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Title: A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4)


Author: Justin McCarthy



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   In the original volumes in this set, each even-numbered page
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   added to each volume's Table of Contents.





A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES

by

JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M.P.

Author of "A History of Our Own Times" Etc.

In Four Volumes

VOL. II.







New York
Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square
1901




NOTE.

While this volume was passing through the press, _The English
Historical Review_ published an interesting article by Prof. J. K.
Laughton on the subject of Jenkins's Ear.  Professor Laughton, while
lately making some researches in the Admiralty records, came on certain
correspondence which appears to have escaped notice up to that time,
and he regards it as incidentally confirming the story of Jenkins's
Ear, "which for certainly more than a hundred years has generally been
believed to be a fable."  The correspondence, in my opinion, leaves the
story exactly as it found it.  We only learn from it that Jenkins made
a complaint about his ear to the English naval commander at Port Royal,
who received the tale with a certain incredulity, but nevertheless sent
formal report of it to the Admiralty, and addressed a remonstrance to
the Spanish authorities.  But as Jenkins told his story to every one he
met, it is not very surprising that he should have told it to the
English admiral.  No one doubts that a part of one of Jenkins's ears
was cut off; it will be seen in this volume that he actually at one
time exhibited the severed part; but the question is, How did it come
to be severed?  It might have been cut off in the ordinary course of a
scuffle with the Spanish revenue-officers who tried to search his
vessel.  The point of the story is that Jenkins said the ear was
deliberately severed, and that the severed part was flung in his face,
with the insulting injunction to take that home to his king.  Whether
Jenkins told the simple truth or indulged in a little fable is a
question which the recently published correspondence does not in any
way help us to settle.

J. McC.



CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.


    CHAP.                                                  PAGE

     XXI. BOLINGBROKE ROUTED AGAIN . . . . . . . . . . . .    1
    XXII. THE "FAMILY COMPACT" . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   22
   XXIII. ROYAL FAMILY AFFAIRS . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   38
    XXIV. THE PORTEOUS RIOTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   56
     XXV. FAMILY JARS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   69
    XXVI. A PERILOUS VICTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   82
   XXVII. "ROGUES AND VAGABONDS" . . . . . . . . . . . . .   93
  XXVIII. THE BANISHED PRINCE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  104
    XXIX. THE QUEEN'S DEATH-BED  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  114
     XXX. THE WESLEYAN MOVEMENT  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  187
    XXXI. ENGLAND'S HONOR AND JENKINS'S EAR  . . . . . . .  147
   XXXII. WALPOLE YIELDS TO WAR  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  170
  XXXIII. "AND WHEN HE FALLS----"  . . . . . . . . . . . .  185
   XXXIV. "THE FORTY-FIVE" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  199
    XXXV. THE MARCH SOUTH  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  308
   XXXVI. CULLODEN--AND AFTER  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  231
  XXXVII. CHESTERFIELD IN DUBLIN CASTLE  . . . . . . . . .  289
 XXXVIII. PRIMUS IN INDIS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  253
   XXXIX. CHANGES  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  274
      XL. CANADA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  282
     XLI. THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN . . . . . . . . . . . . .  292
          INDEX  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  306




{1}

A HISTORY

OF

THE FOUR GEORGES.


CHAPTER XXI.

BOLINGBROKE ROUTED AGAIN.

While "the King's friends" and the Patriots, otherwise the Court party
and the country party, were speech-making and pamphleteering, one of
the greatest English pamphleteers, who was also one of the masters of
English fiction, passed quietly out of existence.  On April 24, 1731,
Daniel Defoe died.  It does not belong to the business of this history
to narrate the life or describe the works of Defoe.  The book on which
his fame will chiefly rest was published just twenty years before his
death.  "Robinson Crusoe" first thrilled the world in 1719.  "Robinson
Crusoe" has a place in literature as unassailable as "Gulliver's
Travels" or as "Don Quixote."  Rousseau in his "Emile" declares that
"Robinson Crusoe" should for a long time be his pupil's sole library,
and that it would ever after through life be to him one of his dearest
intellectual companions.  At the present time, it is said, English
school-boys do not read "Robinson Crusoe."  There are laws of literary
reaction in the tastes of school-boys as of older people.  There were
days when the English public did not read Shakespeare; but it was
certain that Shakespeare would come up again, and it is certain that
"Robinson Crusoe" will come up again.  Defoe had been {2} a fierce
fighter in the political literature of his time, and that was a trying
time for the political gladiator.  He had, according to his own
declaration, been thirteen times rich and thirteen times poor.  He had
always written according to his convictions, and he had a spirit that
no enemy could cow, and that no persecution could break.  He had had
the most wonderful ups and downs of fortune.  He had been patronized by
sovereigns and persecuted by statesmen.  He had been fined; he had been
pensioned; he had been sent on political missions by one minister, and
he had been clapped into Newgate by another.  He had been applauded in
the streets and he had been hooted in the pillory.  Had he not written
"Robinson Crusoe" he would still have held a high place in English
literature, because of the other romances that came from his teeming
brain, and because of the political tracts that made so deep and
lasting an impression even in that age of famous political tracts.  But
"Robinson Crusoe" is to his other works like Aaron's serpent, or the
"one master-passion in the breast," which the poet has compared with
it--it "swallows all the rest."  "While all ages and descriptions of
people," says Charles Lamb, "hang delighted over the adventures of
Robinson Crusoe, and will continue to do so, we trust, while the world
lasts, how few comparatively will bear to be told that there exist
other fictitious narratives by the same writer--four of them at least
of no inferior interest, except what results from a less felicitous
choice of situation.  'Roxana,' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' 'Colonel
Jack,' are all genuine offsprings of the same father.  They bear the
veritable impress of Defoe.  Even an unpractised midwife would swear to
the nose, lip, forehead, and eye of every one of them.  They are, in
their way, as full of incident, and some of them every bit as romantic;
only they want the uninhabited island, and the charm, that has
bewitched the world, of the striking solitary situation."  Defoe died
in poverty and solitude--"alone with his glory."  It is perhaps not
uncurious to note that in the same month of the same year, 1731, on {3}
April 8th, "Mrs. Elizabeth Cromwell, daughter of Richard Cromwell, the
Protector, and granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell, died at her house in
Bedford Row, in the eighty-second year of her age."

[Sidenote: 1733--Gay's request]

The death of Gay followed not long after that of Defoe.  The versatile
author of "The Beggars' Opera" had been sinking for some years into a
condition of almost unrelieved despondency.  He had had some
disappointments, and he was sensitive, and took them too much to heart.
He had had brilliant successes, and he had devoted friends, but a
slight failure was more to him than a great success, and what he
regarded as the falling-off of one friend was for the time of more
account to him than the steady and faithful friendship of many men and
women.  Shortly before his death he wrote: "I desire, my dear Mr. Pope,
whom I love as my own soul, if you survive me, as you certainly will,
if a stone should mark the place of my grave, see these words put upon
it:

  "'Life is a jest and all things show it:
  I thought so once, but now I know it.'"


Gay died in the house of his friends, the Duke and Duchess of
Queensberry, on December 4, 1732.  He was buried near the tomb of
Chaucer in Westminster Abbey, and a monument was set up to his memory,
bearing on it Pope's famous epitaph which contains the line, "In wit a
man, simplicity a child."  Gay is but little known to the present
generation.  Young people or old people do not read his fables any
more--those fables which Rousseau thought worthy of special discussion
in his great treatise on Education.  The gallant Captain Macheath
swaggers and sings across the operatic stage no more, nor are tears
shed now for pretty Polly Peachum's troubles.  Yet every day some one
quotes from Gay, and does not know what he is quoting from.

Walpole was not magnanimous towards enemies who had still the power to
do him harm.  When the enemy could hurt him no longer, Walpole felt
anger no longer; {4} but it was not his humor to spare any man who
stood in his way and resisted him.  If he was not magnanimous, at least
he did not affect magnanimity.  He did not pretend to regard with
contempt or indifference men whom in his heart he believed to be
formidable opponents.  It was a tribute to the capacity of a public man
to be disliked by Walpole; a still higher tribute to be dreaded by him.
One of the men whom the great minister was now beginning to hold in
serious dislike and dread was Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of
Chesterfield.  Born in 1694, Chesterfield was still what would be
called in political life a young man; he was not quite forty.  He had
led a varied and somewhat eccentric career.  His father, a morose man,
had a coldness for him.  Young Stanhope, according to his own account,
was an absolute pedant at the university.  "When I talked my best I
quoted Horace; when I aimed at being facetious I quoted Martial; and
when I had a mind to be a fine gentleman I talked Ovid.  I was
convinced that none but the ancients had common-sense; that the
classics contained everything that was either necessary, useful, or
ornamental to me; . . . and I was not even without thoughts of wearing
the _toga virilis_ of the Romans, instead of the vulgar and illiberal
dress of the moderns."  Later he had been a devotee of fashion and the
gambling-table, was a man of fashion, and a gambler still.  He had
travelled; had seen and studied life in many countries and cities and
courts; had seen and studied many phases of life.  He professed to be
dissipated and even licentious, but he had an ambitious and a daring
spirit.  He well knew his own great gifts, and he knew also and frankly
recognized the defects of character and temperament which were likely
to neutralize their influence.  If he entered the House of Commons
before the legal age, if for long he preferred pleasure to politics, he
was determined to make a mark in the political world.  We shall see
much of Chesterfield in the course of this history; we shall see how
utterly unjust and absurd is the common censure which sets him down as
a literary and political {5} fribble; we shall see that his speeches
were so good that Horace Walpole declares that the finest speech he
ever listened to was one of Chesterfield's; we shall see how bold he
could be, and what an enlightened judgment he could bring to bear on
the most difficult political questions; we shall see how near he went
to genuine political greatness.

[Sidenote: 1733--Chesterfield's character]

It is not easy to form a secure opinion as to the real character of
Chesterfield.  If one is to believe the accounts of some of the
contemporaries who came closest to him and ought to have known him
best, Chesterfield had scarcely one great or good quality of heart.
His intellect no one disputed, but no one seems to have believed that
he had any savor of truth or honor or virtue.  Hervey, who was fond of
beating out fancies fine, is at much pains to compare and contrast
Chesterfield with Scarborough and Carteret.  Thus, while Lord
Scarborough was always searching after truth, loving it, and adhering
to it, Chesterfield and Carteret were both of them most abominably
given to fable, and both of them often, unnecessarily and consequently
indiscreetly so; "for whoever would lie usefully should lie seldom."
Lord Scarborough had understanding, with judgment and without wit; Lord
Chesterfield a speculative head, with wit and without judgment.  Lord
Scarborough had honor and principle, while Chesterfield and Carteret
treated all principles of honesty and integrity with such open contempt
that they seemed to think the appearance of these qualities would be of
as little use to them as the reality.  In short, Lord Scarborough was
an honest, prudent man, capable of being a good friend, while Lord
Chesterfield and Carteret were dishonest, imprudent creatures, whose
principles practically told all their acquaintance, "If you do not
behave to me like knaves, I shall either distrust you as hypocrites or
laugh at you as fools."

We have said already in this history that a reader, in getting at an
estimate of the character of Lord Hervey, will have to strike a sort of
balance for himself between {6} the extravagant censure flung at him by
his enemies and the extravagant praise blown to him by his friends.
But we find no such occasion or opportunity for striking a balance in
the case of Lord Chesterfield.  All the testimony goes the one way.
What do we hear of him?  That he was dwarfish; that he was hideously
ugly; that he was all but deformed; that he was utterly unprincipled,
vain, false, treacherous, and cruel; that he had not the slightest
faith in the honor of men or the virtue of women; that he was silly
enough to believe himself, with all his personal defects, actually
irresistible to the most gifted and beautiful woman, and that he was
mendacious enough to proclaim himself the successful lover of women who
would not have given ear to his love-making for one moment.  Yet we
cannot believe that Chesterfield was by any means the monster of
ugliness and selfish levity whom his enemies, and some who called
themselves his friends, have painted for posterity.  He was, says
Hervey, short, disproportioned, thick, and clumsily made; had a broad,
rough-featured, ugly face, with black teeth, and a head big enough for
a Polyphemus.  "One Ben Ashurst, who said few good things, though
admired for many, told Lord Chesterfield once that he was like a
stunted giant, which was a humorous idea and really apposite."  His
portraits do not by any means bear out the common descriptions of his
personal appearance.  Doubtless, Court painters then, as now, flattered
or idealized, but one can scarcely believe that any painter coolly
converted a hideous face into a rather handsome one and went wholly
unreproved by public opinion of his time.  The truth probably is that
Chesterfield's bitter, sarcastic, and unsparing tongue made him
enemies, who came in the end to see nothing but deformity in his person
and perfidy in his heart.  It is easy to say epigrammatically of such a
man that his propensity to ridicule, in which he indulged himself with
infinite humor and no distinction, and with inexhaustible spirits and
no discretion, made him sought and feared, liked and not loved, by most
of his acquaintance; it is easy to say that {7} no sex, no relation, no
rank, no power, no profession, no friendship, no obligation, was a
shield from those pointed, glittering weapons that seemed only to shine
to a stander-by, but cut deep in those they touched.  But to say this
is not to say all, or to paint a fair picture.  It is evident that he
delighted in passing himself off on serious and heavy people as a mere
trifler, paradox-maker, and cynic.  He invited them not to take him
seriously, and they did take him seriously, but the wrong way.  They
believed that he was serious when he professed to have no faith in
anything; when he declared that he only lived for pleasure, and did not
care by what means he got it; that politics were to him ridiculous, and
ambition was the folly of a vulgar mind.  We now know that he had an
almost boundless political ambition; and we know, too, that when put
under the responsibilities that make or mar statesmen, he showed
himself equal to a great task, and proved that he knew how to govern a
nation which no English statesman before his time or since was able to
rule from Dublin Castle.  If the policy of Chesterfield had been
adopted with regard to Ireland, these countries would have been saved
more than a century of trouble.  We cannot believe the statesman to
have been only superficial and worthless who anticipated in his Irish
policy the convictions of Burke and the ideas of Fox.

[Sidenote: 1733--Chesterfield's governing ability]

The time, however, of Chesterfield's Irish administration is yet to
come.  At present he is still only a rising man; but every one admits
his eloquence and his capacity.  It was he who moved in the House of
Lords the "address of condolence, congratulation, and thanks" for the
speech from the throne on the accession of George the Second.  Since
then he had served the King in diplomacy.  He had been Minister to the
Hague, and the Hague then was a very different place, in the
diplomatist's sense, from what it is now or is ever likely to be again.
He had been employed on special missions and had been concerned in the
making of important treaties.  He was rewarded for his services with
the Garter, and was made Lord Steward {8} of the Household.  He had
distinguished himself highly as an orator in the House of Lords; had
taken a place among the very foremost parliamentary orators of the day.
But he chafed against Walpole's dictatorship, and soon began to show
that he was determined not to endure too much of it.  He secretly did
all he could to mar Walpole's excise scheme; he encouraged his three
brothers to oppose the bill in the House of Commons.  He said witty and
sarcastic things about the measure, which of course were duly reported
to Walpole's ears.  Perhaps Chesterfield thought he stood too high to
be in danger from Walpole's hand.  If he did think so he soon found out
his mistake.  Walpole's hand struck him down in the most unsparing and
humiliating way.  Public affront was added to political deprivation.
Lord Chesterfield was actually going up the great stairs of St. James's
Palace, on the day but one after the Excise Bill had been withdrawn,
when he was stopped by an official and bidden to go home and bring back
the white staff which was the emblem of his office, of all the chief
offices of the Household, and surrender it.  Chesterfield took the
demand thus ungraciously made with his usual composure and politeness.
He wrote a letter to the King, which the King showed to Walpole, but
did not think fit to answer.  The letter, Walpole afterwards told Lord
Hervey, was "extremely labored but not well done."  Chesterfield
immediately passed into opposition, and became one of the bitterest and
most formidable enemies Walpole had to encounter.  Walpole's friends
always justified his treatment of Chesterfield by asserting that
Chesterfield was one of a party who were caballing against the minister
at the time of the excise scheme, and while Chesterfield was a member
of the Government.  Chesterfield, it was declared, used actually to
attend certain private meetings and councils of Walpole's enemies to
concert measures against him.  There is nothing incredible or even
unlikely in this; but even if it were utterly untrue, we may assume
that sooner or later Walpole would have got rid of Chesterfield.  {9}
Walpole's besetting weakness was that he could not endure any really
capable colleague.  The moment a man showed any capacity for governing,
Walpole would appear to have made up his mind that that man and he were
not to govern together.

[Sidenote: 1733--Walpole's animosity]

Walpole made a clean sweep of the men in office whom he believed to
have acted against him.  He even went so far as to deprive of their
commissions in the army two peers holding no manner of office in the
Administration, but whom he believed to have acted against him.  To
strengthen himself in the House of Lords he conferred a peerage on his
attorney-general and on his solicitor-general.  Philip Yorke, the
Attorney-general, became Lord Hardwicke and Chief-justice of the King's
Bench; Charles Talbot was made Lord Chancellor under the title of Lord
Talbot.  Both were men of great ability.  Hardwicke stood higher in the
rank at the bar than Talbot, and in the ordinary course of things he
ought to have had the position of Lord Chancellor.  But Talbot was only
great as a Chancery lawyer, and knew little or nothing of common law,
and it would have been out of the question to make him Lord
Chief-justice.  So Walpole devised a characteristic scheme of
compromise.  Hardwicke was induced to accept the office of Lord
Chief-justice on the salary being raised from 3000 pounds to 4000
pounds, and with the further condition that an additional thousand a
year was to be paid to him out of the Lord Chancellor's salary.  This
curious transaction Walpole managed through the Queen, and the Queen
managed to get the King to regard it as a clever device of his own
mention.  It is worth while to note that the only charge ever made
against Hardwicke by his contemporaries was a charge of avarice; he was
stingy even in his hospitality, his enemies said--a great offence in
that day was to be parsimonious with one's guests; and malignant people
called him Judge Gripus.  For aught else, his public and private
character were blameless.  Hardwicke was the stronger man of the two;
Talbot the more subtle and {10} ingenious.  Both were eloquent pleaders
and skilled lawyers, each in his own department.  Hervey says that "no
one could make more of a good cause than Lord Hardwicke, and no one so
much of a bad cause as Lord Talbot."  Hardwicke lived to have a long
career of honor, and to win a secure place in English history.  Lord
Talbot became at once a commanding influence in the House of Lords.
"Our new Lord Chancellor," the Earl of Strafford, England's nominal and
ornamental representative in the negotiation for the peace of Utrecht,
writes to Swift, "at present has a great party in the House."  But the
new Lord Chancellor did not live long enough for his fame.  He was
destined to die within a few short years, and to leave the wool-sack
open for Lord Hardwicke.

[Sidenote: 1734--The Patriots]

The House of Commons has hardly ever been thrilled to interest and
roused to passion by a more heated, envenomed, and, in the rhetorical
sense, brilliant debate than that which took place on March 13, 1734.
The subject of the debate was the motion of a country gentleman, Mr.
William Bromley, member for Warwick, "that leave be given to bring in a
bill for repealing the Septennial Act, and for the more frequent
meeting and calling of Parliaments."  The circumstances under which
this motion was brought forward gave it a peculiar importance as a
party movement.  Before the debate began it was agreed, upon a formal
motion to that effect, "that the Sergeant-at-arms attending the House
should go with the mace into Westminster Hall, and into the Court of
Bequests, and places adjacent, and summon the members there to attend
the service of the House."

The general elections were approaching; the Parliament then sitting had
nearly run its course.  The Patriots had been making every possible
preparation for a decisive struggle against Walpole.  They had been
using every weapon which partisan hatred and political craft could
supply or suggest.  The fury roused up by the Excise Bill had not yet
wholly subsided.  Public opinion still throbbed and heaved like a sea
the morning after a storm.  {11} The Patriots had been exerting their
best efforts to make the country dissatisfied with Walpole's foreign
policy.  The changes were incessantly rung upon the alleged
depredations which the Spaniards were committing on our mercantile
marine.  Long before the time for the general elections had come, the
Patriot candidates were stumping the country.  Their progress through
each county was marked by the wildest riots.  The riots sometimes
called for the sternest military repression.  On the other hand, the
Patriots themselves were denounced and discredited by all the penmen,
pamphleteers, and orators who supported the Government on their own
account, or were hired by Walpole and Walpole's friends to support it.
So effective were some of these attacks, so damaging was the incessant
imputation that in the mouths of the Patriots patriotism meant nothing
but a desire for place and pay, that Pulteney and his comrades found it
advisable gradually to shake off the name which had been put on them,
and which they had at one time willingly adopted.  They began to call
themselves "the representatives of the country interest."

The final struggle of the session was to take place on the motion for
the repeal of the Septennial Act.  We have already given an account of
the passing of that Act in 1716, and of the reasons which in our
opinion justified its passing.  It cannot be questioned that there is
much to be said in favor of the principle of short Parliaments, but in
Walpole's time the one great object of true statesmanship was to
strengthen the power of the House of Commons; to enable it to stand up
against the Crown and the House of Lords.  It would be all but
impossible for the House of Commons to maintain this position if it
were doomed to frequent and inevitable dissolutions.  Frequent
dissolution of Parliament means frequently recurring cost, struggle,
anxiety, wear and tear, to the members; and; of course, it meant all
this in much higher measure during the reign of George the Second than
it could mean in the reign of Victoria.  Walpole had {12} devoted
himself to the task of strengthening the representative assembly, and
he was, therefore, well justified in resisting the motion made by Mr.
Bromley on March 13, 1734, for the repeal of the Septennial Act.  Our
interest now, however, is not so much with the political aspect of the
debate as with its personal character.  One illustration of the
corruption which existed at the time may be mentioned in passing.  It
was used as an argument against long Parliaments, but assuredly at that
day it might have been told of short Parliaments as well.  Mr. Watkin
Williams Wynn mentioned the fact that a former member of the House of
Commons, afterwards one of the judges of the Common Pleas, "a gentleman
who is now dead, and therefore I may name him," declared that he "had
never been in the borough he represented in Parliament, nor had ever
seen or spoken with any of his electors."  Of course this worthy
person, "afterwards one of the judges of the Common Pleas," had simply
sent down his agent and bought the place.  "I believe," added Mr. Wynn,
"I could without much difficulty name some who are now in the same
situation."  No doubt he could.

[Sidenote: 1734--A supposititious minister]

Sir William Wyndham came on to speak.  Wyndham was now, of course, the
close ally of Bolingbroke.  He hated Walpole.  He made his whole speech
one long denunciation of bribery and corruption, and gave it to be
understood that in his firm conviction Walpole only wanted a long
Parliament because it gave him better opportunities to bribe and to
corrupt.  He went on to draw a picture of what might come to pass under
an unscrupulous minister, sustained by a corrupted septennial
Parliament.  "Let us suppose," he said, "a gentleman at the head of the
Administration whose only safety depends upon his corrupting the
members of this House."  Of course Sir William went on to declare that
he only put this as a supposition, but it was certainly a thing which
might come to pass, and was within the limits of possibility.  If it
did come to pass, could not such a minister promise himself more
success in a septennial than he {13} could in a triennial Parliament?
"It is an old maxim," Wyndham said, "that every man has his price."
This allusion to the old maxim is worthy of notice in a debate on the
conduct and character of Walpole.  Evidently Wyndham did not fall into
the mistake which posterity appears to have made, and attribute to
Walpole himself the famous words about man and his price.  Suppose a
case "which, though it has not happened, may possibly happen.  Let us
suppose a man abandoned to all notions of virtue and honor, of no great
family, and of but a mean fortune, raised to be chief Minister of State
by the concurrence of many whimsical events; afraid or unwilling to
trust to any but creatures of his own making, and most of these equally
abandoned to all notions of virtue or honor; ignorant of the true
interest of his country, and consulting nothing but that of enriching
and aggrandizing himself and his favorites."  Sir William described
this supposititious personage as employing in foreign affairs none but
men whose education made it impossible for them to have such
qualifications as could be of any service to their country or give any
credit to their negotiations.  Under the rule of this minister the
orator described "the true interests of the nation neglected, her honor
and credit lost, her trade insulted, her merchants plundered, and her
sailors murdered, and all these things overlooked for fear only his
administration should be endangered.  Suppose this man possessed of
great wealth, the plunder of the nation, with a Parliament of his own
choosing, most of their seats purchased, and their votes bought at the
expense of the public treasure.  In such a Parliament let us suppose
attempts made to inquire into his conduct or to relieve the nation from
the distress he has brought upon it."  Would it not be easy to suppose
all such attempts discomfited by a corrupt majority of the creatures
whom this minister "retains in daily pay or engages in his particular
interest by granting them those posts and places which never ought to
be given to any but for the good of the public?"  Sir William pictured
this minister {14} pluming himself upon "his scandalous victory"
because he found he had got "a Parliament, like a packed jury, ready to
acquit him at all adventures."  Then, glowing with his subject, Sir
William Wyndham ventured to suggest a case which he blandly declared
had never yet happened in this nation, but which still might possibly
happen.  "With such a minister and such a Parliament, let us suppose a
prince upon the throne, either from want of true information or for
some other reason, ignorant and unacquainted with the inclinations and
the interest of his people, weak, and hurried away by unbounded
ambition and insatiable avarice.  Could any greater curse befall a
nation than such a prince on the throne, advised, and solely advised,
by such a minister, and that minister supported by such a Parliament?
The nature of mankind," the orator exclaimed, "cannot be altered by
human laws; the existence of such a prince, of such a minister, we
cannot prevent by Act of Parliament; but the existence of such a
Parliament, I think, we may; and, as such a Parliament is much more
likely to exist, and may do more mischief while the Septennial Law
remains in force than if it were repealed, therefore I am most heartily
in favor of its immediate repeal."

[Sidenote: 1734--An effective reply]

This was a very pretty piece of invective.  It was full of spirit,
fire, and force.  Nobody could have failed for a moment to know the
original of the portrait Sir William Wyndham professed to be painting
from imagination.  It was not indeed a true portrait of Walpole, but it
was a perfect photograph of what his enemies declared and even believed
Walpole to be.  Such was the picture which the _Craftsman_ and the
pamphleteers were painting every day as the likeness of the great
minister; but it was something new, fresh, and bold to paint such a
picture under the eyes of Walpole himself.  The speech was hailed with
the wildest enthusiasm and delight by all the Jacobites, Patriots, and
representatives of the country interest, and there is even some good
reason to believe that it gave a certain secret satisfaction to some of
those who most {15} steadily supported Walpole by their votes.  But
Walpole was not by any means the sort of man whom it is quite safe to
visit with such an attack.  The speech of Sir William Wyndham had
doubtless been carefully prepared, and Walpole had but a short time,
but a breathing-space, while two or three speeches were made, in which
to get ready his reply.  When he rose to address the House it soon
became evident that he had something to say, and that he was determined
to give his adversary at least as good as he brought.  Nothing could be
more effective than Walpole's method of reply.  It was not to Sir
William Wyndham that he replied; at least it was not Sir William
Wyndham whom he attacked.  Walpole passed Wyndham by altogether.
Wyndham he well knew to be but the mouth-piece of Bolingbroke, and it
was at Bolingbroke that he struck.  "I hope I may be allowed," he said,
"to draw a picture in my turn; and I may likewise say that I do not
mean to give a description of any particular person now in being.
Indeed," Walpole added, ingenuously, "the House being cleared, I am
sure no person that hears me can come within the description of the
person I am to suppose."  This was a clever touch, and gave a new barb
to the dart which Walpole was about to fling.  The House was cleared;
none but members were present; the description applied to none within
hearing.  Bolingbroke, of course, was not a member; he could not hear
what Walpole was saying.  Then Walpole went on to paint his picture.
He supposed, "in this or in some other unfortunate country, an
anti-minister . . . in a country where he really ought not to be, and
where he could not have been but by an effect of too much goodness and
mercy, yet endeavoring with all his might and with all his art to
destroy the fountain from whence that mercy flowed."  Walpole depicted
this anti-minister as one "who thinks himself a person of so great and
extensive parts, and of so many eminent qualifications, that he looks
upon himself as the only person in the kingdom capable of conducting
the public affairs of the nation." {16} Walpole supposed "this fine
gentleman lucky enough to have gained over to his party some persons of
really great parts, of ancient families, and of large fortunes, and
others of desperate views, arising from disappointed and malicious
hearts."  Walpole grouped with fine freehand-drawing the band of
conspirators thus formed under the leadership of this anti-minister.
All the band were moved in their political behavior by him, and by him
solely.  All they said, either in private or public, was "only a
repetition of the words he had put into their mouths, and a spitting
forth of the venom which he had infused into them."  Walpole asked the
House to suppose, nevertheless, that this anti-minister was not really
liked by any even of those who blindly followed him, and was hated by
the rest of mankind.  He showed him contracting friendships and
alliances with all foreign ministers who were hostile to his own
country, and endeavoring to get at the political secrets of English
administrations in order that he might betray them to foreign and
hostile States.  Further, he asked the House to suppose this man
travelling from foreign court to court, making it his trade to betray
the secrets of each court where he had most lately been, void of all
faith and honor, delighting to be treacherous and traitorous to every
master whom he had served and who had shown favor to him.  "Sir, I
could carry my suppositions a great deal further; but if we can suppose
such a one as I have pictured, can there be imagined a greater disgrace
to human nature than a wretch like this?"

[Sidenote: 1734--An unstable alliance]

The ministers triumphed by a majority of 247 to 184.  Walpole was the
victor in more than the mere parliamentary majority.  He had conquered
in the fierce parliamentary duel.

There is a common impression that Walpole's speech hunted Bolingbroke
out of the country; that it drove him into exile and obscurity again,
as Cicero's invective drove Catiline into open rebellion.  This,
however, is not the fact.  A comparison of dates settles the question.
The debate on the Septennial Bill took place in March, 1734; {17}
Bolingbroke did not leave England until the early part of 1735.  The
actual date of his leaving England is not certain, but Pulteney,
writing to Swift on April 29, 1735, adds in a postscript: "Lord
Bolingbroke is going to France with Lord Berkeley, but, I believe, will
return again in a few months."  No one could have known better than
Pulteney that Bolingbroke was not likely to return to England in a few
months.  Still, although Bolingbroke did not make a hasty retreat,
history is well warranted in saying that Walpole's powerful piece of
invective closed the door once for all against Bolingbroke's career in
English politics.  Bolingbroke could not but perceive that Walpole's
accusations against him sank deeply into the heart of the English
people.  He could not but see that some of those with whom he had been
most closely allied of late years were impressed with the force of the
invective; not, indeed, by its moral force, but by the thought of the
influence it must have on the country.  It may well have occurred to
Pulteney, for example, as he listened to Walpole's denunciation, that
the value of an associate was more than doubtful whom the public could
recognize at a glance as the original of such a portrait.  There had
been disputes now and then already.  Bolingbroke was too much disposed
to regard himself as master of the situation; Pulteney was not
unnaturally inclined to believe that he had a much better understanding
of the existing political conditions; he complained that Wyndham
submitted too much to Bolingbroke's dictation.  The whole alliance was
founded on unstable and unwholesome principles; it was sure to crumble
and collapse sooner or later.  There can be no question but that
Walpole's invective precipitated the collapse.  With consummate
political art he had drawn his picture of Bolingbroke in such form as
to make it especially odious just then to Englishmen.  The mere
supposition that an English statesman has packed cards with a foreign
enemy is almost enough in itself at any time to destroy a great career;
to turn a popular favorite into an object of national distrust {18} or
even national detestation.  But in Bolingbroke's case it was no mere
supposition.  No one could doubt that he had often traded on the
political interests of his own country.  In truth, there was but little
of the Englishman about him.  His gifts and his vices were alike of a
foreign stamp.  Walpole was, for good or ill, a genuine sturdy
Englishman.  His words, his actions, his policy, his schemes, his
faults, his vices, were thorough English.  It was as an Englishman, as
an English citizen, more than as a statesman or an orator, that he bore
down Bolingbroke in this memorable debate.

[Sidenote: 1734--Bolingbroke a hurtful ally]

Bolingbroke must have felt himself borne down.  He did not long carry
on the struggle into which he had plunged with so much alacrity and
energy, with such malice and such hope.  Pulteney advised him to go
back for a while to France, and in the early part of 1734 he took the
advice and went.  "My part is over," he wrote to Wyndham, in words
which have a certain pathetic dignity in them, "and he who remains on
the stage after his part is over deserves to be hissed off."  His
departure--it might almost be called his second flight--to the
Continent was probably hastened also by the knowledge that a pamphlet
was about to be published by some of his enemies, containing a series
of letters which had passed between him and James Stuart's secretary,
after Bolingbroke's dismissal from the service of James in 1716.  The
pamphlet was suppressed immediately on its appearance, but its contents
have been republished, and they were certainly not of a character to
render Bolingbroke any the less unpopular among Englishmen.

The correspondence consisted in a series of letters that passed between
Bolingbroke, through his secretary, and Mr. James Murray, acting on
behalf of James Stuart, from whom he afterwards received the title of
Earl of Dunbar.

The letters are little more than mere recriminations.  Bolingbroke is
accused of having brought about the failure of the insurrection of 1715
by weakness, folly, and {19} even downright treachery.  Bolingbroke
flings back the charges at the head of James's friends, and even of
James himself.  There was nothing brought out in 1734 and 1735 to
affect the career and conduct of Bolingbroke which all England did not
know pretty well already.  Still, the revival of these old stories must
have seemed to Bolingbroke very inconvenient and dangerous at such a
time.  The correspondence reminded England once more that Bolingbroke
had been the agent of the exiled Stuarts in the work of stirring up a
civil war for the overthrow of the House of Hanover.  No doubt the
publication quickened Bolingbroke's desire to get out of England.  But
he would have gone, in any case; he would have had to go.  The whole
cabal with Pulteney had been a failure; Bolingbroke would thenceforward
be a hinderance rather than a help to the Patriots.  His counsel was of
no further avail, and he only brought odium on them; indeed, his advice
had from first to last been misleading and ill-omened.  The Patriots
were now only anxious to get rid of him; Pulteney gave Bolingbroke
pretty clearly to understand that they wanted him to go, and he went.

Walpole's speech, and the whole of the debate of which it made so
striking a feature, could not but have a powerful effect on the general
elections.  Parliament was dissolved on April 10, 1734, after having
nearly run the full course of seven years.  Seldom has a general
election been contested with such a prodigality of partisan fury and
public corruption.  Walpole scattered his purchase-money everywhere; he
sowed with the sack and not with the hand, to adopt the famous saying
applied by a Greek poetess to Pindar.  In supporting two candidates for
Norfolk, who were both beaten, despite his support, he spent out of his
private fortune at least 10,000 pounds; one contemporary says 60,000
pounds.  But the Opposition spent just as freely--more freely, perhaps.
It must be remembered that even so pure-minded a man as Burke has
contended that "the charge of systematic corruption" was less
applicable, perhaps, to Walpole "than to any other minister who ever
{20} served the Crown for such a length of time."  The Opposition were
decidedly more reckless in their incitements to violence than the
friends of the Ministry.  The _Craftsman_ boasted that when Walpole
came to give his vote as an honorary freeman at Norwich the people
called aloud to have the bribery oath administered to him; called on
him to swear that he had received no money for his vote.  All the
efforts of the Patriots, or the representatives of the country
interest, as they now preferred to call themselves, failed to bring
about the end they aimed at.  They did, indeed, increase their
parliamentary vote a little, but the increase was not enough to make
any material difference in their position.  All the wit, the eloquence,
the craft, the courage, the unscrupulous use of every weapon of
political warfare that could be seized and handled, had been thrown
away.  Walpole was, for the time, just as strong as ever.

[Sidenote: 1735--Swift's opinion of Arbuthnot]

We turn aside from the movement and rush of politics to lay a memorial
spray on the grave of a good and a gifted man.  Dr. Arbuthnot died in
February, 1735, only sixty years old.  "Poor Arbuthnot," Pulteney
writes to Swift, "who grieved to see the wickedness of mankind, and was
particularly esteemed of his own countrymen, is dead.  He lived the
last six months in a bad state of health, and hoping every night would
be his last; not that he endured any bodily pain, but as he was quite
weary of the world, and tired with so much bad company."  Alderman
Barber, in a letter to Swift a few days after, says much the same.  He
is afraid, he tells Swift, that Arbuthnot did not take as much care of
himself as he ought to have done.  "Possibly he might think the play
not worth the candle.  You may remember Dr. Garth said he was glad when
he was dying, for he was weary of having his shoes pulled off and on."
A letter from Arbuthnot himself to Swift, written a short time before
his death, is not, however, filled with mere discontent, does not
breathe only a morbid weariness of life, but rather testifies to a
serene and noble resignation.  "I am going," he tells Swift, "out {21}
of this troublesome world, and you, amongst the rest of my friends,
shall have my last prayers and good wishes.  I am afraid, my dear
friend, we shall never see one another more in this world.  I shall to
the last moment preserve my love and esteem for you, being well assured
you will never leave the paths of virtue and honor for all that is in
the world.  This world is not worth the least deviation from that way."
Thus the great physician, scientific scholar, and humorist awaited his
death and died.  We have spoken already in this history of Arbuthnot's
marvellous humor and satire.  Macaulay, in his essay on "The Life and
Writings of Addison," says "there are passages in Arbuthnot's satirical
works which we, at least, cannot distinguish from Swift's best
writing."  Swift himself spoke of Arbuthnot in yet higher terms.  "He
has more wit than we all have," was Swift's declaration, "and his
humanity is equal to his wit."  There are not many satirists known to
men during all literary history of whom quite so much could be said
with any faintest color of a regard for truth.  Swift was too warm in
his friendly panegyric on Arbuthnot's humor, but he did not too highly
estimate Arbuthnot's humanity.  Humor is among man's highest gifts, and
has done the world splendid service; but humor and humanity together
make the mercy winged with brave actions, which, according to
Massinger, befit "a soul moulded for heaven" and destined to be "made a
star there."




{22}

CHAPTER XXII.

THE "FAMILY COMPACT."

[Sidenote: 1735--The Polish throne]

The new Parliament met on January 14, 1735.  The Royal intimation was
given to the House of Commons by the Lord Chancellor that it was his
Majesty's pleasure that they should return to their own House and
choose a Speaker.  Arthur Onslow was unanimously elected, or rather
re-elected, to the chair he had filled with so much distinction in the
former Parliament.  The speech from the throne was not delivered until
January 23.  The speech was almost all taken up with foreign affairs,
with the war on the Continent, and the efforts of the King and his
ministers, in combination with the States General of the United
Provinces, to extinguish it.  "I have the satisfaction to acquaint
you," the King said, "that things are now brought to so great a
forwardness that I hope in a short time a plan will be offered to the
consideration of all the parties engaged in the present war, as a basis
for a general negotiation of peace, in which the honor and the interest
of all parties have been consulted as far as the circumstances of time
and the present posture of affairs would admit."  The Royal speech did
not contain one single word which had to do with the internal condition
of England, with the daily lives of the English people.  No legislation
was promised, or even hinted at, which concerned the domestic interests
of these islands.  The House of Lords set to work at once in the
preparation of an address in reply to the speech from the throne; and
they, too, debated only of foreign affairs, and took no more account of
their own fellow-countrymen than of the dwellers in Jupiter or Saturn.

{23}

The war to which the Royal speech referred had been dragging along for
some time.  No quarrel could have less direct interest for the English
people than that about which the Emperor Charles the Sixth and the King
of France, Louis the Fifteenth, were fighting.  On the death of
Augustus the Second of Poland, in February, 1733, Louis thought it a
good opportunity for putting his own father-in-law, Stanislaus
Leszczynski, back on the throne of Poland, from which he had twice been
driven.  Poland was a republic with an elective king, and a very
peculiar form of constitution, by virtue of which any one of the
estates or electoral colleges of the realm was in a position to stop
the action of all the others at any crisis when decision was especially
needed.  The result of this was that the elected king was always a
nominee of one or another of the great Continental Powers who took it
on themselves to intervene in the affairs of Poland.  The election of a
King of Poland was always a mere struggle between these Powers: the
strongest at the moment carried its man.  Stanislaus, the father of
Louis the Fifteenth's wife, had been a _protege_ of Charles the Twelfth
of Sweden.  He was a man of illustrious family and of great and varied
abilities, a scholar and a writer.  Charles drove Augustus the Second,
Augustus, Elector of Saxony, from the throne of Poland, and set up
Stanislaus in his place.  Stanislaus, however, was driven out of the
country by Augustus and his friends, who rallied and became strong in
the temporary difficulties of Charles.  When Charles found time to turn
his attention to Poland he soon overthrew Augustus and set up
Stanislaus once again.  But "hide, blushing glory, hide Pultowa's day";
the fall of the great Charles came, and brought with it the fall of
Stanislaus.  Augustus re-entered Poland at the head of a Saxon army,
and Stanislaus was compelled to abdicate.  Now that Augustus was dead,
Louis the Fifteenth determined to bring Stanislaus out from his
retirement of many years and set him for the third time on the Polish
throne.  On the other hand, the Emperor and Russia alike favored the
son of {24} the late king, another Augustus, Elector of Saxony.  The
French party carried Stanislaus, although at the time of his
abdication, three or four and twenty years before, he had been declared
incapable of ever again being elected King of Poland.  The Saxon party,
secretly backed up by Russia, resisted Stanislaus, attacked his
partisans, drove him once more from Warsaw, and proclaimed Augustus the
Third.  Louis of France declared war, not on Russia, but on the
Emperor, alleging that the Emperor had been the inspiration and support
of the Saxon movement.  A French army under Marshal Berwick, son of
James the Second of England, crossed the Rhine and took the fort of
Kehl--the scene of a memorable crossing of the Rhine, to be recrossed
very rapidly after, in days nearer to our own.  Spain and Sardinia were
in alliance with Louis, and the Emperor's army, although led by the
great Eugene, "Der edle Ritter," was not able to make head against the
French.  The Emperor sent frequent urgent and impassioned appeals to
England for assistance.  George was anxious to lend him a helping hand,
clamored to be allowed to take the field himself and win glory in
battle; camps and battle-fields were what he loved most, he kept
dinning into Walpole's unappreciative ear.  Even the Queen was not
disinclined to draw the sword in defence of an imperilled and harassed
ally.

[Sidenote: 1735--The Emperor's denunciation of Walpole]

Walpole stuck to his policy of masterly inactivity.  He would have
wished to exclude Stanislaus from the Polish throne, but he was not
willing to go to war with France.  He could not bring himself to
believe that the interests of England were concerned in the struggle to
such a degree as to warrant the waste of English money and the pouring
out of English blood.  But he did not take his stand on such a broad
and clear position; indeed at that time it would not have been a firm
or a tenable position.  Walpole did not venture to say that the
question whether this man or that was to sit on the throne of Poland
was not worth the life of one British grenadier.  The time had not come
when even a great minister might venture {25} to look at an
international quarrel from such a point of view.  Walpole temporized,
delayed, endeavored to bring about a reconciliation of claims;
endeavored to get at something like a mediation; carried on prolonged
negotiations with the Government of the Netherlands to induce the
States General to join with England in an offer of mediation.  The
Emperor was all the time sending despatches to England, in which he
bitterly complained that he had been deceived and deserted.  He laid
all the blame on Walpole's head.  Pages of denunciation of Walpole and
all Walpole's family are to be found in these imperial despatches.
Walpole remained firm to his purpose.  He would not go to war, but it
did not suit him to proclaim his determination.  He kept up his
appearance of active negotiation, and he trusted to time to settle the
question one way or the other before King George should get too
restive, and should insist on plunging into the war.  He had many an
uneasy hour, but his policy succeeded in the end.

The controversy out of which the war began was complicated by other
questions and made formidable by the rival pursuit of other ends than
those to be acknowledged in public treaty.  It would be unjust and even
absurd to suppose that Walpole's opponents believed England had a
direct interest in the question of the Polish succession, or that they
would have shed the blood of English grenadiers merely in order that
this candidate and not that should be on the throne of Poland.  What
the Opposition contended was that the alliance of France and Spain was
in reality directed quite as much against England as against the
Emperor.  In this they were perfectly right.  It was directed as much
against England as against the Emperor.  Little more than forty years
ago a collection of treaties and engagements entered into by the
Spanish branch of the Bourbon family found its way to the light of day
in Madrid.  The publication was the means of pouring a very flood of
light on some events which perplexed and distracted the outer world in
the days at {26} which, in the course of this history, we have now
arrived.  We speak especially of the Polish war of succession and the
policy pursued with regard to it by France and Spain.  The collection
of documents contained a copy of a treaty or arrangement entered into
between the King of France and the King of Spain in 1733.  This was, in
fact, the first family compact, the first of a series of family
compacts, entered into between the Bourbons in Versailles and the
Bourbons in Madrid.  The engagement, which in modern European history
is conventionally known as "the family compact" between the Bourbon
Houses, the compact of 1761, the compact which Burke described as "the
most odious and formidable of all the conspiracies against the
liberties of Europe that ever have been framed," was really only the
third of a series.  The second compact was in 1743.  The object of
these successive agreements was one and the same: to maintain and
extend the possessions of the Bourbons in Europe and outside Europe,
and to weaken and divide the supposed enemies of Bourbon supremacy.
England was directly aimed at as one of the foremost of those enemies.
In the compact of 1733 the King of France and the King of Spain pledged
themselves to the interests of "the most serene infant Don Carlos,"
afterwards for a time King of the Sicilies, and then finally King of
Spain.  The compact defined the alliance as "a mutual guarantee of all
the possessions and the honor, interests, and glory" of the two Houses.
It was described as an alliance to protect Don Carlos, and the family
generally, against the Emperor and against England.  France bound
herself to aid Spain with all her forces by land or sea if Spain should
see fit to suspend "England's enjoyment of commerce," and England
should retaliate by hostilities on the dominions of Spain, within or
outside of Europe.  The French King also pledged himself to employ
without interruption his most pressing instances to induce the King of
Great Britain to restore Gibraltar to Spain; pledged himself even to
use force for this purpose if necessary.  There were full and precise
{27} stipulations about the disposition of armies and naval squadrons
under various conditions.  One article in the treaty bluntly declared
that the foreign policy of both States, France and Spain, was to be
"guided exclusively by the interests of the House."  The engagement was
to be kept secret, and was to be regarded "from that day as an eternal
and irrevocable family compact."  No conspiracy ever could have been
more flagrant, more selfish, and more cruel.  The deeper we get into
the secrets of European history, the more we come to learn the truth
that the crowned conspirators were always the worst.

[Sidenote: 1735--Compact between the Houses of Bourbon]

This first family compact is the key to all the subsequent history of
European wars down to the days of the French Revolution.  The object of
one set of men was to maintain and add to the advantages secured to
them by the Treaty of Utrecht; the object of another set of men was to
shake themselves free from the disadvantages and disqualifications
which that treaty imposed on them.  The Bourbon family were possessed
with the determination to maintain the position in Spain which the will
of Charles the Second had bequeathed to them, and which after so many
years of war and blood had been ratified by the Treaty of Utrecht.
They wanted to maintain their position in Spain; but they wanted not
that alone.  They wanted much more.  They wanted to plant a firm foot
in Italy; they wanted to annex border provinces to France; they saw
that their great enemy was England, and they wanted to weaken and to
damage her.  No reasonable Englishman can find fault with the Kings of
Spain for their desire to recover Gibraltar.  An English sovereign
would have conspired with any foreign State for the recovery of Dover
Castle and rock if these were held by a Spanish invader too strong to
be driven out by England single-handed.  Many Englishmen were of
opinion then, some are of opinion now, that it would be an act of wise
and generous policy to give Gibraltar back to the Spanish people.  But
no Englishman could possibly doubt that if England were determined to
keep Gibraltar she must {28} hold it her duty to watch with the keenest
attention every movement which indicated an alliance between France and
Spain.

Spain had at one time sought security for her interests, and a new
chance for her ambitions, by alliance with the Emperor.  Of late she
had found that the Emperor generally got all the subsidies and all the
other advantages of the alliance, and that Spain was left rather worse
off after each successive settlement than she was before it.  The
family compact between the two Houses of Bourbon was one result of her
experience in this way.  Of course, when we talk of France and Spain,
we are talking merely of the Courts and the families.  The people of
France and Spain were never consulted, and, indeed, were never thought
of, in these imperial and regal engagements.  Nor at this particular
juncture had the King of Spain much more to do with the matter than the
humblest of his people.  King Philip the Fifth was a hypochondriac, a
half-demented creature, almost a madman.  He was now the tame and
willing subject of the most absolute petticoat government.  His second
wife, Elizabeth of Parma, ruled him with firm, unswerving hand.  Her
son, Don Carlos, was heir in her right to the Duchies of Parma and
Placentia, but she was ambitious of a brighter crown for him, and went
into the war with an eye to the throne of Naples.  The Emperor soon
found that he could not hold out against the alliance, and consented to
accept the mediation of England and the United Provinces.

The negotiations were long and dragging.  Many times it became apparent
that Louis on his part was only pretending a willingness to compromise
and make peace in order to strengthen himself the more for the complete
prosecution of a successful war.  At last a plan of pacification was
agreed upon between England and Holland and at the same time the King
of England entered into an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the
King of Denmark, this latter treaty, as George significantly described
it in the speech from the throne, "of great importance in {29} the
present conjuncture."  These engagements did not pass without severe
criticism in Parliament.  It was pointed out with effect that the
nation had for some time back been engaged in making treaty after
treaty, each new engagement being described as essential to the safety
of the empire, but each proving in turn to be utterly inefficacious.
In the House of Lords a dissatisfied peer described the situation very
well.  "The last treaty," he said, "always wanted a new one in order to
carry it into execution, and thus, my Lords, we have been a-botching
and piecing up one treaty with another for several years."  The
botching and piecing up did not in this instance prevent the outbreak
of the war.  The opposing forces, after long delays, at length rushed
at each other, and, as was said in the speech from the throne at the
opening of the session of 1736, "the war was carried on in some parts
in such a manner as to give very just apprehensions that it would
unavoidably become general, from an absolute necessity of preserving
that balance of power on which the safety and commerce of the maritime
powers so much depend."  With any other minister than Walpole to manage
affairs, England would unquestionably have been drawn into the war.
Walpole's strong determination and ingenious delays carried his policy
through.

[Sidenote: 1735--"Bonnie Prince Charlie"]

The war has one point of peculiar and romantic interest for Englishmen.
Charles Edward Stuart, the "bonnie Prince Charlie" of a later date, the
hero and darling of so much devotion, poetry, and romance, received his
baptism of fire in the Italian campaign under Don Carlos.  Charles
Edward was then a mere boy.  He was born in the later days of 1720, and
was now about the age to serve some picturesque princess as her page.
He was sent as a volunteer to the siege of Gaeta, and was received with
every mark of honor by Don Carlos.  The English Court heard rumors that
Don Carlos had gone out of his way to pay homage to the Stuart prince,
and had even acted in a manner to give the impression that he
identified himself with the cause of the exiled family.  There were
demands {30} for explanation made by the English minister at the
Spanish Court, and explanations were given and excuses offered.  It was
all merely because of a request made by the Duke of Berwick's son, the
Spanish prime-minister said.  The Duke of Berwick's son asked
permission to bring his cousin Charles Edward to serve as a volunteer,
and the Court of Spain consented, not seeing the slightest objection to
such a request; but there was not the faintest idea of receiving the
boy as a king's son.  King George and Queen Caroline were both very
angry, but Walpole wisely told them that they must either resent the
offence thoroughly, and by war, or accept the explanations and pretend
to be satisfied with them.  Walpole's advice prevailed, and the boy
prince fleshed his maiden sword without giving occasion to George the
Second to seek the ensanguined laurels for which he told Walpole he had
long been thirsting.  The Hanoverian kings were, to do them justice,
generally rather magnanimous in their way of treating the pretensions
of the exiled family.  We may fairly assume that the conduct of the
Spanish prince in this instance did somewhat exceed legitimate bounds.
George was wise, however, in consenting to accept the explanations, and
to make as little of the incident as the Court of Spain professed to do.

[Sidenote: 1735--Success of Walpole's policy]

Incidents such as this, and the interchange of explanations which had
to follow them, naturally tended to stretch out the negotiations for
peace which England was still carrying on.  Again and again it seemed
as if the attempts to bring about a settlement of the controversy must
all be doomed to failure.  At last, however, terms of arrangement were
concluded.  Augustus was acknowledged King of Poland.  Stanislaus was
allowed to retain the royal title, and was put in immediate possession
of the Duchy of Lorraine, which after his death was to become a
province of France.  The Spanish prince obtained the throne of the Two
Sicilies.  France was thought to have done a great thing for herself by
the annexation of Lorraine; in later times it seemed to have been an
ill-omened acquisition.  {31} The terms of peace were, on the whole,
about as satisfactory as any one could have expected.  Walpole
certainly had got all he wanted.  He wanted to keep England out of the
war, and he wanted at the same time to maintain and to reassert her
influence over the politics of the Continent.  He accomplished both
these objects.  Bolingbroke said it was only Walpole's luck.  History
more truly says it was Walpole's patience and genius.

Did Walpole know all this time that there was a distinct and deliberate
family compact, a secret treaty of alliance, a formal, circumstantial,
binding agreement, consigned to written words, between France and
Spain, for the promotion of their common desires and for the crippling
of England's power?  Mr. J. R. Green appears to be convinced that
"neither England nor Walpole" knew of it.  The English people certainly
did not know of it; and it is commonly taken for granted by historians
that while Walpole was pursuing his policy of peace he was not aware of
the existence of this family compact.  It has even been pleaded, in
defence of him and his policy, that he did not know that the war, in
which he believed England to have little or no interest, was only one
outcome of a secret plot, having for its object, among other objects,
the humiliation and the detriment of England.  There are writers who
seem to assume it as a matter of certainty that if Walpole had known of
this family compact he would have adopted a very different course.  But
does it by any means follow that, even if he had been all the time in
possession of a correct copy of the secret agreement, he would have
acted otherwise than as he did act?  Does it follow that if Walpole did
know all about it, he was wrong in adhering to his policy of
non-intervention?  A very interesting and instructive essay by
Professor Seely on the House of Bourbon, published in the first number
of the _English Historical Review_, makes clear as light the place of
this first family compact in the history of the wars that succeeded it.
Professor Seely puts it beyond dispute that in every subsequent
movement of France and Spain the {32} working of this compact was made
apparent.  He shows that it was fraught with the most formidable danger
to England.  Inferentially he seems to convey the idea that Walpole was
wrong when he clung to his policy of masterly inactivity, and that he
ought to have intervened in the interests of England.  We admit all his
premises and reject his conclusion.

Walpole might well have thought that the best way to mar the object of
the conspirators against England was to keep England as much as
possible out of continental wars.  He might well have thought that so
long as England was prosperous and strong she could afford to smile at
the machinations of any foreign kings and statesmen.  We may be sure
that he would not have allowed himself to be drawn away from the path
of policy he thought it expedient to follow by any mere feelings of
anger at the enmity of the foreign kings and statesmen.  He might have
felt as a composed and strong-minded man would feel who, quite
determined not to sit down to the gaming-table, is amused by the
signals which he sees passing between the cheating confederates who are
making preparations to win his money.  Besides, even if he knew nothing
of the family compact, he certainly was not ignorant of the general
scope of the policy of France and of Spain.  He was not a man likely at
any time to put too much trust in princes or in any other persons, and
we need not doubt that in making his calculations he took into full
account the possibility of France and Spain packing cards for the
injury of England.  The existence of the family compact is a very
interesting fact in history, and enables us now to understand with
perfect clearness many things that must have perplexed and astonished
the readers of an earlier day.  But, so far as the policy of Walpole
regarding the war of the Polish Succession was concerned, we do not
believe that it would have been modified to any considerable extent,
even if he had been in full possession of all the secret papers in the
cabinet of the King of France and the Queen of Spain.

{33}

[Sidenote: 1735--Professor Seely and the secret treaty]

But is it certain that Walpole did not know of the existence of this
secret treaty?  It is certain now that if he did not know of it he
might have known.  Other English statesmen of the day did know of
it--at least, had heard that such a thing was in existence, and were or
might have been forewarned against it.  Professor Seely puts it beyond
doubt that the family compact was talked of and written of by English
diplomatists at the time, was believed in by some, treated sceptically
by others.  The Duke of Newcastle actually called it by the very name
which history formally gives to the arrangement made many years after
and denounced by Burke.  He speaks of "the offensive and defensive
alliance between France and Spain, called the _pacte de famille_."  Is
it likely, is it credible, that Walpole had never heard of the
existence of a compact which was known to the Duke of Newcastle?
Archdeacon Coxe, in his "Life of Walpole," contends that Newcastle was
not by any means the merely absurd sort of person whom most historians
and biographers delight to paint him.  "He had a quick comprehension
and was a ready debater," Coxe says, although without grace or style.
"He wrote with uncommon facility and great variety of expression, and
in his most confidential letters, written so quickly as to be almost
illegible, there is scarcely a single alteration or erasure."  But
certainly Newcastle was not a man likely to keep to himself the
knowledge of such a fact as the family compact, or even the knowledge
that some people believed in the existence of such an arrangement.  For
ourselves, we are quite prepared to assume that Walpole had heard of
the family compact, but that it did not disturb his calculations or
disarrange his policy.  From some of his own letters written at the
time it is evident that he did not put any faith in the abiding nature
of family compacts between sovereigns.  More than once he takes
occasion to point out that where political interests interfered family
arrangements went to the wall.  As to the general rule Walpole was
quite right.  We have seen the fact illustrated over and over again
even in our {34} own days.  But Walpole appears to have overlooked the
important peculiarity of this family compact; it was an engagement in
which the political interests and the domestic interests of the
families were at last inextricably intertwined; it was a reciprocal
agreement for the protection of common interests and the attainment of
common objects.  Such a compact might be trusted to hold good even
among Bourbon princes.  On the whole, we are inclined to come to the
conclusion that if Walpole knew anything about the compact--and we
think he did know something about it--he was quite right in not
allowing it to disturb his policy of non-intervention, but that he was
not quite sound in his judgment if he held his peaceful course only
because he did not believe that such a family bond between members of
such a family would hold good.  "Tenez, prince," the Duc d'Aumale wrote
to Prince Napoleon-Jerome in a pamphlet which was once famous, "there
is one promise of a Bonaparte which we can always believe--the promise
that he will kill somebody."  One pledge of a Bourbon with another
Bourbon the world could always rely upon--the pledge to maintain a
common interest and gratify a common ambition.

[Sidenote: 1735--Death of Berwick]

The war cost one illustrious life, that of the brave and noble Duke of
Berwick, whom Montesquieu likened to the best of the heroes of
Plutarch, or rather in whom Montesquieu declared that he saw the best
of Plutarch's heroes in the life.  When Bolingbroke was denouncing the
set of men who surrounded James Stuart at St. Germains he specially
exempted Berwick from reproach.  He spoke of Berwick as one "who has a
hundred times more capacity and credit than all the rest put together,"
but added significantly that he "is not to be reckoned of the Court,
though he has lodgings in the house."  Berwick was the natural son of
James the Second and Arabella Churchill, sister to the Duke of
Marlborough.  When the day of James's destiny as King of England was
over, Berwick gave his bright sword to the service of France.  He
became a naturalized Frenchman and rose to the command {35} of the
French army.  He won the splendid victory of Almanza over the combined
forces of England and her various allies.  "A Roman by a Roman
valiantly o'ercome," defeated Englishmen might have exclaimed.  He was
killed by a cannon-ball on ground not far from that whereon the great
Turenne had fallen--killed by the cannon-ball which, according to
Madame de Sevigne, was charged from all eternity for the hero's death.
Berwick was well deserving of a death in some nobler struggle than the
trumpery quarrel got up by ignoble ambitions and selfish, grasping
policies.  He ought to have died in some really great cause; it was an
age of gallant soldiers--an age, however, that brought out none more
gallant than Berwick.  Of him it might fairly be said that "his
mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes."  This unmeaning little
war--unmeaning in the higher sense--was also the last campaign of the
illustrious Prince Eugene.  Eugene did all that a general could do to
hold up against overwhelming odds, and but for him the victory of the
French would have been complete.  The short remainder of his life was
passed in peace.

Walpole gave satisfaction to some of those who disliked his peace
policy by the energy with which he entered into the settlement of a
petty quarrel between Spain and Portugal.  The dispute turned on a
merely personal question concerning the arrest and imprisonment of some
servants of the Portuguese minister at Madrid.  Walpole was eagerly
appealed to by Portugal, and he took up her cause promptly.  He went so
far as to make a formidable "naval demonstration," as we should now
call it, in her favor.  But he was reasonable, and he was determined
that Portugal too should be reasonable.  He recommended her to show a
willingness to come to terms, while at the same time he brought so much
pressure to bear on Spain that Spain at last consented to refer the
whole dispute to the arbitrament of England and France.  The quarrel
was settled, and a convention was signed at Madrid in July, 1736.  It
was a small matter, but it might at such a time have led {36} to
serious and increasing complications if it had been allowed to go too
far.  Walpole unquestionably showed great judgment and firmness in his
conduct, and he bore himself with entire impartiality.  Spain was in
the wrong, he thought, but not so absolutely or wilfully in the wrong
as to justify Portugal in standing out for too stringent terms of
reparation.  At one time it seemed almost probable that the English
minister would have to employ force to coerce his own client into terms
as well as the other party to the suit.  But Walpole "put his foot
down," as the modern phrase goes, and the danger was averted.  Even
Cardinal Fleury, who co-operated with Walpole in bringing about the
settlement, thought at one time that Walpole was too strenuous and was
likely to overshoot the mark.

[Sidenote: 1736--Walpole's peace policy]

England had troubles enough of her own and at home about this time to
occupy and absorb the attention of the most devoted minister.  To do
Walpole justice, it was no fault of his if the activity of English
statesmanship was compelled to engage itself rather in the composing of
petty quarrels between Spain and Portugal than in any continuous effort
to improve the condition of the population of these islands.  He had at
least a full comprehension of the fact that domestic prosperity has a
good deal to do with sound finance, and that sound finance depends very
much upon a sound foreign policy.  But the utter defeat of his excise
scheme had put Walpole out of the mood for making experiments which
might prove to be in advance of the age.  He had no ambition to be in
advance of his age.  He was not dispirited or disheartened; he was not
a man to be dispirited or disheartened, but he was made cautious.  He
had got into a frame of mind with regard to financial reform something
like that into which the younger Pitt grew in his later years with
regard to Catholic emancipation: he knew what ought to be done, but
felt that he was not able to do it, and therefore shrugged his
shoulders and let the world go its way.  Walpole was honestly proud of
his peace policy; more {37} than once he declared with exultation that
while there were fifty thousand men killed in Europe during the
struggle just ended, the field of dead did not contain the body of a
single Englishman.  Seldom in the history of England has English
statesmanship had such a tale to tell.




{38}

CHAPTER XXIII.

ROYAL FAMILY AFFAIRS.

[Sidenote: 1736--The Sovereign of Hanover]

George, and his wife Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea, had a somewhat large
family.  Their eldest son, Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales and Duke of
Gloucester, was born on January 20, 1706.  Two other sons died, one the
moment after his birth, the other after scarcely a year of breath.
William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, was born in 1721.  There were
five daughters: Anne, Amelia or Emily, Caroline, Mary, and Louisa.  The
Princess Caroline seems to have been by far the most lovable of the
whole family.  She inherited much of her mother's cleverness without
her mother's coarseness.  "Princess Caroline," says Lord Hervey, "had
affability without meanness, dignity without pride, cheerfulness
without levity, and prudence without falsehood."  Her figure indeed is
one of the bright redeeming visions in all that chapter of Court
history.  She stands out among the rough, coarse, self-seeking men and
women somewhat as Sophy Western does among the personages of "Tom
Jones."  Her tender inclination towards Lord Hervey makes her seem all
the more sweet and womanly; her influence over him is always apparent.
He never speaks of her without seeming to become at once more manly and
gentle, strong and sweet.  Of the other princesses, Emily had perhaps
the most marked character, but there would appear to have been little
in her to admire.  Hervey says of her that she had the least sense of
all the family, except, indeed, her brother Frederick; and we shall
soon come to appreciate the significance of this comparison.

{39}

Frederick, the eldest son, like George the Second himself, had not been
allowed to come to England in his early days.  The young prince was in
his twenty-second year when, on the accession of his father to the
throne, he was brought over to this country and created Prince of
Wales.  At that time he was well spoken of generally, although even
then it was known to every one that he was already addicted to some of
the vices of his father and his grandfather.  The Court of Hanover was
not a good school for the training of young princes.  The sovereign of
Hanover was a positive despot, both politically and socially.
Everything had to be done to please him, to amuse him, to conciliate
him.  The women around the Court were always vying with each other to
see who should most successfully flatter the King, or, in the King's
absence, the Royal Prince.  It was intellectually a very stupid Court.
Its pleasures were vulgar, its revels coarse, its whole atmosphere
heavy and sensuous.  Frederick was said, however, to have given some
evidence of a more cultivated taste than might have been expected of a
Hanoverian Crown Prince.  He was said to have some appreciation of
letters and music.  When he settled in London he very soon began to
follow the example of his father and his grandfather; he threw his
handkerchief to this lady and to that, and the handkerchief was in
certain cases very thankfully taken up.  Some people said that he
entered on this way of life not so much because he really had a strong
predilection for it as because he thought it would be unbecoming of the
position of a Prince of Wales not to have an adequate number of women
favorites about him; so he maintained what seemed to him the dignity of
his place in society and in the State.

The prince's character at his first coming over, says Hervey in his
pleasantest vein, though little more respectable, seemed much more
amiable than, upon his opening himself further and being better known,
it turned out to be; for, though there appeared nothing in him to be
{40} admired, yet there seemed nothing in him to be hated--neither
anything great nor anything vicious; his behavior was something that
gained one's good wishes though it gave one no esteem for him.  If his
best qualities prepossessed people in his favor, yet they always
provoked contempt for him at the same time; for, though his manners
were stamped with a good deal of natural or habitual civility, yet his
habit of cajoling everybody, and almost in an equal degree, made what
might have been thought favors, if more sparingly bestowed, lose all
their weight.  "He carried this affectation of general benevolence so
far that he often condescended below the character of a prince; and, as
people attributed this familiarity to popular and not particular
motives, so it only lessened their respect without increasing their
good-will, and, instead of giving them good impressions of his
humanity, only gave them ill ones of his sincerity.  He was indeed as
false as his capacity would allow him to be, and was more capable in
that walk than in any other, never having the least hesitation, from
principle or fear of future detection, of telling any lie that served
his present purpose.  He had a much weaker understanding and, if
possible, a more obstinate temper than his father; that is, more
tenacious of opinions he had once formed, though less capable of ever
forming right ones.  Had he had one grain of merit at the bottom of his
heart, one should have had compassion for him in the situation to which
his miserable poor head soon reduced him, for his case in short was
this: he had a father that abhorred him, a mother that despised him,
sisters that betrayed him, a brother set up against him, and a set of
servants that neglected him, and were neither of use nor capable of
being of use to him, nor desirous of being so."

[Sidenote: 1736--Resolved on a marriage]

The King's eldest daughter, Anne, was married soon after Frederick's
coming to England.  Up to the age of twenty-four she had remained
unmarried, a long time for a princess to continue a spinster.  Many
years before, she had had a good chance of marrying Louis the Fifteenth
{41} of France.  George was anxious for the marriage; the Duc de
Bourbon, then minister to Louis, had originated the idea; Anne was only
sixteen years old, and would no doubt have offered no objection.  But
the scheme fell through because when it was well on its way somebody
suddenly remembered, what every one might have thought of before, that
if the English princess became Queen of France she would be expected to
conform to the religion of the State.  Political rather than religious
considerations made this settle the matter in the English Court.
George and Caroline had certainly no prejudices themselves in favor of
one form of religion over another, or of any form of religion over
none; but, as they held the English Crown by virtue of their at least
professing to be Protestants, and as the Pretender would most assuredly
have got that Crown if he had even professed to be a Protestant, it did
not seem possible that they could countenance a change of Church on the
part of their daughter.  Years passed away and no husband was offering
himself to Anne.  Now at last she was determined that she would wait no
longer.  Suddenly the Prince of Orange was induced to ask her to be his
wife.  She had never seen him; he was known to be ugly and deformed;
King George was opposed to the proposition, and told his daughter that
the prince was the ugliest man in Holland.  Anne was determined not to
refuse the offer; she said she would marry him if he were a Dutch
baboon.  "Very well," retorted the King, angrily; "you will find him
baboon enough, I can tell you."

The princess persevered, however; she was as firmly resolved to get
married as Miss Hoyden in Vanbrugh's "Relapse."  The King sent a
message to Parliament announcing the approaching marriage of his
daughter to the Prince of Orange, and graciously intimating that he
expected the House of Commons to help him to give the princess a
marriage-portion.  The loyal Commons undertook to find eighty thousand
pounds, although George was surely rich enough to have paid his
daughter's dowry out {42} of his own pocket.  George, however, had not
the remotest notion of doing anything of the kind.  The Bill was run
through the House of Commons in a curious sort of way, the vote for the
dowry being thrown in with a little bundle of miscellaneous votes, as
if the House of Commons were rather anxious to keep it out of public
sight, as indeed they probably were.  The bridegroom came to England in
November, 1732, and began his career in this country by falling very
ill.  It took him months to recover, and it was not until March 24,
1733, that the marriage was celebrated.  It must have been admitted by
Anne that her father had not misrepresented the personal appearance of
the Prince of Orange.  The Queen shed abundance of tears at the sight
of the bridegroom, and yet could not help sometimes bursting into a fit
of laughter at his oddity and ugliness.  Anne bore her awkward position
with a sort of stolid composure which was almost dignity.  To add to
the other unsatisfactory conditions of the marriage, the prophets of
evil began to point to the ominous conjuncture of names--an English
princess married to a Prince of Orange.  When this happened last, what
followed?  The expulsion of the father-in-law by the son-in-law.  Go
to, then!

