Chapter XXXIV (2)

The discussion was long, animated, and many times resumed; the good judgment of the nation finally prevailed over the rancors of the past, and over the jealousies of the future. Adopted by the Lords, the bill was rejected in the House of Commons by a large majority. "The road to the temple of fame formerly passed through the temple of virtue," said Walpole; "this bill makes it necessary to arrive at honor through the winding sheet of an old decrepid lord, or the grave of an extinct noble family." It is the sole happiness of England, and one of the sources of her grandeur, as well as of her security, to have maintained upon the ancient bases a force in the state constantly renewed and liberally recruited by personal merit.

This check to the ministry was important; but a greater shock, which was to overthrow it and overwhelm the country in ruin, was preparing. At the same time that Paris and France were a prey to the fever for wild speculations, excited by the system of Law, England, for other reasons and from other pretexts, suffered an analogous contagion, accompanied by the same fatal results. The South Sea Company had been founded in 1711, by Harley. In guarantee for the payment of the national debt, important privileges had then been accorded to him. In 1719 the directors of the company proposed to liquidate the public debt in twenty-six years, upon condition that the different claims were to be concentrated in their hands, and that they would be supplied with new privileges as well as great latitude in their negotiations. The Bank of England disputed with the South Sea Company the honor and supposed profit of this enterprise, which was put up at auction. A bill of Parliament assured the monopoly to the company, which had engaged to pay seven and a half million sterling. {165} In order to sustain this enormous burden, the directors plunged into the wildest speculations. Walpole had predicted the fatal effects, but without measuring the criminal folly of the leaders, and the stupid avidity of the followers. The shares of the company increased from one hundred and thirty to a thousand pounds sterling; while new societies were formed for the working of the most insane industries. Raising the wrecks upon the coast of Ireland, the freshening of the waters of the sea, the fabrication of the oil of turnsole, the importation of donkeys from Spain, the fattening of pork, formed simultaneously the objects of fictitious speculations, suddenly arrested at the instigation of the South Sea Company, jealous and anxious to concentrate upon their enterprise all the energy of the stock-jobbers. Exchange Alley became the rival of Quincampoix street; the greatest lords, the most delicate ladies; ecclesiastics elbowed merchants and servants, all hurrying to secure for themselves the new stocks put in circulation, and the fabulous profits which were expected from them. The Prince of Wales himself consented to become a director of the company for the working of copper mines in Wales. The intervention of the ministry was necessary to threaten the company with prosecution, before his royal highness would consent to withdraw with a profit of £40,000.

The edifice of Law, in France, began to totter; the ruin of the fictitious companies in England soon involved all reasonable and legitimate speculations. In a few weeks the stock of the South Sea Company fell below three hundred pounds sterling; the suddenness of the catastrophe seriously involved the English speculators. Everywhere families were ruined, fortunes the most solid were shaken, and character and reputations were lost. "The very name of the South Sea Company became odious," says a contemporary. {166} In vain was Walpole, who had recently retired to his country house at Houghton, recalled to London to seek a remedy for the evils which he had foreseen; but the ruin was beyond his efforts and power. Public anger and indignation knew no bounds. The king, who was in Hanover, returned precipitately, and Parliament was convoked for the 8th of December. "I avow," said Lord Molesworth, to the House of Commons, "that the ordinary laws do not reach the directors of the South Sea Company, but extraordinary crimes call aloud for extraordinary remedies. The Roman lawgivers had not foreseen the possible existence of a parricide; but as soon as the first monster appeared, he was sewed in a sack and cast headlong into the Tiber; and I shall be content to inflict the same treatment on the authors of our present ruin."

The calm good sense of Walpole, as well as his prudent foresight, powerfully advanced his ascendancy in Parliament. He succeeded in controlling the unchained passions. "If London was on fire, wise men would endeavor to extinguish the flames before they sought the incendiaries. We have a matter of still greater urgency: to save the public credit." Able and wise measures had been presented to Parliament, but public vengeance was not satisfied; a thorough inquiry ended in the discovery of grave evidences of corruption and bribery. The discussions became so violent that the doors of the House were closed and the keys placed upon the table. The German favorites of the king, the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Platen, the Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Sunderland and Mr. Aislabie the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and many other inferior officers of the government, were found to be seriously compromised. A parliamentary quarrel between Lords Wharton and Stanhope agitated the latter so violently that he had an apoplectic fit and died the next day, to the great regret of the public who had never doubted his honesty.

