THE OPPOSITION.
[Sidenote: 1725--Troubles in Scotland]
The trouble had hardly been got rid of in Ireland by Carteret's
judicious advice and the withdrawal of Wood's patent when a commotion
that at one time threatened to be equally serious broke out in
Scotland. English members of Parliament had been for many years
complaining that Scotland was exempt from any taxation on malt. Up to
that time no Government had attempted to take any steps towards
establishing equality in this respect between the two countries.
Walpole now strove to deal with the question. It was proposed in the
House of Commons that instead of a malt duty in Scotland a duty of
sixpence should be levied on every barrel of ale. Walpole at first was
not inclined to deal with the difficulty in this way, but as the
feeling of the House was very strongly in favor of making some attempt,
he consented to adopt the principle suggested, but required that the
duty should be threepence instead of sixpence. The moment it became
known in Scotland that any tax on malt or ale was to be imposed,
rioting began in the principal cities; the spirit of the national motto
asserted itself--"nemo me impune lacessit." The ringleaders of various
mobs were arrested and sent for trial, but the Scotch juries, following
the recent example of the Irish, refused to convict. Brewers all over
Scotland entered into a sort of league, by virtue of which they pledged
themselves not to give any securities for the new duty and to cease
brewing if the Government exacted it. Unluckily for Walpole, the
Secretary of State for Scotland, the Duke of Roxburgh, was a great
friend of Carteret's, {250} and had joined with Carteret in endeavoring
to thwart Walpole in all his undertakings. The success of Walpole's
policy in any instance was understood by Carteret and by Roxburgh to
mean Walpole's supremacy over all other ministers. The Duke of
Roxburgh therefore took advantage of the crisis in Scotland to injure
the administration, and especially to injure Walpole. In a subtle and
underhand way he contrived to favor and foment the disturbance. He
took care that the orders of the Government should not be too quickly
carried out, and he gave more than a tacit encouragement to the common
rumor that the King in his heart was hostile to the new tax, that the
tax was wholly an invention of Walpole's, and that resistance to such a
measure would not be unwelcome to the Sovereign, and would lead to the
dismissal of the minister. Walpole was not long in finding out the
treachery of the Duke of Roxburgh. To adopt a homely phrase, he "took
the bull by the horns" at once. Lord Townshend was in Hanover with the
King, and Walpole wrote to Lord Townshend, giving him a full account of
all that was going on in Scotland, and laying the chief blame for the
continuance of the disturbance on the Duke of Roxburgh. "I beg leave
to observe," wrote Walpole, "that the present administration is the
first that was ever yet known to be answerable for the whole
Government, with a Secretary of State for one part of the kingdom who,
they are assured, acts counter to all their measures, or at least whom
they cannot confide in." His remonstrance had to be pressed again and
again upon Townshend before anything was done to satisfy him. Walpole,
however, was a man to press where he thought the occasion demanded it,
and he was successful in the end. The Duke of Roxburgh had to resign,
and Walpole added to his own duties those of the Secretary of State for
Scotland. He appointed, however, as his agent or deputy in the
administration of Scotland, the Earl of Isla, Lord-keeper of the Privy
Seal in that country, and a man on whose allegiance he could entirely
rely. Having {251} thus secured a full power to act, Walpole was not
long in bringing the disturbances to an end. He displayed both
discretion and resolve. He was able to satisfy the most reasonable
among the brewers and maltsters that their interests would not really
suffer by the proposed resolutions. The natural result was that the
combination of brewers began to melt away. The brewers held a meeting,
and it was soon found that it would not be possible to secure a general
resolution to meet the legislation of the Government by passive
resistance and by ceasing to brew. As all would not stand together,
every man was left to take his own course, and the result was that what
we should now call a strike came quietly to an end.
