A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume I Part 12

It seemed at one time probable that a satisfactory compromise would be arranged 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 the new coinage was founded on the discovery of the fact that Wood had agreed to pay a large bribe to the d.u.c.h.ess of Kendal for her influence in obtaining the patent for him. The objection of the Irish Executive and the Irish Parliament was mainly based on the fact that Dublin had not been consulted in the arrangement of the business. The ministers in London {242} settled the whole affair, and then simply communicated the nature of the arrangement to Dublin. Wood himself was unpopular, so far as anything could be known of him, in Ireland. He was a stranger to Ireland, and he was represented to be a boastful, arrogant man, 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 Irish people. All these objections, however, might have been got over but for the sudden appearance of an unexpected and a powerful actor on the scene. One morning appeared in Dublin "A letter to the shopkeepers, tradesmen, farmers, and common people of Ireland, concerning the bra.s.s halfpence coined by one William Wood, hardwareman, with a design to have them pa.s.s in this kingdom; wherein is shown the power of his patent, the value of his halfpence, and how far every person may be obliged to take the same in payments; and how to behave himself in case such an attempt should be made by Wood or any other person." The letter was signed "M. B., Drapier." This was the first of those famous "Drapier's Letters" which convulsed Ireland with a pa.s.sion like that preceding a great popular insurrection. It may be questioned whether the pamphlets of a literary politician ever before or since worked with so powerful an influence on the mind of a nation as these marvellous letters.

[Sidenote: 1724--Swift's sincerity]

The author of "The Drapier's Letters," we need hardly say, was Dean Swift. Swift had for some years withdrawn himself from the political world. He is described by one of his biographers as having "amused himself for three or four years with poetry, conversation, and trifles." Now and then, however, he published some letter which showed his interest in the condition of the people among whom he lived; his proposal, for example, "for the universal use of Irish manufacture in clothes and furniture of houses, etc.," was written in the year 1720.

This letter--the printer of which was subjected to a Government prosecution--contains a pa.s.sage which has been, perhaps, {243} more often and more persistently misquoted than any other observation of any author we can now remember. It seems to have become an article of faith with many writers and most readers that Swift said, "Burn everything that comes from England, except its coals." Without much hope of correcting that false impression so far as the bulk of the reading and quoting public is concerned, we may observe that Swift never said anything of the kind. This is what he did say: "I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam mention a pleasant observation of somebody's that 'Ireland would never be happy until a law were made for burning everything that came from England, except their people and their coals.' I must confess that, as to the former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home, and, for the latter, I hope in a little time we shall have no occasion for them." Swift was not an Irish patriot; he was not, indeed, an Irishman at all, except by the accident of birth, and now by the accident of residence. He did not love the country; he would not have lived there a week if he could. He had no affection for the people, and, at first, very little sympathy with them. He was always angry if anybody regarded him as an Irishman. His friends were all found among what may be described as the English and Protestant colony in Ireland. He felt towards the native Irish--the Irish Catholics--very much as the official of an English Government might feel towards some savage tribe whom he had been sent out to govern. But at the same time it is an entire mistake to represent Swift as insincere in the efforts which he made to ameliorate the condition of the Irish people, and to redress some of the gross wrongs which he saw inflicted on them. The administrator of whom we have already spoken might have gone out to the savage country with nothing but contempt for its wild natives, but if he were at all a humane and a just man, it would be natural for him as time went on to feel keenly if any injustice were inflicted on the poor creatures whom he despised, and at last to stand up {244} with indignation as their defender and their champion. So it was with Swift. [Sidenote: 1724--The drapier's arguments] Little as he liked the Irish people in the beginning, yet he had a temper and a spirit which made him intolerant of injustice and oppression. That fierce indignation described by himself, and of which such store was always laid up in his heart, was roused to its highest point of heat by the sight of the miseries of the Irish people and of the frequent acts of neglect and injustice by which their misery was deepened. He felt the most sincere resentment at the arbitrary manner in which the Government in London were dealing with Ireland in the matter of Wood's patent and Wood's copper coin. Swift, of course, knew well by what influence the patent had been obtained, and he knew that when obtained it had been simply thrust upon the Irish authorities, Parliament, and people without any previous sanction or knowledge on their part. Very likely he was also convinced, or had convinced himself, that the patent and the new coin would be injurious to the revenues and the trade of the country. Certainly, if he was not convinced of this, he gave to all his diatribes against Wood, Wood's patent, and Wood's halfpence the tones of profoundest conviction. He a.s.sumed the character of a draper for the moment--why he chose to spell draper "drapier" n.o.body knew--and he certainly succeeded in putting on all the semblance of an honest trader driven to homely and robust indignation by an impudent proposal to injure the business of himself and his neighbors. In England, he says, "the halfpence and farthings pa.s.s for very little more than they are worth, and if you should beat them to pieces and sell them to the brazier, you would not lose much above a penny in a s.h.i.+lling." But he goes on to say that Mr. Wood, whom he describes as "a mean, ordinary man, a hardware dealer"--Wood was, as we have already seen, a large owner of iron and copper mines and works, but that was all one to Dean Swift--"made his halfpence of such base metal, and so much smaller than the English ones, that the brazier would hardly give you {245} above a penny of good money for a s.h.i.+lling of his; so that this sum of one hundred and eight thousand pounds in good gold and silver may be given for trash that will not be worth above eight or nine thousand pounds real value." Nor is even this the worst, he contends, "for Mr. Wood, when he pleases, may by stealth send over another hundred and eight thousand pounds and buy all our goods for eleven parts in twelve under the value." "For example,"

