A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume I Part 13

[Sidenote: 1727--The raven]

Even such a man as George the First may become invested by death with a certain dignity and something of a romantic interest. Legends are afloat concerning the King's later days which would not be altogether unworthy the closing hours of a great Roman emperor. George had his melting moments, it would seem, and not long before his death, being in a pathetic mood, he gave the d.u.c.h.ess of Kendal a pledge that if he should die before her, and it were possible for departed souls to return to earth and impress the living with a knowledge of their presence, he, the faithful and aged lover, would come back from the grave to his mistress. When the d.u.c.h.ess of Kendal returned to her home near Twickenham she was in constant expectation of a visit in some form from her lost adorer. One day while the windows of her house were open, a large black raven, or bird of some kind--raven would seem to be the more becoming and appropriate form for such a visitor--flew into her presence from the outer air. The lamenting lady a.s.sumed at once that in this shape the soul of King George had come back to earth. She cherished and petted the bird, it is said, and lavished all fondness and tenderness upon it. What {267} became of it in the end history does not allow us to know. Whether it still is sitting, like the more famous raven of poetry, it is not for us to guess. Probably when the d.u.c.h.ess herself expired in 1743, the ghastly, grim, and ancient raven disappeared with her. Why George the First, if he had the power of returning in any shape to see his mistress, did not come in his own proper form, it is not for us to explain. One might be disposed to imagine that in such a case it would be the first step which would involve the cost, and that there would be no greater difficulty for the departed soul to come back in the likeness of its old vestment of clay than to put on the unfamiliar and somewhat inconvenient form of a fowl.

Perhaps the story is not true. Possibly there was no raven or other bird in the case at all. It may be that, if a black raven did fly in at the d.u.c.h.ess of Kendal's window, the bird was not the embodied spirit of King George. For ourselves, we should be sorry to lose the story.

Neither the King nor the mistress could afford to part with any slight clement of romance wherewithal even legend has chosen to invest them.

Another story, which probably has more truth in it, adds a new ghastliness to the circ.u.mstances of George's death. On November 13, 1726, some seven months before that event, there died in a German castle a woman whom the gazette of the capital described as the Electress Dowager of Hanover. This was the unfortunate Princess Sophia, the wife of George. Thirty-two years of melancholy captivity she had endured, while George was drinking and h.o.a.rding money and amusing himself with his seraglio of ugly women. She died protesting her innocence to the last. In the closing days of her illness, so runs the story, she gave into the hands of some one whom she could trust, a letter addressed to her husband, and obtained a promise that the letter should, somehow or other, be delivered to George himself. This letter contained a final declaration that she was absolutely guiltless of the offence alleged against her, a bitter reproach to George for his ruthless conduct, {268} and a solemn summons to him to stand by her side before the judgment-seat of Heaven within a year, and there make answer in her presence for the wrongs he had done her, for her blighted life and her miserable death. There was no way of getting this letter into George's hands while the King was in England, but an arrangement was made by means of which it was put into his coach when he crossed the frontier of Germany on his way towards his capital. George, it is said, opened the letter at once, and was so surprised and horror-stricken by its stern summons that he fell that moment into the apoplectic fit from which he never recovered. Sophia, therefore, had herself accomplished her own revenge; her reproach had killed the King; her summons brought him at once within the ban of that judgment to which she had called him. It would be well if one could believe the story; there would seem a dramatic justice--a tragic retribution--about it. Its very terror would dignify the story of a life that, on the whole, was commonplace and vulgar. But, for ourselves, we confess that we cannot believe in the mysterious letter, the fatal summons, the sudden fulfilment. There are too many stories of the kind floating about history to allow us to attach any special significance to this particular tale. We doubt even whether, if the letter had been written, it would have greatly impressed the mind of George. Remorse for the treatment of his wife he could not have felt--he was incapable of any such emotion; and we question whether any appeal to the sentiment of the supernatural, any summons to another and an impalpable world, would have made much impression on that stolid, prosaic intelligence and that heart of lead. Besides, according to some versions of the tale, it was not, after all, a letter from his wife which impressed him, but only the warning of a fortune-teller--a woman who admonished the King to be careful of the life of his imprisoned consort, because it was fated for him that he should not survive her a year. This story, too, is told of many kings and other persons less ill.u.s.trious.

