A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume II Part 7

The novelty of the whole movement was enough to account for the genuine and the sham hysterics. It was an entirely new experience then for English men and women of the humblest cla.s.s, and of that generation, to be addressed in great open-air ma.s.ses by renowned and powerful preachers. Whitefield's first great effort at field-preaching was made for the benefit of the colliers at Kingswood, near Bristol. Before many weeks had gone by, he could gather round him some twenty thousand of these men. Whitefield had a marvellous fervor and force of oratory.

His voice, his gestures, his sudden and startling appeals, his solemn pauses, the dramatic and even theatric energy which he threw into his att.i.tudes and his action, his flights of lofty and sustained declamation, contrasting with sentences of homely colloquialism, were overwhelming in their effect on such an audience. "The first discovery," he says himself, "of their being affected was to see the white gutters made by their tears, which plentifully fell down their cheeks, black as they came out of the coal-pits." It was not only miners and other illiterate men whom Whitefield impressed by the fervor and pa.s.sion of his eloquence. Hume, Benjamin Franklin, Horace Walpole, and other men as well qualified to judge, and as little likely to fall under the spell of religions or sentimental enthusiasm, have borne willing testimony to the irresistible power of a sermon from Whitefield.

Wesley and Whitefield did not remain long in spiritual companions.h.i.+p.

They could not agree as to the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination.

Wesley was opposed to {140} the doctrine; Whitefield willing to accept it. They discussed and discussed the question, but without drawing any nearer together. Indeed, as might naturally have been expected, they only fell more widely asunder, and after a while the difference of opinion grew to something like a personal estrangement. Wesley had already broken away from spiritual communion with some of his old friends, the Moravians. Probably he felt all the stronger for his own work now that he stood as a leader all but alone. He walked his own wild road; Whitefield took a path for himself. Wesley soon found that he was gaining more followers than he had lost. He had to adopt the practice of employing lay preachers; it was a matter of necessity to his task. He could not induce many clergymen to work under his guidance and after his fas.h.i.+on. The movement was spreading all over the country. Wesley became the centre and light of his wing of the campaign. The machinery of his organization was simple and strong. A conference was called together every year, which was composed of preachers selected by Wesley. These formed his cabinet or central board, and lent their authority to his decisions.

This was the germ of the great Wesleyan organization, which has since become so powerful, and has spread itself so widely over Great Britain and the American States. The preachers were sent by Wesley from one part of the country to another, just as he thought best; and it never occurred to any missionary to refuse, remonstrate, or even delay. The system was admirable; the discipline was perfect. Wesley was as completely in command of his body of missionaries as the general of the order of Jesuits is of those over whom he is called to exercise control. The humblest of the Wesleyan preachers caught something, caught indeed very much, of the energy, the courage, the devotion, the self-sacrifice, of their great leader. No doubt there were many errors and offences here and there. Good taste, sobriety of judgment, prudence, common-sense, were now and then offended. Most of the preachers were {141} ignorant men, who had nothing but an untaught enthusiasm and a rude, uncouth eloquence to carry them on. They had to preach to mult.i.tudes very often more ignorant and uncouth than themselves. It would be absolutely impossible under such conditions that there should not sometimes be offence, and, as Hamlet says, "much offence too." But there was no greater departure from the lines of propriety and good taste than any one who took a reasonable view of the whole work and its workers must have expected to find.

[Sidenote: 1738--Opposition to Wesleyanism]

Of course a strong opposition to the movement showed itself in many parts of the country. The Wesleyans were denounced; they were ridiculed; they were caricatured; they were threatened; they were set upon by ruffians; they were stoned by mobs. In some places it was said that the local magistrates actually connived with the attempt to drive them out by force. Projects are actually declared to have been formed for their complete extermination. Such projects, however, do not succeed. No amount of violence has ever yet exterminated religious zeal and impa.s.sioned, even let it be fanatical, enthusiasm. John Wesley went his way undismayed. He even appears to have positively enjoyed the excitement and the danger. The persecution began after a while to languish in its efforts, and the Wesleyans kept growing more and more numerous and strong. But the movement in growing grew away from the Church of England. Wesley had been drawn out of his original intent step after step. He could not help himself, once his movement had been started. He had had to take to field preaching, for the good reason that he could not otherwise reach the people whom it was his heart's warmest longing to reach. He had to take to employing lay preachers, because without them he could not have got his preaching done. At last he began to ordain ministers, and even, it is said, bishops, for the missions in America. He had, in fact, broken away altogether from the discipline of the Church of England, although he persisted to his dying day that he never had any design of {142} separating from the Church, "and had no such design now." Near to the close of his long life he declared, "I live and die a member of the Church of England, and none who regard my judgment or advice will ever separate from it." No one can doubt that Wesley spoke in full sincerity. When he stepped outside the pale of Church practice it was only to do what he believed ought to have been the work of the Church itself, but which the Church did not then care to attempt, and which, as he felt convinced, could not afford to wait for the indefinite time when the Church might have the spirit, the energy, and the resources needed for such an undertaking.

