ENGLAND'S HONOR AND JENKINS'S EAR.
[Sidenote: 1738--The passion of war]
"Madam, there are fifty thousand men slain this year in Europe, and not
one Englishman among them." This was the proud boast which, as has
been already mentioned, Walpole was able to make to Queen Caroline not
very long before her death, when she was trying to stir him up to a
more agressive policy in the affairs of the Continent. Walpole's words
sound almost like an anticipation of Prince Bismarck's famous
declaration that the Eastern Question was not worth to Germany the life
of a single Pomeranian grenadier. But Prince Bismarck was more
fortunate than Walpole in his policy of peace. He had secured a
position of advantage for himself in maintaining that policy which
Walpole never had. Prince Bismarck had twice over made it clear to all
the world that he could conduct to the most complete success a policy
of uncompromising war. Walpole had all the difficulty in keeping to
his policy of peace which a statesman always has who is suspected,
rightly or wrongly, of a willingness to purchase peace at almost any
price. It is melancholy to have to make the statement, but the
statement is nevertheless true, that in the England of Walpole's day,
and in the England of our own day as well, the statesman who is known
to love peace is sure to have it shrieked at him in some crisis that he
does not love the honor of his country. A periodical outbreak of the
craving or lust for war seems to be one of the passions and one of the
afflictions of almost every great commonwealth in Europe. A wise and
just policy may have secured a peace that has lasted for years; but the
mere fact that peace has lasted for years {148} seems to many
unthinking people reason enough why the country should be favored with
a taste of war. We are constantly declaring that England is not a
military nation, and yet no statesman is ever so popular for the hour
in England as the statesman who fires the people with the passion of
war. Many a minister, weak and unpopular in his domestic policy, has
suddenly made himself the hero and the darling of the moment by
declaring that some foreign state has insulted England, and that the
time has come when the sword must be drawn to defend the nation's
honor. Then "away to heaven, respective lenity" indeed! The appeal
acts like a charm to call out the passion and to silence the reason of
vast masses of the population in all ranks and conditions. Even among
the working-classes and the poor--who, one might imagine, have all to
lose and nothing to gain by war--it is by no means certain that the war
fever will not flame for the hour. There are seasons when, as Burke
has said, "even the humblest of us are degraded into the vices and
follies of kings."
[Sidenote: 1738--The patriots' war-cry]
War had no fascination for Walpole. He saw it only in its desolation,
its cruelty, its folly, and its cost. At the time which we have now
reached he looked with clear gaze over the European continent, and he
saw nothing in the action of foreign Powers which concerned the honor
and the interest of England enough to make it necessary for her to draw
the sword. But, unfortunately for his country and for his fame,
Walpole was not a statesman of firm and lofty principle. He was always
willing to come to terms. In the domestic affairs of England he
allowed grievances to exist which he had again and again condemned and
deplored, and which every one knew he was sincerely desirous to remove;
he allowed them to exist because it might have been a source of
annoyance to the King if the minister had troubled him about such a
subject. He acted on this policy with regard to the grievances of
which the Dissenters complained, and, as he always admitted, very
justly complained. Much as he detested a policy of war, he was not the
minister who would {149} stand by a policy of peace at the risk of
losing his popularity and his power. Much as he loved peace, he loved
his place as Prime Minister still more. It is probable that his
enemies gave him credit for greater fixity of purpose in regard to his
peace policy than he really possessed. They believed, perhaps, that
they had only to get up a good, popular war-cry in England, and that
Walpole would have to go out of office. They told themselves that he
would not make war. On this faith they based their schemes and founded
their hopes. It would have been well for Walpole and for England if
their belief had been justified by events.
The Patriots raised their war-cry. The honor of England had been
insulted. Her claims had been rejected with insolent scorn. Her flag
had been trampled on; her seamen had been imprisoned, mutilated,
tortured; and all this by whom? By whom, indeed, but the old and
implacable enemy of England, the Power which had sent the Armada to
invade England's shores and to set up the Inquisition among the English
people--by Spain, of course, by Spain! In Spanish dungeons brave
Englishmen were wearing out their lives. In mid-ocean English ships
were stopped and searched by arrogant officers of the King of Spain.
Why did Spain venture on such acts? Because, the Patriots cried out,
Spain believed that England's day of strength had gone, and that
England could now be insulted with impunity. What wonder, they asked,
in patriotic passion, if Spain or any other foreign state should
believe such things? Was there not a Minister now at the head of
affairs in England, now grasping all the various powers of the state in
his own hands, who was notoriously willing to put up with any insult,
to subject his country to any degradation, rather than venture on even
a remonstrance that might lead to war? Let the flag of England be torn
down and trailed in the dust--what then? What cared the Minister whose
only fear was, not of dishonor, but of danger.
