Chapter IX: Part 9

So great were the advantages understood to be gained by this accession of capital in Government hands, that other companies wished to share in them. It was voted by a large majority that these advantages should be put up to public competition. The Bank of England and the South Sea Company set to work outbidding each other, the latter finally proposing terms which were virtually a payment to Government of seven millions and a half. This money was to be devoted to the public service, to pay off debts contracted to the end of the year 1722, and after that as much as possible of the capital of the South Sea Company itself. It is plain that for the success of this scheme two things were requisite. In the first place, a readiness on the part of the public to accept the Company's shares in exchange for their Government annuities; without that Government would not be freed, nor would the Company get its increased capital. But this exchange would of course bring in no ready money. Secondly, therefore, a large number of new shareholders would be required to subscribe, paying for their shares in ready money, in order to meet the demands of those holders of redeemable annuities who refused all exchange, and to cover the heavy premium of £7,000,000. Now both of these objects were dependent on the popularity of the Company's shares; and it was in this that the mistake of the arrangement lay; Government had in fact made too good a bargain. By an extensive system of bribes large sums of fictitious capital were invented and distributed gratis among influential members of the Government, and still more largely among the hungry Hanoverian courtiers, whose influence it was regarded as all important to secure. All fear of the success of the scheme was almost immediately removed. So great was the belief in the vast Company, backed up by this huge accession of Government credit, so well had the directors done their business, that a very large majority of the annuitants pressed with extreme haste to accept the terms offered, though those terms were very low. The public were then invited to subscribe the new capital. Five separate subscriptions of upwards of a million were in succession opened, and all filled, with equal rapidity.

[Sidenote: The rage for stock-jobbing.]

It was however in its secondary effects, rather than in its immediate consequences, that the scheme exerted the most extraordinary influence. There was a great deal of money in the country, and there was no satisfactory way of using it. Much had been hoarded, for there were not then as now numerous industrial investments in the market in which small sums could be employed. The apparent success of the South Sea Company, and the promises which it held out for rapid fortune-making, excited the spirit of speculation to the highest degree, and companies sprang into existence with unexampled rapidity. Some were real and serious--waterworks, paving companies, and companies for the improvement of all branches of manufacture. Some were mere transparent impostures--as a company for the importation of Spanish donkeys, for the fixing of quicksilver, or for wheels of perpetual motion. It did not matter much what they were, for the rage for stock-jobbing was such that any hardy promoter of a company might hope to float it at all events till he had himself realized a handsome fortune. Change Alley became a scene of the wildest excitement--people in all lines of life hurrying to buy and sell as during the railway mania of our own time. But among all the companies the South Sea Company maintained its pre-eminence, and its shares rose, till in August the £100 share was worth £1000. The Company continued to promise largely, even fifty per cent. profits. The absurdity and danger of such reckless proceedings began to become obvious. The nominal value of all the shares in all the companies then existing was held to be £500,000,000, or twice the value of all the land in England. But many of these companies, being unchartered, were illegal, and had no right to issue shares, and the legitimate companies, especially the South Sea, looked with jealousy at their illegal competitors. Apparently unconscious how much their own success depended upon the universal delusion, they proceeded to prosecute some companies which had acted illegally. The effect was instantaneous. The nation began to return to its senses; the bubble burst, and the stocks of all unchartered companies fell with extreme rapidity. In the universal ruin they carried with them the South Sea Company. The panic was as rapid as the eagerness to purchase had been. Before the end of September South Sea stock was at 175. The difference between that sum and the £1000 which they had touched will give some measure of the loss involved. The ruin among all classes was unspeakable.

[Sidenote: Bursting of the bubble.]

So great was the desolation that it was found necessary for Parliament to intervene. Not that the great Company itself was in any way bankrupt, its shares were still at a large premium, they never fell below 175; not that any law of political economy had been broken; Government had never pledged itself to support the credit of the Company, or to force either its shares or its engagements on the public; but simply because private speculation had caused so vast an amount of misery, and because the nation was exasperated at it, interference became absolutely necessary. Examination into all the details of the plan no doubt proved a considerable amount of venality on the part of the ministry, of bribery and fraud on the part of the directors. But even thus it was freely acknowledged that under no old law had any crime been committed, and it required a retrospective Act of Parliament and the creation of a temporary crime to bring the directors within the reach of punishment. As Gibbon said, the steps taken were in fact an act of popular vengeance and contrary to justice. They consisted in the appropriation of the private property of the directors to the amount of £2,000,000 for distribution among the sufferers, the remission of the £7,000,000 due by the Company to Government, the payment of all the just liabilities to the Company, and a division of the capital that then remained, about thirty-three per cent., among the proprietors.

[Sidenote: Punishment of the directors.]

[Sidenote: Supremacy of Walpole. 1721.]

These measures are due exclusively to Walpole, the one man specially fitted from his financial abilities to deal with the present crisis, and in whose favour it was remembered that he had been out of office when the plan was set on foot. The official inquiries into the circumstances of the South Sea Scheme left him indeed in a position of undisputed supremacy in the House. Several members of the Government were implicated in the frauds of the Company; Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was found guilty and expelled the House. The younger Craggs died of smallpox before the inquiry was completed, and his father committed suicide. Charles Stanhope was acquitted by a majority of three only, and although Sunderland was declared innocent by a large majority, public opinion was so strong against him that he had to leave the ministry. In the following year he died. During the angry debates which arose on these matters Lord Stanhope had been attacked with virulence by the Duke of Wharton, and the anger which he had felt had been such as to cause a rush of blood to the head, of which he died shortly before his relative Charles Stanhope was acquitted. There remained no possible rival to Walpole, who with his brother-in-law Townshend returned to power as First Lord of the Treasury. Thus, when the new Parliament assembled, he found himself absolute master of the field, at the head of an unbroken Whig party, supported by an overwhelming majority, and for twenty years maintained his position, to the immense advantage of England and to the lasting security of the reigning house.