Wesley was a thorough despot; as much of a despot as Peter the Great or Napoleon. He took no trouble to disguise his despotic purpose. He did not shelter himself, as Napoleon once wished to do, under the draperies of a const.i.tutional king. Wesley was satisfied in his own mind that he knew better than any other man how to guide his movements and govern his followers, and he told people that he knew it, and acted accordingly. The members of his conference, or what we have called his cabinet, were only like Clive's council of war; Wesley listened to their advice and their arguments, but acted according to his own judgment all the same. Late in his career it was charged against him that he was trying to turn himself into a sort of Methodist pope. He asked for some explanation of this, and was told that he had invested himself with arbitrary power. His answer was simple and straightforward. "If by arbitrary power you mean a power which I exercise singly, without any colleagues therein, this is certainly true; but I see no hurt in it." All the actions of his life show this complete faith in himself where the business of his mission was concerned. He was dogmatic, masterful, overbearing, very often far from amiable, sometimes all but unendurable, to those around him. But if he had not had these peculiar qualities or defects he would not have been the man that he was; he would not have been able to bear the charge of such a task at such a {143} time. It is probable that Hannibal did not cut through the Alps with vinegar; it is certain that he could not have pierced his way with honey.

[Sidenote: 1738--Religion out of fas.h.i.+on]

Nothing can better show than the rise and progress of the great Methodist movement how vast is the difference between a people and what is commonly called society. In society everywhere throughout England, in the great provincial cities as well as in the capital, religion seemed to have completely gone out of fas.h.i.+on. The Court cared nothing about it. The King had no real belief in his heart; he had as little faith in Divine guidance as he had in the honor of man or the chast.i.ty of woman. The Queen's devotional exercises were nothing but a mere performance carried on sometimes through a half-opened door, the attendant minister on one side of the door and the gossiping, chattering ladies on the other. The leading statesmen of the age were avowedly indifferent or professedly unbelieving. Bolingbroke was a preacher of unbelief. Walpole never seems to have cared to turn his thoughts for one moment to anything higher than his own political career, the upholding of his friends if they stood fast by him, and the downfall of his enemies. Chesterfield was not exactly the sort of man to be stirred into spiritual life. Morals were getting out of fas.h.i.+on as much as religion. Society had all the grossness without much of the wit which belonged to the days of the Restoration. Yet the mere fact that the Wesleyan movement made such sudden way among the poor and the lowly shows beyond question that the heart of the English people had not been corrupted. Conscience was asleep, but it was not dead. The first words of Wesley seemed to quicken it into a new life.

We have somewhat antic.i.p.ated the actual course of events in order to show at once what the Wesleyan movement came to. During the lifetime of its founder it had grown into a great national and international inst.i.tution. Since his time it has been spreading and growing all over the world where Christianity grows. It is the severest in {144} its discipline of all the Protestant churches, and yet it exercises a charm even over gentle and tender natures, and makes them its willing servants, while it teaches the wilder and fiercer spirits to bend their natures and tame their wild pa.s.sions down. [Sidenote: 1738--The Wesleyan work] In the United States of America Wesleyanism is now one of the most popular and powerful of all the denominations of Christianity. It has since been divided up into many sections, both here and there, on questions of discipline, and even on questions of belief; but in its leading characteristics it has been faithful to the main purpose of its founder. Its success did not consist mainly in what it accomplished for its own people; it achieved a great work also by the impulse it gave to the Church of England. That Church for a while seemed to be filled with a reviving spiritual and ministerial activity. It appeared to take shame to itself that it had remained so long apathetic and perfunctory, and it flung itself into compet.i.tion with the younger and more energetic mission. The English Church did not indeed retain this mood of ardor and of eagerness very long. After a time it relapsed into comparative inactivity; and a new and very different movement was needed at a period much nearer to our own to make it once again a ministering power to the people--to the poor. But for the time the revival of the Church was genuine and was beneficent.

