USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Wilkes-Barre > A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, from its first beginnings to the present time; including chapters of newly-discovered, Vol. I > Part 102
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About that period Lord North, having announced at a City dinner the receipt of intelligence of an important advantage gained by the British troops over the "rebels" in America, was taken to task by Colonel Barré and Charles James Fox, who were present, for applying such language to their "fellow-subjects in America." "Well, then, to please you," responded North, "I will call them the gentlemen in oppo- sition on the other side of the water."
February 6, 1778, Edmund Burke made a memorable speech in the House of Commons-Horace Walpole denominated it "the chef-d'œuvre of Burke's orations." He referred to General Burgoyne's talk with the American Indians as the "sublimity of bombastic absurdity," in which Burgoyne demanded the assistance of seventeen Indian tribes on the ground of "considerations of our holy religion, and regard for our Con- stitution." Though he enjoined them not to scalp men, women or children alive, yet he promised to pay them for any scalps of the dead. "Seventeen interpreters from the several nations," said Burke, "could not have given the Indians any idea of Burgoyne's reasons ; and the in- vitation was just as if, at a riot on Tower Hill, the keeper of the wild beasts there had turned them loose, but adding : 'My gentle lions, iny sentimental wolves, my tender-hearted hyenas, go forth ! but take care not to hurt men, women or children.' " Burke then grew serious, and as the former part of his speech had excited the warmest and most continued bursts of laughter (even from Prime Minister North and Pay- master General Rigby) so he drew such a pathetic picture of the cruel- ties of the King's army-particularly in the case of a young woman on whose ransom, not beauty, some soldiers had quarreled, and then murdered her-that "he drew iron tears down the cheeks of Colonel Barré, who implored Burke to print his speech." Barré declared, with many invectives against the Bishops, that the speech ought to be pasted up on every church under the Bishops' proclamation for the fast-and that he himself would paste it upon some churches .*
April 7, 1778, in the House of Lords, the Earl of Chatham made a powerful address against the surrender of America-declaring that war, with whatever issue, would be preferable to the proposed termins of peace. This address secured a majority against the motion, and the war was
* See G. H. Jennings' "Anecdotal History of the British Parliament," page 155.
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continued. But it was the orator's last effort, for his physical powers suddenly failed, and he fell down on the floor of the House stricken by a mortal illness. He died at his home in Kent on the 11th of the fol- lowing May, and was honored with a public funeral, which took place June 9th from the "Painted Chamber" in the House of Parliament and proceeded to Westminster Abbey, where interment took place. In the funeral procession was "a banner of the Barony of Chatham, supported by Col. Isaac Barré, the Dukes of Northumberland, Richmond, and Manchester, and the Marquis of Rockingham, in close mourning." It was a strange satire on the life of Barré that he, who had first attained Parliamentary distinction by attacking William Pitt, should have been the mnost zealous mourner for the Earl of Chatham !
Shelburne and Barré, with all those who had acted with Chathain, now ranged themselves with the Rockingham party. All the bitterness and invective of which Barre was master were arrayed against the Gov- ernment. "There was much fair ground for criticism. The justice of the war was, indeed, a matter of opinion ; but the method in which it was conducted, the vast grants of Parliament which remained unaccounted for, and the scandalous corruption of contractors, were subjects of the justest censure. Barré moved for an inquiry into the public accounts. Lord North was in no position to oppose a motion so plausible, and so he made the motion his own. A commission was appointed, which naturally languished under Ministerial protection." About that time, during one of the debates on the American War, Colonel Barré attacked Lord North violently, calling him the scourge of the country. Upon this Lord North, for almost the only time in his life, it is said, lost his temper, and declared that he had "been used, from that quarter, to language so uncivil, so brutal, so insolent - -. " At these words the House got into an uproar, and Mr. Thomas Townshend called upon Lord North to apologize. The latter said he was ready to ask pardon of the House, but not of Barre. At the end of a tumult of three hours' duration he consented to ask pardon even of Barré.
Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall, in his "Memoirs" covering the period of 1772-1784, states (II : 37) :
"In surveying the Opposition side of the House of Commons at this time [1781]; the idea of BARRÉ naturally and unavoidably suggests itself after that of Burke. Both were natives of the same country-Ireland-and both had attained to vast celebrity in their adopted country, England. But no sort of comparison could be made between their talents, acquirements, or claim to general admiration-in all which Burke possessed an infinite superiority. Of an athletic frame and mould, and endowed with extraordinary powers of voice, BARRÉ, as a speaker, roughly enforced rather than solicited or attracted attention. Severe and sometimes coarse in his censures or accusations, he nevertheless sustained his charges against Ministers with considerable force of argument and language. He was more measured in his panegyrics than Burke. Slow, measured and dictatorial in his manner of enunciation, he was never carried away by those beautiful digressions of genius or fancy with which Burke captivated and entertained his audience. Master, nevertheless, of his subject, and more attentive than Burke not to fatigue the patience of the House when he saw it eager to rise, he frequently obtained a more indulgent hearing. Deprived already of one eye, and menaced with a privation of both ; advanced in years ; grey-headed and of a savage aspect, he reminded the beholders when he rose of Belisarius rather than Tully. Yet, possessing a cultivated understanding, conversant with the works of antiquity, and able on occasion to press them into his service, he sometimes displayed great diversity of information.
"Near him, on the same bench, in the front ranks of the Minority, usually sat his friend and colleague [John] Dunning. Never, perhaps, did Nature enclose a more illum- inated mind in a body of meaner and more abject appearance. It is difficult to do justice to the peculiar species of ugliness which characterized his person and figure, although he did not labor under any absolute deformity of shape or limb. Sir Joshua Reynolds alone could give a good portrait of Dunning. His picture of Lord Shelburne, Lord Ashburton
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[Dunning] and Colonel Barré has surely no superior-the characters so admirable, the likenesses so strong.
"A degree of infirmity and almost of debility or decay in his [Dunning's] organs augmented the effect of his other bodily misfortunes. Even his voice was so husky and choked with phlegm that it refused utterance to the sentiments which were dictated by his superior intelligence. But all these imperfections and defects of configuration were obliterated by the ability which he displayed. In spite of the monotony of his tones and his total want of animation as well as grace, yet so powerful was reason when flow- ing from his lips, that every murmur became hushed and every ear attentive. It seemed, nevertheless, to be the acute sophistry of a lawyer rather than the speech of a man of the world or the eloquence of a man of letters and education. His legal talents soon after- wards [in 1782] raised him to the peerage [as Lord Ashburton ], just in time to attain that elevation, as his constitution speedily sank under accumulated disorders, which hurried him prematurely to the grave [in 1783]. This distinguished man, who was not exempt from great infirmity of mind, felt or perceived so little his corporeal deficiencies, as to consider his person with extraordinary predilection. Fond of viewing his face in the
LORD ASHBURTON, COL. ISAAC BARRE AND LORD SHELBURNE. A photo-reproduction of an engraving after the original painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds .*
glass, he passed no time more to liis satisfaction than in decorating himself for his ap- pearance in the world. t
"He and Barré, who were fellow-laborers in the same vineyard, represented like- wise the same borough, Calne, and belonged, or at least looked up, to the same political chief-Lord Shelburne. They consequently were animated by no common principle of union or of action with Fox and Burke, except one-that of overturning the Administra-
* The original of this picture, now owned by Lord Northbrook, London, was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1782. Lord Ashburton (John Dunning) is seated at the left in the picture, in his robe and wig as Chancelor of the Duchy of Lancaster ; Lord Shelburne is seated at the right, arrayed in the regalia of a Knight of the Garter, while Colonel Barré, in civilian dress, is depicted standing between the two I,ords.
+ JOHN DUNNING (previously mentioned on page 580) was born in 1731, and at the age of thirty-three years was eminent as a Crown lawyer. (See page +41.) His argument as counsel for John Wilkes against "General Warrants" made future fame and fortune secure. In March, 1768, through the influence of Lord Shelburne, he was returned to Parliament as one of the Members for Calne. Later in that year, although Solicitor General, he took no part in the debate on the expulsion of Wilkes from the House. (See page 550.) In 1774 Dunning ably supported before the Privy Council the petition of the Massacli- setts Assembly for the removal of Governor Hutchinson. It was upon that occasion that Alexander Wedderburn inade his violent personal attack on Benjamin Franklin-referred to in the note on page 441. In 1782, at the request of Lord Shelburne, the King raised Dunning to the peerage as Baron Aslı- burton, and appointed him to the post of Chancelor of the Duchy of Lancaster. At his death in 1783 he was succeeded as Baron Ashburton by his second son, Richard Barre Dunning-who died without issue in 1823.
