Transcriber's note: Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e. G. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book. For its Index, a page number has been placed only at the start of that section. In the original volumes in this set, each even-numbered page had a header consisting of the page number, the volume title, and the chapter number. The odd-numbered page header consisted of the year with which the page deals, a subject phrase, and the page number. In this set of e-books, the odd-page year and subject phrase have been converted to sidenotes, usually positioned between the first two paragraphs of the even-odd page pair. If such positioning was not possible for a given sidenote, it was positioned where it seemed most logical. In the original book set, consisting of four volumes, the master index was in Volume 4. In this set of e-books, the index has been duplicated into each of the other volumes, with its first page re-numbered as necessary, and an Index item added to each volume's Table of Contents. A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES by JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M. P. Author of "A History of Our Own Times" Etc. In Four Volumes VOL. I. New YorkHarper & Brothers, Franklin Square1901 CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAP. PAGE I. "MORE, ALAS! THAN THE QUEEN'S LIFE!" . . . . . . . 1 II. PARTIES AND LEADERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 III. "LOST FOR WANT OF SPIRIT" . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 IV. THE KING COMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 V. WHAT THE KING CAME TO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 VI. OXFORD'S HALL; BOLINGBKOKE'S FLIGHT . . . . . . . 91 VII. THE WHITE COCKADE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 VIII. AFTER THE REBELLION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 IX. "MALICE DOMESTIC. --FOREIGN LEVY" . . . . . . . . . 158 X. HOME AFFAIRS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 XI. "THE EARTH HATH BUBBLES" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 XII. AFTER THE STORM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 XIII. THE BANISHMENT OF ATTERBURY . . . . . . . . . . . 211 XIV. WALPOLE IN POWER AS WELL AS OFFICE . . . . . . . . 224 XV. THE DRAPIER'S LETTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 XVI. THE OPPOSITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 XVII. "OSNABRUCK! OSNABRUCK!" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 XVIII. GEORGE THE SECOND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 XIX. "THE PATRIOTS" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 XX. A VICTORY FOR THE PATRIOTS . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 {1} A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. CHAPTER I. "MORE, ALAS! THAN THE QUEEN'S LIFE!" "The Queen is pretty well, " Swift wrote to Lord Peterborough on May 18, 1714, "at present, but the least disorder she has puts all in alarm. "Swift goes on to tell his correspondent that "when it is over we act asif she were immortal; neither is it possible to persuade people to makeany preparations against an evil day. " Yet on the condition of QueenAnne's health depended to all appearance the continuance of peace inEngland. While Anne was sinking down to death, rival claimants wereplanning to seize the throne; rival statesmen and rival parties wereplotting, intriguing, sending emissaries, moving troops, organizingarmies, for a great struggle. Queen Anne had reigned for little morethan twelve years. She succeeded William the Third on March 8, 1702, and at the time when Swift wrote the words we have quoted, her reignwas drawing rapidly to a close. Anne was not a woman of great capacity or of elevated moral tone. Shewas moral indeed in the narrow and more limited sense which the wordhas lately come to have among us. She always observed decorum andpropriety herself; she always discouraged vice in others; but she hadno idea of political morality or of high {2} political purpose, and shehad allowed herself to be made the instrument of one faction oranother, according as one old woman or the other prevailed over herpassing mood. While she was governed by the Duchess of Marlborough, the Duke of Marlborough and his party had the ascendant. When Mrs. Masham succeeded in establishing herself as chief favorite, the Duke ofMarlborough and his followers went down. Burnet, in his "History of MyOwn Times, " says of Queen Anne, that she "is easy of access, and hearseverything very gently; but opens herself to so few, and is so cold andgeneral in her answers, that people soon find that the chiefapplication is to be made to her ministers and favorites, who, in theirturns, have an entire credit and full power with her. She has laiddown the splendor of a court too much, and eats privately; so that, except on Sundays, and a few hours twice or thrice a week, at night, inthe drawing-room, she appears so little that her court is, as it were, abandoned. " Although Anne lived during the Augustan Age of Englishliterature, she had no literary capacity or taste. Kneller's portraitof the Queen gives her a face rather agreeable and intelligent thanotherwise--a round, full face, with ruddy complexion and dark-brownhair. A courtly biographer, commenting on this portrait, takesoccasion to observe that Anne "was so universally beloved that herdeath was more sincerely lamented than that of perhaps any othermonarch who ever sat on the throne of these realms. " A curious commenton that affection and devotion of the English people to Queen Anne issupplied by the fact which Lord Stanhope mentions, that "the funds roseconsiderably on the first tidings of her danger, and fell again on areport of her recovery. " [Sidenote: 1714--Fighting for the Crown] England watched with the greatest anxiety the latest days of QueenAnne's life; not out of any deep concern for the Queen herself, butsimply because of the knowledge that with her death must come a crisisand might come a revolution. Who was to snatch the crown as it fellfrom Queen Anne's dying head? Over at Herrenhausen, in {3} Hanover, was one claimant to the throne; flitting between Lorraine and St. Germains was another. Here, at home, in the Queen's verycouncil-chamber, round the Queen's dying bed, were the English heads ofthe rival parties caballing against each other, some of them deceivingHanover, some of them deceiving James Stuart, and more than one, itmust be confessed, deceiving at the same moment Hanoverians and Stuartsalike. Anne had no children living; she had borne to her husband, thefeeble and colorless George of Denmark, a great many children--eighteenor nineteen it is said--but most of them died in their very infancy, and none lived to maturity. No succession therefore could take place, but only an accession, and at such a crisis in the history of Englandany deviation from the direct line must bring peril with it. At thetime when Queen Anne lay dying, it might have meant a new revolutionand another civil war. While Anne lies on that which is soon to be her death-bed, let us takea glance at the rival claimants of her crown, and the leading Englishstatesmen who were partisans on this side or on that, or who were stillhesitating about the side it would be, on the whole, most prudent andprofitable to choose. The English Parliament had taken steps, immediately after theRevolution of 1688, to prevent a restoration of the Stuart dynasty. The Bill of Rights, passed in the first year of the reign of Williamand Mary, declared that the crown of England should pass in the firstinstance to the heirs of Mary, then to the Princess Anne, her sister, and to the heirs of the Princess Anne, and after that to the heirs, ifany, of William, by any subsequent marriage. Mary, however, diedchildless; William was sinking into years and in miserable health, apparently only waiting and anxious for death, and it was clear that hewould not marry again. The only one of Anne's many children whoapproached maturity, the Duke of Gloucester, died just after hiseleventh birthday. The little duke was a pupil of Bishop Burnet, andwas a child of great promise. {4} Readers of fiction will rememberthat Henry Esmond, in Thackeray's novel, is described as havingobtained some distinction in his academical course, "his Latin poem onthe 'Death of the Duke of Gloucester, ' Princess Anne of Denmark's son, having gained him a medal and introduced him to the society of theUniversity wits. " After the death of this poor child it was thoughtnecessary that some new steps should be taken to cut off the chances ofthe Stuarts. The Act of Settlement, passed in 1701, excluded the sonsor successors of James the Second, and all other Catholic claimants, from the throne of England, and entailed the crown on the ElectressSophia of Hanover as the nearest Protestant heir, in case neither thereigning king nor the Princess Anne should have issue. The ElectressSophia was the mother of George, afterwards the First of England. Sheseems to have had good-sense as well as talent; her close friendLeibnitz once said of her that she was not only given to asking why, but also wanted to know the why of the whys. She was not very anxiousto see her son George made sovereign of England, and appeared to beunder the impression that his training and temper would not allow himto govern with a due regard for the notions of constitutional libertywhich prevailed even then among Englishmen. It even seems that Sophiamade the suggestion that James Stuart, the Old Pretender, as he hassince been called, would do well to become a Protestant, go in forconstitutional Government, and thus have a chance of the Englishthrone. It is certain that she strongly objected to his being comparedwith Perkin Warbeck, or called a bastard. She accepted, however, theposition offered to her and her son by the Act of Settlement, andappears to have become gradually reconciled to it, and even, as shesank into years, is said to have expressed a hope many times that thename of Queen of England might be inscribed upon her coffin. She camevery near to the gratification of her wish. She died in June, 1714, being then in her eighty-fourth year--only a very few days before {5}Queen Anne received her first warning of the near approach of death. Her son George succeeded to her claim upon the crown of England. [Sidenote: 1714--The House of Brunswick] The reigning house of Hanover was one of those lucky families whichappear to have what may be called a gift of inheritance. There aresome such houses among European sovereignties; whenever there is abreach in the continuity of succession anywhere, one or other of themis sure to come in for the inheritance. George the Elector, who wasnow waiting to become King of England as soon as the breath should beout of Anne's body, belonged to the House of Guelf, or Welf, said tohave been founded by Guelf, the son of Isembert, a count of Altdorf, and Irmintrude, sister of Charlemagne, early in the ninth century. Ithad two branches, which were united in the eleventh century by themarriage of one of the Guelf ladies to Albert Azzo the Second, Lord ofEste and Marquis of Italy. His son Guelf obtained the Bavarianpossessions of his wife's step-father, a Guelf of Bavaria. One of hisdescendants, called Henry the Lion, married Maud, daughter of Henry theSecond of England, and became the founder of the family of Brunswick. War and imperial favor and imperial displeasure interfered during manygenerations with the integrity of the Duchy of Brunswick, and theElectorate of Hanover was made up for the most part out of territorieswhich Brunswick had once owned. The Emperor Leopold constructed itformally into an Electorate in 1692, with Ernest Augustus ofBrunswick-Lüneberg as its first Elector. The George Louis who now, in1714, is waiting to become King of England, was the son of ErnestAugustus and of Sophia, youngest daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen ofBohemia, sister to Charles First of England. Elizabeth had marriedFrederick, the Elector-Palatine of the Rhine, and her life was crossedand thwarted by the opening of the Thirty Years' War, and then by themisfortunes of her brother Charles and his dynasty. Elizabeth survivedthe English troubles and saw the Restoration, and came to live in {6}England, and to see her nephew, Charles the Second, reign as king. Shebarely saw this. Two years after the Restoration she died in London. Sophia was her twelfth child: she had thirteen in all. One of Sophia'selder brothers was Prince Rupert--that "Rupert of the Rhine" of whomMacaulay's ballad says that "Rupert never comes but to conquer or todie"--the Rupert whose daring and irresistible charges generally wonhis half of the battle, only that the other half might be lost, andthat his success might be swallowed up in the ruin of his companions. His headlong bravery was a misfortune rather than an advantage to hiscause, and there seems to have been one instance--that of the surrenderof Bristol--in which that bravery deserted him for the moment. We seehim afterwards in the pages of Pepys, an uninteresting, prosaic, pedantic figure, usefully employed in scientific experiments, and withall the gilt washed off him by time and years and the commonplace wearand tear of routine life. [Sidenote: 1714--The "Princess of Ahlden"] George inherited none of the accomplishments of his mother. His fatherwas a man of some talent and force of character, but he cared nothingfor books or education of any kind, and George was allowed to revel inignorance. He had no particular merit except a certain easygood-nature, which rendered him unwilling to do harm or to give pain toany one, unless some interest of his own should make it convenient. His neglected and unrestrained youth was abandoned to license and toprofligacy. He was married in the twenty-second year of his age, against his own inclination, to the Princess Sophia Dorothea of Zeil, who was some six years younger. The marriage was merely a politicalone, formed with the object of uniting the whole of the Duchy ofLüneberg. George was attached to another girl; the princess issupposed to have fixed her affections upon another man. They weremarried, however, on November 21, 1682, and during all her life SophiaDorothea had to put up with the neglect, the contempt, and afterwardsthe cruelty of {7} her husband. George's strongest taste was for uglywomen. One of his favorites, Mademoiselle Schulemberg, maid of honorto his mother, and who was afterwards made Duchess of Kendal, wasconspicuous, even in the unlovely Hanoverian court, for the awkwardnessof her long, gaunt, fleshless figure. Another favorite of George's, Madame Kilmansegge, afterwards made Countess of Darlington, representeda different style of beauty. She is described by Horace Walpole ashaving "large, fierce, black eyes, rolling beneath lofty-archedeyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neckthat overflowed and was not distinguishable from the lower part of herbody, and no portion of which was restrained by stays. " It would not be surprising if the neglected Sophia Dorothea should havelooked for love elsewhere, or at least should not have been strictenough in repelling it when it offered itself. Philip ChristofKönigsmark, a Swedish soldier of fortune, was supposed to be herfavored lover. He suffered for his amour, and it was said that hisdeath came by the special order--one version has it by the veryhand--of George the Elector, the owner of the ladies Schulemberg andKilmansegge. Sophia Dorothea was banished for the rest of her life tothe Castle of Ahlden, on the river Aller. In the old schloss ofHanover the spot is still shown, outside the door of the Hall ofKnights, which tradition has fixed upon as the spot where theassassination of Königsmark took place. The Königsmarks were in their way a famous family. The elder brotherwas the Charles John Königsmark celebrated in an English State trial asthe man who planned and helped to carry out the murder of ThomasThynne. Thomas Thynne, of Longleat, the accused of Titus Oates, the"Wise Issachar, " the "wealthy Western friend" of Dryden, the comrade ofMonmouth, the "Tom of Ten Thousand, " of every one, was betrothed toElizabeth, the child widow--she was only fifteen years old--of LordOgle. Königsmark, fresh from love-making in {8} all the courts ofEurope, and from fighting anything and everything from the Turk atTangiers to the wild bulls of Madrid, seems to have fallen in love withThynne's betrothed wife, and to have thought that the best way ofobtaining her was to murder his rival. The murder was done, and itsstory is recorded in clumsy bas-relief over Thynne's tomb inWestminster Abbey. Königsmark's accomplices were executed, butKönigsmark got off, and died years later fighting for the Venetians atthe siege of classic Argos. The soldier in Virgil falls on a foreignfield, and, dying, remembers sweet Argos. The elder Königsmark, dyingbefore sweet Argos, ought of right to remember that spot where St. Albans Street joins Pall Mall, and where Thynne was done to death. TheKönigsmarks had a sister, the beautiful Aurora, who was mistress ofFrederick Augustus, Elector of Saxony, and so mother of the famousMaurice de Saxe, and ancestress of George Sand. Later, like the fairsinner of some tale of chivalry, she ended her days in piousretirement, as prioress of the Protestant Abbey at Quedlinburg. [Sidenote: 1714--Wooden shoes and warming-pans] George was born in Osnabrück, in May, 1660, and was therefore now inhis fifty-fifth year. As his first qualification for the government ofEngland, it may be mentioned that he did not understand one sentence ofthe English language, was ignorant of English ways, history, andtraditions, and had as little sympathy with the growing sentiments ofthe majority of educated English people as if he had been an Amurathsucceeding an Amurath. When George became Elector, on the death of his father in 1698, heshowed, however, some capacity for improvement, under the influence ofthe new responsibility imposed upon him by his station. His privatelife did not amend, but his public conduct acquired a certain solidityand consistency which was not to have been expected from his previousmode of living. One of his merits was not likely to be by any means amerit in the eyes of the English people. He was, to do him justice, deeply attached to his native country. He had all the {9} love forHanover that the cat has for the hearth to which it is accustomed. Theways of the place suited him; the climate, the soil, the wholeconditions of life were exactly what he would have them to be. Helived up to the age of fifty-four a contented, stolid, happy, dissoluteElector of Hanover; and it was a complete disturbance to all his habitsand his predilections when the expected death of Anne compelled him toturn his thoughts to England. The other claimant of the English crown was James Frederick EdwardStuart, the Old Pretender, as he came to be afterwards called by hisenemies, the Chevalier de Saint George, as his friends called him whenthey did not think it prudent to give him the title of king. James wasthe step-brother of Queen Anne. He was the son of James the Second, byJames's second wife, Maria D'Este, sister to Francis, Duke of Modena. Maria was only the age of Juliet when she married: she had just passedher fourteenth year. Unlike Juliet she was not beautiful; unlikeJuliet she was poor. She was, however, a devout Roman Catholic, andtherefore was especially acceptable to her husband. She had fourchildren in quick succession, all of whom died in infancy; and then forten years she had no child. The _London Gazette_ surprised the worldone day by the announcement that the Queen had become pregnant, andupon June 10, 1688, she gave birth to a son. It need hardly be toldnow that the wildest commotion was raised by the birth of the prince. The great majority of the Protestants insinuated, or stoutly declared, that the alleged heir-apparent was not a child of the Queen. The storywas that a newly-born child, the son of a poor miller, had been broughtinto the Queen's room in a warming-pan, and passed off as the son ofthe Queen. It was said that Father Petre, a Catholic clergyman, hadbeen instrumental in carrying out this contrivance, and therefore theenemies of the royal family talked of the young prince as Perkin orPetrelin. The warming-pan was one of the most familiar objects insatirical literature and art for many generations after. {10} A wholeschool of caricature was heated into life, if we may use such anexpression, by this fabulous warming-pan. Warming-pans were associatedwith brass money and wooden shoes in the mouths and minds of Whigpartisans, down to a day not very far remote from our own. Mr. Jobson, the vulgar lawyer in Scott's "Rob Roy, " talks rudely to Diana Vernon, aCatholic, about "King William, of glorious and immortal memory, ourimmortal deliverer from Papists and pretenders, and wooden shoes andwarming-pans. " "Sad things those wooden shoes and warming-pans, "retorted the young lady, who seemed to take pleasure in augmenting hiswrath; "and it is a comfort you don't seem to want a warming-pan atpresent, Mr. Jobson. " There was not, of course, the slightestfoundation for the absurd story about the spurious heir to the throne. Some little excuse was given for the spread of such a tale by the merefact that there had been delay in summoning the proper officials to bepresent at the birth; but despite all the pains Bishop Burnet takes tomake the report seem trustworthy, it may be doubted whether any onewhose opinion was worth having seriously believed in the story, even atthe time, and it soon ceased to have any believers at all. At thetime, however, it was accepted as an article of faith by a largeproportion of the outer public; and the supposed Jesuit plot and thesupposed warming-pan served as missiles with which to pelt thesupporters of the Stuarts, until long after there had ceased to be theslightest chance whatever of a Stuart restoration. This story of aspurious heir to a throne repeats itself at various intervals ofhistory. The child of Napoleon the First and Maria Louisa was believedby many Legitimist partisans to be supposititious. In our own daysthere were many intelligent persons in France firmly convinced that theunfortunate Prince Louis Napoleon, who was killed in Zululand, was notthe son of the Empress of the French, but that he was the son of hersister, the Duchess of Alva, and that he was merely palmed off on theFrench {11} people in order to secure the stability of the Bonapartistthrone. [Sidenote: 1714--The "Old Pretender"] James Stuart was born, as we have said, on June 10, 1688, and wastherefore still in his twenty-sixth year at the time when this historybegins. Soon after his birth his mother hurried with him to France toescape the coming troubles, and his father presently followeddiscrowned. He had led an unhappy life--unhappy all the more becauseof the incessant dissipation with which he tried to enliven it. He isdescribed as tall, meagre, and melancholy. Although not strikinglylike Charles the First or Charles the Second, he had unmistakably theStuart aspect. Horace Walpole said of him many years after that, "without the particular features of any Stuart, the Chevalier has thestrong lines and fatality of air peculiar to them all. " The words"fatality of air" describe very expressively that look of melancholywhich all the Stuart features wore when in repose. The melancholy lookrepresented an underlying habitual mood of melancholy, or evendespondency, which a close observer may read in the character of the"merry monarch" himself, for all his mirth and his dissipation, just aswell as in that of Charles the First or of James the Second. Theprofligacy of Charles the Second had little that was joyous in it. James Stuart, the Chevalier, had not the abilities and the culture ofCharles the Second, and he had much the same taste for intrigue anddissipation. His amours were already beginning to be a scandal, and hedrank now and then like a man determined at all cost to drown thought. He was always the slave of women. Women knew all his secrets, and weremade acquainted with his projected political enterprises. Sometimesthe fair favorite to whom he had unbosomed himself blabbed and tattledall over Versailles or Paris of what she had heard, and in someinstances, perhaps, she even took her newly-acquired knowledge to theEnglish Ambassador and disposed of it for a consideration. At thistime James Stuart is not yet married; but marriage made as little {12}difference in his way of living as it had done in that of his elderlypolitical rival, George the Elector. It is strange that James Stuartshould have made so faint an impression upon history and uponliterature. Romance and poetry, which have done so much for his son, "Bonnie Prince Charlie, " have taken hardly any account of him. Hefigures in Thackeray's "Esmond, " but the picture is not made verydistinct, even by that master of portraiture, and the merely frivolousside of his character is presented with disproportionate prominence. James Stuart had stronger qualities for good or evil than Thackerayseems to have found in him. Some of his contemporaries denied him thecredit of man's ordinary courage; he has even been accused of positivecowardice; but there does not seem to be the slightest ground for suchan accusation. Studied with the severest eye, his various enterprises, and the manner in which he bore himself throughout them, would seem toprove that he had courage enough for any undertaking. Princes seldomshow any want of physical courage. They are trained from their verybirth to regard themselves as always on parade; and even if they shouldfeel their hearts give way in presence of danger, they are not likelyto allow it to be seen. It was not lack of personal bravery thatmarred the chances of James Stuart. [Sidenote: 1714--Anne's sympathies] It is only doing bare justice to one whose character and career havemet with little favor from history, contemporary or recent, to say thatJames might have made his way to the throne with comparative ease if hewould only consent to change his religion and become a Protestant. Itwas again and again pressed upon him by English adherents, and even bystatesmen in power--by Oxford and by Bolingbroke--that if he could notactually become a Protestant he should at least pretend to become one, and give up all outward show of his devotion to the Catholic Church. James steadily and decisively refused to be guilty of any meanness soignoble and detestable. His conduct in thus adhering to hisconvictions, even at {13} the cost of a throne, has been contrastedwith that of Henry the Fourth, who declared Paris to be "well worth amass!" But some injustice has been done to Henry the Fourth in regardto his conversion. Henry's great Protestant minister, Sully, urged himto become an open and professing Catholic, on the ground that he hadalways been a Catholic more or less consciously and in his heart. Sully gave Henry several evidences, drawn from his observation ofHenry's own demeanor, to prove to him that his natural inclinations andthe turn of his intellect always led him towards the Catholic faith, commenting shrewdly on the fact that he had seen Henry cross himselfmore than once on the field of battle in the presence of danger. Thus, according to Sully, Henry the Fourth, in professing himself a Catholic, would be only following the bent of his own natural inclinations. However that may be, it is still the fact that Henry the Fourth, bychanging his profession of religion, succeeded in obtaining a crown, and that James the Pretender, by refusing to hear of such a change, lost his best chance of a throne. What were Anne's own inclinations with regard to the succession? Therecannot be much doubt as to the way her personal feelings went. Thereis a history of the reign of Queen Anne, written by Dr. ThomasSomerville, "one of His Majesty's Chaplains in Ordinary, " and publishedin 1798, with a dedication "by permission" to the King. It is calledon its title-page "The History of Great Britain during the Reign ofQueen Anne, with a Dissertation Concerning the Danger of the ProtestantSuccession. " Such an author, writing comparatively soon after theevents, and in a book dedicated to the reigning king, was not likely todo any conscious injustice to the memory of Queen Anne, and wasespecially likely to take a fair view of the influence which herpersonal inclinations were calculated to have on the succession. Dr. Somerville declares with great justice that "mildness, timidity, andanxiety were constitutional ingredients in the temper" of Queen Anne. This very timidity, this very anxiety, {14} appears, according to Dr. Somerville's judgment, to have worked favorably for the Hanoveriansuccession. [Sidenote: 1714--James the Third] The Queen herself, bysentiment, and by what may be called a sort of superstition, leanedmuch towards the Stuarts. "The loss, " says Dr. Somerville, "of all herchildren bore the aspect of an angry Providence adjusting punishment tothe nature and quality of her offence. " Her offence, of course, wasthe part she had taken in helping to dethrone her father. "Wounded inspirit, and prone to superstition, she naturally thought of therestitution of the crown to her brother as the only atonement she couldmake to the memory of her injured father. " This feeling might haveripened into action with her but for that constitutional timidity andanxiety of which Somerville speaks. There would undoubtedly have beendangers, obvious to even the bravest or the most reckless, in anattempt just then to alter the succession; but Anne saw those dangers"in the most terrific form, and recoiled with horror from the sight. "Moreover, she had a constitutional objection, as strong as that ofQueen Elizabeth herself, to the presence of an intended successor nearher throne. "She trembled, " says Somerville, "at the idea of thepresence of a successor, whoever he might be; and the residence of herown brother in England was not less dreadful to her than that of theelectoral prince. " But it is probable that had she lived longer shewould have found herself constrained to put up with the presence eitherof one claimant or the other. Her ministers, whoever they might be, would surely have seen the imperative necessity of bringing over toEngland the man whom the Queen and they had determined to present tothe English people as the destined heir of the throne. In such anevent as that, and most assuredly if men like Bolingbroke had been inpower, it may be taken for granted that the Queen would have preferredher own brother, a Stuart, to the Electoral Prince of Hanover. "Whatthe consequence might have been, if the Queen had survived, " saysSomerville, "is merely a matter of conjecture; but we may {15}pronounce, with some degree of assurance, that the Protestant interestwould have been exposed to more certain and to more imminent dangersthan ever had threatened it before at any period since the revolution. "This seems a reasonable and just assertion. If Anne had lived muchlonger, it is possible that England might have seen a James the Third. {16} CHAPTER II. PARTIES AND LEADERS. [Sidenote: 1714--Whig and Tory] All the closing months of Queen Anne's reign were occupied by Whigs andTories, and indeed by Anne herself as well, in the invention andconduct of intrigues about the succession. The Queen herself, with thegrave opening before her, kept her fading eyes turned, not to the worldshe was about to enter, but to the world she was about to leave. Shewas thinking much more about the future of her throne than about herown soul and future state. The Whigs were quite ready to maintain theHanoverian succession by force. They did not expect to be able tocarry matters easily, and they were ready to encounter a civil war. Their belief seems to have been that they and not their opponents wouldhave to strike the blow, and they had already summoned the Duke ofMarlborough from his retirement in Flanders to take the lead in theirmovement. Having Marlborough, they knew that they would have the army. On the other hand, if Bolingbroke and the Tories really had any actualhope of a restoration of the Stuarts, it is certain that up to the lastmoment they had made no substantial preparations to accomplish theirobject. The Whigs and Tories divided between them whatever political forcethere was in English society at this time. Outside both parties lay aconsiderable section of people who did not distinctly belong to the onefaction or the other, but were ready to incline now to this and now tothat, according as the conditions of the hour might inspire them. Outside these again, and far outnumbering these and all otherscombined, was the great mass of the English {17} people--hard-working, much-suffering, poor, patient, and almost absolutely indifferent tochanges in governments and the humors and struggles of parties. "Thesewrangling jars of Whig and Tory, " says Dean Swift, "are stale and oldas Troy-town story. " But if the principles were old, the titles of theparties were new. Steele, in 1710, published in the _Tatler_ a letterfrom Pasquin of Rome to Isaac Bickerstaff, asking for "an account ofthose two religious orders which have lately sprung up amongst you, theWhigs and the Tories. " Steele declared that you could not come evenamong women "but you find them divided into Whig and Tory. " It waslike the famous lawsuit in Abdera, alluded to by Lucian and amplifiedby Wieland, concerning the ownership of the ass's shadow, on which allthe Abderites took sides, and every one was either a "Shadow" or an"Ass. " Various explanations have been given of these titles Whig and Tory. Titus Oates applied the term "Tory, " which then signified an Irishrobber, to those who would not believe in his Popish plot, and the namegradually became extended to all who were supposed to have sympathywith the Catholic Duke of York. The word "Whig" first arose during theCameronian rising, when it was applied to the Scotch Presbyterians, andis derived by some from the whey which they habitually drank, and byothers from a word, "whiggam, " used by the western Scottish drovers. The Whigs and the Tories represent in the main not only two politicaldoctrines, but two different feelings in the human mind. The naturaltendency of some men is to regard political liberty as of moreimportance than political authority, and of other men to think that themaintenance of authority is the first object to be secured, and thatonly so much of individual liberty is to be conceded as will notinterfere with authority's strictest exercise. Roughly speaking, therefore, the Tories were for authority, and the Whigs for liberty. The Tories naturally held to the principle of the monarchy and of theState church; the Whigs {18} were inclined for the supremacy ofParliament, and for something like an approach to religious equality. [Sidenote: 1714--Political change] Up to this time at least the Toryparty still accepted the theory of the Divine origin of the king'ssupremacy. The Whigs were even then the advocates of a constitutionalsystem, and held that the people at large were the source ofmonarchical power. To the one set of men the sovereign was a divinelyappointed ruler; to the other he was the hereditary chief of the realm, having the source of his authority in popular election. The Tories, asthe Church party, disliked the Dissenters even more than they dislikedthe Roman Catholics. The Whigs were then even inclined to regard theChurch as a branch of the Civil Service--to adopt a much more modernphrase--and they were in favor of extending freedom of worship toDissenters, and in a certain sense to Roman Catholics. According toBishop Burnet, it was in the reign of Queen Anne that the distinctionbetween High-Church and Low-Church first marked itself out, and we findalmost as a natural necessity that the High-Churchmen were Tories, andthe Low-Churchmen were Whigs. Then as now the chief strength of theTories was found in the country, and not in the large towns. So far astown populations were concerned, the Tories were proportionatelystrongest where the borough was smallest. The great bulk of theagricultural population, so far as it had definite political feelings, was distinctly Tory. The strength of the Whigs lay in themanufacturing towns and the great ports. London was at that time muchstronger in its Liberal political sentiments than it has been morerecently. The moneyed interest, the bankers, the merchants, wereattached to the Whig party. Many peers and bishops were Whigs, butthey were chiefly the peers and bishops who owed their appointments toWilliam the Third. The French envoy, D'Iberville, at this timedescribes the Whigs as having at their command the best purses, thebest swords, the ablest heads, and the handsomest women. The Toryparty was strong at the University of Oxford; the Whig party was {19}in greater force at Cambridge. Both Whigs and Tories, however, were ina somewhat subdued condition of mind about the time that Anne's reignwas closing. Neither party as a whole was inclined to push itspolitical principles to anything like a logical extreme. Whigs andTories alike were practically satisfied with the form which the Englishgoverning system had put on after the Revolution of 1688. Neitherparty was inclined for another revolution. The civil war had carriedthe Whig principle a little too far for the Whigs. The Restoration hadbrought a certain amount of scandal on sovereign authority and theprinciple of Divine right. The minds of men were settling down intowillingness for a compromise. There were, of course, among the Toriesthe extreme party, so pledged to the restoration of the Stuarts thatthey would have moved heaven and earth, at all events they would haveconvulsed England, for the sake of bringing them back. These menconstituted what would now be called in the language of French politicsthe Extreme Right of the Tory party; they would become of importance atany hour when some actual movement was made from the outside to restorethe Stuarts. Such a movement would of course have carried with it andwith them the great bulk of the new quiescent Tory party; but in themean time, and until some such movement was made, the Jacobite sectionof the Tories was not in a condition to be active or influential, andwas not a serious difficulty in the way of the Hanoverian succession. The Whigs had great advantages on their side. They had a clearprinciple to start with. The constitutional errors and excesses of theStuarts had forced on the mind of England a recognition of the two orthree main principles of civil and religious liberty. The Whigs knewwhat they wanted better than the Tories did, and the ends which theWhigs proposed to gain were attainable, while those which the Toriesset out for themselves were to a great extent lost in dream-land. Theuncertainty and vagueness of many of the Tory aims made some of the{20} Tories themselves only half earnest in their purposes. Many aTory who talked as loudly as his brothers about the king having his ownagain, and who toasted "the king over the water" as freely as they, hadin the bottom of his heart very little real anxiety to see a rebellionend in a Stuart restoration. But, on the other hand, the Whigs couldstrive with all their might and main to carry out their principles inChurch and in State without the responsibility of plunging the countryinto rebellion, and without any dread of seeing their projects meltaway into visions and chimeras. A great band of landed proprietorsformed the leaders of the Whigs. Times have changed since then, andthe representatives of some of those great houses which then led theWhig party have passed or glided insensibly into the ranks of theTories; but the main reason for this is because a Tory of our dayrepresents fairly enough, in certain political aspects, the Whig of thedays of Queen Anne. What is called in American politics a newdeparture has taken place in England since that time; the Radical partyhas come into existence with political principles and watchwords quitedifferent even from those of the early Whigs. Some of the Whig houses, not many, have gone with the forward movement; some have remainedbehind, and so lapsed almost insensibly into the Tory quarter. But atthe close of Queen Anne's reign all the great leading Whigs stood welltogether. They understood better than the Tories did the necessity ofobtaining superior influence in the House of Commons. They evencontrived at that time to secure the majority of the countyconstituencies, while they had naturally the majority of the commercialclass on their side. Then, as in later days, the vast wealth of theWhig families was spent unstintingly, and it may be said unblushingly, in securing the possession of the small constituencies, theconstituencies which were only to be had by liberal bribery. Then, asafterwards, there was perceptible in the Whig party a strangecombination of dignity and of meanness, of great principles and ofsomewhat degraded practices. They had high {21} purposes; theyrecognized noble principles, and they held to them; they were forpolitical liberty as they then understood it, and they were forreligious equality--for such approach at least to religious equality ashad then come to be sanctioned by responsible politicians in England. They were ready to make great sacrifices in defence of their politicalcreed. But the principles and purposes with which they started, and towhich they kept, did not succeed in purifying and ennobling all theirparliamentary strategy and political conduct. They intrigued, theybribed, they bought, they cajoled, they paltered, they threatened, theymade unsparing use of money and of power, they employed every art tocarry out high and national purposes which the most unscrupulous cabalcould have used to secure the attainment of selfish and ignoble ends. Their enemies had put one great advantage into their hands. Theconduct of Bolingbroke and of Oxford during recent years had left theWhigs the sole representatives of constitutional liberty. [Sidenote: 1714--Anarchy or "Perkin"] The two great political parties hated and denounced each other with aferocity hardly known before, and hardly possible in our later times. The Whigs vituperated the Tories as rebels and traitors; the Toriescried out against the Whigs as the enemies of religion and theopponents of "the true Church of England. " Many a ballad of that timedescribed the Whigs as men whose object it was to destroy both mitreand crown, to introduce anarchy once again, as they had done in thedays of Oliver Cromwell. The Whig balladists retorted by describingthe Tories as men who were engaged in trying to bring in "Perkin" fromFrance, and prophesied the halter as a reward of their leadingstatesmen. In truth, the bitterness of that hour was very earnest;most of the men on both sides meant what they said. Either side, if ithad been in complete preponderance, would probably have had very littlescruple in disposing of its leading enemies by means of the halter orthe prison. It was for the time not so much a struggle of politicalparties as a {22} struggle of hostile armies. The men were serious andsavage, because the crisis was serious and portentous. The chances ofan hour might make a man a prime-minister or a prisoner. Bolingbrokesoon after was in exile, and Walpole at the head of the administration. The slightest chance, the merest accident, might have sent Walpole intoexile, and put Bolingbroke at the head of the State. [Sidenote: 1714--John Churchill] The eyes of the English public were at this moment turned in especialto watch the movements of two men--the Duke of Marlborough and LordBolingbroke. Marlborough was beyond question the greatest soldier ofhis time. He had gone into exile when Queen Anne consented to degradehim and to persecute him, and now he was on his way home, at the urgententreaty of the Whig leaders, in order to lend his powerful influenceto the Hanoverian cause. The character of the Duke of Marlborough is one which ought to beespecially attractive to the authors of romance and the lovers ofstrong, bold portrait-painting. One peculiar difficulty, however, aromancist would have in dealing with Marlborough--he could hardlyventure to paint Marlborough as nature and fortune made him. Theromancist would find himself compelled to soften and to modify many ofthe distinctive traits of Marlborough's character, in order that hemight not seem the mere inventor of a human paradox, in order that hemight not appear to be indulging in the fantastic and the impossible. Pope has called Bacon "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind, " butBacon was not greater in his own path than Marlborough in his, andBacon's worst meannesses were nobility itself compared with some ofMarlborough's political offences. Marlborough started in life withalmost every advantage that man could have--with genius, with boundlesscourage, with personal beauty, with favoring friends. From his earlyyouth he had been attached to James the Second and James the Second'scourt. One of Marlborough's {23} biographers even suggests that theDuchess of York, James's first wife, was needlessly fond of youngChurchill. The beautiful Duchess of Cleveland--she of whom Pepys said"that everything she did became her"--was passionately in love withMarlborough, and, according to some writers, gave him his first startin life when she presented him with five thousand pounds, whichMarlborough, prudent then as ever, invested in an annuity of fivehundred a year. Burnet said of him that "he knew the arts of living ina court beyond any man in it; he caressed all people with a soft andobliging deportment, and was always ready to do good offices. " Hisonly personal defect was in his voice, which was shrill anddisagreeable. He was, through all his life, avaricious to the lastdegree; he grasped at money wherever he could get it; he took moneyfrom women as well as from men. A familiar story of the timerepresents another nobleman as having been mistaken for the Duke ofMarlborough by a mob, at a time when Marlborough was unpopular, andextricating himself from the difficulty by telling the crowd he couldnot possibly be the Duke of Marlborough, first, because he had only twoguineas in his pocket, and next, because he was perfectly ready to givethem away. Marlborough had received the highest favors from James theSecond, but he quitted James in the hour of his misfortunes, only, however, it should be said, to return secretly to his service at a timewhen he was professing devotion to William the Third. He betrayed eachside to the other. In the same year, and almost in the same month, hewrites to the Elector at Hanover and to the Pretender in France, pouring forth to each alike his protestations of devotion. "I shall bealways ready to hazard my fortune and my life for your service, " hetells the Elector. "I had rather have my hands cut off than doanything prejudicial to King James's cause, " he tells an agent of theStuarts. James appears to have believed in Marlborough, and William, while he made use of him, to have had no faith in him. "The Duke ofMarlborough, " William {24} said, "has the best talents for a general ofany man in England; but he is a vile man and I hate him, for though Ican profit by treasons I cannot bear the traitor. " William's sayingwas strikingly like that one ascribed to Philip of Macedon. Schombergspoke of Marlborough as "the first lieutenant-general whom I everremember to have deserted his colors. " Lord Granard, who was in thecamp of King James the Second on Salisbury Plain, told Dr. King, whohas recorded the story, that Churchill and some other colonels invitedLord Granard to supper, and opened to him their design of deserting tothe Prince of Orange. Granard not merely refused to enter into theconspiracy, but went to the King and told him the whole story, advisinghim to seize Marlborough and the other conspirators. Perhaps if thisadvice had been followed, King William would never have come to thethrone of England. James, however, gave no credit to the story, andtook no trouble about it. Next morning he found his mistake; but itwas then too late. The truth of this story is corroborated by otherauthorities, one of them being King James himself, who afterwardsstated that he had received information of Lord Churchill's designs, and was recommended to seize his person, but that he unfortunatelyneglected to avail himself of the advice. "Speak of that no more, "says Egmont, in Goethe's play; "I _was_ warned. " [Sidenote: 1714--Marlborough] Swift said of Marlborough that "he is as covetous as hell, andambitious as the prince of it. " Marlborough was as ignorant as he wasavaricious. Literary taste or instinct he must have had, because heread with so much eagerness the historical plays of Shakespeare, andindeed frankly owned that his only knowledge of English history wastaken from their scenes. Even in that time of loose spelling hisspelling is remarkably loose. He seems to spell without any particularprinciple in the matter, seldom rendering the same word a second timeby the same combination of letters. He was at one period of his life alibertine of the loosest order, so far as morals were {25} concerned, but of the shrewdest kind as regarded personal gain and advancement. He would have loved any Lady Bellaston who presented herself, and whocould have rewarded him for his kindness. He was not of the type ofByron's "Don Juan, " who declares that The prisoned eagle will not pair, nor I Serve a Sultana's sensual phantasy. Marlborough would have served any phantasy for gain. It has been saidof him that the reason for his being so successful with women as ayoung man was that he took money of them. Yet, as another strikinginstance of the paradoxical nature of his character, he was intenselydevoted to his wife. He was the true lover of Sarah Jennings, whoafterwards became Duchess of Marlborough. A man of the most undauntedcourage in the presence of the enemy, he was his wife's obedient, patient, timid slave. He lived more absolutely under her control thanBelisarius under the government of his unscrupulous helpmate. SarahJennings was, in her way, almost as remarkable as her husband. She wasa woman of great beauty. Colley Gibber, in his "Apology, " pays devotedtestimony to her charms. He had by chance to attend on her in thecapacity of a sort of amateur lackey at an entertainment in Nottingham, and he seems to have been completely dazzled by her loveliness. "If soclear an emanation of beauty, such a commanding grace of aspect, struckme into a regard that had something softer than the most profoundrespect in it, I cannot see why I may not without offence remember it, since beauty, like the sun, must sometimes lose its power to choose, and shine into equal warmth the peasant and the courtier. " He quaintlyadds, "However presumptuous or impertinent these thoughts may haveappeared at my first entertaining them, why may I not hope that myhaving kept them decently a secret for full fifty years may be now agood round plea for their pardon?" The imperious spirit which couldrule Churchill long dominated the feeble nature of Queen Anne. But{26} when once this domination was overthrown, Sarah Jennings had noart to curb her temper into such show of respect and compliance asmight have won back her lost honors. She met her humiliation with themost childish bursts of passion; she did everything in her power toannoy and insult the Queen who had passed from her haughty control. She was always a keen hater; to the last day of her life she neverforgot her resentment towards all who had, or who she thought had, injured her. In long later years she got into unseemly lawsuits withher own near relations. But if one side of her character was harsh andunlovely enough, it may be admitted that there was something notunheroic about her unyielding spirit--something noble in the respect toher husband's memory, which showed itself in the declaration that shewould not marry "the emperor of the world, " after having been the wifeof John, Duke of Marlborough. [Sidenote: 1714--Bolingbroke] Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was in his way as great a man asthe Duke of Marlborough. At the time we are now describing he seemedto have passed through a long, a varied, and a brilliant career, andyet he had only arrived at the age when public men in England now beginto be regarded as responsible politicians. He was in his thirty-sixthyear. The career that had prematurely begun was drawing to itspremature close. He had climbed to his highest position; he isPrime-minister of England, and has managed to get rid of his oldcolleague and rival, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford. Bolingbroke hadalmost every gift and grace that nature and fortune could give. Threeyears before this Swift wrote to Stella, "I think Mr. St. John thegreatest young man I ever knew; wit, capacity, beauty, quickness ofapprehension, good learning and an excellent taste; the greatest oratorin the House of Commons, admirable conversation, good nature and goodmanners, generous, and a despiser of money. " Yet, as in the fairystory, the benign powers which had combined to endow him so richly hadwithheld the one gift which might have made all the rest of {27}surpassing value, and which being denied left them of little account. If Bolingbroke had had principle he would have been one of the greatestEnglishmen of any time. His utter want of morality in politics, aswell as in private life, proved fatal to him; he only climbed high inorder to fall the lower. He was remarkable for profligacy even in thatheedless and profligate time. Voltaire, in one of his letters, tells astory of a famous London courtesan who exclaimed to some of hercompanion nymphs on hearing that Bolingbroke had been made Secretary ofState, "Seven thousand guineas a year, girls, and all for us!" Even ifthe story be not true it is interesting and significant as an evidenceof the sort of impression which Bolingbroke had made upon his age. Itwas his glory to be vicious; he was proud of his orgies. He liked tobe known as a man who could spend the whole night in a drunken revel, and the afternoon in preparing some despatch on which the fortunes ofhis country or the peace of the world might depend. The sight of abeautiful woman could turn him away for the time from the gravestpolitical purposes. He was ready at such a moment to throw anythingover for the sake of the sudden love-chase which had come in his way. He bragged of his amours, and boasted that he had never failed ofsuccess with any woman who seemed to him worth pursuing. Like Faust, he loved to reel from desire to enjoyment, and from enjoyment backagain into desire. Bolingbroke was the first of a great line ofparliamentary debaters who have made for themselves a distinct place inEnglish history, and whose rivals are not to be found in the history ofany other parliament. It is difficult at this time to form anyadequate idea of Bolingbroke's style as a speaker or his capacity fordebate when compared with other great English parliamentary orators. But so far as one may judge, we should be inclined to think that hemust have had Fox's readiness without Fox's redundancy and repetition;and that he must have had the stately diction and the commanding styleof the younger Pitt, with a certain freshness and force which {28} theyounger Pitt did not always exhibit. Bolingbroke's English prose styleis hardly surpassed by that of any other author, either before his timeor since. It is supple, strong, and luminous; not redundant, but notbare; ornamented where ornament is suitable and even useful, butnowhere decorated with the purple rags of unnecessary and artificialbrilliancy. Such a man, so gifted, must in any case have held a highplace among his contemporaries, and probably if Bolingbroke hadpossessed the political and personal virtues of men like Burke andPitt, or even the political virtues of a man like Charles Fox, he wouldhave been remembered as the greatest of all English parliamentarystatesmen. But, as we have already said, the one defect filled himwith faults. The lack of principle gave him a lack of purpose, andwanting purpose he persevered in no consistent political path. Swifthas observed that Bolingbroke "had a great respect for the charactersof Alcibiades and Petronius, especially the latter, whom he wouldgladly be thought to resemble. " He came nearer at his worst toPetronius than at his best to Alcibiades. Alcibiades, to do himjustice, admired and understood virtue in others, however small theshare of it he contrived to keep for himself. It is impossible to readthat wonderful compound of dramatic humor and philosophic thought, Plato's "Banquet, " without being moved by the generous and impassionedeulogy which Alcibiades, in the fulness of his heart and of his wine, pours out upon the austere virtue of Socrates. Such as Alcibiades isthere described we may suppose Alcibiades to have been, and no one whohas followed the career of Bolingbroke can believe it possible that heever could have felt any sincere admiration for virtue in man or woman, or could have thought of it otherwise than as a thing to be sneered atand despised. The literary men, and more especially the poets of thedays of Bolingbroke, seem to have had as little scruple in theircompliments as a French _petit-maître_ might have in sounding thepraises of his mistress to his mistress's ears. Pope talks of hisvilla, where, "nobly {29} pensive, St. John sat and thought, " anddeclared that such only might Tread this sacred floor Who dare to love their country and be poor. [Sidenote: 1714--Pope's praises] It is hard to think of Bolingbroke, even in his more advanced years, as"nobly pensive, " sitting and thinking, and certainly neitherBolingbroke nor any of Bolingbroke's closer political associates wasexactly the sort of man who would have dared "to love his country andbe poor. " In Bolingbroke's latest years we hear of him as amusinghimself by boasting to his second wife of his various successfulamours, until at last the lady, weary of the repetition, somewhatcontemptuously reminds him that however happy as a lover he may havebeen once, his days of love were now over, and the less he said aboutit the better. Nor was Pope less extravagant in his praise to Harley than to St. John. He says: If aught below the seats divine Can touch immortals, 'tis a soul like thine; A soul supreme, in each hard instance tried, Above all pain, all passion, and all pride, The rage of power, the blast of public breath, The lust of lucre, and the dread of death. These lines, it is right to remember, were addressed to Harley, not inhis power, but after his fall. Even with that excuse for a friend'sovercharged eulogy, they read like a satire on Harley rather than likehis panegyric. Caricature itself could not more broadly distort thefeatures of a human being than his poetic admirer has altered thelineaments of Oxford. Harley had been intriguing on both sides of thefield. He professed devoted loyalty to the Queen and to her appointedsuccessor, and he was at the same time coquetting, to put it mildly, with the Stuart family in France. Nothing surprises a reader more thanthe universal duplicity that seems to have prevailed in the days ofAnne and of the early Georges. Falsehood appears to have been arecognized diplomatic {30} and political art. Statesmen, even of thehighest rank and reputation, made no concealment of the fact thatwhenever occasion required they were ready to state the thing which wasnot, either in private conversation or in public debate. Nothing couldexceed or excuse the boundless duplicity of Marlborough, but it must beowned that even William the Third told almost as many falsehoods toMarlborough as Marlborough could have told to him. At a time whenWilliam detested Marlborough, he yet occasionally paid him in publicand in private the very highest compliments on his integrity and hisvirtue. Men were not then supposed or expected to speak the truth. Astatesman might deceive a foreign minister or the Parliament of his owncountry with as little risk to his reputation as a lady would haveundergone, in later days, who told a lie to the custom-house officer atthe frontier to save the piece of smuggled lace in her trunk. [Sidenote: 1714--Harley] If a man like William of Nassau could stoop to deceit and falsehood forany political purpose, it is easy to understand that a man like Harleywould make free use of the same arts, and for personal objects as well. Harley's political changes were so many and so rapid that they couldnot possibly be explained by any theory consistent with sincerity. Itwas well said of him that "his humor is never to deal clearly oropenly, but always with reserve, if not dissimulation, and to lovetricks when not necessary, but from an inward satisfaction inapplauding his own cunning. " He entered Parliament in 1689, and in1700 was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. At that time, and forlong after, it was not an uncommon thing that a man who had beenSpeaker should afterwards become a Secretary of State, sitting in thesame House. This was Harley's case: in 1704 he was made principalSecretary of State. In 1708 Harley resigned office, and immediatelyafter took the leadership of the Tory party. In about two years heoverthrew the Whig administration, and became the head of a newgovernment, with the place of Lord High Treasurer, and the title ofEarl of Oxford. {31} His craft seems only to have been that low kindof artifice which enables an unscrupulous man to cajole his followersand to stir up division among his enemies. His word was not to berelied upon by friend or enemy, and when he most affected a tone offrankness or of candor he was least to be trusted. As Lord Stanhopewell says of him "His slender and pliant intellect was well fitted tocrawl up to the heights of power through all the crooked mazes anddirty by-paths of intrigue; but having once attained the pinnacle, itssmallness and meanness were exposed to all the world. " Even hisprivate life had not the virtues which one who reads some of theexalted panegyrics paid to him by contemporary poets and others wouldbe apt to imagine. He was fond of drink and fond of pleasure in asmall and secret way; his vices were as unlike the daring and brilliantprofligacy of his colleague and rival Bolingbroke as his intellect wasinferior to Bolingbroke's surpassing genius. For all Pope's poeticeulogy, the poet could say in prose of Lord Oxford that he was not avery capable minister, and had a good deal of negligence into thebargain. "He used to send trifling verses from court to the ScriblerusClub every day, and would come and talk idly with them almost everynight, even when his all was at stake. " Pope adds that Oxford "talkedof business in so confused a manner that you did not know what he wasabout, and everything he went to tell you was in the epic way, for healways began in the middle. " Swift calls him "the greatestprocrastinator in the world. " It is of Lord Oxford that the story isoriginally told which has been told of so many statesmen here and inAmerica since his time. Lord Oxford, according to Pope, invited Rowe, the dramatic poet, to learn Spanish. Rowe went to work, and studiedSpanish under the impression that some appointment at the Spanish courtwould follow. When he returned to Harley and told him he hadaccomplished the task, Harley said, "Then, Mr. Rowe, I envy you thepleasure of reading 'Don Quixote' in the original. " Pope asks, "Is notthat cruel?" But {32} others have held that it was unintentional onLord Oxford's part, and merely one of his unthinking oddities. [Sidenote: 1714--Walpole] Another man, fifteen years younger than Harley, a school-fellow at Etonof Bolingbroke, was rising slowly, surely, into prominence and power. All the great part of his career is yet to come; but even already, while men were talking of Marlborough and Bolingbroke, they foundthemselves compelled to give a place in their thoughts to RobertWalpole. If Bolingbroke was the first, and perhaps the most brilliant, of the great line of parliamentary debaters who have made debate amoving power in English history, Walpole was the first of that line ofstatesmen who, sprung from the class of the "Commoner, " have becomeleaders of the English Parliament. In position and in influence, although not in personal character or accomplishments, Walpole may bedescribed as the direct predecessor of Peel and Gladstone. Just twoyears before the death of William the Third, Walpole entered Parliamentfor the first time. He married, entered Parliament, and succeeded tohis father's estates in the same year, 1700. Walpole was onlytwenty-four years of age when he took his seat in the House of Commonsas member for Castle Rising in Norfolk. He was a young country squireof considerable fortune, and a thorough supporter of the Whig party. Walpole came into Parliament at that happy time for men of his positionwhen the change was already taking place which marked therepresentative assembly as the controlling power in the State. TheGovernment as a direct ruling power was beginning to grow less and lesseffective, and the House of Commons beginning to grow more and morestrong. This change had begun to set in during the Restoration, and bythe time Walpole came to be known in Parliament it was becoming moreand more evident that the Ministers of State were in the future only tobe men intrusted with the duty of carrying out the will of the majorityin the House of Commons. Before that majority every other power in theState was ultimately to bend. The man, therefore, {33} who could byeloquence, genuine statesmanship, and force of character, or even bymere tact, secure the adhesion of that majority, had become virtuallythe ruler of the State. But as will easily be seen, his rule even thenwas something very different indeed from the rule of an arbitraryminister. He would have to satisfy, to convince, to conciliate themajority. A single false step, an hour's weakness of purpose, nay, even a failure for which he was not himself accountable in home orforeign policy, might deprive him of his influence over the majority, and might reduce him to comparative insignificance. Therefore, thecontrolling power which a great minister acquired was held by virtue ofthe most constant watchfulness, the most unsparing labor, energy, anddevotion, and also in a great measure by the favor of fortune and ofopportunity. Walpole was a man eminently qualified to obtain influence over theHouse of Commons, and to keep it up when he had once obtained it. Noman could have promised less in the beginning. That was an acuteobserver who divined the genius of Cromwell under Cromwell's homelyexterior when he first came up to Parliament. Almost as much acutenesswould have been needed to enable any one to see the futurePrime-minister of England and master of the House of Commons in theplain, unpromising form, the homely, almost stolid countenance, theungainly movements and gestures of Walpole. Walpole was as much of arustic as Lord Althorp in times nearer to our own acknowledged himselfto be. Althorp said he ought to have been a grazier, and that it wasan odd chance which made him Prime-minister. But the difference wasgreat. Walpole had the gifts which make a man prime-minister, despitehis country gentleman or grazier-like qualities. It was not chance, but Walpole himself which raised him to the position he came to hold. Walpole knew nothing and cared nothing about literature and art. Hisgreat passion was for hunting; his next love was for wine, and histhird for his dinner. Without any natural gift of eloquence he becamea great debater. {34} Nature, which seemed to have lavished all hermost luxurious gifts on Bolingbroke, appeared to have pinched andstarved Walpole. Where Bolingbroke was richest Walpole was poorest;Bolingbroke's genius required a frequent rein; Walpole's intellectneeded the perpetual spur. Yet Walpole, with his lack of imagination, of eloquence, of wit, of humor, and of culture, went farther and didmore than the brilliant Bolingbroke. It was the old fable of the hareand the tortoise over again; perhaps it should rather be called a newversion of the old fable. The farther the hare goes in the wrong waythe more she goes astray, and thus many of Bolingbroke's most rapidmovements only helped the tortoise to get to the goal before him. In1708 Walpole, now recognized as an able debater, a clever tactician, and, above all things, an excellent man of business, was appointedSecretary at War. He became at the same time leader of the House ofCommons. He was one of the managers in the unfortunate impeachment ofthe empty-headed High-Church preacher, Dr. Sacheverell. He resignedoffice with the other Whig ministers in 1710. Harley coming into poweroffered him a place in the new administration, which Walpole declinedto accept. The Tories, reckless and ruthless in their majority, expelled Walpole from the House in 1712 and imprisoned him in theTower. The charge against him was one of corruption, a charge easilymade in those days against any minister, and which, if high moralprinciples were to prevail, might probably have been as easilysustained as it was made. Walpole, however, was not worse than hiscontemporaries; nor, even if he had been, would the contemporaries havebeen inclined to treat his offences very seriously so long as they werenot inspired to act against him by partisan motives. At the end of thesession he was released, and now, in the closing days of Anne's reign, all eyes turned to him as a rising man and a certain bulwark of the newdynasty. [Sidenote: 1714--The Dean of St. Patrick's] It would be impossible not to regard Jonathan Swift as one of thepoliticians, one of the statesmen, of this age. {35} Swift was apolitician in the highest sense, although he had seen little of the onegreat political arena in which the battles of English parties werefought out. He has left it on record that he never heard eitherBolingbroke or Harley speak in Parliament or anywhere in public. Hewas at this time about forty-seven years of age, and had not yetreached his highest point in politics or in literature. The "Tale of aTub" had been written, but not "Gulliver's Travels;" the tract on "TheConduct of the Allies, " but not the "Drapier's Letters. " Even at thistime he was a power in political life; his was an influence with whichstatesmen and even sovereigns had to reckon. No pen ever served acause better than his had served, and was yet to serve, the interestsof the Tory party. He was probably the greatest English pamphleteer ata time when the pamphlet had to do all the work of the leading articleand most of the work of the platform. His churchmen's gown satuneasily on him; he was like one of the fighting bishops of the MiddleAges, with whom armor was the more congenial wear. He had a fierce anddomineering temper, and indeed out of his strangely bright blue eyesthere was already beginning to shine only too ominously the wild lightof that _saeva indignatio_ which the inscription drawn up by his ownhand for his tomb described as lacerating his heart. The ominous lightat last broke out into the fire of insanity. We shall meet Swiftagain; just now we only stop to note him as a political influence. Atthis time he is Dean of St. Patrick's in Ireland; he has been lately inLondon trying, and without success, to bring about a reconciliationbetween Bolingbroke and Harley; and, finding his efforts ineffectual, and seeing that troubled times were near at hand, he has quietlywithdrawn to Berkshire. Before leaving London he wrote the letter toLord Peterborough containing the remarkable words with which we haveopened this volume. It is curious that Swift himself afterwardsascribed to Harley the saying about the Queen's health and the heedless{36} behavior of statesmen. In his "Enquiry into the Behaviour of theQueen's Last Ministry, " dated June, 1715, he tells us that "aboutChristmas, 1713, " the Treasurer said to him "whenever anything ails theQueen these people are out of their wits; and yet they are sothoughtless that as soon as she is well they act as if she wereimmortal. " To which Swift adds the following significant comment: "Ihad sufficient reason, both before and since, to allow his observationto be true, and that some share of it might with justice be applied tohimself. " It was at the house of a clergyman at Upper Letcomb, nearWantage, in Berkshire, that Swift stayed for some time before returningto his Irish home. From Letcomb the reader will perhaps note with somepainful interest that Swift wrote to Miss Esther Vanhomrigh, whom allgenerations will know as Vanessa, a letter, in which he describes hissomewhat melancholy mode of life just then, tells her "this is thefirst syllable I have wrote to anybody since you saw me, " and adds that"if this place were ten times worse, nothing shall make me return totown while things are in the situation I left them. " [Sidenote: 1714--Addison] Swift, in his heart, trusted neither Bolingbroke nor Harley. It seemsclear that Lady Masham was under the impression that she had Swift asher accomplice in the intrigue which finally turned Harley out ofoffice. She writes to him while he is at Letcomb a letter which couldnot have been written if she were not in that full conviction; and hedoes not reply until the whole week's crisis is past and a newcondition of things arisen; and in the reply he commits himself tonothing. If he distrusted Bolingbroke he could not help admiring him. Bolingbroke was the only man then near the court whose genius must nothave been rebuked by Swift. But Swift must, for all his lavish praisesof Harley, have sometimes secretly despised the hesitating, time-serving statesman, with whom indecision was a substitute forprudence, and to be puzzled was to seem to deliberate. That Harleyshould have had the playing of a great political game {37} while Swiftcould only look on, is one of the anomalies of history which Swift'ssardonic humor must have appreciated to the full. Swift took hisrevenge when he could by bullying his great official friends now andthen in the roughest fashion. He knew that they feared him, andflattered him because they feared him, and he was glad of it, andhugged himself in the knowledge. He knew even that at one time theywere uncertain of his fidelity, and took much pains by their praisesand their promises to keep him close at their side; and this, too, amused him. He was amused as a tyrant might be at the obvious effortsof those around him to keep him in good-humor, or as a man conscious ofincipient madness might find malign delight in the anxiety of hisfriends to fall in with all his moods and not to cross him in anythinghe was pleased to say. Joseph Addison had a political position and influence on the other sideof the controversy which entitle him to be ranked among the statesmenof the day. Only in the year before his tragedy of "Cato" had beenbrought out, and it had created an altogether peculiar sensation. Eachof the two great political parties seized upon the opportunity given byGate's pompous political virtue, and claimed him as the spokesman oftheir cause. The Whigs, of course, had the author's authority toappropriate the applause of Cato, and the Whigs had endeavored to packthe House in order to secure their claim. But the Tories were equal tothe occasion. They appeared in great numbers, Bolingbroke, thenSecretary of State, at their head. When Cato lamented the extinguishedfreedom of his country the Whigs were vociferous in their cheers, andglared fiercely at the Tories; but when the austere Roman was made todenounce Caesar and a perpetual dictatorship, the Tories professed toregard this as a denunciation of Marlborough, and his demand to be madecommander-in-chief for life, and they gave back the cheering withredoubled vehemence. At last Bolingbroke's own genius suggested amaster-stroke. He sent for the actor who played Cato's part, thankedhim in face of the {38} public, and presented him with a purse of goldbecause of the service he had done in sustaining the cause of libertyagainst the tyranny of a perpetual dictator. Addison held many high political offices. He was Secretary to a LordLieutenant of Ireland more than once; he was made Secretary to the"Regents, " as they were called--the commissioners intrusted by Georgethe First with the task of administration previous to his arrival inEngland. He sat in Parliament; he was appointed Under-secretary ofState, and was soon to be for a while one of the principal Secretariesof State. The last number of his _Spectator_ was published at theclose of 1714. This was indeed still a time when literary men mighthold high political office. The deadening influence of the Georges hadnot yet quite prevailed against letters and art. Matthew Prior, aboutwhose poetry the present age troubles itself but little, sat inParliament, was employed in many of the most important diplomaticnegotiations of the day, and had not long before this time held theoffice of Plenipotentiary in Paris. Richard Steele not merely sat inthe House of Commons, but was considered of sufficient importance todeserve the distinction of a formal expulsion from the House because ofcertain political diatribes for which he was held responsible and whichthe Commons chose to vote libellous. At the time we are now describinghe had re-entered Parliament, and was still a brilliant penman on theside of the Whigs. His career as politician, literary man, andpractical dramatist combined, seems in some sort a foreshadowing ofthat of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Gay was appointed Secretary to LordClarendon on a diplomatic mission to Hanover. Nicholas Rowe, theauthor of the "Fair Penitent" and the translator of Lucan's"Pharsalia, " was at one time an Under-Secretary of State. Rowe'sdramatic work is not yet absolutely forgotten by the world. We stillhear of the "gallant gay Lothario, " although many of those who are glibwith the words do not know that they come from the "Fair Penitent, " andwould not care even if they did know. {39} CHAPTER III. "LOST FOR WANT OF SPIRIT. " [Sidenote: 1714--The Duke of Ormond] When Bolingbroke found himself in full power he began at once to open theway for some attempt at the restoration of the Stuart dynasty. He putinfluential Jacobites into important offices in England and Scotland; hemade the Duke of Ormond Warden of the Cinque Ports, that authoritycovering exactly the stretch of coast at some point of which it might beexpected that James Stuart would land if he were to make an attempt forthe crown at all. Ormond was a weak and vain man, but he was a man ofpersonal integrity. He had been sent out to Flanders to succeed thegreatest commander of the age as captain-general of the allied armiesthere, and he had naturally played a poor and even ridiculous part. TheJacobites in England still, however, held him in much honor, identifiedhis name, no one exactly knew why, with the cause of High-Church, andelected him the hero and the leader of the movement for the restorationof the exiled family. Bolingbroke committed Scotland to the care of theEarl of Mar, a Jacobite, a personal friend of James Stuart, and a votaryof High-Church. It can hardly be supposed that in making such anappointment Bolingbroke had not in his mind the possibility of a risingof the Highland clans against the Hanoverian succession. But it is nonethe less evident that Bolingbroke was as usual thinking far more ofhimself than of his party, and that his preparations were made not somuch with a view to restoring the Stuarts as with the object of securinghimself against any chance that might befall. {40} Had Bolingbroke been resolved in his heart to bring back the Stuarts, hadhe been ready, as many other men were, to risk all in that cause, tostand or fall by it, he might, so far as one can see, have beensuccessful. It is not too much to say that on the whole the majority ofthe English people were in favor of the Stuarts. Certainly the majoritywould have preferred a Stuart to the dreaded and disliked German princefrom Herrenhausen. For many years the birthday of the Stuart prince hadbeen celebrated as openly and as enthusiastically in English cities as ifit were the birthday of the reigning sovereign. James's adherents wereeverywhere--in the court, in the camp, on the bench, in Parliament, inthe drawing-rooms, the coffee-houses, and the streets. Bolingbroke hadonly to present him at a critical moment, and say "Here is your king, "and James Stuart would have been king. Such a crisis came in France inour own days. There was a moment, after the fall of the Second Empire, when the Count de Chambord had only to present himself in Versailles inorder to be accepted as King of France, not King of the French. But theCount de Chambord put away his chance deliberately; he would not consentto give up the white flag of legitimacy and accept the tricolor. Heacted on principle, knowing the forfeit of his decision. The chances ofJames Stuart were frittered away in half-heartedness, insincerity, andfolly. While Bolingbroke and his confederates were caballing andcounselling, and paltering and drinking, the Whig statesmen were maturingtheir plans, and when the moment came for action it found them ready toact. [Sidenote: 1714--The Council at Kensington] The success was accomplished by a _coupe d'état_ on Friday, July 30, 1714. The Queen was suddenly stricken with apoplexy. A Privy Councilwas to meet that morning at Kensington Palace. The Privy Council meetingwas composed then, according to the principle which prevails still, onlyof such councillors as had received a special summons. In truth, themeeting of the Privy Council {41} in Anne's time was like a Cabinetmeeting of our days, and was intended by those who convened it to be justas strictly composed of official members. But, on the other hand, therewas no law or rule forbidding any member of the Privy Council, whethersummoned or not, to present himself at the meeting. Bolingbroke was inhis place, and so was the Duke of Ormond, and so were other Jacobitepeers. The Duke of Shrewsbury had taken his seat, as he was entitled todo, being one of the highest officers of State. Shrewsbury was known tobe a loyal adherent of the Act of Settlement and the HanoverianSuccession. He was a remarkable man with a remarkable history. Hisfather was the unfortunate Shrewsbury who was killed in a duel by theDuke of Buckingham. The duel arose out of the duke's open intrigue withthe Countess of Shrewsbury, and the story went at the time that the ladyherself, dressed as a page, held her lover's horse while he fought withand killed her husband. Charles Talbot, the son, was brought up aCatholic, but in his twentieth year accepted the arguments of Tillotsonand became a Protestant. He was Lord Chamberlain to James the Second, but lost all faith in James, and went over to Holland to assist Williamof Nassau with counsel and with money. When William became King ofEngland he made Lord Shrewsbury a Privy Councillor and Secretary ofState, created him first marquis and afterwards duke, and called him, intribute to his great popularity, the King of Hearts. He was for a shorttime British Ambassador at the Court of France, and then Lord Lieutenantof Ireland. He had flickered a little between the Whigs and the Toriesat different periods of his career, and in 1710 he actually joined theTory party. But it was well known to every one that if any questionshould arise between the House of Hanover and the Stuarts, he would standfirmly by the appointed succession. He was a man of undoubted integrityand great political sagacity; he had a handsome face, although he hadlost one of his eyes by an accident when riding, and {42} he had astately presence. His gifts and graces were said to have so muchattracted the admiration of Queen Mary that if she had outlived the Kingshe would probably have married Shrewsbury. The condition of thepolitical world around him had impressed him with so little reverence forcourts and cabinets, that he used to say if he had a son he would ratherbring him up a cobbler than a courtier, and a hangman than a statesman. Bolingbroke once kindly said of him, "I never knew a man so formed toplease, and to gain upon the affections while challenging the esteem. " [Sidenote: 1714--The Dukes of Somerset and Argyll] Before there was time to get to any of the business of the council thedoors were opened, and the Duke of Argyll and the Duke of Somersetentered the room. The Duke of Argyll, soldier, statesman, orator, shrewdself-seeker, represented the Whigs of Scotland; the honest, proud, pompous Duke of Somerset those of England. The two intruders, as theywere assuredly regarded by the majority of those present, announced thatthey had heard the news of the Queen's danger, and that they feltthemselves bound to hasten to the meeting of the council, although notsummoned thither, in order that they might be able to afford advice andassistance. The Duke of Somerset was in many respects the most powerful nobleman inEngland. But all his rank, his dignity, and his influence, could notprotect him against the ridicule and contempt which his feeble character, his extravagant pride, and his grotesquely haughty demeanor, invariablybrought upon him. He was probably the most ridiculous man of his time;he had the pomp of an Eastern pasha without the grave dignity whichEastern manners confer. He was like the pasha of a burlesque or an_opéra bouffe_. His servants had to obey him by signs; he disdained togive orders by voice. His first wife was Elizabeth Percy, the virginwidow of Lord Ogle and Tom Thynne of Longleat, the beloved of CharlesJohn Königsmark, the "Carrots" of Dean Swift. While she was Duchess ofSomerset and Queen Anne's close friend, Swift, who {43} hated her, hintedpretty broadly that she was privy to Königsmark's plot to murder TomThynne, and the Duchess revenged herself by keeping the Dean out of thebishopric of Hereford. When she died, Somerset married Lady CharlotteFinch, one of the "Black Funereal Finches, " celebrated by Sir CharlesHanbury Williams. Once, when she tapped him on the shoulder with a fan, he rebuked her angrily: "My first wife was a Percy, and she never tooksuch a liberty. " When he had occasion to travel, all the roads on ornear which he had to pass were scoured by a vanguard of outriders, whosebusiness it was to protect him, not merely from obstruction and delay, but from the gaze of the vulgar herd who might be anxious to feast theireyes upon his gracious person. The statesmen of his own time, while theymade use of him, seem to have vied with each other in protestations oftheir contempt for his abilities and his character. Swift declared thatSomerset had not "a grain of sense of any kind. " Marlborough severaltimes professed an utter contempt for Somerset's abilities or discretion, and was indignant at the idea that he ever could have made use of such aman in any work requiring confidence or judgment. Yet Somerset, ridiculous as he was, came to be a personage of importance in the crisisnow impending over England. He was, at all events, a man whose wordcould be trusted, and who, when he promised to take a certain course, would be sure to follow it. That very pride which made him habituallyridiculous raised him on great occasions above any suspicion of mercenaryor personal views in politics. One of his contemporaries describes himas "so humorsome, proud, and capricious, that he was rather a ministryspoiler than a ministry maker. " In the present condition of things, however, he could be made use of for the purpose of making one ministryafter spoiling another. When he carried his great personal influenceover to the side of the Hanoverian accession, and joined with Argyll andwith Shrewsbury, it must have been evident, to men like Bolingbroke atleast, that the enterprises of the Jacobites {44} would require raregood-fortune and marvellous energy to bring them to any success. [Sidenote: 1714--The coup d'état] Poetry and romance have shown to the world the most favorable side of thecharacter of John Campbell, Duke of Argyll, who was then at least aspowerful in Scotland as the Duke of Somerset in England. Pope describeshim as Argyll, the State's whole thunder born to wield, And shake alike the senate and the field. Scott has drawn a charming picture of him in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian"as the patriotic Scotchman, whose heart must "be cold as death can makeit when it does not warm to the tartan"--the kind and generous protectorof Jeanie Deans. Argyll was a man of many gifts. He was a soldier, astatesman, and an orator. He had charged at Ramilies and Oudenarde, hadrallied a shrinking column at Malplaquet, and served in the sieges ofOstend and Lille and Ghent. His eloquence in the House of Lords is saidto have combined the freshness of youth, the strength of manhood, and thewisdom of old age. Lord Hervey, who is not given to praise, admits thatArgyll was "gallant, and a good officer, with very good parts, and muchmore reading and knowledge than generally falls to the share of a maneducated a soldier, and born to so great a title and fortune. " ButHervey also says that Argyll was "haughty, passionate, and peremptory, "and it cannot be doubted that he was capable of almost any politicaltergiversation, or even treachery, which could have served his purpose;and his purpose was always his own personal interest. He changed hisopinions with the most unscrupulous promptitude; he gave an opinion oneway and acted another way without hesitation, and without a blush. Hewas always equal to the emergency; he had the full courage of hisnon-convictions. He was the grandson of that Argyll whose last sleepbefore his execution is the subject of Mr. Ward's well-known painting;his great-grandfather, too, gave up his life on the scaffold. He did notwant any of the courage of his ancestors; but he was {45} likely to takecare that his advancement should not be to the block or the gallows. Atsuch a moment as this which we are now describing his adhesion and hisaction were of inestimable value to the Hanoverian cause. When these two great peers entered the council-chamber a moment ofperplexity and confusion followed. Bolingbroke and Ormond had probablynot even yet a full understanding of the meaning of this dramaticperformance, and what consequences it was likely to insure. While theysat silent, according to some accounts, the Duke of Shrewsbury arose, andgravely thanking the Whig peers for their courtesy in attending thecouncil, accepted their co-operation in the name of all the otherspresent. They took their places at the council-table, and St. John andOrmond must have begun to feel that all was over. The intrusion of theWhig peers was a daring and a significant step in itself, but when theDuke of Shrewsbury welcomed their appearance and accepted theirco-operation, it was clear to the Jacobites that all was part of aprearranged scheme, to which resistance would now be in vain. The newvisitors to the council called for the reports of the royal physician, and having received and read them, suggested that the Duke of Shrewsburyshould be recommended to the Queen as Lord High Treasurer. St. John didnot venture to resist the proposal; he could only sit with as muchappearance of composure as he was enabled to maintain, and accept thesuggestion of his enemies. A deputation of the peers, with the Duke ofShrewsbury among them, at once sought and obtained an interview with thedying Queen. She gave the Lord High Treasurer's staff into Shrewsbury'shand, and bade him, it is said, in that voice of singular sweetness andmelody which was almost her only charm, to use it for the good of herpeople. The office of Lord High Treasurer is now always put into what is calledcommission; its functions are managed by several ministers, of whom theFirst Lord of the Treasury is one, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer{46} another. In all recent times the First Lord of the Treasury hasusually been Prime-minister, and his office therefore corresponds fairlyenough with that which was called the office of Lord High Treasurer inearlier days. It was clear that when the Duke of Shrewsbury became LordHigh Treasurer at such a junction he would stand firmly by the Protestantsuccession, and would oppose any kind of scheming in the cause of theexiled Stuarts. [Sidenote: 1714--Whigs in possession] Some writers near to that time, and Mr. Lecky among more recenthistorians, are of opinion that it was not either of the intruding dukeswho proposed that Shrewsbury should be appointed Treasurer. Mr. Lecky iseven of opinion that it may have been Bolingbroke himself who made thesuggestion. That seems to us extremely probable. All accounts agree inconfirming the idea that Bolingbroke was taken utterly by surprise whenthe great Whig dukes entered the council-chamber. The moment he saw thatShrewsbury welcomed them he probably made up his mind to the fact that anentirely new condition of things had arisen, and that all his previouscalculations were upset. He was not a man to remain long dumfounded byany change in the state of affairs. It would have been quite consistentwith his character and his general course of action if, when he saw themeaning of the crisis, he had at once resolved to make the best of it andto try to keep himself still at the head of affairs. In that spiritnothing is more likely than that he should have pushed himself to thefront once more, and proposed, as Lord High Treasurer, the man whom, butfor the sudden and overwhelming pressure brought to bear upon him, hewould have tried to keep out of all influence and power at such a moment. The appointment of the Duke of Shrewsbury settled the question. Thecrisis was virtually over. The Whig statesmen at once sent out summonsesto all the members of the Privy Council living anywhere near London. That same afternoon another meeting of the council was held. Somershimself, the great Whig leader whose {47} services had made the partyillustrious in former reigns, and whose fame sheds a lustre on them evento this hour--Somers, aged, infirm, decaying as he was in body and inmind--hastened to attend the summons, and to lend his strength and hisauthority to the measures on which his colleagues had determined. Thecouncil ordered the concentration of several regiments in and nearLondon. They recalled troops from Ostend, and sent a fleet to sea. General Stanhope, a soldier and statesman of whom we shall hear more, wasprepared, if necessary, to take possession of the Tower and clap theleading Jacobites into it, to obtain possession of all the outports, and, in short, to act as military dictator, authorized to anticipaterevolution and to keep the succession safe. In a word, the fate of theStuarts was sealed. Bolingbroke was checkmated; the Chevalier de St. George would have put to sea in vain. Marlborough was on his way toEngland, and there was nothing to do but to wait till the breath was outof Queen Anne's body, and proclaim George the Elector King of England. The time of waiting was not long. Anne sank into death on August 1, 1714, and the heralds proclaimed that "the high and mighty Prince George, Elector of Brunswick and Luneburg, is, by the death of Queen Anne ofblessed memory, become our lawful and rightful liege lord, King of GreatBritain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith. " This "King ofFrance" was lucky enough not to come to his throne until the conclusionof a long war against the King of France who lived in Versailles. The"Defender of the Faith" was just now making convenient arrangements thathis mistresses should follow him as speedily as possible when he shouldhave to take his unwilling way to his new dominions. On August 3d Bolingbroke wrote a letter to Dean Swift, in which he says, "The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday; the Queen died on Sunday. What a world this is, and how does fortune banter us!" In other {48}words, Bolingbroke tells Swift that full success seemed within his graspon Tuesday, and was suddenly torn away from him on Sunday. But the mostcharacteristic part of the letter is a passage which throws a very blazeof light over the unconquerable levity of the man. "I have lost all bythe death of the Queen but my spirit; and, I protest to you, I feel thatincrease upon me. The Whigs are a pack of Jacobites; that shall be thecry in a month, if you please. " No sooner is one web of intrigue sweptaway than Bolingbroke sets to work to weave a new one on a differentplan. Nothing can subdue those high animal spirits; nothing can physicthat selfishness; nothing can fix that levity to a recognition of therealities of things. Bolingbroke has not a word now about the cause ofthe Stuarts; for the moment he cannot think of that. His new scheme isto make out that his enemies were, after all, the true Jacobites; he willcheckmate them that way--"in a month, if you please. " On the very sameday Mr. John Barber, the printer of some of Swift's pamphlets, afterwardsan Alderman and Lord Mayor, writes to Swift and tells him, speaking ofBolingbroke, that "when my lord gave me the letter" (to be enclosed toSwift) "he said he hoped you would come up and help to save theconstitution, which, with a little good management, might be kept in Toryhands. " The chill, clear common-sense of Swift's answer might haveimpressed even Bolingbroke, but did not. [Sidenote: 1714--Simon Harcourt] One among the Tories, indeed, would have had the courage to forestall theWhigs and their proclamation. This one man was a priest, and not asoldier. Atterbury, the eloquent Bishop of Rochester, came toBolingbroke, and urged him to proclaim King James at Charing Cross, offering himself to head a procession in his lawn sleeves if Bolingbrokewould only act on his advice. But for the moment Bolingbroke could onlycomplain of fortune's banter, and plan out new intrigues for therestoration, not of the Stuarts, but of the Tory party--that is to say, of {49} himself. His refusal wrung from Atterbury the declaration thatthe best cause in England was lost for want of spirit. Parliament assembled, and on August 5th the Commons were summoned to theBar of the House of Lords, and the Lord Chancellor made a speech in thename of the Lords of the Regency. He told the Lords and Commons that thePrivy Council appointed by George, Elector of Hanover, had proclaimedthat prince as the lawful and rightful sovereign of these realms. BothHouses agreed to send addresses to the King, expressing their duty andaffection, and the House of Commons passed a bill granting to his Majestythe same civil list as that which Queen Anne had enjoyed, but withadditional clauses for the payment of arrears due to the Hanoveriantroops who had been in the service of Great Britain. The LordChancellor, who had just addressed the House of Lords and the Commonersstanding at the Bar, was himself a remarkable illustration of thepolitics and the principles of that age. Simon Harcourt had been LordChancellor in the later years of Queen Anne's life. His appointmentended with her death, but he was re-appointed by the Lords of the Regencyin the name of the new sovereign, and he was again sworn in as LordChancellor on August 3, 1714, "in Court at his house aforesaid, Lincoln'sInn Fields, _Anno Primo, Georgii Regis_. " He was one of the LordsJustices by virtue of his office, and as such had already taken the oathof allegiance to the new sovereign, and of abjuration to James. LordHarcourt had been throughout his whole career not only a very devotedTory, but in later years a positive Jacobite. He was a highlyaccomplished speaker, a man of great culture, and a lawyer ofconsiderable, if not pre-eminent, attainments. He was stillcomparatively young for a public man of such position. Born in 1660, heentered Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1675, was admitted to the InnerTemple in 1676, and called to the Bar in 1683. He became member ofParliament for Abingdon in 1690, and soon rose to great distinction inthe {50} House of Commons as well as at the Bar. He conducted theimpeachment of the great Lord Somers, and was knighted and madeSolicitor-General by Anne in 1702. He became Attorney-General shortlyafter. He conducted, in 1703, the prosecution of Defoe for his famoussatirical tract, "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. " Harcourt threwhimself into the prosecution with the fervor and the bitterness of asectary and a partisan. He made a most vehement and envenomed speechagainst Defoe; he endeavored to stir up every religious prejudice andpassion in favor of the prosecution. Coke had scarcely shown more of theanimosity of a partisan in prosecuting Raleigh than Simon Harcourt did inprosecuting Defoe. In 1709-10 Harcourt was the leading counsel forSacheverell, and received the Great Seal in 1710, becoming, as the phrasethen was, "Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of Great Britain. " A wholeyear, wanting only a few days, passed before he was raised to the peerageas Lord Harcourt. He acted as Speaker of the House of Lords before hebecame a peer and a member of the House, and even had on one occasion toexpress on behalf of the Peers their thanks to Lord Peterborough for hisservices in Spain. In 1713 he became Lord Chancellor of England. Duringall this time he had been a most devoted adherent of the Stuarts, andduring the later period he was an open and avowed Jacobite. He hadopposed strongly the oaths of abjuration which now, as Lord ChiefJustice, he had both taken and administered. Almost his firstconspicuous act as a member of Parliament was to protest against the Billwhich required the oath Of abjuration of James and his descendants, andhe maintained consistently the same principles and the same policy tillthe death of Queen Anne. There can be no doubt that if just then anymovement had been made on behalf of the Stuarts, with the slightestchance of success, Lord Chancellor Harcourt would have thrown himselfinto it heart and soul. Nevertheless, he took the oath of allegiance andthe oath of abjuration; he professed to be a loyal subject of the King, {51} whose person and principles he despised and detested, and he sworeto abjure forever all adhesion to that dynasty which with all his hearthe would have striven, if he could, to restore to the throne of England. Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the Lord Chancellors, " says of Harcourt, "I do not consider his efforts to restore the exiled Stuarts morallyinconsistent with the engagements into which he had entered to theexisting Government; and although there were loud complaints against himfor at last sending in his adhesion to the House of Hanover, it should berecollected that the cause of the Stuarts had then become desperate, andthat instead of betraying he did everything in his power to screen hisold associates. " The cause of the Stuarts had not become, even then, soutterly desperate as to prevent many brave men from laying down theirlives for it. Thirty years had to pass away before the last blow wasstruck for that cause of the Stuarts which Harcourt by solemn oathabjured forever. Such credit as he is entitled to have, because heprotected rather than betrayed his old associates, we are free to givehim, and it stands a significant illustration of the political moralityof the time that such comparative credit is all that his enthusiasticbiographer ventures to claim for him. [Sidenote: 1714--Lords and Commons] The House of Lords had then two hundred and seven members, many of whom, being Catholics, were not permitted to take any part in public business. That number of Peers is about in just proportion to the population ofEngland as it was then when compared with the Peers and the population ofEngland at present. In the House of Commons there were at the same timefive hundred and fifty-eight members. England sent in five hundred andthirteen, and Scotland, which had lately accepted the union, returnedforty-five. It need hardly be said that at that time Ireland had her ownParliament, and sent no members to Westminster. A great number of thecounty family names in the House of Commons were just the same as thosewhich we see at present. The Stanhopes, the Lowthers, the Lawsons, theHerberts, the Harcourts, {52} the Cowpers, the Fitzwilliams, the Cecils, the Grevilles; all these, and many others, were represented in Parliamentthen as they are represented in Parliament now. Then, as more lately, the small boroughs had the credit of returning, mostly of course throughfamily influence, men of eminence other than political, who happened tosit in the House of Commons. Steele sat for Stockbridge, in "SouthamptonCounty, " as Hampshire was then always called, Addison for Malmesbury, Prior for East Grinstead. There were no reports of the debates, norprinted lists of the divisions. Questions of foreign policy weresometimes discussed with doors strictly closed against all strangers, just as similar questions are occasionally, and not infrequently, discussed in the Senate of the United States at present. The pamphletsupplied in some measure the place of the newspaper report and thenewspaper leading article. Some twelve years later than this thebrilliant pen of Bolingbroke, who, if he had lived at a period nearer toour own, might have been an unrivalled writer of leading articles, wasable to obtain for the series of pamphlets called "The Craftsman" acirculation greater than that ever enjoyed by the _Spectator_. Pulteneyco-operated with him for a time in the work. Steele, as we have said, had been expelled from the House of Commons for his pamphlet "TheCrisis. " The caricature which played so important a part in politicalcontroversy all through the reigns of the Georges had just come intorecognized existence. Countless caricatures of Bolingbroke, of Walpole, of Shrewsbury, of Marlborough, began to fly about London. Scurrilousballads were of course in great demand, nor was the supply inadequate tothe demand. [Sidenote: 1714--Malbrouck de Retour] One of the most successful of these compositions described the return ofthe Duke of Marlborough to London. On the very day of the Queen's deathMarlborough landed at Dover. He came quickly on to London, and there, according to the descriptions given by his admirers, he was received likea restored sovereign returning to his throne. A procession of twohundred gentlemen on {53} horseback met him on the road to London, andthe procession was joined shortly after by a long train of carriages. Ashe entered London the enthusiasm deepened with every foot of the way; thestreets were lined with crowds of applauding admirers. Marlborough'scarriage broke down near Temple Bar, and he had to exchange it foranother. The little incident was only a new cause for demonstrations ofenthusiasm. It was a fresh delight to see the hero more nearly than hecould be seen through his carriage-windows. It was something to havedelayed him for a moment, and to have compelled him to stand among thecrowd of those who were pressing round to express their homage. This wasthe Whig description. According to Tory accounts Marlborough was morehissed than huzzaed, and at Temple Bar the hissing was loudest. The workof the historian would be comparatively easy if eye-witnesses could onlyagree as to any, even the most important, facts. Enthusiastic Whig pamphleteers called upon their countrymen to love andhonor their invincible hero, and declared that the wretch would beesteemed a disgrace to humanity, and should be transmitted to posteritywith infamy, who would dare to use his tongue or pen against him. Suchwretches, however, were found, and did not seem in the least to dread theinfamy which was promised them. The scurrilous ballad of which we havealready spoken was by one Ned Ward, a publican and rhymester, and itpictured the entry of the duke in verses after the fashion of Hudibras. It depicted the procession as made up of Frightful troops of thin-jawed zealots, Curs'd enemies to kings and prelates; and declared that those "champions of religious errors" made London seem As if the prince of terrors Was coming with his dismal train To plague the city once again. The memory of what the Plague had done in London was still green enoughto give bitter force to this allusion. {54} Marlborough could have afforded to despise what Hotspur calls the"metre-ballad-mongers, " but his pride received a check and chill noteasily to be got over. When fairly rid of his enthusiastic followers andadmirers he went to the House of Lords almost at once, and took theoaths; but he did not remain there. In truth, he soon found himselfbitterly disappointed; not with the people--they could not have been moreenthusiastic than they were--but with the new ruling power. Immediatelyafter the death of the Queen, and even before the proclamation of the newsovereign had taken place, the Hanoverian resident in London handed tothe Privy Council a letter from George, in George's own handwriting, naming the men who were to act in combination with the seven greatofficers of State as lords justices. The power to make this nominationwas provided for George by the Regency Act. This document contained thenames of eighteen of the principal Whig peers; the Duke of Shrewsbury, the Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of Argyll were among them; so, too, were Lords Cowper, Halifax, and Townshend. It was noted with wonder thatthe illustrious name of Somers did not appear on the list, nor did thatof Marlborough, nor that of Marlborough's son-in-law, Lord Sunderland. It is likely that the omission of these names was only made in the firstinstance because George and his advisers were somewhat afraid of hisgetting into the hands of a sort of dictatorship--a dictatorship incommission, as it might be called, made up of three or four influentialmen. The King afterwards hastened to show every attention to Marlboroughand Somers and Sunderland, and he soon restored Marlborough to all hispublic offices. But George seems to have had a profound and a verywell-justified distrust of Marlborough. Though he honored him with marksof respect and attention, though he restored him to the great position hehad held in the State, yet the King never allowed Marlborough to supposethat he really had regained his former influence in court and politicallife. Marlborough was shelved, and he already knew it, and bitterlycomplained of it. {55} CHAPTER IV. THE KING COMES. [Sidenote: 1714--Hanover] "The old town of Hanover, " says Thackeray, "must look still pretty muchas in the time when George Louis left it. The gardens and pavilions ofHerrenhausen are scarce changed since the day when the stout oldElectress Sophia fell down in her last walk there, preceding but by afew weeks to the tomb James the Second's daughter, whose death made wayfor the Brunswick Stuarts in England. . . . You may see atHerrenhausen the very rustic theatre in which the Platens danced andperformed masks and sang before the Elector and his sons. There arethe very fauns and dryads of stone still glimmering through thebrandies, still grinning and piping their ditties of no tone, as in thedays when painted nymphs hung garlands round them, appeared under theirleafy arcades with gilt crooks, guiding rams with gilt horns, descendedfrom 'machines' in the guise of Diana or Minerva, and delivered immenseallegorical compliments to the princes returned home from thecampaign. " Herrenhausen, indeed, is changed but little since thosedays of which Thackeray speaks. But although not many years havepassed since Thackeray went to visit Hanover before delivering hislectures on "The Four Georges, " Hanover itself has undergone muchalteration. If one of the Georges could now return to his ancestralcapital he would indeed be bewildered at the great new squares, therows of tall vast shops and warehouses, the spacious railway-station, penetrated to every corner at night by the keen electric light. But inpassing from Hanover to Herrenhausen one goes back, in a short drive, from the {56} days of the Emperor William of Germany to the days ofGeorge the Elector. Herrenhausen, the favorite residence of theElectors of Hanover, is but a short distance from the capital. Thackeray speaks of it as an ugly place, and it certainly has not manyclaims to the picturesque. But it is full of a certain curioushalf-melancholy interest, and well fitted to be the cradle and the homeof a decaying Hanoverian dynasty. In its galleries one may spend manyan hour, not unprofitably, in studying the faces of all the men andwomen who are famous, notorious, or infamous in connection with thehistory of Hanover. The story of that dynasty has more than oneepisode not unlike that of the unfortunate Sophia Dorothea andKönigsmark, her lover. A good many grim legends haunt the place andgive interest to some of the faces, otherwise insipid enough, whichlook out of the heavy frames and the formal court-dresses of thepicture-gallery. [Sidenote: 1714--The entry into London] On the evening of August 5, 1714, four days after Queen Anne's death, Lord Clarendon, the lately appointed English Minister at the Court ofHanover, set out for the palace of Herrenhausen to bear to the new Kingof Great Britain the tidings of Queen Anne's death. About two o'clockin the morning he entered the royal apartments of the ungenial andsleepy George, and, kneeling, did homage to him as King of GreatBritain. George took the announcement of his new rank without even asemblance of gratification. He had made up his mind to endure it, andthat was all. He was too stolid, or lazy, or sincere to affect theslightest personal interest in the news. He lingered in Hanover aslong as he decently could, and sauntered for many a day through theprim, dull, and orderly walks of Herrenhausen. He behaved very much inthe fashion of the convict in Prior's poem, who, when the cart wasready and the halter adjusted, Often took leave but seemed loath to depart. August 31st had arrived before George began his journey to England. But he did one or two good-natured things {57} before leaving Hanover;he ordered the abolition of certain duties on provisions, and he hadthe insolvent debtors throughout the Electorate discharged fromcustody. On September 5th he reached the Hague, and here anotherstoppage took place. The exertion of travelling from Hanover to theHague had been so great that George apparently required a respite fromSeptember 5th until the 16th. On the 16th he embarked, and reachedGreenwich two days after. He was accompanied to England by his twoleading favorites--the ladies whose charms we have already described. For many days after his arrival in London the King did little butlament his exile from his beloved Herrenhausen, and tell every one hemet how cordially he disliked England, its people, and its ways. Fortunately, perhaps, in this respect, for the popularity of hisMajesty, George's audience was necessarily limited. He spoke noEnglish, and hardly any of those who surrounded him could speak German, while some of his ministers did not even speak French. Sir RobertWalpole tried to get on with him by talking Latin. Even the Englishoysters George could not abide; he grumbled long at their queer taste, their want of flavor, and it was some time before his devotedattendants discovered that their monarch liked stale oysters with agood strong rankness about them. No time was lost, when this importantdiscovery had been made, in procuring oysters to the taste of the King, and one of George's objections to the throne of England was easilyremoved. There was naturally great curiosity to see the King, and a writer ofthe time gives an amusing account of the efforts made to obtain a sightof him. "A certain person has paid several guineas for the benefit ofCheapside conduit, and another has almost given twenty years' purchasefor a shed in Stocks Market. Some lay out great sums in shop-windows, others sell lottery tickets to hire cobblers' stalls, and here andthere a vintner has received earnest for the use of his sign-post. King Charles the Second's horse at the aforesaid market is to carrydouble, {58} and his Majesty at Charing Cross is to ride between twodraymen. Some have made interest to climb chimneys, and others to beexalted to the airy station of a steeple. " [Sidenote: 1714--"Under which King?"] The princely pageant which people were so eager to see lives still in aprint issued by "Tim. Jordan and Tho. Bakenwell at Ye Golden Lion inFleet Street. " We are thus gladdened by a sight of the splendidprocession winding its way through St. James's Park to St. James'sPalace. There are musketeers and trumpeters on horseback; there arecourtly gentlemen on horse and afoot, and great lumbering, gilded, gaudily-bedizened carriages with four and six steeds, and moretrumpeters, on foot this time, and pursuivants and heralds--George wasfond of heralds, and created two of his own, Hanover andGloucester--and then the royal carriage, with its eight prancinghorses, and the Elector of Hanover and King of England inside, with hishand to his heart, and still more soldiers following, both horse andfoot, and, of course, a loyal populace everywhere waving theirthree-cornered hats and huzzaing with all their might. The day of the entry was not without its element of tragedy. In thecrowd Colonel Chudleigh called Mr. Charles Aldworth, M. P. For NewWindsor, a Jacobite. There was a quarrel, the gentlemen went toMarylebone Fields, exchanged a few passes, and Mr. Aldworth was almostimmediately killed. This was no great wonder, for we learn, in aletter from Lord Berkeley of Stratton, preserved in the WentworthPapers, describing the duel, that Mr. Aldworth had such a weakness inhis arms from childhood that he could not stretch them out; a fact, Lord Berkeley hints, by no means unknown to his adversary. Horace Walpole has left a description of King George which is worthcitation. "The person of the King, " he says, "is as perfect in mymemory as if I saw him yesterday; it was that of an elderly man, ratherpale, and exactly like his pictures and coins; not tall, of an aspectrather good than august, with a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoatand breeches of snuff-colored cloth, with stockings of the {59} samecolor, and a blue ribbon over all. " George was fond of heavy diningand heavy drinking. He often dined at Sir Robert Walpole's, atRichmond Hill, where he used to drink so much punch that even theDuchess of Kendal endeavored to restrain him, and received in returnsome coarse admonition in German. He was shy and reserved in general, and he detested all the troublesome display of royalty. He hated goingto the theatre in state, and he did not even care to show himself infront of the royal box; he preferred to sit in another and lessconspicuous box with the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Walsingham. On thewhole, it would seem as if the inclination of the English people forthe Hanoverian dynasty was about to be tried by the severest test thatfate could well ordain. A dull, stolid, and profligate king, fond ofdrink and of low conversation, without dignity of appearance or manner, without sympathy of any kind with the English people and English ways, and without the slightest knowledge of the English language, wassuddenly thrust upon the people and proclaimed their king. Fortunatelyfor the Hanoverian dynasty, the English people, as a whole, had growninto a mood of comparative indifference as to who should rule them solong as they were let alone. It was impossible that a strong feelingof loyalty to any House should burn just then in the breast of thegreat majority of the English people. Those who were devoted to theStuarts and those who detested the Stuarts felt strongly on the subjectthis way or that, and they would therefore admire or detest King Georgeaccording to their previously acquired political principles. But tothe ordinary Englishman it only seemed that England had lately beentrying a variety of political systems and a variety of rulers; that oneseemed to succeed hardly better than the other; that so long as nogreat breakdown in the system took place, it mattered little whether aStuart or a Brunswick was in temporary possession of the throne. Within a comparatively short space of time the English Parliament haddeposed Charles the First; the Protectorate had been {60} tried underCromwell; the Restoration had been brought about by the adroitness ofMonk; James the Second, a Catholic, had come to the throne, and hadbeen driven off the throne by William the Third; William hadestablished a new dynasty and a new system, which was no soonerestablished than it had to be succeeded by the introduction to thethrone of one of the daughters of the displaced House of Stuart. England had not had time to become attached, or even reconciled, to anyof these succeeding rulers, and the English people in general--theEnglish people outside the circle of courts and Parliament andpolitics--were well satisfied when George came to the throne to let anyone wear the crown who did not make himself and his system absolutelyintolerable to the nation. [Sidenote: 1714--"A King and no King. "] The old-fashioned romantic principle of personal loyalty, unconditionalloyalty--the loyalty of Divine right--was already languishing untodeath. It was now seen for the last time in effective contrast withwhat we may call the modern principle of loyalty. The modern principleof loyalty to a sovereign is that which, having decided in favor ofmonarchical government and of an hereditary succession, resolves toabide by that choice, and for the sake of the principle and of thecountry to pay all respect and homage to the person of the chosenruler. But the loyalty which still clung to the fading fortunes of theStuarts was very different from this, and came into direct contrastwith the feelings shown by the majority of the people of Englandtowards the House of Hanover. Though faults and weaknesses beyondnumber, weaknesses which were even worse than actual faults, taintedthe character and corroded the moral fibre of every successive Stuartprince, the devotees of personal loyalty still clung with sentiment andwith passion to the surviving representatives of the fallen dynasty. Poets and balladists, singers in the streets and singers on themountain-side, were, even in these early days of George the First, inspired with songs of loyal homage in favor of the son of James theSecond. Men {61} and women in thousands, not only among the wildromantic hills of Scotland, but in prosaic North of England towns, andyet more prosaic London streets and alleys, were ready, if the occasionoffered, to die for the Stuart cause. Despite the evidence of theirown senses, men and women would still endow any representative of theStuarts with all the virtues and talents and graces that might becomean ideal prince of romance. No one thought in this way of thesuccessors of William the Third. No one had had any particularadmiration for Queen Anne, either as a sovereign or as a woman; nobodypretended to feel any thrill of sentimental emotion towards portly, stolid, sensual George the First. About the King, personally, hardlyanybody cared anything. The mass of the English people who acceptedhim and adhered to him did so because they understood that herepresented a certain quiet homely principle in politics which wouldsecure tranquillity and stability to the country. They did not ask ofhim that he should be noble or gifted or dignified, or even virtuous. They asked of him two things in especial: first, that he would maintaina steady system of government; and next, that he would in general letthe country alone. This is the feeling which must be taken intoaccount if we would understand how it came to pass that the Englishpeople so contentedly accepted a sovereign like George the First. Theexplanation is not to be found merely in the fact that the Stuarts, asa race, had discredited themselves hopelessly with the moral sentimentof the people of England. The very worst of the Stuarts, Charles theSecond, was not any worse as regards moral character than George theFirst, or than some of the Georges who followed him. In education andin mental capacity he was far superior to any of the Georges. Therewere many qualities in Charles the Second which, if his fatal love ofease and of amusement could have been kept under control, might havemade him a successful sovereign, and which, were he in private life, would undoubtedly have made him an {62} eminent man. But the truth isthat the old feeling of blind unconditional homage to the sovereign wasdying out; it was dying of inanition and old age and natural decay. Other and stronger forces in political thought were coming up to jostleit aside, even before its death-hour, and to occupy its place. A kingwas to be in England, for the future, a respected and honored chiefmagistrate appointed for life and to hereditary office. This newcondition of things influenced the feelings and conduct of hundreds ofthousands of persons who were not themselves conscious of the change. This was one great reason why George the First was so easily acceptedby the country. The king was in future to be a business king, and nota king of sentiment and romance. {63} CHAPTER V. WHAT THE KING CAME TO. [Sidenote: 1714--Estimate of population] The population of these islands at the close of the reign of Queen Annewas probably not more than one-fifth of its present amount. It is noteasy to arrive at a precise knowledge with regard to the number of theinhabitants of England at that time, because there was no census takenuntil 1801. We have, therefore, to be content with calculationsfounded on the number of houses that paid certain taxes, and on theregister of deaths. This is of course not a very exact way of gettingat the result, but it enables us to form a tolerably fair generalestimate. According to these calculations, then, the population ofEngland and Wales together was something like five millions and a half;the population of Ireland at the same time appears to have been abouttwo millions; that of Scotland little more than one. But thedistribution of the population of these countries was very differentthen from that of the present day. Now the great cities and towns formthe numerical strength of England and Scotland at least, but at thattime the agricultural districts had a much larger proportion of thepopulation than the towns could boast of. London was then considered avast and enormous city, but it was only a hamlet when compared with theLondon which we know. Even then it absorbed more than one-tenth of thewhole population of England and Wales. At the beginning of the reignof King George the First, London had a population of about sevenhundred thousand, and it is a fact worthy of notice, that rapidly asthe {64} population of England has grown between that time and this, the growth of the metropolis has been even greater in proportion. TheCity and Westminster were, at the beginning of George's reign, and forlong after, two distinct and separate towns; between them still laymany wide spaces on which men were only beginning to build houses. Fashion was already moving westward in the metropolis, obeying thatcurious impulse which seems to prevail in all modern cities, and whichmakes the West End as eagerly sought after in Paris, in Edinburgh, andin New York, as in London. The life of London centred in St. Paul'sand the Exchange; that of Westminster in the Court and the Houses ofParliament. All around the old Houses of Parliament were lanes, squares, streets, and gate-ways covering the wide spaces and broadthoroughfares with which we are familiar. Between Parliament Buildingsand the two churches of St. Peter and St. Margaret ran a narrow, densely crowded street, known as St. Margaret's Lane. The spot whereParliament Street now opens into Bridge Street was part of anuninterrupted row of houses running down to the water-gate by theriver. The market-house of the old Woollen Market stood just whereWestminster Bridge begins. The Parliament Houses themselves are asmuch changed as their surroundings. St. Stephen's Gallery now occupiesthe site of St. Stephen's Chapel, where the Commons used to sit. Westminster Hall had rows of little shops or booths ranged all alongeach wall inside; they had been there for generations, and theycertainly did not add either to the beauty or the safety of the ancienthall. In the early part of the seventeenth century some of them tookfire and came near to laying in ashes one of the oldest occupiedbuildings in the world. Luckily, however, the fire was put out withslight damage, but the dangerous little shops were suffered to remainthen and for long after. [Sidenote: 1714--Old London] The Lesser London of that day lives for us in contemporary engravings, in the pages of the _Spectator_ and the {65} _Tatler_, in the poems ofSwift and Pope, in the pictures of Hogarth. Hogarth's men and womenbelong indeed to a later generation than the generation whichBolingbroke dazzled, and Marlborough deceived, and Arbuthnot satirized, and Steele made merry over. But it is only the men and women who aredifferent; the background remains the same. New actors have taken theparts; the costumes are somewhat altered, but the scenes are scarcelychanged. There may be a steeple more or a sign-board less in thestreets that Hogarth drew than there were when Addison walked them, butpractically they are the same, and remained the same for a still latergeneration. Maps of the time show us how curiously small London was. There is open country to the north, just beyond Bloomsbury Square;Sadler's Wells is out in the country, so is St. Pancras, so isTottenham Court, so is Marylebone. At the east Stepney lies far away, a distant hamlet. Beyond Hanover Square to the west stretch fieldsagain, where Tyburn Road became the road to Oxford. There is verylittle of London south of the river. The best part of the political and social life of this small London waspractically lived in the still smaller area of St. James's, a termwhich generally includes rather more than is contained within thestrict limits of St. James's parish. If some Jacobite gentleman orloyal Hanoverian courtier of the year 1714 could revisit to-day thescenes in which he schemed and quarrelled, he would find himself amongthe familiar names of strangely unfamiliar places. St. James's Parkindeed has not altered out of all recognition since the days when DukeBelair and my Lady Betty and my Lady Rattle walked the Mall between thehours of twelve and two, and quoted from Congreve about laughing at thegreat world and the small. There were avenues of trees then as now. Instead of the ornamental water ran a long canal, populous with ducks, which joined a pond called--no one knows why--Rosamund's Pond. Thispond was a favorite trysting-place for happy lovers--"the sylvandeities and rural {66} powers of the place, sacred and inviolable tolove, often heard lovers' vows repeated by its streams and echoes"--anda convenient water for unhappy lovers to drown themselves in, if we maycredit the _Tatler_. St. James's Palace and Marlborough House on itsright are scarcely changed; but to the left only Lord Godolphin's houselay between it and the pleasant park where the deer wandered. Fartheroff, where Buckingham Palace now is, was Buckingham House. It was thena stately country mansion on the road to Chelsea, with semicircularwings and a sweep of iron railings enclosing a spacious court, where afountain played round a Triton driving his sea-horses. On the roofstood statues of Mercury, Liberty, Secrecy, and Equity, and across thefront ran an inscription in great gold letters, "_Sic Siti LaetanturLares_. " The household gods might well delight in so fair a spot and inthe music of that "little wilderness full of blackbirds andnightingales, " which the bowl-playing Duke who built the house lovinglydescribes to his friend Shrewsbury. [Sidenote: 1714--Old London] Most of the streets in the St. James's region bear the names they borewhen King George first came to London. But it is only in name thatthey are unchanged. The street of streets, St. James's Street, ismetamorphosed indeed since the days when grotesque signs swungoverhead, and great gilt carriages lumbered up and down from the park, and the chairs of modish ladies crowded up the narrow thoroughfares. Splendid warriors, fresh from Flanders or the Rhine, clinked theircourtly swords against the posts; red-coated country gentlemen jostledtheir wondering way through the crowd; and the Whig and Tory beaux, with ruffles and rapiers, powder and perfume, haunted the coffee-housesof their factions. Not a house of the old street remains as it wasthen; not one of the panelled rooms in which minuets were danced bycandle-light to the jingle of harpsichord and tinkle of spinet, wherewits planned pamphlets and pointed epigrams, where statesmen schemedthe overthrow of {67} ministries and even of dynasties, where flushedyouth punted away its fortunes or drank away its senses, and staggeredout, perhaps, through the little crowd of chairmen and link-boysclustered at the door, to extinguish its foolish flame in a duel atLeicester Fields. All that world is gone; only the name of the streetremains, as full in its way of memories and associations as the S. P. Q. R. At the head of a municipal proclamation in modern Rome. The streets off St. James's Street, too, retain their ancient names, and nothing more--King Street, Ryder Street, York Street, JermynStreet, the spelling of which seems to have puzzled last centurywriters greatly, for they wrote it "Jermyn, " "Germain, " "Germaine, " andeven "Germin. " St. James's Church, Wren's handiwork, is all thatremains from the age of Anne, with "the steeple, " says Strype, fondly, "lately finished with a fine spire, which adds much splendor to thisend of the town, and also serves as a landmark. " Perhaps it sometimesserved as a landmark to Richard Steele, reeling happily to the home in"Berry" Street, where his beloved Prue awaited him. St. James's Squarehas gone through many metamorphoses since it was first built in 1665, and called the Piazza. In 1714 there was a rectangular enclosure inthe centre, with four passages at the sides, through which the publiccould come and go as they pleased. In a later generation theinhabitants railed the enclosure round, and set in the middle an ovalbasin of water, large enough to have a boat upon it. In old engravingswe see people gravely punting about on the quaint little pond. Thefulness of time filled in the pond, and set up King William the Thirdinstead in the middle of a grassy circle. It would take too long toenumerate all the changes that our Georgian gentleman would find in theLondon of his day. Some few, however, are especially worth recording. He would seek in vain for the "Pikadilly" he knew, with its statelyhouses and fair gardens. It was almost a country road to the left ofSt. James's Street, between the Green Park and Hyde Park, {68} withmeadows and the distant hills beyond. Going eastward he would findthat a Henrietta Street and a King Street still led into Covent Garden;but the Covent Garden of his time was an open place, with a column anda sun-dial in the middle. Handsome dwellings for persons of repute andquality stood on the north side over those arcades which were fondlysupposed by Inigo Jones, who laid out the spot, to resemble the Piazzain Venice. Inigo Jones built the church, too, which is to be seen inthe "Morning" plate of Hogarth's "Four Times of the Day. " This churchwas destroyed by fire in 1795, and was rebuilt in its present form byHardwick. [Sidenote: 1714--Anne's London] Charing Cross was still a narrow spot where three streets met; what isnow Trafalgar Square was covered with houses and the royal mews. St. Martin's Church was not built by Gibbs for a dozen years later, in1726. Soho and Seven Dials were fashionable neighborhoods; Mrs. Theresa Cornelys's house of entertainment, of which we hear so muchfrom the writers of the time of Anne, was considered to be mostfashionably situated; ambassadors and peers dwelt in Gerrard Street;Bolingbroke lived in Golden Square. Traces of former splendor stilllinger about these decayed neighborhoods; paintings by Sir JamesThornhill, Hogarth's master and father-in-law, and elaborate marblemantel-pieces, with Corinthian columns and entablatures, still adornthe interiors of some of these houses; bits of quaint Queen Annearchitecture and finely wrought iron railings still lend an air offaded gentility to some of the dingy exteriors. Parts of London thatare now fashionable had not then come into existence. Grosvenor Squarewas only begun in 1716, and it was not until 1725 that the new quarterwas sufficiently advanced for its creator, Sir Richard Grosvenor, tosummon his intending tenants to a "splendid entertainment, " at whichthe new streets and squares were solemnly named. Though we of to-day have seen a good deal of what are called Anne andGeorgian houses, of red brick, {69} curiously gabled, springing up inall directions, we must not suppose that the London of 1714 was chieflycomposed of such cheerful buildings. Wren and Vanbrugh would be indeedsurprised if they could see the strange works that are now done, if notin their name, at least in the name of the age for which they builttheir heavy, plain, solid houses. We can learn easily enough fromcontemporary engravings what the principal London streets and squareswere like when George the Elector became George the King. There arenot many remains now of Anne's London, but Queen Anne's Gate, some fewhouses in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, and here and there a house in theCity preserve the ordinary architecture of the age of Anne. Marlborough House bears witness to what it did in the way of morepretentious buildings. The insides of these houses were scarcely less like the "Queen Annerevival" of our time than the outsides. The rooms were, as a rule, sparingly furnished. There would be a centre-table, some chairs, asettee, a few pictures, a mirror, possibly a spinet or musicalinstrument of some kind, some shelves, perhaps, for displaying theChinese and Japanese porcelain which every one loved, and, of course, heavy window-curtains. Smaller tables were used for the incessanttea-drinking. Large screens kept off the too frequent draughts. Handsomely wrought stoves and andirons stood in the wide fireplaces. The rooms themselves were lofty; the walls of the better kindwainscoted and carved, and the ceilings painted in allegorical designs. Wall-papers had only begun to come into use within the last few yearsof Anne's reign; windows were long and narrow, and small panes were anecessity, as glass-makers had not yet attained the art of castinglarge sheets of glass. The stairs were exceedingly straight; it wasmentioned as a recommendation to new houses that two persons could goup-stairs abreast. The rents would seem curiously low to Londoners ofour time; houses could be got in Pall Mall for two hundred a year, andin good parts of the town for thirty, forty, and {70} fifty pounds ayear. Lady Wentworth, in 1705, describes a house in Golden Square, with gardens, stables, and coach-house, the rent of which was onlythreescore pounds a year. Pretty riverside houses let at from five toten pounds a year. Lodgings would seem cheap now, though they were notheld so then, for Swift complains of paying eight shillings a week, when he lodged in Bury Street, for a dining-room and bedroom on thefirst floor. [Sidenote: 1714--"Not without danger walk these streets"] There was no general numbering of houses in 1714; that movement ofcivilization did not take place until 1764. Places were known by theirsigns, or their vicinity to a sign. "Blue Boars, " "Black Swans, " and"Red Lions" were in every street, and people lived at the "Red Bodice, "or over against the "Pestle. " The _Tatler_ tells a story of a youngman seeking a house in Barbican for a whole day through a mistake in asign, whose legend read, "This is the Beer, " instead of "This is theBear. " Another tried to get into a house at Stocks Market, under theimpression that he was at his own lodgings at Charing Cross, beingmisled by the fact that there was a statue of the King on horseback ineach place. Signs were usually very large, and jutted so far out fromthe houses that in narrow streets they frequently touched one another. As it was the fashion to have them carefully painted, carved, gilded, and supported by branches of wrought iron, they were often very costly, some being estimated as worth more than a hundred guineas. The ill-paved streets were too often littered with the refuse whichcareless householders, reckless of fines, flung into the open way. Inwet weather the rain roared along the kennel, converting all theaccumulated filth of the thoroughfare into loathsome mud. Thegutter-spouts, which then projected from every house, did not alwayscast their cataracts clear of the pavement, but sometimes soaked theunlucky passer-by who had not kept close to the wall. Umbrellas werethe exclusive privilege of women; men never thought of carrying them. Those whose business or pleasure called them abroad in rainy {71}weather, and who did not own carriages, might hire one of the eighthundred two-horsed hackney carriages; jolting, uncomfortable machines, with perforated tin sashes instead of window-glasses, and grumbling, ever-dissatisfied drivers. There were very few sedan chairs; thesewere still a comparative novelty for general use, and their bearerswere much abused for their drunkenness, clumsiness, and incivility. The streets were always crowded. Coaches, chairs, wheelbarrows, fops, chimney-sweeps, porters bearing huge burdens, bullies swaggering withgreat swords, bailiffs chasing some impecunious poet, cutpurses, funerals, christenings, weddings, and street fights, would seem fromsome contemporary accounts to be invariably mixed up together inhelpless and apparently inextricable confusion. The generalbewilderment was made more bewildering by the very babel of streetcries bawled from the sturdy lungs of orange-girls, chair-menders, broom-sellers, ballad-singers, old-clothes men, and wretchedrepresentatives of the various jails, raising their plaintive appeal to"remember the poor prisoners. " The thoroughfares, however, would havebeen in still worse condition but for the fact that so much of thepassenger traffic of the metropolis was done by water and not by land. The wherries on the Thames were as frequent as the gondolas on thecanals of Venice. Across the river, down the river, up the river, passengers hurried incessantly in the swift little boats that plied forhire, and were rowed by one man with a pair of sculls, or two men withoars. Despite the numbers of the river steamers at present, and thecrowds who take advantage of them, it may well be doubted whether solarge a proportion of the passenger traffic of London is borne by theriver in the days of Queen Victoria as there was in the days of QueenAnne. Darkness and danger ruled the roads at night with all the horrors ofthe Rome of Juvenal. Oil lamps flickered freely in some of the betterstreets, but even these were not lit so long as any suggestion oftwilight served for {72} an excuse to delay the illumination. When themoon shone they were not lit at all. Link-boys drove a busy trade inlighting belated wanderers to their homes, and saving them from theperils of places where the pavement was taken up or where open sewersyawned. Precaution was needful, for pitfalls of the kind were notalways marked by warning lanterns. Footpads roamed about, and worsethan footpads. The fear of the Mohocks had not yet faded from civicmemories, and there were still wild young men enough to rush throughthe streets, wrenching off knockers, insulting quiet people, anddefying the watch. Indeed the watch were, as a rule, as unwilling tointerfere with dangerous revellers as were the billmen of Messina, andseem to have been little better than thieves or Mohocks themselves. They are freely accused of being ever ready to levy black-mail uponthose who walked abroad at night by raising ingenious accusations ofinsobriety and insisting upon being bought off, or conveying theirvictim to the round-house. [Sidenote: 1714--Clubs] The Fleet Ditch, which is almost as much of a myth to our generation asthe stream of black Cocytus itself, was an unsavory reality still inthe London which George the First entered. It was a tributary of theThames, which, rising somewhere among the gentle hills of Hampstead, sought out the river and found it at Blackfriars. At one time it wasused for the conveyance of coals into the city, and colliers ofmoderate size used to ascend it for a short distance. But towards theend of Anne's reign, and indeed for long before, it had become a meretrickling puddle, discharging its filth and refuse and sewage into theriver, and poisoning the air around it. May Fair was still, and for many years later, celebrated in the nowfashionable quarter which bears its name. The fair lasted for sixweeks, and left about six months' demoralization behind it. "Smockraces"--that is to say, races run by young women for a prize of a lacedchemise, the competitors sometimes being attired only in theirsmocks--were still to be seen in Pall Mall and {73} various otherplaces. This popular amusement was kept up in London until 1733, andlingered in country places to a much later time. Bartholomew Fair wasscarcely less popular, or less renowned for its specialty of roastsucking-pig, than in the days when Ben Jonson's Master Little-Wit, andhis wife Win-the-Fight, made acquaintance with its wild humors. Thereis a colored print of about this time which gives a sufficiently vividpresentment of the fair. At Lee and Harper's booth the tragedy of"Judith and Holofernes" is announced by a great glaring, painted cloth, while the platform is occupied by a gentleman in Roman armor and a ladyin Eastern attire, who are no doubt the principal characters of theplay. A gaudy Harlequin and his brother Scaramouch invite theattention of the passers-by. In another booth rope-dancing of men andwomen is offered to the less tragically minded, and in yet another theworld-renowned Faux displays the announcement of his conjuring marvels. A peep-show of the siege of Gibraltar allures the patriotic. Toy-shops, presided over by attractive damsels, lure the light-hearted, and the light-fingered too, for many an intelligent pickpocket seizesthe opportunity to rifle the pocket of some too occupied customer. There is a revolving swing, and go-carts are drawn by dogs for thedelight of children. Hucksters go about selling gin, aniseed, andfruits, and large booths offer meat, cider, punch, and skittles. Theplace is thronged with visitors and beggars. A portly figure in ascarlet coat and wearing an order is said to be no less a person thanSir Robert Walpole, who is rumored to have occasionally honored thefair with his presence. Few of the clubs that play so important a part in the history oflast-century London had come into existence in 1714. The most famousof them either were not yet founded, or lived only as coffee orchocolate houses. There had been literary associations like the"Scriblerus" Club, which was started by Swift, and was finallydissolved by the quarrels of Oxford and Bolingbroke. The {74}"Saturday" and "Brothers" Clubs had been political societies, at bothof which Swift was all powerful, but they, too, were no more. The"Kit-Kat" Club, of mystic origin and enigmatic name, with all itsloyalty to Hanover and all its memories of bright toasts, of Steele, Addison, and Godfrey Kneller, had passed away in 1709, and met no morein Shire Lane, off Fleet Street, or at the "Upper Flask" Inn atHampstead. It had not lived in vain, according to Walpole, whodeclared that its patriots had saved the country. Within its rooms theevil-omened Lord Mohun had broken the gilded emblem of the crown offhis chair. Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, who was secretary to theclub, querulously insisted that the man who would do that would cut aman's throat, and Lord Mohun's fatal career fully justified Tonson'sjudgment. If the Kit-Kat patriots had saved the country, the Torypatriots of the October Club were no less prepared to do the same. TheOctober Club came first into importance in the latest years of Anne, although it had existed since the last decade of the seventeenthcentury. The stout Tory squires met together in the "Bell" Tavern, innarrow, dirty King Street, Westminster, to drink October ale, underDahl's portrait of Queen Anne, and to trouble with their fierce, uncompromising Jacobitism the fluctuating purposes of Harley and thecrafty counsels of St. John. The genius of Swift tempered their hotzeal with the cool air of his "advice. " Then the wilder spiritsseceded, and formed the March Club, which retained all the angryJacobinism of the parent body, but lost all its importance. There werewilder associations, like the Hell-fire Club, which, under thepresidency of the Duke of Wharton, was distinguished for the desperateattempts it made to justify its name. But it was, like its president, short lived and soon forgotten. There are fantastic rumors of aCalves' Head Club, organized in mockery of all kings, and especially ofthe royal martyrs. It was said by obscure pamphleteers to be foundedby John Milton; but whether the body ever had any real existence seemsnow to be uncertain. {75} [Sidenote: 1714--Coffee-houses] Next to the clubs came the "mug-houses. " The mug-houses were politicalassociations of a humbler order, where men met together to drink beerand denounce the Whigs or Tories, according to their convictions. Butat this time the coffee-houses occupied the most important position insocial life. There were a great many of them, each with some specialassociation which still keeps it in men's memories. At Garraway's, inChange Alley, tea was first retailed at the high prices which then madetea a luxury. The "Rainbow, " in Fleet Street, the second coffee-houseopened in London, is mentioned in the _Spectator_; the first wasBowman's, in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill. Lloyd's, in LombardStreet, was dear to Steele and Addison. At Don Saltero's, by the riverat Chelsea, Mr. Salter exhibited his collection of curiosities anddelighted himself, and no one else, by playing the fiddle. At the"Smyrna" Prior and Swift were wont to receive their acquaintances. From the "St. James's, " the last house but one on the south-west cornerof St. James's Street, the _Tatler_ dated its foreign and domesticnews, and conferred fame on its waiter, Mr. Kidney, "who has longconversed with and filled tea for the most consummate politicians. " Itwas the head-quarters of Whigs and officers of the Guards; letters fromStella were left here for Swift, and here in later years originatedGoldsmith's "Retaliation. " Will's, at the north corner of RussellStreet and Bow Street, famous for its memories of Dryden and for the_Tatler's_ dramatic criticisms, had ceased to exist in 1714. Its placewas taken by Button's, at the other side of Russell Street, started byAddison in 1712. Here, later, was the lion-head letter-box for the_Guardian_, designed by Hogarth. At Child's, in St. Paul'sChurch-yard, the _Spectator_ often smoked a pipe. Sir Roger deCoverley was beloved at Squire's, near Gray's Inn Gate. Slaughter's, in St. Martin's Lane, was often honored by the presence first ofDryden, and then of Pope. Serle's, near Lincoln's Inn, was cherishedby the law. At the "Grecian, " in Devereux Court, Strand, learned menmet and {76} quarrelled; a fatal duel was once fought in consequence ofan argument there over the accent on a Greek word. At the "Grecian, "too, Steele amused himself by putting the action of Homer's "Iliad"into an exact journal and planning his "Temple of Fame. " From White'schocolate-house, which afterwards became the famous club, came Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff's "Accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, andEntertainment. " The "Cocoa Tree" was the Tory coffee-house, in St. James's Street. Ozinda's chocolate-house, next to St. James's Palace, was also a Tory resort, and its owner was arrested in 1715 for supposedcomplicity in Jacobite conspiracy. [Sidenote: 1714--Humors of the time] To these coffee and chocolate houses came all the wit and all thefashion of London. Men of letters and statesmen, men of the robe andmen of the sword, lawyers, dandies, poets, and philosophers, met thereto discuss politics, literature, scandal, and the play. There wereoften very strange figures among the motley crowd behind thered-curtained windows of a St. James's coffee-house. The gentleman whomade himself so agreeable to the bar-maid or who chatted so affablyabout the conduct of the allies or the latest news from Sweden, mightmeet you again later on if your road lay at all outside town, andimperiously request you to stand and deliver. But of all the variedassembly the strangest figures must have been the beaux and exquisites, in all their various degrees of "dappers, " "fops, " "smart fellows, ""pretty fellows, " and "very pretty fellows. " They made a brave show inmany-colored splendor of attire, heavily scented with orange-flowerwater, civet-violet, or musk, with large falbala periwigs, or long, powdered duvilliers, with snuff-boxes and perspective glassesperpetually in their hands, and dragon or right Jamree canes, curiouslyclouded and amber headed, dangling by a blue ribbon from the wrist orthe coat-button. The staff was as essential to an early Georgiangentleman as to an Athenian of the age of Pericles, and thecane-carrying custom incurred the frequent attacks of the satirists. Cane-bearers are made to declare {77} that the knocking of the caneupon the shoe, leaning one leg upon it, or whistling with it in themouth, were such reliefs to them in conversation that they did not knowhow to be good company without it. Some of these young men appear tohave affected effeminacy, like an Agathon or a Henri Trois. Steele hasput it on record that he heard some, who set up to be pretty fellows, calling to one another at White's or the St. James's by the names of"Betty, " "Nelly, " and so forth. Servants play almost as important parts as their masters in the humorsof the time. Rich people were always surrounded by a throng ofservants. First came the valet de chambre, who was expected to know alittle of everything, from shaving and wig-making to skill in countrysports, and had as much experience in all town matters as a servant outof Terence or Moličre. Last came the negro slave, who waited on mylord or my lady, with the silver collar of servitude about his neck. Servants wore fine clothes and aped fine manners. The footmen of theLords and Commons held mimic parliament while waiting for their mastersat Westminster, parodying with elaborate care the proceedings of bothHouses. They imitated their masters in other ways, too, taking theirtitles after the fashion made famous by Gil Blas and his fellow valets, and familiar by the farce of "High Life Below Stairs. " The writer ofthe _Patriot_ of Thursday, August 19, 1714, satirizes misplacedambition by "A discourse which I overheard not many evenings ago as Iwent with a friend of mine into Hyde Park. We found, as usual, a greatnumber of gentlemen's servants at the park gate, and my friend, beingunacquainted with the saucy custom of those fellows to usurp theirmasters' titles, was very much surprised to hear a lusty rogue tell oneof his companions who inquired after his fellow-servant that his Gracehad his head broke by the cook-maid for making a sop in the pan. "Presently after another assured the company of the illness of my lordbishop. "The information had doubtless continued had {78} not a fellowin a blue livery alarmed the rest with the news that Sir Edward and themarquis were at fisticuffs about a game at chuck, and that thebrigadier had challenged the major-general to a bout at cudgels. " [Sidenote: 1714--Principal towns] It is only fair, after enumerating so many of the eccentricities anddiscomforts of early Georgian London, to mention one proof ofcivilization of which Londoners were able to boast. London had apenny-post, of which it was not unreasonably proud. This penny-post isthus described in Strype's edition of Stow's "Survey of London. " "Fora further convenience to the inhabitants of this city and partsadjacent, for about ten miles compass, another post, and that afoot-post, commonly called the penny-post, was erected, and though atfirst set up by a private hand, yet, bring of such considerable amount, is since taken into the post-office and made a branch of it. And inthis all letters and parcels not exceeding a pound weight, and also anysum of money not above 10 pounds or parcel of 10 pounds value is safelyconveyed, and at the charge of a penny, to all parts of the city andsuburbs, and but a penny more at the delivery to most towns within tenmiles of London, and to some towns at a farther distance. And for thebetter management of this office there are in London and Westminstersix general post-offices . . . At all which there constantlyattend . . . Officers to receive letters and parcels from the severalplaces appointed to take them in, there being a place or receivinghouse for the receipt thereof in most streets, with a table hung at thedoor or shop-window, in which is printed in great letters 'Penny-postLetters and Parcels are taken in Here. ' And at those houses they haveletter-carriers to call every hour. . . . All the day long they areemployed, some in going their walks to bring in, and others to carryout. " The next town in population to London was Bristol, and Bristol had thenonly one-seventeenth of London's population. The growth of themanufacturing industry, which has created such a cluster of great townsin the North of England, had hardly begun to show itself when {79}George the First came to the throne. Bristol was not only the mostpopulous place after London at this time, but it was the great Englishseaport. It had held this rank for centuries. Even at the time when"Tom Jones" was written, many years after the accession of George theFirst, the Bristol Alderman filled the same place in popularimagination that is now assigned to the Alderman of London. Fieldingattributes to the Bristol Alderman that fine appreciation of thequalities of turtle soup with which more modern humorists have endowedhis metropolitan fellow. Liverpool was hardly thought of in the early Georgian days. It wasonly made into a separate parish a few years before George came to thethrone, and its first dock was opened in 1709. Manchester wascomparatively obscure and unimportant, and had not yet made its firstexport of cotton goods. At this time Norwich, famous for its worstedand woollen works and its fuller's earth, surpassed it in businessimportance. By the middle of the century the population of Bristol issaid to have exceeded ninety thousand; Norwich, to have had more thanfifty-six thousand; Manchester, about forty-five thousand; Newcastle, forty thousand; and Birmingham, about thirty thousand; while Liverpoolhad swelled to about thirty thousand, and ranked as the third port inthe country. York was the chief city of the Northern Counties; Exeter, the capital of the West. Shrewsbury was of some account in the regiontowards the Welsh frontier. Worcester, Derby, Nottingham, andCanterbury were places of note. Bath had not come into its fashion andits fame as yet. Its first pump-room had been built only a few yearsbefore George entered England. The strength of England now, if weleave London out of consideration, lies in the north, and goes nofarther southward than a line which would include Birmingham. In theearly days of the Georges this was just the part of England which wasof least importance, whether as regards manufacturing energy orpolitical power. {80} Ireland just then was quiet. It had sunk into a quietude somethinglike that of the grave. Civil war had swept over the country; asuccession of civil wars indeed had plagued it. There was a time justbefore the outbreak of the parliamentary struggle against Charles theFirst when, according to Clarendon, Ireland was becoming a highlyprosperous country, growing vigorously in trade, manufacture, letters, and arts, and beginning to be, as he puts it, "a jewel of great lustrein the royal diadem. " But civil war and religious persecution hadblighted this rising prosperity, and for the evils coming frompolitical proscription and religious persecution the statesmen of thetime could think of no remedy but new proscription and freshpersecution. Roman Catholics were excluded from the legislature, frommunicipal corporations, and from the liberal professions; they were notallowed to teach or be taught by Catholics; they were not permitted tokeep arms; the trade and navigation of Ireland were put under ruinousrestrictions and disabilities. In the reign of Anne new acts had beenpassed by the Irish Parliament, and sanctioned by the Crown "to preventthe further growth of Popery. " Some of these later measures introducednot a few of the very harshest conditions of the penal code againstCatholics. The Irish Parliament at that time was merely in fact whathas since been called the British garrison; it consisted of theconquerors and the settlers. The Irish people had no more to do withit, except in the way of suffering under it, than the slaves in Georgiathirty years ago had to do with the Congress at Washington. [Sidenote: 1714--Old Dublin] Dublin has perhaps changed less than London since 1714, but it haschanged greatly notwithstanding. The Irish Parliament was alreadyestablished in College Green, but not in the familiar building which itafterwards occupied. It met in Chichester House, which had been builtas a hospital by Sir George Carew at the close of the sixteenthcentury. From him it passed into the possession of Sir ArthurChichester, an English soldier of {81} fortune, who had distinguishedhimself in France under Henry the Fourth, and who afterwards came toIreland and played an active part in the plantation of Ulster. It wasnot until 1728 that Chichester House was pulled down and the newbuilding erected on its site. Trinity College, of course, stood onCollege Green, so did two other stately dwellings, Charlemont House andClancarty House, both of which have long since passed away. There wereseveral book-shops on the Green as well, and a great many taverns andcoffee-shops. The statue of King William the Third had been set up in1701. The collegians professed great indignation at the manner inwhich the statue turned its back to the college gates, and the effigywas the object of many indignities, for which the students sometimesgot into grave trouble with the authorities. St. Patrick's Well was one of the great features of Dublin in the earlypart of the last century. It stood in the narrow way by TrinityCollege, the name of which had not long been altered from Patrick'sWell Lane to Nassau Street. The change had been made in compliment toa bust of William the Third, which adorned the front of one of thehouses, but for long after the place was much more associated with thewell than with the House of Orange. The waters of the well werepopularly supposed to have wonderful curative and health-givingproperties, and it was much used. It dried up suddenly in 1729, andgave Swift the opportunity of writing some fiercely indignant nationalverses. But the water was restored to it in 1731, and it still existsin peaceful, half-forgotten obscurity in the College grounds. Dawson Street, off Nassau Street, had only newly come into existence. It was called after Joshua Dawson, who had just built for himself ahandsome mansion with gardens round it. He sold the house in 1715 tothe Dublin Corporation, to be used as a Mansion House for their LordMayors. Where Molesworth and Kildare Streets now stand there was atthis time a great piece of waste {82} land called Molesworth Fields. Chapelizod, now a sufficiently populous suburb, was then the littlevillage of Chappell Isoud, said to be so called from that Belle Isoud, daughter of King Anguish of Ireland, who was beloved by Tristram. TheGeneral Post-office in Sycamore Alley had for Postmaster-general IsaacManley, who was a friend of Swift. Manley incurred the Dean'sresentment in 1718 by opening letters addressed to him. The postalarrangements were, as may be imagined, miserably defective. Owing tothe carelessness of postmasters, the idleness of post-boys, bad horses, and sometimes the want of horses, much time was lost and lettersconstantly miscarried. [Sidenote: 1714--Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Belfast] The amusements of Dublin were those of London on a small scale. Dublinwas as fond of its coffee-houses as London itself. Lucas's, in CorkStreet, was the favorite resort of beaux, gamesters, and bullies. HereTalbot Edgeworth, Miss Edgeworth's ancestor, whom Swift called the"prince of puppies, " displayed his follies, his fine dresses, and hishandsome face, and believed himself to be the terror of men and theadoration of women, till he died mad in the Dublin Bridewell. The yardbehind Lucas's was the theatre of numerous duels, which were generallywitnessed from the windows by all the company who happened to bepresent. These took care that the laws of honorable combat wereobserved. Close at hand was the "Swan" Tavern, in Swan Alley, adistrict devoted chiefly to gambling-houses. On Cork Hill was thecock-pit royal, where gentlemen and ruffians mingled together towitness and wager on the sport. Cork Hill was not a pleasant place atnight. Pedestrians were often insulted and roughly treated by thechairmen hanging about Lucas's and the "Eagle" Tavern. Even thewaiters of these establishments sometimes amused themselves by pouringpailfuls of foul water upon the aggrieved passer-by. It is notsurprising, therefore, to find that an Irish edition of the Hell-fireClub was set up at the "Eagle" in 1735. The roughness of the timefound its way into {83} the theatre in Smock Lane, which was the sceneof frequent political riots. Dublin had its Pasquin or Marforio in anoaken image, known as the "Wooden Man, " which had stood on the southernside of Essex Street, not far from Eustace Street, since the end of theseventeenth century. Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Belfast were the only considerable townsin Ireland after the Irish capital. Not many years had passed sinceCork was besieged by Marlborough himself, and taken from King James. The Duke of Grafton, one of the sons of Charles the Second, was killedthen in a little street or lane, which still commemorates the fact byits name. The same year that saw Marlborough besieging Cork sawLimerick invested by the forces of King William, under William's owncommand. The Irish general, Sarsfield, held out so gallantly thatWilliam had to give up the attempt, and it was not until the followingyear, and after the cause of James had gone down everywhere else, thatSarsfield consented to accept the terms, most honorable to him, of thefamous Treaty of Limerick. There was but little feeling in Ireland infavor of the Chevalier at the time of Queen Anne's death. Any sympathywith the Stuart cause that still lingered was sentimental merely, andeven as such hardly existed among the great mass of the people. Tothese, indeed, the change of masters could matter but little; they hadhad enough of the Stuarts, and the conduct of James the Second duringhis Irish campaign had made his name and his memory despised. Rightlyor wrongly he was charged with cowardice--he who in his early days hadheard his bravery in action praised by the great Turenne--and thecharge was fatal to him in the minds of the Irish people. The penallaws of Anne's days were not excused because of any strong Jacobitesympathies or active Jacobite schemes in Ireland. The Union between England and Scotland was only seven years old whenGeorge came to the throne of these kingdoms, and already an attempt hadbeen made by a {84} powerful party in Scotland to obtain its repeal. The union was unquestionably accomplished by Lord Somers and otherEnglish statesmen, with the object of securing the succession muchrather than the national interests of the Scottish people. It was fora long time detested in Scotland. The manner of its accomplishment, mainly by bribery and threats, made it more odious. Yet it was basedon principles which secured the dearest interests of Scotland andrespected the religious opinions of the population. Scottish law, Scottish systems, and the Scotch Church were left without interference, and constitutional security was given for the maintenance of thePresbyterian Establishment. In plain words, the Union admitted andmaintained the rights and the claims of the great majority of theScotch people, and therefore, when the first heat of dislike to it hadgone out, Scotland began to find that she could be old Scotland still, even when combined in one constitutional system with England. She soonaccepted cordially the conditions which opened new ways to herindustrial and trading energy, and did not practically interfere withher true national independence. [Sidenote: 1714--Life in Edinburgh] Edinburgh was then, and remained for generations to come, much the sameas it appeared when Mary Stuart first visited it. Historians likeBrantôme, and poets like Ronsard, lamented for their fair princessexiled in a savage land. But the daughter of the House of Lorrainemight well have been content with the curious beauty of her newcapital. Even now, more than three centuries since Mary Stuart landedin Scotland, and more than a century and a half since her descendantraised the standard of rebellion against the Elector of Hanover, Edinburgh Old Town retains more of its antique characteristics thaneither of the capitals of the sister kingdoms. It is true that theNorthern Athens has followed the example of its Greek original inshifting the scene of its social life. The Attic Athens of to-dayoccupies a different site from that of the city of Pericles. NewEdinburgh {85} has reared itself on the other bank of that chasm whereonce the North River flowed, and where now the trains run. Edinburgh, however, more fortunate than the city of Cecrops, while founding a newtown has not lost the old. But at the time of the Hanoverianaccession, and for generations later, not a house of the new town hadbeen built. Edinburgh was still a walled city, with many gates or"ports, " occupying the same ground that she had covered in the reign ofJames the Third, along the ridge between the gray Castle on the heightat the west and haunted Holyrood in the plain at the east. All alongthis ridge rose the huge buildings, "lands, " as they were called, stretching from peak to peak like a mountain-range--five, six, sometimes ten stories high--pierced with innumerable windows, crownedwith jagged, fantastic roofs and gables, and as crowded with life asthe "Insulae" of Imperial Rome. Over all rose the graceful pinnacle ofSt. Giles's Church, around whose base the booths of goldsmiths andother craftsmen clustered. The great main street of this old town was, and is, the Canongate, with its hundred or so of narrow closes or wyndsrunning off from it at right angles. The houses in these closes wereas tall as the rest, though the space across the street was often notmore than four or five feet wide. The Canongate was Edinburgh in theearly days of the last century far more than St. James's Street wasLondon. Its high houses, with their wooden panellings, with the oldarmorial devices on their doors, and their common stair climbing fromstory to story outside, have seen the whole panorama of Scottishhistory pass by. Life cannot have been very comfortable in Edinburgh. There were noopen spaces or squares in the royalty, with the exception of theParliamentary close. The houses were so well and strongly built thatthe city was seldom troubled by fire, but they were poor inside, withlow, dark rooms. We find, in consequence, that houses inhabited by thegentry in the early part of the eighteenth century were consideredalmost too bad for very humble {86} folk at its close, and the successof the new town was assured from the day when its firstfoundation-stone was laid. But if not very comfortable, life was quietand simple. People generally dined at one or two o'clock in Edinburghwhen George the First was king. Shopkeepers closed their shops whenthey dined, and opened them again for business when the meal was over. There was very little luxury; wine was seldom seen on the tables of themiddle classes, and few people kept carriages. There were not manyamusements; friends met at each other's houses to take tea at fiveo'clock, and perhaps to listen to a little music; for the Edinburgherswere fond of music, and an annual concert which was established earlyin the century lingered on till within three years of its close. Butthis simplicity was not immortal, and we hear sad complaints as thecentury grows old concerning the decadence of manners made manifest inthe luxurious practice of dining as late as four or five, the freer useof wine, and other signs of over-civilization. [Sidenote: 1714--Lowland agriculture] Glasgow, in the Clyde valley, ranked next to Edinburgh in importanceamong Scotch towns. More than twenty years later than the time ofwhich we treat, the author of a pamphlet called "Memoirs of the Times"could write, "Glasgow is become the third trading city in the island. "But in 1714 the future of its commercial prosperity, founded upon itstrade with the West Indies and the American colonies, had scarcelydawned. The Scotch merchants had not yet been able, from want ofcapital, and, it was said, the jealousy of the English merchants, tomake much use of the privileges conferred upon them by the union, andGlasgow was on the wrong side of the island for sharing in Scotland'sslight Continental trade. Still, Glasgow was fairly thriving, thanksto the inland navigation of the Clyde. Some of its streets were broad;many of its houses substantial, and even stately. Its pride was thegreat minster of St. Mungo's, "a solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, thatwill stand as lang as the warld keep hands and gunpowther aff it, " toquote the {87} enthusiastic words of Andrew Fairservice. The streetswere often thronged with the wild Highlanders from the hills, who camedown as heavily and as variously armed as a modern Albanian chieftain, to trade in small cattle and shaggy ponies. At this time the average Englishman knew little about the Lowlands andnothing about the Highlands of Scotland. The Londoner of the age ofAnne would have looked upon any traveller who had made his way throughthe Highlands of Scotland with much the same curiosity as hisdescendants, a generation or two later, regarded Bruce when he returnedfrom Abyssinia, and would probably have received most of his statementswith a politer but not less profound disbelief. It was cited, as aproof of the immense popularity of the _Spectator_, that despite allthe difficulties of intercommunication it found its way into Scotland. George the First had passed away, and George the Second was reigning inhis stead, before any Englishman was found foolhardy enough to explorethe Scottish Highlands, and lucky enough to escape unhurt, and publishan account of his experiences, and put on record his disgust at themonstrous deformity of the Highland scenery. But the Londoner in 1714was scarcely better informed about the Scotch Lowlands. What he couldlearn was not of a nature to impress him very profoundly. Scotlandthen, and for some time to come, was very far behind England in manythings; most of all, in everything connected with agriculture. In thevillages the people dwelt in rude but fairly comfortable cottages, madechiefly of straw-mixed clay, and straw-thatched. Wearing clothes thatwere usually home-spun, home-woven, and home-tailored; livingprincipally, if not entirely, on the produce of his own farm, theLowland farmer passed a life of curious independence and isolation. Toplough his land, with its strange measurements of "ox-gate, ""ploughgate, " and "davoch, " he had clumsy wooden ploughs, the veryshape of which is now almost a tradition, but which were certainly atleast as primitive in {88} construction as the plough Ulysses guided inhis farm at Ithaca. Wheeled vehicles of any kind, carts orwheelbarrows, were rarities. A parish possessed of a couple of cartswas considered well provided for. Even where carts were known, theywere of little use, they were so wretchedly constructed, and the fewroads that did exist were totally unfit for wheeled traffic. Roadswere as rare in Scotland then as they are to-day in Peloponnesus. Anenterprising Aberdeenshire gentleman, Sir Archibald Grant, of Monymusk, is deservedly distinguished for the interest he took in road-makingabout the time of the Hanoverian accession. Some years later statutelabor did a little--a very little--towards improving the public roads, but it was not until after the rebellion of 1745, when the Governmenttook the matter in hand, that anything really efficient was done. Anumber of good roads were then made, chiefly by military labor, andreceived in popular language the special title of the King's highways. But in the early part of the century there was little use for carts, even of the clumsiest kind. Such carriage as was necessary wasaccomplished by strings of horses tethered in Indian file, like thelines of camels in the East, and laden with sacks or baskets. Thecultivation of the soil was poor; "the surface was generallyunenclosed; oats and barley the chief grain products; wheat littlecultivated; little hay made for winter; the horses then feeding chieflyon straw and oats. " "The arable land ran in narrow slips, " with "stonywastes between, like the moraines of a glacier. " The hay meadow was anundrained marsh, where rank grasses, mingled with rushes and otheraquatic plants, yielded a coarse fodder. About the time when Georgethe First became King of England, Lord Haddington introduced the sowingof clover and other grass seeds. Some ten years earlier anEnglishwoman, Elizabeth Mordaunt, daughter of the Earl of Peterborough, and wife of the Duke of Gordon, introduced into her husband's estatesEnglish ploughs, English ploughmen, the system of fallowing up to thattime {89} unknown in Scotland, planted moors, sowed foreign grasses, and showed the Morayshire farmers how to make hay. [Sidenote: 1714--Famines in Scotland] As a natural result of the primitive and incomplete agriculture, dearthof food was frequent, and even severe famine, in all its horrors ofstarvation and death, not uncommon. When George the First came to thethrone the century was not old enough for the living generation ofScotchmen to forget the ghastly seven years that had brought theseventeenth century to its close--seven empty ears blasted witheast-wind. So many died of hunger that, in the grim words of one wholived through that time, "the living were wearied with the burying ofthe dead. " The plague of hunger took away all natural and relativeaffections, "so that husbands had not sympathy for their wives, norwives for their husbands; parents for their children, nor children fortheir parents. " The saddest proof of the extent of the suffering isshown in the irreligious despair which seized upon the sufferers. Scotland then, as now, was strongly marked for its piety, but want mademen defiant of heaven, prepared, like her who counselled the man of Uz, to curse God and die by the roadside. Warned by no dream of thin andill-favored kine, the Pharaohs of Westminster had passed an Act, enforced while the famine was well begun, against the importation ofmeal into Scotland. At the sorest of the famine, the importation ofmeal from Ireland was permitted, and exportation of grain from Scotlandprohibited. But, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, when thefamine had but just subsided, a Government commission ordered that allloads of grain brought from Ireland into the West of Scotland should bestaved and sunk. The empire over which King George came to rule was as yet in a growing, almost a fluid condition. In North America, England had, by one formof settlement or another, New York, but lately captured; New Jersey, the New England States, such as they then were, Virginia--an oldpossession--Maryland, South Carolina, Pennsylvania--settled {90} byWilliam Penn, whose death was now very near. Louisiana had just been taken possession of by the French. The city ofNew Orleans was not yet built. The French held the greater part ofwhat was then known of Canada; Jamaica, Barbadoes, and other WestIndian islands were in England's ownership. The great East IndianEmpire was only in its very earliest germ; its full development was notyet foreseen by statesman, thinker, or dreamer. The English flag hadonly begun to float from the Rock of Gibraltar. {91} CHAPTER VI. OXFORD'S FALL; BOLINGBROKE'S FLIGHT. [Sidenote: 1714--Formation of King George's Cabinet] King George did not make the slightest concealment of his intentionswith regard to the political complexion of his future government. Hedid not attempt or pretend to conciliate the Tories, and, on the otherhand, he was determined not to be a puppet in the hands of a "Junto" ofillustrious Whigs. He therefore formed a cabinet, composedexclusively, or almost exclusively, of pure Whigs; but he composed itof Whigs who at that time were only rising men in the political world. He was going to govern on Whig principles, but he was not going to behimself governed by another "Junto" of senior Whig statesmen, like thatwhich had been so powerful in the reign of William the Third. He actedwith that shrewd, hard common-sense which was an attribute of hisfamily, and which often served instead of genius or enlightenment orintelligence, or even experience. A man of infinitely higher capacitythan George might have found himself puzzled as to his proper policyunder conditions entirely new and unfamiliar; but George acted as ifthe conditions were familiar to him, and set about governing England ashe would have set about managing his household in Hanover; and hesomehow hit upon the course which, under all the circumstances, was thebest he could have followed. It is not easy to see how he could haveacted otherwise with safety to himself. It would have been idle to tryto conciliate the Tories. The more active spirits among the Torieswere, in point of fact, conspirators on behalf of the Stuart cause. The {92} colorless Tories were not men whose influence or force ofcharacter would have been of much use to the king in endeavoring tobring about a reconciliation between the two great parties in theState. The civil war was not over, or nearly over, yet, and there werestill to come some moments of crisis, when it seemed doubtful whether, after all, the cause supposed to be fallen might not successfully liftits head again. As the words of Scott's spirited ballad put it, beforethe Stuart crown was to go down, "there are heads to be broke. " ForGeorge the First to attempt to form a Coalition Cabinet of Whigs andTories at such a time would have been about as wild a scheme as for M. Thiers to have formed a Coalition Cabinet of Republicans and ofBonapartists, while Napoleon the Third was yet living at Chiselhurst. [Sidenote: 1714--The Treaty of Utrecht] The Tories had been much discredited in the eyes of the country by thePeace of Utrecht. The long War of the Succession had been allowed toend without securing to England and to Europe the one purpose withwhich it was undertaken by the allies. It was a war to decide whethera French prince, a grandson of Louis the Fourteenth, and whoseaccession seemed to threaten a