[Sidenote: Revival of Jacobite hopes.]

[Sidenote: Bishop Atterbury's plot.]

Not that the Jacobites were as yet extinct, but they were silenced in Parliament, and had to rely upon conspiracy or foreign assistance. Their hopes in fact were at this moment in some respects higher than ever, for the disturbance and discontent caused by the collapse of the South Sea Scheme, together with the birth of an heir to the House of Stuart in the person of Prince Charles Edward, seemed to afford them an opportunity for greater activity. The Stuart papers prove the existence of a well-organized intrigue, under the management of a Committee of five, Lord Orrery, the Earl of Arran Lord Orford's brother, Lord North, Lord Gower, and Atterbury Bishop of Rochester. The letters display in a very curious manner the false hopes with which the party were constantly buoyed up. Atterbury indeed showed signs of considerable wisdom, the reintroduction of Walpole and Townshend to the ministry seemed to him a great blow to the cause. "The reconciliation," he writes, "is not yet hearty and sincere, but I apprehend it will by degrees become so. The Tories have no good foundation on which to stand. Disaffection and uneasiness will continue everywhere, and probably increase. The bulk of the nation will be ever in the true interest and on the side of justice. The present settlement will perhaps be detested every day more and more, and yet no effectual step will or can be taken to shake it." The great South Sea Scheme also seemed to him a difficulty. "That body of men, who have increased their capital by £40,000,000, begin to look formidable. They cannot but be the governors of the kingdom." He therefore urged instant action before the Whig settlement had time to ripen or the financial plans to be brought to successful conclusion. Even a few years later the Earl of Orrery wrote, "It is not an extravagant computation that four out of five of the whole nation wish well to you." Nevertheless all these Jacobite writers were obliged to confess, even after the failure of the scheme, that the united Whigs were too powerful, and the general prudence of all classes too great, to allow of any successful movement without assistance from abroad. It is plain also that there were numerous sections and much want of discipline in the Jacobite camp. Atterbury's influence was disapproved of by many; Gower had a band of followers of his own; and James was so alive to this source of weakness that he earnestly pressed for the election of a responsible head, naming the Earl of Oxford as the fittest person for the purpose. These divisions, and the want of self-reliance in the face of the powerful Government, constantly prevented the Jacobites from obtaining success; their agents were perpetually soliciting foreign countries for help, and the chain of foreign diplomacy which Stanhope had wrought was so close, that such ill-advised requests could scarcely fail to reach the ears of the English ministry. Thus a determination to take advantage of the confusion caused by the South Sea Scheme, by the death of Stanhope, which was supposed to have broken the link with France, and by the new election for Parliament, was brought to Walpole's knowledge. The Regent had been asked to supply 5000 men, but Dubois was not likely to overthrow the diplomatic edifice he had so carefully built up. He at once informed the English minister at Paris. And at the opening of the new Parliament George was able to give a short summary of the conspiracy, involving an expedition headed by James and Ormond from Spain and Italy, the seizure of the Tower, the Bank and the Exchequer, and the declaration in London of King James; and at the same time he could state that some of the chiefs, especially the Bishop of Rochester, were already under arrest.

[Sidenote: Failure of the conspiracy.]

[Sidenote: Quarrel between Carteret and Walpole.]

The superiority of the Whig party was now shown in the Bills that were passed relative to this conspiracy. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended for a whole year, the longest time on record; sums were granted for an increase of the army; a tax of £100,000, to be collected from all Nonjurors, was enacted; and as the evidence was scarcely sufficient to go before a Court of Law, Bills of Pains and Penalties were introduced against some of the subordinate agents, and against Atterbury himself, who was forced to leave the kingdom. At Calais he met Bolingbroke, who had just received his pardon and was returning to England. He had been dismissed by the Pretender after the failure of 1715, and had vowed never again to serve so ungrateful a master. None the less did he continue for the rest of his life to hamper by his intrigues the Whig party. The chief cause of his irritation was that his overtures were rejected by Walpole, who already began to show that thirst for power and jealousy of men of great talents which was one of his marked characteristics, and which was the ultimate cause of his fall. Carteret, who with Townshend was now Secretary of State, was his first victim--a man of the most brilliant parts and of unrivalled knowledge of foreign affairs. He had succeeded to much of the influence as well as to the views of Stanhope. Abroad he was inclined to plunge England into the complications of Hanoverian policy. It was in fact natural that with his great knowledge of foreign affairs he should be led to consider them more important than other English statesmen, who then as now were inclined towards a policy of isolation. At home, too, his views were less exclusively those of a Whig partisan than those of his fellow ministers. He feared probably less than the occasion demanded the strength of the Jacobites. He looked upon the sole possession of power by the Whigs on the Hanoverian succession as a necessary but only temporary evil. He was desirous of a far larger admission of the Tory element, and would willingly have admitted Bolingbroke and those Tories who would have accompanied him among the ranks of the ministry, or at all events among the ranks of the ministerial supporters. But to Walpole such views were exceedingly distasteful. He well knew Bolingbroke's ability and feared him as a personal rival. He felt also that if Bolingbroke were instrumental in destroying the Tory opposition, the King could not but feel under considerable obligations to him, and that his own exclusive influence would be shaken. Bolingbroke's overtures were therefore most coldly received, and he withdrew again to Paris, where an intrigue was going on, in which he took a prominent part, and which ended in the fall of his friend Carteret. The intrigue itself was of a very despicable character, and was connected with the marriage of a daughter of Madame de Platen, sister of the King's mistress, the Countess of Darlington. To counteract Carteret, who was employing the English ambassador in the Countess's interest, Townshend sent Horace Walpole as his agent to Paris. The existence of two rival ambassadors, one only properly accredited, brought matters to a crisis. The King, in spite of a strong personal friendship for Carteret, was obliged to yield to the influence of Walpole, and his rival had to withdraw to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland.

