A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume II Part 8

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Such as it was, however, it had hardly been signed before the diplomatists were already squabbling over the extent and interpretation of its terms, and mixing it up with the attempted arrangement of other and older disputes. Parliament opened on February 1, 1739, and the speech from the throne told of the convention arranged with Spain. "It is now," said the Royal speech, "a great satisfaction to me that I am able to acquaint you that the measures I have pursued have had so good an effect that a convention is concluded and ratified between me and the King of Spain, whereby, upon consideration had of the demands on both sides, that prince hath obliged himself to make reparation to my subjects for their losses by a certain stipulated payment; and plenipotentiaries are therein named and appointed for redressing within a limited time all those grievances and abuses which have hitherto interrupted our commerce and navigation in the American seas, and for settling all matters in dispute in such a manner as may for the future prevent and remove all new causes and pretences of complaint by a strict observance of our mutual treaties and a just regard to the rights and privileges belonging to each other." The King promised that the convention should be laid before the House at once.

Before the terms of the convention were fully in the knowledge of Parliament, there was already a strong dissatisfaction felt among the leading men of the Opposition. We need not set this down to the mere determination of implacable partisans not to be content with anything proposed or executed by the Ministers of the Crown. Sir John Barnard was certainly no implacable partisan in that sense. He was really a true-hearted and patriotic Englishman. Yet Sir John Barnard was one of the very first to predict that the convention would be found utterly unsatisfactory. There is nothing surprising in the prediction. The King's own speech, which naturally made the best of things, left it evident that no important and international question had been touched by the convention. {163} Every dispute over which war might have to be made remained in just the same state after the convention as before.

Lord Carteret in the House of Lords boldly a.s.sumed that the convention must be unsatisfactory, and even degrading, to the English people, and he denounced it with all the eloquence and all the vigor of which he was capable. Lord Hervey vainly appealed to the House to bear in mind that the convention was not yet before them. "Let us read it," he urged, "before we condemn it." Vain, indeed, was the appeal; the convention was already condemned. The very description of it in the speech from the throne had condemned it in advance.

[Sidenote: 1739--Pet.i.tion against the Convention]

The convention was submitted to Parliament and made known to the country. The reception it got was just what might have been expected.

The one general cry was that the agreement gave up or put aside every serious claim made by England. Spain had not renounced her right of search; the boundaries of England's new colonies had not been defined; not a promise was made by Spain that the Spanish officials who had imprisoned and tortured unoffending British subjects should be punished, or even brought to any manner of trial. In the heated temper of the public the whole convention seemed an inappropriate and highly offensive farce. On February 23d the sheriffs of the City of London presented to the House of Commons a pet.i.tion against the convention.

The pet.i.tion expressed the great concern and surprise of the citizens of London "to find by the convention lately concluded between his Majesty and the King of Spain that the Spaniards are so far from giving up their (as we humbly apprehend) unjust pretension of a right to visit and search our s.h.i.+ps on the seas of America that this pretension of theirs is, among others, referred to the future regulation and decision of plenipotentiaries appointed on each side, whereby we apprehend it is in some degree admitted." The pet.i.tion referred to the "cruel treatment of the English sailors whose hard fate has thrown them into the {164} hands of the Spaniards," and added, with a curious mixture of patriotic sentiment and practical, business-like selfishness, that "if this cruel treatment of English seamen were to be put up with, and no reparation demanded, it might have the effect"--of what, does the reader think?--"of deterring the seamen from undertaking voyages to the seas of America without an advance of wages, which that trade or any other will not be able to support."

[Sidenote: 1739--Carteret's attack]

The same pet.i.tion was presented to the House of Lords by the Duke of Bedford. Lord Carteret moved that the pet.i.tioners should be heard by themselves, and, if they should desire it, by counsel. It was agreed, after some debate, that the pet.i.tioners should be heard by themselves in the first instance, and that if afterwards they desired to be heard by counsel their request should be taken into consideration. Lord Chesterfield in the course of the debate contrived ingeniously to give a keen stroke to the convention while declaring that he did not presume as yet to form any opinion on it, or to antic.i.p.ate any discussion on its merits. "I cannot help," he said, "saying, however, that to me it is a most unfavorable symptom of its being for the good of the nation when I see so strong an opposition made to it out-of-doors by those who are the most immediately concerned in its effects."

