V.
A concluding word may be devoted to the question of Gibbon's
motives for writing the Mémoire Justificatif. Early
and
late commentators have carelessly implied or stated that the
historian received his place at the Board of Trade for penning this
pamphlet.[11] The origin of this idea
is laid at the feet of John Wilkes by Gibbon's bibliographer (p.
26) with little consideration for either eighteenth-century
politics or the clear implications of Wilkes's statements. It is
evident from simple chronological study that Gibbon did not receive
his post as a reward for having written the Mémoire
Justificatif.[12] Gibbon would
scarcely have written in anticipation of payment. "I will never
make myself the Champion of a party," he declared. Such
prostitution
of pen was beneath him. But having accepted office, and in large
part for financial reasons, he could no less afford to refuse the
"very polite request" to become "the Advocate of my Country against
a foreign enemy" (Prothero, I, 371-372). The political morality of
the eighteenth century allowed a man of letters who accepted
pension or place to become the anonymous mistress of a mercenary
government, but did not demand a public display of the
relationship. John Wilkes was not in error when he noted the
plethora of literary state papers
"since the ministerial
purchase" of Gibbon's pen. He rightly viewed the
Mémoire
Justificatif as no more than the product of the ardent zeal of
"a very late ministerial convert," a task "commanded by a
task-master more cruel than those of Egypt." He did not baldly
assert that "Gibbon was made a Lord Commissioner of Trade as a
reward for writing it," as Norton implies (p. 26), but to the
contrary deplored that "a lord of trade [had] been
employed to traffic in the grossest abuse" of political
polemic.
[13] True, Wilkes blamed
Gibbon for accepting a position at the hands of a government of
which the historian disapproved, but his attack upon the author of
the
Mémoire Justificatif was a reaction to the
undignified prostration of Clio before Mammon after the goddess's
prayers had been answered. For that Wilkes need not be so heartily
condemned—nor Gibbon so glibly exonerated.
