it was at first chiefly on the friendship of the Queen that he relied.
She was a woman of very considerable ability. Her intellectual fault
indeed was an attempt to know too much. She collected around her men of
learning of all sorts, dabbled in divinity, dabbled in metaphysics,
patronized poetry, and delighted in listening to theological
discussions, in which she kept the part of strict neutrality, believing
it is thought but little on either side. But her influence in bringing
forward men of ability, especially in the Church, was very great. Her
sense was excellent, and by means of it, in spite of the King's royal
immorality, she contrived to rule him absolutely. She thoroughly
appreciated Walpole, and together they pursued that policy, which was no
doubt the right one for the maintenance of the Hanoverian succession.
This consisted in the pursuit of peace in every direction--peace abroad,
peace at home. If any point was strongly contested it was given up; if
any abuse was unobserved it was suffered to rest untouched; and in
general their object was to let the nation learn by its material
prosperity the advantages of an orderly and settled Government. As a
consequence of this policy the period of Walpole's government was
uneventful, and was occupied rather with the great Parliamentary
struggle between himself and the Opposition under Pulteney than by any
great national affairs.
[Sidenote: Character of the Opposition.]
The chief strength of that Opposition consisted of the discontented
Whigs, most of whom were driven to oppose Walpole by his insatiable love
of power. We have already seen Pulteney and Carteret forced from the
ranks of the Government, and all overtures with Bolingbroke rejected. In
1730, Walpole quarrelled with his old friend and brother-in-law
Townshend, who was only restrained by his patriotism from joining the
Opposition. In 1733, Lord Chesterfield was added to the list. These
leaders had behind them a certain quantity of supporters who took the
name of Patriots, and wished to be regarded as the true old Whigs,
looking upon Walpole with his large majority as seceders from them.
There was much plausibility in this view: for the Whig party under
Walpole seemed to have become closely attached to the Crown, and was
supported principally by Crown influence. As the original principle of
the Whigs had been antagonism to the over-great power of the Crown, it
could be plausibly urged that they had now assumed the position of their
former enemies. The Hanoverian line had ascended the throne with a
parliamentary as contrasted with a hereditary title; it had therefore
naturally found its chief supporters among the Whigs. With the
Hanoverians that party had entered upon power. But the Revolution, while
practically subordinating the power of the King to that of Parliament,
had constitutionally left it untouched. The Hanoverian kings did not
indeed employ it to its full, but placed it in the hands of the
minister, who, by means of the royal influence, practically ruled
England with as unquestioned a sway as any great minister of the
Stuarts. The difference lay in this, that the power of the Crown
consisted in the immense influence it possessed by means of pensions,
places, and the command of the public money, and worked through the
House of Commons, and not in opposition to it. The patriot Whigs were
conscious of the power of the Crown, and were true to their principles
in opposing it. Their error lay in this, that they did not understand
that that power was formidable only so long as there was a venal House
of Commons. Eager as they thought for liberty, they formed a close
connection with the High Tories and Jacobites, the greatest enemies of
liberty; and in their eagerness for office did their best to oppose that
Government, which for the present, at all events, was the only safeguard
against the restoration of the Stuarts, for the events of 1745 render it
plain that danger from the Jacobites was as yet by no means over. In
fact, however, principle had little to do with the matter, it was
personal animosity to the minister, and anger at exclusion from office,
which inspired the Opposition. Even the party names "Whig" and "Tory"
were beginning to lose their meaning. By far the greater portion of the
House was thoroughly attached to the Hanoverian succession. Some fifty
Jacobites sat in it under the guidance of Shippen, and a certain number
of country gentlemen, with Wyndham at their head, still retained the
title of Hanoverian Tories. But the Parliamentary struggle lay in fact
between different sections of the Whigs, either of which, whatever their
pretensions may have been when out of office, would probably have acted
in much the same way had they succeeded in obtaining it. It was not
till the close of this reign and the beginning of the next that the old
party names began again to acquire significance. It had become evident
that the power and influence of the Crown, but little diminished, as has
been said, at the Revolution, had as it were been placed in commission
in the hands of the great leaders of the Whig party, who by means of
their own Parliamentary influence, added to the King's power which they
wielded, had assumed a monopoly of the Government antagonistic at once
to the Crown and to the people. Those who regarded this condition of
things as a disturbance of the old balance of the Constitution began to
rally round the King, and when George III. resumed into his own hands
the power of the Crown and broke with the Whig oligarchy, he found his
support in this new Tory party.
