State of Parties.--King’s Illness.--Regency Bill.
When the Houses met again after the recess, a very new scene opened to the public, though unfolded by degrees, and of which all the springs were not at first discovered. Accident, the rashness of Opposition, and the intemperance of Ministers concurred and wrought up the ensuing confusions; but the source lay in the mutual jealousy of the Favourite and Grenville, on which I have already touched, and which terminated in lasting mortification to the two rivals, and gave birth to the various and fluctuating exhibition of politics that took place and succeeded each other from this period. In truth this was the era of faction, though it did not immediately predominate. Hitherto it might be said that the two parties of Whig and Tory still subsisted; though Jacobitism, the concealed mother of the latter, was extinct. The Court had indeed admitted few Tories into place, from their total want of abilities. But though Grenville and the Duke of Bedford had always called themselves Whigs, and the _Chancellor Northington really was one_, yet Lord Bute had left the standard of prerogative in the Court, and his successors had relaxed none of those high-flown doctrines. Nothing could be more despotic than Grenville’s nature. Bedford was drawn by the Duchess and Rigby to adopt any principles, however contrary to his opinion, that favoured her love of power, or Rigby’s rapacity: and Lord Mansfield retained great weight in a cabinet so framed to embrace boldly any arbitrary measures that he was always ready to suggest and always afraid to execute himself. On the other hand, the Opposition, though headed by Newcastle, who had sailed with every current, and though composed of great and proud families, dated from the stand they had made, or by resentment had been forced to make, to the Favourite’s plan of extending the prerogative. Lord Temple stood on no ground but popularity; and the cast of Mr. Pitt’s life, contrary to his temper, had thrown him too on the affections of the people. The crisis I am going to describe broke these ill-consolidated connections into several factions; and though one of those factions adhered more steadily to their professions than the rest, the subsequent contests were rather a struggle for power, than the settled animosity of two parties, though the body of Opposition still called itself Whig, an appellation rather dropped than disclaimed by the Court; and though the real Tories still adhered to their old distinctions, while they secretly favoured, sometimes opposed, the Court, and fluctuated according as they esteemed particular chiefs not of their connection, or had the more agreeable opportunity of distressing those who supported the cause of freedom. As their whole conduct was comprised in silent votes, and never was considerable enough to turn a single scale in the political changes,[83] I shall seldom mention them any more.