[136] The advantage of the Ministers lay in the disunion of their opponents--a fact which the speeches of Mr. Grenville and Mr. Burke, angry as each of them was with the Government, most palpably disclosed;--America, as before, being the subject of their differences. Mr. Grenville, however, disapproved of the dissolution of the American Assemblies, observing that “no corporation was bound to obey the orders of the Secretary of State further than they are enjoined by the laws of the land.” The picture he drew of the state of England is in dark colours. “Distress is among the common people; luxury among the rich; servility, licentiousness, venality, of a nature the most dangerous to the constitution; an enormous debt; a diminishing specie; an increasing paper credit.” Mr. Burke greatly overrated the importance of Corsica. “Corsica naked,” he observed, “I do not dread; but Corsica a province of France, is dreadful to me.”--(Cavendish, vol. i. p. 46.) This apprehension was very generally entertained,--time has proved it to be utterly unfounded, the French having up to this moment derived as little benefit from their conquest as has accrued to them from any of their ultramarine possessions.--E.
[137] As Wilkes was elected into the succeeding Parliament, and was allowed to sit, his expulsion at this time cannot be deemed a precedent to justify the expulsion of any man because he had been expelled by a former Parliament. No part of his expulsion can be turned into a precedent, unless on the argument that he was then a prisoner under sentence.
[138] The arguments for and against the expulsion of Wilkes are stated with neatness and force by Mr. Burke in the Annual Register for 1769.--E.
[139] Sir Joseph Mawbey had soon forgotten the favours of the Whigs:--
“Exulting that he was the first Who Ministerial chains had burst, And in the cause of liberty Could keep his honours and be free.”
He professed to be independent of party, and one of the results of this independence was, that the satirical poets of the day, Whig and Tory, united in pitilessly assailing him. He died in 1817.--E.
[140] See the debate in Cavendish, vol. i. p. 46–49.--E.
[141] It has been supposed that the great object of the Duc de Choiseul in encouraging Turkey to engage in war with Russia, was to procure the possession of Egypt for France as a reward for her interference. The Count de Vergennes had from the first predicted the issue of this unequal conflict. He in vain laid before the Duc the military incapacity of the Sultan Mustapha, the apathy of the Ministers, and the inefficiency of the Turkish levies. “I can arm the Turks against Russia,” he said, “whenever you desire, but I forewarn you that they will be beaten.”--Lacretelle, Histoire de France, vol. iv. p. 212.--E.