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[Sidenote: 1727--Character of the first George]

Much more probable is the rumor that Sophia made a will bequeathing all her personal property to her son, that the will was given to George the First in England, and that he composedly destroyed it. If George committed this act, he seems to have been repaid in kind. His own will left large legacies to the d.u.c.h.ess of Kendal and to other ladies. The Archbishop of Canterbury gave the will to the new King, who read it, put it in his pocket, walked away with it, and never produced it again.

Both these stories are doubted by some of the contemporaries of George the Second, but they were firmly believed in and strongly a.s.serted by others, who seem to have had authority for their belief. At all events, they fit in better with the character and surroundings of both princes than the tragic story of the letter and its fearful summons, the warning of the fortune-teller, or the soul of the dead King revisiting the earth in the funereal form of a raven.

There is not much that is good to be said of George the First. He had a certain prosaic honesty, and was frugal amid all his vulgar voluptuousness. He managed the expenses of his court with creditable economy and regularity. The officers in his army, and his civil servants, received their pay at the properly-appointed time. It would be hardly worth while recording these particulars to the King's credit, but that it was somewhat of a novelty in the arrangements of a modern court for men to receive the reward of their services at regular intervals and in the proper amount. George occasionally did a liberal thing, and he more than once professed a strong interest in the improvement of university education. He is said to have declared to a German n.o.bleman, who was complimenting him on the possession of two such kingdoms as England and Hanover, that a king ought to be congratulated rather on having two such subjects as Newton in the one country and Leibnitz in the other. We fear, however, that this story must go with the fortune-teller and the raven; one cannot think of dull prosaic {270} George uttering such a monumental sort of sentiment. He cared nothing for literature or science or art. He seems to have had no genuine friends.h.i.+ps. He hated his son, and he used to speak of his daughter-in-law, Caroline, as "that she-devil the princess." [Sidenote: 1727--His epitaph] Whatever was respectable in his character came out best at times of trial. He was not a man whom danger could make afraid. At the most critical moments--as, for instance, at the outbreak of the rebellion in 1715--he never lost his head. If he was not capable of seeing far, he saw clearly, and he could look coming events steadily in the face. On one or two occasions, when an important choice had to be made between this political course and that, he chose quickly and well. The fact that he thoroughly appreciated the wisdom and the political integrity, of Walpole speaks, perhaps, his highest praise. His reign, on the whole, was one of prosperity for England. He did not love England--never, up to the very end, cared for the country over which destiny had appointed him to rule. His soul to the last was faithful to Hanover. England was to him as the State wife whom for political reasons he was compelled to marry; Hanover, as the sweetheart and mistress of his youth, to whom his affections, such as they were, always clung, and whom he stole out to see at every possible chance. George behaved much better to his political consort, England, than to the veritable wife of his bosom. He managed England's affairs for her like an honest, straightforward, narrow-minded steward. We shall see hereafter that England came to be governed much worse by men not nearly so bad as George the First. To do him justice, he knew when he ought to leave the business of the State in the hands of those who understood it better than he; this one merit redeemed many of his faults, and, perhaps, may be regarded as having secured his dynasty.

Frederick the Great described George as a prince who governed England by respecting liberty, even while he made use of the subsidies granted by Parliament to corrupt the Parliament which voted them. {271} He was a king, Frederick declares, "without ostentation and without deceit,"

and who won by his conduct the confidence of Europe. This latter part of the description is a little too polite. Kings do not criticise each other too keenly in works that are meant for publication. But the words form, on the whole, an epitaph for George which might be inscribed on his tomb without greater straining of the truth than is common in the monumental inscriptions that adorn the graves of less exalted persons.

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CHAPTER XVIII.

GEORGE THE SECOND.