says Swift, "if a hatter sells a dozen of hats for five s.h.i.+llings apiece, which amounts to three pounds, and receives the payment in Wood's coin, he really receives only the value of five s.h.i.+llings." Of course this is the wildest exaggeration--is, in fact, mere extravagance and absurdity, if regarded as a financial proposition. But Swift understood, as hardly any other man understood, the art of employing exaggeration with such an effect as to make it do the business of unquestionable fact. He was able to make his literary coins pa.s.s for much more than Wood could do with his halfpence and farthings. The artistic skill which bade the creatures whom Gulliver saw in his travels seem real, life-like, and living, made the fantastic extravagance of the "Drapier's Letters" strike home with all the force of truth to the minds of an excited populace.

Many biographers and historians have expressed a blank and utter amazement at the effect which Swift's letters produced. They have chosen to regard it as a mere historical curiosity, a sort of political paradox and puzzle. They have described the Irish people at the time as under the spell of something like sorcery. Even in our own days, Mr. Gladstone, in a speech delivered to the House of Commons, treated the convulsion caused by Swift's letters and Wood's halfpence as an outbreak of national frenzy, called up by the witchery of style displayed in the "Drapier's Letters." To some of us it is, on the other hand, a matter of surprise to see how capable writers, and especially how a man of Mr. Gladstone's genius and political knowledge, could for a moment be thus deceived. {246} One is almost inclined to think that Mr. Gladstone could not have been reading the "Drapier's Letters" recently, when he thus spoke of the effect which they produced, and thus was willing to explain it. [Sidenote: 1724--The drapier's victory] Any one who reads the letters with impartial attention will see that from first to last the anger that burns in them, the sarcasm that withers and scorches, the pa.s.sionate eloquence which glows in even their most carefully measured sentences, are directed against Wood and his halfpence only because the patent, the bribe by which it was purchased, and the manner in which it was forced on Ireland, represented the injustice of the whole system of Irish administration, and the wrongs of many generations. "It would be very hard if all Ireland," Swift declares with indignation, "should be put into one scale, and this sorry fellow Wood into the other." "I have a pretty good shop of Irish stuffs and silks," the Drapier declares, "and instead of taking Mr. Wood's bad copper, I intend to truck with my neighbors, the butchers and bakers and brewers, and the rest, goods for goods; and the little gold and silver I have, I will keep by me like my heart'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 the Parliament or people of Ireland?" The reader who believes that such a pa.s.sage as that, and scores of similar pa.s.sages, were inspired merely by disapproval of the introduction of one hundred and eight thousand pounds in copper coin, must have very little understanding of Swift's temper or Swift's purpose, or the condition of the times in which Swift lived. "I will shoot Mr. Wood and his deputies through the head, like highwaymen or house-breakers, if they dare to force one farthing of their coin on me in the payment of a hundred pounds. It is no loss of honor to submit to the lion, but who in the figure of a man can think with patience of being devoured alive by a rat?" . . . "If the famous Mr. Hampden rather chose to go to prison than pay a few s.h.i.+llings to King Charles I., without authority of Parliament, I will {247} rather choose to be hanged than have all my substance taxed at seventeen s.h.i.+llings in the pound, at the arbitrary will and pleasure of the venerable Mr. Wood." Mr. Gladstone, perhaps, did not observe this allusion to "the famous Mr. Hampden." If he had done so, he would have better understood the inspiration of the "Drapier's Letters." Mr.

