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A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES
by
JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M.P.
Author of "A History of Our Own Times" Etc.
In Four Volumes
VOL. II.
New York
Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square
1901
NOTE.
While this volume was passing through the press, _The English
Historical Review_ published an interesting article by Prof. J. K.
Laughton on the subject of Jenkins's Ear. Professor Laughton, while
lately making some researches in the Admiralty records, came on certain
correspondence which appears to have escaped notice up to that time,
and he regards it as incidentally confirming the story of Jenkins's
Ear, "which for certainly more than a hundred years has generally been
believed to be a fable." The correspondence, in my opinion, leaves the
story exactly as it found it. We only learn from it that Jenkins made
a complaint about his ear to the English naval commander at Port Royal,
who received the tale with a certain incredulity, but nevertheless sent
formal report of it to the Admiralty, and addressed a remonstrance to
the Spanish authorities. But as Jenkins told his story to every one he
met, it is not very surprising that he should have told it to the
English admiral. No one doubts that a part of one of Jenkins's ears
was cut off; it will be seen in this volume that he actually at one
time exhibited the severed part; but the question is, How did it come
to be severed? It might have been cut off in the ordinary course of a
scuffle with the Spanish revenue-officers who tried to search his
vessel. The point of the story is that Jenkins said the ear was
deliberately severed, and that the severed part was flung in his face,
with the insulting injunction to take that home to his king. Whether
Jenkins told the simple truth or indulged in a little fable is a
question which the recently published correspondence does not in any
way help us to settle.
J. McC.
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAP. PAGE
XXI. BOLINGBROKE ROUTED AGAIN . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
XXII. THE "FAMILY COMPACT" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
XXIII. ROYAL FAMILY AFFAIRS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
XXIV. THE PORTEOUS RIOTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
XXV. FAMILY JARS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
XXVI. A PERILOUS VICTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
XXVII. "ROGUES AND VAGABONDS" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
XXVIII. THE BANISHED PRINCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
XXIX. THE QUEEN'S DEATH-BED . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
XXX. THE WESLEYAN MOVEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
XXXI. ENGLAND'S HONOR AND JENKINS'S EAR . . . . . . . 147
XXXII. WALPOLE YIELDS TO WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
XXXIII. "AND WHEN HE FALLS----" . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
XXXIV. "THE FORTY-FIVE" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
XXXV. THE MARCH SOUTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
XXXVI. CULLODEN--AND AFTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
XXXVII. CHESTERFIELD IN DUBLIN CASTLE . . . . . . . . . 289
XXXVIII. PRIMUS IN INDIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
XXXIX. CHANGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
XL. CANADA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
XLI. THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
{1}
A HISTORY
OF
THE FOUR GEORGES.
CHAPTER XXI.
BOLINGBROKE ROUTED AGAIN.
While "the King's friends" and the Patriots, otherwise the Court party
and the country party, were speech-making and pamphleteering, one of
the greatest English pamphleteers, who was also one of the masters of
English fiction, passed quietly out of existence. On April 24, 1731,
Daniel Defoe died. It does not belong to the business of this history
to narrate the life or describe the works of Defoe. The book on which
his fame will chiefly rest was published just twenty years before his
death. "Robinson Crusoe" first thrilled the world in 1719. "Robinson
Crusoe" has a place in literature as unassailable as "Gulliver's
Travels" or as "Don Quixote." Rousseau in his "Émile" declares that
"Robinson Crusoe" should for a long time be his pupil's sole library,
and that it would ever after through life be to him one of his dearest
intellectual companions. At the present time, it is said, English
school-boys do not read "Robinson Crusoe." There are laws of literary
reaction in the tastes of school-boys as of older people. There were
days when the English public did not read Shakespeare; but it was
certain that Shakespeare would come up again, and it is certain that
"Robinson Crusoe" will come up again. Defoe had been {2} a fierce
fighter in the political literature of his time, and that was a trying
time for the political gladiator. He had, according to his own
declaration, been thirteen times rich and thirteen times poor. He had
always written according to his convictions, and he had a spirit that
no enemy could cow, and that no persecution could break. He had had
the most wonderful ups and downs of fortune. He had been patronized by
sovereigns and persecuted by statesmen. He had been fined; he had been
pensioned; he had been sent on political missions by one minister, and
he had been clapped into Newgate by another. He had been applauded in
the streets and he had been hooted in the pillory. Had he not written
"Robinson Crusoe" he would still have held a high place in English
literature, because of the other romances that came from his teeming
brain, and because of the political tracts that made so deep and
lasting an impression even in that age of famous political tracts. But
"Robinson Crusoe" is to his other works like Aaron's serpent, or the
"one master-passion in the breast," which the poet has compared with
it--it "swallows all the rest." "While all ages and descriptions of
people," says Charles Lamb, "hang delighted over the adventures of
Robinson Crusoe, and will continue to do so, we trust, while the world
lasts, how few comparatively will bear to be told that there exist
other fictitious narratives by the same writer--four of them at least
of no inferior interest, except what results from a less felicitous
choice of situation. 'Roxana,' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' 'Colonel
Jack,' are all genuine offsprings of the same father. They bear the
veritable impress of Defoe. Even an unpractised midwife would swear to
the nose, lip, forehead, and eye of every one of them. They are, in
their way, as full of incident, and some of them every bit as romantic;
only they want the uninhabited island, and the charm, that has
bewitched the world, of the striking solitary situation." Defoe died
in poverty and solitude--"alone with his glory." It is perhaps not
uncurious to note that in the same month of the same year, 1731, on {3}
April 8th, "Mrs. Elizabeth Cromwell, daughter of Richard Cromwell, the
Protector, and granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell, died at her house in
Bedford Row, in the eighty-second year of her age."