[Sidenote: 1727--Death of Newton]

The year when George the First died was made memorable forever by the death of a far greater man than any European king of that generation.

When describing the events which led to the publication of the "Drapier's Letters," we mentioned the fact that Sir Isaac Newton had been consulted about the coinage of Wood's half-pence. That was the last time that Isaac Newton appeared as a living figure in public controversy of any kind. On March 20, 1727, the great philosopher died, after much suffering, at his house in Kensington. The epitaph which Pope intended for him sums up as well as a long discourse could do his achievements in science--

"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; G.o.d said, 'Let Newton be,' and all was light."

No other discovery ever made in science approaches in importance to the discovery of the principle of universal gravitation--the principle that every particle of matter is attracted by every other particle with a force proportioned inversely to the square of their distances. Vague ideas of some such principle had long been floating in the minds of some men; had probably been thus floating since ever men began to think seriously over the phenomena of inanimate nature. But the discovery of the principle was, however, as distinctly the achievement of Newton as "Paradise Lost" is the work of Milton. We find it hard now to form to ourselves any clear idea of a world to which Newton's principle was unknown. It would be almost as easy to realize the idea of a world without {273} light or atmosphere. Newton is called by Sir David Brewster the greatest philosopher of any age. Sir John Herschel a.s.signs to the name of Newton "a place in our veneration which belongs to no other in the annals of science." In this book we have only to record the date at which the pure and simple life of this great man came to its end.

The important events of his career belong to an earlier period; his teachings and his fame are for all time. The humblest of historians as well as the greatest may ask himself what is the principle of history which bids us to a.s.sign so much more s.p.a.ce to the wars of kings and the controversies of statesmen than to the life and the deeds of a man like Newton. In the whole history of the world during Newton's lifetime, the one most important fact, the one fact of which the magnitude dwarfs all other facts, is the discovery of the principle of gravitation. Yet its meaning may be explained in fewer words than would be needed to describe the nature of the antagonism between Walpole and Pulteney, or the reason why Queen Anne was succeeded by King George.

We have, however, in these pages only to deal with history in its old and, we suppose, its everlasting fas.h.i.+on--that of telling what happened in the way of actual fact, telling the story of the time. The English public took the death of George the First with becoming composure; the vast majority of the people never troubled their heads about it. It gave a flutter of hope to Spain; it set the councils of the Stuart party in eager commotion for a while; but it made no change in England. "George the First was always reckoned Vile; still viler George the Second."

These are the lines in which Walter Savage Landor sums up the character of the first and second George before pa.s.sing on to picture in little the characters of the third and fourth of the name. Landor was not wrong when he described George the Second as, on the whole, rather worse than George the First. George the Second was born at Hanover on October {274} 30, 1683, and was therefore in his forty-fourth year when he succeeded to the throne. He had still less natural capacity than his father. He was parsimonious; he was avaricious; he was easily put out of temper. His instincts, feelings, pa.s.sions were all purely selfish. He had hot hatreds and but cool friends.h.i.+ps. Personal courage was, perhaps, the only quality becoming a sovereign which George the Second possessed. He had served as a volunteer under Marlborough in 1708, and at the battle of Oudenarde he had headed a charge of his Hanoverian dragoons with a bravery worthy of a prince. He is to serve later on at Dettingen, and to be in all probability the last English sovereign who commanded in person on the battlefield. His education was not even so good as that of his father, and he had an utter contempt for literature. He had little religious feeling, but is said to have had a firm belief in the existence of vampires. He was fond of business--devoted to the small ways of routine. He took a great interest in military matters and all that concerned the arrangements and affairs of an army. Like his father he found abiding pleasure in the society of a little group of more or less attractive mistresses.