A debate of great interest, animation, and importance took place in the House of Lords when the convention was laid before that a.s.sembly. The Earl of Cholmondeley moved that an address be presented to the King to thank him for having concluded the convention. The address was drawn up by a very dexterous hand, a master-hand. Its terms were such as might have conciliated the leaders of the Opposition, if indeed these were to be conciliated by anything short of Walpole's resignation, for, while the address approved of all that had been done thus far, it cleverly a.s.sumed that all this was but the preliminary to a real settlement; and by ingenuously expressing the entire reliance of the House on the King's taking care that proper provision should be made for the redress of various {165} specified grievances, it succeeded in making it quite clear that in the opinion of the House such provision had not yet been made. The address concluded most significantly with an a.s.surance to the King that "in case your Majesty's just expectations shall not be answered, this House will heartily and zealously concur in all such measures as shall be necessary to vindicate your Majesty's honor, and to preserve to your subjects the full enjoyment of all those rights to which they are ent.i.tled by treaty and the Law of Nations."

An address of this kind would seem one that might well have been moved as an amendment to a ministerial address, and understood to be obliquely a vote of censure on the advisers of the Crown. It seems the sort of address that Carteret might have moved and Chesterfield seconded. Carteret and Chesterfield opposed it with spirit and eloquence. "Upon your Lords.h.i.+ps' behavior to-day," said Carteret at the close of a bitter and a pa.s.sionate attack upon the Ministry and the convention, "depends the fate of the British Empire. . . . This nation has. .h.i.therto maintained her independence by maintaining her commerce; but if either is weakened the other must fail. It is by her commerce that she has been hitherto enabled to stand her ground against all the open and secret attacks of the enemies to her religion, liberties, and const.i.tution. It is from commerce, my Lords, that I behold your Lords.h.i.+ps within these walls, a free, an independent a.s.sembly; but, should any considerations influence your Lords.h.i.+ps to give so fatal a wound to the interest and honor of this kingdom as your agreeing to this address, it is the last time I shall have occasion to trouble this House. For, my Lords, if we are to meet only to give a sanction to measures that overthrow all our rights, I should look upon it as a misfortune for me to be either accessary or witness to such a compliance. I will not only repeat what the merchants told your Lords.h.i.+ps--that their trade is ruined--I will go further; I will say the n.o.bility is ruined, the whole nation is undone. For I can call this treaty nothing else but a mortgage of {166} your honor, a surrender of your liberties." Such language may now seem too overwrought and extravagant to have much effect upon an a.s.sembly of practical men. But it was not language likely to be considered overwrought and extravagant at that time and during that crisis. The Opposition had positively worked themselves into the belief that if the convention were accepted the last day of England's strength, prosperity, and glory had come. Carteret, besides, was talking to the English public as well as to the House of Lords. He knew what he meant when he denounced the enemies of England's religion as well as the enemies of England's trade. The imputation was that the Minister himself was a secret confederate of the enemies of the national religion as well as the enemies of the national trade. Men who but a few short years before were secretly engaged in efforts at a Stuart restoration, which certainly would not be an event much in harmony with the spread of the Protestant faith in England, were now denouncing Walpole every day on the ground that he was caballing with Catholic Spain, the Spain of Philip the Second, the Spain of the Armada and the Inquisition, the implacable enemy of England's national religion.

[Sidenote: 1739--Argyle's anecdote]