Hampden was not so ignorant a man as to believe that the mere collection of the s.h.i.+p-money--the mere withdrawal of so much money from the pockets of certain tax-payers--would really ruin the trade and imperil the national existence of England. What Mr. Hampden objected to, and would have resisted to the death, was the unconst.i.tutional and despotic system which the levy of the s.h.i.+p-money represented. The American colonists did not rise in rebellion against the Government of George III. merely because they had eaten of the insane root, and fancied that a trifling tax upon tea would destroy the trade of Boston and New York. They rose in arms against the principle represented by the imposition of the tax. We can all understand why there should have been a national rebellion against s.h.i.+p-money, and a national rebellion against a trumpery duty on tea, but English writers and English public men seem quite unable to explain the national outcry against Wood's patent, except on the theory that a clever writer, pouring forth captivating nonsense, bewitched the Irish Parliament and the Irish people, and sent them out of their senses for a season.

Swift followed up his first letter by others in rapid succession. Lord Carteret arrived in Ireland when the agitation was at its height. He issued a proclamation against the "Drapier's Letters," offered a reward of three hundred pounds for the discovery of the author, and had the printer arrested. The Grand Jury, however, unanimously threw out the bill sent up against Harding, the printer. Another Grand Jury pa.s.sed a presentment against all persons who should by fraud or otherwise impose Wood's copper coins upon the public. This {248} presentment is said to have been drawn up by Swift's own hand. Lord Carteret at last had the good-sense to perceive, and the spirit to acknowledge, that there was no alternative between concession and rebellion. He strongly urged his convictions on the Government, and the Government had the wisdom to yield. The patent was withdrawn, a pension was given to Wood in consideration of the loss he had sustained, and Swift was the object of universal grat.i.tude, enthusiasm, love, and devotion, on the part of the Irish nation. Many a patriotic Irishman would fain believe to this very day that Swift, too, was Irish, and an Irish patriot. Ireland certainly has not yet forgotten, probably never will forget, the successful stand made by Swift against what he believed to be an insult to the Irish nation, when he took up his pen to write the first of the Drapier'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's judicious advice and the withdrawal of Wood's patent when a commotion that at one time threatened to be equally serious broke out in Scotland. English members of Parliament had been for many years complaining that Scotland was exempt from any taxation on malt. Up to that time no Government had attempted to take any steps towards establis.h.i.+ng equality in this respect between the two countries.

Walpole now strove to deal with the question. It was proposed in the House of Commons that instead of a malt duty in Scotland a duty of sixpence should be levied on every barrel of ale. Walpole at first was not inclined to deal with the difficulty in this way, but as the feeling of the House was very strongly in favor of making some attempt, he consented to adopt the principle suggested, but required that the duty should be threepence instead of sixpence. The moment it became known in Scotland that any tax on malt or ale was to be imposed, rioting began in the princ.i.p.al cities; the spirit of the national motto a.s.serted itself--"nemo me impune lacessit." The ringleaders of various mobs were arrested and sent for trial, but the Scotch juries, following the recent example of the Irish, refused to convict. Brewers all over Scotland entered into a sort of league, by virtue of which they pledged themselves not to give any securities for the new duty and to cease brewing if the Government exacted it. Unluckily for Walpole, the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Duke of Roxburgh, was a great friend of Carteret's, {250} and had joined with Carteret in endeavoring to thwart Walpole in all his undertakings. The success of Walpole's policy in any instance was understood by Carteret and by Roxburgh to mean Walpole's supremacy over all other ministers. The Duke of Roxburgh therefore took advantage of the crisis in Scotland to injure the administration, and especially to injure Walpole. In a subtle and underhand way he contrived to favor and foment the disturbance. He took care that the orders of the Government should not be too quickly carried out, and he gave more than a tacit encouragement to the common rumor that the King in his heart was hostile to the new tax, that the tax was wholly an invention of Walpole's, and that resistance to such a measure would not be unwelcome to the Sovereign, and would lead to the dismissal of the minister. Walpole was not long in finding out the treachery of the Duke of Roxburgh. To adopt a homely phrase, he "took the bull by the horns" at once. Lord Townshend was in Hanover with the King, and Walpole wrote to Lord Townshend, giving him a full account of all that was going on in Scotland, and laying the chief blame for the continuance of the disturbance on the Duke of Roxburgh. "I beg leave to observe," wrote Walpole, "that the present administration is the first that was ever yet known to be answerable for the whole Government, with a Secretary of State for one part of the kingdom who, they are a.s.sured, acts counter to all their measures, or at least whom they cannot confide in." His remonstrance had to be pressed again and again 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 for Scotland. He appointed, however, as his agent or deputy in the administration of Scotland, the Earl of Isla, Lord-keeper of the Privy Seal in that country, and a man on whose allegiance he could entirely rely. Having {251} thus secured a full power to act, Walpole was not long in bringing the disturbances to an end. He displayed both discretion and resolve. He was able to satisfy the most reasonable among the brewers and maltsters that their interests would not really suffer by the proposed resolutions. The natural result was that the combination 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 general resolution to meet the legislation of the Government by pa.s.sive resistance 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 what we 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 in which members of the same Government in Walpole's day intrigued against one another, and strove to thwart each other's policy. No actual defence is to be made for such a practice; but it is only fair to observe that up to Walpole's own entrance into office, and after it, the habit of English sovereigns had been to make up an administration by taking members of different and even of opposing parties and bringing them together, in the hope of securing thereby the co-operation of all parties. Under these circ.u.mstances it was natural, it was only to be expected, that the minister who was pledged to one policy would endeavor by all means in his power to counteract the designs of the minister whom he knew to be pledged to a very different kind of policy. Nor, indeed, is the practice of intrigue and counter-intrigue among members of the same cabinet actually unknown in our own days, when there is not the same excuse to be pleaded for it that might have been urged in the time of Walpole. In the case of the Duke of Roxburgh, however, the attempt to counteract the policy of Walpole was made in somewhat bolder and less subtle fas.h.i.+on than was common even in those days, and Walpole was well justified in the course he took. For once his high-handed way of dealing with men was vindicated {252} by its principle and by the unqualified advantage it brought to the interests of the State and to those of the minister as well.