[Sidenote: 1727--Incredulity of the Prince of Wales]

George the Second had always detested his father, and during the greater part of their lives was equally detested by him. The reconciliation which had lately taken place between them was as formal and superficial as that of the two demons described in Le Sage's story. "They brought us together," says Asmodeus; "they reconciled us. We shook hands and became mortal enemies." When the reconciliation between George the Second and his father was brought about by the influence of Stanhope and of Walpole, the father and son shook hands and continued to be mortal enemies. If George the First had his court at St. James's, George the Second had his court and _coterie_ gathered around him at Leicester Fields and at Richmond. The two courts were, in fact, little better than hostile camps. Walpole had been for long years the confidential and favored servant of George the First. The {275} natural expectation was that he would be instantly discredited and discarded when George the Second came to the throne.

So, indeed, it seemed at first to happen. When Walpole received the news of George the First's death he hastened to Richmond Lodge, where George the Second then was, in order to give him the news and hail him as King.

George was in bed, and had to be roused from a thick sleep. He was angry at being disturbed, and not in a humor to admit that there was any excuse for disturbing him. When Walpole told him that his father was dead, the kingly answer of the sovereign was that the statesman's a.s.sertion was a big lie. George roared this at Walpole, and then was for turning round in his bed and settling down to sleep again. Walpole, however, persisted in disturbing the royal slumbers, and a.s.sured the drowsy grumbler that he really was George the Second, King of England. He produced for George's further satisfaction a letter from Lord Townshend, describing the time, place, and circ.u.mstances of the late King's death. Walpole tendered the usual ceremonial expressions of loyalty, which George received coldly, and even gruffly. Then the minister asked whom his Majesty wished to appoint to draw up the necessary declaration for the Privy Council.

Walpole a.s.sumed as a matter of course that the King would leave the task in his hands. George, however, disappointed him. "Compton," said the King; and when he had spoken that word he intimated to Walpole that the interview was over. Walpole left the royal abode believing himself a fallen man.

"Compton," whom the King had thus curtly designated, was Sir Spencer Compton, who had been chosen Speaker of the House of Commons in 1715. He had been one of George the Second's favorites while George was still Prince of Wales. He was a man of respectable character, publicly and privately, but without remarkable capacity of any kind. He knew little or nothing of the business of a minister, and it is said that when Walpole {276} came to him to tell him of the King's command he frankly acknowledged that he did not know how to draw up the formal declaration.

Walpole good-naturedly came to his a.s.sistance, took his pen, and did the work for him.

[Sidenote: 1727--Compton's evaporation]

If the King had persevered in his objection to Walpole, the story of the reign would have to be very differently told. Walpole was the one only man who could at the time have firmly stood between England and foreign intrigue--between England and financial blunder. Nor is it unlikely that the King would have persevered and refused to admit Walpole to office but that he happened to be, without his own knowledge, under the influence of the one only woman who had any legitimate right to influence him--his wife Caroline. Caroline, daughter of a petty German prince--the Margrave of Brandenburg-Ans.p.a.ch--was one of the most remarkable women of her time.

Her faults, foibles, and weaknesses only served to make her more remarkable. She had beauty when she was young, and she still had an expressive face and a sweet smile. She was well educated, and always continued to educate herself; she was fond of letters, art, politics, and metaphysics. She delighted in theological controversy, and also delighted in contests of mere wit. But of all her valuable gifts, the most valuable for herself and for the country was the capacity she had for governing her husband. She governed him through his very anxiety not to be governed by his wife. One of George's strongest, and at the same time meanest, desires was to let the world see that he was absolute master in his own house, and could rule his wife with a rod of iron.