[Sidenote: 1725--Intrigue and counter-intrigue]
A modern reader is naturally shocked and surprised at the manner in
which members of the same Government in Walpole's day intrigued against
one another, and strove to thwart each other's policy. No actual
defence is to be made for such a practice; but it is only fair to
observe that up to Walpole's own entrance into office, and after it,
the habit of English sovereigns had been to make up an administration
by taking members of different and even of opposing parties and
bringing them together, in the hope of securing thereby the
co-operation of all parties. Under these circumstances it was natural,
it was only to be expected, that the minister who was pledged to one
policy would endeavor by all means in his power to counteract the
designs of the minister whom he knew to be pledged to a very different
kind of policy. Nor, indeed, is the practice of intrigue and
counter-intrigue among members of the same cabinet actually unknown in
our own days, when there is not the same excuse to be pleaded for it
that might have been urged in the time of Walpole. In the case of the
Duke of Roxburgh, however, the attempt to counteract the policy of
Walpole was made in somewhat bolder and less subtle fashion than was
common even in those days, and Walpole was well justified in the course
he took. For once his high-handed way of dealing with men was
vindicated {252} by its principle and by the unqualified advantage it
brought to the interests of the State and to those of the minister as
well.
[Sidenote: 1725--Dictatorship overdone]
The student of history derives one satisfaction from the frequent
visits of King George to Hanover. The correspondence between Walpole
and Townshend which was made necessary by those visits gives us many an
interesting glimpse into political affairs in their reality, in their
undress, in their secret movement, which no ordinary State papers or
diplomatic despatches could be trusted to give. The Secretary of State
often communicates to the representative of his country at some foreign
court only just that view of a political situation which he wishes to
put under the eyes of the foreign sovereign and foreign statesmen. But
Walpole writes to Townshend exactly what he himself believes, and what
it is important both to Townshend and to him that Townshend shall fully
know. "I think," Walpole says to Townshend, in one of his letters, "we
have once more got Ireland and Scotland quiet, if we take care to keep
them so." Exactly; if only care be taken to keep them so. The same
chance had often been given to English statesmen before; Ireland and
Scotland quiet, and might have continued in quietness if care had only
been taken to keep them so.
The King was much pleased with Walpole's success. He made him one of
the thirty-eight Knights of the Bath. The Order of the Bath had gone
out of use, out of existence in fact, since the coronation of Charles
the Second; George the First revived it in 1725, and bestowed its
honors on Walpole. It seems an odd sort of reward for the shrewd,
practical, and somewhat coarse-fibred squire-statesman. The close
connection between man and the child, civilized man and the savage, is
never more clearly illustrated than in the joy and pride which the
wisest statesman feels in the wearing of a ribbon or a star. In the
next year the King made Walpole a Knight of the Garter; after this
honor all other mark of dignity {253} would be but an anti-climax.
From the time of his introduction to the Order of the Bath, the great
minister ceased to be plain Mr. Walpole, and became Sir Robert Walpole.
Meanwhile, under Walpole's Order of the Bath, many a throb of pain must
have made itself felt. The minister began to find himself harassed by
the most formidable opposition that had ever set itself against him.
Lord Carteret was out of the way for the moment--and only for the
moment; but Pulteney proved a much more pertinacious, ingenious, and
dangerous enemy than Carteret had hitherto been. Pulteney was at one
time the faithful follower, the enthusiastic admirer, almost the
devotee, of Walpole. The one great political defect of Walpole filled
him with faults. He could not bear the idea of a divided rule; he
would be all or nothing; he would have clerks and servants for his
colleagues in office; not real ministers, actual statesmen. He was
under the mistaken impression that a man of genius is to be reduced to
tame insignificance by merely keeping him out of important office. He
had made this mistake with regard to Carteret; he made it now with
regard to Pulteney. The consequences were far more serious; for
Pulteney was neither so good-humored nor so indolent as Carteret, and
he could not be put aside.
Pulteney was a man of singular eloquence, and of eloquence peculiarly
adapted to the House of Commons. His style was brilliant, incisive,
and penetrating. He could speak on any subject at the spur of the
moment. He never delivered a set speech. He was a born parliamentary
debater. All his resources seemed to be at instant command, according
as he had need of them. His reading was wide, deep, and varied; he was
a most accomplished classical scholar, and had a marvellous readiness
and aptitude for classical allusion. He was a wit and a humorist; he
could brighten the dullest topics and make them sparkle by odd and
droll illustrations, as well as by picturesque allusions and eloquent
phrases. He {254} could, when the subject called for it, break
suddenly into thrilling invective. [Sidenote: 1725--Pulteney] But he
had some of the defects of the extemporaneous orator. His eloquence,
his wit, his epigrams often carried him away from his better judgment.