[Sidenote: 1733--Gay's request]
The death of Gay followed not long after that of Defoe. The versatile
author of "The Beggars' Opera" had been sinking for some years into a
condition of almost unrelieved despondency. He had had some
disappointments, and he was sensitive, and took them too much to heart.
He had had brilliant successes, and he had devoted friends, but a
slight failure was more to him than a great success, and what he
regarded as the falling-off of one friend was for the time of more
account to him than the steady and faithful friendship of many men and
women. Shortly before his death he wrote: "I desire, my dear Mr. Pope,
whom I love as my own soul, if you survive me, as you certainly will,
if a stone should mark the place of my grave, see these words put upon
it:
"'Life is a jest and all things show it:
I thought so once, but now I know it.'"
Gay died in the house of his friends, the Duke and Duchess of
Queensberry, on December 4, 1732. He was buried near the tomb of
Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, and a monument was set up to his memory,
bearing on it Pope's famous epitaph which contains the line, "In wit a
man, simplicity a child." Gay is but little known to the present
generation. Young people or old people do not read his fables any
more--those fables which Rousseau thought worthy of special discussion
in his great treatise on Education. The gallant Captain Macheath
swaggers and sings across the operatic stage no more, nor are tears
shed now for pretty Polly Peachum's troubles. Yet every day some one
quotes from Gay, and does not know what he is quoting from.
Walpole was not magnanimous towards enemies who had still the power to
do him harm. When the enemy could hurt him no longer, Walpole felt
anger no longer; {4} but it was not his humor to spare any man who
stood in his way and resisted him. If he was not magnanimous, at least
he did not affect magnanimity. He did not pretend to regard with
contempt or indifference men whom in his heart he believed to be
formidable opponents. It was a tribute to the capacity of a public man
to be disliked by Walpole; a still higher tribute to be dreaded by him.
One of the men whom the great minister was now beginning to hold in
serious dislike and dread was Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of
Chesterfield. Born in 1694, Chesterfield was still what would be
called in political life a young man; he was not quite forty. He had
led a varied and somewhat eccentric career. His father, a morose man,
had a coldness for him. Young Stanhope, according to his own account,
was an absolute pedant at the university. "When I talked my best I
quoted Horace; when I aimed at being facetious I quoted Martial; and
when I had a mind to be a fine gentleman I talked Ovid. I was
convinced that none but the ancients had common-sense; that the
classics contained everything that was either necessary, useful, or
ornamental to me; . . . and I was not even without thoughts of wearing
the _toga virilis_ of the Romans, instead of the vulgar and illiberal
dress of the moderns." Later he had been a devotee of fashion and the
gambling-table, was a man of fashion, and a gambler still. He had
travelled; had seen and studied life in many countries and cities and
courts; had seen and studied many phases of life. He professed to be
dissipated and even licentious, but he had an ambitious and a daring
spirit. He well knew his own great gifts, and he knew also and frankly
recognized the defects of character and temperament which were likely
to neutralize their influence. If he entered the House of Commons
before the legal age, if for long he preferred pleasure to politics, he
was determined to make a mark in the political world. We shall see
much of Chesterfield in the course of this history; we shall see how
utterly unjust and absurd is the common censure which sets him down as
a literary and political {5} fribble; we shall see that his speeches
were so good that Horace Walpole declares that the finest speech he
ever listened to was one of Chesterfield's; we shall see how bold he
could be, and what an enlightened judgment he could bring to bear on
the most difficult political questions; we shall see how near he went
to genuine political greatness.
[Sidenote: 1733--Chesterfield's character]
It is not easy to form a secure opinion as to the real character of
Chesterfield. If one is to believe the accounts of some of the
contemporaries who came closest to him and ought to have known him
best, Chesterfield had scarcely one great or good quality of heart.
