with opposition. For years the tax upon malt had been with great
difficulty collected in Scotland. This tax had been changed into a
charge of threepence upon every barrel of ale. Edinburgh was in
commotion, and the brewers refused to brew. Lord Isla, the Duke of
Argyle's brother, was acting as Walpole's agent in the matter. He
prudently declined to interfere, certain that love of profit would
speedily break up the combination. A public meeting, Walpole tells us,
was held, and the question put by the chairman, "Brew or not brew?" He
began by asking the man on his right hand. But he and many who followed
him refused to vote, till at last one bolder than the rest refused to be
bound by the majority and voted "Brew." The assembly broke up in some
confusion, but before morning there were forty brewhouses hard at work
in Edinburgh and ten in Leith.
[Sidenote: Spanish difficulties. 1725.]
The remainder of the reign offers but little of interest in domestic
history, but before Walpole could enter unchecked on that course of
peaceful policy which is the chief characteristic of his long tenure of
office, he had yet one difficulty with Spain to overcome, while at home
there was already springing up that opposition of discontented Whigs
combined with the Tory party, which, under the fostering influence of
Bolingbroke behind the scenes, and led in Parliament by the ability of
Pulteney, formed the formidable opposition to which Walpole ultimately
succumbed. Since the adhesion of Spain to the Quadruple Alliance and the
fall of Alberoni, a Congress had been sitting at Cambrai to arrange the
details of the final settlement of Europe. The chief points at issue
were the renunciation of the title of King of Spain, to which the
Austrian Empire fondly clung, the Grand Mastership of the Order of the
Golden Fleece, which the Emperor also claimed, and the restoration to
their owners of certain Italian provinces of which the Emperor had taken
possession. To gain these ends, Spain, absolutely renouncing the policy
of Alberoni, attached itself closely to France and England, purchased
the favour of the latter country by a treaty of commerce, renewing the
Assiento and the annual ship to the Spanish colonies, and of the former
by a marriage-treaty. This marriage-treaty Orleans was induced to accept
in pursuance of his plan for keeping continual hold of the regency; all
views of ultimate succession were gradually fading from him as the young
King improved in health. It was a threefold arrangement; the Infanta
Mary Anne, then only three years old, was to marry Louis XV., the two
daughters of the Regent were to marry the Prince of Asturias, heir to
the Spanish crown, and Don Carlos, presumptive heir to Parma and
Tuscany. Spain had thus done so much that she awaited with confidence
the meeting of the Congress at Cambrai. But that Congress was very slow
in its operations, and the hasty Queen of Spain and her ambitious
husband began to weary of the ill success of their concessions, and to
think that perhaps after all matters might be brought to a more speedy
termination by direct action, without mediators, at the court of Vienna.
The Spanish Government was the more inclined to this step, because it
had been persuaded that the Austrian court would lend no unwilling ear
to direct negotiations.
[Sidenote: Intrigues of Ripperda.]
This belief had been forced upon the King and Queen by a strange,
adventurous, but very able foreigner, who was rapidly rising into
somewhat the same position in Spain that Alberoni had held. This was the
Baron Ripperda. A Dutchman by origin, a soldier by profession, he was
unusually well versed in the details of business and of political
economy. He had taken up all Alberoni's views as to the possible
expansion of the resources of Spain, and, thinking there was more room
for his ability in that country than in Holland, had had himself
naturalized there. He followed the King during his temporary resignation
of the Spanish throne, and returned with him on his son's death to the
possession of full power. There seems little doubt that throughout
Ripperda had been in the pay of the Austrian court, and it was chiefly
at his instigation that the Congress at Cambrai was deserted and direct
negotiations between the courts opened. He had set before the King and
Queen very plausible reasons not only for a negotiation but for a change
of policy, no less complete than an entire desertion of the mediating
Powers and of the principle of the Quadruple Alliance, and a close
friendship with the House of Austria. Spain would thus be freed from the
constant encroachments of England upon her trade, and the interference
of France, which had been very irksome to the Spaniards since the
Bourbon accession, would be avoided. The old question of the Barrier
Treaty was exciting the animosity of England and Austria; for Austria,
in distinct contravention of the commercial articles of that treaty,
which forbade to the Austrian Netherlands the trade of India, had
established a great Ostend India Company. And there was another object
very dear to the Emperor's heart towards which Spain could lend
important aid. It could guarantee the Pragmatic Sanction, pledge itself,
that is, to preserve the Austrian succession to the daughter of the
Emperor, a pledge which in the case of Spain meant a great deal, as
Spain had fair claims to a considerable portion of the succession on the
extinction of the direct male line of the Austrian house. With these
hopes and with these offers Ripperda set out for Vienna, with the
intention of entirely destroying the present arrangements of Europe, of
breaking the existing marriage-treaty with the Orleans princesses, of
substituting for them the Austrian archduchesses, and of restoring
Europe to its ancient attitude by the close alliance of Austria and
Spain in opposition to France and England.
