A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume I Part 14

The materials of opposition consisted of three political groups of men.

There were the Jacobites, under Shippen; the Tories who no longer acknowledged themselves Jacobites, and who were led by Sir William Wyndham; and there were the discontented Whigs whom Pulteney led and whose discontent he turned to his own uses. It had long been a scheme of Bolingbroke's--up to this time it should perhaps rather be called a dream than a scheme--to combine these three groups into one distinct party, having its bond of union in a common detestation of Walpole.

The dream now seemed likely to become a successful scheme. The conception of this plan of opposition was unquestionably Bolingbroke's and not Pulteney's; but it fell to Pulteney's lot to work it out in the House of Parliament, and he performed his task with consummate ability.

Pulteney was probably the greatest leader of Opposition ever known in the House of Commons, with the single exception of Mr. Disraeli.

Charles Fox, with all his splendid genius for debate, was not a skilful or a patient leader of Opposition. Perhaps he was too great of heart for such a part; certain it is that as a leader of Opposition he made some fatal mistakes. Pulteney seemed cut out for the part which a strange combination of chances had allowed him to play. He was not merely a debater of inexhaustible resource {288} and a master of all the trick and craft of Parliamentary leadership; but he thoroughly understood the importance of public support out-of-doors, and the means of getting at it and retaining it. Pulteney saw that the time had come when the English people would have their say in every political question.

[Sidenote: 1728--Sir William Wyndam]

By the combined influence of Pulteney and Bolingbroke there was formed a party of ultra-Whigs, who somewhat audaciously called themselves "The Patriots." Perhaps the t.i.tle was first given to them by Walpole, in contempt; if so, they accepted and adopted it. Again and again in our history this phenomenon presents itself. Some men of ability and unsatisfied ambition belonging to the Liberal party become discontented with the policy of their leaders. When the first opportunity arises they make a public declaration against that policy. In the Conservative ranks there are to be found some other men, also able and also discontented, to whom the general policy of Opposition seems unsatisfactory and feeble. Each of these discontented parties fancies itself to be truly patriotic, public-spirited, and independent. The two factions at length unite for the common good of the country; they tell the world that they are patriots, that they are the only patriots, and the world for a while believes them. This was the condition of things when Pulteney in Parliament joined with Sir William Wyndham, the extreme Jacobite, the Wyndham who is mentioned in Pope's poem about his Twickenham grotto, the Wyndham with whom Bolingbroke corresponded for many years, and to whom he addressed one of his most important political manifestoes. Sir William Wyndham belonged to an old Somersetshire family. He was a staunch Tory. He had powerful connections; his first wife was a daughter of the haughty Duke of Somerset. He entered Parliament and made a considerable figure there.

He had been Secretary at War and afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer under the Tories; he had clung to Bolingbroke's fortunes at the time of Bolingbroke's {289} rupture with Harley. He underwent the common fate of Tory statesmen on the accession of George the First; he was deprived of office, was accused of taking part in the Jacobite conspiracy, and was committed to the Tower. There was, however, no evidence against him, and he resumed his political career. His eloquence is described by Speaker Onslow as "strong, full, and without affectation, arising chiefly from his clearness, propriety, and argumentation; in the method of which last, by a sort of induction almost peculiar to himself, he had a force beyond any man I ever heard in public debates." Lord Hervey, who can be trusted not to overdo the praise of any one, says of Wyndham that "he was very far from having first-rate parts, but by a gentleman-like general behavior, a constant attendance in the House of Commons, a close application to the business of it, and frequent speaking, he had got a sort of Parliamentary routine, and without being a bright speaker was a popular one, well heard, and useful to his party." So far as we now can judge, this seems a very correct estimate of Wyndham's Parliamentary capacity and position. He had a n.o.ble presence, singularly graceful and charming manners, and a high personal character. A combination between such a man as Pulteney and such a man as Wyndham could not but be formidable even to the most powerful minister.

Shippen, the leader of the Jacobites--"honest Shippen," as Pope calls him--we have often met already. He was a straightforward, unselfish man, absolutely given up to his principles and his party. He was well read and had written clever pamphlets and telling satirical verses.

His speeches, or such reports of them as can be got at, are full of striking pa.s.sages and impressive phrases; they are speeches which even now one cannot read without interest. But it would seem that Shippen often marred the effect of his ideas and his language by a rapid, careless, and imperfect delivery. He appears to have been one of the men who wanted nothing but a clear {290} articulation and effective utterance to be great Parliamentary debaters, and whom that single want condemned to comparative failure. Those who remember the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, or, indeed, those who have heard the best speeches of Lord Sherbrooke, when he was Mr. Robert Lowe, can probably form a good idea of what Shippen was as a Parliamentary debater.

