Memoirs of the Court of George IV | Page 3

more alarmed looked hourly for some mischievous demonstration, and the more reckless displayed increasing confidence and audacity. That reports should be circulated of an immediate change of Government, must have been only natural under such circumstances; the wide-spread discontent of the masses of the population, swelling and surging like a storm-driven sea, had nothing else sufficiently prominent to direct itself against, but the authorities who appeared to them responsible for the evils under which they laboured; and those persons who feared, or pretended to fear, the threatened storm, caught at the idea of removing the unpopular Ministers as affording the only chance of re-establishing the public tranquillity. Such, however, had long before been the tactics of opposition, and such, we are afraid, they are likely to remain.
[4] "The Government," writes a Cabinet Minister to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, "is in a very strange and, I must acknowledge, in a precarious state."--Lord Sidmouth to Earl Talbot, Pellew's "Life of Lord Sidmouth," vol. iii. p. 310.
DR. PHILLIMORE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Whitehall, Feb. 15, 1820.
MY DEAR LORD,
As your Lordship desired me to write if there was any news of any description in circulation, I take up my pen merely to inform you that there is a report most generally disseminated both throughout the West-end of the town and the City, that the Ministers have resigned. Sir W. Scott [Lord Stowell] yesterday, in expressing his apprehension (to an acquaintance of mine) that such an event was in contemplation, said it would not be a partial change, "but a general sweep." Excuse haste.
Ever your obliged and faithful servant,
JOSEPH PHILLIMORE.
P.S.--The Cabinet sat thirteen hours on Sunday.
The sweeping change so confidently anticipated did not take place; and probably when it became evident to some of the most daring of the political speculators of the time, that this was not so imminent as they desired, they resolved to expedite it in a fashion that should leave no necessity for a second experiment of the kind.
On the 23rd of February, the loyal citizens of the metropolis were startled by the intelligence of the timely discovery of a plot to assassinate his Majesty's Ministers while they were at dinner in the house of the Earl of Harrowby, Grosvenor Square, and of a sanguinary conflict of the police and military with the conspirators, when attempting to seize the latter at their place of rendezvous, in an obscure thoroughfare near Paddington, called Cato Street. The history of the Thistlewood Conspiracy,[5] as related in the criminal annals of the period, illustrates in a remarkable manner the diseased state of political feeling then existing in England. It was a small copy of the Irish rebellion,--marked by the same cut-throat policy,--having in view a similar overwhelming revolution, with the same absurdly inadequate means. Fortunately for the United Kingdom, the chief actors in both succeeded only in bringing upon themselves the destruction with which they had menaced a powerful Government.
[5] A good account of it may be found in Pellew's "Life of Lord Sidmouth," vol. iii. p. 312.
Thistlewood proposed to slaughter the entire Cabinet at once, when assembled at Lord Harrowby's, which was assented to; "for," said he, "as there has not been a dinner for so long, there will no doubt be fourteen or sixteen there; and it will be a rare haul to murder them all together."[6]
[6] Thistlewood's Trial, p. 37. Alison's "Europe," vol. ii. p. 425.
The next communication refers to the same incident, as well as to the various rumours then in circulation:--
MARQUIS WELLESLEY TO MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Richmond, Tuesday, Feb. 29, 1820.
MY DEAR LORD,
Not having received any commands from you, and having nothing to communicate beyond the rumours of the day, without any authentic information, I have not lately troubled your Lordship with any letter.
It was unnecessary to state that the stories of my being summoned to the King, &c. &c., were all absolutely false. If I had received any such summons, your Lordship would have been fully acquainted with the whole transaction by express from me at the earliest moment.
I believe an attempt was made to confirm the rumours by the circumstance of his Majesty's gracious kindness in answering my inquiries at the moment of his greatest danger, by expresses from Carlton House. My carriage also was in town one day in the highest paroxysm of the supposed squabble; but I happened not to be in it, being confined at home by a cold.
I have not been in town, except to collect some account of the late horrible plot, on the day after the discovery (when I was in the House of Lords about half an hour), for a considerable time, the weather and a cold having concurred to keep me at home.
I know nothing authentic of the quarrel, so much the subject of rumour and noise, nor do I