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The Secretary of State, Craggs, justly accused of having received a bribe from the directors of the company, died of the small pox; his father, the Postmaster-General, took poison. Aislabie was sent to the Tower, and the greater part of his property was confiscated. All the property of the directors was seized, and they were declared forever incapable of holding any public office or of sitting in Parliament. Lord Sunderland had lost considerable sums: "He is a dupe, but not an accomplice," scornfully said even his enemies. He was acquitted, but nevertheless could not preserve his power. Walpole succeeded him as first Lord of the Treasury. Sunderland died on the 17th of April, 1721, some weeks after the general elections, and two months before his illustrious father-in-law, the Duke of Marlborough.

Robert Walpole had finally attained the power which he was to exercise during twenty years, for the repose, if not always for the honor and moral grandeur of his country. Jealous of his authority, to the extent of removing from the circle about the king all those not his friends, and even those of his friends whom he could not control absolutely, he encountered, at the outset, the intrigues of the Jacobites, re-awakened by the general discontent and by the new aspirations which the birth of a son awakened in the Pretender.

A new expedition was prepared under the orders of the Duke of Ormond, and matured and directed from England by a council of five members who conducted the affairs of "King James III." The soul of this little clique was the Bishop of Rochester, Francis Atterbury, indefatigable in his zeal as well as inexhaustible in his resources; sincerely attached to the Protestant faith, but sacrificing all to his political passions, and more occupied in preparing for the landing of the invaders and in fomenting an insurrection during the absence of the king in Hanover, than in the care of his diocese. {168} When the plot was discovered, the inferior agents were promptly arrested, and the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Orrery, and Lord North, at first imprisoned in the Tower, were soon released: the bishop remained gravely compromised. Walpole resolved to risk a trial. Among the accomplices a young barrister named Layer alone suffered the extreme penalty; the property of some others was confiscated; but public interest concentrated itself upon the bishop, who was kept in close confinement in the Tower.

Atterbury was eloquent and convincing; when he appeared before the House of Lords, all his efforts tended to prove that the testimony against him was forged. Walpole was compelled to defend himself: "A finer passage at arms between two such antagonists was never seen," said Onslow, the speaker of the House of Commons; "one fighting for his reputation, the other for his life." The evidence was overwhelming against the bishop; he had evidently conspired against a sovereign to whom he had sworn allegiance. His address was as eloquent as able. "I have suffered so much," said he, "that the little strength which I enjoyed at the time of my arrest, in the month of August last, has completely disappeared, and I am not in a state to appear before your lordships, still less to defend myself in an affair of so extraordinary a nature. I am accused of having conspired. What could I gain, my lords, by going thus out of my way? No man in my order is less urged by ambition for higher dignities of the Church. I have always scorned money; too much so, perhaps, for I may now need it. Could I have been drawn by a secret attraction towards papacy? {169} My lords, since I have known what papacy is, I have exposed it; and the better I have known it, the stronger I have opposed it. For the last thirty-seven years I have written in favor of Martin Luther. Whatever may happen to me, I am ready to suffer all, and by the grace of God to perish at the stake sooner than depart from the Protestant faith as set forth by the Church of England. I have awaited my sentence these eight months, my lords, separated from my children, who have not been able to write me or even send me a message without express authority. When the illustrious Earl of Clarendon, accused of treason, was compelled to retire into exile, he had passed the greater part of his life abroad, and was well known there; he understood the language, and he enjoyed a large fortune; all these consolations are wanting to me. I resemble him only in my innocence and my punishment. It is not in the power of any man to alter the first resemblance, but it is in the power of your lordships to profoundly modify the second; I hope for it and I expect it from you." Atterbury was condemned; a majority of the prelates voted against him.