He frequently committed himself to some opinion which was not really
his, and was led far from his proper position in the pursuit of some
paradox or by the charm of some fantastic idea. He was a brilliant
writer as well as a brilliant speaker. His private character would
have little blame if it were not that a fondness for money kept growing
with his growing years. "For a good old-gentlemanly vice," says Byron,
"I think I must take up with avarice." Pulteney did not even wait to
be an old gentleman to take up with "the good old-gentlemanly vice."
We have in some measure now to take his talents on trust, as we have
those of Carteret. He proved to be little more than the comet of a
season; when he had gone, he left no line of light behind him. But it
is certain that in the estimation of his contemporaries he was one of
the most gifted men of his time; and for a while he was the most
popular man in England--the darling and the hero of the multitude.
When Walpole was sent to the Tower in the late Queen's reign, Pulteney
had spoken up manfully for his friend. When Townshend and Walpole
resigned office in 1717, Pulteney went resolutely with them and
resigned office also. The time came when Walpole found himself
triumphant over all his enemies, and came back not merely to office but
likewise to power. Naturally, Pulteney expected that Walpole would
invite him to fill some place of importance in the new administration.
Walpole did nothing of the kind. He had seen ample evidence of
Pulteney's great parliamentary talents in the mean time, and he feared
that with Pulteney for an official colleague he could never be a
dictator. He was anxious, however, not to offend Pulteney, and he had
the curious weakness to imagine that he could conciliate Pulteney by
offering him a peerage. Even at that time, when the sceptre of popular
power had not yet {255} passed altogether into the hands of the
representative chamber, it was absurd to suppose that Pulteney would
consent to be withdrawn from the House in which he had made his fame,
which was his natural and fitting place, and which already was seen by
every man of sense to be the central force of England's political life.
Pulteney contemptuously refused the peerage. From that hour his old
love for Walpole seems to have turned into hate.
The explosion, however, did not come at once. Pulteney continued to be
on seemingly good terms with Walpole, and shortly afterwards the
comparatively humble post of Cofferer to the Household was offered to
him--some say was asked for by him. It does not seem likely that even
then he had any intention of a serious reconciliation with Walpole.
Perhaps he accepted this post in the expectation that he would shortly
be raised to a much higher position in the State. But Walpole,
although willing enough to give him any mark or place of honor on
condition that he withdrew to the House of Lords, was afraid to allow
him any office of influence while he remained in the Commons. However
this may be, Pulteney's ambition was not satisfied, and he very soon
broke publicly away from Walpole altogether. When a motion was brought
on in April, 1725, for discharging the debts of the Civil List, in
reply to a message from the King himself, Pulteney demanded an inquiry
into the manner in which the money had been spent, and even made a
fierce attack on the whole administration, and accused it of something
very like downright corruption. He was dismissed from his office as
Cofferer, and, even making allowance for his love of money, the wonder
is that he should have held it long enough to be dismissed from it. He
then went avowedly over into the ranks of the enemies of Walpole inside
and outside the House of Commons.
The position taken by Pulteney is chiefly interesting to us now in the
fact that it opened a distinctly new chapter in English politics.
Pulteney created the part of what has ever since been called the Leader
of Opposition. {256} With him begins the time when the real Leader of
Opposition must have a place in the House of Commons; with him, too,
begins the time when the Opposition has for its recognized duty not
merely to watch with jealous care all the acts of the ministers in
order to prevent them from doing anything wrong, but also to watch for
every opportunity of turning them out of office. With Pulteney and his
tactics began the party organization which inside the House of Commons
and outside works unceasingly with tongue and pen, with open antagonism
and underhand intrigue, with all the various social as well as
political influences--the pamphlet, the press, the petticoat, and even
the pulpit--to discredit everything done by the men in office, to turn
public opinion against them, and if possible to overthrow them.
Pulteney and his supporters were now and then somewhat more
unscrupulous in their measures than an English Opposition would be in
our time, but theirs was unquestionably the policy of all our more
modern English parties. From this time forth almost to the close of
his active career as a politician Pulteney performed the part of Leader
of Opposition in the strictly modern sense. His position in history
seems to us to be distinctly marked as that of the first Leader of
Opposition; whether history shows reason to thank him for creating such
a part is another and a different question.