Shippen was nothing of a statesman, and his occasional eccentricities of manner and conduct prevented him from obtaining all the influence which would otherwise have been fairly due to his talents and his political and personal integrity.

[Sidenote: 1729--The Hessians]

Pulteney's party had in Parliament the frequent, indeed for a time the habitual, a.s.sistance of Wyndham and of Shippen. Outside Parliament Bolingbroke intrigued, wrote, and worked with the indomitable energy and restless craving for activity and excitement which, despite all his professions of love for philosophic quiet, had been his life-long characteristic. The _Craftsman_ was stimulated and guided much more directly by his inspiration than even by that of Pulteney. The _Craftsman_ kept showering out articles, letters, verses, epigrams, all intended to damage the ministry, and more especially to destroy the reputation of Walpole. All was fish that came into the _Craftsman's_ net. Every step taken by the Government, no matter what it might be, was made an occasion for ridicule, denunciation, and personal abuse.

Not the slightest scruple was shown in the management of the _Craftsman_. If the policy of the Government seemed to tend towards a Continental war, the _Craftsman_ cried out for peace, and vituperated the minister who dared to think of involving England in the trumpery quarrels of foreign States. Walpole, however, we need hardly say, made it a set purpose of his administration to maintain peace on the Continent; and as soon as the patriots began to find out in each particular instance that his policy was still the same, they turned round and shrieked against the minister whose feebleness and cowardice were laying England at the feet of foreign alliances and Continental {291} despots. Walpole worked in cordial alliance with the French Government, the princ.i.p.al member of which was now Cardinal Fleury. It became the object of the _Craftsman_ to hold Walpole up to contempt and derision, as the dupe of a French cardinal and the sycophant of a French Court. The example of the _Craftsman_ was speedily followed by pamphleteers, caricaturists, satirists, and even ballad-mongers without end. London and the provinces were flooded with such literature.

Walpole was described as "Sir Blue String," the blue string being a cheap satirical allusion to the blue ribbon which was supposed to adorn him as Knight of the Garter. He was styled Sir Robert Bra.s.s, Sir Robert Lynn, more often simple "Robin" or plain "Bob." He was pictured as a systematic promoter of public corruption, as one who fattened on the taxation wrung from the miserable English taxpayer. His personal character, his domestic life, his household expenses, the habits of his wife, his own social and other enjoyments, were coa.r.s.ely criticised and lampooned. The _Craftsman_ and its imitators attacked not only Walpole himself, but Walpole's friends. The political satire of that day was as indiscriminate as it was unsparing. It was enough to be a political or even a personal friend of Walpole to become the object of the _Craftsman's_ fierce blows. Pulteney did not even scruple to betray the confidence of private conversation, and to disclose the words which, in some unguarded moments of former friendship, Walpole had spoken of George the Second when George was Prince of Wales.

An excellent opportunity was soon given to Pulteney to make an open and a damaging attack on the ministry. Horace Walpole, British Amba.s.sador to the French Court, had been brought over from Paris to explain and justify his brother's foreign policy. The Government put forward a resolution in the House of Commons on February 7, 1729, for a grant of some two hundred and fifty thousand pounds "for defraying the expense of twelve thousand Hessians taken into his Majesty's pay." Even {292} if the maintenance of this force had been a positive necessity, which it certainly was not, it would, nevertheless, have been a necessity bringing with it disparagement and danger to the Government responsible for it. Pulteney made the most of the opportunity, and in a speech of fine old English flavor denounced the proposal of the ministers.

[Sidenote: 1729--Subsidies voted] He asked with indignation whether Englishmen were not brave enough or willing enough to defend their own country without calling in the a.s.sistance of foreign mercenaries. It might, he admitted, be some advantage to Hanover that German soldiers should be kept in the pay of England, but he wanted to know what benefit could come to the English people from paying and maintaining such a band. These men were kept, he declared, in the pay of England, not for the service of England, but for the service of Hanover. It need hardly be said that during all the earlier years of the Brunswick accession, a bare allusion to the name of Hanover was enough to stir an angry feeling in the minds of the larger number of the English people.

Even the very men who most loyally supported the House of Brunswick winced and writhed under any allusion to the manner in which the interests of England were made subservient to the interests of Hanover.

Pulteney therefore took every pains to chafe those sore places with remorseless energy. Sir William Wyndham supported Pulteney, and Sir Robert Walpole himself found it necessary to throw all his influence into the scale on the other side. His arguments were of a kind with which the House of Commons has been familiar during many generations.

