George Grenville

I told His Majesty that I came into his service to preserve the constitution of my country, and to prevent any undue and unwarrantable force being put upon the Crown.

George Grenville (14 October 1712 – 13 November 1770) was a British Whig statesman who rose to the position of Prime Minister of Great Britain, an office he held from 8 April 1763 until 10 July 1765

Quotes

• I told His Majesty that I came into his service to preserve the constitution of my country, and to prevent any undue and unwarrantable force being put upon the Crown; that upon these principles I should continue to act, and would endeavour, as far as I was able, to assist the King in the difficulties he lay under; but that the success of these endeavours must depend upon the King himself, and upon the cordial union of all such as were attached to his service.
  • Letter to Lord Strange (3 September 1763), quoted in The Grenville Papers: Being The Correspondence of Richard Grenville Earl Temple, K.G., and The Right Hon. George Grenville, Their Friends and Contemporaries, Vol. II, ed. William James Smith (1852), p. 106

• When I proposed to tax America, I asked the House, if any gentleman would object to the right; I repeatedly asked it, and no man would attempt to deny it. Protection and obedience are reciprocal. Great Britain protects America; America is bound to yield obedience. If not, tell me when the Americans were emancipated? When they want the protection of this kingdom, they are always very ready to ask it. That protection has always been afforded them in the most full and ample manner. The nation has run itself into an immense debt to give them their protection; and now they are called upon to contribute a small share towards the public expence, an expence arising from themselves, they renounce your authority, insult your officers, and break out, I might almost say, into open rebellion. The seditious spirit of the colonies owes its birth to the factions in this House.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (14 January 1766), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XVI. A. D. 1765–1771 (1813), column 102

• Ungrateful people of America! Bounties have been extended to them. When I had the honour of serving the crown, while you yourselves were loaded with an enormous debt, you have given bounties on their lumber, on their iron, their hemp, and many other articles. You have relaxed, in their favour, the Act of Navigation, that palladium of the British commerce; and yet I have been abused in all the public papers as an enemy to the trade of America.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (14 January 1766), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XVI. A. D. 1765–1771 (1813), column 102

• A wise government knows how to enforce with temper, or to conciliate with dignity, but a weak one is odious in the former, and contemptible in the latter.
  • Speech in the House of Commons against the motion for expelling John Wilkes (3 February 1769), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XVI. A. D. 1765–1771 (1813), column 570

Quotes about George Grenville

• Undoubtedly Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country. With a masculine understanding, and a stout and resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and unwearied. He took public business, not as a duty which he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy; and he seemed to have no delight out of this House, except in such things as some way related to the business that was to be done within it. If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and generous strain. It was to raise himself, not by the low, pimping politics of a court, but to win his way to power, through the laborious gradations of public service; and to secure to himself a well-earned rank in parliament, by a thorough knowledge of its constitution, and a perfect practice in all its business.
  • Edmund Burke, speech in the House of Commons on American Taxation (19 April 1774), quoted in The Works of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I (1854), p. 406

• Though Mr. Grenville is a most disagreeable man to do business with, he is nevertheless the fittest person to be at the head of this country.
  • Lord Egmont, recorded in Gerard Hamilton to Mr. Calcraft (24 July 1768), quoted in Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Vol. III, eds. William Stanhope Taylor and John Henry Pringle (1839), p. 334, n.

• The late Lord Essex informed the Editor that one of the Under Secretaries of that day had often said to him, "Mr. Grenville lost America because he read the American despatches, which none of his predecessors ever did." There is no doubt that the business of the colonies was despatched in a very slovenly manner—or to use Mr. Burke's words, it was treated "with a salutary neglect;" and the many volumes of Minutes of Colonial Affairs still preserved at the Board of Trade, relate generally to such insignificant transactions as to be almost ludicrous.
  • Denis Le Marchant, quoted in Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, Vol. II, ed. Denis Le Marchant (1845), p. 69, n.