[Sidenote: Strength of the Government.]
To oppose the many able men whom enmity to the ministers had driven into
the ranks of the Patriots, the Government had little more than the inert
strength of an unfailing majority to show. Besides Walpole himself,
whose talents were unquestioned, the Government consisted of somewhat
second-rate men, such as Newcastle, whose fussy silliness was a constant
theme of jest, Stanhope, Lord Harrington, an excellent diplomatist but
no politician, and Lord Harvey, a clever but bitter and effeminate
courtier. But the Government was supported on almost every question of
importance by a vast majority of the House, whose votes the surpassing
skill of Walpole as a manager secured--many of them by small places and
pensions, or other "considerations," as bribes were then called. That
Walpole reduced the purchase of a majority, a practice by no means
unknown, to a system must be allowed. It may be urged in his favour,
that he used, but did not cause, the venality prevalent among all public
men of the time, and employed it so as to secure what was upon the whole
the government most advantageous for England at the time.
[Sidenote: Depression of the Jacobites.]
The folly of the Pretender spared the minister all trouble with regard
to the Jacobites, for James had succeeded in alienating his ablest
partisans. He had quarrelled with Atterbury as he quarrelled with
Bolingbroke, he had excited scandal by his quarrel with his wife, and
had suffered an unworthy favourite, Colonel Hay, or Lord Inverness as he
called himself, to supplant all his better partisans in his favour. And
when the death of Lord Mar was followed by that of the Duke of Wharton
and of Atterbury in 1732, the Jacobite cause fell into the hands of
very inferior agents, whose intrigues, insignificant as they were, seem
to have been thoroughly known by Walpole.
[Sidenote: European complications.]
It was thus with one source of danger practically removed that Walpole
resumed the threads of foreign policy. The last reign had closed before
peace had been concluded with Spain, and while there were still
unsettled difficulties with the court of Vienna, although preliminaries
had been signed both in Paris and in Spain by what is known as the
Convention of the Pardo. It must indeed have been obvious that the
Treaty of Vienna, plausible as it seemed, could not have been a lasting
treaty. The Bourbons were upon the throne of Spain, and the close
junction of the houses of Bourbon and Hapsburg was an impossible
contradiction of all history, especially as the desire which was really
the moving passion of the Spanish court, the establishment, namely, of a
Spanish kingdom in Italy, was fundamentally opposed to the interests of
Austria. At the same time the shadow of the approaching dissolution of
his kingdom at his death was constantly overhanging the Emperor. No
ideas of present greatness, not even the hope of restoring the Empire to
the position it had held under Charles V., appeared in his eyes so
important as to secure the reversion of his own estates for his
daughter, according to the Pragmatic Sanction, by which, in 1713, he had
arranged the succession to his hereditary kingdoms. It was impossible
for him to hurry into a general war, which must of necessity prevent the
acceptance of that arrangement. There was already a strongly expressed
feeling in Germany against the marriages on which the Vienna Treaty
rested, and which might have the effect of placing a Spaniard on the
Imperial throne. The threatened secession of his chief allies, and the
fear of postponing the acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction, were
sufficient reasons to induce the Emperor to withdraw from his bargain.
He therefore accepted the mediation of France, where Fleury, though he
probably never forgot the old policy of the country which he governed,
always apparently exhibited a love of peace; and it was agreed that
disputed points should be referred to a general Congress to be held at
Aix-la-Chapelle, but subsequently moved to Soissons.
[Sidenote: Congress at Soissons.]