His main point was, that by maintaining a large body of soldiers, Hessian among the rest, the country had been enabled to avoid war. The Court of Vienna, with the a.s.sistance of Spanish subsidies, had been making preparation for war, Walpole contended; and were it not for the maintenance of this otherwise superfluous body of troops, the Emperor of Austria would probably never have accepted the terms of peace. "If you desire peace, {293} prepare for war," may be an excellent maxim, but its value lies a good deal in its practical application. It is a remarkably elastic maxim, and in times nearer to our own than those of Walpole has been made to expand into a justification of the most extravagant and unnecessary military armaments and of schemes of fortification which afterwards were abandoned before they had been half realized. In this instance, however, there was something more to be said against the proposal of the Government. Some of the speakers in the debate pointed out that England in former days, if it engaged in a quarrel with its neighbors, fought the quarrel out with its own strength, and was not in the habit of buying and maintaining the forces of foreign princes to help Englishmen to hold their own. The resolution, of course, was carried. It was even carried by an overwhelming majority: 256 were on the "court side," as it was called, against 91 on the "country side." Fifty thousand pounds was also voted as "one year's subsidy to the King of Sweden," and twenty-five thousand pounds for one year's subsidy to the Duke of Brunswick. In order, however, to appease the consciences of some of those who supported the resolution as well as those who had opposed it, the Government permitted what we should now call a "rider" to be added to the resolution requesting his Majesty that whenever it should be necessary to take any foreign troops into his service, "he will be graciously pleased to use his endeavors that they be clothed with the manufactures of Great Britain." It was supposed to be some solace to the wounded national pride of Englishmen to be a.s.sured that if they had to pay foreigners to fight for them, the foreigners should at least not be allowed to come to this country clothed in the manufactures of their own land, but would be compelled to buy their garments over the counter of an English shop.

On Friday, February 21st, an event which led directly and indirectly to results of some importance occurred. Three pet.i.tions from the merchants trading in tobacco {294} in London, Bristol, and Liverpool were presented to the House of Commons. These pet.i.tions complained of great interruptions for several years past of the trade with the British colonies in America by the Spaniards. The depredations of the Spanish, it was said, endangered the entire loss of that valuable trade to England. The Spaniards were accused of having treated such of his Majesty's subjects as had fallen into their hands in a barbarous and cruel manner. The pet.i.tioners prayed for the consideration of the House of Commons, and such timely remedy as the House should think fit to recommend. These pet.i.tions only preceded a great many others, all in substance to the same effect. The Commons entered upon the consideration of the subject in a Committee of the whole House, heard several pet.i.tioners, and examined many witnesses. An address was presented to the Crown, asking for copies of all memorials, pet.i.tions, and representations to the late King or the present, in relation to Spanish captures of British ships. [Sidenote: 1729--The Campeachy logwood] Copies were also asked for of the reports laid before the King by the Commissioners of Trade and of Plantations, concerning the dispute between England and Spain, with regard to the rights of the subjects of Great Britain to cut logwood in the Bay of Campeachy, on the western sh.o.r.e of that Yucatan peninsula which juts into the Gulf of Mexico. English traders had been for a long time in the habit of cutting logwood along the sh.o.r.es in the Bay of Campeachy, and the logwood trade had come to be one of the greatest importance to the West Indies and to England. The Spanish Government claimed the right to put a stop to this cutting of logwood, and the Spanish Viceroy and Governor had in some instances declared that they would dislodge the Englishmen from the settlements which they had established, and even treat them as pirates if they persisted in their trade. There was, in fact, all the material growing up for a serious quarrel between England and Spain.

Despite the recent treaties which were supposed to {295} secure the peace of Europe, the times were very critical. "The British nation,"

says a contemporary writer, "had for many years past been in a state of uncertainty, scarce knowing friends from foes, or indeed whether we had either." Each new treaty seemed only to disturb the balance of power, as it was called, in a new way. The Quadruple Alliance was intended to rectify the defects of the Treaty of Utrecht; but it gave too much power to the Emperor, and it increased the bitterness and the discontent of the King of Spain. The Treaty of Vienna, made between the Empire and Spain, was justly regarded in England as portending danger to this country. It was even more dangerous than Englishmen in general supposed at the time, although Walpole knew its full purport and menace. The Treaty of Vienna led to the Treaty of Hanover, an arrangement made in the closing years of George the First's reign between Great Britain, France, and Prussia, by virtue of which if any one of the contracting parties were to be attacked, the other two were pledged to come to the a.s.sistance with funds and with arms. All these arrangements were in the highest degree artificial; some of them might fairly be described as unnatural. It might be taken for granted that not one of the States whom they professed to bind to this side or to that would hold to the engagements one hour longer than would serve her own interests. No safety was secured by these overlapping treaties; no one had any faith in them. It was quite true that England did not know her friends from her enemies about the time at which we have now arrived.

