THE RULE OF THE WHIGS.
1714-1739.
[Sidenote: =Character of George I.=]
George Lewis, Elector of Hanover, who in virtue of the Act of
Settlement now mounted the English throne, was a selfish, hard-hearted,
unamiable, and uninteresting man of fifty-four. He was intensely German
in all his ideas and prejudices; he could not speak a word of English,
nor had he the slightest knowledge of the political and social state of
the kingdom that he was called upon to govern. Being a very cautious
man, he had never thought himself secure of the English crown, and now
that he had obtained it, he always looked upon it as a precarious piece
of property, that might some day be taken from him. He was convinced
that he might at any moment be forced to return to his native Hanover,
so he did not attempt to make himself at home on this side of the North
Sea. During his thirteen years of rule he never ceased to feel himself
a stranger in his palaces at London or Windsor. He wished to make what
profit he could out of England, but he was so ignorant of English
politics that he felt himself constrained to rely entirely on his
ministers, and let them manage his affairs for him. His sole fixed idea
was that the Tory party were irretrievably committed to Jacobitism, and
that, if he wished to keep his throne, he must throw himself entirely
into the hands of his friends the Whigs. With his accession, therefore,
began the political ascendency of that party, which was to last more
than half a century [1714-1770].
[Sidenote: =The king and the Whigs.=]
There was no romantic loyalty or mutual respect in the bargain which
was thus struck between the Whig party and the new dynasty. The king
knew that his ministers looked upon him as a mere political necessity.
They could have no liking for their stolid, selfish master. George
was indeed most unlovable to those who knew him best. He had placed
his wife, Sophia of Celle, in lifelong captivity on a charge of
unfaithfulness. But he himself lived in open sin with two mistresses,
whom he made Duchess of Kendal and Countess of Darlington when he came
to the English throne. He was at bitter enmity with his son George,
Prince of Wales; they never met if they could avoid a meeting. George
was, in short, the very last person to command either love or respect
from any man.
[Sidenote: =The beginning of Cabinet government.=]
With the accession of George I. began the substitution of the prime
minister and the Cabinet for the king as the actual ruler of England.
Down to Anne's time the sovereign had habitually attended the meetings
of the Privy Council, and was in constant contact with all the members
of the ministry. They were still regarded as his personal servants, and
he would often dismiss one minister without turning the whole ministry
out of office. The notion that the Cabinet were jointly responsible for
each other's actions, and that the king must accept any combination of
ministers that a parliamentary majority chose to impose upon him, had
not yet come into being. Even the mild and apathetic Queen Anne had
been wont to remove her great officers of state at her own pleasure,
without consulting the rest of the Cabinet, much less the Parliament.
But George I. was so absolutely ignorant of English politics, and
placed at such a disadvantage by his inability to speak the English
language, that he never attempted to interfere with his ministers.
He seldom came to their meetings, and usually communicated with them
through the prime minister of the day. A single fact gives a fair
example of the difficulty which George found in dealing with his new
subjects. He knew no English, while Walpole--his chief minister for
more than half his reign--knew neither German nor French; they had
therefore to discuss all affairs of state in Latin, which both of
them spoke extremely ill. It can easily be understood that George was
constrained to let all things remain in the hands of the Whig statesmen
who had placed him on the throne. He fingered much English money, and
he was occasionally able to use the influence of England for the profit
of Hanover in continental politics. In other respects he was a perfect
nonentity.
The Whig party which now obtained possession of office, and clung to
it for two full generations, was no longer led by its old chiefs.
Godolphin had died in 1712; Marlborough, though he had returned
to England, was not restored to power. His character had been
irretrievably injured by the revelations of 1711, and he was suspected
(not without foundation) of having renewed his old intrigues with the
exiled Stuarts during Harley's tenure of office. The Whigs now gave him
the honourable and lucrative post of commander-in-chief, but would not
serve under him. Only a year after George's accession he was attacked
by paralysis and softening of the brain, and retired to his great
palace of Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, where he lingered till 1722, broken
in mind and body.