The Duke of Argyle made a most vehement speech against the proposed address. He dealt a sharp blow against the Ministry when he declared that the whole convention was a French and not a Spanish measure. He said he should never be persuaded that fear of aught that could be done by Spain could have induced ministers to accept "this thing you call a convention." "It is the interest of France that our navigation and commerce should be ruined, we are the only people in the world whom France has reason to be apprehensive of in America, and every advantage that Spain gains in point of commerce is gained for her. . . . So far as I can judge from the tenor of our late behavior, our dread of France has been the spring of all our weak and ruinous measures. To this dread we have sacrificed the most distinguis.h.i.+ng honors of this kingdom. This dread of France has changed {167} every maxim of right government among us. There is no measure for the advantage of this kingdom that has been set on foot for these many years to which she has not given a negative. There is no measure so much to our detriment into which she has not led us." He scornfully declared that what the reasons of ministers might be for this pusillanimity he could not tell, "for, my Lords, though I am a privy councillor I am as unacquainted with the secrets of the Government as any private gentleman that hears me." Then he told an anecdote of the late Lord Peterborough. "When Lord Peterborough was asked by a friend one day his opinion of a certain measure, says my lord, in some surprise, 'This is the first time I ever heard of it.' 'Impossible,' says the other; 'why, you are a privy councillor.' 'So I am,' replies his lords.h.i.+p, 'and there is a Cabinet councillor coming up to us just now; if you ask the same question of him he will perhaps hold his peace, and then you will think he is in the secret; but if he opens once his mouth about it you will find he knows as little of it as I do.' No, my Lords," exclaimed the Duke of Argyle, "it is not being in Privy Council or in Cabinet Council; one must be in the Minister's counsel to know the true motives of our late proceedings." The duke concluded his oration, characteristically, with a glorification of his own honest and impartial heart.

The address was sure to be carried; Walpole's influence was still strong enough to accomplish that much. But everybody must already have seen that the convention was not an instrument capable of satisfying, or, indeed, framed with any notion of satisfying, the popular demands of England. It was an odd sort of arrangement, partly international and partly personal; an adjustment, or attempted adjustment here of a dispute between States, and there of a dispute between rival trading companies. The reconst.i.tuted South Sea Company--which had now become one of the three great trading companies of England, the East India Company and the Bank being the {168} other two--had all manner of negotiations, arrangements, and transactions with the King of Spain.

All these affairs now became mixed up with the national claims, and were dealt with alike in the convention. The British plenipotentiary at the Spanish Court was--still further to complicate matters--the agent for the South Sea Company. The convention provided that certain set-off claims of Spain should be taken into consideration as well as the claims of England. Spain had some demands against England for the value of certain vessels of the Spanish navy attacked and captured during the reign of George the First without a declaration of war. The claim had been admitted in principle by England, and it became what would be called in the law courts only a question of damages. Then the convention contained some stipulations concerning certain claims of Spain upon the South Sea Company; that is, on what was, after all, only a private trading company. When the anomaly was pointed out by Lord Carteret and others in the House of Lords, and it was asked how came it that the English plenipotentiary at the Court of Spain was also the agent of the South Sea Company, it was ingeniously answered on the part of the Government that nothing could be more fitting and proper, seeing that, as English plenipotentiary, he had to act for England with the King of Spain, and as agent for the South Sea Company to deal with the same sovereign in that sovereign's capacity as a great private merchant. Therefore the national claims were made, to a certain extent, subservient to, or dependent on, the claims of the South Sea Company. Whether we may think the claims of the English merchants and seamen were exaggerated or not, one thing is obvious: they could not possibly be satisfied under such a convention.

[Sidenote: 1739--The Prince's first vote]

The debate in the House of Lords was carried on by the Opposition with great spirit and brilliancy. Lord Hervey defended the policy of the Government with dexterity. Possibly he made as much of the case as could be made of it. The motion for the address was carried {169} by seventy-one votes against fifty-eight--a marked increase of strength on the part of the Opposition. It is to be recorded that the Prince of Wales gave his first vote in Parliament to support the Opposition. The name of "His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales" is the first in the division list of the peers who voted against the address and in favor of the policy of war. There was nothing very mutinous in Frederick's action so far as the King was concerned. Very likely Frederick would have given the same vote, no matter what the King's views on the subject. But every one knew that George was eager for war, that he was fully convinced of his capacity to win laurels on the battle-field, and that he was longing to wear them. A Bonaparte prince of our own day was described by a French literary man as an unemployed Caesar. King George believed himself an unemployed Caesar, and was clamorous for early employment.

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CHAPTER x.x.xII.

WALPOLE YIELDS TO WAR.

[Sidenote: 1739--Horatio Walpole's prediction]

The nation was plunging, not drifting, into war. Walpole himself, while still striving hard to put off any decisive step, and even yet perhaps hoping against hope that the people would return to their senses and leave the Patriots to themselves, did not venture any longer to meet the demands of the Opposition by bold argument founded on the principles of justice and wisdom. He had sometimes to talk the same "tall talk" as that in which the Patriots delighted, and to rave a little about the great deeds that would have to be done if Spain did not listen to reason very soon. But he still pleaded that Spain would listen to reason soon, very soon, and that if war must come sooner or later he preferred to take it later. That, it need hardly be said, was not Walpole's expression--it belongs to a later day--but it represents his mode of argument.

