"MALICE DOMESTIC.--FOREIGN LEVY."
[Sidenote: 1716--Visit to Hanover]
Some of the earlier letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu are written
from Hanover, and give a lively description of the crowded state of
that capital in the autumn of 1716. Hanover was crowded in this
unusual way because King George was there at the time, and his presence
was the occasion for a great gathering of diplomatic functionaries and
statesmen, and politicians of all orders. Some had political missions,
open and avowed; some had missions of still greater political
importance, which, however, were not formally avowed, and were for the
most part conducted in secret. A turning-point had been reached in the
affairs of Europe, and the King's visit to Hanover was an appropriate
occasion for the preliminary steps to certain new arrangements that had
become inevitable. Even before the King's visit to his dear Hanover
the English Government had been paving the way for some of these new
combinations and alliances. The very day after the royal coronation,
Stanhope had gone on a mission to Vienna which had something to do with
the arrangements subsequently made.
It would, however, be paying too high a compliment to the patriotic
energy of the King to suppose that he had gone to Hanover for the sake
of promoting arrangements calculated to be of advantage to England.
Let us do justice to George's sincerity: he never pretended to any
particular concern for English interests when they were not bound up
with the interests of Hanover. But he had long been pining for a sight
of Hanover. He had now been away from his beloved Herrenhausen for
nearly two {153} years, and he was consumed by an unconquerable
homesickness. That his absence might be inconvenient to his newly
acquired country or to his ministers had no weight in his mind to
counterbalance the desire of walking once more in the prim Herrenhausen
avenues and looking over the level Hanoverian fields, or treading the
corridors of the old Schloss, where the ancestral Guelphs had revelled,
and where the ghost of Königsmark might well be supposed to wander.
The Act for restraining the King from going out of the kingdom was
repealed in May, 1716. The Prince of Wales was to be appointed
temporary ruler in the King's absence. This appointment was the only
obstacle that George admitted to his journey. In the Hanover family,
father had hated son, and son father with traditional persistence.
George was animated by the sourest jealousy of his son. One reason, if
there had been no other, for this animosity was that the young man was
well known to have some sympathy for the sufferings of his mother, the
unhappy Sophia Dorothea, imprisoned in Ahlden, and he had at least once
made an unsuccessful effort to see her. Since George came to England
he persisted in regarding his eldest son as a rival for popular favor,
and this feeling was naturally kept alive by the enemies of the House
of Hanover. To this detested son George had now to intrust the care of
his kingdom, or else abandon his visit to dear Herrenhausen. The
struggle was severe, but patriotic affection triumphed over paternal
hatred. The Prince was named not indeed Regent, but Guardian of the
Realm and Lieutenant, with as many restrictions upon his authority as
the King was able or was allowed to impose, and on July 9th George set
out for Hanover, accompanied by Secretary Stanhope. He was not long
absent from England, however. On November 14th he came back again.
Loyalists issued prints of the monarch waited upon by angels, and
accompanied by flattering verses addressed to the "Presedent of ye
Loyall Mug Houses." But the devotion of the mug-houses could not make
George personally popular, or diminish the {154} general dislike to his
German ministers, his German mistresses, and the horde of hungry
foreigners--the Hanoverian rats, as Squire Western would have called
them--who came over with him to England, seeking for place and pension,
or pension without place.
[Sidenote: 1716--Philip of Orleans]
The Thames was frozen over in the winter of this year, 1716, and London
made very merry over the event. The ice was covered with booths for
the sale of all sorts of wares, and with small coffee-houses and
chop-houses. Wrestling-rings were formed in one part; in another, an
ox was roasted whole. People played at push-pin, skated, or drove
about on ice-boats brave with flags. Coaches moved slowly up and down
the highway of barges and wherries, and hawkers cried their wares
lustily in the new field that winter had offered them. All the banks
of the river--and especially such places as the Temple Gardens--were
crowded with curious throngs surveying the animated and unusual scene.
During George's absence from England he and his ministers had made some
new and important arrangements in the policy of Europe. From this time
forth--indeed, from the reign of Queen Anne--England was
destined--doomed, perhaps--to have a regular part in the politics of
the Continent. Before that time she had often been drawn into them, or
had plunged enterprisingly or recklessly into them, but from the date
of the accession of the House of Hanover England was as closely and
constantly mixed up in the political affairs of the Continent as
Austria or France. In the opening years of George's reign, France, the
Empire--Austria, that is to say, for the Holy Roman Empire had come to
be merely Austria--and Spain were the important Continental Powers.