[Sidenote: =The new Whig leaders.=]
The Whigs were now led by the Earl of Sunderland, the son-in-law of
Marlborough, by Earl Stanhope--a general who had won some military
reputation in Spain during the late war--by Lord Townshend, and Sir
Robert Walpole, the youngest and ablest of the party chiefs. They were
all four men of considerable ability, too much so for any one of them
to be content to act as the subordinate and lieutenant of another.
Hence it came that, though they had combined to put George I. on the
throne, they soon fell to intriguing against each other, and split the
Whig party into factions. These cliques did not differ from each other
in principles, but were divided merely by personal grudges that their
leaders bore against each other. They were always making ephemeral
combinations with each other, and then breaking loose again. But on one
thing they were agreed--the Tories should never come into power again,
and to keep their enemies out of office they could always rally and
present a united front.
[Sidenote: =The supporters of the Whig government.=]
The Whig party drew its main strength from three sources. The first was
the strong Protestant feeling in England, which made most men resolve
that the Pretender must be kept over-seas at any cost, even at that of
submitting to the selfish and stolid George I. The second was the fact
that the Whigs had enlisted the support of the mercantile classes all
over the country by their care for trade and commerce. While in power
in Anne's reign, they had done their best to make the war profitable
by concluding commercial treaties with the allies, and by furthering
the colonial expansion of England. This was never forgotten by the
merchants. The third mainstay of the Whig party was their parliamentary
influence. A majority of the House of Lords was on their side, and they
contrived to manage the Commons by a judicious mixture of corruption
and coercion.
[Sidenote: =Pocket boroughs and crown boroughs.=]
The great peers had many "pocket boroughs" in their power--that is,
they possessed such local influence in their own shires that they
could rely on returning their own dependents or relatives for the
seats that lay in their neighbourhood. Many of these "pocket boroughs"
were also "rotten boroughs"--places, that is, which had been important
in the middle ages, but had now decayed into mere hamlets with a few
score of inhabitants. Over such constituencies the influence of the
local landlord was so complete, that he could even sell or barter away
the right to represent them in Parliament. The most extraordinary of
these rotten boroughs were Old Sarum and Gatton, each of which owned
only _two_ voters, men paid to live on the deserted sites by their
landlords. Yet they had as many representatives in the House of Commons
as Yorkshire or Devon! Besides these nomination boroughs, the Whigs had
now control over a number of crown boroughs, places where of late the
members had been wont to be chosen by the sovereign; there were many
such in Cornwall, where the king, as duke of that county, was supreme
landlord. The Tudors had made many Cornish villages into parliamentary
constituencies in order to pack the House of Commons with obedient
members.
[Sidenote: =Parliamentary influence of the Whigs.=]
Hitherto the crown and the great peers had seldom acted together, and
no one had realized how large a portion of the House of Commons could
be influenced by their combination. But when, in the days of the two
first Georges, the Whig oligarchy wielded the power of the crown as
well as their own, they obtained a complete control over the Lower
House. Often the Tory opposition shrank to a minority of sixty or
eighty votes, and the only semblance of party government that remained
was caused by the quarrels and intrigues of the leaders of the Whigs,
who fought each other on personal grounds as bitterly as if they had
been divided by some important principle.
[Sidenote: =The Jacobites.--Death of Lewis XIV.=]
In the first year of King George, however, the Whigs were still kept
together by their fear of the enemy. The Jacobites, who had seemed
so near to triumph in Bolingbroke's short tenure of power, did not
yield without an appeal to arms. The late prime minister and his
chief military adviser, the Duke of Ormonde, both fled to France and
joined the Pretender. When safe over-seas they began to organize an
insurrection, counting on the active assistance of Lewis XIV., who
was always ready to aid his old dependents the Stuarts. But the plot
was not yet ready to burst, when the old king died, and his successor
in power, the regent Philip of Orleans, refused to risk any step that
might lead to a war with England.