[Sidenote: 1736--Massachusetts Bay retaliates]

On the same day on which the House of Commons voted the grant of the
princess's dowry, a memorial from the council and representatives of
the colony or province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England, was
presented and read from the table.  The memorial set forth that the
province was placed under conditions of difficulty and distress owing
to a royal instruction given to the governor of the province
restraining the emission of its bills of credit and restricting the
disposal of its public money.  The memorial, which seems to have been
couched in the most proper and becoming language, prayed that the House
would allow the agent for the province to be heard at the bar, and that
the House, if satisfied of the justice of the request, would use its
influence with the King in order that he might be graciously pleased to
withdraw {43} the instructions as contrary to the rights of the charter
of Massachusetts Bay, and tending in their nature to distress if not to
ruin the province.  The House of Commons treated this petition with the
most sovereign contempt.  After a very short discussion, if it could
even be called a discussion, the House passed a resolution declaring
the complaint "frivolous and groundless, a high insult upon his
Majesty's Government, and tending to shake off the dependency of the
said colony upon this kingdom, to which by law and right they are and
ought to be subject."  The petition was therefore rejected.  To the
short summary of this piece of business contained in the parliamentary
debates the comment is quietly added, "We shall leave to future ages to
make remarks upon this resolution, but it seems not much to encourage
complaints to Parliament from any of our colonies in the West Indies."
Not many ages, not many years even, had to pass before emphatic comment
on such a mode of dealing with the complaints of the American colonies
was made by the American colonists themselves.  Massachusetts Bay took
sterner measures next time to make her voice heard and get her wrongs
redressed.  Just forty years after the insulting and contemptuous
rejection of the petition of Massachusetts Bay, the people of Boston
spilled the stores of tea into Boston harbor, and two years later still
"the embattled farmer," as Emerson calls him, stood up to the British
troops at Lexington, in Massachusetts, and won the battle.

On Wednesday, May 30th, the second reading of the Bill for the
princess's dowry came on in the House of Lords.  Several of the peers
complained warmly of the manner in which the grant to the princess had
been stuck into a general measure disposing of various sums of money.
It was a Bill of items.  There was a sum of 500,000 pounds for the
current service of the year.  There was 10,000 pounds by way of a
charity "for those distressed persons who are to transport themselves
to the colony of Georgia."  There was a vote for the repairing of an
old church, and there {44} were other votes of much the same kind; and
amid them came the item for the dowry of the Royal Princess.  The Earl
of Winchelsea complained of this strange method of huddling things
together, and declared it highly unbecoming to see the grant made "in
such a hotch-potch Bill--a Bill which really seems to be the sweepings
of the other House."  The Earl of Crawford declared it a most indecent
thing to provide the marriage-portion of the Princess Royal of England
in such a manner; "it is most disrespectful to the royal family."  The
Duke of Newcastle could only say in defence of the course taken by the
Government that he saw nothing disrespectful or inconvenient in the
manner of presenting the vote.  Indeed, he went on to argue, or rather
to assert, for he did not attempt to argue, that it was the only way by
which such a provision could have been made.  It could not well have
been done by a particular Bill, he said, because the marriage was not
as yet fully concluded.  But the resolution of the House of Commons was
that out of the money then remaining in the receipt of the Exchequer
arisen by the sale of the lands in the island of St. Christopher's his
Majesty be enabled to apply the sum of 80,000 pounds for the
marriage-portion of the Princess Royal.  What possible difficulty there
could be about the presenting of that resolution in the form of a
separate Bill, or how such a form of presentation could have been
affected by the fact that the marriage had not yet actually been
concluded, only a brain like that of the Duke of Newcastle could
settle.  Of course the Bill was passed; each noble lord who criticised
it was louder than the other in declaring that he had not the slightest
notion of opposing it.  "I am so fond," said the Earl of Winchelsea,
"of enabling his Majesty to provide a sufficient marriage-portion for
the Princess Royal that I will not oppose this Bill."  There was much
excuse for being fond of providing his Majesty in this instance, seeing
that the money was not to be found by the tax-payers.  Probably the
true reason why the grant was asked in a manner which would not be {45}
thought endurable in our days, was that the Government well knew the
King himself cared as little about the marriage as the people did, and
were of opinion that the more the grant was huddled up the better.

[Sidenote: 1736--A projected double alliance]

We get one or two notes about this time that seem to have a forecast of
later days in them.  An explosion of some kind takes place in
Westminster Hall while all the courts of justice were sitting.  No
great harm seems to have been done, but the event naturally startled
people, and was instantly regarded as evidence of a Jacobite plot to
assassinate somebody; it was not very clear who was the particular
object of hatred.  Walpole wrote to his brother, telling him of the
explosion, and adding, "There is no reason to doubt that the whole
thing was projected and executed by a set of low Jacobites who talked
of setting fire to the gallery built for the marriage of the Princess
Royal" by means of "a preparation which they call phosphorus, that
takes fire by the air."  About the same time, too, we hear of an
outbreak of anti-Irish riots in Shoreditch and other parts of the east
end of London.  The "cry and complaint" of the anti-Irish was, as
Walpole described the matter, that they were underworked and starved by
Irishmen.  Numbers of Irishmen, it would seem, were beginning to come
over to this country, not merely to labor in harvesting in the rural
districts, as they had long been accustomed to do, but undertaking work
of all kinds at lower wages than English workmen were accustomed to
receive.  "The cry is, Down with the Irish," Walpole says; and Dr.
Sheridan, Swift's correspondent, proclaiming in terms of humorous
exaggeration his desire to get out of Cavan, protests that, failing all
other means of relief, "I will try England, where the predominant
phrase is, Down with the Irish."

George had at one time set his heart upon a double alliance between his
family and that of King Frederick William of Prussia.  The desire of
George was that his eldest son, Frederick, should marry the eldest
daughter of the Prussian King, and that the Prussian King's eldest {46}
son should marry George's second daughter.  The negotiation, however,
came to nothing.  The King of Prussia was prevailed upon to make
objections to it by those around him who feared that he might be
brought too much under the influence of England; and, indeed, it is
said that he himself became a little afraid of some possible
interference with his ways by an English daughter-in-law.  The only
interest the project has now is that it put the two kings into bad
humor with each other.  The bad humor was constantly renewed by the
quarrels arising out of the King of Prussia's rough, imperious way of
sending recruiting parties into Hanover to cajole or carry off gigantic
recruits for his big battalions.  So unkingly did the disputation at
last become that George actually sent a challenge to Frederick William,
and Frederick William accepted it.  A place was arranged where the
royal duellists, each crossing his own frontier for the purpose, were
to meet in combat.  The wise and persistent opposition of a Prussian
statesman prevailed upon Frederick to give up the idea, and George too
suffered himself to be talked into something like reason.  It is almost
a pity for the amusement of posterity that the duel did not come off.
It would have almost been a pity, if the fight had come off, that both
the combatants should not have been killed.  The King of Prussia and
the King of England were, it may safely be said, the two most coarse
and brutal sovereigns of the civilized world at the time.  The King of
Prussia was more cruel in his coarseness than the King of England.  The
King of England was more indecent in his coarseness than the King of
Prussia.  For all their royal rank, it must be owned that they were
_arcades ambo_--that is, according to Byron's translation, "blackguards
both."

[Sidenote: 1736--Following the ways of his ancestors]

The fight, however, did not come off, and George had still to find a
wife for his eldest son.  She was found in the person of the Princess
Augusta, sister of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha.  The duke gave his consent;
the princess offered no opposition, and indeed would not have been {47}
much listened to if she had had any opposition to offer.  King George
wished his son to get married to anybody rather than remain longer
unmarried; and the prince, who had tried to make a runaway match with a
young English lady before this time, appeared to be absolutely
indifferent on the subject.  So the Princess Augusta was brought over
to Greenwich, and thence to London, and on April 28, 1736, the marriage
took place.  The princess seems to have been a very amiable,
accomplished, and far from unattractive young woman.  The Prince of
Wales grew to be very fond of her, and to be happy in the home she made
him.  He continued, of course, to follow the ways of his father and his
grandfather, and had his mistresses as well as his wife.  The Prince of
Wales would probably have thought he was not acting properly the part
of royalty if he had been contented with the companionship of one
woman, and that woman his wife.  His wife had to put up with the palace
manners of the period.  Frederick had at one time been noted for his
dutiful ways to his mother; but more lately the mother and son had
become hopelessly estranged.  George hated Frederick, and the hatred of
the mother for the son seemed quite as strong as that of the father.

A courtly chronicler and genealogist, writing at a period a little
later, describes George the Second as in the height of glory, a just
and merciful prince, but dryly adds, "He resembles his father in his
too great attachment to the electoral dominions."  So indeed he did.
The whole policy of his reign was affected or controlled by his love
for Hanover, or, at least, his love for his own interest in Hanover.
He had no patriotic or unselfish attachment to the land of his ancestry
and his birth; he was incapable of feeling any such exalted emotion.
But the electoral dominions, which were his property, he clung to with
ardor, and Hanover was the garden of the pleasures he enjoyed most
highly.  He never could understand English ways.  He once scolded an
English nobleman, the Duke of Grafton, for his delight in the hunting
field.  It was a {48} pretty occupation, the King said, for a man of
the duke's years, and of his rank, to spend so much of his time in
tormenting a poor fox, that was generally a much better beast than any
of those that pursued him; for the fox hurts no other animal but for
his subsistence, while the brutes who hurt the fox did it only for the
pleasure they took in hurting.  One might admire such a declaration if
it could be thought to come from a too refined and sensitive humanity.
An eccentric, but undoubtedly benevolent, member of the House of
Commons declared, in a speech made in that House some years ago, that
he only once joined in a hunt, and then it was only in the interest of
the fox.  George had no such feeling; he simply could not understand
the tastes or the sports of English country life.

[Sidenote: 1736--To Hanover at all hazards]

George came back from an expedition to Hanover in a very bad humor.  He
hated everything in England; he loved everything in Hanover.  It was
with the uttermost reluctance that he dragged himself back from the
place of his amusements and his most cherished amours.  He had lately
found in Hanover a new object of adoration.  This was a Madame
Walmoden, a fashionable young married woman, with whom George had
fallen headlong into love.  He wrote home to his wife, telling her of
his admiration for Madame Walmoden, and describing with some minuteness
the lady's various charms of person.  He induced Madame
Walmoden--probably no great persuasion was needed--to leave her husband
and become the mistress of a king.  George, it is said, paid down the
not very extravagant sum of a thousand dollars to make things pleasant
all round.  During his stay in Hanover he and his new companion behaved
quite like a high-Dutch Antony and Cleopatra.  They had revels and
orgies of all kinds in the midst of a crowd of companions as refined
and intellectual as themselves.  George had paintings made of some of
these scenes, with portrait likenesses of those who took a leading part
in them, and these paintings he brought home to England, and was
accustomed {49} to exhibit and explain to the Queen, or to anybody else
who happened to be in the way.  But he did not as yet venture to bring
Madame Walmoden to England; and his having to part with her threw him
into a very bad temper.  The curious reader will find an amusing, but
at the same time very painful, account of the manner in which George
vented his temper by snubbing his children and insulting his wife.  The
Queen bore it all with her wonted patience.  George had made a promise
to get back to Hanover very soon to see his beloved Madame Walmoden.
Walpole restrained him for a long time, which made the King more and
more angry.  Once, when the Queen was urging him to be a little more
considerate in his dealings with some of the bishops, the King of
England, Defender of the Faith, told her he was sick of all that
foolish stuff, and added, "I wish with all my heart that the devil may
take all your bishops, and the devil take your minister, and the devil
take the Parliament, and the devil take the whole island, provided I
can get out of it and go to Hanover."  Caroline herself could be sharp
enough in her tone with the bishops sometimes, but the manners of the
King seemed to her to go beyond the bounds of reason.

The King was determined to get back to Hanover by a certain date.
Walpole swore to some of his friends that the King should not go.  The
King did go, however, and left the Queen to act as regent of the
kingdom during his absence.  This time George was to be absent from his
wife on his birthday, and the poor Queen took this bitterly to heart.
She consulted Walpole, and Walpole was frank, although on this
particular occasion he does not seem to have been coarse.  He reminded
the Queen that she was ceasing to be young and attractive, and, as it
was necessary that she must keep a hold over the King's regard, he
strongly urged her to write to George and ask him to bring Madame
Walmoden over to England with him.  Even this the Queen, after some
moments of agonized mental struggle, consented to do.  She wrote to the
{50} King, and she began to make preparations for the suitable
reception of the new sultana.  She carried her complacency so far as
even to say that she would be willing to take Madame Walmoden into her
own service.  Even Walpole thought this was carrying humbleness too
far.  "Why not?" poor Caroline asked; was not Lady Suffolk, a former
mistress of the King, in the Queen's employment?  Walpole pointed out,
with the worldly good-sense which belonged to him, that public opinion
would draw a great distinction between the scandal of the King's making
one of the Queen's servants his mistress and the Queen's taking one of
the King's mistresses into her service.

[Sidenote: 1736--Handelists and anti-Handelists]

The quarrels between the Prince of Wales and the other members of the
royal family kept on increasing in virulence.  The prince surrounded
himself with the Patriots, and indeed openly put himself at their head.
The King and Queen would look at no one who was seen in the
companionship of the prince.  The Queen is believed to have at one time
cherished some schemes for separating the Electorate of Hanover from
the English Crown, in order that Hanover might be given to her second
son.  With the outer public the Prince of Wales seems to have been
popular in a certain sense, perhaps for no other reason than because he
was the Prince of Wales and not the King.  When he went to one of the
theatres he was loudly cheered, and he took the applause with the
gratified complacency of one who knows he is receiving nothing that he
has not well deserved.  He would appear to have been continually
posturing and attitudinizing as the young favorite of the people.  The
truth is that the people in general knew very little about the prince,
and knew a good deal about the King, and naturally leaned to the side
of the man who might at least turn out to be better than his father.

Even the seraphic realms of music were invaded by the dispute between
the adherents of the King and the adherents of the prince.  The King
and Queen were supporters {51} of Handel, the prince was against the
great composer.  The prince in the first instance declared against
Handel because his sister Anne, the Princess of Orange, was one of
Handel's worshippers, therefore a great number of the nobility who
sided with the prince set up, or at least supported, a rival
opera-house to that in which Handel's music was the great attraction.
The King and Queen, Lord Hervey tells, were as much in earnest on this
subject as their son and daughter, though they had the prudence to
disguise it, or to endeavor to disguise it, a little more.  They were
both Handelists, "and sat freezing constantly at his empty Haymarket
opera, whilst the prince, with all the chief of the nobility, went as
constantly to that of Lincoln's Inn Fields."  "The affair," Hervey
adds, "grew as serious as that of the Greens and the Blues under
Justinian at Constantinople; an anti-Handelist was looked upon as an
anti-courtier, and voting against the Court in Parliament was hardly a
less remissible or more venial sin than speaking against Handel or
going to the Lincoln's Inn Fields Opera."  Hervey was a man of some
culture and some taste; it is curious to observe how little he thought
of the greatest musician of his time, one of the very greatest
musicians of all time.  The London public evidently could not have been
gifted with very high musical perception just then.  Indeed, later on,
when Handel brought out his "Messiah," it was met with so cold and
blank a reception in London that the composer began to despair of the
English public ever appreciating his greatest efforts.  He made up his
mind to try his "Messiah" in Ireland.  He went to Dublin, and there
found a splendid reception for his masterpiece, and he remained there
until the echo of his great success had made itself heard in England,
and he then came back and found his welcome in London.  This, however,
is anticipating.  At present we are only concerned with the fact, as
illustrating the existing condition of things in London, that to be an
admirer of Handel was to be an enemy of the Prince of Wales, and not to
be an {52} admirer of Handel was to be an enemy of the King.  The feud
ran so high that the Princess Royal said she expected in a little while
to see half the House of Lords playing in the orchestra in their robes
and coronets.  She herself quarrelled with the Lord Chamberlain for
preserving his usual neutrality on this occasion, and she spoke of Lord
Delaware, who was one of the chief managers against Handel, "with as
much spleen as if he had been at the head of the Dutch faction who
opposed the making her husband Stadtholder."  It seems needless to say
that George himself had no artistic appreciation of Handel.  He
subscribed one thousand a year to enable Handel to fight his battle,
but he talked over the matter with unenthusiastic prosaic common-sense.
He said he "did not think setting one's self at the head of a faction
of fiddlers a very honorable occupation for people of quality, or the
ruin of one poor fellow so generous or so good-natured a scheme as to
do much honor to the undertakers, whether they succeeded in it or not;
but, the better they succeeded in it, the more he thought they would
have reason to be ashamed of it."  There were some gleams of manhood
shining through George still, and he could appreciate fair play
although he could not quite appreciate Handel.  For the ruin of one
poor fellow!  The poor fellow was Handel.  The faction of fiddlers that
could ruin that poor fellow had not been found in the world, even if we
were to include Nero himself among the number.  One poor fellow!  We
wonder how many sovereigns living in George's time the world could have
spared without a pang of regret if by the sacrifice it could secure for
men's ennobling delight the immortal music of Handel.

[Sidenote: 1736--William Pitt]

On April 29, 1736, an event of importance took place in the House of
Commons; the event was a maiden speech, the speech was the opening of a
great career.  The orator was a young man, only in his twenty-eighth
year, who had just been elected for the borough of Old Sarum.  The new
member was a young officer of {53} dragoons, and his name was William
Pitt.  Pitt attached himself at once to the fortunes of the Patriot, or
country, party, and was very soon regarded as the most promising of
Pulteney's young recruits.  His maiden speech was spoken of and written
of by his friends as a splendid success, as worthy of the greatest
orator of any age.  Probably the stately presence, the magnificent
voice, and the superb declamation of the young orator may account for
much of the effect which his first effort created, for in the report of
the speech, such as it has come down to us, there is little to justify
so much enthusiasm; but that the maiden speech was a signal success is
beyond all doubt.  A study of the history of the House of Commons will,
however, make it clear, that there is little guarantee, little omen
even, for the future success of a speaker in the welcome given to his
maiden speech.  Over and over again has some new member delighted and
thrilled the House of Commons by his maiden speech, and never delighted
it or thrilled it any more.  Over and over again has a new member
failed in his maiden speech, failed utterly and ludicrously, and turned
out afterwards to be one of the greatest debaters in Parliament.  Over
and over again has a man delivered his maiden speech without creating
the slightest impression of any kind, good or bad, so that when he sits
down it is, as Mr. Disraeli put it, hardly certain whether he has lost
his Parliamentary virginity or not; and a little later on the same man
has the whole House trembling with anxiety and expectation when he
rises to take part in a great debate.  On the whole, it is probable
that the chances of the future are rather in favor of the man who fails
in his maiden speech.  At all events, there is as little reason to
assume that a man is about to be a success in the House of Commons
because he has made a successful maiden speech as there would be to
assume that a man is to be a great poet because he has written a
college prize poem.  The friends of young William Pitt, however, were
well justified in their expectations; and the magic of {54} presence,
voice, and action, which led to an exaggerated estimate of the merits
of the speech, threw the same charm over the whole of Pitt's great
career as an orator in the House of Commons.

[Sidenote: 1736--Pitt--Pulteney]

Pitt came of a good family.  His grandfather was the Governor of Madras
to whom Mary Wortley Montagu more than once alludes: the "Governor
Pitt" who was more famous in his diamonds than in himself, and whose
most famous brilliant, the Pitt diamond, was bought by the Regent Duke
of Orleans to adorn the crown of France.  William Pitt was a younger
son, and was but poorly provided for.  A cornet's commission was
obtained for him.  The family had the ownership of some parliamentary
boroughs, according to the fashion of those days and of days much later
still.  At the general election of 1734 William Pitt's elder brother
Thomas was elected for two constituencies, Okehampton and Old Sarum.
When Parliament met, and the double return was made known to it, Thomas
Pitt decided on taking his seat for Okehampton, and William Pitt was
elected to serve in Parliament for Old Sarum.  He soon began to be
conspicuous among the young men--the "boy brigade," who cheered and
supported Pulteney.  William Pitt was from almost his childhood
tortured with hereditary gout, but he had fine animal spirits for all
that, and he appears to have felt from the first a genuine delight in
the vivid struggles of the House of Commons.  He began to outdo
Pulteney in the vehemence and extravagance of his attacks on the policy
and the personal character of the ministers.  His principle apparently
was that whatever Walpole did must _ipso facto_ be wrong, and not
merely wrong, but even base and criminal.  Walpole was never very
scrupulous about inflicting an injury on an enemy, especially if the
enemy was likely to be formidable.  He deprived William Pitt of his
commission in the army.  Thereupon Pitt was made Groom of the
Bedchamber to the Prince of Wales.  When the address was presented to
the King on the occasion of the prince's marriage with the Princess of
{55} Saxe-Gotha, it was Pulteney, leader of the Opposition, and not
Walpole, the head of the Government, who moved its adoption.  It was in
this debate that William Pitt delivered that maiden speech from which
so much was expected, and which was followed by so many great orations
and such a commanding career.  As yet, however, William Pitt is only
the enthusiastic young follower of Pulteney, whom men compare with, or
prefer to, other enthusiastic young followers of Pulteney.  Even those
who most loudly cried up his maiden speech could have had little
expectation of what the maturity of that career was to bring.




{56}

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PORTEOUS RIOTS.

[Sidenote: 1736--The gin riots]

A good deal of disturbance and tumult was going on in various parts of
the provinces.  Some of our readers have probably not forgotten the
riots which took place in the early part of the present reign, in
consequence of the objection to the turnpike gate system, and in which
the rioters took the name of "Rebecca and her daughters."  Riots almost
precisely similar in origin and character, but much more extensive and
serious, were going on in the western counties during the earlier years
of George the Second's reign.  The rioting began as early as 1730, and
kept breaking out here and there for some years.  The rioters assembled
in various places in gangs of about a hundred.  Like "Rebecca and her
daughters," they were usually dressed in women's clothes; they had
their faces blackened; they were armed with guns and swords, and
carried axes, with which to hew down the obnoxious turnpike gates.  The
county magistrates, with the force at their disposal, were unable at
one time to make any head against the rioters.  The turnpike gates were
undoubtedly a serious grievance, and at that time there was hardly any
idea of dealing with a grievance but by the simple process of
imprisoning, suppressing, or punishing those who protested too loudly
against it.

The Gin riots were another serious disturbance to social order.
Gin-drinking had grown to such a height among the middle classes in
cities that reformers of all kinds took alarm at it.  A Bill was
brought into Parliament by Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master of the Rolls,
in 1736, for the purpose of prohibiting the sale of gin, or at least
laying so heavy a duty on it as to put it altogether out of {57} the
reach of the poor, and absolutely prohibiting its sale in small
quantities.  The Bill was not a ministerial measure, and indeed Walpole
seems to have given it but a cool and half-hearted approval, and the
Patriots vehemently opposed it as an unconstitutional interference with
individual habits and individual rights.  The Bill, however, passed
through Parliament and was to come into operation on the 29th of the
following September.  At first it appears to have created but little
popular excitement; but as the time drew near when the Act was to come
into operation, and the poorer classes saw themselves face to face with
the hour that was to cut them off from their favorite drink, a sudden
discontent flashed out in the form of wide-spread riot.  Only the most
energetic action on the part of the authorities prevented the
discontent from breaking into wholesale disturbance.

It does not seem as if the Gin Act did much for the cause of sobriety.
Public opinion among the populace was too decidedly against it to allow
of its being made a reality.  Gin was every day sold under various
names, and, indeed, it was publicly sold in many shops under its own
name.  The Gin Act called into existence an odious crew of common
informers who used to entrap people into the selling and drinking of
gin in order to obtain their share of the penalty, or, perhaps, in some
cases to satisfy a personal spleen.  The mob hated the common informers
as bitterly as a well-dressed crowd at a race-course in our own time
hates a "welsher."  When the informer was got hold of by his enemies he
was usually treated very much after the fashion in which the welsher is
handled to-day.

It would be needless to say that the Gin Act and the agitation
concerning it called also into existence a whole literature of
pamphlets, ballads, libels, and lampoons.  The agitation ran its course
during some two years, more than once threatened to involve the country
in serious disturbance, and died out at last when the legislation which
had caused so much tumult was quietly allowed to become a dead letter.

{58}

Suddenly Edinburgh became the theatre of a series of dramatic events
which made her, for the moment, the centre of interest to the political
world.  It is, perhaps, a sufficient proof of the delicate condition of
the relations between the two countries that the arrest of two
smugglers came within measurable distance of awaking civil war.  These
two smugglers, Wilson and Robertson, being under sentence of death,
made, while in church under armed escort, a desperate effort to escape.
Wilson, a man of great strength, by holding two soldiers with his hand,
and a third with his teeth, gave Robertson the chance, which he gladly
seized, of plunging into the crowd of the dispersing congregation, and
vanishing into space.

[Sidenote: 1736--John Porteous]

The Edinburgh magistrates, alarmed at the escape, offended by the
display of popular sympathy with the escaped smuggler, and fearing,
not, as it was said, without good cause, that an attempt would be made
to rescue the single-minded and not unheroic Wilson, resolved to take
all possible precautions to insure the carrying out of the sentence of
the law.  To do this the more effectively they ordered out nearly the
whole of their own city guard under the command of Captain Porteous,
and in doing so made one of the greatest mistakes recorded in their
annals.

Captain John Porteous was in his way and within his sphere a remarkable
man.  He belonged to that large crew of daring, resolute, and
unscrupulous adventurers who, under happy conditions, become famous
free companions, are great in guerilla wars, make excellent explorers,
and even found colonies and lay the foundations of States, but who,
under less auspicious stars, are only a terror to the peaceable and an
example to the law-abiding.  To the romancist, to the dramatist, the
character of such a man as John Porteous is intensely attractive; even
in the graver ways of history he claims the attention imperatively, and
stands forward with a decisive distinctness that lends to him an
importance beyond his deserts.  {59} His life had been from the
beginning daring, desperate, and reckless.  He was the son of a very
respectable Edinburgh citizen, who was also a very respectable tailor,
and whose harmless ambition it was to make the wild slip of his blood a
respectable tailor in his turn.  Never was the saying "Like father,
like son" more astonishingly belied.  Young John Porteous would have
nothing to do with the tailor's trade.  He was dissipated, he was
devil-may-care; there was nothing better to be done with him than to
ship him abroad into the military service of some foreign State, the
facile resource in those days for getting rid of the turbulent and the
troublesome.  John Porteous went into foreign service; he entered the
corps known as the Scotch-Dutch, in the pay of the States of Holland,
and plied the trade of arms.

Time went on, and in its course it brought John Porteous back to
Edinburgh.  Here his military training served the city in good stead
during the Jacobite rising of 1715.  He disciplined the city guard and
got his commission as its captain.  But, if wanderings and foreign
service had turned the tailor's son into a stout soldier, they had in
no degree mended his morality or bettered his reputation.  Edinburgh
citizenship has always been commended for keeping a strict eye to the
respectabilities, and the standard of public and private decorum was
held puritanically high in the middle of the last century; but even in
the most loose-lived of European cities, even in the frankest freedom
of barracks or of camp, John Porteous, if his reputation did not belie
him, might have been expected to hold his own among the profligate and
the brutal.  It seems to be uncertain whether he was the more
remarkable for his savage temper or for the dissolute disorder of his
life.  Naturally enough, perhaps in obedience to that law of contrast
which seems so often to preside over the destinies of such men, his
appearance did not jump with his nature.  We read that he was of
somewhat portly habit, by no means tall; that his face was rather
benign than otherwise, and that his eyes suggested a sleepy {60}
mildness.  Such as he was, he had lived a queer, wild life, but its
queerest and its wildest scenes were now to come in swift succession
before the end.

[Sidenote: 1736--Scene at an execution]

The city guard, of which Porteous was the commander, were scarcely more
popular than their chief.  Ferguson, the luckless tavern-haunting poet,
the Francois Villon of Edinburgh, the singer whose genius some critics
believe to be somewhat unfairly overshadowed by the greater fame of
Burns, has branded them to succeeding generations as "black banditti."
They were some 120 in number; they were composed of veteran soldiers,
chiefly Highlanders; they were considered by such of the Edinburgh
population as often came into conflict with them to be especially
ferocious in their fashion of preserving civic order.  Captain John
Porteous seems to have found them men after his own heart, to have been
very proud of them, and to have considered that they and he together
were equal to coping with any emergency that a disturbed Edinburgh
might present.  He was therefore deeply affronted when the magistrates,
after according to him and his men the duty of guarding the scaffold on
which Wilson was to die, considered it necessary for the further
preservation of peace and the overawing of any possible attempt at
rescue to order a regiment of Welsh fusileers to be drawn up in the
principal street of the city.  Wrath at the escape of Robertson, and
indignation at the slight which he conceived to be put upon him and his
men, acting upon his old hatred for his enemies, the Edinburgh mob,
seems to have whipped the fierce temper of Porteous into wholly
ungovernable fury.  The execution took place under peculiarly painful
conditions.  Porteous insisted on inflicting needless torture upon the
unhappy Wilson by forcing upon his wrists a pair of handcuffs that were
much too small for the purpose.  When Wilson remonstrated, and urged
that the pain distracted his thoughts from those spiritual reflections
which were now so peremptory, Porteous is said to have replied with
wanton ruffianism that such reflections would matter very {61} little,
since Wilson would so soon be dead.  The prisoner is reported to have
answered with a kind of prophetic dignity that his tormentor did not
know how soon he might in his turn have to ask for himself the mercy
which he now refused to a fellow-being.  With these words, almost the
latest on his lips, the smuggler went to his death and met it with a
decent courage.

While the execution took place no signs were shown on the part of the
great crowd that had assembled of any desire to rescue the prisoner.
But the sentence had hardly been carried out when the temper of the mob
appeared to change.  Stones were thrown, angry cries were raised, and
the mob, as if animated by a common purpose, began to press around the
scaffold.  One man leaped upon the gibbet and cut the rope by which the
body was suspended; others gathered round as if to carry off the body.
Then it is asserted that Porteous completely lost his head.  The
passion that had been swaying him all day entirely overmastered him.
He is said to have snatched a musket from the hands of the soldier
nearest to him, to have yelled to his men to fire, and to have shown
the example by pointing his own piece and shooting one of the crowd
dead.

Whether Porteous gave the order or not, it is certain that the attack
upon the gibbet was followed by a loose fire from the guard which
killed some six or seven persons and wounded many others.  Then
Porteous made an attempt to withdraw his men, and as they were moving
up the High Street the now infuriated mob again attacked, and again the
guards fired upon the people, and again men were killed and wounded.
Thus, as it were, fighting his way, Porteous got his men to their
guard-house.

The popular indignation was so great that the Edinburgh authorities put
Porteous upon his trial.  Porteous defended himself vigorously, denied
that he had ever given an order to fire, denied that he had ever fired
his piece, proved that he had exhibited his piece to the magistrates
immediately after the occurrence unused and still loaded.  This defence
was met by the counter-assertion {62} that the weapon Porteous had used
was not his own, but one seized from the hands of a soldier.  A large
number of persons gave evidence that they heard Porteous give the order
to fire, that they saw him level and discharge the piece he had seized,
and that they had seen his victim fall.  After a lengthy trial Porteous
was found guilty and sentenced to death.

[Sidenote: 1736--Attacking the Tolbooth]

The sentence was received with practically general approval in
Edinburgh, but with very different feelings in London.  The Queen, who
was acting as regent in the absence of George II., felt especially
strongly upon the subject.  Lamentable as the violence of Captain
Porteous had been, it was still urged that he had acted in obedience to
a sense of duty.  It was feared, too, that the sufficiently lawless
attitude of the lower population of Edinburgh towards authority would
be gravely and dangerously intensified if so signal an example were to
be made of an officer whose offence was only committed under conditions
of grave provocation and in the face of an outbreak which might well
appear to resemble riot.  The Government in London came to the
conclusion that it would not do to hang John Porteous, and a message
was sent by the Duke of Newcastle notifying her Majesty's pleasure that
Porteous should have a reprieve for a period of six weeks--a
preliminary step to the consequent commutation of the death sentence.

But, if the Government in London proposed to reprieve Porteous, the
wild democracy of Edinburgh were not willing to lose their vengeance so
lightly.  The deaths caused by the discharge of the pieces of
Porteous's men had aroused the most passionate resentment in Edinburgh.
Men of all classes, those directly affected by the deaths of friends
and relatives, and those who looked upon the quarrel from an attitude
of unconcerned justice, alike agreed in regarding Porteous's sentence
as righteous and deserved; now, alike, they agreed in resenting the
interference of the Queen, and the apparently inevitable escape of
Porteous from the consequences of his crime.

{63}

What followed fills one of the most dramatic of all the many dramatic
pages in the history of Edinburgh town.  John Porteous was imprisoned
in the Tolbooth, in the very thick of the city.  Some of his friends,
stirred by fears which if vague were not imaginary, urged him to
petition to the authorities to be removed to the Castle, perched safe
aloft upon its rock.  But Porteous, filled with a false security, and
rejoicing in the reprieve that had arrived from London, took no heed of
the warnings.  Perhaps, like the Duke of Guise on something of a like
occasion, he would, if warned that there was any thought of taking his
life, have answered, secure in the sanctity of the old Tolbooth, in the
historic words, "They would not dare."  Porteous remained in the old
Tolbooth; he gave an entertainment in honor of his reprieve to certain
privileged friends; he was actually at supper, with the wine going
round and round, and his apartment noisy with talk and laughter, when
the jailer entered the room with a pale face and a terrible tale.  Half
Edinburgh was outside the Tolbooth, armed and furious, their one demand
for the person of Porteous, their one cry for his life.

The tale was strange enough to seem incredible even to minds more sober
than those of Porteous and his companions, but it was perfectly true.
Edinburgh had risen in the most mysterious way.  From all parts of the
town bands of men had come together; the guard-house of the city guard
had been seized upon, the guards disarmed, and their weapons
distributed among the conspirators.  In a very short space of time
Edinburgh was in the hands of an armed and determined mob; the
magistrates, who attempted to enforce their authority, were powerless,
and the crowd, with a unanimity which showed how well their plans had
been preconcerted, directed all their energies to effecting an entrance
into the Tolbooth.  This proved at first exceedingly difficult.  The
great gate seemed to defy the force of all the sledge-hammer strokes
that could be rained against it, and its warders were obstinate alike
to the demands and the threats of the besiegers.  But some {64} one in
the ranks of the besiegers suggested fire, and through fire the
Tolbooth fell.  Fagots were piled outside the great gate and lighted,
and the bonfire was assiduously fed until at last the great gate was
consumed and the rioters rushed to their purpose over the glowing
embers and through the flying sparks.

[Sidenote: 1736--A "respectable" mob]

They found Porteous in his apartment, deserted by his companions, dizzy
with the fumes of wines, and helpless with the horror of the doom that
menaced him.  He might perhaps have escaped when the first alarm was
sounded, but, as he lost his head before through passion, so he seems
to have lost it again now through dismay.  The poor wretch had indeed
at the last moment, when it was too late, sought refuge in the chimney
of his room; his flight was stopped by a grating a little way up; to
this grating he clung, and from this grating he was plucked away by his
assailants.  In a few moments he was carried into the open air, was
borne, the bewildered, despairing, struggling centre of all that armed
and merciless mass, swiftly towards the Netherbow.  In the midst of the
blazing torches, the Lochaber axes, the guns and naked swords, that
hemmed him in, the helpless, hopeless victim was swept along.  A rope
was readily found, but a gibbet was not forthcoming; a byer's pole
served at the need.  Within a little while after the forcing of the
Tolbooth gate, Porteous was hanged and dead, and his wild judges were
striking at his lifeless body with their weapons.  It is said, and we
may well believe it, that Porteous died, when he found that he had to
die, bravely enough, as became a soldier.  In that wild, mad life of
his he had faced many perils, and if he pleaded for his life with his
self-ordained executioners while there was any chance that pleading
might prevail, it is likely enough that he accepted the inevitable with
composure.  Wilson was avenged; the victims of the fusillade of the
city guard had been atoned for by blood, and Edinburgh had asserted
with a ferocity all her own that England's will was not her will, and
England's law not her law.

{65}

The peculiar characteristics of the crowd that battered down the
Tolbooth gate and carried off Porteous to his death in the Grassmarket
were its orderliness, its singleness of purpose, and the curious
"respectability," if such a term may be employed, of its composition.
Its singleness of purpose and its orderliness were alike exemplified by
the way in which it went about its grim business and by the absolute
absence of all riot or pillage of any kind, or indeed of any sort of
violence beyond that essential to the carrying out of its intent.  No
peaceable persons were molested; no buildings other than the Tolbooth
were broken into; the very rope which hanged the unhappy Porteous was
immediately and amply paid for.  No one except the central victim of
the conspiracy received harm at the hands of the mob.  The
"respectability" of a large proportion of the mob and of those
controlling its actions was afterwards vouched for in many ways.
Ladies told tales of their carriages being stopped by disguised
individuals of courteous bearing and marked politeness, who with the
most amiable apologies turned their horses' heads from the scene of
action.  It was afterwards reported and commonly believed that the
Edinburgh authorities knew more about the purpose of the self-appointed
executions than was consonant with a due regard for law and order.  In
fact, if the passions of the mob were aroused they were undoubtedly
organized, directed, and held in check by those who knew well how to
command, and to give to an illegal act the gravity and decorum of
legality.

News travelled slowly in those days.  There were no telegrams, no
special editions, no newspapers, to tell the Londoner in the morning of
the grim deed that had been done in Edinburgh overnight.  But when the
news did come it certainly startled London, and it raised up a perfect
passion of rage, a _hysterica passio_, in the heart and brain of one
person.  That person was the Queen, who had herself specially ordered
the reprieve of the condemned man.  Queen Caroline's reason seemed for
the {66} moment to be wellnigh unhinged by her anger at the news.  She
uttered the wildest threats, and talked vehemently of inflicting all
manner of impossible punishment upon Edinburgh for the offences of its
mob.

[Sidenote: 1737--Scottish dignity]

Fortunately for the maintenance of peace between the two countries, the
question of the justice or the injustice of Porteous's fate was not to
be settled by the caprice of an irritated woman.  In obedience,
however, to the Queen's wishes, the Government introduced into the
House of Lords, in April, 1737, a Bill the terms of which proposed to
disable the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Alexander Wilson, "from taking,
holding, or enjoying any office or place of magistracy in the city of
Edinburgh, or elsewhere in Great Britain, and for imprisoning the said
Alexander Wilson, and for abolishing the town guard kept up in the said
city, commonly called the Town Guard, and for taking away the gates of
the Netherbow port of the said city, and keeping open the same."  The
Bill was the occasion of long and bitter debates, in which Lord
Carteret made himself the most conspicuous advocate of the Government
measure, and the Duke of Argyll acted as the chief champion of the
Scotch peers, who resolutely opposed it.  The debate was curious and
instructive, in serving to show the extreme delicacy of the relations
between England and Scotland, and the difficulties presented by the
differences between the Scotch law and the English law.  Porteous was
tried and condemned naturally by Scotch law, and many, if not most, of
the English advocates of the Bill seemed to find it hard to put it out
of their heads that because the trial was not conducted in accordance
with the principles of English legislation it could possibly be a fair
or a just trial.

If the Bill was calculated to irritate the susceptibilities of the
Scotch peers, there were attendant circumstances still more irritating.
The three Scotch judges were summoned from Scotland to answer certain
legal questions connected with the debate.  On their arrival a fresh
debate sprang up on the question whether they should be {67} examined
at the Bar of the House of Lords or upon the wool-sacks.  The Scotch
peers considered it disrespectful to their judges to be examined at the
Bar of the House of Lords, and urged some of their arguments against it
in terms of ominous warning.  It is curious to find a speaker in this
debate telling the Government that the strength of the legal union that
existed between England and Scotland depended entirely upon the way in
which the people of Scotland were treated by the majority in the two
Houses.  If any encroachment be made, the speaker urged, on those
articles which have been stipulated between the two countries, the
legal union will be of little force: the Scotch people will be apt to
ascribe to the present royal family all the ills they feel or imagine
they feel; and if they should unanimously join in a contrary interest
they would be supported by a powerful party in England as well as by a
powerful party beyond the seas.  For such reasons the speaker urged
that any insult, or seeming insult, to the people of Scotland was
especially to be avoided, and any disrespect to the Scotch judges would
be looked upon by the whole nation as a violation of the Articles of
Union and an indignity to the Scottish people.

The use of such words in the House of Lords within two-and-twenty years
of the rising of 1715 ought to have been found most significant.  No
one who was present and who heard those words could guess indeed that
within eight more years Scotland and England would witness a rising yet
more formidable than that of the Old Pretender, a rising which would
put for a moment in serious peril the Hanoverian hold of the throne.
But they might well have been accepted as of the gravest import by
those who voted for the attendance of the Scotch judges at the Bar of
the House of Lords, and who carried their point by a majority of twelve.

The question of the judges being settled, the debate on the Bill went
on, and the measure was read a third time, on Wednesday, May 11th, and
passed by a majority of fifty-four to twenty-two.  On the following
Monday, May 16th, {68} the Bill was sent down to the House of Commons,
where it occasioned debates even warmer than the debates in the Upper
House.  The Scotch opposition was more successful in the Commons than
it had been in the Lords.  So strenuously was the measure opposed that
at one time it seemed likely to be lost altogether, and was only saved
from extinction by a casting vote.  When at last it was read a third
time, on June 13th, it was a very different measure, in name and in
form, from the Bill which had come down from the Peers a month earlier.
The proposal to abolish the Edinburgh city guard and to destroy the
gate of the Netherbow port disappeared from the Bill, and the proposed
punitive measures finally resolved themselves into the infliction of a
fine of two thousand pounds upon the city of Edinburgh, and the
declaration that the provost, Alexander Wilson, was incapable of
holding office.  Such was the pacific conclusion of a controversy that
at one time seemed likely to put a dangerous strain upon the amicable
relations between the two countries.  It may indeed be shrewdly
suspected that the memory of the Porteous mob, and of the part which
the Hanoverian Queen and the Whig Government played in connection with
it, may have had no small share in fanning the embers of Jacobite
enthusiasm in Scotland in swelling the ranks of the sympathizers with
King James and Prince Charles over the water, and in precipitating the
insurrectionary storm which was to make memorable the name of the
Forty-five.  Perhaps to the world at large the most momentous result of
that wild and stormy episode is to be found in the enchanting fiction
which has illuminated, with the genius of Walter Scott, the stirring
scenes of the Porteous riots, and has lent an air of heroic dignity and
beauty to the obscure smuggler, George Robertson.  It is the happy
privilege of the true romancer to find history his handmaid, and to
make obscure events immortal, whether they be the scuffles of Greeks
and barbarians outside a small town in Asia Minor, or the lynching of a
dissolute adventurer by an Edinburgh mob at the Grassmarket.




{69}

CHAPTER XXV.

FAMILY JARS.

[Sidenote: 1737--Unpopularity of George the Second]

"How is the wind now for the King?"  "Like the nation--against him."
Such was the question put, and such the answer promptly given, by two
persons meeting in a London street during certain stormy days of
December, 1736.  The King had been on a visit to his loved Hanover.
When the royal yachts were returning, some fierce tempests sprang up
and raged along both coasts; and the King's vessel was forced to return
to Helvoetsluis, in Holland, from which she had sailed.  She had parted
company with some of the other vessels.  The storms continued to rage,
and the King, who had been most reluctant to leave Hanover, was wild
with impatience to get away from Helvoetsluis.  Having had to take
leave of Madame Walmoden, he was now anxious to get back to the Queen.
He sailed for Helvoetsluis while the tempest was still not wholly
allayed, and another tempest seemed likely to spring up.  News
travelled slowly in those times, and there were successive intervals of
several days, during which the English Court and the English public did
not know whether George was safe in a port, or was drifting on a wreck,
or was lying at the bottom of the sea.

That was a trying time for the Queen and those who stood by her.
George the Second was just then very unpopular in London, and indeed
all over England.  "The King's danger," Lord Hervey says, "did not in
the least soften the minds of the people towards him; a thousand
impertinent and treasonable reflections were thrown out against him
every day publicly in the streets--such as wishing him at the bottom of
the sea; that he had been {70} drowned instead of some of the poor
sailors that had been washed off the decks--and many other affectionate
_douceurs_ in the same style."  A man went into an ale-house where
several soldiers were drinking; he addressed them "as brave English
boys," and called on them to drink "damnation to your master."  The man
went on to argue that there was no reason why the English people should
not hate the King, and that the King had gone to Hanover only to spend
the money of England there, and to bring back his Hanoverian mistress.
There is not much in this of any particular importance; but there is
significance in what followed.  The man was arrested, and the sergeant
who was with the soldiers when the invitation to drink was given went
to Sir Robert Walpole to tell him what had happened.  Sir Robert
thanked the sergeant and rewarded him, but enjoined him to leave out of
the affidavit he would have to make any allusion to the English money
and the Hanoverian mistress.  There was quite enough in the mere
invitation to drink the disloyal toast, Sir Robert said, to secure the
offender's punishment; but the Prime-minister was decidedly of opinion
that the less said just then in public about the spending of English
money and the endowment of Hanoverian women, the better for peace and
quietness.

[Sidenote: 1737--The Prince of Wales]

The Queen and Sir Robert and Lord Hervey were in constant consultation.
They would not show in public the fear which all alike entertained.
The Queen went to chapel, and passed her evenings with her circle just
as usual; but she was in the uttermost alarm and the deepest distress.
Any hour might bring the news that the King was drowned; and who could
tell what might not happen in England then?  Of course in the natural
order of things the Prince of Wales would succeed to the throne; and
what would become of the Queen and Walpole and Hervey then?  Hervey,
indeed, tried to reassure the Queen, and to persuade her that her son
would acknowledge her influence and be led by it; but Caroline could
not be prevailed upon to indulge in such a hope even for {71} a moment.
To add to her troubles, her daughter, the Princess of Orange, was lying
in a most dangerous condition at the Hague--her confinement had taken
place; she had suffered terribly; and, to save her life, it had been
found necessary to sacrifice the unborn child, a daughter.  Every hour
that passed without bringing news of the King seemed to increase the
chance of the news when it came proving the worst.  Such was the moment
when the Prince of Wales made himself conspicuous by several bids for
popularity.  He gave a dinner to the Lord Mayor and aldermen of the
City of London on the occasion of their presenting him with the freedom
of the city.  The Queen, who, for all her philosophical scepticism and
her emancipated mind, had many lingering superstitions in her, saw an
evil omen in the fact that the only two Princes of Wales who before
Frederick had been presented with the freedom of the city were Charles
the First and James the Second.  The prince was reported to the Queen
to have made several speeches at the dinner which were certain to
ingratiate him in popular favor.  "My God!" she exclaimed, "popularity
always makes me sick; but Fritz's popularity makes me vomit."  People
told her that the prince and those around him talked of the King's
being cast away "with the same _sang-froid_ as you would talk of a
coach being overturned."  She said she had been told that Frederick
strutted about as if he were already King.  But she added, "He is such
an ass that one cannot tell what he thinks; and yet he is not so great
a fool as you take him for, neither."  The Princess Caroline vowed that
if the worst were to prove true, she would run out of the house _au
grand galop_.  Walpole described the prince to Hervey as "a poor, weak,
irresolute, false, lying, dishonest, contemptible wretch," and asked,
"What is to become of this divided family and this divided country?"
It is something of a relief to find that there was in one mind at least
a thought of what might happen to the country.

We have to take all these pictures of Frederick on {72} trust--on the
faith of the father who loathed him, of the mother who detested and
despised him, of the brothers and sisters who shrank away from him, of
the minister who could not find words enough to express his hatred and
contempt for him.  Of course the mere fact that father and mother,
brothers and sisters, felt thus towards the prince is terrible
testimony against him.  But there does not seem much in his conduct, at
least in his public conduct, during this crisis, which might not bear a
favorable interpretation.  He might have given his dinners, as the
Queen held her public drawing-rooms, for the purpose of preventing the
spread of an alarm.  No doubt the entertainment to the Lord Mayor and
aldermen had been long arranged; and the prince may have thought it
would be unwise to put it off at such a moment.  Every report was
believed against him.  A fire broke out at the Temple, and the prince
went down and stayed all night, giving directions and taking the
control of the work for the putting out of the flames.  His exertions
undoubtedly helped to save the Temple from destruction; and he became
for the time a hero with the populace.  It was reported to Caroline
that either the prince himself or some of his friends were going about
saying that the crowd on the night of the fire kept crying out, "Crown
him! crown him!"

[Sidenote: 1737--Monarchy a prosaic institution]

So far as the alarm of the Queen and Walpole had to do with the state
of the country, it does not seem that there was any solid ground.  What
would have happened if the bloated King had been tossed ashore a corpse
on the coast of England or the coast of Holland?  So far as the public
affairs of England are concerned, nothing in particular would have
happened, we think.  George would have been buried in right royal
fashion; there would have been an immense concourse of sight-seers to
stare at the royal obsequies; and Frederick would have been proclaimed,
and the people would have taken little notice of the fact.  What could
it have mattered to the English people whether George the Second or his
eldest son was {73} on the throne?  No doubt Frederick was generally
distrusted and disliked wherever he was known; but, then, George the
Second was ever so much more widely known, and therefore was ever so
much more distrusted and disliked.  The chances of a successful
Jacobite rising would not have been affected in any way by the fact
that it was this Hanoverian prince and not that who was sitting on the
throne of England.  It would be hardly possible to find a more utterly
unkingly and ignoble sovereign than George the Second; it is hardly
possible that his son could have turned out any worse; and there was,
at all events, the possibility that he might turn out better.  Outside
London and Richmond very few people cared in the least which of the
Hanoverians wore the crown.  Those who were loyal to the reigning
family were honestly loyal on the principle that it was better for the
country to have a Hanoverian sovereign than a Stuart.  Many of those
who in their feelings were still devoted to the Stuart tradition did
not think it would be worth while plunging the country into a civil war
for the almost hopeless chance of a revolution.  England was beginning
to see that, with all the corruption of Parliament and the
constituencies under Walpole's administration, there was yet a very
much better presentation of constitutional government than they had
ever seen before.  The arbitrary power of the sovereign had practically
ceased to affect anybody outside the circles of the Ministry and the
Court.  The law tribunals sat and judged men impartially according to
their lights, and person and property were at least secure against the
arbitrary intrusion of the sovereign power.  The old-fashioned
chivalric, picturesque loyalty was gone; not merely because royalty
itself had ceased to be chivalric and picturesque, but because men had,
after so many experiments and changes, come to regard the monarchy as a
merely practical and prosaic institution, to be rated according to its
working merits.  The majority in England at the time when George was
tossing about the North Sea, or waiting impatiently at Helvoetsluis,
had come to the conclusion {74} that on the whole the monarchy worked
better under the Hanoverians than it had done under the Stuarts, and
was more satisfactory than the protectorate of Cromwell.  Therefore, we
do not believe there was the slightest probability that the loss of
George the Second would have brought any political trouble on the
State.  One can imagine objections made even by very moderate and
reasonable Englishmen to each and all of the Hanoverian kings; but we
find it hard to imagine how any reasonable Englishman, who had quietly
put up with George the Second, should be at any pains to resist the
accession of George the Second's eldest son.

But the truth is that although in her many consultations with Walpole
and with Hervey the Queen did sometimes let drop a word or two about
the condition of the country and the danger to the State, she was not
thinking much about the state of the country.  She was thinking
honestly about herself and those who were around her, and whom she
loved and wished to see maintained in comfort and in dignity.  Her
conviction was that if her son Frederick came to the throne she and her
other children would be forced to go into an obscure life in Somerset
House, the old palace which had been assigned to her in her jointure,
and that they would even in that obscurity have to depend very much on
the charity of the new King.  This was the view Walpole took of the
prospect.  He thought those most in peril, those most to be pitied,
were the Queen and the duke, her son, and the princesses.  "I do not
know," said Walpole to Hervey, "any people in the world so much to be
pitied as that gay young company with which you and I stand every day
in the drawing-room, at that door from which we this moment came, bred
up in state, in affluence, caressed and courted, and to go at once from
that into dependence on a brother who loves them not, and whose
extravagance and covetousness will make him grudge every guinea they
spend, as it must come from out of a purse not sufficient to defray the
expenses of his own vices."

{75}

Walpole, to do him justice, did think of the country.  For all his
rough, coarse, selfish ways, Walpole was an English patriot.  He
thought of the country, but he saw no danger to national interests in
the change from George to Frederick.  He saw, indeed, a great prospect
of miserable mismanagement, blundering, and confusion in the
Government.  He foresaw the reliance of the coming King on the most
worthless favorites.  He foresaw more corruption and of a worse kind,
and more maladministration, than there had been before at any time
since the accession of George the First.  He feared that it might not
be possible for him to remain at the head of affairs when Frederick
should have come to reign.  But he does not appear to have had any
dread of any immediate cataclysm or even disturbance.  The troubles
Walpole looked for were troubles which might indeed make government
difficult, disturb the House of Commons, and bring discomfort of the
bitterest kind into Court circles, but which would be hardly heard of
in the great provincial towns, and not heard of at all in the
country--at least not heard of outside the park railings of the great
country-houses.

[Sidenote: 1737--A Royal love-letter]

Whatever the alarm, it was destined suddenly to pass away.  While
Caroline was already secretly putting her heart into mourning for her
husband the news was suddenly brought that George was safe and sound in
Helvoetsluis.  He had been compelled to return, and there he had to
remain weather-bound.  He wrote to the Queen a long, tender, and
impassioned love-letter--like the letter of a youthful lover in whose
heart the first feeling on an unexpected escape from death is the glad
thought that he is to look once again on the fair face of his
sweetheart.  George really had a gift for love-letter writing, the only
literary gift which he seems to have possessed.  It is impossible to
read the letters from Helvoetsluis without believing that they were
written under the inspiration of genuine emotion.  Their style might
well raise over again that interesting subject of speculation--whether
it is in the power of man to be in love with two or more women {76} the
same time.  King George was unquestionably in love with Madame
Walmoden: while he was near her he could think of nothing else.  He was
in Hanover, feasting and dancing, always in Madame Walmoden's company,
while his daughter was lying on what seemed at one time like to be her
death-bed at the Hague.  It is not a very far cry from Hanover to the
Hague, but it never occurred to George to entertain the idea of leaving
Madame Walmoden to go and pay a visit to his daughter.  Out of Madame
Walmoden's presence his thoughts appear to have flown at once back to
his wife.  To her he wrote, not in the mere language of conjugal
affection and sympathy, but with the passionate raptures of young love
itself.  The Queen was immensely proud of this letter, although she
took care to say that she believed she was not unreasonably proud of
it.  She showed it to Walpole and to Hervey, who both agreed that they
had a most incomprehensible master.  Walpole was a very shrewd and
keen-sighted man, but he did not understand Queen Caroline or her
feeling towards her husband.  He had told Hervey more than once that he
did not know whether the Queen hated more her son or her husband; and,
indeed, he said there was good reason why she should hate the husband
the more of the two, seeing that he had treated her so badly while she
had been all devotion to him.  The love of a woman is not always
governed by a sense of gratefulness.  There are women whose hearts are
like the grape, and give out their best juices to him who tramples on
them.  If anything is certain in all the coarse and dreary story of
that Court, it is that Queen Caroline adored her husband--that she was
too fond of her most filthy bargain.

[Sidenote: 1737--A fickle, inconsiderate Prince]

The danger in which George had been, and out of which he had escaped,
did not in any way soften the hearts of King and prince, of father and
son, towards each other.  The prince still occupied a suite of rooms in
St. James's Palace, and the King and he met on public occasions, but
they never spoke.  The Queen was even more constant in her hatred to
the prince than the King himself.  It does {77} not seem possible to
find out how this detestation of the son by the mother ever began to
fill the Queen's heart.  She was not an unloving mother; indeed, where
her affection to the King did not stand in the way, she was fond and
tender to nearly all her children.  But towards her eldest son she
seems to have felt something like a physical aversion.  Then, again,
the King was a dull, stupid, loutish man, over whose clouded faculties
any absurd prejudice or dislike might have settled unquestioned; but
Caroline was a bright, clever, keen-witted woman, who asked herself and
others why this or that should be.  She must have many times questioned
her own heart and reasoned with herself before she allowed it to be
filled forever with hatred to her son.  Lord Hervey, who had a true
regard for her, and in whom she trusted as much as she trusted any
human being, does not appear to have ever fully understood the cause of
the Queen's feelings towards the prince; nor does he appear to have
shared her utter distrust and dislike of him.  As far as one can judge,
the prince appears to have been fickle, inconsiderate, and flighty
rather than deliberately bad.  He sometimes did things which made him
seem like a madman.  Such a person would not be charmed into a
healthier condition of mind and temper by the knowledge daily thrust
upon him that his own father and mother, and his own sister, were the
three persons who hated him most in the world.  Of course, in this as
in other cases of a palace quarrel between a king and an eldest son,
there was a bitter wrangle about money.  The prince demanded an
allowance of one hundred thousand a year to be secured to him
independently of his father's power to recall or reduce it.  The King
had hitherto only given him what Frederick called a beggarly allowance
of fifty thousand a year, and even that had not been made over to the
prince unconditionally and forever.  The prince argued that his
father's civil list was now much larger than that of George the First
at the time when the Prince of Wales of that day, George the Second
now, was allowed an income of one {78} hundred thousand a year.  The
Princess of Wales had as yet received no jointure, and she and the
prince were thus kept, as Frederick's friends insisted, in the
condition of mere pensioners and dependants upon the royal bounty.  The
prince's friends were, for the most part, eager to stir him up to some
open measure of hostility; especially the younger men of the party were
doing their best to drive the prince on.  Pulteney, it must be said,
was not for any such course of action, indeed, was against it, and had
given the prince good advice; and Carteret was not for it.  But Lord
Chesterfield and several other peers, and Lyttelton and William Pitt in
the House of Commons, were eager for the fray, and their counsels
prevailed.  To use an expression which became famous at a much later
day, "the young man's head was on fire," and it soon became known to
the King and Queen that the prince had resolved to act upon a
suggestion made by Bolingbroke two years before, and submit his claim
to the decision of Parliament.  More than that, when Walpole was
consulted Walpole felt himself obliged to declare his belief, or at
least his fear, that if the prince should persist in making his claim
he would find himself supported by a majority in the House of Commons.
The story had reached the Queen in the first instance through Lord
Hervey, and the manner of its reaching Lord Hervey is worth mentioning,
because it brings in for the first time a name destined to be famous
during two succeeding generations.  The prince, having been persuaded
to appeal to Parliament, at once began touting for support and for
votes after the fashion of a candidate for a Parliamentary
constituency.  He sent the Duke of Marlborough to speak to Mr. Henry
Fox, a young member of Parliament, and to ask Mr. Fox for his vote.
Henry Fox was the younger of two brothers, both of whom were intimate
friends of Lord Hervey.  He had not been long in the House of Commons,
having obtained a seat in 1735, as member for Hendon, in Wiltshire.  He
had come into Parliament in the same year with William Pitt, whose
foremost political rival he was soon destined {79} to be.  He was also
destined to be the father of the greatest rival of his opponent's son.
English public life was to see a Pitt and a Fox opposed to each other
at the head of rival parties in one generation, and a far greater Fox
and a not inferior Pitt standing in just the same attitude of rivalry
in the generation that succeeded.

[Sidenote: 1737--A Royal liar]

Henry Fox went at once to Lord Hervey and told him how he had been
asked to support the prince, and how he had answered that he should do
as his brother did, whatever that might be.  Lord Hervey at first was
not inclined to attach much importance to the story.  He said he had
heard so often that the prince was going to take up such a course of
action and nothing had come of it so far, and he did not suppose
anything would come of it this time.  Fox, however, assured him that
the attempt would now most certainly be made, and was surprised to find
that the ministers appeared to know nothing about it.  He declared that
he did not believe there was a man on the side of the Opposition who
had not already been asked for his vote.  Lord Hervey hurried to the
Queen and told her the unpleasant news.  Caroline sent for Walpole; and
at last the story was told to the King himself.  The Queen was urged by
Lord Hervey to speak to her son privately, and endeavor to induce him
not to declare open war upon his father.  The Queen would not do
anything of the kind.  She declared that her speaking to her son would
only make him more obstinate than ever, and that he was such a liar
that it would not be safe for her to enter into any private conference
with him.  Other intercessors were found, but the prince was
unyielding; and George himself, as obstinate as his son, could not be
induced at first by Walpole, or by any one else, to make any show of
concession or compromise.  The Princess Caroline kept saying ever so
many times a day that she prayed her brother might drop down dead; that
he was a nauseous beast, and she grudged him every hour he continued to
exist.  These sisterly expressions did not contribute much to any
manner of settlement, and the prince held on his course.  {80} The
calculations of Frederick's friends gave him in advance a majority of
forty in the House of Commons; and even the most experienced
calculators of votes on the King's side allowed to the prince a
majority of ten.  Walpole began to think the crisis one of profound
danger.  He felt it only too likely that the fate of his administration
would depend on the division in the House of Commons.

[Sidenote: 1737--Frederick's "dutiful expressions"]

Something must be done; something at least must be attempted.  Walpole
saw nothing for it but to endeavor to arrange a compromise.  Parliament
had opened on February 1st, and the day appointed for the debate on
this important question of the prince's allowance was to be Tuesday,
the 22d of the month.  On the Monday previous, Walpole made up his mind
that if the King did not offer some fair show of compromise his party
would be beaten when the question came to be put to the vote.  His plan
of arrangement was that the King should spontaneously send to the
prince an intimation that he was willing to settle a jointure at once
on the princess, with the added remark that this had already been under
consideration--which indeed was true--not a very common occurrence in
Royal messages of that day; and that he was also prepared to settle
fifty thousand a year on the prince himself forever and without
condition.  Walpole did not believe that the prince would accept this
offer of compromise.  He knew very well that Frederick, full of
arrogant confidence and obstinacy, and backed up by the zeal and
passion of his friends, would be certain to refuse it.  But Walpole was
not thinking much about the impression which the offer would make on
the prince.  The thought uppermost in his mind was of the impression it
would make on the House of Commons.  Unless some new impression could
be made upon the House, the triumph of the prince was absolutely
certain; and Walpole felt sure that if any step could now alter the
condition of things in the House of Commons it would be the publication
of the fact that the King had spontaneously held out the olive-branch;
that {81} he had offered a fair compromise, and that the prince had
refused it.

Walpole had much trouble to prevail upon the King to make any offer of
compromise.  Even Lord Hervey was strongly of opinion that the attempt
would be a failure, that the proffered concession would be wholly
thrown away; such a movement, he said, would neither put off the battle
nor gain the King one single desertion from the ranks of the enemy,
while to the King's own party it would seem something like a lowering
of the flag.  Walpole, however, persevered, and he carried his point.
A deputation, headed by the new Lord Chancellor, Lord Hardwicke, who
had succeeded to the Great Seal on the death of his famous rival, Lord
Chancellor Talbot, was sent to wait on the prince and submit to him the
proposition of his father.  The prince answered rather ungraciously
that the matter was entirely out of his hands now, and that therefore
he could give no answer to the Royal message.  It must be gratifying to
every patriotic soul to know that his Royal Highness accompanied this
declaration with "many dutiful expressions" towards his father, and
that he even went so far as to say he was sorry it was not in his power
to do otherwise than as he had done.  The dutiful expressions did not
by any means charm away the wrath either of the King or the Queen.  The
two stormed and raged against Frederick, and called him by many very
hard names.  Both were much disposed to storm against Walpole too, for
the advice he had given, and for his pertinacity in forcing them on to
a step which had brought nothing but humiliation.  Walpole bore his
position with a kind of patience which might be called either proud or
stolid, according as one is pleased to look at it.  With all his
courage, Walpole must have felt some qualms of uneasiness now and then,
but if he did feel he certainly did not show them.




{82}

CHAPTER XXVI.

A PERILOUS VICTORY.

[Sidenote: 1737--Incentives to valor]

On Tuesday, February 22d, the debate took place in the House of Commons.
It came on in the form of a motion for an address to the Sovereign,
praying that he would make to the Prince of Wales an independent
allowance of one hundred thousand a year.  The motion was proposed by
Pulteney himself.  Lord Hervey seems to be surprised that Pulteney, after
having advised the prince not to press on any such motion, should,
nevertheless, when the prince did persevere, actually propose the motion
himself.  But such a course is common enough even in our own days, when
statesmen make greater effort at political and personal consistency.  A
man often argues long and earnestly in the Cabinet or in the councils of
the Opposition against some particular proposal, and then, when it is, in
spite of his advice, made a party resolve, he goes to the House of
Commons and speaks in its favor; nay, even it may be, proposes it.
Pulteney made a long and what would now be called an exhaustive speech.
It was stuffed full of portentous erudition about the early history of
the eldest sons of English kings.  The speech was said to have been
delivered with much less than Pulteney's usual force and fire; and
indeed, so far as one can judge by the accounts--they can hardly be
called reports--preserved of it, one is obliged to regard it as rather a
languid and academical dissertation.  We start off with what Henry the
Third did for his son, afterwards Edward the First, when that noble youth
had reached the unripe age of fourteen.  He granted to him the Duchy of
Guienne; he put him in possession of the Earldom of {83} Chester; he made
him owner of the cities and towns of Bristol, Stamford, and Grantham,
with several other castles and manors; he created him Prince of Wales, to
which, lest it should be merely a barren title, he annexed all the
conquered lands in Wales; and he created him Governor of Ireland.  All
this, to be sure, was mightily liberal on the part of Henry the Third,
and a very handsome and right royal way of providing for his own family;
but it might be supposed an argument rather to frighten than to encourage
a modern English Parliament.  But the orator went on to show what
glorious deeds in arms were done by this highly endowed prince, and the
inferences which he appeared to wish his audience to draw were twofold:
first, that Edward would never have done these glorious deeds if his
father had not given him these magnificent allowances; and next, that if
an equal, or anything like an equal, liberality were shown to Frederick,
Prince of Wales, it was extremely probable that he would rush into the
field at the first opportunity and make a clean sweep of the foes of
England.

We need not follow the orator through his account of what was done for
Edward the Black Prince, and what Edward the Black Prince had done in
consequence; and how Henry the Fifth had been able to conquer France
because of his father's early liberality.  The whole argument tended to
impress upon the House of Commons the maxim that in a free country, above
all others, it is absolutely necessary to have the heir-apparent of the
crown bred up in a state of grandeur and independency.  Despite the
high-flown sentiments and the grandiose historical illustrations in which
the speaker indulged, there seems to the modern intelligence an inherent
meanness, a savor of downright vulgarity, through the whole of it.  If
you give a prince only fifty thousand a year, you can't expect anything
of him.  What can he know of grandeur of soul, of national honor, of
constitutional rights, of political liberty?  You can't get these
qualities in a prince unless you pay him at least a hundred thousand a
year while his {84} father is living.  [Sidenote: 1737--Providing for a
Prince] The argument would have told more logically if the English
Parliament were going into the open market to buy the best prince they
could get.  There would be some show of reason in arguing that the more
we pay the better article we shall have.  But it is hard indeed to
understand how a prince who is to be worth nothing if you give him only
fifty thousand a year, will be another Black Prince or Henry the Fifth if
you let him have the spending of fifty thousand a year more.  Walpole led
the Opposition to the motion.  Much of the argument on both sides was
essentially sordid, but there was a good deal also which was keen, close,
and clever, and which may have even now a sort of constitutional
interest.  The friends of the prince knew they would have to meet the
contention that Parliament had no right to interfere with the Sovereign's
appropriation of the revenues allotted to him.  They therefore contended,
and, as it seems to us, with force and justice, that the Parliament which
made the grants had a perfect right to see that the grants were
appropriated to the uses for which they were intended, to follow out the
grants in the course of their application, and even to direct that they
should be applied to entirely different purposes; even, if need were, to
resume them.  It would naturally seem to follow from this assumption,
that Parliament had a right to call on the King to make the allowance to
the prince, but it would seem to follow also that the allowance ought not
to be made independent and absolute.  For, if the Prince of Wales had an
allowance absolutely independent of the will of any one, he had something
which Pulteney and his friends were contending, as it was their business
just then to contend, that the English Parliament had never consented to
give to the King.  On the other hand, it was pointed out with much effect
that there never had been any express regulation in England to provide
that the Prince of Wales should be made independent of his father, and
there was clear good-sense in the contempt with which Walpole treated the
argument that the State dependency upon his father in {85} which the son
of a great family usually lives, must necessarily tend to the debasing of
the son's mind and the diminishing of his intelligence, or that the
dignity and grandeur even of a Prince of Wales could not be as well
supported by a yearly allowance as by a perpetual and independent
settlement.  Some of the speakers on Walpole's side--indeed, Walpole
himself occasionally--strove to show their willingness to serve the
prince by utterances which must have caused the prince to smile a grim,
sardonic smile if he had any existing sense of humor.  Please do not
imagine--this was the line of observation--that we think one hundred
thousand a year too much for his Royal Highness.  Oh dear, no; nothing of
the kind; we do not think it would be half enough if only the nation had
the money to give away.  "Why," exclaimed one gushing orator, "if we had
the money the only course we could take would be to offer his Royal
Highness whatever he pleased to accept, and even in that case we should
have reason to fear lest his modesty might do an injury to his generosity
by making him confine his demand within the strictest bounds of bare
necessity."  "Were we," another member of the Court party declared, "to
measure the prince's allowance by the prince's merit, as we know no
bounds to the latter, we could prescribe no bounds to the former."
Therefore, as it was totally impossible that the treasury of any State
could reward this extraordinary prince according to his merit, the
speakers on Walpole's side mildly pleaded that they had only to fall back
on the cold and commonplace rules of ordinary economy, and try to find
out what sum the nation could really afford to hand over.