The English Catholics had ardently espoused the cause of the house of Stuart, and they were to pay once again for their illusive imprudence and folly. The attempt which had just cost the Bishop of Rochester his episcopal see and the freedom of his country, served as a pretext for Walpole to propose a tax of £100,000, to be collected from the estates of the Catholics. "Many of them are guilty," said the minister. This contempt for justice and liberty, which long pursued the Catholics in England, weighed upon the French Protestants still longer and more heavily. The bill which passed the Houses included all the gentry who had refused to take the oath of allegiance. Many who had resisted, up to this time, in consequence of a sincere repugnance, now hastened to take the oath to the established order of things.

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"I have observed well," said the Speaker Onslow, who was opposed to the measure of Walpole, "and it was a strange and ridiculous spectacle to see the crowd which gathered at the quarterly Sessions in order to pledge their allegiance to the government, while, at the same time, cursing it for the trouble which it was giving them and for the fear which it inspired. I am convinced that the attachment for the king and his family has received a severe shock from all that happened at this time."

As the exiled bishop put his foot upon the soil of France, at Calais, he learned that Lord Bolingbroke had been pardoned by the king, and had arrived in that city on his way to England. "I am exchanged, then," said Atterbury, smiling. "Assuredly," wrote Pope, the intimate and faithful friend of the bishop, "this country fears an excess of talent, since it will not regain one genius without losing another."

It was to the venal protection of the Duchess of Kendal that Bolingbroke owed the royal pardon. Walpole had not received favorably the overtures which had been made to him in favor of the exile. "The attainder ought never to be abolished, and crimes ought never to be forgotten," said he, in the Council. The Marquise de Villette, niece of Madame Maintenon, at first the friend and subsequently the wife of Bolingbroke, had succeeded in interesting the favorite in his behalf. Eleven thousand pounds sterling were paid, it was said, for permission to return to England. He had as yet recovered neither his title, his rights, nor his fortune. The offer of his services was refused by Walpole. It was not until 1725, and even then, through the intervention of Madame Villette and the Duchess of Kendal, that Bolingbroke, having returned to France, finally obtained permission to present to Parliament a petition that Walpole consented to support. {171} More clear-sighted than he had often been during his public life, Bolingbroke while in France had served continually and to the utmost, the interests of the English minister, by sustaining his brother Horace and his brother-in-law Lord Townshend, in their rivalry against Lord Carteret, the Secretary of State. The amnesty voted by Parliament restored to Bolingbroke his personal fortune, and his rights to the heritage of his father, but without giving him the right of disposing of it. The king had promised Walpole, it was said, that Bolingbroke should never again hold any political position. "I am restored to two-thirds," wrote he to Swift, from his country house at Uxbridge. He received his friends, occupying or at least pretending to occupy himself exclusively with his estate and in literary pursuits. Voltaire was one of his visitors, when driven from France by his quarrel with the Chevalier Rohan, and passed two years in England. This event had a powerful effect upon Voltaire's mind, and many traces of the same may be found in his writings. The relations of the poet with Bolingbroke were of long standing; they had often met at the Chateau de la Source, near Orleans, where the exile lived for some time. "One thing which interests me," wrote Voltaire, "is the recall of milord Bolingbroke to England. He will be at Paris to-day, and I shall have the grief of bidding him farewell, perhaps forever." When Voltaire, in his turn, again reached his own country, he dedicated to Bolingbroke his tragedy of _Brutus_: "Permit me to present to you _Brutus_," wrote he, "although written in another language, _docte sermonis utriusque linguœ_, to you who have given me lessons in French as well as in English, to you who have taught me at least to give to my language that force and that energy which noble liberty of thought inspires: for vigorous sentiments of the soul always pass into the language, and he who thinks forcibly speaks likewise." Voltaire, on asking permission to visit England, had remarked: "it is a country where they think freely and nobly without being restrained by servile fear."

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Troubles in Ireland, caused by the recoinage of money, and in Scotland, by a tax upon beer, which had been substituted for the malt tax, had for some time detained King George in England. Finally, in 1725, he departed for Hanover, accompanied, as usual, by Lord Townshend and the Duchess of Kendal. The state of affairs in Europe had become critical. In France the regent had died on the 2nd of December, 1723; the Duke of Bourbon, who had succeeded him, governed ostentatiously and violently, but without either true force or authority, and abandoned to the influence of his favorite, the corrupt and avaricious Marquise de Prie. Both desired to assure the duration of their power by giving to the young King Louis XV. a wife who would owe to them her elevation, and who would remain submissive to them.

