CHAPTER X

SECOND FOUR YEARS IN PARLIAMENT

1771-1774

ON January 22, 1771, Lord North informed the House of Commons that the Government had received satisfaction from Spain for the raid on the Falkland Islands and he moved an Address to the King approving of what had been done. On February 13 Mr. Dowdeswell brought forward, on behalf of the Opposition, an amendment to this Address which criticised not only the methods adopted but the results obtained. Pownall's speech in the debate which followed is fully reported by Almon.1 It may be condensed by saying that it objected to the intervention of France in the dispute with Spain on the ground that England should be able to settle such matters for herself without invoking the aid of a third party. The settlement was described by Pownall as unsatisfactory because Spain only partly restored those Islands to England, complaint was made that of a great portion of them she was allowed to retain possession. Finally a comparison was made between the action which Spain had permitted to her Governor of Buenos Ayres, in organising and carrying out this attack on a friendly power, and the way in which England by the Charters to her colonies prevented their Governors attempting anything of the kind. As the whole negotiation with Spain had been conducted by the King this criticism must have been disagreeable to him. When Pownall brought up the subject again on March 5 we find in the

1 Parliamentary Debates, ix. p. 127.

King's correspondence with Lord North, the Premier, a note of that date which runs thus:1

LORD NORTH-I am not surprised that Mr. Pownall's absurd motion could not produce a very long debate; indeed it is a convincing proof that the author of it is not calculated to make a figure in foreign affairs.

Hansard makes no mention of this speech, but Almon devotes more than twenty-six pages to the subject; the motion seems hardly so absurd as the King thought it. Ministers could find no reply to Pownall's speech, or to the motion, which was for a vote of censure on them for having neglected to demand from Spain an explanation of the oaths of office taken by her officials in America. It declared that by the omission to have this matter cleared up British possessions all over the world were endangered. Pownall explained this by saying that Spain had justified the Governor's action by appealing to what she described as "the general laws of America." Those appear to have been an ex-parte claim on the part of one Power devoid of formal recognition from any other, somewhat similar in fact to the Monroe doctrine which has succeeded them in the same regions. Under those so-called laws Pownall said that Spain claimed the exclusive dominion of all the southern seas with their lands and islands. This covered an enormous area which included not only South America but the East, where Spain in Manila and England in India were in touch with each other. Pownall argued that a recognition, even a tacit one, of such pretensions on the part of Spain might endanger our commerce and possessions all over the world. He complained that Spain, in acknowledging that in this instance she had given her people "particular orders" to withdraw, had maintained the general principle she asserted. "This is the disavowal they have made. And shame to our negotiators this is the disavowal we have accepted. We demanded Justice-our negotiation has lowered us to accept a Favour, and that favour is both an insult and a snare. He said that the King had in the first instance demanded a repudiation by Spain of the act of her Governor of Buenos Ayres and had declared

99

1 Correspondence of George III. with Lord North, 1867, W. B. Donne, Letter 80. Pownall had been previously mentioned by the King in a letter to Lord North of February 26, 1771. No. 77 of these papers.

that "he would invariably adhere to that demand." But, far from standing his ground, the King had been content to see the Spaniard justified by his Government on the ground of his commission being in accordance with the general laws of Spanish America. Almon observes that this put the Ministry in a very awkward position. On the one hand they did not wish to say how far they admitted the Spanish claims to such wide-world sovereignty; on the other hand, if they challenged those claims, they reopened with the Court of Madrid the whole question which had nearly led to a war for which England was unprepared. Placed in this dilemma, in which they could not safely say anything, the Ministry took refuge in silence, nobody on their side got up to speak.

In support of Pownall Mr. Dowdeswell rose and said he supposed the complete absence of answer from the Ministry was to be taken as a tacit assent to the motion! If, however, they meant to oppose it he called on them either to deny the facts or to refute the argument they had just listened to. This brought up Charles Fox on the part of the Government. He admitted that "the argument was sound and the conclusion right" if the facts on which it was based were correct; but he denied that the Spanish Government had exonerated their Governor. This was flatly contradicted by Mr. T. Townshend, who maintained that the Court of Madrid, far from disgracing its representative, had approved him, honoured him and rewarded him. This one-sided debate was so inconvenient to the Ministry that they cut it short by offering no further argument, and their numerical force enabled them to dismiss the motion by 130 votes against 43. When the King heard of the poor figure his party had made in the House it was but natural that he, who regarded everybody who disagreed with him as "a bad man," should have sat down to write that sharp note to Lord North about Pownall.