The men who talked these revolting absurdities were saying among
themselves an hour after that the prince was an avaricious and greedy
beast, and were openly proclaiming their pious wish that Providence would
be graciously inclined to rid the world of him.  Nothing strikes one as
more painful and odious in the ways of that Court and that Parliament
than the language of sickening sycophancy which is used by all statesmen
alike in public {86} with regard to kings and princes, for whom in
private they could find no words of abuse too strong and coarse, no curse
too profane.  Never was an Oriental despot the most vain and cruel
addressed in language of more nauseous flattery by great ministers and
officers of State than were the early English sovereigns of the House of
Hanover.  The filthy indecency which came so habitually from the lips of
Walpole, of other statesmen, of the King--sometimes even of the Queen
herself--hardly seems more ignoble, more demoralizing, than the
outpouring of a flattery as false as it was gross, a flattery that ought
to have sickened alike the man who poured it out and the man whom it was
poured over.  Poor, stupid George seems to have been always taken in by
it.  Indeed, in his dull, heavy mind there was no praise the voice of man
could utter which could quite come up to his perfections.  The
quicker-witted Queen sometimes writhed under it.

[Sidenote: 1737--Comparisons]

Walpole, however, did not depend upon argument to carry his point.  The
stone up his sleeve, to use a somewhat homely expression, which he meant
to fling at his enemy, was something quite different from any question of
Constitution or prescription or precedent; of the genius of the Black
Prince, and the manner in which Wild Hal, Falstaff's companion, had been
endowed and allowanced into Henry, the victor of Agincourt.  Walpole
flung down, metaphorically speaking, on the table of the House the record
of the interview between the Prince of Wales and the great peers who
waited on him, bearing the message of the King.  The record set forth all
that had happened: how the King had declared himself willing to provide
at once a suitable jointure for the Princess of Wales; how he had shown
that this had been under consideration, and explained in the simplest way
the reason why the arrangement had been delayed; how his Majesty had
voluntarily taken it on himself that the prince should have fifty
thousand a year absolutely independent of the Sovereign's future action,
and over and above the revenues arising from the duchy of Cornwall, which
his Majesty {87} thinks a very competent allowance, considering his own
numerous issue and the great expenses which do, and which necessarily
must, attend an honorable provision for his whole royal family.  And then
the record gave the answer of the Prince of Wales and its peculiar
conclusion; "Indeed, my lords, it is in other hands--I am sorry for it;"
"or," as the record of the peers cautiously concluded, "to that effect."

The reading of this document had one effect, which was instantly invoked
for it by Walpole.  It brought the whole controversy down to the question
whether the prince's father or the prince's friends ought to be the
better authority as to the amount which the King could afford to give,
and the amount which the prince ought to be encouraged to demand.  It
shrunk, in fact, into a mean discussion about the cost of provisions and
the amounts of the land-tax; the number of children George the Second had
to maintain as compared with the small family George the First had to
provide for; the fact that George the Second had a wife to maintain in
becoming state in England, whereas George the First had saved himself
from the occasion of any such outlay; the total amount left for George
the Second to spend as compared with the total amount which the differing
conditions left at the disposal of his illustrious father.  Let us see
what the income of the Prince of Wales was computed to be by his friends
at that time.  He had fifty thousand a year allowance.  From that, said
his friends, we must deduct the land-tax, which at two shillings in the
pound amounts to 5000 pounds a year.  This brings the allowance down to
45,000 pounds.  Then comes the sixpenny duty to the Civil List lottery,
which has also to be deducted from the poor prince's dwindling pittance,
and likewise the fees payable at the Exchequer; and the sixpenny duty
amounts to 1250 pounds, and the fees to about 750 pounds, so that
altogether 7000 pounds would have to be taken off, leaving the prince
only 43,000 pounds allowance.  Then, to be sure, there was the duchy of
Cornwall, the revenues of which, it was insisted, {88} did not amount to
more than 9000 pounds a year, so that, all told, the prince's income
available for spending purposes was but 53,000 pounds a year.  And yet,
they pleaded pathetically, the yearly expense of the prince's household,
acknowledged and ratified by the King himself, came to 63,000 pounds
without allowing his Royal Highness one shilling for the indulgence of
that generous and charitable disposition with which Heaven had so
bounteously endowed him.

[Sidenote: Wealthy King; semi-starved people]

Walpole's instinct had conducted him right.  The reading of the message,
which Walpole delivered with great rhetorical effect, carried confusion
into the Tory ranks.  Two hundred and four members voted for the Address,
two hundred and thirty-four voted against it.  The King's friends were in
a majority of thirty.  Archdeacon Coxe in his "Life of Walpole" gives it
as his opinion that the victory was obtained because some forty-five of
the Tories quitted the House in a body before the division, believing
that they were thus acting on constitutional principles, and that the
interference of the House of Commons would be an unconstitutional,
democratic, and dangerous innovation.  But it is hardly possible to
believe that the managers of the prince's case could have been kept in
total ignorance up to the last moment of the fact that forty-five Tories
were determined to regard the interference of Parliament as
unconstitutional, and to abstain from taking part in the division.  It is
declared to be positively certain that the "whips," as we should now call
them, of the prince's party had canvassed every man on their own side, if
not on both sides.  They could not have made up anything like the number
they announced in anticipation to the prince if they had taken into
account forty-five probable or possible abstentions among their own men.
The truth evidently is that the reading of the King's message compelled a
good many Tories to withdraw who already were somewhat uncertain as to
the constitutionalism, in the Tory sense, of the course their leaders
were taking.  They would probably have swallowed {89} their scruples but
for the message; that dexterous stroke of policy was too much for them.
How can we--they probably thus reasoned with themselves--back up to the
last a prince who positively refused to listen to the offer of a
compromise spontaneously made by his father?

Money went much further in those days than it does in ours.  Fifty
thousand pounds a year must have been a magnificent fortune for a Prince
of Wales in the earlier part of the last century.  On the other hand,
George the Second was literally stuffed and bloated with money.  He had
between eight and nine hundred thousand a year, and his wife was richly
provided for.  Odious bad taste, selfishness, and griping avarice were
exhibited on both sides of the dispute; it would be hard to say which
side showed to the lesser advantage.  There was much poverty all this
time in London, and indeed over the whole country.  Trade was depressed;
employment was hard to get; within a stone's-throw of St. James's Palace
men, women, and children were living in a chronic condition of
semi-starvation.  The Court and the Parliament were wrangling fiercely
over the question whether a king with a revenue of nearly a million could
afford to give his eldest son an extra fifty thousand a year, and whether
a Prince of Wales could live in decency on fifty-three thousand a year.
The patient, cool-headed people of England who knew of all this--such of
them as did--and who hated both king and prince alike, yet put up with
the whole thing simply because they had come to the conviction that
nothing was to be gained by any attempt at a change.  They had been
passing through so many changes, they had been the victims of so many
experiments, that they had not the slightest inclination to venture on
any new enterprise.  They preferred to bear the ills they had; but they
knew that they were ills, and put on no affectation of a belief that they
were blessings.

The debate in the House of Lords took place on Friday, February 25th.
Lord Carteret proposed the motion for the Address to the King, and went
over much of the {90} same historical ground that Pulteney had traversed
in the Commons.  The Duke of Newcastle replied in his usual awkward and
bungling fashion, with the uneasy attitudes and clownish gestures which
were characteristic of him.  He was not able to make any effective use of
the King's message, and the Lord Chancellor read it for him.  The
division in the House of Lords showed seventy-nine votes and twenty-four
proxies for the King, in all one hundred and three; and twenty-eight
votes and twelve proxies for the prince, in all forty; the King had a
majority, therefore, of sixty-three.  Some of the peers, among them Lord
Carteret and Lord Chesterfield, signed a protest against the decision of
the House.  The protest is like so many other protests of the Lords--a
very interesting and even valuable State paper, setting forth as it does
all the genuine arguments of the prince's supporters in the clearest form
and in the fewest words.  The House of Lords at that time was a more
independent body than it has shown itself in later years.  Even already,
however, it was giving signs of that decay as an effective political
institution which had begun to set in, and which was the direct result of
Walpole's determination to rely upon the representative Chamber for the
real work of governing the country.  Neither Walpole nor any one else
seemed to care very much about the debate or the division in the House of
Lords.  Already discussions in that Chamber, no matter how eloquent and
earnest in themselves, were beginning to assume that academic character
which always, sooner or later, is exhibited where political debate is not
endowed with any power to act directly on legislation.

[Sidenote: 1737--A man of consequence]

Walpole's victory was a very cheap affair in one sense; it cost only 900
pounds, of which 500 pounds were given to one man and 400 pounds to
another.  Even these two sums, Walpole used to say, were only advances.
The bribed men were to have had the money at the end of the session in
any case, but they took advantage of the crisis to demand their pay at
once.  But in another sense it was a dear, {91} a very dear, victory to
the minister.  The consent of the King to the offer of compromise had
been extorted, more than extorted, by Walpole.  Indeed, as Walpole often
afterwards told the story, it was on his part not an extortion, but an
actual disregard and overriding of the King's command.  The King refused
at the last moment to send the message to the prince; Walpole said the
Peers were waiting to carry it, and that carry it they should, and he
would not allow the King time to retract his former consent, and
thereupon rushed off to the Lords of the Council and told them to go to
the prince with the message.  Even the Queen, Walpole said, had never
given a real assent to the policy of the message.  When the victory in
the Commons was won, the King and Queen were at first well satisfied; but
afterwards, when the prince became more rude and insolent in his conduct,
they both blamed Walpole for it, and insisted that his policy of
compromise had only filled the head and heart of the young man with pride
and obstinacy, and that he regarded himself as a conqueror, even though
he had been nominally conquered.  The King felt bitterly about this, and
the grudge he bore to Walpole was of long endurance and envenomed anger.
The King and Queen would have got rid of him then if they could, Walpole
thought.  "I have been much nearer than you think," he said to Lord
Hervey, "to throwing it all up and going to end my days at Houghton in
quiet."  But he also told Hervey that he believed he was of more
consequence than any man before him ever was, or perhaps than any man
might ever be again, and so he still held on to his place.  No doubt
Walpole meant that he was of more consequence than any man had been or
probably would be in England.  He did not mean, as Lord Hervey would seem
to give out, that he believed he was a greater and more powerful man than
Julius Caesar.  Lord Hervey's comment, however, is interesting.  "With
regard to States and nations," he coldly says, "nobody's understanding is
so much superior to the rest of mankind as to be missed in a week after
they have gone; and, with {92} regard to particulars, there is not a
great banker that breaks who does not distress more people than the
disgrace or retirement of the greatest minister that ever presided in a
Cabinet; nor is there a deceased ploughman who leaves a wife and a dozen
brats behind him that is not lamented with greater sincerity, as well as
a loss to more individuals, than any statesman that ever wore a head or
deserved to lose it."  There is a good deal of wholesome, although
perhaps somewhat melancholy, truth in what Lord Hervey says.  Perhaps we
ought not to call it melancholy; it ought rather to be considered
cheerful and encouraging, in the national sense.  The world, some modern
writer has said, shuts up the shop for no man.  Yet there is,
nevertheless, a tinge of melancholy in the thought of a great man
toiling, striving, giving up all his days and much of his nights to the
service of some cause or country, all the while firmly believing his life
indispensable to the success of the cause, the prosperity of the country;
and he dies, and the cause and the country go on just the same.




{93}

CHAPTER XXVII.

"ROGUES AND VAGABONDS."

[Sidenote: 1737--The English stage]

The condition of the English stage became a subject of some anxiety
about this time, and was made the occasion for the introduction of an
important Act of Parliament.  The reader of to-day, looking back on the
dramatic literature of the second George's reign, would not be apt to
think that it called for special measures of restriction.  The vices of
the Restoration period had apparently worked out their own cure.  The
hideous indecency of Dryden, of Wycherley, and of Vanbrugh had brought
about a certain reaction.  The indecency of such authors as these was
not merely a coarseness of expression such as most of the Elizabethan
writers freely indulged in, and which has but little to do with the
deeper questions of morality; nor did its evil consist merely in the
choice of subjects which are painful to study, and of questionable
influence on the mind.  Many of the finest plays of Ford and Massinger
and Webster turn on sin and crime, the study of which it might
reasonably be contended must always have the effect of disturbing the
moral sense, if not of actually depraving the mind.  But no one can
pretend to find in the best of the Elizabethan writers any sympathy
with viciousness, any stimulus to immorality.  Of the Restoration
authors, in general, the very contrary has to be said.  They revel in
uncleanness; they glorify immorality.  It is the triumph and the honor
of a gentleman to seduce his friend's wife or his neighbor's daughter.
The business and the glory of men is the seduction of women.  The
sympathy of the dramatic author and his readers goes always with the
seducer.  The husband of the {94} faithless wife is a subject of
inextinguishable merriment and laughter.  His own friends are made to
laugh at him, and to feel a genuine delight in his suffering and his
shame.  The question of morality altogether apart, it seems positively
wonderful to an English reader of to-day why the writers of the
Restoration period should have always felt such an exuberant joy in the
thought that a man's wife was unfaithful to him.  The common feeling of
all men, even the men meant to be best, in the plays of Wycherley and
Vanbrugh, seems one that might find expression in some such words as
these: "I should like to seduce every pretty married woman if I could,
but if I have not time or chance for such delight it is at least a
great pleasure and comfort to me to know that she has been seduced by
somebody; it is always a source of glee to me to know that a husband
has been deceived; and, if the husband himself comes to know it too,
that makes my joy all the greater."  The delight in sin seems to have
made men in a certain sinful sense unselfish.  They delighted so in
vice that they were glad to hear of its existence even where it brought
them no direct personal gratification.

[Sidenote: 1737--Audacious attempt a black-mailing]

All this had changed in the days of George the Second.  There had been
a gradual and marked improvement in the moral tone of the drama,
unaccompanied, it must be owned, by any very decided improvement in the
moral tone of society.  Perhaps the main difference between the time of
the Restoration and that of the early Georges is that the vice of the
Restoration was wanton school-boy vice, and that of the early Georges
the vice of mature and practical men.  In the Restoration time people
delighted in showing off their viciousness and making a frolic and a
parade of it; at the time of the Georges they took their profligacy in
a quiet, practical, man-of-the-world sort of way, and made no work
about it.  One effect of this difference was felt in the greater
decorum, the greater comparative decorum, of the Georgian drama.

Yet this was the time when Walpole thought it necessary to introduce a
measure putting the stage under new {95} and severe restrictions.
Walpole himself cared nothing about literature, and nothing about the
drama; and he was as little squeamish as man could possibly be in the
matter of plain-spoken indecency.  What troubled him was not the
indecency of the stage, but its political innuendo.  It never occurred
to him to care whether anything said in Drury Lane or Covent Garden
brought a blush to the cheek of any young person; but he was much
concerned when he heard of anything said there which was likely to make
people laugh at a certain elderly person.  As we have seen, he had
never got the best of it in the long war of pamphlets and squibs and
epigrams and caricature.  It was out of his power to hire penmen who
could stand up against such antagonists as Swift and Bolingbroke and
Pulteney.  He was out of humor with the press; had been out of humor
with it for a long time; and now he began to be out of humor with the
stage.  Indeed, it should rather be said that he was now falling into a
new fit of ill-humor with the stage; for he had been very angry indeed
with Gay for his "Beggars' Opera," and for the attempt at a
continuation of "The Beggars' Opera" in the yet more audacious "Polly,"
which brought in more money to Gay from its not having been allowed to
get on the stage than its brilliant predecessor had done after all its
unexampled run.  The measure of Walpole's wrath was filled by the
knowledge that a piece was in preparation in which he was to be held up
to public ridicule in the rudest and most uncompromising way.  Walpole
acted with a certain boldness and cunning.  The play was brought to
him, was offered for sale to him.  This was an audacious attempt at
black-mailing; and at first it appeared to be successful.  Walpole
agreed to the terms, bought the play, paid the money, and then
proceeded at once to make the fact that such a piece had been written,
and but for his payment might have been played, an excuse for the
introduction of a measure to put the whole English stage under
restriction, and to brand it with terms of shame.  He picked out
carefully all the worst passages, {96} and had them copied, and sent
round in private to the leading members of all parties in the House of
Commons, and appealed to them to support him in passing a measure which
he justified in advance by the illustrations of dramatic licentiousness
thus brought under their own eyes.  By this mode of action he secured
beforehand an amount of support which made the passing of his Bill a
matter of almost absolute certainty.  Under these favorable conditions
he introduced his Playhouse Bill.

[Sidenote: 1737--The Press and the Theatre]

The Playhouse Bill was a measure that attracted much attention, and
provoked a very fierce controversy.  It was a Bill to explain and amend
so much of an Act made in the twelfth year of the reign of Queen Anne,
entitled "An Act for reducing the laws relating to rogues, vagabonds,
sturdy beggars, and vagrants, and sending them whither they ought to be
sent," as relates to the common players of interludes.  One clause
empowered the Lord Chamberlain to prohibit the representation of any
theatric performance, and compelled all persons to send copies of new
plays, or new parts or prologues or epilogues added to old plays,
fourteen days before performance, in order that they might be submitted
to the Lord Chamberlain for his permission or prohibition.  Every
person who set up a theatre, or gave a theatrical exhibition, without
having a legal settlement in the place where the exhibition was given,
or authority by letters-patent from the Crown, or a license from the
Lord Chamberlain, was to be deemed a rogue and vagabond, and subject to
the penalties liberally doled out to such homeless offenders.  The
system of license thus virtually established by Walpole is the same
that prevails in our own day.  We do not, indeed, stigmatize managers
and actors as rogues and vagabonds, even if they should happen to give
a theatrical performance without the fully ascertained permission of
the authorities, and we no longer keep up the monopoly of what used to
be called the patent theatres.  But the principle of Walpole's Act is
the principle of our present system.  A play must have the permission
of the Lord Chamberlain before {97} it can be put on the stage; and
while it is in course of performance the Lord Chamberlain can insist on
any amendments or alterations in the dialogue or in the dresses which
he believes necessary in the interest of public morality.  A manager
is, therefore, put under conditions quite different from those which
surround a publisher; an actor is fenced in by preliminary restrictions
which do not trouble an author.  There is no censorship of the press;
there is a censorship of the theatre.  If a publisher brings out any
book which is grossly indecent or immoral or blasphemous, he can be
prosecuted, and if a conviction be obtained he can of course be
punished.  But there is no way of preventing him from bringing out the
book; there is no authority which has to be appealed to beforehand for
its sanction.

"Is this right?"  The question is still asked, Why should the people of
these countries submit to a censorship of the press?  What can be the
comparison between the harm done by a play which is seldom seen more
than once by the same person, and is likely to be forgotten a week
after it is seen, and the evil done by a bad book which finds its way
into households, and lies on tables, and may be read again and again
until its poison has really corrupted the mind?  Again, a parent is
almost sure to exercise some caution when he is taking his children to
a theatre.  He will find out beforehand what the play is like, and
whether it is the sort of performance his daughter ought to see.  But
it is out of the question to suppose that a parent will be able to read
beforehand every book that comes into his house in order to make sure
that it contains nothing which is unfit for a girl to study.  Why then
not have a censorship of the press as well as of the theatre, or why
have the one if you will not have the other?  The answer to the first
question is that a censorship of the press is impossible in England.
The multitude of publications forbids it.  The most imaginative person
would find his imagination fail him if he tried to realize in his mind
the idea of the British public waiting for its morning {98} newspaper
several hours while the censor was crawling over its columns to find
out whether they contained anything that could bring a blush to the
cheek of a young person.  It would be ridiculous to put in force a
censorship for books which had no application to newspapers.  But it is
quite easy to maintain a certain form of censorship over the theatres.
The number of plays brought out in a year is comparatively small.  The
preparation for each new play after it has been written and has passed
altogether out of its author's hands must necessarily take some time,
and there is hardly any practical inconvenience, therefore, in its
being submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for his approval.  But then
comes the question, Is the censorship of any use?  Are we any the
better for having it?  Should we not get on just as well without it?
The answer, as it seems to us, ought to be that the censorship is on
the whole of some use; that we are better with it than without it.  It
would be idle to contend that it is of any great service to public
morality in the higher sense, but is certainly of considerable
advantage as a safeguard to public decency and decorum.  The censorship
of the stage in England to-day does not pretend to be a guardian of
public morality.  In all that relates to the higher moral law the
public must take care of itself.  Let us give one or two illustrations.
Many sincere and not unintelligent persons firmly believe that the
cause of public morality is injured by the representation of any play
in which vice of a certain kind is brought under public notice, even
though the object of the play may be to condemn the vice it exposes;
but no censor of plays now would think of refusing to permit the
performance of "Othello" on that account.  To take a lower
illustration: many people believe, and on better ground, that such a
piece as "The Lady of Lyons" is injurious to public morals, because in
that play the man who makes himself a leading actor in an infamous
fraud becomes glorified into a hero and wins fame, fortune, and wife in
the end.  But no censor would think of refusing to allow the
performance of "The Lady of Lyons."  The {99} censor regards it as his
duty to take care that indecent words are not spoken, and that what
society considers indecent dressing is not exhibited.  That is not
much, it may be said, but it is better than nothing, and it is all we
can get or would have.  The censor cannot go ahead of the prevailing
habits and the common opinion of the society of his day.  If we had a
censor who started a lofty code of morality and propriety all his own,
public opinion would not stand him and his code.  Suppose we had a
censor who considered "Othello" shocking, and an ordinary _decolletee_
dress or an ordinary ballet costume indecent, an outcry would soon be
raised against him which would compel him to resign his purposes or his
office.  All he can do is to endeavor to order things so that nothing
is said or exhibited which might shock society's sense of propriety,
and this he can as a rule fairly accomplish.  He must also take his
society as he finds it.  A West End audience in London will stand
allusions and jests and scantiness of costume which an East End
audience, made up almost exclusively of the working-people and the
poor, would not endure for a moment.  The censor of plays can be much
more rigid in his discipline when he is protecting the proprieties of
poverty than when he is protecting the proprieties of fashion.  The
censorship works well in England on the whole, because it has almost
always been worked by capable men of the world who understand that they
are not dealing with children, who do not magnify their office, and do
not strain after an austere authority which it would be quite
impossible for them to exert.

[Sidenote: 1737--The Playhouse Bill]

The Playhouse Bill passed through the House of Commons easily enough.
No one of any mark took much account of it, except Pulteney, who
opposed it.  The opposition offered by Pulteney does not appear to have
been very severe or even serious, for no division was taken in the
representative Chamber.  The feeling of every one was not so much
concerned about what we should now call immorality or indecency, but
about lampoons on public men.  This fear was common to the Opposition
as well as to the {100} Government, was shared alike by the Patriots
and the Court party; and so the Bill was sent speedily through both
Houses.

[Sidenote: 1737--The censorship of the stage]

The debate was made memorable by the brilliant speech of Lord
Chesterfield in the House of Lords.  All contemporary accounts agree in
describing this speech as one of the most fascinating and impressive
ever heard in Parliament.  Chesterfield strongly opposed the measure in
the interests of public liberty and the freedom of the press.  He knew
where to hit hard when he called the licensing department which the
Bill proposed to create "a new excise."  The real object of the
measure, he insisted, was not so much to restrain the stage as to
shackle the press.  "It is an arrow that does but glance at the stage;
the mortal wound seems destined against the liberty of the press."  His
argument to this effect was decidedly clever, keen, plausible, and
telling.  "You can prevent a play from being acted," he said, "but you
do not prevent it from being printed.  Therefore a play which by your
censorship you refuse to allow to come on the stage, and in the
interests of public morals very properly refuse, you allow to come in a
printed form on the shelves of the booksellers.  The very fact that a
play was not allowed to be put on the stage will only make people the
more eager to read it in book form; prohibited publications are in all
countries diligently and generally sought after.  Plays will be written
in order to be prohibited by the censor and then to be sold in book
form.  What will come of this?  Unquestionably an extension of the
present measure for the purpose of preventing the printing as well as
the public representation of plays.  It is out of the question that
society could allow a play to be read by all the public which it would
not allow to be recited on the boards of a theatre.  Now then you have
got so far as the preventing of plays from being printed, what happens
next?  That a writer will turn his rejected, prohibited play into a
novel or something of the kind; will introduce a little narrative as
well as dialogue, and in this slightly {101} altered form offer his
piece of scandalous work to the general reader.  Then it will be asked,
What! will you allow an infamous libel to be printed and dispersed
merely because it does not bear the title of a play?  Thus, my Lords,
from the precedent before us, we may, we shall be induced, nay, we can
find no reason for refusing to lay the press under a general license,
and then we may bid adieu to the liberties of Great Britain."

There was a great deal of force and of justice in Chesterfield's
reasoning.  But its defect was that it made no account of the amount of
common-sense which must go to the administration of law in every
progressive country.  If the censorship of the stage had been worked in
the spirit and style which Chesterfield expected, then it is beyond
question that it would have to be followed up by a censorship of the
press or withdrawn altogether.  It would clearly be impossible to allow
the very words which were not to be spoken on the stage to be set out
in the clearest type on the shelves of every bookseller.  But
Chesterfield's own speech showed that he had entirely misconceived the
extent and operation of a censorship of the stage in a country like
England.  The censorship of the stage which Chesterfield assumed to be
coming, and which he condemned, could not possibly, as we have shown,
exist in those islands.  The censorship of the stage, if it were to
move in such a direction, would not be paving the way for a censorship
of the press, but simply paving the way for its own abolition.  The
speech was a capital and a telling piece of argument addressed to an
audience who were glad to hear something decided and animated on the
subject; but it never could have deceived Chesterfield himself.  It
took no account of the elementary political fact that all legislation
is compromise, and that the supposed logical and extreme consequences
of no measure are ever allowed to follow its enactment.  The censorship
of plays has gone on since that time, and it has not interfered with
the general liberty of acting and of publishing dramatic pieces.  It
has not compelled {102} Parliament to choose between introducing a
censorship of the press or abolishing the censorship of plays.  We have
never heard of any play worth seeing which was lost to the English
stage through the censorship of the drama, nor was the suggestion ever
made by the most reactionary Ministry that it should be followed up by
a censorship of the press.

[Sidenote: 1737--Educated libellers]

Indeed in Walpole's day it might almost have seemed as if the stage
required censorship less than the ballad.  Probably, if it had been
thought humanly possible to prevent the publication and the circulation
of scurrilous poems against eminent men and women, Walpole might have
ventured on the experiment.  But he had too much robust common-sense
not to recognize the impossibility of doing anything effective in the
way of repression in that field of art.

Certainly the Muse of Song made herself very often a shrieking sister
in those days.  When she turned her attention to politics, and had her
patrons to be sung up and her patrons' enemies to be sung down, she
very often screamed and called names, and cursed like an intoxicated
fish-wife.  Pope, Swift, Gay, Hervey, flung metrical abuse about in the
coarsest fashion.  There seemed to be hardly any pretence at accuracy
of description or epithet.  If the poet or the poet's patron did not
like a man or woman, no word of abuse was too coarse or foul to be
employed against the odious personage.  Women, indeed, got off rather
worse than men on the whole; even Lord Hervey did not suffer so much at
the hands of Pope as did Mary Wortley Montagu.  The poets of one
faction did not spare even the princes and princesses, even the King or
Queen, of another.  Furious and revolting lines were written about
George and his wife by one set of versifiers; about the Prince of Wales
by another.  No hour, no event, was held sacred.  Around a death-bed
the wits were firing off their sarcasms on its occupant.  Some of the
verses written about Queen Caroline, verses often containing the
foulest and filthiest libels, followed her into the sick-chamber, {103}
the bed of death, the coffin, and the grave.  One could easily
understand all this if the libellers had been vulgar and venal Grub
Street hacks who were paid to attack some enemy of their paymaster.
But the vilest calumnies of the time were penned by men of genius, by
men of the highest rank in literature; by men whose literary position
made them the daily companions of great nobles and of princes and
princesses.  Political and social hatred seemed to level all
distinctions and to obliterate most of the Christian virtues.




{104}

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE BANISHED PRINCE.

[Sidenote: 1737--An important affair]

The conduct of the Prince of Wales was becoming more and more insolent
to the King and Queen every day.  Perhaps King George was right in his
belief that Walpole's policy of compromise had made Frederick think
himself of some real account in public affairs.  It is certain that he
began to act as if he were determined the whole nation should know how
thoroughly independent he was of the authority of his father and
mother.  He had soon a peculiar opportunity of making a display of this
ferocious independence.

The Princess of Wales was about to have her first child.  For some
reason, which no one could well explain, the news of the coming event
was not made known to the King and Queen until the hour of its coming
was very near.  Even then there seems to have been some conscious or
unconscious misleading of the King and Queen as to the actual time when
according to calculations the child was to be born.  The King and Queen
were left under the impression that it was a good deal further off than
it really proved to be.  The Queen, with all her natural goodness of
heart, was painfully suspicious.  She was suspicious sometimes even of
those she loved and trusted; and she hated both the Prince and the
Princess of Wales.  She had taken it into her head that the Princess of
Wales was not likely to have a child.  She persisted in asserting to
those around her that the princess was not pregnant and never would be.
Naturally when she allowed her mind to be filled with this idea, the
next conclusion for her to jump at was the conviction that a
supposititious infant was about to be palmed off on the Palace and the
{105} country.  This idea took full possession of her mind, and she
kept constantly telling those around her that, no matter when or where
the event might take place, she was determined to be in at that birth.
In the most explicit and emphatic way she told people that she would
make sure for herself that no child was imported in a warming-pan this
time.

The King and Queen were now in Hampton Court Palace; the Prince and
Princess of Wales were also living there.  Nothing would have been
easier for the Queen than to carry out her purpose if the princess were
allowed to remain in the palace until after her confinement.  It was
reported to her that the prince had said he was anxious that his wife
should be confined in London--in St. James's Palace.  This the Queen
was determined to prevent if she could.  The Princess Caroline fully
shared her mother's belief that the Prince of Wales was quite capable
of palming off a spurious child on the country; and indeed the King
became after a while as well convinced of it as his wife and his
daughter.  It was resolved that a message should be sent from the King
to the Prince of Wales, giving a sort of Royal command that the
princess should remain at Hampton Court until after her confinement.
Lord Hervey shook his head at all this.  He did not believe in the
warming-pan fantasy; and he felt sure that in any case the Prince of
Wales would contrive to get his wife out of Hampton Court if he wished
to do so.  What was to prevent the princess going up to London a little
before her time, and then affecting to fall suddenly ill there, and
declaring that she could not endure the pain and danger of removal?
Lord Hervey had seen a good deal of the prince in old days.  They had
had friendships and quarrels and final estrangement, and he knew his
prince pretty well.

What Hervey had predicted came to pass, but in a worse way than he had
ventured to predict.  The Queen kept urging Walpole to send the King's
order to the prince.  Walpole kept putting it off.  For one reason, the
{106} minister had been told the confinement was to be expected in
October, and this was only July.  It is very likely, too, that he
shared Hervey's scepticism alike as to the supposititious child and the
possibility of keeping the prince's wife at Hampton Court against the
prince's will.  The Royal command was never sent.

[Sidenote: 1737--Neighbors requisitioned]

On Sunday, July 31, 1737, the Prince of Wales and the princess dined
publicly with the King and Queen in Hampton Court Palace.  Not a word
was said to any one about an early approach of the confinement.  The
princess seemed in her usual condition.  The two sets of royal
personages did not talk with each other at this time, although they
thus had ceremonial meetings in public.  The Queen called the attention
of some one near her to the princess's appearance, and insisted that
she was not going to have a child at all.  When dinner was over, the
prince and princess went back to their own apartments, and later that
evening the princess was taken with the pains of labor.  Then followed
what has hardly ever happened in the story of the life of a poor
washer-woman or a peasant's wife.  The unfortunate princess was far
gone in her agony before any one had time to think; and before those
around them had much time to think the Prince of Wales had determined
to carry her off, groaning in labor as she was, and take her ten miles
to London.  The whole story is a shocking one; and we shall put it into
a very narrow compass.  But it has to be told somehow.  By the help of
an equerry and a dancing-master, the writhing princess was hoisted
down-stairs and got into a carriage.  The dancing-master, Dunoyer, was
a hanger-on and favorite of the prince; and, being employed to teach
dancing to the younger children of George the Second, acted as a kind
of licensed spy, so Hervey says, on the one family and the other.  In
the carriage with the prince and princess came Lady Archibald Hamilton,
who was understood to be the prince's mistress.  No royal movement in
those days would seem to be thought quite complete without the presence
of some mistress of the {107} King or prince.  The carriage reached
London about ten o'clock.  It had been driven at full gallop, the poor
princess writhing and screaming all the time, and the prince scolding
at her and telling her it was nonsense to cry and groan about pain
which would so soon be over.  When they got to St. James's Palace there
were naturally no preparations made for a lying-in.  The prince and
Lady Archibald Hamilton set to work to get some things in readiness,
and found they had to send round the neighborhood to collect some of
the most necessary appliances for such an occasion.  So pitifully
unprovided was the palace that no clean sheets could be found, and the
prince and his mistress put the princess to bed between two
table-cloths.  At a quarter before eleven the birth took place.  A tiny
baby was born; "a little rat of a girl," Lord Hervey says, "about the
bigness of a good large tooth-pick."  The little rat of a girl grew up,
however, to be a handsome woman.  She was seen by John Wilson Croker in
1809 and had still the remains of beauty.  The Lords of the Council had
been hurriedly sent for to be present at the birth; but the event was
so sudden and so unexpected that only Lord Wilmington, the President of
the Council, and Lord Godolphin, the Privy Seal, arrived in time to be
able to testify that no warming-pan operation was accomplished.

The unsuspecting King and Queen had gone to bed, according to their
usual quiet custom, at eleven o'clock.  Their feelings, as a certain
class of writers are in the habit of saying, may be more easily
imagined than described when they were roused from sleep about two in
the morning by the couriers, who came to tell them that the princess
had become the mother of a girl, and that the prince and princess were
at St. James's Palace, London.  There was racing and chasing.  Within
half an hour the Queen was on the road to London with the two eldest
princesses, Lord Hervey, and others.  The Queen comported herself with
some patience and dignity when she saw the prince and princess.  The
child was shown to her.  {108} No clothes had yet been found for it but
some napkins and an old red cloak.  "The good God bless you, poor
little creature," said the Queen in French; "you have come into a very
disagreeable world!"

[Sidenote: 1737--Applying a precedent]

The King and Queen consented to become the godfather and godmother of
the poor little creature who had been brought thus disagreeably into
this disagreeable world.  But the conduct of the prince was regarded as
unpardonable, and he was banished by Royal letter from the King's
palace, whether at Hampton Court or St. James's.  The prince's own
party, Pulteney and his colleagues, utterly refused to give their
sanction to the extraordinary course which Frederick had taken.
Bolingbroke wrote from France, angrily and scornfully condemning it.
But the Patriots were willing, and resolved to stand the prince's
friends all the same, and they had not even the courage to advise him
to make a frank and full apology for his conduct.  Indeed the action of
the prince seems to suggest an approach to insanity rather than
deliberate and reasoned perverseness.  He had forced his wife to run
the risk of losing her own life and her child's life, he had grossly
and wantonly offended his father and mother, and he had thrown a
secrecy and mystery round the birth of the infant which, if ever there
came to be a dispute about the succession, would give his enemies the
most plausible excuse for proclaiming that a spurious child had been
imposed upon the country.  As a friend of the Queen said at the time,
if ever the Crown came to be fought for again, the only question could
be whether the people would rather have the Whig bastard or the Tory
bastard.

The whole business, as might be expected, caused a terrible scandal.
Not merely was the prince banished from the palace, not merely did the
King refuse to see him or to hold further communication with him, but
it was formally announced by the Secretaries of State to all the
foreign ministers that it would be considered a mark of respect to the
Sovereign if they would abstain from visiting the prince.  Furthermore,
a message was sent in {109} writing to all peers, peeresses, and privy
councillors, declaring that no one who went to the prince's court would
be admitted into the King's presence.  Never probably was domestic
dirty linen more publicly washed.  Nevertheless, it very soon was made
apparent that the course taken by the King was in strict accordance
with a precedent which at one time had a very direct application to
himself.  Some of the prince's friends thought it a clever stroke of
policy just then to print and publish the letters which passed between
the late King and the present Sovereign when the latter was Prince of
Wales and got into a quarrel with his father.  The late King sent his
vice-chamberlain to order his son "that he and his domestics must leave
my house."  A copy was also published of a circular letter signed by
the honored name of Joseph Addison, then Secretary of State, addressed
to the English ministers at foreign courts, giving the King's version
of the whole quarrel, in order that they might report him and his cause
aright to the unsatisfied.

Lord Hervey is inclined to think that it was not the friends of the
prince, but rather Walpole himself, who got these letters printed.
Hervey does not see what good the publication could do to the prince
and the prince's cause, but suggests that it might be a distinct
service to Walpole and Walpole's master to show that the reigning king
in his early days had been treated with even more harshness than he had
just shown to his own son, and with far less cause to justify the
harshness.  Still it seems to us natural for the prince's friends to
believe it would strengthen him in popular sympathy if it were brought
before men's minds that the very same sort of treatment of which George
the Second complained when it was visited on him by his own father he
now had not scrupled nor shamed to visit upon his son.  Among other
discoveries made at this time with regard to the more secret history of
the late reign, it was found out that George the First actually
entertained and encouraged a project for having the Prince of Wales,
now George the Second, put on board {110} some war-vessel and "carried
off to any part of the world that your Majesty may be pleased to
order."  This fact--for a fact it seems to be--did not get to the
public knowledge; but it came to the knowledge of Lord Hervey, who
probably had it from the Queen herself, and it is confirmed by other
and different testimony.  A Prince of Wales kidnapped and carried out
of civilization by the command of his royal father would have made a
piquant chapter in modern English history.

[Sidenote: 1737--Bishop Hoadley and the Test Act]

The prince and princess went to Kew in the first instance, and then the
prince took Norfolk House, in St. James's Square, for his town
residence, and Cliefden for his country place.  The prince put himself
forward more conspicuously than ever as the head of the Patriot party.
It was reported to Walpole that in Frederick's determination to make
himself popular he was resolved to have a Bill brought forward in the
coming session of Parliament to repeal the Test Act.  The Test Act was
passed in the reign of Charles the Second, 1673, and it declared that
all officers, civil or military, of the Government must take the
sacrament according to the forms of the Church of England, and must
take the oaths against the doctrine of transubstantiation.  This Act
was, of course, regarded as a serious grievance by the Dissenters of
all denominations.  Some few eminent Churchmen, like Dr. Hoadley,
Bishop of Winchester, had always been opposed to the narrow-minded
policy of the Act.  Hoadley, indeed, had made himself a sort of leader
of the dissenting communities on this subject.  For that and other
reasons he had been described as the greatest Dissenter who ever wore a
mitre.  When the report got about that an attempt was to be made to
have the Test Act repealed, Walpole, with his usual astuteness, sent
for the bishop, knowing very well that, if such a determination had
been come to, Dr. Hoadley would be among the very first men to be
consulted on the subject.  Walpole expressed his mind very freely to
Hoadley.  A coldness had long existed between them, which Walpole's
gift of the Bishopric of Winchester had not removed.  {111} Hoadley had
thought Walpole slow, lukewarm, and indifferent about movements in
reform of Church and State, which Hoadley regarded as essential parts
of the programme of the Whig party.  Walpole was perfectly frank with
him on this occasion, and explained to him the difficulty which would
come up in English affairs if the Prince of Wales were encouraged to
seek popularity at the expense of the King and Queen by making himself
the champion of the Dissenters' grievances.  Hoadley met Walpole in a
spirit of similar frankness.  He declared that he always had been and
always should be in favor of the repeal of the Test Act, but that he
disapproved altogether of the prince being set up in opposition to the
King; and he believed that even the repeal of the Test Act would be
bought at too dear a cost if it were the means of bringing the King
into a distressing family quarrel.  Therefore the bishop declared that
he would give no encouragement to such a scheme, of which, he said, he
had lately heard nothing from the prince; and that, whatever kindnesses
he might receive from Frederick, he should never forget his duty to
George.  Walpole was delighted with Hoadley's bearing and Hoadley's
answer, and seemed as if he never could praise him enough.  No one can
question Hoadley's sincerity.  We must only try to get ourselves back
into the framework and the spirit of an age when a sound patriot and a
high-minded ecclesiastic could be willing to postpone indefinitely an
act of justice to a whole section of the community in order to avoid
the risk of having the Sovereign brought into disadvantageous
comparison with the Sovereign's eldest son.  Walpole approved of the
Test Act no more than Hoadley did, although the spirit of his objection
to it was far less positive and less exalted than that of Hoadley.  But
Walpole was, of course, an avowed Opportunist; he never professed or
pretended to be anything better.  There is nothing surprising in the
fact that he regarded an act of justice to the Dissenters as merely a
matter of public convenience, to be performed when it could be
performed without disturbing anybody of {112} importance.  Hoadley must
have looked at the subject from an entirely different point of view; it
must have been to him a question of justice or injustice; yet he, too,
was quite ready to put it off indefinitely rather than allow it to be
made the means of obtaining a certain amount of popular favor for the
Prince of Wales as opposed to his father the King.  We shall see such
things occurring again and again in the course of this history.  The
agreement of Walpole and Hoadley did, indeed, put off the repeal of the
Test Act for a pretty long time.  The brand and stigma on the
Protestant Dissenters as well as on the Roman Catholics was allowed to
remain in existence for nearly another century of English history.  We
are now in 1737, and the Test Act was not repealed until 1828.
Historians are sometimes reproached for paying too much attention to
palace squabbles; yet a palace squabble becomes a matter of some
importance if it can postpone an act of national justice for by far the
greater part of a century.

[Sidenote: 1737--A question of price]

There was a good deal of talk about this time of the possibility of
adopting some arrangement for the separation of Hanover from the
English Crown.  The fact of the Princess of Wales having given birth to
a daughter and not a son naturally led to a revival of this question.
The electorate of Hanover could not descend to a woman, and if the
Prince of Wales should have no son some new arrangement would have to
be made.  The Queen was very anxious that Hanover should be secured for
her second son, to whom she was much attached, and the King was
understood to be in favor of this project.  On the other hand, it was
given out that the Prince of Wales would be quite willing to renounce
his rights in favor of his younger brother on condition of his getting
the fifty thousand a year additional for which he had been clamoring in
Parliament.  Nothing could be more popular with the country than any
arrangement which would sever the connection between the Crown of
England and the electorate of Hanover.  If the prince were seeking
popularity, such a proposal coming from him would be popular indeed,
provided {113} it were not spoiled by the stipulation about the fifty
thousand a year.  The Queen's comment upon the rumors as to the
prince's intention was that in her firm belief he would sell the
reversion of the Crown of England to the Pretender if only the
Pretender offered him money enough.  Nothing came of the talk about
Hanover just then.  The King and the Queen had soon something else to
think of.




{114}

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE QUEEN'S DEATH-BED.

[Sidenote: 1737--Caroline's death-stroke]

The Queen had long been dying; dying by inches.  In one of her
confinements she had been stricken with an ailment from which she
suffered severely.  She refused to let any one, even the King, know
what was the matter with her.  She had the strongest objection to being
regarded as an invalid; and she feared, too, that if anything serious
were known to be the matter with her she might lose her hold over her
selfish husband, who only cared for people as long as they were active
in serving and pleasing him.  An invalid was to George merely a
nuisance.  Let us do Caroline justice.  She was no doubt actuated by
the most sincere desire to be of service to the King, and she feared
that if she were to make it known how ill she was, the King might
insist on her giving up active life altogether.  Not only did she take
no pains to get better, but in order to prove that she was perfectly
well, she used to exert herself in a manner which might have been
injurious to the health of a very strong woman.  When at Richmond she
used to walk several miles every morning with the King; and more than
once, Walpole says, when she had the gout in her foot, she dipped her
whole leg in cold water to be ready to attend him.  "The pain," says
Walpole, "the bulk, and the exercise threw her into such fits of
perspiration as routed the gout; but those exertions hastened the
crisis of her distemper."  History preserves some curious pictures of
the manner in which the morning prayers were commonly said to Queen
Caroline.  The Queen was being dressed by her ladies in her bedroom;
the door of the bedroom was left partly open, the {115} chaplain read
the prayers in the outer room, and had to kneel, as he read them,
beneath a great painting of a naked Venus; and just within the
half-open bedroom door her Majesty, according to Horace Walpole, "would
frequently stand some minutes in her shift, talking to her ladies."

Robert Walpole was the first to discover the real and the very serious
nature of the Queen's malady.  He was often alone with her for the
purpose of arranging as to the course of action which they were to
prevail upon the King to believe to be of his own inspiration, and
accordingly to adopt.  Shortly after the death of Walpole's wife he was
closeted with the Queen.  Her Majesty questioned him closely about the
cause of his wife's death.  She was evidently under the impression that
Lady Walpole had died from the effects of a peculiar kind of rupture,
and she put to Walpole a variety of very intimate questions as to the
symptoms and progress of the disease.  Walpole had long suspected, as
many others had, that there was something seriously wrong with the
Queen.  He allowed her to go on with her questions, and he became
satisfied in his own mind that the Queen herself was suffering from the
disorder about which she was so anxious to be told.

On August 26, 1737, it was reported over London that the Queen was
dead.  The report was unfounded, or at least premature.  Caroline had
had a violent attack, but she rallied and was able to go about again at
Hampton Court with the King.  On Wednesday, November 9, 1737, she was
suddenly stricken down, and this was her death-stroke.  She did not die
at once, but lingered and lingered.

There are few chapters of history more full of strange, sardonic
contrast, and grim, ghastly humor, than those which describe these
death-bed scenes.  The Queen, undergoing a succession of painful
operations; now groaning and fainting, now telling the doctors not to
mind her foolish cries; now indulging in some chaff with them--"Is not
Ranby [the surgeon] sorry it isn't his own cross old wife he is cutting
up?"--the King sometimes blubbering, and sometimes telling his dying
wife that her staring eyes {116} looked like those of a calf whose
throat had been cut; the King, who, in his sudden tenderness and grief,
would persist in lying outside the bed, and thereby giving the poor,
perishing sufferer hardly room to move; the messages of affected
condolence arriving from the Prince of Wales, with requests to be
allowed to see his mother, which requests the mother rejects with
bitterness and contempt--all this sets before us a picture such as
seldom, happily for the human race, illustrates a death-bed in palace,
garret, or prison cell.  The King was undoubtedly sincere in his grief,
at least for the time.  He did love the Queen in a sort of way; and she
had worked upon all his weaknesses and vices and made herself necessary
to him.  He did not see how life was to go on for him without her; and
as he thought of this he cried like a child whose mother is about to
leave him.  Over and over again has the story been told of the dying
Queen's appeal to her husband to take a new wife after her death, and
the King's earnest disclaimer of any such purpose; the assurance that
he would have mistresses, and then the Queen's cry of cruel conviction
from hard experience, "Oh, mon Dieu, cela n'empeche pas!"  "I know,"
says Lord Hervey, who tells the story, "that this episode will hardly
be credited, but it is literally true."  One does not see why the
episode should hardly be credited, why it should not be taken at once
as historical and true.  It is not out of keeping with all other
passages of the story, it is in the closest harmony and symmetry with
them.  The King always made his wife the confidante of his amours and
intrigues.  He had written to her once, asking her to bring to Court
the wife of some nobleman or gentleman, and he told her frankly that he
admired this lady and wanted to have her near him in order that he
might have an intrigue with her, and he knew that she, his wife, would
always be glad to do him a pleasure.  Thackeray, in his lecture, often
speaks of the King as "Sultan George."  George had, in the matter of
love-making, no other notions than those of a sultan.  [Sidenote:
1737--George's settled belief] He had no more idea of his wife
objecting to his mistresses than {117} a sultan would have about the
chief sultana's taking offence at the presence of his concubines.  The
fact that the Queen lay dying did not put any restraint on any of
George's ways.  He could not be kept from talking loudly all the time;
he could not be kept from bawling out observations about his wife's
condition which, if they were made only in whispers, must have tended
to alarm and distress an invalid.  It is not the frank brutality of
George's words which surprises us; it is rather the sort of cross-light
they throw on what was after all a tender part of his coarse and
selfish nature.  Every reader of the history and the memoirs of that
reign must be prepared to understand and to appreciate the absolute
sincerity of the King's words; the settled belief that the Queen could
not possibly have any objection to his taking to himself as many
mistresses as he pleased.  One is a little surprised at the uncouth
sentimentality of the thought that nevertheless it might be a
disrespect to her memory if he were to take another wife.  What a light
all this lets in upon the man, and the Court, and the time!  As regards
indiscriminate amours and connections, poor, stupid, besotted George
was simply on a level with the lower animals.  Charles the Second,
Louis the Fourteenth, Louis the Fifteenth even--these at their worst of
times were gentlemen.  It was only at the Hanoverian Court of England
that such an interchange of appeal and reassurance could take place as
that which was murmured and blubbered over the death-bed of Queen
Caroline.  "Horror," says one of the great Elizabethan poets, "waits on
the death-beds of princes."  Horror in the truest sense waited on the
death-bed of that poor, patient, faithful, unscrupulous, unselfish
Queen.

The Queen kept rallying and sinking, and rallying again; and the King's
moods went up and down with each passing change in his wife's
condition.  Now she sank, and he buried his face in the bedclothes and
cried; now she recovered a little, and he rated at her and made rough
jokes at her.  At one moment he appeared to be all {118} tenderness to
her, at another moment he went on as if the whole illness were a mere
sham to worry him, and she might get up and be well if she would only
act like a sensible woman.  The Prince of Wales made an attempt to see
the Queen.  The King spoke of him as a puppy and a scoundrel; jeered at
his impudent, affected airs of duty and affection, declared that
neither he nor the Queen was in a condition to see him act his false,
whining, cringing tricks now, and sent him orders to get out of the
place at once.  His Majesty continued all through the dying scenes to
rave against the Prince of Wales, and call him rascal, knave, puppy,
and scoundrel.  The Queen herself, although she did not use language
quite as strong, yet expressed just as resolute a dislike or
detestation of her son, and an utter disbelief in his sincerity.  She
declared that she knew he only wanted to see her in order that he
should have the joy of knowing she was dead five minutes sooner than if
he had to wait in Pall Mall to hear the glad tidings.  She told the
listeners that if ever she should consent to see the prince they might
be sure she had lost her senses.  Princess Caroline was in constant
attendance on the Queen.  So was Lord Hervey.  The princess, however,
became unwell herself and the Princess Emily sat up with the Queen.
But Caroline would not consent to be removed from her mother.  A couch
was fitted up for her in a room adjoining the Queen's; and Lord Hervey
lay on a mattress on the floor at the foot of the princess's bed.  The
King occasionally went to his own rooms, and there was peace for the
time in the dying woman's chamber.  Probably the only two that truly
and unselfishly loved the Queen were occupying the couch and the
mattress in that outer room.

The Queen talked often to Princess Caroline, and commended to her the
care of her two younger sisters.  She talked to her son William, Duke
of Cumberland, then little more than sixteen years old, admonished him
to be a support to his father, and to "try to make up for the
disappointment and vexation he must receive from your {119} profligate
and worthless brother."  But she also admonished him to attempt nothing
against his brother, and only to mortify him by showing superior merit.
She asked for her keys, and gave them to the King.  She took off her
finger a ruby ring which he had given her at her coronation, and put it
on his finger, and said to him, almost as patient Grizzel does, "Naked
I came to you, and naked I go from you."  All who were present at this
episode in the dying were in tears, except the Queen herself.  She
seemed absolutely composed; indeed she was anxious that the end should
come.  She had no belief in the possibility of her recovery, and she
only wanted to be released now from "the fever called living."  Except
for the bitter outbursts of anger and hatred against the Prince of
Wales, the poor Queen seems to have borne herself like a true-hearted,
resigned, tender wife, kind mother, and Christian woman.

[Sidenote: 1737--A fatal mistake]

An operation was tried, with the consent of the King.  Thereupon arises
a controversy not unlike that which followed an imperial death in very
modern European history.  Lord Hervey insists that the surgeons showed
utter incapacity, made a shocking and fatal mistake; cut away as
mortified flesh that in which there was no mortification whatever.
Then Sir Robert Walpole, who had been sent for, comes on the scene.
The King ordered him to be brought in from the outer room, and Walpole
came in and tried to drop on his knees to kiss the King's hand.  It was
not easy to do, Sir Robert was so bulky and unwieldy.  He found it hard
to get down, and harder still to get up again.  However, the solemn
duty was accomplished somehow, and then Sir Robert was conducted to the
Queen's bedside.  He dropped some tears, which we may be sure were
sincere, even if by no means unselfish.  He was in utter dread of
losing all his power over the King if the Queen were to die.  The Queen
recommended the King, her children, and the kingdom to his care, and
Sir Robert seems to have been much pleased with the implied compliment
of the recommendation.

{120}

The moment Walpole got to private speech with Lord Hervey, he at once
exhibited the nature of his grief and alarm.  "My lord," he exclaimed,
"if this woman should die, what a scene of confusion will there be!
Who can tell into whose hands the King will fall, or who will have the
management of him?"  Lord Hervey tried to reassure him, and told him
that his influence over the King would be stronger than ever.  Walpole
could not see it, and they argued the matter over for a long time.  The
talk lasted two or three hours, much to Lord Hervey's dissatisfaction,
for it kept him out of bed, and this happened to be the first night
since the Queen had fallen ill when he had any chance of a good night's
rest; and now behold, with the Prime-minister's unseasonable anxiety
about the affairs of State, Lord Hervey's chance is considerably
diminished.  Even this little episode has its fit and significant place
in the death-bed story.  The Prime-minister will insist on talking over
the prospects--his own prospects or those of the nation--with the
lord-in-waiting; and the lord-in-waiting is very sleepy, and, having
had a hope of a night's rest, is only alarmed lest the hope should be
disappointed.  No one appears to have said a word as to what would be
better or worse for the Queen.

The Queen was strongly under the belief that she would die on a
Wednesday.  She was born on a Wednesday, married on a Wednesday,
crowned on a Wednesday, gave birth to her first child on a Wednesday;
almost all the important events of her life had befallen her on
Wednesday, and it seemed in the fitness of things that Wednesday should
bring with it the close of that life.  Wednesday came; and, as Lord
Hervey puts it, "some wise, some pious, and a great many busy,
meddling, impertinent people about the Court" began asking each other,
and everybody else they met, whether the Queen had any clergyman to
pray for her and minister to her.  Hervey thought all this very
offensive and absurd, and was of opinion that if the Queen cared about
praying, and that sort of thing, she could pray for herself as well as
any one else could do it.  {121} Hervey, however, kept this free and
easy view of things discreetly to himself.  He was shocked at the rough
cynicism of Sir Robert Walpole, who cared as little about prayer as
Hervey or any other man living, but was perfectly willing that all the
world should know his views on the subject.  The talk of the people
about the Court reached Walpole's ears, and he recommended the Princess
Emily to propose to the King and Queen that the Archbishop of
Canterbury should be sent for.  The princess seemed to be a little
afraid to make so audacious a proposal to the King, Defender of the
Faith, as the suggestion that a minister of the Church should be
allowed to pray by the bedside of the dying Queen.  Sir Robert
encouraged her in his characteristic way.  In the presence of a dozen
people, Hervey tells, Sir Robert said to the princess: "Pray, madam,
let this farce be played; the archbishop will act it very well.  You
may bid him be as short as you will.  It will do the Queen no hurt, no
more than any good; and it will satisfy all the wise and good fools who
will call us atheists if we don't pretend to be as great fools as they
are."

[Sidenote: 1737--Praying with the Queen]

The advice of the statesman was taken.  The wise and good fools were
allowed to have it their own way.  The archbishop was sent for, and he
came and prayed with the Queen every morning and evening; the King
always graciously bolting out of the room the moment the prelate came
in.  But the wise and good fools were not satisfied with the concession
which enlightenment had condescended to make.  Up to this time they
kept asking, "Has the Queen no one to pray with her?"  Now the
whispered question was, "Has the Queen taken--will the Queen take--the
sacrament?"  Some people hinted that she could not receive the
sacrament because she could not make up her mind to be reconciled to
her son; others doubted whether she had religious feeling enough to
consent to ask for the sacrament or to receive it.  All this time the
King chattered perpetually to Lord Hervey, to the physicians and
surgeons, and to his children, about the virtues {122} and gifts of the
Queen.  He deplored in advance the lonely, dull life he would have to
lead when she was taken from him.  He was in frequent bursts of tears.
He declared that he had never been tired one moment in her company;
that he could never have been happy with any other woman in the world;
and he paid her the graceful and delicate compliment of saying that if
she had not been his wife he would rather have her for a mistress than
any other woman with whom he had ever held such relationship.  Yet he
hardly ever went into her room, after one of these outpourings of
tender affection, without being rough to her and shouting at her and
bullying her.  When her pains and her wounds made her move uneasily in
her bed, he asked her how the devil she could sleep when she would
never lie still a moment.  He walked heavily about the room as if it
were a chamber in a barrack; he talked incessantly; gave all manner of
directions; made the unfortunate Queen swallow all manner of foods and
drinks because he took it into his head that they would do her good;
and she submitted, poor, patient, pitiable creature, and swallowed and
vomited, swallowed again and vomited again, and uttered no complaint.

[Sidenote: 1737--Would not play second fiddle]

Even in his outbursts of grief the King's absurd personal vanity
constantly came out; for he was always telling his listeners that the
Queen was devoted to him because she was wildly enamoured of his person
as well as his genius.  Then he told long stories about his own
indomitable courage, and went over and over again an account of the
heroism he had displayed during a storm at sea.  One night the King was
in the outer room with the Princess Emily and Lord Hervey.  The puffy
little King wore his nightgown and nightcap, and was sitting in a great
chair with his thick legs on a stool; a heroic figure, decidedly.  The
princess was lying on a couch.  Lord Hervey sat by the fire.  The King
started the old story of the storm and his own bravery, and gave it to
his companions in all its familiar details.  The princess at last
closed her eyes, and seemed to be fast asleep.  The King presently went
into {123} the Queen's room, and then the princess started up and
asked, "Is he gone?" and added, fervently, "How tiresome he is!"  Lord
Hervey asked if she had not been asleep; she said no; she had only
closed her eyes in order to escape taking part in the conversation, and
that she very much wished she could close her ears as well.  "I am sick
to death," the dutiful princess said, "of hearing of his great courage
every day of my life.  One thinks now of mamma, and not of him.  Who
cares for his old storm?  I believe, too, it is a great lie, and that
he was as much afraid as I should have been, for all what he says now,"
and she added a good many more comments to the same effect.  Then the
King came back into the room, and his daughter ceased her comment on
his bravery and his truthfulness.

"One thinks of mamma, and not of him."  That was exactly what George
would not have.  He did dearly love the Queen after his own fashion; he
was deeply grieved at the thought of losing her; but he did not choose
to play second fiddle even to the dying.  So in all his praises of her
and his laments for her he never failed to endeavor to impress on his
hearers the idea of his own immense superiority to her and to everybody
else.  There is hardly anything in fiction so touching, so pitiful, so
painful, as this exposition of a naked, brutal, yet not quite selfish,
not wholly unloving, egotism.  The Queen did not die on the Wednesday.
Thursday and Friday passed over in just the same way, with just the
same incidents--with the King alternately blubbering and bullying, with
the panegyrics of the dying woman, and the twenty times told tale of
"his old storm."  The Queen was growing weaker and weaker.  Those who
watched around her bed wondered how she was able to live so long in
such a condition of utter weakness.  On the evening of Sunday, November
20th, she asked Dr. Tesier quietly how long it was possible that her
struggle could last.  He told her that he was "of opinion that your
Majesty will be soon relieved."  She thanked him for telling her, and
said in French, "So much the better."  About {124} ten o'clock that
same night the crisis came.  The King was asleep in a bed laid on the
floor at the foot of the Queen's bed.  The Princess Emily was lying on
a couch in a corner of the room.  The Queen began to rattle in her
throat.  The nurse gave the alarm, and said the Queen was dying.  The
Princess Caroline was sent for, and Lord Hervey.  The princess came in
time; Lord Hervey was a moment too late.  The Queen asked in a low,
faint voice that the window might be opened, saying she felt an asthma.
Then she spoke the one word, "Pray."  The Princess Emily began to read
some prayers, but had only got out a few words before the Queen
shuddered and died.  The Princess Caroline held a looking-glass to the
Queen's lips, and, finding the surface undimmed, quietly said, "'Tis
over"; and, according to Lord Hervey, "said not one word more, nor as
yet shed one tear, on the arrival of a misfortune the dread of which
had cost her so many."

"Pray!"  That was the last word the Queen ever spoke, All the wisdom of
the Court statesmen, all the proud, intellectual unbelief, all the
cynical contempt for the weaknesses of intellect which allow ignorant
people to believe their destiny linked with that of some other and
higher life--all that Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, Walpole, would have
taught and sworn oaths for--all was mocked by that one little word,
"pray," which came last from the lips of Queen Caroline.  Bring saucy
Scepticism there; make her laugh at that!

The story would be incomplete if it were not added that while the
Queen's body was yet unburied the King came to Hervey and told him,
laughing and crying alternately, that he had just seen Horace Walpole,
the brother of Robert, and that Walpole was weeping for the Queen with
so bad a grace "that in the middle of my tears he forced me to burst
into laughter."  Amid this explosion of tears and laughter the story of
the Queen's life comes fittingly to an end.

[Sidenote: 1737--Walpole strengthens his position]

The moment the breath was out of the Queen's body, {125} Walpole set
about a course of action which should strengthen his position as
Prime-minister of the King.  At first his strong fear was that with the
life of the Queen had passed away his own principal hold upon the
confidence of George.  He told Hervey that no one could know how often
he had failed utterly by argument and effort of his own to bring the
King to agree to some action which he considered absolutely necessary
for the good of the State, and how after he had given up the attempt in
mere despair the Queen had taken the matter in hand, and so managed the
King that his Majesty at last became persuaded that the whole idea was
his own original conception, and he bade her send for Walpole and
explain it to him, and get Walpole to carry it into execution.  Hervey
endeavored to reassure him by many arguments, and among the rest by one
which showed how well Hervey understood King George's weaknesses.
Hervey said the one thing which was in Walpole's way while the Queen
lived was the fear George had of people saying Walpole was the Queen's
minister, not the King's, and suggesting that the King's policy was
ruled by his wife.  Now that the Queen was gone, George would be glad
to prove to the world that Walpole had always been his minister, and
that he retained Walpole's services because he himself valued them, and
not because they had been pressed upon him by a woman.  Hervey proved
to be right.

Walpole, however, was for strengthening himself after the old fashion.
He was determined to put the King into the hands of some woman who
would play into the hands of the minister.  The Duke of Grafton and the
Duke of Newcastle tried to persuade Walpole to make use of the
influence of the Princess Emily.  They insisted that she was sure to
succeed to the management of the King, but that if Walpole approached
her at once he might easily make her believe that she owed it all to
him, and that she might thus be induced to stand by him and to assist
him.  Walpole would have nothing of the kind.  He only believed in the
ruling power of a mistress now that the {126} Queen was gone.  He gave
his opinions in his blunt, characteristic way.  He meant, he said, to
bring over Madame de Walmoden, and would have nothing to do with "the
girls."  "I was for the wife against the mistress, but I will be for
the mistress against the daughters."  Accordingly he earnestly advised
the King not to fret any longer with a vain sorrow, but to try to
distract himself from grief, and urged him, for this purpose, to send
over at once to Hanover for Madame Walmoden.  Walpole's way of talking
to the young princesses would seem absolutely beyond belief if we did
not know that the reports of it are true.  He told the princesses that
they must try to divert their father's melancholy by bringing women
round him; he talked of Madame Walmoden, and repeated to them what he
had said to Lord Hervey, that, though he had been for the Queen against
Lady Suffolk and every other woman, yet now he would be for Madame
Walmoden, and advised them in the mean time to bring Lady Deloraine, a
former mistress, to her father, adding with brutal indecency that
"people must wear old gloves until they get new ones."  He offended and
disgusted the Princesses Caroline and Emily, and they hated him forever
after.  Walpole did not much care.  He was not thinking much about "the
girls," as he called them.  He believed he saw his way.




{127} CHAPTER XXX.

THE WESLEYAN MOVEMENT.

[Sidenote: 1738--John Wesley]

In 1738 John Wesley returned to London from Georgia, in British North
America.  He had been absent more than two years.  He had gone to
Georgia to propagate the faith to which he was devoted; to convert the
native Indians and to regenerate the British colonists.  He did not
accomplish much in either way.  The colonists preferred to live their
careless, joyous, often dissolute lives, and the stern spirit of Wesley
had no charm for them.  The Indians refused to be Christianized; one
chief giving as his reason for the refusal a melancholy fact which has
kept others as well as him from conversion to the true faith.  He said
he did not want to become a Christian because the Christians in
Savannah got drunk, told lies, and beat men and women.  Wesley had,
before leaving England, founded a small religious brotherhood, and on
his return he at once set to work to strengthen and enlarge it.

John Wesley was in every sense a remarkable man.  If any one in the
modern world can be said to have had a distinct religious mission,
Wesley certainly can be thus described.  He was born in 1703 at
Epworth, in Lincolnshire.  John Wesley came of a family distinguished
for its Churchmen and ministers.  His father was a clergyman of the
Church of England, and rector of the parish of Epworth; his grandfather
was also a clergyman, but became a Non-conformist minister, and seems
to have been a good deal persecuted for his opinions on religious
discipline.  John Wesley's father was a sincere and devout man, with a
certain literary repute and well read in {128} theology, but of narrow
mind and dogmatic, unyielding temper.  The right of King William to the
Throne was an article of faith with him, and it came on him one day
with the shock of a terrible surprise that his wife did not altogether
share his conviction.  He vowed that he would never live with her again
unless or until she became of his way of thinking; and he straightway
left the house, nor did he return to his home and his wife until after
the death of the King, when the controversy might be considered as
having closed.  The King died so soon, however, that the pair were only
separated for about a year; but it may fairly be assumed that, had the
King lived twenty years, Wesley would not have returned to his wife
unless she had signified to him that she had renounced her pestilent
scepticism.

The same stern strength of resolve which Wesley, the father, showed in
this extraordinary course was shown by the son at many a grave public
crisis in his career.  The birth of John Wesley was the result of the
reconciliation between the elder Wesley and his wife.  There were other
children, elder and younger; one of whom, Charles, became in after-life
the faithful companion and colleague of his brother.  John and Charles
Wesley were educated at Oxford, and were distinguished there by the
fervor of their religious zeal and the austerity of their lives.  There
were other young men there at the time who grew into close affinity
with the Wesleys.  There was George Whitefield, the son of a Gloucester
innkeeper, who at one time was employed as a drawer in his mother's
tap-room; and there was James Hervey, afterwards author of the flowery
and sentimental "Meditations," that became for a while so famous--a
book which Southey describes "as laudable in purpose and vicious in
style."  These young men, with others, formed a sort of little
religious association or companionship of their own.  They used to hold
meetings for their mutual instruction and improvement in religious
faith and life.  They shunned all amusement and all ordinary social
intercourse.  They were ridiculed {129} and laughed at, and various
nicknames were bestowed on them.  One of these nicknames they accepted
and adopted; as the Flemish _Gueux_ had done, and many another
religious sect and political party as well.  Those who chose to laugh
at them saw especial absurdity in their formal and methodical way of
managing their spiritual exercises and their daily lives.  The jesters
dubbed them Methodists; Wesley and his friends welcomed the title; and
the fame of the Methodists now folds in the orb of the earth.

[Sidenote: 1738--Torpor of the English Church]

Wesley and his friends had in the beginning, and for long years after,
no idea whatever of leaving the fold of the English Church.  They had
as little thought of that kind as in a later generation had the men who
made the Free Church of Scotland.  Probably their ideas were very vague
in their earlier years.  They were young men tremendously in earnest;
they were aflame in spirit and conscience with religious zeal; and they
saw that the Church of England was not doing the work that might have
been and ought to have been expected of her.  She had ceased utterly to
be a missionary Church.  She troubled herself in nowise about spreading
the glad tidings of salvation among the heathen.  At home she was
absolutely out of touch with the great bulk of the people.  The poor
and the ignorant were left quietly to their own resources.  The
clergymen of the Church of England were not indeed by any means a body
of men wanting in personal morality, or even in religious feeling, but
they had as little or no religious activity because they had little or
no religious zeal.  They performed perfunctorily their perfunctory
duties; and that, as a rule, was all they did.

Atterbury, Burnet, Swift, all manner of writers, who were themselves
ministering in the Church of England, unite in bearing testimony to the
torpid condition into which the Church had fallen.  Decorum seemed to
be the highest reach of the spiritual lives of most of the clergy.  One
finds curious confirmation of the statements {130} made publicly by men
like Atterbury and Burnet in some of the appeals privately made by
Swift to his powerful friends for the promotion of poor and deserving
clergymen whose poverty and merit had been brought under his notice.
The recommendation generally begins and ends in the fact that each
particular man had led a decent, respectable life; that he was striving
to bring up honestly a large family; and that his living or curacy was
not enough to maintain him in comfort.  We hardly ever hear of the work
which the good man had been doing among the poor, the ignorant, and the
sinful.  Swift has said many hard and even terrible things about
bishops and deans, and vicars and curates.  But these stern accusations
do not form anything like as formidable a testimony against the
condition into which the Church had fallen as will be found in the
exceptional praise which he gives to those whom he specially desires to
recommend for promotion; and in the fact that the highest reach of that
praise comes to nothing more than the assurance that the man had led a
decent life, had a large family, and was very poor.  Such a
recommendation as that would not have counted for much with John
Wesley.  He would have wanted to know what work the clergyman had done
outside his own domestic life; what ignorance had he enlightened, what
sinners had he brought to repentance.