This was the fiery stuff which the Patriots kept {150} flooding the
country with; which they poured out in speeches and pamphlets, and
pasquinades and lampoons. Some of them probably came in the end to
believe it all themselves. Walpole was assailed every hour--he was
held up to public hatred and scorn as if he had betrayed his country.
Bolingbroke from his exile contributed his share to the literature of
blood, and soon came over from his exile to take a larger share in it.
The _Craftsman_ ran over with furious diatribes against the Minister of
Peace. Caricatures of all kinds represented Walpole abasing himself
before Spain and entering into secret engagements with her, to the
prejudice and detriment of England. Ballads were hawked and sung
through the streets which described Walpole as acknowledging to the
Spanish Don that he hated the English merchants and traders just as
much as the Don did, and that he was heartily glad when Spain applied
her rod to them. The country became roused to the wildest passion; the
Patriots were carrying it all their own way.
What was it all about? What was Spain doing? What ought England to do?
[Sidenote: 1738--The treaties with Spain]
The whole excitement arose out of certain long-standing trade disputes
between England and Spain in the New World. These disputes had been
referred to in the Treaty of Utrecht, which was supposed to have
settled them in 1713; and again in the Treaty of Seville, which was
believed to have finally settled them in 1729. England had recognized
the right of Spain to regulate the trade with Spanish colonies. Spain
agreed that England should have the privilege of supplying the Spanish
colonies with slaves. This noble privilege English traders exercised
to the full. It is not very gratifying to have to recollect that two
of England's great disputes with Spain were about England's claim to an
unlimited right to sell slaves to the Spanish colonies. To England, or
at least to the English South Sea Company, was also conceded the
permission to send one merchant vessel each year to the South Seas with
as much English goods to sell to the Spanish colonies as a {151} ship
of 500 tons could carry. As everybody might have expected, the
provisions of the treaty were constantly broken through. The English
traders were very eager to sell their goods; the Spanish colonists were
very glad to get them to buy. All other commerce than that in slaves
and the one annual shipload of English goods was strictly prohibited by
Spain. The whole arrangement now seems in the highest degree
artificial and absurd; but it was not an uncommon sort of international
arrangement then. As was to be expected, the English traders set going
a huge illicit trade in the South Seas. This was done partly by the
old familiar smuggling process, and partly, too, by keeping little
fleets of smaller vessels swarming off the coasts and reloading the one
legitimate vessel as often as her contents were sent into a port. This
ingenious device was said to have been detected by the Spanish
authorities in various places. The Spaniards retaliated by stopping
and searching English vessels cruising anywhere near the coast of a
Spanish colony, and by arresting and imprisoning the officers and
sailors of English merchantmen. The Spaniards asserted, and were able
in many instances to make their assertions good, that whole squadrons
of English trading vessels sometimes entered the Spanish ports under
pretence of being driven there by stress of weather, or by the need of
refitting and refreshing; and that, once in the port, they managed to
get their cargoes safely ashore. Sometimes, too, it was said, the
vessels lay off the shore without going into the harbor; and then
smugglers came off in their long, low, swift boats, and received the
English goods and carried them into the port. The fact undoubtedly was
that the English merchants were driving a roaring trade with the
Spanish colonies; just as the Spanish authorities might very well have
known that they would be certain to do. Where one set of men are
anxious to sell, and another set are just as anxious to buy, it needs
very rigorous coastguard watching to prevent the goods being sent in
and the money taken away.
This fact, however, does not say anything against the {152} right of
Spain to enforce, if she could, the conditions of the treaties. On
that point Spain was only asserting her indisputable right. But would
it be reasonable to expect that Spain or any other country could
endeavor to maintain her right in such a dispute, and under such
conditions, without occasional rashness, violence, and injustice on the
part of her officials? There can be no doubt that many high-handed and
arbitrary acts were done against English subjects by the officers of
Spanish authority. On every real and every reported and every
imaginary act of Spanish harshness the Patriots seized with avidity.
They presented petitions, moved for papers, moved that this injured
person and that be allowed to appear and state his case at the bar of
the House of Commons. Some English sailors and other Englishmen were
thus allowed to appear at the bar, and did make statements of outrage
and imprisonment. Some of these statements were doubtless true, some
were probably exaggerated; the men who made them were not on oath;
there was every temptation to exaggerate, because it had become
apparently the duty of every true Patriot who loved old England to
believe anything said by anybody against Spain. The same sort of thing
has happened again and again in times nearer to our own, where some
class of English traders have been trying to carry on a forbidden
traffic with the subjects of a foreign sovereign. We see the same
things, now in China, and now in Burmah; dress goods in one place,
opium in another, slaves in another; reckless smuggling by the traders,
overdone reprisals by the authorities; and then we hear the familiar
appeal to England not to allow her sons to be insulted and imprisoned
by some insolent foreign Power.