His intellect no one disputed, but no one seems to have believed that
he had any savor of truth or honor or virtue. Hervey, who was fond of
beating out fancies fine, is at much pains to compare and contrast
Chesterfield with Scarborough and Carteret. Thus, while Lord
Scarborough was always searching after truth, loving it, and adhering
to it, Chesterfield and Carteret were both of them most abominably
given to fable, and both of them often, unnecessarily and consequently
indiscreetly so; "for whoever would lie usefully should lie seldom."
Lord Scarborough had understanding, with judgment and without wit; Lord
Chesterfield a speculative head, with wit and without judgment. Lord
Scarborough had honor and principle, while Chesterfield and Carteret
treated all principles of honesty and integrity with such open contempt
that they seemed to think the appearance of these qualities would be of
as little use to them as the reality. In short, Lord Scarborough was
an honest, prudent man, capable of being a good friend, while Lord
Chesterfield and Carteret were dishonest, imprudent creatures, whose
principles practically told all their acquaintance, "If you do not
behave to me like knaves, I shall either distrust you as hypocrites or
laugh at you as fools."
We have said already in this history that a reader, in getting at an
estimate of the character of Lord Hervey, will have to strike a sort of
balance for himself between {6} the extravagant censure flung at him by
his enemies and the extravagant praise blown to him by his friends.
But we find no such occasion or opportunity for striking a balance in
the case of Lord Chesterfield. All the testimony goes the one way.
What do we hear of him? That he was dwarfish; that he was hideously
ugly; that he was all but deformed; that he was utterly unprincipled,
vain, false, treacherous, and cruel; that he had not the slightest
faith in the honor of men or the virtue of women; that he was silly
enough to believe himself, with all his personal defects, actually
irresistible to the most gifted and beautiful woman, and that he was
mendacious enough to proclaim himself the successful lover of women who
would not have given ear to his love-making for one moment. Yet we
cannot believe that Chesterfield was by any means the monster of
ugliness and selfish levity whom his enemies, and some who called
themselves his friends, have painted for posterity. He was, says
Hervey, short, disproportioned, thick, and clumsily made; had a broad,
rough-featured, ugly face, with black teeth, and a head big enough for
a Polyphemus. "One Ben Ashurst, who said few good things, though
admired for many, told Lord Chesterfield once that he was like a
stunted giant, which was a humorous idea and really apposite." His
portraits do not by any means bear out the common descriptions of his
personal appearance. Doubtless, Court painters then, as now, flattered
or idealized, but one can scarcely believe that any painter coolly
converted a hideous face into a rather handsome one and went wholly
unreproved by public opinion of his time. The truth probably is that
Chesterfield's bitter, sarcastic, and unsparing tongue made him
enemies, who came in the end to see nothing but deformity in his person
and perfidy in his heart. It is easy to say epigrammatically of such a
man that his propensity to ridicule, in which he indulged himself with
infinite humor and no distinction, and with inexhaustible spirits and
no discretion, made him sought and feared, liked and not loved, by most
of his acquaintance; it is easy to say that {7} no sex, no relation, no
rank, no power, no profession, no friendship, no obligation, was a
shield from those pointed, glittering weapons that seemed only to shine
to a stander-by, but cut deep in those they touched. But to say this
is not to say all, or to paint a fair picture. It is evident that he
delighted in passing himself off on serious and heavy people as a mere
trifler, paradox-maker, and cynic. He invited them not to take him
seriously, and they did take him seriously, but the wrong way. They
believed that he was serious when he professed to have no faith in
anything; when he declared that he only lived for pleasure, and did not
care by what means he got it; that politics were to him ridiculous, and
ambition was the folly of a vulgar mind. We now know that he had an
almost boundless political ambition; and we know, too, that when put
under the responsibilities that make or mar statesmen, he showed
himself equal to a great task, and proved that he knew how to govern a
nation which no English statesman before his time or since was able to
rule from Dublin Castle. If the policy of Chesterfield had been
adopted with regard to Ireland, these countries would have been saved
more than a century of trouble. We cannot believe the statesman to
have been only superficial and worthless who anticipated in his Irish
policy the convictions of Burke and the ideas of Fox.
[Sidenote: 1733--Chesterfield's governing ability]
The time, however, of Chesterfield's Irish administration is yet to
come. At present he is still only a rising man; but every one admits
his eloquence and his capacity. It was he who moved in the House of
Lords the "address of condolence, congratulation, and thanks" for the
speech from the throne on the accession of George the Second. Since
then he had served the King in diplomacy. He had been Minister to the
Hague, and the Hague then was a very different place, in the
diplomatist's sense, from what it is now or is ever likely to be again.
He had been employed on special missions and had been concerned in the
making of important treaties. He was rewarded for his services with
the Garter, and was made Lord Steward {8} of the Household. He had
distinguished himself highly as an orator in the House of Lords; had
taken a place among the very foremost parliamentary orators of the day.