Russia was only coming up; the genius of Peter the Great was beginning
to make her way for her. Italy was as yet only a geographical
expression--a place divided among minor kings and princes, who in
politics sometimes bowed to the Pope's authority, and sometimes evaded
or disregarded it. The power of Turkey was {155} broken, never to be
made strong again; the republic of Venice was already beginning to
"sink like a sea-weed into whence she rose." The position of Spain was
peculiar. Spain had for a long time been depressed and weak and
disregarded. For many years it was thought that she was going down
with Turkey and Venice--that the star of her fate had declined forever.
Suddenly, however, she began to raise her head above the horizon again,
and to threaten the peace of the Continent. The peace of the Continent
could not now be threatened without menace to the peace of England, for
George's Hanoverian dominions were sure to be imperilled by European
disturbance, and George would take good care that Hanover did not
suffer while England had armies to move and money to spend. The
English Government found it necessary to look out for allies.
France was under the rule of a remarkable man. Philip, Duke of Orleans
and Regent of the kingdom, ought to have been a statesman of the
Byzantine Empire. He was steeped to the lips in profligacy; he had no
moral sense whatever, unless that which was supplied by the so-called
code of honor. His intrigues, his carouses, his debaucheries, his
hordes of mistresses, gave scandal even in that time of prodigal
license. But he had a cool head, a daring spirit, and an intellect
capable of accepting new and original ideas. He must be called a
statesman; and, despite the vulgarity of some of his vices, he has to
be called a gentleman as well. He could be trusted; he would keep his
word once given. Other statesmen could treat with him, and not fear
that he would break a promise or betray a confidence. How rare such
qualities were at that day among the politicians of any country the
readers of the annals of Queen Anne do not need to be told. The
Regent's principal adviser at this time was a man quite as immoral, and
also quite as able, as himself--the Abbé Dubois, afterwards Cardinal
and Prime-minister. Dubois had a profound knowledge of foreign
affairs, and he thoroughly understood the ways of men. {156} He had
fought his way from humble rank to a great position in Church and
State. He had trained his every faculty--and all his faculties were
well worth the training--to the business of statecraft and of
diplomatic intrigue. It is somewhat curious to note that the three
ablest politicians in Europe at that day were churchmen: Swift in
England, Dubois in France, and Alberoni--of whom we shall presently
have to speak--in Spain. The quick and unclouded intelligence of the
Regent--unclouded despite his days and nights of debauchery--saw that
the cause of the Stuarts was gone. While that cause had hope he was
willing to give it a chance, and he would naturally have welcomed its
success; but he had taken good care during its late and vain effort not
to embroil himself in any quarrel, or even any misunderstanding, with
England on its account; and now that that poor struggle was over for
the time, he believed that it would be for his interest to come to an
understanding with King George.
[Sidenote: 1716--Dubois]
The idea of such an understanding originated with the Regent himself.
There has been some discussion among English historians as to the title
of Townshend or of Stanhope to be considered its author. Whether
Townshend or Stanhope first accepted the suggestion does not seem a
matter of much consequence. It is clear that the overture was made by
the Regent. While King George and his minister Stanhope were in
Hanover, the Regent sent Dubois on various pretexts to places where he
might have an opportunity of coming to an understanding with both.
Dubois had lived in England, and had made the personal acquaintance of
Stanhope there. What could be more natural than that the Regent, who
was a lover of art, should ask Dubois to visit the Hague, for the
purpose of buying some books and pictures, about the time that the
English minister was known to be in the neighborhood? And how could
old acquaintances like Stanhope and Dubois, thus brought into close
proximity, fail to take advantage of the opportunity, and to {157} have
many a quiet, informal meeting? What more natural than that Dubois
should afterwards go to Hanover to visit his friend Stanhope there, and
that he should live in Stanhope's house? The account which the lively
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu gives of the manner in which Hanover was then
crowded would of itself explain the necessity for Dubois availing
himself of Stanhope's hospitality, and for Stanhope's offer of it. The
Portuguese ambassador, Lady Mary says, thought himself very happy to be
the temporary possessor of "two wretched parlors in an inn." Dubois
and Stanhope had many talks, and the result was an arrangement which
could be accepted by the King and the Regent.