On March 6th the House of Commons met for the purpose of taking the foredoomed convention into consideration. So intense was the interest taken in the subject, so highly strung was political feeling, that more than four hundred members were in their places at eight o'clock in the morning. Seldom indeed is anxiety expressed in so emphatic and conclusive a form among members of the House of Commons. Readers may remember one day within recent years when a measure of momentous importance was to be introduced into the House of Commons, and when, long before eight in the morning, every seat in the House was occupied.

On this March 6, 1739, the House resolved itself into committee, and spent the whole {171} day in hearing some of the merchants and other witnesses against the convention. The whole of the next day (Wednesday) was occupied in the reading of doc.u.ments bearing on the subject, and it was not until Thursday that the debate began. The debate was more memorable for what followed it than for itself. In itself it was the familiar succession of fierce and unscrupulous attacks on the policy of peace, mixed up with equally fierce but certainly very well-deserved attacks on the character of the convention. William Pitt wound up his speech by declaring that "this convention, I think from my soul, is nothing but a stipulation for national ignominy; an illusory expedient to baffle the resentment of the nation; a truce without a suspension of hostilities on the part of Spain; on the part of England a suspension, as to Georgia, of the first law of nature, self-preservation and self-defence; a surrender of the rights and the trade of England to the mercy of plenipotentiaries, and, in this infinitely highest and sacred point, future security, not only inadequate, but directly repugnant to the resolutions of Parliament and the gracious promise from the throne. The complaints of your despairing merchants, the voice of England, have condemned it; be the guilt of it upon the head of its adviser! G.o.d forbid that this committee should share the guilt by approving it!"

One point in the debate is worthy of notice. The address to the King approving of the convention was moved by Horatio Walpole, the diplomatist, brother of Sir Robert. In the course of his speech Horatio Walpole declared that the outbreak of war between England and any great continental State would be certain to be followed by a new blow struck by the Pretender and his followers. Some of the orators of Opposition spoke with immense scorn of the possibility of a Jacobite movement ever again being heard of in England. The Walpoles both generally understood pretty well what they were talking about. The prediction of Horatio Walpole came true.

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[Sidenote: 1739--The secession]

The address was carried by 260 against 232. The ministerial majority had run down to 28. Next day the battle was renewed. According to parliamentary usage, the report of the address was brought up, and Pulteney seized the opportunity to make another vehement attack on the convention and the ministers. He accused the Prime-minister of meanly stooping to the dictates of a haughty, insolent Court, and of bartering away the lives and liberties of Englishmen for "a sneaking, temporary, disgraceful expedient." But the interest of the day was to come. The address was agreed to by a majority of 262 against 234. This was exactly the same majority as before, only with both sides slightly strengthened. Then the princ.i.p.al leaders of Opposition thought the time had come for them to intervene with a deliberately planned _coup de theatre_. Acting, it is understood, under the advice of Bolingbroke, they had been looking out for an opportunity to secede from the House of Commons on the ground that it was vain for patriotic men to try to do their duty to their country in a House of which the majority, narrow though it was, was yet the absolute slave of such a minister as Walpole. They hoped that such a step would have two effects. It would, they believed, create an immense sensation all over England and make them the heroes of the hour; and they fondly hoped that it would scare Walpole, and prevent him from pa.s.sing in their absence the measures which their presence was unable to prevent. Such, we have no doubt, were the ideas of Bolingbroke and of Pulteney and of others; but we do not say that they were the ideas of the man who was intrusted with the duty of announcing the intentions of his party.

This was Sir William Wyndham; and we do not believe that any hope of being one of the heroes of the hour entered for a moment into his mind.