But he chafed against Walpole's dictatorship, and soon began to show
that he was determined not to endure too much of it. He secretly did
all he could to mar Walpole's excise scheme; he encouraged his three
brothers to oppose the bill in the House of Commons. He said witty and
sarcastic things about the measure, which of course were duly reported
to Walpole's ears. Perhaps Chesterfield thought he stood too high to
be in danger from Walpole's hand. If he did think so he soon found out
his mistake. Walpole's hand struck him down in the most unsparing and
humiliating way. Public affront was added to political deprivation.
Lord Chesterfield was actually going up the great stairs of St. James's
Palace, on the day but one after the Excise Bill had been withdrawn,
when he was stopped by an official and bidden to go home and bring back
the white staff which was the emblem of his office, of all the chief
offices of the Household, and surrender it. Chesterfield took the
demand thus ungraciously made with his usual composure and politeness.
He wrote a letter to the King, which the King showed to Walpole, but
did not think fit to answer. The letter, Walpole afterwards told Lord
Hervey, was "extremely labored but not well done." Chesterfield
immediately passed into opposition, and became one of the bitterest and
most formidable enemies Walpole had to encounter. Walpole's friends
always justified his treatment of Chesterfield by asserting that
Chesterfield was one of a party who were caballing against the minister
at the time of the excise scheme, and while Chesterfield was a member
of the Government. Chesterfield, it was declared, used actually to
attend certain private meetings and councils of Walpole's enemies to
concert measures against him. There is nothing incredible or even
unlikely in this; but even if it were utterly untrue, we may assume
that sooner or later Walpole would have got rid of Chesterfield. {9}
Walpole's besetting weakness was that he could not endure any really
capable colleague. The moment a man showed any capacity for governing,
Walpole would appear to have made up his mind that that man and he were
not to govern together.
[Sidenote: 1733--Walpole's animosity]
Walpole made a clean sweep of the men in office whom he believed to
have acted against him. He even went so far as to deprive of their
commissions in the army two peers holding no manner of office in the
Administration, but whom he believed to have acted against him. To
strengthen himself in the House of Lords he conferred a peerage on his
attorney-general and on his solicitor-general. Philip Yorke, the
Attorney-general, became Lord Hardwicke and Chief-justice of the King's
Bench; Charles Talbot was made Lord Chancellor under the title of Lord
Talbot. Both were men of great ability. Hardwicke stood higher in the
rank at the bar than Talbot, and in the ordinary course of things he
ought to have had the position of Lord Chancellor. But Talbot was only
great as a Chancery lawyer, and knew little or nothing of common law,
and it would have been out of the question to make him Lord
Chief-justice. So Walpole devised a characteristic scheme of
compromise. Hardwicke was induced to accept the office of Lord
Chief-justice on the salary being raised from 3000 pounds to 4000
pounds, and with the further condition that an additional thousand a
year was to be paid to him out of the Lord Chancellor's salary. This
curious transaction Walpole managed through the Queen, and the Queen
managed to get the King to regard it as a clever device of his own
mention. It is worth while to note that the only charge ever made
against Hardwicke by his contemporaries was a charge of avarice; he was
stingy even in his hospitality, his enemies said--a great offence in
that day was to be parsimonious with one's guests; and malignant people
called him Judge Gripus. For aught else, his public and private
character were blameless. Hardwicke was the stronger man of the two;
Talbot the more subtle and {10} ingenious. Both were eloquent pleaders
and skilled lawyers, each in his own department. Hervey says that "no
one could make more of a good cause than Lord Hardwicke, and no one so
much of a bad cause as Lord Talbot." Hardwicke lived to have a long
career of honor, and to win a secure place in English history. Lord
Talbot became at once a commanding influence in the House of Lords.
"Our new Lord Chancellor," the Earl of Strafford, England's nominal and
ornamental representative in the negotiation for the peace of Utrecht,
writes to Swift, "at present has a great party in the House." But the
new Lord Chancellor did not live long enough for his fame. He was
destined to die within a few short years, and to leave the wool-sack
open for Lord Hardwicke.
[Sidenote: 1734--The Patriots]
The House of Commons has hardly ever been thrilled to interest and
roused to passion by a more heated, envenomed, and, in the rhetorical
sense, brilliant debate than that which took place on March 13, 1734.
The subject of the debate was the motion of a country gentleman, Mr.
William Bromley, member for Warwick, "that leave be given to bring in a
bill for repealing the Septennial Act, and for the more frequent
meeting and calling of Parliaments." The circumstances under which
this motion was brought forward gave it a peculiar importance as a
party movement. Before the debate began it was agreed, upon a formal
motion to that effect, "that the Sergeant-at-arms attending the House
should go with the mace into Westminster Hall, and into the Court of
Bequests, and places adjacent, and summon the members there to attend
the service of the House."