The foreign policy of the Whigs had for its object the maintenance of
peace on the European continent by a close observance of the conditions
laid down in the Treaty of Utrecht. The settlement made under that
treaty was, however, very unsatisfactory to Spain. The new Spanish
king, Philip of Anjou, had formally renounced his own rights of
succession to the throne of France, and had given up the Italian
provinces which formerly belonged to the Spanish Crown. But, as in
most such instances at that time, an ambitious European sovereign had
no sooner accepted conditions which appeared to him in any wise
unsatisfactory, than he went to work to endeavor to set them aside, or
get out of them somehow. Philip's whole mind was turned to the object
of getting back again all that he had given up. This would not have
seemed an easy task, even to a man of the stamp of Charles the Fifth.
It would almost appear that any attempt in such a direction must bring
Europe in arms against Spain. The Regent Duke of Orleans stood next in
succession to the French throne, in consequence of Philip's
renunciation of his rights by virtue of the Treaty of Utrecht. The
Italian provinces which had once been Spain's were now handed over to
Austria, and Austria would of course be resolute in their defence.
King Philip was not the man to confront the difficulties of a situation
of this kind {158} by his own unaided powers of mind. He was very far
indeed from being a Charles the Fifth. He was not even a Philip the
Second. But he had for his minister a man as richly endowed with
statesmanship and courage as he himself was wanting in those qualities.
[Sidenote: 1716--Alberoni] Giulio Alberoni, an Italian born at
Piacenza, in 1664, was at one time appointed agent of the Duke of Parma
at the Court of Spain, and in this position acquired very soon the
favor of Philip. Alberoni was of the most humble origin. His father
was a gardener, and he himself a poor village priest. He rose,
however, both in diplomacy and in the Church, having worked his way up
to the favor of the Duke of Parma, to work still further on to the
complete favor of Philip the Fifth. The first marked success in his
upward career was made when he contrived to commend himself to the Duc
de Vendôme, the greatest French commander of his day. The Duke of
Parma had occasion to deal with Vendôme, and sent the Bishop of Parma
to confer with him. The Duc de Vendôme was a man who affected
roughness and brutality of manners, and made it his pride to set all
rules of decency at defiance. Peter the Great, Potemkin, Suwarrow,
would have seemed men of ultra-refinement when compared with him. His
manner of receiving the bishop was such that the bishop quitted his
presence abruptly and without saying a word, and returning to Parma,
told his master that no consideration on earth should induce him ever
to approach the brutal French soldier again. Alberoni was beginning to
rise at this time. He offered to undertake the mission, feeling sure
that not even Vendôme could disconcert him. He was intrusted with the
task of renewing the negotiations, and he obtained admission to the
presence of Vendôme. Every reader remembers the story in the "Arabian
Nights" of that brother of the talkative barber who threw himself into
the spirit of the rich Barmecide's humor, and by outdoing him in the
practical joke secured forever his favor and his friendship. Alberoni
acted on this principle at his first meeting with Vendôme. {159} He
outbuffooned even Vendôme's buffoonery. The story will not bear minute
explanation, but Alberoni soon satisfied Vendôme that he had to do with
a man after his own heart, what Elizabethan writers would have called a
"mad wag" indeed, and Vendôme gave him his confidence.
Alberoni was made prime-minister by Philip in 1716, and cardinal by the
Court of Rome shortly after. The ambition of Alberoni was in the first
instance to recover to Spain her lost Italian provinces, and to raise
Spain once more to the commanding position she had held when Charles
the Fifth abdicated the crown. Alberoni's policy, indeed, was a
mistake as regarded the strength and the prosperity of Spain. Spain's
Italian and Flemish provinces were of no manner of advantage to her.
They were sources of weakness, because they constantly laid Spain open
to an attack from any enemy who had the advantage of being able to
choose his battle-ground for himself so long as Spain had outlying
provinces scattered over the Continent. Indeed, it is made clear, from
the testimony of many observers, that Spain was rapidly recovering her
domestic prosperity from the moment when she lost those provinces, and
when the continual strain to which they exposed her finances was
stopped. At that epoch of Europe's political development, however, the
idea had hardly occurred to any statesman that national greatness could
come about in any other way than by the annexing or the recovery of
territory. Alberoni intrigued against the Regent, and was particularly
anxious to injure the Emperor. He was well inclined to enter into
negotiations, and even into an alliance, with England. He lent his
help when first he took office to bring to a satisfactory conclusion
some arrangements for a commercial treaty between England and Spain.