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tion of Lord North. On all other points a secret jealousy and rivalry subsisted between the adherents of the Shelburne and the Rockingham parties."
At the beginning of 1782 there came an agitation in England which was not far from a revolution. Petitions from all parts of the kingdom were sent to the King demanding a change of Ministers. The days of Lord North's administration of public affairs were numbered. "The Opposition, however, was unable to effect Lord North's removal, or to provoke his voluntary resignation, by any censures passed on the American War," states Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall .* "Lord North, who was individually beloved in and out of the House-even by those who most disapproved or opposed many of his measures-was likewise steadily supported by his Sovereign." The war, alone, had preserved the Government-but England was now sick of war. In America she had been beaten. At home she was oppressed by taxation, and was looking to economical reformn. Finally the Reforin Party won a signal victory. "They had terrified a venal House of Commons into a protest against the Royal rapine and secret tyranny on which many of its members depended for their places and not a few for their livelihood." In March, 1782, the King was forced to appoint a Cabinet composed of inen who were pledged to destroy corruption. The Marquis of Rockingham (pre- viously mentioned) was named as Prime Minister and Shelburne as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
March 8, 1782, a short time before the change of the Ministry, resolutions were introduced in the House of Commons imputing the misfortunes of the war to "the want of foresight and ability" in Min- isters. In the debate which followed, Welbore Ellis,t who had just resigned from the office of Treasurer of the Navy to succeed Lord George Germain as Secretary of State for the Colonies, said : "When I accepted the seal I was possessed of a lucrative employment to which no responsibility attached. I was undoubtedly in a warm, comfortable bed, out of which I have been summoned to take an active part in the Ship of State." The opportunity was too favorable for Burke to lose. Start- ing up as soon as the new Secretary had finished, he attacked him with those shafts of classic wit, satire and ridicule which he knew so well how to launch against his opponents. "It was true," he allowed, "that the Treasurer of the Navy had quitted a warm bed, with his eyes hardly open, and had ventured into a vessel leaky, foundering, and tossed by tempestuous winds. He has been most unwise so to do; and to him I may apply the words of Brutus, when he asks his wife-
'Wherefore rise ye now? It is not for your health, thus to commit Your weak condition to the raw, cold morning !'
"The Secretary of State declares," continued Burke, "that he has left a warm bed for a post of danger. In my firm belief it has been left merely with the intention of introducing a Scotch warming-pan." The allusion to Lord Dundas-a Scot, and at that time Lord Advocate of Scotland-which was too palpable to be mistaken, excited no little laughter. After awhile Dundas arose and said : "The honorable Men- ber, whose classic redundancy of wit always charms this audience, has been pleased, when addressing the Secretary of State near me, to inen-
* In his "Memoirs" (previously mentioned), II : 216, et seq.
+ A native of Ireland, and a son of the Bishop of Meath. In March, 1761, he was returned to Parlia- ment with John Wilkes for the borough of Aylesbury. A few years after his retirement from the office of Secretary of State he was created Baron Mendip.
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tion his quitting a snug, warm bed in order to make room for a Scotch warming-pan. Now I see no reason, when I look at the gentlemen opposite me-if their eager expectations of coming into power are ful- filled-why it should not be an Irish warming-pan which is to be in- troduced into that bed." A retort so apposite turned the laugh against Burke ; and, before three weeks had elapsed, the possibility suggested by Lord Dundas had become a fact, for Colonel Barré was appointed Treasurer of the Navy, and shortly afterwards was given a pension of £3,200 a year-to take effect "whenever he should quit his then office." This pension was ten times as large as the Government Bill then before the House of Commons proposed to allow to any one person. Therefore the pension was attacked, and Barré for the first time found there was something to be said in favor of pensions. Relative to this matter Wraxall (previously mentioned) has the following to say ("Memoirs," II : 360):
"A pension of £3,200 a year having been granted to Colonel Barré by the Adminis- tration of which Lord Rockinghamn constituted the head, and another very considerable pension having been given at the same time to Lord Ashburton-the two principal friends of Lord Shelburne in both Houses of Parliament-these grants (the consideration of which was unexpectedly brought forward July 9, 1782, a few days after the coming in of the Shelburne Ministry*) became severely arraigned. It seemed, indeed, impossible not to feel a degree of astonishment at contemplating such profuse donations of the public money made by Ministers who condemned Lord North's want of economy ; who were with difficulty induced to give a pension of £2,000 a year to Lord Rodney for having defeated the French fleet and saved Jamaica ; who themselves had recently reduced the household of the Sovereign, and who loudly asserted their personal disinterestedness.
