Charles James Fox - 1806: Final Year

1806: Final Year

When Pitt died on 23 January 1806, Fox was the last remaining great political figure of the era, and could no longer be denied a place in government. When Grenville formed a "Ministry of All the Talents" out of his supporters, the followers of Addington and the Foxites, Fox was once again offered the post of Foreign Secretary, which he accepted in February. Fox was convinced (as he had been since Napoleon's accession) that France desired a lasting peace and that he was "sure that two civil sentences from the Ministers would ensure Peace". Therefore peace talks were speedily entered into by Fox and his old friend Talleyrand, now French foreign minister. However by July the mood had completely changed and Fox was forced to acknowledge that his assessment of Napoleon's pacific intentions were wrong. Negotiations over Hanover, Naples, Sicily, and Malta faltered and Talleyrand vetoed Russian participation in the negotiations. King George believed this was a ploy to divide Britain and Russia as French interests would suffer if she had to deal with an Anglo-Russian alliance, with Fox forced to agree that the King's belief was "but too well founded".

In June Lord Yarmouth was sent on a peace mission to Paris. Fox wrote to him: "I feel my own Glory highly interested in such an event, but to make peace by acceding to worse terms than those first suggested...wd. be as repugnant to my own feelings as it wd. be to the Duty I owe to K. & Country". Yarmouth confirmed that Russia was negotiating separately with France. Fox was appalled at what he called this "extraordinary step". When Yarmouth reported successive new French demands, Fox replied that the British government "continues ardently to wish for the Conclusion of Peace". In August Lord Lauderdale was sent to join Yarmouth (with full negotiating powers) and he reported back to Fox of "the complete system of Terror which prevails here", with French friends of Fox too frightened to call on him.

Fox's biographer notes that these failed negotiations were "a stunning experience" for Fox, who had always insisted that France desired peace and that the war was the responsibility of King George and his fellow monarchs: "All of this was being proved false...It was a tragic end to Fox's career". To observers such as John Rickman, "Charley Fox eats his former opinions daily and even ostentatiously showing himself the worse man, but the better minister of a corrupt government", and who further claimed that "He should have died, for his fame, a little sooner; before Pitt".

Though the administration failed to achieve either Catholic emancipation or peace with France, Fox's last great achievement would be the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. Though Fox would die before abolition was formalised, he oversaw a Foreign Slave Trade Bill in spring 1806 that prohibited British subjects from contributing to the trading of slaves with the colonies of Britain’s wartime enemies, thus eliminating two-thirds of the slave trade passing through British ports.

On 10 June 1806, Fox offered a resolution for total abolition to Parliament: "this House, conceiving the African slave trade to be contrary to the principles of justice, humanity, and sound policy, will, with all practicable expedition, proceed to take effectual measures for abolishing the said trade..." The House of Commons voted 114 to 15 in favour and the Lords approved the motion on 25 June. Fox said that:

So fully am I impressed with the vast importance and necessity of attaining what will be the object of my motion this night, that if, during the almost forty years that I have had the honour of a seat in parliament, I had been so fortunate as to accomplish that, and that only, I should think I had done enough, and could retire from public life with comfort, and the conscious satisfaction, that I had done my duty.