• George Grenville came to the rescue, and spoke strongly on his favourite theme, the profusion with which the late war had been carried on. That profusion, he said, had made taxes necessary. He called on the gentlemen opposite to him to say where they would have a tax laid, and dwelt on this topic with his usual prolixity. "Let them tell me where," he repeated in a monotonous and somewhat fretful tone. "I say, sir, let them tell me where. I repeat it, sir; I am entitled to say to them, Tell me where." Unluckily for him, Pitt had come down to the House that night, and had been bitterly provoked by the reflections thrown on the war. He revenged himself by murmuring, in a whine resembling Grenville's, a line of a well known song, "Gentle shepherd, tell me where." "If," cried Grenville, "gentlemen are to be treated in this way"—Pitt, as was his fashion, when he meant to mark extreme contempt, rose deliberately, made his bow, and walked out of the House, leaving his brother in law in convulsions of rage, and every body else in convulsions of laughter. It was long before Grenville lost the nickname of the Gentle Shepherd.
  • Thomas Macaulay, 'The Earl of Chatham', The Edinburgh Review (October 1844), quoted in Lord Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. III (1870), p. 570

• Mr. Grenville...was of all the heads of party the worst patron...he weighed every favour in the nicest scale; but I knew my honour would be always safe with him... He had nothing seducing in his manners. His countenance had rather the expression of peevishness and austerity... He was to a proverb tedious...he was diffuse and argumentative, and never had done with a subject after he had convinced your judgment till he wearied your attention—the foreign ministers complained of his prolixity which they called amongst each other, the being Grenvilisé. The same prolixity rendered him an unpleasant speaker in the House of Commons... Yet though his eloquence charmed nobody, his argument converted... his skill upon all matters of finance, of commerce, of foreign treaties, and above all the purity of his character...gave him...weight.
  • Thomas Pitt, "Family Characters and Anecdotes", quoted in Lewis Namier, 'Grenville, George (1712–70), of Wotton, Bucks.', in Lewis Namier and John Brooke (eds.), The House of Commons 1754–1790, Volume III (1964), p. 539

• He was a man born to public business, which was his luxury and amusement. An Act of Parliament was in itself entertaining to him, as was proved when he stole a turnpike bill out of somebody's pocket at a concert and read it in a corner in despite of all the efforts of the finest singers to attract his attention. Order and economy were so natural to him that he told me from the first office he ever held till he became minister he had made it an invariable rule to add the year's salary to his capital contenting himself with carrying the interest the succeeding year into his expenses. His prudence rather bordered upon parsimony.
  • Thomas Pitt, "Family Characters and Anecdotes", quoted in Lewis Namier, 'Grenville, George (1712–70), of Wotton, Bucks.', in Lewis Namier and John Brooke (eds.), The House of Commons 1754–1790, Volume III (1964), p. 539

• Mr. Grenville is universally able in the whole business of the House, and, after Mr. Murray and Mr. Fox, is certainly one of the very best parliament men in the House.
  • William Pitt to Lord Hardwicke (6 April 1754), quoted in Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, Vol. I, eds. William Stanhope Taylor and John Henry Pringle (1838), p. 106

• George Grenville complained that men objected to laying burthens on the sinking fund, and called rather for new taxes. He wished gentlemen would show him where to lay them. Repeating this question in his querulous, languid, fatiguing tone, Pitt, who sat opposite to him, mimicking his accent aloud, repeated these words of an old ditty—Gentle shepherd, tell me where! and then rising, abused Grenville bitterly. He had no sooner finished than Grenville started up in a transport of rage, and said, if gentlemen were to be treated with that contempt—Pitt was walking out of the House, but at that word turned round, made a sneering bow to Grenville and departed. The latter had provoked him by stating the profusions of the war. There is use in recording this anecdote: the appellation of The Gentle Shepherd long stuck by Grenville; he is mentioned by it in many of the writings on the stamp act, and in other pamphlets and political prints of the time.
  • Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, Vol. I, ed. Denis Le Marchant (1845), p. 251

• I have mentioned his jealousy and ill-treatment of the Favourite [Lord Bute]; his manners made him as distasteful to the King, as his engrossing fondness for power had made him to the Favourite... that awkward man of ways and means, whom nature had fitted for no employment less than a courtier's, fatigued the King with such nauseous and endless harangues, that, lamenting being daily exposed to such a political pedant, the King said to Lord Bute of Grenville, "When he has wearied me for two hours, he looks at his watch to see if he may not tire me for an hour more."
  • Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, Vol. II, ed. Denis Le Marchant (1845), p. 160

• Mr. Grenville was, confessedly, the ablest man of business in the House of Commons, and, though not popular, of great authority there from his spirit, knowledge, and gravity of character. His faults, however, had been capital, and to himself most afflicting. His injudicious Stamp Act had exposed us to the risk of seeing all our Colonies revolt.
  • Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, Vol. IV, ed. Denis Le Marchant (1845), pp. 188-189