Stiff in Opinions, Always in the Wrong: Essay on “A Letter to G.G.” - Liberty Fund

October 2024 — Equality

Stiff in Opinions, Always in the Wrong: Essay on “A Letter to G.G.”

The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776

The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776, selected by Jack Greene, makes available in modern digitized form a trove of eighteenth-century books and pamphlets that directly addressed what became known in metropolitan Britain as the American Question.

Stiff in Opinions, Always in the Wrong: Essay on “A Letter to G.G.”

Former prime minister George Grenville (1712-70) was the obvious target of an open letter penned by the redoubtable if enigmatic L of Richmond. The two-shilling pamphlet was issued by a London printer, J. Williams, not normally given to political-themed forays, suggestive perhaps of a more independently minded author than the polemicists packing the presses of John Almon and others, including Grenville’s own team of hack writers. The pamphlet takes aim at two of the more prominent recent pieces defending Grenville’s record in government (1763-65) and criticising succeeding administrations led by the Marquess of Rockingham (13 July 1765-30 July 1766) and the Earl of Chatham (30 July 1766 to October 1768). While the author did not identify them by title, the first target was A Speech, in Behalf of the Constitution, Against the Suspending and Dispensing Prerogative, &c a pamphlet with an intriguing authorship history often incorrectly attributed to Grenville himself. The second, penned by Charles Lloyd, was also issued anonymously as The Conduct of the Late Administration Examined: With an Appendix, Containing Original and Authentic Documents. Both of L’s targets were published by J. Almon in 1767, shortly before publication of L’s own essay dated 18 January 1767. “A Letter to G.G.” was thus a hasty composition; its early sarcasm and invective diminishing as the author pedestrianly wades through the pro-Grenville material in search of an overarching thesis. 

The author’s findings were hardly newsworthy in terms of the American question—that Grenville’s defenders, content on trashing his successors’ records in government, were averse to recognizing the principles at stake in the dispute over the Stamp Act. But in relation to British politics, L of Richmond managed a calm re-evaluation of the evidence mustered by Grenville (presented in the appendix to Conduct of the Late Administration Examined) and previously offered to Parliament concerning British responses to American resistance. That evidence (for the Rockinghamites) partially justified repeal of the Stamp Act in March 1766 and (for the Chathamites) justified reiteration of Parliament’s legislative supremacy set out in the concurrent American Declaratory Act.

L, as an “old acquaintance” of Grenville’s, self-assuredly attributed Grenville’s recent pamphleteering activity to the “envy” and “fretfulness” of his anxious temperament. He confided knowledge of the team assembled by the former prime minister on which he now took “revenge”: the “Newfoundland” secretary, relaying coffee-house gossip; the Treasury secretary, scouring law books and histories; and the private secretary who collated everything for the press. The “German considerer”—one of these three—a vain, disreputable, and “little busy animal” was quietly working against his master (pp.2-4). Grenville’s team, as L clearly knew, had an impressive pamphleteering output defending Grenville’s handling of the John Wilkes affair and public finances, predominantly. These publications sustained Grenville’s reputation as a watchman of public expenditure during his years in opposition, 1765-70, among his seventy plus followers in the House of Commons. Operations in fact were ably directed and managed by Charles Lloyd (1735-73), Grenville’s private secretary when First Lord of the Treasury and the beneficiary of sinecures on his departure from office. The “German considerer” was likely George E. Ramus, of Swiss extraction, appointed a Treasury clerk on 29 July 1766, and later Chief Secretary to the Treasury. (Thomas Whately, an important government writer when a Treasury secretary under Grenville, was now Grenville’s parliamentary “party manager” and probably too busy to contribute.) [1]