Walpole was not inclined to allow English subjects to be molested with
impunity. But he saw no reason to believe that Spain intended anything
of the kind. The advices he received from the British Minister at the
Spanish Court spoke rather of delays and slow formalities, and various
small disputes and misunderstandings, than of {153} wilful denial of
justice. Walpole felt satisfied that by putting a little diplomatic
pressure on the proceedings every satisfaction fairly due to England
and English subjects could be obtained. He, therefore, refused for a
long time to allow his hand to be forced by the Opposition, and was
full of hope that the good sense of the country in general would
sustain him against the united strength of his enemies, as it had so
often done before.
[Sidenote: 1738--Alderman Perry's motion]
Walpole did not know how strong his enemies were this time. He did not
know what a capital cry they had got, what a powerful appeal to
national passion they could put into voice, and what a loud reply the
national passion would make to the appeal. On Saturday, March 2, 1738,
a petition was presented to the House of Commons from divers merchants,
planters, and others trading to and interested in the British
plantations in America. The petition was presented by Mr. Perry, one
of the representatives of London, and an alderman of the City. The
petition set forth a long history of the alleged grievances, and of the
denial of redress, and prayed the House to "provide such timely and
adequate remedy for putting an end to all insults and depredations on
them and their fellow-subjects as to the House shall seem meet, as well
as procure such relief for the unhappy sufferers as the nature of the
case and the justice of their cause may require; and that they may be
heard by themselves and counsel thereupon."
On the same day several other petitions from cities, and from private
individuals, were presented on the same subject. The debate on Mr.
Perry's motion mainly turned, at first, on the minor question, whether
the house would admit the petitioners to be heard by themselves and
also by counsel, or, according to the habit of the House, by themselves
or counsel. Yet, short and almost formal as the debate might have
been, the opponents of the Government contrived to import into it a
number of assumptions, and an amount of passion, such as the earlier
stages of a difficult and delicate international dispute are seldom
allowed to exhibit. Even so cautious and respectable a man as Sir
{154} John Barnard, a typical English merchant of the highest class,
did not hesitate to speak of the grievances as if they were all
established and admitted, and the action of Spain as a wilful outrage
upon the trade, the honor, and the safety of Great Britain. Walpole
argued that the petitioners should be heard by themselves and not by
counsel; but the main object of his speech was to appeal to the House
"not to work upon the passions where the head is to be informed." Mr.
Robert Wilmot thereupon arose, and replied in an oration belonging to
that "spread-eagle" order which is familiar to American political
controversy. "Talk of working on the passions," this orator exclaimed;
"can any man's passions be wound up to a greater height, can any man's
indignation be more raised, than every free-born Briton's must be when
he reads a letter which I have received this morning, and which I have
now in my hand? This letter, sir, gives an account that seventy of our
brave sailors are now in chains in Spain. Our countrymen in chains,
and slaves to Spaniards! Is not this enough to fire the coldest? Is
not this enough to rouse all the vengeance of a national resentment?
Shall we sit here debating about words and forms while the sufferings
of our countrymen call out loudly for redress?"
[Sidenote: 1738--An unlucky argument]
Pulteney himself, when speaking on the general question, professed,
indeed, not to assume the charges in the petitions to be true before
they had been established, but he proceeded to deal with them on
something very like a positive assumption that they would be
established. Thereupon he struck the key-note of the whole outcry that
was to be raised against the Ministry. Could any one believe, he
indignantly asked, that the Court of Spain "would have presumed to
trifle in such a manner with any ministry but one which they thought
wanted either courage or inclination to resent such treatment?" He
accused the Ministry of "a scandalous breach of duty" and "the most
infamous pusillanimity." Later in the same day Sir John Barnard moved
an Address to the Crown, asking for papers to be laid before the House.
Walpole did not actually oppose {155} the motion, and only suggested a
modification of it, but he earnestly entreated the House not, at that
moment, to press the Sovereign for a publication of the latest
despatches. He went so far as to let the House understand that the
latest reply from Spain was not satisfactory, and that it might be
highly injurious to the prospects of peace if it were then to be given
to the world; and he pointed to the obvious fact that "when once a
paper is read in this House the contents of it cannot be long a secret
to the world." The King, he said, had still good hopes of being able
to prevail on Spain to make an honorable and ample reparation for any
wrongs that might have been done to Englishmen. "We ought," Walpole
pleaded, "to wait, at least, till his Majesty shall tell us from the
throne that all hopes of obtaining satisfaction are over. Then it will
be time enough to declare for a war with Spain." Unfortunately,
Walpole went on to a mode of argument which was, of all others, the
best calculated to give his enemies an advantage over him. His
language was strong and clear; his sarcasm was well merited; but the
time was not suited for an appeal to such very calm common-sense as
that to which the great minister was trying in vain to address himself.