This treaty gave back to British subjects whatever advantages in trade
they had enjoyed under the Austrian kings of Spain, and contained what
we should now call a most favored nation clause, providing that no
British subjects should be {160} exposed to higher duties than were
paid by Spaniards. Alberoni cautiously refrained from giving any
encouragement to the Stuarts, and always professed to the British
minister the strongest esteem and friendship for King George. Stanhope
himself had known Alberoni formerly in Spain, and had from the first
formed a very high opinion of his abilities. He now opened a
correspondence with the cardinal, expressing a strong wish for a
sincere and lasting friendship between England and Spain; and this
correspondence was kept up for some time in so friendly and
confidential a manner that very little was left for the regular
accredited minister from Spain at the Court of King George to do.
[Sidenote: 1714-1718--The Triple Alliance]
Alberoni, however, was somewhat too vain and impatient. He had brought
over Sweden to his side, partly because he found Charles the Twelfth in
a bad humor on account of the cession to Hanover of certain Swedish
territories by the King of Denmark, who had clutched them while the
warlike Charles was away in Turkey. The cession of those places
brought Hanover to the sea, and was of importance thus to Hanover and
to England alike. George the Elector was in his petty way an ambitious
Hanoverian prince, however little interest he had in English affairs.
He had always been anxious to get possession of the districts of Bremen
and Verden, which had been handed over to Sweden at the Peace of
Westphalia. Reckless enterprise had carried Charles the
Twelfth--"Swedish Charles," with "a frame of adamant, a soul of fire,"
whom no dangers frighted, and no labors tired, the "unconquered lord of
pleasure and of pain"--too far in the rush of his chivalrous madness.
His vaulting ambition had overleaped itself, and fallen on the other
side; and after his defeat at Pultowa, all his enemies, some of whom he
had scared into inaction before, turned upon him as the nations of
Europe turned upon Napoleon the First after Moscow. Charles had gone
into Turkey and taken refuge there, and it seemed as if he had fallen
never to rise again. In his absence the King of Denmark {161} seized
Schleswig-Holstein, Bremen, and Verden. At the close of 1714 Charles
suddenly roused himself from depression and appeared at the town of
Stralsund, almost as much to the alarm of Europe as Napoleon had caused
when he left Elba and landed on the southern shore of France. The King
of Denmark shuddered at the prospect of a struggle with Charles, and in
order to secure some part of his spoils he entered into a treaty with
the Elector of Hanover, by virtue of which he handed over Bremen and
Verden to George, on condition that George should pay him a handsome
sum of money, and join him in resisting Sweden.
Nothing could be less justifiable, or indeed more nefarious, than these
arrangements. They were discreditable to George the First, and they
were disgraceful to the King of Denmark. Yet the general policy of
that time seems to have approved of the whole transaction, and regarded
it merely as a good stroke of business for Hanover and for England.
Alberoni, having secured the help of Sweden, got together great forces
both by sea and by land, and prepared for a reconquest of the lost
Italian provinces. He occupied Sardinia, and made an attempt on
Sicily. But this was going a little too far and too fast. Alberoni
frightened the great States of Europe into activity against him.
England, France, and Holland formed a triple alliance, the basis of
which was that the House of Hanover should be guaranteed in England,
and the House of Orleans in France, should the young King, Louis the
Fifteenth, die without issue. Not long after, the triple alliance was
expanded into a quadruple alliance, the Emperor of Germany becoming one
of its members. An English fleet appeared in the Straits of Messina,
and a sea-fight took place in which the Spaniards lost almost all their
vessels. Alberoni tried to get up another fleet under the Duke of
Ormond for the purpose of making a landing in Scotland, with a view to
a great Jacobite rising. But the seas and skies seem always to have
been fatal to Spanish projects against England, and {162} the
expedition under Ormond was as much of a failure as the far greater
expedition under Alexander of Parma. The fleet was wrecked in the Bay
of Biscay. The French were invading the northern provinces of Spain,
and the King of Spain was compelled not only to get rid of Alberoni,
but to renounce once more any claim to the French throne, and to
abandon his attempts on Sardinia and Sicily. Another danger was
removed from England by the death of Charles the Twelfth. "A petty
fortress and a dubious hand" brought about the end of him who had,
"like the wind's blast, never-resting, homeless," stormed so long
across war-convulsed Europe, and "left that name at which the world
grew pale to point a moral or adorn a tale." Charles the Twelfth had
just entered into an alliance with Peter the Great for an enterprise to
destroy the House of Hanover and restore the Stuarts, when the
memorable bullet at the siege of Frederickshald, in Norway, brought his
strange career to a close in December, 1718. A junction between such
men as Charles the Twelfth and Peter the Great might indeed have had
matter in it. Peter was probably the greatest sovereign born to a
throne in modern Europe. An alliance between Peter's profound sagacity
and indomitable perseverance, and Charles's unbounded courage and
military skill, might have been ominous for any cause against which it
was aimed. The good-fortune which from first to last seems on the
whole to have attended the House of Hanover, and followed it even in
spite of itself, was with it when the bullet from an unknown hand
struck down Charles the Twelfth.
