hague, resumed the unfinished work of conciliation on which the stability of the Anglo-Dutch alliance in a great measure depended. His letters to Grenville, now Secretary of State for the Home Department, in 1790 and the earlier months of 1791, indicate clearly that although the Duke of Leeds held the office of Foreign Secretary, Grenville was Pitt's chief confidant and counsellor in matters affecting the external interests of the monarchy.

Lord Grenville's correspondence, however, for the first four months of 1791 is chiefly concerned with the business of the Home Department; the administration of Great Britain, Ireland, and the Colonies. The Quebec Government Bill, to which some reference is made, possesses historical interest as initiating the system of colonial self-government; and as affording occasion for the heated.debate on the French Revolution in the course of which Burke renounced the friendship of Fox. Mr. Mitford's Bill, removing some of the disabilities of English Catholics, passed with the assent of Ministers, but forms the subject of a characteristic letter of criticism from Lord Chancellor Thurlow2. Most of the letters at this time, however, are from or to Lord Westmorland, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. They are of little value except in so far as they illustrate the system by which' a narrow monopoly of power was maintained. The Lord Lieutenant set his face against an extension of the benefits of Mitford's Bill to Ireland. In several letters he complained' bitterly of the political conduct of Mr. Robert Stewart, who soon rose to wider celebrity as Lord Castlereagh. Stewart's offence seems to have been an adherence to his hustings' pledges, as a member of the Opposition in the Irish House of Commons, in spite of the fact that before his election his father had obtained an Irish peerage through the influence of Lord Camden, a member of

3

3 II. pp. 28, 36.

Pitt's Cabinet. Another incident may be noticed as a curiou's symptom of weakness in an administration which commanded large majorities in both Houses of Parliament. The case of Mr. Bruen, who, having as Deputy Quarter-Master-General of the British army in North America defrauded Government of an enormous sum, took refuge in Ireland, purchased large estates, and set the judgment of the English Court of Exchequer at defiance, had been brought to the attention of the Cabinet by Lord Buckingham.1 To protect the Crown from such depredations, Pitt, Grenville, and Lord FitzGibbon, the Irish Chancellor, drafted a Bill which, if accepted by the Irish Parliament, would put an end to the immunity Mr. Bruen enjoyed. But Lord Westmor land shrank from the responsibility of introducing the measure. Bruen had become a borough proprietor and returned himself to the House of Commons as a member of the opposition. And the Lord Lieutenant feared" the discredit of attempting to frame a law for the express purpose of catching an Irish patriot."

Towards the end of April the king appointed Lord Grenville Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in succession to the Duke of Leeds. A brief summary of the events leading to this change will supply a key to the correspondence that followed it.

After the formation of the Triple Alliance, the earlier throes of the Great Revo'ution disabled France for several years from any exertion outside the sphere of domestic politics. Great Britain, however, soon found herself involved in two serious disputes; one on her own behalf with Spain; the other, chiefly on behalf of Prussia, with the Empress Catherine II. of Russia. The first found a favourable issue in a treaty signed at Madrid in August 1790 by Mr. Fitzherbert, soon afterwards created Lord St. Helens, and Count Florida Blanca, the Spanish Prime Minister. The second had less fortunate results. Catherine had entered into a compact with the Emperor Joseph II. for a partition of European Turkey. Notwithstanding the remonstrances and proffered mediation of the Triple Alliance, the Austrian and Russian armies wrested several provinces from the Sultan in the campaigns of 1788 and 1789. Frederick William II., King of Prussia, however, was determined - not to suffer the aggrandizement of his powerful neighbours unless fully compensated by an equivalent addition to his own

1

territory. Taking advantage of the troubles which misgovernment had excited throughout the Austrian monarchy, he placed his army on an offensive footing, concluded alliances with Turkey and Poland, and summoned the Emperor to abandon his conquests on pain of war. During this crisis Joseph died. His brother and successor Leopold, accepting the mediation of the Maritime Powers, undertook, by a convention signed at Reichenbach in July 1790, to discontinue hostilities against Turkey and accept the status quo in regard to territory as a basis of negotiation for peace. By another convention, signed at the Hague in October 1790, Great Britain and the Dutch Republic guaranteed the Emperor's dominion over the revolted Netherlands, on condition of his restoring their ancient constitutions. Catherine, having lost her ally, also signified her intention to make peace with the Sultan, restoring all her recent acquisitions, with the exception of the fortress of Ockzakow and a narrow strip of land lying between the rivers Bug and Dniester. Lord Auckland, in letters to Pitt and Grenville, which conveyed the views of the Dutch Government as well as his own, contended that the cession demanded by the Empress was too unimportant even to Turkey to justify a prolongation, much less an extension, of the war. The King of Prussia, however, having failed to effect an arrangement with the Emperor by which he had hoped. to gain possession of the Polish cities of Dantzic and Thorn, moved troops to the frontiers of Livonia, and insisted that the condition of the status quo, accepted by Austria, should also be imposed on Russia. Catherine haughtily repelled this interference. The British Cabinet, in its anxiety to preserve the Prussian alliance and the free navigation of the Dniester, a channel of British trade, entered into an engagement to support Frederick William's demands by sending naval squadrons to the Baltic and Black Seas, to co-operate with Prussian and Turkish armies. But the prospect of an armed conflict with Russia for the defence of Turkey caused such general dissatisfaction in England that Pitt found it necessary to retrace his steps. The Duke of Leeds resigned, and Lord Grenville, who alone of the leading Ministers had consistently opposed war, undertook the difficult task of withdrawing without damage or