"The topic of national resentment for national injury affords," Walpole
said, "a fair field for declamation; and, to hear gentlemen speak on
that head, one would be apt to believe that victory and glory are bound
to attend the resolutions of our Parliament and the efforts of our
arms. But gentlemen ought to reflect that there are many instances in
the history of the world, and some in the annals of England, which
prove that conquest is not always inseparable from the justest cause or
most exalted courage."
The hearts of the Patriots must have rejoiced when they heard such an
argument from the lips of Walpole. For what did it amount to? Only
this--that this un-English Minister, this unworthy servant of the
crown, positively admitted into his own mind the idea that there was
any possibility of England's being worsted in any war with {156} any
state or any number of states! Fancy any one allowing such a thought
to remain for an instant in his mind! As if it were not a settled
thing, specially arranged by Providence, that one Englishman is a match
for at least any six Spaniards, Frenchmen, or other contemptible
foreigners! Walpole's great intellectual want was the lack of
imagination. If he had possessed more imagination, he would have been
not only a greater orator, but a greater debater. He would have seen
more clearly the effect of an argument on men with minds and
temperaments unlike his own. In this particular instance the appeal to
what he would have considered cool common-sense was utterly damaging to
him. Pulteney pounced on him at once. "From longer forbearance," he
exclaimed, "we have everything to fear; from acting vigorously we have
everything to hope." He admitted that a war with Spain was to be
avoided, if it could be avoided with honor; but, he asked, "will it
ever be the opinion of an English statesman that, in order to avoid
inconvenience, we are to embrace a dishonor? Where is the brave man,"
he demanded, "who in a just cause will submissively lie down under
insults? No!--in such a case he will do all that prudence and
necessity dictate in order to procure satisfaction, and leave the rest
to Providence." Pulteney spoke with undisguised contempt of the
sensitive honor of the Spanish people. "I do not see," he
declared--and this was meant as a keen personal thrust at Walpole--"how
we can comply with the form of Spanish punctilio without sacrificing
some of the essentials of British honor. Let gentlemen but consider
whether our prince's and our country's honor is not as much engaged to
revenge our injuries as the honor of the Spaniards can be to support
their insolence." There never, probably, was a House of Commons so
cool-headed and cautious as not to be stirred out of reason and into
passion by so well-contrived an appeal. The appeal was followed up by
others. "Perhaps," Sir William Wyndham said, "if we lose the character
of being good fighters, we shall at least gain that {157} of being
excellent negotiators." But he would not leave to Walpole the full
benefit of even that doubtful change of character. "The character of a
mere negotiator," he insisted, "had never been affected by England
without her losing considerable, both in her interest at home and her
influence abroad. This truth will appear plainly to any one who
compares the figure this nation made in Europe under Queen Elizabeth
with the figure she made under her successor, King James the First.
The first never treated with an insulting enemy; the other never durst
break with a treacherous friend. The first thought it her glory to
command peace; the other thought it no dishonor to beg it. In her
reign every treaty was crowned with glory; in his no peace was attended
with tranquillity; in short, her care was to improve, his to depress
the true British spirit." Even the cool-headed and wise Sir John
Barnard cried out that "a dishonorable peace is worse than a
destructive war."
[Sidenote: 1738--Wyndham's taunts]
We need not go through all the series of debates in the Lords and
Commons. It is enough to say that every one of these debates made the
chances of a peaceful arrangement grow less and less. The impression
of the Patriots seemed to be that Walpole was to be held responsible
for every evasion, every delay, every rash act, and every denial of
justice on the part of Spain. With this conviction, it was clear to
them that the more they attacked the Spanish Government the more they
attacked and damaged Walpole. Full of this spirit, therefore, they
launched out in every debate about Spanish treachery, and Spanish
falsehood, and Spanish cruelty, and Spanish religious faith in a manner
that might have seemed deliberately designed to render a peaceful
settlement of any question impossible between England and Spain. Yet
we do not believe that the main object of the Patriots was to force
England into a war with Spain. Their main object was to force Walpole
out of office. They were for a long time under the impression that he
would resign rather than make war. Once he resigned, the Patriots
would very soon abate {158} their war fury, and try whether the quarrel
might not be settled in peace with honor. But they had allowed
themselves to be driven too far along the path of war; and they had not
taken account of the fact that the great peace Minister might, after
all, prefer staying in office and making war to going out of office and
leaving some rival to make it.