[Sidenote: 1715-1718--Futility of the Triple Alliance]
These international arrangements have for us now very little real
interest. They were entirely artificial and temporary. Nothing came
of them that could long endure or make any real change in the relations
of the European States. They had hardly anything to do with the
interests of the various peoples over whose heads and without whose
knowledge or concern they were made. It was still firmly believed that
two or three diplomatists, meeting in {163} a half-clandestine way in a
minister's closet or a lady's drawing-room, could come to agreements
which would bind down nations and rule political movements. The first
real upheaving of any genuine force, national or personal, in European
life tore through all their meshes in a moment. Frederick the Great,
soon after, is to compel Europe to reconstruct her scheme of political
arrangements; later yet, the French Revolution is to clear the ground
more thoroughly and violently still. The triple alliance, concocted by
the Regent and Stanhope and Dubois, had not the slightest permanent
effect on the general condition of Europe. It was a clever and an
original idea of the Regent to think of bringing England and France,
these old hereditary enemies, into a permanent alliance, and it was
right of Stanhope to enter into the spirit of the enterprise; but the
actual conditions of England and France, did not allow of an abiding
friendship. The national interest, as it was then understood, of the
one State was in antagonism to the national interest of the other. Nor
could France and England combined have kept down the growth of other
European States then rising into importance and beginning to cast their
shadows far in front of them. It seems only amusing to us now to read
of King George's directions to his minister--"To crush the Czar
immediately, to secure his ships, and even to seize his person." The
courageous and dull old King had not the faintest perception of the
part which either the Czar or the Czar's country was destined to play
in the history of Europe. At present we are all inclined, and with
some reason, to think that French statesmen, as a rule, are wanting in
a knowledge of foreign politics--in an appreciation of the relative
proportions of one force and another in the affairs of Europe outside
France. But in the days of George the First French statesmen were much
more accomplished in the knowledge of foreign politics than the
statesmen of England. There was not, probably, in George's
administration any man who had anything like the knowledge of the {164}
affairs of foreign countries which was possessed by Dubois. But it had
not yet occurred to the mind of Dubois, or the Regent, or anybody else,
that the relations of one State to another, or one people to another,
are anything more than the arrangements which various sets of
diplomatic agents think fit to make among themselves and to consign to
the formality of a treaty.
[Sidenote: 1717--Walpole bides his time]
The interest we have now in all these "understandings," engagements,
and so-called alliances is personal rather than national. So far as
England is concerned, they led to a squabble and a split in George's
administration. It would hardly be worth while to go into a minute
history of the quarrel between Townshend and Stanhope, Sunderland and
Walpole. Sunderland, a man of great ability and ambition, had never
been satisfied with the place he held in the King's administration, and
the disputes which sprang up out of the negotiations for the triple
alliance gave him an opportunity of exerting his influence against some
of his colleagues. Fresh occasion for intrigue, jealousy, and anger
was given by the desire of the King to remain during the winter in
Hanover, and his fear, on the other hand, that his son--the Prince who
was at the head of affairs in his absence--was forming a party against
him, and was caballing with some of the members of the Government.