The dispute between England and Spain concerning the question of the Campeachy logwood was to involve a controversy as to the interpretation of certain pa.s.sages in the Treaty of Utrecht. It was distinctly a matter for calm consideration, for compromise, and for an amicable settlement. But each of the two parties mainly concerned showed its desire to push its own claim to an extreme. English traders have never been particularly {296} moderate or considerate in pressing their supposed rights to trade with foreign countries. In this instance they were strongly backed up, encouraged, and stimulated by the band of Englishmen who chose to call themselves "The Patriots." Few of the "Patriots," we venture to think, cared a rush about the question of the Campeachy logwood, or were very deeply grieved because Spain bore herself in a high-handed fashion towards certain English merchants and ship-owners. But the opportunity seemed to the "Patriots" admirably adapted for worrying and hara.s.sing, not the Spaniards, but the administration of Sir Robert Walpole. They used the opportunity to the very full. [Sidenote: 1729--Gibraltar] The debates on the conduct of Spain brought out in the House of Lords the acknowledgment of the fact that King George I. had at one time actually written to the Government of Spain, distinctly undertaking to bring about the rest.i.tution of Gibraltar. A copy of the letter in French, with a translation, was laid before the House. It seemed that on June 1, 1721, George, the late King, wrote to the King of Spain, "Sir, my brother," a letter concerning the treaties then in the course of being re-established between England and Spain. In that letter occurred these words: "I do no longer balance to a.s.sure your Majesty of my readiness to satisfy you with regard to your demand touching the rest.i.tution of Gibraltar; promising you to make use of the first favorable opportunity to regulate this article with the consent of my Parliament." The House of Lords had a long and warm debate on this subject. A resolution was proposed, declaring that "for the honor of his Majesty, and the preservation and security of the trade and commerce of this kingdom,"

care should be taken "that the King of Spain do renounce all claim and pretension to Gibraltar and the island of Minorca, in plain and strong terms." This resolution, however, was thought in the end to be rather too strong, and it was modified into a declaration that the Lords "do entirely rely upon his Majesty, that he will, for the maintaining the honor and securing the {297} trade of this kingdom, take effectual care in the present treaty to preserve his undoubted right to Gibraltar and the island of Minorca." This resolution was communicated to the House of Commons, and the Lords asked for a conference with that House in the Painted Chamber. The Commons had a long debate on the subject. The Opposition strongly denounced the ministers who had advised the late King to write such a letter, and declared that it implied a positive promise to surrender Gibraltar to Spain. The courtiers, as the supporters of the Ministry were then called, to distinguish them from the country party--that is to say, the Opposition--endeavored to qualify and make light of the expressions used in the late King's letter, to show that they were merely hypothetical and conditional, and insisted that effectual care had since been taken in every way to maintain the right of England to Gibraltar. The country party moved that words be added to the Lords' resolution requiring "that all pretensions on the part of the Crown of Spain to the said places be specifically given up." Two hundred and sixty-seven votes against one hundred and eleven refused the addition of these words as unnecessary, and too much in the nature of a challenge and defiance to Spain. But the motion that "this House does agree with the Lords in the said resolution" was carried without a division, the Court party not venturing to offer any objection to it. The King received the address of both Houses on Tuesday, March 25th, and returned an answer thanking them for the confidence reposed in him, and a.s.suring them that "I will take effectual care, as I have hitherto done, to secure my undoubted right to Gibraltar and the island of Minorca."

The difficulty was over for the present. The Government contrived to arrange a new treaty with Spain, the Treaty of Seville, in which France also was included. This treaty settled for the time the disputes about English trade with the New World, and the claims of Spain for a restoration of Gibraltar were, indirectly at least, {298} given up.

Perhaps the whole story is chiefly interesting now as affording an ill.u.s.tration of the manner in which the Patriots turned everything to account for their one great purpose of hara.s.sing the administration of Sir Robert Walpole. All the patriotic effusiveness about the undoubted right of England to Gibraltar was merely well-painted pa.s.sion. Such sentiment as exists in the English mind with regard to the possession of "the Rock" now, did not exist, had not had time to come into existence, then. Gibraltar was taken in 1704; its possession was confirmed to England by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Since that time English Ministers had again and again been considering the expediency of restoring Gibraltar to the Spaniards. Stanhope had been in favor of the restoration; Townshend and Carteret had been in favor of it. Some of the Patriots themselves, before they came to be dubbed Patriots, had been in favor of it. Only the unreasonable and insolent behavior of Spain herself stood at one time in the way of the rest.i.tution.