[Sidenote: 1738--An "archbishop of the slums"]

Things were still worse in the Established Church of Ireland.  Hardly a
pastor of that Church could speak three words of the language of the
Irish people.  Lord Stanhope, in his "History of England from the Peace
of Utrecht," writes as if the Irish clergymen--the clergymen, that is,
of the Established Church of Ireland--might have accomplished wonders
in the way of converting the Irish peasantry to Protestantism if they
only could have preached and controverted in the Irish language.  We
are convinced that they could have done nothing of the kind.  The Irish
Celtic population is in its very nature a Catholic population.  Not all
the preaching since Adam {131} could have made them other than that.
Still it struck John Wesley very painfully later on that the effort was
never made, and that the men who could not talk to the Irish people in
their own tongue, and who did not take the trouble to learn the
language, were not in a promising condition for the conversion of
souls.  The desire of Wesley and his brother, and Whitefield and the
rest, seems only at first to have been an awakening of the Church in
these islands to a sense of her duty.  They do not appear to have had
any very far-reaching hopes or plans.  They saw that the work was left
undone, and they labored to bring about a spirit which should lead men
to the doing of it.  At first they only held their little meetings on
each succeeding Sunday; but they found themselves warming to the task,
and they began to meet and confer very often.  Their one thought was
how to get at the people; how to get at the lowly, the ignorant, and
the poor.  Soon they began to see that the lowly, the ignorant, and the
poor would not come to the Church, and that, therefore, the Church must
go out to them.  In a day much nearer to our own a prelate of the
Established Church indulged in a very unlucky and unworthy sneer at the
expense of the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster.  He
called him an "Archbishop of the slums."  The retort was easy and
conclusive.  It was an admission.  "Exactly; that is just what I am.  I
am an archbishop of the slums; that is my business; that is what I
desire to be.  My ministry is among the hovels and the garrets and the
slums; yours, I admit, is something very different."

This illustrates to the life the central idea which was forming itself
gradually and slowly into shape in the mind of John Wesley and in the
minds of his associates.  They saw that archbishops of the slums were
the very prelates whom England needed.  Their souls revolted against
the apparently accepted idea that the duties of a priest of the Church
of England were fulfilled by the preaching of a chill, formal, written
sermon once a week, and the attendance {132} on Court ceremonials, and
the dining at the houses of those who would then have been called "the
great."  An institution which could do no more and strove to do no more
than the Church of England was then doing did not seem to them to
deserve the name of a Church.  It was simply a branch of the Civil
Service of the State.  But Wesley and his brother, and Whitefield and
the rest, fully believed at first that they could do something to
quicken the Church into a real, a beneficent, and a religions activity.
Most of them had for a long time a positive horror of open-air
preaching and of the co-operation of lay preachers.  Most of them for a
long time clung to all the traditional forms and even formulas amid
which they had grown up.  What Wesley and the others did not see at
first, or for long after, was that the Church of England was not then
equal to the work which ought to have been hers.  A great change was
coming over the communities and the population of England.  Small
hamlets were turning into large towns.  Great new manufacturing
industries were creating new classes of working-men.  Coal-mines were
gathering together vast encampments of people where a little time
before there had been idle heath or lonely hill-side.  The Church of
England, with her then hide-bound constitution and her traditional
ways, was not equal to the new burdens which she was supposed to
undertake.  She suffered also from that lack of competition which is
hurtful to so many institutions.  The Church of Rome had been
suppressed for the time in this country, and the most urgent means had
been employed to keep the Dissenters down; therefore the Church of
England had grown contented, sleek, inert, and was no longer equal to
its work.  This fact began after a while to impress itself more and
more on the minds of the little band who worked with John Wesley.  They
resisted the idea to the very last; they hoped and believed and dreamed
that they might still be part of the Church of England.  They found
themselves drawn outside the Church, and they found, too, that when
once they had gone even a very little way out of the {133} fold, the
gates were rudely closed against them, and they might not return.  It
was not that Wesley and his associates left the Church of England.  The
Church would not have them because they would persist in doing the work
to which she would not even attempt to put a hand.

[Sidenote: 1738--John Wesley's Charity]

John Wesley had been profoundly impressed by William Law's pious and
mystical book, "A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life," which was
published in 1729.  Law lived in London, and Wesley, who desired to be
in frequent intercourse with him, used to walk to and from the
metropolis for the purpose.  The money he thus saved he gave to the
poor.  He wore his hair at one time very long in order to save the
expense of cutting and dressing it, and thus have more money to give
away in charity.  He and his little band of associates, whose numbers
swelled at one time up to twenty-five, but afterwards dropped down to
five, imposed on themselves rules of discipline almost as harsh as
those of a monastery of the Trappist order.  They fasted every
Wednesday and Friday, and they made it a duty to visit the prisons and
hospitals.  Wesley's father, who was growing old, was very anxious that
his son should succeed him in the rectory of Epworth.  John would not
hear of it.  In vain his father pressed and prayed; the son could not
see his way in that direction.  John Wesley has been blamed by some of
his biographers for not accepting the task which his father desired and
thought right to impose on him.  But no one on earth could understand
John Wesley's mission but John Wesley himself.  When it was pressed
upon him that in the living of Epworth he would have the charge of two
thousand souls he said, "I see not how any man can take care of a
hundred."  It was pointed out to him that his little band of companions
had been growing smaller and smaller; he only answered that he was
purifying a fountain and not a stream.  The illustration was effective
and happy.

The truth is that the tremendous energies of John {134} Wesley could
not possibly find employment within the narrow field of work adopted by
the Established Church of his day.  Wesley was a fighter; he had to go
out into the broad living world and do battle there.  He had
originality as well as energy; he must do his work his own way; he
could not be a minister of routine.  He soon found it borne in upon him
that he must speak to his fellow-man wherever he could find him.  For a
long time he held back from the thought of open-air preaching, but now
he saw that it must be done.  There was a period of his life, he says,
when he would have thought the saving of a soul "a sin almost if it had
not been done in a church."  But from the first moment when he began to
preach to crowds in the open air he must have felt that he had found
his work at last.  His friend and colleague Whitefield, who had more of
the genius of an orator than Wesley, had preceded him in this path.
One is a little surprised that such men as Wesley and Whitefield should
ever have found any difficulty about preaching to a crowd in the open
air.  The Hill of Mars at Athens listened to an open-air sermon from an
apostle, and Whitefield himself observed at a later date that the
"Sermon on the Mount is a pretty remarkable precedent of field
preaching."

[Sidenote: 1738--Wesley's superstition]

Meanwhile, however, Wesley's father died, and Wesley received an
invitation to go out to Georgia with General Oglethorpe, the governor
of that settlement, to preach to the Indians and the colonists.  He
sailed for the new colony on October 14, 1735.  He was accompanied by
his brother Charles and two other missionaries, and on board the vessel
was a small band of men from "the meek Moravian Missions."  The
Moravian sect was then in its earliest working order.  It had been
founded--or perhaps it would be more fitting to say restored--not many
years before, by the enthusiastic and devoted Count Von Zinzendorf.
Wesley was greatly attracted by the ways and the spiritual life of the
Moravians.  It is worthy of note that when Count Zinzendorf began the
formation or {135} restoration of Moravianism he had as little idea of
departing from the fold of the Confession of Augsburg as Wesley had of
leaving the Church of England.  John Wesley did not, as we have said,
accomplish much among the colonists and the Indians.  Perhaps his ways
were too dogmatic and dictatorial for the colonists.  He departed
altogether from the Church discipline in some of his religious
exercises, while he clung to it pertinaciously in others.  He offended
local magnates by preaching at them from the pulpit, giving them pretty
freely a piece of his mind as to their conduct and ways of life, and,
indeed, turning them to public ridicule with rough and rasping
sarcasms.  With the Indians he could not do much, if only for the fact
that he had to speak to them through an interpreter.  The tongue, says
Jean Paul Richter, is eloquent only in its own language, and the heart
in its own religion.  It certainly was not from lack of zeal and energy
that Wesley failed to accomplish much among the Indians.  He flung
himself into the work with all his indomitable spirit and disregard for
trouble and pain.  One of his biographers tells us that "he exposed
himself with the utmost indifference to every change of season and
inclemency of weather; snow and hail, storm and tempest, had no effect
on his iron body.  He frequently lay down on the ground and slept all
night with his hair frozen to the earth; he would swim over rivers with
his clothes on and travel till they were dry, and all this without any
apparent injury to his health."  It is no wonder that Wesley soon began
to regard himself as a man specially protected by divine power.  He was
deeply, romantically superstitious.  He commonly guided his course by
opening a page of the Bible and reading the first passage that met his
eye.  He saw visions; he believed in omens.  He tells us himself of the
instantaneous way in which some of his prayers for rescue from danger
were answered from above.  Those who believe that the work Wesley had
to do was really great and beneficent work will hardly feel any regret
that such a man should have allowed himself to be governed {136} by
such ideas.  It was necessary to the tasks he had to execute that he
should believe himself to bear a charmed life.

Wesley was very near getting married in Georgia.  A clever and pretty
young woman in Savannah set herself at him.  She consulted him about
her spiritual salvation, she dressed always in white because she
understood that he liked such simplicity of color, she nursed him when
he was ill.  The governor of the colony favored the young lady's
intentions, which were indeed strictly honorable, being most distinctly
matrimonial.  At one time it seemed very likely that the marriage would
take place, but Wesley's heart was evidently not in the affair.  Some
of his colleagues told him plainly enough that they believed the young
lady to be merely playing a game, that she put on affection and
devotion only that she might put on a wedding-dress.  Wesley consulted
some of the elders of the Moravian Church, and promised to abide by
their decision.  Their advice was that he should go no further with the
young woman, and Wesley kept his word and refused to see her any more.
She married, soon after, the chief magistrate of the colony, and before
long we find Wesley publicly reprehending her for "something in her
behavior of which he disapproved," and threatening even to exclude her
from the communion of the Church until she should have signified her
sincere repentance.  Her family took legal proceedings against him.
Wesley did not care; he was about to return to England, and he was
called on to give bail for his reappearance in the colony.  He
contemptuously refused to do anything of the kind, and promptly sailed
from Savannah.

This little episode of the Georgian girl is characteristic of the man.
He did not care about marrying her, but it did not seem to him a matter
of much importance either way, and he doubtless would have married her
but that he thought it well to seek the advice of his Moravian friends,
and bound himself to abide by their decision.  That decision once
given, he had no further wavering or {137} doubt, but the course he had
taken and the manner in which he had completely thrown over the woman
did not prevent him in the least from visiting her with a public rebuke
when he saw something in her conduct of which he disapproved.  He saw
no reason why, because he refused to be her lover, he should fail in
his duty as her minister.

[Sidenote: 1738--Wesley's unhappy marriage]

We may anticipate a little as to Wesley's personal history.  Later in
his life he married.  He was not happy in his marriage.  He took for
his wife a widow who plagued him by her narrow-mindedness, her
bitterness, and her jealousy.  Wesley's care and kindness of the women
who came under his ministrations set his wife wild with suspicion and
anger.  She could not believe that a man could be kind to a woman, even
as a pastor, without having evil purpose in his heart.  She had the
temper of a virago; she stormed against her husband, she threatened
him, she sometimes rushed at him and tore his hair; she repeatedly left
his house, but was prevailed upon by him to return.  At last after a
fierce quarrel she flung out of the house, vowing that she would never
come back.  Wesley's comment, which he expressed in Latin, was stern
and characteristic: "I have not left her, I have not put her away, I
will never recall her."  He kept his word.

Wesley started on his mission to preach to the people and to pray with
them.  Whitefield and Charles Wesley did the same.  Charles Wesley was
the hymn writer, the sweet singer, of the movement.  The meetings began
to grow larger, more enthusiastic, more impassioned, every day.  John
Wesley brought to his work "a frame of adamant" as well as "a soul of
fire."  No danger frighted him, and no labor tired.  Rain, hail, snow,
storm, were matters of indifference to him when he had any work to do.
One reads the account of the toil he could cheerfully bear, the
privations he could recklessly undergo, the physical obstacles he could
surmount, with what would be a feeling of incredulity were it possible
to doubt the unquestionable evidence of a whole cloud of {138}
heterogeneous witnesses.  Not Mark Antony, not Charles the Twelfth, not
Napoleon, ever went through such physical suffering for the love of
war, or for the conqueror's ambition, as Wesley was accustomed to
undergo for the sake of preaching at the right time and in the right
place to some crowd of ignorant and obscure men, the conversion of whom
could bring him neither fame nor fortune.

All the phenomena with which we have been familiar in modern times of
what are called "revivalist" meetings were common among the
congregations to whom Wesley preached.  Women especially were affected
in this way.  They raved, shrieked, struggled, flung themselves on the
ground, fainted, cried out that they were possessed by evil spirits.
Wesley rather encouraged these manifestations, and indeed quite
believed in their genuineness.  No doubt for the most part they were
genuine: that is, they were the birth of hysterical, highly strung
natures, stimulated into something like epilepsy or temporary insanity
by the unbearable oppression of a wholly novel excitement.  No such
evidences of emotion were ever given in the parish church where the
worthy clergyman read his duly prepared or perhaps thoughtfully
purchased sermon.  Sometimes a new form of hysteria possessed some of
Wesley's congregations, and irrepressible peals of laughter broke from
some of the brethren and sisters, who declared that they were forced to
it by Satan.  Wesley quite accepted this explanation, and so did most
of his companions.  Two ladies, however, refused to believe, and
insisted that "any one might help laughing if she would."  But very
soon after these two sceptics were seized with the very same sort of
irrepressible laughter.  They continued for two days laughing almost
without cessation, "a spectacle to all," as Wesley tells, "and were
then upon prayer made for them delivered in a moment."  It is almost
needless now to say that bursts of irrepressible laughter are among the
commonest forms of hysterical excitement.

[Sidenote: 1738--Whitefield's oratory]

The cooler common-sense of Charles Wesley, however, {139} saw these
manifestations with different eyes.  He felt sure that there was
sometimes a good deal of affectation in them, and he publicly
remonstrated with some women who, as it appeared to him, were
needlessly making themselves ridiculous.  He was probably right in
these instances: the instinct of imitation is so strong among men and
women that every genuine outburst of maniacal excitement is sure to be
followed by some purely mimetic efforts of a similar demonstration.
The novelty of the whole movement was enough to account for the genuine
and the sham hysterics.  It was an entirely new experience then for
English men and women of the humblest class, and of that generation, to
be addressed in great open-air masses by renowned and powerful
preachers.  Whitefield's first great effort at field-preaching was made
for the benefit of the colliers at Kingswood, near Bristol.  Before
many weeks had gone by, he could gather round him some twenty thousand
of these men.  Whitefield had a marvellous fervor and force of oratory.
His voice, his gestures, his sudden and startling appeals, his solemn
pauses, the dramatic and even theatric energy which he threw into his
attitudes and his action, his flights of lofty and sustained
declamation, contrasting with sentences of homely colloquialism, were
overwhelming in their effect on such an audience.  "The first
discovery," he says himself, "of their being affected was to see the
white gutters made by their tears, which plentifully fell down their
cheeks, black as they came out of the coal-pits."  It was not only
miners and other illiterate men whom Whitefield impressed by the fervor
and passion of his eloquence.  Hume, Benjamin Franklin, Horace Walpole,
and other men as well qualified to judge, and as little likely to fall
under the spell of religions or sentimental enthusiasm, have borne
willing testimony to the irresistible power of a sermon from Whitefield.

Wesley and Whitefield did not remain long in spiritual companionship.
They could not agree as to the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination.
Wesley was opposed to {140} the doctrine; Whitefield willing to accept
it.  They discussed and discussed the question, but without drawing any
nearer together.  Indeed, as might naturally have been expected, they
only fell more widely asunder, and after a while the difference of
opinion grew to something like a personal estrangement.  Wesley had
already broken away from spiritual communion with some of his old
friends, the Moravians.  Probably he felt all the stronger for his own
work now that he stood as a leader all but alone.  He walked his own
wild road; Whitefield took a path for himself.  Wesley soon found that
he was gaining more followers than he had lost.  He had to adopt the
practice of employing lay preachers; it was a matter of necessity to
his task.  He could not induce many clergymen to work under his
guidance and after his fashion.  The movement was spreading all over
the country.  Wesley became the centre and light of his wing of the
campaign.  The machinery of his organization was simple and strong.  A
conference was called together every year, which was composed of
preachers selected by Wesley.  These formed his cabinet or central
board, and lent their authority to his decisions.

This was the germ of the great Wesleyan organization, which has since
become so powerful, and has spread itself so widely over Great Britain
and the American States.  The preachers were sent by Wesley from one
part of the country to another, just as he thought best; and it never
occurred to any missionary to refuse, remonstrate, or even delay.  The
system was admirable; the discipline was perfect.  Wesley was as
completely in command of his body of missionaries as the general of the
order of Jesuits is of those over whom he is called to exercise
control.  The humblest of the Wesleyan preachers caught something,
caught indeed very much, of the energy, the courage, the devotion, the
self-sacrifice, of their great leader.  No doubt there were many errors
and offences here and there.  Good taste, sobriety of judgment,
prudence, common-sense, were now and then offended.  Most of the
preachers were {141} ignorant men, who had nothing but an untaught
enthusiasm and a rude, uncouth eloquence to carry them on.  They had to
preach to multitudes very often more ignorant and uncouth than
themselves.  It would be absolutely impossible under such conditions
that there should not sometimes be offence, and, as Hamlet says, "much
offence too."  But there was no greater departure from the lines of
propriety and good taste than any one who took a reasonable view of the
whole work and its workers must have expected to find.

[Sidenote: 1738--Opposition to Wesleyanism]

Of course a strong opposition to the movement showed itself in many
parts of the country.  The Wesleyans were denounced; they were
ridiculed; they were caricatured; they were threatened; they were set
upon by ruffians; they were stoned by mobs.  In some places it was said
that the local magistrates actually connived with the attempt to drive
them out by force.  Projects are actually declared to have been formed
for their complete extermination.  Such projects, however, do not
succeed.  No amount of violence has ever yet exterminated religious
zeal and impassioned, even let it be fanatical, enthusiasm.  John
Wesley went his way undismayed.  He even appears to have positively
enjoyed the excitement and the danger.  The persecution began after a
while to languish in its efforts, and the Wesleyans kept growing more
and more numerous and strong.  But the movement in growing grew away
from the Church of England.  Wesley had been drawn out of his original
intent step after step.  He could not help himself, once his movement
had been started.  He had had to take to field preaching, for the good
reason that he could not otherwise reach the people whom it was his
heart's warmest longing to reach.  He had to take to employing lay
preachers, because without them he could not have got his preaching
done.  At last he began to ordain ministers, and even, it is said,
bishops, for the missions in America.  He had, in fact, broken away
altogether from the discipline of the Church of England, although he
persisted to his dying day that he never had any design of {142}
separating from the Church, "and had no such design now."  Near to the
close of his long life he declared, "I live and die a member of the
Church of England, and none who regard my judgment or advice will ever
separate from it."  No one can doubt that Wesley spoke in full
sincerity.  When he stepped outside the pale of Church practice it was
only to do what he believed ought to have been the work of the Church
itself, but which the Church did not then care to attempt, and which,
as he felt convinced, could not afford to wait for the indefinite time
when the Church might have the spirit, the energy, and the resources
needed for such an undertaking.

Wesley was a thorough despot; as much of a despot as Peter the Great or
Napoleon.  He took no trouble to disguise his despotic purpose.  He did
not shelter himself, as Napoleon once wished to do, under the draperies
of a constitutional king.  Wesley was satisfied in his own mind that he
knew better than any other man how to guide his movements and govern
his followers, and he told people that he knew it, and acted
accordingly.  The members of his conference, or what we have called his
cabinet, were only like Clive's council of war; Wesley listened to
their advice and their arguments, but acted according to his own
judgment all the same.  Late in his career it was charged against him
that he was trying to turn himself into a sort of Methodist pope.  He
asked for some explanation of this, and was told that he had invested
himself with arbitrary power.  His answer was simple and
straightforward.  "If by arbitrary power you mean a power which I
exercise singly, without any colleagues therein, this is certainly
true; but I see no hurt in it."  All the actions of his life show this
complete faith in himself where the business of his mission was
concerned.  He was dogmatic, masterful, overbearing, very often far
from amiable, sometimes all but unendurable, to those around him.  But
if he had not had these peculiar qualities or defects he would not have
been the man that he was; he would not have been able to bear the
charge of such a task at such a {143} time.  It is probable that
Hannibal did not cut through the Alps with vinegar; it is certain that
he could not have pierced his way with honey.

[Sidenote: 1738--Religion out of fashion]

Nothing can better show than the rise and progress of the great
Methodist movement how vast is the difference between a people and what
is commonly called society.  In society everywhere throughout England,
in the great provincial cities as well as in the capital, religion
seemed to have completely gone out of fashion.  The Court cared nothing
about it.  The King had no real belief in his heart; he had as little
faith in Divine guidance as he had in the honor of man or the chastity
of woman.  The Queen's devotional exercises were nothing but a mere
performance carried on sometimes through a half-opened door, the
attendant minister on one side of the door and the gossiping,
chattering ladies on the other.  The leading statesmen of the age were
avowedly indifferent or professedly unbelieving.  Bolingbroke was a
preacher of unbelief.  Walpole never seems to have cared to turn his
thoughts for one moment to anything higher than his own political
career, the upholding of his friends if they stood fast by him, and the
downfall of his enemies.  Chesterfield was not exactly the sort of man
to be stirred into spiritual life.  Morals were getting out of fashion
as much as religion.  Society had all the grossness without much of the
wit which belonged to the days of the Restoration.  Yet the mere fact
that the Wesleyan movement made such sudden way among the poor and the
lowly shows beyond question that the heart of the English people had
not been corrupted.  Conscience was asleep, but it was not dead.  The
first words of Wesley seemed to quicken it into a new life.

We have somewhat anticipated the actual course of events in order to
show at once what the Wesleyan movement came to.  During the lifetime
of its founder it had grown into a great national and international
institution.  Since his time it has been spreading and growing all over
the world where Christianity grows.  It is the severest in {144} its
discipline of all the Protestant churches, and yet it exercises a charm
even over gentle and tender natures, and makes them its willing
servants, while it teaches the wilder and fiercer spirits to bend their
natures and tame their wild passions down.  [Sidenote: 1738--The
Wesleyan work] In the United States of America Wesleyanism is now one
of the most popular and powerful of all the denominations of
Christianity.  It has since been divided up into many sections, both
here and there, on questions of discipline, and even on questions of
belief; but in its leading characteristics it has been faithful to the
main purpose of its founder.  Its success did not consist mainly in
what it accomplished for its own people; it achieved a great work also
by the impulse it gave to the Church of England.  That Church for a
while seemed to be filled with a reviving spiritual and ministerial
activity.  It appeared to take shame to itself that it had remained so
long apathetic and perfunctory, and it flung itself into competition
with the younger and more energetic mission.  The English Church did
not indeed retain this mood of ardor and of eagerness very long.  After
a time it relapsed into comparative inactivity; and a new and very
different movement was needed at a period much nearer to our own to
make it once again a ministering power to the people--to the poor.  But
for the time the revival of the Church was genuine and was beneficent.
With the quickened religious vitality of the Wesleyan movement came
also a quickened philanthropic spirit; a zeal for the instruction, the
purification, and the better life of men and women.  The common
instinct of humanity always is to strive for higher and better ways of
living, if only once the word of guidance is given and the soul of true
manhood is roused to the work.  Indeed, there is not much about this
period of English history concerning which the modern Englishman can
feel really proud except that great religious revival which began with
the thoughts and the teachings of John Wesley.  One turns in relief
from the partisan struggles in Parliament and out of it, from the
intrigues and counter-intrigues of selfish and perfidious statesmen,
and {145} the alcove conspiracies of worthless women, to Wesley and his
religious visions, to Whitefield and his colliers, to Charles Wesley
and his sweet devotional hymns.  Many of us are unable to have any
manner of sympathy with the precise doctrines and the forms of faith
which Wesley taught.  But the man must have no sympathy with faith or
religious feeling of any kind who does not recognize the unspeakable
value of that great reform which Wesley and Whitefield introduced to
the English people.  They taught moral doctrines which we all accept in
common, but they did not teach them after the cold and barren way of
the plodding, mechanical instructor.  They thundered them into the
opening ears of thousands who had never been roused to moral sentiment
before.  They inspired the souls of poor and commonplace creatures with
all the zealot's fire and all the martyr's endurance.  They brought
tears to penitent eyes which had never been moistened before by any but
the selfish sense of personal pain or grief.  They pierced through the
dull, vulgar, contaminated hideousness of low and vicious life, and
sent streaming in upon it the light of a higher world and a better law.
Every new Wesleyan became a missionary of Wesleyanism.  The son
converted the father, the daughter won over the heart of the mother.
There was much that was hard, much that was fierce, in the doctrine and
the discipline of Methodism, but that time was not one in which gentler
teachings could much prevail.  Men and women had to be startled into a
sense of the need of their spiritual regeneration.  Wesley and the
comrades who worked with him in the beginning, and with some of whom,
like Whitefield, he ceased after a while to work, were just the men
needed to call aloud to the people and make sure that their voices must
be heard.  They had to talk in a shout if they were to talk to any
purpose.  There was much in their style of eloquence against which a
pure and cultured criticism would naturally protest.  But they did not
speak for the pure and cultured criticism.  They came to call ignorant
sinners to repentance.  They have the one great abiding {146} merit,
they have the one enduring fame--that they saw their real business in
life; that they kept to it through whatever disadvantage, pain, and
danger; and that they accomplished what they had gone out to do.  Their
monument lives to-day in the living history of England and of America.




{147}

CHAPTER XXXI.

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}

CHAPTER XXXII.

WALPOLE YIELDS TO WAR.

[Sidenote: 1739--Horatio Walpole's prediction]

The nation was plunging, not drifting, into war.  Walpole himself,
while still striving hard to put off any decisive step, and even yet
perhaps hoping against hope that the people would return to their
senses and leave the Patriots to themselves, did not venture any longer
to meet the demands of the Opposition by bold argument founded on the
principles of justice and wisdom.  He had sometimes to talk the same
"tall talk" as that in which the Patriots delighted, and to rave a
little about the great deeds that would have to be done if Spain did
not listen to reason very soon.  But he still pleaded that Spain would
listen to reason soon, very soon, and that if war must come sooner or
later he preferred to take it later.  That, it need hardly be said, was
not Walpole's expression--it belongs to a later day--but it represents
his mode of argument.

On March 6th the House of Commons met for the purpose of taking the
foredoomed convention into consideration.  So intense was the interest
taken in the subject, so highly strung was political feeling, that more
than four hundred members were in their places at eight o'clock in the
morning.  Seldom indeed is anxiety expressed in so emphatic and
conclusive a form among members of the House of Commons.  Readers may
remember one day within recent years when a measure of momentous
importance was to be introduced into the House of Commons, and when,
long before eight in the morning, every seat in the House was occupied.
On this March 6, 1739, the House resolved itself into committee, and
spent the whole {171} day in hearing some of the merchants and other
witnesses against the convention.  The whole of the next day
(Wednesday) was occupied in the reading of documents bearing on the
subject, and it was not until Thursday that the debate began.  The
debate was more memorable for what followed it than for itself.  In
itself it was the familiar succession of fierce and unscrupulous
attacks on the policy of peace, mixed up with equally fierce but
certainly very well-deserved attacks on the character of the
convention.  William Pitt wound up his speech by declaring that "this
convention, I think from my soul, is nothing but a stipulation for
national ignominy; an illusory expedient to baffle the resentment of
the nation; a truce without a suspension of hostilities on the part of
Spain; on the part of England a suspension, as to Georgia, of the first
law of nature, self-preservation and self-defence; a surrender of the
rights and the trade of England to the mercy of plenipotentiaries, and,
in this infinitely highest and sacred point, future security, not only
inadequate, but directly repugnant to the resolutions of Parliament and
the gracious promise from the throne.  The complaints of your
despairing merchants, the voice of England, have condemned it; be the
guilt of it upon the head of its adviser!  God forbid that this
committee should share the guilt by approving it!"

One point in the debate is worthy of notice.  The address to the King
approving of the convention was moved by Horatio Walpole, the
diplomatist, brother of Sir Robert.  In the course of his speech
Horatio Walpole declared that the outbreak of war between England and
any great continental State would be certain to be followed by a new
blow struck by the Pretender and his followers.  Some of the orators of
Opposition spoke with immense scorn of the possibility of a Jacobite
movement ever again being heard of in England.  The Walpoles both
generally understood pretty well what they were talking about.  The
prediction of Horatio Walpole came true.

{172}

[Sidenote: 1739--The secession]

The address was carried by 260 against 232.  The ministerial majority
had run down to 28.  Next day the battle was renewed.  According to
parliamentary usage, the report of the address was brought up, and
Pulteney seized the opportunity to make another vehement attack on the
convention and the ministers.  He accused the Prime-minister of meanly
stooping to the dictates of a haughty, insolent Court, and of bartering
away the lives and liberties of Englishmen for "a sneaking, temporary,
disgraceful expedient."  But the interest of the day was to come.  The
address was agreed to by a majority of 262 against 234.  This was
exactly the same majority as before, only with both sides slightly
strengthened.  Then the principal leaders of Opposition thought the
time had come for them to intervene with a deliberately planned _coup
de theatre_.  Acting, it is understood, under the advice of
Bolingbroke, they had been looking out for an opportunity to secede
from the House of Commons on the ground that it was vain for patriotic
men to try to do their duty to their country in a House of which the
majority, narrow though it was, was yet the absolute slave of such a
minister as Walpole.  They hoped that such a step would have two
effects.  It would, they believed, create an immense sensation all over
England and make them the heroes of the hour; and they fondly hoped
that it would scare Walpole, and prevent him from passing in their
absence the measures which their presence was unable to prevent.  Such,
we have no doubt, were the ideas of Bolingbroke and of Pulteney and of
others; but we do not say that they were the ideas of the man who was
intrusted with the duty of announcing the intentions of his party.
This was Sir William Wyndham; and we do not believe that any hope of
being one of the heroes of the hour entered for a moment into his mind.
He only in a general honest thought, and common good to all, made one
of them.  Wyndham rose, and in a speech of great solemnity announced
that he was about to pay his last duty to his country as a member of
that {117} House.  What hope, he asked, was there when the eloquence of
one man had so great an effect within the walls of the House of
Commons, and the unanimous voice of a brave, suffering people without
had so little?  He implied that the majority of the House must have
been determined "by arguments that we have not heard."  He bade an
adieu to Parliament.  "Perhaps," he said, "when another Parliament
shall succeed, I may again be at liberty to serve my country in the
same capacity."  In other words, if the next Parliament should declare
war on Spain after having got rid of Walpole, then Wyndham and his
friends might be prevailed on to return.  "I therefore appeal to a
future, free, uninfluenced Parliament.  Let it be the judge of my
conduct and that of my friends on this occasion.  Meantime I shall
conclude with doing that duty to my country which I am still at liberty
to perform--which is to pray for its preservation.  May, therefore,
that Power which has so often and so visibly before interposed on
behalf of the rights and liberties of this nation continue its care
over us at this worst and most dangerous juncture; while the insolence
of enemies without, and the influence of corruption within, threaten
the ruin of her Constitution."

This speech created, as will readily be imagined, an immense sensation
in the House.  A member of the Administration, one of the Pelhams, lost
his head so completely that he sprang up with the intention of moving
that Wyndham be committed to the Tower.  Walpole, who was not in the
habit of losing his head, prevented the ardent Pelham from carrying out
his purpose.  Walpole knew quite well that something better could be
done than to evoke for any of the Patriots the antiquated terrors of
the Tower.  Walpole delivered a speech which, for its suppressed
passion and its stern severity, was well equal to the occasion.  The
threat of Wyndham and his friends gave him, he said, no uneasiness.
The friends of the Parliament and the nation were obliged to them for
pulling off the mask--"We can be upon our guard {174} against open
rebellion; it is hard to guard against secret treason."  "The faction I
speak of never sat in this House, they never joined in any public
measure of the Government but with a view to distress it and to serve a
Popish interest."  Walpole was delighted to have an opportunity of
paying off the Opposition for their constant denunciations of his
alleged subservience to the throne of France, by flinging in Wyndham's
teeth his old devotion to the cause of the Stuarts.  "The gentleman,"
he said, "who is now the mouth of this faction was looked upon as the
head of those traitors who, twenty-five years ago, conspired the
destruction of their country and of the royal family to set a Popish
Pretender on the throne.  He was seized by the vigilance of the then
Government and pardoned by its clemency, but all the use he has
ungratefully made of that clemency has been to qualify himself
according to law, that he and his party may some time or other have an
opportunity to overthrow all law."  For himself, Walpole declared he
was only afraid that the gentlemen would not be as good as their word,
and that they would return to Parliament.  "For I remember," he said,
"that in the case of their favorite prelate who was impeached of
treason"--Atterbury--"the same gentleman and his faction made the same
resolution.  They then went off like traitors as they were; but their
retreat had not the detestable effect they expected and wished, and
therefore they returned.  Ever since they have persevered in the same
treasonable intention of serving that interest by distressing the
Government."

[Sidenote: 1739--The policy of secession]

The House broke up in wild excitement; such excitement as had not been
known there since the Excise Bill or the South Sea Bubble.  About sixty
of the Opposition kept for the time their promise of secession.  Sir
John Barnard, and two or three other men of mark in the party, had the
good-sense to see that they could serve their cause, whatever it might
be, better by remaining at their posts than by withdrawing from public
life.  The secession of a party from the House of Commons can {175}
hardly ever be anything but a mistake.  We are speaking now, of course,
of a secession more serious and prolonged than that which concerns a
particular stage of some measure.  There have been occasions when the
party in Opposition, after having fought their best against some
obnoxious measure in all its former stages, and finding that further
struggle would be unavailing, consider that they can make their protest
more effectively, and draw public attention more directly to the nature
of the controversy, by withdrawing in a body from the House of Commons,
and leaving the Government alone with their responsibility.  Such a
course as this has been taken more than once in our own days.  It can
do no practical harm to the public interest, and it may do some service
as a political demonstration.  But a genuine secession, a prolonged
secession, must, in the nature of things, do harm.  It is wrong in
principle; for a man is elected to the House of Commons in order that
he may represent his constituents and maintain their interests there.
To do that is his plain duty and business, which is not to be put away
for the sake of indulging in any petulant or romantic impulse to
withdraw from an assembly because one cannot have one's way there.  No
matter how small the minority on one side of the question, we have seen
over and over again what work of political education may be done by a
resolute few who will not cease to put forward their arguments and to
fight for their cause.

In the case with which we are now dealing Wyndham and his friends only
gratified Walpole by their unwise course of action.  They enabled him
to get through some of the work of the session smoothly and easily.  A
division hardly ever was known, and of some debates on really important
questions there is positively no record.  There was, for instance, a
motion made in the House of Commons on March 30th for leave to bring in
a Bill "to repeal so much of an Act passed in the 25th of King Charles
the Second, entitled An Act for preventing {176} Dangers which may
happen from Popish Recusants, as obligeth all persons who are admitted
to any office, civil or military, to receive the Sacrament of the
Lord's Supper within a time limited by the said Act; and for explaining
and amending so much of the said Act as relates to the declaration
against trans-substantiation."  This proposal was supported by some of
Walpole's friends; and, of course, Walpole himself was in favor of its
principle.  But he was not disposed in the least to trouble his master
or himself about the repeal of Test Acts, either in the interest of the
Roman Catholics or the Non-conformists, and he opposed the motion.
There was a long debate, but the record says that "the particulars of
it not having been made public, we can give no further account of it,
but that many of the members being retired from Parliament, as before
mentioned, and most of those concerned in the Administration being
against it, the question passed in the negative, 188 noes to 89 yeas."

The Government were also enabled to pass without any resistance in the
House of Commons a very ignoble and shabby little treaty with the King
of Denmark, by which England undertook to pay to Denmark seventy
thousand pounds a year for three years on condition that Denmark should
furnish to King George a body of troops, six thousand men in all, these
troops to be ready at any time when the King of England should call for
them, and he being bound to pay a certain sum "by way of levy-money"
for each soldier.  This was not really an English measure at all.  It
had nothing to do with the interests of England, or of George as
Sovereign of England.  It was merely an arrangement between the King of
Denmark and the Elector of Hanover, and was the settlement or
composition of a miserable quarrel about a castle and a scrap of ground
which George had bought from the Duchy of Holstein, and which Denmark
claimed as her own.  The dispute led to a military scuffle, in which
the Danes got the worst of it, and it might have led to a war but that
the timely treaty and the promised annual {177} payment brought the
King of Denmark round to George's views.  The treaty met with some
opposition, or at all events some remonstrance, in the House of Lords.
Carteret, however, gave it his support, and declared that he thought
the treaty a wise and a just measure.  Carteret was always in favor of
the Hanoverian policy of King George.

[Sidenote: 1739--Walpole has it his own way]

So far, therefore, Walpole had things his own way.  He was very glad to
be rid of the Opposition for the time.  He might well have addressed
them in words like those which a modern American humorist says were
called out with enthusiasm to him when he was taking leave of his
friends and about to sail for Europe: "Don't hurry back--stay away
forever if you like."

But war was to come all the same.  Walpole was not strong enough to
prevent that.  The incessant attacks made in both Houses of Parliament
had inflamed the people of Spain into a passion as great as that which
in England was driving Walpole before it.  The Spanish Government would
not pay the amount arranged for in the convention.  They put forward as
their justification the fact, or alleged fact, that the South Sea
Company had failed to discharge its obligations to Spain.  The British
squadron had been sent to the Mediterranean, and the Spaniards declared
that this was a threat and an insult to the King of Spain.  The claim
to the right of search was asserted more loudly and vehemently than
ever.  Near to the close of the session there was a passionate debate
in the House of Lords on the whole subject.  The Opposition insisted
that the honor of England would not admit of further delay, and that
the sword must be unsheathed at once.  The Duke of Newcastle could only
appeal to the House on the part of the Government not to pass a
resolution calling upon the King to declare war, but to leave it to the
King to choose his own opportunity.  Newcastle feebly pleaded that to
pass a resolution would be to give untimely warning to England's
enemies, and reminded the House that England was likely to have to
{178} encounter an enemy stronger and more formidable than Spain.  Lord
Hardwicke and Lord Scarborough could only urge on the House the
prudence and propriety of leaving the time and manner of action in the
hands of the Ministry, in the full assurance that the ministers would
do all that the nation desired.  In other words, the ministers were
already pledged to war.  The session was brought to an end on June
14th, and on October 19th England declared war against Spain.  The
proclamation was greeted with the wildest outburst of popular
enthusiasm; an enthusiasm which at the time seemed to run through all
orders and classes.  Joy-bells rang out their inspiring chimes from
every church.  Exulting crowds shouted in a stentorian chorus of
delight.  Cities flamed with illuminations at night.  The Prince of
Wales and some of the leaders of the Opposition took part in the public
demonstration.  The Prince stopped at the door of a tavern in Fleet
Street, as if he were another Prince Hal carousing with his mates, and
called for a goblet of wine, which he drank to the toast of coming
victory.  The bitter words of Walpole have indeed been often quoted,
but they cannot be omitted here: "They may ring their bells now; before
long they will be wringing their hands."  Walpole was thinking, no
doubt, of the Family Compact, and of "the King over the Water."

Parliament met in November, 1739, and the seceders were all in their
places again.  They had been growing heartily sick of secession and
inactivity, and they insisted on regarding the declaration of war
against Spain as a justification of their return to parliamentary life.
Pulteney made himself their spokesman in the debate on the Address.
"Our step," he said, meaning their secession, "is so fully justified by
the declaration of war, so universally approved, that any further
vindication of it would be superfluous."  They seceded when they felt
that their opposition was ineffectual, and that their presence was only
made use of to give the appearance of a fair debate to that which had
already been ratified.  "The {179} state of affairs is now changed; the
measures of the ministers are altered; and the same regard for the
honor and welfare of their country that determined these gentlemen to
withdraw has now brought them hither once more, to give their advice
and assistance in those measures which they then pointed out as the
only means of asserting and retrieving them."  Walpole's reply was a
little ungracious.  It was, in effect, that he thought the country
could have done very well without the services of the honorable
members; that they never would have been missed; and that the nation
was generally wide-awake to the fact that the many useful and popular
measures passed towards the close of the last session owed their
passing to the happy absence from Parliament of Pulteney and his
friends.  One might well excuse Walpole if he became sometimes a little
impatient of the attitudinizing and the vaporing of the Patriots.

[Sidenote: 1739-1740--Death of Wyndham]

One of the Patriots was not long to trouble Walpole.  On July 17, 1740,
Sir William Wyndham died.  Wyndham was a man of honor and a man of
intellect.  We have already in this history described his abilities and
his character, his political purity, his personal consistency.  He had
always been in poor health; his incessant parliamentary work certainly
could not have tended to improve his physical condition; and he was but
fifty-three years old when he died.  Had he lived yet a little longer
he must have taken high office in a new administration, and he might
have proved himself a statesman as well as a party leader and a
parliamentary orator.  Perhaps, on the whole, it is better for his fame
that he should have been spared the test.  It proved too much for
Carteret.  We may give Bolingbroke credit for sincerity when he poured
out, in letter after letter, his lament for Wyndham's death.  There is
something, however, characteristic of the age and the man in
Bolingbroke's instant assumption that Walpole must regard the death as
a fine stroke of good-luck for himself.  "What a star has our
Minister," Bolingbroke wrote to a friend--"Wyndham dead!"  It seems
strange {180} that Bolingbroke should not even then have been able to
see that the star of the great minister was about to set.  The death of
Wyndham brought Walpole no profit; gave him no security.  But Wyndham's
premature end withdrew a picturesque and a chivalric figure from the
life of the House of Commons.  He was one of the few, the very few,
really unselfish and high-minded men who then occupied a prominent
position in Parliament.  He was not fighting for his own hand.  He was
not a mere partisan.  He had enough of the statesman in him to be able
to accept established facts, and not to argue with the inexorable.  He
was not a scholar like Carteret, or an orator like Bolingbroke; he was
not an ascetic; but he had stainless political integrity, and was a
true friend to his friends.

[Sidenote: 1740--Walpole's fatal mistake]

Walpole committed the great error of his life when he consented to
accept the war policy which his enemies had proclaimed, and which he
had so long resisted.  Even if we consider his conduct not as a
question of principle, but only as one of mere expediency, it must
still be condemned.  No statesman is likely to be able to conduct a
great war whose heart is all the time filled only with a longing for
peace.  Walpole was perhaps less likely than any other statesman to
make a war minister.  He could not throw his heart into the work.  He
went to it because he was driven to it.  It was simply a choice between
declaring war and resigning office, and he merely preferred to declare
war.  This is not the temper, these are not the conditions, for
carrying out a policy of war.  But, as a question of principle,
Walpole's conduct admits of no defence.  His plain duty was to refuse
to administer a policy of which he did not approve, and to leave the
responsibility of the war to those who did approve of it.  It is said
that he tendered his resignation to the King; that the King implored
Walpole to stand by him--not to desert him in that hour of need--and
that Walpole at last consented to remain in office.  This may possibly
be true; some such form may have been gone through.  But it does not
alter the historical judgment about Walpole's {181} action.  Walpole
ought not to have gone through any forms at such a time.  He hated the
war policy; he knew that he was not a war minister; he ought to have
refused to administer such a policy, and have stood by his refusal.  It
is said that, in his conversation with the King, Walpole pointed out
that to the minister would be attributed every disaster that might
occur during a war, his opposition to which would always be considered
a crime.  But would there be anything very unfair or unreasonable in
that?  When a statesman who has fought hard against a war policy
suddenly yields to it, and consents to put it into action, would it be
unreasonable, if disaster should occur, that his enemies should say,
"This comes of trying to conduct a war in which you have no heart or
spirit?"  Burke passes severe censure even on Walpole's manner of
carrying on his opposition to the war party.  "Walpole," says Burke,
"never manfully put forward the strength of his cause; he temporized;
he managed; and, adopting very nearly the sentiments of his
adversaries, he opposed their inferences.  This, for a political
commander, is the choice of a weak post.  His adversaries had the best
of the argument as he handled it; not as the reason and justice of his
cause enabled him to manage it."  Then Burke adds this emphatic
sentence: "I say this after having seen, and with some care examined,
the original documents concerning certain important transactions of
those times; they perfectly satisfied me of the extreme injustice of
that war, and of the falsehood of the colors which, to his own ruin,
and guided by a mistaken policy, he suffered to be daubed over that
measure."  To his own ruin?  Yes, truly.  The consequence of Walpole's
surrender was to himself and his political career fatal--irretrievable.
His wrong-doing brought its heavy punishment along with it.  He has yet
to struggle for a short while against fate and his own fault; he has
still to receive a few successive humiliations before the great and
final fall.  But the day of his destiny is over.  For all real work his
career may be said to have closed on the day when he consented to
remain in {182} office and become the instrument of his enemies.  With
that day he passed out of the real world and life of politics, and
became as a shadow among shadows.

We need not trouble ourselves much about the war with Spain.  On
neither side of the struggle was anything done which calls for grave
historical notice.  Every little naval success one of our admirals
accomplished in the American seas, as they were then called, was
glorified as if it had been an anticipated Trafalgar; and our admirals
accomplished blunders and failures as well as petty victories.  The
quarrel very soon became swallowed up in the great war which broke out
on the death of Charles the Sixth of Spain, and the occupation of
Silesia by Frederick of Prussia.  England lent a helping hand in the
great war, but its tale does not belong to English history.  Two
predictions of Walpole's were very quickly realized.  France almost
immediately took part with Spain, in accordance with the terms of the
Family Compact.  In 1740 an organization was got up in Scotland by a
number of Jacobite noblemen and other gentlemen, pledging themselves to
stake fortune and life on the Stuart cause whenever its standard,
supported by foreign auxiliaries, should be raised in Great Britain.
This was the shadow cast before by the coming events of
"forty-five"--events which Walpole was not destined to see.

[Sidenote: 1743--George at Dettingen]

One link of personal interest connects England with the war.  George
sent a body of British and Hanoverian troops into the field to support
Maria Theresa of Hungary.  The troops were under the command of Lord
Stair, the veteran soldier and diplomatist, whose brilliant career has
been already described in this history.  George himself joined Lord
Stair and fought at the battle of Dettingen, where the French were
completely defeated; one of the few creditable events of the war, so
far as English arms were concerned.  George behaved with great courage
and spirit.  If the poor, stupid, puffy, plucky little man did but know
what a strange, picturesque, memorable figure he was as he stood up
against the enemy at that battle of Dettingen!  {183} The last king of
England who ever appeared with his army in the battle-field!  There, as
he gets down off his unruly horse, determined to trust to his own stout
legs--because, as he says, they will not run away--there is the last
successor of the Williams, and the Edwards, and the Henrys; the last
successor of the Conquerer, and Edward the First, and the Black Prince,
and Henry the Fourth, and Henry of Agincourt, and William of Nassau;
the last English king who faces a foe in battle.  With him went out, in
this country, the last tradition of the old and original duty and right
of royalty--the duty and the right to march with the national army in
war.  A king in older days owed his kingship to his capacity for the
brave squares of war.  In other countries the tradition lingers still.
A continental sovereign, even if he have not really the generalship to
lead an army, must appear on the field of battle, and at least seem to
lead it, and he must take his share of danger with the rest.  But in
England the very idea has died out, never in all probability to come
back to life again.  If one were to follow some of the examples set us
in classical imaginings, we might fancy the darkening clouds on the
west, where the sun has sunk over the battlefield, to be the phantom
shapes of the great English kings who led their people and their armies
in the wars.  Unkingly, indeed unheroic, little of kin with them they
might well have thought that panting George; and yet they might have
looked on him with interest as the last of their proud race.

We have been anticipating a little; let us anticipate a little more and
say what came of the war, so far as the claims originally made by
England, or rather by the Patriots, were concerned.  When peace was
arranged, nearly ten years after, the _asiento_ was renewed for four
years, and not one word was said in the treaty about Spain renouncing
the right of search.  The great clamor of the Patriots had been that
Spain must be made to proclaim publicly her renunciation of the right
of search; and when a treaty of settlement came to be drawn up not a
{184} sentence was inserted about the right of search, and no English
statesman troubled his head about the matter.  The words of Burke,
taken out of one of his writings from which a quotation has already
been made, form the most fitting epitaph on the war as it first broke,
out--the war of Jenkins's ear.  "Some years after it was my fortune,"
says Burke, "to converse with many of the principal actors against that
minister (Walpole), and with those who principally excited that clamor.
None of them--no, not one--did in the least defend the measure or
attempt to justify their conduct.  They condemned it as freely as they
would have done in commenting upon any proceeding in history in which
they were totally unconcerned."  Let it not be forgotten, however,
that, while this is a condemnation of the Patriots, it is no less a
condemnation of Walpole.  The policy which none of them could
afterwards defend, which he himself had always condemned and
reprobated, he nevertheless undertook to carry out rather than submit
to be driven from office.  Schiller in one of his dramas mourns over
the man who stakes reputation, health, and all upon success--and no
success in the end.  It was to be thus with Walpole.




{185}

CHAPTER XXXIII.

"AND WHEN HE FALLS----"

[Sidenote: 1741--Motions against Walpole]

Walpole soon found that his enemies were no less bitter against him, no
less resolute to harass and worry him, now that he had stooped to be
their instrument and do their work.  Every unsuccessful movement in the
war was made the occasion of a motion for papers, a motion for an
inquiry, a vote of want of confidence, or some other direct or indirect
attack upon the Prime-minister.  In the House of Lords, Lord Carteret
was especially unsparing, and was brilliantly supported by Lord
Chesterfield.  In the House of Commons, Samuel Sandys, a clever and
respectable country gentleman from Worcestershire, made himself quite a
sort of renown by his motions against Walpole.  On Friday, February 13,
1741, a motion was made in each of the Houses of Parliament calling on
the King "to remove the Right Honorable Sir Robert Walpole, Knight of
the most noble Order of the Garter, First Commissioner for executing
the office of Treasurer of the Exchequer, Chancellor and
Under-Treasurer of the Exchequer, and one of his Majesty's most
honorable Privy Council, from his Majesty's presence and councils
forever."  In the House of Lords the motion was made by Lord Carteret;
in the House of Commons by Mr. Sandys, who was nicknamed "the
motion-maker."  The motion was lost by a large majority in the House of
Lords; and in the House of Commons there were only 106 for it, while
there were 290 against it.  This was a victory; but it did not deceive
Walpole.  There would soon be a new Parliament, and Walpole knew very
well that the country was already growing sick of the unmeaning war,
and that he was held {186} responsible alike for the war policy which
he had so long opposed, and the many little disasters of the war with
which he had nothing to do.  In Walpole's utter emergency he actually
authorized a friend to apply for him to James Stuart at Rome, in the
hope of inducing James to obtain for him the support of some of the
Jacobites at the coming elections.  What he could possibly have thought
he could promise James in return for the solicited support it is hard,
indeed, to imagine; for no one can question the sincerity of Walpole's
attachment to the reigning House.  Perhaps if James had consented to go
into the negotiations Walpole might have made some pledges about the
English Catholics.  Nothing came of it, however.  James did not seem to
take to the suggestion, and Walpole was left to do the best he could
without any helping hand from Rome.  Lord Stanhope thinks it not
unlikely that King George was fully aware of this curious attempt to
get James Stuart to bring his influence to bear on the side of Walpole.
The elections were fought out with unusual vehemence of partisanship,
even for those days, and the air was thick with caricatures of Walpole
and lampoons on his policy and his personal character.  When the
election storm was over, it was found that the Ministry had distinctly
lost ground.  In Scotland and in parts of the west of England the loss
was most manifest.  Walpole now was as well convinced as any of his
enemies could be that the fall was near.  He must have felt like some
desperate duellist, who, having fought his fiercest and his best, is
conscious at last that his strength is gone; that he is growing fainter
and fainter from loss of blood; and conscious, too, that his antagonist
already perceives this and exults in the knowledge, and is already
seeking out with greedy eye for the best place in which to give the
final touch of the rapier's point.

The new Parliament met on December 1, 1741, and re-elected Mr. Onslow
as Speaker.  The speech from the throne was almost entirely taken up
with somewhat cheerless references to the war with Spain, and the
debate on {187} the address was naturally made the occasion for new
attacks on the policy of the Government.  "Certainly, my Lords," said
Chesterfield, "it is not to be hoped that we should regain what we have
lost but by measures different from those which have reduced us to our
present state, and by the assistance of other counsellors than those
who have sunk us into the contempt and exposed us to the ravages of
every nation throughout the world."  This was the string that had been
harped upon in all the pamphlets and letters of the Patriots during the
progress of the war.  Walpole had done it all; Walpole had delayed the
war to gratify France; he had prevented the war from being carried on
vigorously in order to assist France; he had obtained a majority in
Parliament by the most outrageous and systematic corruption; he was an
enemy of his country, and so forth.  All these charges and allegations
were merely founded on Walpole's public policy.  They simply came to
this, that a certain course of action taken by Walpole, with the
approval of Parliament, was declared by Walpole to have been taken from
patriotic motives and for the good of England, and was declared by his
enemies to have been taken from unpatriotic motives and in the interest
of France.  It was of no avail for Walpole to point out that everything
he had done thus far had been done with the approval of the House of
Commons.  The answer was ready: "Exactly; and there is another of your
crimes: you bribed and corrupted every former House of Commons."

[Sidenote: 1742--Pulteney's attempt to refer]

On January 21, 1742, Pulteney brought forward a motion to refer all the
papers concerning the war, which had just been laid on the table, to a
select committee of the House, in order that the committee should
examine the papers, and report to the House concerning them.  This was
simply a motion for a committee of inquiry into the manner in which
ministers were carrying on the war.  The House was the fullest that had
been known for many years.  Pulteney had 250 votes with him; Walpole
had only 253--a majority of three.  Some of the efforts made {188} on
both sides to bring up the numbers on this occasion remind one of
Hogarth's picture of the "Polling Day," where the paralytic, the
maimed, the deaf, and the dying are carried up to record their vote.
Men so feeble from sickness that they could not stand were brought down
to the House wrapped up like mummies, and lifted through the division.
Walpole seems to have surpassed himself in the speech which he made in
his own defence.  At least such is the impression we get from the
declaration of some of those who heard it, Pulteney himself among the
rest.  Pulteney always sat near to Walpole on the Treasury bench;
Pulteney, of course, not admitting that he had in any way changed his
political principles since Walpole and he were friends and colleagues.
Pulteney offered to Walpole his warm congratulations on his speech, and
added, "Well, nobody can do what you can."  Pulteney might afford to be
gracious.  The victory of three was a substantial defeat.  It was the
prologue to a defeat which was to be formal as well as substantial.
The Patriots were elated.  The fruit of their long labors was about to
come at last.

All this was telling hard upon Walpole's health.  We get melancholy
accounts of the cruel work which his troubles were making with that
frame which once might have seemed to be of iron.  The robust animal
spirits which could hardly be kept down in former days had now changed
into a mournful and even a moping temperament.  His son, Horace
Walpole, gives a very touching picture of him in these decaying years.
"He who was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow--for I have
frequently known him snore ere they had drawn his curtains--now never
sleeps above an hour without waking; and he who at dinner always forgot
he was minister, and was more gay and thoughtless than all the company,
now sits without speaking, and with his eyes fixed for an hour
together."  Many of his friends implored him to give up the hopeless
and thankless task.  Walpole still clung to office; still tried new
stratagems; planned new combinations; racked {189} his brain for new
devices.  He actually succeeded in inducing the King to have an offer
made to the Prince of Wales of an addition of fifty thousand pounds a
year to his income, provided that Frederick would desist from
opposition to the measures of the Government.  The answer was what
every one--every one, surely, but Walpole, must have expected.  The
prince professed any amount of duty to his father, but as regards
Walpole he was implacable.  He would listen to no terms of compromise
while the great enemy of himself and of his party remained in office.

[Sidenote: 1742--"The thanes fly from me!"]

The Duke of Newcastle had notoriously turned traitor to Walpole.  Lord
Wilmington, whose "evaporation" as Sir Spencer Compton marked Walpole's
first great success under George the Second, was approached by some of
Walpole's enemies, and besought to employ his influence with the King
to get Walpole dismissed.  It is said that even Lord Hervey now began
to hold aloof from him.  It was only a mere question of time and the
hour.  Walpole's enemies were already going about proclaiming their
determination not to be satisfied with merely turning him out of
office; he must be impeached and brought to condign punishment.
Walpole's friends--those of them who were left--made this another
reason for imploring him to resign.  They pleaded that by a timely
resignation he might at least save himself from the peril of an
impeachment.  Walpole showed a determination which had much that was
pitiable and something that was heroic about it.  He would not
fly--bear-like, he would fight the course.

The final course soon came.  The battle was on a petition from the
defeated candidates for Chippenham, who claimed the seats on the ground
of an undue election and return.  Election petitions were then heard
and decided by the House of Commons itself, and not by a committee of
the House, as in more recent days.  The decision of the House was
always simply a question of party; and no one had ever insisted more
strongly than Walpole himself that it must be a question of party.  The
Government desired the Chippenham petition to succeed.  On some
disputed {190} point the Opposition prevailed over the Government by a
majority of one.  It is always said that Walpole then at once made up
his mind to resign; and that the knowledge of his intention put such
heart into those who were falling away from him as to bring about the
marked increase which was presently to take place in the majority
against him.  We are inclined to think that he even still hesitated,
and that his hesitation caused the increase in the hostile majority.
He must go--he has to go--people said; and the sooner we make this
clear to him the better.  Anyhow, the end was near.  The Chippenham
election was carried against him by a majority of sixteen--241 votes
against 225.  A note at the bottom of the page of the Parliamentary
Debates for that day says: "The Chippenham election being thus carried
in favor of the sitting members, it was reported that Sir Robert
Walpole publicly declared he would never enter the House of Commons
more."  This was on February 2, 1742.  Next day the Lord Chancellor
signified the pleasure of the King that both Houses of Parliament
should adjourn until the eighteenth of the month.  Everybody knew what
had happened.  The long administration of twenty years was over; the
great minister had fallen, never to lift his head again.  The
Parliamentary record thus tells us what had happened: "The same evening
the Right Honorable Sir Robert Walpole resigned his place of First
Commissioner of the Treasury and Chancellor and Under-Treasurer of the
Exchequer, which he had held ever since April 4, 1721, in the former of
which he succeeded the Earl of Sunderland, and in the latter Mr.
Aislabie."

That, however, was not the deepest depth of the fall.  The same record
announces that "three days afterwards his Majesty was pleased to create
him Earl of Orford, Viscount Walpole, and Baron of Houghton."
"Posterity," says Macaulay, "has obstinately refused to degrade Francis
Bacon into Viscount St. Albans."  Posterity has in like manner
obstinately refused to degrade Robert Walpole into the Earl of Orford.
He will be known {191} as Robert Walpole so long as English history
itself is known.

[Sidenote: 1742--The new Administration]

Walpole, then, was on the ground--down in the dust--never to rise
again.  Surely it would seem the close of his career as a
Prime-minister must be the opening of that of his rival and conqueror.
Any one now--supposing there could be some one entirely ignorant of
what did really happen--would assume, as a matter of course, that
Pulteney would at once become Prime-minister and proceed to form an
administration.  This was naturally in Pulteney's power.  But Pulteney
suddenly remembered having said long ago that he would accept no
office, and he declared that he would positively hold to his word.  At
a moment of excitement, it would seem, and stung by some imputation of
self-seeking, Pulteney had adopted the high Roman fashion, and
announced that he would prove his political disinterestedness by
refusing to accept any office in any administration.  The King
consulted Walpole during all these arrangements, and Walpole strongly
recommended him to offer the position of Prime-minister to Lord
Wilmington.  Time had come round indeed--this was the Sir Spencer
Compton for whom King George at his accession had endeavored to thrust
away Walpole, but whom Walpole had quietly thrust away.  He was an
utterly incapable man.  Walpole probably thought that it would ruin the
new administration in the end if it were to have such a man as Compton,
now Lord Wilmington, at its head.  Lord Wilmington accepted the
position.  Lord Carteret had desired the post for himself, but Pulteney
would not hear of it.  The office of Secretary of State--of the
Secretary of State who had to do with foreign affairs--was the proper
place, he insisted, for a man like Carteret.  The secretaries then
divided their functions into a Northern department and a Southern
department.  The Northern department was concerned with the charge of
Russia, Prussia, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Poland, and Saxony;
the Southern department looked after France, Spain, Italy, Portugal,
Switzerland, Turkey, {192} and the States along the southern shore of
the Mediterranean.  So Carteret became one secretary, and the grotesque
Duke of Newcastle remained the other.  The duke's brother, Henry
Pelham, remained in his place as Paymaster, Lord Hardwicke retained his
office as Lord Chancellor, and Mr. Samuel Sandys, who had moved the
resolution calling for Walpole's dismissal, took Walpole's place as
Chancellor of the Exchequer.  There seems some humor in the appointment
of such a man as successor to Robert Walpole.

[Sidenote: 1742--The combined four]

Then Pulteney's career as a great Prime-minister is not beginning?
No--not beginning--never to begin.  By one of the strangest strokes of
fate the events which closed the career of Walpole closed the career of
Pulteney too.  Yet but a few months, and Pulteney ceases as completely
as Walpole has done to move the world of politics.  The battle is over
and the rival leaders have both fallen.  One monument might suffice for
both, like that for Wolfe and Montcalm at Quebec.  Pulteney was offered
a peerage, an offer which he had contemptuously rejected twice before.
He accepted it now.  It will probably never be fully and certainly
known why he committed this act of political suicide.  Walpole appears
to have been under the impression that it was by his cleverness the
King had been prevailed upon to drive Pulteney into the House of Lords.
Walpole, indeed, very probably made the suggestion to the King, and no
doubt had as his sole motive in making it the desire to consign
Pulteney to obscurity; but it does not seem as if his was the influence
which accomplished the object.  Lord Carteret and the Duke of Newcastle
both hated Pulteney, who as cordially hated them.  Newcastle was
jealous of Pulteney because of his immense influence in the House of
Commons, which he fancied must be in some sort of way an injury to
himself and his brother; and, stupid as he was, he felt certain that if
Pulteney consented to enter the House of Lords the popularity and the
influence would vanish.  Carteret's was a more reasonable if not a more
noble jealousy.  He was determined to come {193} to the head of affairs
himself--to be Prime-minister in fact if not in name; and he feared
that he never could be this so long as Pulteney remained, what some one
had called him, the Tribune of the Commons.  Once get him into the
House of Lords and there was an end to the tribune and the tribune's
career.  As for himself, Carteret, he would then be able to domineer
over both Houses by his commanding knowledge of foreign affairs, now of
such paramount importance to the State, and by his entire sympathy with
the views of the King.  The King hated Pulteney--had never forgiven him
his championship of the Prince of Wales--and would be delighted to see
him reduced to nothingness by a removal to the House of Lords.  But if
it was plain alike to such men of intellect as Walpole and Carteret,
and to such stupid men as King George and the Duke of Newcastle, that
removal to the House of Lords would mean political extinction for
Pulteney, how is it that no thought of the kind seems to have entered
into the mind of Pulteney himself?  Even as a question of the purest
patriotism, such a man as Pulteney, believing his own policy to be for
the public good, ought to have sternly refused to allow himself to be
forced into any position in which his public influence must be
diminished or destroyed.  As regarded his personal interests and his
fame, Pulteney must have had every motive to induce him to remain in
the House where his eloquence and his debating power had won him such a
place.  It is impossible to believe that he could have been allured
just then, at the height of his position and his renown, by the bauble
of a coronet which he had twice before refused--contemptuously refused.
Probably the real explanation may be found in the fact that Pulteney,
for all his fighting capacity, was not a strong but a weak man.
Probably he was, like Goethe's Egmont, brilliant in battle but weak in
council.  All unknown to himself, four men, each man possessed of an
overmastering power of will, were combined against him for a single
purpose--to drive him into the House of Lords--that is, to drive him
out of the {194} House of Commons.  His enemies prevailed against him.
As Lord Chesterfield put it, he "shrank into insignificance and an
earldom."  We are far from saying that a man might not be a good
minister and a statesman of influence after having accepted a seat in
the House of Lords.  But it was beginning to be found, even in
Pulteney's time, that the place of a great Prime-minister is in the
House of Commons; and certainly the place of a tribune of the people
can hardly be the House of Lords.  Pulteney was born for the House of
Commons: transplantation meant death to a genius like his.  When the
news of his "promotion" became public, a wild outcry of anger and
despair broke from his population of admirers.  He was denounced as
having committed an act of perfidy and of treason.  He had accepted a
peerage, it was said, as a bribe to induce him to consent to let Robert
Walpole go unimpeached and unpunished.  The outcry was quite unjust,
but was certainly not unnatural.  People wanted some sort of
explanation of an act which no ordinary reasoning could possibly
explain.  Pulteney's conduct bitterly disappointed the Tory section of
the Opposition as well as the populace of his former adorers
out-of-doors.  Bolingbroke, who had hurried back to England, found that
all his dreams of a genuine Coalition Ministry, representing fairly
both wings of the forces of Opposition, had vanished with the morning
light.  Except for the removal of Walpole, hardly any change was made
in the composition of recent English administration.  The Tories and
Jacobites, who had helped so signally in the fight, were left out of
the spoils of victory.  Bolingbroke found that he was no nearer to
power than he would have been if Walpole still were at the head of
affairs.  Nothing was changed for him; only a stupid man had taken the
place of a statesman.  Pulteney appears to have acted very generously
towards his immediate political colleagues, and to have remained in the
House of Commons, where he now had all the power, until he had got for
them the places they desired.  Then he was gazetted as Earl of Bath;
and we {195} have all heard the famous anecdote of the first meeting in
the House of Lords between the man who had been Robert Walpole and the
man who had been William Pulteney, and the greeting given by the new
Lord Orford to the new Lord Bath;  "Here we are, my lord, the two most
insignificant fellows in England."  With these words the first great
leader of Opposition in the House of Commons, the man who may almost be
said to have created the parliamentary part of leader of Opposition,
may be allowed to pass out of the political history of his time.

Many attempts were made to impeach Walpole, as we still must call him.
Secret committees of inquiry were moved for.  Horace Walpole, _the_
Horace Walpole, Sir Robert's youngest son, made his first speech in the
House of Commons, in defence of his father, against such a motion.  A
secret committee was at last obtained, but it did not succeed, although
composed almost altogether of Walpole's enemies, in bringing out
anything very startling against him.  Public money had been spent, no
doubt, here and there very freely for purely partisan work.  There
could be no question that some of it had gone in political corruption.
But everybody had already felt sure that this had been done by all
ministries and parties.  The report of the committee, when it came at
last, was received with cold indifference or unconcealed contempt.

[Sidenote: 1742-1745--Death of Walpole]

Walpole still kept a good deal in touch with the King.  George
consulted him privately, and indeed with much mystery about the
consultations.  The King sometimes sent a trusty messenger, who met
Walpole at midnight at the house of a friend.  It was indeed a summons
from George which hastened the great statesman's death.  The King
wished to consult Walpole, and Walpole hurried up from Houghton for the
purpose.  The journey greatly increased a malady from which he
suffered, and he was compelled by pain to have recourse to heavy doses
of opium, which kept him insensible for the greater part of every day
during more than six weeks.  When the stupefying effect of the opium
was not on him--that is, for {196} some two or three hours each day--he
talked with all that former vivacity which of late years seemed to have
deserted him.  He knew that the end was coming, and he bore the
knowledge with characteristic courage.  On March 18, 1745, he died at
his London house in Arlington Street.  Life could have had of late but
little charm for him.  He had always lived for public affairs and for
power.  He had none of the gifts of seclusion.  Except for his love of
pictures, he had no in-door intellectual resources.  He could not bury
himself in literature as Carteret could do; or, at a later day, Charles
James Fox; or, at a later day still, Mr. Gladstone.  Walpole's life
really came to an end the day he left the House of Commons; the rest
was silence.  He was only in his sixty-ninth year when he died.  It was
fitting that he should lose his life in striving to assist and counsel
the sovereign whose family he more than any other man or set of men had
seated firmly on the throne of England.  His faults were many; his
personal virtues perhaps but few.  One great and consummate public
virtue he certainly had: he was devoted to the interests of his
country.  In the building of Nelson's ships it was said that the oak of
Houghton Woods excelled all other timber.  Oak from the same woods was
used to make musket-stocks for Wellington's soldiers in the long war
against Napoleon.  Walpole's own fibre was something like that of the
oaks which grew on his domain.  His policy on two of the most eventful
occasions of his life has been amply justified by history.  He was
right in the principles of his Excise Bill; he was right in opposing
the war policy of the Patriots.  The very men who had leagued against
him in both these instances acknowledged afterwards that he was right
and that they were wrong.  It was in an evil moment for himself that he
yielded to the policy of the Patriots, and tried to carry on a war in
which he had no sympathy, and from which he had no hope.  He was a
great statesman; almost, but not quite, a great man.