[Sidenote: Excitement in Ireland.]

But although the office given to Carteret was regarded as a retirement, in the present instance it promised to be no sinecure. Ireland was in a state of wild excitement, lashed to fury by the exceedingly able but untrue writings of Swift, who in his Drapier's Letters had by exaggeration and falsehood given an aspect of tyrannical misgovernment to a commonplace and legitimate financial act. There was great need of a new small coinage for Ireland, and Walpole had given a patent in 1722 to a certain William Wood, giving him power to coin farthings and halfpence to the value of £108,000. The contract and quality had been declared satisfactory by Sir Isaac Newton, Master of the Mint. The Irish Parliament declared that the patent would occasion a loss to the nation of one hundred and fifty per cent., an extraordinary assertion based upon the fact that a pound of rough copper in Ireland was worth twelve pence, while a pound of coined fine copper was to be worth thirty pence. But the mint in London gave eighteenpence a pound for its copper. The charge of coinage was fourpence, the duties upon copper imported into Ireland were twenty per cent., and the difference of exchange between England and Ireland rendered a slight diminution of the weight reasonable. Of course, however, it is certain that the patentee made something by the bargain, especially as the voracious Duchess of Kendal had been bribed to obtain it. But all facts and all reasoning were useless against the storm raised by Swift's Letters, and it was not till Walpole had exhibited his usual prudence in accepting inevitable defeat, and cancelling the patent, that Ireland was quieted.

[Sidenote: Disturbances in Scotland. 1725.]

It was not in Ireland only that the financial measures of Walpole met with opposition. For years the tax upon malt had been with great difficulty collected in Scotland. This tax had been changed into a charge of threepence upon every barrel of ale. Edinburgh was in commotion, and the brewers refused to brew. Lord Isla, the Duke of Argyle's brother, was acting as Walpole's agent in the matter. He prudently declined to interfere, certain that love of profit would speedily break up the combination. A public meeting, Walpole tells us, was held, and the question put by the chairman, "Brew or not brew?" He began by asking the man on his right hand. But he and many who followed him refused to vote, till at last one bolder than the rest refused to be bound by the majority and voted "Brew." The assembly broke up in some confusion, but before morning there were forty brewhouses hard at work in Edinburgh and ten in Leith.

[Sidenote: Spanish difficulties. 1725.]

The remainder of the reign offers but little of interest in domestic history, but before Walpole could enter unchecked on that course of peaceful policy which is the chief characteristic of his long tenure of office, he had yet one difficulty with Spain to overcome, while at home there was already springing up that opposition of discontented Whigs combined with the Tory party, which, under the fostering influence of Bolingbroke behind the scenes, and led in Parliament by the ability of Pulteney, formed the formidable opposition to which Walpole ultimately succumbed. Since the adhesion of Spain to the Quadruple Alliance and the fall of Alberoni, a Congress had been sitting at Cambrai to arrange the details of the final settlement of Europe. The chief points at issue were the renunciation of the title of King of Spain, to which the Austrian Empire fondly clung, the Grand Mastership of the Order of the Golden Fleece, which the Emperor also claimed, and the restoration to their owners of certain Italian provinces of which the Emperor had taken possession. To gain these ends, Spain, absolutely renouncing the policy of Alberoni, attached itself closely to France and England, purchased the favour of the latter country by a treaty of commerce, renewing the Assiento and the annual ship to the Spanish colonies, and of the former by a marriage-treaty. This marriage-treaty Orleans was induced to accept in pursuance of his plan for keeping continual hold of the regency; all views of ultimate succession were gradually fading from him as the young King improved in health. It was a threefold arrangement; the Infanta Mary Anne, then only three years old, was to marry Louis XV., the two daughters of the Regent were to marry the Prince of Asturias, heir to the Spanish crown, and Don Carlos, presumptive heir to Parma and Tuscany. Spain had thus done so much that she awaited with confidence the meeting of the Congress at Cambrai. But that Congress was very slow in its operations, and the hasty Queen of Spain and her ambitious husband began to weary of the ill success of their concessions, and to think that perhaps after all matters might be brought to a more speedy termination by direct action, without mediators, at the court of Vienna. The Spanish Government was the more inclined to this step, because it had been persuaded that the Austrian court would lend no unwilling ear to direct negotiations.

[Sidenote: Intrigues of Ripperda.]