[Sidenote: 1738--Walpole almost alone]
Suddenly there came to the aid of the Patriots and their policy the
portentous story of Captain Jenkins and his ear. Captain Jenkins had
sailed on board his vessel, the _Rebecca_, from Jamaica for London, and
off the coast of Havana he was boarded by a revenue-cutter of Spain,
which proceeded to subject him and his vessel to the right of search.
Jenkins declared that he had been fearfully maltreated; that the
Spanish officers had him hanged up at the yard-arm and cut down when he
was half-dead; that they slashed at his head with their cutlasses and
hacked his left ear nearly off; and that, to complete the measure of
their outrages, one of them actually tore off his bleeding ear, flung
it in his face, and bade him carry it home to his king and tell him
what had been done. To this savage order Jenkins reported that he was
ready with a reply: "I commend," he said, "my soul to God, and my cause
to my country"--a very eloquent and telling little sentence, which
gives good reason to think of what Jenkins could have done after
preparation in the House of Commons if he could throw off such rhetoric
unprepared, and in spite of the disturbing effect of having just been
half-hanged and much mutilated. Jenkins showed, indeed, remarkable
presence of mind in every way. He prudently brought home the severed
ear with him, and invited all patriotic Englishmen to look at it.
Scepticism itself could not, for a while at all events, refuse to
believe that the Spaniards had cut off Jenkins's ear, when, behold!
there was the ear itself to tell the story. Later on, indeed,
Scepticism did begin to assert herself. Were there not other ways, it
was asked, by which Englishmen might have lost an ear as well as by the
fury of the hateful Spaniards? {159} Were there not British pillories?
Whether Jenkins sacrificed his ear to the cause of his country abroad
or to the criminal laws of his country at home, it seems to be quite
settled now that his story was a monstrous exaggeration, if not a pure
invention. Burke has distinctly stigmatized it as "the fable of
Jenkins's ear." The fable, however, did its work for that time. It
was eagerly caught up and believed in; people wanted to believe in it,
and the ear was splendid evidence. The mutilation of Jenkins played
much the same part in England that the fabulous insult of the King of
Prussia to the French envoy played in the France of 1870. The
eloquence of Pulteney, the earnestness of Wyndham, the intriguing
genius of Bolingbroke, seemed only to have been agencies to prepare the
way for the triumph of Jenkins and his severed ear. The outcry all
over the country began to make Walpole feel at last that something
would have to be done. His own constitutional policy came against him
in this difficulty. He had broken the power of the House of Lords and
had strengthened that of the House of Commons. The hereditary Chamber
might perhaps be relied upon to stand firmly against a popular clamor,
but it would be impossible to expect such firmness at such a time from
an elective assembly of almost any sort. In this instance, however,
Walpole found himself worse off in the House of Lords than even in the
House of Commons. The House of Lords was stimulated by the really
powerful eloquence of Carteret and of Chesterfield, and there was no
man on the ministerial side of the House who could stand up with any
effect against such accomplished and unscrupulous political gladiators.
Walpole appealed to the Parliament not to take any step which would
render a peaceful settlement impossible, and he promised to make the
most strenuous efforts to obtain a prompt consideration of England's
claims. He set to work energetically for this purpose. His
difficulties were greatly increased by the unfriendly conduct of the
Spanish envoy, who was on terms of confidence with the Patriots, and
went about everywhere declaring {160} that Walpole was trying to
deceive the English people as well as the Spanish Government. It must
have needed all Walpole's strength of will to sustain him against so
many difficulties and so many enemies at such a crisis. It had not
been his way to train up statesmen to help him in his work, and now he
stood almost alone.
The negotiations were further complicated by the disputes between
England and Spain as to the right of English traders to cut logwood in
Campeachy Bay, and as to the settlement of the boundaries of the new
English colonies of Florida and Carolina in North America, and the
rival claims of England and Spain to this or that strip of border
territory. Sometimes, however, when an international dispute has to be
glossed over, rather than settled, to the full satisfaction of either
party, it is found a convenient thing for diplomatists to have a great
many subjects of disputation wrapped up in one arrangement. Walpole
was sincerely anxious to give Spain a last chance; but the Spanish
people, on their side, were stirred to bitterness and to passion by the
vehement denunciations of the English Opposition. Even then, when
daily papers were little known to the population of either London or
Madrid, people in London and in Madrid did somehow get to know that
there had been fierce exchange of international dislike and defiance.
Walpole, however, still clung to his policy of peace, and his influence
in the House of Commons was commanding enough to get his proposals
accepted there. In the House of Lords the Ministry were nowhere in
debate. Something, indeed, should be said for Lord Hervey, who had
been raised to the Upper House as Baron Hervey of Ickworth in 1733, and
who made some speeches full of clear good-sense and sound moderating
argument in support of Walpole's policy. But Carteret and Chesterfield
would have been able in any case to overwhelm the Duke of Newcastle,
and the Duke of Newcastle now was turning traitor to Walpole. Stupid
as Newcastle was, he was beginning to see that the day of Walpole's
destiny was nearly over, and he was taking {161} measures to act
accordingly. All that Newcastle could do as Secretary for Foreign
Affairs was done to make peace impossible.