[Sidenote: 1725--Bolingbroke again]
Pulteney had some powerful allies. The King, as we know, hated his
son, the Prince of Wales; the Prince of Wales hated his father. No
reconciliation got up between them could be lasting or real. The
father and son hardly ever met except on the occasion of some great
public ceremonial. The standing quarrel between the Sovereign and his
heir had the effect of creating two parties in political life, one of
which supported the King and the King's advisers, while the other found
its centre in the house of the Heir to the Throne. We shall see this
condition of things re-appearing in all the subsequent reigns of the
Georges. The ministry and their friends {257} were detested and
denounced by those who surrounded the Prince of Wales; the adherents of
the Prince of Wales were virtually proscribed by the King. Then, as at
a later date in the history of the Georges, those who favored and were
favored by the Prince were looking out with anxious hope for the King's
death. When "the old King is dead as nail in door," then indeed each
leading supporter of the new king believed he could say with Falstaff,
"The laws of England are at my commandment; happy are they which have
been my friends." Pulteney and his supporters were among the friends
and favorites of the Prince of Wales; they constituted the Prince's
party. The Prince's party was composed mainly of the men who were
Tories but were not Jacobites, and of the Whigs who disliked Walpole or
had been overlooked or offended by him, or who in sober honesty were
opposed to his policy. In all these, and in a daily growing number of
the people out-of-doors, Pulteney had his friends and Walpole his
enemies.
But a more formidable rival than even Pulteney was now again to the
front and active in hostility to Walpole. This was the man whom the
official records of the time described as "the late Viscount
Bolingbroke." The late Viscount Bolingbroke, it need hardly be said,
means that Henry St. John whose title of viscount had been forfeited
when he fled to France and joined the Pretender. Bolingbroke had
lately received the pardon of King George. He had secured the pardon
chiefly by means of an influence then familiar and recognized in
politics--that of one of the King's mistresses. Bolingbroke had got
money with his second wife, and through her he conveyed to the Duchess
of Kendal a large sum--about ten thousand pounds--with the intimation
that more would be forthcoming from the same place, if necessary, to
obtain his object. The Duchess of Kendal was easily prevailed upon,
under these circumstances, to recognize the justice of Bolingbroke's
claim and the sincerity of his repentance. Moreover, there was about
the same time that {258} political intrigue, or rather rivalry of
intrigues, going on between Walpole and Carteret, between England and
France, in which it was thought the influence of Bolingbroke might be
used with advantage--as it was, in fact, used--to Walpole's ends.
[Sidenote: 1725--The Bolingbroke Petition] For all these reasons the
pardon was obtained, and Bolingbroke was allowed to return to England.
Nor was he long put off with a mere forgiveness which kept from him his
forfeited estates and his right to the family inheritance. "Here I
am," he wrote to Swift soon after, "two-thirds restored, my person safe
(unless I meet hereafter with harder treatment than even that of Sir
Walter Raleigh), and my estate, with all the other property I have
acquired or may acquire, secured to me. But the attainder is kept
prudently in force, lest so corrupt a member should come again into the
House of Lords, and his bad leaven should sour that sweet, untainted
mass." Walpole was quite willing that the forfeiture of Lord
Bolingbroke's estates and the interruption of the inheritance should be
recalled. It was necessary for this purpose to pass an Act of
Parliament. On April 20, 1725, Lord Finch presented to the House of
Lords the petition "of Henry St. John, late Viscount Bolingbroke." The
petition set forth that the petitioner was "truly concerned for his
offence in not having surrendered himself, pursuant to the directions
of an act of the first year of his Majesty's reign;" that he had
lately, "in most humble and dutiful manner," made his submission to the
King, and given his Majesty "the strongest assurances of his inviolable
fidelity, and of his zeal for his Majesty's service and for the support
of the present happy establishment, which his Majesty hath been most
graciously pleased to accept." The petition then prayed that leave
might be given to bring in a bill to enable the petitioner and his
heirs male to take and enjoy in person the estates of which he was then
or afterwards should be possessed. Walpole, as Chancellor of the
Exchequer, informed the House that he had received his Majesty's
command to say that George was satisfied with Bolingbroke's {259}
penitence, was convinced that Lord Bolingbroke was a proper object of
mercy, and consented that the petition should be presented to the House.