future union of Spain with France, should or should not be allowed to ascend the throne of Spain. The endof the war left the French prince on the throne of Spain. Yet eventhis fact would not in itself have been very distressing or alarming tothe English people, however it might have pained others of the alliedStates. The English people probably would never have drawn a swordagainst France in this quarrel if it had not been for the rash act ofLouis the Fourteenth in recognizing the chevalier, James Stuart, asKing of England on the death of his father, James the Second. ButEngland felt bitterly that the Peace of Utrecht left France and Louisnot only unpunished, but actually rewarded. All the campaigns, thevictories, the sacrifices, the genius of Marlborough, the heroism ofhis soldiers, had ended in nothing. Peace was secured at any price. It was not that {93} the people of England did not want to have a peacemade at the time. On the contrary, most Englishmen were thoroughlytired of the war, and felt but little interest in the main objects forwhich it had been originally undertaken. Most Englishmen would haveagreed to the very terms which were contained in the Treaty, disadvantageous as these conditions were in many points. But they wereashamed of the manner in which the Treaty had been brought about, morethan of the Treaty itself. France lost little or nothing by thearrangement; she sacrificed no territory, and was left with practicallythe same frontier which she had secured for herself twenty yearsbefore. Spain had to give up her possessions in Italy and the Lowcountries. The Dutch got very little to make up to them for theirtroubles and losses, but they could do nothing for themselves, and theEnglish statesmen were determined not to continue the war. Yet, on thewhole, these terms were not altogether unsatisfactory to the people ofEngland. The war was becoming an insufferable burden. The NationalDebt was swollen to a size which alarmed at that time and almosthorrified many persons, and there seemed no chance whatever of theexpulsion of Philip, the French prince, from Spain. All theseconsiderations had much influence over the public mind, and possiblywould of themselves have entirely borne down the arguments of those whocontended that an opportunity was now come to England of bringingFrance, so long her principal enemy and greatest danger, completely toher feet. Marlborough's victories had, indeed, made it easy to marchto Paris, and dictate there such terms of peace as would keep Francepowerless for generations to come. But the English people weredisgusted by the manner in which the Treaty of Utrecht had been broughtabout. In order to secure that arrangement it was absolutely necessaryto destroy the authority of Marlborough, and the Tory statesmen setabout this work with the most shameless and undisguised pertinacity. Through the influence {94} of Mrs. Masham, a cousin of the Duchess ofMarlborough, introduced by the Duchess herself to the Queen, the Torystatesmen contrived to get the Whig ministry dismissed, and a ministryformed under Harley and Bolingbroke. These statesmen opened secretnegotiations with France. They were determined to bring about a peaceby any sort of arrangement. They betrayed England's allies by enteringinto secret negotiations with the enemy, in express violation of theconditions of the alliance; they sacrificed the Catalonian populationsof Northern Spain in the most shameless manner. The Catalans had beenencouraged to rise against the French prince, and England had promisedin return to protect them, and to secure them the restoration of alltheir ancient liberties. In making the peace the Catalans were whollyforgotten. The best excuse that can be made for the Tory ministers isto suppose that they positively and actually did forget all about theCatalans. Anyhow, the Catalans were left at the mercy of the new Kingof Spain, and were treated after the severest fashion of the time indealing with conquered but obstinate rebels. [Sidenote: 1714--Degradation of Marlborough] In order to make such a peace it was necessary to remove Marlborough. Some accusations were pressed against him to secure his removal. Hewas charged with having taken perquisites from the contractors who weresupplying the army with bread, and with having deducted two and onehalf per cent. From the pay which England allowed to the foreign troopsin her service. Marlborough's defence would not have been consideredsatisfactory in our day; and indeed it is impossible to think of anysuch accusation being made, or any such defence being needed, in timeslike ours. Imagination can hardly conceive the possibility of suchcharges being seriously made against the Duke of Wellington, forexample, or the Duke of Wellington condescending to plead custom andusage in reply to them. But in Marlborough's day things were verydifferent, and Marlborough was able {95} to show that, as regarded someof the accusations, he had only done what was customary among men inhis position, and what he had full authority for doing; and, asregarded others, that he had applied the sums he got to the business ofthe State as secret service money, and had not made any personalprofit. He did not, indeed, produce any accounts; but, assuming hisdefence to be well founded, it is quite possible that the keeping ofaccounts might have been an undesirable and inconvenient practice. Atall events it was certain that Marlborough had not done any worse thanother statesmen of the time, in civil as well as in military service, had been in the habit of doing; and considering all the conditions ofthe period, the defence which he set up ought to have been satisfactoryto every one. It probably would have satisfied his enemies but thatthey were determined to get rid of him. They were, indeed, compelledto get rid of him in order to make their secret treaty with France, andthey succeeded. Marlborough was dismissed from all his employments, and went for a time into exile. The English people, therefore, sawthat peace had been made by the sacrifice of the greatest Englishcommander who, up to that time, had ever taken the field in theirservice. The treaty had been obtained by the most shameless intriguesto bring about the downfall of this great soldier. No matter howdesirable in itself the peace might be, no matter how reasonable theconditions on which it was based, yet it became a national disgracewhen secured by means like these. Nor was this all: the Tory statesmenfinding it imperative for their purpose to have a majority in the Houseof Lords, as well as in the House of Commons, prevailed upon the Queento stretch her royal prerogative to the extent of making twelve peers. All these new peers were Tories; one of them was Mr. Masham, husband ofthe woman who had assisted so efficiently in the degradation of theDuke of Marlborough. When they first appeared in the House of Lords, aWhig statesman ironically asked them {96} whether they proposed to voteseparately or by their foreman? [Sidenote: 1714--The new Ministry] Never, perhaps, has a mean and treacherous policy like that whichbrought about the Treaty of Utrecht had so splendid a literary defenceset up for it. Swift, with the guidance of Bolingbroke, and put up, indeed, to the work by Bolingbroke, devoted the best of his powers todefame Marlborough, and to justify the conduct of the Tory ministry. No matter how clear one's own opinions on the question may be, it isimpossible, even at this distance of time, to study the writings ofSwift on this subject without finding our convictions sometimes shaken. The biting satire, which seems only like cool common-sense and justicetaking their keenest tone; the masterly array, or perhaps we shouldrather say disarray, of facts, dates, and arguments; the boldassumptions which, by their very case and confidence, bear down thereader's knowledge and judgment; the clear, unadorned style, made forconvincing and conquering--all these qualities, and others too, unitewith almost matchless force to make the worse seem the better cause. It is true that the mind of the reader is never impressed by Swift'svindication of the Tories, as it is always impressed by Burke'sdenunciation of the French Revolution. Swift does not make one see, asBurke does, that the whole soul and conscience of the author are in hiswork. Swift is evidently the advocate retained to conduct the case;Burke is the man of impassioned conviction, speaking out because hecannot keep silent. Still, we have all of us been sometimes made toquestion our own judgment, and almost to repudiate our own previouslyformed impressions as to facts, by the skill of some great advocate ina court of law; and it is skill of this kind, and of the very highestorder, that we have to recognize in Swift's efforts to justify thepolicy of the Treaty of Utrecht. To make out any case it was necessaryto endeavor to lower Marlborough in the estimation of the Englishpeople, just as it was necessary to destroy his power in order to getthe ground open for the {97} arrangement of the treaty. Swift sethimself to this task with a malignity equal to his genius. Arbuthnot, hardly inferior as a satirist to Swift, wrote a "History of John Bull, "to hold up Marlborough and Marlborough's wife to ridicule and tohatred. He depicted the great soldier as a low and roguish attorney, who was deluding his clients into the carrying on of a long and costlylawsuit for the mere sake of putting money into his own pocket. Helampooned England's allies as well as England's great general; hedescribed the Dutch, whom the Tory ministers had shamefully betrayed, as self-seeking and perfidious traitors, for whose protection we weresacrificing all, until we found out that they were secretly jugglingwith our enemies for our destruction. No stronger argument could befound to condemn the conduct of the Tory ministers than the mere factthat Swift and Arbuthnot failed to secure their acquittal at the bar ofpublic opinion. All the attacks on Marlborough were inspired byBolingbroke, and it has only to be added that Marlborough had beenBolingbroke's first and best benefactor. The King appointed Lord Townshend his Secretary of State. The officewas then regarded as that of First Lord of the Treasury is now; itcarried with it the authority of Prime-minister. James Stanhope wasSecond Secretary. Walpole was at first put in the subordinate officeof Paymaster-general, without a seat in the Cabinet; a place inAdministration which at a later period was assigned to no less a manthan Edmund Burke. Walpole's political capacity soon, however, made itevident that he was fitted for higher office, and we shall find that hedoes not remain long at the post of Paymaster-general. The Duke ofShrewsbury had resigned both his offices: that of Lord Treasurer, andthat of Viceroy of Ireland. Lord Sunderland accepted the IrishViceroyalty, and the Lord Treasurership was put into commission, andfrom that time was heard of no more. Next to Walpole himself, the mostnotable man in the administration--the man, that is to say, who becamebest known to the world afterwards--was {98} Pulteney, now Walpole'sdevoted friend, before long to be his bitter and unrelenting enemy. Pulteney, just now, is still a very young man, only in his thirty-thirdyear; but he is the hereditary representative of good Whig principles, and has already distinguished himself in the House of Commons as askilful and fearless advocate of his political faith; he is a keen andclever pamphleteer; in later days, if he had lived then, he woulddoubtless have been a writer of leading articles in newspapers. Hisstyle is polished and penetrating, like that of an epigrammatist. Hehas travelled much for that time, and is what was then called anelegant scholar. The eloquent and silver-tongued Lord Cowper wasrestored to the office of Lord Chancellor, which he had already heldunder Queen Anne, and by virtue of which he had presided at theimpeachment of Sacheverell. When Cowper was made Lord Keeper of theGreat Seal by Anne in 1705, he was in the forty-first year of his age, but looked very much younger. He wore his own hair at that time, anunusual thing in Anne's days, and this added to his juvenileappearance. The Queen insisted that he must have his hair cut off andmust wear a heavy wig; otherwise, she said, the world would think shehad given the seals to a boy. Cowper was a prudent, cautious, cleverman, whose abilities made a considerable impression upon his own time, but have carried his memory only in a faint and feeble way on to ours. He was a fine speaker, so far as style and manner went, and he had acharming voice. Chesterfield said of him that the ears and the eyesgave him up the hearts and understandings of the audience. The Duke ofArgyll became Commander-in-chief for Scotland. In Ireland, SirConstantine Phipps was removed from the office of Chancellor, on theground of his Jacobite opinions; and it is a curious fact, worth notingas a sign of the times, that the University of Oxford unanimouslyagreed to confer on him an honorary degree almost immediately after--onthe day, in fact, of the King's coronation. {99} [Sidenote: 1714--Lord Townshend] Lord Townshend, the Prime-minister, as we may call him, was not a manof any conspicuous ability. He belonged to that class of competent, capable, trustworthy Englishmen who discharge satisfactorily the dutiesof any office to which they are called in the ordinary course of theirlives. Such a man as Townshend would have made a respectable LordMayor or a satisfactory Chairman of Quarter Sessions, if fortune hadappointed him to no higher functions. He might have changed placesprobably with an average Lord Mayor or Chairman of Quarter Sessionswithout any particular effect being wrought on English history. Men ofthis stamp have nothing but official rank in common with the statesmenPrime-ministers--the Walpoles and Peels and Palmerstons; or with themen of genius--the Pitts and Disraelis and Gladstones. Lord Townshendhad performed the regular functions of a statesman in training at thattime. He had been an Envoy Extraordinary, and had made treaties. Hewas a brother-in-law of Walpole. Just now Walpole and he are friendsas well as connections; the time came when Walpole and he were destinedto quarrel; and then Townshend conducted himself with remarkableforbearance, self-restraint, and dignity. He was an honest andrespectable man, blunt of speech, and of rugged, homespun intelligence, about whom, since his day, the world is little concerned. Such name ashe had is almost absorbed in the more brilliant reputation of hisgrandson--the spoiled child of the House of Commons, as Burke calledhim--that Charles Townshend of the famous "Champagne Speech;" theChancellor of the Exchequer, of whom we shall hear a good deal lateron, and who, by the sheer force of animal spirits, feather-headedtalents, and ignorance, became, in a certain perverted sense, thefather of American Independence. The Second Secretary of State, James, afterwards Earl, Stanhope, was aman of very different mould. Stanhope was one of the few Englishmenwho have held high position in arms and politics. He had been abrilliant {100} soldier; had fought in Flanders and Spain; haddistinguished himself at Barcelona, even under a commander likePeterborough, whose daring spirit rendered it hard for any subaltern toshine in rivalry; had been himself raised to command, and kept onwinning victories until his military genius found itself overcrowed bythat of the great French captain, the Duke de Vendôme. His soldier'scareer came to a premature close, as indeed his whole mortal career didnot very long after the time at which we have now arrived. Stanhopewas a man of scholarly education, almost a scholar; he had abilitiesabove the common; he had indomitable energy, and was as daring andresolute in the council as in the field. He had a domineering mind, was outspoken and haughty, trampling over other men's opinions as acharge of cavalry treads down the grasses of the field it traverses. He made enemies, and did not heed their enmity. He was single-minded, and, what was not very common in that day, he was free from any love ofmoney or taint of personal greed. He does not rank high either amongstatesmen or soldiers, but as statesman and soldier together he hasmade for himself a distinct and a peculiar place. His career willalways be remembered without effort by the readers of English history. [Sidenote: 1714--Coronation of the King] A new Privy Council was formed which included the name of Marlborough. The Duchess of Marlborough urged her husband not to accept this officeof barren honor. It is said that the one only occasion on whichMarlborough had ventured to act against the dictation of his wife waswhen he thus placed himself again at the disposal of the King. Henever ceased to regret that he had not followed her advice in thisinstance as in others. His proud heart soon burned within him when hefound that he was appreciated, understood, and put aside; mocked with asemblance of power, humiliated under the pretext of doing him honor. Much more humiliating, much more ominous, however, was the receptionawaiting Oxford and Bolingbroke. From the moment of his arrival, theKing showed himself {101} determined to take no friendly notice of thegreat Tories. Oxford found it most difficult even to get audience ofhis Majesty. The morning after the King's arrival, Oxford was allowed, after much pressure and many entreaties, to wait upon the Sovereign, and to kiss his hand. He was received in chilling silence. Truly, itwas not likely that much conversation would take place, seeing thatGeorge spoke no English and Oxford spoke no German. But there wassomething in the King's demeanor towards him, as well as in the merefact that no words were exchanged, which must have told Oxford that hisenemies were in triumph over him, and were determined to bring abouthis doom. Even before George had landed in England he had sentdirections that Bolingbroke should be removed from his place ofSecretary of State. On the last day of August this order was executedin a manner which made it seem especially premature, and evenignominious. The Privy Council, as it stood, was then dissolved, andthe new Council appointed, which consisted of only thirty-threemembers. Somers was one of this new Council, but in name alone; hisgrowing years, his increasing infirmities, and the flickering decay ofhis once great intellect, allowed him but little chance of ever againtaking an active part in the affairs of the State. Marlborough wasnamed a member of it, as we have seen. The Lords Justices ordered thatall despatches addressed to the Secretary of State should be brought tothem. Bolingbroke himself had to wait at the door of the CouncilChamber with his despatch-box, to receive the commands of his newmasters. France, tired of war, recognized the new King of England. Thecoronation of the King took place on October 20th; Bolingbroke andOxford were both present. We learn from some of the journals of theday that it had rained on the previous afternoon, and that many of theJacobites promised themselves that the rain would continue to the nextday, and so retard, if only for a few hours, the hateful ceremony. Buttheir hopes of foul weather {102} were disappointed. The rain did notkeep on, and the coronation took place successfully in London; not, however, without some Jacobite disturbances in Bristol, Birmingham, Norwich, and other places. [Sidenote: 1714--Flight of Bolingbroke] The Government soon after issued a proclamation dissolving the existingParliament, and another summoning a new one. The latter called on allthe electors of the kingdom, in consequence of the evil designs of mendisaffected to the King, "to have a particular regard to such as showeda firmness to the Protestant Succession when it was in danger. " Theappeal was clearly unconstitutional, according to our ideas, but it wasmade, probably, in answer to James Stuart's manifesto a few weeksbefore, in which the Pretender reasserted his claims to the throne, anddeclared that he had only waited until the death "of the Princess, oursister, of whose good intentions towards us we could not for some timepast well doubt. " The general elections showed an overwhelming majority for the Whigs. The not unnatural fluctuations of public opinion at such a time areeffectively illustrated by the sudden and complete manner in which themajority was transferred, now to this side, now to that. Just at thismoment, and indeed for long after, the Whigs had it all their own way. Only a few years ago their fortunes had seemed to have sunk to zero, and now they had mounted again to the zenith. The King openedParliament in person; the Speech was read for him by the LordChancellor, for the very good reason that George could not pronounceEnglish. That Speech declared that the established Constitution, Church and State, should be the rule of his Government. The debate onthe Address was remarkable. In the House of Lords the Addresscontained the words, "To recover the reputation of this kingdom. "Bolingbroke made his last speech in Parliament. He objected to thesewords, and proposed an amendment, with an eloquence and an energyworthy of his best days, and with a front as seemingly fearless asthough his fortunes were at the full. He contended that to talk of{103} "recovering" the reputation of the kingdom was to cast a stigmaon the glory of the late reign. He proposed to substitute the word"maintain" for the word "recover. " His amendment was defeated bysixty-six votes to thirty-three: exactly two to one. In the House ofCommons the Address, which was moved by Walpole, contained words stillmore significant. The Address spoke of the Pretender's attempts "tostir up your Majesty's subjects to rebellion, " declared that his hopes"were built upon the measures that had been taken for some time past inGreat Britain, " and added: "It shall be our business to trace out thosemeasures whereon he placed his hopes, and to bring the authors of themto condign punishment. " These words were the first distinct intimationgiven by the Ministers that they intended to call their predecessors toaccount. Stanhope stated their resolve still more explicitly in thecourse of the debate. Bolingbroke sat and heard it announced that heand his late colleague were to be impeached for high-treason. He puton an appearance of serenity and philosophic boldness for a time, butin his heart he had already taken fright. For a few days he went aboutin public, showing himself ostentatiously, with all the manner of a manwho is happy in his unwonted ease, and is only anxious for relaxationand amusement. He professed to be rejoiced by his release from office, and those of his friends who wished to please him offered him theirformal congratulations on his promotion to a retirement that placed himabove the petty struggles and cares of political life. He visitedDrury Lane Theatre on March 26, 1715, went about among his friends, chatted, flirted, paid compliments, received compliments, arranged toattend another performance at the same theatre the following evening. That same night he disguised himself as a serving-man, slipped quietlydown to Dover, escaped from thence to Calais, and went hurriedly on toParis, ready to place himself and his talents and his influence--suchas it might be--at the service of the Stuarts. There seems good reason to believe that the Duke of {104} Marlborough, by a master-stroke of treachery, avenged himself on Bolingbroke at thiscrisis in Bolingbroke's fortunes, and decided the flight to Paris. Bolingbroke sought out Marlborough, and appealing to the memories oftheir old friendship, begged for advice and assistance. Marlboroughprofessed the utmost concern for Bolingbroke, and gave him tounderstand that it was agreed upon between the Ministers of the Crownand the Dutch Government that Bolingbroke was to be brought to thescaffold. Marlborough pretended to have certain knowledge of this, andhe told Bolingbroke that his only chance was in flight. Bolingbrokefled, and thereby seemed to admit in advance all the accusations of hisenemies and to abandon his friends to their mercy. One ofBolingbroke's biographers appears to consider that on the whole thiswas well done by Marlborough, and that it was only a fair retaliationon Bolingbroke. In any case, it is clear that Bolingbroke acted instrict consistency with the principles on which he had moulded hispublic and private life; he consulted for himself first of all. It mayhave been necessary for his own safety that he should fly from thethreatening storm, It is certain that he had bitter and unrelentingenemies. These would not have spared him if they could have made out acase against him. No one but Bolingbroke himself could know to thefull how much of a case there was against him. But his flight, if itsaved himself, might have been fatal to those who were in league withhim for the return of the Stuarts. If he had stood firm, it isprobable that his enemies would not have been able to prevail anyfurther against him than they were able to prevail in his absenceagainst Harley, whom his flight so seriously compromised. Nobody needsto be told that the one last hope for conspirators whose plans arebeing discovered is for all in the plot to stand together or all to flytogether. Bolingbroke does not seem to have given his associates anychance of considering the position and making up their minds. [Sidenote: 1715--The Committee of Secrecy] A committee of secrecy was struck. It was composed {105} of twenty-onemembers, and the hearts of Bolingbroke's friends may well have sunkwithin them as they studied the names upon its roll. Many of itsmembers were conscientious Whigs--Whigs of conviction, eaten up withthe zeal of their house, like James Stanhope himself, and SpencerCowper and Lord Coningsby and young Lord Finch and Pulteney, now in hisperiod of full devotion to Walpole. There were Whig lawyers, likeLechmere; there were steady, obtuse Whigs, like Edward Wortley Montagu, husband of the brilliant and beautiful woman whom Pope first loved andthen hated. There was Aislabie, then Treasurer of the Navy, afterwardsChancellor of the Exchequer, who came to disgrace at the bursting ofthe South Sea Bubble, and who would at any time have elected to go withthe strongest, and loved to tread the path lighted by his ownimpressions as to his own interests. Thomas Pitt, grandfather to thegreat Chatham, the "Governor Pitt" of Madras, whose diamonds wereobjects of admiration to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, was a member of thecommittee; and so was Sir Richard Onslow, afterwards speaker of theHouse of Commons, and uncle of the much more celebrated "SpeakerOnslow. " From none of these men could Bolingbroke have much favor toexpect. Those who were honest and unselfish would be ill-disposedtowards him because of their honesty and unselfishness; those who werenot exactly honest and certainly not unselfish, would, by reason oftheir character, probably be only too anxious to help the winning partyto get rid of him. But the names that must have showed most formidablein the eyes of Bolingbroke and his friends were those of Robert Walpoleand Richard Hampden. Two years before this time the persistent enmityof Bolingbroke had sent Walpole to the Tower, branded with the chargeof corruption and expelled from the House of Commons. Now things arechanged indeed. Walpole is chairman of the committee, and "Hast thoufound me, oh, mine enemy?" St. John had threatened Hampden, who was alineal descendant of the {106} Hampden of the Civil War, with theTower, for daring to censure the Ministry of the day, and was onlydeterred from carrying out his threat by prudent counsellors, whoshowed him that Hampden would be only too proud to share Walpole'simprisonment. These were men not likely to forget or to forgive suchinjuries. At first the Tories seem scarcely to have believed that the Whigs wouldpush their policy to extremities. The eccentric Jacobite Shippenpublicly scoffed at the committee, and declared in the Mouse of Commonsthat its investigations would vanish into smoke. Such confidence wasquickly and rudely shattered. June 9th saw a memorable scene. On thatday Robert Walpole, as chairman of the Committee of Secrecy, rose andtold the House of Commons that he had to present a report, but that hewas commanded by the committee to move in the first instance that awarrant be issued by the Speaker to apprehend several persons whoshould be named by him, and that meantime no member be permitted toleave the House. Thereupon the lobbies were cleared of all strangers, and the Sergeant-at-arms stood at the door in order to prevent anymember from going out. Then Walpole named Mr. Matthew Prior, Mr. Thomas Harley, and other persons, and the Speaker issued his warrantfor their arrest. Mr. Prior was arrested at once; Mr. Harley a fewhours afterwards. [Sidenote: 1715--"Most contagious treason"] Prior was the poet, the friend and correspondent of Bolingbroke. Hehad been much engaged in the negotiations for the Treaty of Utrecht, and had at one time actually held the rank of English Envoy. He hadbut lately returned from Paris; had arrived in London just beforeBolingbroke's flight. Thomas Harley, cousin of Lord Oxford, had alsobeen concerned in the negotiations in a less formal and more underhandsort of way. When the arrests had been ordered, Walpole informed theHouse that the Committee of Secrecy had agreed upon their report, andhad commanded him to submit it to the House of Commons. The report, which Walpole himself, as {107} chairman of the committee, had drawnup, was a document of great length; it occupied many hours in thereading. But the time could not have seemed tedious to those wholistened. The report was an indictment and a State paper combined. Itarrayed with the utmost skill all the evidences and arguments, all thefacts and all the passages of correspondence, necessary to make out acase against the accused statesmen. It carried with it, beyondquestion, the complete historical condemnation of Oxford andBolingbroke in all that related to the Treaty of Utrecht. Never was itmore conclusively established for the historian that Ministers of Statehad used the basest means to bring about the basest objects. It wasmade clear as light that the national interests and the national honorhad been sacrificed for partisan and for personal purposes. Objects inthemselves criminal for statesmen to aim at had been sought by meanswhich would have been shameful even if employed for justifiable ends. Had Bolingbroke and Oxford been endeavoring to save the State by thearts which they employed to sacrifice it, their conduct would havecalled for the condemnation of all honest men. But as regards thetransactions with James Stuart there was ample ground shown forsuspicion, there was good reason to conjecture or to infer, but therewas no positive evidence of intended treason. A historian reading overthe report would in all probability come to the conclusion that Oxfordand Bolingbroke had been plotting with James Stuart, but he would notsee in it satisfactory grounds for an impeachment. No jury wouldconvict on such evidence; no jury probably would even leave the box forthe purpose of considering their verdict. In the course of the eventsthat were soon to follow it was placed beyond any doubt thatBolingbroke and Oxford had all along been trying to arrange for thereturn of the Stuarts. They were not driven to throw themselves indespair into the Stuart cause by reason of harsh proceedings takenagainst them by their enemies in England; they had been "pipe-laying, "to use an expressive {108} American word, for the Stuart restorationduring all the closing years of Queen Anne's reign. The reader mustdecide for himself as to the degree of moral or political guiltinvolved in such transactions. It has to be remembered that nearlyhalf--some still say more than half--of the population of thesecountries was in favor of such a restoration, and that Anne herselfunquestionably leaned to the same view. What is certain is that Oxfordand Bolingbroke were planning for it. But what seems equally clear isthat the report of the Secret Committee did not contain satisfactoryevidence on which to sustain a charge of treason. Swift is not atrustworthy witness on these subjects, but he is quite right when hesays that the allegations were "more proper materials to furnish out apamphlet than an impeachment. " [Sidenote: 1715--"An intricate impeach is this!"] Bolingbroke's friends must have felt deeply grieved at his flight whenthey heard the statement of the case against him. Even as regards theTreaty of Utrecht, it seems questionable whether the historicalconviction assuredly obtained against him by the contents of the reportwould, in the existing condition of politics and parties, have beenfollowed by any sort of judicial conviction, whether in a court of lawor a trial by Parliament. The day after the reading of the report gave Walpole his long-desiredrevenge; he impeached Bolingbroke of high-treason. There was a deadsilence in the House when he had finished. Then two of Bolingbroke'sfriends, Mr. Hungerford and General Ross, mustered up courage to speaka few words for their lost leader. The star of the morning, the ToryLucifer, had fallen indeed! Lord Coningsby got up and made a cleverlittle set speech. Walpole had impeached the hand, and Lord Coningsbyimpeached the head; Walpole had impeached the clerk, and Coningsbyimpeached the justice; Walpole had impeached the scholar, and Coningsbyimpeached the master. This head, this justice, this master, was, ofcourse, the Lord Oxford. As a piece of dramatic declamation {109}Coningsby's impeachment was telling enough; as a historicalpresentation of the case against the two men it was absurd. Throughall Anne's later years Oxford had been nothing and Bolingbrokeeverything. On the very eve of the Queen's death Bolingbroke hadsecured his triumph over his former friend by driving Oxford out of alloffice. Had Oxford been first impeached, and the speech of LordConingsby been aimed at Bolingbroke, it would have been strikinglyappropriate; as it was, it became meaningless rhetoric. Next dayOxford went to the House of Lords, and tried to appear cool andunconcerned, but, according to a contemporary account, "finding thatmost members avoided sitting near him, and that even the Earl Powletwas shy of exchanging a few words with him, he was dashed out ofcountenance, and retired out of the House. " Impeachments were now the order of the day. The loyal Whigs of theCommons were incessantly passing between the Upper House and the Lowerwith articles of impeachment, and still further articles when the firstwere not found to be strong enough for the purpose. Stanhope impeachedthe Duke of Ormond; Aislabie impeached Lord Strafford--not ofhigh-treason, but of high crimes and misdemeanors; Strafford wasaccused of being not only "the tool of a Frenchified ministry, " but theadviser of most pernicious measures. Strafford's part in thenegotiations had not been one of any considerable importance. He hadbeen sent as English Plenipotentiary to the Congress at Utrecht. Associated with him as Second Plenipotentiary was Dr. John Robinson, then Bishop of Bristol, and more lately made Bishop of London, thechurchman on whom the office of the Privy Seal had been conferred byHarley, to the great anger of the Whigs. It was said that Strafford, in his high and mighty way, had refused flatly to accept a mere poetlike Prior for his official colleague. Strafford had, in reality, little or nothing to do with the making of the Treaty. Thenegotiations were carried on between Bolingbroke and {110} the Marquisde Torcy, French Secretary of State and nephew of the great Colbert;and when these wanted agents they employed men more clever and lesspompous than Strafford. Aislabie, in bringing on his motion, drew acurious distinction between Strafford and Strafford's officialcolleague. "The good and pious Prelate, " he said, had been only acipher, and "seemed to have been put at the head of that negotiationonly to palliate the iniquity of it under the sacredness of hischaracter. " He was glad, therefore, that nothing could be charged uponthe Bishop, and complacently observed that the course taken with regardto Dr. Robinson, who was not to be impeached, "ought to convince theworld that the Church was not in danger. " There was some wisdom aswell as wit in a remark made thereupon by a member of the House inopposing the motion--"the Bishop, it seems, is to have the benefit ofclergy. " [Sidenote: 1715--Ormond's hesitation] The motions for the impeachment of Bolingbroke and Oxford were carriedwithout a division. This fact, however, would be little indication asto the result of an impeachment after a long trial, and after the mindsof men had cooled down on both sides; when Whigs had grown lesspassionate in their hate, and Tories had recovered their courage tosustain their friends. Even at the moment the impeachment of the Dukeof Ormond was a matter of far greater difficulty. Ormond had manyfriends, even among the most genuine supporters of the Hanoveriansuccession. He was the idol of the High-Church party; at all events, of the High-Church mob. Had he acted with anything like a steadyresolve he would, in all probability, have escaped even impeachment. To some of the most serious charges against him, his refusal, forinstance, to attack the French while the secret negotiations for theTreaty of Utrecht were going on, he could fairly have pleaded that hehad acted only as a soldier taking positive instructions and carryingthem out. His clear and obvious policy would have been to take thequiet stand of a man conscious of innocence, and {111} therefore notafraid of the scrutiny of any committee or the judgment of any tribunal. But Ormond hesitated. Ormond was always hesitating. Many of hisinfluential supporters urged him to seek an audience of the King atonce, and to profess to George his unfailing and incorruptible loyalty. Had he taken such a course it is not at all unlikely that the Kingmight have caused the measures against him to be abandoned. Ormond'sfriends, indeed, were full of hope that they could, in any case, inducethe Ministry not to persevere in the proceedings against him. On theother hand, he was urged to join in an insurrection in the West ofEngland, towards which, beyond doubt, he had already himself taken somesteps. The less cautious of his friends assured him that hisappearance in the West would be welcomed with open arms, and wouldbring a vast number of adherents round him, and that a powerful blowcould be struck at once against the Hanoverian succession. Ormond, however, took neither the one course nor the other. To do him justice, he was far too honorable for the utter perfidy of the first course, andit is doing him no injustice to say that he was too feeble for thedaring enterprise of the second. It is believed that Ormond had aninterview with Oxford before his flight, and that he urged Oxford toattempt an escape in terms not unlike those with which William theSilent, in Goethe's play, endeavors to persuade Egmont not to remain inthe power of Philip the Second. Then Ormond himself fled to France. He lived there for thirty years after. He led a pleasant, easy, harmless life, and was completely forgotten in England for years andyears before his death. More than twenty years after his flight he isdescribed by vivacious Mary Wortley Montagu as "one who seems to haveforgotten every part of his past life, and to be of no party. " He wasa weak man, with only a very faint outline of a character; but he wasmore honorable and consistent than was common with the men of his time. When he had once taken up a cause or a principle he held to it. {112}He was the very opposite to Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke was genius andforce without principle. Ormond had principle without genius or force. [Sidenote: 1715--Oxford committed to the Tower] Two, then, of the great accused peers were beyond the reach of theHouse of Lords. Oxford alone remained. On July 9, 1715, articles ofimpeachment were brought up against him. The impeachment does not seemto have been very substantial in its character. The great majority ofits articles referred to the conduct of Oxford with regard to theTreaty of Utrecht. One article accused him of having abused hisinfluence over her Majesty by prevailing upon her to exercise "in themost unprecedented and dangerous manner" her prerogative by thecreation of twelve Peers in December, 1711. A motion that Oxford becommitted to the Tower was made, and on this motion he spoke a fewwords which were at once ingenious and dignified. He asserted hisinnocence of any treasonable practice or thought, and declared thatwhat he had done was done in obedience to the positive orders of theQueen. He asked the House what might not happen if Ministers of State, acting on the immediate commands of their sovereign, were afterwards tobe made accountable for their proceedings. Then in a few words hecommended his cause to the justice of his brother peers, and took leaveof the House of Lords, as he put it, "perhaps forever. " Such animpeachment would have been impossible in more recent days. If Oxfordhad been accused of treasonable dealings with the Stuarts, and ifevidence could have been brought home to him, there indeed might havebeen a reasonable ground for impeachment. But there was no sufficientevidence for any such purpose, and to impeach a statesman simplybecause he had taken a political course which was afterwardsdisapproved by the nation, and which was discredited by results, wassimply to say that any failure in the policy of a Minister of the Crownmight make him liable to impeachment when his enemies came into power. The Peace of Utrecht, bad as it was, had been condoned, or rather {113}approved of, by two successive Parliaments. Shrewsbury, who was now inhigh favor, had been actively concerned in its promotion. It was aquestion of compromise altogether, on which politicians were entitledto form the strongest opinions. No doubt the enemies of the Tory partyhad ample ground for condemning and denouncing the Peace. But the partwhich a statesman had taken in bringing about the Peace could not, according to our modern ideas, form any just ground of ministerialimpeachment. Much more reasonably might the statesmen of a later dayhave been impeached who, by their blundering and obstinacy, broughtabout the armed resistance and the final independence of the NorthAmerican colonies. It is curious, in our eyes, to find Oxforddefending his conduct on the ground that he had simply obeyed thepositive orders of his sovereign. The minister would run more risk ofimpeachment, in our days, who declared that he had acted in some greatpublic crisis simply in obedience to his sovereign's orders, than if hewere to stand accountable for the greatest errors, the grossestblunders, committed on the judgment and on the responsibility ofhimself and his colleagues. Oxford was committed to the Tower, whither he went escorted by animmense popular procession of his admirers, who cheered vociferouslyfor him and for High-Church together. He may now be said to drop outof our history altogether. He was destined to linger in longconfinement, almost like one forgotten by friends and enemies. Weshall have to tell afterwards how he petitioned for a trial, and wasbrought to trial, and in what fashion he came to be acquitted by hispeers. The remainder of his life he passed in happy quietude among hisbooks and curious manuscripts; the books and manuscripts which formedthe original stock of the Harleian Library, afterwards completed by hisson. Harley lived until 1724, and was not an old man even then--onlysixty-three. It is not necessary that in this work we should concernourselves much more about him. Despite all the {114} praises of hisfriends, some of them men of the highest intellectual gifts, like Swiftand Pope, there does not seem to have been any great quality, intellectual or moral, in Harley. He had a narrow and feeble mind; hewas incapable of taking a large view of anything; he was selfish anddeceitful; although it has to be said that sometimes that which mencalled deceit in him was but a lack of the capacity to look straightbefore him and make up his mind. He often led astray those who actedwith him merely because his own confusion of intellect and want ofdefined purpose were leading himself astray. Perhaps the mostdignified passage in his life was that which showed him calmly awaitingthe worst in London, when men like Bolingbroke and Ormond had chosen toseek safety in flight. Yet even the course which he took in thisinstance seems to have been rather the result of indecision than ofindependent self-sufficing courage and resolve. He does not appear tohave been able to decide upon anything until the time had passed whenmovement of any kind would have availed, and so he remained where hewas. Many a man has gained credit for courage, and has seemed tosurround himself with dignity, because at a moment of alarm, whenothers did this or that, he was unable quite to make up his mind as towhat he ought to do, and so did nothing, and let the world go by. [Sidenote: 1715--Sir Henry St. John] On September 17, Norroy, King at Arms, came solemnly down to the Houseof Lords and razed the names of Ormond and of Bolingbroke from the rollof peers. Bolingbroke had some consolation of a sham kind. He hadwished and schemed to be Earl of Bolingbroke before his fall, and nowhis new king, James of St. Germains, had given him the patent ofenhanced nobility. If he ceased to be a viscount in the eyes ofEnglish peers and of English heralds, he was still an earl in thePretender's court. Bolingbroke had too keen a sense of humor not to bepainfully aware of the irony of the situation. Nor was he likely tofind much satisfaction in the peerage {115} which the Government hadjust conferred upon his father, Sir Henry St. John, by creating himBaron of Battersea and Viscount St. John. Sir Henry St. John was anidle, careless _roué_, a haunter of St. James's coffee-houses, livingin the manner and in the memories of the Restoration, listlesslyindifferent to all parties, leaning, perhaps, a little to the Whigs. He had no manner of sympathy with his son or appreciation of hisgenius. When the son was made a peer the father only said, "Well, Harry, I thought thee would be hanged, but now I see thee wilt bebeheaded. " The father himself was once very near being hanged. In hiswild youth he had killed a man in a quarrel, and was tried for murderand condemned to death, and then pardoned by the King, Charles II. , inconsideration, it is said, of a liberal money-payment to the merrymonarch and his yet more merry mistresses. {116} CHAPTER VII. THE WHITE COCKADE. [Sidenote: 1715--Bolingbroke at St. Germains] When Bolingbroke got to Paris he did not immediately attach himself tothe service of James. Even then and there he still appears to havebeen undecided. In the modern American phrase, he "sat on the fence"for a while. Probably, if he had seen even then a chance of returningwith safety to England, if the impeachments had not been going on, andif any manner of overture had been made to him from London, he wouldforthwith have dropped the Jacobite cause, and returned to profess hisloyalty to the reigning English sovereign. After a while, however, seeing that there was no chance for him at home, he went openly intothe cause of the Stuarts, and accepted the office of Secretary of Stateto James. It must have been a trying position for a man ofBolingbroke's genius and ambition when he found himself thus compelledto put up with an empty office at a sham court. Bolingbroke's desirewas to play on a great stage, with a vast admiring audience. He lovedthe heat and passion of debate; he enjoyed his own rhetorical triumphs. He must have been chilled and cramped indeed in a situation whichallowed him no opportunity of displaying his most splendid and genuinequalities, while it constantly called on him for the exercise of thevery qualities which he had least at hand. Nature had never meant himfor a conspirator, or even for a subtle political intriguer; nor, indeed, had Nature ever intended him to be the adherent of a lostcause. All that could have made a position like his tolerable to a manof his peculiar capacity would have been faith in the cause--that faithwhich would have {117} prevented him from seeing any but its noble andexalted qualities, and would have made him forget himself in its hopes, its perils, its triumphs, and its disasters. On the contrary, it wouldseem that Bolingbroke found it difficult to take the Stuart causeseriously, even when he was himself playing the part of its leadingstatesman. A critical observer writes from Paris in the early part ofthe year 1716, saying that he believed Bolingbroke's chief fault was"that he could not play his part with a grave enough face; he could nothelp laughing now and then at such kings and queens. " Meantime, Bolingbroke amused himself in his moments of recreation after his oldfashion, he indulged in amour after amour, intrigue after intrigue. Lord Chesterfield said of him, that "though nobody spoke and wrotebetter upon philosophy than Lord Bolingbroke, no man in the world hadless share of philosophy than himself. The least trifle, such as theoverroasting of a leg of mutton, would strangely disturb and ruffle histemper. " On the other hand, a glance from a pretty woman, or a glimpseof her ankle, would send all Bolingbroke's political combinations andphilosophical speculations flying into the air, and convert him in amoment from the statesman or the philosopher into the merest _petitmaître_, macaroni, and gallant. Louis the Fourteenth refused to give open assistance to the cause ofthe Stuarts, but he was willing enough to lend any help that he couldin private to Bolingbroke and to them. His death was the first severeblow to the cause which Bolingbroke now represented. Louis theFourteenth was, according to Bolingbroke himself, the best friend Jamesthen had. "When I engaged, " says Bolingbroke, "in this business, myprincipal dependence was on his personal character; my hopes sank as hedeclined, and died when he expired. " The Regent, Duke of Orleans, wasa man who, with all his coarse and unrestricted dissipation, had somepolitical capacity and even statesmanship. He saw that the Stuart wasa sinking, the Hanoverian a rising cause. Even when the two seemed{118} most nearly balanced it yet appeared to Orleans, if we may quotea phrase more often used in our days than in his, that the one causewas only half alive, but the other was half dead. Orleans, moreover, had a good deal of that feeling which was more strongly marked still ina Duke of Orleans of a later day. He had a liking for England and forEnglish ways; he was, indeed, rather inclined to affect the politicalmanners of an English statesman. He therefore leaned to the side ofthe Government established in England; and, at the urgent request ofthe English Ambassador in Paris, he acted with some energy inpreventing the sailing of vessels intended for the uses of anexpedition to the English coast. [Sidenote: 1715--"Mischief, thou art afoot. "] James Stuart seemed as if he were determined still further to imperilthe chances of his family, and to embarrass his adherents. The rightmoment for a movement in his favor had been allowed to pass away, andnow, with characteristic blundering and ill fortune, he seized upon themost unsuitable time that could possibly have been employed for such anattempt. Something might have been done, perhaps, a temporaryalteration in the dynasty might have been obtained, if energy anddecision had been shown in that momentous interval when Queen Anne laydying. But when that time had been allowed to pass, the clear policyof the Pretender was to permit the fears of Englishmen to go to sleepfor a while, to endeavor to reorganize his plans and his party; to waituntil a certain reaction should set in, a reaction very likely to comeabout because of the apparent incapacity and the unattractive characterof George the First, and then at some timely hour, with well-maturedpreparations, to strike an energetic blow. George the First was only ayear on the throne when the adherents of James got up a miserableattempt at an insurrection. There were three conditions under which, and under which alone, aninsurrection just then would have had a reasonable chance of success. These conditions were fully recognized and understood by the Jacobiteleaders {119} in England, Scotland, and France. The first was that arising should take place at once in England and in Scotland, the secondthat the Chevalier in person should take the field, and the third thatFrance should give positive assistance to the enterprise. The Jacobitecause was strong in the south-western counties of England, and therethe influence of the Duke of Ormond was strong likewise. The generalarrangement, therefore, in the minds of the Jacobite chiefs was thatJames Stuart should make his appearance in Scotland, that at the samemoment the Duke of Ormond should raise the standard of revolt in someof the south-western counties, and that France should assist theexpedition with men, money, and arms. When James, acting against theadvice of his best counsellors, resolved on striking a blow at once, two of the necessary conditions were clearly wanting. France was notwilling to give any actual assistance, and Ormond was not ready toraise the standard of rebellion in England. Ormond's sudden appearance in Paris struck dismay into the hearts ofthe Jacobite counsellors, men and women, there. It had been distinctlyunderstood that he was to remain in England, and that, if threatenedwith arrest, he was to hasten to one of the western counties, where heand his friends were strong, and strike a sudden blow. He was to seizeBristol, Exeter, Plymouth, and other towns, and set the Stuart flagflying all over that part of England. When he appeared in France, amere solitary fugitive, all men of sense saw that the game was up. Bolingbroke at once sent through safe hands a clear statement of thecondition of things, to be laid before Lord Mar. Bolingbroke's objectwas to restrain Mar from any movement in the altered state of affairs. The letter, however, came too late. Mar had already made his movementtowards the Highlands: there was no stopping the enterprise then; therebellion had taken fire. James was determined more than ever to go. His arguments were the arguments of mere desperation. "I cannot but{120} see, " he wrote to Bolingbroke, "that affairs grow daily worse andworse by delays, and that, as the business is now more difficult thanit was six months ago, so these difficulties will, in all humanappearance, rather increase than diminish. Violent diseases must haveviolent remedies, and to use none has, in some cases, the same effectas to use bad ones. " Indeed, it was impossible that the Chevalierhimself or the Duke of Ormond could hold back. Both had personalcourage quite enough for such an attempt. On the 28th of October JamesStuart, after many delays, set out in disguise, and travelled westwardto St. Malo. Ormond sailed from the coast of Normandy to that ofDevonshire, but found there no sign of any arrangement for a rising. His plans had long been known to the English Government, and measureshad been taken to frustrate them. In that little Jacobite Parliamentsitting in Paris, which Bolingbroke spoke of with such contempt, andfrom which, as he puts it, "no sex was excluded, " there was hardly anysecret made of the projects they were carrying on. Before the suddenappearance of Ormond in Paris they had counted, with the utmostconfidence, on a full success, and were already talking of theRestoration as if it were an accomplished fact. Every word theyuttered which it was of the least importance for the British Governmentto hear was instantly made known to Lord Stair, the new EnglishAmbassador--a resolute and capable man, a brilliant soldier, an astuteand bold diplomatist, equal to any craft, ready for any emergency, charming to all, dear to his friends, very formidable to his enemies. Ormond found that, as he had let the favorable moment slip when he fledfrom England to France, there was now no means whatever of recallingthe lost opportunity. He returned to Brittany, and there he found theChevalier preparing to start for Scotland. After various goings andcomings the Chevalier was at last enabled to embark at Dunkirk in asmall vessel, with a few guns and half a dozen Jacobite officers toattend him, and he made for the Scottish coast. {121} [Sidenote: 1715--The camp in Hyde Park] About the same time, and as if in obedience to some word of commandfrom France, there was a general and almost simultaneous outburst ofJacobite demonstration in England, amounting in most places to riot. In London, and all over England, so far as one can judge, the popularfeeling appears to have been rather with the Jacobites than againstthem. Stout Jacobites toasted a mysterious person called Job, who hadno connection with the prophet, but whose name contained the initialletters of James, Ormond, and Bolingbroke; and "Kit" was no lesspopular, because it stood for "King James III. , " while the mysterioussymbolism of the "Three B's" implied "Best Born Briton, " and so theChevalier de St. George. The Chevalier's birthday--the 10th ofJune--was celebrated with wild outbursts of enthusiasm in severalplaces. Stuart-loving Oxford in especial made a brave show of itswhite roses. The Loyalists, who endeavored to do a similar honor tothe birthday of King George, were often violently assailed by mobs. Inmany places the windows of houses whose inmates refused to illuminatein honor of the Chevalier were broken; William the Third was burned ineffigy in various parts of London, and in many towns throughout thecountry. So serious at one period did the revulsion of Jacobitefeeling appear to be, that it was thought necessary to form a camp inHyde Park, and to bring together a large body of troops there. TheLife Guards and Horse Grenadiers, three battalions of the Foot Guards, the Duke of Argyll's regiment, and several pieces of cannon wereestablished in the camp. By a curious coincidence the troops werereviewed by King George, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke ofMarlborough, on the 25th of August, 1715, the very day on which, as weshall presently see, the Highland clans set up the standard of theStuarts at Braemar, in Scotland. The camp had a certain amount ofpractical advantage in it, independently of its supposed politicalnecessity--it made Hyde Park safe at night. Before the camp wasestablished, and after it was broken up, the Park appears to {122} havebeen little better than Bagshot Heath or Hounslow Heath. It was thefavorite parade-ground of highway robbers and murderers. The soldiersthemselves were occasionally suspected of playing the part ofhighwaymen. "A man in those days, " says Scott, "might have all theexternal appearance of a gentleman, and yet turn out to be ahighwayman;" and "the profession of the polite and accomplishedadventurer who nicked you out of your money at White's, or bowled youout of it at Marylebone, was often united with that of the professedruffian who, on Bagshot Heath or Finchley Common, commanded his brotherbeau to stand and deliver. " "Robbers--a fertile and alarmingtheme--filled up every vacancy, and the names of the Golden Farmer, theFlying Highwayman, Jack Needham, and other Beggars' Opera heroes, werefamiliar in our mouths as household words. " The revulsion of Jacobitefeeling actually showed itself sometimes among the soldiers in thecamp. Accounts published at the time tell us of men having beenflogged and shot for wearing Jacobite emblems in their caps. Perhapsin mentioning this Hyde Park camp it may not be inappropriate to noticethe fact that General Macartney, who had figured in a terrible tragedyin the Park two or three years before, returned to England, andobtained the favor of George by bringing over six thousand soldiersfrom Holland to assist the King. General Macartney was the man who hadacted as second to Lord Mohun in the fatal duel in Hyde Park on the15th of November, 1712, when both Mohun and the Duke of Hamilton werekilled. Macartney escaped to Holland, and was charged by the Duke ofHamilton's second with having stabbed the Duke through the heart whileColonel Hamilton was endeavoring to raise him from the ground. Macartney came back and took his trial, but was only found guilty ofmanslaughter--that is to say, found guilty of having taken part in theduel, and escaped without punishment. Probably Macartney, andHamilton, and Mohun, and the Duke are best remembered in our timebecause of the {123} effect which that fatal meeting had upon thefortunes of Beatrix Esmond. [Sidenote: 1715--John Erskine of Mar] The insurrection had already broken out in Scotland. John Erskine, eleventh Earl of Mar, set himself up as lieutenant-general in the causeof the Chevalier. Lord Mar was a man of much courage and somecapacity. He had held high office under Queen Anne. One of thebiographers of that period describes Mar as a devoted adherent of theStuarts. His career is indeed a fair illustration of the sort of thingwhich then sometimes passed for devoted adherence to a cause. WhenKing George reached England he dismissed Mar from office, suspectinghim of sympathy with the Jacobite movement. Mar had expected somethingof the kind, and had written an obsequious and a grovelling letter toGeorge, in which he spoke of the king's "happy accession, " professedunbounded devotion to the house of Hanover, and promised that "Youshall ever find in me as faithful a subject as ever any king had. " Thenew king, however, declined to trust to the faithfulness of thissubject; and a year after the faithful subject had returned to hisJacobite convictions, and was gathering the Highland clans in JamesStuart's name. The clans were got together at Braemar. The white cockade was mountedthere by clan after clan, the Macintoshes being the first to display itas the emblem of the Stuart cause. Inverness was seized. King Jameswas proclaimed at several places, notably at Dundee, by Graham, thebrother of "conquering Graham, " Bonnie Dundee, the fearless, cruel, clever Claverhouse who fell at Killiecrankie. Perth was secured. Theforce under Mar's leadership grow greater every day. He had begun witha handful of men. He had now a little army. He had set up hisstandard almost at hap-hazard at Braemar, and now nearly all thecountry north of the Tay was in the hands of the Jacobites. The Duke of Argyll was put in command of the royal forces, and arrivedin Scotland in the middle of September 1716. He hastened to the camp, which had been got {124} together somehow at Stirling. He came therealmost literally alone. He brought no soldiers with him. He found fewsoldiers there to receive him. Under his command he had altogetherabout a thousand foot and half as many dragoons, the latter consistingin great measure of the famous and excellent Scots Grays. His prospectlooked indeed very doubtful. He could expect little or no assistancefrom his own clan. They had work enough to do in guarding against apossible attack from some of the followers of Lord Mar. Glasgow, Dumfries, and other towns were likewise in imminent danger from some ofthe Highland clans, and were kept in a continual agony of apprehension. It seemed likely enough that Argyll might soon be surrounded atStirling. If Mar had only made a forward movement it is impossible tosay what degree of success he might not have accomplished. It seemsalmost marvellous, when we look back and survey the state of things, tosee what a miserable force the Government had to rely upon. In thewhole country they had only about eight thousand men. They had moremen abroad than at home, and in the critical condition of things whichstill prevailed upon the Continent, it did not seem clear that theycould, except in the very last extremity, bring home many of the menwhom they kept abroad. Of that little force of eight thousand soldiersthey did not venture to send a considerable proportion up to the North. They had, perhaps, good reason. They did not know yet where theserious blow was to be struck for the Stuart cause. Many of George'scounsellors still looked upon the movement in Scotland as somethingmerely in the nature of a feint. They believed that the real blowwould yet be struck by Ormond in the West of England. [Sidenote: 1715--Sheriffmuir] But the evil fortune which hung over the Stuart cause in all its laterdays clung to it now. There was no conceivable reason why Mar shouldnot have marched southward. The forces of the King were few in number, and were not well placed for the purpose of making any considerableresistance. But in an enterprise like that of {125} Mar all dependsupon rapidity of movement. What we may call the ultimate resources ofthe country were in the hands of the King and his adherents. Everyday's delay enabled them to grow stronger. Every day's delay beyond acertain time discouraged and weakened the invaders. Mar might, at onecritical moment, have swept Argyll's exhausted troops before him, buthe was feeble and timorous; he dallied; he let the time pass; heallowed Argyll to get away without making an effort to attack him. Itwas then that one of the Gordon clan broke into that memorableexclamation, "Oh for one hour of Dundee!"--the exclamation which Byronhas paraphrased in the line, Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo! Certainly one hour of Dundee might, at more than one crisis in thismelancholy struggle, have secured for the time the cause of theStuarts, and won for James at least a temporary occupation of thethrone of his ancestors. Mar's little force remained motionless longenough to allow the Duke of Argyll to get sufficient strength to makean attack upon it at Sheriffmuir. Sheriffmuir was not much of avictory. Each side, in fact, claimed the conqueror's honor. Mar wasnot annihilated, nor Argyll driven back. The Duke of Argyll probablylost more of his men, but, on the other hand, he captured many guns andstandards, and he re-appeared on the same field the next day, while Marshowed there no more. Tested in the only practical way, it is clearthat the Duke of Argyll had the better of it. Lord Mar wanted to dosomething, and was prevented from doing it at a time when to himeverything depended on advance and on success. The Duke of Argyllsuccessfully interposed between Mar and his object, and therefore wasclearly the victor. It is on record that no small share of Mar's ill-success was due to theaction, or rather the inaction, of the famous Highland outlaw, Rob Roy. He and his clan had joined Mar's standard, but his sympathies seem tohave been with Argyll. He had an unusually large body of {126} menunder his command, for many of the clan Macpherson had been committedto his leadership, in consequence of the old age of their chief; but ata critical moment he refused to lead his men to the charge, and stoodon a hill with his followers unconcernedly surveying the fight. It issaid that had he kept faith he could have turned the fortunes of theday. [Sidenote: 1715--"If he will die like a prince"] Argyll and the cause he represented could afford to wait, and Mar couldnot. The insurrection already began to melt. James Stuart himselfmade his appearance in Scotland. He was characteristically late forSheriffmuir, and when he did throw himself into the field he seemedunable to take any decisive step, or even to come to any cleardecision. He did not succeed in making himself popular, even for themoment, among his followers in Scotland. The occasion was one in whichgallant bearing and kingly demeanor would have gone for much, andindeed it is not at all impossible that a leader of a different stampfrom James might even then have so inspired the Highland clansmen, andso made use of his opportunity, as to overwhelm Argyll and theHanoverian forces, and turn the whole crisis to his favor. But Jameswas peculiarly unsuited to an enterprise of the kind. He had gracefulmanners, a mild, serene temper, and great power of application to work. His personal courage was undoubted, and he was willing enough to riskhis own life on any chance; but he had none of the spirit of acommander. He was sometimes weak and sometimes obstinate. His veryappearance was not in his favor among the Highland men, to whom he hadpreviously been unknown. He was tall and thin, with pale face, andeyes that wanted fire and expression. His words were few, his behavioralways sedate and somewhat depressed. Here, among the Scottishclansmen on the verge of rebellion, he seemed utterly borne down by thegreatness of the enterprise. He was wholly unable to infuse anythinglike spirit or hope into his followers. On the contrary, hisappearance among them, when he did show {127} himself, had adispiriting and a depressing effect on almost every mind. Those whoremember the manner and demeanor of the late Louis Napoleon, Emperor ofthe French, the silent shyness, the appearance of almost constantdepression, which were characteristic of that sovereign, will, wethink, be easily able to form a clear idea of the effect that JamesStuart produced among his followers in Scotland. He did not care tosee the soldiers exercise, and handle their arms; he avoided goingamong them as much as possible. The men at last began to feel amistrust of his courage--the one great quality which he certainly didnot lack. A feeling of something like contempt began to spread abroad. "Can he speak at all?" some of the soldiers asked. He was all ice; hisvery kindness was freezing. A man like Dundee called to such anenterprise would have set the clans of Scotland aflame with enthusiasm. James Stuart was only a chilling and a dissolving influence. His moreimmediate military counsellors were like himself, and their only policyseemed to be one of postponement and delay. They advised him againstaction of every kind. The clansmen grew impatient. At Perth, onedevoted Highland chief actually suggested that James should be takenaway by force from his advisers, and brought among men who were readyto fight. "If he is willing to die like a prince, " said this man, "hewill find there are ten thousand gentlemen in Scotland who are willingto die with him. " If James had followed the bent of his owndisposition, he might even then have died like a prince, or gone on toa throne. His opponents were as little inclined for action as his ownimmediate advisers. The Duke of Argyll himself delayed making anadvance until peremptory orders were sent to him from London. So long, and with so little excuse, did he delay, that statesmen in Londonsuspected, not unreasonably, that Argyll was still willing to giveJames Stuart a chance, or was not yet quite certain whether the causeof the Stuarts was wholly lost. It is characteristic of the time thatso long as there seemed any possibility of James {128} redeeming hiscrown Argyll's own colleagues suspected that Argyll was not willing toput himself personally in the way. At last, however, the peremptoryorder came that Argyll must advance upon Perth. The moment the advancebecame apparent, the counsellors of James Stuart insisted on a retreat. On a day of ill omen to the Stuart cause, the 30th of January, 1716, the anniversary of the day when Charles the First was executed, theretreat from Perth was resolved on. That retreat was the end of theenterprise. Many Jacobites had already made up their minds that thestruggle was over, that there was nothing better to be done than todisperse before the advancing troops of King George, that the soonerthe forces of James Stuart melted away, and James Stuart himself gotback to France, the better. James Stuart went back to France, and theclansmen returned to their homes. Some of the Roman Catholic gentlemenrose in Northumberland, and endeavored to form a junction with aportion of Mar's force which had come southward to meet them. TheEnglish Jacobites, however, were defeated at Preston, and compelled tosurrender. After a voyage of five days in a small vessel, Jamessucceeded in reaching Gravelines safely on the 8th of February, 1716. His whole expedition had not occupied him more than six weeks. [Sidenote: 1715--Marlborough's counsels] It was believed at the time that the counsels of the Duke ofMarlborough were mainly instrumental in bringing about the promptsuppression of the rebellion. Marlborough's advice was asked withregard to the military movements and dispositions to be made, and thebelief of the day was that it was his counsel, and the manner in whichthe Government followed it out, which led to the utter overthrow ofJames Stuart and the dispersion of his followers. Marlborough is saidto have actually told in advance the very time at which, if his advicewere followed, the rebellion could be put down. Nothing is more likelythan that Marlborough's advice should have been sought and should havebeen given. It would not in the {129} least degree militate againstthe truth of the story that the outbreak took place so soon afterMarlborough had been professing the most devoted attachment to thecause of the Stuarts, and had declared, as we have said already, thathe would rather cut off his right hand than do anything to injure theclaims of the Chevalier St. George. But it would not seem that anyadvice Marlborough might have given was followed out very strictly inthe measures taken to put down the rebellion. We may be sure thatMarlborough's would have been military counsel worthy of the greatestcommander of his age. But in the measures taken to put down therebellion we can see nothing but incapacity, vacillation, and eventimidity. An energetic man in Argyll's position, seeing how JamesStuart halted and fluctuated, must have made up his mind at once that arapid and bold movement would finish the rebellion, and we find no suchmovement made, until at last the most peremptory orders from Londoncompelled Argyll at all hazards to advance. If then Marlborough gavehis advice in London, which is very likely, it would seem that, forsome reason or other, the advice was not followed by the commanders inthe field. The whole story reminds one of the belief long entertainedin France, and which we suppose has some votaries there still, that thegreat success of the Duke of Wellington, in the latter part of the waragainst Napoleon, was due to the military counsels of Dumouriez, thenan exile in London. There was a plan for the capture of Edinburgh Castle, which, like otherStuart enterprises, would have been a great thing if it had onlysucceeded. Edinburgh Castle was then full of arms, stores, and money. Some eighty of the Jacobites, chiefly Highlanders, contrived awell-laid scheme by which to get possession of the Castle. Theymanaged by bribes and promises to win over three soldiers in the Castleitself. The arrangement was that these men were to be furnished withladders of a peculiar construction suited to the purpose, which, at acertain hour of the night, they were to lower down the Castle rock onthe {130} north side--the side looking on the Prince Street of our day. By these ladders the assailants were quietly to ascend, and thenoverpower the little garrison, and possess themselves of the Castle. When the stroke had been done, they were to fire three cannon, and menstationed on the opposite coast of Fife were thereupon to light abeacon; and the flash of that light would be the signal for otherbeacons from hill to hill to bear the news to Mar--as the lights alongthe Argive hills carried the tale of Troy's fall to Argos. The planwas an utter failure. It broke down in two places. One of theconspirators told his brother; the brother told his wife; the lady tookalarm, and sent an anonymous letter disclosing the whole plot to theLord Justice Clerk. Yet even then, had the conspirators been in time, their plan might have succeeded; for the anonymous letter did not reachits destination till an hour after the time appointed to make theattempt on the Castle. But the conspirators were not punctual. Someof them were in a tavern in Edinburgh, drinking to the success of theirenterprise. Every one in the neighborhood seems to have known whattheir enterprise was, to have had some sympathy with it, to have talkedfreely about it. Eighteen of these heroes kept up their convivialityin the tavern till long after the appointed time. The hostess of theplace was heard to say that they were powdering their hair to go to theattack on the Castle. "A strange sort of powder, " Lord Stanhoperemarks, "to provide on such an occasion. " Lord Stanhope evidentlytakes the hostess's words in a literal sense, and believes that thelady really meant to say that the jovial conspirators were actuallypowdering their locks as if for a ball. We may assume that the hostessspoke as Hamlet did, "tropically. " Whether she did or not--whetherthey were really adorning their locks, or simply draining theflagon--the result was all the same. They came too late; the plot wasdiscovered; the sympathizing soldiers from the Castle were alreadyunder arrest. The conspirators had to disperse and fly; a few of themwere arrested; {131} their neighbors were only too willing to help themto escape. It cannot be doubted that there was sympathy enough inEdinburgh to have made their plan the beginning of a completesuccess--if it had only itself been allowed to succeed. But thedisclosure to the lady, and the powder for the hair, brought all tonothing. The whole story might almost be said to be an allegoricalillustration of the fortunes of the Stuarts. The pint and thepetticoat always came in the way of a success to that cause. [Sidenote: 1715--Bolingbroke's dismissal] When James reached Gravelines, he hurried on to St. Germains. There, the next morning, Bolingbroke came to see him. Bolingbroke, to do himjustice, had done all in his power to dissuade James from making hisfatal expedition at such a time, and under such untoward circumstances. He had shown judgment, prudence, and, in the true sense, courage. Hehad shown himself a statesman. He might very well have met James inthe mood and with the remonstrances of the counsellors who, after theevent, are able to say, "I told you so. " But Bolingbroke appears tohave had more discretion and more manliness. He advised James towithdraw once again from the dominions of the King, and take refuge inLorraine. Bolingbroke knew well, by this time, that there was not theslightest chance of any open assistance from the French Court; and eventhat the French Court would be only too ready to throw James over, andsacrifice him, if, by doing so, they could strengthen the bonds of goodfeeling between France and England. James professed to takeBolingbroke's counsel in very friendly fashion, and parted fromBolingbroke with many expressions of confidence and affection. Yet itis certain that at this time he had made up his mind not to seeBolingbroke any more. He went for a time to a house near Versailles, akind of headquarters of intriguing political women, and thenceimmediately despatched a letter to Bolingbroke, relieving him of allhis duties as Secretary of State. Bolingbroke affects to have takenhis dismissal very composedly, but it cannot be doubted that his heartburned within him at what he, {132} doubtless, believed to be theingratitude of the prince for whom he had done and sacrificed so much. For Bolingbroke had that unlucky gift of fancy which enables a man tosee himself, and his own doings, and his own merits, in whatever lightis most gratifying to his personal vanity. He had, in truth, neverrisked nor sacrificed anything for the sake of James or the Stuartcause. He never had the least idea of risking or sacrificing anythingfor that cause, or for any other. It was only when his fortunes inEngland became desperate, when impeachment, and, as he believed, ascaffold threatened him, when he had no apparent alternative left butto join the Pretender or stay at home and lose all--it was only thenthat he took any decided step as an adherent of the cause of theStuarts. We cannot doubt that James Stuart knew to the full the partthat Bolingbroke had played. He knew that he owed Bolingbroke nofavor, and that he could have no confidence in him. Still, it remainsto the present hour a mystery why James should then, and in thatmanner, have got rid of Bolingbroke forever. Bolingbroke himself doesnot appear to have known the cause of his dismissal. It may be thatJames had grown tired of the whole fruitless struggle, and was glad toget rid of a minister whose restless energy and genius would alwayshave kept political intrigue alive, and political enterprises going. Or it may be that just then there had fallen into James's hands somenew and recent evidences of Bolingbroke's willingness to treat, onoccasion, with either side. However this may be, James made up hismind to dismiss his great follower, and Bolingbroke at once made up hismind to endeavor to ingratiate himself into the favor of the House ofHanover, and to secure his restoration to London society. Almost atthe very moment of his dismissal he made application to some of hisfriends in London to endeavor to obtain for him a permission to return. [Sidenote: 1715--"Banished Bolingbroke repeats himself"] We do not absolutely say a farewell to Bolingbroke now and here, as hestands dismissed from the service of {133} the Stuarts and disqualifiedfor the service of the Hanoverians. Nearly forty years of life wereyet before him, but his work as a statesman was done. Never again hadhis genius a chance of shining in the service of a throne. Themaster-politician of the age was out of employment forever. We do notknow if history anywhere supplies such another example of a greatpolitical career snapped off so suddenly at its midst, hardly even atits midst, and never put together again. Bolingbroke re-appeared againand again in England. He even took more than once a certain kind ofpart in politics--that is in pamphleteering; he tried to be theinspiration and the guiding-star of Pulteney and other rising men whohad come, for one reason or another, to detest Walpole. But even thesesoon began to find Bolingbroke rather more of a hinderance than a help, and were glad to shake him off and be rid of him. He becomeseverything by turns; plays at cool philosophy and philosophic retreat;is always assuring the world in tones of highly suspicious eagernessthat he is done forever with it and its works and pomps; and he isalways yearning and striving to get back to the works and pomps again. He plays at farming, actually puts on countrified manners, and dinesostentatiously off homely farmer-like fare, to the amusement of some ofhis friends. He undertakes to settle the whole question of religion, of this world and the next, including the entire code of human ethics;and at the same time he is very fond of expatiating to young menconcerning the most effective ways for the seduction of women, thecourse to be followed with a lady of quality, the different course indealing with an actress, the policy of a long siege, and the policy ofan attack by storm. He marries again and gets money with his wife, aFrench _marquise_, once beautiful, somewhat older than himself, andseems to be fond of her and happy with her, and discourses to her as toothers about the variety of his successful amours. Through long, longyears his shadow, his ghost, for in the political sense it is {134}nothing else, keeps revisiting the glimpses of the moon in England. For all the influence he is destined to have on the realities ofpolitical life, he might as well be already lying in that tomb in theold church on the edge of the Thames at Battersea where his strangelybrilliant, strangely blighted career is to come to an end at last. {135} CHAPTER VIII. AFTER THE REBELLION. [Sidenote: 1715--Conflicts of parties] All this time the Jacobite demonstrations were still going on in Londonand in various parts of England with as much energy as ever. Greenboughs and oak apples were worn, and even flaunted, about the streets, bygroups of persons on May 29th, the anniversary of Charles the Second'srestoration. We read of the riots in London, of Whigs of the "LoyalSociety" going about with little warming-pans as emblems of theirhostility to the Stuart cause, and being met by other mobs bearing whiteroses as badges of the Stuart cause. There was a continual battle ofpamphleteers and of ballad-writers. "High-Church and Ormond!" wereshouted for and sung on one side of the political field, and the "Popeand Perkin, " that is to say, James Stuart, were as liberally denounced onthe other. The scandals about King George's mistresses were freelyalluded to in the Jacobite songs. The public of all parties seem to havevery cordially detested the ill-favored ladies whom George had broughtover from Hanover. The coarsest and grossest abuse was poured forth inballads and in pamphlets against the King's favorites and courtiers, andwas sung and shouted day and night in the public streets. Then, and for long after, these public streets were battle-grounds onwhich Whigs and Tories, Hanoverians and Jacobites, fought out theirquarrel. Men carried turnips in their hats in mockery of the Germanelector who had threatened to make St. James's Park a turnip-field, andwere prepared to fight lustily for their bucolic emblem. Women fannedthe strife, wore white roses for the King {136} over the water, or SweetWilliam in compliment to the "immortal memory" of William of Nassau. Sometimes even women were roughly treated. On one occasion we read of aserving-girl, who had made known the hiding-place of a Jacobite, beingattacked and nearly murdered by a Jacobite mob, and rescued by some Whiggentlemen. On another occasion a Whig gentleman seeing a young lady inthe street with a white rose in her bosom, jumped from his coach, toreout the disloyal blossom, lashed the young lady with his whip, and handedher over to a gang of Whigs, who would have stripped and scourged her butfor the timely appearance of some Jacobite gentry, by whom she wascarried home in safety. The "Flying Post" warns all "he-Jacobites" and"she-Jacobites" that if they are not careful they will meet with moresevere treatment than hitherto, and then alludes to some pretty severetreatment the poor "she-Jacobites" had already received. [Sidenote: 1715--"All for our rightful King"] To do the King and his family justice, they behaved with courage andcomposure through this long season of popular excitement. They wenteverywhere as they pleased, braving the dangers that certainly existed. Once a man named Moor spat in the face of the Princess of Wales as shewas going through the streets, and he was scourged till he cried "Godbless King George!" In 1718 a youth named Sheppard was hanged forplanning King George's death. This led a Hanoverian fanatic named Bowesto suggest to the ministry that in return he should go to Italy and killKing James. His proffer of political retaliation only resulted in hisbeing shut up as a madman. At last the temper of the times and thefrequent threats of assassination compelled the King to take more care ofhimself. Though he walked in Kensington Gardens every day, the gardenswere first searched, and then carefully watched by soldiers. When the rebellion was over, the Government found they had a large numberof prisoners on their hands, many of them of high rank. Several officerstaken on {137} the field had already been treated as deserters and shot, after a trial by drum-head court-martial. Some of the prisoners ofhigher rank were brought into London in a manner like that of captivesdragged along in an old Roman triumph, or like that of actual convictstaken to Tyburn. They were marched in procession from Highgate throughLondon, each man sitting on a horse, having his arms tied with cordsbehind his back, the horses led by soldiers, with a military escortdrumming and fifing a march of triumph. The men of noble rank wereconfined in the Tower; others, many of them men of position, such as Mr. Thomas Forster, a Northumberland gentleman, and member for his county, were thrust into Newgate, whose horrors have been so well described inScott's "Rob Roy. " The Rev. Robert Patten, who had been a conspicuousJacobite, played a Titus Oates part in betraying his companions, and hisname figures for King's evidence incessantly in the political trials. When he tired of treachery he retired to the obscurity of his parish ofAllendale, in Northumberland, and gave the world his history of therebellion in which he had played so base a part. Among the chief prisoners were Lord Widdrington, the Earl of Nithisdale, the Earl of Wintoun, the Earl of Carnwath, the Earl of Derwentwater, Viscount Kenmure, and Lord Nairn. These noblemen were impeached beforethe House of Lords, and all, except Lord Wintoun, pleaded guilty, andprayed for the mercy of the King. Every effort was made to obtain apardon for some of the condemned noblemen. Women of rank and beautyimplored the King's mercy. Audacious attempts were made to bribe theministers. Some eminent members of the Whig party in the House ofCommons spoke up manfully and courageously in favor of a policy of mercy. It is something pleasant to recollect that Sir Richard Steele, who hadgot into Parliament again, was conspicuous among these. In the House ofLords the friends of the condemned men succeeded in carrying, despite thestrong {138} resistance of the Government, a motion for an address to theKing, beseeching him to extend mercy to the noblemen in prison. Walpolehimself had spoken very harshly in the House of Commons, and condemned inunmeasured terms those of his party--the Whig party--who could be sounworthy as, without blushing, to open their mouths in favor of rebelsand parricides, and he had carried an adjournment of the House of Commonsfrom the 22d of February to the 1st of March, in order to prevent anyfurther petitions in favor of the rebel lords from being presented beforethe day fixed for their execution. One of these petitions, it is worthwhile recollecting, was presented by the kindly hand and supported by themanly voice of Sir Richard Steele. The ministers returned a merelyformal answer on the King's behalf to the address, but they thought itwise to recommend a respite to be given to Lord Nairn, the Earl ofCarnwath, and Lord Widdrington; and in order to get rid of any furtherappeals for mercy, they resolved that the execution of Lord Nithisdale, Lord Derwentwater, and Lord Kenmure should take place the very next day. Lord Nithisdale, however, was lucky enough to make his escape, somewhatafter the fashion in which Lavalette, at a much later date, contrived toget out of prison, by the courage, devotion, and ingenuity of his wife. It is a curious fact that most of the contemporaries of Nithisdale whotell the story of his escape have represented his mother, and not hiswife, as the woman who took his place in prison, and to whose energy andadroitness he owed his life. Smollett is one of those who give thisversion as if there were no doubt about it. Lord Stanhope, in the firstedition of his "History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht to thePeace of Versailles, " accepted the story on authorities which seemed sotrustworthy. Lord Stanhope knew that many modern writers had describedthe escape as being effected by Lord Nithisdale's wife, but he assumedthat "the name of the wife was substituted in later tradition as beingmore romantic. " A letter from Lady Nithisdale herself, {139} written toher sister, settles the whole question, and of course Lord Stanhopeimmediately adopted this genuine version. Lady Nithisdale tells how atfirst she endeavored to present a petition to the King. The first dayshe heard that the King was to go to the drawing-room, she dressedherself in black, as if in mourning, and had a lady to accompany her, because she did not know the King personally, and might have mistakensome other