Gibraltar was one capture, like many others; captured territory changed and changed hands with each new arrangement in those days. Minorca, which was included with Gibraltar in the resolution of the two Houses of Parliament and the consequent promise of the King, was taken by the English forces shortly after the capture of Gibraltar, and was settled upon England by the same Treaty of Utrecht. Yet, as we all know, it was given up by England at the peace of Amiens, and no tears of grief were shed by any English eyes. But the discovery that the late King had at one time been willing to restore Gibraltar to Spain for a consideration came in most opportunely for the Patriots. To most of them it was, of course, no discovery at all. They had always known of the intention, and some of them had approved of it. None the less shrill were their cries of surprise; none the less vociferous their shouts of patriotic anger.

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CHAPTER XX.

A VICTORY FOR THE PATRIOTS.

[Sidenote: 1729--Death of Congreve]

Literature lost some great names in the early part of George the Second's reign. William Congreve and Richard Steele both died in 1729.

Congreve's works do not belong to the time of which we are writing. He was not sixty years old when he died, and he had long ceased to take any active part in literature. Swift deplores, in a letter to an acquaintance, "the death of our friend Mr. Congreve, whom I loved from my youth, and who surely, besides his other talents, was a very agreeable companion." Swift adds that Congreve "had the misfortune to squander away a very good const.i.tution in his younger days," and "upon his own account I could not much desire the continuance of his life under so much pain and so many infirmities." Congreve was beyond comparison the greatest English comic dramatist of his time. Since the days of Ben Jonson and until the days of Sheridan there was no one who could fairly be compared with him. His comedy was not in the least like the bold, broad, healthy, Aristophanic humor of Ben Jonson; the two stand better in contrast than in comparison. Jonson drew from the whole living English world of his time; Congreve drew from the men and women whom he had seen in society. Congreve took society as he found it in his earlier days. The men and women with whom he then mixed were for the most part flippant, insincere, corrupt, and rather proud of their corruption; and Congreve filled his plays with figures very lifelike for such a time. He has not drawn many men or women whom one could admire. Even his heroines, if they are chaste in their lives, {300} are anything but pure in their conversation, and seem to have no moral principle beyond that which is represented by what Heine calls an "anatomical chast.i.ty." Angelica, the heroine of "Love for Love," is evidently meant by Congreve to be all that a charming young Englishwoman ought to be; and she is charming, fresh, and fascinating even still. But she occasionally talks in a manner which would be a little strong for a barrack-room now; and nothing gives her more genuine delight than to twit her kind, fond old uncle with his wife's infidelities, to make it clear to him that all the world is acquainted with the full particulars of his shame, and to sport with his jealous agonies. Congreve was the first dramatic author who put an English seaman on the stage; and, after his characteristic fashion, he made his Ben Legend a selfish, coa.r.s.e, and ruffianly lout. But if one cannot admire many of Congreve's characters, on the other hand one cannot help admiring every sentence they speak. The only fault to be found with their talk is that it is too witty, too brilliant, for any manner of real life. Society would have to be all composed of male and female Congreves to make such conversation possible. There is more strength, originality, and depth in it than even in the conversation in "The Rivals" and "The School for Scandal." The same fault has been found with Sheridan which is to be found with Congreve. We need not make too much of it. No warning example is called for. There will never be many dramatists whose dialogue will deserve the censure of critics on the ground that it is too witty.

[Sidenote: 1729--Death of Steele]

Of Steele we have often had occasion to speak. His fame has been growing rather than fading with time. At one period he was ranked by critics as far below the level of Addison; few men now would not set him on a pedestal as high. He was more natural, more simple, more fresh than Addison. There is some justice in the remark of Hazlitt that "Steele seems to have gone into his closet chiefly to set down what he had observed out-of-doors;" {301} while Addison appears "to have spent most of his time in his study," spinning out to the utmost there the hints "which he borrowed from Steele or took from nature."