The general elections were approaching; the Parliament then sitting had
nearly run its course. The Patriots had been making every possible
preparation for a decisive struggle against Walpole. They had been
using every weapon which partisan hatred and political craft could
supply or suggest. The fury roused up by the Excise Bill had not yet
wholly subsided. Public opinion still throbbed and heaved like a sea
the morning after a storm. {11} The Patriots had been exerting their
best efforts to make the country dissatisfied with Walpole's foreign
policy. The changes were incessantly rung upon the alleged
depredations which the Spaniards were committing on our mercantile
marine. Long before the time for the general elections had come, the
Patriot candidates were stumping the country. Their progress through
each county was marked by the wildest riots. The riots sometimes
called for the sternest military repression. On the other hand, the
Patriots themselves were denounced and discredited by all the penmen,
pamphleteers, and orators who supported the Government on their own
account, or were hired by Walpole and Walpole's friends to support it.
So effective were some of these attacks, so damaging was the incessant
imputation that in the mouths of the Patriots patriotism meant nothing
but a desire for place and pay, that Pulteney and his comrades found it
advisable gradually to shake off the name which had been put on them,
and which they had at one time willingly adopted. They began to call
themselves "the representatives of the country interest."
The final struggle of the session was to take place on the motion for
the repeal of the Septennial Act. We have already given an account of
the passing of that Act in 1716, and of the reasons which in our
opinion justified its passing. It cannot be questioned that there is
much to be said in favor of the principle of short Parliaments, but in
Walpole's time the one great object of true statesmanship was to
strengthen the power of the House of Commons; to enable it to stand up
against the Crown and the House of Lords. It would be all but
impossible for the House of Commons to maintain this position if it
were doomed to frequent and inevitable dissolutions. Frequent
dissolution of Parliament means frequently recurring cost, struggle,
anxiety, wear and tear, to the members; and; of course, it meant all
this in much higher measure during the reign of George the Second than
it could mean in the reign of Victoria. Walpole had {12} devoted
himself to the task of strengthening the representative assembly, and
he was, therefore, well justified in resisting the motion made by Mr.
Bromley on March 13, 1734, for the repeal of the Septennial Act. Our
interest now, however, is not so much with the political aspect of the
debate as with its personal character. One illustration of the
corruption which existed at the time may be mentioned in passing. It
was used as an argument against long Parliaments, but assuredly at that
day it might have been told of short Parliaments as well. Mr. Watkin
Williams Wynn mentioned the fact that a former member of the House of
Commons, afterwards one of the judges of the Common Pleas, "a gentleman
who is now dead, and therefore I may name him," declared that he "had
never been in the borough he represented in Parliament, nor had ever
seen or spoken with any of his electors." Of course this worthy
person, "afterwards one of the judges of the Common Pleas," had simply
sent down his agent and bought the place. "I believe," added Mr. Wynn,
"I could without much difficulty name some who are now in the same
situation." No doubt he could.
[Sidenote: 1734--A supposititious minister]
Sir William Wyndham came on to speak. Wyndham was now, of course, the
close ally of Bolingbroke. He hated Walpole. He made his whole speech
one long denunciation of bribery and corruption, and gave it to be
understood that in his firm conviction Walpole only wanted a long
Parliament because it gave him better opportunities to bribe and to
corrupt. He went on to draw a picture of what might come to pass under
an unscrupulous minister, sustained by a corrupted septennial
Parliament. "Let us suppose," he said, "a gentleman at the head of the
Administration whose only safety depends upon his corrupting the
members of this House." Of course Sir William went on to declare that
he only put this as a supposition, but it was certainly a thing which
might come to pass, and was within the limits of possibility. If it
did come to pass, could not such a minister promise himself more
success in a septennial than he {13} could in a triennial Parliament?
"It is an old maxim," Wyndham said, "that every man has his price."