[Sidenote: =Bolingbroke and the Tory party.=]
Nevertheless, Bolingbroke and his master persevered. They had so many
friends both in England and in Scotland, that they thought that they
could hardly fail. They had not realized that most of these friends
were lukewarm, and unprepared to take arms in order to give the crown
to a Romanist. Two-thirds of the Tory party hated the Pope even more
than they hated the Whigs and the Hanoverian king, and would not move
unless James Stuart showed some signs of wishing to conform to the
Church of England. Their loyalty to the national Church was stronger
than their loyalty to the divine right of kings.
[Sidenote: =Disaffection in Scotland.=]
But the wilder and more excitable spirits in the party were ready to
follow Bolingbroke. They saw all their hopes of political advancement
cut away by George's alliance with the Whigs, and determined to make a
bold stroke for power. In Scotland more especially did the emissaries
of the Pretender meet with encouragement. The Scots were still
very sore over the passing of the Act of Union in 1707, and nursed
their ancient grudge against England. But the most active source of
discontent was the hatred which the minor clans of the Highlands felt
for the powerful tribe of the Campbells.
[Sidenote: =Ascendency of the Campbells.=]
The rule of George I. in England implied the domination of that great
Whig clan, and its chief the Duke of Argyle, over the lands north
of Forth and Clyde. For now, as in 1645 and 1685, the chief of the
Campbells, the MacCallain Mor, as his clansmen called him, was at the
head of the Presbyterian or Whig party in Scotland. The chiefs of the
other Highland tribes were as bitterly hostile to the present Duke of
Argyle as their ancestors had been to his father and grandfather.
[Sidenote: =The Earl of Mar in the Highlands.=]
[Sidenote: =The Lowland Jacobites.=]
[Sidenote: =The English Jacobites.=]
The head of the Jacobite plotters in the north was John Erskine, Earl
of Mar, who had been Bolingbroke's Secretary of State for Scotland in
the Cabinet of 1714. He was a busy and ambitious man, who was bitterly
vexed at seeing his prospects of political advancement at an end.
Under the pretence of gathering a great hunting-party, he assembled a
number of the leading chiefs of the Highlands at Braemar Castle. On
his persuasion they resolved to take arms for King James. Among the
clans which joined in the rising were the Gordons, Murrays, Stuarts,
Mackintoshes, Macphersons, Macdonalds, Farquharsons, and many more. In
the Lowlands a simultaneous rising was arranged by some of the lords of
the Border, headed by the Earls of Nithsdale, Carnwath and Wintoun, and
Lord Kenmure. Meanwhile England was also to be stirred up. The Duke of
Ormonde was to land in Devonshire with some refugees from France. Lord
Derwentwater and Mr. Forster, a rich Northumbrian squire, undertook to
raise and organize the northern counties. A third rising was to take
place in Wales.
[Sidenote: =The Highlanders as a military force.=]
In the autumn of 1715 the Jacobites struck their blow. On September
6th Mar raised the royal standard of Scotland at the Castletown of
Braemar. Immediately a score of chiefs joined him, and an army of
5000 or 6000 men was at his disposal. Nor were the Highlanders to be
despised as a military force. The ancient Celtic turbulence and tribal
feuds yet survived in the lands beyond the Tay, and the clansmen were
still reared to arms from their youth up. Their fathers had fought
under Dundee, and their grandfathers had served Montrose in the old
civil wars of Charles I. The Scottish Government had never succeeded
in pacifying the Highlands, and the clans were still wont to lift each
other's cattle, and to engage in bloody affrays. They were blindly
devoted to their chiefs, and would follow them into any quarrel; the
cause in which they armed was indifferent to them--it was enough for
them to know their master's will, and to carry it out. When called to
arms, they came out with gun, broadsword, and shield. The force and
fury of their charge were tremendous, and none but the best of regular
troops could stand against them. But they were utterly undisciplined;
it was difficult to keep them to their standards, since they were prone
to melt home after a battle, to stow away their plunder. Moreover,
their tribal pride was so great, and their ancient tribal feuds so
many, that it was very hard to induce any two clans to serve side by
side, or to help each other loyally.