Who was L? The clues he provided, while tactically intended to unsettle Grenville himself, do not permit identification. But we cannot dismiss the likelihood he was an old adversary of either Grenville or his team. Possibilities include David Hartley, Rockingham’s adviser on public finances, and other Rockinghamites who had publicly crossed Grenville such as Sir William Meredith M.P. and Charles Lenox the Duke of Richmond, and, more speculatively, members of Samuel Johnson’s literary club, Edmund Burke and Bennet Langton. Of all these, Burke seems the most plausible—given he was Lloyd’s reluctant interlocutor with Rockingham to retain his sinecure and Rockingham’s chief political writer—were it not for L’s exposition and argumentation lacking the penetrating logic and persuasive fluency of Burke’s early writings.[2]  L’s praise for the Annual Register’s contemporary commentaries on Grenville’s administration—when Burke was still its editor—proves nothing beyond admiration. Review periodicals avoided the question of authorship entirely. Tobias Smollet’s Critical Review dismissed “A Letter to G.G.” as a “contemptible insipid collection of abuse” parading a “farrago of hackneyed objections” to Grenville’s reputation. The Monthly Review instead praised its “solid . . . intelligent” commentaries, curious as to the “affectation of ease and carelessness” when engaging Grenville. [3]

“A Letter to G.G.” was published at a point in time when colonial taxation was being revived by Grenville in a concerted attempt to undermine the Chatham administration. Mention of impending important business by “the next 30th of January” indicates publication somewhere before then and L’s given date of composition, 18 January. In the autumn parliamentary session, Grenville had failed to win majority support for Commons’ motions condemning the illegality of the government’s order-in-council of 24 September placing an embargo on grain exports. Necessity—against a backdrop of food riots, and looming famine—trumped party interests and constitutional considerations. The impending business L anticipated was on 26 January, with the whole of Commons acting as a committee of supply. The subsequent failure of Grenville’s amendment proposing that British regiments in North America be directly maintained by the colonies proved a political watershed in his party’s decline. Independents critical of the Chatham administration’s neglect of this matter were discouraged from rallying to Grenville by Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend’s announcement on the 26th that he was reviving American taxation (which was enacted that summer). [4] L’s criticism of Grenville’s lacking “discernment” in his political judgement is less significant than his revelation that the “conceit[ed]” “German considerer” had leaked his master’s plans.

The first substantive political issue addressed by “A Letter to G.G.” was Grenville’s opposition to the grain embargo. Grenville’s November motion on the illegality of the order-in-council had rested on the contention that Parliament ought to have been first summoned, thus exposing the King to accusations of exceeding his prerogative powers when acting as His Majesty in Council. Similar views were expressed in the House of Lords by Grenville’s brother, Earl Temple, Lord Lyttleton, and the Earl of Mansfield. [5] Details of their speeches were not public knowledge, however, and the pamphlet published by Almon afterward was a spurious rendition of Grenville’s speech. L would have known this when he engaged A Speech, in Behalf of the Constitution, Against the Suspending and Dispensing Prerogative, &c. He did not know that this pamphlet was written by Lords Temple and Lyttleton (as Almon revealed in 1792). [6] L’s commentary echoed the Chathamite position that salus populi suprema lex (the welfare of the people is the supreme law) took precedence in times of crisis, regardless of constitutional objections, and that the King’s government acted out of necessity to prevent famine. The embargo was indeed illegal, but it was just.

The second issue was Grenville’s defence of the Stamp Act, and his criticism of the repeal moved by Rockingham’s administration set forth in Lloyd’s Conduct of the Late Administration Examined. L quickly rehearsed most of the arguments previously marshalled against colonial taxation by American writers and their British friends. His point of departure was acceptance of the Declaratory Act’s insistence upon parliamentary supremacy. Like Burke, L questioned the “propriety of exercising” such a power in the future to justify colonial taxation. Sources and authorities were duly summoned, but the most convincing evidence of the Americans’ case vis a vis taxation and representation, he contended, could be found in parliamentary acts relating to the “subordinate states” of Great Britain—Wales and the palatinate counties of Chester and Durham—that explicitly acknowledged the justice of these “states” having direct representation in Parliament. Americans’ virtual representation was easily dismissed. L was echoing Chatham’s now famous denunciation of Grenville delivered in the Commons on 17 December 1766. [7] It left him momentarily in agreement with both Rockingham and Chatham, save in supposing that questions of authority and sovereignty could be left unresolved. While Grenville and Townshend sought an opportunity to revive colonial taxation, L foresaw “dangerous consequences”—prolonged disputes with the colonies—from “discussion of points that should never be brought into discussion.” 