Sunderland acted on the King's narrow and petty fears. He distinctly
accused Townshend and Walpole of a secret understanding with the Prince
and the Duke of Argyll against the Sovereign's interests. The result
of all this was that the King dismissed Lord Townshend, and that
Walpole insisted on resigning office. The King, to do him justice,
would gladly have kept Walpole in his service, but Walpole would not
stay. It is clear that Walpole was glad of the opportunity of getting
out of the ministry. He professed to be deeply touched by the
earnestness of the King's remonstrances. He was moved, it is stated,
to tears. At all events, he got very successfully through the ceremony
of tear-shedding. But although he wept, he did not {165} soften. His
purpose remained fixed. He went out of office, and, to all intents and
purposes, passed straightway into opposition. Stanhope became First
Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
For a long time it must have been apparent to every one that Walpole
was the coming minister. Walpole himself must have felt satisfied on
the point; but he was probably well content to admit to himself that
his time had not yet come. Walpole was not a great man. He wanted the
moral qualities which are indispensable to greatness. He was almost as
much wanting in them as Bolingbroke himself. But if his genius was far
less brilliant than that of Bolingbroke, he was amply furnished with
patience and steadiness. He could wait. He did not devise half a
dozen plans for one particular object, and fly from one to the other
when the moment for action was approaching, and end by rejecting them
all when the moment for action had arrived. He made up his mind to a
certain course, and he held to it; if its chance did not come to-day,
it might come to-morrow. He had no belief in men's sincerity--or
women's either. There seems reason to believe that the famous saying
ascribed to him, about every man having his price, was not used by him
in that unlimited sense; that he only spoke of "these men"--of certain
men--and said that every one of them had his price. But he always
acted as if the description he gave of "these men" might safely be
extended to all men. He had a coarse, licentious nature. He enjoyed
the company of loose women. He loved obscene talk; not merely did he
love it, but he indulged in and encouraged it for practical purposes of
his own; he thought it useful at men's dinner-parties, because it gave
even the dullest man a subject on which he could find something to say.
One could not call Walpole a patriot in the higher sense; he wanted
altogether that fine fibre in his nature, that exalted, half-poetic
feeling, that faculty of imagination which quickens practical and
prosaic objects with the spirit of the ideal, and which are {166}
needed to make a man a patriot in the noblest meaning of the word. But
he loved his country in his own heavy, practical, matter-of-fact sort
of way, and that was just the sort of way which at the time happened to
be most useful to England. Let it be said, too, in justice to Walpole,
that the most poetic and lyrical nature would have found little subject
for enthusiasm in the England of Walpole's earlier political career.
It was not exactly the age for a Philip Sidney or for a Milton.
England's home and foreign policy had for years been singularly
ignoble. At home it had been a conflict of mean intrigues; abroad, a
policy of selfish alliances and base compromises and surrenders. The
splendid military genius of Marlborough only shone as it did as if to
throw into more cruel light the infamy of the intrigues and plots to
which it was often sacrificed. No man could be enthusiastic about
Queen Anne or George the First. The statesmen who professed the utmost
ardor for the Stuart cause were ready to sell it at a moment's notice,
to secure their own personal position; most of those who grovelled
before King George were known to have been in treaty, up to the last,
with his rival. [Sidenote: 1717--Economist statesmen] We may excuse
Walpole if, under such conditions, he took a prosaic view of the state
of things, and made his patriotism a very practical sort of service to
his country. It was, as we have said, precisely the sort of service
England just then stood most in need of. Walpole applied himself to
secure for his country peace and retrenchment. He did not, indeed,
maintain a sacred principle of peace; he had no sacred principle about
anything. We shall see more lately that he did not scruple, for party
reasons, to lend himself to a wanton and useless war, well knowing it
was wanton and useless; but his general policy was one of peace, and so
long as he had his own way there would have been no waste of England's
resources on foreign battle-fields. He despised war, and the trade of
war, in his heart. To him war showed only in its vulgar, practical,
and repulsive features; the soldier was a man who got paid for the
{167} trade of killing. Walpole might be likened to a shrewd and
sensible steward who is sincerely anxious to manage his master's estate
with order and economy, and who, for that very reason, is willing to
indulge his master's vices and to sanction his prodigalities to a
certain extent, knowing that if he attempts to draw the purse-strings
too closely an open rupture will be the result, and then some steward
will come in who has no taste for saving, and who will let everything
go to rack and ruin. He was the first of the long line of English
ministers who professed to regard economy as one of the great objects
of statesmanship. He established securely the principle that to make
the two ends meet was one of the first duties of patriotism. He
founded, if we may use such an expression, the dynasty of statesmen to
which Pitt and Peel and Gladstone belong. The change in our
constitutional ways which set up that new dynasty was of infinitely
greater importance to England than the change which settled the
Brunswicks in the place of the Stuarts.
{168}