With the quickened religious vitality of the Wesleyan movement came also a quickened philanthropic spirit; a zeal for the instruction, the purification, and the better life of men and women. The common instinct of humanity always is to strive for higher and better ways of living, if only once the word of guidance is given and the soul of true manhood is roused to the work. Indeed, there is not much about this period of English history concerning which the modern Englishman can feel really proud except that great religious revival which began with the thoughts and the teachings of John Wesley. One turns in relief from the partisan struggles in Parliament and out of it, from the intrigues and counter-intrigues of selfish and perfidious statesmen, and {145} the alcove conspiracies of worthless women, to Wesley and his religious visions, to Whitefield and his colliers, to Charles Wesley and his sweet devotional hymns. Many of us are unable to have any manner of sympathy with the precise doctrines and the forms of faith which Wesley taught. But the man must have no sympathy with faith or religious feeling of any kind who does not recognize the unspeakable value of that great reform which Wesley and Whitefield introduced to the English people. They taught moral doctrines which we all accept in common, but they did not teach them after the cold and barren way of the plodding, mechanical instructor. They thundered them into the opening ears of thousands who had never been roused to moral sentiment before. They inspired the souls of poor and commonplace creatures with all the zealot's fire and all the martyr's endurance. They brought tears to penitent eyes which had never been moistened before by any but the selfish sense of personal pain or grief. They pierced through the dull, vulgar, contaminated hideousness of low and vicious life, and sent streaming in upon it the light of a higher world and a better law.

Every new Wesleyan became a missionary of Wesleyanism. The son converted the father, the daughter won over the heart of the mother.

There was much that was hard, much that was fierce, in the doctrine and the discipline of Methodism, but that time was not one in which gentler teachings could much prevail. Men and women had to be startled into a sense of the need of their spiritual regeneration. Wesley and the comrades who worked with him in the beginning, and with some of whom, like Whitefield, he ceased after a while to work, were just the men needed to call aloud to the people and make sure that their voices must be heard. They had to talk in a shout if they were to talk to any purpose. There was much in their style of eloquence against which a pure and cultured criticism would naturally protest. But they did not speak for the pure and cultured criticism. They came to call ignorant sinners to repentance. They have the one great abiding {146} merit, they have the one enduring fame--that they saw their real business in life; that they kept to it through whatever disadvantage, pain, and danger; and that they accomplished what they had gone out to do. Their monument lives to-day in the living history of England and of America.

{147}

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

ENGLAND'S HONOR AND JENKINS'S EAR.

[Sidenote: 1738--The pa.s.sion of war]

"Madam, there are fifty thousand men slain this year in Europe, and not one Englishman among them." This was the proud boast which, as has been already mentioned, Walpole was able to make to Queen Caroline not very long before her death, when she was trying to stir him up to a more agressive policy in the affairs of the Continent. Walpole's words sound almost like an antic.i.p.ation of Prince Bismarck's famous declaration that the Eastern Question was not worth to Germany the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier. But Prince Bismarck was more fortunate than Walpole in his policy of peace. He had secured a position of advantage for himself in maintaining that policy which Walpole never had. Prince Bismarck had twice over made it clear to all the world that he could conduct to the most complete success a policy of uncompromising war. Walpole had all the difficulty in keeping to his policy of peace which a statesman always has who is suspected, rightly or wrongly, of a willingness to purchase peace at almost any price. It is melancholy to have to make the statement, but the statement is nevertheless true, that in the England of Walpole's day, and in the England of our own day as well, the statesman who is known to love peace is sure to have it shrieked at him in some crisis that he does not love the honor of his country. A periodical outbreak of the craving or l.u.s.t for war seems to be one of the pa.s.sions and one of the afflictions of almost every great commonwealth in Europe. A wise and just policy may have secured a peace that has lasted for years; but the mere fact that peace has lasted for years {148} seems to many unthinking people reason enough why the country should be favored with a taste of war. We are constantly declaring that England is not a military nation, and yet no statesman is ever so popular for the hour in England as the statesman who fires the people with the pa.s.sion of war. Many a minister, weak and unpopular in his domestic policy, has suddenly made himself the hero and the darling of the moment by declaring that some foreign state has insulted England, and that the time has come when the sword must be drawn to defend the nation's honor. Then "away to heaven, respective lenity" indeed! The appeal acts like a charm to call out the pa.s.sion and to silence the reason of vast ma.s.ses of the population in all ranks and conditions. Even among the working-cla.s.ses and the poor--who, one might imagine, have all to lose and nothing to gain by war--it is by no means certain that the war fever will not flame for the hour. There are seasons when, as Burke has said, "even the humblest of us are degraded into the vices and follies of kings."