He only in a general honest thought, and common good to all, made one of them. Wyndham rose, and in a speech of great solemnity announced that he was about to pay his last duty to his country as a member of that {117} House. What hope, he asked, was there when the eloquence of one man had so great an effect within the walls of the House of Commons, and the unanimous voice of a brave, suffering people without had so little? He implied that the majority of the House must have been determined "by arguments that we have not heard." He bade an adieu to Parliament. "Perhaps," he said, "when another Parliament shall succeed, I may again be at liberty to serve my country in the same capacity." In other words, if the next Parliament should declare war on Spain after having got rid of Walpole, then Wyndham and his friends might be prevailed on to return. "I therefore appeal to a future, free, uninfluenced Parliament. Let it be the judge of my conduct and that of my friends on this occasion. Meantime I shall conclude with doing that duty to my country which I am still at liberty to perform--which is to pray for its preservation. May, therefore, that Power which has so often and so visibly before interposed on behalf of the rights and liberties of this nation continue its care over us at this worst and most dangerous juncture; while the insolence of enemies without, and the influence of corruption within, threaten the ruin of her Const.i.tution."

This speech created, as will readily be imagined, an immense sensation in the House. A member of the Administration, one of the Pelhams, lost his head so completely that he sprang up with the intention of moving that Wyndham be committed to the Tower. Walpole, who was not in the habit of losing his head, prevented the ardent Pelham from carrying out his purpose. Walpole knew quite well that something better could be done than to evoke for any of the Patriots the antiquated terrors of the Tower. Walpole delivered a speech which, for its suppressed pa.s.sion and its stern severity, was well equal to the occasion. The threat of Wyndham and his friends gave him, he said, no uneasiness.

The friends of the Parliament and the nation were obliged to them for pulling off the mask--"We can be upon our guard {174} against open rebellion; it is hard to guard against secret treason." "The faction I speak of never sat in this House, they never joined in any public measure of the Government but with a view to distress it and to serve a Popish interest." Walpole was delighted to have an opportunity of paying off the Opposition for their constant denunciations of his alleged subservience to the throne of France, by flinging in Wyndham's teeth his old devotion to the cause of the Stuarts. "The gentleman,"

he said, "who is now the mouth of this faction was looked upon as the head of those traitors who, twenty-five years ago, conspired the destruction of their country and of the royal family to set a Popish Pretender on the throne. He was seized by the vigilance of the then Government and pardoned by its clemency, but all the use he has ungratefully made of that clemency has been to qualify himself according to law, that he and his party may some time or other have an opportunity to overthrow all law." For himself, Walpole declared he was only afraid that the gentlemen would not be as good as their word, and that they would return to Parliament. "For I remember," he said, "that in the case of their favorite prelate who was impeached of treason"--Atterbury--"the same gentleman and his faction made the same resolution. They then went off like traitors as they were; but their retreat had not the detestable effect they expected and wished, and therefore they returned. Ever since they have persevered in the same treasonable intention of serving that interest by distressing the Government."

[Sidenote: 1739--The policy of secession]

The House broke up in wild excitement; such excitement as had not been known there since the Excise Bill or the South Sea Bubble. About sixty of the Opposition kept for the time their promise of secession. Sir John Barnard, and two or three other men of mark in the party, had the good-sense to see that they could serve their cause, whatever it might be, better by remaining at their posts than by withdrawing from public life. The secession of a party from the House of Commons can {175} hardly ever be anything but a mistake. We are speaking now, of course, of a secession more serious and prolonged than that which concerns a particular stage of some measure. There have been occasions when the party in Opposition, after having fought their best against some obnoxious measure in all its former stages, and finding that further struggle would be unavailing, consider that they can make their protest more effectively, and draw public attention more directly to the nature of the controversy, by withdrawing in a body from the House of Commons, and leaving the Government alone with their responsibility. Such a course as this has been taken more than once in our own days. It can do no practical harm to the public interest, and it may do some service as a political demonstration. But a genuine secession, a prolonged secession, must, in the nature of things, do harm. It is wrong in principle; for a man is elected to the House of Commons in order that he may represent his const.i.tuents and maintain their interests there.

To do that is his plain duty and business, which is not to be put away for the sake of indulging in any petulant or romantic impulse to withdraw from an a.s.sembly because one cannot have one's way there. No matter how small the minority on one side of the question, we have seen over and over again what work of political education may be done by a resolute few who will not cease to put forward their arguments and to fight for their cause.