This belief had been forced upon the King and Queen by a strange, adventurous, but very able foreigner, who was rapidly rising into somewhat the same position in Spain that Alberoni had held. This was the Baron Ripperda. A Dutchman by origin, a soldier by profession, he was unusually well versed in the details of business and of political economy. He had taken up all Alberoni's views as to the possible expansion of the resources of Spain, and, thinking there was more room for his ability in that country than in Holland, had had himself naturalized there. He followed the King during his temporary resignation of the Spanish throne, and returned with him on his son's death to the possession of full power. There seems little doubt that throughout Ripperda had been in the pay of the Austrian court, and it was chiefly at his instigation that the Congress at Cambrai was deserted and direct negotiations between the courts opened. He had set before the King and Queen very plausible reasons not only for a negotiation but for a change of policy, no less complete than an entire desertion of the mediating Powers and of the principle of the Quadruple Alliance, and a close friendship with the House of Austria. Spain would thus be freed from the constant encroachments of England upon her trade, and the interference of France, which had been very irksome to the Spaniards since the Bourbon accession, would be avoided. The old question of the Barrier Treaty was exciting the animosity of England and Austria; for Austria, in distinct contravention of the commercial articles of that treaty, which forbade to the Austrian Netherlands the trade of India, had established a great Ostend India Company. And there was another object very dear to the Emperor's heart towards which Spain could lend important aid. It could guarantee the Pragmatic Sanction, pledge itself, that is, to preserve the Austrian succession to the daughter of the Emperor, a pledge which in the case of Spain meant a great deal, as Spain had fair claims to a considerable portion of the succession on the extinction of the direct male line of the Austrian house. With these hopes and with these offers Ripperda set out for Vienna, with the intention of entirely destroying the present arrangements of Europe, of breaking the existing marriage-treaty with the Orleans princesses, of substituting for them the Austrian archduchesses, and of restoring Europe to its ancient attitude by the close alliance of Austria and Spain in opposition to France and England.

[Sidenote: Treaty of Vienna. April 30, 1725.]

The success of Ripperda's scheme, the completion of his great act of treachery, was rapidly secured by an act of a very similar description on the part of the Duke of Bourbon. That prince had an almost insane dread of the possible succession of the Orleans house to the French throne; to preclude its possibility he desired the immediate marriage of the young king. But his betrothed Spanish bride was but a baby; regardless therefore of all treaty obligations, the Duke sent her back almost without explanation to Spain, and married the young King to Maria Leczinska, daughter of the ex-King of Poland. The rage of the Spanish king knew no bounds; he sent peremptory orders to Ripperda to bring the treaty with Austria to a conclusion upon any terms. Under these circumstances the great Treaty of Vienna was made on the 30th of April 1725. It consisted of three separate treaties, two public and one private. By the public treaties the Pragmatic Sanction was guaranteed; the Spanish ports opened to German commerce; the succession of Parma and Tuscany promised to Don Carlos; and Austria pledged herself to use her best influence to secure the restoration of Gibraltar and Minorca. Had this been all it would have been fair enough, somewhat humiliating to the countries left negotiating uselessly at Cambrai, but not otherwise than in accordance with the principles of the Quadruple Alliance.

[Sidenote: The secret treaty.]

On the supposition that there was no secret treaty the English Opposition desired that no notice might be taken of the transaction, and reprobated the action of the Government in forming a counter treaty as Hanoverian. But there can be little doubt that there was a secret treaty. Its tenor was afterwards disclosed by Ripperda. In it the marriages between the two houses were arranged; Austria and Spain pledged themselves to assist the restoration of the Stuarts; and to compel, if necessary by force, the restoration of Gibraltar and Minorca. The existence of this treaty before long reached the ears of the English ministers. For some little time the Jacobites had been extremely active. An envoy had come to rouse the loyalty of the clans, and had found them not disinclined to revolt; and the Duke of Wharton, one of the Jacobite leaders, had gone abroad and held ostentatiously secret meetings with Ripperda. Ripperda's own tongue was none of the quietest, and he boasted constantly of his great plans. The threat against the power of England was rendered more dangerous by the attitude of Russia, where the Empress Catherine, who was receiving large subsidies from the Spanish court, was eager to win for her son-in-law the Duke of Holstein the province of Sleswig, which the Danes had taken from him.

[Sidenote: The Treaty of Hanover.]

To meet this threatening alliance therefore, on the 3rd of September, the counter Treaty of Hanover was signed between England, France and Prussia, for mutual assistance should either of the countries be attacked. The real intention was to compel the Emperor to relinquish the Ostend Company, and to withstand any attempt on the part of the Pretender. Ripperda had returned in triumph to Madrid; but his success was shortlived. He found himself unable to fulfil the promises he had made to the Austrians; the people of Spain hated him; he was driven from office, and had to seek refuge at the British embassy, where his confessions completely justified the precautions the Government had taken in bringing about the Treaty of Hanover. In spite of his fall the treaty he had arranged still continued effective.

[Sidenote: Excitement of Europe.]

It seemed as if Europe was upon the verge of a great war, divided as of old into North and South, Protestant and Catholic. The indignation excited by the Treaty of Vienna in England was very great. As it was well put in the King's speech, it appeared as if the appropriation of the English trade was to be given to one country, and Gibraltar and Port Mahon to another, as a price for assisting the Stuart Pretender to the English throne. Very large subsidies were granted, and the army and navy increased. A British squadron blockaded Porto Bello, another squadron entered the Baltic to overawe the Russians; the Spanish galleons were seized. The foolish publication of a direct appeal from the Emperor of Austria to the English people excited the anger even of the Opposition, and secured the speedy dismissal of Palm, the Austrian ambassador. A Spanish army proceeded to invest Gibraltar.