Caroline, having long since discovered this weakness, played into the King's hands, and always made outward show of the utmost deference for his authority, and dread of his anger. She put herself metaphorically, and indeed almost literally, under his feet. She was pleased that all the Court should see her thus grovelling. George was in the habit of making jocular allusion, in his jovial, graceful way, to living and dead sovereigns who were {277} governed by their wives, and he often invited his courtiers to notice the difference between them and him, and to admire the imperial supremacy which he exercised over the humble Caroline. By humoring him in this way Caroline obtained, without any consciousness on his part, an almost absolute power over him. Another and a worse failing of the King's she humored as well. She had suffered much in the beginning of her married life because of his amours and his mistresses. Her true and faithful heart had been wrung by long jealousies; but, happily for herself and for the country, she was able at last to rise superior to this natural weakness of woman. Indeed, it has to be said with regret for her self-degradation, that she not only tolerated the love-makings of the King and his favorites, but even showed occasionally a politic interest in the promotion of the amours and the appointment of the ladies. She humored her lord and master's avarice with as little scruple. Thus his princ.i.p.al defects--his sordid love of money, his ign.o.ble pa.s.sion for women, and his ridiculous desire to seem the absolute master of his wife--became in her skilful hands the leading-strings by which she drew and guided him whither she would have him go. Through Caroline's influence mainly Walpole was retained in power. She played on the King's avarice, and poured into his greedy ear the a.s.surance that Walpole could raise money as no other living man could. Caroline acted in this chiefly from a sincere love of her husband, and anxiety for his good, but partly also, it has to be acknowledged, because it had been made known to her that Walpole would provide her with a larger allowance than it was Compton's intention to do. The result was that Walpole was retained in office, or, perhaps it should be said, restored to office. The crowds of courtiers who love to wors.h.i.+p the rising sun had hardly time to offer their adoration to Compton when they found that the supposed rising sun was only a meteor, which instantly vanished. Horace Walpole the younger describes the event by a happy phrase as "Compton's evaporation." Compton {278} himself had soon found that the responsibility would be too much for him. He besought the King to relieve him of the burden to which he found himself unequal. The King acceded to his wish. Walpole became once again First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Townshend continued to be Secretary of State. The crisis was over.

[Sidenote: 1727--Condolence and congratulation]

Parliament a.s.sembled on June 15th, after the death of George the First.

As the law then stood, any Parliament summoned by a sovereign was not to be dissolved by that sovereign's death, but should continue to sit and act during a term of six months, "unless the same shall be sooner prorogued or dissolved by such person who shall be next heir to the Crown of this Realm in succession." The meeting of June 15th was merely formal. Parliament was prorogued by a Commission from George the Second until the 27th of the month. Both Houses then met at Westminster, and the King came to the House of Peers in his royal robes and ascended the throne with all the regular ceremonial. Sir Charles Dalton, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, was sent with a message from the King commanding the attendance of the Commons. When the Commons had crowded into the s.p.a.ce appointed for them in the Peers' Chamber, the King "delivered from his own mouth" the Royal speech. George the Second had at all events one advantage over George the First as a King of England--he understood the language of his subjects, and could speak to them in their own tongue.

The Royal speech began by expressing the King's persuasion that "you all share with me in my grief and affliction for the death of my late royal father." The King was well warranted in this persuasion; nothing could be more correct than his a.s.sumption. The Lords and Commons quite shared with him his grief and affliction for the death of his royal father.

They felt just as much distress at that event as he did. The King then went on to declare his fixed resolution to merit by all possible means the love and affection of his people; to preserve the Const.i.tution {279} "as it is now happily established in Church and State;" and to secure to all his subjects the full enjoyment of their religious and civil rights.

He expressed his satisfaction at the manner in which tranquillity and the balance of power in Europe had been maintained, the strict union and harmony which had hitherto subsisted among the allies of the Treaty of Hanover, and which had chiefly contributed to the near prospect of a general peace. Finally, the King pointed out that the grant of the greatest part of his Civil List revenues had now run out, and that it would be necessary for the House of Commons to make a new provision for the support of him and of his family. "I am persuaded," said the King, "that the experience of past times and a due regard to the honor and dignity of the Crown will prevail upon you to give me this first proof of your zeal and affection in a manner answerable to the necessities of my Government." Then the King withdrew, and Lord Chesterfield moved for "an address of condolence, congratulation, and thanks." The condoling and congratulating address was unanimously voted, was presented next day to his Majesty, and received his Majesty's most gracious acknowledgment.

