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 early Wyoming Valley history, together with many biographical sketches and much genealogical material. Volume I > Part 102
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In reply to Colonel Barré Solicitor General Wedderburn (previously mentioned) made a fiery speech. He said, among other things :
* * "Relinquish America ! What is it but to desire a giant to shrink spontane- ously into a dwarf ? Relinquish America and you also relinquish the West Indies, and confine yourself to that narrow insular situation which once made you hardly discernible on the face of the globe. My heart swells with indignation at the idea. Relinquish America ! Forbid it, ye spirits of Edward and Henry, whom Englishmen once held in veneration and burned to imitate ! Forbid it, thou spirit of Wolfe, who, if thou hast any consciousness of thy country's wrongs, blushest to see a companion [Barré] of thy victor- ies so tamely give up thy conquest ! *
* * Establish first your superiority, and then talk of negotiation. Did Rome, when Hannibal marched triumphantly up to her walls, sue for peace? She had more wisdom and spirit. She knew the moment was not favor- able, and would not listen to any propositions till the tide of fortune changed. Why should we not follow so bright an example? * * Had my advice been taken (gentle- men insinuate that it is taken too much), the House must do me the justice to own that a much more powerful force than General Gage had would have been sent to America."
A few months later (February 20, 1776) a motion made by Charles James Fox, relative to the ill success of the British army in America, was under discussion in the House of Commons. Colonel Barré was particularly severe on several of the statements made by Solicitor General Wedderburn. He charged the latter and the other Ministers with the loss of America. With much emphasis he exclaimed : "Give us back our Colonies ! You have lost America ! It is your ignorance, blunders, cowardice, which have lost America !" He said he had heard the noble Lord George Germain (mentioned on page 568, ante), the Secretary of State for the Colonies, recently called "the Pitt of the day." This he ridiculed. Then, referring to affairs in America, he asserted that the British troops, from an aversion to the service, had misbehaved at the battle of Bunker Hill. He condemned the Ministers in the strongest terms, and told them that their shiftings and evasions would not protect them, though they should be changed every day and made to shift places at the pleasure, and sometimes, too, for the sport, of their secret directors.
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Colonel Barré further observed that the late appointment of a new Secretary of State was a proof that some weak and perhaps foul proceed- ings had happened, which made such an arrangement necessary ; but, though changes might happen every day, he was well convinced meas- ures never would, till the whole fabric of despotism fell at once and buried in its ruins the architects, with all those employed under them. He begged to assure them, once more, that America would never submit to be taxed, though half of Germany were to be transported over the Atlantic to effect it. General Burgoyne thereupon arose, and with warmth contradicted Colonel Barré in the flattest manner. He allowed that the British troops gave way a little at one time at the battle of Bunker Hill, because they were flanked by a fire out of the houses at Charlestown ; but they soon rallied and advanced, and no men on earth ever behaved with more spirit and firmness till they forced the enemy out of their entrenchments.
January 15, 1776, a treaty was signed at Cassel between George III and the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel relative to the hiring by the latter to the former of troops (the "Hessians") to be used in America. Some six weeks later this subject was being considered in the House of Commons, when Colonel Barré reminded Lord Barrington-the Secretary for War -of the assurance he had given on a former occasion that no foreign troops were meant to be employed in America. Turning then to Lord North Barré indulged in some severe strictures on him and his col- leagues. He told them, in no uncertain words, that they were not fit to conduct the affairs of a great nation, either in peace or war. He at- tacked the treaties and those who advised them, and pointed out the great danger of introducing such a number of foreigners into the king- dom. Later in the debate Paymaster General Rigby expressed his astonishment at what had fallen from Colonel Barré-who had con- demned the war as impolitic, ruinous and unjust-when he recollected that that very gentleman had both spoken and voted "for the Boston Port Bill, which was the great, leading and fundamental basis of the present civil war."
Early in March, 1776, the Secretary for War moved in the House of Commons for a grant of upwards of £845,000 "for defraying the extra- ordinary expenses of the British land forces in America between March 9, 1775, and January 31, 1776." In discussing this motion Colonel Barré declared that the annals of the country did not furnish another instance in which a nominal body of 11,000 troops-never amounting, at any time within the period mentioned, to above 8,500-had cost the nation so much money. The Lexington-Bunker Hill campaign was ludicrously compared with the glorious campaigns of the Duke of Marl- borough, and then Barré concluded by eulogizing, in the highest terms, the late Gen. Richard Montgomery, an account of whose death (Decem- ber 31, 1775) at the attempt of the Americans to take Quebec, had reached London only a few days before. Following Barré Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox vied with each other in eulogies of Montgomery.
In the Autumn of 1776 France and Spain were arming and equip- ping large additions to their regular military and naval forces, and in England there were many apprehensions of danger from these two nations. October 31, 1776 (the same day that John Wilkes delivered
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the speech quoted, in part, on page 561, ante), Colonel Barré spoke in the House of Commons with respect to the situation of the affairs of Great Britain-which he described as "awful, alarming and tremendous." He spoke these words, he said, with fear and trembling; but the country seemed to be near the crisis of her fate. He then entered into a discus- sion of the state of the nation's naval establishment, and declared that it was by no means a match for the united forces of France and Spain. He recommended to the Ministry to make up matters with America. "We had," he asserted, "in the last war 12,000 seamen from America, who would now, should France attack England, be fighting against us." He said further that all the useful part of the British navy was on the coast of America-in fact, that matters were so bad at home that un- avoidable ruin hovered over their devoted country. "Recall, therefore," said he, "your fleets and armies from America, and leave the brave Colonists to the enjoyment of their liberty." This closing sentence created loud laughter among the occupants of the Ministerial benches.
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, my 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 terms 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 most zealous mourner for the Earl of Chatham !
Shelburne and Barré, with all those who had acted with Chatham, now ranged themselves with the Rockingham party. All the bitterness and invective of which Barré 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 Barré. 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 BARRÉ AND LORD SHELBURNE. A photo-reproduction of an engraving after the original painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds .*
glass, he passed no time more to his 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 Lords.
+ 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 441.) 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 Massachu- setts Assembly for the removal of Governor Hutchinson. It was upon that occasion that Alexander Wedderburn made 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 Ash- 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 Barré. 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 reform. Finally the Reform 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 men 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 Mem- ber, whose classic redundancy of wit always charms this audience, has been pleased, when addressing the Secretary of State near me, to men-
* 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 Rockingham 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- mitted 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."
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