But the skilful though selfish policy of Prussia, and the pacific tendencies of Walpole and of the new French minister Fleury, produced an arrangement. The Emperor found that his position was becoming dangerous. Prussia, at once the leader of the princely opposition to the Imperial house, and yet thoroughly German in its tendencies, determined to be neutral. It could not assist the Emperor in supporting a treaty which by its marriage clauses threatened to put a Spanish prince on the Imperial throne. The King had hopes of gaining from France some portion of the Juliers succession. But the house of Brandenburg had become of great importance in European politics; neither party could well act without it. Its neutrality induced the Emperor to consent to the signature of preliminaries of peace, signed at Paris on the 31st of May 1727. He agreed to suspend the Ostend Company for seven years, and to refer other disputes to the general Congress. The pacific policy which had produced this arrangement was Walpole's. The skill which had formed the Treaty of Hanover, the dread of which had undoubtedly produced the peace, belonged to Townshend. And here began the ill-feeling between the brothers-in-law which ultimately produced the disruption of their friendship.

[Sidenote: Preliminaries of peace. May 31, 1727.]

[Sidenote: Opposition to Walpole headed by Bolingbroke.]

The period of this exciting foreign crisis was rendered interesting in England by the rising power of the Opposition to Walpole. At the back of that Opposition was constantly Bolingbroke. Enormous bribes had secured for him the favour of the Duchess of Kendal. Great stress had been brought to bear on Walpole to consent to his complete restitution. But Walpole would go no further than to allow a restoration of property, the attainder and consequent exclusion from the House of Peers was kept constantly suspended over his head. His anger against the minister who thus thwarted him knew no bounds. He set himself to work to form an Opposition. William Pulteney, an old friend of Walpole's, but like Carteret cast off as too able, lent himself to Bolingbroke's plans, and became his mouthpiece in the House of Commons. Between them they established the Opposition paper, the _Craftsman_, and under their influence every measure of the Government was vigorously attacked by the Jacobite or Whig members. Underhand intrigue promised to be even more effectual than overt opposition. The Duchess of Kendal, by dint of bribing, had grown to be zealous in the cause of the Opposition. She was constantly at work on the King, urging the full restoration of Bolingbroke, urging even the admission of him and his friends to the ministry, and the dismissal of Walpole. George indeed held bravely to his old minister. He showed him the insidious attacks which the Duchess put into his hands, and allowed him thus to meet and counteract them. But Walpole himself felt that the constant importunity of the favourite would sooner or later have its effect. He was even, it is said, thinking of withdrawing to the Upper House, when the King's death at Osnabrück, on his return home from Hanover, put an end for a moment to the almost successful intrigue.

[Sidenote: The King's death. June 9, 1727.]

[Sidenote: Review of the reign.]

[Sidenote: Increased importance of England abroad.]

England had been singularly fortunate in escaping the dangers which generally accompany a violent change of dynasty. The attention of the new Government is usually so constantly directed towards the maintenance of its position in the face of the eager opposition of its worsted rivals, that it neglects the external interests of the country, and the nation sinks for a time into insignificance. In the first days of the Revolution the nation had fortunately fallen into the hands of a great statesman, whose wide policy, carried out with consummate ability by the Duke of Marlborough, had raised it to a very high position. At Utrecht it had treated as one of the first European nations. The skill of Stanhope had secured the prestige thus won. It was England which was the chief power of the Quadruple Alliance, her fleet in the Mediterranean which gave the first great blow to the plans of Alberoni. Twice the appearance of her fleet in the Baltic had overawed the North, and when the new European combination brought about by the Treaty of Vienna had threatened the existing arrangements of Europe, it was the diplomacy of England which called into existence the counter Treaty of Hanover.

[Sidenote: Private and public immorality.]

At home the survey of the reign is not so satisfactory. There was deep depravity in both domestic and public life. The licentiousness which had marked the whole Stuart period had lost nothing of its wickedness, but a good deal of its elegance, in its union with the corruption of a small German court. With a king without wit, without taste for the arts, without knowledge of literature, without perception of beauty, and swayed by two ugly, ignorant and rapacious mistresses, we hear with no surprise tales of the coarseness of the time. If possible, the depravity of public life was greater than the private immorality. It is enough to mark the character of the reign that the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Macclesfield, was towards its close convicted of disgracing the seat of justice by receiving bribes, and was removed with ignominy from his office; that three ministers at least, if not more, were compromised in the iniquitous transactions of the South Sea Company, and that the King's mistress amassed an immense fortune from the bribes by which her favour was purchased. But even worse than this shameless venality was the political infidelity which universally prevailed. It is this which is the real danger of a disputed succession. There is an uncertainty as to which party may ultimately be successful, which engenders a spirit of political gambling, while for any fancied insults, or any real loss of power, immediate revenge can be sought by a mere transfer, and frequently a secret transfer of allegiance. To this may be added the tendency of compulsory oaths, which men persuade themselves that they may accept as a matter of form, and which therefore weaken all sense of conscientious engagements. There was hardly a statesman of note who had not more or less tampered with the Jacobite party. Even Walpole is not quite clear of the charge, while the whole body of High Tories were in constant danger of drifting into Jacobitism.