The Infanta of Spain had been educated at the French Court, treated as queen, and was only waiting until her age would permit her to wed the young King Louis XV., according to a treaty solemnly negotiated with Philip V. She was sent back to Madrid, and Marie Leczinska, daughter of Stanislaus, the dethroned and ruined King of Poland, was chosen in her place for the sad honor of sharing the throne of Louis XV. "It is necessary that the Infanta depart immediately, in order that this may be done sooner," said the Count of Morvilliers, who was charged with the marriage negotiations.

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The anger and indignation of Spain were extreme. "All the Bourbons are true demons," said the queen; then turning towards the king, whose origin she had forgotten, in her fury, she added: "Save your Majesty." The fragile edifice of the Quadruple Alliance succumbed beneath the imprudent insolence of the French government. Philip V. gave his daughter to the Prince of Brazil, the heir to the throne of Portugal. By this alliance, agreeable to England, the faithful friend of Portugal, the King of Spain hoped to gain the support of George I. "We will put confidence only in your master," said the queen to William Stanhope, the English minister at Madrid, "and we desire no other mediator but him in our negotiations." The English government nevertheless refused to break with France. Philip V. formed an alliance with the Emperor Charles VI., the most ancient, and even then, the most implacable of his enemies. The Archduke had no son, and wished to secure the succession to his eldest daughter, the Archduchess Maria Theresa. The Pragmatic Sanction which declared this will, awaited the assent of Europe. That of Spain was of great value. She offered, besides, to open her ports to the company of Ostend, recently founded by the Emperor to compete with the Dutch commerce.

The house of Austria divided the house of Bourbon by opposing to each other the two branches of France and Spain. The treaty of Vienna was concluded on the 1st of May, 1725. The two sovereigns renounced all pretensions to their respective states, and proclaimed a full amnesty for their partisans. The emperor recognized the hereditary rights of Don Carlos to the Duchies of Tuscany, Parma and Plaisance; he promised, at the same time, his good offices, to obtain from England the restitution of Gibraltar and Port Mahon. In spite of negotiations already entered into with the Duke of Lorraine, the hands of the Archduchesses, the daughters of the emperor, were promised to the two sons of Elizabeth Farnese, Don Carlos and Don Philip.

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King George was in Hanover when the secret articles of the treaty became known. "On this occasion, it was not the ministers of his Majesty who instructed him," subsequently said Walpole, "but it was his Majesty who gave his ministers the information. The information which the king had received in Hanover was so sure, that they could not be deceived." The Count de Broglie went to Germany to join George I. The King of Prussia, Frederick William I., was called to the conference; the Empress Catherine I., widow of Peter the Great, made advances to Spain in consequence of her antipathy towards England. The necessity for strong alliances was felt; the King of Prussia hesitated, realizing the danger he ran from his nearness to the emperor; he signed, nevertheless, but soon afterwards abandoned his allies. The Treaty of Hanover was concluded on the 8th of September, between England, France, Prussia, Denmark and Sweden. "Hanover advances itself triumphantly upon the shoulders of England," said Lord Chesterfield. George I. was accused of having defended his electorate at the expense of his kingdom; in Hanover the elector was reproached for having protected the commercial interests of England by exposing his native country to great perils. The Count de Broglie shared the English opinion: "His Majesty regards England as a temporary possession, by which it is necessary to profit while at his service, more than as a durable heritage," wrote he, on the 20th of January, 1724, to Louis XV. The Duke of Bourbon had just been replaced at the head of the French government by Cardinal Fleury, moderate and prudent, favorable to the English alliance and sincerely desirous of preserving peace in Europe. {175} Lord Townshend directed the negotiations of the treaty of Hanover. Walpole was secretly jealous and censured certain clauses. The secret articles, concluded at Vienna, greatly pre-occupied England. "I know, from a source, which cannot be doubted," said George I., in his address at the opening of Parliament, in 1727, "that the re-establishment of the Pretender upon the throne of this kingdom, was one of the secret articles signed at Vienna. If time proves that by abandoning the commerce of this nation to one power, and Gibraltar and Port Mahon to another, a market has been made of this kingdom, in order to impose upon it a papist Pretender, what will not be the indignation of all English and Protestant hearts."