[Sidenote: Treaty of Vienna. April 30, 1725.]
The success of Ripperda's scheme, the completion of his great act of
treachery, was rapidly secured by an act of a very similar description
on the part of the Duke of Bourbon. That prince had an almost insane
dread of the possible succession of the Orleans house to the French
throne; to preclude its possibility he desired the immediate marriage of
the young king. But his betrothed Spanish bride was but a baby;
regardless therefore of all treaty obligations, the Duke sent her back
almost without explanation to Spain, and married the young King to Maria
Leczinska, daughter of the ex-King of Poland. The rage of the Spanish
king knew no bounds; he sent peremptory orders to Ripperda to bring the
treaty with Austria to a conclusion upon any terms. Under these
circumstances the great Treaty of Vienna was made on the 30th of April
1725. It consisted of three separate treaties, two public and one
private. By the public treaties the Pragmatic Sanction was guaranteed;
the Spanish ports opened to German commerce; the succession of Parma and
Tuscany promised to Don Carlos; and Austria pledged herself to use her
best influence to secure the restoration of Gibraltar and Minorca. Had
this been all it would have been fair enough, somewhat humiliating to
the countries left negotiating uselessly at Cambrai, but not otherwise
than in accordance with the principles of the Quadruple Alliance.
[Sidenote: The secret treaty.]
On the supposition that there was no secret treaty the English
Opposition desired that no notice might be taken of the transaction, and
reprobated the action of the Government in forming a counter treaty as
Hanoverian. But there can be little doubt that there was a secret
treaty. Its tenor was afterwards disclosed by Ripperda. In it the
marriages between the two houses were arranged; Austria and Spain
pledged themselves to assist the restoration of the Stuarts; and to
compel, if necessary by force, the restoration of Gibraltar and Minorca.
The existence of this treaty before long reached the ears of the English
ministers. For some little time the Jacobites had been extremely active.
An envoy had come to rouse the loyalty of the clans, and had found them
not disinclined to revolt; and the Duke of Wharton, one of the Jacobite
leaders, had gone abroad and held ostentatiously secret meetings with
Ripperda. Ripperda's own tongue was none of the quietest, and he
boasted constantly of his great plans. The threat against the power of
England was rendered more dangerous by the attitude of Russia, where the
Empress Catherine, who was receiving large subsidies from the Spanish
court, was eager to win for her son-in-law the Duke of Holstein the
province of Sleswig, which the Danes had taken from him.
[Sidenote: The Treaty of Hanover.]
To meet this threatening alliance therefore, on the 3rd of September,
the counter Treaty of Hanover was signed between England, France and
Prussia, for mutual assistance should either of the countries be
attacked. The real intention was to compel the Emperor to relinquish the
Ostend Company, and to withstand any attempt on the part of the
Pretender. Ripperda had returned in triumph to Madrid; but his success
was shortlived. He found himself unable to fulfil the promises he had
made to the Austrians; the people of Spain hated him; he was driven from
office, and had to seek refuge at the British embassy, where his
confessions completely justified the precautions the Government had
taken in bringing about the Treaty of Hanover. In spite of his fall the
treaty he had arranged still continued effective.
[Sidenote: Excitement of Europe.]