[Sidenote: Influence of the Hanoverian courtiers.]

Nor was this the only cause leading to low political morality. The reigning King was a foreigner in all his habits and in all his tastes. He was surrounded by a Hanoverian court, who regarded England as an instrument for the aggrandizement of Hanover, and formed a centre for all intrigues to win the royal favour at the expense of patriotism. It is strange, indeed, that their influence was less directly felt in English politics, and it is perhaps owing to those very Hanoverian predilections of the King, which are so often urged against him, that their influence was not greater. He was so thoroughly German in language and in thought, he was so incapable of comprehending the English Constitution and manners, that his real interests were entirely centred on his Hanoverian dominions, and in all matters in which they were not concerned he left England to work out its own revolution, and was compelled, moreover, to throw himself wholly into the hands of that party on whom the revolution rested, and with whom it was a matter of life and death to secure the completion of that revolution, and to maintain the security of the Parliamentary King. It was fortunate that that party was guided by the wisdom of Walpole. That jealousy of power which was his chief weakness was itself an advantage, since it tended to exclude from power the Tory party, and gave a united character to the Government, which proved the hopelessness of success to all who did not accept it.

GEORGE II.

1727-1760.

Born 1683=Caroline of Anspach.
|
+----------------+--------+-----------+---------------+
| | | | |
Frederick=Augusta William Anne=Prince Mary=Landgrave Louisa=
d. 1751. of Saxe- Duke of of Orange of Hesse- Frederick V.
| Gotha Cumberland. Cassel. of Denmark.
| d. 1765.
George III.

CONTEMPORARY PRINCES.

_France._ | _Austria._ | _Spain._ |
Louis XV., 1715.| Charles VI., 1711. | Philip V., 1700. |
| Charles VII., 1742. | Ferdinand VI., 1746.|
| Maria Theresa, 1745.| Charles III., 1759. |

| _Prussia._
| Frederick William, 1713.
| Frederick the Great, 1740.

_Russia._ | _Denmark._ | _Sweden._
Peter II., 1727. | Frederick IV., 1699. | Frederick I., 1720.
Anne, 1730. | Christian VI., 1730. | Adolphus, 1751.
Ivan VI., 1740. | Frederick V., 1746. |
Elizabeth, 1741. |

=POPES.--=Benedict XIII., 1724. Clement XII., 1730. Benedict XIV., 1740.
Clement XIII., 1758.

_Archbishops._ | _Chancellors._
Wake, 1715. | King, 1725.
Potter, 1737. | Talbot, 1733.
Herring, 1747. | Hardwick, 1737.
Hutton, 1757. | Northington, 1757.
Secker, 1758. |

_First Lords of the Treasury._ | _Chancellors of the Exchequer._
1727. Walpole. | 1727. Walpole.
1742. Wilmington. | 1742. Sandys.
1743. Pelham. | 1743. Pelham.
1754. Newcastle. | 1754. Legge.
1756. Devonshire. | 1755. Lyttleton.
1757. Newcastle. | 1756. Legge.

_Secretaries of State._
1727-1757. Newcastle.
1730. Harrington.
1742. Carteret.
1744. Harrington.
1746. Chesterfield.
1748. Bedford.
1751. Holderness.
1754. Robinson.
1755. Fox.
1757. {Pitt.
{Holderness.

[Sidenote: Walpole retains his position.]

The ascendancy of Walpole was in great jeopardy on the death of George I. Bolingbroke's intrigues against him, backed by all the influence of the Duchess of Kendal, had indeed been thwarted by the straightforward manner in which George I. had put all complaints against him into the minister's own hands--a striking instance of that love of justice and fidelity to old friends which were the redeeming traits of his otherwise uninteresting character. But Walpole had now to do with a sovereign whom as Prince of Wales he had always opposed, and who had been known to use strong expressions of disapprobation with regard to him. George II., a little, dry man, gifted with the hereditary bravery and obstinacy of his family, but with very limited abilities, and a mind far more easily touched by little things than by broad interests, could not be expected to forget Walpole's opposition, nor to appreciate his calm, tolerant wisdom. When Walpole brought him the news of his father's death, he was at once directed to apply to Sir Spencer Compton, a dull, orderly man, Speaker of the House of Commons and Treasurer to the Prince of Wales. Walpole was wise enough to profess friendship for the new favourite, who even employed the ability of his predecessor to draw up the speech which the King was to deliver to the Council. For some days it was believed that Walpole's power was gone. His usual throng of followers deserted him and crowded to Sir Spencer Compton's levée. But before any definite arrangements had been made, Sir Spencer unwisely gave Walpole opportunities for personally explaining himself to the King. He was thus able to remove the bad impression the King had received as to his foreign policy, and to outbid his rivals in the arrangements he proposed to make for the Civil List, a point very close to the King's heart. He completely succeeded in winning the Queen to his interests; and when she heard that Compton had had to appeal to his assistance in arranging the speech from the throne, she took the opportunity of impressing upon George the absurdity of employing a minister who was obliged to lean for support upon his rival. The Queen's influence, which was very great, turned the scale in his favour. The ministry continued unchanged. Compton, feeling his brief importance at an end, withdrew from the contest, and shortly afterwards accepted the position of President of the Council as Lord Wilmington.

[Sidenote: Increase of the Civil List.]