[Sidenote: 1739--The Convention]
Walpole thought the time had fully come when it would be right for him
to show that, while still striving for peace, he was not unprepared for
war. He sent a squadron of line-of-battle ships to the Mediterranean
and several cruisers to the West Indies, and he allowed letters of
marque to be issued. These demonstrations had the effect of making the
Spanish Government somewhat lower their tone--at least they had the
effect of making that Government seem more willing to come to terms.
Long negotiations as to the amount of claim on the one side and of
set-off on the other were gone into both in London and Madrid. We need
not study the figures, for nothing came of the proposed arrangement.
It was impossible that anything could come of it. England and Spain
were quarrelling over several great international questions. Even
these questions were themselves only symbolical of a still greater one,
of a paramount question which was never put into words: the question
whether England or Spain was to have the ascendent in the new world
across the Atlantic. Walpole and the Spanish Government drew up an
arrangement, or rather professed to find a basis of arrangement, for
the paying off of certain money claims. A convention was agreed upon,
and was signed on January 14, 1739. The convention arranged that a
certain sum of money was to be paid by Spain to England within a given
time, but that this discharge of claims should not extend to any
dispute between the King of Spain and the South Sea Company as holders
of the Asiento Contract; and that two plenipotentiaries from each side
should meet at Madrid to settle the claims of England and Spain with
regard to the rights of trade in the New World and the boundaries of
Carolina and Florida. This convention, it will be seen, left the
really important subjects of dispute exactly where they were before.
{162}
Such as it was, however, it had hardly been signed before the
diplomatists were already squabbling over the extent and interpretation
of its terms, and mixing it up with the attempted arrangement of other
and older disputes. Parliament opened on February 1, 1739, and the
speech from the throne told of the convention arranged with Spain. "It
is now," said the Royal speech, "a great satisfaction to me that I am
able to acquaint you that the measures I have pursued have had so good
an effect that a convention is concluded and ratified between me and
the King of Spain, whereby, upon consideration had of the demands on
both sides, that prince hath obliged himself to make reparation to my
subjects for their losses by a certain stipulated payment; and
plenipotentiaries are therein named and appointed for redressing within
a limited time all those grievances and abuses which have hitherto
interrupted our commerce and navigation in the American seas, and for
settling all matters in dispute in such a manner as may for the future
prevent and remove all new causes and pretences of complaint by a
strict observance of our mutual treaties and a just regard to the
rights and privileges belonging to each other." The King promised that
the convention should be laid before the House at once.
Before the terms of the convention were fully in the knowledge of
Parliament, there was already a strong dissatisfaction felt among the
leading men of the Opposition. We need not set this down to the mere
determination of implacable partisans not to be content with anything
proposed or executed by the Ministers of the Crown. Sir John Barnard
was certainly no implacable partisan in that sense. He was really a
true-hearted and patriotic Englishman. Yet Sir John Barnard was one of
the very first to predict that the convention would be found utterly
unsatisfactory. There is nothing surprising in the prediction. The
King's own speech, which naturally made the best of things, left it
evident that no important and international question had been touched
by the convention. {163} Every dispute over which war might have to be
made remained in just the same state after the convention as before.
Lord Carteret in the House of Lords boldly assumed that the convention
must be unsatisfactory, and even degrading, to the English people, and
he denounced it with all the eloquence and all the vigor of which he
was capable. Lord Hervey vainly appealed to the House to bear in mind
that the convention was not yet before them. "Let us read it," he
urged, "before we condemn it." Vain, indeed, was the appeal; the
convention was already condemned. The very description of it in the
speech from the throne had condemned it in advance.
[Sidenote: 1739--Petition against the Convention]
The convention was submitted to Parliament and made known to the
country. The reception it got was just what might have been expected.
The one general cry was that the agreement gave up or put aside every
serious claim made by England. Spain had not renounced her right of
search; the boundaries of England's new colonies had not been defined;
not a promise was made by Spain that the Spanish officials who had
imprisoned and tortured unoffending British subjects should be
punished, or even brought to any manner of trial. In the heated temper
of the public the whole convention seemed an inappropriate and highly
offensive farce. On February 23d the sheriffs of the City of London
presented to the House of Commons a petition against the convention.