The emperor protested boldly against the address from the throne, and appealed from the king to the nation. The Pretender, recently filled with hope, by the alliance of the empire and Spain, alienated these two powers by his cruel conduct towards his wife. The princess had left him on the 15th of November, 1725, to retire into the convent of St. Cecilia, at Rome. War, nevertheless, seemed inevitable; but the emperor realized his feebleness, and cared but little for the interests of Spain. On the 31st of May, 1727, the preliminaries of peace were signed at Paris, between England, France and Holland, on the one part, and the empire on the other. English commerce was satisfied by the suspension of the privileges of the company of Ostend for seven years. Philip V. voluntarily raised the siege of Gibraltar. The prudent moderation of Walpole and of Cardinal Fleury, once again succeeded in maintaining the peace of Europe.

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Walpole was threatened, nevertheless; he governed with sagacity the nation so long and so cruelly agitated, and became rich and prosperous; but he governed without glory. "Little jealous," says De Rémussat, "of honoring men, provided he rules them." He was reserved and haughty, carefully withdrawing from even the shadow of a rivalry. Bolingbroke had never pardoned his hostility; he attacked him anonymously in a journal directed by Pulteney, who was detached from the Whigs by an ancient enmity against Walpole. He undertook to lower him in the estimation of the king. The Duchess of Kendal, secretly hostile to the minister, placed in the king's hands a Memorial drawn up by Bolingbroke, in which the latter pointed out all the dangers to which the state was exposed in the hands of Walpole, and demanded an audience. George I. simply turned over the memorial to Walpole, who promptly divined from whom the blow came. "Join with me. Duchess, in praying the king to accord Lord Bolingbroke an audience;" boldly said Sir Robert. The king hesitated, as he did not speak English. "It is a great proof of the ability of Walpole that he governed the king in Latin," it was said. Bolingbroke understood French perfectly, and it was in that language that the interview was held. The Viscount claimed the restoration of his political privileges. "It is sufficient that your Majesty exacts it," said he. "Sir Robert is here, let him be called, and I will convince him before your Majesty that the thing can be done."--"No, no," replied the king, "do not call him." Then, as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall, Lechmere, who was at this time antagonistic to both Walpole and Bolingbroke, entered, the king could scarcely refrain from laughter. When his minister, somewhat disturbed, came to learn the result of the conversation with Bolingbroke, "Bagatelle, bagatelle!" repeated George I. Walpole never learned more.

[Transcriber's note:
Bagatelle: Something of little value or significance.]

[Image] The Mysterious Letter.

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The king prepared for another journey to Hanover. Some months before, on the 12th of November, 1726, his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Zell, died. She was beautiful and amiable, but arbitrarily condemned by her husband during thirty-six years. The Count of Konigsmark, the man who had, it was said, gained her favors, disappeared mysteriously at the time when the princess was imprisoned, by the order of her father-in-law as well as her husband. The place where the Count was struck down is still shown. Many years later his bones were found under the marble slab before the chimney of the castle. The prince obtained a divorce, but never relaxed his severity towards his wife, who, on her part, never ceased protesting her innocence.

It is said that at the time when King George I. entered Germany, in June, 1727, an unknown person threw into his carriage a letter from the princess, written during her last illness, solemnly adjuring her husband to repent of the terrible injury which he had inflicted upon her, and calling upon him to appear within a year before the tribunal of God.

It was to this summons from the tomb that was attributed that unexpected blow which so suddenly fell upon King George. On the 10th of June, 1727, he departed from Delden in good health, but within a few hours was struck by apoplexy. His servants desired to stop, but the king repeated, in a stifled voice, "Osnabruch! Osnabruch!" When they gained that palace of the prince Bishop, his brother, the King of England was dead.

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