Mar was a mere politician; he was destitute of force of character, and
had earned the dishonourable name of "Bobbing John" by his fickle and
shifty conduct. No worse leader could have been found to command the
horde of high-spirited, jealous, and quarrelsome mountaineers whom he
had called to arms.
[Sidenote: =Failures of the insurrection in the West of England.=]
When the news of Mar's rising was noised abroad, the Jacobites in the
Scottish Lowlands and in Northumberland gathered themselves together
according to their promise. But the insurrections in Devonshire and
Wales, on which the Pretender had been counting, did not take place.
The Whig Government had sent most of its available troops to the West
of England, and had arrested the chief Jacobites of those parts, so
that the Duke of Ormonde, on landing near Plymouth, found no support,
and hastily returned to France. But Scotland and Northumberland were
all ablaze, and it seemed that the throne of George I. was in great
danger, for the army available against the insurgents was less than
10,000 strong, owing to the reductions which the Tories had carried out
after the peace of Utrecht.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Preston.=]
But the mistakes and feebleness of the Jacobite leaders sufficed to
wreck their enterprise. The insurgents on the English and Scottish
Border united, and advanced into Lancashire, where Roman Catholics were
many and Toryism strong. But their imbecile and cowardly leader, Thomas
Forster, allowed himself to be surrounded at Preston by a force of 1000
cavalry under General Carpenter, and tamely laid down his arms after
a slight skirmish, though his men outnumbered the regulars by three
to one. He and all his chief supporters, the Earls of Derwentwater,
Nithsdale, Nairn, Carnwath and Wintoun, and Lord Kenmure, were sent
prisoners to London (November 12, 1715).
[Sidenote: =Battle of Sheriffmuir.=]
Meanwhile Mar had gathered an army of 10,000 men, and had seized
Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and the whole of the north of Scotland; but,
with an unaccountable sluggishness, he lingered north of the Tay, and
made no attempt to capture Edinburgh or to overrun the Lowlands. He
allowed the Duke of Argyle, who had taken post at Stirling with 3000
men, to maintain the line of the Forth, and to keep separate the two
areas of insurrection. It was only on the very day of the surrender
of Preston that Mar at last consented to move southward from Perth.
Argyle advanced to meet him, and then ensued the indecisive battle of
Sheriffmuir. In this fight each army routed the left wing of the other,
and then retired towards its base. Mar's bad generalship and the petty
quarrels of the clans had neutralized the vast advantage of numbers
which the Jacobites possessed (November 13, 1715).
[Sidenote: =Mar's army disperses.=]
Mar brought his army back to Perth in a mutinous and discontented
condition; each chief laid on another the loss of the expected victory,
and the Highlanders began to melt away to their homes. It was to no
purpose that James Stuart himself at last appeared, to endeavour to
rally his dispirited followers. The Pretender was a slow and ungenial
young man, with a melancholy face and a hesitating manner. He failed
to inspire his followers with the enthusiasm which he did not himself
possess, and his cause continued to lose ground. When Argyle, largely
reinforced from England, began to move northward, James deserted his
army and took ship for France. The remnants of Mar's once formidable
host then disbanded themselves; the chiefs fled over-sea or submitted
to Argyle, while the clansmen dispersed to their valleys.
Thus ended in ignominious failure the great rising of 1715. The Whigs
took no very cruel revenge on the insurgents. Two peers, the Lords
Derwentwater and Kenmure,[51] were beheaded, and about 30 persons of
meaner rank hanged. As the years went by, most of the Jacobite chiefs
were pardoned and returned to England. Even Bolingbroke was allowed to
come back from exile in 1722.