[Sidenote: 1744--Death of Pope]

Not very long before Walpole's death a star of all but {197} the first
magnitude had set in the firmament of English literature.  Alexander
Pope died on May 30, 1744, at his house in Twickenham, where "Thames'
translucent wave shines a broad mirror," to use his own famous words.
He died quietly; death was indeed a relief to him from pain which he
had borne with a patience hardly to be expected from one of so fitful a
temper.  Pope's life had been all a struggle against ill-health and
premature decrepitude.  He was deformed; he was dwarfish; he was
miserably weak from his very boyhood; a rude breath of air made him
shrink and wither; the very breezes of summer had peril in them for his
singularly delicate constitution and ever-quivering nerves.  He was but
fifty-six years old when death set him free.  Life had been for him a
splendid success indeed, but the success had been qualified by much
bitterness and pain.  He was sensitive to the quick; he formed strong
friendships, fierce and passionate enmities; and the friendships
themselves turned only too often into enmities.  Unsparing with the
satire of his pen, he made enemies everywhere.  He professed to be
indifferent to the world's praise or censure, but he was nevertheless
morbidly anxious to know what people said of him.  He was as egotistic
as Rousseau or Byron; but he had none of Byron's manly public spirit,
and none of Rousseau's exalted love of humanity.  Pope's place in
English poetry may be taken now as settled.  He stands high and stands
firmly in the second class: that is, in the class just below
Shakespeare and Milton and a very few others.  He has been
extravagantly censured and extravagantly praised.  Byron at one time
maintained that he was the greatest English poet, and many vehement
arguments have been used to prove that he was not a poet at all.  One
English critic believed he had settled the question forever when he
described Pope as "a musical rocking-horse."  Again and again the world
has been told that Pope has disappeared from the sky of literature, but
the world looks up, and behold, there is the star shining just as
before.  Many scholars and many poets have scoffed at his translations
of {198} Homer, but generations of English school-boys have learned to
love the "Iliad" because of the way in which Pope has told them the
story; and as to the telling of a story, the judgment of a school-boy
sometimes counts for more than the judgment of a sage.  Pope's "Iliad"
and "Odyssey" are certainly not for those who can read the great
originals in their own tongue, or even for those who have a taste
strong and refined enough to enjoy the severe fidelity of a prose
translation.  But Pope has brought the story of Achilles' wrath, and
Helen's pathetic beauty, and Hector's fall, and Priam's agony home to
the hearts of millions for whom they would otherwise have no life.  We
have no intention of writing a critical dissertation on the poetry of
Pope.  One fact may, however, be remarked and recorded concerning it.
After Shakespeare, and possibly Milton, no English poet is so much
quoted from as Pope.  Lines and phrases of his have passed into the
common vernacular of our daily life.  We talk Pope, many of us, as the
too-often cited _bourgeois gentilhomme_ of Moliere talked prose,
without knowing it.  There is hardly a line of "The Rape of the Lock"
or "The Dunciad" that has not thus passed into the habitual
conversation of our lives.  This of itself would not prove that Pope
was a great poet, but it is a striking testimony to his extraordinary
popularity, and his style is not that which of itself would seem
calculated to insure popularity.  The very smoothness and perfection of
his verse make it seem to many ears nothing better than a melodious
monotony.  Pope had not imagination enough to be a great poet of the
highest order--the order of creative power.  He had marvellous fancy,
which sometimes, as in "The Rape of the Lock" and in passages of the
fierce "Dunciad," rose to something like imagination.  Every good
Christian ought no doubt to lament that a man of such noble gifts
should have had also such a terrible gift of hate.  But even a very
good Christian could hardly help admitting that it must have been all
for the best, seeing that only for that passion of hatred we should
never have had "The Dunciad."




{199}

CHAPTER XXXIV.

"THE FORTY-FIVE."

[Sidenote: 1720--Birth of "Prince Charlie"]

Thirty years had come and gone since England had been alarmed,
irritated, or encouraged, according to the temper of its political
inhabitants, by a Jacobite rising.  The personality of James Stuart,
the Old Pretender, was little more than a memory among those clansmen
who had rallied round the royal standard at Braemar.  In those thirty
years James Stuart had lived his melancholy, lonely, evil life of
exile, the hanger-on of foreign courts, the half grotesque, half
pitiable, sham monarch of a sham court, that was always ready to be
moved from place to place, with all its cheaply regal accessaries, like
the company and the properties of some band of strolling players.  Now
there was a new Stuart in the field, a new sham prince, a "Young
Pretender."  After the disasters of the Fifteen, James Stuart had
become the hero of as romantic a love-story as ever wandering prince
experienced.  He had fallen in love, in the hot, unreasoning Stuart
way, with the beautiful Clementine Sobieski, and the beautiful
Clementine had returned the passion of the picturesquely unfortunate
prince, and they had carried on their love affairs under conditions of
greater difficulty than Romeo and Juliet, and had overcome the
difficulties and got married, and in 1720 Clementine had borne to the
House of Stuart a son and heir.  Every precaution was taken to insure
the most public recognition of the existence of the newly born prince.
It was determined that none of the perplexity, the uncertainty, the
suspicion, which attended upon the birth of James, should be permitted
to arise now.  There must be no _haro_ about warming-pans, no
accusations of {200} juggling, no possible doubts as to the right of
the new-born babe to be regarded as the son of James Stuart and of
Clementine Sobieski.  The birth took place in Rome, and cardinals
accredited from all the great Powers of Europe were present on the
occasion to bear witness to it.  The city was alive with such
excitement as it had seldom witnessed since the days when pagan Rome
became papal Rome.  The streets in the vicinity of the house where
Clementine Sobieski lay in her pain were choked with the gilt carriages
of the proudest Italian nobility; princes of the Church and princes of
royal blood thronged the antechambers.  Gallant gentlemen who bore some
of the stateliest names of England and of Scotland waited on the
stair-ways for the tidings that a new prince was given unto their
loyalty.  Adventurous soldiers of fortune kicked their heels in the
court-yard, and thought with moistened eyes of the toasts they would
drink to their future king.  From the Castle of St. Angelo, where long
ago the besieged had hurled upon the besiegers the statues that had
proved the taste of a Roman emperor, where Rienzi lay yesterday, and
where Cagliostro shall lie to-morrow, thunders of artillery saluted the
advent of the new rose of the House of Stuart.

In the years that followed, while the young Prince Charles was growing
up to his tragic inheritance, it can hardly be maintained, even by the
most devoted adherent of the Stuart line, that James showed himself in
the slightest degree worthy of the crown towards which he reached.
Indeed, his conduct showed a reckless indifference to the means most
likely to attain that crown which it is difficult to account for.  When
everything depended for the success of his schemes upon the friends he
made abroad and the favor he retained at home, he wantonly acted as if
his dearest purpose was to alienate the one and to wholly lose the
other.  His conduct towards his wife, and his persistent and stupid
favoritism of the Mar man and woman--especially the woman--drove the
injured and indignant Clementine into a convent, and made the great
European {201} princes of Spain, Germany, and Rome his adversaries.
Spain refused him entrance to the kingdom unaccompanied by his wife;
the Pope struck him a heavier blow in diminishing by one-half the
income that had hitherto been allowed him from the Papal treasury.  But
worse than the loss of foreign friends, worse even than the loss of the
Sistine subsidy, was the effect which his treatment of his wife
produced in the countries which he aspired to rule.  His wisest
followers wrote to him that he had done more to injure his cause by his
conduct to Clementine than by anything else in his ill-advised career.
At last even James took alarm; his stubborn nature was forced to yield;
the obnoxious favorites were dismissed, and a reconciliation of a kind
was effected between the Stuart king and queen.  But fidelity was a
quality difficult enough for James to practise, and when the Queen died
in 1735 it is said that she found death not unwelcome.

[Sidenote: 1734-1735--Charles in his first campaign]

In the mean time the young Prince Charles grew up to early manhood.
Princes naturally begin the world at an earlier age than most men, and
Charles may be said to have begun the world in 1734, when, as we have
seen, at the age of fourteen, he took part in the siege of Gaeta as a
general of artillery, and bore himself, according to overwhelming
testimony, as became a soldier.  Up to this time his education had been
pursued with something like regularity; and if at all times he
preferred rowing, riding, hunting, and shooting to graver and more
secluded pleasures, he was not in this respect peculiar among young
men, princes or otherwise.  If, too, he never succeeded in overcoming
the difficulties which the spelling of the English language presented,
and if his handwriting always remained slovenly and illegible, it must
be remembered that in that age spelling was not prized as a pre-eminent
accomplishment by exalted persons, and that Charles Stuart could spell
quite as well as Marlborough.  He knew how to sign his name; and it may
be remarked that though he has passed into the pages of history and the
pages of romance as Charles Edward, he himself never signed his {202}
name so, but always simply Charles.  He was baptized Charles Edward
Louis Philip Casimir, and, like his ancestors before him, he chose his
first name as his passport through the world.  If he had marched to
Finchley, if Culloden had gone otherwise than it did go, if any of the
many things that might have happened in his favor had come to pass, he
would have been Charles the Third of England.

His education was, from a religious point of view, curiously mixed.  He
was intrusted to the especial care of Murray, Mrs. Hay's brother, and a
Protestant, much to the grief and anger of his mother.  But he
professed the tenets of the Catholic Church, and satisfied Pope
Clement, in an interview when the young prince was only thirteen, that
his Catholic education was sound and complete.  For the rest, he was a
graceful musician, spoke French, Spanish, and Italian as readily as
English, and was skilled in the use of arms.  As far as the cultivation
of mind or body vent, he might fairly be considered to hold his own
with any of the preceding sovereigns and princes of the House of
Stuart.  When in 1737 he set out on a kind of triumphal tour of the
great Italian towns, he was received everywhere with enthusiasm, and
everywhere made the most favorable impression.  So successful was this
performance, so popular did the prince make himself, and so warmly was
he received, that the Hanoverian Government took upon itself to be
seriously offended, ordered the Venetian ambassador Businiello to leave
London, and conveyed to the Republic of Genoa its grave disapproval of
the Republic's conduct.  The zealous energy of Mr. Fane, our envoy at
Florence, saved that duchy from a like rebuke.  Mr. Fane insisted so
strongly that no kind of State reception was to be accorded to the
travelling prince that the Grand Duke gave way.  Yet the Grand Duke's
curiosity to meet Charles Stuart was so great that he had prevailed
upon Fane to allow him to meet the stranger on the footing of a private
individual; but sudden death carried off the poor Grand Duke before the
interview could take place.

{203}

[Sidenote: 1734-1737--The omen accepted]

When Charles Stuart, as a general of fourteen, was helping to besiege
Gaeta, he had been hailed by Don Carlos as Prince of Wales, and as
Prince of Wales he was invariably addressed by those outside the little
circle of the sham court who wished to please the exiled princes or
show their sympathy with their cause.  The young Charles soon began to
weary of being Prince of Wales only in name.  It seems certain that
from a very early age his thoughts were turned to England and the
English succession.  There is a legend that at Naples once the young
prince's hat blew into the sea, and when some of his companions wished
to put forth in a boat and fetch it back he dissuaded them, saying that
it was not worth while, as he would have to go shortly to England to
fetch his hat.  The legend is in all likelihood true in so far as it
represents the bent of the young man's mind.  He was sufficiently
intelligent to perceive that masquerading through Italian cities and
the reception of pseudo-royal honors from petty princes were but a poor
counterfeit of the honors that were his, as he deemed, by right divine.
So it was only natural that with waxing manhood his eyes and his
thoughts turned more often to that England which he had never seen, but
which, as he had been so often and often assured, was only waiting for
a fit opportunity to cast off the Hanoverian yoke and welcome any
lineal descendant of the Charleses and the Jameses of beloved memory.

More than one expedition had been planned, and one expedition had
decisively failed, when in the summer of 1745 Prince Charles sailed
from Belleisle on board the _Boutelle_, with the _Elizabeth_ as a
companion vessel.  He started on this expedition on his own
responsibility and at his own risk.  Murray of Broughton, and other
influential Scottish friends, had told him, again and again, that it
would be absolutely useless to come to Scotland without a substantial
and well-armed following of at least six thousand troops, and a
substantial sum of money in his pocket.  To ask so much was to ask the
impossible.  {204} At one time the young prince had believed that Louis
the Fifteenth would find him the men and lend him the money, but in
1745 any such hope had entirely left him.  He knew now that Louis the
Fifteenth would do nothing for him; he knew that if he was ever to
regain his birthright he must win it with his own wits.  It is
impossible not to admire the desperate courage of the young aspirant
setting out thus lightly to conquer a kingdom with only a handful of
men at his back and hardly a handful of money in his pocket.  Judging,
too, by the course of events and the near approach which the prince
made to success, it is impossible not to accord him considerable praise
for that instinct which makes the great soldier and the great
statesman, the instinct which counsels when to dare.  The very ships in
which he was sailing he had got hold of, not only without the
connivance, but without the knowledge, of the French Government.  They
were obtained through two English residents at Nantes.  On August 2d
the _Boutelle_ anchored off the Hebrides alone.  The _Elizabeth_ had
fallen in with an English vessel, the _Lion_, and had been so severely
handled that she was obliged to return to Brest to refit, carrying with
her all the arms and ammunition on which Prince Charles had relied for
the furtherance of his expedition.  So here was the claimant to the
crown, friendless and alone, trying his best to derive encouragement
from the augury which Tullibardine grandiloquently discerned in the
flight of a royal eagle around the vessel.  Eagle or no eagle, augury
or no augury, the opening of the campaign was gloomy in the extreme.
The first clansmen whose aid the prince solicited were indifferent,
reluctant, and obstinate in their indifference and reluctance.
Macdonald of Boisdale first, and Clanranald of that ilk afterwards,
assured the prince, with little ceremony, that without aid, and
substantial aid, from a foreign Power, in the shape of arms and
fighting-men, no clansman would bare claymore in his behalf.  But the
eloquence and the determination of the young prince won over Clanranald
and the Macdonalds of {205} Kinloch-Moidart; Charles disembarked and
took up his headquarters at Borrodaile farm in Inverness-shire.  A kind
of legendary fame attaches to the little handful of men who formed his
immediate following.  [Sidenote: 1745--The Seven Men of Moidart] The
Seven Men of Moidart are as familiar in Scottish Jacobite legend as the
Seven Champions of Christendom are to childhood.  Tullibardine; Sir
Thomas Sheridan, the prince's tutor; Francis Strickland, an English
gentleman; Sir John Macdonald, an officer in the service of Spain;
Kelly, a non-juring clergyman; Buchanan, the messenger, and Aeneas
Macdonald, the banker, made up the mystic tale.  Among these Seven Men
of Moidart, Aeneas Macdonald plays the traitor's part that Ganelon
plays in the legends of Charlemagne.  He seems to have been actuated,
from the moment that the prince landed on the Scottish shore, by the
one desire to bring his own head safely out of the scrape, and to
attain that end he seems to have been ready to do pretty well anything.
When he was finally taken prisoner he saved himself by the readiness
and completeness with which he gave his evidence.  No more of him.
There were, happily for the honor of the adherents of the House of
Stuart, few such followers in the Forty-five.

The position of the young prince was peculiar.  His engaging manners
had won over many of the chiefs; his presence had set on fire that old
Stuart madness which a touch can often kindle in wild Highland hearts;
his determination to be a Scotchman among Scotchmen, a determination
which set him the desperate task of trying to master the Gaelic speech,
insured his hold upon the affections of the rude chivalry whom his
presence and his name had already charmed.  But some of the greatest
clans absolutely refused to come in.  Macdonald of Sleat, and Macleod
of Macleod, would have none of the "pretended Prince of Wales" and his
"madmen."

Though these chieftains were appealed to again and again, they were
resolute in their refusal to embark in the Stuart cause.  They pledged
themselves to the House of Hanover, they accepted commissions in the
royal army; {206} the cause of Charles Stuart must sink or swim without
them.  With them or without them, however, Charles was going on.  The
number of clans that had come in was quite sufficient to fill him with
hope; the little brush at Spean's Bridge between two companies of the
Scots Royal, under Captain Scott, and the clansmen of Keppoch and
Lochiel, had given the victory to the rebels.  The Stuarts had drawn
first blood successfully, and the superstitions saw in the circumstance
yet another augury of success.  The time was now ripe for action.  All
over the north of Scotland the Proclamation of Prince Charles was
scattered.  This proclamation called upon all persons to recognize
their rightful sovereign in the young prince's person as regent for his
father, invited all soldiers of King George, by offers of increased
rank or increased pay, to desert to the Stuart colors, promised a free
pardon and full religious liberty to all who should renounce their
allegiance to the usurper, and threatened all who, after due warning,
remained obdurate with grave pains and penalties.  Everywhere through
the west this document had been seen and studied, had inflamed men's
minds, and set men's pulses dancing to old Jacobite tunes.  In
Edinburgh, in Berwick, in Carlisle, copies had been seen by astonished
adherents of the House of Stuart, who were delighted or dismayed,
according to their temperaments.  Scotland was pretty well aware of the
presence of the young prince by the time that it was resolved to unfurl
the flag.

[Sidenote: 1745--An auspicious opening]

The royal standard of crimson and white was raised by Tullibardine on
August 19th in the vale of Glenfinnan, in the presence of Keppoch and
Lochiel, Macdonald of Glencoe, Stuart of Appin, and Stuart of Ardshiel,
and their clansmen.  No such inauspicious omen occurred as that which
shook the nerves of the superstitious when James Stuart gave his banner
to the winds of Braemar a generation earlier.  Indeed, an invading
prince could hardly wish for happier conditions under which to begin
his enterprise.  Not only was he surrounded by faithful clansmen,
prepared to do or die for the heir to the House of Stuart, but the
{207} stately ceremony of setting up the royal standard was witnessed
by English prisoners, the servants and the soldiers of King George, the
first-fruits of the hoped-for triumph over the House of Hanover.  "Go,
sir," Charles is reported to have said to one of his prisoners, Captain
Swetenham, "go and tell your general that Charles Stuart is coming to
give him battle."  That clement of the theatrical which has always hung
about the Stuart cause, and which has in so large a degree given it its
abiding charm, was here amply present.  For a royal adventurer setting
out on a crusade for a kingdom the opening chapter of the enterprise
was undoubtedly auspicious reading.




{208}

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE MARCH SOUTH.

[Sidenote: 1715-1716--The chances in his favor]

The condition of Scotland at the time of the prince's landing was such
as in a great degree to favor a hostile invasion.  Even educated
Englishmen then knew much less about Scotland, or at least the
Highlands of Scotland, than their descendants do to-day of Central
Africa.  People--the few daringly adventurous people--who ventured to
travel in the Highlands were looked upon by their admiring friends as
the rivals of Bruce or Mandoville, and they wrote books about their
travels as they would have done if they had travelled in Thibet; and
very curious reading those books are now after the lapse of something
over a century.  The whole of the Highlands were wild, unfrequented,
and desolate, under the rude jurisdiction of the heads of the great
Highland houses, whose clansmen, as savage and as desperately
courageous as Sioux or Pawnees, offered their lords an almost
idolatrous devotion.  Nominally the clans were under the authority of
the English Crown and the Scottish law; actually they recognized no
rule but the rule of their chiefs, who wielded a power as despotic as
that of any feudal seigneur in the days of the old regime.  The heroes
of the Ossianic poems--the Finns and Dermats whom colonization had
transplanted from Irish to Scottish legend--were not more unfettered or
more antiquely chivalrous than the clansmen who boasted of their
descent from them.  Scotland was more unlike England in the middle of
the last century than Russia is unlike Sicily to day.

There were several things in Charles's favor.  To begin with, the
disarmament of the clans, which had been insisted {209} upon after "the
Fifteen," had been carried out in such a fashion as was now to prove
most serviceable to the Young Pretender; for the only clans that had
been really disarmed were the Mackays, Campbells, and Sutherlands, who
were loyal enough to the House of Hanover, and gave up their weapons
very readily to prove their loyalty.  But the other clans--the clans
that ever cherished the lingering hope of a Stuart restoration--were
not in reality disarmed at all.  They made a great show of surrendering
to General Wade weapons that were utterly worthless as weapons of war,
honey-combed, crippled old guns and swords and axes; but the good guns
and swords and axes, the serviceable weapons, these were all carefully
stowed away in fitting places of concealment, ready for the hour when
they might be wanted again.  That hour had now come.  So that, thanks
to the Disarming Act of 1716, the Government found its chief allies in
the north of Scotland practically defenceless and unarmed, while the
clans that kept pouring in to rally around the standard of the young
invader were as well armed as any of those who had fought so stoutly at
Sheriffmuir.  Yet another advantage on the adventurer's side was due to
the tardiness with which news travelled in those times.  Charles had
been for many days in the Highlands, preparing the way for the rising,
before rumors of anything like an accredited kind came to the Court of
St. James.  The Highlands and islands of Scotland were then so far
removed from the great world of government that it had taken something
like half a year on one occasion before the dwellers in the stormy
Shetlands had learned that their sovereign, King William the Third, was
dead and buried; and in the years that had elapsed since William of
Orange passed away the means of communication between London and the
far north were little if at all better.  Charles had actually raised
his standard and rallied clan after clan around him before the
Government in London could seriously believe that a Stuart in arms was
in the island.  There were other and minor elements of success, too, to
be noted in the great game that the Stuart prince {210} was playing.
The Ministry was unpopular: the head of that Ministry was the imbecile
Duke of Newcastle, perhaps the most contemptible statesman who has ever
made high office ridiculous.  The King was away in Hanover.  England
was in the toils of a foreign war, and her prestige had lately suffered
heavily from the sudden defeat at Fontenoy.  There were very few troops
in England to employ against an invasion, and the Scottish
commander-in-chief, Sir John Cope, whose name lives in unenviable fame
in the burden of many a Jacobite ballad, was as incapable a
well-meaning general as ever was called upon to face a great unexpected
emergency.  It must be admitted that all these were excellent points in
the prince's favor, and that they counted for much in the conduct of
the campaign.

From the first, young Charles Stuart might well have come to regard
himself as the favorite of fortune.  The history of the Forty-five
divides itself into two distinct parts: the first a triumphant record
of brilliant victories, and the picture of a young prince marching
through conquest after conquest to a crown; the second part prefaced by
a disastrous resolution, leading to overwhelming defeat, and ending in
ignominious flight and the extinction of the last Stuart hope.  From
the moment when the Stuart standard fluttered its folds of white and
crimson on the Highland wind it seemed as if the Stuart luck had
turned.  Charles might well conceive himself happy.  Upon his sword sat
laurel victory.  Smooth success was strewn before his feet.  The
blundering and bewildered Cope actually allowed Charles and his army to
get past him.  Cope was neither a coward nor a traitor, but he was a
terrible blunderer, and while the English general was marching upon
Inverness Charles was triumphantly entering Perth.  From Perth the
young prince, with hopeless, helpless Cope still in his rear, marched
on Edinburgh.

[Sidenote: 1745--The advance of the clans]

The condition of Edinburgh was peculiar: although a large proportion of
its inhabitants, especially those who were well-to-do, were stanch
supporters of the House of Hanover, there were plenty of Jacobites in
the place, and {211} it only needed the favor of a few victories to
bring into open day a great deal of latent Jacobitism that was for the
moment prudently kept under by its possessors.  The Lord Provost
himself was more than suspected of being a Jacobite at heart.  The city
was miserably defended.  Such walls as it possessed were more
ornamental than useful, and in any case were sadly in want of repair.
All the military force it could muster to meet the advance of the clans
was the small but fairly efficient body of men who formed the Town
Guard; the Train Bands, some thousand strong, who knew no more than so
many spinsters of the division of a battle; the small and undisciplined
Edinburgh regiment; and a scratch collection of volunteers hurriedly
raked together from among the humbler citizens of the town, and about
as useful as so many puppets to oppose to the daring and the ferocity
of the clans.  Edinburgh opinion had changed very rapidly with regard
to that same daring and ferocity.  When the first rumors of the
prince's advance were bruited abroad, the adherents of the House of
Hanover in Edinburgh made very merry over the gang of ragged rascals,
hen-roost robbers, and drunken rogues upon whom the Pretender relied in
his effort to "enjoy his ain again."  But as the clans came nearer and
nearer, as the air grew thicker with flying rumors of the successes
that attended upon the prince's progress, as the capacity of the town
seemed weaker for holding out, and as the prospect of reinforcements
seemed to grow fainter and fainter, the opinion of Hanoverian Edinburgh
concerning the clans changed mightily.  Had the Highlanders been a race
of giants, endowed with more than mortal prowess, and invulnerable as
Achilles, they could hardly have struck more terror into the hearts of
loyal and respectable Edinburgh citizens.

Still there were some stout hearts in Edinburgh who did their best to
keep up the courage of the rest and to keep out the enemy.  Andrew
Fletcher and Duncan Forbes were of the number.  M'Laurin, the
mathematician, turned his genius to the bettering of the
fortifications.  Old {212} Dr. Stevenson, bedridden but heroic, kept
guard in his armchair for many days at the Netherbow Gate.  The great
question was would Cope come in time?  Cope was at Aberdeen.  Cope had
put his army upon transports.  Cope might be here to-morrow, the day
after to-morrow, to-day, who knows?  But in the mean time the King's
Dragoons, whom Cope had left behind him when he first started out to
meet the Pretender, had steadily and persistently retreated before the
Highland advance.  They had now halted--they can hardly be said to have
made a stand--at Corstorphine, some three miles from Edinburgh, and
here it was resolved to do something to stay the tide of invasion.
Hamilton's Dragoons were at Leith.  These were ordered to join the
King's Dragoons at Corstorphine, and to collect as many Edinburgh
volunteers as they could on their way.  Inside the walls of Edinburgh
it was easy enough to collect volunteers, and quite a little army of
them marched out with drums beating and colors flying at the heels of
Hamilton's Dragoons.  But on the way to the town gates the temper of
the volunteers changed, and by the time that the town gates were
reached and passed the volunteers had dwindled to so pitiable a handful
that they were dismissed, and Hamilton's Dragoons proceeded alone to
join Cope's King's Dragoons at Corstorphine.

But the united force of dragoons did not stay long at Corstorphine.
The fame of the fierce Highlanders had unhinged their valor, and it
only needed a few of the prince's supporters to ride within pistol-shot
and discharge their pieces at the Royal troops to set them into as
disgraceful a panic as ever animated frightened men.  The dragoons,
ludicrously unmanned, turned tail and rode for their lives, rode
without drawing bridle and without staying spur till they came to
Leith, paused there for a little, and then, on some vague hint that the
Highlanders were on their track, they were in the saddle again and
riding for their lives once more.  Dismayed Edinburgh citizens saw them
sweep along what now is Prince's Street, a pitiable sight; saw them,
bloody with spurring, fiery hot with {213} haste, ride on--on into the
darkness.  On and on the desperate cowards scampered, sheep-like in
their shameful fear, till they reached Dunbar and behind its gates
allowed themselves to breathe more freely, and to congratulate
themselves upon the dangers they had escaped.  Such is the story of the
famous, or infamous, "Cantor of Coltbrigg," one of the most disgraceful
records of the abject collapse of regular troops before the terror of
an almost unseen foe that are to found in history.  Well might loyal
Edinburgh despair if such were its best defenders.  The town was all
tumult, the Loyalists were in utter gloom, the secretly exulting
Jacobites were urging the impossibility of resistance, and the
necessity for yielding while yielding was still an open question.

[Sidenote: 1745--Edinburgh parleys]

On the top of all this came a summons from the prince demanding the
immediate surrender of the city.  A deputation was at once despatched
to Gray's Mill, where the prince had halted, to confer with him.
Scarcely had the deputation gone when rumor spread abroad in the town
that Cope, Cope the long expected, the almost given up, was actually
close at hand, and the weathercock emotions of the town veered to a new
quarter.  Perhaps they might be able to hold out after all.  The great
thing was to gain time.  The deputation came back to say that Prince
Charles must have a distinct answer to his summons before two o'clock
in the morning, and it was now ten at night.  Still spurred by the hope
of gaining time, and allowing Cope to arrive, if, indeed, he were
arriving, the deputation was sent back again.  But the prince refused
to see them, and the deputation returned to the city, and all
unconsciously decided the fate of Edinburgh.  Lochiel and Murray, with
some five hundred Camerons, had crept close to the walls under the
cover of the darkness of the night, in the hope of finding some means
of surprising the city.  Hidden close by the Netherbow Port, they saw
the coach which had carried the deputation home drive up and demand
admittance.  The admittance, which was readily granted to the coach,
could not well be refused to the {214}

Highlanders, who leaped up the moment the doors were opened,
overpowered the guard, and entered the town.  Edinburgh awoke in the
morning to find its doubts at an end.  It was in the hands of the
Highlanders.

Jacobite Edinburgh went wild with delight over its hero prince.  He
entered Holyrood with the white rose in his bonnet and the star of
Saint Andrew on his breast, through enthusiastic crowds that fought
eagerly for a nearer sight of his face or the privilege of touching his
hand.  The young prince looked his best; the hereditary melancholy
which cast its shadow over the faces of all the Stuarts was for the
moment dissipated.  Flushed with easy triumph, popular applause, and
growing hope, the young prince entered the palace of his ancestors like
a king returning to his own.  James Hepburn of Keith, with drawn sword,
led the way; beautiful women distributed white cockades to enraptured
Jacobites; the stateliest chivalry of Scotland made obeisance to its
rightful prince.  The intoxicating day ended with a great ball at the
palace, at which the youthful grace of Charles Stuart confirmed the
charm that already belonged to the adventurous and victorious Prince of
Wales.  September 17, 1745, was one of the brightest days in the Stuart
calendar.

The conquest of Edinburgh was but the prelude to greater glories.  Cope
was rallying his forces at Dunbar--was marching to the relief of
Edinburgh.  Charles, acting on the advice of his generals, marched out
to meet him.  Cope's capacity for blundering was by no means exhausted.
He affected a contemptuous disregard for his foes, delayed attack in
defiance of the advice of his wisest generals, was taken unawares in
the gray morning of the 21st at Prestonpans, and routed completely and
ignominiously in five minutes.

[Sidenote: 1745--Bore the news of his own defeat]

Seldom has it been the misfortune of an English general to experience
so thorough, so humiliating a defeat.  The wild charges of the Highland
men broke up the ordered ranks of the English troops in hopeless
confusion; almost all the infantry was cut to pieces, and the cavalry
{215} escaped only by desperate flight.  Cope's dragoons were
accustomed to flight by this time; the clatter of their horses' hoofs
as they cantered from Coltbrigg was still in their cars, and as they
once again tore in shameless flight up the Edinburgh High Street they
might well have reflected upon the rapidity with which such experiences
repeated themselves.  General Preston of the Castle refused to admit
the cowards within his gate, so there was nothing for them but to turn
their horses' heads again and spur off into the west country.  As for
Cope, he managed to collect some ragged remnant of his ruined army
about him, and to make off with all speed to Berwick, where he was
received by Lord Mark Ker with the scornful assurance that he was the
first commander-in-chief in Europe who had brought with him the news of
his own defeat.

The victorious army were unable, if they had wished, to follow up the
flight, owing to their lack of cavalry.  They remained on the field to
ascertain their own losses and to count their spoil.  The losses were
trifling, the gain was great.  Only thirty Highlanders were killed,
only seventy wounded, in that astonishing battle.  As for the gain, not
merely were the honorable trophies of victory, the colors and the
standards, left in the Highland hands, but the artillery and the
supplies, with some two thousand pounds in money, offered the prince's
troops a solid reward for their daring.  It is to the credit of Charles
that after the fury of attack was over he insisted upon the wounded
enemy and the prisoners being treated with all humanity.  An incident
is told of him which brings into relief the better qualities of his
race.  One of his officers, pointing to the ghastly field, all strewn
with dead bodies, with severed limbs and mutilated trunks, said to the
prince, "Sir, behold your enemies at your feet."  The prince sighed.
"They are my father's subjects," he said, sadly, as he turned away.

The battle of Prestonpans is enshrined in Jacobite memories as the
battle of Gladsmuir, for a reason very characteristic of the Stuarts
and their followers.  Some {216} queer old book of prophecies had
foretold, more than a century earlier, that there should be a battle at
Gladsmuir.  The battle of Prestonpans was not fought really on
Gladsmuir at all: Gladsmuir lies a good mile away from the scene of
Charles's easy triumph and Cope's inglorious rout; but for enthusiastic
Jacobite purposes it was near enough to seem an absolute fulfilment of
the venerable prediction.  A battle was to be fought at Gladsmuir; go
to, then--a battle was fought at Gladsmuir, or near Gladsmuir, which is
very much the same thing: anyhow, not very far away from Gladsmuir.
And so the Jacobites were contented, and more than ever convinced of
the advantages of prophecy in the affairs of practical politics.

Some busy days were passed in Edinburgh in which councils of war
alternated with semi-regal entertainments, and in which the prince
employed his ready command of language in paying graceful compliments
to the pretty women who wore the white cockade, and in issuing
proclamations in which the Union was dissolved and religious liberty
promised.  One thing the young prince could not be induced to do: none
of the arguments of his councillors could prevail upon him to threaten
severe measures against the prisoners fallen into his hands.  It was
urged that unless the Government treated their prisoners as prisoners
of war and not as rebels, the prince would be well advised to retaliate
by equal harshness to the captives in his power.  But on this point the
prince was obdurate.  He would not take in cold blood the lives that he
had saved in the heat of action.  Then and all through this meteoric
campaign the conduct of Charles was characterized by a sincere
humanity, which stands out in startling contrast with the cruelties
practised later by his enemy, the "butcher Cumberland."  It prevented
the prince from gaining an important military advantage by the
reduction of Edinburgh Castle.  He attempted the reduction of the
castle by cutting off its supplies, but when the general in command
threatened to open fire upon the town in consequence, Charles
immediately rescinded the order, although {217} his officers urged that
the destruction of a few houses, and even the loss of a few lives, was
in a military sense of scant importance in comparison with the capture
of so valuable a stronghold as Edinburgh Castle.  The prince held
firmly to his resolve, and Edinburgh Castle remained to the end in the
hands of the Royal troops.  Charles displayed a great objection, too,
to any plundering or lawless behavior on the part of his wild Highland
army.  We learn from the Bland Burges papers that when the house of
Lord Somerville, who was opposed to the prince, was molested by a party
of Highlanders, the prince, on hearing of it, sent an apology to Lord
Somerville, and an officer's guard to protect him from further
annoyance.

[Sidenote: 1745--In the heart of England]

But time was running on, and it was necessary to take action again.
England was waking up to a sense of its peril.  Armies were gathering.
The King had come back from Hanover, the troops were almost all
recalled from Flanders.  It was time to make a fresh stroke.  Charles
resolved upon the bold course of striking south at once for England,
and early in November he marched.  He set off on the famous march
south.  In this undertaking, as before, the same extraordinary
good-fortune attended upon the Stuart arms.  His little army of less
than six thousand men reached Carlisle, reached Manchester, without
opposition.  On December 4th he was at Derby, only one hundred and
twenty-seven miles from London.  Once again, by skill or by
good-fortune, he had contrived to slip past the English general sent
out to bar his way.  Cumberland with his forces was at Stafford, nine
miles farther from the capital than the young prince, who was now only
six days from the city, with all his hopes and his ambitions ahead of
him, and behind him the hostile army of the general he had eluded.
Never perhaps in the history of warfare did an invader come so near the
goal of his success and throw it so wantonly away; for that is what
Charles did.  With all that he had come for apparently within his
reach, he did not reach out to take it; the crown of England was in the
hollow of his hand, and he opened his hand {218} and let the prize fall
from it.  It is difficult to understand now what curious madness
prompted the prince's advisers to counsel him as they did, or the
prince to act upon their counsels.  He was in the heart of England; he
was hard by the capital, which he would have to reach if he was ever to
mount the throne of his fathers.  He had a devoted army with him--it
would seem as if he had only to advance and to win--and yet, with a
fatuity which makes the student of history gasp, he actually resolved
to retreat, and did retreat.  It is true, and must not be forgotten,
that Charles did not know, and could not know, all his advantages; that
many of the most urgent arguments for advance could not present
themselves to his mind.  He could not know the panic in which
Hanoverian London was cast; he could not know that desperate thoughts
of joining the Stuart cause were crossing the craven mind of the Duke
of Newcastle; he could not know that the frightened bourgeoisie were
making a maddened rush upon the Bank of England; he could not know that
the King of England had stored all his most precious possessions on
board of yachts that waited for him at the Tower stairs, ready at a
moment's notice to carry him off again into the decent obscurity of the
Electorship of Hanover.  He could not know the exultation of the
metropolitan Jacobites; he could not know the perturbation of the
Hanoverian side; he could not know the curious apathy with which a
large proportion of the people regarded the whole proceeding, people
who were as willing to accept one king as another, and who would have
witnessed with absolute unconcern George the Elector scuttling away
from the Tower stairs at one end of the town, while Charles the Prince
entered it from another.  These factors in his favor he did not know,
could not know, could hardly be expected even to guess.

[Sidenote: 1745--How London felt]

That the news of the rising produced very varied emotions in London we
may learn from the letters of Horace Walpole.  In one of September 6th
to Sir Horace Mann, mixed with much important information concerning
"My Lady O" and the Walpole promise of marriage "to young {219}
Churchill," comes news of the Pretender's march past General Cope, and
very gloomy forebodings for the result.  Another letter, which talks of
the Pretender as "the Boy," and of King George "as the _person_ most
concerned," presents the Hanoverian Elector as making very little of
the invasion, answering all the alarms of his ministers by "Pho, don't
talk to me of that stuff."  Walpole's spirits has risen within the
week, for he is much amused by the story that "every now and then a
Scotchman comes and pulls the Boy by the sleeve, 'Preence, here is
another mon taken,' then, with all the dignity in the world, the Boy
hopes nobody was killed in the action."

London at large vacillated very much as Horace Walpole vacillated.
While on the one side Jacobites began to come out of the corners in
which they had long lain concealed, and to air their opinions in the
free sunlight, rejoicing over the coming downfall of the House of
Hanover, authority, on the other hand, busied itself in ordering all
known Papists to leave the capital, in calling out the Train Bands, in
frequently and foolishly shutting the gates of Temple Bar, and, which
was better and wiser, in making use of Mr. Henry Fielding to write
stinging satires upon the Pretender and his party, and hint at the
sufferings which were likely to fall upon London when the Highlanders
imported their national complaint into the capital.  A statesman is
reported to have said that this disagreeable jest about the itch was
worth two regiments of horse to the cause of the Government.

Yet, if London was excited, there was a tranquil London as well.  Mr.
George Augustus Sala, in that brilliant novel of his, "The Adventures
of Captain Dangerous," draws a vivid picture of this London with the
true artist touch.  "Although from day to day we people in London knew
not whether before the sunset the dreaded pibrochs of the Highland
clans might not be heard at Charing Cross--although, for aught men
knew, another month, nay, another week, might see King George the
Second toppled from his throne--yet to those who lived quiet {220}
lives and kept civil tongues in their heads all things went on pretty
much as usual. . . .  That there was consternation at St. James's, with
the King meditating flight, and the royal family in tears and swooning,
did not save the little school-boy a whipping if he knew not his lesson
after morning call. . . .  So, while all the public were talking about
the rebellion, all the world went nevertheless to the playhouses, where
they played loyal pieces, and sang 'God save great George, our King'
every night; as also to balls, ridottos, clubs, masquerades, drums,
routs, concerts, and Pharaoh parties.  They read novels and flirted
their fans, and powdered and patched themselves, and distended their
petticoats with hoops, just as though there were no such persons in the
world as the Duke of Cumberland and Charles Edward Stuart."  Fiction,
that most faithful and excellent handmaiden of history, here shows us
no doubt very vividly what London as a whole thought and did in face of
the rebellion.  It is an old story.  Were not the Romans in the theatre
when the Goths came over the hills?  Did not the theatres flourish,
never better, during the Reign of Terror?

Nor was London the only place which displayed a well-nigh stoical
indifference to the progress of the rebellion.  If Oxford had a good
deal of Jacobitism hidden decorously away in its ancient colleges, if
there were a good many disloyal toasts drunk in the seclusion of
scholastic rooms, there was apparently only a feeling of curious
indifference at the rival university, for Gray has put it on record
that at Cambridge "they had no more sense of danger than if it were the
battle of Cannae," and we learn that some grave Dons actually were
thinking of driving to Camford to see the Scotch troops march past, "as
though they were volunteers out for a sham-fight, or a circus
procession."




{221}

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CULLODEN--AND AFTER.

[Sidenote: 1745--Had he but known]

The prince did not know, and could not know, the exact condition of
things in the capital; did not know, and could not know, how many
elements of that condition told in his favor, and how many against.
But what he could know, what he did know, was this: He was at the head
of a devoted army, which if it was small had hitherto found its career
marked by triumph after triumph.  He was in the heart of England, and
had already found that the Stuart war-cry was powerful enough to rally
many an English gentleman to his standard.  Sir Walter Williams Wynn,
whom men called the King of Wales, was on his way to join the Prince of
Wales.  So was Lord Barrymore, the member of Parliament; so was many
another gallant gentleman of name, of position, of wealth.  Manchester
had given him the heroic, the ill-fated James Dawson, and a regiment
three hundred strong.  Lord James Drummond had landed at Montrose with
men, money, and supplies.  The young chevalier's troops were eager to
advance; they were flushed with victories; their hearts were high; they
believed, in the wild Gaelic way, in the sanctity of their cause; they
believed that the Lord of Hosts was on their side, and such a belief
strengthened their hands.  For a prince seeking his principality it
would seem that there was one course, and one only, to pursue.  He
might go on and take it, and win the great game he played for; or,
failing that, he might die as became a royal gentleman, sword in hand
and fighting for his rights.  The might-have-beens are indeed for the
most part a vanity, but we can fairly venture to assert now that {222}
if Charles had pushed on he would, for the time at least, have restored
the throne of England to the House of Stuart.  We may doubt, and doubt
with reason, whether any fortuitous succession of events could have
confirmed the Stuart hold upon the English crown; but we can scarcely
doubt that the hold would have been for the time established, that the
Old Pretender would have been King James the Third, and that George the
Elector would have been posting, bag and baggage, to the rococo shades
of Herrenhausen.   But, as we have said, failing that, if Charles had
fallen in battle at the head of his defeated army, how much better that
end would have been than the miserable career which was yet to lend no
tragic dignity to the prolonged, pitiful, pitiable life of the Young
Pretender!

However, for good or evil, the insane decision was made.  Charles's
council of war were persistent in their arguments for retreat.  There
were thirty thousand men in the field against them.  If they were
defeated they would be cut to pieces, and the prince, if he escaped
slaughter, would escape it only to die as a rebel on Tower Hill,
whereas, if they were once back in Scotland, they would find new
friends, new adherents, and even if they failed to win the English
crown, might at least count, with reasonable security, upon converting
Scotland, as of old, into a separate kingdom, with a Stuart king on its
throne.  By arguments such as these the prince's officers caused him to
throw away the one chance he had of gaining all that he had crossed the
seas to gain.

It is only fair to remember that the young prince himself was from
first to last in favor of the braver course of boldly advancing upon
London.  When his too prudent counsellors told him that if he advanced
he would be in Newgate in a fortnight, he still persisted in pressing
his own advice.  Perhaps he thought that where the stake was so great,
and the chance of success not too forbidding, failure might as well end
in Newgate as in the purlieus of petty foreign courts.  But, with the
exception of his {223} Irish officers, he had nobody on his side.  The
Duke of Perth and Sir John Gordon had a little plan of their own.  They
thought that a march into Wales would be a good middle course to adopt,
but their suggestion found no backers.  All Charles's other counsellors
were to a man in favor of retreat, and Charles, after at first
threatening to regard as traitors all who urged such a course, at last
gave way.  Sullenly he issued the disastrous order to retreat, sullenly
he rode in the rear of that retreat, assuming the bearing of a man who
is no longer responsible for failure.  The cheery good-humor, the
bright heroism, which had so far characterized him, he had now
completely lost, and he rode, a dejected, a despairing, almost a doomed
man, among his disheartened followers.  It is dreary reading the record
of that retreat; yet it is starred by some bright episodes.  At Clifton
there was an engagement where the retreating Highlanders held their
own, and inflicted a distinct defeat upon Cumberland's army.  Again,
when they were once more upon Scottish soil, they struck a damaging
blow at Hawley's army at Falkirk.  But the end came at last on the day
when the dwindling, discouraged, retreating army tried its strength
with Cumberland at Culloden.

[Sidenote: 1746--The Duke of Cumberland]

Men of the Cumberland type are to be found in all ages, and in the
history of all nations.  Men in whom the beast is barely under the
formal restraint of ordered society, men in whom a savage sensuality is
accompanied by a savage cruelty, men who take a hideous physical
delight in bloodshed, darken the pages of all chronicles.  It would be
unjust to the memory of Cumberland to say that in his own peculiar line
he had many, if any, superiors; that many men are more worthy of the
fame which he won.  To be remembered with a just loathing as a man by
whom brutalities of all kinds were displayed, almost to the point of
madness, is not the kind of memory most men desire; it is probably not
the kind of memory that even Cumberland himself desired to leave behind
him.  But, if he had cherished the ambition of handing down his name to
other times, "linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes," if {224}
he had deliberately proposed to force himself upon the attention of
posterity as a mere abominable monster, he could hardly have acted with
more persistent determination towards such a purpose.  In Scotland, for
long years after he was dead and dust, the mention of his name was like
a curse; and even in England, where the debt due to his courage counted
for much, no one has been found to palliate his conduct or to whitewash
his infamy.  As Butcher Cumberland he was known while he lived; as
Butcher Cumberland he will be remembered so long as men remember the
"Forty-five" and the horrors after Culloden fight.  Some of those
horrors no doubt were due to the wild fury of revenge that always
follows a wild fear.  The invasion of the young Stuart had struck
terror; the revenge for that terror was bloodily taken.

[Sidenote: 1746--Culloden]

Everything contributed to make Culloden fatal to the fortunes of the
Pretender.  The discouragement of some of the clans, the disaffection
of others, the wholesale desertions which had thinned the ranks of the
rebel army, the prince's sullen distrust of his advisers, the position
of the battle-field, the bitter wintry weather, which drove a blinding
hail and snow into the eyes of the Highlanders, all these were so many
elements of danger that would have seriously handicapped a
better-conditioned army than that which Charles Stuart was able to
oppose to Cumberland.  But the prince's army was not well-conditioned;
it was demoralized by retreat, hungry, ragged, dizzy with lack of
sleep.  Even the terrors of the desperate Highland attack were no
longer so terrible to the English troops.  Cumberland had taught his
men, in order to counteract the defence which the target offered to the
bodies of the Highlanders, to thrust with their bayonets in a slanting
direction--not against the man immediately opposite to its point, but
at the unguarded right side of the man attacking their comrade on the
right.

After enduring for some time the terrible cannonade of the English, the
battle began when the Macintoshes charged with all their old desperate
valor upon the English.  {225} But the English were better prepared
than before, and met the onslaught with such a volley as shattered the
Highland attack and literally matted the ground with Highland bodies.
Then the Royal troops advanced, and drove the rebels in helpless rout
before them.  The fortunes of the fight might have gone very
differently if all the Highlanders had been as true to their cause as
those who formed this attacking right wing.  "English gold and Scotch
traitors," says an old ballad of another fight, "won . . . , but no
Englishman."  To no English gold can the defeat of Culloden be
attributed, but unhappily Scotch treason played its part in the
disaster.  The Macdonalds had been placed at the left wing of the
battle instead of at the right, which they considered to be their
proper place.  Furious at what they believed to be an insult, they took
no part whatever in the fight after they had discharged a single
volley, but stood and looked on in sullen apathy while the left wing
and centre of the prince's army were being whirled into space by the
Royalist advance.  The Duke of Perth appealed desperately and in vain
to their hearts, reminded them of their old-time valor, and offered, if
they would only follow his cry of Claymore, to change his name and be
henceforward called Macdonald.  In vain Keppoch rushed forward almost
alone, and met his death, moaning that the children of his tribe had
deserted him.  There are few things in history more tragic than the
picture of that inert mass of moody Highlanders, frozen into traitors
through an insane pride and savage jealousy, witnessing the ruin of
their cause and the slaughter of their comrades unmoved, and listening
impassively to the entreaties of the gallant Perth and the death-groans
of the heroic Keppoch.  In a few minutes the battle was over, the rout
was complete; the rebel army was in full retreat, with a third of its
number lying on the field of battle; the Duke of Cumberland was master
of the field, of all the Highland baggage and artillery, of fourteen
stands, and more than two thousand muskets.  Culloden was fought and
won.

{226}

It is not necessary to believe the stories that have been told of
Charles Stuart, attributing to him personal cowardice on the fatal day
of Culloden.  The evidence in favor of such stories is of the
slightest; there is nothing in the prince's earlier conduct to justify
the accusation, and there is sufficient evidence in favor of the much
more likely version that Charles was with difficulty prevented from
casting away his life in one desperate charge when the fortune of the
day was decided.  It is part of a prince's business to be brave, and if
Charles Stuart had been lacking in that essential quality of
sovereignty he could scarcely have concealed the want until the day of
Culloden, or have inspired the clans with the personal enthusiasm which
they so readily evinced for him.  Nor is it necessary for us to follow
out in full the details of the unhappy young man's miserable flight and
final escape.  Through all those stormy and terrible days, over which
poetry and romance have so often and so fondly lingered, the fugitive
found that he had still in the season of his misfortune friends as
devoted as he had known in the hours of his triumph.  His adventures in
woman's dress, his escape from the English ship, the touching devotion
of Flora Macdonald, the loyalty of Lochiel, the fidelity of Cluny
Macpherson--all these things have been immortalized in a thousand tales
and ballads, and will be remembered in the North Country so long as
tales and ballads continue to charm.  At last, at Lochnanuagh, the
prince embarked upon a French ship that had been sent for him, and
early in the October of 1746 he landed in Brittany.

[Sidenote: 1746--Cumberland's vengeance]

The horrors that followed Culloden suggest more the blood feuds of some
savage tribes than the results of civilized warfare.  Cumberland,
flushed by a victory that was as unexpected as it was easy, was
resolved to kill, and not to scotch, the snake of Jacobite
insurrection.  The flying rebels were hotly pursued--no quarter was
given; the wounded on the field of battle were left cold in their
wounds for two days, and then mercilessly butchered.  There is a story,
which might well be true, and {227} which tells that as Cumberland was
going over the field of dead and dying he saw a wounded Highlander
staring at him.  Cumberland immediately turned to the officer next to
him, and ordered him to shoot the wounded man.  The officer, with an
honorable courage and dignity, answered that he would rather resign his
commission than obey.  The officer of the story was the heroic Wolfe,
who was afterwards to become a famous general and die gloriously before
Quebec.  It may be true; we may hope that it is, as it adds another
ornament to the historic decoration of a brave man--but history does
not, so far as we are aware, record the answer that Cumberland made to
this unexpected display of audacious humanity.

The cruelties of Culloden field were only the preface to the red reign
of terror that Cumberland set up in the Highlands.  The savage temper
of the Royal general found excellent instruments in the savage tempers
of his soldiery.  Murder, rape, torture, held high carnival; men were
hanged or shot on the slightest suspicion or on no suspicion; women
were insulted, outraged, killed; even children were not safe from the
blood-lust of Cumberland's murderers.

The pacification of the Highlands was accomplished on much the same
methods as were afterwards employed to bring about the pacification of
Poland.  Perhaps the most dramatically tragic of all the events after
the defeat of Charles Stuart are connected with the fate of those of
his adherents who were taken prisoners, and who were of too grave an
importance to be put to the sword at once or hanged out of hand.  Some,
unhappily, of the followers of the young prince proved themselves to be
unworthy of any cause of any monarch.  Aeneas Macdonald, John Murray of
Broughton, Lord Elcho, and Macdonald of Barrisdale have left behind
them the infamous memory that always adheres to traitors.  The
revelations which John Murray made to save his own life were the means
of sending many a gallant gentleman to Tower Hill.

In the end of July (of 1746) Westminster Hall was {228} brilliant with
scarlet hangings, and crowded with an illustrious company, to witness
the trial of the three most important of the captured rebels, Lord
Kilmarnock, Lord Cromarty, and Lord Balmerino.  Walpole, who went to
that ceremony with the same amused interest that he took in the first
performance of a new play, has left a very living account of the scene:
Lord Kilmarnock, tall, slender, refined, faultlessly dressed, looking
less than his years, which were a little over forty, and inspiring a
most astonishing passion in the inflammable heart of Lady Townshend;
Lord Cromarty, of much the same age, but of less gallant bearing,
dejected, sullen, and even tearful; Balmerino, the very type and model
of a gallant, careless old soldier.

There was no question of the prisoners' guilt; they were tried, were
found guilty, were sentenced to death.  Two of the prisoners had,
however, many powerful friends--Kilmarnock and Cromarty; and the charm
of Kilmarnock's presence had raised up for him many more friends, whose
influence was exerted with the King.  For Balmerino nobody seems to
have taken the trouble to plead, and even King George, whose clemency
was not conspicuously displayed in his treatment of his prisoners,
appears to have expressed some surprise at this, though he did not
allow his regret to carry him so far as to extend his pardon to the
stout old soldier.  The exertions of Lord Cromarty's friends, and
especially of Lady Cromarty, saved that prisoner's life.  It is said
that when the child which Lady Cromarty bore in her body during the
terrible period in which she was pleading for her husband's life came
into the world, it carried a mark like the stroke of the executioner's
axe upon its neck.  Kilmarnock and Balmerino died on Tower Hill on
August 18, 1746.  Both died, as they had lived, like gentlemen and
brave soldiers.  It is, perhaps, to be regretted that Kilmarnock should
on the scaffold have expressed any regret for the part he had played in
supporting the Young Pretender against the House of Hanover.  He {229}
had gone gallantly into the game of insurrection, and he might as well
have played it out to the end.  At least he was the only one of all the
seven-and-seventy rebels who were executed, from James Dawson to Simon
Lovat, who made upon the scaffold any retractation of the acts that he
had done.  It is impossible not to contrast Balmerino's dying words,
and to like them better than the apologies of Kilmarnock.  Balmerino
was no subject of King George; he was his prince's man.  "If I had a
thousand lives I would give them all for him" were his dying words, and
braver dying words were never spoken.  It was the old heroic spirit of
absolute loyalty to the annointed king which was of necessity dying
out; which was to be repeated again half a century later in the hills
and the forests of La Vendee.  The Stuarts were as bad, as worthless,
as kings could well be, but they did possess the royal prerogative of
inspiring men with an extraordinary devotion.  There was something to
be said for the cause which could send a man like Balmerino so
gallantly to his death with such a brave piece of soldierly bluster
upon his dying lips.

[Sidenote: 1746--Lord Lovat]

A very different man died for the same cause upon the same scaffold a
little later.  History hardly recalls a baser figure than that of Simon
Fraser (Lord Lovat).  He is remembered chiefly as the desperate
shuffler and paltry traitor who tried to blow hot and cold, to fawn on
Hanover with one hand and to beckon the Stuarts with the other.  But
his whole career was of a piece with its paltry ending.  His youth and
manhood were characterized by a kind of savage lawlessness, like that
of a Calabrian chieftain brigand or the brave of a Sioux band.  He was
cruel, he was cunning; he was, in his wild Highland way, a voluptuary
and a debauchee; he was treacherous and hideously selfish.  In his
earlier days he had cast his eyes upon a lady, whom, for motives of
worldly advantage as well as for her beauty, he had regarded as
suitable to make his wife.  Neither the young lady nor the young lady's
family would listen to the suit of Captain Fraser, as he then {230}
was; whereupon Captain Fraser gathered together a select company of
scoundrels, carried the young lady off by force, very much as Rob Roy's
wild son did with the girl of whom he was enamoured, married her
against her will by force, with the aid of a suborned priest, actually,
so the story goes, cutting the clothes off her body with his dirk,
while his pipers, in obedience to his orders, drowned the poor
creature's cries with their music.  Now, in the eightieth year of his
age, he had come to his grim end.  He had broken most of the laws of
earth and of heaven; he had ever tried to be in with both sides and to
cheat both; he was always ready to betray and lie and cozen; seldom,
perhaps, did a more horrible old man meet a more deserved doom; yet he
died with a bravery and a composure which were not to be expected.
Nothing in his life became him like to the leaving it.  Thanks to the
genius of William Hogarth, we all know exactly how Simon Fraser, the
bad Lord Lovat, looked in those last days of his life when he lay in
prison, his old body weak with many infirmities, and his old spirit
still scheming and hoping for the reprieve that did not come.  On April
9th he was executed on Tower Hill.  His latest words were grotesquely
inappropriate to his evil life.  With his lying lips he repeated the
famous line from Horace, "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," and
with that lie on his lips he knelt before the block and had his head
cut off at one stroke.  His body was laid in the company of better men,
by the side of Balmerino and Kilmarnock, in the Church of St. Peter on
the Green.

[Sidenote: 1745--William Hogarth]

The genius of William Hogarth is inseparably associated with the
Forty-five by reason of this famous portrait of Simon Lovat, and for
yet another reason.  In this year (1745) William Hogarth was already
exceedingly popular, although he had as yet failed to bask much in the
sunshine of royal favor.  Those old, early days of poverty and struggle
were far behind.  The industrious apprentice had married his master's
daughter, fifteen years ago by this time, and Sir James Thornhill had
forgotten his {231} wrath and forgiven the young painter who was so
immeasurably his superior.  "The Harlot's Progress," "The Rake's
Progress," "Industry and Idleness," and many another plate in the
astonishing panorama of mid last century life, had earned for Hogarth a
high position in the favor of the day; and when he posted down to St.
Albans, where wicked Simon Lovat lay sick, to receive the old traitor's
lathered embrace and to make the famous engraving, William Hogarth was
a very distinguished person indeed.  The portrait of Simon Fraser had a
great success.  Never did portrait bear more distinctly the impress of
fidelity.  The unwieldy trunk, the swollen legs, the horrible, cunning,
satyr-like face with its queerly lifted eyebrows, its flattened sensual
nose, and its enormous mouth, the odd dogmatic gesture with which the
index finger of the left hand touches the thumb of the right: all these
things William Hogarth immortalized--making Simon Fraser (Lord Lovat)
wellnigh as familiar a personality to us as he was to any of the men be
betrayed or the women he wronged in the course of his base life.  The
plate had a prodigious success.  The presses were hard at work for many
days, and could not print proofs fast enough.  "For several weeks,"
says Mr. Sala, "Hogarth received money at the rate of twelve pounds a
day for prints of his etching."  It was reduced in size and printed as
a watch-paper--watch-papers were vastly fashionable in those days--and
in that Liliputian form it sold also in large quantities.  The infamy
of the subject and the genius of the artist lent a double attraction to
the portrait.

But the portrait of Simon Fraser is not the only, is not perhaps even
the chief, connection of Hogarth with the Forty-five.  Whether Hogarth
did or did not do the sketch for the mezzotint engraving called
"Lovat's Ghost on Pilgrimage" matters little.  He certainly did do the
famous picture and famous plate which is known as the "March to
Finchley."  Every one knows that marvellous and no doubt vividly
accurate picture of the progress of the foot guards to Finchley Common
on their way to {232} Scotland; the riot, the debauchery, the
confusion, the drunkenness of the scene.  Those tipsy heroes,
staggering along to the tunes of tipsy drummer and tiny fifer, while
Doll Tearsheet and Moll Flanders harass them with enforced embraces,
played their part no doubt in the horrible cruelties which succeeded
Culloden.  But, at the same time, these were among the soldiers who did
succeed in preventing England from being given over to the Jacobites,
or who at least prevented the Stuart Prince from holding Scotland, and
setting up the Stuart throne there.  It may, therefore, be perhaps
pardoned to his majesty King George the Second if he did not quite
appreciate the "burlesque," even though that lack of appreciation made
Hogarth in a rage dedicate the plate to his majesty of Prussia.

[Sidenote: 1788--"Bonnie Prince Charlie"]

Misfortune followed most of the followers of Prince Charles.
Tullibardine died in the Tower a few days before his trial.  Charles
Ratcliffe, Lord Derwentwater's brother, was executed.  Sheridan died of
apoplexy in the November of 1746.  The Duke of Perth died on shipboard,
on his way to France, soon after Culloden.  The less conspicuous rebels
suffered as severely as the leaders.  The executions that took place at
York and Carlisle, at Penrith and Brampton, and on Kennington Common,
bloodily avenged the blow that had been struck at the House of Hanover.
A great number of prisoners who were not executed were shipped off as
slaves to the plantations, a fate scarcely less terrible than death;
some were pardoned on consideration of their entering the service of
the King as sailors; some were pardoned later on; a few, it is said,
escaped.  The sternest measures were taken to prevent any possibility
of a further rising in Scotland.  The disarmament of the clans, which
had been carried out so imperfectly after the Fifteen, was now
rigorously and effectually enforced.  The hereditary jurisdiction of
the chiefs of clans, which made those chiefs the petty kings of their
districts, was abolished, and in their places the ordinary process of
law was established, with its sheriffs {233} and sheriffs' substitutes,
and its circuits of judges.  The national costume, the kilt, was
proscribed under the severest penalties, though in the course of time
this proscription was gradually relaxed.  Every master of every private
school north of the Tweed was called upon to swear allegiance to the
House of Hanover, and to register his oath.  The turbulent spirit and
fine fighting qualities of the clans were turned to good account by the
Government, who raised several Highland regiments, and thus succeeded
in diverting to their own service all the restless and warlike energy
which had hitherto been so troublesome to law and order.  It must be
admitted that the modern prosperity of Scotland dates in a great degree
from the Forty-five.  The old conditions of life in the Highlands were
conditions under which it was impossible for a country to thrive; and
though it is necessary to condemn the manner in which the Government,
at all events in the earlier stages, attempted to effect the
pacification of Scotland, it is also necessary to admit that Scotland
is probably more fortunate to-day than she would have been if victory
had been given to the Stuart at Culloden.

Of that Stuart we may as well take leave now.  His subsequent career is
a most dispiriting study.  He hoped against hope for a while that this
foreign power or that foreign power would lend him a helping hand to
his throne.  Expelled from France, he drifted to Italy, and into that
pitiable career of dissipation and drunkenness which ended so
ingloriously a once bright career.  To the unlucky women whom he loved
he was astonishingly brutal; he forced Miss Walkenshaw--the lady of
whom he became enamoured in Scotland--to leave him by his cruelty; he
forced his unhappy wife, the Countess of Albany, to leave him for the
same reason.  Her love affair with the poet Alfieri is one of the
famous love-stories of the world.  It seems pretty certain that Charles
Stuart actually visited England once, if not more than once, after the
Forty-five, and that George the Third was well aware of his presence in
London, and, with a contemptuous good {234} nature, took no steps
whatever to lay hands upon the rival who was dangerous no longer.  At
last, on January 31, 1788, or, as some have it, on January 30, the
actual anniversary of the execution of Charles the First, Charles
Stuart died in Rome, and with him died the last hope of the Stuart
restoration in England.  Had Charles lived a little longer, he would
have seen in the very following year the beginning of that great storm
which was to sweep out of existence a monarchical system as absolute as
that of the Stuarts had been, and to behead a monarch far less blamable
than Charles the First of England.  There is something appropriate in
this uncompromising devotee and victim of the principle of divine right
dying in exile on the very eve of that revolution which was practically
to abolish the principle of the divine right of kings forever.  Oddly
enough, there are still devotees of the House of Stuart, gentlemen and
ladies who work up picturesque enthusiasms about the Rebel Rose and the
Red Carnation, and who affect to regard a certain foreign princess as
the real sovereign of England.  But the English people at large need
hardly take this graceful Jacobitism very seriously.  Jacobitism came
to its end with Cardinal Henry dying as the pensioner of George the
Third, and with Prince Charles drowning in Cyprus wine the once gallant
spirit which, even at the end, could sometimes shake off its
degradation, and blaze into a moment's despairing brilliancy, at the
thought of the Clans and the Claymores, and the brave days of
Forty-five.  And so, in the words of the old Saga men, here he drops
out of the tale.

[Sidenote: 1745-1889--The Stuart charm]

But it is the curious characteristic of the ill-fated House of Stuart
that, through all their misfortunes, through all their degradations,
they have contrived to captivate the imagination and bewitch the hearts
of many generations.  The Stuart influence upon literature has been
astonishing.  No cause in the world has rallied to its side so many
poets, named or nameless, has so profoundly attracted the writers and
the readers of romance, has bitten more deeply {235} into popular
fancy.  Even in our own day, an English poet, Mr. Swinburne, who has
not tuned much to thrones fallen or standing, has been inspired by the
old Stuart frenzy to write one of the most valuable of all the wealth
of ballads that have grown up around the Stuart name.  In his "A
Jacobite's Exile, 1746," Mr. Swinburne has summed up in lines of the
most poignant and passionate pathos all the feeling of a gentleman of
the North Country dwelling in exile for his king's sake.  The emotion
which finds such living voice in the contemporary poetry, in the
ballads that men wrote and men sang, while the House of Stuart was
still a reality, while there were still picturesque or semi-picturesque
personages living in foreign courts and claiming the crown of England,
finds no less living voice in the words written by a poet of to-day,
though nearly a century has elapsed, since the hopes of the House of
Stuart went out forever.

  "We'll see nae mair the sea-banks fair,
    And the sweet, gray, gleaming sky,
  And the lordly strand of Northumberland,
    And the goodly towers thereby:
  And none shall know, but the winds that blow,
    The graves wherein we lie."

What was there, what is there, we may well ask, in that same House of
Stuart, in that same Jacobite cause, which still quickens in this
latter day a living passion and pathos, which can still inspire a poet
of to-day with some of the finest verses he has ever written?  It may
be some consolation to the lingering adherents of the name, to those
who wear oak-apple on May 29th, and who sigh because there is no "king
over the water" who can come to "enjoy his own again"--it may be some
consolation to them to think that if their cause can no longer stir the
swords in men's hands, it can still guide their pens to as poetic
purpose as it did in the years that followed the fatal Forty-five.  It
may console them too, perhaps, with a more ironical consolation, to
know that the greatest enthusiast about {236} all things connected with
the House of Stuart, the most eager collector of all Stuart relics, is
the very sovereign who is the direct descendant of the Hanoverian
electors against whom the clans were hurled at Sheriffmuir and at
Culloden, the lady and queen whom it affords a harmless gratification
to certain eccentric contemporary Jacobites to allude to as "the
Princess Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha."

[Sidenote: 1745--Swift and Stella]

In the wild October of the wild year of the Forty-five a great spirit
passed away under the most tragic conditions.  While Scotland and
England were raging for and against rebellion, the greatest mind of the
age went grimly out in Ireland.  On October 19, 1745, Jonathan Swift
died.  For years he had been but in a living death.  Racked with pain,
almost wholly bereft of reason, sometimes raging in fits of madness, he
was a fearful sight to those who watched over him.  When the end came
it came quietly.  He sank into sleep and did not wake any more.  He was
in his seventy-eighth year when he died.  A dim stone upon the darkened
wall of St. Patrick's Church in Dublin sums up, in words at once
cruelly bitter and profoundly melancholy, the story of his life.  That
mouldering inscription, niched in high obscurity, which sometimes stray
pilgrims from across the seas strain their sight to decipher in the
gloom, is the self-uttered epitaph of Jonathan Swift.  We may translate
it thus into English: "Here resteth the body of Jonathan Swift, Dean of
this Cathedral Church, where fierce indignation can lacerate his heart
no longer.  Go, traveller, imitate if thou canst a champion, strenuous
to his uttermost, of liberty."

A little way apart, shadowed by his name in death no less than in life,
lies Stella, the pale, dark-haired child whose wide eyes filled with
love as they followed the poor and lonely scholar through stately Shene
or the prim rococo epicureanism of Moor Park.  She sleeps as she lived,
at her master's feet.  She dedicated all the days of her life to Swift
with a devotion which is wellnigh without a parallel in the history of
woman's love for man.  Those {237} who stand awe-struck and reverential
in the quiet presence of the dead may well feel troubled by a haunting
influence in the twilight air of the place.  It is the haunting
influence of the secret of those two tortured lives, the secret that
lies buried between their graves.  One forgets for the moment Swift,
the fierce fighting statesman, and thinks only of the lonely man who
lived to lament for Stella.

There has hardly ever been in the world, or out of it, in the
illimitable kingdoms of fancy, a more famous pair of lovers than these
two.  Leila and Majnun, Romeo and Juliet, Petrarch and Laura--repeat
what names we may of famous lovers that the fancies of poets have ever
adored by the Tigris, or the Avon, or in the shadows of Vaucluse, the
names of Swift and Stella are found to appeal no less keenly to heart
and brain, to the imagination and to pity.  Happy they were not, and
could not be.  When we read of Swift and Stella the mind naturally
turns to that luckless pair of lovers whom Dante saw in the third
circle of hell, blown about forever on the racking wind, and finding
comfort through the lapse of eternal twilight in the companionship of
their common doom.  They, too--Swift and Stella--seem driven by the
pitiless wind of fate; they have fallen upon evil days; they are
greatly gifted, noble, greatly unhappy; they are sustained by their
strange, exquisite friendship, by the community of genius, by a tender
affection which was out of tune with the time and with their troubled
lives.  So long as Stella lived Swift was never alone.  When she died
he was alone till the end.  There is nothing in literature more
profoundly melancholy than Swift's own eloquent tribute to the memory
of his dead wife, written in a room to which he has removed so that he
may not see the light burning in the church windows, where her last
rites are being prepared.  There is no greater and no sadder life in
all the history of the last century.  The man himself was described in
the very hours when he was most famous, most courted, most flattered,
as the most unhappy man on earth.  Indeed he seems to have been most
wretched; he certainly {238} darkened the lives of the two or three
women who were so unfortunate as to love him.  But we may forget the
sadness of the personal life in the greatness of the public career.
Swift was the ardent champion of every cause that touched him; the good
friend of Ireland; he was always torn with "fierce indignation" against
oppression and injustice.  Thackeray, whose reading of the character of
Swift is far too generally accepted, finds fault with the phrase, and
blames somewhat bitterly the man who uses it, "as if," he says, "the
wretch who lay under that stone waiting God's judgment had a right to
be angry."  But it was natural that Swift, scanning life from his own
point of view, should feel a fierce indignation against wrong-doing,
injustice, dishonesty.  He was an erring man, but he had the right to
be angry with crimes of which he could never be guilty.  His ways were
not always our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts; but he walked his
way, such as it was, courageously, and the temper of his thoughts was
not unheroic.  He was loyal to his leaders in adversity; he was true to
friends who were sometimes untrue to him; his voice was always raised
against oppression; he had the courage to speak up for Ireland and her
liberties in some of the darkest days in our common history.  To
Thackeray he is only a "lonely guilty wretch," a bravo, and a bully--a
man of genius, employing that genius for selfish or vindictive purpose.
To soberer and more sympathetic judgment Thackeray's study of Swift is
a cruel caricature.  He may have been "miserrimus," but Grattan was
right when he appealed long after to the "spirit of Swift" as the
spirit of one in true sympathy with the expanding freedom of every
people--a champion, strenuous to his uttermost, of liberty.




{239}

CHAPTER XXXVII.

CHESTERFIELD IN DUBLIN CASTLE.