man for him. This lady and another came with her, and thethree remained in the room between the King's apartments and thedrawing-room. When George was passing through, "I threw myself at hisfeet, and told him in French that I was the unfortunate Countess ofNithisdale. . . . Perceiving that he wanted to go off without receivingmy petition, I caught hold of the skirt of his coat that he might stopand hear me. He endeavored to escape out of my hands, but I kept suchstrong hold that he dragged me upon my knees from the middle of the roomto the very door of the drawing-room. " One of the attendants of the Kingcaught the unfortunate lady round the waist, while another dragged theKing's coat-skirt out of her hands. "The petition, which I hadendeavored to thrust into his pocket, fell down in the scuffle, and Ialmost fainted away through grief and disappointment. " Seldom, perhaps, in the history of royalty is there a description of so ungracious, unkingly, and even brutal reception of a petition presented by adistracted wife praying for a pardon to her husband. [Sidenote: 1716--This most constant wife] Then Lady Nithisdale determined to effect her husband's escape. Shecommunicated her design to a Mrs. Mills, and took another lady with heralso. This lady was of tall and slender make, and she carried under herown riding-hood one that Lady Nithisdale had prepared for Mrs. Mills, asMrs. Mills was to lend hers to Lord Nithisdale, so that in going out hemight be taken for her. Mrs. Mills was also "not only of the sameheight, but nearly of the same size as my lord. " On their arrival at theTower, Mrs. Morgan was allowed to go in with {140} Lady Nithisdale. [Sidenote: 1716--Lord Nithisdale's escape] Only one at a time could beintroduced by the lady. She left the riding-hood and other things behindher. Then Lady Nithisdale went downstairs to meet Mrs. Mills, who heldher handkerchief to her face, "as was very natural for a woman to do whenshe was going to bid her last farewell to a friend on the eve of hisexecution. I had indeed desired her to do it, that my lord might go outin the same manner. " Mrs. Mills's eyebrows were a light color, and LordNithisdale's were dark and thick. "So, " says Lady Nithisdale, "I hadprepared some paint of the color of hers to disguise his with. I alsobought an artificial head-dress of the same color as hers, and I paintedhis face with white, and his cheeks with rouge to hide his long beard, which he had not time to shave. All this provision I had before left inthe Tower. The poor guards, whom my slight liberality the day before hadendeared me to, let me go quietly with my company, and were not sostrictly on the watch as they usually had been, and the more so as theywere persuaded, from what I had told them the day before, that theprisoners would obtain their pardon. " Then Mrs. Mills was taken into theroom with Lord Nithisdale, and rather ostentatiously led by LadyNithisdale past several sentinels, and through a group of soldiers, andof the guards' wives and daughters. When she got into Lord Nithisdale'spresence she took off her riding-hood, and put on that which Mrs. Morganhad brought for her. Then Lady Nithisdale dismissed her, and took carethat she should not go out weeping as she had come in, in order, ofcourse, that Lord Nithisdale, when he wont out, "might the better passfor the lady who came in crying and afflicted. " When Mrs. Mills wasgone, Lady Nithisdale dressed up her husband "in all my petticoatsexcepting one. " Then she found that it was growing dark, and was afraidthat the light of the candles might betray her. She therefore went out, leading the disguised nobleman by the hand, he holding his handkerchiefpressed to his eyes, as Mrs. Mills had done when she came in. The {141}guards opened the doors, and Lady Nithisdale went down-stairs with him. "As soon as he had cleared the door I made him walk before me for fearthe sentinels should take notice of his walk. " Some friends receivedLord Nithisdale, and conducted him to a place of security. LadyNithisdale went back to her husband's prison, and "When I was in the roomI talked to him as if he had been really present, and answered my ownquestions in my lord's voice as nearly as I could imitate it. I walkedup and down, as if we were conversing together, till I thought they hadtime enough to clear themselves of the guards. I then thought proper tomake off also. I opened the door, and stood half in it, that those inthe outward chamber might hear what I said, but held it so close thatthey could not look in. I bid my lord a formal farewell for that night, "and she added some words about the petition for his pardon, and told him, "I flattered myself that I should bring favorable news. " Then she closedthe door with some force behind her, and "I said to the servant as Ipassed by"--who was ignorant of the whole transaction--"that he need notcarry any candles to his master till my lord sent for him, as he desiredto finish some prayers first. I went down-stairs and called a coach, asthere were several on the stand. I drove home to my lodgings. " Soonafter Lady Nithisdale was taken to the place of security where herhusband was remaining. They took refuge at the Venetian ambassador's twoor three days after. Lord Nithisdale put on a livery, and went in theretinue of the ambassador to Dover. The ambassador, it should be said, knew nothing about the matter, but his coach-and-six went to Dover tomeet his brother; and it was one of the servants of the embassy who actedin combination with Lord and Lady Nithisdale. A small vessel was hiredat Dover, and Lord Nithisdale escaped to Calais, where his wife shortlyafter joined him. It is said by nearly all contemporary writers thatKing George, when he heard of the escape, took it very good-humoredly, and even {142} expressed entire satisfaction with it. Lady Nithisdaledoes not seem to have believed this story of George's generosity. Thestatement made to her was that "when the news was brought to the King, heflew into an excess of passion and said he was betrayed, for it could nothave been done without some confederacy. He instantly despatched twopersons to the Tower to see that the other prisoners were well secured. " [Sidenote: 1716--Anti-Catholic legislation] Lord Derwentwater and Lord Kenmure were executed on Tower Hill on the24th of February. The young and gallant Derwentwater declared on thescaffold that he withdrew his plea of guilty, and that he acknowledged noone but James Stuart as his king. Kenmure, too, protested his repentanceat having, even formally, pleaded guilty, and declared that he died witha prayer for James Stuart. Lord Wintoun was not tried until the nextmonth. He was a poor and feeble creature, hardly sound in his mind. "Not perfect in his intellectuals, " a writer in a journal of the dayobserved of him. He was found guilty, but afterwards succeeded in makinghis escape from the Tower. Like Lord Nithisdale, he made his way to theContinent; and, like Lord Nithisdale, he died long after at Rome. Humbler Jacobites could escape too. Forster escaped from Newgate throughthe aid of a clever servant, and got off to France, while the angry Whigshinted at connivance on the part of persons in high places. Theredoubted Brigadier Mackintosh, who figures in descriptions of the timeas a "beetle-browed, gray-eyed" man of sixty, speaking "broad Scotch, "succeeded in escaping, together with his son and seven others, in a rushof prisoners from the Newgate press-yard. Mr. Charles Radcliffe had aneven stranger escape; for one day, growing tired, as well he might, ofprison life, he simply walked out of Newgate under the eyes of hisjailers, in the easy disguise of a morning suit and a brown tie-wig. Once some Jacobite prisoners, who were being sent to the West Indianplantations, rose against the crew, seized the ship, steered it toFrance, and quietly settled down {143} there. Later still some prisonersgot out even more easily. Brigadier Mackintosh's brother was dischargedfrom Newgate on his own prayer, and on showing that "he was very old, andaltogether friendless. " Immediately after the execution of the rebel noblemen the ministry set towork to take some steps which might render political intrigue andconspiracy less dangerous in the future. One idea which especiallycommended itself to the statesmen of that time was to make the laws morerigorous against Roman Catholics. Law and popular feeling were alreadystrongly set against the Catholics. On the death of Queen Anne, officersin the army, when informing their companies of the accession of theElector of Hanover, carried their loyal and religious enthusiasm so faras to call upon any of their hearers who might be Catholics to fallforthwith out of the ranks. The writers who supported the Hanoveriansuccession, and were in the service of the Whig ministry, were notashamed to declare that the ceremony of the Paternoster would infalliblycure a stranger of the spleen, and that any man in his senses would findexcellent comedy in the recital of an Ave Mary. "How common it is, " saysthe writer of the _Patriot_, "to find a wretch of this persuasion to bedeluded to such a degree that he shall imagine himself engaged in thesolemnity of devotion, while in reality he is exceeding the fopperies ofa Jack-pudding!" So great was the distrust of Catholics that it wasoften the practice to seize upon the horses of Catholic gentlemen inorder to impede them in the risings which they were always supposed to bemeditating. But the condition of the Catholics in England was not badenough to content the ministry. An Act was passed, in fact what wouldnow be called "rushed, " through Parliament, to "strengthen the Protestantinterest in Great Britain, " by making more severe "the laws now in beingagainst Papists, " and by providing a more effective and exemplarypunishment for persons who, being Papists, should venture to enlist inthe service of his Majesty. {144} The spirit of political freedom, as we now understand it, had not yeteven begun to glimmer upon the counsels of statesmen. The idea had notyet arisen in the minds of Englishmen--even of men as able asWalpole--that liberty meant anything more than liberty for the expressionof one's own opinions, and for the carrying into action of one's ownpolicy. Those who were in power immediately made it their business tostrengthen their own hands, and to prevent as far as possible the growthof opinions, the expression of ideas, unfavorable to themselves. Yet atsuch a time there were not wanting advocates of the administration towrite that it was "indeed the peculiar happiness and glory of anEnglishman that he must first quit these kingdoms before he canexperimentally know the want of public liberty. " Most people, evenstill, read history by the light of ideas which prevailed up to the closeof George the First's reign. We are all ready enough to admit that inour time it would not be a free system which suppressed or prevented theexpression of other men's opinions, or which attached any manner of penalconsequence to the profession of one creed or the adhesion to one party. But most of us are, nevertheless, ready enough to describe one period ofEnglish history, the reign perhaps of one sovereign, as a period ofreligious liberty, and another season, or reign, as a time when libertywas suppressed. Some Englishmen talk with enthusiasm of the spirit ofElizabeth's reign, or the spirit of the reign of William the Third, andcondemn in unmeasured terms the spirit which influenced James the Second, and which would no doubt have influenced James the Second's son if he hadcome to the throne. But any one who will put aside for the moment hisown particular opinions will see that in both cases the guiding principlewas exactly the same. Never were there greater acts of political andreligious intolerance committed than during the reign of Elizabeth andduring the reign of William the Third. The truth is that the modern ideaof constitutional and political liberty did not {145} exist among Englishstatesmen even so recently as the reign of William the Third. At theperiod with which we are now dealing it would not have occurred to anystatesman that there could be a wiser course to take than to follow upthe suppression of the insurrection of 1715 by making more stringent thanever the laws already in existence against the religion to which most ofthe rebels belonged. [Sidenote: 1716--The Triennial Bill] The Government made another change of a different kind, and for whichthere was better political justification. They passed a measure alteringthe period of the duration of parliaments. At this time the limit of theexistence of a parliament was three years. An Act was passed in 1641directing that Parliament should meet once at least in every three years. This Act was repealed in 1664. Another, and a different kind ofTriennial Parliament Bill, passed in 1694. This Act declared that noparliament should last for a longer period than three years. But thesystem of short parliaments had not apparently been found to work withmuch satisfaction. The impression that a House of Commons with solimited a period of life before it would be more anxious to conciliatethe confidence and respect of the constituencies had not been justifiedin practice. Indeed, the constituencies themselves at that time were notsufficiently awake to the meaning and the value of Parliamentaryrepresentation to think of keeping any effective control over those whomthey sent to speak for them in Parliament. Bribery and corruption wereas rife and as extravagant under the triennial system as ever they hadbeen before, or as they ever were since. But no doubt the immediateobject of repealing the Triennial Bill was to obtain a better chance forthe new condition of things by giving it a certain time to work insecurity. If the new dynasty was to have any chance of success at all, it was necessary that ministers should not have to come almostimmediately before the country again. Shippen in the Commons and Atterbury in the Lords {146} were among themost strenuous opponents of the new measure. Both staunch Jacobites, they had everything to gain just then by frequent appeals to the country. Shippen urged that it was unconstitutional in a Parliament elected forthree years to elect itself for seven years without an appeal to theconstituencies. Steele defended the Bill on the ground that all themischiefs which could be brought under the Septennial Act could beperpetrated under the Triennial, but that the good which might becompassed under the Septennial could not be hoped for under theTriennial. Not a few persons in both Houses seemed to be of one mindwith the bewildered Bishop of London, who declared that he did not knowwhich way to vote, for "he was confounded between dangers andinconveniences on one side and destruction on the other. " It is not outof place to mention here that when a Bill was unsuccessfully brought innearly twenty years after for the Repeal of the Septennial Act, many ofthose who had voted in favor of parliaments of seven years in 1716 votedthe other way, while opponents in 1716 were turned into allies in 1734. [Sidenote: 1716--Death of Lord Somers] The system of short parliaments has ardent admirers in our own day. "Annual Parliaments" formed one of the points of the People's Charter. Many who would not accept the Chartist idea of annual parliaments wouldstill regard as one of the articles of the true creed of Liberalism theprinciple of the triennial parliament. But even if that creed were truein the politics of the present day, it would not have been true in theearly days of King George. One of the great constitutional changes whichthe times were then making, and which Walpole welcomed and helped tocarry out, was the change which gave to the House of Commons the realruling power in the Constitution. No representative chamber could thenhave held its own against the House of Lords, or the Court, or the Courtand the House of Lords combined, if it had been subject to the necessityof frequent re-elections. Short parliaments have even in our own daysbeen made {147} in Europe the most effective weapons of despotic power. No test more trying can be found for a party of men sincerely anxious tomaintain constitutional rights at a season of danger than to subject themto frequent and close electoral struggles. Much more important in thehistorical and constitutional sense was it at the opening of KingGeorge's reign that the House of Commons should be strengthened than thatany particular party should have unlimited opportunities of trying itschances at a general election. It mattered little, when once theposition of the representative body had been made secure, whether Georgeor James sat on the throne. With the representative body aninconsiderable factor in the State system, Brunswick would soon have beenas unconstitutional as Stuart. One of the last acts of the life of Lord Somers was to express to LordTownshend his approval of the principle of the Septennial Bill. He didnot live to see it actually passed into law. He was but sixty-six yearsold at the time of his death. Disease and not age had weakened his fineintellect, and had kept him for many years from playing any importantpart in the affairs of the State. The day when Somers died was the veryday when the Septennial Bill passed its third reading in the House ofCommons. It had come down from the House of Lords, and had to go back tothat House, in consequence of some alterations made in the Commons. Somers lived just long enough to be assured of its safety. Born in 1650, the son of a Worcester attorney, he had won for himself the proudesthonors of the law, and had written his name high up in the roll ofEnglish statesmen. Steele wrote of him that he was "as much admired forhis universal knowledge of men and things as for his eloquence, courage, and integrity in the exerting of such extraordinary talents. " The_Spectator_, in dedicating its earliest papers to him, spoke of him asone who brought into the service of his sovereign the arts and policiesof ancient Greece and Rome, and praised him for a certain dignity in{148} himself which made him appear as great in private life as in themost important offices he had borne. It was in allusion to Somers, indeed, that Swift said Bolingbroke wanted for success "a small infusionof the alderman. " This was a sneer at Somers, as well as a sort ofrebuke to Bolingbroke. If the "small infusion of the alderman" wasanother term for order and method in public business, then it may befreely admitted by his greatest admirers that Somers had more of thealderman in his nature than Bolingbroke. Perhaps the only thing, exceptgreat capacity, which he had in common with Bolingbroke was an ungovernedadmiration of the charms of women. His fame was first established by theability with which he conducted his part of the defence of the sevenbishops in James the Second's reign. His consistent devotion to the Whigparty, and his just and almost prescient appreciation of the trueprinciples of that party, set him in sharp contrast to other statesmen ofthe time--to men like Marlborough and Shrewsbury and Bolingbroke. His isa noble figure, even in its decay, and the historian of such a time partsfrom him with regret, feeling that the average of public manhood andvirtue is lowered when Somers is gone. [Sidenote: 1716--Mary Wortley Montagu] While Jacobites were lingering in prison and dying on Tower Hill, LadyMary Wortley Montagu was writing from abroad imperishable letters to herfriends. We may turn away from politics for a moment to observe her andher career. Mr. Wortley Montagu had been appointed Ambassador toConstantinople, and had set out for his post, accompanied by the wittyand beautiful wife for whom he cared so little. Ever since he first mether and presented her with a copy of "Quintus Curtius, " in honor of herLatinity, and some original verses of his own, in earnest of hisadmiration, he had been an exacting, impatient lover. After his marriagehe seems to have grown absolutely indifferent to her, leaving her alonefor months together while he remained in town, and pleading as his excusehis Parliamentary duties. {149} She who, on the contrary, had made nounreasonable display of affection for the lover, appears to have becomedeeply attached to the husband, and to have been bitterly pained by hiscareless indifference, an indifference which at last, and it would appearmost unwillingly, she learned to return. When this life had been livedfor a year or two Queen Anne died, and with Walpole's accession to powerMr. Wortley got office, and brought his beautiful wife up from Yorkshireto be the wonder and admiration of the English Court and the Hanoverianmonarch. For two bright years Lady Mary shone like a star in thebrilliant constellation of women, of wits, of politicians, and men ofletters, who thronged St. James's Palace and peopled St. James's parish. Then came the Constantinople embassy. Lady Mary had always a longing forforeign travel, and now that her desires were gratified she enjoyedherself with all the delight of a child and all the intelligence of agifted woman. Travel was a rare pleasure for women then. A youngEnglish gentleman made the grand tour, and brought back, if he werefoolish, nothing better than a few receipts for strange dishes, and somenewer notions of vice than he had set out with; if he were wise he became"possessed of the tongues, " and bore home spoils of voyage in the shapeof Titians and Correggios and Raphaels--genuine or the reverse--to stocka picture-gallery in the family mansion. But women very seldom travelledmuch in those days. Certainly no man or woman could then write oftravels as Mary Wortley Montagu could and did. We may well imagine thedelight with which Mistress Skerret and Lady Rich and the Countess ofBristol, languid Lord Hervey's mother, and adoring Mr. Pope receivedthese marvellous letters, which were destined to rank with the epistlesof the younger Pliny and of Madame de Sévigné. Mr. Pope--whosetranslation of the "Odyssey" had not yet made its appearance--may wellhave thought that Ulysses himself had not seen men and cities to greateradvantage than the beautiful wanderer whom he was destined first {150} tolove and then to hate. As we read her letters we seem to live with herin the great, gay, gloomy life of Vienna, to hear once more the foolishsquabbles of Ratisbon society as to who should and should not be styledExcellency, and to smile at the loyal crowds of English thronging thewretched inns of Hanover. But the fidelity of her descriptions may bestbe judged from her accounts of life in Constantinople. The Vienna ofto-day is very different from the ill-built, high-storied city of MariaTheresa; but the condition of Constantinople has scarcely changed withthe century and a half that has gone by since Lady Mary was EnglishAmbassadress there. She seems, indeed, to have seen the heads upon thefamous monument of bronze twisted serpents in the Hippodrome; and perhapsshe did, for Spon and Wheler's sketch of it in 1675 gives it with thetriple heads still perfect, though these serpent heads, and all traces ofthem, have long since disappeared. In Constantinople Lady Mary firstbecame acquainted with that principle of inoculation for the small-poxwhich she so enthusiastically advocated, which she introduced intoEngland in spite of so much hostility and disfavor, and which, nowaccepted by almost all the civilized world, is still wrangled fiercelyover in England. [Sidenote: 1716--Lady Mary's career] Perhaps we may anticipate by some half-century to tell of Lady Mary'sfurther career. She came back to London again, and shone as brilliantlyas before, and was made love to by Pope, and laughed at her lover, andwas savagely scourged by him in return with whips of stinging andshameful satire. One can understand better the story of the daughters ofLycambes hanging themselves under the pain of the iambics of Archilochuswhen one reads the merciless cruelty with which the great Englishsatirist treated the woman he had loved. When Lady Mary grew old shewent away abroad to live, without any opposition on her husband's part. They parted with mutual indifference and mutual esteem. She lived formany years in Italy, chiefly in Venice. Then she came back to London fora short time to live in lodgings off Hanover Square, and be the curiosityof the town; and then she died. Lady Mary always had a dread of growingold; and she grew old and ill-favored, as Horace Walpole was spitefulenough to put on record. When Pope was laughed at by the beauty, hemight have said to her in the words that Clarendon used to the fairCastlemaine, "Woman, you will grow old, " and have felt that in thosewords he had almost repaid the bitterness of her scorn. Horace Walpoleindeed avenged the offended poet, long dead and famous, when he wrotethus of Lady Mary: "Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amazeany one that never heard her name. She wears a foul mob that does notcover her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled; anold mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvaspetticoat. Her face . . . Partly covered . . . With white paint, whichfor cheapness she has bought so coarse that you would not use it to washa chimney. " Such is one of the latest portraits of the woman who hadbeen a poet's idol and the cherished beauty of a Court. Lady Mary, whohad outlived her husband, left an exemplary daughter, who married LordBute, and a most unexemplary son, to whom she bequeathed one guinea, andwho spent the greater part of his life drifting about the East, andacquiring all kinds of strange and useless knowledge. {152} CHAPTER IX. "MALICE DOMESTIC. --FOREIGN LEVY. " [Sidenote: 1716--Visit to Hanover] Some of the earlier letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu are writtenfrom Hanover, and give a lively description of the crowded state ofthat capital in the autumn of 1716. Hanover was crowded in thisunusual way because King George was there at the time, and his presencewas the occasion for a great gathering of diplomatic functionaries andstatesmen, and politicians of all orders. Some had political missions, open and avowed; some had missions of still greater politicalimportance, which, however, were not formally avowed, and were for themost part conducted in secret. A turning-point had been reached in theaffairs of Europe, and the King's visit to Hanover was an appropriateoccasion for the preliminary steps to certain new arrangements that hadbecome inevitable. Even before the King's visit to his dear Hanoverthe English Government had been paving the way for some of these newcombinations and alliances. The very day after the royal coronation, Stanhope had gone on a mission to Vienna which had something to do withthe arrangements subsequently made. It would, however, be paying too high a compliment to the patrioticenergy of the King to suppose that he had gone to Hanover for the sakeof promoting arrangements calculated to be of advantage to England. Let us do justice to George's sincerity: he never pretended to anyparticular concern for English interests when they were not bound upwith the interests of Hanover. But he had long been pining for a sightof Hanover. He had now been away from his beloved Herrenhausen fornearly two {153} years, and he was consumed by an unconquerablehomesickness. That his absence might be inconvenient to his newlyacquired country or to his ministers had no weight in his mind tocounterbalance the desire of walking once more in the prim Herrenhausenavenues and looking over the level Hanoverian fields, or treading thecorridors of the old Schloss, where the ancestral Guelphs had revelled, and where the ghost of Königsmark might well be supposed to wander. The Act for restraining the King from going out of the kingdom wasrepealed in May, 1716. The Prince of Wales was to be appointedtemporary ruler in the King's absence. This appointment was the onlyobstacle that George admitted to his journey. In the Hanover family, father had hated son, and son father with traditional persistence. George was animated by the sourest jealousy of his son. One reason, ifthere had been no other, for this animosity was that the young man waswell known to have some sympathy for the sufferings of his mother, theunhappy Sophia Dorothea, imprisoned in Ahlden, and he had at least oncemade an unsuccessful effort to see her. Since George came to Englandhe persisted in regarding his eldest son as a rival for popular favor, and this feeling was naturally kept alive by the enemies of the Houseof Hanover. To this detested son George had now to intrust the care ofhis kingdom, or else abandon his visit to dear Herrenhausen. Thestruggle was severe, but patriotic affection triumphed over paternalhatred. The Prince was named not indeed Regent, but Guardian of theRealm and Lieutenant, with as many restrictions upon his authority asthe King was able or was allowed to impose, and on July 9th George setout for Hanover, accompanied by Secretary Stanhope. He was not longabsent from England, however. On November 14th he came back again. Loyalists issued prints of the monarch waited upon by angels, andaccompanied by flattering verses addressed to the "Presedent of yeLoyall Mug Houses. " But the devotion of the mug-houses could not makeGeorge personally popular, or diminish the {154} general dislike to hisGerman ministers, his German mistresses, and the horde of hungryforeigners--the Hanoverian rats, as Squire Western would have calledthem--who came over with him to England, seeking for place and pension, or pension without place. [Sidenote: 1716--Philip of Orleans] The Thames was frozen over in the winter of this year, 1716, and Londonmade very merry over the event. The ice was covered with booths forthe sale of all sorts of wares, and with small coffee-houses andchop-houses. Wrestling-rings were formed in one part; in another, anox was roasted whole. People played at push-pin, skated, or droveabout on ice-boats brave with flags. Coaches moved slowly up and downthe highway of barges and wherries, and hawkers cried their wareslustily in the new field that winter had offered them. All the banksof the river--and especially such places as the Temple Gardens--werecrowded with curious throngs surveying the animated and unusual scene. During George's absence from England he and his ministers had made somenew and important arrangements in the policy of Europe. From this timeforth--indeed, from the reign of Queen Anne--England wasdestined--doomed, perhaps--to have a regular part in the politics ofthe Continent. Before that time she had often been drawn into them, orhad plunged enterprisingly or recklessly into them, but from the dateof the accession of the House of Hanover England was as closely andconstantly mixed up in the political affairs of the Continent asAustria or France. In the opening years of George's reign, France, theEmpire--Austria, that is to say, for the Holy Roman Empire had come tobe merely Austria--and Spain were the important Continental Powers. Russia was only coming up; the genius of Peter the Great was beginningto make her way for her. Italy was as yet only a geographicalexpression--a place divided among minor kings and princes, who inpolitics sometimes bowed to the Pope's authority, and sometimes evadedor disregarded it. The power of Turkey was {155} broken, never to bemade strong again; the republic of Venice was already beginning to"sink like a sea-weed into whence she rose. " The position of Spain waspeculiar. Spain had for a long time been depressed and weak anddisregarded. For many years it was thought that she was going downwith Turkey and Venice--that the star of her fate had declined forever. Suddenly, however, she began to raise her head above the horizon again, and to threaten the peace of the Continent. The peace of the Continentcould not now be threatened without menace to the peace of England, forGeorge's Hanoverian dominions were sure to be imperilled by Europeandisturbance, and George would take good care that Hanover did notsuffer while England had armies to move and money to spend. TheEnglish Government found it necessary to look out for allies. France was under the rule of a remarkable man. Philip, Duke of Orleansand Regent of the kingdom, ought to have been a statesman of theByzantine Empire. He was steeped to the lips in profligacy; he had nomoral sense whatever, unless that which was supplied by the so-calledcode of honor. His intrigues, his carouses, his debaucheries, hishordes of mistresses, gave scandal even in that time of prodigallicense. But he had a cool head, a daring spirit, and an intellectcapable of accepting new and original ideas. He must be called astatesman; and, despite the vulgarity of some of his vices, he has tobe called a gentleman as well. He could be trusted; he would keep hisword once given. Other statesmen could treat with him, and not fearthat he would break a promise or betray a confidence. How rare suchqualities were at that day among the politicians of any country thereaders of the annals of Queen Anne do not need to be told. TheRegent's principal adviser at this time was a man quite as immoral, andalso quite as able, as himself--the Abbé Dubois, afterwards Cardinaland Prime-minister. Dubois had a profound knowledge of foreignaffairs, and he thoroughly understood the ways of men. {156} He hadfought his way from humble rank to a great position in Church andState. He had trained his every faculty--and all his faculties werewell worth the training--to the business of statecraft and ofdiplomatic intrigue. It is somewhat curious to note that the threeablest politicians in Europe at that day were churchmen: Swift inEngland, Dubois in France, and Alberoni--of whom we shall presentlyhave to speak--in Spain. The quick and unclouded intelligence of theRegent--unclouded despite his days and nights of debauchery--saw thatthe cause of the Stuarts was gone. While that cause had hope he waswilling to give it a chance, and he would naturally have welcomed itssuccess; but he had taken good care during its late and vain effort notto embroil himself in any quarrel, or even any misunderstanding, withEngland on its account; and now that that poor struggle was over forthe time, he believed that it would be for his interest to come to anunderstanding with King George. [Sidenote: 1716--Dubois] The idea of such an understanding originated with the Regent himself. There has been some discussion among English historians as to the titleof Townshend or of Stanhope to be considered its author. WhetherTownshend or Stanhope first accepted the suggestion does not seem amatter of much consequence. It is clear that the overture was made bythe Regent. While King George and his minister Stanhope were inHanover, the Regent sent Dubois on various pretexts to places where hemight have an opportunity of coming to an understanding with both. Dubois had lived in England, and had made the personal acquaintance ofStanhope there. What could be more natural than that the Regent, whowas a lover of art, should ask Dubois to visit the Hague, for thepurpose of buying some books and pictures, about the time that theEnglish minister was known to be in the neighborhood? And how couldold acquaintances like Stanhope and Dubois, thus brought into closeproximity, fail to take advantage of the opportunity, and to {157} havemany a quiet, informal meeting? What more natural than that Duboisshould afterwards go to Hanover to visit his friend Stanhope there, andthat he should live in Stanhope's house? The account which the livelyLady Mary Wortley Montagu gives of the manner in which Hanover was thencrowded would of itself explain the necessity for Dubois availinghimself of Stanhope's hospitality, and for Stanhope's offer of it. ThePortuguese ambassador, Lady Mary says, thought himself very happy to bethe temporary possessor of "two wretched parlors in an inn. " Duboisand Stanhope had many talks, and the result was an arrangement whichcould be accepted by the King and the Regent. The foreign policy of the Whigs had for its object the maintenance ofpeace on the European continent by a close observance of the conditionslaid down in the Treaty of Utrecht. The settlement made under thattreaty was, however, very unsatisfactory to Spain. The new Spanishking, Philip of Anjou, had formally renounced his own rights ofsuccession to the throne of France, and had given up the Italianprovinces which formerly belonged to the Spanish Crown. But, as inmost such instances at that time, an ambitious European sovereign hadno sooner accepted conditions which appeared to him in any wiseunsatisfactory, than he went to work to endeavor to set them aside, orget out of them somehow. Philip's whole mind was turned to the objectof getting back again all that he had given up. This would not haveseemed an easy task, even to a man of the stamp of Charles the Fifth. It would almost appear that any attempt in such a direction must bringEurope in arms against Spain. The Regent Duke of Orleans stood next insuccession to the French throne, in consequence of Philip'srenunciation of his rights by virtue of the Treaty of Utrecht. TheItalian provinces which had once been Spain's were now handed over toAustria, and Austria would of course be resolute in their defence. King Philip was not the man to confront the difficulties of a situationof this kind {158} by his own unaided powers of mind. He was very farindeed from being a Charles the Fifth. He was not even a Philip theSecond. But he had for his minister a man as richly endowed withstatesmanship and courage as he himself was wanting in those qualities. [Sidenote: 1716--Alberoni] Giulio Alberoni, an Italian born atPiacenza, in 1664, was at one time appointed agent of the Duke of Parmaat the Court of Spain, and in this position acquired very soon thefavor of Philip. Alberoni was of the most humble origin. His fatherwas a gardener, and he himself a poor village priest. He rose, however, both in diplomacy and in the Church, having worked his way upto the favor of the Duke of Parma, to work still further on to thecomplete favor of Philip the Fifth. The first marked success in hisupward career was made when he contrived to commend himself to the Ducde Vendôme, the greatest French commander of his day. The Duke ofParma had occasion to deal with Vendôme, and sent the Bishop of Parmato confer with him. The Duc de Vendôme was a man who affectedroughness and brutality of manners, and made it his pride to set allrules of decency at defiance. Peter the Great, Potemkin, Suwarrow, would have seemed men of ultra-refinement when compared with him. Hismanner of receiving the bishop was such that the bishop quitted hispresence abruptly and without saying a word, and returning to Parma, told his master that no consideration on earth should induce him everto approach the brutal French soldier again. Alberoni was beginning torise at this time. He offered to undertake the mission, feeling surethat not even Vendôme could disconcert him. He was intrusted with thetask of renewing the negotiations, and he obtained admission to thepresence of Vendôme. Every reader remembers the story in the "ArabianNights" of that brother of the talkative barber who threw himself intothe spirit of the rich Barmecide's humor, and by outdoing him in thepractical joke secured forever his favor and his friendship. Alberoniacted on this principle at his first meeting with Vendôme. {159} Heoutbuffooned even Vendôme's buffoonery. The story will not bear minuteexplanation, but Alberoni soon satisfied Vendôme that he had to do witha man after his own heart, what Elizabethan writers would have called a"mad wag" indeed, and Vendôme gave him his confidence. Alberoni was made prime-minister by Philip in 1716, and cardinal by theCourt of Rome shortly after. The ambition of Alberoni was in the firstinstance to recover to Spain her lost Italian provinces, and to raiseSpain once more to the commanding position she had held when Charlesthe Fifth abdicated the crown. Alberoni's policy, indeed, was amistake as regarded the strength and the prosperity of Spain. Spain'sItalian and Flemish provinces were of no manner of advantage to her. They were sources of weakness, because they constantly laid Spain opento an attack from any enemy who had the advantage of being able tochoose his battle-ground for himself so long as Spain had outlyingprovinces scattered over the Continent. Indeed, it is made clear, fromthe testimony of many observers, that Spain was rapidly recovering herdomestic prosperity from the moment when she lost those provinces, andwhen the continual strain to which they exposed her finances wasstopped. At that epoch of Europe's political development, however, theidea had hardly occurred to any statesman that national greatness couldcome about in any other way than by the annexing or the recovery ofterritory. Alberoni intrigued against the Regent, and was particularlyanxious to injure the Emperor. He was well inclined to enter intonegotiations, and even into an alliance, with England. He lent hishelp when first he took office to bring to a satisfactory conclusionsome arrangements for a commercial treaty between England and Spain. This treaty gave back to British subjects whatever advantages in tradethey had enjoyed under the Austrian kings of Spain, and contained whatwe should now call a most favored nation clause, providing that noBritish subjects should be {160} exposed to higher duties than werepaid by Spaniards. Alberoni cautiously refrained from giving anyencouragement to the Stuarts, and always professed to the Britishminister the strongest esteem and friendship for King George. Stanhopehimself had known Alberoni formerly in Spain, and had from the firstformed a very high opinion of his abilities. He now opened acorrespondence with the cardinal, expressing a strong wish for asincere and lasting friendship between England and Spain; and thiscorrespondence was kept up for some time in so friendly andconfidential a manner that very little was left for the regularaccredited minister from Spain at the Court of King George to do. [Sidenote: 1714-1718--The Triple Alliance] Alberoni, however, was somewhat too vain and impatient. He had broughtover Sweden to his side, partly because he found Charles the Twelfth ina bad humor on account of the cession to Hanover of certain Swedishterritories by the King of Denmark, who had clutched them while thewarlike Charles was away in Turkey. The cession of those placesbrought Hanover to the sea, and was of importance thus to Hanover andto England alike. George the Elector was in his petty way an ambitiousHanoverian prince, however little interest he had in English affairs. He had always been anxious to get possession of the districts of Bremenand Verden, which had been handed over to Sweden at the Peace ofWestphalia. Reckless enterprise had carried Charles theTwelfth--"Swedish Charles, " with "a frame of adamant, a soul of fire, "whom no dangers frighted, and no labors tired, the "unconquered lord ofpleasure and of pain"--too far in the rush of his chivalrous madness. His vaulting ambition had overleaped itself, and fallen on the otherside; and after his defeat at Pultowa, all his enemies, some of whom hehad scared into inaction before, turned upon him as the nations ofEurope turned upon Napoleon the First after Moscow. Charles had goneinto Turkey and taken refuge there, and it seemed as if he had fallennever to rise again. In his absence the King of Denmark {161} seizedSchleswig-Holstein, Bremen, and Verden. At the close of 1714 Charlessuddenly roused himself from depression and appeared at the town ofStralsund, almost as much to the alarm of Europe as Napoleon had causedwhen he left Elba and landed on the southern shore of France. The Kingof Denmark shuddered at the prospect of a struggle with Charles, and inorder to secure some part of his spoils he entered into a treaty withthe Elector of Hanover, by virtue of which he handed over Bremen andVerden to George, on condition that George should pay him a handsomesum of money, and join him in resisting Sweden. Nothing could be less justifiable, or indeed more nefarious, than thesearrangements. They were discreditable to George the First, and theywere disgraceful to the King of Denmark. Yet the general policy ofthat time seems to have approved of the whole transaction, and regardedit merely as a good stroke of business for Hanover and for England. Alberoni, having secured the help of Sweden, got together great forcesboth by sea and by land, and prepared for a reconquest of the lostItalian provinces. He occupied Sardinia, and made an attempt onSicily. But this was going a little too far and too fast. Alberonifrightened the great States of Europe into activity against him. England, France, and Holland formed a triple alliance, the basis ofwhich was that the House of Hanover should be guaranteed in England, and the House of Orleans in France, should the young King, Louis theFifteenth, die without issue. Not long after, the triple alliance wasexpanded into a quadruple alliance, the Emperor of Germany becoming oneof its members. An English fleet appeared in the Straits of Messina, and a sea-fight took place in which the Spaniards lost almost all theirvessels. Alberoni tried to get up another fleet under the Duke ofOrmond for the purpose of making a landing in Scotland, with a view toa great Jacobite rising. But the seas and skies seem always to havebeen fatal to Spanish projects against England, and {162} theexpedition under Ormond was as much of a failure as the far greaterexpedition under Alexander of Parma. The fleet was wrecked in the Bayof Biscay. The French were invading the northern provinces of Spain, and the King of Spain was compelled not only to get rid of Alberoni, but to renounce once more any claim to the French throne, and toabandon his attempts on Sardinia and Sicily. Another danger wasremoved from England by the death of Charles the Twelfth. "A pettyfortress and a dubious hand" brought about the end of him who had, "like the wind's blast, never-resting, homeless, " stormed so longacross war-convulsed Europe, and "left that name at which the worldgrew pale to point a moral or adorn a tale. " Charles the Twelfth hadjust entered into an alliance with Peter the Great for an enterprise todestroy the House of Hanover and restore the Stuarts, when thememorable bullet at the siege of Frederickshald, in Norway, brought hisstrange career to a close in December, 1718. A junction between suchmen as Charles the Twelfth and Peter the Great might indeed have hadmatter in it. Peter was probably the greatest sovereign born to athrone in modern Europe. An alliance between Peter's profound sagacityand indomitable perseverance, and Charles's unbounded courage andmilitary skill, might have been ominous for any cause against which itwas aimed. The good-fortune which from first to last seems on thewhole to have attended the House of Hanover, and followed it even inspite of itself, was with it when the bullet from an unknown handstruck down Charles the Twelfth. [Sidenote: 1715-1718--Futility of the Triple Alliance] These international arrangements have for us now very little realinterest. They were entirely artificial and temporary. Nothing cameof them that could long endure or make any real change in the relationsof the European States. They had hardly anything to do with theinterests of the various peoples over whose heads and without whoseknowledge or concern they were made. It was still firmly believed thattwo or three diplomatists, meeting in {163} a half-clandestine way in aminister's closet or a lady's drawing-room, could come to agreementswhich would bind down nations and rule political movements. The firstreal upheaving of any genuine force, national or personal, in Europeanlife tore through all their meshes in a moment. Frederick the Great, soon after, is to compel Europe to reconstruct her scheme of politicalarrangements; later yet, the French Revolution is to clear the groundmore thoroughly and violently still. The triple alliance, concocted bythe Regent and Stanhope and Dubois, had not the slightest permanenteffect on the general condition of Europe. It was a clever and anoriginal idea of the Regent to think of bringing England and France, these old hereditary enemies, into a permanent alliance, and it wasright of Stanhope to enter into the spirit of the enterprise; but theactual conditions of England and France, did not allow of an abidingfriendship. The national interest, as it was then understood, of theone State was in antagonism to the national interest of the other. Norcould France and England combined have kept down the growth of otherEuropean States then rising into importance and beginning to cast theirshadows far in front of them. It seems only amusing to us now to readof King George's directions to his minister--"To crush the Czarimmediately, to secure his ships, and even to seize his person. " Thecourageous and dull old King had not the faintest perception of thepart which either the Czar or the Czar's country was destined to playin the history of Europe. At present we are all inclined, and withsome reason, to think that French statesmen, as a rule, are wanting ina knowledge of foreign politics--in an appreciation of the relativeproportions of one force and another in the affairs of Europe outsideFrance. But in the days of George the First French statesmen were muchmore accomplished in the knowledge of foreign politics than thestatesmen of England. There was not, probably, in George'sadministration any man who had anything like the knowledge of the {164}affairs of foreign countries which was possessed by Dubois. But it hadnot yet occurred to the mind of Dubois, or the Regent, or anybody else, that the relations of one State to another, or one people to another, are anything more than the arrangements which various sets ofdiplomatic agents think fit to make among themselves and to consign tothe formality of a treaty. [Sidenote: 1717--Walpole bides his time] The interest we have now in all these "understandings, " engagements, and so-called alliances is personal rather than national. So far asEngland is concerned, they led to a squabble and a split in George'sadministration. It would hardly be worth while to go into a minutehistory of the quarrel between Townshend and Stanhope, Sunderland andWalpole. Sunderland, a man of great ability and ambition, had neverbeen satisfied with the place he held in the King's administration, andthe disputes which sprang up out of the negotiations for the triplealliance gave him an opportunity of exerting his influence against someof his colleagues. Fresh occasion for intrigue, jealousy, and angerwas given by the desire of the King to remain during the winter inHanover, and his fear, on the other hand, that his son--the Prince whowas at the head of affairs in his absence--was forming a party againsthim, and was caballing with some of the members of the Government. Sunderland acted on the King's narrow and petty fears. He distinctlyaccused Townshend and Walpole of a secret understanding with the Princeand the Duke of Argyll against the Sovereign's interests. The resultof all this was that the King dismissed Lord Townshend, and thatWalpole insisted on resigning office. The King, to do him justice, would gladly have kept Walpole in his service, but Walpole would notstay. It is clear that Walpole was glad of the opportunity of gettingout of the ministry. He professed to be deeply touched by theearnestness of the King's remonstrances. He was moved, it is stated, to tears. At all events, he got very successfully through the ceremonyof tear-shedding. But although he wept, he did not {165} soften. Hispurpose remained fixed. He went out of office, and, to all intents andpurposes, passed straightway into opposition. Stanhope became FirstLord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. For a long time it must have been apparent to every one that Walpolewas the coming minister. Walpole himself must have felt satisfied onthe point; but he was probably well content to admit to himself thathis time had not yet come. Walpole was not a great man. He wanted themoral qualities which are indispensable to greatness. He was almost asmuch wanting in them as Bolingbroke himself. But if his genius was farless brilliant than that of Bolingbroke, he was amply furnished withpatience and steadiness. He could wait. He did not devise half adozen plans for one particular object, and fly from one to the otherwhen the moment for action was approaching, and end by rejecting themall when the moment for action had arrived. He made up his mind to acertain course, and he held to it; if its chance did not come to-day, it might come to-morrow. He had no belief in men's sincerity--orwomen's either. There seems reason to believe that the famous sayingascribed to him, about every man having his price, was not used by himin that unlimited sense; that he only spoke of "these men"--of certainmen--and said that every one of them had his price. But he alwaysacted as if the description he gave of "these men" might safely beextended to all men. He had a coarse, licentious nature. He enjoyedthe company of loose women. He loved obscene talk; not merely did helove it, but he indulged in and encouraged it for practical purposes ofhis own; he thought it useful at men's dinner-parties, because it gaveeven the dullest man a subject on which he could find something to say. One could not call Walpole a patriot in the higher sense; he wantedaltogether that fine fibre in his nature, that exalted, half-poeticfeeling, that faculty of imagination which quickens practical andprosaic objects with the spirit of the ideal, and which are {166}needed to make a man a patriot in the noblest meaning of the word. Buthe loved his country in his own heavy, practical, matter-of-fact sortof way, and that was just the sort of way which at the time happened tobe most useful to England. Let it be said, too, in justice to Walpole, that the most poetic and lyrical nature would have found little subjectfor enthusiasm in the England of Walpole's earlier political career. It was not exactly the age for a Philip Sidney or for a Milton. England's home and foreign policy had for years been singularlyignoble. At home it had been a conflict of mean intrigues; abroad, apolicy of selfish alliances and base compromises and surrenders. Thesplendid military genius of Marlborough only shone as it did as if tothrow into more cruel light the infamy of the intrigues and plots towhich it was often sacrificed. No man could be enthusiastic aboutQueen Anne or George the First. The statesmen who professed the utmostardor for the Stuart cause were ready to sell it at a moment's notice, to secure their own personal position; most of those who grovelledbefore King George were known to have been in treaty, up to the last, with his rival. [Sidenote: 1717--Economist statesmen] We may excuseWalpole if, under such conditions, he took a prosaic view of the stateof things, and made his patriotism a very practical sort of service tohis country. It was, as we have said, precisely the sort of serviceEngland just then stood most in need of. Walpole applied himself tosecure for his country peace and retrenchment. He did not, indeed, maintain a sacred principle of peace; he had no sacred principle aboutanything. We shall see more lately that he did not scruple, for partyreasons, to lend himself to a wanton and useless war, well knowing itwas wanton and useless; but his general policy was one of peace, and solong as he had his own way there would have been no waste of England'sresources on foreign battle-fields. He despised war, and the trade ofwar, in his heart. To him war showed only in its vulgar, practical, and repulsive features; the soldier was a man who got paid for the{167} trade of killing. Walpole might be likened to a shrewd andsensible steward who is sincerely anxious to manage his master's estatewith order and economy, and who, for that very reason, is willing toindulge his master's vices and to sanction his prodigalities to acertain extent, knowing that if he attempts to draw the purse-stringstoo closely an open rupture will be the result, and then some stewardwill come in who has no taste for saving, and who will let everythinggo to rack and ruin. He was the first of the long line of Englishministers who professed to regard economy as one of the great objectsof statesmanship. He established securely the principle that to makethe two ends meet was one of the first duties of patriotism. Hefounded, if we may use such an expression, the dynasty of statesmen towhich Pitt and Peel and Gladstone belong. The change in ourconstitutional ways which set up that new dynasty was of infinitelygreater importance to England than the change which settled theBrunswicks in the place of the Stuarts. {168} CHAPTER X. HOME AFFAIRS. [Sidenote: 1717--Oxford's impeachment] Meanwhile the public seemed to have forgotten all about Lord Oxford. "Harley, the nation's great support, " as Swift had called him, had beennearly two years in the Tower, and the nation did not seem to miss itsgreat support, or to care anything about him. In May, 1717, LordOxford sent a petition to the House of Lords, complaining of thehardship and injustice of this unaccountable delay in his impeachment, and the House of Lords began at last to put on an appearance ofactivity. The Commons, too, revived and enlarged their secretcommittee, of which it will be remembered that Walpole was thechairman. Times, however, had changed. Walpole was not in theadministration, and felt no anxiety to assist the ministry in any way. He purposely absented himself from the sittings, and a new chairman hadto be chosen. Probably Walpole had always known well enough that therewas not evidence to sustain a charge of high-treason against his formerrival; perhaps, now that the rival was down in the dust, never to riseagain, he did not care to press for his punishment. At all events, hemade it clear that he felt no interest in the impeachment of LordOxford. The friends of the ruined minister had recourse to aningenious artifice. June 24, 1717, had been appointed for the openingof the proceedings. Westminster Hall, lately the scene of theimpeachment of Somers, and soon to be the scene of the impeachment ofWarren Hastings, was of course the place where Oxford had to comeforward and meet his accusers. The King, the Prince and the Princessof Wales were seated in the {169} Hall; most of the foreign ambassadorsand ministers were spectators. The imposing formalities and artificialterrors of such a ceremonial were kept up. Lord Oxford had beenbrought from the Tower to Westminster by water. He was now ledbareheaded up to the bar by the Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower, havingthe axe borne before him, its edge turned away from him as yet, symbolic of the doom that might await the prisoner, but to which he hadnot yet been declared responsible. When the reading of the articles ofimpeachment and other opening passages of the trial had been gonethrough, Lord Harcourt, Oxford's friend, interposed, and announced thathe had a motion to make. In order to hear his motion, the Peers had towithdraw to their own House. There Lord Harcourt moved that the Houseshould dispose of the two articles of impeachment for high-treasonbefore going into any of the evidence to support the charges for highcrimes and misdemeanors. The argument for this course of proceedingwas plausible. If Oxford were convicted of high-treason he would haveto forfeit his life; and in such case, where would be the use ofconvicting him of a minor offence? The plan on which the Commonsproposed to act, that of taking all the evidence in order of time, nomatter to which charge it had reference, before coming to anyconclusion, might, as Lord Harcourt put it, "draw the trial intoprodigious length, " and absolutely to no purpose. Should the accusedbe found guilty of high-treason he must suffer death, and there wouldbe an end of the whole business. Should he be acquitted of the gravercharge, he might then be impeached on the lighter accusation; and whatharm would have been done or time lost? The motion was carried by amajority of eighty-eight to fifty-six. Now it is hardly possible to suppose that the Peers who voted in themajority did not know very well that the Commons would not, and couldnot, submit to have their mode of conducting an impeachment, which itwas their business to manage, thus altered at the sudden {170}dictation of the other chamber. The House of Commons was growing inimportance every day; the House of Lords was proportionately losing itsinfluence. The Commons determined that they would conduct theimpeachment in their own way or not at all. Doubtless some of them, most of them, were glad to be well out of the whole affair. July 1stwas fixed for the renewal of the proceedings. Some fruitlessconferences between Lords and Commons wasted two days, and on theevening of July 3d the Lords sat in Westminster Hall, and invited byproclamation the accusers of Oxford to appear. No manager came forwardto conduct the impeachment on the part of the Commons. The Peers satfor a quarter of an hour, as if waiting for a prosecutor, well knowingthat none was coming. A solemn farce was played. The Peers went backto their chamber, and there a motion was made acquitting "Robert, Earlof Oxford and Earl Mortimer, " on the ground that no charge had beenmaintained against him. A crowd without hailed the adoption of themotion with cheers. Oxford was released from the Tower, and nothingmore was ever heard of his impeachment. The Duke of Marlborough wasfurious with rage at Oxford's escape, and the duchess is described as"almost distracted that she could not obtain her revenge. " Magnanimitywas not a characteristic virtue of the early days of the Georges. [Sidenote: 1718--Disabilities of dissenters] This was what has sometimes been called the honorable acquittal ofOxford. An English judge once spoke humorously of a prisoner havingbeen "honorably acquitted on a flaw in the indictment. " Harley's waslike this: it was not an acquittal, and it was not honorable to the manimpeached, the House that forebore to press the impeachment, or theHouse that contrived his escape from trial. Oxford had been committedto the Tower and impeached for reasons that had little to do with hisguilt or innocence, or with true public policy; he was released fromprison and relieved from further proceedings in just the same way. There was not evidence against {171} him on which he could be convictedof high-treason, and this was well known to his enemies when they firstconsigned him to the Tower. But there could not be the slightest moraldoubt on the mind of any man that Oxford had intrigued with theStuarts, and had endeavored to procure their restoration, and that hehad done this even since his committal to the Tower. His guilt, whatever it was, had been increased by him, and not diminished, sincethe beginning of the proceedings taken against him. But he had onlydone what most other statesmen of that day had been doing, or wouldhave done if they had seen advantage in it. He was not more guiltythan some of his bitterest opponents, the Duke of Marlborough amongothers. All but the very bitterest opponents were glad to be done withthe whole business. It must have come to a more or less farcical endsooner or later, and sensible men were of opinion that the sooner thebetter. Of Harley, "Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, " as his titlesran, we shall not hear any more; we have already foreshadowed theremainder of his life and his death. This short account of his shamimpeachment is introduced here merely as a part of the historiccontinuity of the narrative. History has few characters lessinteresting than that of Oxford. He held a position of greatnesswithout being great; he fell, and even his fall could not invest himwith tragic dignity. On December 13, 1718, Lord Stanhope, who had been raised to thepeerage, first as Viscount and then as Earl Stanhope, introduced intothe House of Lords a measure ingeniously entitled "A Bill forStrengthening the Protestant Interest in these Kingdoms. " The title ofthe Bill was strictly appropriate according to our present ideas, andaccording to the ideas of enlightened men in Stanhope's days also; butit must at first have misled some of Stanhope's audience. MostChurchmen are now ready to admit that the interests of the Church ofEngland are strengthened by every measure which tends to securereligious equality; but most Churchmen were not quite so {172} sure ofthis in the reign of George the First. The Bill brought in by Stanhopewas really a measure intended to relieve Dissenters from some of thepenalties and disabilities imposed on them in the reign of Queen Anne. [Sidenote: 1719--Catholic emancipation foreshadowed] The second reading of the Bill was the occasion of a long and animateddebate. Several noble lords appealed to the opinion of the bishops, and the bishops spoke in answer to the appeal. The Archbishop ofCanterbury, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of London, the Bishop ofBristol, the Bishop of Rochester (Atterbury), the Bishop of Chester, and other prelates, spoke against the Bill. The Bishop of Bangor, theBishop of Gloucester, the Bishop of Lincoln, the Bishop of Norwich, andthe Bishop of Peterborough spoke in its favor. The Bishop ofPeterborough's was a strenuous and an eloquent argument in favor of theprinciple of the Bill. "The words 'Church' and 'Church's danger, '"said the Bishop of Peterborough, "had often been made use of to carryon sinister designs; and then these words made a mighty noise in themouth of silly women and children;" but in his opinion the Church, which he defined to be a scriptural institution upon a legalestablishment, was founded upon a rock, and "could not be in danger aslong as we enjoyed the light of the Gospel and our excellentconstitution. " The argument would have been perfect if the eloquentbishop had only left out the proviso about "our excellentconstitution;" for the opponents of the measure were contending, as wasbut natural, that the Bill, if passed into law, would not leave to theChurch the constitutional protection which it had previously enjoyed. The Bill passed the House of Lords on December 23d, and was sent downto the Commons next day. It was read there a first time at once, wasread a second time after a debate of some nine hours, and was passedwithout amendment by a majority of 221 against 170 on January 10, 1719. The test majority, however, by which the Bill had been decisivelycarried, on the motion to go into committee, was but small--243 against202--and this {173} majority was mainly due to the vote of the Scottishmembers. Stanhope, it is well known, would have made the measure moreliberal than it was, and was dissuaded from this intention bySunderland, who insisted that if it were too liberal it would not passthe House of Commons. The result seems to prove that Sunderland wasright. Walpole spoke against the Bill, limited as its concessionswere. It would be interesting to know what sort of argument a man ofWalpole's principles could have offered against a measure embodying thevery spirit and sense of Whig policy. Unfortunately we have no meansof knowing. The galleries of the House of Commons were rigidly closedagainst strangers on the day of the debate, and all we are allowed tohear concerning Walpole's part in the discussion is that "Mr. RobertWalpole made a warm speech, chiefly levelled against a great man in thepresent administration. " There is something characteristic of Walpolein this. He was never very particular about principle, or even aboutseeming consistency; but still, when opposing a measure which he mighthave been expected to support, he would have probably found it moreexpedient, as well as more agreeable, to confine himself chiefly to thetask of attacking some "great man in the present administration. " It ought to be said of Stanhope that he was distinctly in advance ofhis age as regarded the recognition of the principle of religiousequality. He was not only anxious to put the Protestant Dissenters asmuch as possible on a level with Churchmen in all the privileges ofcitizenship, but he was even strongly in favor of mitigating theseverity of the laws against the Roman Catholics. In his "History ofEngland, from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, " LordStanhope, the descendant of the minister whose career and characterhave done so much honor to a name and a family, claims for him thecredit of having put on paper a scheme "not undeserving of attention asthe earliest germ of Roman Catholic emancipation. " Stanhope's life wastoo soon and too {174} suddenly cut short to allow him to push forwardhis scheme to anything like a practical position, and it is notprobable that he could in any case have done much with it at such atime. Still, though fate cut short the life, it ought not to cut shortthe praise. [Sidenote: 1719--The Peerage Bill] The Peerage Bill raised a question of some constitutional importance. The principal object of this measure, which was introduced on February28, 1719, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Somerset, and wasbelieved to have Lord Sunderland for its actual author, was to limitthe prerogative of the Crown in the creation of English peerages to anumber not exceeding six, in addition to those already existing. According to the provisions of the Bill, the Crown might still createnew Peers on the extinction of old titles for want of male heirs; butwith this exception the power of adding new peerages would be limitedto the number of six. It was also proposed that, instead of thesixteen elective Peers from Scotland, twenty-five hereditary Peersshould be created. This part of the Bill was that which at the timegave rise to most of the debate, in the House of Lords at least; butthe really important constitutional question was that which involvedthe limitation of the privilege of the Sovereign. The Sovereignhimself sent a special message to the House of Lords, informing themthat "he has so much at heart the settling the Peerage of the wholekingdom upon such a foundation as may secure the freedom andconstitution of Parliament in all future ages, that he is willing thathis prerogative stand not in the way of so great and necessary a work. "The ostensible motive for the proposed legislation was to get rid ofdifficulties caused by the over-increase of the numbers of the peeragesince the union of England and Scotland; the real object was to guardagainst such a _coup-d'état_ as that accomplished in Anne's later daysby the creation of the twelve Peers, of whom Mrs. Masham's husband wasone. Nothing could be more generous and liberal, it might have beenthought, than the expressed willingness of the {175} King to surrendera part of his prerogative. This very readiness, however, expressed asit was by anticipation, and before the measure had yet made anyprogress, set a great many persons in and out of Parliament thinking. A vehement dispute soon sprang up, in which the pamphleteer, as usual, bore an important part. Addison, in one of his latest political andliterary efforts, defended the proposed change. He described hispamphlet as the work of an "Old Whig. " It was written as a reply to apamphlet by Steele condemning the Bill, and signed "A Plebeian. "Reply, retort, and rejoinder followed in more and more heated andpersonal style. The excitement created caused the measure to bedropped for the session, but it was brought in again in the sessionfollowing, and it passed through all its stages in the Lords withouttrouble and with much rapidity. When it came down to the House of Commons, however, a very differentfate awaited it. Walpole assailed it with powerful eloquence and withunanswerable argument. The true nature of the scheme now came out. Itwould have simply rendered the representative chamber powerless againsta majority of the chamber which did not represent. This will bereadily apparent to any one who considers the subject for a moment bythe light of our more modern experience. A majority of the House ofCommons, representing, it may be, a vast majority of the people, agreeto a certain measure. It goes up to the House of Lords, and isrejected there. What means in the end have the Commons, who representthe nation, of giving effect to the wishes of the nation? They havenone but the privilege of the Crown to create, under the advice ofministers, a sufficient number of new Peers to outvote the opponents ofthe measure. No alternative but revolution and civil war would be leftif this were taken away. It is true that the power might be againabused by the Sovereign, as it was abused in Anne's days on the adviceof the Tories; but we know that, as a matter of fact, it is hardly everabused--hardly ever even used. {176} Why is it hardly ever used? Forthe good reason that all men know it is existing, and can be usedshould the need arise. Even were it to be misused, the misuse wouldhappen under responsible ministers, who could be challenged to answerfor it, and who would have to make good their defence. But if theHouse of Lords were made supreme over the House of Commons in everyinstance, by abolishing the unlimited prerogative which alone keeps itin check, who could then be held responsible for abuse--and beforewhom? Who could call the House of Lords to account? Before whattribunal could it be summoned to answer? The Peers are now independentof the people, and would then be also independent of the Crown. Thereis hardly a great political reform known to modern England which, ifthe Peerage Bill had become law, would not have been absolutelyrejected or else carried by a popular revolution. [Sidenote: 1720--The Irish House of Lords] Walpole attacked the Bill on every side. Such legislation, heinsisted, "would in time bring back the Commons into the state ofservile dependency they were in when they wore the badges of theLords. " It would, he contended, take away "one of the most powerfulincentives to virtue, . . . Since there would be no coming to honor butthrough the winding-sheet of an old decrepit lord and the grave of anextinct noble family. " Walpole knew well his public and his time. Hedwelt most strongly on this last consideration--that the Bill if passedinto law would shut the gates of the Peerage against deservingCommoners. He asked indignantly how the House of Lords could expectthe Commons to give their concurrence to a measure "by which they andtheir posterities are to be excluded from the Peerage. " The commonerwho, after this way of putting the matter, assented to the Bill, musteither have been an unambitious bachelor, or have been blessed in asingularly unambitious wife. Steele, who, as we have seen, had foughtgallantly against the Bill with his pen, now made a very effectivespeech against it. He showed that the {177} measure would, alter thewhole constitutional position of the House of Lords, whether as alegislative chamber or a court of appeal. "The restraint of the Peersto a certain number will make the most powerful of them have all therest under their direction, . . . And judges so made by the blind orderof birth will be capable of no other way of decision. " Theprerogative, as Steele put it very clearly, "can do no hurt whenministers do their duty; but a settled number of Peers may abuse theirpower when no man is answerable for them, or can call them to accountfor their encroachments. " The Bill was rejected by a majority of 269votes against 177. In March, 1720, was passed an Act with a pompous and even portentoustitle: it was called "An Act for the better securing the Dependency ofthe Kingdom of Ireland upon the Crown of Great Britain. " The preamblerecited that "attempts have been lately made to shake off thesubjection of Ireland unto and dependence upon the Imperial Crown ofthis realm, which will be of dangerous consequence to Great Britain andIreland. " The reader would naturally assume that some fresh designs ofthe Stuarts had been discovered, having for their theatre the Catholicprovinces of Ireland. Was James Stuart about to land at Kinsale? HadAlberoni got hold of the Irish Catholics? Was Atterbury plotting withSwift for an armed insurrection in Munster and Connaught? No; nothingof the kind was expected. The preamble of the alarming Act went on toset forth that the House of Lords in Ireland had lately, "against law, assumed to themselves a power and jurisdiction to examine, correct, andamend the judgments and decrees of the courts of justice in the kingdomof Ireland;" and this alleged trespass of the Irish House of Lords wasthe whole cause of the new measure. The Act declared that the IrishHouse of Lords had no jurisdiction "to judge of, affirm, or reverse anyjudgment, sentence, or decree given or made in any court within thesaid kingdom. " This was an enactment of the most serious {178} momentin a constitutional sense. It made the Parliament of Irelandsubordinate to the Parliament of England; it reduced the Irish House ofLords from a position in Ireland equal to that of the House of Lords inEngland, down to the level of a mere provincial assembly. The occasionof the passing of this Act was the decision given by the Irish House ofLords in the celebrated cause of Sherlock against Annesley. It is notnecessary for us to go into the story of the case at any length. Itwas a question of disputed property. The defendant had obtained adecree in the Irish Court of Exchequer, which decree was reversed on anappeal to the Irish House of Lords. The defendant appealed to theEnglish House of Lords, who confirmed the judgment of the Irish Courtof Exchequer, and ordered him to be put in possession of the disputedproperty. The Irish House of Lords stood by their authority, andactually ordered the Irish Barons of Exchequer to be taken into custodyby Black Rod for having offended against the privileges of the Peersand the rights and liberties of Ireland. The Act was passed to settlethe question and reduce the Irish House of Lords to submission andsubordinate rank. It was settled merely, of course, by the strength ofa majority in the English Parliament. The Duke of Leeds recorded asensible and a manly protest against the vote of the majority of hisbrother Peers. One or two of the reasons he gives for his protest areworth reading even now. The eleventh reason is, "Because it is theglory of the English laws and the blessing attending Englishmen, thatthey have justice administered at their doors, and not to be drawn, asformerly, to Rome by appeals;" "and by this order the people of Irelandmust be drawn from Ireland hither whensoever they receive any injusticefrom the Chancery there, by which means poor men must be trampled on, as not being able to come over to seek for justice. " The thirteenthreason is still more concise: "Because this taking away thejurisdiction of the Lords' House in Ireland may be a means to {179}disquiet the Lords there and disappoint the King's affairs. " [Sidenote: 1718--Death of William Penn] The protest, it need hardly be said, received little or no attention. More than sixty years after, when England was perplexed in foreign andcolonial troubles, the spirit of the protest walked abroad and animatedGrattan and the Irish Volunteers. But in 1720 the Parliament atWestminster was free to do as it pleased with the Parliament in Dublin. To the vast majority of the Irish people it might have been a matter ofabsolute indifference which Parliament reigned supreme; they had aslittle to expect from Dublin as from Westminster. The Irish Parliamentwas quite as ready to promote legislation for the further persecutionof Catholics as any English Parliament could be. The Parliament inDublin was merely an assembly of English and Protestant colonists. Yetit is worthy of remark, that, then and after, the sympathies of thepeople, when they had any means of showing them, went with the IrishParliament simply because of the name it bore. It was, at all events, the so-called Parliament of Ireland; it represented, at least in name, the authority of the Irish people. So long as it existed there wassome recognition of the fact that Ireland was something more than amerely conquered country, held by the title of the sword, and governedby arbitrary proclamation, secret warrant, and drum-head court-martial. Death had been busy among eminent men for some few years. The Duke ofShrewsbury, the "king of hearts, " the statesman whose appointment asLord Treasurer secured the throne of Great Britain for the Hanoverianfamily, died on February 18, 1717. William Penn, the founder of thegreat American State of Pennyslvania, closed his long active andfruitful life in 1718. We have here only to record his death; thehistory of his deeds belongs to an earlier time. Controversy has nowquite ceased to busy itself about his noble character, and his life ofsplendid unostentatious beneficence. His name, which without hisconsent and against his wishes was {180} made part of the name of theState which he founded, will be remembered in connection with itshistory while the Delaware and the Schuylkill flow. Of his famoustreaty with the Indians nothing, perhaps, was ever better said than thecomment of Voltaire, that it was the only league between savages andwhite men which was never sworn to and never broken. Addison died, still comparatively young, on June 17, 1719. He had reached thehighest point of his political career but a short time before, when, onone of the changes of office between Stanhope and Sunderland, he becameone of the principal secretaries of State. His health, however, wasbreaking down, and he never had indeed the slightest gift or taste forpolitical life. "Pity, " said Mrs. Manley, the authoress of "The NewAtlantis, " speaking of Addison, "that politics and sordid interestshould have carried him out of the road of Helicon and snatched himfrom the embraces of the Muses. " But it seems quite unjust to ascribeAddison's divergence into political ways to any sordid interest. Hehad political friends who loved him, and he went with them intopolitics as he might have travelled in company with them, and for thesake of their company, although caring nothing for travel himself. Noman was better aware of his incapacity for the real business of publiclife. Addison had himself pointed out all the objections to hispolitical advancement before that advancement was pressed upon him. Hewas not a statesman; he was not an administrator; he could not do anygenuine service as head of a department; he was not even a good clerk;he was a wretched speaker; he was consumed by a morbid shyness, almostas oppressive as that of the poet Cowper in a later day, or ofNathaniel Hawthorne, the American novelist, later still. His wholepublic career was at best but a harmless mistake. It has done no harmto his literary fame. The world has almost forgotten it. Even loversof Addison might have to be reminded now that the creator of Sir Rogerde Coverley was once a diplomatic agent and a secretary of State, {181}and a member of the House of Commons. Some of the essays which Addisoncontributed to the _Spectator_ are like enough to outlive the system ofgovernment by party, and perhaps even the whole system ofrepresentative government. Sir Roger de Coverley will not be forgottenuntil men forget Parson Adams and Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas, and forthat matter, Sir John Falstaff and Don Quixote. [Sidenote: 1720--The King and the Prince reconciled] For some time things were looking well at home and abroad. The policyof the Government appeared to have been completely successful on theContinent. The confederations that had been threatening England weredissolved or broken up; the Jacobite conspiracies seemed to have beenmade hopeless and powerless. The friendship established betweenEngland and the Regent of France had to all seeming robbed the Stuartsof their last chance. James the Chevalier had no longer a home onFrench soil. Paris could not any more be the head-quarters of hisorganization and the scene of his mock Court. The Regent had kept hispromises to the English Government. It was well known that, so farfrom encouraging or permitting the designs of the exiled family againstEngland, he would do all in his power to frustrate them; as, indeed, hehad an opportunity of doing not long after. Never before, perhapsnever since, was there so cordial an understanding between England andFrance. Never could there have been a time when such an understandingwas of greater importance to England. At home the prospect seemed equally bright. Walpole had contrived toingratiate himself more and more with the Prince of Wales, and hadbecome his confidential adviser. Acting on his counsel, the Princemade his submission to the King; and acting on Stanhope's counsel, theKing accepted it. The Sovereign and his heir had a meeting and werereconciled; for the time, at least. Walpole consented to join theadministration, content for the present to fill the humble place ofpaymaster to the forces, without a seat in the Cabinet. He returned, in {182} fact, to the ministerial position which he had first occupied, and from which he had been promoted, and must have seemed to himselfsomewhat in the position of a boy who, after having got high in hisclass, has got down very low again, and is well content to mount up astep or two from the humblest position. Walpole knew what he wasdoing, and must have been quite satisfied in his own mind that he wasnot likely to remain very long paymaster to the forces, although hecould not, by any possibility, have anticipated the strange successionof events by which he was destined soon to be left without a rival. For the present he was in the administration, but he took little partin its actual work. He did not even appear to have any real concern init. He spent as much of his time as he could at Houghton, his pleasantcountry-seat in Norfolk. Townshend, too, had been induced to join theadministration. To him was assigned the position of president of thecouncil. Thus there appeared to be a truce to quarrels, and to enmities abroadand at home. There was no dispute with any of the great Continentalpowers; there was no dread of the Stuarts. Ministerial rivalries hadbeen reduced to concordance and quiet; the traditional quarrel betweenthe Sovereign and the heir-apparent had been composed. It might havebeen thought that a time of peace and national prosperity had beenassured. In the history of nations, however, we commonly find thatnothing more certainly bodes unsettlement than a general convictionthat everything is settled forever. {183} CHAPTER XI. "THE EARTH HATH BUBBLES. " [Sidenote: 1718-1719--The Mississippi Scheme] One of the comedies of Ben Jonson gives some vivid and humorousillustrations of the mania for projects, speculations, patents, andmonopolies that at his time had taken possession of the minds ofEnglishmen. There is an enterprising person who declares that he cancoin money out of cobwebs, raise wool upon egg-shells, and make grassgrow out of marrow-bones. He has a project "for the recovery of drownedland, " a scheme for a new patent for the dressing of dog-skins forgloves, a plan for the bottling of ale, a device for making wine out ofblackberries, and various other schemes cut and dry for what would now becalled floating companies to make money. The civilized world is visitedwith this epidemic of project and speculation from time to time. In thereign of George the First such a mania attacked England much morefiercely than it had done even in the days of Ben Jonson. It came to usthis time from France. The close of a great war is always a tempting anda favorable time for such enterprises. Finances are out of order; aseason of spurious commercial activity has come to an end; new resourcesare to be sought for somehow; and man must change to be other than he iswhen he wholly ceases to believe in financial miracle-working. There isan air of plausibility about most of the new projects; and, indeed, likethe scheme told of in Ben Jonson for the recovery of drowned lands, theenterprise is usually something within human power to accomplish, if onlyhuman skill could make it pay. The exchequer of France had been broughtinto a condition of something very like {184} bankruptcy by the long andwasting war; and a projector was found who promised to supply thedeficiency as boldly and as liberally as Mephistopheles does in thesecond part of "Faust. " John Law, a Scotchman, and unquestionably a manof great ability and financial skill, had settled in France inconsequence of having fought a duel and killed his man in his owncountry. [Sidenote: 1710-1720--The South Sea Company] Law set up acompany which was to have a monopoly of the trade of the wholeMississippi region in North America, and on condition of the monopoly wasto pay off the national debt of France. A scheme of the kind within duelimitations would have been reasonable enough, so far as the working ofthe Mississippi region was concerned; but Law went on extending andextending the scope of its supposed operations, until it might almost aswell have attempted to fold in the orb of the earth. The shares in hiscompany went up with a sudden bound. He had the patronage of the Regentand of all the Court circle. Gambling in shares became the fashion, thepassion of Paris, and, indeed, of all France. Shares bought one day weresold at an immense advance the next, or even the same day. Men and womennearly bankrupt in purse before, suddenly found themselves in possessionof large sums of money, for which they had to all appearance run no riskand made no sacrifice whatever. Princes and tradesmen, duchesses andseamstresses and harlots, clamored, intrigued, and battled for shares. The offices in the Rue Quincampoix, a street then inhabited by bankers, stock-brokers, and exchange agents, were besieged all day long withcrowds of eager competitors for shares. The street was choked with fineequipages, until it was found absolutely necessary to close it againstall horses and carriages. All the rank and fashion of Paris flung itselfinto this game of speculation. Every one has heard the story of thehunchback who made a little fortune by the letting of his hump as a deskon which impatient speculators might scribble their applications forshares. A French novelist, M. Paul Feval, has made good use of {185}this story, and London still remembers to what a brilliant dramaticaccount it was turned by Mr. Fechter. Law was the most powerful and themost courted man of his day. In his youth he had been a gallant and afree liver, a man of dress and fashion and intrigue, who delighted inscandalous entanglements with women. The fashion and beauty of Paris wasfor the hour at his feet. Think of a brilliant gallant who could makeone rich in a moment! The mother of the Regent described in a coarse andpungent sentence the sort of homage which Parisian ladies would have beenwilling to pay to Law if he had so desired. St. Simon, the mere_littérateur_ and diplomatist, kept his head almost alone, and was not tobe dazzled. Since the fable of Midas, he said, he had not heard of anyone having the power to turn all he touched into gold, and he did notbelieve that virtue was given to M. Law. There is no doubt that Law wasa man of great ability as a financier, and that his scheme in thebeginning had promise in it. It was, as Burke has said of the scheme andits author, the public enthusiasm, and not Law himself, which chose tobuild on the base of his scheme a structure which it could not bear. Itdoes not seem by any means certain that a project quite as wild might notbe launched in London or Paris at the present day, and find almost asgreat a temporary success, and blaze, like Law's, the comet of a season. While the season lasted the comet blazed with a light that filled thesocial sky. Law was for the time the most powerful man in France. A momentarywhisper that he was out of health sent the funds down, and eclipsed thegayety of nations. He was admitted into the Regent's privy council, andmade Controller-general of the finances of France. The result wasinevitable; there was as yet nothing behind the promises and the sharesof the Mississippi Company. If finance could have gone on foreverpromise-crammed, things would have been all right. But you cannot feedcapons so, as Hamlet tells us; and you cannot long feed {186}shareholders so. Law's scheme suddenly collapsed one day, and broughtruin on hundreds of thousands in France. While, however, it was stillafloat in air, its gaudy colors dazzled the eyes of the South Sea Companyin England. [Sidenote: 1710-1720--The bubble swells] At the north-west end of Threadneedle Street, within view of the remainsof Richard the Third's Palace of Crosby, stands a solid red-brickbuilding, substantial, respectable, business-like, dignified with thedignity of some century and a half of existence. Time has softened anddeepened its ruddy hue to a mellow, rich tone, contrasting pleasantlywith the white copings and facings of its windows, and suggestingagreeably something of the smooth brown cloth and neat white linen of awell-to-do city gentleman of the last century. Yet that solemn, massive, prosperous-looking building is the enduring monument of one of the mostgigantic shams on record--a sham and swindle that was the prolific parentof a whole brood of shams and swindles; for that building, with honestyand credit and mercantile honor written in its every line and angle, isall that remains of the South Sea House. It is a melancholy place--theHall of the Kings at Karnak is hardly more melancholy or moreghost-haunted. Not that the house has now that "desolation somethinglike Balclutha's" which Charles Lamb attributed to it more than half acentury ago. The place has changed greatly since Elia the Italian andElia the Englishman were fellow-clerks at the South Sea House. Thosedusty maps of Mexico, "dim as dreams, " have long been taken away. Thecompany itself, having outlived alike its fame and its infamy, lingeringinappropriately like some guest that "hath outstayed his welcome time, "was wound up at last within the memory of living men. The statelygate-way no longer opens upon the "grave court, with cloisters andpillars, " where South Sea stock so often changed hands. The cloistersand pillars have gone; the court has been converted into a hall of a sortof exchange, where merchants daily meet. The days of the desolation ofthe South Sea House are as much a thing of its past as {187} its earliersplendor. Its corridors are now crowded with offices occupied bymerchants of every nationality, from Scotland to Greece, and by companiesconnected with every portion of the globe. Only at night, on Saturdayafternoons, and during the still peace of a City Sabbath, do the noise ofmen and the stir of business cease in the South Sea House. Yet, nevertheless, when one thinks of all that has happened there, of thedreams and hopes and miseries of which it was the begetter, it remainsone of the most melancholy temples to folly that man has yet erected. The South Sea Company had been established in 1710 by Harley himself, andwas going along quietly and soberly enough for the time; but the exampleof the Mississippi Company was too strong for it. The South Sea Company, too, made to itself waxen wings, and prepared to fly above the clouds. The directors offered to relieve the State of its debt on condition ofobtaining a monopoly of the South Sea trade. The nation was to takeshares in the company in the first instance, and to deal with thecompany, for its commercial and other wares, in the second; and by meansof the exclusive dealing in shares and in products it was to pay off theNational Debt. In other words, three men, all having nothing, andheavily in debt, were to go into exclusive dealings with each other, andwere thus to make fortunes, discharge their liabilities, and live inluxury for the rest of their days. Stated thus, the proposition looksmarvellously absurd. But it is not, in its essential conditions, moreabsurd than many a financial project which floats successfully for atime. Money-making, the hardest and most practical of all occupations, the task which can soonest be tested by results, is the business of allothers in which men are most easily led astray, most greedy to be ledastray. Sydney Smith speaks of a certain French lady whose whole naturecried out for her seduction. There are seasons when the whole nature ofman seems to cry out for his financial seduction. The South Sea projectexpanded and inflated as the {188} Mississippi Scheme had done. Itstemporary success turned the heads of the whole population. [Sidenote: 1720--The bank competes] Hundreds of schemes, still more wild, sprang into sudden existence. Someof the projects then put forward, and believed in, surpass in senselessextravagance anything satirized by Ben Jonson. So wild was the passionfor new enterprises, that it seemed as if, at one time, anybody had onlyto announce any scheme, however preposterous, in order to find peoplecompeting for shares in it. The only condition of things in our own timethat could be compared with this epoch of insane speculation is therailway mania of 1846, when, for a brief season, George Hudson was king, and set up his hat in the market-place, and all England bowed down inhomage to it. But the epidemic of speculation in the reign of therailway king was comparatively harmless and reasonable when compared withthe midsummer madness of the South Sea scheme. The South Sea scheme was brought before the notice of the House ofCommons in 1720. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was Mr. Aislabie. Wehave already seen Mr. Aislabie as one of the secret committee whorecommended the impeachment of Oxford and Bolingbroke. How well he wasfitted for his office will appear from the fact that he was altogethertaken in by the project, and by the financial arguments of those whobrought it forward. Sunderland and Stanhope were taken in likewise--butthere was nothing very surprising in that. A statesman of those days didnot profess to understand anything about finance or economics, unlessthese subjects happened to belong to his department; and the statesmanwas exceptional who could honestly profess to understand them even whenthey did. Walpole, however, was a minister of a different order. He wasthe first of the line of statesmen-financiers. He saw through thebubble, and endeavored to make others see as clearly as he did himself. Walpole assailed the project in a pamphlet, and opposed it strenuously inhis place in Parliament. He was {189} not at that time a minister of theCrown; perhaps, if he had been, the South Sea Bill might never have beenpresented to Parliament; but the nation and the Parliament were off theirheads just then. The caricaturists and the authors of lampoon versespositively found out the South Sea scheme before the financiers and menof the city. On January 22, 1720, the House of Commons, sitting in what was thentermed a Grand Committee, or what would now be called Committee of thewhole House, took into consideration a proposal of the South Sea Companytowards the redemption of the public debts. The proposal set forth that, "the Corporation of the Governor and Company of Merchants of GreatBritain, trading to the South Sea and other parts of America, and forencouraging the fishery, having under their consideration how they may bemost serviceable to his Majesty and his Government, and to show theirzeal and readiness to concur in the great and honorable design ofreducing the national debts, " do "humbly apprehend that if the publicdebts and annuities mentioned in the annexed estimate were taken into andmade part of the capital stock of the said Company, it would greatlycontribute to that most desirable end. " The Company then set forth theconditions under which they proposed to convert themselves into an agencyfor paying off the national debt, and making a profit for themselves. The proposal fell somewhat short of the general expectation, which lookedfor nothing less than a sort of financial philosopher's stone. Besides, the Bank of England was willing to compete with the South Sea Company. If the Company could coin money out of cobwebs, why should not the Bankbe able to accomplish the same feat? The friends of the Bank remindedthe House of Commons of the great services which that corporation hadrendered to the Government in the most difficult times, and urged, withmuch show of justice, that if any advantage was to be made by publicbargains, the Bank should be preferred before a Company that had never{190} done anything for the nation. Well might Aislabie, the unfortunateChancellor of the Exchequer, whose shame and ruin we shall soon come totell of, exclaim in the speech which he made when defending himself forthe second time before the House of Lords, that "the spirit of bubblinghad prevailed so universally that the very Bank became a bubble--and thisnot by chance or necessity, or from any engagement to raise money for thepublic service, but from the same spirit that actuated Temple Mills orCaraway's Fishery. " In plain truth, as poor Aislabie pointed out, theBank started a scheme in imitation of the South Sea Company, and theHouse of Commons gave time for its proper development. The Bank offeredits scheme on February 1st, and by that time the South Sea Company hadseen their way to mend their hand and submit more attractive proposals. Then the Bank, not to be out-rivalled, soon made a second proposal aswell. The House took the rival propositions into consideration. Walpolewas the chief advocate of the Bank. No doubt he had come to thereasonable conclusion that if there could be any hope of success for sucha scheme, it would be found in the Bank of England rather than in theSouth Sea Company. Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, madehimself the champion of the Company, and assured the House that itspropositions were of far greater advantage to the country than those ofthe Bank. Under his persuasive influence the House agreed to accept thetender, as we may call it, of the Company, and the Chancellor of theExchequer, Mr. Secretary Craggs, and others, were ordered to prepare andbring in a bill to give legislative sanction to the scheme. [Sidenote: 1720--The Bill passed] The bill passed the Commons and went up to the House of Lords. To thecredit of the Peers it has to be said that they received it moredoubtfully, and were slower to admit the certainty of its blessings thanthe members of the representative chamber had been. Lord North and Graycondemned it as not only making way for, but {191} actually countenancingand authorizing "the fraudulent and pernicious practice ofstock-jobbing. " The Duke of Wharton declared that "the artificial andprodigious rise of the South Sea stock was a dangerous bait, which mightdecoy many unwary people to their ruin, and allure them, by a falseprospect of gain, to part with what they had got by their labor andindustry to purchase imaginary riches. " Lord Cowper said that the bill, "like the Trojan horse, was ushered in and received with great pomp andacclamations of joy, but was contrived for treachery and destruction. "Lord Sunderland, however, spoke warmly in favor of the bill, andcontended that "they who countenanced the scheme of the South Sea Companyhad nothing in their view but the easing the nation of part of that heavyload of debt it labored under;" and argued that the scheme would enablethe directors of the Company at once to pay off the debt, and to securelarge dividends to their share-holders. The Lords decided on admittingthe South Sea Company's Trojan horse. Eighty-three votes were in favorof the bill, and only seventeen against it. The bill was read a thirdtime on April 7th, and received the Royal assent on June 11th. TheKing's speech, delivered that day at the close of the session, declaredthat "the good foundation you have prepared this session for the paymentof the national debts, and the discharge of a great part of them withoutthe least violation of the public faith, will, I hope, strengthen moreand more the union I desire to see among all my subjects, and make ourfriendship yet more valuable to all foreign Powers. " The immediate result of the Parliamentary authority thus given to whatwas purely a bubble scheme was to bring upon the Legislature a perfectdeluge of petitions from all manner of projectors. Patents andmonopolies were sought for the carrying on of fisheries in Greenland andvarious other regions; for the growth, manufacture and sale of hemp, flax, and cotton; for the making of sail-cloth; for a general insuranceagainst fire; for the {192} planting and rearing of madder to be used bydyers; for the preparing and curing of Virginia tobacco for snuff, andmaking it into the same within all his Majesty's dominions. Schemes suchas these were comparatively reasonable; but there were others of adifferent kind. Petitions were gravely submitted to Parliament prayingfor patents to be granted to the projectors of enterprises for trading inhair; for the universal supply of funerals to all parts of Great Britain;for insuring and increasing children's fortunes; for insuring masters andmistresses against losses from the carelessness or misconduct ofservants; for insuring against thefts and robberies; for extractingsilver from lead; for the transmutation of silver into malleable finemetal; for buying and fitting out ships to suppress pirates; for a wheelfor perpetual motion, and--with which project, perhaps, we may close ourlist of specimens--"for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is. " Of course some of these projects weremere vulgar swindles. Even in that season of marvellous projection it isnot to be supposed that the inventors of the last-mentioned scheme hadany serious belief in its efficacy. The author of the project for theperpetual-motion wheel was, we take it, a sincere personage andenthusiast. His scheme has been coming up again and again before theworld since his time; and we have known good men who would have stakedall they held dear in life upon the possibility of its realization. Butthe would-be patentee of the undertaking of great advantage, nobody toknow what it is, was a man of a different order. He understood humannature in certain of its moods. He knew that there are men and women whocan be got to believe in anything which holds out the promise of quickand easy gain. If he found a few dozen greedy and selfish fools to helphis project with a little money, that would, no doubt, be the fullattainment of his ends. Probably he was successful. The very boldnessof his avowal of secrecy would have a charm for many. One day would beenough for him--the {193} the day when he sent in his demand for apatent. The bare demand would bring him dupes. [Sidenote: 1720--The bubble bursts] The first great blow struck at the South Sea Company came from the SouthSea Company itself. Several bubble companies began to imitate thefinancial system which the more favored institution had set up. TheSouth Sea Company put in motion certain legal proceedings against some ofthe offenders. The South Sea Company had the support and countenance ofthe high legal authorities, and found no difficulty in obtaininginjunctions against the other associations, directing them not to gobeyond the strict legal privileges secured to them by their charters ofincorporation. Among the undertakings thus admonished were the EnglishCopper Company and the Welsh Copper and Lead Company. His Royal Highnessthe Prince of Wales happened to be a governor of the English CopperCompany, and the Lords-justices were polite enough to send the Prince amessage expressing the great regret they felt at having to declareillegal an enterprise with which he was connected. The Prince, not to beoutdone in politeness, received the admonition, we are told, "verygraciously, " and sent on his part a message to the Company requestingthem to accept his resignation, and to elect some one else a governor inhis place. The proceedings which the South Sea Company had set on footagainst their audacious rivals and imitators had, however, theinconvenient effect of directing too much of public attention to theprinciples upon which they conducted their own business. Confidencebegan to waver, to be shaken, to give way altogether; and when people askwhether a speculation is a bubble, the bubble, if it is one, is alreadyburst. The whole basis of Law's system, and of the South Sea Company's schemesas well, was the principle that the prosperity of a nation is increasedin proportion to the quantity of money in circulation; and that as noState can have gold enough for all its commercial transactions, paper-money may be issued to an unlimited extent, and {194} its fullvalue maintained without its being convertible at pleasure into hardcash. This supposed principle has been proved again and again to be amere fallacy and paradox; but it always finds enthusiastic believers whohave plausible arguments in its support. It appears, indeed, to have asingular fascination for some persons in all times and communities. Itmight seem an obvious truism that under no possible conditions can peoplein general be got to give as much for a promise to pay as for a certainand instant payment; and yet this truism would have to be proved afalsehood in order to establish a basis for such a project as that ofLaw. Even were the basis to be established, the project would then haveto be worked fairly and honestly out, which was not done either in thecase of the Mississippi Company or of the South Sea Company. If each hadbeen founded on a true financial principle, each was worked in a falseand fraudulent way. At its best the South Sea Company in its laterdevelopment would have been a bubble. Worked as it actually was, itproved to be a swindle. A committee of secrecy was appointed by theHouse of Commons to inquire into the condition of the Company. Thecommittee found that false and fictitious entries had been made in theCompany's books; that leaves had been torn out; that some books had beendestroyed altogether, and that others had been carried off and secreted. The vulgar arts of the card-sharper and the thimble-rigger had beenprodigally employed to avert detection and ruin by the directors of aCompany which was promoted and protected by ministers of State and by thefavorites of the King. [Sidenote: 1720--Houghton] Some idea of the wide-spread nature of the disaster which was inflictedby the wreck of the Company may be formed from a rapid glance at some ofthe petitions for redress and relief which were presented to the House ofCommons. We find among them petitions from the counties of Hertford, Dorset, Essex, Buckingham, Derby; the cities of Bristol, Exeter, Lincoln;the boroughs of Oakhampton, Amersham, Bedford, Chipping Wycombe, {195}Abingdon, Sudbury, East Retford, Evesham, Newark-upon-Trent, Newbury, andmany other places. We have purposely omitted to take account of any ofthe London communities. The wildest excitement prevailed; and it ischaracteristic of the time to note that the national calamity--for it wasno less--aroused fresh hopes in the minds of the Jacobites. Such acalamity, such a scandal, it was thought, could not but bring shame andruin upon the Whig ministers, and through them discredit on the Sovereignand the Court. It was believed, it was hoped, that Sunderland would befound to be implicated in the swindle. Why should not such a crisis, such a humiliation to the Whigs, be the occasion of a new and a moresuccessful attempt on the part of the Jacobites? The King was again inHanover. He was summoned home in hot haste. On December 8, 1720, thetwo Houses of Parliament were assembled to hear the reading of the Royalspeech proroguing the session; and in the speech the King was made toexpress his concern "for the unhappy turn of affairs which has so muchaffected the public credit at home, " and to recommend most earnestly tothe House of Commons "that you consider of the most effectual and speedymethods to restore the national credit, and fix it upon a lastingfoundation. " "You will, I doubt not, " the speech went on to say, "beassisted in so commendable and necessary a work by every man that loveshis country. " A week or so before the Royal speech was read, on November30, 1720, Charles Edward, eldest son of James Stuart, was born at Rome. The undaunted mettle of Atterbury came into fresh and vigorous activitywith the birth of the Stuart heir, and the apparently imminent ruin ofthe Whig ministers. Robert Walpole had been spending some time peacefully at his countryplace, Houghton, in Norfolk. Hunting, bull-baiting, and drinking werethe principal amusements with which Walpole entertained his guests there. Sometimes the guests were persons of royal rank (Walpole once entertainedthe Grand Duke of Tuscany); {196} sometimes the throng of his visitorsand his neighbors to the hunting-field could only be compared, says aletter written at the time, to an army in its march. Walpole never lostsight, however, of what was going on in the metropolis. He used to senda trusty Norfolk man as his express-messenger to run all the way on footfrom Houghton to London, and carry letters for him to confidentialfriends, and bring him back the answers. When he found how badly thingswere going in London on the bursting of the South Sea bubble, he hastenedup to town. His presence was sadly needed there. It is not withoutinterest to think of James Stuart in Rome, and Walpole in Houghton, bothkeeping their eyes fixed on the gradual exposure of the South Seaswindle, and both alike hoping to find their account in the nationalcalamity. All the advantage was with the statesman and not with thePrince. The English people of all opinions and creeds were tolerablywell assured that if any one could help them out of the difficultyWalpole could; and it required the faith of the most devoted Jacobite tomake any man of business believe that the return of the exiled Stuartscould do much to keep off national bankruptcy. Walpole had waited long. His time was now come at last. [Sidenote: 1720--The Craggses] Walpole had kept his head cool during the days when the Company wassoaring to the skies; he kept his head equally cool when it came downwith a crash. "He had never, " he said in the House of Commons, "approvedof the South Sea scheme, and was sensible it had done a great deal ofmischief; but, since it could not be undone, he thought it the duty ofall good men to give their helping hand towards retrieving it; and withthis view he had already bestowed some thoughts on a proposal to restorepublic credit, which at the proper time he would submit to the wisdom ofthe House. " Walpole had made money by the South Sea scheme. The soundknowledge of the principles of finance, which enabled him to see that theenterprise thus conducted could not pay, in the end {197} enabled himalso to see that it could pay up to a certain point; and when that pointhad been reached he quietly sold out and saved his gains. The King'smistresses and their relatives also made good profit out of thetransactions. The Prince of Wales was a gainer by some of the season'sspeculations. But when the crash came, the ruin was wide-spread; itamounted to the proportions of a national calamity. The ruling classesraged and stormed against the vile conspirators who had disappointed themin their expectations of coining money out of cobwebs. The Lords andCommons held inquiries, passed resolutions, demanded impeachments. Itwas soon made manifest beyond all doubt that members of the Governmenthad been scandalously implicated in the worst parts of the fraudulentspeculations. Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was onlytoo clearly shown to be one of the leading delinquents. Mr. Craggs, thefather, Postmaster-general, and James Craggs, the son, Secretary ofState, were likewise involved. Both were remarkable men. The father hadbegun life as a common barber, and partly by capacity and partly by thethrift that follows fawning, had made his way up in the world until hereached the height from which he was suddenly and so ignominiously tofall. It was hardly worth the trouble thus to toil and push and climb, only to tumble down with such shame and ruin. Craggs the father had hadgreat transfers of South Sea stock made to him for which he never paid. Craggs the son, the Secretary of State, had acted as the go-between inthe transactions of the Company with the King's mistresses, whereby theinfluence of these ladies was purchased for a handsome consideration. Charles Stanhope, one of the Secretaries to the Treasury and cousin ofthe Minister, was shown to have received large value in the stock of theCompany for which he never paid. The most ghastly ruin fell on some ofthese men. Craggs the younger died suddenly on the very day when thereport incriminating him was read in the House of Commons. Craggs thefather poisoned himself a few {198} days afterwards. Pope wrote anepitaph on the son, in which he described him as-- "Statesman, yet friend of truth; of soul sincere, In action faithful and in honor clear; Who broke no promise, served no private end, Who gained no title, and who lost no friend. " Epitaphs seem to have been genuine tributes of personal friendship inthose days; they had no reference to merit or to truth. One's friend hadevery virtue because he was one's friend. Secret committees mightcondemn, Parliament might degrade, juries might convict, impartialhistory might stigmatize, but one's friend remained one's friend all thesame; and if one had the gift of verse, was to be held up to theadmiration of time and eternity in a glorifying epitaph. We have fallenon more prosaic days now; the living admirer of a modern Craggs wouldleave his epitaph unwritten if he could not make facts and feelings fitbetter in together. [Sidenote: 1721--Death of Stanhope] A better and more eminent man than Aislabie or either Craggs lost hislife in consequence of the South Sea calamity. No one had accused, oreven suspected, Lord Stanhope of any share in the financial swindle. Even the fact that his cousin was one of those accused of guiltycomplicity with it did not induce any one to believe that the Minister ofState had any share in the guilt. Yet Stanhope was one of the firstvictims of the crisis. The Duke of Wharton, son of the late Minister, had just come of age. He was already renowned as a brilliant, audaciousprofligate. He was president of the Hell-fire Club; he and some of hiscomrades were the nightly terror of London streets. Wharton thought fitto make himself the champion of public purity in the debates on the SouthSea Company's ruin. He attacked the Ministers fiercely; he attackedStanhope in especial. Stanhope replied to him with far greater warmththan the weight of any attack from Wharton would seem to have called for. Excited beyond measure, Stanhope burst a blood-vessel in his {199} anger. He was carried home, and he died the next day--February 5, 1721. Hislife had been pure and noble. He was a sincere lover of his country; abrave and often a successful soldier; a statesman of high purpose if notof the most commanding talents. His career as a soldier was brought to aclose when he had to capitulate to that master of war and profligacy, theDuke de Vendôme; an encounter of a different kind with another brilliantprofligate robbed him of his life. The House of Commons promptly passed a series of resolutions declaring"John Aislabie, Esquire, a Member of this House, then Chancellor of theExchequer and one of the Commissioners of his Majesty's Treasury, " guiltyof "most notorious, dangerous, and infamous corruption, " and ordering hisexpulsion from the House and his committal as a prisoner to the Tower. This resolution was carried without a dissentient word. The House ofCommons went on next to consider that part of the report which applied toLord Sunderland, and a motion was made declaring that "after theproposals of the South Sea Company were accepted by this House, and abill ordered to be brought in thereupon, and before such bill passed, 50, 000 pounds of the capital stock of the South Sea Company was taken inby Robert Knight, late cashier of the said Company, for the use and uponthe account of diaries, Earl of Sunderland, a Lord of Parliament andFirst Commissioner of the Treasury, without any valuable considerationpaid, or sufficient security given, for payment for or acceptance of thesame. " Sunderland had too many friends, however, and too much influence to bedealt with as if he were Aislabie. A fierce debate sprang up. Theevidence against him was not by any means so clear as in the case ofAislabie. There was room for a doubt as to Sunderland's personalknowledge of all that had been done in his name. His influence and powersecured him the full benefit of the doubt. The motion implicating himwas rejected by a majority of 233 votes against 172, "which, however, "{200} says a contemporary account, "occasioned various reasonings andreflections. " Charles Stanhope, too, was lucky enough to get off, on adivision, by a very narrow majority. [Sidenote: 1721--An interview with James Stuart] A letter from an English traveller at Rome to his father, bearing dateMay 6, 1721, and privately printed this year (1884) for the first time, under the auspices of the Clarendon Society of Edinburgh, gives aninteresting account of the reception of the writer, an EnglishProtestant, by James Stuart and his wife. That part of the letter whichis of present interest to us tells of the remarks made by James on thesubject of the South Sea catastrophe. James spoke of the investigationsof the secret committee, from which he had no great hopes; for, he said, the authors of the calamity "would find means to be above the commoncourse of justice. " "Some may imagine, " continued he, "that thesecalamities are not displeasing to me, because they may in some measureturn to my advantage. I renounce all such unworthy thoughts. The loveof my country is the first principle of my worldly wishes, and my heartbleeds to see so brave and honest a people distressed and misled by a fewwicked men, and plunged into miseries almost irretrievable. ""Thereupon, " says the writer of the letter, "he rose briskly from hischair, and expressed his concern with fire in his eyes. " Exiled sovereigns are in the habit of expressing concern for theircountry with fire in their eyes; they are also in the habit of regardingtheir own return to power as the one sole means of relieving the countryfrom its distress. The English gentleman who describes this scenerepresents himself as not to be outdone in patriotism of his own even bythe exiled Prince. "I could not disavow much of what he said; yet I ownI was piqued at it, for very often compassionate terms from the mouth ofan adverse party are grating. It appeared to me so on this occasion;therefore I replied, 'It's true, sir, that our affairs in England lie atpresent under many hardships by the South Sea's mismanagement; but it isa constant {201} maxim with us Protestants to undergo a great deal forthe security of our religion, which we could not depend upon under aRomish Government. '" This speech, not over-polite, the Prince took ingood part, and entered upon an argument so skilfully, "that I amapprehensive I should become half a Jacobite if I should continuefollowing these discourses any longer. " "Therefore, " says the writer, "Iwill give you my word I will enter no more upon arguments of this kindwith him. " The Prince and his visitor were perhaps both playing a partto some extent, and the whole discourse was probably a good deal lesstheatric in style than the English traveller has reported. But there canbe no doubt that the letter fairly illustrates the spirit in which theleading Jacobites watched over the financial troubles in England, and thenew hopes with which they were inspired--hopes destined to be translatedinto new action before very long. Nor can it be denied that the speechof the English visitor correctly represented the feeling which wasgrowing stronger day after day in the minds of prudent people at home inEngland. The time was coming--had almost come--when a politicaldisturbance or a financial panic in these kingdoms was to be accountedsufficient occasion for a change of Ministers, but not for a revolution. {202} CHAPTER XII. AFTER THE STORM. [Sidenote: 1721--South Sea victims] Swift wrote more than one poem on the South Sea mania. That which waswritten in 1721, and is called "South Sea, " is a wonder of wit andwisdom. It shows the hollowness of the scheme in some new, odd, andstriking light in every metaphor and every verse. "A guinea, " Swiftreminds his readers, "will not pass at market for a farthing more, shown through a multiplying glass, than what it always did before. " "So cast it in the Southern Seas, And view it through a jobber's bill, Put on what spectacles you please, Your guinea's but a guinea still. " Other poets had not as much prudence and sound sense as Swift. Popeput some of his money, a good deal of it, into South Sea stock, contrary to the earnest advice of Atterbury, and lost it. Swiftreflected faithfully the temper of the time in savage verses, whichcall out for the punishment by death of the fraudulent directors of theCompany. Antaeus, Swift tells us, was always restored to freshstrength as often as he touched the earth; Hercules subdued him at lastby holding him up in the air and strangling him there. Suspended awhile in the air, according to the same principle, our directors, headmonishes the country, will be properly tamed and dealt with. Manypublic enemies of the directors gave themselves credit for moderationand humanity on the ground that they would not have the culpritstortured to death, but merely executed in the ordinary way. Walpole set himself first of all to restore public credit. {203} Hisobject was not so much the punishment of fraudulent directors as thetranquillizing of the public mind and the subsidence of national panic. He proposed one measure in the first instance to accomplish this end;but that not being sufficiently comprehensive, he introduced anotherbill, which was finally adopted by both Houses of Parliament. Brieflydescribed, this scheme so adjusted the financial affairs of the SouthSea Company that five millions of the seven which the directors hadagreed to pay the public were remitted; the encumbrances to the Companywere cleared off to a certain extent by the confiscation of the estatesof the fraudulent directors; the credit of the Company's bonds wasmaintained; thirty-three pounds six shillings and eightpence per cent. Were divided among the proprietors, and two millions were reservedtowards the liquidation of the national debt. The Company wastherefore put into a position to carry out its various publicengagements, and the panic was soon over. Many of the proprietors ofthe Company complained bitterly of the manner in which they had beentreated by Walpole. The lobbies of the House of Commons and all theadjacent places were crowded by proprietors of the short annuities andother redeemable popular deeds; men and women who, as the contemporaryaccounts tell us, "in a rude and insolent manner demanded justice ofthe members as they went into the House, " and put into their hands apaper with the words written on it, "Pray do justice to the annuitantswho lent their money on Parliamentary security. " "The noisymultitude, " we are told, "were particularly rude to Mr. Comptroller, tearing part of his coat as he passed by. " The Speaker of the Housewas informed that a crowd of people had got together in a riotous andtumultuous manner in the lobbies and passages, and he ordered "that theJustices of the Peace for the City of Westminster do immediately attendthis House and bring the constables with them. " While the justices andthe constables were being sent for, Sir John Ward was {204} presentingto the House a petition from the proprietors of the redeemable funds, setting forth that they had lent their money to the South Sea Companyon Parliamentary security; that they had been unwarily drawn intosubscribing for the shares in the Company by the artifices of thedirectors; and they prayed that they might be heard by themselves ortheir counsel against Walpole's measure--the bill "for making severalprovisions to restore the public credit, which suffers by the fraudsand mismanagement of the late South Sea directors and others. " Walpoleopposed the petition, and said he did not see how the petitioners couldbe relieved, seeing that the resolutions, in pursuance of which hisbill was brought in, had been approved by the King and council, and bya great majority of the House. Walpole, therefore, moved that thedebate be adjourned, in order to get rid of the matter. The motion wascarried by seventy-eight voices against twenty-nine. By this time fourJustices for the City of Westminster had arrived, and were brought tothe bar of the House. The Speaker informed them that there was a greatcrowd of riotous people in the lobbies and passages, and that he wascommanded by the House to direct them to go and disperse the crowd, andtake care to prevent similar riots in the future. The four justices, attended by five or six constables, desired the petitioners to clearthe lobbies, and when they refused to do so, caused a proclamationagainst rioters to be twice read, warning them at the same time that ifthey remained until the third reading, they would have to incur thepenalties of the Act. What the penalties of the Act were, and what thefour justices and five or six constables could have done with thepetitioners if the petitioners had refused to listen to reason, do notseem very clear. The petitioners, however, did listen to reason, anddispersed before the fatal third reading of the proclamation. But theydid not disperse without giving the House of Commons and the justices apiece of their mind. Many exclaimed that they had come as peaceablecitizens and {205} subjects to represent their grievances, and had notexpected to be used like a mob and scoundrels; and others, as they wentout, shouted to the members of Parliament, "You first pick our pockets, and then send us to jail for complaining. " [Sidenote: 1721--Relief measures] The Bill went up to the House of Lords on Monday, August 7th, and theLords agreed to it without an amendment. On Thursday, August 10th, Parliament was prorogued. The Lord Chancellor read the King's speech. "The common calamity, " said his Majesty, "occasioned by the wickedexecution of the South Sea scheme, was become so very great before yourmeeting that the providing proper remedies for it was very difficult. But it is a great comfort to me to observe that public credit nowbegins to recover, which gives me the greatest hopes that it will beentirely restored when all the provisions you have made for that endshall be duly put in execution. " The speech went on to tell of hisMajesty's "great compassion for the sufferings of the innocent, and ajust indignation against the guilty;" and added that the King hadreadily given his assent "to such bills as you have presented to me forpunishing the authors of our late misfortunes, and for obtaining therestitution and satisfaction due to those who have been injured by themin such manner as you judged proper. " Certainly there was no lack ofseverity in the punishment inflicted on the fraudulent directors. Their estates were confiscated with such rigor that some of them werereduced to miserable poverty. They were disqualified from ever holdingany public place or office whatever, and from ever having a seat inParliament. Yet, severely as they were punished, the outcry of thepublic at the time was that they had been let off far too easily. Walpole was denounced because he did not carry their punishment muchfarther. There was even a ridiculous report spread abroad that he haddefended Sunderland and screened the directors from the most ignobleand sordid motives, and that he had been handsomely paid for hiscompromise with crime. {206} Nothing would have satisfied some of thesufferers by the South Sea scheme short of the execution of itsprincipal directors. Even the scaffold, however, could hardly havedealt more stern and summary justice on the criminals--as some of themundoubtedly were--than did the actual course of events. When the stormcleared away, Aislabie was ruined; Craggs, the Postmaster-general, wasdead; Craggs, the Secretary of State, was dead; Lord Stanhope, who wasreally innocent--was really unsuspected of any share in the crimes ofthe fraudulent directors--was dead also; Sunderland was no longer aMinister of State, and the shadow of death was already on him. It wasnot merely the bursting of a bubble, it was the bursting of a shell--itmutilated or killed those who stood around and near. [Sidenote: 1722--Sunderland's antipathy to Walpole] By the time of the new elections--for Parliament had now nearly run itscourse--public tranquillity was entirely restored. Parliament wasdissolved in March, 1722, and the new elections left Walpole and hisfriends in power, with an immense majority at their back. Long beforethe new Parliament had time to assemble, Lord Sunderland suddenly diedof heart disease. On April 19, 1722, his death took place, and it wasso unexpected that a wild outcry was raised by some of his friends, whoinsisted that his enemies had poisoned him. The medical examinationproved, however, that Sunderland's disease was one which might at anymoment of excitement have brought on his death. Nearly all the leadingpublic men who, innocent or guilty, had been mixed up with the evilschemes of the South Sea Company were now in the grave. The field seemed now clear and open to Walpole. The death ofSunderland, following so soon on that of Stanhope, had left himapparently without a rival. Sunderland had been to the last apolitical, and even a personal, enemy of Walpole. Although Walpole hadgone so far to protect Sunderland against the House of Commons andagainst public opinion, with regard to his share in {207} the South SeaCompany's transactions, Sunderland could not forgive Walpole becauseWalpole was rising higher in the State--because he was, in fact, thegreater man. Though Sunderland was compelled by public opinion toresign office, he had contrived, up to the hour of his death, tomaintain his influence over the mind of King George. Fortunately forGeorge, the King had too much clear, robust good-sense not to recognizethe priceless worth of Walpole's advice and Walpole's services. Sunderland tried one ingenious artifice to get rid of Walpole. Hesuggested to George that Walpole's merits required some special andpermanent recognition, and he recommended that the King should createWalpole Postmaster-general for life. Such an office, indeed, wouldhave brought Walpole an ample revenue, supposing he stood in need ofmoney, which he did not, but it would have disqualified him forever fora seat in Parliament. Perhaps no better illustration of Sunderland'snarrow intellect and utter lack of judgment could be found than thesupposition that this shallow trick could succeed, and that thegreatest administrator of his time could be thus quietly withdrawn fromParliamentary life and from the higher work of the State, and shelvedin perpetuity as a Postmaster-general. King George was not to be takenin after this fashion. He asked Sunderland whether Walpole wished forsuch an office, or was acquainted with Sunderland's intention to makethe suggestion. Sunderland had to answer both questions in thenegative. "Then, " said the King, "pray do not make him any such offer, or say anything about it to him. I had to part with him once, muchagainst my will, and so long as he is willing to serve me I will neverpart with him again. " This incident shows that, if Sunderland hadlived, he would have plotted against Walpole to the end, and would havestood in Walpole's way to the best of his power, and with all theunforgiving hostility of the narrow-minded and selfish man who has hadservices rendered him for which he ought to feel grateful but cannot. {208} [Sidenote: 1721-1722--Marlborough's closing days] A far greater man than Sunderland was soon to pass away. "From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow. " These are the famous words in which Johnson depicts the miserable decayof a great spirit, and points anew the melancholy moral of the vanityof human wishes. Hardly a line in the poetry of our language is betterknown or more often quoted. Where did Johnson get the idea thatMarlborough had sunk into dotage before his death? There is not theslightest foundation for such a belief. All that we know ofMarlborough's closing days tells us the contrary. Nothing inMarlborough's life, not even his serene disregard of dangers anddifficulties, not even his victories, became him like to the leaving ofit. No great man ever sank more gracefully, more gently, with a calmerspirit, down to his rest. We get some charming pictures ofMarlborough's closing days. Death had given him warning by repeatedparalytic strokes. On November 27, 1721, he was seen for the last timein the House of Lords. He was not, however, quite near his death eventhen. He used to spend his time at Blenheim, or at his lodge inWindsor. To the last he was fond of riding and driving and the freshcountry air. In-doors he loved to be surrounded by his granddaughtersand their young friends, and to join in games of cards and otheramusements with them. They used to get up private theatricals togratify the gentle old warrior. We hear of a version of Dryden's "Allfor Love" being thus performed. The Duchess of Marlborough had cut outof the play its unseemly passages, and even its too amorousexpressions--the reader will probably think there was not much left ofthe piece when this work of purification had been accomplished--and shewould not allow any embracing to be performed. The gentleman whoplayed Mark Antony wore a sword which had been presented to Marlboroughby the Emperor. The part of the high-priest was played by a prettygirl, a friend of Marlborough's granddaughters, and she wore as {209}high-priest's robe what seems to have been a lady's night-dress, gorgeously embroidered with special devices for the occasion. Aprologue, written by Dr. Hoadly, was read, in which the glories of thegreat Duke's career were glowingly recounted. Some painter, it seemsto us, might make a pretty picture of this: the great hall in Blenheimturned into a theatre, the handsome young men and pretty girls enactingtheir chastened parts, the fading old hero looking at the scene withpleased and kindly eyes, and the imperious, loving old Duchess turningher devoted gaze on him. So fades, so languishes, grows dim, and dies the conqueror of Blenheim, the greatest soldier England ever had since the days when kings ceasedto be as a matter of right her chiefs in command. In the early days ofJune, 1722, Marlborough was stricken by another paralytic seizure, andthis was his last. He was in full possession of his senses to the end, perfectly conscious and calm. He knew that he was dying; he hadprayers read to him; he conveyed in many tender ways his feelings ofaffection for his wife, and of hope for his own future. At four in themorning of June 16th his life ebbed quietly away. He was in hisseventy-second year when he died. None of the great deeds of his lifebelong to this history; none of that life's worst offences have much todo with it. Marlborough's career seems to us absolutely faultless intwo of its aspects; as a commander and as a husband we can only givehim praise. He was probably a greater commander than even the Duke ofWellington. If he never had to encounter a Napoleon, he had to meetand triumph over difficulties which never came in Wellington's way. Itwas not Wellington's fate to have to strive against political treacheryof the basest kind on the part of English Ministers of State. Wellington's enemies were all in the field arrayed against him;Marlborough had to fight the foreign enemy on the battle-field, and tostruggle meanwhile against the persistent treachery of the still moreformidable enemy {210} at home in the council-chamber of his ownsovereign. Perhaps, indeed, Wellington's nature would not havepermitted him to succeed under such difficulties. Wellington couldhardly have met craft with craft, and, it must be added, falsehood withfalsehood, as Marlborough did. We have said in this book already thateven for that age of double-dealing Marlborough was a surprisingdouble-dealer, and there were many passages in his career which areevidences of an astounding capacity for deceit. "He was a great man, "said his enemy, Lord Peterborough, "and I have forgotten his faults. "Historians would gladly do the same if they could; would surely dwellwith much more delight on the virtues and the greatness than on thedefects. The English people were generous to Marlborough, and in theway which, it has to be confessed, was most welcome to him. But if avery treasure-house of gold could not have satisfied his love of money, let it be added that the national treasure-house itself, were it pouredout at his feet, could not have overpaid the services which he hadrendered to his country. Marlborough left no son to inherit his honors and his fortune. Histitles and estates descended to his eldest daughter, the Countess ofGodolphin. She died without leaving a son, and the titles and estatespassed over to the Earl of Sunderland, the son and heir ofMarlborough's second daughter, at that time long dead. From the daywhen the victor of Blenheim died, there has been no Duke of Marlboroughdistinguished in anything but the name. Not one of the world's greatsoldiers, it would seem, was destined to have a great soldier for ason. From great statesman fathers sometimes spring great statesmansons; but Alexander, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Charles the Twelfth, Alexander Farnese, Clive, Marlborough, Frederick, Napoleon, Wellington, Washington, left to the world no heir of their greatness. {211} CHAPTER XIII. THE BANISHMENT OF ATTERBURY. [Sidenote: 1722--Funeral of Marlborough] On Thursday, August 9, 1722, the "pompous solemnity" of Marlborough'sfuneral took place. The great procession went from the Duke's house inSt. James's Park, through St. James's and the Upper Park to Hyde ParkCorner, and thence through Piccadilly, St. James's Street, Pall Mall, Charing Cross, and King Street to Westminster Abbey. A small army ofsoldiers guarded the remains of the greatest warrior of his age; a wholeheralds' college clustered about the lofty funeral banner on which allthe arms of the Churchills were quartered. Marlborough's friends andadmirers, his old brothers-in-arms, the companions of his victories, followed his coffin, and listened while Garter King-at-Arms, bending overthe open grave, said: "Thus it hath pleased Almighty God to take out ofthis transitory life unto His mercy the most high, most mighty, and mostnoble prince, John Churchill, Duke and Earl of Marlborough. " In Applebee's _Weekly Journal_ for Saturday, August 11th, two days afterthe funeral, we are told that the Duchess of Marlborough, in honor of thememory of her life-long lover, had offered a prize of five hundred poundsfor a Latin epitaph to be inscribed upon his tomb, and that "severalpoets have already taken to their lofty studies to contend for the prize. " At Marlborough's funeral we see for the last time in high public estateone of the few Englishmen of the day who could properly be named in thesame breath with Marlborough. This was Francis Atterbury, the eloquentand daring Bishop of Rochester. Atterbury came up to {212} town for thepurpose of officiating at the funeral of the great Duke. On July 30, 1722, he wrote from the country to his friend Pope, announcing his visitto London. "I go to-morrow, " Atterbury writes, "to the Deanery, and Ibelieve I shall stay there till I have said dust to dust, and shut upthis last scene of pompous vanity. " Atterbury does not seem to have beenprofoundly impressed with the religious solemnity of the occasion. Hiswas not a very reverential spirit. There was as little of the temper ofpious sanctity in Atterbury as in Swift himself. The allusion to thelast scene of pompous vanity might have had another significance, as wellas that which Atterbury meant to give to it. Amid the pomp in whichMarlborough's career went out, the career of Atterbury went out as well, although in a different way, and not closed sublimely by death. Afterthe funeral, Atterbury went to the Deanery at Westminster--he was Dean ofWestminster as well as Bishop of Rochester--and there, on August 24th, the day but one after the scene of pompous vanity, he was arrested by theUnder-Secretary of State, accompanied by two officers of justice, and wasbrought, along with all papers of his which the officers could seize, before the Privy Council. He underwent an examination, as the result ofwhich he was committed to the Tower, on a charge of having been concernedin a treasonable conspiracy to dethrone the King, and to bring back theHouse of Stuart. In the Tower he was left to languish for many a longday before it was found convenient to bring him to trial. [Sidenote: 1722--The King's speech] England was startled by the disclosures which followed Atterbury'sarrest. On Tuesday, October 9, 1722, the sixth Parliament of GreatBritain--the sixth, that is to say, since the union with Scotland--met atWestminster. The House of Commons, on the motion of Mr. Pulteney, elected Mr. Spencer Compton their Speaker, and on the next day but one, October 11th, the Royal speech was read. The King was present in person, but the speech was read by the Lord Chancellor, for the good reason whichwe {213} have already mentioned that his Majesty the King of Englandcould not speak the English language. The speech opened with a startlingannouncement. "My Lords and Gentlemen"--so ran the words of theSovereign--"I am concerned to find myself obliged, at the opening of thisParliament, to acquaint you that a dangerous conspiracy has been for sometime formed, and is still carrying on, against my person and government, in favor of a Popish pretender. " "Some of the conspirators, " the speechwent on to say, "have been taken up and secured, and endeavors are usedfor the apprehending others. " When the speech was read, and the King hadleft the House, the Duke of Grafton, then Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, brought in a bill for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, and empoweringthe Government to secure and detain "such persons as his Majesty shallsuspect are conspiring against his person and government, for the spaceof one year. " The motion to read the Bill a second time in the samesitting was strenuously resisted by a considerable minority of the Peers. A warm debate took place, and in the end the second reading was carriedby a majority of sixty-seven against twenty-four. The debate was renewedupon the other stages of the Bill, which were taken in rapid succession. The proposal of the Government was, of course, carried in the end, but itmet with a resistance in the House of Lords which certainly would nothave been offered to such a proposal by any member of the hereditarychamber in our day. Some of the recorded protests of dissentient peersread more like the utterances of modern Radicals than those ofinfluential members of the House of Lords. The strongest objection madeto the proposal was that the utmost term for which the Constitution hadpreviously been suspended was six months, and that the measure to suspendit for a year would become an authority for suspending it at some futuretime for two years, or three years, or any term which might please theministers in power. On Monday, October 15th, the Bill was brought downto the Commons, and was read {214} a first time on the motion of Walpole. The Bill was passed in the Commons, not, indeed, without opposition, butwith an opposition much less strenuous and influential than that whichhad been offered to it in the House of Lords. On October 17th it wasannounced to Parliament that Dr. Atterbury, the Bishop of Rochester, theLord North and Grey, and the Earl of Orrery, had been committed to theTower on a charge of high-treason. A few days after, a similarannouncement was made about the arrest and committal of the Duke ofNorfolk. [Sidenote: 1722--Proclamation of James] By far the most important of the persons committed for trial was theBishop of Rochester. Francis Atterbury may rank among the mostconspicuous public men of his time. He stands only just beneathMarlborough and Bolingbroke and Walpole. Steele, in his sixty-sixth_Tatler_, pays a high tribute to Atterbury: "He has so much regard to hiscongregation that he commits to memory what he has to say to them, andhas so soft and graceful a behavior that it must attract your attention. His person, it is to be confessed, is no slight recommendation; but he isto be highly commended for not losing that advantage, and adding to apropriety of speech which might pass the criticism of Longinus, an actionwhich would have been approved by Demosthenes. He has a peculiar forcein his way, and has many of his audience who could not be intelligenthearers of his discourse were there not explanation as well as grace inhis action. This art of his is used with the most exact and honestskill; he never attempts your passions until he has convinced yourreason; all the objections which he can form are laid open and dispersedbefore he uses the least vehemence in his sermon; but when he thinks hehas your head he very soon wins your heart, and never pretends to showthe beauty of holiness until he hath convinced you of the truth of it. " Atterbury had, however, among his many gifts a dangerous gift ofpolitical intrigue. Like Swift and Dubois and Alberoni, he was at leastas much statesman as churchman. {215} He had mixed himself up in variousintrigues--some of them could hardly be called conspiracies--for therestoration of the Stuarts, and when at last something like a newconspiracy was planned, it was not likely that he would be left out ofit. He had courage enough for any such scheme. There was no greatdifficulty in finding out the new plot which King George mentioned in hisspeech to Parliament; for James Stuart had revealed it himself by aproclamation which he caused to be circulated among his supposedadherents in England, renewing in the boldest terms his claim to thecrown of England. A sort of junto of Jacobites appears to have beenestablished in England to make arrangements for a new attempt on the partof James; the noblemen whom King George had arrested were understood tobe among its leading members. Atterbury was charged with having taken aprominent if not, indeed, a foremost part in the conspiracy. The Duke ofNorfolk, Lord North and Grey, and Lord Orrery were afterwards dischargedfor want of evidence to convict them. The arrest of a number of humblerconspirators led to the discovery of a correspondence asserted to havebeen carried on between Atterbury and the adherents of James Stuart inFrance and Italy. Both Houses of Parliament began by voting addresses of loyalty andgratitude to the King, and by resolving that the proclamation entitled"Declaration of James the Third, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, to all his loving subjects of the three nations, " and signed "James Rex, "was "a false, insolent, and traitorous libel, " and should be burned bythe hands of the common hangman, under the direction of the sheriffs ofLondon. This important ceremonial was duly carried out at the RoyalExchange. Then the House of Commons voted, "that towards raising thesupply, and reimbursing to the public the great expenses occasioned bythe late rebellions and disorders, the sum of one hundred thousand poundsbe raised and levied upon the real and personal estates of {216} allPapists, Popish recusants, or persons educated in the Popish religion, orwhose parents are Papists, or who shall profess the Popish religion, inlieu of all forfeitures already incurred for or upon account of theirrecusancy. " This singular method of infusing loyalty into the RomanCatholics of England was not allowed to be adopted without serious andpowerful resistance in the House of Commons. The idea was not to devisea new penalty for the Catholics, but to put in actual operation the termsof a former penalty pronounced against them in Elizabeth's time, and notthen pressed into execution. This fact was dwelt upon with much emphasisby the advocates of the penal motion. Why talk of religious persecution?they asked. This is not religious persecution; it is only putting inforce an edict passed in a former reign to punish Roman Catholics forpolitical rebellion. This way of putting the case seems only to make thecharacter of the policy more clear and less justifiable. The Catholicsof King George's time were to be mulcted indiscriminately because theCatholics of Queen Elizabeth's time had been declared liable to such apenalty. The Master of the Rolls, to his great credit, strongly opposedthe resolution. Walpole supported it with all the weight of his argumentand his influence. The plot was evidently a Popish plot, he contended, and although he was not prepared to accuse any English Catholic inparticular of taking part in it, yet there could be no doubt that Papistsin general were well-wishers to it, and that some of them had contributedlarge sums towards it. Why, then, should they not be made to reimbursesome part of the expense to which they and the friends of the Pretenderhad put the nation? The resolution, after it had been reported fromcommittee, was only carried in the whole House by 188 votes against 172. [Sidenote: 1723--Lord Cowper's opposition] The resolution was embodied ina bill, and the Bill, when it went up to the House of Lords, was opposedthere by several of the Peers, and especially by Lord Cowper, the"silver-tongued Cowper, " who had {217} been so distinguished a LordChancellor under Anne, and under George himself. Lord Cowper's was aneloquent and a powerful speech. It tore to pieces the wretched web offlimsy sophistry by which the supporters of the Bill endeavored to makeout that it was not a measure of religious persecution. Indeed, therewere some of these who insisted that, so far from being a measure ofpersecution, it was a measure of relief. Our readers will, no doubt, becurious to know how this bold position was sustained. In this wise: thepenalties prescribed for the Catholics in Elizabeth's reign were muchgreater in amount than those which the Bill proposed to inflict on theCatholics of King George's time; therefore the Bill was an indulgence andnot a persecution--a mitigation of penalty, not a punishment. Let usreduce the argument to plain figures. A Catholic in the reign ofElizabeth is declared liable to a penalty of twenty pounds, but out ofconsiderations of humanity or justice the penalty is not enforced. Thedescendant and heir of that same Catholic in the reign of George theFirst is fined fifteen pounds, and the fine is exacted. He complains, and he is told, "You have no right to complain; you ought to be grateful;the original fine ordained was twenty pounds; you have been let off fivepounds--you have been favored by an act of indulgence, not victimized byan act of persecution. " Lord Cowper had not much trouble in disposing ofarguments of this kind, but his speech took a wider range, and is indeeda masterly exposure of the whole principle on which the measure wasfounded. On May 22, 1723, sixty-nine peers voted for the third readingof the Bill, and fifty-five opposed it. Lord Cowper, with twenty otherpeers, entered a protest against the decision of the House, according toa practice then common in the House of Lords, and which has lately falleninto complete disuse. The recorded protests of dissentient peers form, we may observe, very important historical documents, and deserve, some ofthem, {218} a careful study. Lord Cowper's protest was the last publicact of his useful and honorable career. He died on the 10th of Octoberin the same year, 1723. Some of his enemies explained his action on theanti-Papist Bill by the assertion that he was a Jacobite at heart. Evenif he had been, the fact would hardly have made his conduct lesscreditable and spirited. Many a man who was a Jacobite at heart wouldhave supported a measure for the punishment of Roman Catholics if only tosave himself from the suspicion of sympathy with the lost cause. [Sidenote: 1723--Charges against Atterbury] This, however, was but an episode in the story of the Jacobite plot andthe measures taken to punish those who were engaged in it. Committees ofsecrecy were appointed by Parliament to inquire into the evidence andexamine witnesses. Meantime both Houses of Parliament kept voting address after address tothe Crown at each new stage of the proceedings, and as each freshevidence of the conspiracy was laid before them. The King must havegrown rather weary of finding new words of gratitude, and the Houses ofParliament, one would think, must have grown tired of inventing newphrases of loyalty and fresh expressions of horror at the wickedness ofthe Jacobites. The horror was not quite genuine on the part of some whothus proclaimed it. Many of those who voted the addresses would gladlyhave welcomed a restoration of the Stuarts. Not the most devotedadherent of King George could really have felt any surprise at thepersistent efforts of the Jacobite partisans. Eight years before this itwas a mere toss-up whether Stuart or Hanover should succeed, and evenstill it was not quite certain whether, if the machinery of the modern_plebiscite_ could have been put into operation in England, the majoritywould not have been found in sympathy with Atterbury. It is almostcertain that if the _plebiscite_ could have been taken in Ireland andScotland also, a majority of voices would have voted James Stuart to thethrone. {219} It was resolved to proceed against Atterbury by a Bill of Pains andPenalties to be brought into Parliament. The evidence against him wascertainly not such as any criminal court would have held to justify aconviction. A young barrister named Christopher Layer was arrested andexamined, so were a nonjuring minister named Kelly, an Irish Catholicpriest called Neynoe, and a man named Plunkett, also from Ireland. Thecharge against Atterbury was founded on the statements obtained orextorted from these men. It should be said that Layer gave evidencewhich actually seemed to impugn Lord Cowper himself as a member of a clubof disaffected persons; and when Lord Cowper indignantly repudiated thecharge and demanded an inquiry, the Government declared inquiryabsolutely unnecessary, as everybody was well assured of his innocence. The Government, however, declined to follow Lord Cowper in his notunreasonable assumption that the whole story was unworthy of explicitcredence when it included such a false statement. The case againstAtterbury rested on the declaration of some of the arrested men that thebishop had carried on a correspondence with James Stuart, Lord Mar, andGeneral Dillon (an Irish Catholic soldier, who after the capitulation ofLimerick, had entered the French service), through the instrumentality ofKelly, who acted as his secretary and amanuensis for that purpose. Itwas a case of circumstantial evidence altogether. The impartial readerof history now will feel well satisfied on two points: first, thatAtterbury was engaged in the plot; and second, that the evidence broughtagainst him was not nearly strong enough to sustain a conviction. It wasthe case of Bolingbroke and Harley over again. We know now that the menhad done the things charged against them, but the evidence then reliedupon was utterly inadequate to sustain the charge. A "Dialogue in Verse between a Whig and a Tory" was written by Swift inthe year 1723, "concerning the horrid plot discovered by Harlequin, theBishop of {220} Rochester's French Dog. " The Whig tells the Tory thatthe dog-- "His name is Harlequin, I wot, And that's a name in every plot"-- was generously "Resolved to save the British nation, Though French by birth and education; His correspondence plainly dated Was all deciphered and translated; His answers were exceeding pretty, Before the secret wise committee; Confessed as plain as he could bark, Then with his fore-foot set his mark. " [Sidenote: 1723-1731--Atterbury's sentence] There was more than mere fooling in the lines. The dog Harlequin wasmade to bear important evidence against the Bishop of Rochester. Atterbury had never resigned himself to the Hanoverian dynasty. He didnot believe it would last, and he openly declaimed against it. He didmore than this, however: he engaged in conspiracies for the restorationof James Stuart. Horace Walpole says of him that he was simply aJacobite priest. He was a Jacobite priest who would gladly, if he could, have been a Jacobite soldier, and had given ample evidence of courageequal to such a part. He had been engaged in a long correspondence withJacobite conspirators at home and abroad. The correspondence was carriedon in cipher, and of course under feigned names. Atterbury appears tohave been described now as Mr. Illington, and now as Mr. Jones. Atterbury refused to make any defence before the House of Commons, but heappeared before the House of Lords on May 6, 1723, and defended himself, and made strong and eloquent protestation of his innocence. One of thewitnesses whom he called in his defence was his friend Pope, who couldonly give evidence as to the manner in which the bishop had passed histime when staying in the poet's house. Christopher Layer, Atterbury'sassociate in the general charge of conspiracy, was a young barrister ofgood family, a remarkably handsome, {221} graceful, and accomplished man. One charge against him was that he had formed a plan to murder the Kingand carry off the Prince of Wales; but the statements made against Layermust be taken with liberal allowance for the extravagance of loyalpassion, panic, and exaggeration. Layer had escaped and was recaptured, was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was hanged at Tyburnon March 15, 1723; he met his death with calm courage. His body wasquartered and his head was set on Temple Bar, from which it was presentlyblown down by the wind. Some one picked up the head and sold it to asurgeon. Neynoe, another of the accused men, contrived to escape fromcustody, got to the river, endeavored to swim across it, and was drownedin the attempt. The charges made against Atterbury had therefore sometimes to rest uponinferences drawn from confessions, or portions of confessions, averred tohave dropped or been drawn from men whose lips were now closed by death. Those who defended Atterbury dwelt strongly on this fact, as was butnatural. It is curious to notice how often in the debates of the Lordson the Bill of Pains and Penalties one noble peer accuses another ofsecret sympathy with Jacobite schemes. As regards Atterbury, the wholequestion was whether he was really the person described in thecorrespondence now as Jones and now as Illington. There might have beenno evidence which even a "secret, wise" committee of that day would havecared to accept but for the fact that the bishop's wife had received, orwas to have received, from France a present of a dog called Harlequin, and that there was mention in the correspondence about poor Mr. Illingtonbeing in grief for the loss of his dog Harlequin. This allusion put thecommittee of secrecy on the track. The bishop's wife had lately died, and it would seem from the correspondence that Illington's wife had diedabout the same time. Clearly, if it were once assumed that Illington andAtterbury were one and the same person, there was ample ground forsuspicion, and even for a general belief that the story told {222} wastrue in the main. The evidence was enough for Parliament at that time, and the Bill passed the House of Lords on May 16th by a majority ofeighty-three votes to forty-three. Atterbury was deprived of all hisoffices and dignities, declared to be forever incapable of holding anyplace or exercising any authority within the King's dominions, andcondemned to perpetual banishment. He went to France in the firstinstance with his daughter and her husband. It so happened thatBolingbroke had just at that time obtained a sort of conditional pardonfrom the King; obtained it mainly by bribing the Duchess of Kendal. Thetwo Jacobites crossed each other on the way, one going into exile, theother returning from it. "I am exchanged, " was Atterbury's remark. "Thenation, " said Pope afterwards, "is afraid of being overrun with genius, and cannot regain one great man but at the expense of another. " So faras this history is concerned we part with Atterbury here. He livedabroad until 1731, and after his death his remains were brought back andprivately laid in Westminster Abbey. [Sidenote: 1723--Tom Tempest and Jack Sneaker] We have directed attention to the freedom and frequency of theaccusations of Jacobitism made by one peer against another during thedebates on Atterbury's case. The fact is worthy of note, if only to showhow uncertain, even still, was the foundation of the throne of Brunswick, and how wide-spread the sympathy with the lost cause was supposed to be. When Bolingbroke was allowed to return to England, some of Swift'sfriends instantly fancied that he must have purchased his permission bytelling some tale against the dean himself, among others, and long afterthis time we find Swift defending himself against the rumored accusationof a share in Jacobite conspiracy. The condition of the public mind iswell pictured in a description of two imaginary politicians in one of thesuccessors to the _Tatler_. "Tom Tempest" is described as a steadyfriend to the House of Stuart. He can recount the prodigies that haveappeared in the sky, and the calamities that have afflicted the {223}nation every year from the Revolution, and is of opinion that if theexiled family had continued to reign, there would neither have been wormsin our ships nor caterpillars in our trees. He firmly believes that KingWilliam burned Whitehall that he might steal the furniture, and thatTillotson died an atheist. Of Queen Anne he speaks with more tenderness;owns that she meant well, and can tell by whom she was poisoned. Tom hasalways some new promise that we shall see in another month the rightfulmonarch on the throne. "Jack Sneaker, " on the other hand, is a devotedadherent to the present establishment. He has known those who saw thebed in which the Pretender was conveyed in a warming-pan. He oftenrejoices that this nation was not enslaved by the Irish. He believesthat King William never lost a battle, and that if he had lived one yearlonger he would have conquered France. Yet amid all this satisfaction heis hourly disturbed by dread of Popery; wonders that stricter laws arenot made against the Papists, and is sometimes afraid that they are busywith French gold among our bishops and judges. {224} CHAPTER XIV. WALPOLE IN POWER AS WELL AS OFFICE. [Sidenote: 1723--Walpole's Administration] Walpole was now Prime-minister. The King wished to reward him for hisservices by conferring a peerage on him, but this honor Walpolesteadily declined. One of his biographers says that his refusal "atfirst appears extraordinary. " It ought not to appear extraordinary atfirst or at last. Walpole knew that the sceptre of government inEngland had passed to the House of Commons. He would have been unwiseand inconsistent indeed if at his time of life he had consented torenounce the influence and the power which a seat in that House gavehim for the comparative insignificance and obscurity of a seat in theHouse of Lords. He accepted a title for his eldest son, who was madeBaron Walpole, but for himself he preferred to keep to the field inwhich he had won his name, and where he could make his influence andpower felt all over the land. We may anticipate the course of events, and say at once that hardlyever before in the history of English political life, and hardly eversince Walpole's time, has a minister had so long a run of power. Hislong administration, as Mr. Green well says, is almost without ahistory. It is almost without a history, that is to say, in theordinary sense of the word. For the most part, the steady movement ofEngland's progress remains, during long years and years, undisturbed byany event of great dramatic interest at home or abroad. But the periodof Walpole's long and successful administration was none the less aperiod of the highest importance in English {225} history. It was atime of almost uninterrupted national development in the rightdirection, and almost unbroken national prosperity. The foreign policyof Walpole was, on the whole, no less sound and just than his policy athome. His first ambition was to keep England out of wars with foreignPowers. Yet his was not the ambition which some later statesmen, especially, for example, Mr. Bright, have owned--the ambition to keepEngland free of any foreign policy whatever. Such an ambition was notWalpole's, and such an ambition at Walpole's time it would have beenall but impossible to realize. Walpole knew well that there was no wayof keeping England out of foreign wars at that season of politicalgrowth but by securing for her a commanding influence in Continentalaffairs. Such influence he set himself to establish, and he succeededin establishing it by friendly and satisfactory alliances with Franceand other Powers. Turning back for a moment into the political affairsof a year or two previous, we may remark that one of the consequencesof the Mississippi scheme, and the reign of Mr. Law in France, had beenthe recall of Lord Stair from the French Court, to which he wasaccredited as English ambassador. Lord Stair quarrelled with Law whenLaw was all-powerful; and in order to propitiate the financialdictator, it was found convenient to recall Stair from Paris. Englandhad been well served by him as her ambassador at the French Court. Wehave already said something of Lord Stair--his ability, courage, anddexterity, his winning ways, and his fearless spirit. John Dalrymple, second Earl of Stair, was one of the remarkable men of his time. Hewas a scholar and an orator, a soldier and a diplomatist. He hadfought with conspicuous bravery and skill under William the Third andunder Marlborough. He appears to have combined a daring that lookedlike recklessness with a cool calculation which made it prudence. OnMarlborough's fall, Lord Stair fell with him. He was deprived of allhis public offices, and was plunged into a condition of {226} somethinglike poverty. When George the First came to the throne, Stair wastaken into favor again, and as a special tribute to his diplomaticcapacity was sent to represent England at the Court of France. Therehe displayed consummate sagacity, foresight, and firmness. Hecontrived to make himself acquainted beforehand with everything theJacobites were doing. This, as may be seen by Bolingbroke'scomplaints, was easy enough at one time; but the adherents of JamesStuart began after a while to learn prudence, and some of theirenterprises were conducted up to a certain point with much craft andcaution. Lord Stair, however, always contrived to get the informationhe wanted. Some of the arts by which he accomplished his purposes werenot, perhaps, such as a great diplomatist of our time would have caredto practise. He bribed with liberal hand; he kept persons of all kindsin his pay; he bribed French officials, and even French ministers; hegot to know all that was done in the most secret councils of the State. He used to go about the capital in disguise in order to find out whatpeople were saying in the wine-shops and coffee-houses. Often, afterhe had entertained a brilliant company of guests at a state dinner, hewould make some excuse to his friends for quitting them abruptly; saythat he had received despatches which required his instant attention, leave the company to be entertained by his wife, withdraw to his study, there quietly change his clothes, and then wander out on one of hisnightly visitations of taverns and coffee-houses. He paid court togreat ladies, flattered them, allowed them to win money at cards fromhim, and even made love to them, for the sake of getting some politicalsecrets out of them. He had a noble and stately presence, a handsomeface, and charming manners. He is said to have been the most politeand well-bred man of his time. It is of him the story is told aboutthe test of good-breeding which the King of France applied andacknowledged. Louis the Fourteenth had heard it said that Stair wasthe best-bred man of his day. The {227} King invited Stair to driveout with him. As they were about to enter the carriage the King signedto the English ambassador to go first. Stair bowed and entered thecarriage. "The world is right about Lord Stair, " said the King; "Inever before saw a man who would not have troubled me with excuses andceremony. " [Sidenote: 1723--Spain] The French Government naturally feared that the recall of Lord Stairmight be marked by a change in the friendly disposition of England. This fear became greater on the death of Stanhope. The EnglishGovernment, however, took steps to reassure the Regent of France. Townshend himself wrote at once to Cardinal Dubois, promising tomaintain as before a cordial friendship with the French Government. Walpole was entirely imbued with the instincts of such a policy. Thechief disturbing influence in Continental politics arose from theanxiety of Spain to recover Gibraltar and Minorca, and, in fact, to getback again all that had been taken from her by the Treaty of Utrecht. The territorial and other arrangements which concluded with the Treatyof Utrecht made themselves the central point of all the foreign policyof that time: these States were concerned to maintain the treaty; thosewere eager to break through its bonds. It holds in the politics ofthat day the place which was held by the Treaty of Vienna at a laterperiod. There is always much of the hypocritical about the manner inwhich treaties of that highly artificial nature are made. No Statereally intends to hold by them any longer than she finds that theyserve her own interests. If they are imposed upon a State and areinjurious to her, that State never means to submit to them any longerthan she is actually under compulsion. New means and impulses to breakaway from such bonds are given to those inclined that way, in the factthat the arrangements are usually made without the slightest concernfor the populations of the countries concerned, but only for dynasticor other political considerations. The pride of the Spanish people wasso much hurt by some of the conditions of the Treaty {228} of Utrechtthat a Spanish sovereign or minister would always be popular who couldpoint to his people a way to escape from its bonds or to rend them inpieces. Spain, therefore, was always looking out for new alliances. She saw at one time a fresh chance for trying her policy, and she heldout every inducement in her power to the Emperor Charles the Sixth andto Russia to enter into a combination against France and England. TheEmperor was without a son, and, in consequence, had issued his famousPragmatic Sanction, providing that his hereditary dominions in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia should descend to his daughter Maria Theresa. Thegreat Powers of Europe had not as yet seen fit to guarantee, or evenrecognize, this succession. Spain held out the temptation to theEmperor of her own guarantee to the Pragmatic Sanction and of severalimportant concessions in the matter of trade and commerce to Austria, on consideration that the Emperor should assist Spain to recover herlost territory. Catherine, the wife of Peter the Great, was nowgoverning Russia, and was entering into secret negotiations with Spainand with the Emperor. Townshend and Walpole understood all that wasgoing on, and succeeded in making a defensive treaty between England, France, and Prussia. Prussia, to be sure, did not long hold to thetreaty, and her withdrawal gave a new stimulus to the machinations ofthe Emperor and of Philip of Spain, and in 1727 Philip actuallyventured to lay siege to Gibraltar. England, France, and Holland, however, held firmly together; the Russian Empress suddenly died, theEmperor Charles was not inclined to risk much, and Spain finally had tocome to terms with England and her allies. [Sidenote: 1721--Anticipations of free-trade] These troubles might have proved serious but for the determined policyof Townshend and of Walpole. We have not thought it necessary to wearyour readers with the details of this little running fire of disputewhich was kept up for some years between England and Spain. We saw inan earlier chapter how the quarrel began, and what {229} the elementswere which fed it and kept it burning. This latter passage is reallyonly a continuation of the former; both, except for the sake of merecontinuity of historic narrative, might have been told as one story, and, indeed, would perhaps not have required many sentences for thetelling. Walpole applied himself at home to the work of what has sincebeen called Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform. He was the first greatEnglish finance minister; perhaps we may say he was the first Englishminister who ever sincerely regarded the development of nationalprosperity, the just and equal distribution of taxation, and thelightening of the load of financial burdens, as the most importantbusiness of a statesman. The whole political and social conditions ofthe country were changing under his wise and beneficent system ofadministration. Population was steadily increasing; some of the greatrising towns had doubled their numbers since Walpole's career began. Agriculture was better in its systems, and was brightening the face ofthe country everywhere; the farmer had almost ceased for the time togrumble; the laborer was well fed and not too heavily worked. We donot mean to say that Walpole's administration was the one cause of allthis improvement in town and country, but most assuredly the peace, andthe security of peace, which Walpole's administration conferred was ofdirect and material influence in the growing prosperity of the nation. His financial systems lightened the burdens of taxation, distributedthe load more equally everywhere, and enabled the State to get the bestrevenue possible at the lowest cost and with the least effort. Itmight almost be said that Walpole anticipated free-trade. The Royalspeech from the Throne at the opening of Parliament, on October 19, 1721, declared it to be "very obvious that nothing would more conduceto the obtaining so public a good"--the extension of ourcommerce--"than to make the exportation of our own manufactures, andthe importation of the commodities used in the manufacturing of them, as practicable and as easy as may be; by this means the balance {230}of trade may be preserved in our favor, our navigation increased, andgreater numbers of our poor employed. " "I must, therefore, " the speechwent on, "recommend it to you, gentlemen of the House of Commons, toconsider how far the duties upon these branches may be taken off andreplaced, without any violation of public faith or laying any newburden upon my people; and I promise myself that, by a dueconsideration of this matter, the produce of those duties, comparedwith the infinite advantages that will accrue to the kingdom by theirbeing taken off, will be found so inconsiderable as to leave littleroom for any difficulties or objections. " In furtherance of the policyindicated in these passages of the Royal speech, more than one hundredarticles of British manufacture were allowed to be exported free ofduty, while some forty articles of raw material were allowed to beimported in the same manner. Walpole was anxious to make a full use ofthis system of indirect taxation. He desired to levy and collect taxesin such a manner as to avoid the losses imposed upon the revenue bysmuggling and by various forms of fraud. His principle was that thenecessaries of life and the raw materials from which our manufactureswere to be made ought to remain, as far as possible, free of taxation. The whole history of our financial systems since Walpole's time hasbeen a history of the gradual development of his economic principles. There has been, of course, reaction now and then, and sometimes thecounsels of statesmen appear for a while to have been under theabsolute domination of the policy which he strove to supplant; but thereaction has only been for seasons, while the progress of Walpole'spolicy has been steady. We have now, in 1884, nearly accomplished thefinancial task Walpole would, if he could, have accomplished a centuryand a half earlier. [Sidenote: 1723--Parliamentary corruption] No one can deny that Walpole was an unscrupulous minister. He wouldgladly have carried out the best policy by the best means; but wherethis was not practicable or convenient he was perfectly willing tocarry {231} out a noble policy by the vilest methods. He was nothimself avaricious; he was not open to the temptations of money. Hehad a fortune large enough for him, and he spent it freely, but he waswilling to bribe and corrupt all those of whom he could make any use. Under his rule corruption became a settled Parliamentary system. Hehad done more than any other man to make the House of Commons the mostpowerful factor in the government of England; he had therefore made aseat in the House of Commons an object of the highest ambition. To sitin that House made the obscurest country gentleman a power in theState. Naturally, therefore, a seat in the House of Commons wasstruggled for, scrambled for, fought for--obtained at any cost ofmoney, influence, time, and temper. Naturally, also, a seat thusobtained was a possession through which recompense of some kind wasexpected. Those who buy their seats naturally expect to sell theirvotes; at least that was so in the days of Walpole. In times nearer toour own, England has seen a condition of things in which public opinionand the development of a sort of national conscience absolutelyprevented members from taking bribes, although it allowed them the mostliberal use of bribery and corruption in the obtaining of their seats. The member of Parliament who, twenty or thirty years ago, would havebought his seat by means of the most unblushing and shamelesscorruption, would no more have thought of selling his vote to aminister for a money payment than he would have thought of selling hiswife at Smithfield. But in Walpole's time the man who bought his seatwas ready to sell his vote. Walpole, the minister, was willing to buythe vote of any man who would sell it. He was lavish in the gift oflucrative offices, of rich sinecures, of pensions, and even of bribesin a lump sum, money down. He would bribe a member's wife, if thatwere more convenient than openly to bribe the member himself. He hadno particular choice as to whether the bribe should be direct orindirect, open or secret; he {232} wanted to get the vote, he waswilling to pay the price, and he cared not who knew of the arrangement. We have already mentioned that the saying ascribed to him about everyman having his price was never uttered by him. What he said probablywas, that "each of these men, " alluding to a certain group or party, had his price. He is reported to have said that he never knew anywoman who would not take money, except one noble lady, whom he named, and she, he said, took diamonds. He acted consistently and was notashamed. He was incorrupt himself; he was even in that senseincorruptible; but in order to gain his own public purposes, wise andjust as they were, he was willing to corrupt a whole House of