Lord North by W. Baring Pemberton

Author:W. Baring Pemberton [Pemberton, W. Baring]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Great Britain, Eastern, Ireland
ISBN: 9781787204188
Google: 9xkkDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2017-04-07T15:55:39+00:00

CHAPTER VII—THE AMERICAN WAR

‘The American War is held up to our view as if it had been the war of the Crown, in contradiction to the wishes of the people. I deny the fact. It was a war of Parliament, sanctioned throughout its whole progress by both Houses. It was more. It was the war of the People, undertaken for the purpose of maintaining their rights over the dependencies of the Empire.’—WRAXALL, iii. 407.

‘The American War was a constitutional war: it was a popular war.’—NORTH, P.H., xix. 607.

No sooner had the dispute with the American colonies become an affair of muskets and generals than it tended to recede into the background of Lord North’s life. It became a disturbing, unhappy, and at times exceedingly sombre background; but it bore little direct relationship to the pathetic, often bewildered, figure in the foreground. Once the gloves were off, the initiative necessarily passed from North. His principal concern was to meet unprecedented demands upon the Exchequer and to repel the ceaseless assaults of the Opposition. In the Cabinet where, on his own confession, he was at the best of times unable to choose between the clashing opinions of his colleagues, he made fewer decisions than ever.{457} Possessing neither the driving force nor the imperious personality necessary to control a Ministry under war conditions, he co-operated rather than directed, he advised rather than resolved. Decked out with all the trappings of authority, he enjoyed increasingly less of its realities. The war became George Germain’s war, Lord Sandwich’s war, King George’s war, before it could be considered, if, indeed, at all, Lord North’s war. Anything like a consecutive account of the struggle forms, therefore, no part of his life, as it must that of Germain or Sandwich. Events in America are of importance only in so far as they affected North personally and ministerially.

If the American War brought to North nothing but distress of mind; if he suffered privately for what, publicly, he had little power to prevent; if in the closing stages he even saw its futility and hopelessness, it may very properly be asked why he consented to remain in such uncongenial surroundings when Bushey with its lawns and glass-houses beckoned unceasingly? To the complete eighteenth-century mind there was only one explanation possible: the emoluments of office outweighed its vexations.{458} This point of view, expressed independently by Walpole and Fox,{459} both in their way highly representative of their age, is, in North’s case, an increasingly unconvincing explanation the closer his career is studied. Admittedly his total emoluments were considerable, but when the expenses of Bushey, Downing Street, and Dillington had been taken into account, in addition to the immense prodigality which in those days it was almost impossible for a public man to avoid, little was left over for luxuries.{460} {461} Once North had retired—and it would have been clean contrary to practice to have done so without the offer of some substantial pension—once Downing Street and perhaps even Bushey had been given up, his financial straits must cease, and there would be sufficient to live upon in comfort.

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