[Sidenote: =Second attempt of the Pretender.=]
Even after his lamentable failure in 1715-16, the Pretender still
nourished some hopes of exciting another rebellion. When France refused
to help him, he turned to Spain, and got some small assistance from
Philip V., who, as we shall see, had the best reasons for disliking the
Whigs. A few hundred Spanish troops landed in Rosshire in 1719, and
were joined by the clans of the neighbourhood; but no general rising
took place, and the whole Jacobite force was dispersed or captured by
Carpenter--the victor of Preston--at the battle of Glenshiel.
[Sidenote: =War with Spain.--Schemes of Alberoni.=]
The tale of "the Fifteen" is the one stirring incident in the
inglorious annals of George I. The domestic interest of the remainder
of his reign centred in the quarrels and intrigues of the various Whig
parties with each other. The only important constitutional change which
dates from this time is the "Septennial Act" of 1716, which fixed the
duration of Parliament at seven years. Since 1694 three years had been
their legal term, but, on account of the inconvenience of general
elections at such short intervals, the longer term was substituted and
still prevails. In foreign politics the only notable event was a short
war with Spain in 1718-20. This was caused by an attempt of Philip V.
and his able minister, Cardinal Alberoni, to reconquer the old Spanish
dominions in Sicily and Naples. England, as one of the guarantors of
the treaty of Utrecht, interfered to aid the Austrians and the Duke of
Savoy, the two powers whom Spain had attacked, and an English fleet
under Admiral Byng destroyed off Cape Passaro the Spanish squadron
which had accompanied the army that invaded Sicily.
In revenge Cardinal Alberoni gave the Jacobites what help he could, and
endeavoured to concert an alliance with Charles XII., the warlike King
of Sweden. But he and his helpers were too weak to cope with Austria,
France, and England, who were all leagued against him. Alberoni was
forced from office, and his master Philip V. signed an ignominious
peace, and gave up his ephemeral conquests in Sicily (1720).
The ministry which had carried on the war with Spain had been composed
of that section of the Whigs who followed Stanhope and Sunderland. But
in the same year in which peace was signed, that cabinet was replaced
by another, and England saw the advent to power of the prime minister
who was to rule the three kingdoms for the next twenty-two years
(1721-42), Sir Robert Walpole.
[Sidenote: =The South Sea Bubble.=]
The Stanhope cabinet was overthrown, not by the strength of its
enemies, but by its own misfortune in becoming involved in the great
financial panic known as the "South Sea Bubble." The South Sea Company
was a trading venture which had been started in 1711 for developing
commerce with Spanish America and the countries of the Pacific. The
undertaking had been very successful, and the shares of the company
were much sought after, and commanded a very heavy premium. But the
directors who managed it were venturesome and reckless men, who wished
to extend their operations outside the sphere of trade into that of
finance and stock-jobbing. They formed a great scheme for offering
the Government the huge sum of £7,000,000 for the privilege of taking
over the management of the National Debt, which had hitherto been in
the hands of the Bank of England. They intended to recoup themselves
by inducing the creditors who held the state loans to exchange them
for new stock of the South Sea Company, which would thus accumulate
a capital sufficient to develop its trade all over the world, and
distance all rivals.
Stanhope and Sunderland accepted this wild offer; they were glad to
get the burden of the National Debt off their shoulders, and did
not stop to think if they were treating the public creditors fairly
in handing them over to the mercies of a greedy trading company.