Commons, and would not have shrunk from corrupting a nation. [Sidenote: 1723--Lord Carteret] It ought to be pointed out that the very pacific nature of Walpole'spolicy and the security and steadiness of his administration made itsometimes all the more necessary for him to have recourse toquestionable methods. Great controversies of imperial or nationalinterest--controversies which stir the hearts of men, which appeal totheir principles and awaken their passions--did not often arise duringhis long tenure of power. Agitations of this kind, whatever troubleand disturbance they may bring with them, have a purifying effect uponthe political atmosphere. Only a very ignoble creature is to be bribedout of his opinions when some interest is at stake, on which his heart, his training, and his associations have already taught him to takesides. Walpole kept the nation out of such controversies for the mostpart, and one result was that small political combinations of variouskinds were free to form themselves around him, beneath him, and againsthim. The House of Commons sometimes threatened to dissolve itself intoa number of little separate sections or factions, none of themrepresenting any real principle or having more than a temporaryattraction of cohesion. Walpole was again and again placed in theposition of having to encounter {233} some little faction of this kindby open exercise of power or by the process of corruption, and heusually found the latter course more convenient and ready. Nor couldsuch a man at any period of English history have remained long withoutmore or less formidable rivals. Walpole himself must have known wellenough that the death of men like Sunderland, or the death or anynumber of men, could not, so long as England was herself, secure himfor long an undisturbed political field, with no head raised againsthim. A country like this is never so barren of political intellect andcourage as to admit of a long dictatorship in political life. Walpole had already one rising rival in the person of Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl of Granville. John Carteret was born April 22, 1690, and was only five years old when the death of his father, the firstLord Carteret, made him a member of the House of Lords. Hedistinguished himself greatly at Oxford, and entered very early intopublic life. He was from the beginning a favorite of George the First, and by the influence of Stanhope was intrusted with various diplomaticmissions of more or less importance. In 1721 he was actually appointedambassador to the Court of France. The death of Craggs, the Secretaryof State, however, made a vacancy in the administration, and the placewas at once assigned to Carteret. Carteret was one of those men whosegenius we have to believe in rather on the faith of contemporaryjudgment than by reason of any track of its own it has left behind. The unanimous opinion of all who knew him, and more especially of thosewho were commonly brought into contact with him, was that Carteretpossessed the rarest combination of statesmanlike and literary gifts. Probably no English public man ever exhibited in a higher degree thequalities that bring success in politics and the qualities that bringsuccess in literature. It seems strange to have to say this when oneremembers a man like Bolingbroke and a man like Burke; but it iscertain that neither Bolingbroke nor Burke could {234} boast of suchscholarship and accomplishments as those of Carteret. [Sidenote:1723--Carteret's German] He was a profound classical scholar; he was amaster of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Swedish. His scientific knowledge was extraordinary for that time; he was aclose student of the history of past and passing time; he was deeplyinterested in constitutional law, and had a passion for Church history. He was a great parliamentary debater--some say he was even a greatorator. He was prompt and bold in his decisions; he was not afraid ofany enterprise; he was not depressed or abashed by failure; he couldtake fortune's buffets and rewards with equal thanks. Large brains andsmall affections are, according to Mr. Disraeli, the essentialqualities for success in public life. Carteret had large brains andsmall affections; he had no friendships and no enmities. Like Fox, hewas a bad hater, but, unlike Fox, he had not a heart to love. He wasfond of books and of wine and of women; he was a great drinker of wine, even for those days of deep drink. Beneath all the apparent energy anddaring of his character there lay a voluptuous love of ease andlanguor. He was not a lazy man, but his inclination was always to bean indolent man. He leaped up to sudden political action when the callcame, like Sardanapalus leaping up to the inevitable fight; but, likeSardanapalus, he would have been always glad to lie down again and lollin ease the moment the necessity for action had passed away. No doubthis daily allowance of Burgundy--a very liberal and generousallowance--had a good deal to do with his tendency to indolence. Whatever the reason, it is certain that, with all his magnificent giftsand his splendid chances, he did nothing great, and has left no abidingmark in history. Every one who came near him seems to have regardedhis as a master-spirit. Chesterfield said of him, "When he dies, theablest head in England dies too, take it for all in all. " HoraceWalpole declares him to be superior in one set of qualities to hisfather. Sir Robert Walpole, {235} and in others to the great LordChatham. "Why did they send you here?" Swift said to Carteret, withrough good-humor, when Carteret came over to Dublin to beLord-lieutenant of Ireland. "You are not fit for this place; let themsend us back our boobies. " Carteret's fame has always seemed to uslike the fame of Sheridan's Begum speech. Such poor records as we haveof that speech seem hardly to hint at any extraordinary eloquence; yetthe absolutely unanimous opinion of all that heard it--of all theorators and statesmen and critics of the time--was that so great aspeech had never before been spoken in Parliament. Those men canhardly have been all wrong, one would think; and yet, on the otherhand, it is not easy to believe that those who made such record of thespeech as we have can have purposely left out all the eloquence, thewit, and the argument. In like manner, readers of this day may perplexthemselves about the fame of Carteret. All the men who knew him canhardly have been mistaken when they concurred in giving him credit forsurpassing genius; and yet we find no evidence of that genius either inthe literature or the political history of England. Carteret had one great advantage over Walpole and over all hiscontemporaries in political life--he was able to speak German fluently;he was able to talk for hours with the King in the King's own gutturaltongue. The King clung to Carteret's companionship because of hisGerman. While Walpole was trying to instil his policy and counselsinto George's mind through the non-conducting medium of very bad Latin, while other ministers were endeavoring to approach the Royalintelligence by means of French, which they spoke badly and heunderstood imperfectly, Carteret could rattle away in idiomatic German, and could amuse the Royal humor even with voluble German slang. Carteret had come into public life under the influence of LordSunderland and Lord Stanhope, and he regarded himself as the successorto their policy. He never considered himself as quite in {236}understanding and harmony with Townshend and Walpole. His principalidea was that the time had passed when it was proper or expedient toexclude the Tories or the High-churchmen from the political service ofthe Crown. He desired to enlarge the basis of administration byadmitting some of the more plastic and progressive of the Tories to ashare in it. There was, however, something more than a conflict ofpolitical views between Carteret and Walpole. Walpole's ambition wasto be the constitution dictator of England. We do not say that thiswas a mere personal ambition; on the contrary, we believe Walpole actedon the honest conviction that he knew better than any other man howEngland ought to be governed. He was sure, and reasonably sure, thatno other statesman could play the game so well; he therefore claimedthe right to play it. Carteret, on the other hand, was far too stronga man to be quietly pushed into the background. He was determined thatif he remained in the service of the State he would be a statesman, andnot a clerk. [Sidenote: 1723--A match making intrigue] Therefore, while Carteret and Walpole were colleagues there was alwaysa struggle going on between them, and, like all the political strugglesof the time, it had a great deal of underhand influence, and the worstkind of petticoat influence, engaged in it. One of the King'smistresses--the most influential of them--gave all her support toWalpole; another Royal paramour lent her aid to Carteret's side. Carteret played into the King's hands as regarded the Hanoverianpolicy, and was for taking strong measures against Russia. Townshendand Walpole would hear of no schemes which threatened to entangleEngland in war for the sake of Hanoverian interests. George likedCarteret, and was captivated by his policy as well as by his personalqualities, but he could not help seeing that Townshend's advice was thesounder, and that no man could manage the finances like Walpole. George went to Hanover in the summer of 1723, and both the Secretariesof State went with him. This was {237} something unusual, and evenunprecedented; but the King would not do without the companionship ofCarteret, and knew that he could not do without the advice ofTownshend. So both Townshend and Carteret went with his Majesty toHerrenhausen, and Walpole had the whole business of administration inhis own hands at home. A very paltry and pitiful intrigue at length settled the questionbetween Townshend and Carteret. A marriage had been arranged between aniece, or so-called niece, of one of George's mistresses and the son ofLa Vrilličre, the French Secretary of State. Madame La Vrilličreinsisted, as a condition of the marriage, that her husband should bemade a duke, and it was assumed that this could be brought about by theinfluence of the English Government. King George was anxious that themarriage should take place, and Carteret, of course, was willing toassist him. The English ambassador at the Court of France was a mannamed Sir Luke Schaub, by birth a Swiss, who had been Stanhope'ssecretary, and by Stanhope's influence was pushed up in the diplomaticservice. Sir Luke Schaub was in close understanding with Carteret, andwas strongly hostile to Townshend and Walpole. Of this fact Townshendwas well aware, and he took care that Schaub should be closely watchedin Paris. Schaub was instructed by Carteret to do all he could inorder to obtain the dukedom for Madame La Vrilličre's husband. Cardinal Dubois died, and his place in the councils of the Duke ofOrleans was taken by Count Nocé, who was believed to be hostile toEngland. This fact gave Townshend an excuse for suggesting to the Kingthat some one should be sent to Paris to watch over the action of theFrench Government and the conduct of the English ambassador, "in such amanner, " so Townshend wrote from Hanover to Walpole, "as may neitherhurt Sir Luke Schaub's credit with the Duke of Orleans, nor create ajealousy in Sir Luke of the King's intending to withdraw his confidencefrom him. " This was, of course, exactly what Townshend wanted todo--to {238} induce the King to withdraw his confidence from poor SirLuke. The King agreed that it was necessary some one "in whosefidelity and dexterity he can depend" should set out from England toHanover, "and take Paris on his way hither, under pretence of acuriosity to see that place, and without owning to any one living thebusiness he is employed in. " The person selected for this somewhatdelicate mission was Horace Walpole, Robert Walpole's only survivingbrother. [Sidenote: 1724--Carteret goes to Ireland] Horace Walpole acquitted himself very cleverly of the task assigned tohim. He was a man of uncouth manners, but of some shrewd ability andof varied experience. He had been a soldier with Stanhope beforeacting as Under-Secretary of State to Townshend; he had managed todistinguish himself in Parliament and in diplomacy. He soon contrivedto obtain the ear of the Duke of Orleans, and he found that Sir LukeSchaub had been deceiving himself and his sovereign about the prospectof La Vrilličre's dukedom. Philip of Orleans told Horace Walpolefrankly that there never was the slightest idea of giving such adukedom, and added that the dignity of France would be compromised ifsuch a concession were made in order to enable the King of England "tomarry his bastard daughter"--so the Duke put it--into the French_noblesse_. Sir Luke Schaub's haste and indiscreet zeal had, in fact, brought his sovereign into discredit, and even compromised the goodunderstanding between England and France. Philip of Orleans died almost immediately. His death was sudden, buthe had long run a course which set all laws of health at defiance. Hestuck to his pleasures to the very last--died, one might say, inharness. His successor in the administration of France, under theyoung King Louis the Fifteenth, who had just been declared of age, wasthe Duke de Bourbon, Philip's equal, perhaps, in profligacy, but not byany means his equal in capacity. Horace Walpole won over the newadministrator. The Duke de Bourbon told him that Sir Luke Schaub was{239} obnoxious to every one in the French Court, and that he was notfit, by birth, breeding, or capacity, to represent England there. We need not follow the intrigue through all its turns and twists. Walpole and Townshend succeeded. Schaub was recalled; Horace Walpolewas appointed ambassador in his place. The recall of Schaub involvedthe fall of Carteret. Carteret, however, was not a man to be rudelythrust out of office, and a soft fall was therefore prepared for him;he was made Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. He knew that he was defeated. Then, as at a later day and at an earlier, the Viceroyalty of Irelandwas the gilding which enabled a man to gulp down the bitter pill ofpolitical failure. When Lord John Russell obtained the dismissal ofLord Palmerston from his cabinet in 1851, he endeavored, somewhatawkwardly, to soften the blow by offering to his dispossessed rival theposition of Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. Lord Palmerston understood themeaning of the offer, and treated it--as was but natural--with opencontempt. Carteret acted otherwise. Probably he felt within himselfthat he was not destined to a great political career. In any case, heaccepted the offer with perfect good-humor, declaring that, on thewhole, he thought he should be much more pleasantly situated as adictator in Dublin than as the servant of a dictator in London. {240} CHAPTER XV. THE DRAPIER'S LETTERS. [Sidenote: 1724--Wood's coinage] Lord Carteret arrived at the seat of his Viceroyalty in the midst of apolitical storm which threatened at one time to blow down a good manyshaky institutions. He found the whole country, and especially thecapital, convulsed by an agitation the like of which was not seen againuntil the days of Grattan and the Volunteers. The hero of theagitation was Swift; the spell-words which gave it life and directionwere found in "The Drapier's Letters. " The copper coinage of Ireland had been for a long time deficient. Employers of labor had in many cases been obliged to pay their workmenin tokens; sometimes even with pieces of card, stamped and signed, andrepresenting each a small amount. During Sunderland's time of power, the Government set themselves to work to supply the lack of copper, andinvited tenders from the owners of mines for the supply. A Mr. WilliamWood, a man who owned iron and copper mines, and iron and copper works, sent in a tender which was accepted. A patent was given to Woodpermitting him to coin halfpence and farthings to the value of onehundred and eight thousand pounds. Walpole had not approved of thescheme himself, but for various reasons he did not venture to upset it. He had the patent prepared, and consulted Sir Isaac Newton, then Masterof the Mint, with regard to the objects which the Government had inview, and the weight and fineness of the coin which Wood was to supply. The halfpence and farthings were to be a little less in weight than thecoin of the same kind {241} current in England. Walpole consideredthis necessary because of the difference in exchange between the twocountries. Sir Isaac Newton was of opinion that the Irish coinexceeded the English in fineness of metal. As to the King'sprerogative for granting such patents, Walpole himself explained in aletter to Lord Townshend, then in Hanover with the King, that it wasone never disputed and often exercised. The granting of this patent, and the mode of supplying the deficiency in copper coin, might seemlittle open to objection; but the Irish Privy Council at once declaredagainst the whole transaction. Both Houses of the Irish Parliamentpassed addresses to the King, declaring that the introduction of Wood'scoinage would be injurious to the revenue and positively destructive oftrade. The Irish Lord Chancellor set himself sternly against thepatent in private, and urged all his friends, comrades, and dependents, to act publicly against it. The addresses from the two Houses ofParliament were sent to Walpole, who transmitted them to LordTownshend. Walpole accompanied the addresses with an explanation inwhich he vindicated the policy represented by the granting of thepatent, and insisted that no harm whatever could be done to the tradeor revenue of Ireland by the introduction of the new copper coinage. Walpole advised that the King should return a soothing and aconciliatory reply to the addresses, and the King acted accordingly. It seemed at one time probable that a satisfactory compromise would bearranged between the Irish Parliament and King George's ministers. This hope, however, was soon dispelled. One objection felt by the Irish people in general to the patent and thenew coinage was founded on the discovery of the fact that Wood hadagreed to pay a large bribe to the Duchess of Kendal for her influencein obtaining the patent for him. The objection of the Irish Executiveand the Irish Parliament was mainly based on the fact that Dublin hadnot been consulted in the arrangement of the business. The ministersin London {242} settled the whole affair, and then simply communicatedthe nature of the arrangement to Dublin. Wood himself was unpopular, so far as anything could be known of him, in Ireland. He was astranger to Ireland, and he was represented to be a boastful, arrogantman, who went about saying he could do anything he liked with Walpole, and that he would cram his copper coins down the throats of the Irishpeople. All these objections, however, might have been got over butfor the sudden appearance of an unexpected and a powerful actor on thescene. One morning appeared in Dublin "A letter to the shopkeepers, tradesmen, farmers, and common people of Ireland, concerning the brasshalfpence coined by one William Wood, hardwareman, with a design tohave them pass in this kingdom; wherein is shown the power of hispatent, the value of his halfpence, and how far every person may beobliged to take the same in payments; and how to behave himself in casesuch an attempt should be made by Wood or any other person. " Theletter was signed "M. B. , Drapier. " This was the first of those famous"Drapier's Letters" which convulsed Ireland with a passion like thatpreceding a great popular insurrection. It may be questioned whetherthe pamphlets of a literary politician ever before or since worked withso powerful an influence on the mind of a nation as these marvellousletters. [Sidenote: 1724--Swift's sincerity] The author of "The Drapier's Letters, " we need hardly say, was DeanSwift. Swift had for some years withdrawn himself from the politicalworld. He is described by one of his biographers as having "amusedhimself for three or four years with poetry, conversation, andtrifles. " Now and then, however, he published some letter which showedhis interest in the condition of the people among whom he lived; hisproposal, for example, "for the universal use of Irish manufacture inclothes and furniture of houses, etc. , " was written in the year 1720. This letter--the printer of which was subjected to a Governmentprosecution--contains a passage which has been, perhaps, {243} moreoften and more persistently misquoted than any other observation of anyauthor we can now remember. It seems to have become an article offaith with many writers and most readers that Swift said, "Burneverything that comes from England, except its coals. " Without muchhope of correcting that false impression so far as the bulk of thereading and quoting public is concerned, we may observe that Swiftnever said anything of the kind. This is what he did say: "I heard thelate Archbishop of Tuam mention a pleasant observation of somebody'sthat 'Ireland would never be happy until a law were made for burningeverything that came from England, except their people and theircoals. ' I must confess that, as to the former, I should not be sorryif they would stay at home, and, for the latter, I hope in a littletime we shall have no occasion for them. " Swift was not an Irishpatriot; he was not, indeed, an Irishman at all, except by the accidentof birth, and now by the accident of residence. He did not love thecountry; he would not have lived there a week if he could. He had noaffection for the people, and, at first, very little sympathy withthem. He was always angry if anybody regarded him as an Irishman. Hisfriends were all found among what may be described as the English andProtestant colony in Ireland. He felt towards the native Irish--theIrish Catholics--very much as the official of an English Governmentmight feel towards some savage tribe whom he had been sent out togovern. But at the same time it is an entire mistake to representSwift as insincere in the efforts which he made to ameliorate thecondition of the Irish people, and to redress some of the gross wrongswhich he saw inflicted on them. The administrator of whom we havealready spoken might have gone out to the savage country with nothingbut contempt for its wild natives, but if he were at all a humane and ajust man, it would be natural for him as time went on to feel keenly ifany injustice were inflicted on the poor creatures whom he despised, and at last to stand up {244} with indignation as their defender andtheir champion. So it was with Swift. [Sidenote: 1724--The drapier'sarguments] Little as he liked the Irish people in the beginning, yet hehad a temper and a spirit which made him intolerant of injustice andoppression. That fierce indignation described by himself, and of whichsuch store was always laid up in his heart, was roused to its highestpoint of heat by the sight of the miseries of the Irish people and ofthe frequent acts of neglect and injustice by which their misery wasdeepened. He felt the most sincere resentment at the arbitrary mannerin which the Government in London were dealing with Ireland in thematter of Wood's patent and Wood's copper coin. Swift, of course, knewwell by what influence the patent had been obtained, and he knew thatwhen obtained it had been simply thrust upon the Irish authorities, Parliament, and people without any previous sanction or knowledge ontheir part. Very likely he was also convinced, or had convincedhimself, that the patent and the new coin would be injurious to therevenues and the trade of the country. Certainly, if he was notconvinced of this, he gave to all his diatribes against Wood, Wood'spatent, and Wood's halfpence the tones of profoundest conviction. Heassumed the character of a draper for the moment--why he chose to spelldraper "drapier" nobody knew--and he certainly succeeded in putting onall the semblance of an honest trader driven to homely and robustindignation by an impudent proposal to injure the business of himselfand his neighbors. In England, he says, "the halfpence and farthingspass for very little more than they are worth, and if you should beatthem to pieces and sell them to the brazier, you would not lose muchabove a penny in a shilling. " But he goes on to say that Mr. Wood, whom he describes as "a mean, ordinary man, a hardware dealer"--Woodwas, as we have already seen, a large owner of iron and copper minesand works, but that was all one to Dean Swift--"made his halfpence ofsuch base metal, and so much smaller than the English ones, that thebrazier would hardly give you {245} above a penny of good money for ashilling of his; so that this sum of one hundred and eight thousandpounds in good gold and silver may be given for trash that will not beworth above eight or nine thousand pounds real value. " Nor is eventhis the worst, he contends, "for Mr. Wood, when he pleases, may bystealth send over another hundred and eight thousand pounds and buy allour goods for eleven parts in twelve under the value. " "For example, "says Swift, "if a hatter sells a dozen of hats for five shillingsapiece, which amounts to three pounds, and receives the payment inWood's coin, he really receives only the value of five shillings. " Ofcourse this is the wildest exaggeration--is, in fact, mere extravaganceand absurdity, if regarded as a financial proposition. But Swiftunderstood, as hardly any other man understood, the art of employingexaggeration with such an effect as to make it do the business ofunquestionable fact. He was able to make his literary coins pass formuch more than Wood could do with his halfpence and farthings. Theartistic skill which bade the creatures whom Gulliver saw in histravels seem real, life-like, and living, made the fantasticextravagance of the "Drapier's Letters" strike home with all the forceof truth to the minds of an excited populace. Many biographers and historians have expressed a blank and utteramazement at the effect which Swift's letters produced. They havechosen to regard it as a mere historical curiosity, a sort of politicalparadox and puzzle. They have described the Irish people at the timeas under the spell of something like sorcery. Even in our own days, Mr. Gladstone, in a speech delivered to the House of Commons, treatedthe convulsion caused by Swift's letters and Wood's halfpence as anoutbreak of national frenzy, called up by the witchery of styledisplayed in the "Drapier's Letters. " To some of us it is, on theother hand, a matter of surprise to see how capable writers, andespecially how a man of Mr. Gladstone's genius and political knowledge, could for a moment be thus deceived. {246} One is almost inclined tothink that Mr. Gladstone could not have been reading the "Drapier'sLetters" recently, when he thus spoke of the effect which theyproduced, and thus was willing to explain it. [Sidenote: 1724--Thedrapier's victory] Any one who reads the letters with impartialattention will see that from first to last the anger that burns inthem, the sarcasm that withers and scorches, the passionate eloquencewhich glows in even their most carefully measured sentences, aredirected against Wood and his halfpence only because the patent, thebribe by which it was purchased, and the manner in which it was forcedon Ireland, represented the injustice of the whole system of Irishadministration, and the wrongs of many generations. "It would be veryhard if all Ireland, " Swift declares with indignation, "should be putinto one scale, and this sorry fellow Wood into the other. " "I have apretty good shop of Irish stuffs and silks, " the Drapier declares, "andinstead of taking Mr. Wood's bad copper, I intend to truck with myneighbors, the butchers and bakers and brewers, and the rest, goods forgoods; and the little gold and silver I have, I will keep by me like myheart's blood till better times, or until I am just ready to starve. ""Wood's contract?" he asks. "His contract with whom? Was it with theParliament or people of Ireland?" The reader who believes that such apassage as that, and scores of similar passages, were inspired merelyby disapproval of the introduction of one hundred and eight thousandpounds in copper coin, must have very little understanding of Swift'stemper or Swift's purpose, or the condition of the times in which Swiftlived. "I will shoot Mr. Wood and his deputies through the head, likehighwaymen or house-breakers, if they dare to force one farthing oftheir coin on me in the payment of a hundred pounds. It is no loss ofhonor to submit to the lion, but who in the figure of a man can thinkwith patience of being devoured alive by a rat?" . . . "If the famousMr. Hampden rather chose to go to prison than pay a few shillings toKing Charles I. , without authority of Parliament, I will {247} ratherchoose to be hanged than have all my substance taxed at seventeenshillings in the pound, at the arbitrary will and pleasure of thevenerable Mr. Wood. " Mr. Gladstone, perhaps, did not observe thisallusion to "the famous Mr. Hampden. " If he had done so, he would havebetter understood the inspiration of the "Drapier's Letters. " Mr. Hampden was not so ignorant a man as to believe that the merecollection of the ship-money--the mere withdrawal of so much money fromthe pockets of certain tax-payers--would really ruin the trade andimperil the national existence of England. What Mr. Hampden objectedto, and would have resisted to the death, was the unconstitutional anddespotic system which the levy of the ship-money represented. TheAmerican colonists did not rise in rebellion against the Government ofGeorge III. Merely because they had eaten of the insane root, andfancied that a trifling tax upon tea would destroy the trade of Bostonand New York. They rose in arms against the principle represented bythe imposition of the tax. We can all understand why there should havebeen a national rebellion against ship-money, and a national rebellionagainst a trumpery duty on tea, but English writers and English publicmen seem quite unable to explain the national outcry against Wood'spatent, except on the theory that a clever writer, pouring forthcaptivating nonsense, bewitched the Irish Parliament and the Irishpeople, and sent them out of their senses for a season. Swift followed up his first letter by others in rapid succession. LordCarteret arrived in Ireland when the agitation was at its height. Heissued a proclamation against the "Drapier's Letters, " offered a rewardof three hundred pounds for the discovery of the author, and had theprinter arrested. The Grand Jury, however, unanimously threw out thebill sent up against Harding, the printer. Another Grand Jury passed apresentment against all persons who should by fraud or otherwise imposeWood's copper coins upon the public. This {248} presentment is said tohave been drawn up by Swift's own hand. Lord Carteret at last had thegood-sense to perceive, and the spirit to acknowledge, that there wasno alternative between concession and rebellion. He strongly urged hisconvictions on the Government, and the Government had the wisdom toyield. The patent was withdrawn, a pension was given to Wood inconsideration of the loss he had sustained, and Swift was the object ofuniversal gratitude, enthusiasm, love, and devotion, on the part of theIrish nation. Many a patriotic Irishman would fain believe to thisvery day that Swift, too, was Irish, and an Irish patriot. Irelandcertainly has not yet forgotten, probably never will forget, thesuccessful stand made by Swift against what he believed to be an insultto the Irish nation, when he took up his pen to write the first of theDrapier's immortal Letters. {249} CHAPTER XVI. THE OPPOSITION. [Sidenote: 1725--Troubles in Scotland] The trouble had hardly been got rid of in Ireland by Carteret'sjudicious advice and the withdrawal of Wood's patent when a commotionthat at one time threatened to be equally serious broke out inScotland. English members of Parliament had been for many yearscomplaining that Scotland was exempt from any taxation on malt. Up tothat time no Government had attempted to take any steps towardsestablishing equality in this respect between the two countries. Walpole now strove to deal with the question. It was proposed in theHouse of Commons that instead of a malt duty in Scotland a duty ofsixpence should be levied on every barrel of ale. Walpole at first wasnot inclined to deal with the difficulty in this way, but as thefeeling of the House was very strongly in favor of making some attempt, he consented to adopt the principle suggested, but required that theduty should be threepence instead of sixpence. The moment it becameknown in Scotland that any tax on malt or ale was to be imposed, rioting began in the principal cities; the spirit of the national mottoasserted itself--"nemo me impune lacessit. " The ringleaders of variousmobs were arrested and sent for trial, but the Scotch juries, followingthe recent example of the Irish, refused to convict. Brewers all overScotland entered into a sort of league, by virtue of which they pledgedthemselves not to give any securities for the new duty and to ceasebrewing if the Government exacted it. Unluckily for Walpole, theSecretary of State for Scotland, the Duke of Roxburgh, was a greatfriend of Carteret's, {250} and had joined with Carteret in endeavoringto thwart Walpole in all his undertakings. The success of Walpole'spolicy in any instance was understood by Carteret and by Roxburgh tomean Walpole's supremacy over all other ministers. The Duke ofRoxburgh therefore took advantage of the crisis in Scotland to injurethe administration, and especially to injure Walpole. In a subtle andunderhand way he contrived to favor and foment the disturbance. Hetook care that the orders of the Government should not be too quicklycarried out, and he gave more than a tacit encouragement to the commonrumor that the King in his heart was hostile to the new tax, that thetax was wholly an invention of Walpole's, and that resistance to such ameasure would not be unwelcome to the Sovereign, and would lead to thedismissal of the minister. Walpole was not long in finding out thetreachery of the Duke of Roxburgh. To adopt a homely phrase, he "tookthe bull by the horns" at once. Lord Townshend was in Hanover with theKing, and Walpole wrote to Lord Townshend, giving him a full account ofall that was going on in Scotland, and laying the chief blame for thecontinuance of the disturbance on the Duke of Roxburgh. "I beg leaveto observe, " wrote Walpole, "that the present administration is thefirst that was ever yet known to be answerable for the wholeGovernment, with a Secretary of State for one part of the kingdom who, they are assured, acts counter to all their measures, or at least whomthey cannot confide in. " His remonstrance had to be pressed again andagain upon Townshend before anything was done to satisfy him. Walpole, however, was a man to press where he thought the occasion demanded it, and he was successful in the end. The Duke of Roxburgh had to resign, and Walpole added to his own duties those of the Secretary of State forScotland. He appointed, however, as his agent or deputy in theadministration of Scotland, the Earl of Isla, Lord-keeper of the PrivySeal in that country, and a man on whose allegiance he could entirelyrely. Having {251} thus secured a full power to act, Walpole was notlong in bringing the disturbances to an end. He displayed bothdiscretion and resolve. He was able to satisfy the most reasonableamong the brewers and maltsters that their interests would not reallysuffer by the proposed resolutions. The natural result was that thecombination of brewers began to melt away. The brewers held a meeting, and it was soon found that it would not be possible to secure a generalresolution to meet the legislation of the Government by passiveresistance and by ceasing to brew. As all would not stand together, every man was left to take his own course, and the result was that whatwe should now call a strike came quietly to an end. [Sidenote: 1725--Intrigue and counter-intrigue] A modern reader is naturally shocked and surprised at the manner inwhich members of the same Government in Walpole's day intrigued againstone another, and strove to thwart each other's policy. No actualdefence is to be made for such a practice; but it is only fair toobserve that up to Walpole's own entrance into office, and after it, the habit of English sovereigns had been to make up an administrationby taking members of different and even of opposing parties andbringing them together, in the hope of securing thereby theco-operation of all parties. Under these circumstances it was natural, it was only to be expected, that the minister who was pledged to onepolicy would endeavor by all means in his power to counteract thedesigns of the minister whom he knew to be pledged to a very differentkind of policy. Nor, indeed, is the practice of intrigue andcounter-intrigue among members of the same cabinet actually unknown inour own days, when there is not the same excuse to be pleaded for itthat might have been urged in the time of Walpole. In the case of theDuke of Roxburgh, however, the attempt to counteract the policy ofWalpole was made in somewhat bolder and less subtle fashion than wascommon even in those days, and Walpole was well justified in the coursehe took. For once his high-handed way of dealing with men wasvindicated {252} by its principle and by the unqualified advantage itbrought to the interests of the State and to those of the minister aswell. [Sidenote: 1725--Dictatorship overdone] The student of history derives one satisfaction from the frequentvisits of King George to Hanover. The correspondence between Walpoleand Townshend which was made necessary by those visits gives us many aninteresting glimpse into political affairs in their reality, in theirundress, in their secret movement, which no ordinary State papers ordiplomatic despatches could be trusted to give. The Secretary of Stateoften communicates to the representative of his country at some foreigncourt only just that view of a political situation which he wishes toput under the eyes of the foreign sovereign and foreign statesmen. ButWalpole writes to Townshend exactly what he himself believes, and whatit is important both to Townshend and to him that Townshend shall fullyknow. "I think, " Walpole says to Townshend, in one of his letters, "wehave once more got Ireland and Scotland quiet, if we take care to keepthem so. " Exactly; if only care be taken to keep them so. The samechance had often been given to English statesmen before; Ireland andScotland quiet, and might have continued in quietness if care had onlybeen taken to keep them so. The King was much pleased with Walpole's success. He made him one ofthe thirty-eight Knights of the Bath. The Order of the Bath had goneout of use, out of existence in fact, since the coronation of Charlesthe Second; George the First revived it in 1725, and bestowed itshonors on Walpole. It seems an odd sort of reward for the shrewd, practical, and somewhat coarse-fibred squire-statesman. The closeconnection between man and the child, civilized man and the savage, isnever more clearly illustrated than in the joy and pride which thewisest statesman feels in the wearing of a ribbon or a star. In thenext year the King made Walpole a Knight of the Garter; after thishonor all other mark of dignity {253} would be but an anti-climax. From the time of his introduction to the Order of the Bath, the greatminister ceased to be plain Mr. Walpole, and became Sir Robert Walpole. Meanwhile, under Walpole's Order of the Bath, many a throb of pain musthave made itself felt. The minister began to find himself harassed bythe most formidable opposition that had ever set itself against him. Lord Carteret was out of the way for the moment--and only for themoment; but Pulteney proved a much more pertinacious, ingenious, anddangerous enemy than Carteret had hitherto been. Pulteney was at onetime the faithful follower, the enthusiastic admirer, almost thedevotee, of Walpole. The one great political defect of Walpole filledhim with faults. He could not bear the idea of a divided rule; hewould be all or nothing; he would have clerks and servants for hiscolleagues in office; not real ministers, actual statesmen. He wasunder the mistaken impression that a man of genius is to be reduced totame insignificance by merely keeping him out of important office. Hehad made this mistake with regard to Carteret; he made it now withregard to Pulteney. The consequences were far more serious; forPulteney was neither so good-humored nor so indolent as Carteret, andhe could not be put aside. Pulteney was a man of singular eloquence, and of eloquence peculiarlyadapted to the House of Commons. His style was brilliant, incisive, and penetrating. He could speak on any subject at the spur of themoment. He never delivered a set speech. He was a born parliamentarydebater. All his resources seemed to be at instant command, accordingas he had need of them. His reading was wide, deep, and varied; he wasa most accomplished classical scholar, and had a marvellous readinessand aptitude for classical allusion. He was a wit and a humorist; hecould brighten the dullest topics and make them sparkle by odd anddroll illustrations, as well as by picturesque allusions and eloquentphrases. He {254} could, when the subject called for it, breaksuddenly into thrilling invective. [Sidenote: 1725--Pulteney] But hehad some of the defects of the extemporaneous orator. His eloquence, his wit, his epigrams often carried him away from his better judgment. He frequently committed himself to some opinion which was not reallyhis, and was led far from his proper position in the pursuit of someparadox or by the charm of some fantastic idea. He was a brilliantwriter as well as a brilliant speaker. His private character wouldhave little blame if it were not that a fondness for money kept growingwith his growing years. "For a good old-gentlemanly vice, " says Byron, "I think I must take up with avarice. " Pulteney did not even wait tobe an old gentleman to take up with "the good old-gentlemanly vice. "We have in some measure now to take his talents on trust, as we havethose of Carteret. He proved to be little more than the comet of aseason; when he had gone, he left no line of light behind him. But itis certain that in the estimation of his contemporaries he was one ofthe most gifted men of his time; and for a while he was the mostpopular man in England--the darling and the hero of the multitude. When Walpole was sent to the Tower in the late Queen's reign, Pulteneyhad spoken up manfully for his friend. When Townshend and Walpoleresigned office in 1717, Pulteney went resolutely with them andresigned office also. The time came when Walpole found himselftriumphant over all his enemies, and came back not merely to office butlikewise to power. Naturally, Pulteney expected that Walpole wouldinvite him to fill some place of importance in the new administration. Walpole did nothing of the kind. He had seen ample evidence ofPulteney's great parliamentary talents in the mean time, and he fearedthat with Pulteney for an official colleague he could never be adictator. He was anxious, however, not to offend Pulteney, and he hadthe curious weakness to imagine that he could conciliate Pulteney byoffering him a peerage. Even at that time, when the sceptre of popularpower had not yet {255} passed altogether into the hands of therepresentative chamber, it was absurd to suppose that Pulteney wouldconsent to be withdrawn from the House in which he had made his fame, which was his natural and fitting place, and which already was seen byevery man of sense to be the central force of England's political life. Pulteney contemptuously refused the peerage. From that hour his oldlove for Walpole seems to have turned into hate. The explosion, however, did not come at once. Pulteney continued to beon seemingly good terms with Walpole, and shortly afterwards thecomparatively humble post of Cofferer to the Household was offered tohim--some say was asked for by him. It does not seem likely that eventhen he had any intention of a serious reconciliation with Walpole. Perhaps he accepted this post in the expectation that he would shortlybe raised to a much higher position in the State. But Walpole, although willing enough to give him any mark or place of honor oncondition that he withdrew to the House of Lords, was afraid to allowhim any office of influence while he remained in the Commons. Howeverthis may be, Pulteney's ambition was not satisfied, and he very soonbroke publicly away from Walpole altogether. When a motion was broughton in April, 1725, for discharging the debts of the Civil List, inreply to a message from the King himself, Pulteney demanded an inquiryinto the manner in which the money had been spent, and even made afierce attack on the whole administration, and accused it of somethingvery like downright corruption. He was dismissed from his office asCofferer, and, even making allowance for his love of money, the wonderis that he should have held it long enough to be dismissed from it. Hethen went avowedly over into the ranks of the enemies of Walpole insideand outside the House of Commons. The position taken by Pulteney is chiefly interesting to us now in thefact that it opened a distinctly new chapter in English politics. Pulteney created the part of what has ever since been called the Leaderof Opposition. {256} With him begins the time when the real Leader ofOpposition must have a place in the House of Commons; with him, too, begins the time when the Opposition has for its recognized duty notmerely to watch with jealous care all the acts of the ministers inorder to prevent them from doing anything wrong, but also to watch forevery opportunity of turning them out of office. With Pulteney and histactics began the party organization which inside the House of Commonsand outside works unceasingly with tongue and pen, with open antagonismand underhand intrigue, with all the various social as well aspolitical influences--the pamphlet, the press, the petticoat, and eventhe pulpit--to discredit everything done by the men in office, to turnpublic opinion against them, and if possible to overthrow them. Pulteney and his supporters were now and then somewhat moreunscrupulous in their measures than an English Opposition would be inour time, but theirs was unquestionably the policy of all our moremodern English parties. From this time forth almost to the close ofhis active career as a politician Pulteney performed the part of Leaderof Opposition in the strictly modern sense. His position in historyseems to us to be distinctly marked as that of the first Leader ofOpposition; whether history shows reason to thank him for creating sucha part is another and a different question. [Sidenote: 1725--Bolingbroke again] Pulteney had some powerful allies. The King, as we know, hated hisson, the Prince of Wales; the Prince of Wales hated his father. Noreconciliation got up between them could be lasting or real. Thefather and son hardly ever met except on the occasion of some greatpublic ceremonial. The standing quarrel between the Sovereign and hisheir had the effect of creating two parties in political life, one ofwhich supported the King and the King's advisers, while the other foundits centre in the house of the Heir to the Throne. We shall see thiscondition of things re-appearing in all the subsequent reigns of theGeorges. The ministry and their friends {257} were detested anddenounced by those who surrounded the Prince of Wales; the adherents ofthe Prince of Wales were virtually proscribed by the King. Then, as ata later date in the history of the Georges, those who favored and werefavored by the Prince were looking out with anxious hope for the King'sdeath. When "the old King is dead as nail in door, " then indeed eachleading supporter of the new king believed he could say with Falstaff, "The laws of England are at my commandment; happy are they which havebeen my friends. " Pulteney and his supporters were among the friendsand favorites of the Prince of Wales; they constituted the Prince'sparty. The Prince's party was composed mainly of the men who wereTories but were not Jacobites, and of the Whigs who disliked Walpole orhad been overlooked or offended by him, or who in sober honesty wereopposed to his policy. In all these, and in a daily growing number ofthe people out-of-doors, Pulteney had his friends and Walpole hisenemies. But a more formidable rival than even Pulteney was now again to thefront and active in hostility to Walpole. This was the man whom theofficial records of the time described as "the late ViscountBolingbroke. " The late Viscount Bolingbroke, it need hardly be said, means that Henry St. John whose title of viscount had been forfeitedwhen he fled to France and joined the Pretender. Bolingbroke hadlately received the pardon of King George. He had secured the pardonchiefly by means of an influence then familiar and recognized inpolitics--that of one of the King's mistresses. Bolingbroke had gotmoney with his second wife, and through her he conveyed to the Duchessof Kendal a large sum--about ten thousand pounds--with the intimationthat more would be forthcoming from the same place, if necessary, toobtain his object. The Duchess of Kendal was easily prevailed upon, under these circumstances, to recognize the justice of Bolingbroke'sclaim and the sincerity of his repentance. Moreover, there was aboutthe same time that {258} political intrigue, or rather rivalry ofintrigues, going on between Walpole and Carteret, between England andFrance, in which it was thought the influence of Bolingbroke might beused with advantage--as it was, in fact, used--to Walpole's ends. [Sidenote: 1725--The Bolingbroke Petition] For all these reasons thepardon was obtained, and Bolingbroke was allowed to return to England. Nor was he long put off with a mere forgiveness which kept from him hisforfeited estates and his right to the family inheritance. "Here Iam, " he wrote to Swift soon after, "two-thirds restored, my person safe(unless I meet hereafter with harder treatment than even that of SirWalter Raleigh), and my estate, with all the other property I haveacquired or may acquire, secured to me. But the attainder is keptprudently in force, lest so corrupt a member should come again into theHouse of Lords, and his bad leaven should sour that sweet, untaintedmass. " Walpole was quite willing that the forfeiture of LordBolingbroke's estates and the interruption of the inheritance should berecalled. It was necessary for this purpose to pass an Act ofParliament. On April 20, 1725, Lord Finch presented to the House ofLords the petition "of Henry St. John, late Viscount Bolingbroke. " Thepetition set forth that the petitioner was "truly concerned for hisoffence in not having surrendered himself, pursuant to the directionsof an act of the first year of his Majesty's reign;" that he hadlately, "in most humble and dutiful manner, " made his submission to theKing, and given his Majesty "the strongest assurances of his inviolablefidelity, and of his zeal for his Majesty's service and for the supportof the present happy establishment, which his Majesty hath been mostgraciously pleased to accept. " The petition then prayed that leavemight be given to bring in a bill to enable the petitioner and hisheirs male to take and enjoy in person the estates of which he was thenor afterwards should be possessed. Walpole, as Chancellor of theExchequer, informed the House that he had received his Majesty'scommand to say that George was satisfied with Bolingbroke's {259}penitence, was convinced that Lord Bolingbroke was a proper object ofmercy, and consented that the petition should be presented to the House. Lord Finch then moved that a bill be brought in to carry out the prayerof the petition. The Chancellor of the Exchequer seconded and stronglyadvocated the motion. It was opposed with great vigor by Mr. Methuen, the Controller of the Household, and formerly British Minister inPortugal. Methuen denounced Bolingbroke's "scandalous and villainousconduct" during his administration of affairs in Queen Anne's reign;his clandestine negotiation for peace; his insolent behavior towardsthe allies of England; his sacrificing the interests of the wholeConfederacy and the honor of his country--more especially in theabandonment of the Catalans; "and, to sum up all his crimes in one, histraitorous designs of defeating the Protestant succession, and ofadvancing a Popish pretender to the throne. " This speech, we read, "made a great impression on the Assembly, " and several distinguishedmembers, Arthur Onslow among the rest, spoke strongly on the same side. The motion, however, was carried by 231 votes against 113. The Billwas prepared, and went up to the House of Lords on May 5th, was carriedthere by a large majority, was sent back to the House of Commons withsome slight amendments, was accepted there, and received the Royalassent. Some of the peers put on record a strong and earnest protestagainst the passing of such a measure. The protest recited all thecharges against Bolingbroke; declared that those who signed it knew ofno particular public services which Bolingbroke had lately rendered, and which would entitle him to a generous treatment; and further addedthat "no assurances which this person hath given" could be a sufficientsecurity against his future insincerity, "he having already so oftenviolated the most solemn assurances and obligations, and in defiance ofthem having openly attempted the dethroning his Majesty and thedestruction of the liberties of his country. " {260} Bolingbroke, however, wanted something more than restoration to histitle and to his forfeited right of inheritance. His active anduntamed spirit was eager for political strife again, and his heartburned with a longing to take his old place in the debates of the Houseof Lords. Against this Walpole had made a firm resolve; on this pointhe would not yield. He would not allow his eloquent and daring rivalto have a voice in Parliament any more. In this, as it seems to us, Walpole acted neither wisely nor magnanimously. Bolingbroke's safestplace, so far as the interests of the public, and even the politicalinterests of his rivals, were concerned, would have been in the Houseof Lords. He would have delivered brilliant speeches there, and wouldhave worked off his energies in that harmless fashion. In Walpole'stime, however, the idea had not yet arisen that an enemy to the settledorder of things is least dangerous where he is most free to speak. Bolingbroke, who had always hated Walpole, even lately when he wasprofessing regard and gratitude, hated him now more than ever, and setto work by all the means in his power to injure Walpole in theestimation of the country, and, if possible, to undermine his wholepolitical position. [Sidenote: 1725-1726--The "craftsman"] Bolingbroke and Pulteney soon came into political companionship. Therewas a certain affinity between the intellectual nature of the two men;and they had now a common object. Both were literary men as well aspoliticians, and they naturally put their literary gifts to the fullestaccount in the campaign they had undertaken. In our days two such mencombining for such a purpose would contrive to get incessant leadingarticles into some daily paper; perhaps would start a weekly or even adaily evening paper of their own. Bolingbroke and Pulteney were men inadvance of their age--in some respects at least. They did between themstart a paper. They established the famous _Craftsman_. The_Craftsman_ was started in 1726. It was first issued daily in singleleaves or sheets after the fashion of the _Spectator_. It was soon, {261} however, changed into a weekly newspaper bearing the title of the_Craftsman_ or _Country Journal_. Its editor, Nicholas Amhurst, tookthe feigned name of Caleb d'Anvers, and the paper itself was commonlycalled _Caleb_ accordingly. The _Craftsman_ was brilliantly written, and was inspired by the most unscrupulous passion of partisan hate. Walpole was held up in prose and verse, in bold invective and drolllampoon, as a traitor to the country, as a man stuffed and gorged withpublic plunder, audacious in his profligate disregard of politicalprinciple and common honesty, a danger to the State and a disgrace toparliamentary life. The circulation of the _Craftsman_ at one timesurpassed that of the _Spectator_ at the height of the _Spectator's_popularity. Not always are more flies caught by honey than by vinegar. {262} CHAPTER XVII. "OSNABRUCK! OSNABRUCK!" [Sidenote: 1725--Trial of Lord Macclesfield] The impeachment of Lord Macclesfield was ascribed, rightly or wrongly, to the influence of the Prince of Wales; the comparative leniency ofLord Macclesfield's punishment to the favor and protection of the King. Macclesfield was a justly distinguished judge. He had had the higheststanding at the bar; had risen, step by step, until from plain ThomasParker, the son of an attorney, he became Chief Justice of the Court ofKing's Bench, then one of the Lords Justices of the kingdom in theinterval between Anne's death and the arrival of George the First, andfinally Lord Chancellor. George made him Baron, and subsequently Earl, of Macclesfield. He had always borne a high reputation for probity aswell as for generosity until the charge was made against him on whichhe was impeached. He was accused of having, while Lord Chancellor, sold the offices of Masters in Chancery to incompetent persons and menof straw, unfit to be intrusted with the money of suitors, but whom hehad publicly represented to be "persons of great fortunes, and in everyrespect qualified for that trust;" with having extorted money fromseveral of the masters, and with having embezzled the estates of widowsand orphans. On May 6, 1725, the managers of the House of Commonsappeared at the bar of the House of Lords and presented their articlesof impeachment against Macclesfield. The trial took place at the barof the House, and not in Westminster Hall, where impeachments wereusually carried on, and it lasted until May 26th. There was nothingthat could be called a defence to some of the charges, and as {263} toothers Lord Macclesfield simply insisted that he had followed theexample of some of his most illustrious predecessors, and that themoneys he received as presents were reckoned among the knownperquisites of the Great Seal, and were not declared unlawful by anyAct of Parliament. The Lords were unanimous in finding Macclesfieldguilty, and condemned him to be fined thirty thousand pounds, and to beimprisoned in the Tower until the fine had been paid. The motion thathe be declared forever incapable of any office, place, or employment inthe State was, however, rejected, as was also a motion to prohibit himfrom ever sitting in Parliament or coming within the verge of thecourt. It would certainly seem as if these motions ought to have beenthe natural and necessary consequence of the impeachment and theconviction. If the conviction were just--and it was obviouslyjust--then Lord Macclesfield had disgraced the highest bench ofjustice, and merely to condemn him to disgorge a part of his plunderwas a singularly inadequate sort of punishment. George the First, however, chose to ascribe the impeachment to the malice and theinfluence of the Prince of Wales, and when Macclesfield had paid thefine by the mortgage of an estate, the King undertook to repay themoney to him. George actually did pay to Macclesfield one instalmentof a thousand pounds, but fate interposed and prevented any furtherpayment. Macclesfield retired from the world, and spent his remainingyears in the study of science and in religious meditation. He died in1732. His was a strange story. He had many of the noblest qualities;he had had, on the whole, a great career. It is not easy, if we mayborrow the words which Burke applied to a more picturesque andinteresting sufferer, "to contemplate without emotion that elevationand that fall. " During all this time of comparative quietude we are not to suppose thatthere were no threatenings of foreign disturbance. The adherents ofthe Stuarts were never at rest; the controversies which grew out of theTreaty of Utrecht were always sputtering and menacing. Cardinal {264}Fleury, a statesman devoted to peace and economy, had becomePrime-minister of France. Other new figures were arising on the fieldof Continental politics. Alberoni, in exile and disgrace, had beensucceeded by a burlesque imitation of him, the Duke of Ripperda, aDutch adventurer who turned diplomatist, and had risen into influencethrough Alberoni's favor. In 1725 Ripperda negotiated a secret treatybetween the Emperor, Charles the Sixth, and the King of Spain, and wasrewarded with the title of duke. He became Prime-minister of Spain fora short time, to be presently disgraced and thrown into prison, quiteafter the fashion of a royal favorite in the pages of "Gil Blas. " Hewas a fantastic, arrogant, feather-headed creature, an Alberoni of the_opera bouffe_. He betook himself at last to the service of theSovereign of Morocco. England had a sort of Ripperda of her own in theperson of the wild Duke of Wharton, the man whose eloquent andferocious invective had contributed to the sudden death of LordStanhope, and who had since that time devoted himself to the service ofJames Stuart on the Continent, and actually fought as a volunteer inthe ranks of the Spanish army at the abortive siege of Gibraltar. Itis to the credit of the sincerer and better supporters of the Stuartcause that they would not even still consent to regard it as whollylost. They kept their eyes fixed on England, and every murmur ofnational discontent or disturbance became to them a new encouragement, a fresh signal of hope, a reviving incitement to energy. In Englandmen were constantly hearing rumors about the dissolute life of theChevalier, and his quarrels with his wife, Clementina Maria, agranddaughter of one of the Kings of Poland. The loyalists here athome were ready to believe anything that could be said by anybody tothe discredit of James and his adherents; James and his adherents werewilling to be fed on any tales about the unpopularity of George theFirst, and the tottering condition of his throne. Nor could it be saidthat George was popular with any class of persons in {265} England. Ifthe reign of the Brunswicks depended upon personal popularity, it wouldnot have endured for many years. But the people of England were ableto see clearly enough that George allowed his great minister to rulefor him, and that Walpole's policy meant prosperity and peace. Theydid not admire George's mistresses any more now than they had done whenfirst these ladies set their large feet on English soil; but even someof the most devoted followers of the Stuart cause shook their headssadly over the doings of James in Italy, and could not pretend to saythat the cause of morality would gain much by a change from Brunswickto Stuart. [Sidenote: 1727--Death of George the First] The end was very near for George. He was now an old man, in hissixty-eighth year, and he had not led a life to secure a long lease ofhealth. His excesses in eating and drinking, his hot punch, and hismany mistresses had proved too much even for his originally robustconstitution. Of late he had become a mere wreck. He was eager to payone other visit to Hanover, and he embarked at Greenwich on June 3, 1727, landing in Holland on the 7th of the month. He made for hiscapital as quickly as he could, but in the course of the journey he wasattacked by a sort of lethargic paralysis. Early on June 10th he wasseized with an apoplectic fit; his hands hung motionless by his sides, his eyes were fixed, glassy, and staring, and his tongue protruded fromhis mouth. The sight of him horrified his attendants; they wished tostop at once and secure some assistance for the poor old dying King. George, however, recovered consciousness so far as to be able to insiston pursuing his journey, crying out, with spasmodic efforts at command, the words "Osnabrück! Osnabrück!" At Osnabrück lived his brother thePrince-bishop. The attendants dared not disobey George, even at thatmoment, and the carriage drove at its fullest speed on towardsOsnabrück. No swiftness of wheels, however, no flying chariot, couldhave reached the house of the Prince-bishop in time for the King. Whenthe royal carriages clattered into the court-yard of the {266}Prince-bishop's palace the reign of the first George was over--the oldKing lay dead in his seat. Lord Townshend and the Duchess of Kendalwere following in different carriages on the road; an express was sentback to tell them the grim news. Lord Townshend came on to Osnabrück, and finding that the King was dead, had nothing to do but to returnhome at once. The Duchess of Kendal is stated to have shown all thesigns of grief proper to be expected from a favorite. She tore herhair--at least she pulled and clutched at it--and she beat her amplebosom, and professed the uttermost horror at the thought of having toendure life without the companionship of her lord and master. It issatisfactory, however, to know that she did not die of grief. Shelived for some sixteen years, and made her home for the most part atKendal House, near Twickenham. [Sidenote: 1727--The raven] Even such a man as George the First may become invested by death with acertain dignity and something of a romantic interest. Legends areafloat concerning the King's later days which would not be altogetherunworthy the closing hours of a great Roman emperor. George had hismelting moments, it would seem, and not long before his death, being ina pathetic mood, he gave the Duchess of Kendal a pledge that if heshould die before her, and it were possible for departed souls toreturn to earth and impress the living with a knowledge of theirpresence, he, the faithful and aged lover, would come back from thegrave to his mistress. When the Duchess of Kendal returned to her homenear Twickenham she was in constant expectation of a visit in some formfrom her lost adorer. One day while the windows of her house wereopen, a large black raven, or bird of some kind--raven would seem to bethe more becoming and appropriate form for such a visitor--flew intoher presence from the outer air. The lamenting lady assumed at oncethat in this shape the soul of King George had come back to earth. Shecherished and petted the bird, it is said, and lavished all fondnessand tenderness upon it. What {267} became of it in the end historydoes not allow us to know. Whether it still is sitting, like the morefamous raven of poetry, it is not for us to guess. Probably when theDuchess herself expired in 1743, the ghastly, grim, and ancient ravendisappeared with her. Why George the First, if he had the power ofreturning in any shape to see his mistress, did not come in his ownproper form, it is not for us to explain. One might be disposed toimagine that in such a case it would be the first step which wouldinvolve the cost, and that there would be no greater difficulty for thedeparted soul to come back in the likeness of its old vestment of claythan to put on the unfamiliar and somewhat inconvenient form of a fowl. Perhaps the story is not true. Possibly there was no raven or otherbird in the case at all. It may be that, if a black raven did fly inat the Duchess of Kendal's window, the bird was not the embodied spiritof King George. For ourselves, we should be sorry to lose the story. Neither the King nor the mistress could afford to part with any slightclement of romance wherewithal even legend has chosen to invest them. Another story, which probably has more truth in it, adds a newghastliness to the circumstances of George's death. On November 13, 1726, some seven months before that event, there died in a Germancastle a woman whom the gazette of the capital described as theElectress Dowager of Hanover. This was the unfortunate PrincessSophia, the wife of George. Thirty-two years of melancholy captivityshe had endured, while George was drinking and hoarding money andamusing himself with his seraglio of ugly women. She died protestingher innocence to the last. In the closing days of her illness, so runsthe story, she gave into the hands of some one whom she could trust, aletter addressed to her husband, and obtained a promise that the lettershould, somehow or other, be delivered to George himself. This lettercontained a final declaration that she was absolutely guiltless of theoffence alleged against her, a bitter reproach to George for hisruthless conduct, {268} and a solemn summons to him to stand by herside before the judgment-seat of Heaven within a year, and there makeanswer in her presence for the wrongs he had done her, for her blightedlife and her miserable death. There was no way of getting this letterinto George's hands while the King was in England, but an arrangementwas made by means of which it was put into his coach when he crossedthe frontier of Germany on his way towards his capital. George, it issaid, opened the letter at once, and was so surprised andhorror-stricken by its stern summons that he fell that moment into theapoplectic fit from which he never recovered. Sophia, therefore, hadherself accomplished her own revenge; her reproach had killed the King;her summons brought him at once within the ban of that judgment towhich she had called him. It would be well if one could believe thestory; there would seem a dramatic justice--a tragic retribution--aboutit. Its very terror would dignify the story of a life that, on thewhole, was commonplace and vulgar. But, for ourselves, we confess thatwe cannot believe in the mysterious letter, the fatal summons, thesudden fulfilment. There are too many stories of the kind floatingabout history to allow us to attach any special significance to thisparticular tale. We doubt even whether, if the letter had beenwritten, it would have greatly impressed the mind of George. Remorsefor the treatment of his wife he could not have felt--he was incapableof any such emotion; and we question whether any appeal to thesentiment of the supernatural, any summons to another and an impalpableworld, would have made much impression on that stolid, prosaicintelligence and that heart of lead. Besides, according to someversions of the tale, it was not, after all, a letter from his wifewhich impressed him, but only the warning of a fortune-teller--a womanwho admonished the King to be careful of the life of his imprisonedconsort, because it was fated for him that he should not survive her ayear. This story, too, is told of many kings and other persons lessillustrious. {269} [Sidenote: 1727--Character of the first George] Much more probable is the rumor that Sophia made a will bequeathing allher personal property to her son, that the will was given to George theFirst in England, and that he composedly destroyed it. If Georgecommitted this act, he seems to have been repaid in kind. His own willleft large legacies to the Duchess of Kendal and to other ladies. TheArchbishop of Canterbury gave the will to the new King, who read it, put it in his pocket, walked away with it, and never produced it again. Both these stories are doubted by some of the contemporaries of Georgethe Second, but they were firmly believed in and strongly asserted byothers, who seem to have had authority for their belief. At allevents, they fit in better with the character and surroundings of bothprinces than the tragic story of the letter and its fearful summons, the warning of the fortune-teller, or the soul of the dead Kingrevisiting the earth in the funereal form of a raven. There is not much that is good to be said of George the First. He hada certain prosaic honesty, and was frugal amid all his vulgarvoluptuousness. He managed the expenses of his court with creditableeconomy and regularity. The officers in his army, and his civilservants, received their pay at the properly-appointed time. It wouldbe hardly worth while recording these particulars to the King's credit, but that it was somewhat of a novelty in the arrangements of a moderncourt for men to receive the reward of their services at regularintervals and in the proper amount. George occasionally did a liberalthing, and he more than once professed a strong interest in theimprovement of university education. He is said to have declared to aGerman nobleman, who was complimenting him on the possession of twosuch kingdoms as England and Hanover, that a king ought to becongratulated rather on having two such subjects as Newton in the onecountry and Leibnitz in the other. We fear, however, that this storymust go with the fortune-teller and the raven; one cannot think of dullprosaic {270} George uttering such a monumental sort of sentiment. Hecared nothing for literature or science or art. He seems to have hadno genuine friendships. He hated his son, and he used to speak of hisdaughter-in-law, Caroline, as "that she-devil the princess. " [Sidenote:1727--His epitaph] Whatever was respectable in his character came outbest at times of trial. He was not a man whom danger could makeafraid. At the most critical moments--as, for instance, at theoutbreak of the rebellion in 1715--he never lost his head. If he wasnot capable of seeing far, he saw clearly, and he could look comingevents steadily in the face. On one or two occasions, when animportant choice had to be made between this political course and that, he chose quickly and well. The fact that he thoroughly appreciated thewisdom and the political integrity, of Walpole speaks, perhaps, hishighest praise. His reign, on the whole, was one of prosperity forEngland. He did not love England--never, up to the very end, cared forthe country over which destiny had appointed him to rule. His soul tothe last was faithful to Hanover. England was to him as the State wifewhom for political reasons he was compelled to marry; Hanover, as thesweetheart and mistress of his youth, to whom his affections, such asthey were, always clung, and whom he stole out to see at every possiblechance. George behaved much better to his political consort, England, than to the veritable wife of his bosom. He managed England's affairsfor her like an honest, straightforward, narrow-minded steward. Weshall see hereafter that England came to be governed much worse by mennot nearly so bad as George the First. To do him justice, he knew whenhe ought to leave the business of the State in the hands of those whounderstood it better than he; this one merit redeemed many of hisfaults, and, perhaps, may be regarded as having secured his dynasty. Frederick the Great described George as a prince who governed Englandby respecting liberty, even while he made use of the subsidies grantedby Parliament to corrupt the Parliament which voted them. {271} He wasa king, Frederick declares, "without ostentation and without deceit, "and who won by his conduct the confidence of Europe. This latter partof the description is a little too polite. Kings do not criticise eachother too keenly in works that are meant for publication. But thewords form, on the whole, an epitaph for George which might beinscribed on his tomb without greater straining of the truth than iscommon in the monumental inscriptions that adorn the graves of lessexalted persons. {272} CHAPTER XVIII. GEORGE THE SECOND. [Sidenote: 1727--Death of Newton] The year when George the First died was made memorable forever by thedeath of a far greater man than any European king of that generation. When describing the events which led to the publication of the "Drapier'sLetters, " we mentioned the fact that Sir Isaac Newton had been consultedabout the coinage of Wood's half-pence. That was the last time thatIsaac Newton appeared as a living figure in public controversy of anykind. On March 20, 1727, the great philosopher died, after muchsuffering, at his house in Kensington. The epitaph which Pope intendedfor him sums up as well as a long discourse could do his achievements inscience-- "Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; God said, 'Let Newton be, ' and all was light. " No other discovery ever made in science approaches in importance to thediscovery of the principle of universal gravitation--the principle thatevery particle of matter is attracted by every other particle with aforce proportioned inversely to the square of their distances. Vagueideas of some such principle had long been floating in the minds of somemen; had probably been thus floating since ever men began to thinkseriously over the phenomena of inanimate nature. But the discovery ofthe principle was, however, as distinctly the achievement of Newton as"Paradise Lost" is the work of Milton. We find it hard now to form toourselves any clear idea of a world to which Newton's principle wasunknown. It would be almost as easy to realize the idea of a worldwithout {273} light or atmosphere. Newton is called by Sir DavidBrewster the greatest philosopher of any age. Sir John Herschel assignsto the name of Newton "a place in our veneration which belongs to noother in the annals of science. " In this book we have only to record thedate at which the pure and simple life of this great man came to its end. The important events of his career belong to an earlier period; histeachings and his fame are for all time. The humblest of historians aswell as the greatest may ask himself what is the principle of historywhich bids us to assign so much more space to the wars of kings and thecontroversies of statesmen than to the life and the deeds of a man likeNewton. In the whole history of the world during Newton's lifetime, theone most important fact, the one fact of which the magnitude dwarfs allother facts, is the discovery of the principle of gravitation. Yet itsmeaning may be explained in fewer words than would be needed to describethe nature of the antagonism between Walpole and Pulteney, or the reasonwhy Queen Anne was succeeded by King George. We have, however, in these pages only to deal with history in its oldand, we suppose, its everlasting fashion--that of telling what happenedin the way of actual fact, telling the story of the time. The Englishpublic took the death of George the First with becoming composure; thevast majority of the people never troubled their heads about it. It gavea flutter of hope to Spain; it set the councils of the Stuart party ineager commotion for a while; but it made no change in England. "Georgethe First was always reckoned Vile; still viler George the Second. "These are the lines in which Walter Savage Landor sums up the characterof the first and second George before passing on to picture in little thecharacters of the third and fourth of the name. Landor was not wrongwhen he described George the Second as, on the whole, rather worse thanGeorge the First. George the Second was born at Hanover on October {274}30, 1683, and was therefore in his forty-fourth year when he succeeded tothe throne. He had still less natural capacity than his father. He wasparsimonious; he was avaricious; he was easily put out of temper. Hisinstincts, feelings, passions were all purely selfish. He had hothatreds and but cool friendships. Personal courage was, perhaps, theonly quality becoming a sovereign which George the Second possessed. Hehad served as a volunteer under Marlborough in 1708, and at the battle ofOudenarde he had headed a charge of his Hanoverian dragoons with abravery worthy of a prince. He is to serve later on at Dettingen, and tobe in all probability the last English sovereign who commanded in personon the battlefield. His education was not even so good as that of hisfather, and he had an utter contempt for literature. He had littlereligious feeling, but is said to have had a firm belief in the existenceof vampires. He was fond of business--devoted to the small ways ofroutine. He took a great interest in military matters and all thatconcerned the arrangements and affairs of an army. Like his father hefound abiding pleasure in the society of a little group of more or lessattractive mistresses. [Sidenote: 1727--Incredulity of the Prince of Wales] George the Second had always detested his father, and during the greaterpart of their lives was equally detested by him. The reconciliationwhich had lately taken place between them was as formal and superficialas that of the two demons described in Le Sage's story. "They brought ustogether, " says Asmodeus; "they reconciled us. We shook hands and becamemortal enemies. " When the reconciliation between George the Second andhis father was brought about by the influence of Stanhope and of Walpole, the father and son shook hands and continued to be mortal enemies. IfGeorge the First had his court at St. James's, George the Second had hiscourt and _coterie_ gathered around him at Leicester Fields and atRichmond. The two courts were, in fact, little better than hostilecamps. Walpole had been for long years the confidential and favoredservant of George the First. The {275} natural expectation was that hewould be instantly discredited and discarded when George the Second cameto the throne. So, indeed, it seemed at first to happen. When Walpole received the newsof George the First's death he hastened to Richmond Lodge, where Georgethe Second then was, in order to give him the news and hail him as King. George was in bed, and had to be roused from a thick sleep. He was angryat being disturbed, and not in a humor to admit that there was any excusefor disturbing him. When Walpole told him that his father was dead, thekingly answer of the sovereign was that the statesman's assertion was abig lie. George roared this at Walpole, and then was for turning roundin his bed and settling down to sleep again. Walpole, however, persistedin disturbing the royal slumbers, and assured the drowsy grumbler that hereally was George the Second, King of England. He produced for George'sfurther satisfaction a letter from Lord Townshend, describing the time, place, and circumstances of the late King's death. Walpole tendered theusual ceremonial expressions of loyalty, which George received coldly, and even gruffly. Then the minister asked whom his Majesty wished toappoint to draw up the necessary declaration for the Privy Council. Walpole assumed as a matter of course that the King would leave the taskin his hands. George, however, disappointed him. "Compton, " said theKing; and when he had spoken that word he intimated to Walpole that theinterview was over. Walpole left the royal abode believing himself afallen man. "Compton, " whom the King had thus curtly designated, was Sir SpencerCompton, who had been chosen Speaker of the House of Commons in 1715. Hehad been one of George the Second's favorites while George was stillPrince of Wales. He was a man of respectable character, publicly andprivately, but without remarkable capacity of any kind. He knew littleor nothing of the business of a minister, and it is said that whenWalpole {276} came to him to tell him of the King's command he franklyacknowledged that he did not know how to draw up the formal declaration. Walpole good-naturedly came to his assistance, took his pen, and did thework for him. [Sidenote: 1727--Compton's evaporation] If the King had persevered in his objection to Walpole, the story of thereign would have to be very differently told. Walpole was the one onlyman who could at the time have firmly stood between England and foreignintrigue--between England and financial blunder. Nor is it unlikely thatthe King would have persevered and refused to admit Walpole to office butthat he happened to be, without his own knowledge, under the influence ofthe one only woman who had any legitimate right to influence him--hiswife Caroline. Caroline, daughter of a petty German prince--the Margraveof Brandenburg-Anspach--was one of the most remarkable women of her time. Her faults, foibles, and weaknesses only served to make her moreremarkable. She had beauty when she was young, and she still had anexpressive face and a sweet smile. She was well educated, and alwayscontinued to educate herself; she was fond of letters, art, politics, andmetaphysics. She delighted in theological controversy, and alsodelighted in contests of mere wit. But of all her valuable gifts, themost valuable for herself and for the country was the capacity she hadfor governing her husband. She governed him through his very anxiety notto be governed by his wife. One of George's strongest, and at the sametime meanest, desires was to let the world see that he was absolutemaster in his own house, and could rule his wife with a rod of iron. Caroline, having long since discovered this weakness, played into theKing's hands, and always made outward show of the utmost deference forhis authority, and dread of his anger. She put herself metaphorically, and indeed almost literally, under his feet. She was pleased that allthe Court should see her thus grovelling. George was in the habit ofmaking jocular allusion, in his jovial, graceful way, to living and deadsovereigns who were {277} governed by their wives, and he often invitedhis courtiers to notice the difference between them and him, and toadmire the imperial supremacy which he exercised over the humbleCaroline. By humoring him in this way Caroline obtained, without anyconsciousness on his part, an almost absolute power over him. Anotherand a worse failing of the King's she humored as well. She had sufferedmuch in the beginning of her married life because of his amours and hismistresses. Her true and faithful heart had been wrung by longjealousies; but, happily for herself and for the country, she was able atlast to rise superior to this natural weakness of woman. Indeed, it hasto be said with regret for her self-degradation, that she not onlytolerated the love-makings of the King and his favorites, but even showedoccasionally a politic interest in the promotion of the amours and theappointment of the ladies. She humored her lord and master's avaricewith as little scruple. Thus his principal defects--his sordid love ofmoney, his ignoble passion for women, and his ridiculous desire to seemthe absolute master of his wife--became in her skilful hands theleading-strings by which she drew and guided him whither she would havehim go. Through Caroline's influence mainly Walpole was retained inpower. She played on the King's avarice, and poured into his greedy earthe assurance that Walpole could raise money as no other living mancould. Caroline acted in this chiefly from a sincere love of herhusband, and anxiety for his good, but partly also, it has to beacknowledged, because it had been made known to her that Walpole wouldprovide her with a larger allowance than it was Compton's intention todo. The result was that Walpole was retained in office, or, perhaps itshould be said, restored to office. The crowds of courtiers who love toworship the rising sun had hardly time to offer their adoration toCompton when they found that the supposed rising sun was only a meteor, which instantly vanished. Horace Walpole the younger describes the eventby a happy phrase as "Compton's evaporation. " Compton {278} himself hadsoon found that the responsibility would be too much for him. Hebesought the King to relieve him of the burden to which he found himselfunequal. The King acceded to his wish. Walpole became once again FirstLord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Townshendcontinued to be Secretary of State. The crisis was over. [Sidenote: 1727--Condolence and congratulation] Parliament assembled on June 15th, after the death of George the First. As the law then stood, any Parliament summoned by a sovereign was not tobe dissolved by that sovereign's death, but should continue to sit andact during a term of six months, "unless the same shall be soonerprorogued or dissolved by such person who shall be next heir to the Crownof this Realm in succession. " The meeting of June 15th was merelyformal. Parliament was prorogued by a Commission from George the Seconduntil the 27th of the month. Both Houses then met at Westminster, andthe King came to the House of Peers in his royal robes and ascended thethrone with all the regular ceremonial. Sir Charles Dalton, GentlemanUsher of the Black Rod, was sent with a message from the King commandingthe attendance of the Commons. When the Commons had crowded into thespace appointed for them in the Peers' Chamber, the King "delivered fromhis own mouth" the Royal speech. George the Second had at all events oneadvantage over George the First as a King of England--he understood thelanguage of his subjects, and could speak to them in their own tongue. The Royal speech began by expressing the King's persuasion that "you allshare with me in my grief and affliction for the death of my late royalfather. " The King was well warranted in this persuasion; nothing couldbe more correct than his assumption. The Lords and Commons quite sharedwith him his grief and affliction for the death of his royal father. They felt just as much distress at that event as he did. The King thenwent on to declare his fixed resolution to merit by all possible meansthe love and affection of his people; to preserve the Constitution {279}"as it is now happily established in Church and State;" and to secure toall his subjects the full enjoyment of their religious and civil rights. He expressed his satisfaction at the manner in which tranquillity and thebalance of power in Europe had been maintained, the strict union andharmony which had hitherto subsisted among the allies of the Treaty ofHanover, and which had chiefly contributed to the near prospect of ageneral peace. Finally, the King pointed out that the grant of thegreatest part of his Civil List revenues had now run out, and that itwould be necessary for the House of Commons to make a new provision forthe support of him and of his family. "I am persuaded, " said the King, "that the experience of past times and a due regard to the honor anddignity of the Crown will prevail upon you to give me this first proof ofyour zeal and affection in a manner answerable to the necessities of myGovernment. " Then the King withdrew, and Lord Chesterfield moved for "anaddress of condolence, congratulation, and thanks. " The condoling andcongratulating address was unanimously voted, was presented next day tohis Majesty, and received his Majesty's most gracious acknowledgment. Meanwhile the Commons having returned to their House, several new memberstook the oaths. Sir Paul Methuen, Treasurer of the Household, the authorof the commercial treaty with Portugal which still bears his name, movedan address of condolence and congratulation to the King. The motion wasseconded by Sir Robert Walpole, and as the formal record puts it, "voted_nemine contradicente_. " A committee was appointed to draw up theaddress, Sir Robert Walpole, of course, being one of its members. Thechairman of the committee paid Walpole the compliment of handing him thepen, "whereupon, " as a contemporary account reports it, "Sir Robert, without hesitation and with a masterly hand, drew up the said address. "Walpole could be courtly enough when he thought fit. He seems to havedistinctly outdone the House of Lords in the fervor of his grief for thelate King and his devotion {280} to the present. The death of George theFirst, Walpole pronounced to be "a loss to this nation which your Majestyalone could possibly repair. " Having mentioned the fact that the death ofGeorge the First had plunged all England into grief, Walpole changed, "asby the stroke of an enchanter's wand, " this winter of our discontent intoglorious summer. "Your immediate succession, " he assured the King, "banished all our grief. " [Sidenote: 1727--"Honest