[Sidenote: 1738--The patriots' war-cry]

War had no fascination for Walpole. He saw it only in its desolation, its cruelty, its folly, and its cost. At the time which we have now reached he looked with clear gaze over the European continent, and he saw nothing in the action of foreign Powers which concerned the honor and the interest of England enough to make it necessary for her to draw the sword. But, unfortunately for his country and for his fame, Walpole was not a statesman of firm and lofty principle. He was always willing to come to terms. In the domestic affairs of England he allowed grievances to exist which he had again and again condemned and deplored, and which every one knew he was sincerely desirous to remove; he allowed them to exist because it might have been a source of annoyance to the King if the minister had troubled him about such a subject. He acted on this policy with regard to the grievances of which the Dissenters complained, and, as he always admitted, very justly complained. Much as he detested a policy of war, he was not the minister who would {149} stand by a policy of peace at the risk of losing his popularity and his power. Much as he loved peace, he loved his place as Prime Minister still more. It is probable that his enemies gave him credit for greater fixity of purpose in regard to his peace policy than he really possessed. They believed, perhaps, that they had only to get up a good, popular war-cry in England, and that Walpole would have to go out of office. They told themselves that he would not make war. On this faith they based their schemes and founded their hopes. It would have been well for Walpole and for England if their belief had been justified by events.

The Patriots raised their war-cry. The honor of England had been insulted. Her claims had been rejected with insolent scorn. Her flag had been trampled on; her seamen had been imprisoned, mutilated, tortured; and all this by whom? By whom, indeed, but the old and implacable enemy of England, the Power which had sent the Armada to invade England's sh.o.r.es and to set up the Inquisition among the English people--by Spain, of course, by Spain! In Spanish dungeons brave Englishmen were wearing out their lives. In mid-ocean English s.h.i.+ps were stopped and searched by arrogant officers of the King of Spain.

Why did Spain venture on such acts? Because, the Patriots cried out, Spain believed that England's day of strength had gone, and that England could now be insulted with impunity. What wonder, they asked, in patriotic pa.s.sion, if Spain or any other foreign state should believe such things? Was there not a Minister now at the head of affairs in England, now grasping all the various powers of the state in his own hands, who was notoriously willing to put up with any insult, to subject his country to any degradation, rather than venture on even a remonstrance that might lead to war? Let the flag of England be torn down and trailed in the dust--what then? What cared the Minister whose only fear was, not of dishonor, but of danger.

This was the fiery stuff which the Patriots kept {150} flooding the country with; which they poured out in speeches and pamphlets, and pasquinades and lampoons. Some of them probably came in the end to believe it all themselves. Walpole was a.s.sailed every hour--he was held up to public hatred and scorn as if he had betrayed his country.

Bolingbroke from his exile contributed his share to the literature of blood, and soon came over from his exile to take a larger share in it.

The _Craftsman_ ran over with furious diatribes against the Minister of Peace. Caricatures of all kinds represented Walpole abasing himself before Spain and entering into secret engagements with her, to the prejudice and detriment of England. Ballads were hawked and sung through the streets which described Walpole as acknowledging to the Spanish Don that he hated the English merchants and traders just as much as the Don did, and that he was heartily glad when Spain applied her rod to them. The country became roused to the wildest pa.s.sion; the Patriots were carrying it all their own way.

What was it all about? What was Spain doing? What ought England to do?

[Sidenote: 1738--The treaties with Spain]