[Sidenote: 1746--Chesterfield in Dublin Castle]

The Jacobite rebellion had compelled the Government to withdraw some of
their troops from the continent.  France for a while was flattered and
fluttered by a series of brisk successes which left almost the whole of
the Austrian Netherlands in her possession at the end of the campaign
of 1746.  The battle of Lauffeld, near Maestricht, in Holland, in the
summer of 1747, in which the allied Austrian, Dutch, and English armies
were defeated, especially exhilarated the French Jacobites.  The French
were commanded by Marshal Saxe, the victor of Fontenoy.  The English
troops were under the command of Cumberland, and Lauffeld was therefore
regarded by them as in some sort avenging Culloden.  The victory was
largely due at Lauffeld, as it had been at Fontenoy, to the desperate
courage of the Irish Brigade, who, in the words of one of their
enemies, "fought like devils," and actually came very near to capturing
Cumberland himself.  But the tide of victory soon turned for France on
land and sea, and she became as anxious to make a peace as any other of
the belligerent powers could be.  The French were sick of the war.
Henry Pelham was writing to the Duke of Cumberland to tell him that no
more troops were to be had by England, and that, if they were to be
had, there was no more money wherewith to pay them.

Political life in England had, during all this time, been passing
through a very peculiar period of transition.  When we speak of
political life we are speaking merely of the life that went on in St.
James's Palace, in the House of Lords, and in the House of Commons.
The great bulk {240} of the middle classes, and the whole of the poorer
classes all over Great Britain, may be practically counted out when we
are making any estimate of the movement and forces in the political
life of that time.  The tendency, however, was even then towards a
development of the popular principle.  The House of Lords had ceased to
rule; the Commons had not yet begun actually to govern.  But the
Commons had become by far the more important assembly of the two; and
if the House of Commons did not govern yet, it was certain that the
King and the Ministry could only govern in the end through the House of
Commons.  The sudden shuffle of the cards of fate which had withdrawn
both Walpole and Pulteney at one and the same moment from their place
of command at either side of the field, brought with it all the
confusion of a Parliamentary transformation scene.  Nothing could have
been more strictly in the nature of the burlesque effects of a
Christmas pantomime than Walpole and Pulteney shot up into the House of
Lords, and Wilmington and Sandys set to carry on the government of the
country.

[Sidenote: 1743--"The drunken Administration"]

Yet a little, and poor, harmless, useless Wilmington was dead.  He died
in July, 1743.  Then came the troubling question, who is to be
Prime-minister?  The Ministerialists were broken into utter schism.
The Pelhams, who had for some time been secretly backed up by Walpole's
influence with the King, were struggling hard for power against
Carteret, and against such strength as Pulteney, Earl of Bath, still
possessed.  Carteret had made himself impossible by the way in which he
had conducted himself in the administration of foreign affairs.  He had
gone recklessly in for a thoroughly Hanoverian policy.  He had made
English interests entirely subservient to the interests of Hanover; or
rather, indeed, to the King's personal ideas as to the interests of
Hanover.  Carteret had the weakness of many highly cultured and highly
gifted men; he believed far too much in the supremacy of intellect and
culture.  The great rising wave of popular opinion was unnoticed by
him.  He did not see that {241} the transfer of power from the
hereditary to the representative assembly must inevitably come to mean
the transfer of power from the representatives to the represented.
Carteret in his heart despised the people and all popular movements.
Fancy being dictated to by persons who did not know Greek, who did not
know German, who did not even know Latin and French!  He was fully
convinced for a while that with his gifts he could govern the people
through the House of Commons and the House of Commons through the King.
He was not really a man of much personal ambition, unless of such
personal ambition as consists in the desire to make the most brilliant
use of one's intellectual gifts.  The effort to govern the House of
Commons through the King interested him, and called all his dearest
faculties into play.  He scorned the ordinary crafts of party
management.  If he thought a man stupid he let the man know it.  He was
rude and overbearing to his colleagues; insulting to people, however
well recommended, who came to him to solicit office or pension.  All
that sort of thing he despised, and he bluntly said as much.  "Ego et
rex meus" was his motto, as we may say it was the motto of Wolsey.  Not
Wolsey himself made a more complete failure.  The King fought hard for
Carteret; but the stars in their courses were fighting harder against
him.

Carteret's term of office was familiarly known as "the drunken
Administration."  The nickname was doubtless due in part to Carteret's
love of wine, which made him remarkable even in that day of
wine-drinking statesmen.  But the phrase had reference also to the
intoxication of intellectual recklessness with which Carteret rushed at
and rushed through his work.  It was the intoxication of too confident
and too self-conscious genius.  Carteret was drunk with high spirits,
and with the conviction that he could manage foreign affairs as nobody
else could manage them.  No doubt he knew far more about continental
affairs than any of his English contemporaries; but he made the fatal
mistake which other brilliant foreign {242} secretaries have made in
their foreign policy: he took too little account of the English people
and of prosaic public opinion at home.  In happy intoxication of this
kind he reeled and revelled along his political career like a man
delighting in a wild ride after an exciting midnight orgy.  He did not
note the coming of the cold gray dawn, and of the day when his
goings-on would become the wonder of respectable and commonplace
observers.

The cold gray dawn came, however, and the day.  The public opinion of
the country could not be kept from observing and pronouncing on the
doings of Carteret.  Carteret felt sure that he was safe in the favor
and the support of the King.  He did not remember that the return of
every cold gray dawn was telling more and more against him.  The King,
who, with all his vagaries and brutalities, had a considerable fund of
common-sense, was beginning to see that, much as he liked Carteret
personally, the time was fast approaching when Carteret would have to
be thrown overboard.  The day when the King could rule without the
House of Commons was gone.  The day when the House of Commons could
rule without the Sovereign had not come.

In truth, the Patriots were now put at a sad disadvantage.  It is a
great triumph to overthrow a great Ministry, but the triumph often
carries with it a responsibility which is too much for the victors to
bear, and which turns them into the vanquished before long.  So it
fared with the Patriots.  While they were in opposition they had
promised, as Sallust says Catiline and his friends did, seas and
mountains.  Now the time had come to show what they really could do;
and, behold, they could do nothing.  An opposition has a safe time of
it which, being directly adverse on some distinct question, principle,
or policy to the party in power, it is able to say, "Let us come into
office and we will do the very opposite; we will try to undo all that
the present ministers have been doing," and is able to carry out the
pledge.  But the opposition to Walpole had lived and flourished by
finding {243} fault with everything he did merely because it was he who
did it, and with his way of doing everything merely because it was his
way.  Nothing can be easier than for a group of clever and unscrupulous
men to make it hot for even the strongest minister if they will only
adopt such a plan of action.  This was the plan of action of the
Patriots, and they carried it out boldly, thoroughly, brilliantly, and
successfully.  But now that they had come into office they found that
they had not come into power.  The claim to power had still to be
earned for them by the success of their administration; and what was
there for them to do?  Nothing--positively nothing--but just what their
defeated opponents had been trying to do.  Hanoverian policy,
Hanoverian subsidies, foreign soldiers, standing armies--these were the
crimes for which Walpole's administration had been unsparingly
assailed.  But now came Carteret, and Carteret was on the whole rather
more Hanoverian than the King himself.  Pulteney?  Why, such influence
as Pulteney still had left was given to support Newcastle and Pelham,
Walpole's own pupils and followers, in carrying out Carteret's
Hanoverian policy.

[Sidenote: 1743--An irreparable mistake]

Carteret set up Lord Bath as leader of the Administration.  The two
Pelhams--the Duke of Newcastle and his brother, Henry Pelham--were
tremendously strong in family influence, in money, in retainers,
led-captains, and hangers-on of all kinds.  Pulteney, who had always
held a seat nominally in the Cabinet, although he had hitherto clung to
his determination not to take office, now suddenly thought fit to
change his mind.  Probably he already regretted deeply the fatal
mistake which had made him refuse to accept any office on the fall of
Walpole.  Perhaps he had fancied that the country and the Government
never could get on without him, and that he would have been literally
forced to withdraw his petulant self-denying ordinance.  But the
mistake was fatal, irreparable.  The country did not insist on having
him back at any price; the country did not seem to have been thinking
about him at all.  Now, when there seemed to be {244} something like a
new opportunity opening for him on the death of Lord Wilmington, he had
the weakness to consent to be put up as a candidate for the position of
Prime-minister.  The effort proved a failure.  The Pelhams were not
only powerful in themselves, but they were powerful also in the support
of Walpole.  Walpole still had great influence over the King, and he
naturally threw all that influence into the scale of the men who
represented his own policy, and not into the scale of those who
represented the policy of his enemies.  Walpole and the Pelhams carried
the day; Henry Pelham became Prime-minister, and from that time the
power of Carteret was gone.  This was in 1743--we are now going back a
little to take up threads which had to be dropped in order to deal with
the events springing out of the continental war, and especially the
rebellion in Scotland--and in November, 1744, Carteret was driven to
resign his office.  He had just become Earl Granville by the death of
his mother, and was exiled to the House of Lords.

The King, however, still kept up his desire to get back Lord Granville
and to get rid of the Pelhams.  George had sense enough to despise the
two brothers, and sense enough also to see when he could not do without
them.  During the February of 1746, while the Stuart rebellion was
still aflame, a ministerial crisis came on.  The Pelhams wished to
bring Pitt into the Ministry; the King blankly refused.  But the King
did more than that: he began to negotiate privately with Lord Granville
and Lord Bath.  The Pelhams knew their strength.  They at once threw up
their offices; the whole Ministry resigned in a body.  The King found
that Carteret could not possibly form an administration which would
have any support worth a moment's consideration in either House of
Parliament.  The fortunes of Charles Stuart were still looking bright
in the north, and the King found himself without a Ministry.  There was
no course open to him but one, and that was to recognize the strength
of the Pelhams and their followers, and to take back Newcastle and his
{245} brother on any terms the conquerors might be pleased to dictate.
The Pelhams came back to what might almost be called absolute power.
The King was not likely soon again to trouble them with any hostile
intervention.  Thus these two men, one stupid beyond sounding, the
other of only fair abilities, rising a little above mediocrity, had
gone into battle with some of the greatest statesmen and orators of the
age, and had come out victorious.

[Sidenote: 1743-1746--The "Broad-bottomed Ministry"]

Henry Pelham's administration was known by the slang nickname of the
"Broad-bottomed Ministry."  It is known by that nickname in history
still; will doubtless always keep the title.  The great overmastering
passion of the Pelhams was the desire to keep office and power in their
hands at any price.  Of the two brothers Henry Pelham was by far the
abler man.  His idea was to get around him all the really capable
administrators and debaters of every party, and thus make up a Ministry
which should be all-powerful, and of which all the power should be in
his hands.  Like his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, he had a sort of
half good-natured cynicism which never allowed him to doubt that if the
offices were offered to the men, the men would on any conditions accept
the offices.  The events that he had lately seen had not induced him in
any way to modify his opinion.  He had heard Pitt thundering away
against Carteret in exactly the same strain as Pitt and Carteret used
to thunder against Walpole.  He had heard Pitt denounce Carteret as "an
execrable, a sole minister, who had ruined the British nation, and
seemed to have drunk of the potion described in poetic fiction which
made men forget their country."  He had seen the policy of Walpole
quietly carried out by the very men who had bellowed against Walpole,
and had succeeded at last in driving him from office forever.  He knew
that no one now among those who used to call themselves "the Patriots"
cared one straw whether Spain did or did not withdraw her claim to the
Right of Search.  His idea, therefore, was to get all the capable men
of the various parties together, form them {246} into an
administration, and leave them to enjoy their dignity and their
emoluments while the King and he governed the country.  It was in this
spirit and with this purpose that he set himself to form the
"Broad-bottomed Ministry."  He was not, like his royal master,
tormented or even embarrassed by personal dislikes; he would take into
his Ministry any one who could be of the slightest use to him.  He
would have kept Lord Carteret if Carteret had not made himself
impossible.

[Sidenote: 1745--The Chesterfield of Dublin Castle]

The time had already come when Chesterfield had to be taken into the
Administration again.  He had made himself so particularly disagreeable
to the King when out of office, he had raked the Government, and even
the Court, so hotly with satire and invective in the House of Lords,
that George reluctantly admitted that it was better to try to live with
such a man, seeing that it began to be impossible to live without him.
So it was settled that some place should be found for Chesterfield, and
at the same time it was very desirable that a place should be found
which would not bring him much into personal association with the King.
The condition of Continental Europe, the fluctuations of the war,
suggested a natural opportunity for making use of Chesterfield's
admitted genius for diplomacy, and accordingly he was sent back to his
old quarters at the Hague.  He rendered some good service there; and
then suddenly the office of Viceroy of Ireland became vacant, and
Chesterfield was called from the Hague and sent to Dublin Castle in
1745.  He had known nothing of Ireland; he had never before been put in
any position where his gift of governing could be tried.  The gift of
governing is of course something entirely different from the gift of
managing diplomatic business; and Chesterfield had as yet had no chance
of proving any capacity but that of a parliamentary orator and a
diplomatist.  "Administration," according to Aristotle, "shows the
man."  Every one remembers the superb and only too often quoted Latin
sentence which tells of one who by the consent of all would have been
declared capable {247} of ruling if only he had not ruled.
Administration was to show the real Chesterfield.  He was just the sort
of person to whom one would have expected the Latin saying to apply.
What a likely man, everybody might have said, to make a great
administrator, if only he had not administered!  Chesterfield's record,
however, must be read the other way.  If he had never had the chance of
administering the affairs of Ireland, how should we ever have known
that he had a genius for governing men?

For, in the minds of all who understand these times and those,
Chesterfield's short season of rule in Ireland was by far the greatest
period of his career.  The Chesterfield of Dublin Castle was as high
above the Chesterfield of the House of Lords as Goldsmith the poet is
above Goldsmith the historian, or Blackstone the constitutional lawyer
is above Blackstone the poet.  Judging of Chesterfield's conduct in the
Irish Viceroyalty by Chesterfield's past career, men would have been
entitled to assume that his sympathies would go altogether with the
governing race in Ireland.  With them were the wealth, the rank, the
fashion, the elegance, the refinement.  With them was the easy-going
profession of State religion--just the sort of thing that suited
Chesterfield's ways.  What sympathy could such a man as he have with
the Celtic and Catholic Irishman?  Why should he care to be popular
with such a population?  Even such gifted, and, on the whole, patriotic
Protestants as Swift only sympathized with the Catholic Celts as an
Englishman living in Virginia, in the old plantation days, might have
sympathized with the population of negro slaves.  Chesterfield might
have entered on his formal task in the temper of graceful levity and
high-bred languid indifference.  He might have allowed the cultured and
respectable gentlemen who were his permanent officials to manage things
as they had long been doing before his time, pretty much in their own
way.  He might have given them politely to understand that so long as
they spared him any trouble in his unthankful task he would back them
up in anything they did.  He {248} might have made it plain to the
Protestant gentry and the Castle folk that his sympathies were all with
them; that he desired only to mix with them; and that it really did not
much matter what the outer population in Ireland thought of him or of
them.  Thus he would easily have become the darling of Dublin Castle;
and to most Irish Viceroys the voice of Dublin Castle was the voice of
Ireland; at all events, the only voice in Ireland to which they cared
to listen.

[Sidenote: 1745--The state of Ireland]

What did Chesterfield find in Ireland when he came to undertake the
task of government in Dublin Castle?  He found a people oppressed
almost beyond endurance by a cruel and barbarous system of penal laws
directed against the profession and the practice of the faith to which
they were passionately devoted.  No people in the world's history, not
even the Scottish Covenanters, were more absolutely absorbed by the
zeal of their faith than the Irish Catholic Celts.  The Penal Laws were
devised and were being worked with the avowed intention of extirpating
either the faith or the race--or, better still, the faith and the race.
"The Irish," said Dr. Johnson, "bursting forth," as his biographer
tells us, "with a generous indignation," "are in a most unnatural
state, for we see there the minority prevailing over the majority.
There is no instance, even in the ten persecutions, of such severity as
that which the Protestants of Ireland have exercised against the
Catholics."  The Revolution, which had brought liberty of worship to
England, had only brought harsher and more cruel repressive legislation
against liberty of worship in Ireland.  Where Chesterfield got the
ideas which he carried out from the first in his government of Ireland
it is hard to understand.  He must have had that gift of spontaneous
sympathy which is the very instinct of genius in the government of a
people among whom one has not been born, among whom one has scarcely
lived.  His mind seems to have taken in at a glance the whole state of
things.  Talleyrand said of Alexander Hamilton, the great American
statesman, that {249} he had "divined Europe."  Chesterfield had
apparently divined Ireland.

The twin curses of Ireland at the time were the Penal Laws and the
corrupt administration of Dublin Castle.  Chesterfield determined to
strike a heavy blow at each of these evil things.  He saw that the
baneful class ascendency which was engendered by the Penal Laws was as
bad in the end for the oppressors as for the oppressed.  He saw that it
was poisoning those who were administering it as well as those against
whom it was administered.  He could not abolish the Penal Laws or get
them repealed.  No man in his senses could have hoped to get the
existing Parliament either of England or of Ireland to do anything then
with the Penal Laws, except perhaps to try to make them a little more
severe and more tormenting.  Chesterfield did not waste a thought on
any such device.  He simply resolved that he would not put the Penal
Laws into action.  It has been said of Chesterfield's administration in
Ireland that it was a policy which, with certain reservations, Burke
himself might have originated and owned.  Chesterfield took the
government entirely into his own hands.  He did his very best to
suppress the jobbery which had become a tradition in the officialism of
Dublin Castle.  He established schools wherever he could.  He tried to
encourage and foster new branches of manufacture, and to give a free
way to trade, and a stimulus to all industrial arts and crafts.  He
showed himself a strong man, determined to repress crime and outrage,
but he showed himself also a just and a merciful man, determined not to
create new crimes in the hope of repressing the old offences.  The
curse of Irish repressive government has always been its tendency to
make fresh crimes, crimes unknown to the ordinary law.  Chesterfield
would have nothing of the kind.  More than that, he would not recognize
as offences the State-made crimes which so many of his predecessors had
shown themselves ruthless in trying to repress.  The confidence of the
people began to revive under his rule.  The Irish {250} Catholic began
to find that although the Penal Laws still existed, in all their
blood-thirsty and stupid clauses, he might profess and practise his
religion without the slightest fear of the informer, the prison, the
transport ship, or the hangman.  Chesterfield asked for no additional
troops from England.  On the contrary, he sent away some of the
soldiers in Ireland to help the cause of the empire on the Continent.
He was buoyant with a well-grounded confidence; and there was something
contagious in his fearless generosity and justice.  The Irish people
soon came to understand him, and almost to adore him.  He was
denounced, of course, by the alarmists and the cowards; by the Castle
hacks and the furious anti-Catholic bigots.  Chesterfield let them
denounce as long and as loudly as seemed good to them.  He never
troubled himself about their wild alarms and their savage clamor.

[Sidenote: 1745-1746--Chesterfield's recall]

Probably no Irishman who ever lived was a more bitter and
uncompromising enemy of English rule in Ireland than John Mitchel, the
rebel of 1848.  His opinion, therefore, is worth having as to the
character of Chesterfield's rule in Dublin Castle.  In his "History of
Ireland," a book which might well be more often read in this country
than it is, Mitchel says of Chesterfield: "Having satisfied himself
that there was no insurrectionary movement in the country, and none
likely to be, he was not to be moved from his tolerant courses by any
complaints or remonstrances.  Far from yielding to the feigned alarm of
those who solicited him to raise new regiments, he sent four battalions
of the soldiers then in Ireland to reinforce the Duke of Cumberland.
He discouraged jobs, kept down expenses. . . .  When some savage
Ascendency Protestant would come to him with tales of alarm, he usually
turned the conversation into a tone of light badinage which perplexed
and baffled the man.  One came to seriously put his lordship on his
guard by acquainting him with the fact that his own coachman was in the
habit of going to mass.  'Is it possible?' cried Chesterfield: 'then I
will take care the fellow shall not drive me there.'  A {251} courtier
burst into his apartment one morning, while he was sipping his
chocolate in bed, with the startling intelligence that the Papists were
rising in Connaught.  'Ah,' he said, looking at his watch, ''tis nine
o'clock--time for them to rise!'  There was evidently no dealing with
such a viceroy as this, who showed such insensibility to the perils of
Protestantism and the evil designs of the dangerous Papists.  Indeed he
was seen to distinguish by his peculiar admiration a Papist beauty,
Miss Ambrose, whom he declared to be the only 'dangerous Papist' he had
met in Ireland."  Chesterfield himself has left an exposition of his
policy which we may well believe to be genuine.  "I came determined,"
he wrote many years after, "to proscribe no set of persons whatever,
and determined to be governed by none.  Had the Papists made any
attempt to put themselves above the law, I should have taken good care
to have quelled them again.  It was said that my lenity to the Papists
had wrought no alteration either in their religious or their political
sentiments.  I did not expect that it would; but surely that was no
reason for cruelty towards them."

[Sidenote: 1745-1746--Chesterfield's recall]

It is true that Lord Chesterfield's conduct in Ireland has been found
fault with by no less devoted a friend of Ireland than Burke.  In his
letter to a peer of Ireland on the Penal Laws against the Irish
Catholics, Burke says: "This man, while he was duping the credulity of
Papists with fine words in private, and commending their good behavior
during a rebellion in Great Britain--as it well deserved to be
commended and rewarded--was capable of urging penal laws against them
in a speech from the Throne, and of stimulating with provocatives the
wearied and half-exhausted bigotry of the then Parliament of Ireland."
But Burke was a man whose public virtue was too high and unbending to
permit him to make allowance for the political arts and crafts of a
Chesterfield.  It is quite true that Chesterfield recommended in his
speech that the Irish Parliament should inquire into the working of the
Penal Laws in order to find out if they needed any {252} improvement.
But this was a mere piece of stage-play to amuse and to beguile the
stupidity and the bigotry of the Irish Parliament of those days.  It
was not a stroke of policy which a man like Burke would have
condescended to or could have approved; but it must have greatly
delighted the cynical humor of such a man as Chesterfield.  At all
events it is certain that during his administration Chesterfield
succeeded in winning the confidence and the admiration of the Catholics
of Ireland--that is to say, of five-sixths of the population of the
country.  He was very soon recalled; perhaps the King did not quite
like his growing popularity in Ireland; and when he left Dublin he was
escorted to the ship's side by an enthusiastic concourse of people, who
pressed around him to the last and prayed of him to return soon to
Ireland.  Chesterfield did not return to Ireland.  He was made one of
the Secretaries of State, and the Dublin Castle administration went on
its old familiar way.  But there is even still among the Irish people a
lingering tradition of the rule of Lord Chesterfield, and of the new
system which he tried for a while to establish in the government of
their island.




{253}

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

PRIMUS IN INDIS.

[Sidenote: 1743--Nucleus of the Anglo-Indian Empire]

Before the Jacobite rising had been put down, or the Pelhams absolutely
set up, England, without knowing it, had sent forth a new conqueror,
and might already have hailed the first promises of sway over one of
the most magnificent empires of the earth.  The name of the new
conqueror was Robert Clive; the name of the magnificent empire was
India.

At that time the influence of England over India was small to
insignificance--a scrap of Bengal, the island and town of Bombay,
Madras, and a fort or two.  The average Englishman's knowledge of India
was small even to non-existence.  The few Englishmen who ever looked
with eyes of intelligent information upon that great tract of
territory, leaf-shaped, and labelled India on the maps, knew that the
English possessions therein were few and paltry.  Three quite distinct
sections, called presidencies, each independent of the two others, and
all governed by a supreme authority whose offices were in Leadenhall
Street in London, represented the meagre nucleus of what was yet to be
the vast Anglo-Indian Empire.  The first of these three presidencies
was the Bombay presidency, where the Indian Ocean washes the Malabar
coast.  The second was in the Carnatic, on the eastern side of the
leaf, where the waters of the Bay of Bengal wash the Coromandel coast,
where the forts of St. George and St. David protected Madras and a
smaller settlement.  The third presidency was up towards the north,
where the sacred Ganges, rushing through its many mouths to the sea,
floods the Hoogly.  Here the town of Calcutta was growing up around
Fort William.

{254}

These three little presidencies, plying their poor trade, and depending
for defence upon their ill-disciplined native soldiers, the Sepahis,
whom we have come to call Sepoys, were all that had grown out of the
nearly two centuries of relations with the leaf-shaped Indian land
since first, in 1591, Captain Lancaster sailed the seas; since first
the East India Company sprang into existence.  It was not an agreeable
two centuries for Englishmen who ever thought of India to read about.
Two centuries of squabblings and strugglings with Dutch settlers and
with Portuguese settlers, of desperate truckling to native princes.  In
1664 the English East India Company found a rival more formidable than
the Dutch or the Portuguese in the French East India Company, which the
astuteness of Colbert set up at Pondicherry, and which throve with a
rapidity that quite eclipsed the poor progress of the English traders.
Even when, in 1708, the old East India Company united its fortunes with
the new Indian Company that had been formed, and thus converted one
rival into an ally, the superiority of the French remained uncontested,
and daily waxed greater and greater, until it began to seem as if, in
the words of Antony to Cleopatra, all the East should call her mistress.

[Sidenote: 1725-1743--The Clives of Market-Drayton]

Such was the condition of affairs in the year 1743, when the apparently
insignificant fact that a young gentleman of a ne'er-do-well
disposition, who seemed likely to come to a bad end in England, and who
was accordingly shipped off to India by his irritated relations,
altered and exalted the destinies not merely of a wealthy trading
company, but of the British Crown.  In the market town of
Drayton-in-Hales, better known as Market-Drayton, in Shropshire, there
lived, in the reign of George the First, a Mr. Richard Clive--a man
whose comparatively meagre abilities were divided between the
profession of the law and the cares of a small and not very valuable
estate.  In the little town on the river Tern, within sight of the old
church built by Stephen, whose architectural characteristics were then
happily unaltered by the hand of the {255} eighteenth century restorer,
the Clives had been born and given in marriage and died, and repeated
the round ever since the twelfth century.  Mr. Richard Clive, in the
reign of George the First, married a Manchester lady named Gaskill, who
bore him many children of no note whatever, but who bore him one very
noteworthy child indeed, his eldest son Robert, on September 29th, in
the year 1725.

There was a time, a long time too, during which the worthy Mr. Richard
Clive persisted in regarding the birth of this eldest son as little
less than a curse.  He could very well have said of Robert what the
Queen-mother says of Richard of Gloster, tetchy and wayward was his
infancy.  Seldom was there born into the world a more stubborn-minded,
high-spirited boy.  He may remind us a little of the young Mirabeau in
his strenuous impassioned youth; in the estimate which those nearest to
him, and most ignorant of him, formed of the young lion cub in the
domestic litter; in the strange promise which the great career
fulfilled.  There was a kind of madness in the impish pranks which the
boy Clive played in Market-Drayton, scaring the timid and scandalizing
the respectable.  He climbed to the top of the lofty steeple of that
church, which dated from the days of Stephen, and perched himself upon
a stone spout near the dizzy summit with a cool courage which Stephen
himself might have envied.  He got round him from among the idle lads
of the town "a list of lawless resolutes," and, like David, made
himself a captain over them for the purpose of levying a kind of
guerilla warfare upon the shopkeepers of the little town, and making
them pay tribute for the sanctity of their windows.  In fact, he
behaved as wildly as the wildest school-boy could behave--drifting from
school to school, to learn nothing from each new master, and only to
leave behind at each the record of an incorrigible reprobate.  Nobody
seems to have discovered that there was anything of the man of genius
in the composition of the incorrigible reprobate, and so it came about
that the town of {256} Market-Drayton in general, and the respectable
family of the Clives in particular, breathed more freely when it was
known that young Robert was "bound to John Company"--that he had
accepted a writership in the East India Service, and had actually
sailed for Madras.

The career to which the young Clive was thus devoted did not, on the
face of it, appear to be especially brilliant.  The voyage in itself,
to begin with, was a terrible business; a six months' voyage was then
regarded as an astonishingly quick passage, and in Clive's case the
voyage was longer even than usual.  It was more than a year after he
left England before he arrived at Madras, as his ship had stayed for
some months at the Brazils.  Clive arrived at Madras with no money,
with many debts, and with some facility in speaking Portuguese,
acquired during the delay in the Brazils.  He had absolutely no friends
in India, and made no friends for many months after his arrival.  It
would be hard to think of a more desolate position for a proud, shy,
high-spirited lad with a strong strain of melancholy in his
composition.  We find him sighing for Manchester with all the profound
and pathetic longing which inspires the noble old English ballad of
"Farewell, Manchester."  It is not easy for us of to-day, who associate
the name of Manchester with one of the greatest manufacturing towns in
the world, to appreciate to the full either the spirit of the old
ballad or the longing aspiration which Clive had to see again
Manchester, "the centre of all my wishes."  But if he was homesick, if
he was lonely, if he was poor in pocket and weak in health, shadowed by
melancholy and saddened by exile, he never for a moment suffered his
pride to abate or his courage to sink.  He treated his masters of the
East India Company with the same scornful spirit which he had of old
shown to the shopkeepers of Market-Drayton and the school-masters of
Shropshire.

In the wretched mood of mind and body that Clive owned during his early
days at Madras the constitutional melancholy asserted itself with
conquering force, and he {257} twice attempted his life.  On each
occasion the pistol which he turned upon his desperate and disordered
brain missed fire.  Yet Clive had meant most thoroughly and
consistently to kill himself.  He did not, like Byron, discover, after
the attempt was made, that the weapon he had aimed at his life was not
loaded.  Each time the pistol was properly charged and primed, and each
time it was the accident of the old flint-lock merely causing a flash
in the pan which saved his life.  In a nature that is melancholy a
tinge of superstition is appropriate, and it is hardly surprising if
Clive saw in the successive chance a proof that he was not meant as yet
to perish by self-slaughter.  "I must be destined for great things," he
thought, and he was right.  Between that attempt at suicide and the
next lay long years of unexampled glory, lay the pomp of Oriental
courts and the glitter of Oriental warfare, lay the foundation and
establishment of that empire of India which is to-day one of the
greatest glories of the British Crown--an empire mightier, wealthier,
statelier than any which Aurungzebe swayed, and whose might and wealth
and state were mainly due to the courage and the genius of the lonely,
melancholy lad, the humble writer in the service of John Company, who
had endeavored in his solitude and his despair to end his young life at
the muzzle of his pistol.

[Sidenote: 1707--The fall of the House of Baber]

What was the condition of India at the time when Clive was making
unavailing efforts to cut short his career?  The country itself was
given over to the wildest confusion.  With the death of Aurungzebe, in
1707, the majestic empire of the House of Baber came to an end.  The
empire of Alexander did not crumble more disastrously to pieces after
the death of the Macedonian prince than did the empire of the Moguls
fall to pieces after the death of Aurungzebe.  The pitiable and
despicable successors of a great prince, worse than Sardanapalus, worse
than the degraded Caesars of the basest days of Byzantium, squandered
their unprofitable hours in shameful pleasure while the great empire
fell to pieces, trampled by the {258} conquering feet of Persian
princes, of Afghan invaders, of wild Mahratta chiefs.  Between the
fierce invaders from the northern hills who ravaged, and levied
tribute, and established dominion of their own, and such still powerful
viceroys as held their own, and offered a nominal allegiance to the
Mogul line, the glory of the race of Tamerlane was dimmed indeed.  It
occurred to one man, watching all the welter of the Indian world, where
Mussulman and Hindoo struggled for supremacy--it occurred to Dupleix
that in this struggle lay the opportunity for some European power--for
his European power--for France--to gain for herself, and for the daring
adventurer who should shape her Oriental policy, an influence hitherto
undreamed of by the statesmen of the West.  It was not given to Dupleix
to guess that what he dreamed of and nearly accomplished was to be
carried out at last by Robert Clive.

[Sidenote: 1746--La Bourdonnais]

The history of French empire in India contains two specially
illustrious names--the name of La Bourdonnais and the name of Dupleix.
The first had practically called into existence the two colonies of the
Ile de France and of Bourbon; the second had founded the town of
Chandernagor, in the bay of Bengal, and, as governor-general of the
French East India Company, had established himself at Pondicherry with
all the luxury and more than all the luxury of a veritable Oriental
prince.  It may be that if these two men had been better able to agree
together the fortunes of the French nation in the Indies might have
been very different.  But a blind and uncompromising jealousy divided
them.  Whatever Dupleix did was wrong in the eyes of La Bourdonnais;
whatever La Bourdonnais did was wrong in the eyes of Dupleix; and
Dupleix was the stronger man of the two, and he finally triumphed for a
time.  In the war that was raging La Bourdonnais saw his opportunity.
He determined to anticipate Dupleix in beginning hostilities against
the English in India.  He set sail from the island of Bourbon with a
fleet of nine vessels which he had equipped, at his proper cost, and an
{259} army of some three thousand men, which included a large
proportion of negroes.  After a successful engagement with the ships of
war under the command of Admiral Burnett, outside Madras, La
Bourdonnais disembarked, besieged Madras, and compelled the town to
capitulate.  So far the star of La Bourdonnais was in the ascendent;
but the terms which he exacted from the conquered town were, by their
very moderation, the means of his undoing.  With the keys of the
conquered town in his hand, with the French colors floating bravely
from Fort St. George, with all the stored wealth of the company as
spoils of war, La Bourdonnais thought that he might be not unlenient in
the terms he accorded to his enemies.  He allowed the English
inhabitants of Madras to remain prisoners of war on parole, and
stipulated that the town should remain in his hands until the payment
of a ransom of some nine millions of francs.

The triumph of La Bourdonnais aroused, however, not the admiration but
the jealousy of Dupleix.  Out of La Bourdonnais's very victory the
cunning of Dupleix discovered a means to humiliate his rival.  The
vague schemes which he had formed for the authority of France, and for
his influence in India, did not at all jump with the restoration of
Madras, once conquered, to the English.  He declared that La
Bourdonnais had gone beyond his powers; that terms to the vanquished on
Indian soil could be made by the Governor of Pondicherry and the
Governor of Pondicherry alone.  He refused to ratify La Bourdonnais's
convention, and, instead, declared that the capitulation was at an end,
marched upon Madras, insisted upon the pillage and destruction of a
great portion of the town, arrested a large number of the leading
Englishmen, including the Governor of Fort St. George, and conveyed
them with all circumstances of public ignominy to Pondicherry.  As for
La Bourdonnais, who had taken so gallant a step to secure French
supremacy in India, he was placed under arrest and sent to France,
where the Bastille awaited him; he had fallen before his vindictive
rival.

The inhabitants of Madras, smarting under what may {260} fairly be
called the treachery of Dupleix, considered rightly that they were no
longer bound by the convention with the luckless La Bourdonnais.  One
at least of the inhabitants was a man not likely to be bound by the
mere letter of a convention which had already been broken in the
spirit.  Clive disguised himself as a Mussulman--we may be permitted to
wonder how a man who to the end of his days remained eccentrically
ignorant of all Eastern languages accomplished this successfully--and,
escaping from Madras, made his way to Fort St. David.  At Fort St.
David his military career began.  The desperate courage which had
carried him to the top of the tower of Stephen's church, and which had
enabled him to overawe the "military bully who was the terror of Fort
St. David," now found its best vent in "welcoming the French," like the
hero of Burns's ballad, "at the sound of the drum."  The peace which
was concluded between England and France sent Clive for a season,
however, back to the counting-house, and gave back Madras again to the
English company.

[Sidenote: 1748--The dream of Dupleix]

But the ambition of Dupleix was not a thing to be bounded by the
circumscription of war or peace between England and France.  England
and France might be at peace, but there was no need that the English
East India Company and the French East India Company should be at peace
as well.  The internal troubles of India afforded Dupleix the
opportunity he coveted of pushing his own fortunes, and doing his best
to drive the English traders out of the field.  Unfortunately for him,
however, his opportunity was also the opportunity of the young writer
and ensign who had already won the admiration and the esteem of Major
Lawrence, then looked upon as the first English officer in India.

While the French still held Madras, before the Treaty of
Aix-la-Chapelle compelled the reluctant Dupleix to restore it to the
English, a military episode, which might almost be called an accident,
had helped to confirm enormously the influence of France in India.  The
Nabob of {261} the Carnatic, offended by the action of the English
governor of Madras, who had omitted to send him those presents which
are essential to all stages of Oriental diplomacy, had practically
winked at the action of the more liberal-handed Dupleix in his movement
against Madras.  When, too late, the Nabob heard of the fall of Madras,
he sent an army to recapture the town, and called upon the French
governor to surrender it.  The governor was Duval D'Espremesnil, the
father of that mad D'Espremesnil who fuliginates through a portion of
the French Revolution.  He refused to obey the Nabob, opened fire upon
his forces, and repulsed them.  The repulse was followed a little later
by a vigorous attack of the French troops under Paradis, which smashed
the armament of the Nabob to pieces at St. Thome on November 4, 1746.
This victory gave the French a prestige of which Dupleix was the very
man to appreciate the full importance.  When, in 1748, Nizam-Al-Mulk,
the Viceroy of the Deccan, died, there arose at once pretenders not
merely to the Deccan viceroyalty, but also to the government of the
Carnatic.  The first was claimed by Mirzapha Jung; the second by Chunda
Sahib.  Mirzapha Jung and Chunda Sahib, profoundly impressed by the
triumph of French arms two years earlier, appealed to Dupleix to help
them, joined their forces, and invaded the Carnatic.

Dupleix was not unwilling to listen to the appeal of the invaders.  He
saw that the chance had arisen for him to constitute himself the
Warwick, the king-maker, of India.  He lent all the force of his
European troops, of his native troops trained in the European fashion,
and of the prestige of France to the invaders.  The old Nabob of the
Carnatic, Anaverdi Khan, was defeated and killed.  His son fled with
his broken army to Trichinopoly, and the invaders nominally, and
Dupleix actually, reigned supreme in the Carnatic.

At that moment the sun of Dupleix's fortunes reached its zenith.  He
was the chosen companion and confidant of the new Nizam of the Deccan;
he was made Governor {262} of India from the river Kristna to Cape
Comorin; he pomped it with more than Oriental splendor in the
pageantries of triumph at Pondicherry; he set up on the scene of his
victory a stately column, bearing in four languages inscriptions
celebrating his fame; he had treasure, power, and influence even to his
ambitious heart's content.  When Mirzapha Jung died, shortly after his
accession to the government of the Deccan, Dupleix held equal influence
over his successor.  He might well have believed that his glory was
complete, his plans perfected; he might well have believed that he
could afford to smile at the feeble efforts which the English made to
stay his progress.

[Sidenote: 1751--The defence of Arcot]

He soon ceased to smile.  Clive, then five-and-twenty years old, urged
upon his superiors that Trichinopoly must soon fall before famine and
leaguer, that with the overthrow of the House of Anaverdi Khan the
power of the French over India would be established, and the power of
the English in India destroyed.  The great deed to be done was to raise
the siege of Trichinopoly.  This Clive coolly proposed to do by
effecting a counter-diversion in besieging Arcot, the favored home of
the Nabobs.  With a little handful of an army--200 Europeans and 300
Sepoys--Clive marched through the wildest weather to Arcot, captured
it, and prepared to hold his conquest.  We may perhaps here be
permitted to say that in using, as we shall continue to do, the old
familiar forms of spelling the names of Indian towns and of Indian
princes, we do so not in ignorance of the fact that in many, if not
most cases, they present but a very poor idea indeed of the actual
Oriental sounds and spelling.  The modern writers on Indian history
adopt a new and more scientific spelling, which makes Arcot Arkat, and
Trichinopoly Trichinapalli.  But, all things considered, it seems best
for the present to adhere to those old forms which have become, as it
were, portion and parcel of English history.

Chunda Sahib, who was besieging Trichinopoly, immediately despatched
4000 men against Arcot, which, {263} joining with the defeated garrison
and a few French, made up a muster of some 10,000 men under Rajah
Sahib, Chunda Sahib's son, against a garrison of little more than 300.
The defence of Arcot is one of the most brilliant episodes in history.
It reads rather like some of those desperate and heroic adventures in
which the fiction of the elder Dumas delighted than the sober chronicle
of recorded warfare.  For fifty days the siege raged.  For fifty days
Rajah Sahib did his best to take the town, and for fifty days Clive and
his little band of Europeans and Sepoys frustrated all his efforts.
The stubborn defence began to create allies.  The fighting capacity of
the English had come to be regarded with great contempt by the native
races, but the contempt was now rapidly changing to admiration.  Murari
Rao, the great Mahratta leader, who had been hired to assist the cause
of Mohammed Ali, but who had hitherto hung in idleness upon the
Carnatic frontier, convinced that the English must be defeated, now
declared that since he had learned that the "English could fight," he
was willing to fight for them, and with them, and prepared to move to
the assistance of Clive.  Before they could arrive, Rajah Sahib made a
desperate last effort to capture Arcot, was completely defeated with
great loss, and withdrew from Arcot, leaving Clive and his little army
masters of the place.

Great was the glory of Clive in Fort St. George; but Clive was not
going to content himself with so much and no more.  With an army
increased to nearly a thousand men, he assailed the enemy, defeated
Rajah Sahib once and again, and in his triumphal progress caused to be
razed to the ground the memorial city which the pride of Dupleix had
erected to his victory, and the vaunting monument which set forth in
four languages the glory of his deeds.  The astonished Nabobs began for
the first time to understand that the glory of France was not
invincible, that a new star had arisen before which the star of Dupleix
must pale, and might vanish.  The star of Clive continued to mount.
Though the arrival of Major Lawrence from {264} England took away from
his hands the chief command, he worked under Lawrence as gallantly as
when he was alone responsible for his desperate undertakings, and
success, as before, followed all the enterprises in which he was
concerned.

Trichinopoly was relieved; Chunda Sahib was captured by the Mahrattas
and put to death; Covelong and Chingkeput, two of the most important
French forts, were captured by Clive with an army as unpromising as
Falstaff's ragged regiment.  At this point, and on the full tide of
victory, Clive's health broke down, and he was compelled to return to
England for change of climate.  Before he left Madras he married Miss
Maskelyne.  Never did a man return to his native land under more
auspicious conditions who had gone thence under conditions so
inauspicious.  The bad boy of Market-Drayton was now the illustrious
and opulent soldier whom the gentlemen of the India House delighted to
salute as General Clive, and about whom it seemed as if it was
impossible for the nation to make too much ado.

[Sidenote: 1755--Back to India]

Clive was now seized with the ambition to play a part in home politics.
The general election of 1754 seemed to offer him a tempting opportunity
of entering Parliament.  He came forward as one of the members for St.
Michael's in Cornwall, was opposed by Newcastle, and supported by
Sandwich and Fox, was returned, was petitioned against, and was
unseated on petition.  To fight a parliamentary election in those days
meant the spending of a very great deal of money, and Clive, who had
squandered his well-earned fortune right and left since his return to
his native land, found himself, after he was unseated, in a decidedly
disagreeable position.  His money was dwindling; his hope of political
triumphs had vanished into thin air; naturally enough, his thoughts
turned back to the India of his youth.  The curious good-luck that
always attended upon him stood him in good stead here.  If he had need
of the India of his youth, the India of his youth had need of him.  If
France and England were not at {265} war, the rumor of war was busy
between them, and there was a desire for good leaders in the advancing
English colonies in India.  Poor Dupleix was out of the way already.
The brilliant spirit whom Clive's genius had over-crowed had vanished
forever from the scenes of his triumphs and his humiliations.  He had
suffered something of the same hard measure that he had himself meted
out to his colleague La Bourdonnais; he had been recalled in
comparative disgrace to France, with ruined fortunes and ruined hopes,
to die, a defeated and degraded man, the shadow of his own great name.
But the influence of France was not extinct in India; it might at any
moment reassert itself--at any moment come to the push of arms between
France and England in the East as well as in the West; and where could
the English look for so capable a leader of men as Clive?  So it came
about that in the year 1755 Clive again sailed the seas for India,
under very different conditions from those under which he first
adventured for the East.  Then he was an unknown, unappreciated
rapscallion of a lad, needy, homesick, desperate, and alone; now he was
going out as the Governor of Fort St. David, as lieutenant-colonel in
the British army, with a record of fame and fortune behind him.  New
fame, new fortune, awaited him almost on the very moment of his arrival
in India.  The pirate stronghold of Gheriah fell before him almost as
easily as if the place had been a new Jericho and Clive a second
Joshua.  But there was greater work in store for him than the
destruction of pirate strongholds.  Bengal became suddenly the theatre
of a terrible drama.  Up to the year 1756 the tranquillity of the
English settlers and traders in Bengal had been undisturbed.  Their
relations with the Nabob Ali Vardi Khan had been of the friendliest
kind, and the very friendliness of those relations had had the effect
of making the English residents in Bengal, like the native population,
men of a milder mould than those whom hard fortune had fashioned into
soldiers and statesmen at Madras.  But in the year 1758 the Nabob Ali
Vardi Khan died, and was {266} succeeded by his grandson, Siraju'd
Daulah, infamous in English history as Surajah Dowlah.

[Sidenote: 1756--The Blackhole]

This creature, who incarnated in his own proper person all the worst
vices of the East, without apparently possessing any of the East's
redeeming virtues, cherished a very bitter hatred of the English.
Surajah Dowlah was unblessed with the faintest glimmerings of
statesmanship; it seemed to his enfeebled mind that it would be not
only a very good thing to drive the English out of Bengal, but that it
would be also an exceedingly easy thing to do.  All he wanted, it
seemed to him, was a pretext, and to such a mind a pretext was readily
forthcoming.  Had not the English dogs fortified their settlement
without his permission?  Had they not afforded shelter to some victim
flying from his omnivorous rapacity?  These were pretexts good enough
to serve the insane brain of Surajah Dowlah.  He attacked Fort William
with an overwhelming force; the English traders, unwarlike, timorous,
and deserted by their leaders, made little or no resistance; the madman
had Fort William in his power, and used his power like a madman.  The
memory of the Blackhole of Calcutta still remains a mark of horror and
of terror upon our annals of Indian empire.  When Lord Macaulay,
eighty-four years after the event, penned his famous passage in which
he declared that nothing in history or in fiction, not even the story
which Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, approached the
horrors of the Blackhole, he wrote before the worst horrors of Indian
history had yet become portion and parcel of our own history.  But even
those who write to-day, more than a century and a quarter after that
time; those in whose minds the memories are fresh of the butcher's well
at Cawnpore and the massacre on the river-bank; those to whom the names
of Nana Sahib and Azimoolah Khan sound as horridly as the names of
fiends--even those can still think of the Blackhole as almost
incomparable in horror, and of Surajah Dowlah as among the worst of
Oriental murderers.  It is true that certain efforts have been made to
reduce the {267} measure of Surajah Dowlah's guilt.  Colonel Malleson,
than whom there is no fairer or abler Indian historian, thinks there
can be no doubt that Surajah Dowlah did not desire the death of his
English prisoners.  Mr. Holwell, one of the few survivors of that awful
night, the man whose narrative thrilled and still thrills, horrified
and still horrifies, the civilized world, does give testimony that goes
towards clearing the character of Surajah Dowlah from direct complicity
in that terrible crime.  "I had in all three interviews with him," he
wrote, "the last in Darbar before seven, when he repeated his
assurances to me, on the word of a soldier, that no harm should come to
us; and, indeed, I believe his orders were only general that we for
that night should be secured, and that what followed was the result of
revenge and resentment in the breasts of the lower jemidars to whose
custody we were delivered for the number of their order killed during
the siege."  Yet these words do not go far to cleanse Surajah Dowlah's
memory.  What had occurred?  The English prisoners were brought before
the triumphant Nabob, bullied and insulted, and finally left in charge
of the Nabob's soldiery, while the Nabob himself retired to slumber.
The soldiery, whether prompted by revenge or mere merciless cruelty,
forced the prisoners, one hundred and forty-six in number, into the
garrison prison--a fearful place, only twenty feet square, known as the
Blackhole.  The senses sicken in reading what happened after this
determination was carried out.  The death-struggles of those unhappy
English people crowded in that narrow space, without air, in the
fearful summer heat, stir the profoundest pity, the profoundest
anguish.  The Nabob's soldiers all through that fearful night revelled
in the sights and sounds that their victims' sufferings offered to them.

When the night did end and the awakened despot did allow the door of
the Blackhole to be opened, only twenty-three out of the hundred and
forty-six victims were alive.  The hundred and twenty-three dead bodies
were hurriedly buried in a common pit.

{268}

It is simply impossible to exonerate Surajah Dowlah from the shame and
stain of that deed.  The savage who passed "the word of a soldier" that
the lives of his prisoners should be spared took no precautions to
insure the carrying out of his promise.  If, as Mr. Holwell says, the
lower jemidars were thirsting for revenge, then the Nabob, who gave his
prisoners over to the care of those jemidars, was directly responsible
for their deeds.  Even in Surajah Dowlah's army there must have been
men, there must have been officers, to whom the tyrant, if he had
wished his prisoners to be well treated, could have intrusted them, in
the full confidence and certainty that his commands would be carried
out, and his humane wishes humanely interpreted.  But even if by the
utmost straining we can in any degree acquit the Nabob of direct
personal responsibility before the act, his subsequent conduct involves
him in direct complicity, and forces upon him all the responsibility
and all the infamy.  He did not punish the miscreants who forced their
victims into the Blackhole, and who gloated over their appalling
sufferings.  He did not treat the survivors with ordinary humanity.  He
was evidently convinced that he could deal with the wretched English as
he pleased, that their power in India was annihilated, that Surajah
Dowlah was among the mightiest princes of the earth.

[Sidenote: 1757--Plot and counterplot]

For six long months, for a fantastical half-year, Surajah Dowlah
revelled in the crazy dream of his own omnipotence.  Then came
retribution, swift, successive, comprehensive.  Clive was upon
him--Clive the unconquerable, sacking his towns, putting his garrisons
to the sword, recapturing those places from which Surajah Dowlah had
imagined that he had banished the Englishman forever.  The news of the
tragedy of the Blackhole, and of the capture of Calcutta and Fort
William, had reached Madras in August, and the warlike community had
resolved upon prompt and speedy revenge.  But it took time to raise the
expedition, took time to despatch the expedition.  In October the army
of two thousand four hundred men, {269} of which nine hundred were
European troops, and fifteen hundred Sepoys, sailed for the Hoogly,
under Clive as military, and Admiral Watson as naval, commander.
Hostile winds delayed the armament until December, but when it did
reach its destination it carried all before it.  The luck which always
attended upon Clive was still faithful to him.  The Nabob, at the head
of his vast hordes, was soon as eager to come to terms with Clive at
the head of his little handful of men as he had before been eager to
obliterate the recollection of the Englishmen from the soil of Bengal.
He offered to treat with Clive; he was ready to make terms which from a
military point of view were satisfactory; he was evidently convinced
that he had underrated the power of England, and he was prepared to pay
a heavy penalty for his blunder.

We are now approaching that chapter of Clive's career which has served
his enemies with their readiest weapon, and has filled his admirers
with the deepest regret.  The negotiations between Clive and Surajah
Dowlah were conducted on the part of all the Orientals concerned, from
Surajah Dowlah to Omichund, the wealthy Bengalee who played the part of
go-between, with an amount of treachery that has not been surpassed
even in the tortuous records of Oriental treachery.  But unhappily the
treachery was not confined to the Oriental negotiators; not confined to
the wretched despot on the throne; not confined to Meer Jaffier, the
principal commander of his troops, who wanted the throne for himself;
not confined to the unscrupulous Omichund, who plotted with his left
hand against Surajah Dowlah, and with his right hand against the
English.  Treachery as audacious, treachery more ingenious, treachery
more successful, was deliberately practised by Clive.  The brilliant
and gallant soldier of fortune showed himself to be more than a match
for Oriental cunning in all the worst vices of a vicious Oriental
diplomacy.  If Surajah Dowlah was unable to make up his miserable mind,
if he alternately promised and denied, cajoled and threatened, Clive,
on his side, while affecting to treat {270} with Surajah Dowlah, was
deliberately supporting the powerful conspiracy against Surajah Dowlah,
the object of which was to place Meer Jaffier on the throne.  If
Omichund, with the keys of the conspiracy in his hand, threatened to
betray all to Surajah Dowlah unless he was promised the heaviest
hush-money, Clive on his side was perfectly ready to promise without
the remotest intention of paying.  If Omichund, wary and suspicious,
was determined to have his bond in writing, Clive was quite ready to
meet him with a false and fraudulent bond.  Clive professed to be
perfectly willing that in the secret treaty which was being drawn up
between the English and Meer Jaffier a clause should be inserted
promising the fulfilment of all Omichund's claims.  But as Clive had
not the remotest intention of satisfying those claims, he composedly
prepared two treaties.  One--the one by which he and Meer Jaffier were
to be bound--was written on white paper, and contained no allusion to
the avaricious Omichund.  [Sidenote: 1757--The Red Treaty] Another, on
red paper, which was to be disregarded by the parties to the swindle,
contained a paragraph according to Omichund's heart's desire.  Thus bad
begins, but worse remains behind.  Clive, to his great astonishment,
found that Admiral Watson entertained different views from his about
the honor of an English soldier and gentleman.  However convenient it
might be to bamboozle Omichund with a sham treaty, Admiral Watson
declined to be a party to the trick by signing his name to the
fraudulent document.  Yet Admiral Watson's name was essential to the
success of the Red Treaty, and Clive showed that he was not a man to
stick at trifles.  He wanted Admiral Watson's signature; he knew that
Omichund would want Admiral Watson's signature; he satisfied himself,
and he satisfied Omichund, by forging Admiral Watson's signature at the
bottom of the Red Treaty.

It is simply impossible to imagine any defence of Clive's conduct in
this most disgraceful business.  The best that can be said for him is
that the whole process of the {271} treason was so infamous, the
fabrication of the Red Treaty so revolting a piece of duplicity, that
the forging of Admiral Watson's name does not materially add to the
darkness of the complete transaction.  Nothing can palliate Clive's
conduct.  It may, indeed, be said that as civilized troops after long
engagements in petty wars with savage races lose that morale and
discipline which come from contests with their military peers, so minds
steeped in the degrading atmosphere of Oriental diplomacy become
inevitably corrupted, and lose the fine distinction between right and
wrong.  But so specious a piece of special pleading cannot serve
Clive's turn.  English diplomacy at home and abroad has always, with
the rarest exceptions, plumed itself on its truthfulness, and has often
been successful by reason of that very truthfulness.  The practically
unanimous condemnation which Clive's countrymen then and since have
passed upon his action with regard to the Red Treaty is the best answer
to all such pitiful prevarications.

However, Clive did prepare a sham treaty, did forge Admiral Watson's
name, did fool Omichund to the top of his bent.  Omichund being thus
cunningly bought over, Clive prepared for action, flung defiance at
Surajah Dowlah, and marched against him.  On June 23, 1757, the fate of
England in India was decided by the famous battle of Plassey, or, as it
should be more correctly called, Palasi.

Plassey was a great victory.  Yet, in the words of the conspirator in
Ben Jonson's "Catiline," it was but "a cast at dice in Fortune's hand"
that it might have been a great defeat, Clive was astonishingly,
grotesquely out-numbered.  The legendary deeds of chivalrous paladins
who at the head of a little body of knights sweep away whole hosts of
paynims at Saragossa or Roncesvalles were rivalled by Clive's audacity
in opposing his few regiments to the swollen armament of the Nabob.
Moreover, Meer Jaffier, whose alliance with the English, whose treason
to Surajah Dowlah, was an important part of the scheme, {272} was not
to be counted upon.  He hesitated, unwilling to fling his fortunes into
the English scale before he was convinced that the English were certain
of success, although he was himself one of the most important factors
in the possibility of that success.  But the greatest danger that
threatened the English arms was, curiously enough, due to Clive
himself.  On the eve of Plassey he held a council of war at which it
was discussed whether they should fight at once or postpone fighting to
what might seem a more seasonable opportunity.  Clive at this council
departed from his usual custom.  He gave his own vote first, and he
voted against taking any immediate action.  Naturally enough, the
majority of the council of war voted with Clive, in spite of the
strenuous opposition of Major Eyre Coote and a small minority.  By a
majority of thirteen to seven it was resolved not to fight.

It is needless to speculate on what would have been the fortunes of the
English in Bengal if that vote had settled the question.  Luckily,
Clive was a man of genius, and was not either afraid to admit that he
had made a mistake, or to change his mind.  A short period of solitary
reflection convinced him that he and the majority were wrong, and that
Eyre Coote and the minority were right.  He informed Eyre Coote of his
new decision, gave the necessary orders, and the next day the battle of
Plassey was fought and won.

It is not necessary here to go into the details of that momentous day.
The desperate courage, daring, and skill of the English troops carried
all before them; their cannonade scattered death and confusion into the
Nabob's ranks.  Within an hour an army of sixty thousand men was
defeated, with astonishingly slight loss to the victors; Surajah
Dowlah, abandoned at the judicious moment by one traitor, Meer Jaffier,
was flying for his life in obedience to the insidious counsels of
another traitor, Rajah Dulab Ram.  From that hour Bengal became part of
the English empire.

{273}

The fate of the different actors on the Indian side was soon decided.
Meer Jaffier was duly invested with the Nabob's authority over Bengal,
Behar, and Orissa; Omichund, on learning the shameful trick of the Red
Treaty, went mad and died mad; Surajah Dowlah was soon captured and
promptly killed by Meer Jaffier: the Blackhole was avenged.

[Sidenote: 1757--The conqueror returns]

Clive had now reached the pinnacle of his greatness.  Victor of
Plassey, Governor of Bengal, he remained in India for three more
resplendent years; he added to the number of his conquests by defeating
the great enterprise of Shah Alum against Meer Jaffier, and shattered
the Dutch descent upon the Hoogly--a descent secretly favored by the
ever-treacherous Meer Jaffier--both on land and sea.  Then, with laurel
victory upon his sword, and smooth success strewn before his feet,
Clive resolved to return again to England.  He sailed from India, full
of honors, in 1760, the year in which George the Second died.  When he
arrived in England George the Third was king.  Here for the moment we
must leave him, the greatest living soldier of his country, with a
career of practically unbroken glory behind him.  He had reached his
apogee.  We shall meet with him again under less happy conditions, when
the sun of Plassey had begun to set.




{274}

CHAPTER XXXIX.

CHANGES.

[Sidenote: 1751--"Give us back our eleven days"]

Meanwhile some changes were taking place in political affairs at home
which were full of importance to the coming time.  William Pitt had
taken office; not, indeed, an office important enough for his genius,
but still one which gave him an opportunity of making his power felt.
The King still detested him; all the more, perhaps, because it was now
becoming more and more evident that the King would have to reckon with
him as Prime-minister before very long.  The stately form of Pitt was,
indeed, already throwing a gigantic shadow before it.  Henry Fox, too,
was beginning to show himself an administrator and a debater, and, it
may be added, a political intriguer, of all but consummate ability.
Murray was beginning to be recognized as a great advocate, and even a
great man.  Lyttelton was still making brilliant way in politics, but
was even yet hovering somewhat uncertain between politics and
literature, destined in the end to become another illustration of the
career marred for both fields by the effort to work in both fields.  On
the other hand, Chesterfield had given up office.  He had had a dispute
with his colleagues when he was strongly in favor of making a peace,
and they would not have it, and he left them to go their own way.  He
refused the title of duke which the King offered him.  He withdrew for
the remainder of his years to private life, saying: "I have been behind
the scenes both of pleasure and business; I have seen all the coarse
pulleys and dirty ropes which exhibit and move all the gaudy machines;
and I have seen and smelt the tallow candles which illuminate the whole
{275} decoration to the astonishment and admiration of the ignorant
multitude."  He seldom spoke in Parliament afterwards; he was growing
deaf and weary.  In 1751 he broke silence, and with success, when he
delivered his celebrated speech on the reform of the calendar.  He was
"coached," as we should say now, by two able mathematicians, the Earl
of Macclesfield and Mr. Bradley.  The ignorant portion of the public
were greatly excited by what they considered the loss of eleven days,
and were strongly opposed to the whole scheme.  Years later, when Mr.
Bradley was sinking under mortal disease, many people ascribed his
sufferings to a judgment from Heaven for having taken part in that
"impious undertaking."

The "impious undertaking" was a very needed scientific reform in the
calendar, which had long before been adopted in some other countries.
Julius Caesar was the first great regulator of the calendar; his work
in that way was not the least wonderful of his achievements.  The
calculations of his astronomers, however, were discovered in much later
times to be "out" by eleven minutes in each year.  When Pope Gregory
the Thirteenth came to the throne of the papacy, in 1572, he found that
the eleven minutes had grown by mere process of time to eleven days.
He started a new reform of the calendar, which was adopted at once in
Italy, Spain, and Portugal.  It gradually commended itself to France
and Germany, and it was adopted by Denmark and Sweden in 1700.  England
only came into line with the reform of the calendar in 1751.  The Act
of Parliament which sanctioned the change brought in the use of the
words "new style" and "old style."  Only Russia and Greece now of
European countries cling to the old style.  But the new style, as we
have said, was bitterly resented by the mob in England, and every one
remembers Hogarth's picture of the patriot drunk in the gutter with his
banner near him bearing the inscription, "Give us back our eleven days."

Chesterfield laughed at the success of his speech on the {276} reform
of the calendar, and made little of it.  Perhaps he helped thus to
explain the comparative failure of his whole career.  Life was to him
too much of a gibe and a sarcasm, and life will not be taken on those
terms.

Lord Chesterfield was then out of the running, and Lord Granville's
active career had closed.  The men of the older school had had their
day; the new men had pushed them from their stools.  The age of Walpole
is closed.  The age of Chatham is about to open.

[Sidenote: 1751--Fred's epitaphs]

Early in the year 1751 death removed one of the elements of discord
from the family circle of George the Second.  The end had come for
Frederick, Prince of Wales.  The long, unnatural struggle was brought
very suddenly to a close.  On the 12th of March, 1751, the prince, who
had been suffering from pleurisy, went to the House of Lords, and
caught a chill which brought on a relapse.  "Je sens la mort," he cried
out on the 20th of March, and the princess, hearing the cry, ran
towards him, and found that he was indeed dead.  The general feeling of
the country was perhaps not unfairly represented in the famous epigram
which became the talk of the town:

  "Here lies Fred,
  Who was alive and is dead.
  Had it been his father,
  I had much rather;
  Had it been his brother,
  Still better than another;
  Had it been his sister,
  No one would have missed her;
  Had it been the whole generation,
  Still better for the nation.
  But since it is only Fred,
  Who was alive and is dead,
  There's no more to be said."

It is curious to contrast this grim suggestion for an epitaph on the
dead prince with the stately volume which the University of Oxford
issued from the Clarendon Press: "Epicedia Oxoniensia in obitum
celsissimi et desideratissimi Frederici Principis Walliae."  Here an
{277} obsequious vice-chancellor displayed all the splendors of a
tinsel Latinity in the affectation of offering a despairing king and
father such consolations for his loss as the Oxonian Muses might offer.
Here Lord Viscount Stormont, in desperate imitation of Milton, did his
best to teach

  "The mimic Nymph that haunts the winding Verge
  And oozy current of Parisian Seine"

to weep for Frederick.

  "For well was Fred'rick loved and well deserv'd,
  His voice was ever sweet, and on his lips
  Attended ever the alluring grace
  Of gentle lowliness and social zeal."

The hind who labored was to weep for him, and the artificer to ply his
varied woof in sullen sadness, and the mariner,

          "Who many moons
  Has counted, beating still the foamy Surge,
  And treads at last the wish'd-for beach, shall stand
  Appall'd at the sad tale."


Here all the learned languages, and not the learned languages alone,
contributed their syllables of simulated despair.  Many scholastic
gentlemen mourned in Greek; James Stillingfleet found vent in Hebrew;
Mr. Betts concealed his tears under the cloak of the Syriac speech;
George Costard sorrowed in Arabic that might have amazed Abu
l'Atahiyeh; Mr. Swinton's learned sock stirred him to Phoenician and
Etruscan; and Mr. Evans, full of national fire and the traditions of
the bards, delivered himself, and at great length too, in Welsh.  The
wail of this "Welsh fairy" is the fine flower of this funeral wreath of
pedantic and unconscious irony.

Poor Frederick had played a little with literature in his idle time.
He had amused himself with letters as he had amused himself with
literary men, and sometimes with rallying a bevy of the maids of honor
to the bombardment of a pasteboard citadel and a cannonade of
sugar-plums.  {278} He had written verses; among the rest, a love
tribute to his wife, full of rapture and enriched with the most
outspoken description of her various charms of person, which, however,
he assures us, were nothing to her charms of mind.  Probably he was
very fond of his wife; we have already said that it is likely he
carried on his amours with other women chiefly because he thought it
one of the duties of his princely station.  Perhaps we may assume that
he must have had some good qualities of his own; he certainly got
little teaching or example of goodness from most of those who
surrounded him in the days when he could yet have been taught.

The new heir to the throne was George, Frederick's eldest son, who was
born in London on June 4, 1738, and was now, therefore, in his
thirteenth year.  Frederick's wife had already given birth to eight
children, and was expected very soon to bring forth another.  George
was a seven-months' child.  His health was so miserably delicate that
it was believed he could not live.  It was doubted at first whether it
would be physically possible to rear him; and it would not have been
possible if the ordinary Court customs were to be followed.  But the
infant George was wisely handed over to the charge of a robust and
healthy young peasant woman, a gardener's wife, who took fondest care
of him and adored him, and by whose early nursing he lived to be George
the Third.

[Sidenote: 1753--The last of Bolingbroke]

The year 1751, which may be said to have opened with the death of poor
Frederick, closed with the death of a man greater by far than any
prince of the House of Hanover.  On December 12th Bolingbroke passed
away.  He had settled himself quietly down in his old home at
Battersea, and there he died.  He had outlived his closest friends and
his keenest enemies.  The wife--the second wife--to whom, with all his
faults, he had been much devoted--was long dead.  Pope and Gay, and
Arbuthnot, and "Matt" Prior and Swift were dead.  Walpole, his great
opponent, was dead.  All chance of a return to public life had faded
years before.  New conditions and {279} new men had arisen.  He was
old--was in his seventy-fourth year; there was not much left to him to
live for.  There had been a good deal of the spirit of the classic
philosopher about him--the school of Epictetus, not the school of
Aristotle or Plato.  He was a Georgian Epictetus with a dash of
Gallicized grace about him.  He made the most out of everything as it
came, and probably got some comfort out of disappointment as well as
out of success.  Life had been for him one long dramatic performance,
and he played it out consistently to the end.  He had long believed
himself a formidable enemy to Christianity--at least to revealed
religion.  He made arrangements by his will for the publication, among
other writings, of certain essays which were designed to give
Christianity its death-blow, and, having satisfactorily settled that
business and disposed in advance of the faith of coming ages, he turned
his face to the wall and died.

The reign of George the Second was not a great era of reform; but there
was accomplished about this time a measure of reform which we cannot
omit to mention.  This was the Marriage Act, brought in and passed by
Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, in 1753.  The Marriage Act
provided that no marriage should be legal in England unless the banns
had been put up in the parish church for three successive Sundays
previously, or a special license had been obtained from the archbishop,
and unless the marriage were celebrated in the parish church.  The Bill
provided that any clergyman celebrating a marriage without these
formalities should be liable to penal servitude for seven years.  This
piece of legislation put a stop to some of the most shocking and
disgraceful abuses in certain classes of English social life.  With
other abuses went the infamous Fleet marriages--marriages performed by
broken-down and disreputable clergymen whose headquarters were very
commonly the Fleet prison--"couple-beggars" who would perform the
marriage ceremony between any man and woman without asking questions,
sometimes not even asking their names, provided {280} they got a fee
for the performance.  Men of this class, a scandal to their order, and
still more to the system of law which allowed them to flourish, were to
be found at almost every pothouse in the populous neighborhoods, ready
to ply their trade at any moment.  Perhaps a drunken young lad was
brought up to be married in a half unconscious state to some elderly
prostitute, perhaps some rich young woman was carried off against her
will to be married forcibly to some man who wanted her money.  The
Fleet parson asked no questions, did his work, and pocketed his
fee--and the marriage was legal.  Lord Hardwicke's Act stopped the
business and relegated the Fleet parson to the pages of romance.

[Sidenote: 1759--England's control in North America]

Years went on--years of quiet at home, save for little ministerial
wrangles--years of almost uninterrupted war abroad.  The peace that was
patched up at Aix-la-Chapelle was evidently a peace that could not
last--that was not meant to last.  If no other European power would
have broken it, England herself probably would, for the arrangements
were believed at home to be very much to her disadvantage, and were
highly unpopular.  But there was no need for England to begin.  The
Family Compact was in full force.  The Bourbons of France were
determined to gain more than they had got; the Bourbons of Spain were
eager to recover what they had lost.  The genius and daring of
Frederick of Prussia were not likely to remain inactive.  As we have
seen, the war between England and France raged on in India without
regard to treaties and truces on the European continent.  There was, in
fact, a great trial of strength going on, and it had to be fought out.
England and France had yet another stage to struggle on as well as
Europe and India.  They had the continent of North America.  There were
always some disputes about boundaries going on there; and a dispute
concerning a boundary between two States which are mistrustful of one
another is like a flickering flame close to a train of gunpowder.  The
renewal of war on the Continent gave for the first time its full chance
to the {281} genius of William Pitt as a great war minister.  The
breaking out of war in North America established England as the
controlling power there, and settled forever the pretensions of France
and of Spain.  It is not necessary for us in this history to follow the
course of the continental wars.  The great results of these to England
were worked out on other soil.




{282}

CHAPTER XL.

CANADA.