Accordingly, the management of the debt was duly transferred to the
South Sea Company, and the directors did their best to put off their
shares on the late holders of Government stock. For a time they were
successful; the exchange was in many cases effected, and on terms
very favourable to the Company, whose prospects were so well thought
of that a share nominally worth £100 was actually sold for £1000. But
this prosperity was purely fictitious; the actual bulk and profit of
the Company's trade with the Pacific was not able to bear a quarter of
the financial mountain that had been built up upon it. The first shock
to credit that occurred was sufficient to expose the fraud that had
been perpetrated on the public. The success of the South Sea Company
had led to the starting of many other companies, some of them genuine
but hazardous ventures, some mere swindling devices for robbing the
investor. A general madness seemed to have fallen upon the nation,
and in the haste to make money quickly and without exertion, all
classes rushed into the whirl of speculation and stock-jobbing. It is
said that subscribers were found for schemes "to discover perpetual
motion, and utilize it for machinery," "to make salt water fresh," "to
render quicksilver malleable," "to fatten hogs by a new process," and
even "to engage in a secret undertaking which shall hereafter be made
public." Of course, all these bubble companies began to burst before
they were many months old, and to ruin those who had engaged in them.
The financial crisis which was brought about by these failures, led
to a general panic, which affected all speculative enterprises, great
and small. None suffered more than the South Sea Company itself, whose
shares gradually sank from 1000 down to 135. This ruined thousands of
investors, and finally broke the company itself, which proved unable to
pay the Government the £7,000,000 that it had covenanted to give for
the privilege of managing the National Debt.
[Sidenote: =Fall of the Stanhope cabinet.=]
On the suspension of the South Sea Company, a cry of wrath arose all
over the country against the Stanhope cabinet, which had taken the
venture under its patronage and entrusted it with such important
public duties. It was whispered that some of the ministers had been
induced to lend their aid to the scheme by corrupt influences, and
that others had made money by using their official information to
aid them in speculation. These suspicions were mooted in Parliament,
and, when investigated, proved to be not without foundation. When an
inquiry was pressed for, Craggs, the Postmaster-General, committed
suicide; Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was expelled from
the House as "guilty of notorious and infamous corruption;" Stanhope,
the prime minister, was being attacked in the Lords for the doings of
his subordinates, when he fell down dead in an apoplectic fit. His
colleague Sunderland resigned his post of First Lord of the Treasury,
though he was personally acquitted of all blame in the matter of the
South Sea Company.
[Sidenote: =Walpole and Townshend in office.=]
Thus the Stanhope-Sunderland cabinet had disappeared, and the other
section of the Whigs, headed by Walpole and Townshend, came into
office. The former became Chancellor of the Exchequer and took charge
of home affairs, while Townshend was entrusted with the foreign
relations of the country. Entering into power under pledges to stay
the financial crisis and save all that could be rescued from the wreck
of the South Sea Company, they executed their task with success. The
company was let off the payment of £7,000,000 which it had promised
to the state, but deprived of the charge of the National Debt. By
confiscating the estates of its fraudulent directors, enough money
was obtained to pay all its debtors, and thus the crisis proved less
disastrous than had at first been expected.
[Sidenote: =Supremacy of Walpole.=]
Sir Robert Walpole was the ruling spirit of the new cabinet; he
showed his masterful mind by keeping his brother-in-law Townshend
in the second place, and ultimately turned him out of the ministry.
"The firm," he said, "must be Walpole and Townshend, not Townshend
and Walpole." He soon got the king into complete subjection, for
George asked for nothing more than a liberal civil list and frequent
opportunities of visiting his beloved Hanover. Nor was he less
masterful with the two Houses, where the Tory opposition and the Whigs
of the rival faction were equally unable to make any head against him.
[Sidenote: Walpole as a statesman.]
Walpole was a strange example of the height to which the practical
power of dealing with other men may raise one who is neither
intellectually nor morally the superior of his fellows. He was a
wealthy county gentleman from Norfolk, who had entered parliament
early, and had already made himself a place in politics before the
death of Queen Anne. The one subject of which he had a competent
knowledge was finance; in most of the other spheres of politics he
was grossly ignorant, and most of all was he deficient in a grasp
of European politics. He did not understand a word of French or any
other modern tongue, a fact which is enough by itself to account for
his inadequate foreign policy. His morals and his language were alike
coarse; he affected a shameless cynicism, which is well reflected in
the saying that "every man has his price" which was put into his mouth
by his enemies.