The whole excitement arose out of certain long-standing trade disputes between England and Spain in the New World. These disputes had been referred to in the Treaty of Utrecht, which was supposed to have settled them in 1713; and again in the Treaty of Seville, which was believed to have finally settled them in 1729. England had recognized the right of Spain to regulate the trade with Spanish colonies. Spain agreed that England should have the privilege of supplying the Spanish colonies with slaves. This n.o.ble privilege English traders exercised to the full. It is not very gratifying to have to recollect that two of England's great disputes with Spain were about England's claim to an unlimited right to sell slaves to the Spanish colonies. To England, or at least to the English South Sea Company, was also conceded the permission to send one merchant vessel each year to the South Seas with as much English goods to sell to the Spanish colonies as a {151} s.h.i.+p of 500 tons could carry. As everybody might have expected, the provisions of the treaty were constantly broken through. The English traders were very eager to sell their goods; the Spanish colonists were very glad to get them to buy. All other commerce than that in slaves and the one annual s.h.i.+pload of English goods was strictly prohibited by Spain. The whole arrangement now seems in the highest degree artificial and absurd; but it was not an uncommon sort of international arrangement then. As was to be expected, the English traders set going a huge illicit trade in the South Seas. This was done partly by the old familiar smuggling process, and partly, too, by keeping little fleets of smaller vessels swarming off the coasts and reloading the one legitimate vessel as often as her contents were sent into a port. This ingenious device was said to have been detected by the Spanish authorities in various places. The Spaniards retaliated by stopping and searching English vessels cruising anywhere near the coast of a Spanish colony, and by arresting and imprisoning the officers and sailors of English merchantmen. The Spaniards a.s.serted, and were able in many instances to make their a.s.sertions good, that whole squadrons of English trading vessels sometimes entered the Spanish ports under pretence of being driven there by stress of weather, or by the need of refitting and refres.h.i.+ng; and that, once in the port, they managed to get their cargoes safely ash.o.r.e. Sometimes, too, it was said, the vessels lay off the sh.o.r.e without going into the harbor; and then smugglers came off in their long, low, swift boats, and received the English goods and carried them into the port. The fact undoubtedly was that the English merchants were driving a roaring trade with the Spanish colonies; just as the Spanish authorities might very well have known that they would be certain to do. Where one set of men are anxious to sell, and another set are just as anxious to buy, it needs very rigorous coastguard watching to prevent the goods being sent in and the money taken away.

This fact, however, does not say anything against the {152} right of Spain to enforce, if she could, the conditions of the treaties. On that point Spain was only a.s.serting her indisputable right. But would it be reasonable to expect that Spain or any other country could endeavor to maintain her right in such a dispute, and under such conditions, without occasional rashness, violence, and injustice on the part of her officials? There can be no doubt that many high-handed and arbitrary acts were done against English subjects by the officers of Spanish authority. On every real and every reported and every imaginary act of Spanish harshness the Patriots seized with avidity.

They presented pet.i.tions, moved for papers, moved that this injured person and that be allowed to appear and state his case at the bar of the House of Commons. Some English sailors and other Englishmen were thus allowed to appear at the bar, and did make statements of outrage and imprisonment. Some of these statements were doubtless true, some were probably exaggerated; the men who made them were not on oath; there was every temptation to exaggerate, because it had become apparently the duty of every true Patriot who loved old England to believe anything said by anybody against Spain. The same sort of thing has happened again and again in times nearer to our own, where some cla.s.s of English traders have been trying to carry on a forbidden traffic with the subjects of a foreign sovereign. We see the same things, now in China, and now in Burmah; dress goods in one place, opium in another, slaves in another; reckless smuggling by the traders, overdone reprisals by the authorities; and then we hear the familiar appeal to England not to allow her sons to be insulted and imprisoned by some insolent foreign Power.

Walpole was not inclined to allow English subjects to be molested with impunity. But he saw no reason to believe that Spain intended anything of the kind. The advices he received from the British Minister at the Spanish Court spoke rather of delays and slow formalities, and various small disputes and misunderstandings, than of {153} wilful denial of justice. Walpole felt satisfied that by putting a little diplomatic pressure on the proceedings every satisfaction fairly due to England and English subjects could be obtained. He, therefore, refused for a long time to allow his hand to be forced by the Opposition, and was full of hope that the good sense of the country in general would sustain him against the united strength of his enemies, as it had so often done before.

[Sidenote: 1738--Alderman Perry's motion]

Walpole did not know how strong his enemies were this time. He did not know what a capital cry they had got, what a powerful appeal to national pa.s.sion they could put into voice, and what a loud reply the national pa.s.sion would make to the appeal. On Sat.u.r.day, March 2, 1738, a pet.i.tion was presented to the House of Commons from divers merchants, planters, and others trading to and interested in the British plantations in America. The pet.i.tion was presented by Mr. Perry, one of the representatives of London, and an alderman of the City. The pet.i.tion set forth a long history of the alleged grievances, and of the denial of redress, and prayed the House to "provide such timely and adequate remedy for putting an end to all insults and depredations on them and their fellow-subjects as to the House shall seem meet, as well as procure such relief for the unhappy sufferers as the nature of the case and the justice of their cause may require; and that they may be heard by themselves and counsel thereupon."

On the same day several other pet.i.tions from cities, and from private individuals, were presented on the same subject. The debate on Mr.