It seemed as if Europe was upon the verge of a great war, divided as of
old into North and South, Protestant and Catholic. The indignation
excited by the Treaty of Vienna in England was very great. As it was
well put in the King's speech, it appeared as if the appropriation of
the English trade was to be given to one country, and Gibraltar and Port
Mahon to another, as a price for assisting the Stuart Pretender to the
English throne. Very large subsidies were granted, and the army and navy
increased. A British squadron blockaded Porto Bello, another squadron
entered the Baltic to overawe the Russians; the Spanish galleons were
seized. The foolish publication of a direct appeal from the Emperor of
Austria to the English people excited the anger even of the Opposition,
and secured the speedy dismissal of Palm, the Austrian ambassador. A
Spanish army proceeded to invest Gibraltar.
But the skilful though selfish policy of Prussia, and the pacific
tendencies of Walpole and of the new French minister Fleury, produced an
arrangement. The Emperor found that his position was becoming dangerous.
Prussia, at once the leader of the princely opposition to the Imperial
house, and yet thoroughly German in its tendencies, determined to be
neutral. It could not assist the Emperor in supporting a treaty which
by its marriage clauses threatened to put a Spanish prince on the
Imperial throne. The King had hopes of gaining from France some portion
of the Juliers succession. But the house of Brandenburg had become of
great importance in European politics; neither party could well act
without it. Its neutrality induced the Emperor to consent to the
signature of preliminaries of peace, signed at Paris on the 31st of May
1727. He agreed to suspend the Ostend Company for seven years, and to
refer other disputes to the general Congress. The pacific policy which
had produced this arrangement was Walpole's. The skill which had formed
the Treaty of Hanover, the dread of which had undoubtedly produced the
peace, belonged to Townshend. And here began the ill-feeling between the
brothers-in-law which ultimately produced the disruption of their
friendship.
[Sidenote: Preliminaries of peace. May 31, 1727.]
[Sidenote: Opposition to Walpole headed by Bolingbroke.]
The period of this exciting foreign crisis was rendered interesting in
England by the rising power of the Opposition to Walpole. At the back of
that Opposition was constantly Bolingbroke. Enormous bribes had secured
for him the favour of the Duchess of Kendal. Great stress had been
brought to bear on Walpole to consent to his complete restitution. But
Walpole would go no further than to allow a restoration of property, the
attainder and consequent exclusion from the House of Peers was kept
constantly suspended over his head. His anger against the minister who
thus thwarted him knew no bounds. He set himself to work to form an
Opposition. William Pulteney, an old friend of Walpole's, but like
Carteret cast off as too able, lent himself to Bolingbroke's plans, and
became his mouthpiece in the House of Commons. Between them they
established the Opposition paper, the _Craftsman_, and under their
influence every measure of the Government was vigorously attacked by the
Jacobite or Whig members. Underhand intrigue promised to be even more
effectual than overt opposition. The Duchess of Kendal, by dint of
bribing, had grown to be zealous in the cause of the Opposition. She was
constantly at work on the King, urging the full restoration of
Bolingbroke, urging even the admission of him and his friends to the
ministry, and the dismissal of Walpole. George indeed held bravely to
his old minister. He showed him the insidious attacks which the Duchess
put into his hands, and allowed him thus to meet and counteract them.
But Walpole himself felt that the constant importunity of the favourite
would sooner or later have its effect. He was even, it is said,
thinking of withdrawing to the Upper House, when the King's death at
Osnabrück, on his return home from Hanover, put an end for a moment to
the almost successful intrigue.
[Sidenote: The King's death. June 9, 1727.]
[Sidenote: Review of the reign.]
[Sidenote: Increased importance of England abroad.]