During this Session there was no debate on American affairs, and the King's speech of May 8 when Parliament rose, made no reference to them. Nor were there at this time any fresh outbreaks in America. In their absence Ministers were no doubt glad to escape allusion to the subject in the hope that the fire which Grenville's act had kindled, and subsequent measures had kept alight,

would die out quietly. Nothing would have suited the King so well, it would have maintained the prerogatives of which he was so jealous, and that at no cost. But far from being extinct the fire was only smouldering, ready to break out again at the slightest breath. How deep was the colonial resentment the King never realised till too late, he had never seen the people across the Atlantic, his blood was different from theirs, it came almost wholly from Germany where officialdom is supreme. His were the brow-beating methods of a German bureaucrat, which he tried to enforce on men of English descent who would not submit to them. From their Puritan ancestors those colonists of Massachusetts had derived, in a high degree, that latent force of the English which makes them, while outwardly calm, more stubborn at a pinch than any other race.1 Foreigners are often surprised when they see this quality appear from below the surface.

He

While the King, foreign in his ideas if not in his place of birth, did not realise the existence of this force the ex-Governor of Massachusetts, who so vigorously opposed his Sovereign, was perfectly aware of it and of what would happen if men of that breed were pressed too far. knew the colonists thoroughly after the years he had lived among them; he was of their blood, his stubborn resistance to the Court, in his books and in his speeches in Parliament, shews him to have been of their nature. If in dealing with those colonies the power of this Sovereign and the special knowledge of this subject could have been combined in one person there might have been no frontier between Canada and the United States to-day. For all Pownall desired was that Massachusetts should be treated by England then exactly as England treats Canada now. To his mind the British subject in a British colony was in precisely the same position, as regards both his duties and his rights, as the man who lived in an English county. Since the American War of Independence this has been recognised. Pownall wanted it to be done without a war instead of in consequence of the war which, years before it broke out, he saw was inevitable unless the King could be induced to mend his ways.

In March 1771 Oliver, hitherto Secretary to the province of Massachusetts, became Lieutenant-Governor,

1 Junius noticed this trait in his Letter of Feb. 24, 1768.

succeeding Hutchinson who had been in charge since Bernard's departure and was now promoted to Governor. On June 7 we find Pownall writing from Albemarle Street to Cooper in Boston:

The session is now over and not one single point, either by Ministry or by those who oppose it, has been brought forward relative to the constitution of the Provinces or to the rights of the Americans. . . . Those who wish best to mankind can only lye by for such events as may present future occasions for serving them. I shall always consider myself as being in this situation, both with regard to the general liberties of mankind, as well as the particular interest of the Province of Massachusetts Bay with whose affairs my administration naturally connected me. There seems just now no great reason to expect any change in things, as those who have the forming and direction of persons seem thoroughly founded and established in their power.

This last passage is of course an allusion to the supremacy the King had obtained by the employment of Lord North. In another letter to Cooper of July 26 Pownall wrote that

until some new event shall give a new spirit of government to both parties, and that spirit shall actuate an honest people, all is at hazard, I had almost said—at random. Tempted with the glare of false characters too many on your side the water attached themselves to men and the seduction of party, forgetting all the while thingsthings of the last importance. .. I do not despair of once more seeing my real friends in America; it is almost a fixed purport in my mind to make the tour of America once more, to compare on the spot the state and progress of the country. But that must be some years hence-if ever.

He wrote again to Cooper this autumn from Richmond, on September 3. After describing, with minute knowledge of what was passing, how Russia, Turkey and Austria, stood in relation to each other on the Continent he said :

I am determined to be silent upon, although not forgetting or negligent of, American affairs, I am, at my leisure, putting together some ideas on the right of mankind to colonise and the rights of colonies so emigrant, when settled as distinct and compleat (sic) communities. But whether I shall ever finish it, or whether, when finished, I shall ever publish it, is very distant from my present determination. . . . Dr. Franklin is gone on a tour to Ireland. I have been here all summer-am going into Lincolnshire, my usual tour. for the next month, and when I return shall, I fancy, soon after

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