Perry's motion mainly turned, at first, on the minor question, whether the house would admit the pet.i.tioners to be heard by themselves and also by counsel, or, according to the habit of the House, by themselves or counsel. Yet, short and almost formal as the debate might have been, the opponents of the Government contrived to import into it a number of a.s.sumptions, and an amount of pa.s.sion, such as the earlier stages of a difficult and delicate international dispute are seldom allowed to exhibit. Even so cautious and respectable a man as Sir {154} John Barnard, a typical English merchant of the highest cla.s.s, did not hesitate to speak of the grievances as if they were all established and admitted, and the action of Spain as a wilful outrage upon the trade, the honor, and the safety of Great Britain. Walpole argued that the pet.i.tioners should be heard by themselves and not by counsel; but the main object of his speech was to appeal to the House "not to work upon the pa.s.sions where the head is to be informed." Mr.

Robert Wilmot thereupon arose, and replied in an oration belonging to that "spread-eagle" order which is familiar to American political controversy. "Talk of working on the pa.s.sions," this orator exclaimed; "can any man's pa.s.sions be wound up to a greater height, can any man's indignation be more raised, than every free-born Briton's must be when he reads a letter which I have received this morning, and which I have now in my hand? This letter, sir, gives an account that seventy of our brave sailors are now in chains in Spain. Our countrymen in chains, and slaves to Spaniards! Is not this enough to fire the coldest? Is not this enough to rouse all the vengeance of a national resentment?

Shall we sit here debating about words and forms while the sufferings of our countrymen call out loudly for redress?"

[Sidenote: 1738--An unlucky argument]

Pulteney himself, when speaking on the general question, professed, indeed, not to a.s.sume the charges in the pet.i.tions to be true before they had been established, but he proceeded to deal with them on something very like a positive a.s.sumption that they would be established. Thereupon he struck the key-note of the whole outcry that was to be raised against the Ministry. Could any one believe, he indignantly asked, that the Court of Spain "would have presumed to trifle in such a manner with any ministry but one which they thought wanted either courage or inclination to resent such treatment?" He accused the Ministry of "a scandalous breach of duty" and "the most infamous pusillanimity." Later in the same day Sir John Barnard moved an Address to the Crown, asking for papers to be laid before the House.

Walpole did not actually oppose {155} the motion, and only suggested a modification of it, but he earnestly entreated the House not, at that moment, to press the Sovereign for a publication of the latest despatches. He went so far as to let the House understand that the latest reply from Spain was not satisfactory, and that it might be highly injurious to the prospects of peace if it were then to be given to the world; and he pointed to the obvious fact that "when once a paper is read in this House the contents of it cannot be long a secret to the world." The King, he said, had still good hopes of being able to prevail on Spain to make an honorable and ample reparation for any wrongs that might have been done to Englishmen. "We ought," Walpole pleaded, "to wait, at least, till his Majesty shall tell us from the throne that all hopes of obtaining satisfaction are over. Then it will be time enough to declare for a war with Spain." Unfortunately, Walpole went on to a mode of argument which was, of all others, the best calculated to give his enemies an advantage over him. His language was strong and clear; his sarcasm was well merited; but the time was not suited for an appeal to such very calm common-sense as that to which the great minister was trying in vain to address himself.

"The topic of national resentment for national injury affords," Walpole said, "a fair field for declamation; and, to hear gentlemen speak on that head, one would be apt to believe that victory and glory are bound to attend the resolutions of our Parliament and the efforts of our arms. But gentlemen ought to reflect that there are many instances in the history of the world, and some in the annals of England, which prove that conquest is not always inseparable from the justest cause or most exalted courage."

The hearts of the Patriots must have rejoiced when they heard such an argument from the lips of Walpole. For what did it amount to? Only this--that this un-English Minister, this unworthy servant of the crown, positively admitted into his own mind the idea that there was any possibility of England's being worsted in any war with {156} any state or any number of states! Fancy any one allowing such a thought to remain for an instant in his mind! As if it were not a settled thing, specially arranged by Providence, that one Englishman is a match for at least any six Spaniards, Frenchmen, or other contemptible foreigners! Walpole's great intellectual want was the lack of imagination. If he had possessed more imagination, he would have been not only a greater orator, but a greater debater. He would have seen more clearly the effect of an argument on men with minds and temperaments unlike his own. In this particular instance the appeal to what he would have considered cool common-sense was utterly damaging to him. Pulteney pounced on him at once. "From longer forbearance," he exclaimed, "we have everything to fear; from acting vigorously we have everything to hope." He admitted that a war with Spain was to be avoided, if it could be avoided with honor; but, he asked, "will it ever be the opinion of an English statesman that, in order to avoid inconvenience, we are to embrace a dishonor? Where is the brave man,"