This allusion to the old maxim is worthy of notice in a debate on the
conduct and character of Walpole. Evidently Wyndham did not fall into
the mistake which posterity appears to have made, and attribute to
Walpole himself the famous words about man and his price. Suppose a
case "which, though it has not happened, may possibly happen. Let us
suppose a man abandoned to all notions of virtue and honor, of no great
family, and of but a mean fortune, raised to be chief Minister of State
by the concurrence of many whimsical events; afraid or unwilling to
trust to any but creatures of his own making, and most of these equally
abandoned to all notions of virtue or honor; ignorant of the true
interest of his country, and consulting nothing but that of enriching
and aggrandizing himself and his favorites." Sir William described
this supposititious personage as employing in foreign affairs none but
men whose education made it impossible for them to have such
qualifications as could be of any service to their country or give any
credit to their negotiations. Under the rule of this minister the
orator described "the true interests of the nation neglected, her honor
and credit lost, her trade insulted, her merchants plundered, and her
sailors murdered, and all these things overlooked for fear only his
administration should be endangered. Suppose this man possessed of
great wealth, the plunder of the nation, with a Parliament of his own
choosing, most of their seats purchased, and their votes bought at the
expense of the public treasure. In such a Parliament let us suppose
attempts made to inquire into his conduct or to relieve the nation from
the distress he has brought upon it." Would it not be easy to suppose
all such attempts discomfited by a corrupt majority of the creatures
whom this minister "retains in daily pay or engages in his particular
interest by granting them those posts and places which never ought to
be given to any but for the good of the public?" Sir William pictured
this minister {14} pluming himself upon "his scandalous victory"
because he found he had got "a Parliament, like a packed jury, ready to
acquit him at all adventures." Then, glowing with his subject, Sir
William Wyndham ventured to suggest a case which he blandly declared
had never yet happened in this nation, but which still might possibly
happen. "With such a minister and such a Parliament, let us suppose a
prince upon the throne, either from want of true information or for
some other reason, ignorant and unacquainted with the inclinations and
the interest of his people, weak, and hurried away by unbounded
ambition and insatiable avarice. Could any greater curse befall a
nation than such a prince on the throne, advised, and solely advised,
by such a minister, and that minister supported by such a Parliament?
The nature of mankind," the orator exclaimed, "cannot be altered by
human laws; the existence of such a prince, of such a minister, we
cannot prevent by Act of Parliament; but the existence of such a
Parliament, I think, we may; and, as such a Parliament is much more
likely to exist, and may do more mischief while the Septennial Law
remains in force than if it were repealed, therefore I am most heartily
in favor of its immediate repeal."
[Sidenote: 1734--An effective reply]
This was a very pretty piece of invective. It was full of spirit,
fire, and force. Nobody could have failed for a moment to know the
original of the portrait Sir William Wyndham professed to be painting
from imagination. It was not indeed a true portrait of Walpole, but it
was a perfect photograph of what his enemies declared and even believed
Walpole to be. Such was the picture which the _Craftsman_ and the
pamphleteers were painting every day as the likeness of the great
minister; but it was something new, fresh, and bold to paint such a
picture under the eyes of Walpole himself. The speech was hailed with
the wildest enthusiasm and delight by all the Jacobites, Patriots, and
representatives of the country interest, and there is even some good
reason to believe that it gave a certain secret satisfaction to some of
those who most {15} steadily supported Walpole by their votes. But
Walpole was not by any means the sort of man whom it is quite safe to
visit with such an attack. The speech of Sir William Wyndham had
doubtless been carefully prepared, and Walpole had but a short time,
but a breathing-space, while two or three speeches were made, in which
to get ready his reply. When he rose to address the House it soon
became evident that he had something to say, and that he was determined
to give his adversary at least as good as he brought. Nothing could be
more effective than Walpole's method of reply. It was not to Sir
William Wyndham that he replied; at least it was not Sir William
Wyndham whom he attacked. Walpole passed Wyndham by altogether.
Wyndham he well knew to be but the mouth-piece of Bolingbroke, and it
was at Bolingbroke that he struck. "I hope I may be allowed," he said,
"to draw a picture in my turn; and I may likewise say that I do not
mean to give a description of any particular person now in being.
Indeed," Walpole added, ingenuously, "the House being cleared, I am
sure no person that hears me can come within the description of the
person I am to suppose." This was a clever touch, and gave a new barb
to the dart which Walpole was about to fling. The House was cleared;
none but members were present; the description applied to none within
hearing. Bolingbroke, of course, was not a member; he could not hear
what Walpole was saying. Then Walpole went on to paint his picture.
He supposed, "in this or in some other unfortunate country, an
anti-minister . . . in a country where he really ought not to be, and
where he could not have been but by an effect of too much goodness and
mercy, yet endeavoring with all his might and with all his art to
destroy the fountain from whence that mercy flowed." Walpole depicted
this anti-minister as one "who thinks himself a person of so great and
extensive parts, and of so many eminent qualifications, that he looks
upon himself as the only person in the kingdom capable of conducting
the public affairs of the nation." {16} Walpole supposed "this fine
gentleman lucky enough to have gained over to his party some persons of
really great parts, of ancient families, and of large fortunes, and
others of desperate views, arising from disappointed and malicious
hearts." Walpole grouped with fine freehand-drawing the band of
conspirators thus formed under the leadership of this anti-minister.