"D. P. Coke *
* moved for an Address to request of His Majesty to declare which of his Ministers had dared to recommend the grant of the pension in question to Barré. The three Lords of the Treasury present having all admitted that it was the Marquis of Rockingham's act, and Frederick Montagu, one of the number, not only jus- tifying it as a remuneration merited by Barré for his long services in that assembly, but adding that all he regretted was his not having signed a warrant for a similar sum to another distinguished servant of the public, namely, Burke, Barré himself then arose. In a speech well-conceived, and delivered from the Treasury bench, he detailed his mili- tary sufferings and honorary as well as pecuniary renunciations. The post of Adjutant General and the government of Stirling Castle, both of which offices had been conferred on him by the Crown as a reward for his services under the immortal Wolfe in Canada- posts of which officers were only deprived for military offenses-he had sacrificed. 'I was,' said he, 'an enemy to General Warrants. I voted against them in this House, and for this political transgression I was dismissed the very next day from my military employments. I should now have been an old Lieutenant General. Had I been less a friend to the liberties of the people, my income would have exceeded the.pension con- ferred on me. If, after such sacrifices, I do not merit this provision, let it be curtailed or annihilated.'
"I confess that, though I felt no predilection towards Barré-whose manners, like his figure, had in them something approaching to ferocious-yet these circumstances produced on my mind a sentiment of conviction or approbation. *
* Fox, rising, ad- initted that Rockingham had concurred in recommending the pensions conferred on Barré and Ashburton. I find it difficult to convey to posterity any adequate idea of this extra- ordinary debate, or rather discussion, which, during the greater part of the time it lasted, exhibited not the slightest reference nor made the smallest allusion to the ostensible sub- ject before the House-Barré's pension. In defiance of order it was maintained for three or four hours in the shape of a conversation, or dialogue, carried on between Fox and General Conway exclusively-the Speaker and the Members present acquiescing in a total departure from the question under examination, from motives of curiosity. Never, perhaps, were political disclosures, more delicate and interesting, made within those walls."
March 31, 1783, the Shelburne Cabinet resigned, being succeeded by the Ministry under the Premiership of the Duke of Portland. On the downfall of this Ministry in the following December William Pitt, second son of the late Earl of Chatham, and then in the twenty-fifth
* The Marquis of Rockingham having died July 1, 1782, the King appointed as Prime Minister Lord Shelburne, who immediately formed a new Cabinet-Colonel Barré becoming Paymaster General of the Forces.
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year of his life, became Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Chancelor of the Exchequer. Early in 1784 Pitt gained considerable applause by appointing Colonel Barré Clerk of the Pells. This office was one of the principal ones within the gift of the Minister, being a complete sinecure, worth £3,000 a year. The office was connected with the Exchequer, and it was the duty of the incumbent to make entries on the "pells", or parchment rolls. The office was abolished in 1834. Upon his appointment to the clerkship of the Pells-which office he held continuously until his death-Colonel Barré relinquished the pension of £3,200 which had been previously granted to him. In1 1785 a heavy misfortune fell upon him, for which no pension or well-paid sinecure could compensate. He became totally blind. For several sessions he disappeared from Parliament. When he returned, all was changed ; his place in politics was gone ; a new generation of statesmen had sprung up. He continued, however, to represent Calne in the House of Commons until 1790, when he retired permanently.