he demanded, "who in a just cause will submissively lie down under insults? No!--in such a case he will do all that prudence and necessity dictate in order to procure satisfaction, and leave the rest to Providence." Pulteney spoke with undisguised contempt of the sensitive honor of the Spanish people. "I do not see," he declared--and this was meant as a keen personal thrust at Walpole--"how we can comply with the form of Spanish punctilio without sacrificing some of the essentials of British honor. Let gentlemen but consider whether our prince's and our country's honor is not as much engaged to revenge our injuries as the honor of the Spaniards can be to support their insolence." There never, probably, was a House of Commons so cool-headed and cautious as not to be stirred out of reason and into pa.s.sion by so well-contrived an appeal. The appeal was followed up by others. "Perhaps," Sir William Wyndham said, "if we lose the character of being good fighters, we shall at least gain that {157} of being excellent negotiators." But he would not leave to Walpole the full benefit of even that doubtful change of character. "The character of a mere negotiator," he insisted, "had never been affected by England without her losing considerable, both in her interest at home and her influence abroad. This truth will appear plainly to any one who compares the figure this nation made in Europe under Queen Elizabeth with the figure she made under her successor, King James the First.

The first never treated with an insulting enemy; the other never durst break with a treacherous friend. The first thought it her glory to command peace; the other thought it no dishonor to beg it. In her reign every treaty was crowned with glory; in his no peace was attended with tranquillity; in short, her care was to improve, his to depress the true British spirit." Even the cool-headed and wise Sir John Barnard cried out that "a dishonorable peace is worse than a destructive war."

[Sidenote: 1738--Wyndham's taunts]

We need not go through all the series of debates in the Lords and Commons. It is enough to say that every one of these debates made the chances of a peaceful arrangement grow less and less. The impression of the Patriots seemed to be that Walpole was to be held responsible for every evasion, every delay, every rash act, and every denial of justice on the part of Spain. With this conviction, it was clear to them that the more they attacked the Spanish Government the more they attacked and damaged Walpole. Full of this spirit, therefore, they launched out in every debate about Spanish treachery, and Spanish falsehood, and Spanish cruelty, and Spanish religious faith in a manner that might have seemed deliberately designed to render a peaceful settlement of any question impossible between England and Spain. Yet we do not believe that the main object of the Patriots was to force England into a war with Spain. Their main object was to force Walpole out of office. They were for a long time under the impression that he would resign rather than make war. Once he resigned, the Patriots would very soon abate {158} their war fury, and try whether the quarrel might not be settled in peace with honor. But they had allowed themselves to be driven too far along the path of war; and they had not taken account of the fact that the great peace Minister might, after all, prefer staying in office and making war to going out of office and leaving some rival to make it.

[Sidenote: 1738--Walpole almost alone]

Suddenly there came to the aid of the Patriots and their policy the portentous story of Captain Jenkins and his ear. Captain Jenkins had sailed on board his vessel, the _Rebecca_, from Jamaica for London, and off the coast of Havana he was boarded by a revenue-cutter of Spain, which proceeded to subject him and his vessel to the right of search.

Jenkins declared that he had been fearfully maltreated; that the Spanish officers had him hanged up at the yard-arm and cut down when he was half-dead; that they slashed at his head with their cutla.s.ses and hacked his left ear nearly off; and that, to complete the measure of their outrages, one of them actually tore off his bleeding ear, flung it in his face, and bade him carry it home to his king and tell him what had been done. To this savage order Jenkins reported that he was ready with a reply: "I commend," he said, "my soul to G.o.d, and my cause to my country"--a very eloquent and telling little sentence, which gives good reason to think of what Jenkins could have done after preparation in the House of Commons if he could throw off such rhetoric unprepared, and in spite of the disturbing effect of having just been half-hanged and much mutilated. Jenkins showed, indeed, remarkable presence of mind in every way. He prudently brought home the severed ear with him, and invited all patriotic Englishmen to look at it.

Scepticism itself could not, for a while at all events, refuse to believe that the Spaniards had cut off Jenkins's ear, when, behold!

there was the ear itself to tell the story. Later on, indeed, Scepticism did begin to a.s.sert herself. Were there not other ways, it was asked, by which Englishmen might have lost an ear as well as by the fury of the hateful Spaniards? {159} Were there not British pillories?