In the case with which we are now dealing Wyndham and his friends only gratified Walpole by their unwise course of action. They enabled him to get through some of the work of the session smoothly and easily. A division hardly ever was known, and of some debates on really important questions there is positively no record. There was, for instance, a motion made in the House of Commons on March 30th for leave to bring in a Bill "to repeal so much of an Act pa.s.sed in the 25th of King Charles the Second, ent.i.tled An Act for preventing {176} Dangers which may happen from Popish Recusants, as obligeth all persons who are admitted to any office, civil or military, to receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper within a time limited by the said Act; and for explaining and amending so much of the said Act as relates to the declaration against trans-substantiation." This proposal was supported by some of Walpole's friends; and, of course, Walpole himself was in favor of its principle. But he was not disposed in the least to trouble his master or himself about the repeal of Test Acts, either in the interest of the Roman Catholics or the Non-conformists, and he opposed the motion.

There was a long debate, but the record says that "the particulars of it not having been made public, we can give no further account of it, but that many of the members being retired from Parliament, as before mentioned, and most of those concerned in the Administration being against it, the question pa.s.sed in the negative, 188 noes to 89 yeas."

The Government were also enabled to pa.s.s without any resistance in the House of Commons a very ign.o.ble and shabby little treaty with the King of Denmark, by which England undertook to pay to Denmark seventy thousand pounds a year for three years on condition that Denmark should furnish to King George a body of troops, six thousand men in all, these troops to be ready at any time when the King of England should call for them, and he being bound to pay a certain sum "by way of levy-money"

for each soldier. This was not really an English measure at all. It had nothing to do with the interests of England, or of George as Sovereign of England. It was merely an arrangement between the King of Denmark and the Elector of Hanover, and was the settlement or composition of a miserable quarrel about a castle and a sc.r.a.p of ground which George had bought from the Duchy of Holstein, and which Denmark claimed as her own. The dispute led to a military scuffle, in which the Danes got the worst of it, and it might have led to a war but that the timely treaty and the promised annual {177} payment brought the King of Denmark round to George's views. The treaty met with some opposition, or at all events some remonstrance, in the House of Lords.

Carteret, however, gave it his support, and declared that he thought the treaty a wise and a just measure. Carteret was always in favor of the Hanoverian policy of King George.

[Sidenote: 1739--Walpole has it his own way]

So far, therefore, Walpole had things his own way. He was very glad to be rid of the Opposition for the time. He might well have addressed them in words like those which a modern American humorist says were called out with enthusiasm to him when he was taking leave of his friends and about to sail for Europe: "Don't hurry back--stay away forever if you like."

But war was to come all the same. Walpole was not strong enough to prevent that. The incessant attacks made in both Houses of Parliament had inflamed the people of Spain into a pa.s.sion as great as that which in England was driving Walpole before it. The Spanish Government would not pay the amount arranged for in the convention. They put forward as their justification the fact, or alleged fact, that the South Sea Company had failed to discharge its obligations to Spain. The British squadron had been sent to the Mediterranean, and the Spaniards declared that this was a threat and an insult to the King of Spain. The claim to the right of search was a.s.serted more loudly and vehemently than ever. Near to the close of the session there was a pa.s.sionate debate in the House of Lords on the whole subject. The Opposition insisted that the honor of England would not admit of further delay, and that the sword must be unsheathed at once. The Duke of Newcastle could only appeal to the House on the part of the Government not to pa.s.s a resolution calling upon the King to declare war, but to leave it to the King to choose his own opportunity. Newcastle feebly pleaded that to pa.s.s a resolution would be to give untimely warning to England's enemies, and reminded the House that England was likely to have to {178} encounter an enemy stronger and more formidable than Spain. Lord Hardwicke and Lord Scarborough could only urge on the House the prudence and propriety of leaving the time and manner of action in the hands of the Ministry, in the full a.s.surance that the ministers would do all that the nation desired. In other words, the ministers were already pledged to war. The session was brought to an end on June 14th, and on October 19th England declared war against Spain. The proclamation was greeted with the wildest outburst of popular enthusiasm; an enthusiasm which at the time seemed to run through all orders and cla.s.ses. Joy-bells rang out their inspiring chimes from every church. Exulting crowds shouted in a stentorian chorus of delight. Cities flamed with illuminations at night. The Prince of Wales and some of the leaders of the Opposition took part in the public demonstration. The Prince stopped at the door of a tavern in Fleet Street, as if he were another Prince Hal carousing with his mates, and called for a goblet of wine, which he drank to the toast of coming victory. The bitter words of Walpole have indeed been often quoted, but they cannot be omitted here: "They may ring their bells now; before long they will be wringing their hands." Walpole was thinking, no doubt, of the Family Compact, and of "the King over the Water."