At the Congress the Emperor, afraid of exciting the national prejudices
of the Germans, entirely deserted his Spanish allies, and instead of
hastening a favourable negotiation, perpetually threw obstacles in the
way. As far as England was concerned, the great point at issue was
Gibraltar, which Spain had already besieged in vain. The ministry, both
before and now, seem to have regarded the surrender of it as neither
impossible nor very injurious; the view of the nation was very
different. But as is so often the case, the Congress came to very
little. Spain, finding herself deserted by Austria, and observing that
the Congress was falling to pieces by constant delays, had recourse to a
direct treaty; and on the 9th of November 1729 the celebrated Treaty of
Seville was signed. It was a defensive alliance between England, Spain
and France, to which Holland subsequently acceded. Spain revoked all the
privileges granted to Austrian subjects by the treaties of Vienna,
re-established English trade in America on its former footing, and
restored all captures. The Assiento was confirmed to the South Sea
Company, and arrangements made for securing the succession of Parma and
Tuscany to the Infant Don Carlos, by substituting Spanish troops for the
neutral forces, which since the Preliminaries had been occupying those
countries.
[Sidenote: Treaty of Seville. Nov. 9, 1729.]
[Sidenote: Disappointment of the Emperor.]
The Emperor now found that he had outwitted himself. He had clung to the
Treaty of Vienna just long enough to irritate two of the great countries
of Europe, he had put difficulties in the way of its completion, and
hesitated about fulfilling it, just long enough to irritate the third.
Old friends and old foes had made common cause. His hopes for the
Pragmatic Sanction seemed entirely gone. It was not likely that he would
sit down quietly while Spanish troops occupied fortresses in what he
considered his dominions. He broke off all diplomatic relations with
Spain, sent troops into Italy, and on the death of the Duke of Parma
seized his duchy. But all men really knew that the bribe was ready, if
they would only give it, to put an end to all his opposition. And the
impatient Queen of Spain--angry with the shilly-shally policy of her new
allies (who would not insist with sufficient rapidity on the completion
of the Seville treaty), throwing over France, which she regarded as the
chief delinquent in the matter--joined with England and Holland to offer
the long wished for guarantee. Thus at length by the second Treaty of
Vienna all the much vexed questions were decided. Austria was glad to
accept the terms proposed at Seville, agreed to destroy the Ostend
Company, to establish Don Carlos in his duchies, and not again to
threaten the balance of European power. And in 1732, under the escort of
English ships, the Spanish troops took possession of the disputed
fortresses.
[Sidenote: Second Treaty of Vienna. March 16, 1731.]
[Sidenote: Complete supremacy of Walpole.]
[Sidenote: The Pension Bill.]
[Sidenote: Retirement of Townshend. 1731.]
Both these treaties were arranged in accordance with the pacific views
of Walpole. When the second was concluded he was absolute master of
affairs in England; for almost immediately after the Treaty of Seville
the old jealousy which had long smouldered between him and Townshend
burst out, and Townshend had found it necessary to withdraw. Townshend
was a proud, rough man, ill fitted to play the subordinate part which
Walpole was determined to thrust upon his colleagues. Besides general
ill-feeling, several specific grounds of difference existed between
them. The first Treaty of Vienna had greatly irritated Townshend, who
would have wished to avoid all compromise and to proceed to extremities
with the Emperor. The link which had bound the brothers-in-law together
had been broken by the death of Lady Townshend, Walpole's sister; and
Walpole's conduct with regard to the Pension Bill supplied a fresh
ground of quarrel. The Opposition had discovered, without exactly
tracing it to its constitutional source, the power of the royal
influence, and early in 1730 Mr. Sandys introduced the first of those
Bills for restraining it which became from this time onwards one of the
regular weapons of attack against the ministry. He moved for leave to
bring in a Bill to disable all persons from sitting in Parliament who
had any pension direct or indirect from the Crown, and proposed that
every member as he took his seat should swear that he held no such
pension. The attack was exceedingly well judged, for it gave expression
to a very general feeling, and Walpole, who studiously avoided shocking
the feelings of any large section of the nation, was at some loss how to
meet it. But he knew that he could rely upon his great Whig supporters
in the Upper House, and of that House Townshend was the leader. Walpole
therefore suffered the Bill to pass the Lower House without opposition,
so that it was upon Townshend and the Lords that the whole odium fell
when, as a matter of course, they rejected it. On these and various
other grounds such ill blood sprang up between the brothers, that it is
told, though upon doubtful authority, that they nearly came to blows at
an entertainment in the house of Mrs. Selwyn. It was impossible that
both the ministers should remain in office; the influence of the Queen
turned the scale in favour of Walpole, and Townshend resigned,
withdrawing with unusual patriotism from political life, and devoting
himself at Reynham, his house in Norfolk, to the improvement of
agriculture. It is to him that we chiefly owe the cultivation of
turnips. This change, by allowing a proper rotation of crops, and thus
avoiding the necessity of leaving fields to lie fallow, added nearly a
third to the cultivable area of England, while by supplying large
quantities of cattle-food from a comparatively small space of ground, it
enormously increased the food-producing resources of the country.