Meanwhile the Commons having returned to their House, several new members took the oaths. Sir Paul Methuen, Treasurer of the Household, the author of the commercial treaty with Portugal which still bears his name, moved an address of condolence and congratulation to the King. The motion was seconded by Sir Robert Walpole, and as the formal record puts it, "voted _nemine contradicente_." A committee was appointed to draw up the address, Sir Robert Walpole, of course, being one of its members. The chairman of the committee paid Walpole the compliment of handing him the pen, "whereupon," as a contemporary account reports it, "Sir Robert, without hesitation and with a masterly hand, drew up the said address."

Walpole could be courtly enough when he thought fit. He seems to have distinctly outdone the House of Lords in the fervor of his grief for the late King and his devotion {280} to the present. The death of George the First, Walpole p.r.o.nounced to be "a loss to this nation which your Majesty alone could possibly repair." Having mentioned the fact that the death of George the First had plunged all England into grief, Walpole changed, "as by the stroke of an enchanter's wand," this winter of our discontent into glorious summer. "Your immediate succession," he a.s.sured the King, "banished all our grief."

[Sidenote: 1727--"Honest s.h.i.+ppen"]

On Monday, July 3d, the Commons met to consider the amount of supply to be granted to his Majesty. Walpole, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated to the House that the annual sum of seven hundred thousand pounds, granted to the late King "for the support of his household and of the honor and dignity of the Crown," had fallen short every year, and that ministers had been obliged to make it up in other ways. The present sovereign's necessary expenses were likely to increase, the Chancellor of the Exchequer explained, "by reason of the largeness of his family" and the necessity of "settling a household for his royal consort." The Chancellor of the Exchequer therefore moved that the entire revenues of the Civil List, which produced about one hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year above the yearly sum of seven hundred thousand pounds already mentioned, should be settled on his Majesty during life. The motion was supported by several members, but Mr. s.h.i.+ppen, the earnest and able, though somewhat eccentric, Jacobite and Tory, had the spirit and courage to oppose it. s.h.i.+ppen's speech was expressed in a spirit of loyalty, but was direct and incisive in its criticism of the Government proposal. s.h.i.+ppen pointed out that the yearly sum of seven hundred thousand pounds, now thought too little, was not obtained by the late sovereign without a long and solemn debate, and was described by every one who contended for it as an ample revenue for a king. He reminded the House that Queen Anne used to pay about nineteen thousand pounds a year out of her own pocket for the augmentation of the salaries of poor clergymen, {281} allowed five thousand pounds a year out of the Post-office revenue to the Duke of Marlborough, gave several hundred thousand pounds for the building of the castle of Blenheim; and by this means came under the necessity of asking Parliament for five hundred thousand pounds, which she determined never to do again, and had therefore prepared a scheme for the reduction of her expenses, which was to bring her full yearly outlay down to four hundred and fifty thousand pounds. s.h.i.+ppen then severely criticised the foreign policy of the late King's reign, and with justice condemned the extravagance which required to be met by repeated grants from the nation. "I confess," he said, "that if the same management was to be continued, and if the same ministers were to be again employed, a million a year would not be sufficient to carry on the exorbitant expenses so often and so justly complained of in this House." He deplored the vast sum "sunk in the bottomless gulf of secret service." "I heartily wish," he exclaimed, "that time, the great discoverer of hidden truths and concealed iniquities, may produce a list of all such--if any such there were--who have been perverted from their public duty by private pensions, who have been the hired slaves and the corrupt instruments of a profuse and vainglorious administration." s.h.i.+ppen concluded by moving as an amendment that the amount granted to his Majesty be the clear yearly sum of seven hundred thousand pounds. It is worth noticing that when s.h.i.+ppen had occasion once to refer to some of Walpole's arguments he spoke of him as "my honorable friend," and then, suddenly correcting himself, said, "I ask pardon; I should have said the honorable person, for there is no friends.h.i.+p betwixt us."

s.h.i.+ppen's speech hit hard, and must have been felt by the ministry. The one charge against Walpole's government which he could not refute was the charge of extravagance in corruption. The ministers, however, affected to treat the speech with contempt, and were justified in doing so by the manner in which the House of Commons {282} dealt with it. No answer was given to s.h.i.+ppen's statements, because s.h.i.+ppen's motion was not seconded and fell to the ground. The resolutions proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer were carried without a division, and a bill was ordered to be brought in to give effect to them. A provision of one hundred thousand pounds a year was voted for the Queen, in case she should survive the King. The vote was agreed to without division or debate.