All the band were moved in their political behavior by him, and by him
solely. All they said, either in private or public, was "only a
repetition of the words he had put into their mouths, and a spitting
forth of the venom which he had infused into them." Walpole asked the
House to suppose, nevertheless, that this anti-minister was not really
liked by any even of those who blindly followed him, and was hated by
the rest of mankind. He showed him contracting friendships and
alliances with all foreign ministers who were hostile to his own
country, and endeavoring to get at the political secrets of English
administrations in order that he might betray them to foreign and
hostile States. Further, he asked the House to suppose this man
travelling from foreign court to court, making it his trade to betray
the secrets of each court where he had most lately been, void of all
faith and honor, delighting to be treacherous and traitorous to every
master whom he had served and who had shown favor to him. "Sir, I
could carry my suppositions a great deal further; but if we can suppose
such a one as I have pictured, can there be imagined a greater disgrace
to human nature than a wretch like this?"
[Sidenote: 1734--An unstable alliance]
The ministers triumphed by a majority of 247 to 184. Walpole was the
victor in more than the mere parliamentary majority. He had conquered
in the fierce parliamentary duel.
There is a common impression that Walpole's speech hunted Bolingbroke
out of the country; that it drove him into exile and obscurity again,
as Cicero's invective drove Catiline into open rebellion. This,
however, is not the fact. A comparison of dates settles the question.
The debate on the Septennial Bill took place in March, 1734; {17}
Bolingbroke did not leave England until the early part of 1735. The
actual date of his leaving England is not certain, but Pulteney,
writing to Swift on April 29, 1735, adds in a postscript: "Lord
Bolingbroke is going to France with Lord Berkeley, but, I believe, will
return again in a few months." No one could have known better than
Pulteney that Bolingbroke was not likely to return to England in a few
months. Still, although Bolingbroke did not make a hasty retreat,
history is well warranted in saying that Walpole's powerful piece of
invective closed the door once for all against Bolingbroke's career in
English politics. Bolingbroke could not but perceive that Walpole's
accusations against him sank deeply into the heart of the English
people. He could not but see that some of those with whom he had been
most closely allied of late years were impressed with the force of the
invective; not, indeed, by its moral force, but by the thought of the
influence it must have on the country. It may well have occurred to
Pulteney, for example, as he listened to Walpole's denunciation, that
the value of an associate was more than doubtful whom the public could
recognize at a glance as the original of such a portrait. There had
been disputes now and then already. Bolingbroke was too much disposed
to regard himself as master of the situation; Pulteney was not
unnaturally inclined to believe that he had a much better understanding
of the existing political conditions; he complained that Wyndham
submitted too much to Bolingbroke's dictation. The whole alliance was
founded on unstable and unwholesome principles; it was sure to crumble
and collapse sooner or later. There can be no question but that
Walpole's invective precipitated the collapse. With consummate
political art he had drawn his picture of Bolingbroke in such form as
to make it especially odious just then to Englishmen. The mere
supposition that an English statesman has packed cards with a foreign
enemy is almost enough in itself at any time to destroy a great career;
to turn a popular favorite into an object of national distrust {18} or
even national detestation. But in Bolingbroke's case it was no mere
supposition. No one could doubt that he had often traded on the
political interests of his own country. In truth, there was but little
of the Englishman about him. His gifts and his vices were alike of a
foreign stamp. Walpole was, for good or ill, a genuine sturdy
Englishman. His words, his actions, his policy, his schemes, his
faults, his vices, were thorough English. It was as an Englishman, as
an English citizen, more than as a statesman or an orator, that he bore
down Bolingbroke in this memorable debate.
[Sidenote: 1734--Bolingbroke a hurtful ally]
Bolingbroke must have felt himself borne down. He did not long carry
on the struggle into which he had plunged with so much alacrity and
energy, with such malice and such hope. Pulteney advised him to go
back for a while to France, and in the early part of 1734 he took the
advice and went. "My part is over," he wrote to Wyndham, in words
which have a certain pathetic dignity in them, "and he who remains on
the stage after his part is over deserves to be hissed off." His
departure--it might almost be called his second flight--to the
Continent was probably hastened also by the knowledge that a pamphlet
was about to be published by some of his enemies, containing a series
of letters which had passed between him and James Stuart's secretary,
after Bolingbroke's dismissal from the service of James in 1716. The
pamphlet was suppressed immediately on its appearance, but its contents
have been republished, and they were certainly not of a character to
render Bolingbroke any the less unpopular among Englishmen.
The correspondence consisted in a series of letters that passed between
Bolingbroke, through his secretary, and Mr. James Murray, acting on
behalf of James Stuart, from whom he afterwards received the title of
Earl of Dunbar.