Parliament met in November, 1739, and the seceders were all in their places again. They had been growing heartily sick of secession and inactivity, and they insisted on regarding the declaration of war against Spain as a justification of their return to parliamentary life.

Pulteney made himself their spokesman in the debate on the Address.

"Our step," he said, meaning their secession, "is so fully justified by the declaration of war, so universally approved, that any further vindication of it would be superfluous." They seceded when they felt that their opposition was ineffectual, and that their presence was only made use of to give the appearance of a fair debate to that which had already been ratified. "The {179} state of affairs is now changed; the measures of the ministers are altered; and the same regard for the honor and welfare of their country that determined these gentlemen to withdraw has now brought them hither once more, to give their advice and a.s.sistance in those measures which they then pointed out as the only means of a.s.serting and retrieving them." Walpole's reply was a little ungracious. It was, in effect, that he thought the country could have done very well without the services of the honorable members; that they never would have been missed; and that the nation was generally wide-awake to the fact that the many useful and popular measures pa.s.sed towards the close of the last session owed their pa.s.sing to the happy absence from Parliament of Pulteney and his friends. One might well excuse Walpole if he became sometimes a little impatient of the att.i.tudinizing and the vaporing of the Patriots.

[Sidenote: 1739-1740--Death of Wyndham]

One of the Patriots was not long to trouble Walpole. On July 17, 1740, Sir William Wyndham died. Wyndham was a man of honor and a man of intellect. We have already in this history described his abilities and his character, his political purity, his personal consistency. He had always been in poor health; his incessant parliamentary work certainly could not have tended to improve his physical condition; and he was but fifty-three years old when he died. Had he lived yet a little longer he must have taken high office in a new administration, and he might have proved himself a statesman as well as a party leader and a parliamentary orator. Perhaps, on the whole, it is better for his fame that he should have been spared the test. It proved too much for Carteret. We may give Bolingbroke credit for sincerity when he poured out, in letter after letter, his lament for Wyndham's death. There is something, however, characteristic of the age and the man in Bolingbroke's instant a.s.sumption that Walpole must regard the death as a fine stroke of good-luck for himself. "What a star has our Minister," Bolingbroke wrote to a friend--"Wyndham dead!" It seems strange {180} that Bolingbroke should not even then have been able to see that the star of the great minister was about to set. The death of Wyndham brought Walpole no profit; gave him no security. But Wyndham's premature end withdrew a picturesque and a chivalric figure from the life of the House of Commons. He was one of the few, the very few, really unselfish and high-minded men who then occupied a prominent position in Parliament. He was not fighting for his own hand. He was not a mere partisan. He had enough of the statesman in him to be able to accept established facts, and not to argue with the inexorable. He was not a scholar like Carteret, or an orator like Bolingbroke; he was not an ascetic; but he had stainless political integrity, and was a true friend to his friends.

[Sidenote: 1740--Walpole's fatal mistake]

Walpole committed the great error of his life when he consented to accept the war policy which his enemies had proclaimed, and which he had so long resisted. Even if we consider his conduct not as a question of principle, but only as one of mere expediency, it must still be condemned. No statesman is likely to be able to conduct a great war whose heart is all the time filled only with a longing for peace. Walpole was perhaps less likely than any other statesman to make a war minister. He could not throw his heart into the work. He went to it because he was driven to it. It was simply a choice between declaring war and resigning office, and he merely preferred to declare war. This is not the temper, these are not the conditions, for carrying out a policy of war. But, as a question of principle, Walpole's conduct admits of no defence. His plain duty was to refuse to administer a policy of which he did not approve, and to leave the responsibility of the war to those who did approve of it. It is said that he tendered his resignation to the King; that the King implored Walpole to stand by him--not to desert him in that hour of need--and that Walpole at last consented to remain in office. This may possibly be true; some such form may have been gone through. But it does not alter the historical judgment about Walpole's {181} action. Walpole ought not to have gone through any forms at such a time. He hated the war policy; he knew that he was not a war minister; he ought to have refused to administer such a policy, and have stood by his refusal. It is said that, in his conversation with the King, Walpole pointed out that to the minister would be attributed every disaster that might occur during a war, his opposition to which would always be considered a crime. But would there be anything very unfair or unreasonable in that? When a statesman who has fought hard against a war policy suddenly yields to it, and consents to put it into action, would it be unreasonable, if disaster should occur, that his enemies should say, "This comes of trying to conduct a war in which you have no heart or spirit?" Burke pa.s.ses severe censure even on Walpole's manner of carrying on his opposition to the war party. "Walpole," says Burke, "never manfully put forward the strength of his cause; he temporized; he managed; and, adopting very nearly the sentiments of his adversaries, he opposed their inferences. This, for a political commander, is the choice of a weak post. His adversaries had the best of the argument as he handled it; not as the reason and justice of his cause enabled him to manage it." Then Burke adds this emphatic sentence: "I say this after having seen, and with some care examined, the original doc.u.ments concerning certain important transactions of those times; they perfectly satisfied me of the extreme injustice of that war, and of the falsehood of the colors which, to his own ruin, and guided by a mistaken policy, he suffered to be daubed over that measure." To his own ruin? Yes, truly. The consequence of Walpole's surrender was to himself and his political career fatal--irretrievable.