[Sidenote: 1725--Dictators.h.i.+p overdone]

The student of history derives one satisfaction from the frequent visits of King George to Hanover. The correspondence between Walpole and Townshend which was made necessary by those visits gives us many an interesting glimpse into political affairs in their reality, in their undress, in their secret movement, which no ordinary State papers or diplomatic despatches could be trusted to give. The Secretary of State often communicates to the representative of his country at some foreign court only just that view of a political situation which he wishes to put under the eyes of the foreign sovereign and foreign statesmen. But Walpole writes to Townshend exactly what he himself believes, and what it is important both to Townshend and to him that Townshend shall fully know. "I think," Walpole says to Townshend, in one of his letters, "we have once more got Ireland and Scotland quiet, if we take care to keep them so." Exactly; if only care be taken to keep them so. The same chance had often been given to English statesmen before; Ireland and Scotland quiet, and might have continued in quietness if care had only been taken to keep them so.

The King was much pleased with Walpole's success. He made him one of the thirty-eight Knights of the Bath. The Order of the Bath had gone out of use, out of existence in fact, since the coronation of Charles the Second; George the First revived it in 1725, and bestowed its honors on Walpole. It seems an odd sort of reward for the shrewd, practical, and somewhat coa.r.s.e-fibred squire-statesman. The close connection between man and the child, civilized man and the savage, is never more clearly ill.u.s.trated than in the joy and pride which the wisest statesman feels in the wearing of a ribbon or a star. In the next year the King made Walpole a Knight of the Garter; after this honor 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 great minister ceased to be plain Mr. Walpole, and became Sir Robert Walpole.

Meanwhile, under Walpole's Order of the Bath, many a throb of pain must have made itself felt. The minister began to find himself hara.s.sed by the most formidable opposition that had ever set itself against him.

Lord Carteret was out of the way for the moment--and only for the moment; but Pulteney proved a much more pertinacious, ingenious, and dangerous enemy than Carteret had hitherto been. Pulteney was at one time the faithful follower, the enthusiastic admirer, almost the devotee, of Walpole. The one great political defect of Walpole filled him with faults. He could not bear the idea of a divided rule; he would be all or nothing; he would have clerks and servants for his colleagues in office; not real ministers, actual statesmen. He was under the mistaken impression that a man of genius is to be reduced to tame insignificance by merely keeping him out of important office. He had made this mistake with regard to Carteret; he made it now with regard to Pulteney. The consequences were far more serious; for Pulteney was neither so good-humored nor so indolent as Carteret, and he could not be put aside.

Pulteney was a man of singular eloquence, and of eloquence peculiarly adapted to the House of Commons. His style was brilliant, incisive, and penetrating. He could speak on any subject at the spur of the moment. He never delivered a set speech. He was a born parliamentary debater. All his resources seemed to be at instant command, according as he had need of them. His reading was wide, deep, and varied; he was a most accomplished cla.s.sical scholar, and had a marvellous readiness and apt.i.tude for cla.s.sical allusion. He was a wit and a humorist; he could brighten the dullest topics and make them sparkle by odd and droll ill.u.s.trations, as well as by picturesque allusions and eloquent phrases. He {254} could, when the subject called for it, break suddenly into thrilling invective. [Sidenote: 1725--Pulteney] But he had 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 really his, and was led far from his proper position in the pursuit of some paradox or by the charm of some fantastic idea. He was a brilliant writer as well as a brilliant speaker. His private character would have little blame if it were not that a fondness for money kept growing with his growing years. "For a good old-gentlemanly vice," says Byron, "I think I must take up with avarice." Pulteney did not even wait to be 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 have those of Carteret. He proved to be little more than the comet of a season; when he had gone, he left no line of light behind him. But it is certain that in the estimation of his contemporaries he was one of the most gifted men of his time; and for a while he was the most popular man in England--the darling and the hero of the mult.i.tude.