Parliament was dissolved by proclamation on August 7th.

[Sidenote: 1728--Onslow as Haroun-al-Raschid]

The new Parliament met on January 23d, 1728. It was found that the ministerial majority was even greater than it had been before. The King opened Parliament in person, and directed the Commons, who had been summoned to the House of Peers, to return to their own House and choose their Speaker. The Commons unanimously chose Arthur Onslow to this high office. Compton, the former Speaker, had been soothed with a peerage after his "evaporation." Arthur Onslow was born in 1691, and had been in Parliament from 1719; in July, 1728, he was made Privy Councillor. We may antic.i.p.ate events a little for the purpose of mentioning the fact that all the writers of his time united in ascribing to Speaker Onslow, as he has always since been called, a combination of the best attributes which fit a man to preside over the House of Commons. It is said that his election to the Speaker's chair was brought about mainly by Sir Robert Walpole, and that Walpole expected Onslow to use his great abilities and authority to suit the policy and serve the wishes of the administration. If this was Walpole's idea, he must soon have found himself as much mistaken as the conclave of cardinals about whom so much is said in history, romance, and the drama, who elected one of their order as Pope because they believed him to be too feeble and nerveless to have any will of his own, and were much amazed to find that the moment the new Pope had been elected he suddenly became strong and energetic--the master and not the servant. Onslow's whole {283} conduct in the chair of the House of Commons during the many years which he occupied it displayed an absolute and fearless impartiality. The chair has never been better filled in English history; the very t.i.tle of "Speaker Onslow," ever afterwards given to him, is of itself a tribute to his impartiality and his services. Onslow was a man who loved letters and art, and also, it is said, loved studying all varieties of life. It is reported of him that he used to go about disguised, like a sort of eighteenth-century Haroun-al-Raschid, among the lowest cla.s.ses of men, in out-of-the-way parts of the capital, for the purpose of studying the forms and manners of human life. Legend has preserved the memory of a certain public-house, called "The Jews'-harp," where Onslow is said to have amused himself many an evening, sitting in the chimney-corner and exchanging talk and jests with the company who frequented the place. It is pleasant to be able to believe these stories of Speaker Onslow in that highly artificial and formal age--that age of periwigs and paint and shallow formulas. It is somewhat refres.h.i.+ng to meet with this clever man of eccentric ways, the great "Speaker," who could wear his official robes with so much true dignity, and then, when he had laid them aside, could amuse himself after his own fas.h.i.+on, and study life in some of its queerest corners with the freshness of a school-boy and the eye of an artist.

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CHAPTER XIX.

"THE PATRIOTS."

[Sidenote: 1728--Pulteney's place in history]

The name and the career of William Pulteney are all but forgotten in English political life. It is doubtful whether Pulteney's name, if p.r.o.nounced in the course of a debate in the House of Commons just now, would bring with it any manner of idea to the minds of nine-tenths of the listening members. Yet Pulteney played, all unconsciously, a great part in the development of the Parliamentary life of this country. So far as intellectual gifts are concerned, he is not, of course, to be named in the same breath with a man like Burke, for example; one might as well think of comparing Offenbach with Mozart or Handel. But the influence of the career of Pulteney on the English Parliament is nevertheless more distinctly marked than the influence of the career of Burke. We are speaking now not of political thought--no man ever made a greater impression on political thought than Burke has done--but only of the forms and the development of English Parliamentary systems. For Pulteney was, beyond all question, the founder of the modern practice of Parliamentary opposition. Walpole was mainly instrumental in transferring the seat of political power from the House of Lords to the House of Commons. Never, since Walpole's time, has the House of Lords exercised any real influence over the political life of England. This was not Walpole's doing; it was the doing of time and change, of altered conditions and new forces. But Walpole saw the coming change, and bent all the energies of his robust intellect to help and forward it. Pulteney is in the same sense the author of {285} the modern principle of Parliamentary opposition; but there is no reason to believe that Pulteney saw what he was doing as clearly as Walpole did.

