Most unlike Turgot in character, but with something of the same spirit
of prophecy, and associated in time, was Horace Walpole, youngest son
of England’s remarkable Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. With the
former, life was serious always, and human improvement the perpetual
passion; with the latter, there was a constant desire for amusement,
and the world was little more than a curious gimcrack.
Horace Walpole was born 5th October, 1717, and died 2d March,
1797, being at his death Earl of Orford. According to his birth he
was a man of fashion; for a time a member of Parliament; a man of
letters always. To his various talents he added an aggregation of
miscellaneous tastes, of which his house at Strawberry Hill was an
illustration,--being an elegant “Old Curiosity Shop,” with pictures,
books, manuscripts, prints, armor, china, historic relics, and art in
all its forms, which he had collected at no small outlay of time and
money. Though aristocratic in life, he boasted that his principles were
not monarchical. On the two sides of his bed were hung engravings of
Magna Charta and the Sentence of Charles the First, the latter with the
inscription “_Major_ Charta.” Sleeping between two such memorials, he
might be suspected of sympathy with America, although the aristocrat
was never absent. His Memoirs, Journals, Anecdotes of Painting in
England, and other works, are less famous than his multifarious
correspondence, which is the best in English literature, and, according
to French judgment, nearer than any other in our language to that of
Madame de Sévigné, whom he never wearied in praising. It is free, easy,
gossipy, historic, and spicy.
But I deal with him now only as a prophet. And I begin with his
“Memoires of the last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second,”
where we find the record that the Colonists were seeking independence.
This occurs in his description of the Duke of Newcastle as Secretary
of State for the Colonies, during the long Walpole administration.
Illustrating what he calls the Duke’s “mercurial inattention,” he
says: “It would not be credited what reams of papers, representations,
memorials, petitions from that quarter of the world [the Colonies], lay
mouldering and unopened in his office”; and then, showing the Duke’s
ignorance, he narrates how, when it was hinted that there should be
some defence for Annapolis, he replied, with evasive, lisping hurry:
“Annapolis, Annapolis! Oh, yes, Annapolis must be defended,--to be
sure, Annapolis should be defended;--where is Annapolis?” But this
negligence did not prevent him from exalting the prerogative of the
Crown; and here the author says:--
“The instructions to Sir Danvers Osborn, a new governor of
New York, seemed better calculated for the latitude of Mexico
and for a Spanish tribunal than for a free, rich British
settlement, and in such opulence and of such haughtiness that
_suspicions had long been conceived of their meditating to
throw off their dependence on their mother country_.”[348]
This stands in the “Memoires” under the date of 1754, and the editor
in a note observes, “If, as the author asserts, this was written at
the time, it is a very remarkable passage.” By direction of the author
the book was “to be kept unopened and unsealed” until a certain person
named should attain the age of twenty-five years. It was published in
1822. Perhaps the honesty of this entry will be better appreciated,
when it is noted, that, only a few pages later, Washington, whom the
author afterwards admired, is spoken of as “this brave braggart” who
“learned to blush for his rodomontade.”[349]
As the difficulties with the Colonies increased, he became more
sympathetic and prophetic. In a letter to Sir Horace Mann, 2d February,
1774, he wrote:--
“We have no news, public or private; but there is an
ostrich-egg laid in America, where the Bostonians have canted
three hundred chests of tea into the ocean; for they will
not drink tea with our Parliament.… Lord Chatham talked of
conquering America in Germany. _I believe England will be
conquered some day or other in New England or Bengal._”[350]