The remainder of the commentary exhibited Grenville’s abnegation of responsibilities towards the Americans: His ignoring colonial assemblies’ protests back in 1764; his demand for the stamp tax to be paid in sterling specie; his insistence on transferring revenue out of America to the Treasury; his insistence on prosecuting non-payers in juryless Courts of Vice Admiralty; his failure to anticipate resistance despite intelligence from Francis Bernard, governor of Massachusetts, and other colonial governors. On that last point, L peddled a view that gained traction in Parliament in early 1766 [8] when Bernard’s correspondence on the Stamp Act riots were used by the Rockingham administration in manoeuvres to repeal the Stamp Act. Neither L nor Lloyd discussed the full range of documentation presented to Parliament. But L was able to provide a plausible alternative hypothesis of the “financier” acting contrary to all advice in pushing ahead with colonial taxation and deluding himself about American compliance and obedience. A parliamentary inquiry, he concluded, might resolve uncertainties. Grenville faced no such examination but calls for an inquiry were revived and undertaken upon the continuation of American opposition to British policies through the early 1770s. [9]

Library catalogues often ascribe a subtitle to this octavo pamphlet of ninety-six numbered pages: “stiff in opinions, always in the wrong”. While these words appear nowhere in the text, they aptly depict the author’s determined critique of Grenville and his party. L was either a Rockinghamite Whig or loyal Chathamite, sharing their opinions of Grenville, but also a writer with “stiff opinions” on the question of parliamentary authority in North America. Resolution of that matter, he did not anticipate any time soon.

[1] Rory T. Cornish, The Grenvillites and the British Press: Colonial and British Politics, 1750-1770 (Newcastle, Eng., 2020), 212-59; Cornish, “Whately, Thomas (1726–1772), politician and author,” Oxford Dictionary of Biography (2004), https://www.oxforddnb.com/; Philip Lawson, George Grenville: A Political Life (Oxford, 1984), 222-23.

[2] On Burke and Rockingham see Paul Langford and William B. Todd, eds., The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke. Vol. 2, Party, Parliament, and the American War. 1766-1774 (Oxford, 2014), 18-19, 87; Thomas W. Copeland, et al., eds., The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, 10 vols. (Cambridge Eng., and Chicago,1958-1978), 1: 214; James Sambrook, “Club [Literary Club, Johnson’s Literary Club] (act. 1764–1784)”, Oxford Dictionary of Biography (2006), https://www.oxforddnb.com/. 

[3] The Critical Review, or, Annals of Literature, 23 (February 1767), 158; Monthly Review, or, Literary Journal, 36 (February 1767), 143.

[4] Philip Lawson, George Grenville: A Political Life (Oxford, 1984), 231-32.

[5] Richard G. Temple, The Grenville Papers: Being the Correspondence of Richard Grenville, Earl Temple, K.G., and the Right Hon. George Grenville, their Friends and Contemporaries, 4 vols., (London, 1852), 3: 383.

[6] John Almon, Anecdotes of the Life of the Right Hon. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and of the Principal Events of His Time. with His Speeches in Parliament, from the Year 1736 to the Year 1778 (Dublin, 1792), 326-27. The preface admitted it was “not true” that the speech was “real.” Anon., A Speech, in Behalf of the Constitution, Against the Suspending and Dispensing Prerogative, &c (London, 1767).

[7] William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London, 1813), 103-06.

[8] See Colin Nicolson, ed. The Papers of Francis Bernard, Governor of Colonial Massachusetts, 1760-69. Volume 3 (1766-1767), (Boston, 2013), 128-129.

[9] Colin Nicolson, ed. The Papers of Francis Bernard, Governor of Colonial Massachusetts, 1760-69. Volume 5 (1768-1769), (Boston, 2017), 18, 36, 153, passim.

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