Until the beginning of Pulteney's brilliant career, the opposition between parties had been mainly a compet.i.tion for the ear and the favor of the sovereign. Thus Harley strove against Marlborough, and Bolingbroke against Harley, and the Whigs against Harley and Bolingbroke. But the course of action taken by Pulteney against Walpole converted the struggle into one of party against party, inside and outside of the House of Commons. The object sought was the command of a majority in the representative a.s.sembly. Pulteney showed how this was to be obtained by the voices of the public out-of-doors as well as by the votes of the elected representatives in Westminster. Walpole had made it clear that in the House of Commons the battle was to be fought; Pulteney showed that in the House of Commons the victory was to be gained, not by the favor of the sovereign, but by the co-operation of the people.

We have said in a former chapter that Pulteney's form of procedure, become now a component part of our whole Parliamentary system, brings with it some serious disadvantages from which, for the present, it is not easy, it is not even possible, to see any way of escape. The principle of government by party will some time or other come to be put to the challenge in English political life. For the present, however, we have only to make the best we can of it; and no one in his senses can doubt that it was an immense advance on the system of back-stairs influence and bedchamber intrigue, the policy, to use the great Conde's expression, "of petticoats and alcoves," which prevailed in the days when Mrs. Masham was competing with Sarah Jennings, and later still, when Walpole was buying his way back to power through the influence of the sovereign's wife, in co-operation with the sovereign's paramour.

The student of English history will have to turn with {286} close attention to the reigns of the First and Second George. In those reigns the transfer of power to the representative chamber began, and the modern system of Parliamentary opposition grew into form. The student will have to remember that the time he is studying was one when there was no such thing known in England as a public meeting. There were "demonstrations," as we call them now; there were crowds; there were processions; there were tumults; there were disturbances, riots, reading of Riot Acts, dispersion of mobs, charges of cavalry, _fusillades_ of infantry; but there were no great public meetings called together for the discussion of momentous political questions.

The rapid growth of the popular newspaper, soon to swell up like the prophet's gourd, had hardly begun as yet. We cannot call the _Craftsman_ a newspaper; it was rather a series of pamphlets. It stood Pulteney instead of the more modern newspaper. He worked on public opinion with it outside the House of Commons. Inside the House he made it his business to form a party which should a.s.sail the ministry on all points, lie in wait to find occasion for attacking it, attack it rightly or wrongly, attack it even at the risk of exposing national weakness or bringing on national danger, keep attacking it always. In former days a leader of opposition had often been disdainful of the opinion of the vulgar herd out-of-doors; Pulteney and his companions set themselves to appeal especially to the prejudices, pa.s.sions, and ignorance of the vulgar herd. They made it their business to create a public opinion of their own. They dealt in the manufacture of public opinion. They set up political shops wherein to retail the article which they had thus manufactured. Pulteney was now in his prime--still some years inside fifty. He was full of energy and courage, and he threw his whole soul into his work. Much of what he did was undoubtedly dictated by his spite against Walpole, but much, too, was the mere outcome of his ambition, his energy, and the peculiar character of his intellect. He enjoyed playing a {287} conspicuous part and he liked attacking somebody. People used to think at one time that Mr. Disraeli had a profound personal hatred for Sir Robert Peel when he was flinging off his philippics against that great minister.

It afterwards appeared clear enough that Mr. Disraeli had no particular dislike to his opponent, but that he enjoyed attacking an important statesman. Pulteney, of course, did actually begin his career of imbittered opposition because of his quarrel with Walpole; but it is likely enough that even if no quarrel had ever taken place and he never had been Walpole's friend and colleague, he would sooner or later have become the foremost gladiator of opposition all the same.

[Sidenote: 1728--Materials of opposition]