[Sidenote: Walpole's home government.]
For two years the ascendancy of Walpole was unquestioned. He was enabled
to turn his thoughts to domestic improvements. English was substituted,
certainly most reasonably, for the ancient Law Latin in all legal
proceedings, to the grief it is said of some conservative lawyers, and
against the opposition of most of the judges. There was a Committee of
Inquiry also into the condition of public prisons, which brought many
revolting horrors to light. Both in the Fleet and Marshalsea torture by
thumbscrew and otherwise was constant, and the condition of poor
prisoners who could not bribe the gaolers was inconceivably horrid.
Forty or fifty of them, for instance, were locked up for the night in a
cell not sixteen feet square. Gaol-fever and famine were constantly
destroying them, so that the deaths at one prison were frequently eight
or ten a day.
[Sidenote: His financial measures. 1733.]
But it was as a financier that Walpole was most favourably known, and
somewhat strangely it was a great financial reform in the year 1733 that
almost brought him to ruin. Walpole was desirous of lessening even the
weak opposition by which he was confronted in Parliament; and in the
hope of attracting to himself the country gentlemen, he appealed, in
accordance with his usual principle, to their love of money, and sought
some way to lessen the Land Tax. For this purpose he suggested an excise
upon salt. This must have been contrary to his own convictions. He could
not have been ignorant how important an article salt is in many
manufactures, how necessary an article of purchase even among the
poorest. He was in fact taxing the poor and the manufacturing classes
for the sake of winning the landed interest, which would be called upon
to pay a land tax of one instead of two shillings. The new duty was
carried, but by no large majority. The chief argument against it was
that it was a step towards a general excise, which, because it seemed to
infringe on the rights of the subject by giving revenue officers the
right of entering houses, was much detested, and regarded as a badge of
servitude. Although the tax upon salt was not really intended as a
beginning of a general excise, it was nevertheless true that Walpole had
a scheme of that nature in his mind: for it was found after a year's
experience that the new tax upon salt fell short by two-thirds of the
sum required to admit of the reduction of the Land Tax to one shilling.
It was to a new measure of excise that Walpole looked to supply the
deficiency. The excisable articles at that time were malt, salt, and
distilleries, and the produce of the tax in 1733 was about £3,200,000.