The petition expressed the great concern and surprise of the citizens
of London "to find by the convention lately concluded between his
Majesty and the King of Spain that the Spaniards are so far from giving
up their (as we humbly apprehend) unjust pretension of a right to visit
and search our ships on the seas of America that this pretension of
theirs is, among others, referred to the future regulation and decision
of plenipotentiaries appointed on each side, whereby we apprehend it is
in some degree admitted." The petition referred to the "cruel
treatment of the English sailors whose hard fate has thrown them into
the {164} hands of the Spaniards," and added, with a curious mixture of
patriotic sentiment and practical, business-like selfishness, that "if
this cruel treatment of English seamen were to be put up with, and no
reparation demanded, it might have the effect"--of what, does the
reader think?--"of deterring the seamen from undertaking voyages to the
seas of America without an advance of wages, which that trade or any
other will not be able to support."
[Sidenote: 1739--Carteret's attack]
The same petition was presented to the House of Lords by the Duke of
Bedford. Lord Carteret moved that the petitioners should be heard by
themselves, and, if they should desire it, by counsel. It was agreed,
after some debate, that the petitioners should be heard by themselves
in the first instance, and that if afterwards they desired to be heard
by counsel their request should be taken into consideration. Lord
Chesterfield in the course of the debate contrived ingeniously to give
a keen stroke to the convention while declaring that he did not presume
as yet to form any opinion on it, or to anticipate any discussion on
its merits. "I cannot help," he said, "saying, however, that to me it
is a most unfavorable symptom of its being for the good of the nation
when I see so strong an opposition made to it out-of-doors by those who
are the most immediately concerned in its effects."
A debate of great interest, animation, and importance took place in the
House of Lords when the convention was laid before that assembly. The
Earl of Cholmondeley moved that an address be presented to the King to
thank him for having concluded the convention. The address was drawn
up by a very dexterous hand, a master-hand. Its terms were such as
might have conciliated the leaders of the Opposition, if indeed these
were to be conciliated by anything short of Walpole's resignation, for,
while the address approved of all that had been done thus far, it
cleverly assumed that all this was but the preliminary to a real
settlement; and by ingenuously expressing the entire reliance of the
House on the King's taking care that proper provision should be made
for the redress of various {165} specified grievances, it succeeded in
making it quite clear that in the opinion of the House such provision
had not yet been made. The address concluded most significantly with
an assurance to the King that "in case your Majesty's just expectations
shall not be answered, this House will heartily and zealously concur in
all such measures as shall be necessary to vindicate your Majesty's
honor, and to preserve to your subjects the full enjoyment of all those
rights to which they are entitled by treaty and the Law of Nations."
An address of this kind would seem one that might well have been moved
as an amendment to a ministerial address, and understood to be
obliquely a vote of censure on the advisers of the Crown. It seems the
sort of address that Carteret might have moved and Chesterfield
seconded. Carteret and Chesterfield opposed it with spirit and
eloquence. "Upon your Lordships' behavior to-day," said Carteret at
the close of a bitter and a passionate attack upon the Ministry and the
convention, "depends the fate of the British Empire. . . . This nation
has hitherto maintained her independence by maintaining her commerce;
but if either is weakened the other must fail. It is by her commerce
that she has been hitherto enabled to stand her ground against all the
open and secret attacks of the enemies to her religion, liberties, and
constitution. It is from commerce, my Lords, that I behold your
Lordships within these walls, a free, an independent assembly; but,
should any considerations influence your Lordships to give so fatal a
wound to the interest and honor of this kingdom as your agreeing to
this address, it is the last time I shall have occasion to trouble this
House. For, my Lords, if we are to meet only to give a sanction to
measures that overthrow all our rights, I should look upon it as a
misfortune for me to be either accessary or witness to such a
compliance. I will not only repeat what the merchants told your
Lordships--that their trade is ruined--I will go further; I will say
the nobility is ruined, the whole nation is undone. For I can call
this treaty nothing else but a mortgage of {166} your honor, a
surrender of your liberties." Such language may now seem too
overwrought and extravagant to have much effect upon an assembly of
practical men. But it was not language likely to be considered
overwrought and extravagant at that time and during that crisis. The
Opposition had positively worked themselves into the belief that if the
convention were accepted the last day of England's strength,
prosperity, and glory had come. Carteret, besides, was talking to the
English public as well as to the House of Lords. He knew what he meant
when he denounced the enemies of England's religion as well as the
enemies of England's trade. The imputation was that the Minister
himself was a secret confederate of the enemies of the national
religion as well as the enemies of the national trade. Men who but a
few short years before were secretly engaged in efforts at a Stuart
restoration, which certainly would not be an event much in harmony with
the spread of the Protestant faith in England, were now denouncing
Walpole every day on the ground that he was caballing with Catholic
Spain, the Spain of Philip the Second, the Spain of the Armada and the
Inquisition, the implacable enemy of England's national religion.