Every one, however, will cordially say with Hazlitt, "I am far from wishing to depreciate Addison's talents, but I am anxious to do justice to Steele." There are not many names in English literature round which a greater affection clings than that of Steele. Leigh Hunt, in writing of Congreve, speaks of "the love of the highest aspirations" which he sometimes displays, and which makes us think of what he might have been under happier and purer auspices. Leigh Hunt refers in especial to Congreve's essay in the _Tatler_ on the character of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, whom Congreve calls Aspasia--"an effusion so full of enthusiasm for the moral graces, and worded with an appearance of sincerity so cordial, that we can never read it without thinking it must have come from Steele." "It is in this essay," Leigh Hunt goes on, "that he says one of the most elegant and truly loving things that were ever uttered by an unworldly pa.s.sion: 'To love her is a liberal education.'" Leigh Hunt's critical judgment was better than his information. The words "to love her is a liberal education" are by Steele, and not by Congreve. They do not appear in the essay by Congreve on the character of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, but in a subsequent essay by Steele, in which, after a fashion common enough in the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_, one author takes up some figure created or described by another, and gives it new touches and commends it afresh to the reader. Steele was doing this with Congreve's picture of Aspasia, and it was then that he crowned the whole work by the exquisite and immortal words which Leigh Hunt could never read without thinking they must have come from the man who was in fact their author.

If literature had its losses in these years, it had also its gains.

Not long before the time at which we have now arrived, English literature had achieved three great successes. Pope wrote the first three books of his {302} "Dunciad," Swift published his "Gulliver's Travels," and Gay set the town wild with his "Beggar's Opera." We are far from any thought of cla.s.sifying the "Beggar's Opera" as a work of art on a level with the "Dunciad" or "Gulliver's Travels," but in its way it is a masterpiece. It is thoroughly original, fresh, and vivid.

It added one or two distinctly new figures to the humorous drama. It is clever as a satire and charming as a story. One cannot be surprised that when it had the attraction of novelty the public raved about it.

To say anything about "Gulliver's Travels" or the "Dunciad," except to note the historical fact that each was published, would of course be mere superfluity and waste of words.

In 1731 the first steps were taken in a reform of some importance in the liberation of our legal procedure. It was arranged that English should be subst.i.tuted for Latin in the presentments, indictments, pleadings, and all other doc.u.ments used in our courts of law. The early stages of this most wise and needful reform were met with much opposition by lawyers and pedants. One main argument employed in favor of the retention of the old system was that, if the language of our legal doc.u.ments were to be changed, no man would be at the pains of studying Latin any more, and that in a few years no one would be able to read a word of some of our own most valuable historical records. It was mildly suggested on the other side that there would always be some men among us who "either out of curiosity, or for the sake of gain,"

would make it their business to keep up the knowledge of Latin, and that a very few of such antiquarians would suffice to give the country all the information drawn from Latin records which it could possibly require or care to have. We have had some experience since that time, and it does not appear that the disuse of Latin in our legal doc.u.ments has led to its falling into absolute disuse among reading men. There are still among us, and apparently will always be, persons who, "either out of curiosity, or for the sake of gain," keep up their knowledge of Latin. {303} The curiosity to read Virgil and Horace and Cicero and Caesar, in the tongue which those authors employed, is more keen than it ever was before. Men indulge themselves freely in it, even without reference to the sake of gain.

[Sidenote: 1731--Quarrel of Walpole and Townshend]

Meanwhile a change long foreseen by those who were in the inner political circles was rapidly approaching. The combination between Walpole and his brother-in-law, Lord Townshend, was about to be broken up. It had for a long time been a question whether it was to be the firm of Townshend and Walpole, or Walpole and Townshend; and of late years the question was becoming settled. If the firm was to endure at all, it must clearly be Walpole and Townshend. Walpole had been growing every day in power and influence. The King, as well as the Queen, treated him openly and privately as the head of the Government.

Townshend saw this, and felt bitterly aggrieved. He had for a long time been a much more powerful personage socially than Walpole, and he could not bear with patience the supremacy which Walpole was all too certainly obtaining. Great part of that supremacy was due to Walpole's superiority of talents; but something was due also to the fact that the House of Commons was becoming a much more important a.s.sembly than the House of Lords. The result was inevitable. Townshend for a long time struggled against it. He tried to intrigue against Walpole; he did his best to ingratiate himself with the King. He was a man of austere character and stainless life; but he seems, nevertheless, to have tried at one time the merest arts of the political intriguer to supplant his brother-in-law in the favor and confidence of the King. Perhaps he might have succeeded--it is at least possible--but for the watchful intelligence of Queen Caroline. She saw through all Townshend's schemes, and took care that they should not succeed. At last the two rivals quarrelled. Their quarrel broke out very openly, in the drawing-room of a lady, and in the presence of several distinguished {304} persons. From hot words they were going on to a positive personal struggle, when the spectators at last intervened to "pluck them asunder," in the words of the King in "Hamlet." They were plucked asunder, and then there was talk of a duel. The friends of both succeeded in preventing this scandal, but the brothers-in-law were never thoroughly reconciled, and after a short time Lord Townshend resigned his office. He withdrew from public life altogether, and devoted his remaining years to the enjoyment of the country and the cultivation of agriculture. It is to his credit that when once he had given way to the superior influence of Walpole, he did not afterwards cabal against him, or try to injure him, according to the fashion of the statesmen of the time. On the contrary, when he was once pressed to join in an attack on Walpole's ministry, he firmly refused to do anything of the kind. He said he had resolved to take no further part in political contests, and he did not mean to break his resolution. He was particularly determined not to depart from his resolve in this case, he explained, because his temper was hot, and he was apprehensive that he might be hurried away by personal resentment to take a course which in his cooler moments he should have to regret. Nothing in his public life, perhaps, became him so well as his dignified conduct in his retirement. His place in history is not strongly marked; in this history we shall not hear of him any more.