[Sidenote: =Government by corruption.=]
This phrase, indeed, well expresses his political methods; his one
end was to maintain himself in office, and for that purpose he kept
his party in a state of complete subjection. Good service he rewarded
by good pay, whether in the form of office and preferment, or in the
grosser shape of hard cash. He was always prepared to buy any member
or group of members by open bribery, and the taint of corruption
dating from the times of Charles II. was still so strong in English
politics that he seldom failed to secure his prize. He was impatient of
opposition, and gradually turned out of office any colleague who would
not obey his slightest nod; even his own brother-in-law Townshend and
Lord Carteret, the ablest diplomatist of the day, were forced to leave
his cabinet by his unreasoning jealousy. He preferred to work with
nonentities, because they feared and obeyed him.
Walpole was a thoroughly bad influence in English politics; he lowered
the moral tone of a whole generation by his constant sneers at
probity and patriotism. He promoted a host of unworthy men to power.
Most especially did he injure the national Church by his practice of
bestowing bishoprics and other high preferments on mere political
partisans, without any thought as to their spiritual fitness.
Though the Whigs professed to be the party of liberty, enlightenment,
and toleration, Walpole did not pass one important bill to improve the
constitution or the social state of the nation in his twenty-two years
of power. He only took thought for the material prosperity of England,
and cared nothing for her moral welfare. Hence it comes that his whole
term of office is almost a blank in our political history.
[Sidenote: =Death of George I.=]
So firm a grasp had Walpole on the helm of power, that his position was
not in the least shaken by the death of his master George I. [1727].
The king died suddenly while absent on one of his periodical visits to
Hanover, and was succeeded by his son and bitter enemy, George, Prince
of Wales. The new sovereign disliked Walpole on principle, because he
had been his father's confidant, but found himself quite unable to turn
him out of power. Immediately on hearing of his predecessor's death,
George II. bade Walpole give up his seals of office, but a few days
later he had to ask him to resume them, after finding that no one else
would undertake to construct a cabinet. For fifteen years more he was
constrained to keep his father's old minister (1727-1742).
[Sidenote: =Character of George II.=]
George II. was a man of much greater force of character than George
I. He was a busy, consequential, irascible little man, who would have
liked to play a considerable part in English politics if the Whigs had
only allowed him. He was a keen if not an able soldier, and had served
with some distinction under Marlborough in the Low Countries. He took
a great interest in foreign affairs, and chafed bitterly at the way in
which Walpole persisted in keeping out of all European complications.
He spoke English fluently with a vile German accent: every one has
heard of his famous dictum, "I don't like Boetry, and I don't like
Bainting." His tastes were coarse, and his private life indifferent.
But he was wise enough to let himself be guided in many things by his
clever wife, Caroline of Anspach, who possessed the very qualities
in which he was most wanting, was a judicious patroness of arts and
letters, and knew how to win popularity both for her husband and
herself. It was mainly by her advice that King George was induced to
keep Walpole in power, instead of rushing into the turmoil that would
have followed his dismissal.
[Sidenote: =The Excise Bill.=]
Walpole went on, for the first twelve years of the reign of George
II., ruling the country in the same unostentatious way as before. He
only made one attempt to introduce a measure of importance in the
whole time; this was his Excise Bill of 1733, a financial scheme for
suppressing smuggling, and encouraging the use of England as a central
depôt by other nations, by means of a system of free trade. Tobacco,
wine, and spirits were to be imported without paying any customs duty
at the port of entry, and were to be permitted to be re-exported
without any charge. But the retailers of these commodities were to pay
the duty on each quantity as they sold it, so that the tax should be
paid inland if not at the seaport. When a great cry was raised against
the bill, as inquisitorial and tyrannous, Walpole tamely dropped it
rather than risk his hold on power.