discredit from an untenable position, and accomplishing by moral pressure the English aim of preserving the Dniester from Russian control. His hopes of success seem to have depended chiefly on the action of the Emperor Leopold. If the Emperor could be brought to join the Triple Alliance, or even to give it diplomatic support, Catherine II. might be forced, without a shot being fired, to recede from her demands, or at least to consent to the territory in dispute being laid waste as a neutral zone between the Russian and Turkish empires; and, at the same time, the latter might be secured against further aggression by a guarantee of the chief European powers. With these objects in view, Grenville despatched Lord Elgin on a special mission to confer with the Emperor, then in Italy 1; and Mr. Fawkener on another to St. Petersburgh, to support the representations of Mr. Whitworth, resident minister of Great Britain. And Mr. Ewart, British Minister at Berlin, who had been for some time in London, ardently advocating warlike measures, returned in haste to his post, with instructions to reconcile King Frederick William to the pacific line of action which Pitt found himself compelled to adopt. An interesting sketch by Mr. Ewart of the past relations of Russia and Great Britain since the middle of the 18th century is dated April 1791.3

The course of these various negotiations may be traced, with some help from public despatches, in Lord Grenville's confidential correspondence with Lord Auckland, Messrs. Ewart, Whitworth, and Fawkener. The letters of Auckland and Ewart are especially worth attention. As the only British Ambassador in Northern Europe, Auckland had control of the packet service between Helvoetsluys and Harwich, and the despatches from Berlin, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Constantinople, passed through his hands. The confidential footing on which he lived at the Hague with the Princess of Orange and the Dutch Ministers, his wide and intimate relations with continental statesmen, gave him command of a great variety of political information, which Grenville, who eagerly sought his advice, encouraged him to communicate without reserve. He represented in diplomacy the pacific views then dominant in England. His letters, intended

1 II. pp. 54, 61, 73.

2 II. p. 76.

3 II. p. 44.

to be read only by Grenville and Pitt, abound in amusing anecdotes and shrewdl comments on men and affairs; and allowing for natural bias, may be regarded as epitomes of instructed European opinion on current events. Ewart had been one of the chief instruments in building up the AngloPrussian Alliance. His anxiety to maintain it, as well as the close connexions, private and public, he had formed at Berlin, inclined him to promote the aggressive designs of the Prussian Court, without, as Auckland often complained, taking sufficient account of the situation of the British Ministry and Lord Grenville's instructions. The King of Prussia at first took Pitt's excuses in good part, and sent his ruling favourite, Colonel Bischoffswerder, to Italy, to support Lord Elgin's representations to the Emperor. But Leopold gave the envoys only fair words. He had his own game to play, and he waited on events. His plenipotentiaries, then treating with those of the Sultan at Sistova, under the mediation of the maritime powers, spun out discussion. His armies still occupied Turkey, and he refused to commit himself to any new engagement that might separate him from Catherine II. She on her part set Frussia at defiance, and smote Turkey with redoubled vigour. Being well informed of the state of public feeling in England, she and her ministers showed their sense of the impotence of the British Ministry by their contemptuous treatment of Mr. Fawkener, and the attentions they lavished on Fox's friend Mr. Adair. It appears probable from Mr. Whitworth's letter to Grenville dated June 171 that the story of Fox having sent Adair to the Russian Court to thwart Fawkener and bring Pitt's administration into discredit in England, was the suggestion of a mortified diplomatist. Grenville, however, writing to Auckland on August 1,2 seems to give it credit. And the anxiety felt in official circles to obtain proof of what was only surmise, is shown in the circumstances that Whitworth's official messenger and Mr. Lindsay, his principal secretary, took charge of Adair's letters in order to deliver them at the Foreign Office in London; and that when Adair's arrival at Paris on his return to England becare known, Bland Burges, Lord Grenville's Under Secretary, took measures at Dover to

1 II. p. 109.

2 II. p. 149.

3 II. pp. 101, 163.