England had been singularly fortunate in escaping the dangers which
generally accompany a violent change of dynasty. The attention of the
new Government is usually so constantly directed towards the maintenance
of its position in the face of the eager opposition of its worsted
rivals, that it neglects the external interests of the country, and the
nation sinks for a time into insignificance. In the first days of the
Revolution the nation had fortunately fallen into the hands of a great
statesman, whose wide policy, carried out with consummate ability by the
Duke of Marlborough, had raised it to a very high position. At Utrecht
it had treated as one of the first European nations. The skill of
Stanhope had secured the prestige thus won. It was England which was the
chief power of the Quadruple Alliance, her fleet in the Mediterranean
which gave the first great blow to the plans of Alberoni. Twice the
appearance of her fleet in the Baltic had overawed the North, and when
the new European combination brought about by the Treaty of Vienna had
threatened the existing arrangements of Europe, it was the diplomacy of
England which called into existence the counter Treaty of Hanover.
[Sidenote: Private and public immorality.]
At home the survey of the reign is not so satisfactory. There was deep
depravity in both domestic and public life. The licentiousness which had
marked the whole Stuart period had lost nothing of its wickedness, but a
good deal of its elegance, in its union with the corruption of a small
German court. With a king without wit, without taste for the arts,
without knowledge of literature, without perception of beauty, and
swayed by two ugly, ignorant and rapacious mistresses, we hear with no
surprise tales of the coarseness of the time. If possible, the depravity
of public life was greater than the private immorality. It is enough to
mark the character of the reign that the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of
Macclesfield, was towards its close convicted of disgracing the seat of
justice by receiving bribes, and was removed with ignominy from his
office; that three ministers at least, if not more, were compromised in
the iniquitous transactions of the South Sea Company, and that the
King's mistress amassed an immense fortune from the bribes by which her
favour was purchased. But even worse than this shameless venality was
the political infidelity which universally prevailed. It is this which
is the real danger of a disputed succession. There is an uncertainty as
to which party may ultimately be successful, which engenders a spirit of
political gambling, while for any fancied insults, or any real loss of
power, immediate revenge can be sought by a mere transfer, and
frequently a secret transfer of allegiance. To this may be added the
tendency of compulsory oaths, which men persuade themselves that they
may accept as a matter of form, and which therefore weaken all sense of
conscientious engagements. There was hardly a statesman of note who had
not more or less tampered with the Jacobite party. Even Walpole is not
quite clear of the charge, while the whole body of High Tories were in
constant danger of drifting into Jacobitism.
[Sidenote: Influence of the Hanoverian courtiers.]
Nor was this the only cause leading to low political morality. The
reigning King was a foreigner in all his habits and in all his tastes.
He was surrounded by a Hanoverian court, who regarded England as an
instrument for the aggrandizement of Hanover, and formed a centre for
all intrigues to win the royal favour at the expense of patriotism. It
is strange, indeed, that their influence was less directly felt in
English politics, and it is perhaps owing to those very Hanoverian
predilections of the King, which are so often urged against him, that
their influence was not greater. He was so thoroughly German in language
and in thought, he was so incapable of comprehending the English
Constitution and manners, that his real interests were entirely centred
on his Hanoverian dominions, and in all matters in which they were not
concerned he left England to work out its own revolution, and was
compelled, moreover, to throw himself wholly into the hands of that
party on whom the revolution rested, and with whom it was a matter of
life and death to secure the completion of that revolution, and to
maintain the security of the Parliamentary King. It was fortunate that
that party was guided by the wisdom of Walpole. That jealousy of power
which was his chief weakness was itself an advantage, since it tended to
exclude from power the Tory party, and gave a united character to the
Government, which proved the hopelessness of success to all who did not
accept it.
GEORGE II.
1727-1760.
Born 1683=Caroline of Anspach.
|
+----------------+--------+-----------+---------------+
| | | | |
Frederick=Augusta William Anne=Prince Mary=Landgrave Louisa=
d. 1751. of Saxe- Duke of of Orange of Hesse- Frederick V.
| Gotha Cumberland. Cassel. of Denmark.
| d. 1765.
George III.
CONTEMPORARY PRINCES.
_France._ | _Austria._ | _Spain._ |
Louis XV., 1715.| Charles VI., 1711. | Philip V., 1700. |
| Charles VII., 1742. | Ferdinand VI., 1746.|
| Maria Theresa, 1745.| Charles III., 1759. |
| _Prussia._
| Frederick William, 1713.
| Frederick the Great, 1740.