[Sidenote: =The War of the Polish Succession.=]
Meanwhile the continent was much disturbed by the "War of the Polish
Succession" (1733-1735), in which Austria fought unsuccessfully against
Spain, France, and Turkey. But Walpole would not interfere to aid our
old ally, and saw her lose Naples and Sicily without stirring a hand.
Much was to be said in favour of keeping England out of foreign wars in
which she had no direct interest; but the new union of France and Spain
boded ill for England. Already these two powers had secretly formed a
union, afterwards known as the "Family Compact," by which the uncle and
nephew, Philip V. and Lewis XV., bound themselves to do their best to
put an end to England's naval supremacy, and to crush her commercial
greatness (1733).
[Sidenote: =Commercial hostility of Spain.=]
This treaty was carefully kept dark, but the spirit which had inspired
it could not be concealed. The Spanish government began to redouble
its vexatious pretensions to a monopoly of the trade of South America,
and to interfere with the commercial rights which England possessed
under the treaty of Utrecht. The governors of the Spanish colonies and
their custom-house officials waxed more and more tyrannous and insolent
to the English merchants who endeavoured to carry on a trade with
America. The state of public feeling in England grew very bitter over
this matter--all the more so because Walpole refused to listen to any
complaints, or to remonstrate with the Spaniards.
[Sidenote: =The case of Captain Jenkins.=]
At last the case of a merchant captain named Jenkins brought the
national anger to boiling-point. His vessel had been boarded, and he
himself maltreated by a Spanish _guarda-costa_. He asserted that the
officer who searched his ship had cut off his ear, and told him to
take it back and show it to his masters. And he certainly produced the
severed ear in a box, and exhibited it freely. His story may have been
exaggerated, but it was universally believed, and Walpole was attacked
on all sides for his tame submission to Spanish insults.
[Sidenote: =War with Spain declared.=]
Determined to keep himself in power at all costs, the prime minister
demanded reparation from Spain, and, on failing to obtain it,
reluctantly declared war. The public joy on the news of the rupture was
unbounded. Only Walpole was sad at the end of twenty years of peace and
prosperity that his inglorious rule had given to the land. "Ring your
bells now," he is reported to have said when he heard the rejoicings
of London, "but you will soon be wringing your hands."
Thus England embarked on the first of four great continental wars,
which were to cover the greater part of the eighteenth century.
THE HOUSE OF HANOVER.
GEORGE I. = Sophia of Celle.
1714-1727. |
|
GEORGE II. = Caroline of Anspach.
1727-1760. |
|
|
+------------------+-------------------------+
| |
Frederick, Prince of Wales = Augusta of William, Duke
| Saxe Gotha. of Cumberland.
|
|
GEORGE III. = Charlotte of
1760-1820. | Mecklenburg Strelitz.
|
+----------------------+---------------+--+-----------+
| | | |
GEORGE IV. = Caroline Frederick, WILLIAM IV. |
1820-1830. | of Duke of York 1830-1837. |
| Brunswick. and Albany. |
| |
| |
| |
Princess Charlotte = Leopold of |
died 1816. Saxe Coburg-Gotha. |
|
+--------------------------+
|
|
+--------------+---------------+
| |
Edward, Ernest, Duke
Duke of Kent = Victoria of Cumberland;
| of Saxe King
| Coburg. of Hanover
| 1830-1851.
VICTORIA = Albert
1837. of Saxe
Coburg-
Gotha.
FOOTNOTE:
[51] Mr. Forster and Lord Nithsdale would have shared the fate of
Derwentwater and Kenmure, but for the fact that they escaped from
prison. How the latter got away by the ingenuity and devotion of his
wife is a well-known story.