Colonel Barré died at his home in Stanhope Street, Mayfair, Lon- don, July 20, 1802, in his seventy-sixth year. His health had been declin- ing for a considerable time previously, and a few hours before his death he suffered a stroke of paralysis. He left an estate valued at about £24,000, a moiety of which he bequeathed to the Marchioness of Town- shend, the wife of his old companion-in-arms George, Marquis of Town- shend-mentioned on page 578. October 18, 1802, in The Luzerne Federalist, published in Wilkes-Barré, the following reference to Colonel Barré's death was printed-which was the first and only mention made of the occurrence, or even of Barré himself.
"Died-in England-the Hon. ISAAC BARRÉ, Member of the British Parliament ; celebrated for the part he took in favor of the American Colonies in 1774, '75, &c. He was blind for several years before his death."
"The pre-eminence of Barré as a speaker," says Elliot in "Colonel Barré and His Times," previously mentioned, "was due principally to his extraordinary power of invective ; but it would be a great injustice to suppose that there was nothing but invective in his speeches. On the contrary, some of them abound with wise maxims and good, sound com- mon sense. He was generally on what we should call the Constitutional side, and a's the great Constitutional questions of that day have all been settled in his favor, it is naturally difficult for us to help being struck by his arguments. But Barré does not deserve our unqualified approba-
tion. He was essentially a party man. He spoke for his party, and he voted with his party. Walpole called him a bravo, and nothing can .so well illustrate the dependence of his position as the fact that, clever and eloquent as he was, the first trace we find of his making an original motion was in 1778, seventeen years after he entered Parliament. He was one of those mercenaries of the great political leaders of the last century who, after a tumultuous life of Parliamentary conflict, were content to retire into oblivion upon a pension ; men of vast abilities and too often of low morality, who flamed across the political heavens like meteors, and whose brilliant track-already beginning to fade in the lapse of time-alone remains to mark their former splendor.
"Thus Barré found himself fighting the battles of the people, and his eloquence was of a sort peculiarly adapted to such warfare. It was of an aggressive character. It is doubtful whether as a Ministerial speaker he would ever have risen to any eminence. His mind was fired by
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all the lofty principles which a popular opposition, whether rightly or wrongly, seems always to inspire. He was the champion of resistance in every form ; of mobs against soldiers ; of the people against the Parlia- ment ; of the Parliament against the Crown. The Corporation of London denied the privileges of the House of Commons ; he recommended con- cession. The American Colonies rose in rebellion against England ; he counseled compliance. His speeches abound with appeals to the moral sympathies. Virtue is eulogized ; tyranny, corruption and fraud meet with proper reprobation. Such themes can never be exhausted, and are always popular. It is doubtful whether his eloquence, stripped of such spangles as these, would ever have shone so brilliantly before the world. But Barré was not always so fortunate as to charm the House with his language or to terrify it with his invective. He was an Irishman, and his French extraction was unable to save him from the penalties of an Irish birth. On one fatal occasion, when he was speaking on the sub- ject of America, he declared in stentorian tones : 'I think Boston ought to be punished ; she is your eldest son !' The House which he had oftener driven to tears than to mirth, naturally exploded into a roar of laughter."
The writer of the foregoing is a descendant of Sir Gilbert Elliot, a Scot, who was a contemporary of Colonel Barré, and, at the beginning of the latter's public career, was the confidential friend of the Earl of Bute (mentioned on page 530). Later he became the special confidant of George III, and, if not his adviser and mentor in his political policy, was the chief advocate of that policy .* Sir Gilbert was not, therefore, a friend to the American patriots, as was Barré, and he saw little to commend in the latter's attacks on the British Ministry and its sup- porters during the early days of the American War. Governed, 110 doubt, by the recorded judgments and comments of his ancestor, the author of "Colonel Barré and His Times" has little to say in general commendation of Barré, and is almost silent with respect to the firm stand taken, and the brave, forceful and eloquent speeches delivered, by the latter during the most important period of his Parliamentary career -from 1775 to 1782. The writer in question is not an unbiased judge in respect to his estimates and opinions of Barré. It would be difficult to convince Americans of to-day-familiar with the speeches delivered, and the principles and policies upheld, by Colonel Barré during the Ameri- can War-that he was "a bravo," or "one of those inercenaries of the great political leaders" of the eighteenth century, or a man of "low morality."
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