Whether Jenkins sacrificed his ear to the cause of his country abroad or to the criminal laws of his country at home, it seems to be quite settled now that his story was a monstrous exaggeration, if not a pure invention. Burke has distinctly stigmatized it as "the fable of Jenkins's ear." The fable, however, did its work for that time. It was eagerly caught up and believed in; people wanted to believe in it, and the ear was splendid evidence. The mutilation of Jenkins played much the same part in England that the fabulous insult of the King of Prussia to the French envoy played in the France of 1870. The eloquence of Pulteney, the earnestness of Wyndham, the intriguing genius of Bolingbroke, seemed only to have been agencies to prepare the way for the triumph of Jenkins and his severed ear. The outcry all over the country began to make Walpole feel at last that something would have to be done. His own const.i.tutional policy came against him in this difficulty. He had broken the power of the House of Lords and had strengthened that of the House of Commons. The hereditary Chamber might perhaps be relied upon to stand firmly against a popular clamor, but it would be impossible to expect such firmness at such a time from an elective a.s.sembly of almost any sort. In this instance, however, Walpole found himself worse off in the House of Lords than even in the House of Commons. The House of Lords was stimulated by the really powerful eloquence of Carteret and of Chesterfield, and there was no man on the ministerial side of the House who could stand up with any effect against such accomplished and unscrupulous political gladiators.

Walpole appealed to the Parliament not to take any step which would render a peaceful settlement impossible, and he promised to make the most strenuous efforts to obtain a prompt consideration of England's claims. He set to work energetically for this purpose. His difficulties were greatly increased by the unfriendly conduct of the Spanish envoy, who was on terms of confidence with the Patriots, and went about everywhere declaring {160} that Walpole was trying to deceive the English people as well as the Spanish Government. It must have needed all Walpole's strength of will to sustain him against so many difficulties and so many enemies at such a crisis. It had not been his way to train up statesmen to help him in his work, and now he stood almost alone.

The negotiations were further complicated by the disputes between England and Spain as to the right of English traders to cut logwood in Campeachy Bay, and as to the settlement of the boundaries of the new English colonies of Florida and Carolina in North America, and the rival claims of England and Spain to this or that strip of border territory. Sometimes, however, when an international dispute has to be glossed over, rather than settled, to the full satisfaction of either party, it is found a convenient thing for diplomatists to have a great many subjects of disputation wrapped up in one arrangement. Walpole was sincerely anxious to give Spain a last chance; but the Spanish people, on their side, were stirred to bitterness and to pa.s.sion by the vehement denunciations of the English Opposition. Even then, when daily papers were little known to the population of either London or Madrid, people in London and in Madrid did somehow get to know that there had been fierce exchange of international dislike and defiance.

Walpole, however, still clung to his policy of peace, and his influence in the House of Commons was commanding enough to get his proposals accepted there. In the House of Lords the Ministry were nowhere in debate. Something, indeed, should be said for Lord Hervey, who had been raised to the Upper House as Baron Hervey of Ickworth in 1733, and who made some speeches full of clear good-sense and sound moderating argument in support of Walpole's policy. But Carteret and Chesterfield would have been able in any case to overwhelm the Duke of Newcastle, and the Duke of Newcastle now was turning traitor to Walpole. Stupid as Newcastle was, he was beginning to see that the day of Walpole's destiny was nearly over, and he was taking {161} measures to act accordingly. All that Newcastle could do as Secretary for Foreign Affairs was done to make peace impossible.

[Sidenote: 1739--The Convention]

Walpole thought the time had fully come when it would be right for him to show that, while still striving for peace, he was not unprepared for war. He sent a squadron of line-of-battle s.h.i.+ps to the Mediterranean and several cruisers to the West Indies, and he allowed letters of marque to be issued. These demonstrations had the effect of making the Spanish Government somewhat lower their tone--at least they had the effect of making that Government seem more willing to come to terms.

Long negotiations as to the amount of claim on the one side and of set-off on the other were gone into both in London and Madrid. We need not study the figures, for nothing came of the proposed arrangement.

It was impossible that anything could come of it. England and Spain were quarrelling over several great international questions. Even these questions were themselves only symbolical of a still greater one, of a paramount question which was never put into words: the question whether England or Spain was to have the ascendent in the new world across the Atlantic. Walpole and the Spanish Government drew up an arrangement, or rather professed to find a basis of arrangement, for the paying off of certain money claims. A convention was agreed upon, and was signed on January 14, 1739. The convention arranged that a certain sum of money was to be paid by Spain to England within a given time, but that this discharge of claims should not extend to any dispute between the King of Spain and the South Sea Company as holders of the Asiento Contract; and that two plenipotentiaries from each side should meet at Madrid to settle the claims of England and Spain with regard to the rights of trade in the New World and the boundaries of Carolina and Florida. This convention, it will be seen, left the really important subjects of dispute exactly where they were before.