When Walpole's project of extending the excise got wind it proved most
repugnant to the people. Numerous meetings were held, and many members
were instructed to vote against any such attempt. But when the project
was brought before the House, then in Committee, it appeared that
Walpole, disowning all intention of establishing a general excise,
confined himself solely to the duties on wine and tobacco; and even on
those commodities designed no increase of the present duties, but merely
a change in the manner of collecting them. In future the dues were to be
collected after the manner of an excise from the retailers, and not as
heretofore in the form of customs at the ports. Fraud and smuggling were
so prevalent that in tobacco alone the customs, which ought to have
produced £750,000 a year, produced in fact only £160,000. As these
frauds took place chiefly at the ports or along the seaboard, Walpole
hoped by taxing the retail trade, and not the importation, much to
lessen them. In addition to this, he would have established a system of
warehousing without tax for re-exportation, thus making London a free
port. It was undoubtedly an excellent plan. As he pointed out, it was
the shops and warehouses alone which were under supervision, not the
houses of the retailers; liberty was in no way infringed; it enabled him
to remit the Land Tax to the advantage of the country gentlemen; the
scheme was advantageous to the importer, who could re-export free of
duty; the price of the commodity was not raised. But none the less did
it meet with the most violent opposition. Wyndham likened it to the
unjust imposts of Empson and Dudley, and Pulteney derided it as a vast
plan to cure an almost imaginary evil. The people beset the doors of the
House during the debate in great crowds, irritating Walpole till he let
fall the unhappy words--"It may be said that they came hither as humble
suppliants, but I know whom the law calls sturdy beggars;" an expression
which was never forgiven. The resolution was carried, but by an
unusually small majority. On this and subsequent motions a Bill was
founded, and in the course of many discussions a new cry was raised by
Pulteney, that, as most of the seaport boroughs were already in the
hands of one or the other branch of the administration, this was a plan
for bringing inland towns under the same influences; and before the Bill
came to a second reading, the ministerial majority of sixty had
dwindled to sixteen. The excitement became dangerous; even the army was
infected, and Walpole, according to his usual principle, yielded to the
violence of the storm and withdrew the Bill. But though thus thwarted,
he did not forego his revenge on the defaulters of his own party.
Chesterfield, the ablest man in the ministry, Lord-Steward of the
Household, was somewhat rudely dismissed. Lord Clinton, the Earl of
Burlington, the Duke of Montrose, the Earls of Marchmont and Stair, and
by a questionable exercise of prerogative the Duke of Bolton and Lord
Cobham, were deprived of their commission in the army,--an arbitrary act
not lost sight of by the Opposition.
[Sidenote: His pacific foreign policy.]
[Sidenote: Fresh European war.]
As Walpole, true to his principles, had purchased peace at home by
concession, we find him the next year for the same object keeping
entirely aloof from a new war which had broken out in Europe. The Peaces
of Seville and Vienna had apparently completed the arrangements of the
Treaty of Utrecht, and settled all differences between the courts of
Spain and Vienna; but treaties based upon arbitrary territorial
arrangements for the purpose of preserving the balance of power are
always very liable to be broken. Neither party considers itself quite
fairly treated, and is ever on the look-out for some opening to regain
its lost power or to acquire some new influence. The Peace of Utrecht
had closed the War of Succession, undertaken solely to establish the
balance of power in Europe, and had been exactly such a treaty as has
been described. The Peaces of Seville and Vienna had been necessary to
modify in some degree its arrangements. A quarrel as to the election of
a new King of Poland was sufficient to render for the time all three of
them useless. It will be remembered that the French King had married the
daughter of Stanislaus, ex-King of Poland. All French influence
therefore was now employed to secure his re-election, while the Czarina
Anne of Russia and the Emperor strongly upheld the claims of Augustus,
son of the late King. A Russian and a Saxon army were sufficient to
secure the throne for Augustus; but the Emperor's interference, although
indirect, had enabled Fleury to show himself in his true colours, to
listen to that great section of his countrymen who were weary of the
lengthened peace, and to bring on a war which promised to be far more
advantageous to France than any success in Poland could have been. In
his attack upon Austria he was joined at once by Spain: for the Queen,
the real ruler of the Peninsula, was still discontented with the losses
Spain had suffered by the late treaties, and was besides very anxious to
secure a crown for her son Don Carlos, who was already Duke of Parma.
There was a short campaign upon the Rhine, where Berwick commanded the
French, Eugene the Imperial army. Though the French lost their general
before Philipsburg, they were everywhere successful, and when the united
armies of Spain and Sardinia threw themselves on the kingdom of Naples,
they found no great difficulty in conquering the Austrians, and
completing the conquest of that country and of Sicily by the victory of
Bitonto. Don Carlos assumed the kingdom as Charles III.
[Sidenote: Definitive Peace of Vienna. Nov. 8, 1738.]