When Walpole was sent to the Tower in the late Queen's reign, Pulteney had spoken up manfully for his friend. When Townshend and Walpole resigned office in 1717, Pulteney went resolutely with them and resigned office also. The time came when Walpole found himself triumphant over all his enemies, and came back not merely to office but likewise to power. Naturally, Pulteney expected that Walpole would invite him to fill some place of importance in the new administration.

Walpole did nothing of the kind. He had seen ample evidence of Pulteney's great parliamentary talents in the mean time, and he feared that with Pulteney for an official colleague he could never be a dictator. He was anxious, however, not to offend Pulteney, and he had the curious weakness to imagine that he could conciliate Pulteney by offering him a peerage. Even at that time, when the sceptre of popular power had not yet {255} pa.s.sed altogether into the hands of the representative chamber, it was absurd to suppose that Pulteney would consent 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 by every man of sense to be the central force of England's political life.

Pulteney contemptuously refused the peerage. From that hour his old love for Walpole seems to have turned into hate.

The explosion, however, did not come at once. Pulteney continued to be on seemingly good terms with Walpole, and shortly afterwards the comparatively humble post of Cofferer to the Household was offered to him--some say was asked for by him. It does not seem likely that even then he had any intention of a serious reconciliation with Walpole.

Perhaps he accepted this post in the expectation that he would shortly be raised to a much higher position in the State. But Walpole, although willing enough to give him any mark or place of honor on condition that he withdrew to the House of Lords, was afraid to allow him any office of influence while he remained in the Commons. However this may be, Pulteney's ambition was not satisfied, and he very soon broke publicly away from Walpole altogether. When a motion was brought on in April, 1725, for discharging the debts of the Civil List, in reply to a message from the King himself, Pulteney demanded an inquiry into the manner in which the money had been spent, and even made a fierce attack on the whole administration, and accused it of something very like downright corruption. He was dismissed from his office as Cofferer, and, even making allowance for his love of money, the wonder is that he should have held it long enough to be dismissed from it. He then went avowedly over into the ranks of the enemies of Walpole inside and outside the House of Commons.

The position taken by Pulteney is chiefly interesting to us now in the fact that it opened a distinctly new chapter in English politics.

Pulteney created the part of what has ever since been called the Leader of Opposition. {256} With him begins the time when the real Leader of Opposition must have a place in the House of Commons; with him, too, begins the time when the Opposition has for its recognized duty not merely to watch with jealous care all the acts of the ministers in order to prevent them from doing anything wrong, but also to watch for every opportunity of turning them out of office. With Pulteney and his tactics began the party organization which inside the House of Commons and outside works unceasingly with tongue and pen, with open antagonism and underhand intrigue, with all the various social as well as political influences--the pamphlet, the press, the petticoat, and even the pulpit--to discredit everything done by the men in office, to turn public opinion against them, and if possible to overthrow them.

Pulteney and his supporters were now and then somewhat more unscrupulous in their measures than an English Opposition would be in our time, but theirs was unquestionably the policy of all our more modern English parties. From this time forth almost to the close of his active career as a politician Pulteney performed the part of Leader of Opposition in the strictly modern sense. His position in history seems to us to be distinctly marked as that of the first Leader of Opposition; whether history shows reason to thank him for creating such a part is another and a different question.

[Sidenote: 1725--Bolingbroke again]

Pulteney had some powerful allies. The King, as we know, hated his son, the Prince of Wales; the Prince of Wales hated his father. No reconciliation got up between them could be lasting or real. The father and son hardly ever met except on the occasion of some great public ceremonial. The standing quarrel between the Sovereign and his heir had the effect of creating two parties in political life, one of which supported the King and the King's advisers, while the other found its centre in the house of the Heir to the Throne. We shall see this condition of things re-appearing in all the subsequent reigns of the Georges. The ministry and their friends {257} were detested and denounced by those who surrounded the Prince of Wales; the adherents of the Prince of Wales were virtually proscribed by the King. Then, as at a later date in the history of the Georges, those who favored and were favored by the Prince were looking out with anxious hope for the King's death. When "the old King is dead as nail in door," then indeed each leading supporter of the new king believed he could say with Falstaff, "The laws of England are at my commandment; happy are they which have been my friends." Pulteney and his supporters were among the friends and favorites of the Prince of Wales; they const.i.tuted the Prince's party. The Prince's party was composed mainly of the men who were Tories but were not Jacobites, and of the Whigs who disliked Walpole or had been overlooked or offended by him, or who in sober honesty were opposed to his policy. In all these, and in a daily growing number of the people out-of-doors, Pulteney had his friends and Walpole his enemies.