[Sidenote: 1730--Signs of change in foreign policy]

Colonel Stanhope, who had made the Treaty of Seville, and had been raised to the peerage as Lord Harrington for his services, succeeded Townshend as Secretary of State. Horace Walpole, the brother of Robert, was at his own request recalled from Paris. Walpole, the Prime-minister, had begun to see that it would be necessary for the future to have something like a good understanding with Austria. The friendship with France had been a priceless advantage in its time, but Walpole believed that it had served its turn. It was valuable to England chiefly because it had enabled the Sovereign to keep {305} the movements of the Stuart party in check, and Walpole hoped that the House of Hanover was now secure on the throne, and believed, with too sanguine a confidence, that no other effort would be made to disturb it. Moreover, he saw some reason to think that France, no longer guided by the political intelligence of a man like the Duke of Orleans, was drawing a little too close in her relationship with Spain. Walpole was already looking forward to the coming of a time when it might be necessary for England to strengthen herself against France and Spain, and he therefore desired to get into a good understanding with the Emperor and Austria.

Walpole now had the Government entirely to himself. He was not merely all-powerful in the administration, he actually was the administration.

The King knew him to be indispensable; the Queen put the fullest trust in him. His only trouble was with the intrigues of Bolingbroke and the opposition of Pulteney. The latter sometimes affected what would have been called at the time a "mighty unconcern" about political affairs.

Writing once to Pope, he says, "Mrs. Pulteney is now in labor; if she does well, and brings me a boy, I shall not care one sixpence how much longer Sir Robert governs England, or Horace governs France." This was written while Horace Walpole was still Amba.s.sador at the French Court.

Pulteney, however, was very far from feeling anything like the philosophical indifference which he expressed in his letter to Pope.

He never ceased to attack everything done by the Ministry, and to satirize every word said by Walpole. At the same time Pulteney was complaining bitterly to his friends of the attacks made on him by the supporters of Walpole. On February 9, 1730, he wrote a letter to Swift, in which he says that "certain people" had been driven by want of argument "to that last resort of calling names: villain, traitor, seditious rascal, and such ingenious appellations have frequently been bestowed on a couple of friends of yours." "Such usage," he complacently adds, "has made it {306} necessary to return the same polite language; and there has been more Billingsgate stuff uttered from the press within these two months than ever was known before."

Swift himself had previously written to his friend Dr. Sheridan a letter in which he declared that "Walpole is peevish and disconcerted, stoops to the vilest offices of hireling scoundrels to write Billingsgate of the lowest and most prost.i.tute kind, and has none but beasts and blockheads for his penmen, whom he pays in ready guineas very liberally." One would have thought that beasts and blockheads could hardly prove very formidable enemies to Swift and Bolingbroke and Pulteney.

[Sidenote: 1730--Lord Hervey]

One of the incidents in the controversy carried on by the Ministerial penmen and the _Craftsman_ was a duel between Pulteney and Lord Hervey.