The offer which had proved so effective a means for securing Walpole's power consisted of £130,000 to the Civil List, and a jointure of £100,000 to Queen Caroline. The Civil List, which had been settled after the Revolution at £700,000 a year from all sources, had proved insufficient, saddled as it then was with a variety of expenses, such as the judges' and ambassadors' salaries, beyond the mere expenses of the Court. Anne had been £1,200,000 in debt, George I. £1,000,000. Walpole now offered to induce the House to raise it to £800,000 a year, allowing the King to claim anything beyond that sum which should arise from the hereditary revenues.

[Sidenote: The influence of the Queen.]

[Sidenote: Character of Walpole's ministry.]

Before long Walpole won the entire confidence of the King himself, but it was at first chiefly on the friendship of the Queen that he relied. She was a woman of very considerable ability. Her intellectual fault indeed was an attempt to know too much. She collected around her men of learning of all sorts, dabbled in divinity, dabbled in metaphysics, patronized poetry, and delighted in listening to theological discussions, in which she kept the part of strict neutrality, believing it is thought but little on either side. But her influence in bringing forward men of ability, especially in the Church, was very great. Her sense was excellent, and by means of it, in spite of the King's royal immorality, she contrived to rule him absolutely. She thoroughly appreciated Walpole, and together they pursued that policy, which was no doubt the right one for the maintenance of the Hanoverian succession. This consisted in the pursuit of peace in every direction--peace abroad, peace at home. If any point was strongly contested it was given up; if any abuse was unobserved it was suffered to rest untouched; and in general their object was to let the nation learn by its material prosperity the advantages of an orderly and settled Government. As a consequence of this policy the period of Walpole's government was uneventful, and was occupied rather with the great Parliamentary struggle between himself and the Opposition under Pulteney than by any great national affairs.

[Sidenote: Character of the Opposition.]

The chief strength of that Opposition consisted of the discontented Whigs, most of whom were driven to oppose Walpole by his insatiable love of power. We have already seen Pulteney and Carteret forced from the ranks of the Government, and all overtures with Bolingbroke rejected. In 1730, Walpole quarrelled with his old friend and brother-in-law Townshend, who was only restrained by his patriotism from joining the Opposition. In 1733, Lord Chesterfield was added to the list. These leaders had behind them a certain quantity of supporters who took the name of Patriots, and wished to be regarded as the true old Whigs, looking upon Walpole with his large majority as seceders from them. There was much plausibility in this view: for the Whig party under Walpole seemed to have become closely attached to the Crown, and was supported principally by Crown influence. As the original principle of the Whigs had been antagonism to the over-great power of the Crown, it could be plausibly urged that they had now assumed the position of their former enemies. The Hanoverian line had ascended the throne with a parliamentary as contrasted with a hereditary title; it had therefore naturally found its chief supporters among the Whigs. With the Hanoverians that party had entered upon power. But the Revolution, while practically subordinating the power of the King to that of Parliament, had constitutionally left it untouched. The Hanoverian kings did not indeed employ it to its full, but placed it in the hands of the minister, who, by means of the royal influence, practically ruled England with as unquestioned a sway as any great minister of the Stuarts. The difference lay in this, that the power of the Crown consisted in the immense influence it possessed by means of pensions, places, and the command of the public money, and worked through the House of Commons, and not in opposition to it. The patriot Whigs were conscious of the power of the Crown, and were true to their principles in opposing it. Their error lay in this, that they did not understand that that power was formidable only so long as there was a venal House of Commons. Eager as they thought for liberty, they formed a close connection with the High Tories and Jacobites, the greatest enemies of liberty; and in their eagerness for office did their best to oppose that Government, which for the present, at all events, was the only safeguard against the restoration of the Stuarts, for the events of 1745 render it plain that danger from the Jacobites was as yet by no means over. In fact, however, principle had little to do with the matter, it was personal animosity to the minister, and anger at exclusion from office, which inspired the Opposition. Even the party names "Whig" and "Tory" were beginning to lose their meaning. By far the greater portion of the House was thoroughly attached to the Hanoverian succession. Some fifty Jacobites sat in it under the guidance of Shippen, and a certain number of country gentlemen, with Wyndham at their head, still retained the title of Hanoverian Tories. But the Parliamentary struggle lay in fact between different sections of the Whigs, either of which, whatever their pretensions may have been when out of office, would probably have acted in much the same way had they succeeded in obtaining it. It was not till the close of this reign and the beginning of the next that the old party names began again to acquire significance. It had become evident that the power and influence of the Crown, but little diminished, as has been said, at the Revolution, had as it were been placed in commission in the hands of the great leaders of the Whig party, who by means of their own Parliamentary influence, added to the King's power which they wielded, had assumed a monopoly of the Government antagonistic at once to the Crown and to the people. Those who regarded this condition of things as a disturbance of the old balance of the Constitution began to rally round the King, and when George III. resumed into his own hands the power of the Crown and broke with the Whig oligarchy, he found his support in this new Tory party.

[Sidenote: Strength of the Government.]

To oppose the many able men whom enmity to the ministers had driven into the ranks of the Patriots, the Government had little more than the inert strength of an unfailing majority to show. Besides Walpole himself, whose talents were unquestioned, the Government consisted of somewhat second-rate men, such as Newcastle, whose fussy silliness was a constant theme of jest, Stanhope, Lord Harrington, an excellent diplomatist but no politician, and Lord Harvey, a clever but bitter and effeminate courtier. But the Government was supported on almost every question of importance by a vast majority of the House, whose votes the surpassing skill of Walpole as a manager secured--many of them by small places and pensions, or other "considerations," as bribes were then called. That Walpole reduced the purchase of a majority, a practice by no means unknown, to a system must be allowed. It may be urged in his favour, that he used, but did not cause, the venality prevalent among all public men of the time, and employed it so as to secure what was upon the whole the government most advantageous for England at the time.