But a more formidable rival than even Pulteney was now again to the front and active in hostility to Walpole. This was the man whom the official records of the time described as "the late Viscount Bolingbroke." The late Viscount Bolingbroke, it need hardly be said, means that Henry St. John whose t.i.tle of viscount had been forfeited when he fled to France and joined the Pretender. Bolingbroke had lately received the pardon of King George. He had secured the pardon chiefly by means of an influence then familiar and recognized in politics--that of one of the King's mistresses. Bolingbroke had got money with his second wife, and through her he conveyed to the d.u.c.h.ess of Kendal a large sum--about ten thousand pounds--with the intimation that more would be forthcoming from the same place, if necessary, to obtain his object. The d.u.c.h.ess of Kendal was easily prevailed upon, under these circ.u.mstances, to recognize the justice of Bolingbroke's claim and the sincerity of his repentance. Moreover, there was about the same time that {258} political intrigue, or rather rivalry of intrigues, going on between Walpole and Carteret, between England and France, in which it was thought the influence of Bolingbroke might be used with advantage--as it was, in fact, used--to Walpole's ends.

[Sidenote: 1725--The Bolingbroke Pet.i.tion] For all these reasons the pardon was obtained, and Bolingbroke was allowed to return to England.

Nor was he long put off with a mere forgiveness which kept from him his forfeited estates and his right to the family inheritance. "Here I am," he wrote to Swift soon after, "two-thirds restored, my person safe (unless I meet hereafter with harder treatment than even that of Sir Walter Raleigh), and my estate, with all the other property I have acquired or may acquire, secured to me. But the attainder is kept prudently in force, lest so corrupt a member should come again into the House of Lords, and his bad leaven should sour that sweet, untainted ma.s.s." Walpole was quite willing that the forfeiture of Lord Bolingbroke's estates and the interruption of the inheritance should be recalled. It was necessary for this purpose to pa.s.s an Act of Parliament. On April 20, 1725, Lord Finch presented to the House of Lords the pet.i.tion "of Henry St. John, late Viscount Bolingbroke." The pet.i.tion set forth that the pet.i.tioner was "truly concerned for his offence in not having surrendered himself, pursuant to the directions of an act of the first year of his Majesty's reign;" that he had lately, "in most humble and dutiful manner," made his submission to the King, and given his Majesty "the strongest a.s.surances of his inviolable fidelity, and of his zeal for his Majesty's service and for the support of the present happy establishment, which his Majesty hath been most graciously pleased to accept." The pet.i.tion then prayed that leave might be given to bring in a bill to enable the pet.i.tioner and his heirs male to take and enjoy in person the estates of which he was then or afterwards should be possessed. Walpole, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, informed the House that he had received his Majesty's command to say that George was satisfied with Bolingbroke's {259} penitence, was convinced that Lord Bolingbroke was a proper object of mercy, and consented that the pet.i.tion should be presented to the House.

Lord Finch then moved that a bill be brought in to carry out the prayer of the pet.i.tion. The Chancellor of the Exchequer seconded and strongly advocated the motion. It was opposed with great vigor by Mr. Methuen, the Controller of the Household, and formerly British Minister in Portugal. Methuen denounced Bolingbroke's "scandalous and villainous conduct" during his administration of affairs in Queen Anne's reign; his clandestine negotiation for peace; his insolent behavior towards the allies of England; his sacrificing the interests of the whole Confederacy and the honor of his country--more especially in the abandonment of the Catalans; "and, to sum up all his crimes in one, his traitorous designs of defeating the Protestant succession, and of advancing a Popish pretender to the throne." This speech, we read, "made a great impression on the a.s.sembly," and several distinguished members, Arthur Onslow among the rest, spoke strongly on the same side.

The motion, however, was carried by 231 votes against 113. The Bill was prepared, and went up to the House of Lords on May 5th, was carried there by a large majority, was sent back to the House of Commons with some slight amendments, was accepted there, and received the Royal a.s.sent. Some of the peers put on record a strong and earnest protest against the pa.s.sing of such a measure. The protest recited all the charges against Bolingbroke; declared that those who signed it knew of no particular public services which Bolingbroke had lately rendered, and which would ent.i.tle him to a generous treatment; and further added that "no a.s.surances which this person hath given" could be a sufficient security against his future insincerity, "he having already so often violated the most solemn a.s.surances and obligations, and in defiance of them having openly attempted the dethroning his Majesty and the destruction of the liberties of his country."