His wrong-doing brought its heavy punishment along with it. He has yet to struggle for a short while against fate and his own fault; he has still to receive a few successive humiliations before the great and final fall. But the day of his destiny is over. For all real work his career may be said to have closed on the day when he consented to remain in {182} office and become the instrument of his enemies. With that day he pa.s.sed out of the real world and life of politics, and became as a shadow among shadows.

We need not trouble ourselves much about the war with Spain. On neither side of the struggle was anything done which calls for grave historical notice. Every little naval success one of our admirals accomplished in the American seas, as they were then called, was glorified as if it had been an antic.i.p.ated Trafalgar; and our admirals accomplished blunders and failures as well as petty victories. The quarrel very soon became swallowed up in the great war which broke out on the death of Charles the Sixth of Spain, and the occupation of Silesia by Frederick of Prussia. England lent a helping hand in the great war, but its tale does not belong to English history. Two predictions of Walpole's were very quickly realized. France almost immediately took part with Spain, in accordance with the terms of the Family Compact. In 1740 an organization was got up in Scotland by a number of Jacobite n.o.blemen and other gentlemen, pledging themselves to stake fortune and life on the Stuart cause whenever its standard, supported by foreign auxiliaries, should be raised in Great Britain.

This was the shadow cast before by the coming events of "forty-five"--events which Walpole was not destined to see.

[Sidenote: 1743--George at Dettingen]

One link of personal interest connects England with the war. George sent a body of British and Hanoverian troops into the field to support Maria Theresa of Hungary. The troops were under the command of Lord Stair, the veteran soldier and diplomatist, whose brilliant career has been already described in this history. George himself joined Lord Stair and fought at the battle of Dettingen, where the French were completely defeated; one of the few creditable events of the war, so far as English arms were concerned. George behaved with great courage and spirit. If the poor, stupid, puffy, plucky little man did but know what a strange, picturesque, memorable figure he was as he stood up against the enemy at that battle of Dettingen! {183} The last king of England who ever appeared with his army in the battle-field! There, as he gets down off his unruly horse, determined to trust to his own stout legs--because, as he says, they will not run away--there is the last successor of the Williams, and the Edwards, and the Henrys; the last successor of the Conquerer, and Edward the First, and the Black Prince, and Henry the Fourth, and Henry of Agincourt, and William of Na.s.sau; the last English king who faces a foe in battle. With him went out, in this country, the last tradition of the old and original duty and right of royalty--the duty and the right to march with the national army in war. A king in older days owed his kings.h.i.+p to his capacity for the brave squares of war. In other countries the tradition lingers still.

A continental sovereign, even if he have not really the generals.h.i.+p to lead an army, must appear on the field of battle, and at least seem to lead it, and he must take his share of danger with the rest. But in England the very idea has died out, never in all probability to come back to life again. If one were to follow some of the examples set us in cla.s.sical imaginings, we might fancy the darkening clouds on the west, where the sun has sunk over the battlefield, to be the phantom shapes of the great English kings who led their people and their armies in the wars. Unkingly, indeed unheroic, little of kin with them they might well have thought that panting George; and yet they might have looked on him with interest as the last of their proud race.