The letters are little more than mere recriminations. Bolingbroke is
accused of having brought about the failure of the insurrection of 1715
by weakness, folly, and {19} even downright treachery. Bolingbroke
flings back the charges at the head of James's friends, and even of
James himself. There was nothing brought out in 1734 and 1735 to
affect the career and conduct of Bolingbroke which all England did not
know pretty well already. Still, the revival of these old stories must
have seemed to Bolingbroke very inconvenient and dangerous at such a
time. The correspondence reminded England once more that Bolingbroke
had been the agent of the exiled Stuarts in the work of stirring up a
civil war for the overthrow of the House of Hanover. No doubt the
publication quickened Bolingbroke's desire to get out of England. But
he would have gone, in any case; he would have had to go. The whole
cabal with Pulteney had been a failure; Bolingbroke would thenceforward
be a hinderance rather than a help to the Patriots. His counsel was of
no further avail, and he only brought odium on them; indeed, his advice
had from first to last been misleading and ill-omened. The Patriots
were now only anxious to get rid of him; Pulteney gave Bolingbroke
pretty clearly to understand that they wanted him to go, and he went.
Walpole's speech, and the whole of the debate of which it made so
striking a feature, could not but have a powerful effect on the general
elections. Parliament was dissolved on April 10, 1734, after having
nearly run the full course of seven years. Seldom has a general
election been contested with such a prodigality of partisan fury and
public corruption. Walpole scattered his purchase-money everywhere; he
sowed with the sack and not with the hand, to adopt the famous saying
applied by a Greek poetess to Pindar. In supporting two candidates for
Norfolk, who were both beaten, despite his support, he spent out of his
private fortune at least 10,000 pounds; one contemporary says 60,000
pounds. But the Opposition spent just as freely--more freely, perhaps.
It must be remembered that even so pure-minded a man as Burke has
contended that "the charge of systematic corruption" was less
applicable, perhaps, to Walpole "than to any other minister who ever
{20} served the Crown for such a length of time." The Opposition were
decidedly more reckless in their incitements to violence than the
friends of the Ministry. The _Craftsman_ boasted that when Walpole
came to give his vote as an honorary freeman at Norwich the people
called aloud to have the bribery oath administered to him; called on
him to swear that he had received no money for his vote. All the
efforts of the Patriots, or the representatives of the country
interest, as they now preferred to call themselves, failed to bring
about the end they aimed at. They did, indeed, increase their
parliamentary vote a little, but the increase was not enough to make
any material difference in their position. All the wit, the eloquence,
the craft, the courage, the unscrupulous use of every weapon of
political warfare that could be seized and handled, had been thrown
away. Walpole was, for the time, just as strong as ever.
[Sidenote: 1735--Swift's opinion of Arbuthnot]
We turn aside from the movement and rush of politics to lay a memorial
spray on the grave of a good and a gifted man. Dr. Arbuthnot died in
February, 1735, only sixty years old. "Poor Arbuthnot," Pulteney
writes to Swift, "who grieved to see the wickedness of mankind, and was
particularly esteemed of his own countrymen, is dead. He lived the
last six months in a bad state of health, and hoping every night would
be his last; not that he endured any bodily pain, but as he was quite
weary of the world, and tired with so much bad company." Alderman
Barber, in a letter to Swift a few days after, says much the same. He
is afraid, he tells Swift, that Arbuthnot did not take as much care of
himself as he ought to have done. "Possibly he might think the play
not worth the candle. You may remember Dr. Garth said he was glad when
he was dying, for he was weary of having his shoes pulled off and on."
A letter from Arbuthnot himself to Swift, written a short time before
his death, is not, however, filled with mere discontent, does not
breathe only a morbid weariness of life, but rather testifies to a
serene and noble resignation. "I am going," he tells Swift, "out {21}
of this troublesome world, and you, amongst the rest of my friends,
shall have my last prayers and good wishes. I am afraid, my dear
friend, we shall never see one another more in this world. I shall to
the last moment preserve my love and esteem for you, being well assured
you will never leave the paths of virtue and honor for all that is in
the world. This world is not worth the least deviation from that way."
Thus the great physician, scientific scholar, and humorist awaited his
death and died. We have spoken already in this history of Arbuthnot's
marvellous humor and satire. Macaulay, in his essay on "The Life and
Writings of Addison," says "there are passages in Arbuthnot's satirical
works which we, at least, cannot distinguish from Swift's best
writing." Swift himself spoke of Arbuthnot in yet higher terms. "He
has more wit than we all have," was Swift's declaration, "and his
humanity is equal to his wit." There are not many satirists known to
men during all literary history of whom quite so much could be said
with any faintest color of a regard for truth. Swift was too warm in
his friendly panegyric on Arbuthnot's humor, but he did not too highly
estimate Arbuthnot's humanity. Humor is among man's highest gifts, and
has done the world splendid service; but humor and humanity together
make the mercy winged with brave actions, which, according to
Massinger, befit "a soul moulded for heaven" and destined to be "made a
star there."
{22}