[Sidenote: 1756--The struggle for Canada]

We have seen that, when the young Duke of Cumberland, after the battle
of Culloden, was earning his right to the title of "Butcher," one
English officer at least had the courage to protest by his actions
against the atrocities of the English general.  That soldier was James
Wolfe, then a young lieutenant-colonel, who had served his
apprenticeship to arms in the Low Countries in the war of the Austrian
Succession, and earned by his courage and his abilities an honorable
name.  He was destined to make that name famous by the part he was to
play in the events that were taking place in Canada.  The red-haired,
unattractive soldier, whose cold and almost repellent manner concealed
some of the highest qualities, was fated to do as much for the glory of
the English Empire in one part of the world as Clive in another.  But
there could hardly be two men more different than Clive and Wolfe.  The
one was always an adventurer--a gentleman adventurer, indeed, and a
brilliant specimen of the class, but an adventurer still, and with some
of the worst vices of his kind.  Wolfe, on the contrary, resembled more
the better men among those Puritan soldiers who rallied around the name
of Cromwell and battled beneath the standards of Monk.  He cherished an
austere ideal of public and private virtue.  The sweet, simple gravity
of the man's nature lives for us very vividly in the portrait Thackeray
draws of him in the pages of "The Virginians," where so many of the
famous figures of the crowded last century world seem to take bodily
shape again and live and move around us.

{283}

From the end of the fifteenth century, when John and Sebastian Cabot
discovered Canada, France considered that portion of the New World as
her own.  Early in the sixteenth century a French expedition under
Verazzani formed a settlement named New France, and eleven years later
the Breton Jacques Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence as far as the site
of Montreal.  The first permanent settlement was made in 1608, when
Quebec was founded.  From that time Quebec seems like the prize for
which English and French arms are to strive.  Canada was taken by the
English in 1629, only to be restored in 1632; but when more than a
century later France and England were newly at war, the serious and
final struggle for the possession of Canada took place.

The French settlements in America were called Canada and Louisiana.
The one comprehended the basin of the St. Lawrence River and the Great
Lakes, with a vast extent of territory west and north to the Pacific
and Arctic oceans.  It was, as has been happily said, a convenient
maxim in those days of our colonization, that whoever possessed the
coast had a right to all the inland territory as far as from sea to
sea.  While this gave England its boundaries from north to south, it
left from east to west open to French fancy and French ambition.
Louisiana was a term which covered in English eyes only the Mississippi
mouths and a few stations along the Mississippi and Ohio valleys; in
French minds the term extended to all the territory bounded to the
north by Canada and to the south by Mexico, and stretching from the
Alleghanies to the Pacific.

The French settlements in Canada were administered very much upon the
same happy-go-lucky system as that which prevailed in France at home
under the beneficent influence of the Old Order, and which at home was
slowly and surely preparing the way for the French Revolution.  The
ministers in Paris governed the colonies through governors who were
supreme in their own districts, but who possessed no power whatever of
initiating any laws for the people they swayed.

{284}

The English colonies were very different from those of the French.
Founded in the early days of religious persecution by men too
strong-minded to accept tyranny or to make composition with their
consciences, the new colonies of Englishmen in America had thriven in
accordance with the antique spirit of independence which had called
them into existence.  The colonists were a hardy, a stubborn, and a
high-minded people, well fitted to battle with the elements and the
Indians, and to preserve, under new conditions, the austere standard of
morality which led them to look for liberty across the sea.  The creed
which they professed endowed them with a capacity for self-government,
and taught them the arts of administration and the polity of free
States.  The English colonies, as they throve and extended, were not
without their faults.  The faith which their founders professed was a
gloomy faith, and left its mark in gloom upon the characters of the
people and the tenor of their laws.  The Ironside quality of their
creed showed itself in the cruelties with which they visited the
Indians; the severity of their tenets was felt by all who could not
readily adapt themselves to the adamantine ethics of men of the type of
Endicott and Mather.  There was not wanting, too, a spirit of
lawlessness in the English America, curiously in contrast with the
law-abiding character of the Non-conformist colonizations.  Along the
seaboard wild pirates nestled, skimmers of the seas of the most daring
type, worthy brethren of the Kidds, the Blackbeards, and the Teaches,
terrors of the merchantman and the well-disposed emigrant.  But in
spite of the sternness of the law-abiding, and the savageness of the
lawless portions of the English settlements, they contrasted favorably
in every way with the settlements which were nominally French and the
centres of colonization which hoisted the French flag.

[Sidenote: 1754--Young Mr. Washington]

After a long stretch of threatened hostilities, the pinch came at last
in 1753, when the two nations met on the banks of the Ohio.  The
meeting meant one of the greatest and most momentous series of wars in
the century.  {285} French soldiers invaded all the settlements of the
Ohio company and drove the settlers out.  The Governor of Virginia sent
an ambassador to the French officer commanding on the Ohio, and chose
as his ambassador a young Virginian gentleman then absolutely unknown
except to the small circle of his personal friends, but destined to
become one of the most famous, and most deservedly famous, men in
history.  Young Mr. George Washington bore Governor Dinwiddie's message
over 500 miles through the wilderness at the peril of his life.  That
expedition, says Irving, "may be considered the foundation of his
fortunes.  From that moment he was the rising hope of Virginia."  The
French commander informed the young envoy that he proposed to hold Ohio
and drive the English out.  Back went George Washington through the
wilderness again with this discouraging reply.  After that hostilities
were inevitable.  The next year Washington, then lieutenant-colonel,
led a small force to the frontier, and fired the first shot against the
enemy.  It is curious to think of all the results that followed from
that first shot.  The fall of the French colonies in America, the
establishment of the American Republic, the French Revolution--all may,
by the simplest process of causation, be traced back to the first shot
fired by Washington's command against a petty officer on the frontier.
That shot echoes on the Plains of Abraham, at Lexington and Bunker's
Hill, at the taking of the Bastille, and with the "whiff of
grape-shot"; we may hear it at Waterloo and in the autumn horrors of
the Coup d'Etat.

France had long been ambitious of extending the domain of her colonial
empire in America.  Her aim was to secure for herself the Mississippi
and Ohio valleys.  Securing these meant many things to France.  It
meant the connection of her Mexican colonies with Canada, but it meant
much more than this; it meant serious annoyance to England, serious
limitation to English commerce.  It would make the Alleghany mountains
the western limits of the English colonies, hamper the English trade
with {286} the Indians, and expose to French attack the English on the
north, south, and west.  In this year 1754, therefore, she deliberately
drove the English out of West Pennsylvania, and set up her staff there
by building Fort Duquesne to command the Ohio Valley.  At that time the
chief British commander in America was General Braddock, a joyous,
rollicking soldier of the old-fashioned type, rather popular in London
as a good companion and good fellow, who loved his glass with a more
than merely convivial enthusiasm.  But he was not the sort of man who
was fitted to fight the French just then and there.  In the open field
and under ordinary conditions he might have done well enough, but the
war with France in the American colonies was not pursued under ordinary
conditions.  It was fought on the lines of Indian warfare, with
murderous Indian allies, against whom the jolly general of the London
tables and the St. James's clubs was wholly unfitted to cope.  Though
he had been warned by Sir P. K. Halkett, who knew the danger, Braddock
actually insisted upon advancing with astonishing recklessness against
Fort Duquesne as if he were marching at the head of an invincible force
to the easiest possible success.  The result of his heedlessness is one
of the grimmest spots in English colonial history.

[Sidenote: 1759--James Wolfe]

Braddock's forces were cut to pieces: very few of his stout thousand
escaped to spread horror through the English colonies by the news of
their misfortunes.  The banner of the Leopard had gone down indeed
before the white coats and the Silver Lilies of France and the painted
fantasies of Indian braves and sachems.  The fair hair of English
soldiers graced the wigwams of the wild and remorseless Red Man, and it
seemed for the moment as if the fighting power of England had gone.
But, indeed, English fighting power was made of sterner stuff.  The
fact is, perhaps, never more happily exemplified than in this very
story of the dying Braddock himself.  As he was carried away, bleeding,
to his death, from that fatal ambuscade, something of the hero animated
and exalted {287} the spirit of that drink-hardy and foolhardy soldier.
"I must do better another time," he is reported to have said; and it
would not be easy to say with what gallanter words a stout soldier
could go to his account.  Against such a spirit as that which animated
the dying Braddock the soldiers of France were not destined to triumph.
"The last of the Gracchi," said Mirabeau, "when dying, flung dust to
heaven, and from that dust sprang Marias."  Braddock, promising himself
to do better next time, spoke not indeed for himself, but for his
nation.  The next time came in its due season, but the man who "did
better," who carried that "banner of the Leopard" high over the Lilies,
was not Braddock, but James Wolfe.

England thirsted for revenge.  The years came and the years went, and
at last they brought the hour and the men.  An elaborate campaign in
1759 had been prepared, by which Amherst, coming by Lake George,
Ticonderoga, and Lake Champlain; Prideaux and Johnson coming by Fort
Niagara, Lake Ontario, and Montreal; and Wolfe coming by the St.
Lawrence River, were to unite in attacking Quebec.  But the first two
divisions of the whole force were unable to make the connection in the
due time, and to Wolfe's command alone was given the honor of assailing
Quebec.  He advanced up the St. Lawrence with some 7000 men and the
fleet under Admiral Saunders, and encamped on the Island of St. Orleans
in the St. Lawrence River, some eight miles from Quebec.  The whole
world, perhaps, hardly holds a scene more picturesque, whether looked
at from above or from below, from the rock or from the river, than that
which is given by the city of Quebec.  At some places the bold mass of
rock and clay descends almost sheer to the lower level and the
river-shore.  One can see that splendid heap of rock and clay from the
distant Falls of Montmorency, standing out as the Acropolis of Athens
or as Acrocorinth may be seen from some far-off point of view.  The
newer part of the city and the fortifications are perched high upon the
great mound or mass of clay and rock, which looks over the {288}
confluence of a mighty river and a great stream.  The lower and older
town creeps and straggles along the base of the rock and by the edges
of the river.  Here are the old market-places, the quaint old streets,
the ancient wharfs, the crumbling houses, the narrow lanes, the curious
inlets, of past generations, and the crude shanties of yesterday and
the day before yesterday.  From this lower level broad roads now wind
up to what would be called the better part of the city--the region of
the hotels, and the clubs, and the official buildings, and the
fashionable residences.  But until lately these roads passed under the
ancient gate-ways of the city--gate-ways that reminded one of the Gate
of Calais, and brought back suggestions of Hogarth's famous picture.
In more recent years, however, the restless spirit of modern
improvement has invaded even Quebec, and all, or nearly all, the
ancient gate-ways, the gate-ways of the days of Wolfe, have bowed to
the fate of Temple Bar.  Yet even to-day the traveller in Canada who
stands upon that height may vividly recall the scene that lay before
the eyes of Wolfe during that memorable campaign.

Wolfe made an attempt to carry a battery above the Montmorency mouth,
but failed, and was repulsed with considerable loss.  He then cast
about him if it were possible to attack the town from the Heights of
Abraham on the southern side.  It seemed on the face of it an
impossibility.  How was it possible for the attacking force to make its
way unseen by the French up the precipitous cliffs to the Heights of
Abraham?  Luckily, there was a young man in Wolfe's army, a Lieutenant
McCulloch, who had been held prisoner in Quebec in 1756.  With a view
to future possibilities, he employed his time in surveying the cliffs,
and he thought that he had discovered a particular spot where the steep
hills might be successfully scaled by an attacking force.  He now
communicated this to Wolfe.  Indeed, the idea of attack in this way
seems to have been suggested by him, and on the memorable September
night the attempt was made.

{289}

[Sidenote: 1759--Wolfe's tribute to literature]

Who has not heard--who has not been touched and thrilled by the story
of Wolfe, while being rowed across the spreading waters of the St.
Lawrence to the cove where the attempt was to be made, repeating in low
tones to his officers near him Gray's "Elegy in a Country Church-yard"?
Who does not remember Wolfe's famous saying that he would rather have
written the Elegy than take Quebec?  It is a fine saying, akin to that
of Caesar when he swore that he would rather be the first man in an
obscure Italian village than the second man in Rome.  We may perhaps
take the liberty of questioning the absolute accuracy of either saying.
In Caesar's case he was, no doubt, sufficiently conscious that he was
going to be the first man in Rome.  In Wolfe's case we may well believe
that his exquisite tribute to literature, and to the most charming work
of one of the most charming men of letters then alive, was not meant
very seriously.  He was a soldier; Quebec was his duty; Quebec was to
be his fame.  But it is one of those sayings that live forever, and the
mere thought of it at once calls up two widely different pictures,
pictures of places in two widely different parts of the world.  One
shows the shining, swelling St. Lawrence River and the dead hour of
night, and those slowly moving boats of hushed heroes creeping across
the waters to where the mighty Quebec hills gloomed hugely out.  The
other is of that quiet church-yard in England, at Stoke Pogis, near
Slough, where pilgrims from many parts of the world still wander
through the pleasant Buckinghamshire fields to stand where Gray
conceived his Elegy.

Wolfe carried out his plan to perfection.  Day was dawning as the
majority of his forces formed upon the Heights of Abraham.  It was six
in the morning before Montcalm's irregulars were upon the field, and
nine o'clock before the French army was in position for action.  At ten
o'clock the battle began.  It did not last very long.  Whether the
French were utterly disheartened or not by the appearance so
unexpectedly of the {290} English on the ground, which they had deemed
unassailable, certain is it that they made a poor fight of it.  Though
the French forces amounted to nearly double the English strength, the
whole battle, from the first French advance to their utter rout and
flight, did not last a quarter of an hour.  It was one of the sharpest
and the strangest battles in history.  Both sides lost their generals.
Montcalm was killed; Wolfe, charging gallantly at the head of his men,
fell mortally wounded.  The wild cry, "They run!" echoed in his dying
ears.  He seemed to recover a kind of alertness at the sound, and
shaking himself from his deadly stupor, asked, "Who run?"  We can
imagine the momentary trepidation in that gallant heart: could it be
his outnumbered followers?  In a moment he was reassured; it was the
enemy who fled; with his last breath he gave some strategical orders,
and then fell back.  "God be praised, I die in peace," he said, and so
passed away.  The time may, perhaps, come when the great game of war
will no longer stir the pulses, and men will no longer feel that they
die in peace after the bloody defeat of their enemies.  But so long as
the pulses of men's hearts do answer to any martial music, so long men
will say of Wolfe that he died well as became a soldier, a hero, and a
gentleman.  He sleeps in Greenwich Church.

[Sidenote: 1759--An old French province]

The pride of England's colonial empire might find new stimulus in the
way in which the memory of one of the most brilliant scenes in the
story of England's career is kept green in Quebec.  The traveller,
standing on Dufferin Terrace to-day, may in his mind's eye see Wolfe
crossing the stream on his perilous expedition, may in his mind's ear
hear him reciting to his officers those lines from Gray's Elegy, and
telling them that he would rather have written such verses than be sure
of taking Quebec.  His monument is near to the promenade on Dufferin
Terrace--his monument which, a rare event in war, is the monument also
of his rival, the French commander, Montcalm, killed in the hour of
defeat, as Wolfe was at the moment of victory.  Quebec itself seems to
illustrate in {291} its own progress and its own history the moral of
that common monument.  Quebec is as loyal to the British Crown as
Victoria or as the Channel Islands.  But it is still in great part an
old-fashioned French city.  The France that survives there and all
through the province is not the France of to-day, but the France of
before the great Revolution.  The stranger seeking his way through the
streets had better, in most cases, question the first crossing-sweeper
he meets in French, and not in English.  The English residents are all
expected to speak French.  But the English residents and the French
live on terms of the most cordial fraternity.  Little quarrels, local
quarrels of race and sect, do unquestionably spring up here and there
now and again, but they are only like the disputes of Churchmen and
Dissenters in an English city, and they threaten no organic
controversy.  England has great reason to be proud of Quebec.  The
English flag has a home on those heights which we have already said may
challenge the world for bold picturesqueness and beauty.




{292}

CHAPTER XLI.

THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN.

[Sidenote: 1684-1753--Berkeley]

In the early days of the year 1753 literature and philosophy lost a
great man by the death of Bishop Berkeley.

George Berkeley was born on March 12, 1684, by the Nore, in the county
Kilkenny.  His father was an Irishman of English descent, William
Berkeley.  In the first year of the eighteenth century George Berkeley
went, a lad of fifteen, to the University of Dublin, to Trinity
College.  In Trinity College he remained for thirteen years, studying,
thinking, dreaming, bewildering most of the collegians, his colleagues,
who seemed to have been unable to make up their minds whether he was a
genius or a blockhead.  Within the walls of Trinity he worked,
gradually and laboriously piecing together and thoughtfully shaping out
his theory of the metaphysical conception of the material world about
him; poring over Locke and Plato, breathing an atmosphere saturated
with Cartesianism, his active mind eagerly investigating, exploring,
inquiring in all directions, and his hand recording day by day the
notes and stages of his mental development.

His early philosophical writings rapidly earned him a reputation in the
great world of London, to which at that time the eyes of all
men--divines, wits, statesmen, philosophers, and poets--turned.  It is
not necessary here to dwell upon the nature of those philosophical
writings, or to enter into any study of the great theory of idealism in
which he affirmed that there is no proof of the existence of matter
anywhere save in our own perceptions.  Byron, in his light-hearted way,
more than two generations later, dismissed Bishop Berkeley and his
theory in the famous couplet--

{293}

  "When Bishop Berkeley said there is no matter,
  It clearly was no matter what he said"

--a smart saying which Byron did not intend to put forth, and which
nobody would be likely to regard, as a serious summing up of the mental
work of Berkeley.

Berkeley came to London in the first winter month of 1713, and made the
acquaintance of his great countryman Swift.  The Dean was a great
patron of Berkeley's in those early London days.  Swift took Berkeley
to Court, and introduced him or spoke of him to all the great
ministers, and pushed his fortunes by all the ways--and they were
many--in his power.  Berkeley, with the aid of Swift, was soon made
free of that wonderful republic of letters which then held sway in
London, and which numbered among its members such men as Steele and
Addison, Bolingbroke and Harley, Gay and Arbuthnot, and Pope.  Berkeley
was in Addison's box at the first performance of "Cato," and tasted of
the author's champagne and burgundy there, and listened with curious
delight to the mingled applause and hisses that greeted Mr. Pope's
prologue.  A little later Berkeley went to Italy as the travelling
tutor, the bear-leader, of the son of Ashe, Bishop of Clogher.  In
Italy he passed some four enchanted years.

Berkeley came back to England in 1720 to find all England writhing in
the welter and chaos of the South Sea crash.  The shame and misery of
the time appear to have inspired him with a kind of horror of the
hollow civilization of the age, and to have given him his first
promptings towards that ideal community in the remote Atlantic to which
his mind turned so strongly a little later.  He left England speedily,
and came home again to Ireland after an absence of eight years.  It was
in Ireland that a strange windfall came to him and amazed him.  On that
fatal afternoon when Swift, with a legion of wild passions tearing at
his heartstrings, rode over to Marley Abbey to fling back at Vanessa's
feet the letter she had written to Stella, Hester Vanhomrigh received
{294} her death-blow.  But she lived long enough to inflict a curious
little piece of vengeance, the only vengeance in her power, except the
nobler revenge of forgiveness, upon the false Cadenus.  She had left by
will all the property she possessed to the man she had so madly
worshipped.  With the hand of Death upon her, with the raging eyes of
the Dean still burning upon her brain, she performed the one little
pitiful act of retaliation which is the saddest spot in all her sad
history; she altered her will, and disinherited her idol.  For the name
of Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, she substituted the name of
another great Irishman, another great Churchman, another great thinker
and teacher, the name of George Berkeley, Dean--only nominally so,
indeed--of Dromore.  Berkeley's first idea on receiving this unexpected
windfall was to employ the money thus almost miraculously placed at his
disposal in carrying out a scheme which had long been dear to his
heart.  This scheme was that he should emigrate to Bermuda, should
settle there, and devote the rest of his life to "the reformation of
manners among the English in our Western plantations, and the
propagation of the Gospel among the American savages."  He was nobly
convinced of the nobility of his dream, and, which was more remarkable,
he succeeded in awaking a latent nobility in unexpected places, and in
arousing an enthusiasm for this dream of a Bermudan Utopia even in
callous hearts and unsympathetic bosoms.

[Sidenote: 1728--Berkeley's aspirations]

Bermuda became for a while the fashion in the marvellous medley of
London society over which the first of the Georges reigned.  People
talked Bermuda, thought Bermuda, wrote Bermuda.  He was indeed a
remarkable man whose missionary zeal and eloquence could make Bermuda
popular in London with the voice of religion.  He was indeed a
remarkable man who could impress for a moment the cynical nature of
Bolingbroke with something of the fire of his own enthusiasm; who could
induce Walpole to swell from his own pocket the subscription-list that
was raised to further Berkeley's schemes; {295} who actually succeeded
in touching the callous organism which the Elector of Hanover and King
of England called a heart; and whose one joy on hearing of the Vanessa
legacy was at the aid it afforded to his voyage and his pure, unselfish
aspirations.  Bermuda ever remained a vision for him; but in 1728 he
set sail for Rhode Island in the company of his young wife, Miss Anne
Forster, whom, as he quaintly tells us, he chose "for her qualities of
mind and her unaffected inclination to books."  For more than three
years he dwelt in America a simple, happy, earnest life.  But the
mission was a failure.  To Robert Walpole, Berkeley's plans and hopes
would naturally seem about as deserving of the attention and aid of
practical men as the ambitions of Don Quixote.  The grant promised by
the Government was never sent out, and in 1731 Berkeley came back to
England.  How many of those who are familiar with the line, "Westward
the course of empire takes its way," which has been accepted as the
motto for one of the best and best-known frescos that adorn the Capitol
in Washington, know that it comes from the last verse of a poem which
Berkeley wrote as he was striving to realize a New Atlantis in Rhode
Island?

  "Westward the course of empire takes its way;
    The first four acts already past,
  A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
    Time's noblest offspring is the last."

Two years of literary and philosophic life in London succeeded to the
Rhode Island idyl.  In 1734 he returned to Ireland for the last time,
and dwelt for eighteen years in his bishopric of Cloyne in studious
seclusion with his family, wandering among the myrtle-hedges his own
hand planted, reading Plato and Hooker, teaching his cherished
daughter, suffering from domestic losses, and proclaiming to an
astounded world that tar-water was a panacea for all human ills.
Berkeley's genius and his eloquent prose made tar-water as popular as
both had {296} made Bermuda some twenty years earlier.  The later years
of his life at Cloyne are tinged with melancholy.  His mind began to be
agitated anew with the dream of an academic retreat by other streams
than the Blackwater and the Leo, and in 1752 he journeyed again to
England and set up his tent for the last time beneath the shadow of the
Oxford spires.  It was mellow autumn when he came to the City of
Scholars.  In the chill January weather of the following year he died
suddenly and peacefully in the midst of his family.  He was a great and
a good man.  The serene purity of his life, his lofty purposes, his
nobility of nature, cause him to stand out very conspicuously in the
strange, cynical, cruel world of English life and English thought
during the first half of the eighteenth century.  He was in that world,
but he was never of it.  His friends were either noble of life and
mind, or else he saw in them only their nobler qualities, and took no
thought of or no harm from the rest.  He seems to have been most
happy--and the fact is characteristic of the man--in the society of the
sweet, simple, and studious woman who made him a loving wife, and of
the children whom he loved with an affection for the excess of which he
sometimes reproached himself.  All his contemporaries, says Sir James
Mackintosh, agreed with Pope in ascribing

  "To Berkeley every virtue under heaven."


In 1754 Henry Pelham died.  The important consequence of his death was
the fact that it gave Pitt at last an opportunity of coming to the
front.  The Duke of Newcastle, Henry Pelham's brother, became leader of
the administration, with Henry Fox for Secretary at War, Pitt for
Paymaster-general of the Forces, and Murray, afterwards to be famous as
Lord Mansfield, for Attorney-general.  There was some difficulty about
the leadership of the House of Commons.  Pitt was still too much
disliked by the King to be available for the position.  Fox for a while
refused to accept it, and Murray was unwilling {297} to do anything
which might be likely to withdraw him from the professional path along
which he was to move to such distinction.  An attempt was made to get
on with a Sir Thomas Robinson, a man of no capacity for such a
position, and the attempt was soon an evident failure.  Then Fox
consented to take the position on Newcastle's own terms, which were
those of absolute submission to the dictates of Newcastle.  Later still
he was content to descend to a subordinate office which did not even
give him a place in the Cabinet.  Fox never recovered the damage which
his reputation and his influence suffered by this amazing act; the only
explanation for which was found in the fact that he loved money better
than anything in the world, and that the office of Paymaster-general
gave almost limitless opportunities to a rapacious and unscrupulous man.

[Sidenote: 1757--Admiral Byng]

The Duke of Newcastle's Ministry soon fell.  Newcastle was not a man
who had the slightest capacity for controlling or directing a policy of
war; and the great struggle known as the Seven Years' War had now
broken out.  One lamentable event in the war has to be recorded,
although it was but of minor importance.  This was the capture of
Minorca by the French under the romantic, gallant, and profligate Duc
de Richelieu.  The event is memorable chiefly, or only, because it was
followed by the trial and execution of the unfortunate Admiral Byng.
Admiral Byng, the son of a famous sailor, was sent in command of a
small and a very poorly furnished squadron to the Mediterranean to
relieve Minorca.  When he readied Gibraltar he found that a French
fleet much superior in numbers to his own was blockading the island he
was sent to relieve.  Byng called a council of war, and the council
decided that, as they had no instructions from home how to act in the
event of their finding themselves face to face with a superior force,
they had better not interfere with the doings of the enemy.  Still Byng
made for Minorca, and tried unsuccessfully to open communications with
the garrison.  He had a slight engagement {298} with the French, and
then he brought his squadron away.  The news created such an outburst
of passion in England that the Duke of Newcastle made up his mind at
once to sacrifice Byng to the popular fury.  Byng was tried at
Spithead, found guilty of having failed in his duty, and shot on March
14, 1757.  He died like a brave man.  It went heavily against Newcastle
in later days that he was believed to have promised the sacrifice of
Byng before the trial had even begun.  No one now believes that Byng
was a coward; and nothing but a miracle could have enabled him with
such a force to save Minorca.  But he failed sadly in his duty, whether
from stupidity or irresolution, and probably he would not have cared to
outlive his degradation.  The punishment was stern and harsh indeed,
but it was a time to excuse sternness on the part of a government on
whom had fallen the conduct of a great war.  Pitt did his best to
induce the King to mitigate the penalty in accordance with the
unanimous recommendation of the court-martial; but George was
inflexible, and reminded Pitt that he had himself taught the Sovereign
to seek outside the House of Commons for the judgment of the English
people.  It was to the execution of Byng that Voltaire applied the
famous epigram, "In England it is thought necessary to kill an admiral
from time to time to encourage the others"--"_pour encourager les
autres_."  Voltaire tried hard to save Byng, and even induced the Duc
de Richelieu to write a letter bearing his personal testimony to the
unfortunate admiral's courage.

The Duke of Newcastle resigned office, and for a short time the Duke of
Devonshire was at the head of a coalition Ministry which included Pitt.
The King, however, did not stand this long, and one day suddenly turned
them all out of office.  Then a coalition of another kind was formed,
which included Newcastle and Pitt, with Henry Fox in the subordinate
position of paymaster.  Pitt now for the first time had it all his own
way.  He ruled everything in the House of Commons.  He flung himself
with passionate and patriotic energy into the {299} alliance with that
great Frederick whose genius and daring were like his own.  Pitt was a
heaven-born war-minister.  His courage and his resources changed the
whole fortunes of the war.  He seemed a statesman to organize victory.
He stirred up the languishing patriotism of the hour, and filled it
with new and noble inspiration.  It was true what George had said to
him--that he had taught, or tried to teach, the Sovereign to seek
outside the House of Commons for the voice of the English people.  But
this was to the honor of Pitt, and not to his discredit.  Pitt saw that
a legislature returned on such a representation could be no spokesman
of the English people.  He knew that intelligence and education were
beginning to spread with increased wealth through large unrepresented
classes, and even communities.  While he had the people behind him he
cared little for the Sovereign, and still less for the House of
Commons.  His pride was as great as his patriotism; he might be broken,
but he could not bend.  At last he had found his true place--at the
head of a great nation and during a grand national crisis.

[Sidenote: 1757--Sterne]

The closing years of George's reign were honored by some literary
triumphs in which George himself could have taken but little interest.
In 1755 appeared, in two volumes folio, the English Dictionary by
Samuel Johnson.  We shall meet with Samuel Johnson a good deal in the
future course of this history, and have now only to mention as a fact
the publication of the work on which he himself believed his fame was
to rest.  Another work of a very different kind and by a very different
sort of man appeared in 1759--the first and second volume of "Tristram
Shandy," by Laurence Sterne.

Seldom, perhaps, has an author experienced a stranger bringing up than
that which fell to the lot of Sterne.  His father, Roger Sterne, was
one of those luckless persons who seem to be the especial sport of a
malicious destiny, in whose hands nothing prospers, from whose hands
thievish Fortune filches all opportunities.  Roger Sterne was a
gentleman of good family and narrow means, who {300} had adopted arms
as his profession and had not prospered therein.  He had married a wife
who was herself a sutler's widow, and who blessed Ensign Sterne with a
swift and steady succession of offspring, of whom Laurence was the
second.  It was chance, acting through the impulses of the War Office,
which caused little Laurence to see the light on Irish soil; but though
he was born in the melodiously named Valley of Honey, there was little
of honeyed sweetness, and much bitterness as of gall and coloquintida,
in his early boyhood.  Poverty and the eccentric evolutions of a
marching regiment contributed to make his a most unenviable childhood.
The record, as we can read it in his own account, is disastrous and
dreary enough.  The regiment to which Roger Sterne belonged was
perpetually on the move; the births and deaths of Mrs. Sterne's
children succeeded each other with painful rapidity; again and again
was little Laurence in imminent peril of shipwreck on the stormiest
seas; he experienced in his earliest years all that was worst and most
disagreeable in the life of camp-followers.  Some account must
necessarily be taken of this by those who review Sterne's writings.  A
child brought up under such conditions is not likely to have a very
keen appreciation of the finer phases of life, and must inevitably have
a precocious and most unfortunate familiarity with the seamy side of
existence.  What is commonly called knowledge of the world, which means
knowledge of what is worst in the world, as "seeing life" generally
means seeing its dirtiest places, undoubtedly Sterne got in plenty, and
the future divine was not improved by the education of the camp.

The misfortunes that had attended so persistently upon the career of
Roger Sterne culminated at last most tragically, yet at the same time
most ludicrously, as if Destiny had determined to the end to make the
luckless ensign her sport.  At Gibraltar a quarrel with another officer
"about a goose" resulted in a duel.  Roger Sterne was run through the
body.  He never recovered from the wound, and though in this harsh
world he drew his breath {301} in pain a little longer, he died in
Jamaica of fever, which found his enfeebled frame a ready victim.  One
of the few pleasing characteristics in Laurence Sterne's nature is his
affectionate memory of his father; one of the most pleasing passages of
all his writings is that in which he describes him.  "My father was a
little, smart man, active to the last degree in all exercises, most
patient of fatigue and disappointment, of which it had pleased God to
give him full measure.  He was, in his temper, somewhat rapid and
hasty"--hence, no doubt, the speaking of hot words and the spilling of
hot blood over that ill-omened goose--"but of a kindly, sweet
disposition, void of all design, and so innocent in his intentions that
he suspected no one, so that you might have cheated him ten times a day
if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose."

[Sidenote: 1713-1768--"Tristram Shandy"]

Through Halifax School and Cambridge sizarship Laurence Sterne passed,
by the patronage of his pluralist uncle, Jacques Sterne, into holy
orders and the living of Sutton-on-the-Forest, and so into twenty years
of almost complete obscurity.  We know that he married, that he
preached, played the fiddle, fished, hunted, and read, and that is
about all we know.  Then quite suddenly, in 1759, the lazy, lounging,
most eccentric, and ill-chosen clergyman enraptured London by the
publication of the first two volumes of "Tristram Shandy."

The author of "Tristram Shandy" came to town, and was received with
more than Roman triumph.  Wealth, wit, genius, nobility, thronged his
door, sought his friendship, proffered favors.  Sterne revelled in this
new life.  London offered him a cup of the most intoxicating quality,
and he drank and drank again of its sparkling fountain without ever
quenching his thirst for popularity, for flattery, for success.
Flattery, popularity, success--all three he had in plenty for eight
resplendent years.  Volume after volume of "Tristram Shandy" wooed and
won public applause.  Sterne travelled abroad and found the same
adulation in other capitals of Europe that he had enjoyed in London.
When the popularity of "Shandy" {302} appeared to be on the wane, and
the fame of its author to be dwindling, he whipped it up again with the
"Sentimental Journey."  We may finish his story by anticipation.  He
died one of the most tragic deaths recorded in the necrology of genius.
He died in London on March 18, 1768, and he died alone.  The wish he
had expressed of expiring at an inn untroubled by the presence of
mourning friends was grimly gratified.  In lonely lodgings, beneath the
speculative gaze of a memoir-writing footman and the care of hired
hands, Sterne gasped out the words, "Now it is come!" and so died.  He
was buried almost unattended, and his body was stolen from its new-made
grave by resurrectionists, and recognized, when half-dissected, on an
anatomist's table by a horrified friend.  So the story goes--not,
indeed, absolutely authentic, but certainly not absolutely without
credit--the melancholy conclusion of an ill-spent life and a splendid,
ill-used intellect.

For his conduct to his wife his memory has been scourged by Thackeray
and by his latest biographer, Mr. H. D. Traill.  It cannot be too
severely scourged.  He took her youth, he took her money, and he tired
of her, and was untrue to her, and spoke against her in the dastardly
letters he wrote to his friends and in which he has gibbeted himself to
all time as a hideous warning, a sort of sentimental scarecrow.  "As to
the nature of Sterne's love affairs," says Mr. Traill, "I have come,
though not without hesitation, to the conclusion that they were most,
if not all of them, what is called, somewhat absurdly, platonic. . . .
But as I am not one of those who hold that the conventionally
'innocent' is the equivalent of the morally harmless in this matter, I
cannot regard the question as worth any very minute investigation.  I
am not sure that the habitual male flirt, who neglects his wife to sit
continually languishing at the feet of some other woman, gives much
less pain and scandal to others or does much less mischief to himself
and the objects of his adoration than the thorough-going profligate."

One of the greatest of German writers, Jean Paul Richter, {303}
declares more than once that he regards Sterne as his master.  The
statement is amazing.  Jean Paul Richter, Jean Paul the Only One, as he
was fondly called, was immeasurably sincerer than his master.  All that
was sham, tinsel, and tawdry in the writings of Yorick was genuine,
heart-felt, and soul-inspiring in Jean Paul.  Yorick's sentiment was
pinchbeck; Jean Paul's was pure gold.  All that Richter ever wrote is
animated with the deepest religious feeling, the tenderest sympathy,
the gentlest and bravest pity.  Yorick, in the black and white of his
sacred calling's gown and bands, grins and leers like a disguised
satyr.  His morality is a mummer's mask; his pathos is pretence; the
only thing truly Irish about him is his humor, his ceaseless wit, the
unfailing sparkle of his fancy.

[Sidenote: 1760--A levee under difficulties]

Quite suddenly the ghastly tragicomedy of the King's life came to an
end.  There was, we are told, a strange affectation of an incapacity to
be sick that ran through the whole royal family, which they carried so
far that few of them were more willing to own any other member of the
family ill than to acknowledge themselves to be so.  "I have known the
King," says Hervey, "get out of his bed choking with a sore throat, and
in a high fever, only to dress and have a levee, and in five minutes
undress and return to his bed till the same ridiculous farce of health
was to be presented the next day at the same hour."  It must be owned,
however, that George made a stout fight against ill-health, and if he
shammed being well, he kept up the sham for a good long time.  He came
into the world more than a dozen years before Lord Hervey was born, and
he contrived to keep his place in it for some seventeen years after
Lord Hervey had died.  Time had nearly come round with George as with
Shakespeare's Cassius; his death fell very near to his birthday.
George was born on October 30, 1683, and on October 25, 1760, he was on
the verge of completing his seventy-seventh year.  On October 25, 1760,
he woke early, as was his custom, drank his chocolate, inquired as to
the quarter whence the wind came, and talked of a walk in the {304}
garden.  That walk in the garden was never taken.  The page who
attended on the King had left the room.  He heard a groan and the sound
of a fall.  [Sidenote: 1727-1760--Passed away] He came back, and found
the King a helpless heap upon the floor.  "Call Amelia," the dying man
gasped; but before Amelia could be called he was dead.  Amelia, when
she came, being a little deaf, did not grasp at once the full extent of
what had happened, and bent over her father only to learn in the most
startling and shocking manner that her father was dead.  The Countess
of Walmoden, too, was sent for.  It would seem as if the ample charms
of the Countess of Walmoden, which had delighted George so much while
he lived, might have some power to conjure him back from the common
doom of kings.  But George the Second was dead beyond the power of all
the fat and painted women in the world to help.  "Friends," says
Thackeray in his Essay, "he was your fathers' king as well as mine; let
us drop a respectful tear over his grave."  But indeed it is very hard
to drop a respectful tear over the grave of George the Second.  Seldom
has any man been a king with fewer kingly qualities.  He had courage,
undoubtedly--courage enough to be habitually described by the Jacobites
as "the Captain," but his courage was the courage of a captain and not
of a king.  He was obstinate, he was narrow-minded, he was selfish, he
was repulsively and even ridiculously incontinent.  The usual quantity
of base and servile adulation was poured over the Royal coffin.  The
same abject creatures--they or their kind--that had rhymed their lying
verses over the dead Prince of Wales who had hated his father, now
rhymed their lying verses over the dead king who had hated his son.  If
George the Second had been a more common man, instead of being Elector
of Hanover and King of England, one might have said of him frankly
enough that he was a person about as little to be admired as a man well
could be who was not a coward or in the ordinary sense of the term a
criminal.  But because he was a crowned king, it was regarded as a
patriotic duty then to make much of the {305} departed monarch, and to
talk of him in the strain which would have been appropriate if he had
been a Marcus Aurelius.  The best, perhaps, that can be said of him is
that, on the whole, all things considered, he might have been worse.
It would be unfair to a George who has, at a long interval, to succeed
him, to say that George the Second was actually the worst of his line
and name; but he was so little, so very little, worthy, that the
fulsome pens must have labored in his praise.  If many people rejoiced
at his removal, it would be hard to say who grieved with the exception
of a few, a select few, of his family and the hangers-on of the
Walmoden type, to whom his existence was the essential figure in their
own existence.  To the vast bulk of the English people the matter was
of no moment whatever.  All that they knew was that a second George,
who was Elector of Hanover, had passed away from the English throne,
and that a third George, who was Elector of Hanover, had mounted into
the vacant seat.

Never was a king better served than George the Second; never had so
ignoble a sovereign such men to make his kingdom strong and his reign
famous.  He began his time of royalty under the protection of the
sturdy figure of Walpole; he closed it under the protection of the
stately form of Pitt.



END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.



{306}

INDEX.


  Abernethy, Dr., death, iv. 282.
  Act for better securing the Dependency of Ireland, i. 177.
  Act of Settlement, i. 4.
  Act of Union passed, iii. 327, 330.
  Acts of Trade, iii. 82, 84, 86, 105.
  Adams, John:
    Conduct towards Colonel Preston, iii. 152.
    Opposes dominion of England, iii. 85.
  Adams, Samuel, protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90.
  Addington, Henry, Viscount Sidmouth, Prime Minister, iii. 337.
  Addison, Joseph:
    M. P. for Malmesbury, i. 52.
    Secretary of State; circular letter to English Ministers, ii. 109.
    Sketch of, i. 37, 180.
  Address (1715), i. 102.
  Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of William IV., iv. 97.
    Supposed attitude towards Reform, iv. 172.
  Agrarian crime, iv. 84, 106.
  Agriculture in Scotland (1714), i. 87, 89.
  Agriculture in 1721, i. 229.
  Aislabie, John:
    Chancellor of Exchequer, i. 188, 190.
    Committed to Tower, i. 199.
    Impeaches Lord Strafford, i. 109, 110.
    Treasurer of Navy, i. 105.
  Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, ii. 260, 280.
  Akerman, Keeper of Newgate, attitude towards mob, iii. 203.
  Albany, Countess of, wife of Charles Stuart, ii. 233.
  Alberoni, Giulio:
    Policy, i. 159.
    Sketch of, i. 158.
  Ale-tax in Scotland, i. 249.
  Ali Vardi Khan, death of, ii. 265.
  Allan, killed in riot (1768), iii. 120.
  Allen, Ethan, iii. 179.
  Almanza, battle of, ii. 35.
  Althorp,  Lord  (_see_ Spencer, John Charles, Earl).
  Amelia, daughter of George III., death of, iii. 341.
  Amelia, Princess  (_see_ Emily, Princess).
  American Colonies:
    Discontent in, iii. 147 _seqq._
    Grievances, iii. 82.
    Proclaim their Independence, iii. 183.
    Report on, i. 310.
    Sketch of history, iii. 74.
    Systems of governing, i. 310.
  American  Republic  acknowledged, iii. 184.
    Influence on France, iii. 290, 292.
  American War of Independence, iii. 173 _seqq._
  American War, Second, iii. 344.
  Amherst, Jeffrey, Baron:
    Commander-in-Chief, iii. 207.
    Commands troops in Canada, ii. 287.
  Amhurst, Nicholas (Caleb d'Anvers), edits _Craftsman_, i. 261.
  Anaverdi Khan, Nabob of Carnatic, ii. 201.
  Andre, Major, death as spy, iii. 184.
  Anglesey, Marquis of, Viceroy of Ireland, attitude towards
      Catholic Emancipation, iv. 73, 74.
  Anne, Princess of Orange, ii. 38.
    Illness, ii. 71, 76.
    Marriage, ii. 42.
  Anne, Queen:
    Character, i. 1, 13.
    Death, i. 47.
    Declining health, i. 1.
    Scheme to reduce expenses, i. 281.
  "Annual Register":
    Description of mob in London, iii. 205.
    Founded by Edmund Burke, iii. 99.
  Anti-Irish riots, ii. 45.
  "Anti-Jacobin," iv. 33.
  Arbuthnot, John:
    History of John Bull, i. 97.
    Sketch of, ii. 20.
  Arcot, Siege of, ii. 263.
  Arden, Richard Pepper, iii. 236.
  Argyll, John Campbell, Duke of, i. 42.
    Commander-in-Chief for Scotland, i. 98, 123.
    Sketch of, i. 44.
    Speech on Convention, ii. 166.
  Aristotle on administration, ii. 246.
  Arnold, Benedict, iii. 179.
    Treason, iii. 184.
  Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, ii. 293.
  Ashley, Lord (_see_ Shaftesbury, Earl of).
  Association of United Irishmen, iii. 309, 313, 319.
  Atterbury, Francis, Bishop of Rochester, i. 48.
    Arrested and committed to Tower, i. 212.
    Banished, i. 222.
    Evidence against, i. 219, 220, 222.
    On condition of church, ii. 129.
    Opposes Septennial Act, i. 146.
    Sketch of, i. 214.
  _Auditor_, iii. 15, 55.
  Augusta, Princess of Saxe-Gotha, wife of Frederick,
      Prince of Wales, ii. 46, 47; iii. 6, 7.
    Birth of first child, ii. 104-107.
    Regency Bill and, iii. 73.
  Augustus, Elector of Saxony, ii. 23.
  Augustus II. of Poland, ii. 23.
  Aurungzebe, Empire on death of, ii. 257.
  Austerlitz, Battle of, iii. 338, 339.
  Austria in 1716, i. 154.

  Bailly, Mayor of Paris, iii. 298.
  Ballot system, iv. 131.
  Balmerino, Lord, trial, ii. 228.
  Bank of England:
    Attacked by rioters, iii. 207.
    Charter renewed, iv. 232.
    Imitates South Sea Company, i. 189.
  Barber, John:
    Letter to Swift, i. 48.
    On Arbuthnot, ii. 20.
  Barnard, Sir John:
    Abandons seceders, ii. 174.
    On Convention, ii. 162.
    On grievances against Spaniards, ii. 154, 157.
    On Walpole's Excise scheme, i. 315.
  Barre, Colonel, iii. 131, 133, 136.
  Barry, Richard, Lord Barrymore, iii. 244.
    Supports Young Pretender, ii. 221.
  Barry, Sir Charles, designs new Houses of Parliament, iv. 270, 272.
  Bartholomew Fair, i. 73.
  Barwell, Richard, iii. 260.
    Supports Hastings, iii. 260, 261, 264.
  Bastile captured, iii. 294.
  Bath in 1714, i. 79.
  Bathurst, Lord, demands prosecution of rioters, iii. 201.
  Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of:
    On Lord John Russell, iv. 126.
    Philippics against Sir Robert Peel, i. 287.
  Beaux and requisites, i. 76.
  Bedford, Duke of:
    Opposes Pitt, iii. 26.
    Patron of Rigby, iii. 37.
    Presents petition against Convention, ii. 164.
  Bellingham, John, shot Spencer Perceval, iii. 341.
  Benares annexed, iii. 258.
  Benares, Chait Singh, Rajah of, iii. 269.
  Bentham, Jeremy, theories of, iv. 281.
  Beranger, "King of Yvetot," iv. 119.
  Berkeley, George Bishop:
    Character, ii. 296.
    Lives in Rhode Island, ii. 295.
    Scheme of Settlement in Bermuda, ii. 294.
    Sketch of, ii. 292.
  Berkeley, Lord, of Stratton, describes duel between Colonel
      Chudleigh and Charles Aldworth, i. 58.
  Bermuda, Scheme for Settlement in, ii. 294.
  Bernard, Francis, Governor of Massachusetts, iii. 106, 148.
    Dissolves Massachusetts Legislature, iii. 150.
    Recalled, iii. 151.
  Berwick, James FitzJames, Duke of:
    Sketch of, ii. 34.
    Takes Kehl, ii. 24.
  Bill for Catholic Relief, iii. 190, 191.
  Bill for Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 43.
  Bill for strengthening Protestant interest, i. 171, 172.
  Bill of Rights, i. 3.
  Bill to adjust affairs of South Sea Company, i. 203, 205.
  Bill to suspend Habeas Corpus Act, i. 213.
  Birmingham, iv. 99.
  Bismarck, Prince, Peace policy, ii. 147.
  Black Hole of Calcutta, ii. 266, 267; iii. 249.
  Blackstone, Speech on Middlesex Election Petition, iii. 131.
  Bland-Burges Papers, ii. 217.
  Bland-Burges, Sir James, defends Warren Hastings, iii. 277, 278.
  Bloomfield, patronized by Duke of Grafton, iii. 35.
  Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, i. 22, 115.
    Advises secession from Commons, ii. 172.
    Alliance with Pulteney, i. 260; ii. 17.
    At St. Germains, i. 116.
    Attitude towards restoration of Stuarts, i. 39, 48, 107.
    Character, i. 116; ii. 18, 279.
    Correspondence with James Stuart, ii. 18.
    Dismissed by James, i. 131.
    Dreams of Coalition Ministry, ii. 194.
    Flight, i. 103.
    Impeached of high treason, i. 108, 110.
    Inspires _Craftsman_, i. 290.
    Leaves England for France, ii. 17, 18.
    Letter to Swift, i. 47.
    Name erased from roll of peers, i. 114.
    On Duke of Berwick, ii. 34.
    On Duke of Shrewsbury, i. 42.
    On Wyndham's death, ii. 179.
    Petition to Lords, i. 258.
    Removed from Secretaryship of State, i. 101.
    Returns to England, i. 222, 258.
    Scheme of Opposition, i. 287.
    Sketch of, i. 26; later life, i. 133; ii. 278, 279.
    Style as speaker and writer, i. 27.
    Walpole's portrait of, ii. 15, 16.
  Bombay, dower of Catherine of Braganza, iii. 248.
  Boston:
    Evacuated, iii. 182.
    Hostile to British, iii. 151.
    Invested, iii. 175, 181.
    Life in 1765, iii. 77.
    Massacre, iii. 151.
    Protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90.
    Tea thrown into harbor, ii. 43; iii. 160.
  Boston, Lord, in hands of mob, iii. 197.
  Boston Port Bill, iii. 163; copies circulated, iii. 165.
  Boswell, James:
    Johnson and, iii. 44.
    On Alexander Wedderburn, iii. 158.
  Bourbon family:
    Aims of, ii. 28.
    Compacts, ii. 26.
  Bourne, Vincent, at Westminster School, iii. 53.
  Braddock, General, defeat and death, ii. 286; iii. 79, 180.
  Bradley on reform of Calendar, ii. 275.
  Breed Hill battle, iii. 176.
  Bremen ceded to Hanover, i. 160, 161.
  Brewster, Sir David:
    British Association and, iv. 262.
    On Newton, i. 273.
  Bright, John, doctrine of non-intervention, iv. 62.
  Bristol:
    Growth of, i. 78.
    Reform riot at, iv. 171.
  British Admirals of Eighteenth Century, iii. 336.
  British Association founded, iv. 262.
  British garrison proposed for America, iii. 84, 86.
  British sailor (1797), iii. 334.
  _Briton_, iii. 51, 55.
  "Broad-bottomed Ministry," ii. 245, 246.
  Bromley, William, motion on Septennial Act, ii. 10, 12.
  "Brothers" Club, i. 74.
  Brougham, Henry, Lord Brougham and Vaux:
    Advice to Queen Caroline, iv. 5.
    Attitude towards electoral reform, iv. 52.
    Attitude towards Poor Relief, iv. 223.
    Attitude towards West Indian Slavery, iv. 192, 193.
    British Association and, iv. 262.
    Character, iv. 251.
    Defends Queen Caroline, iv. 6, 8.
    Evidence in Cobbett's prosecution, iv. 156.
    Leader of Opposition, iv. 103.
    Lord Chancellor, iv. 124.
    Motion on Reform, iv. 104, 110, 111.
    Motions against Slavery, iv. 194, 195.
    Negotiates with King on creation of new peers, iv. 180.
    On Parliamentary Reform, iv. 85.
    Oratory, iv. 104, 174.
    "Penny Cyclopaedia" and, iv. 262.
    Persuades William IV. to dissolve Parliament, iv. 151.
    Power as Reformer, iv. 122, 125.
    Retires from Ministerial life, iv. 251.
    Scheme for national education, iv. 22.
    Speech on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 74.
  Brunswick family, i. 5.
  Buchanan, messenger of Young Pretender, ii. 205.
  Buckingham, Earl of, iii. 338.
  Buckingham House, i. 66.
  Buckingham Palace, iv. 93.
  Bunbury, Sir Thomas Charles, marries Lady Sarah Lennox, iii. 10.
  Burdett, Sir Francis, resolution on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 73.
  Burgoyne at Boston, iii. 175, 182.
  Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga, iii. 183.
  Burke, Edmund:
    Alliance with Fox and North, iii. 226.
    Attitude on American Independence, iii. 87.
    Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 285.
    Career, iii. 96 _seqq._
    Character, iii. 227.
    Crusade against French Revolution, iii. 296, 298.
    Denunciation of French Revolution, i. 96.
    "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful," iii. 98.
    Friend of Goldsmith, iii. 168.
    Impeaches Warren Hastings, iii. 281, 285.
    Indian policy, iii. 273.
    Influence on generation, iii. 96, 100.
    Maiden speech, iii. 100.
    Marriage, iii. 98.
    On Ballot system, iv. 131.
       Boston exploit, iii. 161.
       Chesterfield's rule in Ireland, ii. 251.
       Ministry and Wilkes's riots, iii. 121, 122.
       Townshend, iii. 111.
       Walpole's opposition to war party, ii. 181.
       War with Spain, ii. 184.
       Warren Hastings, iii. 258, 259.
       Wilkes's reception in London, iii. 116; in Middlesex, iii. 117.
    Opinion of George IV., iv. 90.
    Oratory, iii. 100.
    Passion for justice, iii. 272.
    Paymaster-General, iii. 224, 228.
    Praises of Pitt, iii. 223.
    Private Secretary to Lord Rockingham, iii. 99.
    Reproves Charles James Fox, iii. 141.
    Speech against American war, iii. 188.
    Speech on Middlesex Election Petition, iii. 132.
    Vindication of Natural Society, iii. 98.
  Burke, William, iii. 99.
  Burnet, Bishop, on:
    Condition of Church, ii. 129.
    Duke of Marlborough, i. 23.
    High and Low Church, i. 17.
    Queen Anne, i. 2.
  Burney, Miss, in Burke's arraignment of Hastings, iii. 286.
  Burns, Robert, on William IV. and Mrs. Jordan, iv. 97.
  Bury Street, price of lodgings in, in 1714, i. 70.
  Bute, Lord:
    Bribery under, iii. 28, 30.
    Cabals against Pitt, iii. 26.
    Character, iii. 7, 28.
    Foreign policy, iii. 28, 29.
    House besieged, iii. 117.
    Influence over Princess of Wales and her son, iii. 8.
    Prime Minister, iii. 28.
    Proposes cider tax, iii. 30, 32.
    Resigns office, iii. 32.
    Secretary of State, iii. 8.
    Sketch of, iii. 7.
    Unpopular, iii. 28, 32.
  Buxton, Fowell, West Indian slavery and, iv. 190, 191, 194, 195.
  Byng, Admiral:
    Fails to relieve Minorca, ii. 297.
    Tried and shot, ii. 298.
  Byrne, Miles:
    Career, iii. 321.
    Memoirs, iii. 321.
  Byron, Lord:
    Assists Greeks, iv. 48.
    Death at Missolonghi, iv. 50.
    On George IV., iii. 242.
    On Grattan, iii. 307.
    Scorn of O'Connell's loyalty, iv. 23, 27.
    Verses on Castlereagh's death, iv. 37.

  Cabot, John and Sebastian, discover Canada, ii. 283.
  Calder, Admiral Sir Robert, iii. 336.
  Calendar, reform of, ii. 275.
  Campbell, John, Baron, on Lord Harcourt, i. 51.
  Campeachy logwood question, i. 294, 295; ii. 160.
  Camperdown, battle of, iii. 318, 336.
  Canada:
    French and English colonies in, ii. 283, 284.
    Sketch of history, ii. 283 _seqq._
  "Canter of Coltbrigg," ii. 213-215.
  Canterbury, Archbishop of, attends Queen Caroline, ii. 121.
  Canning, George:
    Accepts Governor-Generalship of India, iv. 35.
    Attitude towards Free Trade and Parliamentary reform, iv. 52, 62.
    Character, iv. 60, 65.
    Death, iv. 61.
    Duel with Lord Castlereagh, iv. 34.
    Foreign Secretary, iv. 38.
    Funeral in Westminster Abbey, iv. 62.
    Monroe doctrine and, iv. 44.
    Opponents in House of Lords, iv. 59.
    Oratory, iv. 33, 34, 64.
    Policy, iv. 34, 38, 41, 42, 43, 52, 55.
    Summary of, iv. 62.
    Prime Minister, iv. 55, 58.
    Resigns office, iv. 7, 31, 34.
    Sketch of career, iv. 31 _seqq._, 62.
    Supports Queen Caroline, iv. 5, 7.
    Sympathy with Greece, iv. 49, 52.
  Canning, Stratford, iv. 32.
  "Canningites," iv. 65, 72.
  Carew, Sir George, builds Chichester House, Dublin, i. 80.
  Caricature in political controversy, i. 52.
  Caricatures during Hastings's trial, iii. 288.
  Caricatures of Napoleon Bonaparte, iii. 333.
  Carnwath, Earl of, a prisoner, i. 137, 138.
  Caroline, Amelia Elizabeth, Princess of Brunswick, wife of
      George IV., iii. 244.
    Character, iv. 11.
    Demands to be crowned, iv. 8, 10.
    Divorce bill, iv. 6; abandoned, iv. 8.
    Illness and death, iv. 10, 11.
    Italian witnesses against, iv. 7.
    Returns to England on accession of George IV., iv. 5, 6.
  Caroline, Princess, ii. 38, 71, 79, 105.
    Attends on Queen, ii. 118, 124.
    Dislikes Walpole, ii. 126.
  Caroline, Wilhelmina Dorothea, wife of George II., i. 303.
    Action towards Porteous, ii. 62, 66.
    Acts as Regent, ii. 49.
    Alarmed for King's safety, ii. 71, 72.
    Character, i. 276; ii. 77.
    Death-bed, ii. 114 _seqq._
    Family, ii. 38.
    Godmother to her granddaughter, ii. 108.
    Hates Prince of Wales, ii. 40, 50, 71, 76, 118.
    Lampoons on, ii. 102.
  Carteret, John, Earl of Granville:
    Attacks Ministry and Convention, ii. 165.
    Character, ii. 240, 241; iii. 38.
    Death, iii. 38.
    Denounces Convention, ii. 163.
    Enmity to Walpole, ii. 159, 160, 185.
    Foreign Policy, ii. 177, 240, 241.
    Hatred of Pulteney, ii. 192.
    Knowledge of German, i. 235.
    Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, i. 239; iii. 38.
    Motion on Petition against Convention, ii. 164.
    Moves motion for removal of Walpole, ii. 185.
    Proclamation against "Drapier's Letters," i. 247.
    Proposes address on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 89.
    Resigns, ii. 244.
    Secretary of State, ii. 191.
    Sketch of career, i. 233.
    Speech on Salt Tax, i. 314.
  Cartier, Jacques, ascends St. Lawrence, ii. 283.
  Castlereagh, Viscount (Marquis of Londonderry):
    Character, iv. 36.
    Death, iv. 36.
    Duel with Canning, iv. 34.
    Policy, iv. 34, 39, 41.
  Catalans and Peace of Utrecht, i. 94.
  "Catholic" and "Protestant" Ministers, iv. 54.
  Catholic Association formed, iv. 21.
  Catholic disabilities, iii. 307.
  Catholic emancipation question, iv. 52, 67 _seqq._
  Catholic Relief Bill passed, iv. 78.
  Catholics, feeling against, i. 143.
  Catholics, penalty against, i. 216.
  Cato Street Conspiracy, iv. 2, 15.
  Censorship for stage and press discussed, ii. 96 _seqq._
  Chadwick, Sir Edwin, on Poor Law Commission, iv. 225, 227.
  Chait Singh, Rajah of Benares, and Warren Hastings, ii. 269.
  Chambord, Count de, i. 40.
  Charing Cross in 1714, i. 68.
  Charles II. of Spain:
    Character, i. 61.
    Will of, ii. 27.
  Charles VI., Emperor, ii. 23.
    Death, ii. 182.
    Denounces Walpole, ii. 25.
    Pragmatic sanction, i. 228.
  Charles X. deposed, iv. 98.
  Charles XII. of Sweden:
    Action in Poland, ii. 23.
    Sketch of, i. 160, 162.
  Charles River, English fleet in, iii. 173, 182.
  Charleston in 1765, iii. 77.
  Charleston, tea landed at, iii. 161.
  Charlotte, Princess:
    Death, iii. 348.
    Marries Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, iii. 348.
  Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of George
      III., iii. 10.
    Character and personal appearance, iii. 12, 14.
    Death, iii. 348.
  Chartists demand vote by ballot, iv. 131.
  Chaworth, Mary, Mrs. Musters, iv. 170.
  Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of:
    Administration in Ireland, ii. 249.
    Advice to Prince of Wales, ii. 78.
    Attitude on Penal Laws, ii. 249.
    Character, ii. 6.
    Conduct to Johnson, iii. 44.
    Enmity to Walpole, ii. 159, 160, 185.
    Irish policy, ii. 7.
    Moves address on Accession of George II., ii. 7.
    On Bolingbroke, i. 117.
       Bute's nationality, iii. 30.
       Carteret, i. 235.
       Lord Cowper, i. 98.
    Recalled from Ireland, ii. 252.
    Retires from public life, ii. 274.
    Secretary of State, ii. 252.
    Sketch of, ii. 4 _seqq._
    Speech on Convention, ii. 164.
    Speech on Playhouse Bill, ii. 100.
    Speech on Reform of Calendar, ii. 275.
    Viceroy of Ireland, ii. 246, 247.
  Chichester, Sir Arthur, i. 80.
  China trade and East India Company, iv. 231.
  Chippenham election petition, ii. 189, 190.
  Chiswick, Mr., sends Warren Hastings to Calcutta, iii. 247.
  Cholmondeley, Earl of, moves address on Convention, ii. 164.
  Chudleigh, Colonel, quarrels with Charles Aldworth, i. 58.
  Chunar fortress, iii. 270.
  Chunda Sahib:
    Besieges Trichinopoly, ii. 262.
    Captured and put to death, ii. 264.
    Invades Carnatic, ii. 261.
  Church of England, condition in 1738, ii. 129, 132.
  Churchill, Charles:
    Character, iii. 52.
    Death, iii. 69.
    Denunciation of Hogarth, iii. 63.
    Flight, iii. 59.
    "Rosciad," iii. 54.
    Satires, iv. 69.
    Wilkes and, iii. 55.
  Cider tax proposed, iii. 30.
  Claimants to throne (1714), i. 3 _seqq._
  Clare Election (1828), iv. 70, 78.
  Clarence, Duke of (_see_ William IV.).
  Clarendon, Lord, bears tidings of Queen Anne's death to
      George, i. 56.
  Clarke, Adam, death, iv. 284.
  Clarke, George, killed in riot, iii. 129.
  Clarkson, Thomas, West Indian Slavery and, iv. 195, 200.
  Clavering, General Francis, iii. 260, 261.
    Death, iii. 264.
  Clement, Pope, interview with Charles Stuart, ii. 202.
  Clerk, Lord Justice, i. 130.
  Clerkenwell Prison broken open, iii. 203.
  Cleveland, Duchess of, i. 23.
  Clifton, engagement at, ii. 223.
  Clinton at Boston, iii. 175.
  Clive, Richard, ii. 254.
  Clive, Robert, ii. 253.
    Advances against Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 268.
    Captures Arcot, ii. 262.
    Character, ii. 255.
    Discerns Warren Hastings's talent, iii. 250, 252.
    Escapes from Madras, ii. 260.
    Forges Admiral Watson's signature, ii. 270.
    Governor of Fort St. David, ii. 265.
    Marries, ii. 264.
    Negotiates with Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269.
    Protests against Indian Administration, iii. 251.
    Returns to England, ii. 264, 273.
    Returns to India, iii. 253.
    Sketch of career, ii. 256 _seqq._
  Clonmel, State trials at, iv. 179.
    Clubs in 1714, i. 73.
  Coalition Ministry (1783), iii. 225, 229
    Fall of, iii. 235, 237.
  Cobbett, William:
    Death, iv. 282.
    Prosecution, iv. 154.
    Sketch of career, iv. 155.
  Cobden, R., doctrine of non-intervention, iv. 62.
  Cochrane, Thomas, Earl of Dundonald, assists Greeks, iv. 48.
  "Cocoa Tree" coffee-house, i. 76.
  Code Napoleon, iii. 332.
  Codrington, Sir Edward, commands at Navarino, iv. 50, 96.
  Coffee-houses, i. 75, 76.
  Coke's description of Raleigh, iii. 286.
  Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, death, iv. 283.
  Colonial Administration System (1765), iii. 80.
  Committee of Secrecy, i. 104, 168.
  Compton, Sir Spencer, Lord Wilmington, ii. 107, 189.
    Character, i. 275.
    Death, ii. 240.
    Prime Minister, ii. 191.
    Speaker of House of Commons, i. 212.
  Concord, battle and retreat from, iii. 174.
  Congress of Verona and Vienna (_see_ Verona and Vienna Congress).
  Congreve, William, sketch of, i. 299.
  Coningsby, Lord, i. 105.
    Impeaches Oxford, i. 108.
  Convention between England and Spain (1739), ii. 161, 168.
    Petition against, ii. 163.
  Conway, Circular letter to governors of colonies, iii. 105.
  Cooke, George, Tory candidate for Middlesex, iii. 117.
    Death, iii. 124.
  Coote, Major Eyre, ii. 272.
  Cope, Sir John, Scottish Commander-in-Chief, ii. 210.
    Defeated at Preston Pans, ii. 214, 215.
  Copley, Sir John (_see_ Lyndhurst, Baron).
  Cork Hill, Dublin, i. 82.
  Cork in 1714, i. 83.
  Cornwallis, Charles, Marquis:
    Commands royal troops in Ireland, iii. 323.
    Surrenders at Yorktown, iii. 184.
  Corporation Act repealed, iv. 52, 67.
  Corstorphine, Dragoons at, ii. 212.
  Cottenham, Lord Chancellor, iv. 252.
  Court Street Conspiracy, iii. 160.
  Covent Garden in 1714, i. 68.
  Cowper, Spencer, i. 105.
  Cowper, William, Earl, Lord Chancellor:
    Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 190.
    Evidence against, i. 219.
    Opposes taxing Catholics, i. 216.
    Sketch of, i. 98.
  Coxe, Archdeacon, on:
    Division on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 88.
    Duke of Newcastle, ii. 33.
  Crabbe, George:
    Account of taking of Newgate, iii. 203.
    Death, iv. 282.
  _Craftsman_:
    Objects of, i. 290, 291.
    On Walpole's excise scheme, i. 318.
    Picture of Walpole, ii. 14.
    "Sedition and defamation displayed," i. 306.
    Series of pamphlets, i. 286.
    Started, i. 260.
  Craggs, Father and Son, i. 197.
  Crawford, Earl of, on Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 44.
  Croix, Petit de la, Persian Tales, iii. 254.
  Croker, John Wilson, ii. 107.
    Obstructs Reform Bill, iv. 163.
  Cromarty, Lord, trial, ii. 228.
  Cromwell, Elizabeth, death, ii. 3.
  Cruden, Alexander, dislike to Wilkes, iii. 135.
  Culloden, Battle of, ii. 224.
    Prisoners, ii. 232.
  Cumberland, Ernest Augustus, Duke of:
    Orange Association and, iv. 276, 278.
    Supports Irish Church, iv. 219.
    Unpopularity, iv. 102.
  Cumberland, William Augustus, Duke of (Butcher), ii. 38.
    Army at Stafford, ii. 217.
    Character, ii. 223.
    Commands English troops at Lauffeld, ii. 239.
    Conduct after Culloden, ii. 226.
    Invites Pitt to return to office, iii. 73, 93.
    Queen Caroline's advice to, ii. 118.
  Curran, John Philpot:
    Appeal on behalf of Wolfe Tone, iii. 326.
    Description of Ireland, iv. 27.
  Curran, Sarah, and Robert Emmet, iii. 329.

  "Daily Advertiser," iii. 128.
  _Daily Post_, iii. 128.
  Dalton, Sir Charles, Gentleman Usher of Black Rod, i. 278.
  Dashwood, Francis, Lord Le Despencer, iii. 33, 65.
    Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 48.
    Founds brotherhood of Medmenham, iii. 46.
  Davy, Sir Humphry, iv. 93.
  Dawson, James, supports Young Pretender, ii. 221, 229.
  Dawson Street, Dublin, i. 81.
  Daylesford Manor, Worcestershire, iii. 245, 247.
  D'Espremesnil, Duval, Governor of Madras, ii. 261.
  De Launay decapitated, iii. 294.
  De Quincey, iii. 44.
  Deccan, Nizam of, sends diamond to George III., iii. 281.
  Declaration of Rights, Philadelphia, iii. 173.
  Declaratory Act, iii. 104, 105.
  Defoe, Daniel, "Robinson Crusoe," ii. 1.
  Demerara, "Insurrection" of slaves, iv. 193.
  Denman, Thomas, Lord Chief Justice:
    Defends Queen Caroline, iv. 6, 7, 8.
  Denmark, King of:
    Character, i. 3.
    Treaty with George I., i. 161.
    Treaty with George II., ii. 176.
  Derby, Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, Earl of:
    Letter to Peel declining office, iv. 238.
    Political principles, iv. 217.
    Secretary to Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, iv. 127.
    Speech on Emancipation of Slaves, iv. 196.
    Speech on Irish State Church, iv. 217, 246.
  Derby, Reform riot at, iv. 170.
  Derwentwater, Earl of, i. 137.
    Executed, i. 142.
  Dettingen, battle of, ii. 182.
  Devonshire, Duke of, Premier of Coalition Ministry, ii. 298.
  D'Iberville on Whigs, i. 18.
  Dickens, Charles, iv. 286.
  Dinner hour, changes in, iii. 18.
  Dinwiddie, Governor of Virginia, ii. 285.
  Disarmament of clans, ii. 208, 232.
  Disarming Act (1716), result of, ii. 209.
  Disraeli (_see_ Beaconsfield, Lord).
  Divorce Bill (1820), iv. 6.
    Abandoned, iv. 8.
  Don Carlos:
    Compact to protect (1733), ii. 26.
    Heir to Parma and Placentia, ii. 28.
  Dorset, Duke of, English ambassador to France, iii. 295.
  Drake, Governor, in Fulta Island, iii. 249.
  Draper, Sir William, replies to letters of Junius, iii. 129.
  Drapier's letters, i. 240, 242.
  Drummond, Lord James, supports Young Pretender, ii. 221.
  Dublin coffee-houses, i. 82.
  Dublin in 1714, i. 80.
  Dubois, Abbe, Sketch of, i. 155.
  Duddington, Lieutenant, Commands "Gaspee," iii. 152.
  Dumouriez and Duke of Wellington, i. 129.
  Duncan, Admiral (Lord Camperdown):
    Deserted by squadron, iii. 335.
    Victory of Camperdown, iii. 318, 336.
  Duncannon, Lord, Commissioner of Woods and Forests, iv. 127.
  Dundas, Henry, Viscount Melville:
    Catholic Relief Bill for Scotland, iii. 195.
    Fall of, iii. 338.
    Sketch of, iii. 232.
  Dundonald, Admiral, last of sea-kings, iii. 336.
  Dunleary (_see_ Kingstown).
  Dunoyer, dancing-master and spy, ii. 106.
  Dupleix, Governor of S. India, ii. 261.
    Dreams of French empire in India, ii. 258.
    Founds Chandernagor, ii. 258.
    Indian policy, iii. 249.
    Recalled to France, ii. 262.
    Refuses to ratify Convention and pillages Madras, ii. 259.
  Duplicity universal, i. 30.
  Durham, Earl of, iv. 291.
    Efforts for Parliamentary reform, iv. 22.
    Lord Privy Seal, iv. 127.
    Manners, iv. 121.
    Sketch of, iv. 127.
    Suggestions on Reform Bill, iv. 129.
  Dutch (Batavian) expedition to Ireland, iii. 317.
  Dymoke, King's champion, iii. 13.