_Russia._ | _Denmark._ | _Sweden._
Peter II., 1727. | Frederick IV., 1699. | Frederick I., 1720.
Anne, 1730. | Christian VI., 1730. | Adolphus, 1751.
Ivan VI., 1740. | Frederick V., 1746. |
Elizabeth, 1741. |
=POPES.--=Benedict XIII., 1724. Clement XII., 1730. Benedict XIV., 1740.
Clement XIII., 1758.
_Archbishops._ | _Chancellors._
Wake, 1715. | King, 1725.
Potter, 1737. | Talbot, 1733.
Herring, 1747. | Hardwick, 1737.
Hutton, 1757. | Northington, 1757.
Secker, 1758. |
_First Lords of the Treasury._ | _Chancellors of the Exchequer._
1727. Walpole. | 1727. Walpole.
1742. Wilmington. | 1742. Sandys.
1743. Pelham. | 1743. Pelham.
1754. Newcastle. | 1754. Legge.
1756. Devonshire. | 1755. Lyttleton.
1757. Newcastle. | 1756. Legge.
_Secretaries of State._
1727-1757. Newcastle.
1730. Harrington.
1742. Carteret.
1744. Harrington.
1746. Chesterfield.
1748. Bedford.
1751. Holderness.
1754. Robinson.
1755. Fox.
1757. {Pitt.
{Holderness.
[Sidenote: Walpole retains his position.]
The ascendancy of Walpole was in great jeopardy on the death of George
I. Bolingbroke's intrigues against him, backed by all the influence of
the Duchess of Kendal, had indeed been thwarted by the straightforward
manner in which George I. had put all complaints against him into the
minister's own hands--a striking instance of that love of justice and
fidelity to old friends which were the redeeming traits of his otherwise
uninteresting character. But Walpole had now to do with a sovereign whom
as Prince of Wales he had always opposed, and who had been known to use
strong expressions of disapprobation with regard to him. George II., a
little, dry man, gifted with the hereditary bravery and obstinacy of his
family, but with very limited abilities, and a mind far more easily
touched by little things than by broad interests, could not be expected
to forget Walpole's opposition, nor to appreciate his calm, tolerant
wisdom. When Walpole brought him the news of his father's death, he was
at once directed to apply to Sir Spencer Compton, a dull, orderly man,
Speaker of the House of Commons and Treasurer to the Prince of Wales.
Walpole was wise enough to profess friendship for the new favourite, who
even employed the ability of his predecessor to draw up the speech which
the King was to deliver to the Council. For some days it was believed
that Walpole's power was gone. His usual throng of followers deserted
him and crowded to Sir Spencer Compton's levée. But before any definite
arrangements had been made, Sir Spencer unwisely gave Walpole
opportunities for personally explaining himself to the King. He was thus
able to remove the bad impression the King had received as to his
foreign policy, and to outbid his rivals in the arrangements he proposed
to make for the Civil List, a point very close to the King's heart. He
completely succeeded in winning the Queen to his interests; and when she
heard that Compton had had to appeal to his assistance in arranging the
speech from the throne, she took the opportunity of impressing upon
George the absurdity of employing a minister who was obliged to lean for
support upon his rival. The Queen's influence, which was very great,
turned the scale in his favour. The ministry continued unchanged.
Compton, feeling his brief importance at an end, withdrew from the
contest, and shortly afterwards accepted the position of President of
the Council as Lord Wilmington.
[Sidenote: Increase of the Civil List.]
The offer which had proved so effective a means for securing Walpole's
power consisted of £130,000 to the Civil List, and a jointure of
£100,000 to Queen Caroline. The Civil List, which had been settled
after the Revolution at £700,000 a year from all sources, had proved
insufficient, saddled as it then was with a variety of expenses, such as
the judges' and ambassadors' salaries, beyond the mere expenses of the
Court. Anne had been £1,200,000 in debt, George I. £1,000,000. Walpole
now offered to induce the House to raise it to £800,000 a year, allowing
the King to claim anything beyond that sum which should arise from the
hereditary revenues.
[Sidenote: The influence of the Queen.]
[Sidenote: Character of Walpole's ministry.]