[Sidenote: 1739--Argyle's anecdote]
The Duke of Argyle made a most vehement speech against the proposed
address. He dealt a sharp blow against the Ministry when he declared
that the whole convention was a French and not a Spanish measure. He
said he should never be persuaded that fear of aught that could be done
by Spain could have induced ministers to accept "this thing you call a
convention." "It is the interest of France that our navigation and
commerce should be ruined, we are the only people in the world whom
France has reason to be apprehensive of in America, and every advantage
that Spain gains in point of commerce is gained for her. . . . So far
as I can judge from the tenor of our late behavior, our dread of France
has been the spring of all our weak and ruinous measures. To this
dread we have sacrificed the most distinguishing honors of this
kingdom. This dread of France has changed {167} every maxim of right
government among us. There is no measure for the advantage of this
kingdom that has been set on foot for these many years to which she has
not given a negative. There is no measure so much to our detriment
into which she has not led us." He scornfully declared that what the
reasons of ministers might be for this pusillanimity he could not tell,
"for, my Lords, though I am a privy councillor I am as unacquainted
with the secrets of the Government as any private gentleman that hears
me." Then he told an anecdote of the late Lord Peterborough. "When
Lord Peterborough was asked by a friend one day his opinion of a
certain measure, says my lord, in some surprise, 'This is the first
time I ever heard of it.' 'Impossible,' says the other; 'why, you are
a privy councillor.' 'So I am,' replies his lordship, 'and there is a
Cabinet councillor coming up to us just now; if you ask the same
question of him he will perhaps hold his peace, and then you will think
he is in the secret; but if he opens once his mouth about it you will
find he knows as little of it as I do.' No, my Lords," exclaimed the
Duke of Argyle, "it is not being in Privy Council or in Cabinet
Council; one must be in the Minister's counsel to know the true motives
of our late proceedings." The duke concluded his oration,
characteristically, with a glorification of his own honest and
impartial heart.
The address was sure to be carried; Walpole's influence was still
strong enough to accomplish that much. But everybody must already have
seen that the convention was not an instrument capable of satisfying,
or, indeed, framed with any notion of satisfying, the popular demands
of England. It was an odd sort of arrangement, partly international
and partly personal; an adjustment, or attempted adjustment here of a
dispute between States, and there of a dispute between rival trading
companies. The reconstituted South Sea Company--which had now become
one of the three great trading companies of England, the East India
Company and the Bank being the {168} other two--had all manner of
negotiations, arrangements, and transactions with the King of Spain.
All these affairs now became mixed up with the national claims, and
were dealt with alike in the convention. The British plenipotentiary
at the Spanish Court was--still further to complicate matters--the
agent for the South Sea Company. The convention provided that certain
set-off claims of Spain should be taken into consideration as well as
the claims of England. Spain had some demands against England for the
value of certain vessels of the Spanish navy attacked and captured
during the reign of George the First without a declaration of war. The
claim had been admitted in principle by England, and it became what
would be called in the law courts only a question of damages. Then the
convention contained some stipulations concerning certain claims of
Spain upon the South Sea Company; that is, on what was, after all, only
a private trading company. When the anomaly was pointed out by Lord
Carteret and others in the House of Lords, and it was asked how came it
that the English plenipotentiary at the Court of Spain was also the
agent of the South Sea Company, it was ingeniously answered on the part
of the Government that nothing could be more fitting and proper, seeing
that, as English plenipotentiary, he had to act for England with the
King of Spain, and as agent for the South Sea Company to deal with the
same sovereign in that sovereign's capacity as a great private
merchant. Therefore the national claims were made, to a certain
extent, subservient to, or dependent on, the claims of the South Sea
Company. Whether we may think the claims of the English merchants and
seamen were exaggerated or not, one thing is obvious: they could not
possibly be satisfied under such a convention.
[Sidenote: 1739--The Prince's first vote]
The debate in the House of Lords was carried on by the Opposition with
great spirit and brilliancy. Lord Hervey defended the policy of the
Government with dexterity. Possibly he made as much of the case as
could be made of it. The motion for the address was carried {169} by
seventy-one votes against fifty-eight--a marked increase of strength on
the part of the Opposition. It is to be recorded that the Prince of
Wales gave his first vote in Parliament to support the Opposition. The
name of "His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales" is the first in the
division list of the peers who voted against the address and in favor
of the policy of war. There was nothing very mutinous in Frederick's
action so far as the King was concerned. Very likely Frederick would
have given the same vote, no matter what the King's views on the
subject. But every one knew that George was eager for war, that he was
fully convinced of his capacity to win laurels on the battle-field, and
that he was longing to wear them. A Bonaparte prince of our own day
was described by a French literary man as an unemployed Caesar. King
George believed himself an unemployed Caesar, and was clamorous for
early employment.
{170}