Pulteney and his friends were apparently under the impression that they had a right to a monopoly of personal abuse, and they resented any effusion of the kind from the other side as a breach of their privilege. Hervey had written a tract called "Sedition and Defamation displayed, in a Letter to the Author of the _Craftsman_;" and this led to a new outburst of pa.s.sion on both sides. Pulteney stigmatized Hervey, on account of his effeminate appearance, as a thing that was half man, half woman, and a duel took place in which Hervey was wounded. Hervey was a remarkable man. His physical frame was as feeble as that of Voltaire. He suffered from epilepsy and a variety of other ailments. He had to live mainly on a dietary of a.s.s's milk. His face was so meagre and so pallid, or rather livid, that he used to paint and make up like an actress or a fine lady. Pope, who might have been considerate to the weak of frame, was merciless in his ridicule of Hervey. He ridiculed him as Sporus, who could neither feel satire nor sense, and as Lord f.a.n.n.y. Yet Hervey could appreciate satire and sense; could write satire and sense. He was a man of very rare capacity. He had already distinguished himself as a debater in the House of Commons, and was afterwards to distinguish himself as a {307} debater in the House of Lords. He wrote pretty verses and clever pamphlets, and he has left to the world a collection of "Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second," which will always be read for its vivacity, its pungency, its bitterness, and its keen, penetrating good-sense. Hervey succeeded in obtaining the hand of one of the most beautiful women of the day, the charming Mary Lepell, whose name has been celebrated in more than one poetical panegyric by Pope, and he captivated the heart of one of the royal princesses. The historical reader must strike a sort of balance for himself in getting at an estimate of Hervey's character. No man has been more bitterly denounced by his enemies or more warmly praised by his friends.

Affectation, insincerity, prodigality, selfishness, servility to the great, contempt for the humble, are among the qualities his opponents ascribe to him. According to his friends, his cynicism was a mere affectation to hide a sensitive and generous nature; his bitterness arose from his disappointment at finding so few men or women who came up to a really high standard of n.o.bleness; his homage of the great was but the half-disguised mockery of a scornful philosopher. Probably the picture drawn by the friends is on the whole more near to life than that painted by the enemies. The world owes him some thanks for a really interesting book, the very boldness and bitterness of which enhance to a certain extent its historical value. At this time Hervey was but little over thirty years of age. He was the son of the first Earl of Bristol by a second marriage, had been educated at Westminster School and at Clare Hall, Cambridge; had gone early through the usual round of Continental travels, and became a friend of George the First's grandson, now Prince of Wales, at Hanover. This friendship not merely did not endure, but soon turned into hate. Hervey was an admirer of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and was admired by her; but her own a.s.surances, which may be trusted to, declared that there had been nothing warmer than friendship between them. Lady Mary afterwards {308} maintained that the relationship between Hervey and her established the possibility of "a long and steady friendship subsisting between two persons of different s.e.xes without the least admixture of love." Hervey was in his day a somewhat free and liberal lover of women, and it is not surprising that the world should have regarded his acquaintanceship with Lady Mary as something warmer than mere friendship. We shall have occasion to refer to Hervey's memoirs of the reign of George the Second more than once hereafter, and may perhaps now cite a few words which Hervey himself says in vindication of their sincerity and their historical accuracy; "No one who did not live in these times will, I dare say, believe but some of those I describe in these papers must have had some hard features and deformities exaggerated and heightened by the malice and ill-nature of the painter who drew them. Others, perhaps, will say that at least no painter is obliged to draw every wart or wen or humpback in its full proportions, and that I might have softened these blemishes where I found them. But I am determined to report everything just as it is, or at least just as it appears to me; and those who have a curiosity to see courts and courtiers dissected, must bear with the dirt they find in laying open such minds with as little nicety and as much patience as, in a dissection of their bodies, if they wanted to see that operation, they must submit to the disgust."

Hervey fought with spirit and effect on the side of Walpole, although Lady Hervey strongly disliked the Minister and was disliked by him.

Walpole had at one time, it was said, made unsuccessful love to the beautiful and witty Molly Lepell, and he did not forgive her because of her scornful rejection of his ponderous attempts at gallantry. Hervey, nevertheless, took Walpole's side, and proved to be an ally of some importance. A great struggle was approaching, in which the whole strength of Walpole's hold on the Sovereign and the country was to be tested by the severest strain.

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[Sidenote: 1730--The Sinking Fund]

Walpole was, as we have said more than once, the first of the great financier statesmen of England. He was the first statesman who properly appreciated the virtue and the value of mere economy in the disposal of a nation's revenues. He was the first to devise anything like a solid and symmetrical plan for the fair adjustment of taxation.

Sometimes he had recourse to rather poor and common-place artifices, as in the case of his proposal to meet a certain financial strain by borrowing half a million from the Sinking Fund. This proposal he carried by a large majority, in spite of the most vehement and even furious opposition on the part of the Patriots. It must be owned that the Patriots were right enough in the principle of their objection to this encroachment on the Sinking Fund, although their predictions as to the ruin it must bring upon the country were preposterous. Borrowing from a sinking fund is always rather a shabby dodge; but it is a trick familiar to all statesmen in difficulties, and Walpole did no worse than many statesmen of later days, who, with the full advantages of a sound and well-developed financial system, have shown that they were not able to do any better.

The Patriots seem to have made up their minds to earn their t.i.tle.