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Bolingbroke, however, wanted something more than restoration to his t.i.tle and to his forfeited right of inheritance. His active and untamed spirit was eager for political strife again, and his heart burned with a longing to take his old place in the debates of the House of Lords. Against this Walpole had made a firm resolve; on this point he would not yield. He would not allow his eloquent and daring rival to have a voice in Parliament any more. In this, as it seems to us, Walpole acted neither wisely nor magnanimously. Bolingbroke's safest place, so far as the interests of the public, and even the political interests of his rivals, were concerned, would have been in the House of Lords. He would have delivered brilliant speeches there, and would have worked off his energies in that harmless fas.h.i.+on. In Walpole's time, however, the idea had not yet arisen that an enemy to the settled order of things is least dangerous where he is most free to speak.

Bolingbroke, who had always hated Walpole, even lately when he was professing regard and grat.i.tude, hated him now more than ever, and set to work by all the means in his power to injure Walpole in the estimation of the country, and, if possible, to undermine his whole political position.

[Sidenote: 1725-1726--The "craftsman"]

Bolingbroke and Pulteney soon came into political companions.h.i.+p. There was a certain affinity between the intellectual nature of the two men; and they had now a common object. Both were literary men as well as politicians, and they naturally put their literary gifts to the fullest account in the campaign they had undertaken. In our days two such men combining for such a purpose would contrive to get incessant leading articles into some daily paper; perhaps would start a weekly or even a daily evening paper of their own. Bolingbroke and Pulteney were men in advance of their age--in some respects at least. They did between them start a paper. They established the famous _Craftsman_. The _Craftsman_ was started in 1726. It was first issued daily in single leaves or sheets after the fas.h.i.+on of the _Spectator_. It was soon, {261} however, changed into a weekly newspaper bearing the t.i.tle of the _Craftsman_ or _Country Journal_. Its editor, Nicholas Amhurst, took the feigned name of Caleb d'Anvers, and the paper itself was commonly called _Caleb_ accordingly. The _Craftsman_ was brilliantly written, and was inspired by the most unscrupulous pa.s.sion of partisan hate.

Walpole was held up in prose and verse, in bold invective and droll lampoon, as a traitor to the country, as a man stuffed and gorged with public plunder, audacious in his profligate disregard of political principle and common honesty, a danger to the State and a disgrace to parliamentary life. The circulation of the _Craftsman_ at one time surpa.s.sed that of the _Spectator_ at the height of the _Spectator's_ popularity. Not always are more flies caught by honey than by vinegar.

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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 of Lord Macclesfield's punishment to the favor and protection of the King.

Macclesfield was a justly distinguished judge. He had had the highest standing at the bar; had risen, step by step, until from plain Thomas Parker, the son of an attorney, he became Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, then one of the Lords Justices of the kingdom in the interval between Anne's death and the arrival of George the First, and finally Lord Chancellor. George made him Baron, and subsequently Earl, of Macclesfield. He had always borne a high reputation for probity as well as for generosity until the charge was made against him on which he was impeached. He was accused of having, while Lord Chancellor, sold the offices of Masters in Chancery to incompetent persons and men of straw, unfit to be intrusted with the money of suitors, but whom he had publicly represented to be "persons of great fortunes, and in every respect qualified for that trust;" with having extorted money from several of the masters, and with having embezzled the estates of widows and orphans. On May 6, 1725, the managers of the House of Commons appeared at the bar of the House of Lords and presented their articles of impeachment against Macclesfield. The trial took place at the bar of the House, and not in Westminster Hall, where impeachments were usually carried on, and it lasted until May 26th. There was nothing that could be called a defence to some of the charges, and as {263} to others Lord Macclesfield simply insisted that he had followed the example of some of his most ill.u.s.trious predecessors, and that the moneys he received as presents were reckoned among the known perquisites of the Great Seal, and were not declared unlawful by any Act of Parliament. The Lords were unanimous in finding Macclesfield guilty, and condemned him to be fined thirty thousand pounds, and to be imprisoned in the Tower until the fine had been paid. The motion that he be declared forever incapable of any office, place, or employment in the State was, however, rejected, as was also a motion to prohibit him from ever sitting in Parliament or coming within the verge of the court. It would certainly seem as if these motions ought to have been the natural and necessary consequence of the impeachment and the conviction. If the conviction were just--and it was obviously just--then Lord Macclesfield had disgraced the highest bench of justice, and merely to condemn him to disgorge a part of his plunder was a singularly inadequate sort of punishment. George the First, however, chose to ascribe the impeachment to the malice and the influence of the Prince of Wales, and when Macclesfield had paid the fine by the mortgage of an estate, the King undertook to repay the money to him. George actually did pay to Macclesfield one instalment of a thousand pounds, but fate interposed and prevented any further payment. Macclesfield retired from the world, and spent his remaining years in the study of science and in religious meditation. He died in 1732. His was a strange story. He had many of the n.o.blest qualities; he had had, on the whole, a great career. It is not easy, if we may borrow the words which Burke applied to a more picturesque and interesting sufferer, "to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall."