Lord Finch then moved that a bill be brought in to carry out the prayer
of the petition. The Chancellor of the Exchequer seconded and strongly
advocated the motion. It was opposed with great vigor by Mr. Methuen,
the Controller of the Household, and formerly British Minister in
Portugal. Methuen denounced Bolingbroke's "scandalous and villainous
conduct" during his administration of affairs in Queen Anne's reign;
his clandestine negotiation for peace; his insolent behavior towards
the allies of England; his sacrificing the interests of the whole
Confederacy and the honor of his country--more especially in the
abandonment of the Catalans; "and, to sum up all his crimes in one, his
traitorous designs of defeating the Protestant succession, and of
advancing a Popish pretender to the throne." This speech, we read,
"made a great impression on the Assembly," and several distinguished
members, Arthur Onslow among the rest, spoke strongly on the same side.
The motion, however, was carried by 231 votes against 113. The Bill
was prepared, and went up to the House of Lords on May 5th, was carried
there by a large majority, was sent back to the House of Commons with
some slight amendments, was accepted there, and received the Royal
assent. Some of the peers put on record a strong and earnest protest
against the passing of such a measure. The protest recited all the
charges against Bolingbroke; declared that those who signed it knew of
no particular public services which Bolingbroke had lately rendered,
and which would entitle him to a generous treatment; and further added
that "no assurances which this person hath given" could be a sufficient
security against his future insincerity, "he having already so often
violated the most solemn assurances and obligations, and in defiance of
them having openly attempted the dethroning his Majesty and the
destruction of the liberties of his country."
{260}
Bolingbroke, however, wanted something more than restoration to his
title and to his forfeited right of inheritance. His active and
untamed spirit was eager for political strife again, and his heart
burned with a longing to take his old place in the debates of the House
of Lords. Against this Walpole had made a firm resolve; on this point
he would not yield. He would not allow his eloquent and daring rival
to have a voice in Parliament any more. In this, as it seems to us,
Walpole acted neither wisely nor magnanimously. Bolingbroke's safest
place, so far as the interests of the public, and even the political
interests of his rivals, were concerned, would have been in the House
of Lords. He would have delivered brilliant speeches there, and would
have worked off his energies in that harmless fashion. In Walpole's
time, however, the idea had not yet arisen that an enemy to the settled
order of things is least dangerous where he is most free to speak.
Bolingbroke, who had always hated Walpole, even lately when he was
professing regard and gratitude, hated him now more than ever, and set
to work by all the means in his power to injure Walpole in the
estimation of the country, and, if possible, to undermine his whole
political position.
[Sidenote: 1725-1726--The "craftsman"]
Bolingbroke and Pulteney soon came into political companionship. There
was a certain affinity between the intellectual nature of the two men;
and they had now a common object. Both were literary men as well as
politicians, and they naturally put their literary gifts to the fullest
account in the campaign they had undertaken. In our days two such men
combining for such a purpose would contrive to get incessant leading
articles into some daily paper; perhaps would start a weekly or even a
daily evening paper of their own. Bolingbroke and Pulteney were men in
advance of their age--in some respects at least. They did between them
start a paper. They established the famous _Craftsman_. The
_Craftsman_ was started in 1726. It was first issued daily in single
leaves or sheets after the fashion of the _Spectator_. It was soon,
{261} however, changed into a weekly newspaper bearing the title of the
_Craftsman_ or _Country Journal_. Its editor, Nicholas Amhurst, took
the feigned name of Caleb d'Anvers, and the paper itself was commonly
called _Caleb_ accordingly. The _Craftsman_ was brilliantly written,
and was inspired by the most unscrupulous passion of partisan hate.
Walpole was held up in prose and verse, in bold invective and droll
lampoon, as a traitor to the country, as a man stuffed and gorged with
public plunder, audacious in his profligate disregard of political
principle and common honesty, a danger to the State and a disgrace to
parliamentary life. The circulation of the _Craftsman_ at one time
surpassed that of the _Spectator_ at the height of the _Spectator's_
popularity. Not always are more flies caught by honey than by vinegar.
{262}