[Sidenote: Depression of the Jacobites.]

The folly of the Pretender spared the minister all trouble with regard to the Jacobites, for James had succeeded in alienating his ablest partisans. He had quarrelled with Atterbury as he quarrelled with Bolingbroke, he had excited scandal by his quarrel with his wife, and had suffered an unworthy favourite, Colonel Hay, or Lord Inverness as he called himself, to supplant all his better partisans in his favour. And when the death of Lord Mar was followed by that of the Duke of Wharton and of Atterbury in 1732, the Jacobite cause fell into the hands of very inferior agents, whose intrigues, insignificant as they were, seem to have been thoroughly known by Walpole.

[Sidenote: European complications.]

It was thus with one source of danger practically removed that Walpole resumed the threads of foreign policy. The last reign had closed before peace had been concluded with Spain, and while there were still unsettled difficulties with the court of Vienna, although preliminaries had been signed both in Paris and in Spain by what is known as the Convention of the Pardo. It must indeed have been obvious that the Treaty of Vienna, plausible as it seemed, could not have been a lasting treaty. The Bourbons were upon the throne of Spain, and the close junction of the houses of Bourbon and Hapsburg was an impossible contradiction of all history, especially as the desire which was really the moving passion of the Spanish court, the establishment, namely, of a Spanish kingdom in Italy, was fundamentally opposed to the interests of Austria. At the same time the shadow of the approaching dissolution of his kingdom at his death was constantly overhanging the Emperor. No ideas of present greatness, not even the hope of restoring the Empire to the position it had held under Charles V., appeared in his eyes so important as to secure the reversion of his own estates for his daughter, according to the Pragmatic Sanction, by which, in 1713, he had arranged the succession to his hereditary kingdoms. It was impossible for him to hurry into a general war, which must of necessity prevent the acceptance of that arrangement. There was already a strongly expressed feeling in Germany against the marriages on which the Vienna Treaty rested, and which might have the effect of placing a Spaniard on the Imperial throne. The threatened secession of his chief allies, and the fear of postponing the acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction, were sufficient reasons to induce the Emperor to withdraw from his bargain. He therefore accepted the mediation of France, where Fleury, though he probably never forgot the old policy of the country which he governed, always apparently exhibited a love of peace; and it was agreed that disputed points should be referred to a general Congress to be held at Aix-la-Chapelle, but subsequently moved to Soissons.

[Sidenote: Congress at Soissons.]

At the Congress the Emperor, afraid of exciting the national prejudices of the Germans, entirely deserted his Spanish allies, and instead of hastening a favourable negotiation, perpetually threw obstacles in the way. As far as England was concerned, the great point at issue was Gibraltar, which Spain had already besieged in vain. The ministry, both before and now, seem to have regarded the surrender of it as neither impossible nor very injurious; the view of the nation was very different. But as is so often the case, the Congress came to very little. Spain, finding herself deserted by Austria, and observing that the Congress was falling to pieces by constant delays, had recourse to a direct treaty; and on the 9th of November 1729 the celebrated Treaty of Seville was signed. It was a defensive alliance between England, Spain and France, to which Holland subsequently acceded. Spain revoked all the privileges granted to Austrian subjects by the treaties of Vienna, re-established English trade in America on its former footing, and restored all captures. The Assiento was confirmed to the South Sea Company, and arrangements made for securing the succession of Parma and Tuscany to the Infant Don Carlos, by substituting Spanish troops for the neutral forces, which since the Preliminaries had been occupying those countries.

[Sidenote: Treaty of Seville. Nov. 9, 1729.]

[Sidenote: Disappointment of the Emperor.]

The Emperor now found that he had outwitted himself. He had clung to the Treaty of Vienna just long enough to irritate two of the great countries of Europe, he had put difficulties in the way of its completion, and hesitated about fulfilling it, just long enough to irritate the third. Old friends and old foes had made common cause. His hopes for the Pragmatic Sanction seemed entirely gone. It was not likely that he would sit down quietly while Spanish troops occupied fortresses in what he considered his dominions. He broke off all diplomatic relations with Spain, sent troops into Italy, and on the death of the Duke of Parma seized his duchy. But all men really knew that the bribe was ready, if they would only give it, to put an end to all his opposition. And the impatient Queen of Spain--angry with the shilly-shally policy of her new allies (who would not insist with sufficient rapidity on the completion of the Seville treaty), throwing over France, which she regarded as the chief delinquent in the matter--joined with England and Holland to offer the long wished for guarantee. Thus at length by the second Treaty of Vienna all the much vexed questions were decided. Austria was glad to accept the terms proposed at Seville, agreed to destroy the Ostend Company, to establish Don Carlos in his duchies, and not again to threaten the balance of European power. And in 1732, under the escort of English ships, the Spanish troops took possession of the disputed fortresses.

[Sidenote: Second Treaty of Vienna. March 16, 1731.]

[Sidenote: Complete supremacy of Walpole.]

[Sidenote: The Pension Bill.]

[Sidenote: Retirement of Townshend. 1731.]