During all this time of comparative quietude we are not to suppose that there were no threatenings of foreign disturbance. The adherents of the Stuarts were never at rest; the controversies which grew out of the Treaty of Utrecht were always sputtering and menacing. Cardinal {264} Fleury, a statesman devoted to peace and economy, had become Prime-minister of France. Other new figures were arising on the field of Continental politics. Alberoni, in exile and disgrace, had been succeeded by a burlesque imitation of him, the Duke of Ripperda, a Dutch adventurer who turned diplomatist, and had risen into influence through Alberoni's favor. In 1725 Ripperda negotiated a secret treaty between the Emperor, Charles the Sixth, and the King of Spain, and was rewarded with the t.i.tle of duke. He became Prime-minister of Spain for a short time, to be presently disgraced and thrown into prison, quite after the fas.h.i.+on of a royal favorite in the pages of "Gil Blas." He was a fantastic, arrogant, feather-headed creature, an Alberoni of the _opera bouffe_. He betook himself at last to the service of the Sovereign of Morocco. England had a sort of Ripperda of her own in the person of the wild Duke of Wharton, the man whose eloquent and ferocious invective had contributed to the sudden death of Lord Stanhope, and who had since that time devoted himself to the service of James Stuart on the Continent, and actually fought as a volunteer in the ranks of the Spanish army at the abortive siege of Gibraltar. It is to the credit of the sincerer and better supporters of the Stuart cause that they would not even still consent to regard it as wholly lost. They kept their eyes fixed on England, and every murmur of national discontent or disturbance became to them a new encouragement, a fresh signal of hope, a reviving incitement to energy. In England men were constantly hearing rumors about the dissolute life of the Chevalier, and his quarrels with his wife, Clementina Maria, a granddaughter of one of the Kings of Poland. The loyalists here at home were ready to believe anything that could be said by anybody to the discredit of James and his adherents; James and his adherents were willing to be fed on any tales about the unpopularity of George the First, and the tottering condition of his throne. Nor could it be said that George was popular with any cla.s.s of persons in {265} England. If the reign of the Brunswicks depended upon personal popularity, it would not have endured for many years. But the people of England were able to see clearly enough that George allowed his great minister to rule for him, and that Walpole's policy meant prosperity and peace. They did not admire George's mistresses any more now than they had done when first these ladies set their large feet on English soil; but even some of the most devoted followers of the Stuart cause shook their heads sadly over the doings of James in Italy, and could not pretend to say that the cause of morality would gain much by a change from Brunswick to Stuart.

[Sidenote: 1727--Death of George the First]

The end was very near for George. He was now an old man, in his sixty-eighth year, and he had not led a life to secure a long lease of health. His excesses in eating and drinking, his hot punch, and his many mistresses had proved too much even for his originally robust const.i.tution. Of late he had become a mere wreck. He was eager to pay one 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 his capital as quickly as he could, but in the course of the journey he was attacked by a sort of lethargic paralysis. Early on June 10th he was seized with an apoplectic fit; his hands hung motionless by his sides, his eyes were fixed, gla.s.sy, and staring, and his tongue protruded from his mouth. The sight of him horrified his attendants; they wished to stop at once and secure some a.s.sistance for the poor old dying King.

George, however, recovered consciousness so far as to be able to insist on pursuing his journey, crying out, with spasmodic efforts at command, the words "Osnabruck! Osnabruck!" At Osnabruck lived his brother the Prince-bishop. The attendants dared not disobey George, even at that moment, and the carriage drove at its fullest speed on towards Osnabruck. No swiftness of wheels, however, no flying chariot, could have reached the house of the Prince-bishop in time for the King. When the royal carriages clattered into the court-yard of the {266} Prince-bishop's palace the reign of the first George was over--the old King lay dead in his seat. Lord Townshend and the d.u.c.h.ess of Kendal were following in different carriages on the road; an express was sent back to tell them the grim news. Lord Townshend came on to Osnabruck, and finding that the King was dead, had nothing to do but to return home at once. The d.u.c.h.ess of Kendal is stated to have shown all the signs of grief proper to be expected from a favorite. She tore her hair--at least she pulled and clutched at it--and she beat her ample bosom, and professed the uttermost horror at the thought of having to endure life without the companions.h.i.+p of her lord and master. It is satisfactory, however, to know that she did not die of grief. She lived for some sixteen years, and made her home for the most part at Kendal House, near Twickenham.