Shippen"] On Monday, July 3d, the Commons met to consider the amount of supply tobe granted to his Majesty. Walpole, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated to the House that the annual sum of seven hundred thousand pounds, granted to the late King "for the support of his household and of thehonor and dignity of the Crown, " had fallen short every year, and thatministers had been obliged to make it up in other ways. The presentsovereign's necessary expenses were likely to increase, the Chancellor ofthe Exchequer explained, "by reason of the largeness of his family" andthe necessity of "settling a household for his royal consort. " TheChancellor of the Exchequer therefore moved that the entire revenues ofthe Civil List, which produced about one hundred and thirty thousandpounds a year above the yearly sum of seven hundred thousand poundsalready mentioned, should be settled on his Majesty during life. Themotion was supported by several members, but Mr. Shippen, the earnest andable, though somewhat eccentric, Jacobite and Tory, had the spirit andcourage to oppose it. Shippen's speech was expressed in a spirit ofloyalty, but was direct and incisive in its criticism of the Governmentproposal. Shippen pointed out that the yearly sum of seven hundredthousand pounds, now thought too little, was not obtained by the latesovereign without a long and solemn debate, and was described by everyone who contended for it as an ample revenue for a king. He reminded theHouse that Queen Anne used to pay about nineteen thousand pounds a yearout of her own pocket for the augmentation of the salaries of poorclergymen, {281} allowed five thousand pounds a year out of thePost-office revenue to the Duke of Marlborough, gave several hundredthousand pounds for the building of the castle of Blenheim; and by thismeans came under the necessity of asking Parliament for five hundredthousand pounds, which she determined never to do again, and hadtherefore prepared a scheme for the reduction of her expenses, which wasto bring her full yearly outlay down to four hundred and fifty thousandpounds. Shippen then severely criticised the foreign policy of the lateKing's reign, and with justice condemned the extravagance which requiredto be met by repeated grants from the nation. "I confess, " he said, "that if the same management was to be continued, and if the sameministers were to be again employed, a million a year would not besufficient to carry on the exorbitant expenses so often and so justlycomplained of in this House. " He deplored the vast sum "sunk in thebottomless gulf of secret service. " "I heartily wish, " he exclaimed, "that time, the great discoverer of hidden truths and concealediniquities, may produce a list of all such--if any such there were--whohave been perverted from their public duty by private pensions, who havebeen the hired slaves and the corrupt instruments of a profuse andvainglorious administration. " Shippen concluded by moving as anamendment that the amount granted to his Majesty be the clear yearly sumof seven hundred thousand pounds. It is worth noticing that when Shippenhad occasion once to refer to some of Walpole's arguments he spoke of himas "my honorable friend, " and then, suddenly correcting himself, said, "Iask pardon; I should have said the honorable person, for there is nofriendship betwixt us. " Shippen's speech hit hard, and must have been felt by the ministry. Theone charge against Walpole's government which he could not refute was thecharge of extravagance in corruption. The ministers, however, affectedto treat the speech with contempt, and were justified in doing so by themanner in which the House of Commons {282} dealt with it. No answer wasgiven to Shippen's statements, because Shippen's motion was not secondedand fell to the ground. The resolutions proposed by the Chancellor ofthe Exchequer were carried without a division, and a bill was ordered tobe brought in to give effect to them. A provision of one hundredthousand pounds a year was voted for the Queen, in case she shouldsurvive the King. The vote was agreed to without division or debate. Parliament was dissolved by proclamation on August 7th. [Sidenote: 1728--Onslow as Haroun-al-Raschid] The new Parliament met on January 23d, 1728. It was found that theministerial majority was even greater than it had been before. The Kingopened Parliament in person, and directed the Commons, who had beensummoned to the House of Peers, to return to their own House and choosetheir Speaker. The Commons unanimously chose Arthur Onslow to this highoffice. Compton, the former Speaker, had been soothed with a peerageafter his "evaporation. " Arthur Onslow was born in 1691, and had been inParliament from 1719; in July, 1728, he was made Privy Councillor. Wemay anticipate events a little for the purpose of mentioning the factthat all the writers of his time united in ascribing to Speaker Onslow, as he has always since been called, a combination of the best attributeswhich fit a man to preside over the House of Commons. It is said thathis election to the Speaker's chair was brought about mainly by SirRobert Walpole, and that Walpole expected Onslow to use his greatabilities and authority to suit the policy and serve the wishes of theadministration. If this was Walpole's idea, he must soon have foundhimself as much mistaken as the conclave of cardinals about whom so muchis said in history, romance, and the drama, who elected one of theirorder as Pope because they believed him to be too feeble and nerveless tohave any will of his own, and were much amazed to find that the momentthe new Pope had been elected he suddenly became strong andenergetic--the master and not the servant. Onslow's whole {283} conductin the chair of the House of Commons during the many years which heoccupied it displayed an absolute and fearless impartiality. The chairhas never been better filled in English history; the very title of"Speaker Onslow, " ever afterwards given to him, is of itself a tribute tohis impartiality and his services. Onslow was a man who loved lettersand art, and also, it is said, loved studying all varieties of life. Itis reported of him that he used to go about disguised, like a sort ofeighteenth-century Haroun-al-Raschid, among the lowest classes of men, inout-of-the-way parts of the capital, for the purpose of studying theforms and manners of human life. Legend has preserved the memory of acertain public-house, called "The Jews'-harp, " where Onslow is said tohave amused himself many an evening, sitting in the chimney-corner andexchanging talk and jests with the company who frequented the place. Itis pleasant to be able to believe these stories of Speaker Onslow in thathighly artificial and formal age--that age of periwigs and paint andshallow formulas. It is somewhat refreshing to meet with this clever manof eccentric ways, the great "Speaker, " who could wear his official robeswith so much true dignity, and then, when he had laid them aside, couldamuse himself after his own fashion, and study life in some of itsqueerest corners with the freshness of a school-boy and the eye of anartist. {284} CHAPTER XIX. "THE PATRIOTS. " [Sidenote: 1728--Pulteney's place in history] The name and the career of William Pulteney are all but forgotten inEnglish political life. It is doubtful whether Pulteney's name, ifpronounced in the course of a debate in the House of Commons just now, would bring with it any manner of idea to the minds of nine-tenths ofthe listening members. Yet Pulteney played, all unconsciously, a greatpart in the development of the Parliamentary life of this country. Sofar as intellectual gifts are concerned, he is not, of course, to benamed in the same breath with a man like Burke, for example; one mightas well think of comparing Offenbach with Mozart or Handel. But theinfluence of the career of Pulteney on the English Parliament isnevertheless more distinctly marked than the influence of the career ofBurke. We are speaking now not of political thought--no man ever madea greater impression on political thought than Burke has done--but onlyof the forms and the development of English Parliamentary systems. ForPulteney was, beyond all question, the founder of the modern practiceof Parliamentary opposition. Walpole was mainly instrumental intransferring the seat of political power from the House of Lords to theHouse of Commons. Never, since Walpole's time, has the House of Lordsexercised any real influence over the political life of England. Thiswas not Walpole's doing; it was the doing of time and change, ofaltered conditions and new forces. But Walpole saw the coming change, and bent all the energies of his robust intellect to help and forwardit. Pulteney is in the same sense the author of {285} the modernprinciple of Parliamentary opposition; but there is no reason tobelieve that Pulteney saw what he was doing as clearly as Walpole did. Until the beginning of Pulteney's brilliant career, the oppositionbetween parties had been mainly a competition for the ear and the favorof the sovereign. Thus Harley strove against Marlborough, andBolingbroke against Harley, and the Whigs against Harley andBolingbroke. But the course of action taken by Pulteney againstWalpole converted the struggle into one of party against party, insideand outside of the House of Commons. The object sought was the commandof a majority in the representative assembly. Pulteney showed how thiswas to be obtained by the voices of the public out-of-doors as well asby the votes of the elected representatives in Westminster. Walpolehad made it clear that in the House of Commons the battle was to befought; Pulteney showed that in the House of Commons the victory was tobe gained, not by the favor of the sovereign, but by the co-operationof the people. We have said in a former chapter that Pulteney's form of procedure, become now a component part of our whole Parliamentary system, bringswith it some serious disadvantages from which, for the present, it isnot easy, it is not even possible, to see any way of escape. Theprinciple of government by party will some time or other come to be putto the challenge in English political life. For the present, however, we have only to make the best we can of it; and no one in his sensescan doubt that it was an immense advance on the system of back-stairsinfluence and bedchamber intrigue, the policy, to use the great Condé'sexpression, "of petticoats and alcoves, " which prevailed in the dayswhen Mrs. Masham was competing with Sarah Jennings, and later still, when Walpole was buying his way back to power through the influence ofthe sovereign's wife, in co-operation with the sovereign's paramour. The student of English history will have to turn with {286} closeattention to the reigns of the First and Second George. In thosereigns the transfer of power to the representative chamber began, andthe modern system of Parliamentary opposition grew into form. Thestudent will have to remember that the time he is studying was one whenthere was no such thing known in England as a public meeting. Therewere "demonstrations, " as we call them now; there were crowds; therewere processions; there were tumults; there were disturbances, riots, reading of Riot Acts, dispersion of mobs, charges of cavalry, _fusillades_ of infantry; but there were no great public meetingscalled together for the discussion of momentous political questions. The rapid growth of the popular newspaper, soon to swell up like theprophet's gourd, had hardly begun as yet. We cannot call the_Craftsman_ a newspaper; it was rather a series of pamphlets. It stoodPulteney instead of the more modern newspaper. He worked on publicopinion with it outside the House of Commons. Inside the House he madeit his business to form a party which should assail the ministry on allpoints, lie in wait to find occasion for attacking it, attack itrightly or wrongly, attack it even at the risk of exposing nationalweakness or bringing on national danger, keep attacking it always. Informer days a leader of opposition had often been disdainful of theopinion of the vulgar herd out-of-doors; Pulteney and his companionsset themselves to appeal especially to the prejudices, passions, andignorance of the vulgar herd. They made it their business to create apublic opinion of their own. They dealt in the manufacture of publicopinion. They set up political shops wherein to retail the articlewhich they had thus manufactured. Pulteney was now in his prime--stillsome years inside fifty. He was full of energy and courage, and hethrew his whole soul into his work. Much of what he did wasundoubtedly dictated by his spite against Walpole, but much, too, wasthe mere outcome of his ambition, his energy, and the peculiarcharacter of his intellect. He enjoyed playing a {287} conspicuouspart and he liked attacking somebody. People used to think at one timethat Mr. Disraeli had a profound personal hatred for Sir Robert Peelwhen he was flinging off his philippics against that great minister. It afterwards appeared clear enough that Mr. Disraeli had no particulardislike to his opponent, but that he enjoyed attacking an importantstatesman. Pulteney, of course, did actually begin his career ofimbittered opposition because of his quarrel with Walpole; but it islikely enough that even if no quarrel had ever taken place and he neverhad been Walpole's friend and colleague, he would sooner or later havebecome the foremost gladiator of opposition all the same. [Sidenote: 1728--Materials of opposition] The materials of opposition consisted of three political groups of men. There were the Jacobites, under Shippen; the Tories who no longeracknowledged themselves Jacobites, and who were led by Sir WilliamWyndham; and there were the discontented Whigs whom Pulteney led andwhose discontent he turned to his own uses. It had long been a schemeof Bolingbroke's--up to this time it should perhaps rather be called adream than a scheme--to combine these three groups into one distinctparty, having its bond of union in a common detestation of Walpole. The dream now seemed likely to become a successful scheme. Theconception of this plan of opposition was unquestionably Bolingbroke'sand not Pulteney's; but it fell to Pulteney's lot to work it out in theHouse of Parliament, and he performed his task with consummate ability. Pulteney was probably the greatest leader of Opposition ever known inthe House of Commons, with the single exception of Mr. Disraeli. Charles Fox, with all his splendid genius for debate, was not a skilfulor a patient leader of Opposition. Perhaps he was too great of heartfor such a part; certain it is that as a leader of Opposition he madesome fatal mistakes. Pulteney seemed cut out for the part which astrange combination of chances had allowed him to play. He was notmerely a debater of inexhaustible resource {288} and a master of allthe trick and craft of Parliamentary leadership; but he thoroughlyunderstood the importance of public support out-of-doors, and the meansof getting at it and retaining it. Pulteney saw that the time had comewhen the English people would have their say in every politicalquestion. [Sidenote: 1728--Sir William Wyndam] By the combined influence of Pulteney and Bolingbroke there was formeda party of ultra-Whigs, who somewhat audaciously called themselves "ThePatriots. " Perhaps the title was first given to them by Walpole, incontempt; if so, they accepted and adopted it. Again and again in ourhistory this phenomenon presents itself. Some men of ability andunsatisfied ambition belonging to the Liberal party become discontentedwith the policy of their leaders. When the first opportunity arisesthey make a public declaration against that policy. In theConservative ranks there are to be found some other men, also able andalso discontented, to whom the general policy of Opposition seemsunsatisfactory and feeble. Each of these discontented parties fanciesitself to be truly patriotic, public-spirited, and independent. Thetwo factions at length unite for the common good of the country; theytell the world that they are patriots, that they are the only patriots, and the world for a while believes them. This was the condition ofthings when Pulteney in Parliament joined with Sir William Wyndham, theextreme Jacobite, the Wyndham who is mentioned in Pope's poem about hisTwickenham grotto, the Wyndham with whom Bolingbroke corresponded formany years, and to whom he addressed one of his most importantpolitical manifestoes. Sir William Wyndham belonged to an oldSomersetshire family. He was a staunch Tory. He had powerfulconnections; his first wife was a daughter of the haughty Duke ofSomerset. He entered Parliament and made a considerable figure there. He had been Secretary at War and afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequerunder the Tories; he had clung to Bolingbroke's fortunes at the time ofBolingbroke's {289} rupture with Harley. He underwent the common fateof Tory statesmen on the accession of George the First; he was deprivedof office, was accused of taking part in the Jacobite conspiracy, andwas committed to the Tower. There was, however, no evidence againsthim, and he resumed his political career. His eloquence is describedby Speaker Onslow as "strong, full, and without affectation, arisingchiefly from his clearness, propriety, and argumentation; in the methodof which last, by a sort of induction almost peculiar to himself, hehad a force beyond any man I ever heard in public debates. " LordHervey, who can be trusted not to overdo the praise of any one, says ofWyndham that "he was very far from having first-rate parts, but by agentleman-like general behavior, a constant attendance in the House ofCommons, a close application to the business of it, and frequentspeaking, he had got a sort of Parliamentary routine, and without beinga bright speaker was a popular one, well heard, and useful to hisparty. " So far as we now can judge, this seems a very correct estimateof Wyndham's Parliamentary capacity and position. He had a noblepresence, singularly graceful and charming manners, and a high personalcharacter. A combination between such a man as Pulteney and such a manas Wyndham could not but be formidable even to the most powerfulminister. Shippen, the leader of the Jacobites--"honest Shippen, " as Pope callshim--we have often met already. He was a straightforward, unselfishman, absolutely given up to his principles and his party. He was wellread and had written clever pamphlets and telling satirical verses. His speeches, or such reports of them as can be got at, are full ofstriking passages and impressive phrases; they are speeches which evennow one cannot read without interest. But it would seem that Shippenoften marred the effect of his ideas and his language by a rapid, careless, and imperfect delivery. He appears to have been one of themen who wanted nothing but a clear {290} articulation and effectiveutterance to be great Parliamentary debaters, and whom that single wantcondemned to comparative failure. Those who remember the late SirGeorge Cornewall Lewis, or, indeed, those who have heard the bestspeeches of Lord Sherbrooke, when he was Mr. Robert Lowe, can probablyform a good idea of what Shippen was as a Parliamentary debater. Shippen was nothing of a statesman, and his occasional eccentricitiesof manner and conduct prevented him from obtaining all the influencewhich would otherwise have been fairly due to his talents and hispolitical and personal integrity. [Sidenote: 1729--The Hessians] Pulteney's party had in Parliament the frequent, indeed for a time thehabitual, assistance of Wyndham and of Shippen. Outside ParliamentBolingbroke intrigued, wrote, and worked with the indomitable energyand restless craving for activity and excitement which, despite all hisprofessions of love for philosophic quiet, had been his life-longcharacteristic. The _Craftsman_ was stimulated and guided much moredirectly by his inspiration than even by that of Pulteney. The_Craftsman_ kept showering out articles, letters, verses, epigrams, allintended to damage the ministry, and more especially to destroy thereputation of Walpole. All was fish that came into the _Craftsman's_net. Every step taken by the Government, no matter what it might be, was made an occasion for ridicule, denunciation, and personal abuse. Not the slightest scruple was shown in the management of the_Craftsman_. If the policy of the Government seemed to tend towards aContinental war, the _Craftsman_ cried out for peace, and vituperatedthe minister who dared to think of involving England in the trumperyquarrels of foreign States. Walpole, however, we need hardly say, madeit a set purpose of his administration to maintain peace on theContinent; and as soon as the patriots began to find out in eachparticular instance that his policy was still the same, they turnedround and shrieked against the minister whose feebleness and cowardicewere laying England at the feet of foreign alliances and Continental{291} despots. Walpole worked in cordial alliance with the FrenchGovernment, the principal member of which was now Cardinal Fleury. Itbecame the object of the _Craftsman_ to hold Walpole up to contempt andderision, as the dupe of a French cardinal and the sycophant of aFrench Court. The example of the _Craftsman_ was speedily followed bypamphleteers, caricaturists, satirists, and even ballad-mongers withoutend. London and the provinces were flooded with such literature. Walpole was described as "Sir Blue String, " the blue string being acheap satirical allusion to the blue ribbon which was supposed to adornhim as Knight of the Garter. He was styled Sir Robert Brass, SirRobert Lynn, more often simple "Robin" or plain "Bob. " He was picturedas a systematic promoter of public corruption, as one who fattened onthe taxation wrung from the miserable English taxpayer. His personalcharacter, his domestic life, his household expenses, the habits of hiswife, his own social and other enjoyments, were coarsely criticised andlampooned. The _Craftsman_ and its imitators attacked not only Walpolehimself, but Walpole's friends. The political satire of that day wasas indiscriminate as it was unsparing. It was enough to be a politicalor even a personal friend of Walpole to become the object of the_Craftsman's_ fierce blows. Pulteney did not even scruple to betraythe confidence of private conversation, and to disclose the wordswhich, in some unguarded moments of former friendship, Walpole hadspoken of George the Second when George was Prince of Wales. An excellent opportunity was soon given to Pulteney to make an open anda damaging attack on the ministry. Horace Walpole, British Ambassadorto the French Court, had been brought over from Paris to explain andjustify his brother's foreign policy. The Government put forward aresolution in the House of Commons on February 7, 1729, for a grant ofsome two hundred and fifty thousand pounds "for defraying the expenseof twelve thousand Hessians taken into his Majesty's pay. " Even {292}if the maintenance of this force had been a positive necessity, whichit certainly was not, it would, nevertheless, have been a necessitybringing with it disparagement and danger to the Government responsiblefor it. Pulteney made the most of the opportunity, and in a speech offine old English flavor denounced the proposal of the ministers. [Sidenote: 1729--Subsidies voted] He asked with indignation whetherEnglishmen were not brave enough or willing enough to defend their owncountry without calling in the assistance of foreign mercenaries. Itmight, he admitted, be some advantage to Hanover that German soldiersshould be kept in the pay of England, but he wanted to know whatbenefit could come to the English people from paying and maintainingsuch a band. These men were kept, he declared, in the pay of England, not for the service of England, but for the service of Hanover. Itneed hardly be said that during all the earlier years of the Brunswickaccession, a bare allusion to the name of Hanover was enough to stir anangry feeling in the minds of the larger number of the English people. Even the very men who most loyally supported the House of Brunswickwinced and writhed under any allusion to the manner in which theinterests of England were made subservient to the interests of Hanover. Pulteney therefore took every pains to chafe those sore places withremorseless energy. Sir William Wyndham supported Pulteney, and SirRobert Walpole himself found it necessary to throw all his influenceinto the scale on the other side. His arguments were of a kind withwhich the House of Commons has been familiar during many generations. His main point was, that by maintaining a large body of soldiers, Hessian among the rest, the country had been enabled to avoid war. TheCourt of Vienna, with the assistance of Spanish subsidies, had beenmaking preparation for war, Walpole contended; and were it not for themaintenance of this otherwise superfluous body of troops, the Emperorof Austria would probably never have accepted the terms of peace. "Ifyou desire peace, {293} prepare for war, " may be an excellent maxim, but its value lies a good deal in its practical application. It is aremarkably elastic maxim, and in times nearer to our own than those ofWalpole has been made to expand into a justification of the mostextravagant and unnecessary military armaments and of schemes offortification which afterwards were abandoned before they had been halfrealized. In this instance, however, there was something more to besaid against the proposal of the Government. Some of the speakers inthe debate pointed out that England in former days, if it engaged in aquarrel with its neighbors, fought the quarrel out with its ownstrength, and was not in the habit of buying and maintaining the forcesof foreign princes to help Englishmen to hold their own. Theresolution, of course, was carried. It was even carried by anoverwhelming majority: 256 were on the "court side, " as it was called, against 91 on the "country side. " Fifty thousand pounds was also votedas "one year's subsidy to the King of Sweden, " and twenty-five thousandpounds for one year's subsidy to the Duke of Brunswick. In order, however, to appease the consciences of some of those who supported theresolution as well as those who had opposed it, the Governmentpermitted what we should now call a "rider" to be added to theresolution requesting his Majesty that whenever it should be necessaryto take any foreign troops into his service, "he will be graciouslypleased to use his endeavors that they be clothed with the manufacturesof Great Britain. " It was supposed to be some solace to the woundednational pride of Englishmen to be assured that if they had to payforeigners to fight for them, the foreigners should at least not beallowed to come to this country clothed in the manufactures of theirown land, but would be compelled to buy their garments over the counterof an English shop. On Friday, February 21st, an event which led directly and indirectly toresults of some importance occurred. Three petitions from themerchants trading in tobacco {294} in London, Bristol, and Liverpoolwere presented to the House of Commons. These petitions complained ofgreat interruptions for several years past of the trade with theBritish colonies in America by the Spaniards. The depredations of theSpanish, it was said, endangered the entire loss of that valuable tradeto England. The Spaniards were accused of having treated such of hisMajesty's subjects as had fallen into their hands in a barbarous andcruel manner. The petitioners prayed for the consideration of theHouse of Commons, and such timely remedy as the House should think fitto recommend. These petitions only preceded a great many others, allin substance to the same effect. The Commons entered upon theconsideration of the subject in a Committee of the whole House, heardseveral petitioners, and examined many witnesses. An address waspresented to the Crown, asking for copies of all memorials, petitions, and representations to the late King or the present, in relation toSpanish captures of British ships. [Sidenote: 1729--The Campeachylogwood] Copies were also asked for of the reports laid before the Kingby the Commissioners of Trade and of Plantations, concerning thedispute between England and Spain, with regard to the rights of thesubjects of Great Britain to cut logwood in the Bay of Campeachy, onthe western shore of that Yucatan peninsula which juts into the Gulf ofMexico. English traders had been for a long time in the habit ofcutting logwood along the shores in the Bay of Campeachy, and thelogwood trade had come to be one of the greatest importance to the WestIndies and to England. The Spanish Government claimed the right to puta stop to this cutting of logwood, and the Spanish Viceroy and Governorhad in some instances declared that they would dislodge the Englishmenfrom the settlements which they had established, and even treat them aspirates if they persisted in their trade. There was, in fact, all thematerial growing up for a serious quarrel between England and Spain. Despite the recent treaties which were supposed to {295} secure thepeace of Europe, the times were very critical. "The British nation, "says a contemporary writer, "had for many years past been in a state ofuncertainty, scarce knowing friends from foes, or indeed whether we hadeither. " Each new treaty seemed only to disturb the balance of power, as it was called, in a new way. The Quadruple Alliance was intended torectify the defects of the Treaty of Utrecht; but it gave too muchpower to the Emperor, and it increased the bitterness and thediscontent of the King of Spain. The Treaty of Vienna, made betweenthe Empire and Spain, was justly regarded in England as portendingdanger to this country. It was even more dangerous than Englishmen ingeneral supposed at the time, although Walpole knew its full purportand menace. The Treaty of Vienna led to the Treaty of Hanover, anarrangement made in the closing years of George the First's reignbetween Great Britain, France, and Prussia, by virtue of which if anyone of the contracting parties were to be attacked, the other two werepledged to come to the assistance with funds and with arms. All thesearrangements were in the highest degree artificial; some of them mightfairly be described as unnatural. It might be taken for granted thatnot one of the States whom they professed to bind to this side or tothat would hold to the engagements one hour longer than would serve herown interests. No safety was secured by these overlapping treaties; noone had any faith in them. It was quite true that England did not knowher friends from her enemies about the time at which we have nowarrived. The dispute between England and Spain concerning the question of theCampeachy logwood was to involve a controversy as to the interpretationof certain passages in the Treaty of Utrecht. It was distinctly amatter for calm consideration, for compromise, and for an amicablesettlement. But each of the two parties mainly concerned showed itsdesire to push its own claim to an extreme. English traders have neverbeen particularly {296} moderate or considerate in pressing theirsupposed rights to trade with foreign countries. In this instance theywere strongly backed up, encouraged, and stimulated by the band ofEnglishmen who chose to call themselves "The Patriots. " Few of the"Patriots, " we venture to think, cared a rush about the question of theCampeachy logwood, or were very deeply grieved because Spain boreherself in a high-handed fashion towards certain English merchants andship-owners. But the opportunity seemed to the "Patriots" admirablyadapted for worrying and harassing, not the Spaniards, but theadministration of Sir Robert Walpole. They used the opportunity to thevery full. [Sidenote: 1729--Gibraltar] The debates on the conduct ofSpain brought out in the House of Lords the acknowledgment of the factthat King George I. Had at one time actually written to the Governmentof Spain, distinctly undertaking to bring about the restitution ofGibraltar. A copy of the letter in French, with a translation, waslaid before the House. It seemed that on June 1, 1721, George, thelate King, wrote to the King of Spain, "Sir, my brother, " a letterconcerning the treaties then in the course of being re-establishedbetween England and Spain. In that letter occurred these words: "I dono longer balance to assure your Majesty of my readiness to satisfy youwith regard to your demand touching the restitution of Gibraltar;promising you to make use of the first favorable opportunity toregulate this article with the consent of my Parliament. " The House ofLords had a long and warm debate on this subject. A resolution wasproposed, declaring that "for the honor of his Majesty, and thepreservation and security of the trade and commerce of this kingdom, "care should be taken "that the King of Spain do renounce all claim andpretension to Gibraltar and the island of Minorca, in plain and strongterms. " This resolution, however, was thought in the end to be rathertoo strong, and it was modified into a declaration that the Lords "doentirely rely upon his Majesty, that he will, for the maintaining thehonor and securing the {297} trade of this kingdom, take effectual carein the present treaty to preserve his undoubted right to Gibraltar andthe island of Minorca. " This resolution was communicated to the Houseof Commons, and the Lords asked for a conference with that House in thePainted Chamber. The Commons had a long debate on the subject. TheOpposition strongly denounced the ministers who had advised the lateKing to write such a letter, and declared that it implied a positivepromise to surrender Gibraltar to Spain. The courtiers, as thesupporters of the Ministry were then called, to distinguish them fromthe country party--that is to say, the Opposition--endeavored toqualify and make light of the expressions used in the late King'sletter, to show that they were merely hypothetical and conditional, andinsisted that effectual care had since been taken in every way tomaintain the right of England to Gibraltar. The country party movedthat words be added to the Lords' resolution requiring "that allpretensions on the part of the Crown of Spain to the said places bespecifically given up. " Two hundred and sixty-seven votes against onehundred and eleven refused the addition of these words as unnecessary, and too much in the nature of a challenge and defiance to Spain. Butthe motion that "this House does agree with the Lords in the saidresolution" was carried without a division, the Court party notventuring to offer any objection to it. The King received the addressof both Houses on Tuesday, March 25th, and returned an answer thankingthem for the confidence reposed in him, and assuring them that "I willtake effectual care, as I have hitherto done, to secure my undoubtedright to Gibraltar and the island of Minorca. " The difficulty was over for the present. The Government contrived toarrange a new treaty with Spain, the Treaty of Seville, in which Francealso was included. This treaty settled for the time the disputes aboutEnglish trade with the New World, and the claims of Spain for arestoration of Gibraltar were, indirectly at least, {298} given up. Perhaps the whole story is chiefly interesting now as affording anillustration of the manner in which the Patriots turned everything toaccount for their one great purpose of harassing the administration ofSir Robert Walpole. All the patriotic effusiveness about the undoubtedright of England to Gibraltar was merely well-painted passion. Suchsentiment as exists in the English mind with regard to the possessionof "the Rock" now, did not exist, had not had time to come intoexistence, then. Gibraltar was taken in 1704; its possession wasconfirmed to England by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Since that timeEnglish Ministers had again and again been considering the expediencyof restoring Gibraltar to the Spaniards. Stanhope had been in favor ofthe restoration; Townshend and Carteret had been in favor of it. Someof the Patriots themselves, before they came to be dubbed Patriots, hadbeen in favor of it. Only the unreasonable and insolent behavior ofSpain herself stood at one time in the way of the restitution. Gibraltar was one capture, like many others; captured territory changedand changed hands with each new arrangement in those days. Minorca, which was included with Gibraltar in the resolution of the two Housesof Parliament and the consequent promise of the King, was taken by theEnglish forces shortly after the capture of Gibraltar, and was settledupon England by the same Treaty of Utrecht. Yet, as we all know, itwas given up by England at the peace of Amiens, and no tears of griefwere shed by any English eyes. But the discovery that the late Kinghad at one time been willing to restore Gibraltar to Spain for aconsideration came in most opportunely for the Patriots. To most ofthem it was, of course, no discovery at all. They had always known ofthe intention, and some of them had approved of it. None the lessshrill were their cries of surprise; none the less vociferous theirshouts of patriotic anger. {299} CHAPTER XX. A VICTORY FOR THE PATRIOTS. [Sidenote: 1729--Death of Congreve] Literature lost some great names in the early part of George theSecond's reign. William Congreve and Richard Steele both died in 1729. Congreve's works do not belong to the time of which we are writing. Hewas not sixty years old when he died, and he had long ceased to takeany active part in literature. Swift deplores, in a letter to anacquaintance, "the death of our friend Mr. Congreve, whom I loved frommy youth, and who surely, besides his other talents, was a veryagreeable companion. " Swift adds that Congreve "had the misfortune tosquander away a very good constitution in his younger days, " and "uponhis own account I could not much desire the continuance of his lifeunder so much pain and so many infirmities. " Congreve was beyondcomparison the greatest English comic dramatist of his time. Since thedays of Ben Jonson and until the days of Sheridan there was no one whocould fairly be compared with him. His comedy was not in the leastlike the bold, broad, healthy, Aristophanic humor of Ben Jonson; thetwo stand better in contrast than in comparison. Jonson drew from thewhole living English world of his time; Congreve drew from the men andwomen whom he had seen in society. Congreve took society as he foundit in his earlier days. The men and women with whom he then mixed werefor the most part flippant, insincere, corrupt, and rather proud oftheir corruption; and Congreve filled his plays with figures verylifelike for such a time. He has not drawn many men or women whom onecould admire. Even his heroines, if they are chaste in their lives, {300} are anything but pure in their conversation, and seem to have nomoral principle beyond that which is represented by what Heine calls an"anatomical chastity. " Angelica, the heroine of "Love for Love, " isevidently meant by Congreve to be all that a charming youngEnglishwoman ought to be; and she is charming, fresh, and fascinatingeven still. But she occasionally talks in a manner which would be alittle strong for a barrack-room now; and nothing gives her moregenuine delight than to twit her kind, fond old uncle with his wife'sinfidelities, to make it clear to him that all the world is acquaintedwith the full particulars of his shame, and to sport with his jealousagonies. Congreve was the first dramatic author who put an Englishseaman on the stage; and, after his characteristic fashion, he made hisBen Legend a selfish, coarse, and ruffianly lout. But if one cannotadmire many of Congreve's characters, on the other hand one cannot helpadmiring every sentence they speak. The only fault to be found withtheir talk is that it is too witty, too brilliant, for any manner ofreal life. Society would have to be all composed of male and femaleCongreves to make such conversation possible. There is more strength, originality, and depth in it than even in the conversation in "TheRivals" and "The School for Scandal. " The same fault has been foundwith Sheridan which is to be found with Congreve. We need not make toomuch of it. No warning example is called for. There will never bemany dramatists whose dialogue will deserve the censure of critics onthe ground that it is too witty. [Sidenote: 1729--Death of Steele] Of Steele we have often had occasion to speak. His fame has beengrowing rather than fading with time. At one period he was ranked bycritics as far below the level of Addison; few men now would not sethim on a pedestal as high. He was more natural, more simple, morefresh than Addison. There is some justice in the remark of Hazlittthat "Steele seems to have gone into his closet chiefly to set downwhat he had observed out-of-doors;" {301} while Addison appears "tohave spent most of his time in his study, " spinning out to the utmostthere the hints "which he borrowed from Steele or took from nature. "Every one, however, will cordially say with Hazlitt, "I am far fromwishing to depreciate Addison's talents, but I am anxious to do justiceto Steele. " There are not many names in English literature round whicha greater affection clings than that of Steele. Leigh Hunt, in writingof Congreve, speaks of "the love of the highest aspirations" which hesometimes displays, and which makes us think of what he might have beenunder happier and purer auspices. Leigh Hunt refers in especial toCongreve's essay in the _Tatler_ on the character of Lady ElizabethHastings, whom Congreve calls Aspasia--"an effusion so full ofenthusiasm for the moral graces, and worded with an appearance ofsincerity so cordial, that we can never read it without thinking itmust have come from Steele. " "It is in this essay, " Leigh Hunt goeson, "that he says one of the most elegant and truly loving things thatwere ever uttered by an unworldly passion: 'To love her is a liberaleducation. '" Leigh Hunt's critical judgment was better than hisinformation. The words "to love her is a liberal education" are bySteele, and not by Congreve. They do not appear in the essay byCongreve on the character of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, but in asubsequent essay by Steele, in which, after a fashion common enough inthe _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_, one author takes up some figurecreated or described by another, and gives it new touches and commendsit afresh to the reader. Steele was doing this with Congreve's pictureof Aspasia, and it was then that he crowned the whole work by theexquisite and immortal words which Leigh Hunt could never read withoutthinking they must have come from the man who was in fact their author. If literature had its losses in these years, it had also its gains. Not long before the time at which we have now arrived, Englishliterature had achieved three great successes. Pope wrote the firstthree books of his {302} "Dunciad, " Swift published his "Gulliver'sTravels, " and Gay set the town wild with his "Beggar's Opera. " We arefar from any thought of classifying the "Beggar's Opera" as a work ofart on a level with the "Dunciad" or "Gulliver's Travels, " but in itsway it is a masterpiece. It is thoroughly original, fresh, and vivid. It added one or two distinctly new figures to the humorous drama. Itis clever as a satire and charming as a story. One cannot be surprisedthat when it had the attraction of novelty the public raved about it. To say anything about "Gulliver's Travels" or the "Dunciad, " except tonote the historical fact that each was published, would of course bemere superfluity and waste of words. In 1731 the first steps were taken in a reform of some importance inthe liberation of our legal procedure. It was arranged that Englishshould be substituted for Latin in the presentments, indictments, pleadings, and all other documents used in our courts of law. Theearly stages of this most wise and needful reform were met with muchopposition by lawyers and pedants. One main argument employed in favorof the retention of the old system was that, if the language of ourlegal documents were to be changed, no man would be at the pains ofstudying Latin any more, and that in a few years no one would be ableto read a word of some of our own most valuable historical records. Itwas mildly suggested on the other side that there would always be somemen among us who "either out of curiosity, or for the sake of gain, "would make it their business to keep up the knowledge of Latin, andthat a very few of such antiquarians would suffice to give the countryall the information drawn from Latin records which it could possiblyrequire or care to have. We have had some experience since that time, and it does not appear that the disuse of Latin in our legal documentshas led to its falling into absolute disuse among reading men. Thereare still among us, and apparently will always be, persons who, "eitherout of curiosity, or for the sake of gain, " keep up their knowledge ofLatin. {303} The curiosity to read Virgil and Horace and Cicero andCaesar, in the tongue which those authors employed, is more keen thanit ever was before. Men indulge themselves freely in it, even withoutreference to the sake of gain. [Sidenote: 1731--Quarrel of Walpole and Townshend] Meanwhile a change long foreseen by those who were in the innerpolitical circles was rapidly approaching. The combination betweenWalpole and his brother-in-law, Lord Townshend, was about to be brokenup. It had for a long time been a question whether it was to be thefirm of Townshend and Walpole, or Walpole and Townshend; and of lateyears the question was becoming settled. If the firm was to endure atall, it must clearly be Walpole and Townshend. Walpole had beengrowing every day in power and influence. The King, as well as theQueen, treated him openly and privately as the head of the Government. Townshend saw this, and felt bitterly aggrieved. He had for a longtime been a much more powerful personage socially than Walpole, and hecould not bear with patience the supremacy which Walpole was all toocertainly obtaining. Great part of that supremacy was due to Walpole'ssuperiority of talents; but something was due also to the fact that theHouse of Commons was becoming a much more important assembly than theHouse of Lords. The result was inevitable. Townshend for a long timestruggled against it. He tried to intrigue against Walpole; he did hisbest to ingratiate himself with the King. He was a man of austerecharacter and stainless life; but he seems, nevertheless, to have triedat one time the merest arts of the political intriguer to supplant hisbrother-in-law in the favor and confidence of the King. Perhaps hemight have succeeded--it is at least possible--but for the watchfulintelligence of Queen Caroline. She saw through all Townshend'sschemes, and took care that they should not succeed. At last the tworivals quarrelled. Their quarrel broke out very openly, in thedrawing-room of a lady, and in the presence of several distinguished{304} persons. From hot words they were going on to a positivepersonal struggle, when the spectators at last intervened to "pluckthem asunder, " in the words of the King in "Hamlet. " They were pluckedasunder, and then there was talk of a duel. The friends of bothsucceeded in preventing this scandal, but the brothers-in-law werenever thoroughly reconciled, and after a short time Lord Townshendresigned his office. He withdrew from public life altogether, anddevoted his remaining years to the enjoyment of the country and thecultivation of agriculture. It is to his credit that when once he hadgiven way to the superior influence of Walpole, he did not afterwardscabal against him, or try to injure him, according to the fashion ofthe statesmen of the time. On the contrary, when he was once pressedto join in an attack on Walpole's ministry, he firmly refused to doanything of the kind. He said he had resolved to take no further partin political contests, and he did not mean to break his resolution. Hewas particularly determined not to depart from his resolve in thiscase, he explained, because his temper was hot, and he was apprehensivethat he might be hurried away by personal resentment to take a coursewhich in his cooler moments he should have to regret. Nothing in hispublic life, perhaps, became him so well as his dignified conduct inhis retirement. His place in history is not strongly marked; in thishistory we shall not hear of him any more. [Sidenote: 1730--Signs of change in foreign policy] Colonel Stanhope, who had made the Treaty of Seville, and had beenraised to the peerage as Lord Harrington for his services, succeededTownshend as Secretary of State. Horace Walpole, the brother ofRobert, was at his own request recalled from Paris. Walpole, thePrime-minister, had begun to see that it would be necessary for thefuture to have something like a good understanding with Austria. Thefriendship with France had been a priceless advantage in its time, butWalpole believed that it had served its turn. It was valuable toEngland chiefly because it had enabled the Sovereign to keep {305} themovements of the Stuart party in check, and Walpole hoped that theHouse of Hanover was now secure on the throne, and believed, with toosanguine a confidence, that no other effort would be made to disturbit. Moreover, he saw some reason to think that France, no longerguided by the political intelligence of a man like the Duke of Orleans, was drawing a little too close in her relationship with Spain. Walpolewas already looking forward to the coming of a time when it might benecessary for England to strengthen herself against France and Spain, and he therefore desired to get into a good understanding with theEmperor and Austria. Walpole now had the Government entirely to himself. He was not merelyall-powerful in the administration, he actually was the administration. The King knew him to be indispensable; the Queen put the fullest trustin him. His only trouble was with the intrigues of Bolingbroke and theopposition of Pulteney. The latter sometimes affected what would havebeen called at the time a "mighty unconcern" about political affairs. Writing once to Pope, he says, "Mrs. Pulteney is now in labor; if shedoes well, and brings me a boy, I shall not care one sixpence how muchlonger Sir Robert governs England, or Horace governs France. " This waswritten while Horace Walpole was still Ambassador at the French Court. Pulteney, however, was very far from feeling anything like thephilosophical indifference which he expressed in his letter to Pope. He never ceased to attack everything done by the Ministry, and tosatirize every word said by Walpole. At the same time Pulteney wascomplaining bitterly to his friends of the attacks made on him by thesupporters of Walpole. On February 9, 1730, he wrote a letter toSwift, in which he says that "certain people" had been driven by wantof argument "to that last resort of calling names: villain, traitor, seditious rascal, and such ingenious appellations have frequently beenbestowed on a couple of friends of yours. " "Such usage, " hecomplacently adds, "has made it {306} necessary to return the samepolite language; and there has been more Billingsgate stuff utteredfrom the press within these two months than ever was known before. "Swift himself had previously written to his friend Dr. Sheridan aletter in which he declared that "Walpole is peevish and disconcerted, stoops to the vilest offices of hireling scoundrels to writeBillingsgate of the lowest and most prostitute kind, and has none butbeasts and blockheads for his penmen, whom he pays in ready guineasvery liberally. " One would have thought that beasts and blockheadscould hardly prove very formidable enemies to Swift and Bolingbroke andPulteney. [Sidenote: 1730--Lord Hervey] One of the incidents in the controversy carried on by the Ministerialpenmen and the _Craftsman_ was a duel between Pulteney and Lord Hervey. Pulteney and his friends were apparently under the impression that theyhad a right to a monopoly of personal abuse, and they resented anyeffusion of the kind from the other side as a breach of theirprivilege. Hervey had written a tract called "Sedition and Defamationdisplayed, in a Letter to the Author of the _Craftsman_;" and this ledto a new outburst of passion on both sides. Pulteney stigmatizedHervey, on account of his effeminate appearance, as a thing that washalf man, half woman, and a duel took place in which Hervey waswounded. Hervey was a remarkable man. His physical frame was asfeeble as that of Voltaire. He suffered from epilepsy and a variety ofother ailments. He had to live mainly on a dietary of ass's milk. Hisface was so meagre and so pallid, or rather livid, that he used topaint and make up like an actress or a fine lady. Pope, who might havebeen considerate to the weak of frame, was merciless in his ridicule ofHervey. He ridiculed him as Sporus, who could neither feel satire norsense, and as Lord Fanny. Yet Hervey could appreciate satire andsense; could write satire and sense. He was a man of very rarecapacity. He had already distinguished himself as a debater in theHouse of Commons, and was afterwards to distinguish himself as a {307}debater in the House of Lords. He wrote pretty verses and cleverpamphlets, and he has left to the world a collection of "Memoirs of theReign of George the Second, " which will always be read for itsvivacity, its pungency, its bitterness, and its keen, penetratinggood-sense. Hervey succeeded in obtaining the hand of one of the mostbeautiful women of the day, the charming Mary Lepell, whose name hasbeen celebrated in more than one poetical panegyric by Pope, and hecaptivated the heart of one of the royal princesses. The historicalreader must strike a sort of balance for himself in getting at anestimate of Hervey's character. No man has been more bitterlydenounced by his enemies or more warmly praised by his friends. Affectation, insincerity, prodigality, selfishness, servility to thegreat, contempt for the humble, are among the qualities his opponentsascribe to him. According to his friends, his cynicism was a mereaffectation to hide a sensitive and generous nature; his bitternessarose from his disappointment at finding so few men or women who cameup to a really high standard of nobleness; his homage of the great wasbut the half-disguised mockery of a scornful philosopher. Probably thepicture drawn by the friends is on the whole more near to life thanthat painted by the enemies. The world owes him some thanks for areally interesting book, the very boldness and bitterness of whichenhance to a certain extent its historical value. At this time Herveywas but little over thirty years of age. He was the son of the firstEarl of Bristol by a second marriage, had been educated at WestminsterSchool and at Clare Hall, Cambridge; had gone early through the usualround of Continental travels, and became a friend of George the First'sgrandson, now Prince of Wales, at Hanover. This friendship not merelydid not endure, but soon turned into hate. Hervey was an admirer ofLady Mary Wortley Montagu, and was admired by her; but her ownassurances, which may be trusted to, declared that there had beennothing warmer than friendship between them. Lady Mary afterwards{308} maintained that the relationship between Hervey and herestablished the possibility of "a long and steady friendship subsistingbetween two persons of different sexes without the least admixture oflove. " Hervey was in his day a somewhat free and liberal lover ofwomen, and it is not surprising that the world should have regarded hisacquaintanceship with Lady Mary as something warmer than merefriendship. We shall have occasion to refer to Hervey's memoirs of thereign of George the Second more than once hereafter, and may perhapsnow cite a few words which Hervey himself says in vindication of theirsincerity and their historical accuracy; "No one who did not live inthese times will, I dare say, believe but some of those I describe inthese papers must have had some hard features and deformitiesexaggerated and heightened by the malice and ill-nature of the painterwho drew them. Others, perhaps, will say that at least no painter isobliged to draw every wart or wen or humpback in its full proportions, and that I might have softened these blemishes where I found them. ButI am determined to report everything just as it is, or at least just asit appears to me; and those who have a curiosity to see courts andcourtiers dissected, must bear with the dirt they find in laying opensuch minds with as little nicety and as much patience as, in adissection of their bodies, if they wanted to see that operation, theymust submit to the disgust. " Hervey fought with spirit and effect on the side of Walpole, althoughLady Hervey strongly disliked the Minister and was disliked by him. Walpole had at one time, it was said, made unsuccessful love to thebeautiful and witty Molly Lepell, and he did not forgive her because ofher scornful rejection of his ponderous attempts at gallantry. Hervey, nevertheless, took Walpole's side, and proved to be an ally of someimportance. A great struggle was approaching, in which the wholestrength of Walpole's hold on the Sovereign and the country was to betested by the severest strain. {309} [Sidenote: 1730--The Sinking Fund] Walpole was, as we have said more than once, the first of the greatfinancier statesmen of England. He was the first statesman whoproperly appreciated the virtue and the value of mere economy in thedisposal of a nation's revenues. He was the first to devise anythinglike a solid and symmetrical plan for the fair adjustment of taxation. Sometimes he had recourse to rather poor and common-place artifices, asin the case of his proposal to meet a certain financial strain byborrowing half a million from the Sinking Fund. This proposal hecarried by a large majority, in spite of the most vehement and evenfurious opposition on the part of the Patriots. It must be owned thatthe Patriots were right enough in the principle of their objection tothis encroachment on the Sinking Fund, although their predictions as tothe ruin it must bring upon the country were preposterous. Borrowingfrom a sinking fund is always rather a shabby dodge; but it is a trickfamiliar to all statesmen in difficulties, and Walpole did no worsethan many statesmen of later days, who, with the full advantages of asound and well-developed financial system, have shown that they werenot able to do any better. The Patriots seem to have made up their minds to earn their title. They fought the "Court, " or Ministerial, party on a variety of issues. They supported motions for the reduction of the numbers of the army, and they declaimed against the whole principle of a standing army withpatriotic passion, which sometimes appeared for the time quite genuine. They brought illustrations of all kinds, applicable and inapplicable, from Greek and Roman, from French and Spanish history, even fromEastern history, to show that a standing army was invariably theinstrument of despotism and the forerunner of doom to the liberties ofa people. The financial policy of the Government gave them frequentopportunities for using the sword of the partisan behind the flutteringcloak of the patriot. On both sides of the House there wasconsiderable confusion of ideas on the subject of political economy{310} and the incidence of taxation. Walpole was ahead of his ownparty as well as of his opponents on such subjects; his followers werelittle more enlightened than his antagonists. [Sidenote: 1732--The American colonies] In 1732 there was presented to the House of Commons an interestingreport from the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on "the stateof his Majesty's colonies and plantations in America, with respect toany laws made, manufactures set up, and trade carried on there, whichmay affect the trade, navigation, and manufactures of this kingdom. "From this report we learn that at the time there were three differentsystems of government prevailing in the American colonies. Someprovinces were immediately under the administration of the Crown: thesewere Nova Scotia, New Hampshire, the Jerseys, New York, Virginia, thetwo Carolinas, Bermuda, Bahama Islands, Jamaica, Barbadoes, and theLeeward Islands. Others were vested in proprietors--Pennsylvania, forexample, and Maryland--and the Bahamas and the two Carolinas had notlong before been in the same condition. There were three CharterGovernments, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, in which thepower was divided between the Crown and the population, where thepeople chose their representative assemblies, and the Governor wasdependent upon the Assembly for his annual support, "which, " as thereport observed ingenuously, "has so frequently laid the Governor ofsuch a province under temptations of giving up the prerogative of theCrown and the interest of Great Britain. " The report contains a veryfull account of the state of manufactures in all the provinces. NewYork, for example, had no manufactures "that deserved mentioning;" thetrade there "consisted chiefly in furs, whalebone, oil, pitch, tar, andprovisions. " In Massachusetts "the inhabitants worked up their wooland flax, and made an ordinary coarse cloth for their own use, but didnot export any. " In Pennsylvania the "chief trade lay in theexportation of provisions and lumber, " and there were {311} "nomanufactures established, their clothing and utensils for their housesbeing all imported from Great Britain. " For the object of the wholereport was not to discover how far the energy of the colonists wasdeveloping the resources of the colonies, in order that the Governmentand the people of England might be gratified with a knowledge of theprogress made, and give their best encouragement to further progress. The inquiry was set on foot in order to find out whether the colonistswere presuming to manufacture for themselves any goods which they oughtby right to buy from English makers, and to recommend steps by whichsuch audacious enterprises might be rebuked and prevented. This is theavowed object of the report, and we find governor after governorassuring the Commissioners earnestly and plaintively that thepopulation of his province really manufacture nothing, or at all eventsnothing that could possibly interfere with the sacred privileges of theEnglish monopolists. The report significantly recommends the House ofCommons to take into consideration the question "whether it might notbe expedient to give these colonies proper encouragements for turningtheir industry to such manufactures and products as might be of serviceto Great Britain, and more particularly to the production of all kindsof naval stores. " The proper encouragement given to this sort ofproductiveness would imply, of course, proper discouragement given toanything else. The colonies were to exist merely for the convenienceand benefit of the so-called mother country, a phrase surely ofsardonic impressiveness. Such, however, was the common feeling of thatday in England. It was so with regard to India; it was so with regardto Ireland. The story of the pelican was reversed. The pelican didnot in this case feed her young with her blood; the young were expectedto give their blood to feed the pelican. The real strain was to come when Walpole should introduce his famousand long-expected scheme for a reform in the customs and excise laws. Walpole's scheme {312} was inspired by two central ideas. One of thesewas to diminish the amount of taxation imposed on the land of thecountry, and make up the deficiency by indirect taxation; the other wasto reduce the customs duties by substituting as far as possible anexcise duty. Walpole would have desired something like free-trade asregarded the introduction of food and the raw materials of manufacture. Let these be got into the country as easily and freely as possible washis principle, and then let us see afterwards how we can adjust theexcise duties so as to produce the largest amount of revenue with thesmallest injury to the interest of the consumer, and with the minimumof waste. His design was that the necessaries of life and the rawmaterials of manufacture should remain as nearly as possible untaxed, and that the revenue of the country should be collected from land andfrom luxuries. We do not mean to say that the plans which Walpolepresented to the country were faithful in all their details to thesecentral ideas. One scheme at least which he laid before Parliament waspositively at variance with the main principles which he had long beentrying to establish. But in considering the whole controversy betweenhim and his opponents, the reader may take it for granted that suchwere the principles by which his financial policy was inspired. He hadbeen moving quietly in this direction for some time. He had removedthe import duties from tea, coffee, and chocolate, and made themsubject to inland or excise duties. In 1732 he revived the salt tax. The Bill which was introduced on February 9, 1732, to accomplish thisobject, met with a strong opposition in both Houses of Parliament. Walpole's speech in introducing the motion for the revival of the taxcontained a very clear statement of his financial creed. "Where everyman contributes a small share, a great sum may be raised for the publicservice without any man's being sensible of what he pays; whereas asmall sum raised upon a few, lies heavy upon each particular man, andis the more grievous in that it is unjust; for where {313} the benefitis mutual, the expense ought to be in common. " [Sidenote:1732--Opposition alarm] The general principle is unassailable; butWalpole seems to us to have been quite wrong in his application of itto such an impost as the salt tax. "Of all the taxes I ever couldthink of, " he argued, "there is not one more general, nor one lessfelt, than that of the duty upon salt. " He described it as a "tax thatevery man in the nation contributes to according to his circumstancesand condition in life. " This is exactly what every man does not do. The family of the rich man does not by any means consume more salt thanthe family of the poor man in proportion to their respective incomes. Pulteney knocked Walpole's argument all to pieces in a speech ofremarkable force and ingenuity even for him. There was somethinghonestly pathetic in his appeal on behalf of the poor man, whom theduty on salt would touch most nearly. The tax, he said, would be atleast one shilling a head for every man or woman able to work; to a manwith a family it would average four shillings and sixpence a year. Such a yearly sum "may be looked upon as a trifle by a gentleman of alarge estate and easy circumstances, but a poor man feels sometimesseverely the want of a shilling; many a poor man has for want of ashilling been obliged to pawn the only whole coat he had to his back, and has never been able to redeem it again. Even a farthing to a poorman is a considerable sum; what shifts do the frugal among them make tosave even a farthing!" Had all Pulteney's speech been animated by this spirit he would havemade out an unanswerable case. The objection to a salt tax in Englandthen was not so great as in India at a later period; but the principleof the tax was undoubtedly bad, while the general principle ofWalpole's finance was undoubtedly good. The question, however, was notargued out by Pulteney or any other speaker on his side upon such aground as the hardship to the poor man. The tyranny of an excisesystem, of any excise system, its unconstitutional, despotic, andinquisitorial nature--this was the chief ground of attack. Sir {314}William Wyndham sounded the alarm which was soon to be followed by atremendous echo. He declared the proposed tax "not only destructive tothe trade, but inconsistent with the liberties of this nation. " Thevery number of the officers who would have to be appointed to collectthis one tax, who would be named by the Crown and scattered all overthe country, would have immense influence on the elections; and thisfact alone would give a power into the hands of the Crown greater thanwas consistent with the liberties of the people, and "of the mostdangerous consequence to our happy constitution. " The Bill passed theHouse of Commons, and was read a first time in the House of Lords onMarch 22d. The second reading was moved on March 27th, and a longdebate took place. Not the least interesting fact concerning thisdebate was that the leading part in opposition to the Bill was taken byLord Carteret, who had returned from his Irish Government, and wasbeginning to show himself a pertinacious and a formidable enemy ofWalpole and his administration. Carteret outshone even Pulteney andWyndham in wholesale and extravagant denunciation of the measure. Helikened it to the domestic policy of Cardinal Richelieu, by which theestates of the nobility and gentry were virtually confiscated to theCrown, and the liberties of the people were lost. It would place it inthe power of a wicked administration to reduce the English people tothe same condition as the people in Turkey; "their only resource willbe in mobs and tumults, and the prevailing party will administerjustice by general massacres and proscriptions. " All this may now seemsheer absurdity; but for the purposes of Carteret and Pulteney it wasby no means absurd. The salt tax was carried through the House ofLords; but the public out-of-doors were taught to believe that theMinister's financial policy was merely a series of artifices for thedestruction of popular rights, and for robbing England of her politicalliberty. [Sidenote: 1733--"A very terrible affair"] Walpole had long had in his mind a measure of a different {315}nature--a measure to readjust the duties on tobacco and wine. It wasknown that he was preparing some bill on the subject, and theexcitement which was beginning to show itself at the time of the salttax debates was turned to account by the Opposition to forestall thepopular reception of the expected measure. The cry was got up that theadministration were planning a scheme for a general excise, and thebare idea of a general excise was then odious and terrible to thepublic. Whatever Walpole's final purposes may have been, there wasnothing to alarm any one in the scheme which he was presently tointroduce. Nobody now would think of impugning the soundness of theeconomical principles on which his moderate, limited, and tentativescheme of fiscal reform was founded. The coming event threw its shadow before it, and the shadow becamemarvellously distorted. Pulteney, speaking on February 23, 1733, withregard to the Sinking Fund proposal, talked of the expected excisescheme in language of such exaggeration that it is impossible tobelieve the orator could have felt anything like the alarm and horrorhe expressed. There is "a very terrible affair impending, " Pulteneysaid, "a monstrous project--yea, more monstrous than has ever yet beenrepresented. It is such a project as has struck terror into the mindsof most gentlemen within this House, and into the minds of all menwithout-doors who have any regard to the happiness or to theconstitution of their country. I mean that monster the excise; thatplan of arbitrary power which is expected to be laid before this Housein the present session of Parliament. " Sir John Barnard, one of themembers for the City of London, a man of great respectability, capacity, and influence, ventured to predict that Walpole's schemewould "turn out to be his eternal shame and dishonor, and that the morethe project is examined, and the consequences thereof considered, themore the projector will be hated and despised. " Of all this strong language Walpole took little account. {316} Hemeant to propose his scheme, he said, when the proper time should come, and he did not doubt but that honorable members would find it somethingvery different from the vague and monstrous project of which they hadbeen told. In any case he meant to propose it. [Sidenote:1733--Walpole's scheme] Accordingly, on Wednesday, March 7, 1733, Walpole moved that the House should on that day week resolve itselfinto a committee "to consider of the most proper methods for the bettersecurity and improvement of the duties and revenues already chargedupon and payable from tobacco and wines. " On the day appointed, Wednesday, March 14th, the House went into committee accordingly, andWalpole expounded his scheme. It was simply a plan to deal with theduties on wines and tobacco, and Walpole protested that his views andpurposes were confined altogether to these two branches of the revenue, and that such a thing as a scheme for a general excise had neverentered into his head, "nor, for what I know, into the head of any manI am acquainted with. " There was in the mind of the English peoplethen a vague horror of all excise laws and excise officers, and thewhole opposition to Walpole's scheme in and out of the House of Commonswas maintained by an appeal to that common feeling. Walpole'sresolutions with regard to the tobacco trade were taken first andseparately. It will soon be seen that the resolutions concerning theduties on wine were destined never to be discussed at all. WhatWalpole proposed to do in regard to tobacco was to make the customsduty very small and to increase the excise duty; to establish bondedwarehouses for the storing of the tobacco imported into this countryand meant to be exported again or sold here for home consumption; thusto encourage and facilitate the importation; to get rid of many of thedishonest practices which injured the fair dealer and defrauded therevenue; to put a stop to smuggling; to benefit at once the grower, themanufacturer, the consumer, and the revenue. We need not relate atgreat length and in minute detail the history of these resolutions{317} and of the debates on them in the House of Commons. But it maybe pointed out that, wild and absurd as were the outcries of thePatriots, there yet was good reason for their apprehension of a growingscheme to substitute excise for land-tax or poll-tax or customs. Walpole was, as we know, a firm believer in the advantages of indirecttaxation, and of the introduction, as freely as possible, of all rawmaterials for manufacture, and all articles useful for the food of anation. He was a free-trader before his time, and he saw that incertain cases there was immense advantage to the consumer and to therevenue in allowing articles to be imported under as light a duty aspossible, and then putting an excise duty on their distribution here. Walpole was perfectly right in all this, but his enemies were none theless justified in proclaiming that the proposals he was introducingcould not end in a mere readjustment of the tobacco and wine duties. Walpole's first resolution was carried by 206 votes against 205. TheGovernment had won a victory, but it was such a victory as Walpole didnot care to win. He had been used of late to bear down all before him, and he saw with eyes of clear foreboding the ominous significance ofhis present majority. He knew well that the Opposition had got themost telling cry they could possibly have sought or found against him. He knew that popular tumult would grow from day to day. He knew thathis enemies were unscrupulous, and that they were banded togetheragainst him on many grounds and with many different purposes. Everysection of the nation which had any hostile feeling to the House ofHanover, to the existing administration, or to the Prime-ministerhimself, made common cause against, not his Excise Bill, but him. Thetobacco resolutions were passed, and a bill to put them into executionwas ordered to be prepared. On April 4th the Bill was introduced tothe House of Commons, and a motion was made that it be read a firsttime. Much, however, had happened out-of-doors since the day whenWalpole introduced his {318} resolutions. Even at that time there wasa great excitement abroad, which, brought crowds of more or lesstumultuous persons round the entrances of the House of Commons. Thetroops had to be kept in readiness for any emergency that might arise. The least thing feared was that they might have to be employed to keepthe access to the House clear for its members. [Sidenote: 1733--TheBill abandoned] By the time the first division had taken place, thetide of popular passion had swollen still higher. As Walpole wasquitting the House a furious rush was made at him, and but that some ofhis colleagues surrounded, protected, and bore him off, he would havebeen in serious personal danger. But the interval between that eventand the introduction of the Bill had been turned to very practicalaccount by those who were agitating against him, and the country wasnow in a flame of excitement. The _Craftsman_ and the pamphleteers haddone their work well. The most extravagant consequences were describedas certain to follow from the adoption of Walpole's excise scheme. Aminister once allowed to impose his excise duty upon wine and tobacco, and--thus shrieked the mouths of a hundred pamphleteers andverse-mongers--he will go on imposing excise on every article of foodand dress and household use. Nothing will be able to resist theinquisitorial exciseman. It was positively asserted in ballad and inpamphlet that before long the exciseman would everywhere practise onthe daughters of England the atrociously insulting test which wasattempted on Wat Tyler's daughter, and which brought about Wat Tyler'sinsurrection. The memories of Wat Tyler and of Jack Straw were invokedto arouse popular panic and fury. Strange as it may now seem, theseappeals were successful in their object; they did create a popularpanic, and stir up popular passion and fury to the uttermost height. Not even Walpole attempted any longer to argue down the monstrousmisrepresentations of his policy. The fury against him and his excisescheme grew hotter every day, and at one time it was positively thoughtthat his life {319} was in danger. Tumultuous crowds of peoplegathered in and around all the approaches to the House of Commons. Several members of the House who were known to be in favor of theMinisterial scheme complained that they had been menaced, insulted, andeven assaulted; and the House had for the security of its own debates, and the personal safety of its own members, to pass resolutionsdeclaring that this riotous behavior was destructive of the freedom andconstitution of Parliament, and a high crime and misdemeanor. In theHouse itself certain tactics, with which Parliament has been veryfamiliar at a later period, were tried with some effect. Variousmotions for adjournment and other such delay to the progress of theBill were made and pressed to a division. It was becoming evident toevery one that the measure was doomed, and the hearts of the leaders ofOpposition rose with each hour that passed, while the spirits of theMinisterialists fell. Walpole never lost his head, although he well knew that a certain and adamaging failure was now awaiting him. He still proclaimed that hismeasure could be hurtful to none but smugglers and unfair traders, thatit would be of great benefit to the revenue and the nation, that itwould tend "to make London a free port, and by consequence the marketof the world. " He spoke with scorn of the riotous crowds whom some haddeclared to be merely respectful petitioners. "Gentlemen may give themwhat name they think fit; it may be said that they came hither ashumble suppliants, but I know whom the law calls sturdy beggars. " TheCommon Council of London, spirited on by a Jacobite Lord Mayor, petitioned against the excise scheme, and its example was followed byvarious municipalities in the kingdom. Walpole acted at last accordingto the principle which always governed him at such a crisis. He hadthe courage to abandon the ground which he had taken up, and which hewould have been well entitled to maintain if argument could prevailover misrepresentation and passion. With that {320} cool contempt forthe extravagance and the ignorance of the sentiment which thwarted him, he abandoned his scheme and let the mob have its way. On Wednesday, April 11, 1733, it was made known that the Government did not intend togo any farther with the Bill. Exultation all over the island wasunbounded. Church bells rang, windows were illumined, bonfires blazed, multitudes shouted everywhere. If England had gained some splendidvictory over a combination of foreign enemies, there could not havebeen a greater display of frantic national enthusiasm than that whichbroke out when it was found that hostile clamor had prevailed againstthe Minister, and that his excise scheme was abandoned. Frederick the Great has enriched the curiosities of history with anaccount which he gives of the abandonment of the Bill. According tohim, George the Second had devised the measure as a means of makinghimself absolute sovereign of England. The Excise Bill was intended toput him in possession of a revenue fixed and assured, a revenue largeenough to allow him to increase his military power to any strength hepleased. It only needed a word of command and a chief for revolutionto break out. Walpole escaped from Parliament covered with an oldcloak, and shouting with all his might, "Liberty, liberty! no excise!"Thus disguised, he managed to get to the King in St. James's Palace. He found the King preparing for the worst, arming himself at allpoints, having put on the hat he wore at Malplaquet, and trying thetemper of the sword he carried at Oudenarde. George desired to puthimself at once at the head of his guards, and try conclusions with hisenemies. Walpole had all the trouble in the world to moderate hissovereign's impetuosity, and at length represented to him, "with thegenerous hardihood of an Englishman attached to his master, " that itwas only a choice between abandoning the Excise Bill and losing thecrown. Whereupon George at last gave way; the Bill was abandoned, andthe crown preserved. {321} [Sidenote: 1733--Romance and reality] This scene is, of course, a piece of the purest romance. But it iscertain that the passions of the people were so thoroughly aroused thata man less cool and in the true sense courageous than Walpole mighthave provoked a popular outbreak, and no one can say whether the crownof the Brunswicks might not have gone down in a popular outbreak justthen. Time and education have long since vindicated Walpole'sfinancial principles; but the passion, the ignorance, and thepartisanship of his own day were too strong, and prevailed against him. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. {322} INDEX. Abernethy, Dr. , death, iv. 282. Act for better securing the Dependency of Ireland, i. 177. Act of Settlement, i. 4. Act of Union passed, iii. 327, 330. Acts of Trade, iii. 82, 84, 86, 105. Adams, John: Conduct towards Colonel Preston, iii. 152. Opposes dominion of England, iii. 85. Adams, Samuel, protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90. Addington, Henry, Viscount Sidmouth, Prime Minister, iii. 337. Addison, Joseph: M. P. For Malmesbury, i. 52. Secretary of State; circular letter to English Ministers, ii. 109. Sketch of, i. 37, 180. Address (1715), i. 102. Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of William IV. , iv. 97. Supposed attitude towards Reform, iv. 172. Agrarian crime, iv. 84, 106. Agriculture in Scotland (1714), i. 87, 89. Agriculture in 1721, i. 229. Aislabie, John: Chancellor of Exchequer, i. 188, 190. Committed to Tower, i. 199. Impeaches Lord Strafford, i. 109, 110. Treasurer of Navy, i. 105. Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, ii. 260, 280. Akerman, Keeper of Newgate, attitude towards mob, iii. 203. Albany, Countess of, wife of Charles Stuart, ii. 233. Alberoni, Giulio: Policy, i. 159. Sketch of, i. 158. Ale-tax in Scotland, i. 249. Ali Vardi Khan, death of, ii. 265. Allan, killed in riot (1768), iii. 120. Allen, Ethan, iii. 179. Almanza, battle of, ii. 35. Althorp, Lord (_see_ Spencer, John Charles, Earl). Amelia, daughter of George III. , death of, iii. 341. Amelia, Princess (_see_ Emily, Princess). American Colonies: Discontent in, iii. 147 _seqq. _ Grievances, iii. 82. Proclaim their Independence, iii. 183. Report on, i. 310. Sketch of history, iii. 74. Systems of governing, i. 310. American Republic acknowledged, iii. 184. Influence on France, iii. 290, 292. American War of Independence, iii. 173 _seqq. _ American War, Second, iii. 344. Amherst, Jeffrey, Baron: Commander-in-Chief, iii. 207. Commands troops in Canada, ii. 287. Amhurst, Nicholas (Caleb d'Anvers), edits _Craftsman_, i. 261. Anaverdi Khan, Nabob of Carnatic, ii. 201. André, Major, death as spy, iii. 184. Anglesey, Marquis of, Viceroy of Ireland, attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 73, 74. Anne, Princess of Orange, ii. 38. Illness, ii. 71, 76. Marriage, ii. 42. Anne, Queen: Character, i. 1, 13. Death, i. 47. Declining health, i. 1. Scheme to reduce expenses, i. 281. "Annual Register": Description of mob in London, iii. 205. Founded by Edmund Burke, iii. 99. Anti-Irish riots, ii. 45. "Anti-Jacobin, " iv. 33. Arbuthnot, John: History of John Bull, i. 97. Sketch of, ii. 20. Arcot, Siege of, ii. 263. Arden, Richard Pepper, iii. 236. Argyll, John Campbell, Duke of, i. 42. Commander-in-Chief for Scotland, i. 98, 123. Sketch of, i. 44. Speech on Convention, ii. 166. Aristotle on administration, ii. 246. Arnold, Benedict, iii. 179. Treason, iii. 184. Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, ii. 293. Ashley, Lord (_see_ Shaftesbury, Earl of). Association of United Irishmen, iii. 309, 313, 319. Atterbury, Francis, Bishop of Rochester, i. 48. Arrested and committed to Tower, i. 212. Banished, i. 222. Evidence against, i. 219, 220, 222. On condition of church, ii. 129. Opposes Septennial Act, i. 146. Sketch of, i. 214. _Auditor_, iii. 15, 55. Augusta, Princess of Saxe-Gotha, wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales, ii. 46, 47; iii. 6, 7. Birth of first child, ii. 104-107. Regency Bill and, iii. 73. Augustus, Elector of Saxony, ii. 23. Augustus II. Of Poland, ii. 23. Aurungzebe, Empire on death of, ii. 257. Austerlitz, Battle of, iii. 338, 339. Austria in 1716, i. 154. Bailly, Mayor of Paris, iii. 298. Ballot system, iv. 131. Balmerino, Lord, trial, ii. 228. Bank of England: Attacked by rioters, iii. 207. Charter renewed, iv. 232. Imitates South Sea Company, i. 189. Barber, John: Letter to Swift, i. 48. On Arbuthnot, ii. 20. Barnard, Sir John: Abandons seceders, ii. 174. On Convention, ii. 162. On grievances against Spaniards, ii. 154, 157. On Walpole's Excise scheme, i. 315. Barré, Colonel, iii. 131, 133, 136. Barry, Richard, Lord Barrymore, iii. 244. Supports Young Pretender, ii. 221. Barry, Sir Charles, designs new Houses of Parliament, iv. 270, 272. Bartholomew Fair, i. 73. Barwell, Richard, iii. 260. Supports Hastings, iii. 260, 261, 264. Bastile captured, iii. 294. Bath in 1714, i. 79. Bathurst, Lord, demands prosecution of rioters, iii. 201. Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of: On Lord John Russell, iv. 126. Philippics against Sir Robert Peel, i. 287. Beaux and requisites, i. 76. Bedford, Duke of: Opposes Pitt, iii. 26. Patron of Rigby, iii. 37. Presents petition against Convention, ii. 164. Bellingham, John, shot Spencer Perceval, iii. 341. Benares annexed, iii. 258. Benares, Chait Singh, Rajah of, iii. 269. Bentham, Jeremy, theories of, iv. 281. Béranger, "King of Yvetot, " iv. 119. Berkeley, George Bishop: Character, ii. 296. Lives in Rhode Island, ii. 295. Scheme of Settlement in Bermuda, ii. 294. Sketch of, ii. 292. Berkeley, Lord, of Stratton, describes duel between Colonel Chudleigh and Charles Aldworth, i. 58. Bermuda, Scheme for Settlement in, ii. 294. Bernard, Francis, Governor of Massachusetts, iii. 106, 148. Dissolves Massachusetts Legislature, iii. 150. Recalled, iii. 151. Berwick, James FitzJames, Duke of: Sketch of, ii. 34. Takes Kehl, ii. 24. Bill for Catholic Relief, iii. 190, 191. Bill for Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 43. Bill for strengthening Protestant interest, i. 171, 172. Bill of Rights, i. 3. Bill to adjust affairs of South Sea Company, i. 203, 205. Bill to suspend Habeas Corpus Act, i. 213. Birmingham, iv. 99. Bismarck, Prince, Peace policy, ii. 147. Black Hole of Calcutta, ii. 266, 267; iii. 249. Blackstone, Speech on Middlesex Election Petition, iii. 131. Bland-Burges Papers, ii. 217. Bland-Burges, Sir James, defends Warren Hastings, iii. 277, 278. Bloomfield, patronized by Duke of Grafton, iii. 35. Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, i. 22, 115. Advises secession from Commons, ii. 172. Alliance with Pulteney, i. 260; ii. 17. At St. Germains, i. 116. Attitude towards restoration of Stuarts, i. 39, 48, 107. Character, i. 116; ii. 18, 279. Correspondence with James Stuart, ii. 18. Dismissed by James, i. 131. Dreams of Coalition Ministry, ii. 194. Flight, i. 103. Impeached of high treason, i. 108, 110. Inspires _Craftsman_, i. 290. Leaves England for France, ii. 17, 18. Letter to Swift, i. 47. Name erased from roll of peers, i. 114. On Duke of Berwick, ii. 34. On Duke of Shrewsbury, i. 42. On Wyndham's death, ii. 179. Petition to Lords, i. 258. Removed from Secretaryship of State, i. 101. Returns to England, i. 222, 258. Scheme of Opposition, i. 287. Sketch of, i. 26; later life, i. 133; ii. 278, 279. Style as speaker and writer, i. 27. Walpole's portrait of, ii. 15, 16. Bombay, dower of Catherine of Braganza, iii. 248. Boston: Evacuated, iii. 182. Hostile to British, iii. 151. Invested, iii. 175, 181. Life in 1765, iii. 77. Massacre, iii. 151. Protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90. Tea thrown into harbor, ii. 43; iii. 160. Boston, Lord, in hands of mob, iii. 197. Boston Port Bill, iii. 163; copies circulated, iii. 165. Boswell, James: Johnson and, iii. 44. On Alexander Wedderburn, iii. 158. Bourbon family: Aims of, ii. 28. Compacts, ii. 26. Bourne, Vincent, at Westminster School, iii. 53. Braddock, General, defeat and death, ii. 286; iii. 79, 180. Bradley on reform of Calendar, ii. 275. Breed Hill battle, iii. 176. Bremen ceded to Hanover, i. 160, 161. Brewster, Sir David: British Association and, iv. 262. On Newton, i. 273. Bright, John, doctrine of non-intervention, iv. 62. Bristol: Growth of, i. 78. Reform riot at, iv. 171. British Admirals of Eighteenth Century, iii. 336. British Association founded, iv. 262. British garrison proposed for America, iii. 84, 86. British sailor (1797), iii. 334. _Briton_, iii. 51, 55. "Broad-bottomed Ministry, " ii. 245, 246. Bromley, William, motion on Septennial Act, ii. 10, 12. "Brothers" Club, i. 74. Brougham, Henry, Lord Brougham and Vaux: Advice to Queen Caroline, iv. 5. Attitude towards electoral reform, iv. 52. Attitude towards Poor Relief, iv. 223. Attitude towards West Indian Slavery, iv. 192, 193. British Association and, iv. 262. Character, iv. 251. Defends Queen Caroline, iv. 6, 8. Evidence in Cobbett's prosecution, iv. 156. Leader of Opposition, iv. 103. Lord Chancellor, iv. 124. Motion on Reform, iv. 104, 110, 111. Motions against Slavery, iv. 194, 195. Negotiates with King on creation of new peers, iv. 180. On Parliamentary Reform, iv. 85. Oratory, iv. 104, 174. "Penny Cyclopaedia" and, iv. 262. Persuades William IV. To dissolve Parliament, iv. 151. Power as Reformer, iv. 122, 125. Retires from Ministerial life, iv. 251. Scheme for national education, iv. 22. Speech on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 74. Brunswick family, i. 5. Buchanan, messenger of Young Pretender, ii. 205. Buckingham, Earl of, iii. 338. Buckingham House, i. 66. Buckingham Palace, iv. 93. Bunbury, Sir Thomas Charles, marries Lady Sarah Lennox, iii. 10. Burdett, Sir Francis, resolution on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 73. Burgoyne at Boston, iii. 175, 182. Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga, iii. 183. Burke, Edmund: Alliance with Fox and North, iii. 226. Attitude on American Independence, iii. 87. Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 285. Career, iii. 96 _seqq. _ Character, iii. 227. Crusade against French Revolution, iii. 296, 298. Denunciation of French Revolution, i. 96. "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, " iii. 98. Friend of Goldsmith, iii. 168. Impeaches Warren Hastings, iii. 281, 285. Indian policy, iii. 273. Influence on generation, iii. 96, 100. Maiden speech, iii. 100. Marriage, iii. 98. On Ballot system, iv. 131. Boston exploit, iii. 161. Chesterfield's rule in Ireland, ii. 251. Ministry and Wilkes's riots, iii. 121, 122. Townshend, iii. 111. Walpole's opposition to war party, ii. 181. War with Spain, ii. 184. Warren Hastings, iii. 258, 259. Wilkes's reception in London, iii. 116; in Middlesex, iii. 117. Opinion of George IV. , iv. 90. Oratory, iii. 100. Passion for justice, iii. 272. Paymaster-General, iii. 224, 228. Praises of Pitt, iii. 223. Private Secretary to Lord Rockingham, iii. 99. Reproves Charles James Fox, iii. 141. Speech against American war, iii. 188. Speech on Middlesex Election Petition, iii. 132. Vindication of Natural Society, iii. 98. Burke, William, iii. 99. Burnet, Bishop, on: Condition of Church, ii. 129. Duke of Marlborough, i. 23. High and Low Church, i. 17. Queen Anne, i. 2. Burney, Miss, in Burke's arraignment of Hastings, iii. 286. Burns, Robert, on William IV. And Mrs. Jordan, iv. 97. Bury Street, price of lodgings in, in 1714, i. 70. Bute, Lord: Bribery under, iii. 28, 30. Cabals against Pitt, iii. 26. Character, iii. 7, 28. Foreign policy, iii. 28, 29. House besieged, iii. 117. Influence over Princess of Wales and her son, iii. 8. Prime Minister, iii. 28. Proposes cider tax, iii. 30, 32. Resigns office, iii. 32. Secretary of State, iii. 8. Sketch of, iii. 7. Unpopular, iii. 28, 32. Buxton, Fowell, West Indian slavery and, iv. 190, 191, 194, 195. Byng, Admiral: Fails to relieve Minorca, ii. 297. Tried and shot, ii. 298. Byrne, Miles: Career, iii. 321. Memoirs, iii. 321. Byron, Lord: Assists Greeks, iv. 48. Death at Missolonghi, iv. 50. On George IV. , iii. 242. On Grattan, iii. 307. Scorn of O'Connell's loyalty, iv. 23, 27. Verses on Castlereagh's death, iv. 37. Cabot, John and Sebastian, discover Canada, ii. 283. Calder, Admiral Sir Robert, iii. 336. Calendar, reform of, ii. 275. Campbell, John, Baron, on Lord Harcourt, i. 51. Campeachy logwood question, i. 294, 295; ii. 160. Camperdown, battle of, iii. 318, 336. Canada: French and English colonies in, ii. 283, 284. Sketch of history, ii. 283 _seqq. _ "Canter of Coltbrigg, " ii. 213-215. Canterbury, Archbishop of, attends Queen Caroline, ii. 121. Canning, George: Accepts Governor-Generalship of India, iv. 35. Attitude towards Free Trade and Parliamentary reform, iv. 52, 62. Character, iv. 60, 65. Death, iv. 61. Duel with Lord Castlereagh, iv. 34. Foreign Secretary, iv. 38. Funeral in Westminster Abbey, iv. 62. Monroe doctrine and, iv. 44. Opponents in House of Lords, iv. 59. Oratory, iv. 33, 34, 64. Policy, iv. 34, 38, 41, 42, 43, 52, 55. Summary of, iv. 62. Prime Minister, iv. 55, 58. Resigns office, iv. 7, 31, 34. Sketch of career, iv. 31 _seqq. _, 62. Supports Queen Caroline, iv. 5, 7. Sympathy with Greece, iv. 49, 52. Canning, Stratford, iv. 32. "Canningites, " iv. 65, 72. Carew, Sir George, builds Chichester House, Dublin, i. 80. Caricature in political controversy, i. 52. Caricatures during Hastings's trial, iii. 288. Caricatures of Napoleon Bonaparte, iii. 333. Carnwath, Earl of, a prisoner, i. 137, 138. Caroline, Amelia Elizabeth, Princess of Brunswick, wife of George IV. , iii. 244. Character, iv. 11. Demands to be crowned, iv. 8, 10. Divorce bill, iv. 6; abandoned, iv. 8. Illness and death, iv. 10, 11. Italian witnesses against, iv. 7. Returns to England on accession of George IV. , iv. 5, 6. Caroline, Princess, ii. 38, 71, 79, 105. Attends on Queen, ii. 118, 124. Dislikes Walpole, ii. 126. Caroline, Wilhelmina Dorothea, wife of George II. , i. 303. Action towards Porteous, ii. 62, 66. Acts as Regent, ii. 49. Alarmed for King's safety, ii. 71, 72. Character, i. 276; ii. 77. Death-bed, ii. 114 _seqq. _ Family, ii. 38. Godmother to her granddaughter, ii. 108. Hates Prince of Wales, ii. 40, 50, 71, 76, 118. Lampoons on, ii. 102. Carteret, John, Earl of Granville: Attacks Ministry and Convention, ii. 165. Character, ii. 240, 241; iii. 38. Death, iii. 38. Denounces Convention, ii. 163. Enmity to Walpole, ii. 159, 160, 185. Foreign Policy, ii. 177, 240, 241. Hatred of Pulteney, ii. 192. Knowledge of German, i. 235. Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, i. 239; iii. 38. Motion on Petition against Convention, ii. 164. Moves motion for removal of Walpole, ii. 185. Proclamation against "Drapier's Letters, " i. 247. Proposes address on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 89. Resigns, ii. 244. Secretary of State, ii. 191. Sketch of career, i. 233. Speech on Salt Tax, i. 314. Cartier, Jacques, ascends St. Lawrence, ii. 283. Castlereagh, Viscount (Marquis of Londonderry): Character, iv. 36. Death, iv. 36. Duel with Canning, iv. 34. Policy, iv. 34, 39, 41. Catalans and Peace of Utrecht, i. 94. "Catholic" and "Protestant" Ministers, iv. 54. Catholic Association formed, iv. 21. Catholic disabilities, iii. 307. Catholic emancipation question, iv. 52, 67 _seqq. _ Catholic Relief Bill passed, iv. 78. Catholics, feeling against, i. 143. Catholics, penalty against, i. 216. Cato Street Conspiracy, iv. 2, 15. Censorship for stage and press discussed, ii. 96 _seqq. _ Chadwick, Sir Edwin, on Poor Law Commission, iv. 225, 227. Chait Singh, Rajah of Benares, and Warren Hastings, ii. 269. Chambord, Count de, i. 40. Charing Cross in 1714, i. 68. Charles II. Of Spain: Character, i. 61. Will of, ii. 27. Charles VI. , Emperor, ii. 23. Death, ii. 182. Denounces Walpole, ii. 25. Pragmatic sanction, i. 228. Charles X. Deposed, iv. 98. Charles XII. Of Sweden: Action in Poland, ii. 23. Sketch of, i. 160, 162. Charles River, English fleet in, iii. 173, 182. Charleston in 1765, iii. 77. Charleston, tea landed at, iii. 161. Charlotte, Princess: Death, iii. 348. Marries Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, iii. 348. Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of George III. , iii. 10. Character and personal appearance, iii. 12, 14. Death, iii. 348. Chartists demand vote by ballot, iv. 131. Chaworth, Mary, Mrs. Musters, iv. 170. Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of: Administration in Ireland, ii. 249. Advice to Prince of Wales, ii. 78. Attitude on Penal Laws, ii. 249. Character, ii. 6. Conduct to Johnson, iii. 44. Enmity to Walpole, ii. 159, 160, 185. Irish policy, ii. 7. Moves address on Accession of George II. , ii. 7. On Bolingbroke, i. 117. Bute's nationality, iii. 30. Carteret, i. 235. Lord Cowper, i. 98. Recalled from Ireland, ii. 252. Retires from public life, ii. 274. Secretary of State, ii. 252. Sketch of, ii. 4 _seqq. _ Speech on Convention, ii. 164. Speech on Playhouse Bill, ii. 100. Speech on Reform of Calendar, ii. 275. Viceroy of Ireland, ii. 246, 247. Chichester, Sir Arthur, i. 80. China trade and East India Company, iv. 231. Chippenham election petition, ii. 189, 190. Chiswick, Mr. , sends Warren Hastings to Calcutta, iii. 247. Cholmondeley, Earl of, moves address on Convention, ii. 164. Chudleigh, Colonel, quarrels with Charles Aldworth, i. 58. Chunar fortress, iii. 270. Chunda Sahib: Besieges Trichinopoly, ii. 262. Captured and put to death, ii. 264. Invades Carnatic, ii. 261. Church of England, condition in 1738, ii. 129, 132. Churchill, Charles: Character, iii. 52. Death, iii. 69. Denunciation of Hogarth, iii. 63. Flight, iii. 59. "Rosciad, " iii. 54. Satires, iv. 69. Wilkes and, iii. 55. Cider tax proposed, iii. 30. Claimants to throne (1714), i. 3 _seqq. _ Clare Election (1828), iv. 70, 78. Clarence, Duke of (_see_ William IV. ). Clarendon, Lord, bears tidings of Queen Anne's death to George, i. 56. Clarke, Adam, death, iv. 284. Clarke, George, killed in riot, iii. 129. Clarkson, Thomas, West Indian Slavery and, iv. 195, 200. Clavering, General Francis, iii. 260, 261. Death, iii. 264. Clement, Pope, interview with Charles Stuart, ii. 202. Clerk, Lord Justice, i. 130. Clerkenwell Prison broken open, iii. 203. Cleveland, Duchess of, i. 23. Clifton, engagement at, ii. 223. Clinton at Boston, iii. 175. Clive, Richard, ii. 254. Clive, Robert, ii. 253. Advances against Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 268. Captures Arcot, ii. 262. Character, ii. 255. Discerns Warren Hastings's talent, iii. 250, 252. Escapes from Madras, ii. 260. Forges Admiral Watson's signature, ii. 270. Governor of Fort St. David, ii. 265. Marries, ii. 264. Negotiates with Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269. Protests against Indian Administration, iii. 251. Returns to England, ii. 264, 273. Returns to India, iii. 253. Sketch of career, ii. 256 _seqq. _ Clonmel, State trials at, iv. 179. Clubs in 1714, i. 73. Coalition Ministry (1783), iii. 225, 229 Fall of, iii. 235, 237. Cobbett, William: Death, iv. 282. Prosecution, iv. 154. Sketch of career, iv. 155. Cobden, R. , doctrine of non-intervention, iv. 62. Cochrane, Thomas, Earl of Dundonald, assists Greeks, iv. 48. "Cocoa Tree" coffee-house, i. 76. Code Napoléon, iii. 332. Codrington, Sir Edward, commands at Navarino, iv. 50, 96. Coffee-houses, i. 75, 76. Coke's description of Raleigh, iii. 286. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, death, iv. 283. Colonial Administration System (1765), iii. 80. Committee of Secrecy, i. 104, 168. Compton, Sir Spencer, Lord Wilmington, ii. 107, 189. Character, i. 275. Death, ii. 240. Prime Minister, ii. 191. Speaker of House of Commons, i. 212. Concord, battle and retreat from, iii. 174. Congress of Verona and Vienna (_see_ Verona and Vienna Congress). Congreve, William, sketch of, i. 299. Coningsby, Lord, i. 105. Impeaches Oxford, i. 108. Convention between England and Spain (1739), ii. 161, 168. Petition against, ii. 163. Conway, Circular letter to governors of colonies, iii. 105. Cooke, George, Tory candidate for Middlesex, iii. 117. Death, iii. 124. Coote, Major Eyre, ii. 272. Cope, Sir John, Scottish Commander-in-Chief, ii. 210. Defeated at Preston Pans, ii. 214, 215. Copley, Sir John (_see_ Lyndhurst, Baron). Cork Hill, Dublin, i. 82. Cork in 1714, i. 83. Cornwallis, Charles, Marquis: Commands royal troops in Ireland, iii. 323. Surrenders at Yorktown, iii. 184. Corporation Act repealed, iv. 52, 67. Corstorphine, Dragoons at, ii. 212. Cottenham, Lord Chancellor, iv. 252. Court Street Conspiracy, iii. 160. Covent Garden in 1714, i. 68. Cowper, Spencer, i. 105. Cowper, William, Earl, Lord Chancellor: Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 190. Evidence against, i. 219. Opposes taxing Catholics, i. 216. Sketch of, i. 98. Coxe, Archdeacon, on: Division on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 88. Duke of Newcastle, ii. 33. Crabbe, George: Account of taking of Newgate, iii. 203. Death, iv. 282. _Craftsman_: Objects of, i. 290, 291. On Walpole's excise scheme, i. 318. Picture of Walpole, ii. 14. "Sedition and defamation displayed, " i. 306. Series of pamphlets, i. 286. Started, i. 260. Craggs, Father and Son, i. 197. Crawford, Earl of, on Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 44. Croix, Petit de la, Persian Tales, iii. 254. Croker, John Wilson, ii. 107. Obstructs Reform Bill, iv. 163. Cromarty, Lord, trial, ii. 228. Cromwell, Elizabeth, death, ii. 3. Cruden, Alexander, dislike to Wilkes, iii. 135. Culloden, Battle of, ii. 224. Prisoners, ii. 232. Cumberland, Ernest Augustus, Duke of: Orange Association and, iv. 276, 278. Supports Irish Church, iv. 219. Unpopularity, iv. 102. Cumberland, William Augustus, Duke of (Butcher), ii. 38. Army at Stafford, ii. 217. Character, ii. 223. Commands English troops at Lauffeld, ii. 239. Conduct after Culloden, ii. 226. Invites Pitt to return to office, iii. 73, 93. Queen Caroline's advice to, ii. 118. Curran, John Philpot: Appeal on behalf of Wolfe Tone, iii. 326. Description of Ireland, iv. 27. Curran, Sarah, and Robert Emmet, iii. 329. "Daily Advertiser, " iii. 128. _Daily Post_, iii. 128. Dalton, Sir Charles, Gentleman Usher of Black Rod, i. 278. Dashwood, Francis, Lord Le Despencer, iii. 33, 65. Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 48. Founds brotherhood of Medmenham, iii. 46. Davy, Sir Humphry, iv. 93. Dawson, James, supports Young Pretender, ii. 221, 229. Dawson Street, Dublin, i. 81. Daylesford Manor, Worcestershire, iii. 245, 247. D'Espremesnil, Duval, Governor of Madras, ii. 261. De Launay decapitated, iii. 294. De Quincey, iii. 44. Deccan, Nizam of, sends diamond to George III. , iii. 281. Declaration of Rights, Philadelphia, iii. 173. Declaratory Act, iii. 104, 105. Defoe, Daniel, "Robinson Crusoe, " ii. 1. Demerara, "Insurrection" of slaves, iv. 193. Denman, Thomas, Lord Chief Justice: Defends Queen Caroline, iv. 6, 7, 8. Denmark, King of: Character, i. 3. Treaty with George I. , i. 161. Treaty with George II. , ii. 176. Derby, Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, Earl of: Letter to Peel declining office, iv. 238. Political principles, iv. 217. Secretary to Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, iv. 127. Speech on Emancipation of Slaves, iv. 196. Speech on Irish State Church, iv. 217, 246. Derby, Reform riot at, iv. 170. Derwentwater, Earl of, i. 137. Executed, i. 142. Dettingen, battle of, ii. 182. Devonshire, Duke of, Premier of Coalition Ministry, ii. 298. D'Iberville on Whigs, i. 18. Dickens, Charles, iv. 286. Dinner hour, changes in, iii. 18. Dinwiddie, Governor of Virginia, ii. 285. Disarmament of clans, ii. 208, 232. Disarming Act (1716), result of, ii. 209. Disraeli (_see_ Beaconsfield, Lord). Divorce Bill (1820), iv. 6. Abandoned, iv. 8. Don Carlos: Compact to protect (1733), ii. 26. Heir to Parma and Placentia, ii. 28. Dorset, Duke of, English ambassador to France, iii. 295. Drake, Governor, in Fulta Island, iii. 249. Draper, Sir William, replies to letters of Junius, iii. 129. Drapier's letters, i. 240, 242. Drummond, Lord James, supports Young Pretender, ii. 221. Dublin coffee-houses, i. 82. Dublin in 1714, i. 80. Dubois, Abbé, Sketch of, i. 155. Duddington, Lieutenant, Commands "Gaspee, " iii. 152. Dumouriez and Duke of Wellington, i. 129. Duncan, Admiral (Lord Camperdown): Deserted by squadron, iii. 335. Victory of Camperdown, iii. 318, 336. Duncannon, Lord, Commissioner of Woods and Forests, iv. 127. Dundas, Henry, Viscount Melville: Catholic Relief Bill for Scotland, iii. 195. Fall of, iii. 338. Sketch of, iii. 232. Dundonald, Admiral, last of sea-kings, iii. 336. Dunleary (_see_ Kingstown). Dunoyer, dancing-master and spy, ii. 106. Dupleix, Governor of S. India, ii. 261. Dreams of French empire in India, ii. 258. Founds Chandernagor, ii. 258. Indian policy, iii. 249. Recalled to France, ii. 262. Refuses to ratify Convention and pillages Madras, ii. 259. Duplicity universal, i. 30. Durham, Earl of, iv. 291. Efforts for Parliamentary reform, iv. 22. Lord Privy Seal, iv. 127. Manners, iv. 121. Sketch of, iv. 127. Suggestions on Reform Bill, iv. 129. Dutch (Batavian) expedition to Ireland, iii. 317. Dymoke, King's champion, iii. 13. East India Companies, ii. 254, 260. East India Company: Charter renewed, iv. 230, 232. Clamors for revenge, iii. 163. Forces tea on America, iii. 161. Policy, iii. 248 _seqq. _ Semi-regal authority, iii. 230. Edgeworth, Talbot, i. 82. Edinburgh: Bill, ii. 66, 68. City guard, ii. 60. Condition in 1745, ii. 210. In 1714, i. 84. Life in, i. 85. Edinburgh Castle: Jacobite plan to capture, i. 129. Reduction abandoned by Young Pretender, ii. 216. Edwards, spy in Cato Street conspiracy, iv. 17, 19. Effingham, Lord, Earl Marshal, iii. 13. Egremont, Lord, iii. 59, 63. House besieged, iii. 117. Wilkes before, iii. 60. Elcho, Lord, ii. 227. Eldon, Earl of, Lord Chancellor, iv. 3. Attitude on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 69. Attitude towards death penalty for stealing, iv. 21. Resigns office, iv. 57. Toryism, iv. 3. Elizabeth, Electress Palatine of the Rhine, i. 5. Elizabeth of Parma, wife of Philip V. , ii. 28. Ellis, relations with Nawab Mir Kasim, iii. 251. Emerson prophesies rise of Orientalism in England, iii. 254. Emily, Princess: At her father's death-bed, ii. 304. Attends on Queen, ii. 117, 122, 123. Dislikes Walpole, ii. 126. Emmet, Robert, iii. 313, 314; iv. 206. Projects for Independence of Ireland, iii. 327. Emmet, Thomas Addis, iii. 313, 314. England: American Colonies and Advantages of union between, iii. 80. Declares war against Spain, ii. 178. Politics of Continent, and, i. 154, 225. Protests against War of Independence, iii. 183, 184. Recuperates, iii. 187. Spain and, trade disputes, ii. 150. English Copper Company and South Sea Company, i. 193. English Protestant Association, iii. 192, 195. Meeting in St. George's Fields, iii. 169. English substituted for Latin in indictments, etc. , i. 302. Entinck, John, Editor of _Monitor_, iii. 51. Eon, Chevalier d', present to Wilkes, iii. 134. Erskine, Thomas, Lord: Defends Lord George Gordon, iii. 210. On Coronation oath, iv. 54. Eugene, Prince, of Savoy, ii. 24, 35. Excise Bill (1733), i. 317. Abandoned, i. 320. Excise Reform, i. 311. Exeter in 1714, i. 79. Factories Act (1833), iv. 202, 204. Factory labor and State, iv. 201, 202. Fairman, Colonel, Orange lodges and, iv. 278. Falkirk, Hawley defeated at, ii. 223. "Family compacts, " ii. 26; iii. 27. Famines in Scotland, i. 89. "Fancy Franchises, " iv. 183. Fane, British Envoy at Florence, ii. 202. Fashions in 1760, iii. 16. Ferguson, on Edinburgh City Guard, ii. 60. Fielding, Henry: On mob in London, iii. 123. Satires on Pretender, ii. 219. Fielding, Sir John, house sacked, iii. 203. Finch, Lord, presents Bolingbroke's petition to Lords, i. 258. Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, iii. 309, 314; iv. 206. Death, iii. 323. Marriage, iii. 220. Sketch of career, iii. 312. Withdraws from Dublin Parliament, iii. 319. Fitzgerald, Vesey, defeated by O'Connell, iv. 74. Fitzherbert, Mrs. : Death, iv. 289. George IV. And, iii. 242; iv. 88. Fitzwilliam, Earl, Viceroy of Ireland, iii. 308. Flaxman, John, iv. 93. Fleet ditch, i. 72. Fleet marriages, ii. 279. Fleming, Sir Michael, and Lord George Gordon, iii. 199. Fletcher, Andrew, in Edinburgh in 1745, ii. 211. Fleury, Cardinal, Prime Minister of France, i. 264, 291. Florida and Carolina, dispute as to boundaries, ii. 160. Fontenoy, Battle of, ii. 210. Foote, on Alexander Wedderburn, iii. 158. Forbes, Duncan, in Edinburgh in 1745, ii. 62. Foreign aid for America, iii. 183. Forster, Thomas: Escapes, i. 142. In Newgate, i. 137. Fort Duquesne built, ii. 286. Fort Duquesne taken, iii. 180. Fort St. David, Olive at, ii. 260, 263. Fort Ticonderoga taken, iii. 79. "Forty-five, " Account of Rebellion, ii. 203 _seqq. _ Forty-shilling freeholders, iv. 179. Fowke, charged with conspiracy, iii. 261. Fox, Charles James, i. 28. Acquainted with Paris, iii. 293. Antagonism to Pitt, iii. 225. As Leader of Opposition, i. 287. Attitude on Regency, iii. 243. Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 296, 299. Attitude towards Pitt, iii. 339. Character, iii. 227. Coalition with North, iii. 225. Contracted with Pitt, iii. 212 Death, iii. 340; iv. 61. Early life, iii. 142. Foreign Secretary and Leader of Commons, iii. 340. Friend to Ireland, iii. 319; iv. 23. India Bill, iii. 230 _seqq. _ On Henry Grattan, iii. 307. Parliamentary career, iii. 141, 143. Praises of Pitt, iii. 223. Prince of Wales's conduct to, iii. 243. Resigns office, iii. 225. Scholarship, iii. 143. Secretary of State, iii. 224. Speech on Middlesex Election Petition, iii. 132. Fox, Henry (_see_ Holland, Lord). Fox's Martyrs, iii. 237. France: Acknowledges independence of America, iii. 183. Condition before Revolution, iii. 291. Declares war (1793), iii. 303. In 1716, i. 154, 155. Spain and, Alliance between, ii. 25, 26, 182. Spanish policy, iv. 42. Francis, Philip: Character, iii. 260. Duel with Hastings, iii. 267. Hostile to Hastings, iii. 280. Probable author of "Letters of Junius, " iii. 39. Franklin, Benjamin: At Bar of House, iii. 103, 156. Gala suit, iii. 156, 184. Letters of Hutchinson and Oliver and, iii. 153, 155. On Whitefield's eloquence, ii. 139. On Wilkes's candidature for Parliament, iii. 116, 132. Signs Peace in Paris, iii. 184. Sketch of, iii. 102. Frazer, Under Secretary of State, iii. 235. Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, ii. 38. Attempts to see his mother, ii. 118. Banished from King's palaces, ii. 108. Bids for popularity, ii. 71. Carries off his wife to London, ii. 106. Character, ii. 71, 72, 74, 77. Claims independent allowance, ii. 77. Conduct on declaration of war, ii. 178. Death, ii. 276. Epitaphs, ii. 276. Income, ii. 87. Marries Princess Augusta, ii. 47. Patriots and, ii. 50, 108, 110. Relations with George II. , ii. 39, 50, 76, 91, 104. Sketch of, ii. 39. Votes against address on Convention, ii. 169. Frederick II. Of Prussia (the Great), ii. 280. Account of abandonment of Excise Bill, i. 320. Description of George I. , i. 270. Occupies Silesia, ii. 182. Frederick William, King of Prussia, and George II. , ii. 45. Free Trade, movement towards, iv. 93. Free Trade, Walpole and, i. 317. Freedom of City, origin of, iv. 256. French aims in America, ii. 285. French expeditions to Ireland, iii. 315, 323, 325. French in Canada, ii. 283. French Revolution, iii. 284, 293 _seqq. _ Condition of France before, iii. 291. England and, iii. 302, 306. French Revolution of 1830, iv. 98. Fuseli, Henry, iv. 93. Gage, General: Arrives in Massachusetts, iii. 165. Raid upon stores in Concord, iii. 174. Galland, version of "Arabian Nights, " iii. 254. Game Laws, severity of, iv. 84. Garrick, David, and Samuel Johnson, iii. 42. Gascoigne, General, amendment to Reform Bill, iv. 150. "Gaspee, " iii. 152. Gates, General Horatio, iii. 179. Traitor, iii. 184. Gay, John; "Beggar's Opera, " i. 302; ii. 95. Lampoons, ii. 102. "Polly, " ii. 95. Secretary to Lord Clarendon, i. 38. Sketch of, ii. 3. _Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser_, iii. 128. George I. (George Louis, Elector of Hanover): Attitude towards Prince of Wales, i. 153, 256, 274. Character, i. 6, 8, 58, 91, 269. Conduct during 1715, i. 136. Coronation, i. 101. Death, i. 266. Descent, i. 6. Directions about Czar, i. 163. Distrusts Marlborough, i. 54. Entry into London, i. 58. Extent of Empire, i. 89. Journey to England, i. 56. Letter to King of Spain on Gibraltar, i. 296. New Lords Justices, i. 54. Principles of government, i. 91. Proclaimed King, i. 47, 49. Project for kidnapping Prince of Wales, ii. 109, 110. Stories of later years, i. 266. Treatment of Oxford and Bolingbroke, i. 101. Visits Hanover, i. 152, 236, 265. Will, i. 269. George II. : At Dettingen, ii. 182. Character, i. 274; ii. 46, 48, 76, 117, 123, 304. Consults Walpole, ii. 195. Death, ii. 303. Godfather to his grand-daughter, ii. 108. Guardian of the Realm and Lieutenant, i. 153. His family, ii. 38. In danger through storms, ii. 69. Income, ii. 89. Letter to Queen, ii. 76. On Handel, ii. 52. Opens Parliament (1728), i. 282. Negotiates with Carteret and Pulteney, ii. 244. Party when Prince of Wales, i. 257. Proposes allowance to Prince of Wales, ii. 81, 86. Proposes duel with Frederick William of Prussia, ii. 46. Relations with George I. , i. 153, 256, 274; ii. 109. Relations with Prince of Wales, ii. 40, 50, 76, 104 _seqq. _, 118. Royal speech (1727), i. 278. Speech from throne (1735), ii. 22. Sympathy with his mother, i. 153. Unpopular, ii. 69. Visits Hanover, ii. 47, 49, 210. George III. : Accession, iii. 2. Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 53. Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 301. Attitude towards Wilkes, iii. 17, 119, 132. Birth, ii. 278. Character, iii. 4, 241; iv. 91. Coronation, iii. 12. Courage during Gordon riots, iii. 206. Death, iii. 348. Dislikes Fox and North, iii. 225. Dislikes Pitt, iii. 3, 26. Dismisses Fox and North, iii. 235. Grenville and, iii. 71, 72, 93. Ideal of governing, iii. 23, 25, 80. Illnesses, iii. 72, 243, 341. Improvements during reign, iii. 349. Letter to Temple on India Bills, iii. 234. Ministry of all the talents and, iii. 340. Personal appearance, iii. 3. Policy towards American colonies, iii. 78, 79, 153, 164. Private life, iii. 19. Speech from throne (1760), iii. 22. George IV. (Augustus Frederick): Accession and illness, iv. 1. Attitude towards Canning, iv. 31, 37, 46, 48, 55, 65. Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 54, 55, 76. Attitude towards Lord Grey, iv. 76. Character, iii. 241; iv. 24, 28, 30, 89 _seqq. _ Coronation, iv. 9. Death, iv. 87. Endeavors to obtain divorce, iv. 3, 4, 6, 8. Friend of Fox and Sheridan, iii. 242; iv. 23. Illness, iv. 86. In opposition, iii. 242. Interview with Wellington, Lyndhurst, and Peel, iv. 77. Letters to Lord Liverpool, iv. 27, 37. Marries Princess Caroline of Brunswick, iii. 244. Mrs. Fitzherbert and, iii. 242; iv. 88. Regent, iii. 341. Visits Hanover, iv. 28. Visits Ireland, iv. 23 _seqq. _ Visits Scotland, iv. 29. Georgia, John Wesley visits, ii. 127, 134. Georgian drama, ii. 94. Georgian literature, iii. 171. Gheriah, Pirate stronghold, ii. 265. Gibbon on Gordon riots, iii. 196. Gibraltar: Besieged (1727), i. 228. Debate on restitution of, i. 296. Gin riots, ii. 56. Gladsmuir (_see_ Preston Pans, battle of). Gladstone, John, entertains George Canning, iv. 35. Gladstone, William Ewart, iv. 35. Junior Lord of Treasury, iv. 239. On "Drapier's Letters, " i. 245. Speech on Irish Church revenues, iv. 247. Glasgow in 1714, i. 86. Gloucester, Duke of, death, i. 3. Glynn, Serjeant, M. P. For Middlesex, iii. 124. Goderich, Viscount: Colonial and War Secretary, iv. 58. Prime Minister, iv. 65. "Prosperity Robinson, " iv. 65. Resigns office, iv. 67. Sketch of, iv. 65. Godolphin, Countess of, i. 210. Godolphin, Earl of, Lord Privy Seal, ii. 107. Goethe, referred to, iii. 144, 145. "Sorrows of Werther, " iii. 167. Goldsmith, Oliver: Plays, iii. 170. Sketch of career and writings, iii. 167, 171. Gordon, Colonel, threatens rioters, iii. 199. Gordon, Elizabeth, Duchess of, improves Scotch agriculture, i. 88. Gordon, Lord George: Acquitted, iii. 210. Arrested, iii. 209. Death in Newgate, iii. 210. Denounces Burke, iii. 199. Presents petition to Commons, iii. 198. Sketch of, iii. 192. Gordon riots, iii. 196 _seqq. _ Gordon, Sir John, ii. 223. Government by party, i. 284. Graeme, Colonel, mission, iii. 11. Grafton, Duke of (I. ), killed in Cork, i. 83. Grafton, Duke of (II. ), Bill to suspend Habeas Corpus Act, i. 213. Grafton (Augustus Henry Fitzroy), Duke of (III. ): Junius's indictment of, iii. 129. Resigns place in Rockingham ministry, iii. 108. Sketch of, iii. 35. Graham, Sir James: First Lord of Admiralty, iv. 127. Refuses office in Peel's ministry, iv. 238. Resigns office, iv. 218. Speech on Irish Church revenues, iv. 246. Granard, Lord, tells King James of conspiracy, i. 24. Grant, Sir Archibald, interest in road-making, i. 88. Granville, Earl of (_see_ Carteret, John). Grattan, Henry: Buried in Westminster Abbey, iv. 23. Leader of Irish, iii. 307. Withdraws from Dublin Parliament, iii. 319. Gray, "Elegy in a Country Church-yard, " ii. 289. Great Seal stolen, iii. 237. "Grecian" coffee-house, i. 76. Greece: struggle for independence, iv. 40, 48. Green, J. B. , on "Family Compact, " ii. 31. Greene, Nathaniel, iii. 176, 179. Gregory XIII. Reforms calendar, ii. 275. Grenville, George, iii. 26, 57. Colonial policy, iii. 84, 87. Prime minister, iii. 72. Proposes tax to maintain garrison in America, iii. 87. Regency Bill and, iii. 72. Sketch of, iii. 31. Speech on Middlesex election petition, iii. 131. Stamp Act, iii. 87, 90. Grenville, James, iii. 26. Grenville, William Wyndham, Lord, Ministry of all the talents, iii. 340. Greville, Charles, on: Duel between Wellington and Winchilsea, iv. 83. Edmund Burke, iii. 96. George IV. 's illness, iv. 86. James and John Stuart Mill, iv. 281. Meeting Macaulay, iv. 185. Princess Victoria, iv. 290, 291. William IV. , iv. 114, 115. William IV. And Whig ministers, iv. 175. Grey, Charles, Earl: Appeal to archbishops and bishops on Reform Bill, iv. 171. Appeals to country, iv. 152. Attacks Canning, iv. 59. Attitude towards electoral reform, iv. 52, 59. Attitude towards Irish State Church, iv. 218, 220. Catholic Emancipation and, iv. 76. Character, iv. 120. Introduces third Reform Bill, iv. 173. Irish grievances and, iv. 207. Leader of Opposition, iv. 103. Motion on speech from throne, iv. 104. Prime Minister, iv. 122. Resigns office, iv. 233. Scheme for creating new peers, iv. 176, 180. Speech on reform, iv. 108. Speech on Reform Bill (second), iv. 168. Grey, Earl: Committed to Tower, i. 214. Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 190. Grey, Sir George, Under-Secretary of Colonies, iv. 252. Grosvenor, Sir Richard, names squares and streets, i. 68. Grote, George: On Irish State Church system, iv. 210. Motion for ballot in municipal elections, iv. 259. Sketch of, iv. 215. Speech on Ward's motion on Irish Church, iv. 216, 217. Guelf, history of family, i. 5. Guildhall banquet rumors, iv. 112. Haddington, Lord, introduces sowing grass seeds, i. 88. Haidar: Grudge against English, iii. 265. Sketch of career, iii. 265. Halhed, friend of Sheridan, iii. 217, 218. Halifax, Lord, iii. 59. Wilkes before, iii. 60. Halkett, Sir P. K. , warns General Braddock, ii. 286. Hall, Robert, death, iv. 284. Hamilton, James, Duke of, killed in duel, i. 122. Hamilton, Lady Archibald, accompanies Prince and Princess of Wales to London, ii. 107. Hamilton (Single-speech), Secretary to Halifax, iii. 99. Hampden, John, and ship money, i. 247. Hampden, Richard, i. 105. Hampton Court Palace, Royal Family in, ii. 105, 106. Handel: Reception of "Messiah, " ii. 51. Royal Family and, ii. 51. Hanger, George, iii. 244. Hanover: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's account of, i. 152. Separation from English Crown proposed, ii. 105. Sketch of House of, i. 5. Thackeray's description of, i. 55. Treaty of, i. 295. Hanoverian dynasty, position of, iv. 94. Harcourt, Simon, Lord Chancellor: Motion on Oxford's impeachment, i. 169. Sketch of career, i. 49. Hardwicke, Philip Yorke, Lord Chancellor, ii. 9, 192. Heads deputation to Prince of Wales, ii. 81. On declaration of war, ii. 177. Opposes Pitt, iii. 26. Passes Marriage Act, ii. 279. Harley, Robert (_see_ Oxford, Earl of). Harley, Thomas, arrest ordered, i. 106. Harrington, Lord, Secretary of State, i. 304. Harrison, Audrey, marries third Marquis Townshend, iii. 110. Harrowby, Lord, and Cato Street conspiracy, iv. 18. Harvard College, places in lists, iii. 77. Hastings, Howard, assists his nephew, iii. 246. Hastings, Lady Elizabeth, Essays by Congreve and Steele on, i. 301. Hastings, Pynaston, iii. 245. Hastings, Warren: Acquitted, iii. 285. Advice on quarrel of Nawab and Ellis, iii. 252. At Bar of House, iii. 276, 289. Attempts literature, iii. 253. Benares expedition, iii. 269. Buys Dalesford, iii. 276. Charges against, iii. 258. Company's representative at Murshidabad, iii. 250. Defence at Bar of House, iii. 276. Duel with Francis, iii. 267. Enemies, iii. 260, 264, 265. Evidence before House of Commons' Committee, iii. 253. Friendship for Sir James Bland-Burges, iii. 278. Governor-General, iii. 260; his Council, iii. 260 _seqq. _ Governor of Bengal, iii. 257. Impeached, iii. 281. Indian policy, iii. 273. Life at Daylesford, iii. 288. Marriage, iii. 250, 256. Oriental diplomacy, iii. 249. Oriental studies, iii. 254. Presents Deccan diamond to king, iii. 281. Reforms needed and carried out, iii. 257, 258. Relations with Impey, iii. 267, 268. Resignation accepted, iii. 264. Returns to England, iii. 253. Returns to India, iii. 255. Scheme for Supreme Court and Council, iii. 267. Sketch of career, iii. 245 _seqq. _ State of India on his arrival, iii. 249. Trial, iii. 281 _seqq. _ Work accomplished, iii. 258. Hatzfeldt, Count, mobbed, iii. 118. Hawley, defeated at Falkirk, ii. 223. Hazlitt on Steele and Addison, i. 300, 301. Heath, --, iii. 179. Heber, Bishop, death, iv. 92. Heights of Abraham, ii. 288, 289. Hell-Fire Club, iii. 47. Hemans, Felicia, death, iv. 284. Henry IV. Becomes a Catholic, i. 13. Henry, Patrick, speech against Stamp Act, iii. 90. Hepburn, James, of Keith, ii. 214. Herbert, Colonel (Lord Carnarvon), Treatment of Lord George Gordon, iii. 202. Herbert, Sidney, as debater, iv. 239. Herrenhausen, i. 55. Herschel, Sir John, on Newton, i. 273. Hertford, Lord, preparations against insurgents, iii. 205. Hervey, James, author of "Meditations, " ii. 128. Hervey, John, Lord, Baron Hervy of Ickworth: Appeal on Convention, ii. 163. Attends dying Queen, ii. 118, 123. Compares Chesterfield with Scarborough and Carteret, ii. 5. Interviews with Walpole on Queen's death, ii. 120, 125. Lampoons, ii. 102. Memoirs of Reign of George II. , i. 306, 308. On Duke of Argyll, i. 44. On Frederick, Prince of Wales, ii. 39, 105. On George II. 's danger, ii. 69. On George II. 's illness, ii. 303. On Handel and Royal Family, ii. 51. On Hardwicke and Talbot, ii. 10. On letters between George I. And Prince of Wales, ii. 109. On Princess Caroline, ii. 38. On Princess Emily, ii. 38. On Sir William Wyndham, i. 288. On Walpole being indispensable, ii. 91. Sedition and Defamation displayed, i. 306. Sketch of, i. 306. Supports Walpole's policy, ii. 160, 168. Takes news of Prince of Wales's claim to Queen, ii. 78, 79. Hessian mercenaries, i. 291, 292. For America, iii. 183. In Ireland, iii. 322. Highlands, modern prosperity of, ii. 233. Highlands, pacification after Culloden, ii. 227. Hill, Frank H. , quoted on: Fame and George Canning, iv. 59. Peel and art of government, iv. 57. Hill, Rowland, death, iv. 284. Hill, Sir George, recognizes Wolfe Tone, iii. 325. Hillsborough, Lord, Secretary of State, iii. 147. Colonial policy, iii. 147, 148, 150, 152. Hoadley, Dr. , Bishop of Winchester, opposed to Test Act, ii. 110, 111. Hoche, General: Commands expedition to Ireland, iii. 315. Death, iii. 318. Hogarth, William: Caricature of Churchill, iii. 63. Caricature of Wilkes, iii. 61. Death, iii. 68. "March to Finchley, " ii. 231. Pictures of London, i. 64, 65. "Polling Day, " ii. 188. Portrait of Lord Lovat, ii. 230. Sketch of career, ii. 230. Hogg, James, death, iv. 282. Holland, Henry Fox, Lord: As Administrator and Debater, ii. 274. Asked to support Prince of Wales's claim, ii. 78. Character, iii. 33, 141. Forms Opposition to Pitt, iii. 26. Macaulay and C. Greville dine with, iv. 185. Paymaster, ii. 298. Protests against words "On the true faith of a Christian, " iv. 69. Secretary at War, ii. 296. Holroyd, Colonel, threatens Lord George Gordon, iii. 199. Holwell, on Black Hole of Calcutta, ii. 267. Holy Alliance and Congress of Verona, iv. 39, 42, 45. Horne-Tooke, John, Rector of Brentford: Candidate for Westminster, iii. 139. Quarrels with Wilkes, iii. 136. Supports Wilkes, iii. 117. Horneck, Mary, "Jessamy Bride, " iii. 169. Houghton, Walpole at, i. 196. House of Commons: Chairman of Committee, iv. 160. Commencement of Party organization, i. 256. Committee on Convention, ii. 171. Debates on: Allowance for Prince of Wales, ii. 82, 88. American Colonies, iii. 162. Middlesex Election, iii. 131. Restitution of Gibraltar, i. 297. Supply to George II. , i. 280. Election Petitions, ii. 189. Gordon presents petition to, iii. 198. Growth of, i. 32. In Committee, iv. 160. Inadequate accommodation, iv. 270, 271. Ladies' Gallery, iv. 272. Numbers in 1714, i. 51. Obstruction in, iv. 159, 160 _seqq. _ Petition of merchants against Spaniards, ii. 153. Petitions against Spaniards, i. 294. Secession from, ii. 172, 174. Subsidies for foreign mercenaries, i. 293. House of Lords: Agitation against, iv. 167. Debates on: Bill for Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 43. Convention, ii. 164, 168. Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 89. India Bills rejected, iii. 235. Numbers in 1714, i. 51. Protest against Address on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 90. Reform and, iv. 169, 173, 176. Scene during Gordon Riot, iii. 197, 201. Walpole and, ii. 159. Houses of Parliament (old), i. 64. Destroyed by fire, iv. 267. Houses of Parliament, design for new, iv. 269, 270. Howe, Admiral Richard, Viscount, Mutiny at Spithead and, iii. 335. Howe, William, Viscount, iii. 182. Commands at Breed Hill, iii. 176. Humbert, General, commands expedition to Ireland, iii. 323. Hume, David, on Whitefield's eloquence, ii. 139. Hume, Joseph, Committee on Orangeism, iv. 387. Hungerford speaks for Bolingbroke, i. 108. Hunt, Leigh, on: George IV. , iii. 242. William Congreve, i. 301. Hunt, Orator, defeats Stanley at Preston, iv. 131. Huskisson, William: Attitude on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 68. Colonial and War Secretary, iv. 65, 67. Death, iv. 103. Resigns office, iv. 72. Sketch of career, iv. 52. Treasurer of Navy and President of Board of Trade, iv. 58. Hutchinson, Governor-General of Massachusetts: House in Boston ransacked, iii. 91. Letters to Whately, iii. 153. Hyde Park, camp in, i. 121. Ibraham Pasha, military capacity, iv. 49. Imhoff, Baroness von, and Warren Hastings, iii. 255. Impey, Elijah, Chief Justice, iii. 261, 268. Impressment for Navy abolished, iv. 263, 267. India Bills: Fox's, iii. 230 _seqq. _ Pitt's, iii. 237, 238. Indian Empire, ii. 257. Condition in 1707, ii. 257. Three Presidencies, ii. 253. Inglis, Sir Robert Harry, speech on Reform Bill, iv. 144. Insurrection of 1715, i. 118 _seqq. _ Conditions of success, i. 118. Intrigues in Cabinet, i. 251. Ireland: Agitation in 1724, i. 240. Condition in 1797, iii. 318. Grievances, iii. 306. In 1714, i. 80. New copper coinage, i. 240. Irish and English Parliaments, i. 179. Irish Brigade at Fontenoy and Lauffeld, ii. 239. Irish clergy, ii. 130. Irish House of Lords, i. 178. Irish Parliament, i. 80; iii. 307. Abolished, iv. 206. Irish, Penal Laws against, ii. 248. Irish Rebellion of '98, iii. 313, 314 _seqq. _; iv. 206. Irish State Church question, tithes, iv. 207 _seqq. _ Debate on, iv. 212. (_See also_ Tithe question, Ireland. ) Irish vote, iv. 244. Irving, Washington, essay on Robert Emmet, iii. 329. Isla, Earl of, i. 250. Italy in 1716, i. 154. Jacobite demonstration in England, i. 121, 135. Jacobitism and Tory cause, iii. 24. Jamaica: Act to mitigate punishment of slaves, iv. 193. Jekyll, Sir Joseph, Gin Act, ii. 56. Jenkins, Captain, story of his ear, ii. 158. Johnson, Samuel: English dictionary, ii. 299. Epitaph on Goldsmith, iii. 171. Friend of Goldsmith, iii. 169. Interview with Wilkes, iii. 138. On acquittal of Lord George Gordon, iii. 210. On Alexander Wedderburn, iii. 158. On authorship of _Letters of Junius_, iii. 131. On state of Irish, ii. 248. On taking of Newgate, iii. 203. Opinion of Thomas Sheridan, iii. 217. Receives pension, iii. 55. Regard for Warren Hastings, iii. 255. Sketch of, iii. 39 _seqq. _ Visits Paris, iii. 293. Jones, Inigo, lays out Covent Garden, i. 68. Jones, Paul, commands "Le Bonhomme Richard, " iii. 183. Jones, Sir William, Persian grammar, iii. 254. Jonson, Ben, Comedies, i. 299. Jordan, Mrs. , and William IV. , iv. 97. Julius Caesar regulates calendar, ii. 275. _Junius's Letters in Public Advertiser_, iii. 128. Kazim Bazar Settlement, iii. 249. Keats, John, death, iv. 92. Kean, Edmund, death, iv. 285. Kelly supports Young Pretender, ii. 205. Kemble, John, death, iv. 92. Kendal, Mlle. Schulemberg, Duchess of, i. 7, 241, 266. Bribed by Bolingbroke, i. 267. Death, i. 266. Kenmure, Viscount, i. 137. Executed, i. 142. Kennett, Lord Mayor of London, iii. 201. Kent, Edward, Duke of, death, iii. 348. Kent, Duchess of, and William IV. , iv. 117. Kenyon defends Lord George Gordon, iii. 210. Ker, Lord Mark, reception of Cope, ii. 215. Kilmansegge, Mme. (Countess of Darlington), i. 7. Kilmarnock, Lord, trial of, ii. 228, 229. Kilwarden, Lord Chief Justice: Action respecting Wolfe Tone, iii. 326. Murdered, iii. 328. King's Evil, iii. 39. King's friends, iii. 108. Kingstown, origin of name, iv. 25. Kinnison, David, iii. 161. "Kit-Kat" Club, i. 74. Kneller: portrait of Queen Anne, i. 2. Knighton, Sir William, sketch of, iv. 47. Königsmark, Aurora, mother of Maurice de Saxe, i. 8. Königsmark, Charles John, i. 7. Murders Lord Thynne, i. 8. Königsmark, Philip Christof, assassinated, i. 7. Kosciusko in America, iii. 183. La Bourdonnais: Besieges and takes Madras, ii. 259. Founds colonies of Ile de France and Bourbon, ii. 258. Sent to France under arrest, ii. 259. La Vendée, Royalist revolt in, iii. 303. La Vrilličre, Mme. , i. 237. Lade, Sir John, iii. 244. Lafayette: Demands revival of States-General, iii. 293. In America, iii. 183. Lamb, Charles: Death, iv. 284. On "Robinson Crusoe, " ii. 2. Lambton, J. G. (_see_ Durham, Earl of). Lampooners, ii. 102. Landor, Walter Savage: Epigram on the Four Georges, iii. 242. On George I. And George II. , i. 273. Langdale, distilleries fired by mob, iii. 207. Lauderdale, Lord, attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 301. Lauffeld, battle of, ii. 239. Law, defends Warren Hastings, iii. 285. Law, John, forms Mississippi Company, i. 184. Law, William, "Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, " ii. 133. Lawrence, Major, commands in S. India (1751), ii. 264. Lawrence, Sir Thomas, iv. 93. Layer, Christopher: Arrested, i. 219. Hanged, i. 221. Lecky, William E. H. , on: Catholics and Protestants, iv. 55. Shrewsbury as Lord High Treasurer, i. 46. Lee, Richard Henry, on George Washington, iii. 189. Lee, General Charles, iii. 179. Traitor, iii. 184. Leeds, iv. 99. Leeds, Duke of, protests against Act for Dependency of Ireland, i. 178. Leibnitz on Electress Sophia, i. 4. Lennox, Lady Sarah, sketch of, iii. 9. Leopold, King of the Belgians, iv. 117, 290. Lepell, Mary, Lady Hervey, i. 307, 308. Lessing, "Laocoon, " iii. 98. Referred to, iii. 145. Leszczynski, Stanislaus, King of Poland, sketch of, ii. 23. _Letters of Junius_ in _Public Advertiser_, iii. 128. Authorship, iii. 130. Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, i. 290. Lexington, battle at, ii. 43; iii. 174. Liberal political principles, rise of, iv. 94. Lightfoot, Hannah, iii. 8. Limerick invested by William III. , i. 83. Limerick, Treaty of, i. 83. Linley, Elizabeth (Mrs. Richard B. Sheridan), iii. 218. Liverpool: As commercial port, iv. 99. In 1714, i. 79. Memorials of Canning, iv. 34. Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened, iv. 103. Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of: Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 34. Attitude towards popular liberty, iv. 3. Character, iii. 345. Death, iv. 62. Illness, iv. 55, 58. Prime Minister, iv. 3. Recommends Canning as Foreign Secretary, iv. 37. Lloyd, Dr. , at Westminster School, iii. 54. Logwood Trade on Campeachy Bay, i. 294, 295. London: In panic, iii. 204. In 1714, i. 63. In 1760, iii. 15. Penny Post, i. 78. Poverty in, ii. 89. State during '45, ii. 218. London University Charter, iv. 261. Londonderry, Marquis of (_see_ Castlereagh, Viscount). Lord High Treasurer, office of, i. 46. Lord Mayor of London committed to Tower, iii. 135. Lord Mayor of London presents addresses to King, iii. 133. Lord Treasurership in Commission, i. 97. "Lords of Trade, " iii. 80. Louis XIV. And Stuart cause, i. 117. Louis XV. Places Stanislaus Leszczynski on throne of Poland, ii. 23. Louis XVI. : Character, iii. 295. Executed, iii. 300, 303. Louis Napoleon, Emperor, demeanor, i. 127. Louis Napoleon, Prince, i. 10. Louis Philippe, King of the French, iv. 98, 105. Louisiana, ii. 283. Lovat, Simon Fraser, Lord, sketch of, ii. 229. Lowe, Sir Hudson, and Napoleon Bonaparte, iii. 344. Lowland Agriculture, i. 87. Loyalty in 1714, i. 59. Luttrell, Colonel: Opposes Wilkes, iii. 126. Petition against, iii. 132. Lyall, Sir Alfred, on Hastings's application for annuity for his wife, iii. 289. Lyndhurst, John Singleton Copley, Baron, iv. 58, 65. Amendment on Reform Bill (third), iv. 174. Interview with King on Catholic emancipation, iv. 77. Lord Chancellor, iv. 239. Opposes Municipal Bill, iv. 259. Oratory, iv. 174. Lyons rises against Paris, iii. 303. Lyttelton in politics and literature, ii. 274. Maberly, house sacked, iii. 201. Macartney, General, returns to England, i. 122. Macartney, Lord, governor of Madras, iii. 266. Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Lord: On Arbuthnot, ii. 21. On Irish tithe question, iv. 210. On Warren Hastings, iii. 258. Sketch of, iv. 184. Macaulay, Zachary, West Indian Slavery and, iv. 190. Macclesfield, Thomas Parker, Earl of: Impeached, i. 262. On reform of calendar, ii. 275. M'Cullock, Lieutenant, suggests scaling Heights of Abraham, ii. 288. Macdonald, Aeneas, evidence on '45, ii. 205, 227. Macdonald of Barrisdale, ii. 227. Macdonald of Sleat refuses to support Young Pretender, ii. 205. Macdonald, Sir John, supports Young Pretender, ii. 205, Macdonalds' conduct at Culloden, ii. 225. Mackintosh, Brigadier, escapes from Newgate, i. 142. Mackintosh, Sir James: Bill to abolish death penalty for minor offences, iv. 20. Death, iv. 281. Denounces trial of Rev. John Smith, iv. 194. M'Laurin improves fortifications of Edinburgh, ii. 211. Maclean, Donald, tried for murdering Allan, iii. 120. Macleod of Macleod refuses to support Young Pretender, ii. 205. M'Quirk, Edward, tried for murder of George Clarke, iii. 129. Madras: Besieged by Le Bourdonnais, ii. 259. Restored to England, ii. 260. Madras expedition, iii. 250. Mahon, Lord, iii. 186. Mahratta States and Nizam of Deccan, iii. 265, 266. Malleson, Colonel, on Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 267. Malthus, Thomas Robert, iv. 281. Manchester, iv. 99. In 1714, i. 79. Mangan, Clarence, "Dark Rosaleen, " iv. 205. Manley, Isaac, Postmaster-General, Dublin, i. 82. Mansfield, Murray, Lord, ii. 274. Attorney-General, ii. 296. Demeanor during Gordon riot, iii. 197. House sacked, iii. 203. Mar, John Erskine, Earl of, i. 39. Leader of insurrection, 1715, i. 123. Letter to Bolingbroke, i. 120. Sketch of, i. 123. March Club, i. 74. Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary, British troops support, ii. 182. Marie Antoinette executed, iii. 300. Markham arrests Rajah of Benares, iii. 269. Marlborough House, i. 69. Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of, i. 2, 54. Advice on rebellion of 1715, i. 128. Advice to Bolingbroke, i. 104. Character, i. 22, 24, 210. Charges against, i. 94. Closing days, i. 208. Funeral, i. 211. Member of Privy Council, i. 100. Return to England, i. 16, 52. Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of, i. 208. Advice to Duke, i. 100. Character, i. 25. Marriage Act, ii. 279. Marseilles rises against Paris, iii. 303. Martin challenges Wilkes, iii. 66. Martineau, H. : Attitude towards Poor Relief, iv. 224. On admission of ladies to hear debates in House, iv. 272. On movement against monopoly of East India Company, iv. 232. On Queen Caroline, iv. 10. Masham, created peer, i. 174. Masham, Mrs. , i. 2. Letter to Swift, i. 36. Result of influence with Queen, i. 94. Massachusetts: Memorial from, ii. 42. Mutiny Act and, iii. 150. Petition for recall of Hutchinson and Oliver, iii. 155. Protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90. Punishment of, iii. 164. Mathews, Charles, Sen. , "At Home" performance, iv. 285. Maximilian, Emperor, iv. 45. Mayfair, i. 72. Mechanics' Institutes, iv. 93. Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Duchy of, iii. 11. Medmenham-on-Thames, iii. 46. Meer Jaffier conspires against Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269, 270, 271, 272. Melbourne, William Lamb, Viscount: Attitude towards reforms, iv. 254. Character, iv. 234. Home Secretary, iv. 126. Irish Members and, iv. 253. Prime Minister, iv. 233, 250. Meredith, George, "Ironic procession, " iii. 2. Methodism (_see_ Wesleyan Movement). Methuen, Sir Paul, Treasurer of Household, i. 279. Opposes Bolingbroke's pardon, i. 259. Mexican Empire, iv. 45. Middlesex election (1768), iii. 117. Debate on petition, iii. 131. Mill, James, historian of British India, iv. 281. Mill, John Stuart: Doctrine of non-intervention, iv. 62. On Irish cottier tenant, iv. 222. Mills, Mrs. , friend of Lady Nithisdale, i. 139. Ministry of All the Talents, iii. 340. Ministry of 1714, i. 97. Ministry of 1742, ii. 192. Minorca, i. 296, 298. Captured by French, ii. 297. Mir Jaffier, iii. 250, 253. Intrigues, iii. 250. Mir Kasim, Nawab, and Ellis, iii. 251. Mirzapha Jung claims Deccan Vice-royalty, ii. 261. Death, ii. 262. Mississippi scheme, i. 184 _seqq. _ Mitchel, John, on Chesterfield's rule in Ireland, ii. 250. Mob law in London, iii. 122. Mob orators, Sir Robert Inglis on, iv. 145. Mohun, Lord, i. 74. Killed in duel, i. 122. Moira, Lady Elizabeth, letter on French expedition to Ireland, iii. 315. Molesworth: on renewal of East India Company's Charter, iv. 230, 232. Monarchy under Hanoverians, ii. 74. _Monitor_ edited by John Entinck, iii. 51, 52, 55. Monopolies, petitions for, i. 191. Monroe doctrine, iv. 44. Monson, Colonel, iii. 260, 261. Death, iii. 264. Montagu, Edward Wortley, i. 105. Ambassador to Constantinople, i. 148. Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley: Letters, i. 148, 149, 152, 157. Sketch of, i. 148, 149, 150. Montcalm, Louis, Marquis de: Killed at Quebec, ii. 290. Monument, ii. 290. Montesquieu, on Duke of Berwick, ii. 34. Montgomery, --, iii. 179. Moore, Thomas: Lines on Robert Emmet, iii. 329. On George IV. , iii. 242. Quoted, iv. 23. Moravian sect, ii. 134. More, Hannah: Death, iv. 282. On Lord George Gordon, iii. 193. Morgan, Mrs. , friend of Lady Nithisdale, i. 139. Morris, Charles, iii. 244. Mostyn, Sir Thomas, iii. 338. "Mug houses, " i. 75. Municipal Corporation Bill for Ireland, iv. 258. Municipal Corporations Commission and Bill, iv. 257, 258. Municipal system, reorganization of, iv. 254 _seqq. _ Munster, Earl of, iv. 114. Murari Rao offers to assist English, ii. 263. Murchison, Sir Roderick, and British Association, iv. 262. Murger, Henri, "bohemianiam, " iii. 310. Murphy, Father John: And _Auditor_, iii. 51. Conduct in '98, iii. 320. Murray, James (Earl of Dunbar), Secretary to James Stuart, ii. 18. Murray, John, of Broughton, ii. 227. Murray, tutor to Charles Edward, Young Pretender, ii. 202. Murray (_see_ Mansfield, Lord). Musters, Mr. , house set fire to, iv. 170. Mutiny Act and New York, iii. 149. Nairn, Lord, a prisoner, i. 137, 138. Nand Kumar (Nuncomar), iii. 258, 259. Accusations against Hastings, iii. 261. Charged with conspiracy, iii. 261. Charged with forgery, iii. 261. Tried and hanged, iii. 262. Napier, Hon. George, marries Lady Sarah Bunbury, iii. 10. Napier, Sir Charles, iii. 10; iv. 179. Napier, Sir William, iii. 10. Napoleon I. (Bonaparte): Close of career, iv. 12. On Romilly's suicide, iii. 347. On Thames Embankment, iv. 14. On Wellington seizing English crown, iv. 277. Scheme for invasion of Ireland and, iii. 312, 314. Sketch of career, iii. 331 _seqq. _, 344. Wins Toulon, iii. 304. Napoleon III. (Charles Louis), Policy, iv. 45. National Assembly, declaration of war and, iii. 302, 303. National Crisis (1832), iv. 178. National Debt (1714), i. 93. Pitt's plan for redemption of, iii. 239. National distress in 1830, iv. 100, 105. Navarino, battle of, iv. 50, 67, 96. Navy, press-gang system abolished, iv. 263, 266. Nelson, Horatio, Viscount, iii. 337. Receives freedom of London, iii. 139. Nepean, Under-Secretary of State, iii. 235. New England Colonies, iii. 75. New York: Congress of 1765, iii. 91. In 1765, iii. 77. Mutiny Act and, iii. 149. Newbottle, Lord, and Lady Sarah Lennox, iii. 9, 10. Newcastle, Duke of: Appeal to Lords on declaration of war, ii. 177. Bribery under, iii. 25. Family influence, ii. 243. Jealous of Pulteney, ii. 192. Leader of Administration, ii. 210, 296. On Bill for Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 44. On "Briton, " iii. 23. On "Family Compact, " ii. 33. Resigns office, ii. 298. Sacrifices Byng, ii. 298. Secretary for Foreign Affairs, ii. 160. Secretary of State, ii. 192. Traitor to Walpole, ii. 160, 189. Warns Rockingham against Burke, iii. 100. Newfoundland, French fishing-stations on, iii. 78. Newgate taken by rioters, iii. 203. Newton, Sir Isaac: Death, i. 272. Opinion on Irish coins, i. 241. Neyoe, Irish priest: Arrested, i. 219. Drowned, i. 221. Nile, battle of the, iii. 337. Nithisdale, Countess of: Effects Earl's escape, i. 140. Petition to King, i. 139. Nithisdale, William Maxwell, Earl of: Condemnation and escape, i. 138. Nizam-Al-Mulk, Viceroy of Deccan, death of, ii. 261. Nizam of Deccan and Mahratta States, iii. 265, 266. Nollekens, Joseph, iv. 93. Nootka Sound, English settlement at, iii. 302. Norbury, Baron, tries Robert Emmet, iii. 329. Nore, mutiny at, iii. 335. Norfolk, Duke of: Committed to Tower, i. 214. Discharged, i. 215. Norris, James, sketch of, iv. 288. _North Briton_, iii. 51, 52, 155. Churchill writes on, iii. 55. No. 45 on King's Speech, iii. 57, 60. Ordered to be burned, iii. 67. Warrant for arrest of authors, printers, and publishers, iii. 58. North, Frederick, Lord: Attitude during Wedderburn's attack on Franklin, iii. 156. Bill to close Port of Boston, iii. 163. Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 113. Coalition with Fox, iii. 225. Colonial policy, iii. 152. Fall of Ministry, iii. 223. Finances and, iii. 239. Makes peace with America, iii. 184. Moves repeal of American duties except tea tax, iii. 151. Regulates Act of 1773, iii. 260. North, Lord: Committed to Tower, i. 214. Discharged, i. 215. Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 190. Northcote, James, on Queen Charlotte, iii. 12. Northumberland, Duchess of: Governess to Princess Victoria, iv. 291. Northumberland, Duke of, forced to toast Wilkes, iii. 118. Norton, Fletcher, speech on Middlesex election petition, iii. 131. Norwich in 1714, i. 79. Nottingham Castle burned, iv. 170. Nunjeraj, Vizier of Rajah of Mysore, iii. 265. Oates, Titus, on term "Tory, " i. 17. O'Brien, Smith, iv. 179. O'Connell, Daniel: Demands municipal reform for Ireland, iv. 258. Elected for Clare, iv. 71, 78. In favor of ballot, iv. 131. Loyalty, iv. 23, 27. On Universal Suffrage, iv. 85. Oratory, iv. 70. Seconds amendment on Emancipation of Slaves, iv. 197. Sketch of, iv. 53, 69. Speech on Irish Church Revenues, iv. 248, 249. Speeches on Reform Bill, iv. 148, 172. O'Connor, Arthur, iii. 313, 314. Withdraws from Dublin Parliament, iii. 319. October Club, i. 74. Oglethorpe, General, invites John Wesley to Georgia, ii. 134. Ohio, English and French on, ii. 285. Oliver, Alderman, committed to Tower, iii. 135. Oliver, Andrew, collector of stamp taxes at Boston, iii. 91. Oliver, Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts: Letters to Whately, iii. 153. O'Meara, Dr. Barry E. , conversations with Napoleon, iv. 13. Omichund: Death, ii. 273. Plots against English and Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269, 270. Onslow, Arthur, Speaker of House of Commons: On Sir William Wyndham, i. 288. Opposes Bolingbroke's pardon, i. 259. Re-elected Speaker, ii. 22, 186. Sketch of, i. 282. Onslow, Sir Richard, i. 105. Orange Associations, iv. 274 _seqq. _ Orange, Prince of, marries Princess Anne, ii. 41. Order of Bath revived, i. 252. Orleans, Louis Philippe, Duke of (Egalité), iii. 293. Orleans, Philippe, Duke of (Regent), i. 117. Death, i. 238. Overtures to George I. , i. 156, 181. Sketch of, i. 155. Ormond, Duke of: Flight, i. 111. Heads Spanish Jacobite expedition, i. 162. Impeached, i. 109, 110. In Paris, i. 119, 120. Name razed from roll of Peers, i. 114. Warden of Cinque Ports, i. 39. Orrery, Earl of: Committed to Tower, i. 214. Discharged, i. 215. Otis, James, denounces Writs of Assistance, iii. 84. Oude subjected, iii. 258. Oude, Vizier of, and Begums, iii. 271. Oxford in '45, ii. 220. Oxford, Robert Harley, Earl of, i. 26, 29. Acquitted, i. 111, 170. Attitude towards Restoration of Stuarts, i. 107. Character, i. 113. Committed to Tower, i. 112. Establishes South Sea Company, i. 187. Impeached of high treason, i. 109, 110, 112, 168. Petition to House of Lords, i. 168. Reception by George I. , i. 101. Sketch of, i. 30. Ozinda's chocolate-house, i. 76. Paine, Thomas, iii. 312. Pakenham, Hon. Catherine, Duchess of Wellington, iii. 334. Palmerston, Viscount: Foreign Secretary, iv. 126, 252. Member for Tiverton, iv. 254. Member of Liverpool Administration, iv. 3. On the "Inevitable Man, " iv. 55. Resigns office, iv. 72. Secretary at War, iv. 58. Pamela, wife of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, iii. 313. Paradis defeats Nabob of Carnatic at St. Thome, ii. 261. Parker heads mutiny at Nore, iii. 335. Parliament: Annual, i. 146. Dissolved (1831), iv. 143. Election of 1734, ii. 19. Election of 1830, iv. 105. Irish and English, i. 179. Language of sycophancy, ii. 85. Motions for removal of Walpole, ii. 185. Of 1722, i. 206, 213. Prorogued (1727), Royal Speech, i. 278. Septennial Act, i. 146. Short, ii. 11. Speech from Throne (1739), ii. 162; (1741), ii. 186; (1765), iii. 88. Triennial Acts, i. 145. (_See also_ House of Lords and House of Commons. ) Parliamentary Opposition, system of, i. 285 _seqq. _ Parma, Duke of, i. 158. Parnell, Sir Henry: Motion on Civil Service Estimates, iv. 110. Paymaster-General, iv. 252. Parr, Dr. , opinion of Sheridan, iii. 217. Patents, petitions for, i. 190. "Patriots, " i. 288, 296, 298. Frederick, Prince of Wales, and, ii. 50, 108, 110. In Opposition and power, ii. 242. Oppose borrowing from Sinking Fund, i. 309. Raise war cry, ii. 149, 157. Return to Commons, ii. 178. Secede from Commons, ii. 172. Struggle against Walpole, ii. 11. Patten, Rev. Robert, as King's evidence, i. 137. Peel, Sir Robert: At opening of Liverpool and Manchester railway, iv. 103. Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 57, 68, 74, 75. Attitude towards Reform, iv. 152, 163. Declines to form Ministry, iv. 177. Free Trade and, iv. 52. Home Secretary, iv. 71, 103. Interview with King on Catholic emancipation, iv. 77. Measure on Irish Tithe System, iv. 245; Speech on, iv. 249. On claims of "Princess" Olivia, iv. 287. Prime Minister and Chancellor of Exchequer, iv. 238. Resigns office, iv. 113, 250. Speech on municipal reform, iv. 259, 260. Speech on Reform Bill, iv. 146. Summoned to form Ministry, iv. 235. Tamworth Address, iv. 240. Peerage Bill, object of, i. 174. Peers, creation of new, iv. 180. Pelham, Henry: Death, ii. 296. Letter to Duke of Cumberland, ii. 239. Paymaster, ii. 192. Prime Minister, ii. 244, 245. Pelham Ministry: Resign, ii. 244. Return to power, ii. 245. Penn, William, death, i. 179. Penny Post, London, i. 78. Pepys quoted on Duchess of Cleveland, i. 23. Perceval, Spencer: Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 341. Death, iii. 341. Regency Bill, iii. 341. Percy, Lord, commands reinforcements from Boston, iii. 174. Perry, presents petition of merchants against Spaniards, ii. 153. Perth, Duke of, ii. 223. Appeal to Macdonalds, ii. 225. Death, ii. 232. Perth, Jacobites retreat from, i. 128. Pestolozzi, Johann H. , iv. 93. Peter the Great, character, i. 162. Peterborough, Lord, anecdote of, ii. 167. Philadelphia: Congress draws up Declaration of Rights, iii. 173. Evacuated, iii. 183. In hands of British, iii. 183. In 1765, iii. 77. Tea-ship at, iii. 161. Philip V. Of Spain, ii. 28. Renounces French throne, i. 157. Phipps, Sir Constantine, removed from office of Chancellor, i. 98. Pitt diamond, ii. 54. Pitt Ministry (1766), members of, iii. 108. Pitt, Thomas, i. 105. M. P. For Okehampton, ii. 54. Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham: Accepts pension and barony for his wife, iii. 27. Advice to Prince of Wales, ii. 78. As War Minister, ii. 299; iii. 2, 27, 29. Character, iii. 186. Coalition against, iii. 26. Death, iii. 186. Denunciation of Walpole and Carteret, ii. 245. Illness, iii. 73, 108, 109. In House of Peers, iii. 109. Maiden speech, ii. 52, 55. On action of Boston people, iii. 161, 163. Paymaster-General, ii. 296. Protests against war with America, iii. 185. Quarrels with Temple, iii. 108. Refuses office, iii. 73, 93. Resigns office, iii. 27. Sketch of, ii. 54. Speech on Convention, ii. 171. Takes news of accession to George III. , iii. 2. Takes office, ii. 274; iii. 108. Wilkes and, iii. 57. Pitt, William (the younger), iii. 211. Antagonism to Fox, iii. 225. Attacks Fox's India Bill, iii. 232. Attitude on Regency, iii. 243. Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iii. 308; iv. 53. Challenge to Ministry on Eastern possessions, iii. 230. Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 225. Closing hours, iii. 338. Coalition against, iii. 26, 225. Contrasted with Fox, iii. 212. Death, iii. 339. Declines Vice-Treasurership of Ireland, iii. 224. Difficulties of Administration, iii. 240. Financial measures, iii. 239. First Lord of Treasury and Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 236. Foreign policy, iii. 302. French policy, iii. 301. India Bill, iii. 237, 238. Irish policy, iii. 319, 327. Makes name in Commons, iii. 223. Plan of Parliamentary reform, iii. 229, 240. Refuses to appeal for payment of Prince of Wales's debts, iii. 242. Resigns office, iii. 337. Sketch of, iii. 214. Speech on Benares vote, iii. 277, 279. Speech on Trafalgar, iii. 339. Struggle with Napoleon Bonaparte, iii. 332, 337. Supports Dundas, iii. 338. Plassey (Palasi), Battle of, ii. 271, 272. Playhouse Bill, ii. 96, 99. Plunket, Lord, Lord Chancellor for Ireland, iv. 127. Pocket boroughs, iv. 99, 147. Poland, condition of, iv. 40. Poland, election of king, ii. 23. Political freedom in 1716, i. 144. Political life in 1742, ii. 239. Political parties in 1728, i. 287, 288. Pomeroy, General, iii. 176, 179. Pontiac conspiracy, iii. 79. Population of Great Britain (1714), i. 63. Poor Laws, iv. 221 _seqq. _ Commission, iv. 225. Bill, iv. 228, 229. Pope, Alexander: "Dunciad, " i. 301. Epitaph on James Craggs, i. 198. Epitaph on Sir Isaac Newton, i. 272. Lampoons, ii. 102, 103. Loses money in South Sea stock, i. 22. On Argyll, Duke of, i. 44. On Bacon, i. 22. On Bolingbroke, i. 29. On Oxford, i. 29, 31. Place in literature, ii. 197. Sketch of, ii. 197. Popham, Major, defeats Rajah's troops, iii. 270. "Porcupine Papers, " iv. 155. Porteous, Captain John: Death, ii. 64. Sentence on, ii. 62. Sketch of, ii. 58. Porteous riots, ii. 58 _seqq. _ Portland, William Cavendish Bentinck, Duke of: Prime Minister, iii. 340. Supports Wilkes, iii. 116. Portsmouth, press-gang in, iv. 265. Portugal: free institutions, iv. 43. Potter, Thomas, iii. 48, 65. Vice-Treasurer for Ireland, iii. 49. Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, iv. 239. Pratt, Justice, Lord Camden, iii. 109. Discharges Wilkes, iii. 60, 67. Predestination, Wesley and Whitefield dispute on, ii. 139. Prescott, hero of Breed Hill, iii. 179. Preston: "Fancy franchises, " iv. 183. Jacobites defeated at, i. 128. Preston, Colonel, commands British troops at Boston, iii. 151. Preston, General, in Edinburgh Castle, ii. 215. Preston Pans, Battle of, ii. 214, 215. Prideaux, --, in Canada, ii. 287. Primacy of Ireland and George IV. , iv. 27. Prior, Matthew, i. 38. Arrested, i. 106. M. P. For East Grinstead, i. 52. Prisoners in 1715, i. 136. Privy Council, July 30, 1714, i. 40, 45, 46. Proctor, Sir W. Beauchamp, Whig candidate for Middlesex, iii. 117. "Protestant" and "Catholic" Ministers, iv. 54. Prussia, position at end of Seven Years' War, iii. 29. _Public Advertiser, Letters of Junius_ in, iii. 128. Pulteney, William (Earl of Bath), i. 105. Accepts Peerage, ii. 192. Advice to Prince of Wales, ii. 78. Alliance with Bolingbroke, i. 260; ii. 17. Attacks Convention and Ministers, ii. 156, 172. Declines office, ii. 191. Duel with Hervey, i. 306. Founder of Parliamentary Opposition, i. 225, 284, 288; ii. 195. Leader of discontented Whigs, i. 287. Letters to Pope, i. 305. Letter to Swift, i. 306. Motion on papers concerning war, ii. 187. On Arbuthnot, ii. 20. On grievances against Spain, ii. 154, 156. On Walpole's excise scheme, i. 315. Opposes Playhouse Bill, ii. 99. Proposes allowance for Prince of Wales, ii. 82. Sketch of, i. 98, 253, 286. Speech on salt tax, i. 313. Speech on Secession, ii. 178. Tribune of Commons, ii. 192, 194. Puritanism in Boston, iii. 76. Purkitt, Henry, iii. 161. Putnam, Israel, iii. 176, 179. Quadruple Alliance, i. 161. Principle of, i. 295. Quebec: Attacked by Wolfe, ii. 287. Described, ii. 287, 291. Founded, ii. 283. Queen Anne's Bounty, i. 280. Queen Anne's houses, i. 69. Queensberry, Duke of, iii. 244. Radcliffe, Charles, escapes from Newgate, i. 142. Radical party, i. 20. Rise of, iv. 218. Rae, Fraser, on elections of Lord Mayor, iii. 137. "Rainbow" Coffee-house, i. 75. Rainsforth, house sacked, iii. 201. Rajah Dulab Ram, ii. 272. Rajah Sahib: Besieges Arcot, ii. 263. Defeated, ii. 263. Ramnagar stronghold, iii. 270. Rathbone, William, and movement against monopoly of East India Company, iv. 231. Ray, Miss, murdered by Hickman, iii. 50. "Rebecca and Her Daughters, " ii. 56. Rebellion of 1745, ii. 203 _seqq. _ Reform Bill (First): Committee, iv. 127. Debate on, iv. 144, 149. Introduced in Commons, iv. 134, 137. General Gascoigne's amendment, iv. 150. Principles of, iv. 143. Redistribution, iv. 142. Scheme for, iv. 129, 132. Second Reading, iv. 149. Reform Bill (Second), iv. 154. Introduced into House of Lords, iv. 168. Rejected, iv. 169. Second Reading, iv. 154, 159. Third Reading, iv. 166. Obstructed, iv. 161, 163. Reform Bill (Third), iv. 172. Defect in, iv. 182. Passed, iv. 181. Political Parties and, iv. 218. Reform Bills for Ireland and Scotland, iv. 181. Reform Meetings, iv. 177. Reform Parliament (First), iv. 172, 204, 241. Reform Riots, iv. 170. Regency Bill, iii. 72. Regency Question (1830), iv. 101, 104, 107. Religious equality and Parliament, iv. 67, 99. Restoration dramatists, character of, ii. 93. Revere, Paul, iii. 174. Reynolds, Sir Joshua: Friend of Goldsmith, iii. 169. Portrait of Wilkes, iii. 68. Richelieu, Duc de, captures Minorca, ii. 297. Richmond, Duke of: On "Our Army, " iii. 183. Speech on Annual Parliaments, iii. 197. Richter, Jean Paul, on: Eloquence, ii. 135. Laurence Sterne, ii. 302. Rigby, Richard, sketch of, iii. 36. Riot in St. George's Fields, iii. 120, 124. Rioters killed, wounded, and executed, iii. 209. Ripon, Earl of (_see_ Goderich, Viscount). Ripperda, Duke of, i. 264. Rob Roy at Sheriffmuir, i. 126. Robertson, Dr. , threatened, iii. 195. Robertson, George, and Porteous riots, ii. 58. Robinson, Dr. John, Bishop of London, i. 109. Robinson, Frederick (_see_ Goderich, Viscount). Robinson, Sir Thomas, ii. 297. Rockingham, Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquis of: Character, iii. 94. Dismissed from office, iii. 108. Prime Minister, iii. 94. Repeals Stamp Act, iii. 104. Second Ministry, iii. 223. Rohilla War, iii. 258. Roman Catholics (_see_ Catholics). Romilly, Sir Samuel: Death and character, iii. 346. Philanthropic reforms, iv. 21. Rosebery, Lord, on Pitt's position, iii. 240. Ross, General: Captures Washington, iii. 346. Speaks for Bolingbroke, i. 108. Rousseau, on "Robinson Crusoe, " ii. 1. Rowe, Nicholas, i. 38. Roxburgh, Duke of, attitude towards Walpole, i. 250. Royal Society of Literature founded, iv. 93. Royal Standard set up at Glenfinnan, ii. 206, 210. Russell, Lord John: As reformer, iv. 104, 126, 127. As speaker, iv. 133. Beaten in S. Devonshire, iv. 253. Carries repeal of Test and Corporation Acts, iv. 52, 67. "English Government and Constitution, " iv. 128, 129. Home Secretary, iv. 252. Interview with Napoleon in Elba, iv. 277. Leader of Opposition, iv. 103. Municipal Bill, iv. 257, 260. On Parliamentary Reform, iv. 85. Reforms Parliamentary representation, iv. 22. Resolution on Irish Church revenues, iv. 246, 250. Second Reform Bill, iv. 154. Sketch of proposed Reform Bill, iv. 128, 132. Speech on Greek cause, iv. 48. Speech on Reform Bill, iv. 137 _seqq. _ Statement on Reform Act, iv. 182. Rupert, Prince, sketch of, i. 6. Russia in 1716, i. 154. Russia: policy towards Greece and Turkey, iv. 49. Sacheverell, Dr. , impeached, i. 34. St. James's, i. 65. St. James's coffee-house, i. 75. _St. James's Chronicle_, iii. 124. St. James's Square, i. 67. St. James's Street, i. 66. St. John, Henry, Viscount (_see_ Bolingbroke). St. Helena, Island of, iii. 344. St. Margaret's Lane, London, i. 64. St. Patrick's Well, Dublin, i. 81. St. Simon on Mississippi scheme, i. 185. St. Thome, Nabob of Carnatic defeated at, ii. 261. Sala, George Augustus, picture of London in '45, ii. 219. Salt tax, i. 313. Sandwich, Earl of, iii. 48, 49. Denounces Wilkes, and "Essay on Woman, " iii. 65. First Lord of Admiralty, iii. 48. "Jemmy Twitcher, " iii. 68. Mobbed, iii. 202. Sandys, Samuel, Chancellor of Exchequer, ii. 192. Motions against Walpole, ii. 185, 186. Saratoga, Burgoyne surrenders at, iii. 183. Sarsfield defends Limerick, i. 83. "Saturday" Club, i. 74. Savile, Sir George: Bill for Catholic Relief, iii. 190, 191. House sacked, iii. 201. Sketch of, iii. 190. Saxe, Maurice de: Commands at Fontenoy and Lauffeld, ii. 239. Parentage, i. 8. Sayer, James, caricature of Fox, iii. 233. Scarborough, Lord: Character, ii. 5. On Declaration of War, ii. 178. Schaub, Sir Luke, Ambassador at Paris, i. 237. Recalled, i. 239. Schleswig-Holstein, seized by King of Denmark, i. 161. Schomberg, Duke of, opinion of Marlborough, i. 24. Scotch Judges at Bar of House of Lords, ii. 66, 67. Scotland: Condition in 1745, ii. 208. Fanaticism in, iii. 194. Riots in, i. 249. Scott, Captain, commands Scots Royal, ii. 206. Scott, Dr. , iii. 203. Scott, Major, defends Hastings, iii. 274, 276, 282. Scott, Sir Walter: Interview with George IV. , iv. 29. Later years and death, iv. 187. Sketch of John, Duke of Argyll, i. 44. Scottish Highlands and Lowlands, i. 87. Scratton, represents Company at Murshidabad, iii. 250. "Scriblerus" Club, i. 73. Secession from House of Commons, ii. 172, 175. Secretary of State, two departments, ii. 192. Seeley, Professor, on "Family Compact, " ii. 31, 33. Selwyn, George, attachment to Fox, iii. 214. Senior, Nassau: Attitude towards Poor Relief, iv. 223. On Poor Law Committee, iv. 225. Septennial Act, i. 146, 147. Debate on repealing, ii. 10. Serres, Olivia Wilmot, sketch of, iv. 286. Servants in 1714, i. 77. Seven Men of Moidart, ii. 205. Seven Years' War, ii. 297; iii. 29. Close of, iii. 79. Sévigné, Mme. De, ii. 35. Seville, Treaty of, i. 297. Trade disputes and, ii. 150. Shackleton, Richard, schoolmaster of Edmund Burke, iii. 97. Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of: Factory labor and, iv. 200 _seqq. _ Sketch of, iv. 203. Shah Alum, enterprise against Meer Jaffier, ii. 273. Sheffield, iv. 99. Shelburne, William Petty, Earl of: Opposes calling out military, iii. 198. Passed over by Pitt, iii. 236. Secretary of State, iii. 109. Sketch of, iii. 223, 224. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, death, iv. 92. Sherbrooke, Robert Lowe, Lord, i. 290. Sheridan, Charles, iii. 218. Sheridan, Mrs. , opinion of her boys, iii. 217. Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, iii. 211. Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 296. Begum speech, iii. 280. Duel with Matthews, iii. 219. Funeral in Westminster Abbey, iii. 346. M. P. For Stamford, iii. 221. Marriage, iii. 220, 222. "School for Scandal, " "Critic, " iii. 221. Sketch of, iii. 216. Speeches during Hastings's trial, iii. 280, 286. "The Rivals, " iii. 221. Under-Secretary of State, iii. 224. Sheridan (Dr. ), Thomas, friend of Swift, iii. 216. Sheridan (Sir), Thomas: Death, ii. 232. Tutor to Charles Stuart, ii. 205. Sheriffmuir, battle of, i. 125. Shippen: Amendment on Supply (1727), i. 280. Leader of Jacobites, i. 287. Opposes Septennial Bill, i. 146. Sketch of, i. 289. Shrewsbury, Charles Talbot, Duke of, i. 41. Death, i. 179. Lord High Treasurer, i. 45. Resigns offices, i. 97. Sketch of career, i. 41. Shrewsbury, Duke of, killed by Duke of Buckingham, i. 41. Shrewsbury in 1714, i. 79. Siddons, Mrs. , death, iv. 285. Sidmouth, Viscount, Home Secretary: Challenged by Thistlewood, iv. 16. Signs in streets, i. 70. Sinking Fund, borrowing from, i. 309. Slaughter's coffee-house, i. 75. Slave Trade, Fox and, iii. 340. Slavery, iv. 189 _seqq. _ Crusade against, iv. 93. (_See also_ West Indies, slavery in. ) Smith, Rev. John, sentenced to death, iv. 194. Smith, Sydney, on: Collection of tithes in Ireland, iv. 208, 210, 211. Spencer Perceval, iii. 341. "Smock races, " i. 72. Smollett and _Briton_, iii. 51. Smuggling in American colonies, iii. 83. Sobieski, Clementine, wife of James Stuart, ii. 199. Retires to convent, ii. 200. Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge founded, iv. 93. Somers, John, Lord, i. 47, 54. Accomplishes Union of England and Scotland, i. 84. Approves Septennial Bill, i. 147. Member of New Council, i. 101. Sketch of career, i. 147. Somerset, Charles Seymour, Duke of: sketch of, i. 42. Somerset, Charlotte, Duchess of, i. 42. Somerset, Elizabeth, Duchess of, i. 43. Somerville, Dr. Thomas, _History of Reign of Queen Anne_, i. 13. Somerville, Lord, house molested, ii. 217. Sophia Dorothea, wife of George I. , i. 6, 153. Banished to Castle of Ahlden, i. 7. Death, i. 267. Will, i. 269. Sophia, Electress of Hanover, i. 4, 5. South Sea Bill, i. 189, 190. South Sea Company, i. 187, 193; ii. 150. Petitions for relief, i. 194. Principle of, i. 194. Reconstituted, ii. 167. South Sea House, i. 186. South Sea victims, i. 194, 204. Spain: Claims Right of Search, ii. 151, 163, 245. Complaints against, i. 294. Demands constitutional government, iv. 40, 43. England and, trade disputes, ii. 150. In 1716, i. 154, 155. Portugal and, dispute between, ii. 35. Treaty of Utrecht and, i. 227. War declared against, ii. 178. Spean's Bridge, brush at, ii. 206. Spencer, John Charles, Earl, iv. 234. As Speaker, iv. 133. Chancellor of Exchequer, iv. 125. Declaration on Reform Bill, iv. 164. Motion on speech from Throne, iv. 104. On Government measure for Irish Tithe Question, iv. 211. On slavery in Colonies, iv. 195. Sketch of, iv. 125. Spies in Ireland in '98, iii. 314. Spithead, mutiny at, iii. 335. Stage Censorship, ii. 96 _seqq. _ Stair, John Dalrymple, Earl of: Character, i. 120, 225. Commands British troops, ii. 182. Recalled from French Court, i. 225. Stamp Act, iii. 87, 88. Repealed, iii. 103. Stanhope, Charles, and South Sea Company, i. 197, 200. Stanhope, Colonel (_see_ Harrington, Lord). Stanhope, James, Earl, iii. 339. Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 302. Death, i. 173. First Lord of Treasury and Chancellor of Exchequer, i. 165. Impeaches Duke of Ormond, i. 109. Mission to Vienna, i. 152. On funds and Queen Anne's health, i. 2. On Irish clergy, ii. 130. On Oxford, Earl of, i. 31. Recognized religious equality, i. 173. Second Secretary of State, i. 97, 99. Sketch of, i. 100. Stanhope, Lady Hester, iii. 339. Stanley, Lord (_see_ Derby, Earl of). States-General convoked, iii. 293. Steele, Sir Richard: Career, i. 38. Compared with Addison, i. 300. Death, i. 299. M. P. For Stockbridge, i. 52. On Somers, i. 147. On Whig and Tory, i. 17. Petition in favor of rebels, i. 137, 138. Tribute to Atterbury, i. 214. Stephen, Sir James, "Story of Nuncomar, " iii. 263. Sterne, Laurence, "Tristram Shandy, " ii. 299, 301. Sterne, Roger, ii. 299. Death, ii. 300. Stevenson, Dr. , keeps guard at Netherbow Gate, ii. 212. Stewart, Dugald, iv. 93. Stoke Pogis church-yard, ii. 289. Stow, "Survey of London" quoted on penny post, i. 78. Strafford, Lord, charges against, i. 109. Stratford de Redcliffe, Viscount, iv. 32. Streets of London in 1714, i. 70. Strickland, Francis, supports Young Pretender, ii. 205. Stuart, Cardinal Henry, death, ii. 234. Stuart, Charles Edward, Young Pretender: Advantages on his side, ii. 208, 209, 218, 221. Adventures after Culloden, ii. 226. At siege of Gaeta, ii. 29, 201, 203. Birth, ii. 199. Education, ii. 201, 202. Enters Holyrood, ii. 214. Humanity during campaign, ii. 215, 217. In London, iii. 14. Later career, ii. 233, 234. March into England, ii. 217. Marches on Edinburgh, ii. 210, 213. Proclamation, ii. 206. Rebellion of 1745, ii. 204 _seqq. _ Retreats, ii. 223. Wishes to advance on London, ii. 222. Stuart influence on literature, ii. 234. Stuart, James Francis Edward (Old Pretender), i. 4. Character, i. 126. Dismisses Bolingbroke, i. 131. Embarks for Scotland, i. 120. Life of exile, ii. 199, 201. On South Sea scheme, i. 200. Proclaimed in Dundee, i. 123. Rebellion in favor of, i. 118. Returns to France, i. 128. Rumors of, i. 264. Sketch of, i. 9 _seqq. _ Stuart standard set up at Braemer, i. 121, 123. Sugar Act of 1733, iii. 83. Sullivan, iii. 179. Sully, advice to Henry IV. , i. 13. Sumner, Dr. , Head-master of Harrow, iii. 217. Sunderland, Charles, Earl of, i. 54. Accusations against Townshend and Walpole, i. 164. Death, i. 206. Motion implicating him in South Sea scheme, i. 199. Plot against Walpole, i. 207. Speech in favor of South Sea Bill, i. 191. Viceroy of Ireland, i. 97. Suraj ud Dowlah: Black Hole of Calcutta, ii. 266. Captured and killed, ii. 273. Character, ii. 266. Death, iii. 250. Declares war against English, iii. 249. Swetenham, Captain, ii. 207. Swift, Jonathan, Dean of St. Patrick's: Attitude towards Irish, i. 243. Character, ii. 237. Death, ii. 236. Defends Treaty of Utrecht, i. 96. Dialogue between Whig and Tory, i. 219. "Drapier's Letters, " i. 240, 242, 247. "Gulliver's Travels, " i. 302. Lampoons, ii. 102. Letter to Lord Peterborough, i. 36. Letter to Sheridan on Walpole, i. 306. On Arbuthnot, ii. 21. On Bolingbroke, i. 26, 28. On Condition of Church, ii. 129. On Marlborough, i. 24. On Oxford, Earl of, i. 31, 168. On Queen Anne's health, i. 1, 36. On Somerset, Duke of, i. 43. On William Congreve, i. 299. Patron of Berkeley, ii. 293. Poems on South Sea mania, i. 202. Reception of Carteret, i. 235. Sketch of, i. 35. Stella and, ii. 236. Swinburne, "A Jacobite's Exile, " ii. 235. Talbot, Charles, Lord Chancellor, ii. 9, 81. Talleyrand: Dines with William IV. , iv. 117. On Alexander Hamilton, ii. 248; iv. 281. Tea tax introduced by Townshend, iii. 113. Telford, Thomas, death, iv. 282. Temple, John, iii. 155. Temple, Richard Grenville, Earl, iii. 26. Action on India Bill, iii. 234. Persuades Pitt to refuse office, iii. 73, 93. Removed from Lord-Lieutenancy, iii. 64. Resigns office, iii. 236. Shows King's speech to Wilkes, iii. 57. Supports Wilkes, iii. 116. Ten-pound franchise, iv. 130. Tenterden, Chief Justice, decision in Cobbett prosecution, iv. 157. Test Act: Debate on proposed repeal, ii. 176. Repeal proposed, ii. 110. Repealed, iv. 52, 67. Thackeray, W. M. , iv. 286. Description of Hanover, i. 55. On George IV. , iii. 242. On interview of George IV. And Sir Walter Scott, iv. 29. On interview of George IV. With Wellington, Lyndhurst, and Peel, iv. 78. On Laurence Sterne, ii. 302. On Swift's character, ii. 237, 238. Thames frozen (1716), i. 154. Thames Tunnel, iv. 93. Thistlewood, plots to assassinate Ministers, iv. 15. Thomas, --, iii. 179. Thornhill, Sir James, i. 68. Thurlow, Lord, iii. 228. Thynne, Thomas, Lord, i. 8. Tippu, English make treaty with, iii. 266. Tithe question, Ireland, iv. 207 _seqq. _, 216, 220. Government proposal on, iv. 211, 245. Tobacco, excise duty on, i. 316. Tolbooth fired, ii. 64. Tone, Matthew, fights under Humbert, iii. 324. Tone, Theobald Wolfe, iv. 206. Death, iii. 327. Letter to his wife, iii. 324. Marriage, iii. 311. Project for colony in South Sea island, iii. 310. Scheme for French invasion of Ireland, iii. 311. Sketch of, iii. 309 _seqq. _ Tonson, Jacob, Secretary to Kit-Kat Club, i. 74. Torcy, Marquis de, Secretary of State, France, i. 110. Tories: Attitude towards restoration of Stuarts, i. 16, 19. Doctrines, i. 17 _seqq. _ Jacobitism and, iii. 24. Old school of, iv. 241. Origin of name, i. 17. Peace of Utrecht and, i. 92. Toulon: Retaken by French, iii. 304. Welcomes English fleet, iii. 303. Townshend, Alderman, opposes Wilkes, iii. 136. Townshend, Audrey, Marchioness of, iii. 110. Townshend, Charles ("Weathercock"), i. 99. Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 109. Character, iii. 110. Death, iii. 113. Introduces tea tax for America, iii. 113. Townshend, Charles, Viscount: Accompanies King to Hanover, i. 237. Dismissed, i. 164. President of Council, i. 182. Resigns office, i. 304. Secretary of State, i. 97, 278. Sketch of, i. 99. Trading Guilds, origin of, iv. 255. Trafalgar, battle of, iii. 337. Traill, H. D. , on Laurence Sterne, ii. 302. Treaties (_see_ under various titles). Trichinopoly: Besieged, ii. 262. Relieved, ii. 264. Triennial Parliament Acts, i. 145. Triple Alliance, i. 161, 163. Tucker, Dean, on mutinous colonies, iii. 163. Tullibardine: Dies in Tower, ii. 232. Supports Young Pretender, ii. 205, 206. Turkey in 1716, i. 154. Ulm, capitulation of, iii. 338. Union, Scotland's attitude towards, i. 83. University College Charter, iv. 261. University of London, Charter, iv. 261. Upper Ossory, John, Earl of, iii. 36. Utrecht, Treaty of, i. 95, 157, 227, 263. Campeachy logwood question and, i. 295. Tories and, i. 92. Trade disputes and, ii. 150. Will of Charles II. And, ii. 27. Valley Forge, iii. 183. Vanhomrigh, Esther (Vanessa), i. 36. Alters her will, ii. 294. Vansittart, Governor of East India Company, iii. 251. Advice on quarrel of Nawab and Ellis, iii. 252. Vendôme, Duc de, i. 100. Character, i. 158. Verazani forms settlement in Canada, ii. 283. Verden ceded to Hanover, i. 161. Verona Congress and Holy Alliance, iv. 39, 42, 45. Victoria, Princess Alexandrina: Birth, iii. 348. Heir-presumptive, iv. 101. William IV, and, iv. 117, 118. Vienna, Congress of, iv. 38. Vienna, Treaty of, i. 295; ii. 30. Virginia protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90. Voltaire, epigram on Byng, ii. 298. Von Steuben in America, iii. 183. Vote by ballot proposed, iv. 131. Wade, General, clans surrender arms to, ii. 209. Wales, Prince of (_see_ Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, and George IV. ). Walkenshaw, Miss, ii. 233. Walmoden, Mme. , ii. 48, 76, 304. Walpole, Baron, i. 224. Walpole, Horace, Earl of Orford: Account of his father (1742), ii. 189. Acquainted with Paris, iii. 293. Contrasts Townshend with Burke, iii. 112. Description of George I. , i. 58. Description of Lord Hillsborough, iii. 148. Description of Mme. Kilmansegge, i. 7. Eulogy of Queen Charlotte, iii. 12. Maiden speech in defence of his father, ii. 195. On Bute's Administration, iii. 28. On Carteret, i. 235. On Chesterfield's speeches, ii. 5. On Coronation of George III. , iii. 12. On dinner hour, iii. 18. On James Stuart, i. 11. On Lord George Gordon, iii. 193. On Whitefield's eloquence, ii. 139. On Wilkes's career, iii. 137. Walpole, Horatio, Lord: Ambassador to Paris, i. 237, 238, 291. Moves Address on Convention, ii. 171. Recalled from Paris, i. 304. Walpole, Sir Robert, Earl of Orford: Accepts war policy, ii. 180. Administration, i. 224 _seqq. _, 305. Address to George II. , i. 280. Advice to Princesses, ii. 126. At Houghton, i. 196; ii. 195. At Queen Caroline's death-bed, ii. 119. Attacks Peerage Bill, i. 176. Attempts to get influence of James Stuart, ii. 186. Attitude towards financial reform, ii. 36. Bill to adjust affairs of South Sea Company, i. 203, 205. Chairman of Committee of Secrecy, i. 105, 106, 168. Character, i. 165; ii. 8, 18, 196. Charges against, ii. 187, 195. Conduct on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 80. Correspondence with Townshend, i. 252. Corruption under, i. 231; ii. 13, 19, 90, 195; iii. 25. Created Earl of Orford, ii. 190. Death, ii. 196. First great finance minister, i. 229. Fiscal policy, i. 230, 309, 311 _seqq. _ Foreign policy, i. 229, 236, 292, 305; ii. 24, 31, 149. Hails George II. King, i. 275. Health in 1742, ii. 188. Made K. B. , i. 252. Made K. G. , i. 252. Masterly inactivity, ii. 24, 31, 36. Moves Address (1715), i. 103. On Frederick, Prince of Wales, ii. 71. On Queen's illness, ii. 115. On Royal family, ii. 74. On South Sea Company, i. 188, 196. Paymaster-General, i. 97, 181. Pleads against war with Spain, ii. 155, 159. Quarrel with Townshend, i. 304. Relations with stage, ii. 95. Resigns office, i. 164; ii. 190. Restored to office, i. 278. Secretary of State for Scotland, i. 250. Settles dispute between Spain and Portugal, ii. 35. Sketch of career, i. 32; ii. 196. Speech on Bolingbroke, ii. 15. Speech on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 86. Speech on secession from Commons, ii. 174. War declared against Spain, ii. 178. Results of, ii. 183. War of Independence, ii. 43. War of Polish Succession, ii. 23 _seqq. _ War of the Succession, purpose of, i. 92. War passion, ii. 148. War with Spain, iii. 29. Ward, Artemus, iii. 179. Ward, Henry, resolution on Irish State Church, iv. 212, 213, 214. Ward, Ned, ballad on Marlborough's return to England, i. 53. Ward, Plumer, author of "Tremaine, " iv. 213. Ward, Sir John, petition on South Sea Company, i. 203. Wardle, Colonel, iii. 338. Warren, General, iii. 176. Washington, George: Character, iii. 188. Commands Continental army, iii. 181. Disapproves of Boston exploit, iii. 161, 163. Fires first shot against enemy, ii. 285. First President of American Republic, iii. 189. Sketch of career, iii. 180. Watson, Admiral, commands fleet against Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269. "Waverers, " iv. 173. Webster, "Duchess of Malfi" quoted, iv. 11. Wedderburn, Alexander, Solicitor-General, iii. 149. Denounces Franklin, iii. 156, 157. On using military against mob, iii. 207. Sketch of, iii. 158. Speech on Middlesex election petition, iii. 131. "Weekly Political Register, " Cobbett's article in, iv. 156, 157. Wellesley, Arthur (_see_ Wellington, Duke of). Wellesley, Garret, Earl of Mornington, iii. 341. Wellesley, Richard C. , Marquis of: Resigns Vice-royalty of Ireland, iv. 73. Sketch of career, iv. 72. Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of: Accompanies George IV. To Waterloo, iv. 28. At opening of Liverpool and Manchester railway, iv. 103. Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 54, 56, 75, 106. Attitude towards Municipal Bill, iv. 260. Attitude towards Parliamentary reform, iv. 52. Attitude towards Queen Caroline, iv. 7. Character, iv. 120. Declines to form ministry, iv. 177. Duel with Lord Winchilsea, iv. 81. Interview with King on Catholic emancipation, iv. 77. Prime Minister, iv. 67, 100. Represents England at Congress of Verona, iv. 41, 42. Resigns office, iv. 113. Secretary for Foreign Affairs, iv. 238. Sketch of, iii. 341 _seqq. _ Speech against Reform Bill, iv. 169. Speech on Parliamentary reform, iv. 108. Supports Poor Law Bill, iv. 229. Unpopular, iv. 153. Welsh Copper and Lead Company, and South Sea Company, i. 193. Wentworth, Lady, describes house in Golden Square, i. 70. Wesley, Charles, ii. 128, 137, 145. Accompanies John to Georgia, ii. 134. On Revivalist meetings, ii. 139. Wesley, John: Breaks away from Moravians, ii. 140. Breaks from discipline of Church of England, ii. 142. Character, ii. 134, 135, 137, 142. Dispute with Whitefield, ii. 139. Marriage, ii. 137. Organization, ii. 140. Sketch of, ii. 127 _seqq. _ Visits Georgia, ii. 127. Wesleyan Movement, account of, ii. 127 _seqq. _ In United States, ii. 144. Revivalist meetings, ii. 138. West Indian Planters, grant to, iv. 198, 200. West Indies, slavery in, iv. 190 _seqq. _ Abolished, iv. 199, 200. Westminster Hall, iv. 268. Booths in, i. 64. Explosion in, ii. 45. Wetherell, Sir Charles, obstructs Reform Bill, iv. 163. Rescued from rioters, iv. 197. Weymouth, Lord, letter to magistrate in case of riot, iii. 120, 124. Wharncliffe, Lord, amendment to Reform Bill, iv. 169. Wharton, Duke of: Character, i. 264. Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 191, 198. Whately, --, private secretary to George Grenville, iii. 153. Whately, William, iii. 155. Wheler, appointed Governor-General, iii. 264. Whigs: Ascendency, iii. 24. Attitude towards Hanoverian Succession, i. 16. Doctrines, i. 17 _seqq. _ Foreign policy (1716), i. 157. Nobles and Reform Bill, iv. 178. Origin of name, i. 17. Whitbread, efforts to inquire into troubles in Ireland, iii. 319. Whitefield, George, ii. 128, 137, 145. Disputes with Wesley, ii. 139. Oratory, ii. 139. White's chocolate-house, i. 76. Widdrington, Lord, a prisoner, i. 137, 138. Wilberforce, William: Later years, iv. 280. Supports Queen Caroline, iv. 6. Votes against Dundas, iii. 338. West-Indian Slavery and, iv. 191, 193, 194. Wilkes, John: Arrested, iii. 59. At King's Bench, iii. 119. Attack on, iii. 64, 66. Brings actions against Lord Halifax and Wood, iii. 63. Candidate for Parliament, iii. 116, 117, 126, 137. Catholic Relief for Scotland and, iii. 195. Churchill and, iii. 55. Committed to Tower, iii. 60. Death, iii. 139. Duel with Martin, iii. 66. Elected Alderman for Farringdon Without, iii. 134. Elected Lord Mayor, iii. 137. Elected Sheriff, iii. 136. Expelled from House, iii. 130. Interview with Johnson, iii. 138. Later life, iii. 137. Liberated from prison, iii. 135. Literary executor to Churchill, iii. 69. M. P. For Aylesbury, iii. 49, 51. _North Briton_ and, iii. 52, 55, 57. On rioters, iii. 209. Outlawed, iii. 68. Released by Judge Pratt, iii. 60, 63. Sketch of, iii. 48 _seqq. _ Summoned before Commons, iii. 135. William III. , opinion of Duke of Marlborough, i. 24. William IV. : Accession, iv. 96. Assents to Bill for Abolition of Slavery, iv. 199. Attitude towards Duke of Wellington, iv. 115. Attitude towards Irish State Church, iv. 219. Attitude towards Ministry (1831), iv. 151. Attitude towards Reform, iv. 172, 173, 175, 179, 181. Character, iv. 98, 114, 115, 120, 293. Conduct as admiral, iv. 115. Conduct to Mrs. Fitzherbert, iv. 88. Death, iv. 293. Dismisses Whig Government and sends for Sir Robert Peel, iv. 235. Illness, iv. 289. Lord High Admiral, iv. 60, 96. Marries Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, iv. 97. Mrs. Jordan and, iv. 97. Opens Parliament (1831), iv. 154. Orangeism and, iv. 279. Popular, iv. 153, 154. Prayers for, iv. 292. Raises his children to Peerage, iv. 114. Sanctions Reform Bill, iv. 132. Speech from Throne (1830), iv. 100, 103, 108. Speech from Throne (1831), iv. 172. Speeches at state dinners, iv. 116, 117. Unconventionalities, iv. 118. Unpopular, iv. 179. Williamson, Dr. Hugh, iii. 154. Will's coffee-house, i. 75. Wilmington, Lord (_see_ Compton, Sir Spencer). Wilmot, Olivia, sketch of, iv. 286. Wilmot, Robert, on grievances against Spaniards, ii. 154. Wilson, Alexander, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Bill against, ii. 66, 68. Wilson's execution and Porteous riots, ii. 60, 61. Winchilsea, Earl of: Duel with Duke of Wellington, iv. 81. On Princess Anne's Dowry, ii. 44, 45. Letter on Duke of Wellington and Catholic Emancipation, iv. 80. Window tax, iii. 239. Wine-drinking in Georgian era, iii. 20. Wintoun, Earl of, a prisoner, i. 137. Escapes, i. 142. Witherington, Matilda, wife of Wolfe Tone, iii. 311, 329. Wolfe, James: At Culloden, ii. 227, 282. Character, ii. 282. Death, ii. 290. Monument, ii. 290. Wood, Alderman, supports Queen Caroline, iv. 5. Wood, William, patent for copper coins, i. 164, 241, 244. Withdrawn, i. 248. Wooster, --, iii. 179. Wray, Sir Cecil, opponent of Fox at Westminster, iii. 238. Writs of Assistance, iii. 84, 86. Wyndham, Sir William: Announces secession from Commons, ii. 173. Death, ii. 179. Leader of Tories, i. 287. On grievances against Spaniards, ii. 156. On Salt Tax, i. 313. Sketch of, i. 288; ii. 179. Speech on repeal of Septennial Act, ii. 12. Wynn, Sir Walter Williams, supports Young Pretender, ii. 221. Wynn, Watkin Williams, argument against long Parliaments, ii. 12. Yale College, places in lists, iii. 77. York, Frederick Augustus, Duke of: Death, iv. 60. Public career, iv. 60. York in 1714, i. 79. Yorktown, Cornwallis surrenders at, iii. 184. Young, Arthur, travels in France, iii. 293. Zinzendorf, Count von, founds Moravian sect, ii. 134. Zoological Gardens opened, iv. 93.