  East India Companies, ii. 254, 260.
  East India Company:
    Charter renewed, iv. 230, 232.
    Clamors for revenge, iii. 163.
    Forces tea on America, iii. 161.
    Policy, iii. 248 _seqq._
    Semi-regal authority, iii. 230.
  Edgeworth, Talbot, i. 82.
  Edinburgh:
    Bill, ii. 66, 68.
    City guard, ii. 60.
    Condition in 1745, ii. 210.
    In 1714, i. 84.
    Life in, i. 85.
  Edinburgh Castle:
    Jacobite plan to capture, i. 129.
    Reduction  abandoned  by Young Pretender, ii. 216.
  Edwards, spy in Cato Street conspiracy, iv. 17, 19.
  Effingham, Lord, Earl Marshal, iii. 13.
  Egremont, Lord, iii. 59, 63.
    House besieged, iii. 117.
    Wilkes before, iii. 60.
  Elcho, Lord, ii. 227.
  Eldon, Earl of, Lord Chancellor, iv. 3.
    Attitude on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 69.
    Attitude towards death penalty for stealing, iv. 21.
    Resigns office, iv. 57.
    Toryism, iv. 3.
  Elizabeth, Electress Palatine of the Rhine, i. 5.
  Elizabeth of Parma, wife of Philip V., ii. 28.
  Ellis, relations with Nawab Mir Kasim, iii. 251.
  Emerson prophesies rise of Orientalism in England, iii. 254.
  Emily, Princess:
    At her father's death-bed, ii. 304.
    Attends on Queen, ii. 117, 122, 123.
    Dislikes Walpole, ii. 126.
  Emmet, Robert, iii. 313, 314; iv. 206.
    Projects for Independence of Ireland, iii. 327.
  Emmet, Thomas Addis, iii. 313, 314.
  England:
    American Colonies and Advantages of union between, iii. 80.
    Declares war against Spain, ii. 178.
    Politics of Continent, and, i. 154, 225.
    Protests against War of Independence, iii. 183, 184.
    Recuperates, iii. 187.
    Spain and, trade disputes, ii. 150.
  English Copper Company and South Sea Company, i. 193.
  English Protestant Association, iii. 192, 195.
    Meeting in St. George's Fields, iii. 169.
  English substituted for Latin in indictments, etc., i. 302.
  Entinck, John, Editor of _Monitor_, iii. 51.
  Eon, Chevalier d', present to Wilkes, iii. 134.
  Erskine, Thomas, Lord:
    Defends Lord George Gordon, iii. 210.
    On Coronation oath, iv. 54.
  Eugene, Prince, of Savoy, ii. 24, 35.
  Excise Bill (1733), i. 317.
    Abandoned, i. 320.
  Excise Reform, i. 311.
  Exeter in 1714, i. 79.

  Factories Act (1833), iv. 202, 204.
  Factory labor and State, iv. 201, 202.
  Fairman, Colonel, Orange lodges and, iv. 278.
  Falkirk, Hawley defeated at, ii. 223.
  "Family compacts," ii. 26; iii. 27.
  Famines in Scotland, i. 89.
  "Fancy Franchises," iv. 183.
  Fane, British Envoy at Florence, ii. 202.
  Fashions in 1760, iii. 16.
  Ferguson, on Edinburgh City Guard, ii. 60.
  Fielding, Henry:
    On mob in London, iii. 123.
    Satires on Pretender, ii. 219.
  Fielding, Sir John, house sacked, iii. 203.
  Finch, Lord, presents Bolingbroke's petition to Lords, i. 258.
  Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, iii. 309, 314; iv. 206.
    Death, iii. 323.
    Marriage, iii. 220.
    Sketch of career, iii. 312.
    Withdraws from Dublin Parliament, iii. 319.
  Fitzgerald, Vesey, defeated by O'Connell, iv. 74.
  Fitzherbert, Mrs.:
    Death, iv. 289.
    George IV. and, iii. 242; iv. 88.
  Fitzwilliam, Earl, Viceroy of Ireland, iii. 308.
  Flaxman, John, iv. 93.
  Fleet ditch, i. 72.
  Fleet marriages, ii. 279.
  Fleming, Sir Michael, and Lord George Gordon, iii. 199.
  Fletcher, Andrew, in Edinburgh in 1745, ii. 211.
  Fleury, Cardinal, Prime Minister of France, i. 264, 291.
  Florida and Carolina, dispute as to boundaries, ii. 160.
  Fontenoy, Battle of, ii. 210.
  Foote, on Alexander Wedderburn, iii. 158.
  Forbes, Duncan, in Edinburgh in 1745, ii. 62.
  Foreign aid for America, iii. 183.
  Forster, Thomas:
    Escapes, i. 142.
    In Newgate, i. 137.
  Fort Duquesne built, ii. 286.
  Fort Duquesne taken, iii. 180.
  Fort St. David, Olive at, ii. 260, 263.
  Fort Ticonderoga taken, iii. 79.
  "Forty-five," Account of Rebellion, ii. 203 _seqq._
  Forty-shilling freeholders, iv. 179.
  Fowke, charged with conspiracy, iii. 261.
  Fox, Charles James, i. 28.
    Acquainted with Paris, iii. 293.
    Antagonism to Pitt, iii. 225.
    As Leader of Opposition, i. 287.
    Attitude on Regency, iii. 243.
    Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 296, 299.
    Attitude towards Pitt, iii. 339.
    Character, iii. 227.
    Coalition with North, iii. 225.
    Contracted with Pitt, iii. 212
    Death, iii. 340; iv. 61.
    Early life, iii. 142.
    Foreign Secretary and Leader of Commons, iii. 340.
    Friend to Ireland, iii. 319; iv. 23.
    India Bill, iii. 230 _seqq._
    On Henry Grattan, iii. 307.
    Parliamentary career, iii. 141, 143.
    Praises of Pitt, iii. 223.
    Prince of Wales's conduct to, iii. 243.
    Resigns office, iii. 225.
    Scholarship, iii. 143.
    Secretary of State, iii. 224.
    Speech on Middlesex Election Petition, iii. 132.
  Fox, Henry (_see_ Holland, Lord).
  Fox's Martyrs, iii. 237.
  France:
    Acknowledges independence of America, iii. 183.
    Condition before Revolution, iii. 291.
    Declares war (1793), iii. 303.
    In 1716, i. 154, 155.
    Spain and, Alliance between, ii. 25, 26, 182.
    Spanish policy, iv. 42.
  Francis, Philip:
    Character, iii. 260.
    Duel with Hastings, iii. 267.
    Hostile to Hastings, iii. 280.
    Probable author of "Letters of Junius," iii. 39.
  Franklin, Benjamin:
    At Bar of House, iii. 103, 156.
    Gala suit, iii. 156, 184.
    Letters of Hutchinson and Oliver and, iii. 153, 155.
    On Whitefield's eloquence, ii. 139.
    On Wilkes's candidature for Parliament, iii. 116, 132.
    Signs Peace in Paris, iii. 184.
    Sketch of, iii. 102.
  Frazer, Under Secretary of State, iii. 235.
  Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, ii. 38.
    Attempts to see his mother, ii. 118.
    Banished from King's palaces, ii. 108.
    Bids for popularity, ii. 71.
    Carries off his wife to London, ii. 106.
    Character, ii. 71, 72, 74, 77.
    Claims independent allowance, ii. 77.
    Conduct on declaration of war, ii. 178.
    Death, ii. 276.
    Epitaphs, ii. 276.
    Income, ii. 87.
    Marries Princess Augusta, ii. 47.
    Patriots and, ii. 50, 108, 110.
    Relations with George II., ii. 39, 50, 76, 91, 104.
    Sketch of, ii. 39.
    Votes against address on Convention, ii. 169.
  Frederick II. of Prussia (the Great), ii. 280.
    Account of abandonment of Excise Bill, i. 320.
    Description of George I., i. 270.
    Occupies Silesia, ii. 182.
  Frederick William, King of Prussia, and George II., ii. 45.
  Free Trade, movement towards, iv. 93.
  Free Trade, Walpole and, i. 317.
  Freedom of City, origin of, iv. 256.
  French aims in America, ii. 285.
  French expeditions to Ireland, iii. 315, 323, 325.
  French in Canada, ii. 283.
  French Revolution, iii. 284, 293 _seqq._
    Condition of France before, iii. 291.
    England and, iii. 302, 306.
  French Revolution of 1830, iv. 98.
  Fuseli, Henry, iv. 93.

  Gage, General:
    Arrives in Massachusetts, iii. 165.
    Raid upon stores in Concord, iii. 174.
  Galland, version of "Arabian Nights," iii. 254.
  Game Laws, severity of, iv. 84.
  Garrick, David, and Samuel Johnson, iii. 42.
  Gascoigne, General, amendment to Reform Bill, iv. 150.
  "Gaspee," iii. 152.
  Gates, General Horatio, iii. 179.
    Traitor, iii. 184.
  Gay, John;
    "Beggar's Opera," i. 302; ii. 95.
    Lampoons, ii. 102.
    "Polly," ii. 95.
    Secretary to Lord Clarendon, i. 38.
    Sketch of, ii. 3.
  _Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser_, iii. 128.
  George I. (George Louis, Elector of Hanover):
    Attitude towards Prince of Wales, i. 153, 256, 274.
    Character, i. 6, 8, 58, 91, 269.
    Conduct during 1715, i. 136.
    Coronation, i. 101.
    Death, i. 266.
    Descent, i. 6.
    Directions about Czar, i. 163.
    Distrusts Marlborough, i. 54.
    Entry into London, i. 58.
    Extent of Empire, i. 89.
    Journey to England, i. 56.
    Letter to King of Spain on Gibraltar, i. 296.
    New Lords Justices, i. 54.
    Principles of government, i. 91.
    Proclaimed King, i. 47, 49.
    Project for kidnapping Prince of Wales, ii. 109, 110.
    Stories of later years, i. 266.
    Treatment of Oxford and Bolingbroke, i. 101.
    Visits Hanover, i. 152, 236, 265.
    Will, i. 269.
  George II.:
    At Dettingen, ii. 182.
    Character, i. 274; ii. 46, 48, 76, 117, 123, 304.
    Consults Walpole, ii. 195.
    Death, ii. 303.
    Godfather to his grand-daughter, ii. 108.
    Guardian of the Realm and Lieutenant, i. 153.
    His family, ii. 38.
    In danger through storms, ii. 69.
    Income, ii. 89.
    Letter to Queen, ii. 76.
    On Handel, ii. 52.
    Opens Parliament (1728), i. 282.
    Negotiates with Carteret and Pulteney, ii. 244.
    Party when Prince of Wales, i. 257.
    Proposes allowance to Prince of Wales, ii. 81, 86.
    Proposes duel with Frederick William of Prussia, ii. 46.
    Relations with George I., i. 153, 256, 274; ii. 109.
    Relations with Prince of Wales, ii. 40, 50, 76, 104 _seqq._, 118.
    Royal speech (1727), i. 278.
    Speech from throne (1735), ii. 22.
    Sympathy with his mother, i. 153.
    Unpopular, ii. 69.
    Visits Hanover, ii. 47, 49, 210.
  George III.:
    Accession, iii. 2.
    Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 53.
    Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 301.
    Attitude towards Wilkes, iii. 17, 119, 132.
    Birth, ii. 278.
    Character, iii. 4, 241; iv. 91.
    Coronation, iii. 12.
    Courage during Gordon riots, iii. 206.
    Death, iii. 348.
    Dislikes Fox and North, iii. 225.
    Dislikes Pitt, iii. 3, 26.
    Dismisses Fox and North, iii. 235.
    Grenville and, iii. 71, 72, 93.
    Ideal of governing, iii. 23, 25, 80.
    Illnesses, iii. 72, 243, 341.
    Improvements during reign, iii. 349.
    Letter to Temple on India Bills, iii. 234.
    Ministry of all the talents and, iii. 340.
    Personal appearance, iii. 3.
    Policy towards American colonies, iii. 78, 79, 153, 164.
    Private life, iii. 19.
    Speech from throne (1760), iii. 22.
  George IV. (Augustus Frederick):
    Accession and illness, iv. 1.
    Attitude towards Canning, iv. 31, 37, 46, 48, 55, 65.
    Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 54, 55, 76.
    Attitude towards Lord Grey, iv. 76.
    Character, iii. 241; iv. 24, 28, 30, 89 _seqq._
    Coronation, iv. 9.
    Death, iv. 87.
    Endeavors to obtain divorce, iv. 3, 4, 6, 8.
    Friend of Fox and Sheridan, iii. 242; iv. 23.
    Illness, iv. 86.
    In opposition, iii. 242.
    Interview with Wellington, Lyndhurst, and Peel, iv. 77.
    Letters to Lord Liverpool, iv. 27, 37.
    Marries Princess Caroline of Brunswick, iii. 244.
    Mrs. Fitzherbert and, iii. 242; iv. 88.
    Regent, iii. 341.
    Visits Hanover, iv. 28.
    Visits Ireland, iv. 23 _seqq._
    Visits Scotland, iv. 29.
  Georgia, John Wesley visits, ii. 127, 134.
  Georgian drama, ii. 94.
  Georgian literature, iii. 171.
  Gheriah, Pirate stronghold, ii. 265.
  Gibbon on Gordon riots, iii. 196.
  Gibraltar:
    Besieged (1727), i. 228.
    Debate on restitution of, i. 296.
  Gin riots, ii. 56.
  Gladsmuir (_see_ Preston Pans, battle of).
  Gladstone, John, entertains George Canning, iv. 35.
  Gladstone, William Ewart, iv. 35.
    Junior Lord of Treasury, iv. 239.
    On "Drapier's Letters," i. 245.
    Speech on Irish Church revenues, iv. 247.
  Glasgow in 1714, i. 86.
  Gloucester, Duke of, death, i. 3.
  Glynn, Serjeant, M. P. for Middlesex, iii. 124.
  Goderich, Viscount:
    Colonial and War Secretary, iv. 58.
    Prime Minister, iv. 65.
    "Prosperity Robinson," iv. 65.
    Resigns office, iv. 67.
    Sketch of, iv. 65.
  Godolphin, Countess of, i. 210.
  Godolphin, Earl of, Lord Privy Seal, ii. 107.
  Goethe, referred to, iii. 144, 145.
    "Sorrows of Werther," iii. 167.
  Goldsmith, Oliver:
    Plays, iii. 170.
    Sketch of career and writings, iii. 167, 171.
  Gordon, Colonel, threatens rioters, iii. 199.
  Gordon, Elizabeth, Duchess of, improves Scotch agriculture, i. 88.
  Gordon, Lord George:
    Acquitted, iii. 210.
    Arrested, iii. 209.
    Death in Newgate, iii. 210.
    Denounces Burke, iii. 199.
    Presents petition to Commons, iii. 198.
    Sketch of, iii. 192.
  Gordon riots, iii. 196 _seqq._
  Gordon, Sir John, ii. 223.
  Government by party, i. 284.
  Graeme, Colonel, mission, iii. 11.
  Grafton, Duke of (I.), killed in Cork, i. 83.
  Grafton, Duke of (II.), Bill to suspend Habeas Corpus Act, i. 213.
  Grafton (Augustus Henry Fitzroy), Duke of (III.):
    Junius's indictment of, iii. 129.
    Resigns place in Rockingham ministry, iii. 108.
    Sketch of, iii. 35.
  Graham, Sir James:
    First Lord of Admiralty, iv. 127.
    Refuses office in Peel's ministry, iv. 238.
    Resigns office, iv. 218.
    Speech on Irish Church revenues, iv. 246.
  Granard, Lord, tells King James of conspiracy, i. 24.
  Grant, Sir Archibald, interest in road-making, i. 88.
  Granville, Earl of (_see_ Carteret, John).
  Grattan, Henry:
    Buried in Westminster Abbey, iv. 23.
    Leader of Irish, iii. 307.
    Withdraws from Dublin Parliament, iii. 319.
  Gray, "Elegy in a Country Church-yard," ii. 289.
  Great Seal stolen, iii. 237.
  "Grecian" coffee-house, i. 76.
  Greece: struggle for independence, iv. 40, 48.
  Green, J. B., on "Family Compact," ii. 31.
  Greene, Nathaniel, iii. 176, 179.
  Gregory XIII. reforms calendar, ii. 275.
  Grenville, George, iii. 26, 57.
    Colonial policy, iii. 84, 87.
    Prime minister, iii. 72.
    Proposes tax to maintain garrison in America, iii. 87.
    Regency Bill and, iii. 72.
    Sketch of, iii. 31.
    Speech on Middlesex election petition, iii. 131.
    Stamp Act, iii. 87, 90.
  Grenville, James, iii. 26.
  Grenville, William Wyndham, Lord, Ministry of
      all the talents, iii. 340.
  Greville, Charles, on:
    Duel between Wellington and Winchilsea, iv. 83.
    Edmund Burke, iii. 96.
    George IV.'s illness, iv. 86.
    James and John Stuart Mill, iv. 281.
    Meeting Macaulay, iv. 185.
    Princess Victoria, iv. 290, 291.
    William IV., iv. 114, 115.
    William IV. and Whig ministers, iv. 175.
  Grey, Charles, Earl:
    Appeal to archbishops and bishops on Reform Bill, iv. 171.
    Appeals to country, iv. 152.
    Attacks Canning, iv. 59.
    Attitude towards electoral reform, iv. 52, 59.
    Attitude towards Irish State Church, iv. 218, 220.
    Catholic Emancipation and, iv. 76.
    Character, iv. 120.
    Introduces third Reform Bill, iv. 173.
    Irish grievances and, iv. 207.
    Leader of Opposition, iv. 103.
    Motion on speech from throne, iv. 104.
    Prime Minister, iv. 122.
    Resigns office, iv. 233.
    Scheme for creating new peers, iv. 176, 180.
    Speech on reform, iv. 108.
    Speech on Reform Bill (second), iv. 168.
  Grey, Earl:
    Committed to Tower, i. 214.
    Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 190.
  Grey, Sir George, Under-Secretary of Colonies, iv. 252.
  Grosvenor, Sir Richard, names squares and streets, i. 68.
  Grote, George:
    On Irish State Church system, iv. 210.
    Motion for ballot in municipal elections, iv. 259.
    Sketch of, iv. 215.
    Speech on Ward's motion on Irish Church, iv. 216, 217.
  Guelf, history of family, i. 5.
  Guildhall banquet rumors, iv. 112.

  Haddington, Lord, introduces sowing grass seeds, i. 88.
  Haidar:
    Grudge against English, iii. 265.
    Sketch of career, iii. 265.
  Halhed, friend of Sheridan, iii. 217, 218.
  Halifax, Lord, iii. 59.
    Wilkes before, iii. 60.
  Halkett, Sir P. K., warns General Braddock, ii. 286.
  Hall, Robert, death, iv. 284.
  Hamilton, James, Duke of, killed in duel, i. 122.
  Hamilton, Lady Archibald, accompanies Prince and Princess
      of Wales to London, ii. 107.
  Hamilton (Single-speech), Secretary to Halifax, iii. 99.
  Hampden, John, and ship money, i. 247.
  Hampden, Richard, i. 105.
  Hampton Court Palace, Royal Family in, ii. 105, 106.
  Handel:
    Reception of "Messiah," ii. 51.
    Royal Family and, ii. 51.
  Hanger, George, iii. 244.
  Hanover:
    Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's account of, i. 152.
    Separation from English Crown proposed, ii. 105.
    Sketch of House of, i. 5.
    Thackeray's description of, i. 55.
    Treaty of, i. 295.
  Hanoverian dynasty, position of, iv. 94.
  Harcourt, Simon, Lord Chancellor:
    Motion on Oxford's impeachment, i. 169.
    Sketch of career, i. 49.
  Hardwicke, Philip Yorke, Lord Chancellor, ii. 9, 192.
    Heads deputation to Prince of Wales, ii. 81.
    On declaration of war, ii. 177.
    Opposes Pitt, iii. 26.
    Passes Marriage Act, ii. 279.
  Harley, Robert (_see_ Oxford, Earl of).
  Harley, Thomas, arrest ordered, i. 106.
  Harrington, Lord, Secretary of State, i. 304.
  Harrison, Audrey, marries third Marquis Townshend, iii. 110.
  Harrowby, Lord, and Cato Street conspiracy, iv. 18.
  Harvard College, places in lists, iii. 77.
  Hastings, Howard, assists his nephew, iii. 246.
  Hastings, Lady Elizabeth, Essays by Congreve and Steele on, i. 301.
  Hastings, Pynaston, iii. 245.
  Hastings, Warren:
    Acquitted, iii. 285.
    Advice on quarrel of Nawab and Ellis, iii. 252.
    At Bar of House, iii. 276, 289.
    Attempts literature, iii. 253.
    Benares expedition, iii. 269.
    Buys Dalesford, iii. 276.
    Charges against, iii. 258.
    Company's representative at Murshidabad, iii. 250.
    Defence at Bar of House, iii. 276.
    Duel with Francis, iii. 267.
    Enemies, iii. 260, 264, 265.
    Evidence before House of Commons' Committee, iii. 253.
    Friendship for Sir James Bland-Burges, iii. 278.
    Governor-General, iii. 260; his Council, iii. 260 _seqq._
    Governor of Bengal, iii. 257.
    Impeached, iii. 281.
    Indian policy, iii. 273.
    Life at Daylesford, iii. 288.
    Marriage, iii. 250, 256.
    Oriental diplomacy, iii. 249.
    Oriental studies, iii. 254.
    Presents Deccan diamond to king, iii. 281.
    Reforms needed and carried out, iii. 257, 258.
    Relations with Impey, iii. 267, 268.
    Resignation accepted, iii. 264.
    Returns to England, iii. 253.
    Returns to India, iii. 255.
    Scheme for Supreme Court and Council, iii. 267.
    Sketch of career, iii. 245 _seqq._
    State of India on his arrival, iii. 249.
    Trial, iii. 281 _seqq._
    Work accomplished, iii. 258.
  Hatzfeldt, Count, mobbed, iii. 118.
  Hawley, defeated at Falkirk, ii. 223.
  Hazlitt on Steele and Addison, i. 300, 301.
  Heath, --, iii. 179.
  Heber, Bishop, death, iv. 92.
  Heights of Abraham, ii. 288, 289.
  Hell-Fire Club, iii. 47.
  Hemans, Felicia, death, iv. 284.
  Henry IV. becomes a Catholic, i. 13.
  Henry, Patrick, speech against Stamp Act, iii. 90.
  Hepburn, James, of Keith, ii. 214.
  Herbert, Colonel (Lord Carnarvon), Treatment of Lord
      George Gordon, iii. 202.
  Herbert, Sidney, as debater, iv. 239.
  Herrenhausen, i. 55.
  Herschel, Sir John, on Newton, i. 273.
  Hertford, Lord, preparations against insurgents, iii. 205.
  Hervey, James, author of "Meditations," ii. 128.
  Hervey, John, Lord, Baron Hervy of Ickworth:
    Appeal on Convention, ii. 163.
    Attends dying Queen, ii. 118, 123.
    Compares Chesterfield with Scarborough and Carteret, ii. 5.
    Interviews with Walpole on Queen's death, ii. 120, 125.
    Lampoons, ii. 102.
    Memoirs of Reign of George II., i. 306, 308.
    On Duke of Argyll, i. 44.
    On Frederick, Prince of Wales, ii. 39, 105.
    On George II.'s danger, ii. 69.
    On George II.'s illness, ii. 303.
    On Handel and Royal Family, ii. 51.
    On Hardwicke and Talbot, ii. 10.
    On letters between George I. and Prince of Wales, ii. 109.
    On Princess Caroline, ii. 38.
    On Princess Emily, ii. 38.
    On Sir William Wyndham, i. 288.
    On Walpole being indispensable, ii. 91.
    Sedition and Defamation displayed, i. 306.
    Sketch of, i. 306.
    Supports Walpole's policy, ii. 160, 168.
    Takes news of Prince of Wales's claim to Queen, ii. 78, 79.
  Hessian mercenaries, i. 291, 292.
    For America, iii. 183.
    In Ireland, iii. 322.
  Highlands, modern prosperity of, ii. 233.
  Highlands, pacification after Culloden, ii. 227.
  Hill, Frank H., quoted on:
    Fame and George Canning, iv. 59.
    Peel and art of government, iv. 57.
  Hill, Rowland, death, iv. 284.
  Hill, Sir George, recognizes Wolfe Tone, iii. 325.
  Hillsborough, Lord, Secretary of State, iii. 147.
    Colonial policy, iii. 147, 148, 150, 152.
  Hoadley, Dr., Bishop of Winchester, opposed to Test Act,
      ii. 110, 111.
  Hoche, General:
    Commands expedition to Ireland, iii. 315.
    Death, iii. 318.
  Hogarth, William:
    Caricature of Churchill, iii. 63.
    Caricature of Wilkes, iii. 61.
    Death, iii. 68.
    "March to Finchley," ii. 231.
    Pictures of London, i. 64, 65.
    "Polling Day," ii. 188.
    Portrait of Lord Lovat, ii. 230.
    Sketch of career, ii. 230.
  Hogg, James, death, iv. 282.
  Holland, Henry Fox, Lord:
    As Administrator and Debater, ii. 274.
    Asked to support Prince of Wales's claim, ii. 78.
    Character, iii. 33, 141.
    Forms Opposition to Pitt, iii. 26.
    Macaulay and C. Greville dine with, iv. 185.
    Paymaster, ii. 298.
    Protests against words "On the true faith of a Christian," iv. 69.
    Secretary at War, ii. 296.
  Holroyd, Colonel, threatens Lord George Gordon, iii. 199.
  Holwell, on Black Hole of Calcutta, ii. 267.
  Holy Alliance and Congress of Verona, iv. 39, 42, 45.
  Horne-Tooke, John, Rector of Brentford:
    Candidate for Westminster, iii. 139.
    Quarrels with Wilkes, iii. 136.
    Supports Wilkes, iii. 117.
  Horneck, Mary, "Jessamy Bride," iii. 169.
  Houghton, Walpole at, i. 196.
  House of Commons:
    Chairman of Committee, iv. 160.
    Commencement of Party organization, i. 256.
    Committee on Convention, ii. 171.
    Debates on:
      Allowance for Prince of Wales, ii. 82, 88.
      American Colonies, iii. 162.
      Middlesex Election, iii. 131.
      Restitution of Gibraltar, i. 297.
      Supply to George II., i. 280.
    Election Petitions, ii. 189.
    Gordon presents petition to, iii. 198.
    Growth of, i. 32.
    In Committee, iv. 160.
    Inadequate accommodation, iv. 270, 271.
    Ladies' Gallery, iv. 272.
    Numbers in 1714, i. 51.
    Obstruction in, iv. 159, 160 _seqq._
    Petition of merchants against Spaniards, ii. 153.
    Petitions against Spaniards, i. 294.
    Secession from, ii. 172, 174.
    Subsidies for foreign mercenaries, i. 293.
  House of Lords:
    Agitation against, iv. 167.
    Debates on:
      Bill for Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 43.
      Convention, ii. 164, 168.
      Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 89.
    India Bills rejected, iii. 235.
    Numbers in 1714, i. 51.
    Protest against Address on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 90.
    Reform and, iv. 169, 173, 176.
    Scene during Gordon Riot, iii. 197, 201.
    Walpole and, ii. 159.
  Houses of Parliament (old), i. 64.
    Destroyed by fire, iv. 267.
  Houses of Parliament, design for new, iv. 269, 270.
  Howe, Admiral Richard, Viscount, Mutiny at Spithead and, iii. 335.
  Howe, William, Viscount, iii. 182.
    Commands at Breed Hill, iii. 176.
  Humbert, General, commands expedition to Ireland, iii. 323.
  Hume, David, on Whitefield's eloquence, ii. 139.
  Hume, Joseph, Committee on Orangeism, iv. 387.
  Hungerford speaks for Bolingbroke, i. 108.
  Hunt, Leigh, on:
    George IV., iii. 242.
    William Congreve, i. 301.
  Hunt, Orator, defeats Stanley at Preston, iv. 131.
  Huskisson, William:
    Attitude on Catholic Emancipation, iv. 68.
    Colonial and War Secretary, iv. 65, 67.
    Death, iv. 103.
    Resigns office, iv. 72.
    Sketch of career, iv. 52.
    Treasurer of Navy and President of Board of Trade, iv. 58.
  Hutchinson, Governor-General of Massachusetts:
    House in Boston ransacked, iii. 91.
    Letters to Whately, iii. 153.
  Hyde Park, camp in, i. 121.

  Ibraham Pasha, military capacity, iv. 49.
  Imhoff, Baroness von, and Warren Hastings, iii. 255.
  Impey, Elijah, Chief Justice, iii. 261, 268.
  Impressment for Navy abolished, iv. 263, 267.
  India Bills:
    Fox's, iii. 230 _seqq._
    Pitt's, iii. 237, 238.
  Indian Empire, ii. 257.
    Condition in 1707, ii. 257.
    Three Presidencies, ii. 253.
  Inglis, Sir Robert Harry, speech on Reform Bill, iv. 144.
  Insurrection of 1715, i. 118 _seqq._
    Conditions of success, i. 118.
  Intrigues in Cabinet, i. 251.
  Ireland:
    Agitation in 1724, i. 240.
    Condition in 1797, iii. 318.
    Grievances, iii. 306.
    In 1714, i. 80.
    New copper coinage, i. 240.
  Irish and English Parliaments, i. 179.
  Irish Brigade at Fontenoy and Lauffeld, ii. 239.
  Irish clergy, ii. 130.
  Irish House of Lords, i. 178.
  Irish Parliament, i. 80; iii. 307.
    Abolished, iv. 206.
  Irish, Penal Laws against, ii. 248.
  Irish Rebellion of '98, iii. 313, 314 _seqq._; iv. 206.
  Irish State Church question, tithes, iv. 207 _seqq._
    Debate on, iv. 212.
    (_See also_ Tithe question, Ireland.)
  Irish vote, iv. 244.
  Irving, Washington, essay on Robert Emmet, iii. 329.
  Isla, Earl of, i. 250.
  Italy in 1716, i. 154.

  Jacobite demonstration in England, i. 121, 135.
  Jacobitism and Tory cause, iii. 24.
  Jamaica: Act to mitigate punishment of slaves, iv. 193.
  Jekyll, Sir Joseph, Gin Act, ii. 56.
  Jenkins, Captain, story of his ear, ii. 158.
  Johnson, Samuel:
    English dictionary, ii. 299.
    Epitaph on Goldsmith, iii. 171.
    Friend of Goldsmith, iii. 169.
    Interview with Wilkes, iii. 138.
    On acquittal of Lord George Gordon, iii. 210.
    On Alexander Wedderburn, iii. 158.
    On authorship of _Letters of Junius_, iii. 131.
    On state of Irish, ii. 248.
    On taking of Newgate, iii. 203.
    Opinion of Thomas Sheridan, iii. 217.
    Receives pension, iii. 55.
    Regard for Warren Hastings, iii. 255.
    Sketch of, iii. 39 _seqq._
    Visits Paris, iii. 293.
  Jones, Inigo, lays out Covent Garden, i. 68.
  Jones, Paul, commands "Le Bonhomme Richard," iii. 183.
  Jones, Sir William, Persian grammar, iii. 254.
  Jonson, Ben, Comedies, i. 299.
  Jordan, Mrs., and William IV., iv. 97.
  Julius Caesar regulates calendar, ii. 275.
  _Junius's Letters in Public Advertiser_, iii. 128.

  Kazim Bazar Settlement, iii. 249.
  Keats, John, death, iv. 92.
  Kean, Edmund, death, iv. 285.
  Kelly supports Young Pretender, ii. 205.
  Kemble, John, death, iv. 92.
  Kendal, Mlle. Schulemberg, Duchess of, i. 7, 241, 266.
    Bribed by Bolingbroke, i. 267.
    Death, i. 266.
  Kenmure, Viscount, i. 137.
    Executed, i. 142.
  Kennett, Lord Mayor of London, iii. 201.
  Kent, Edward, Duke of, death, iii. 348.
  Kent, Duchess of, and William IV., iv. 117.
  Kenyon defends Lord George Gordon, iii. 210.
  Ker, Lord Mark, reception of Cope, ii. 215.
  Kilmansegge, Mme. (Countess of Darlington), i. 7.
  Kilmarnock, Lord, trial of, ii. 228, 229.
  Kilwarden, Lord Chief Justice:
    Action  respecting  Wolfe Tone, iii. 326.
    Murdered, iii. 328.
  King's Evil, iii. 39.
  King's friends, iii. 108.
  Kingstown, origin of name, iv. 25.
  Kinnison, David, iii. 161.
  "Kit-Kat" Club, i. 74.
  Kneller: portrait of Queen Anne, i. 2.
  Knighton, Sir William, sketch of, iv. 47.
  Koenigsmark, Aurora, mother of Maurice de Saxe, i. 8.
  Koenigsmark, Charles John, i. 7.
    Murders Lord Thynne, i. 8.
  Koenigsmark, Philip Christof, assassinated, i. 7.
  Kosciusko in America, iii. 183.

  La Bourdonnais:
    Besieges and takes Madras, ii. 259.
    Founds colonies of Ile de France and Bourbon, ii. 258.
    Sent to France under arrest, ii. 259.
  La Vendee, Royalist revolt in, iii. 303.
  La Vrilliere, Mme., i. 237.
  Lade, Sir John, iii. 244.
  Lafayette:
    Demands revival of States-General, iii. 293.
    In America, iii. 183.
  Lamb, Charles:
    Death, iv. 284.
    On "Robinson Crusoe," ii. 2.
  Lambton, J. G. (_see_ Durham, Earl of).
  Lampooners, ii. 102.
  Landor, Walter Savage:
    Epigram on the Four Georges, iii. 242.
    On George I. and George II., i. 273.
  Langdale, distilleries fired by mob, iii. 207.
  Lauderdale, Lord, attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 301.
  Lauffeld, battle of, ii. 239.
  Law, defends Warren Hastings, iii. 285.
  Law, John, forms Mississippi Company, i. 184.
  Law, William, "Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life," ii. 133.
  Lawrence, Major, commands in S. India (1751), ii. 264.
  Lawrence, Sir Thomas, iv. 93.
  Layer, Christopher:
    Arrested, i. 219.
    Hanged, i. 221.
  Lecky, William E. H., on:
    Catholics and Protestants, iv. 55.
    Shrewsbury as Lord High Treasurer, i. 46.
  Lee, Richard Henry, on George Washington, iii. 189.
  Lee, General Charles, iii. 179.
    Traitor, iii. 184.
  Leeds, iv. 99.
  Leeds, Duke of, protests against Act for Dependency
      of Ireland, i. 178.
  Leibnitz on Electress Sophia, i. 4.
  Lennox, Lady Sarah, sketch of, iii. 9.
  Leopold, King of the Belgians, iv. 117, 290.
  Lepell, Mary, Lady Hervey, i. 307, 308.
  Lessing, "Laocoon," iii. 98.
    Referred to, iii. 145.
  Leszczynski, Stanislaus, King of Poland, sketch of, ii. 23.
  _Letters of Junius_ in _Public Advertiser_, iii. 128.
    Authorship, iii. 130.
  Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, i. 290.
  Lexington, battle at, ii. 43; iii. 174.
  Liberal political principles, rise of, iv. 94.
  Lightfoot, Hannah, iii. 8.
  Limerick invested by William III., i. 83.
  Limerick, Treaty of, i. 83.
  Linley, Elizabeth (Mrs. Richard B. Sheridan), iii. 218.
  Liverpool:
    As commercial port, iv. 99.
    In 1714, i. 79.
    Memorials of Canning, iv. 34.
  Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened, iv. 103.
  Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of:
    Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 34.
    Attitude towards popular liberty, iv. 3.
    Character, iii. 345.
    Death, iv. 62.
    Illness, iv. 55, 58.
    Prime Minister, iv. 3.
    Recommends Canning as Foreign Secretary, iv. 37.
  Lloyd, Dr., at Westminster School, iii. 54.
  Logwood Trade on Campeachy Bay, i. 294, 295.
  London:
    In panic, iii. 204.
    In 1714, i. 63.
    In 1760, iii. 15.
    Penny Post, i. 78.
    Poverty in, ii. 89.
    State during '45, ii. 218.
  London University Charter, iv. 261.
  Londonderry, Marquis of (_see_ Castlereagh, Viscount).
  Lord High Treasurer, office of, i. 46.
  Lord Mayor of London committed to Tower, iii. 135.
  Lord Mayor of London presents addresses to King, iii. 133.
  Lord Treasurership in Commission, i. 97.
  "Lords of Trade," iii. 80.
  Louis XIV. and Stuart cause, i. 117.
  Louis XV. places Stanislaus Leszczynski on throne of Poland,
      ii. 23.
  Louis XVI.:
    Character, iii. 295.
    Executed, iii. 300, 303.
  Louis Napoleon, Emperor, demeanor, i. 127.
  Louis Napoleon, Prince, i. 10.
  Louis Philippe, King of the French, iv. 98, 105.
  Louisiana, ii. 283.
  Lovat, Simon Fraser, Lord, sketch of, ii. 229.
  Lowe, Sir Hudson, and Napoleon Bonaparte, iii. 344.
  Lowland Agriculture, i. 87.
  Loyalty in 1714, i. 59.
  Luttrell, Colonel:
    Opposes Wilkes, iii. 126.
    Petition against, iii. 132.
  Lyall, Sir Alfred, on Hastings's application for annuity
      for his wife, iii. 289.
  Lyndhurst, John Singleton Copley, Baron, iv. 58, 65.
    Amendment on Reform Bill (third), iv. 174.
    Interview with King on Catholic emancipation, iv. 77.
    Lord Chancellor, iv. 239.
    Opposes Municipal Bill, iv. 259.
    Oratory, iv. 174.
  Lyons rises against Paris, iii. 303.
  Lyttelton in politics and literature, ii. 274.

  Maberly, house sacked, iii. 201.
  Macartney, General, returns to England, i. 122.
  Macartney, Lord, governor of Madras, iii. 266.
  Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Lord:
    On Arbuthnot, ii. 21.
    On Irish tithe question, iv. 210.
    On Warren Hastings, iii. 258.
    Sketch of, iv. 184.
  Macaulay, Zachary, West Indian Slavery and, iv. 190.
  Macclesfield, Thomas Parker, Earl of:
    Impeached, i. 262.
    On reform of calendar, ii. 275.
  M'Cullock, Lieutenant, suggests scaling Heights of Abraham, ii. 288.
  Macdonald, Aeneas, evidence on '45, ii. 205, 227.
  Macdonald of Barrisdale, ii. 227.
  Macdonald of Sleat refuses to support Young Pretender, ii. 205.
  Macdonald, Sir John, supports Young Pretender, ii. 205,
  Macdonalds' conduct at Culloden, ii. 225.
  Mackintosh, Brigadier, escapes from Newgate, i. 142.
  Mackintosh, Sir James:
    Bill to abolish death penalty for minor offences, iv. 20.
    Death, iv. 281.
    Denounces trial of Rev. John Smith, iv. 194.
  M'Laurin improves fortifications of Edinburgh, ii. 211.
  Maclean, Donald, tried for murdering Allan, iii. 120.
  Macleod of Macleod refuses to support Young Pretender, ii. 205.
  M'Quirk, Edward, tried for murder of George Clarke, iii. 129.
  Madras:
    Besieged by Le Bourdonnais, ii. 259.
    Restored to England, ii. 260.
  Madras expedition, iii. 250.
  Mahon, Lord, iii. 186.
  Mahratta States and Nizam of Deccan, iii. 265, 266.
  Malleson, Colonel, on Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 267.
  Malthus, Thomas Robert, iv. 281.
  Manchester, iv. 99.
    In 1714, i. 79.
  Mangan, Clarence, "Dark Rosaleen," iv. 205.
  Manley, Isaac, Postmaster-General, Dublin, i. 82.
  Mansfield, Murray, Lord, ii. 274.
    Attorney-General, ii. 296.
    Demeanor during Gordon riot, iii. 197.
    House sacked, iii. 203.
  Mar, John Erskine, Earl of, i. 39.
    Leader of insurrection, 1715, i. 123.
    Letter to Bolingbroke, i. 120.
    Sketch of, i. 123.
  March Club, i. 74.
  Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary, British troops support, ii. 182.
  Marie Antoinette executed, iii. 300.
  Markham arrests Rajah of Benares, iii. 269.
  Marlborough House, i. 69.
  Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of, i. 2, 54.
    Advice on rebellion of 1715, i. 128.
    Advice to Bolingbroke, i. 104.
    Character, i. 22, 24, 210.
    Charges against, i. 94.
    Closing days, i. 208.
    Funeral, i. 211.
    Member of Privy Council, i. 100.
    Return to England, i. 16, 52.
  Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of, i. 208.
    Advice to Duke, i. 100.
    Character, i. 25.
  Marriage Act, ii. 279.
  Marseilles rises against Paris, iii. 303.
  Martin challenges Wilkes, iii. 66.
  Martineau, H.:
    Attitude towards Poor Relief, iv. 224.
    On admission of ladies to hear debates in House, iv. 272.
    On movement against monopoly of East India Company, iv. 232.
    On Queen Caroline, iv. 10.
  Masham, created peer, i. 174.
  Masham, Mrs., i. 2.
    Letter to Swift, i. 36.
    Result of influence with Queen, i. 94.
  Massachusetts:
    Memorial from, ii. 42.
    Mutiny Act and, iii. 150.
    Petition for recall of Hutchinson and Oliver, iii. 155.
    Protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90.
    Punishment of, iii. 164.
  Mathews, Charles, Sen., "At Home" performance, iv. 285.
  Maximilian, Emperor, iv. 45.
  Mayfair, i. 72.
  Mechanics' Institutes, iv. 93.
  Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Duchy of, iii. 11.
  Medmenham-on-Thames, iii. 46.
  Meer Jaffier conspires against Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269,
      270, 271, 272.
  Melbourne, William Lamb, Viscount:
    Attitude towards reforms, iv. 254.
    Character, iv. 234.
    Home Secretary, iv. 126.
    Irish Members and, iv. 253.
    Prime Minister, iv. 233, 250.
  Meredith, George, "Ironic procession," iii. 2.
  Methodism (_see_ Wesleyan Movement).
  Methuen, Sir Paul, Treasurer of Household, i. 279.
    Opposes Bolingbroke's pardon, i. 259.
  Mexican Empire, iv. 45.
  Middlesex election (1768), iii. 117.
    Debate on petition, iii. 131.
  Mill, James, historian of British India, iv. 281.
  Mill, John Stuart:
    Doctrine of non-intervention, iv. 62.
    On Irish cottier tenant, iv. 222.
  Mills, Mrs., friend of Lady Nithisdale, i. 139.
  Ministry of All the Talents, iii. 340.
  Ministry of 1714, i. 97.
  Ministry of 1742, ii. 192.
  Minorca, i. 296, 298.
    Captured by French, ii. 297.
  Mir Jaffier, iii. 250, 253.
    Intrigues, iii. 250.
  Mir Kasim, Nawab, and Ellis, iii. 251.
  Mirzapha Jung claims Deccan Vice-royalty, ii. 261.
    Death, ii. 262.
  Mississippi scheme, i. 184 _seqq._
  Mitchel, John, on Chesterfield's rule in Ireland, ii. 250.
  Mob law in London, iii. 122.
  Mob orators, Sir Robert Inglis on, iv. 145.
  Mohun, Lord, i. 74.
    Killed in duel, i. 122.
  Moira, Lady Elizabeth, letter on French expedition to Ireland,
      iii. 315.
  Molesworth: on renewal of East India Company's Charter, iv. 230, 232.
  Monarchy under Hanoverians, ii. 74.
  _Monitor_ edited by John Entinck, iii. 51, 52, 55.
  Monopolies, petitions for, i. 191.
  Monroe doctrine, iv. 44.
  Monson, Colonel, iii. 260, 261.
    Death, iii. 264.
  Montagu, Edward Wortley, i. 105.
    Ambassador to Constantinople, i. 148.
  Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley:
    Letters, i. 148, 149, 152, 157.
    Sketch of, i. 148, 149, 150.
  Montcalm, Louis, Marquis de:
    Killed at Quebec, ii. 290.
    Monument, ii. 290.
  Montesquieu, on Duke of Berwick, ii. 34.
  Montgomery, --, iii. 179.
  Moore, Thomas:
    Lines on Robert Emmet, iii. 329.
    On George IV., iii. 242.
    Quoted, iv. 23.
  Moravian sect, ii. 134.
  More, Hannah:
    Death, iv. 282.
    On Lord George Gordon, iii. 193.
  Morgan, Mrs., friend of Lady Nithisdale, i. 139.
  Morris, Charles, iii. 244.
  Mostyn, Sir Thomas, iii. 338.
  "Mug houses," i. 75.
  Municipal Corporation Bill for Ireland, iv. 258.
  Municipal Corporations Commission and Bill, iv. 257, 258.
  Municipal system, reorganization of, iv. 254 _seqq._
  Munster, Earl of, iv. 114.
  Murari Rao offers to assist English, ii. 263.
  Murchison, Sir Roderick, and British Association, iv. 262.
  Murger, Henri, "bohemianiam," iii. 310.
  Murphy, Father John:
    And _Auditor_, iii. 51.
    Conduct in '98, iii. 320.
  Murray, James (Earl of Dunbar), Secretary to James Stuart, ii. 18.
  Murray, John, of Broughton, ii. 227.
  Murray, tutor to Charles Edward, Young Pretender, ii. 202.
  Murray (_see_ Mansfield, Lord).
  Musters, Mr., house set fire to, iv. 170.
  Mutiny Act and New York, iii. 149.

  Nairn, Lord, a prisoner, i. 137, 138.
  Nand Kumar (Nuncomar), iii. 258, 259.
    Accusations against Hastings, iii. 261.
    Charged with conspiracy, iii. 261.
    Charged with forgery, iii. 261.
    Tried and hanged, iii. 262.
  Napier, Hon. George, marries Lady Sarah Bunbury, iii. 10.
  Napier, Sir Charles, iii. 10; iv. 179.
  Napier, Sir William, iii. 10.
  Napoleon I. (Bonaparte):
    Close of career, iv. 12.
    On Romilly's suicide, iii. 347.
    On Thames Embankment, iv. 14.
    On Wellington seizing English crown, iv. 277.
    Scheme for invasion of Ireland and, iii. 312, 314.
    Sketch of career, iii. 331 _seqq._, 344.
    Wins Toulon, iii. 304.
  Napoleon III. (Charles Louis), Policy, iv. 45.
  National Assembly, declaration of war and, iii. 302, 303.
  National Crisis (1832), iv. 178.
  National Debt (1714), i. 93.
    Pitt's plan for redemption of, iii. 239.
  National distress in 1830, iv. 100, 105.
  Navarino, battle of, iv. 50, 67, 96.
  Navy, press-gang system abolished, iv. 263, 266.
  Nelson, Horatio, Viscount, iii. 337.
    Receives freedom of London, iii. 139.
  Nepean,  Under-Secretary of State, iii. 235.
  New England Colonies, iii. 75.
  New York:
    Congress of 1765, iii. 91.
    In 1765, iii. 77.
    Mutiny Act and, iii. 149.
  Newbottle, Lord, and Lady Sarah Lennox, iii. 9, 10.
  Newcastle, Duke of:
    Appeal to Lords on declaration of war, ii. 177.
    Bribery under, iii. 25.
    Family influence, ii. 243.
    Jealous of Pulteney, ii. 192.
    Leader of Administration, ii. 210, 296.
    On Bill for Princess Anne's dowry, ii. 44.
    On "Briton," iii. 23.
    On "Family Compact," ii. 33.
    Resigns office, ii. 298.
    Sacrifices Byng, ii. 298.
    Secretary for Foreign Affairs, ii. 160.
    Secretary of State, ii. 192.
    Traitor to Walpole, ii. 160, 189.
    Warns Rockingham against Burke, iii. 100.
  Newfoundland, French fishing-stations on, iii. 78.
  Newgate taken by rioters, iii. 203.
  Newton, Sir Isaac:
    Death, i. 272.
    Opinion on Irish coins, i. 241.
  Neyoe, Irish priest:
    Arrested, i. 219.
    Drowned, i. 221.
  Nile, battle of the, iii. 337.
  Nithisdale, Countess of:
    Effects Earl's escape, i. 140.
    Petition to King, i. 139.
  Nithisdale, William Maxwell, Earl of:
    Condemnation and escape, i. 138.
  Nizam-Al-Mulk, Viceroy of Deccan, death of, ii. 261.
  Nizam of Deccan and Mahratta States, iii. 265, 266.
  Nollekens, Joseph, iv. 93.
  Nootka Sound, English settlement at, iii. 302.
  Norbury, Baron, tries Robert Emmet, iii. 329.
  Nore, mutiny at, iii. 335.
  Norfolk, Duke of:
    Committed to Tower, i. 214.
    Discharged, i. 215.
  Norris, James, sketch of, iv. 288.
  _North Briton_, iii. 51, 52, 155.
    Churchill writes on, iii. 55.
    No. 45 on King's Speech, iii. 57, 60.
    Ordered to be burned, iii. 67.
    Warrant for arrest of authors, printers, and publishers, iii. 58.
  North, Frederick, Lord:
    Attitude during Wedderburn's attack on Franklin, iii. 156.
    Bill to close Port of Boston, iii. 163.
    Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 113.
    Coalition with Fox, iii. 225.
    Colonial policy, iii. 152.
    Fall of Ministry, iii. 223.
    Finances and, iii. 239.
    Makes peace with America, iii. 184.
    Moves repeal of American duties except tea tax, iii. 151.
    Regulates Act of 1773, iii. 260.
  North, Lord:
    Committed to Tower, i. 214.
    Discharged, i. 215.
    Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 190.
  Northcote, James, on Queen Charlotte, iii. 12.
  Northumberland, Duchess of:
    Governess to Princess Victoria, iv. 291.
  Northumberland, Duke of, forced to toast Wilkes, iii. 118.
  Norton, Fletcher, speech on Middlesex election petition, iii. 131.
  Norwich in 1714, i. 79.
  Nottingham Castle burned, iv. 170.
  Nunjeraj, Vizier of Rajah of Mysore, iii. 265.

  Oates, Titus, on term "Tory," i. 17.
  O'Brien, Smith, iv. 179.
  O'Connell, Daniel:
    Demands municipal reform for Ireland, iv. 258.
    Elected for Clare, iv. 71, 78.
    In favor of ballot, iv. 131.
    Loyalty, iv. 23, 27.
    On Universal Suffrage, iv. 85.
    Oratory, iv. 70.
    Seconds amendment on Emancipation of Slaves, iv. 197.
    Sketch of, iv. 53, 69.
    Speech on Irish Church Revenues, iv. 248, 249.
    Speeches on Reform Bill, iv. 148, 172.
  O'Connor, Arthur, iii. 313, 314.
    Withdraws from Dublin Parliament, iii. 319.
  October Club, i. 74.
  Oglethorpe, General, invites John Wesley to Georgia, ii. 134.
  Ohio, English and French on, ii. 285.
  Oliver, Alderman, committed to Tower, iii. 135.
  Oliver, Andrew, collector of stamp taxes at Boston, iii. 91.
  Oliver, Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts:
    Letters to Whately, iii. 153.
  O'Meara, Dr. Barry E., conversations with Napoleon, iv. 13.
  Omichund:
    Death, ii. 273.
    Plots against English and Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269, 270.
  Onslow, Arthur, Speaker of House of Commons:
    On Sir William Wyndham, i. 288.
    Opposes Bolingbroke's pardon, i. 259.
    Re-elected Speaker, ii. 22, 186.
    Sketch of, i. 282.
  Onslow, Sir Richard, i. 105.
  Orange Associations, iv. 274 _seqq._
  Orange, Prince of, marries Princess Anne, ii. 41.
  Order of Bath revived, i. 252.
  Orleans, Louis Philippe, Duke of (Egalite), iii. 293.
  Orleans, Philippe, Duke of (Regent), i. 117.
    Death, i. 238.
    Overtures to George I., i. 156, 181.
    Sketch of, i. 155.
  Ormond, Duke of:
    Flight, i. 111.
    Heads Spanish Jacobite expedition, i. 162.
    Impeached, i. 109, 110.
    In Paris, i. 119, 120.
    Name razed from roll of Peers, i. 114.
    Warden of Cinque Ports, i. 39.
  Orrery, Earl of:
    Committed to Tower, i. 214.
    Discharged, i. 215.
  Otis, James, denounces Writs of Assistance, iii. 84.
  Oude subjected, iii. 258.
  Oude, Vizier of, and Begums, iii. 271.
  Oxford in '45, ii. 220.
  Oxford, Robert Harley, Earl of, i. 26, 29.
    Acquitted, i. 111, 170.
    Attitude towards Restoration of Stuarts, i. 107.
    Character, i. 113.
    Committed to Tower, i. 112.
    Establishes South Sea Company, i. 187.
    Impeached of high treason, i. 109, 110, 112, 168.
    Petition to House of Lords, i. 168.
    Reception by George I., i. 101.
    Sketch of, i. 30.
  Ozinda's chocolate-house, i. 76.

  Paine, Thomas, iii. 312.
  Pakenham, Hon. Catherine, Duchess of Wellington, iii. 334.
  Palmerston, Viscount:
    Foreign Secretary, iv. 126, 252.
    Member for Tiverton, iv. 254.
    Member of Liverpool Administration, iv. 3.
    On the "Inevitable Man," iv. 55.
    Resigns office, iv. 72.
    Secretary at War, iv. 58.
  Pamela, wife of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, iii. 313.
  Paradis defeats Nabob of Carnatic at St. Thome, ii. 261.
  Parker heads mutiny at Nore, iii. 335.
  Parliament:
    Annual, i. 146.
    Dissolved (1831), iv. 143.
    Election of 1734, ii. 19.
    Election of 1830, iv. 105.
    Irish and English, i. 179.
    Language of sycophancy, ii. 85.
    Motions for removal of Walpole, ii. 185.
    Of 1722, i. 206, 213.
    Prorogued  (1727), Royal Speech, i. 278.
    Septennial Act, i. 146.
    Short, ii. 11.
    Speech from Throne (1739), ii. 162; (1741), ii. 186;
      (1765), iii. 88.
    Triennial Acts, i. 145.
    (_See also_ House of Lords and House of Commons.)
  Parliamentary Opposition, system of, i. 285 _seqq._
  Parma, Duke of, i. 158.
  Parnell, Sir Henry:
    Motion on Civil Service Estimates, iv. 110.
    Paymaster-General, iv. 252.
  Parr, Dr., opinion of Sheridan, iii. 217.
  Patents, petitions for, i. 190.
  "Patriots," i. 288, 296, 298.
    Frederick, Prince of Wales, and, ii. 50, 108, 110.
    In Opposition and power, ii. 242.
    Oppose borrowing from Sinking Fund, i. 309.
    Raise war cry, ii. 149, 157.
    Return to Commons, ii. 178.
    Secede from Commons, ii. 172.
    Struggle against Walpole, ii. 11.
  Patten, Rev. Robert, as King's evidence, i. 137.
  Peel, Sir Robert:
    At opening of Liverpool and Manchester railway, iv. 103.
    Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 57, 68, 74, 75.
    Attitude towards Reform, iv. 152, 163.
    Declines to form Ministry, iv. 177.
    Free Trade and, iv. 52.
    Home Secretary, iv. 71, 103.
    Interview with King on Catholic emancipation, iv. 77.
    Measure on Irish Tithe System, iv. 245; Speech on, iv. 249.
    On claims of "Princess" Olivia, iv. 287.
    Prime Minister and Chancellor of Exchequer, iv. 238.
    Resigns office, iv. 113, 250.
    Speech on municipal reform, iv. 259, 260.
    Speech on Reform Bill, iv. 146.
    Summoned to form Ministry, iv. 235.
    Tamworth Address, iv. 240.
  Peerage Bill, object of, i. 174.
  Peers, creation of new, iv. 180.
  Pelham, Henry:
    Death, ii. 296.
    Letter to Duke of Cumberland, ii. 239.
    Paymaster, ii. 192.
    Prime Minister, ii. 244, 245.
  Pelham Ministry:
    Resign, ii. 244.
    Return to power, ii. 245.
  Penn, William, death, i. 179.
  Penny Post, London, i. 78.
  Pepys quoted on Duchess of Cleveland, i. 23.
  Perceval, Spencer:
    Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 341.
    Death, iii. 341.
    Regency Bill, iii. 341.
  Percy, Lord, commands reinforcements from Boston, iii. 174.
  Perry, presents petition of merchants against Spaniards, ii. 153.
  Perth, Duke of, ii. 223.
    Appeal to Macdonalds, ii. 225.
    Death, ii. 232.
  Perth, Jacobites retreat from, i. 128.
  Pestolozzi, Johann H., iv. 93.
  Peter the Great, character, i. 162.
  Peterborough, Lord, anecdote of, ii. 167.
  Philadelphia:
    Congress draws up Declaration of Rights, iii. 173.
    Evacuated, iii. 183.
    In hands of British, iii. 183.
    In 1765, iii. 77.
    Tea-ship at, iii. 161.
  Philip V. of Spain, ii. 28.
    Renounces French throne, i. 157.
  Phipps, Sir Constantine, removed from office of Chancellor, i. 98.
  Pitt diamond, ii. 54.
  Pitt Ministry (1766), members of, iii. 108.
  Pitt, Thomas, i. 105.
    M. P. for Okehampton, ii. 54.
  Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham:
    Accepts pension and barony for his wife, iii. 27.
    Advice to Prince of Wales, ii. 78.
    As War Minister, ii. 299; iii. 2, 27, 29.
    Character, iii. 186.
    Coalition against, iii. 26.
    Death, iii. 186.
    Denunciation of Walpole and Carteret, ii. 245.
    Illness, iii. 73, 108, 109.
    In House of Peers, iii. 109.
    Maiden speech, ii. 52, 55.
    On action of Boston people, iii. 161, 163.
    Paymaster-General, ii. 296.
    Protests against war with America, iii. 185.
    Quarrels with Temple, iii. 108.
    Refuses office, iii. 73, 93.
    Resigns office, iii. 27.
    Sketch of, ii. 54.
    Speech on Convention, ii. 171.
    Takes news of accession to George III., iii. 2.
    Takes office, ii. 274; iii. 108.
    Wilkes and, iii. 57.
  Pitt, William (the younger), iii. 211.
    Antagonism to Fox, iii. 225.
    Attacks Fox's India Bill, iii. 232.
    Attitude on Regency, iii. 243.
    Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iii. 308; iv. 53.
    Challenge to Ministry on Eastern possessions, iii. 230.
    Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 225.
    Closing hours, iii. 338.
    Coalition against, iii. 26, 225.
    Contrasted with Fox, iii. 212.
    Death, iii. 339.
    Declines Vice-Treasurership of Ireland, iii. 224.
    Difficulties of Administration, iii. 240.
    Financial measures, iii. 239.
    First Lord of Treasury and Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 236.
    Foreign policy, iii. 302.
    French policy, iii. 301.
    India Bill, iii. 237, 238.
    Irish policy, iii. 319, 327.
    Makes name in Commons, iii. 223.
    Plan of Parliamentary reform, iii. 229, 240.
    Refuses to appeal for payment of Prince of Wales's debts, iii. 242.
    Resigns office, iii. 337.
    Sketch of, iii. 214.
    Speech on Benares vote, iii. 277, 279.
    Speech on Trafalgar, iii. 339.
    Struggle with Napoleon Bonaparte, iii. 332, 337.
    Supports Dundas, iii. 338.
  Plassey (Palasi), Battle of, ii. 271, 272.
  Playhouse Bill, ii. 96, 99.
  Plunket, Lord, Lord Chancellor for Ireland, iv. 127.
  Pocket boroughs, iv. 99, 147.
  Poland, condition of, iv. 40.
  Poland, election of king, ii. 23.
  Political freedom in 1716, i. 144.
  Political life in 1742, ii. 239.
  Political parties in 1728, i. 287, 288.
  Pomeroy, General, iii. 176, 179.
  Pontiac conspiracy, iii. 79.
  Population of Great Britain (1714), i. 63.
  Poor Laws, iv. 221 _seqq._
    Commission, iv. 225.
    Bill, iv. 228, 229.
  Pope, Alexander:
    "Dunciad," i. 301.
    Epitaph on James Craggs, i. 198.
    Epitaph on Sir Isaac Newton, i. 272.
    Lampoons, ii. 102, 103.
    Loses money in South Sea stock, i. 22.
    On Argyll, Duke of, i. 44.
    On Bacon, i. 22.
    On Bolingbroke, i. 29.
    On Oxford, i. 29, 31.
    Place in literature, ii. 197.
    Sketch of, ii. 197.
  Popham, Major, defeats Rajah's troops, iii. 270.
  "Porcupine Papers," iv. 155.
  Porteous, Captain John:
    Death, ii. 64.
    Sentence on, ii. 62.
    Sketch of, ii. 58.
  Porteous riots, ii. 58 _seqq._
  Portland, William Cavendish Bentinck, Duke of:
    Prime Minister, iii. 340.
    Supports Wilkes, iii. 116.
  Portsmouth, press-gang in, iv. 265.
  Portugal: free institutions, iv. 43.
  Potter, Thomas, iii. 48, 65.
    Vice-Treasurer for Ireland, iii. 49.
  Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, iv. 239.
  Pratt, Justice, Lord Camden, iii. 109.
    Discharges Wilkes, iii. 60, 67.
  Predestination, Wesley and Whitefield dispute on, ii. 139.
  Prescott, hero of Breed Hill, iii. 179.
  Preston:
    "Fancy franchises," iv. 183.
    Jacobites defeated at, i. 128.
  Preston, Colonel, commands British troops at Boston, iii. 151.
  Preston, General, in Edinburgh Castle, ii. 215.
  Preston Pans, Battle of, ii. 214, 215.
  Prideaux, --, in Canada, ii. 287.
  Primacy of Ireland and George IV., iv. 27.
  Prior, Matthew, i. 38.
    Arrested, i. 106.
    M. P. for East Grinstead, i. 52.
  Prisoners in 1715, i. 136.
  Privy Council, July 30, 1714, i. 40, 45, 46.
  Proctor, Sir W. Beauchamp, Whig candidate for Middlesex, iii. 117.
  "Protestant" and "Catholic" Ministers, iv. 54.
  Prussia, position at end of Seven Years' War, iii. 29.
  _Public Advertiser, Letters of Junius_ in, iii. 128.
  Pulteney, William (Earl of Bath), i. 105.
    Accepts Peerage, ii. 192.
    Advice to Prince of Wales, ii. 78.
    Alliance with Bolingbroke, i. 260; ii. 17.
    Attacks Convention and Ministers, ii. 156, 172.
    Declines office, ii. 191.
    Duel with Hervey, i. 306.
    Founder of Parliamentary Opposition, i. 225, 284, 288; ii. 195.
    Leader of discontented Whigs, i. 287.
    Letters to Pope, i. 305.
    Letter to Swift, i. 306.
    Motion on papers concerning war, ii. 187.
    On Arbuthnot, ii. 20.
    On grievances against Spain, ii. 154, 156.
    On Walpole's excise scheme, i. 315.
    Opposes Playhouse Bill, ii. 99.
    Proposes allowance for Prince of Wales, ii. 82.
    Sketch of, i. 98, 253, 286.
    Speech on salt tax, i. 313.
    Speech on Secession, ii. 178.
    Tribune of Commons, ii. 192, 194.
  Puritanism in Boston, iii. 76.
  Purkitt, Henry, iii. 161.
  Putnam, Israel, iii. 176, 179.

  Quadruple Alliance, i. 161.
    Principle of, i. 295.
  Quebec:
    Attacked by Wolfe, ii. 287.
    Described, ii. 287, 291.
    Founded, ii. 283.
  Queen Anne's Bounty, i. 280.
  Queen Anne's houses, i. 69.
  Queensberry, Duke of, iii. 244.

  Radcliffe, Charles, escapes from Newgate, i. 142.
  Radical party, i. 20.
    Rise of, iv. 218.
  Rae, Fraser, on elections of Lord Mayor, iii. 137.
  "Rainbow" Coffee-house, i. 75.
  Rainsforth, house sacked, iii. 201.
  Rajah Dulab Ram, ii. 272.
  Rajah Sahib:
    Besieges Arcot, ii. 263.
    Defeated, ii. 263.
  Ramnagar stronghold, iii. 270.
  Rathbone, William, and movement against monopoly of East
      India Company, iv. 231.
  Ray, Miss, murdered by Hickman, iii. 50.
  "Rebecca and Her Daughters," ii. 56.
  Rebellion of 1745, ii. 203 _seqq._
  Reform Bill (First):
    Committee, iv. 127.
    Debate on, iv. 144, 149.
    Introduced in Commons, iv. 134, 137.
    General Gascoigne's amendment, iv. 150.
    Principles of, iv. 143.
    Redistribution, iv. 142.
    Scheme for, iv. 129, 132.
    Second Reading, iv. 149.
  Reform Bill (Second), iv. 154.
    Introduced into House of Lords, iv. 168.
    Rejected, iv. 169.
    Second Reading, iv. 154, 159.
    Third Reading, iv. 166.
    Obstructed, iv. 161, 163.
  Reform Bill (Third), iv. 172.
    Defect in, iv. 182.
    Passed, iv. 181.
    Political Parties and, iv. 218.
  Reform Bills for Ireland and Scotland, iv. 181.
  Reform Meetings, iv. 177.
  Reform Parliament (First), iv. 172, 204, 241.
  Reform Riots, iv. 170.
  Regency Bill, iii. 72.
  Regency Question (1830), iv. 101, 104, 107.
  Religious equality and Parliament, iv. 67, 99.
  Restoration dramatists, character of, ii. 93.
  Revere, Paul, iii. 174.
  Reynolds, Sir Joshua:
    Friend of Goldsmith, iii. 169.
    Portrait of Wilkes, iii. 68.
  Richelieu, Duc de, captures Minorca, ii. 297.
  Richmond, Duke of:
    On "Our Army," iii. 183.
    Speech on Annual Parliaments, iii. 197.
  Richter, Jean Paul, on:
    Eloquence, ii. 135.
    Laurence Sterne, ii. 302.
  Rigby, Richard, sketch of, iii. 36.
  Riot in St. George's Fields, iii. 120, 124.
  Rioters killed, wounded, and executed, iii. 209.
  Ripon, Earl of (_see_ Goderich, Viscount).
  Ripperda, Duke of, i. 264.
  Rob Roy at Sheriffmuir, i. 126.
  Robertson, Dr., threatened, iii. 195.
  Robertson, George, and Porteous riots, ii. 58.
  Robinson, Dr. John, Bishop of London, i. 109.
  Robinson, Frederick (_see_ Goderich, Viscount).
  Robinson, Sir Thomas, ii. 297.
  Rockingham, Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquis of:
    Character, iii. 94.
    Dismissed from office, iii. 108.
    Prime Minister, iii. 94.
    Repeals Stamp Act, iii. 104.
    Second Ministry, iii. 223.
  Rohilla War, iii. 258.
  Roman Catholics (_see_ Catholics).
  Romilly, Sir Samuel:
    Death and character, iii. 346.
    Philanthropic reforms, iv. 21.
  Rosebery, Lord, on Pitt's position, iii. 240.
  Ross, General:
    Captures Washington, iii. 346.
    Speaks for Bolingbroke, i. 108.
  Rousseau, on "Robinson Crusoe," ii. 1.
  Rowe, Nicholas, i. 38.
  Roxburgh, Duke of, attitude towards Walpole, i. 250.
  Royal Society of Literature founded, iv. 93.
  Royal Standard set up at Glenfinnan, ii. 206, 210.
  Russell, Lord John:
    As reformer, iv. 104, 126, 127.
    As speaker, iv. 133.
    Beaten in S. Devonshire, iv. 253.
    Carries repeal of Test and Corporation Acts, iv. 52, 67.
    "English Government and Constitution," iv. 128, 129.
    Home Secretary, iv. 252.
    Interview with Napoleon in Elba, iv. 277.
    Leader of Opposition, iv. 103.
    Municipal Bill, iv. 257, 260.
    On Parliamentary Reform, iv. 85.
    Reforms Parliamentary representation, iv. 22.
    Resolution on Irish Church revenues, iv. 246, 250.
    Second Reform Bill, iv. 154.
    Sketch of proposed Reform Bill, iv. 128, 132.
    Speech on Greek cause, iv. 48.
    Speech on Reform Bill, iv. 137 _seqq._
    Statement on Reform Act, iv. 182.
  Rupert, Prince, sketch of, i. 6.
  Russia in 1716, i. 154.
  Russia: policy towards Greece and Turkey, iv. 49.

  Sacheverell, Dr., impeached, i. 34.
  St. James's, i. 65.
  St. James's coffee-house, i. 75.
  _St. James's Chronicle_, iii. 124.
  St. James's Square, i. 67.
  St. James's Street, i. 66.
  St. John, Henry, Viscount (_see_ Bolingbroke).
  St. Helena, Island of, iii. 344.
  St. Margaret's Lane, London, i. 64.
  St. Patrick's Well, Dublin, i. 81.
  St. Simon on Mississippi scheme, i. 185.
  St. Thome, Nabob of Carnatic defeated at, ii. 261.
  Sala, George Augustus, picture of London in '45, ii. 219.
  Salt tax, i. 313.
  Sandwich, Earl of, iii. 48, 49.
    Denounces Wilkes, and "Essay on Woman," iii. 65.
    First Lord of Admiralty, iii. 48.
    "Jemmy Twitcher," iii. 68.
    Mobbed, iii. 202.
  Sandys, Samuel, Chancellor of Exchequer, ii. 192.
    Motions against Walpole, ii. 185, 186.
  Saratoga, Burgoyne surrenders at, iii. 183.
  Sarsfield defends Limerick, i. 83.
  "Saturday" Club, i. 74.
  Savile, Sir George:
    Bill for Catholic Relief, iii. 190, 191.
    House sacked, iii. 201.
    Sketch of, iii. 190.
  Saxe, Maurice de:
    Commands at Fontenoy and Lauffeld, ii. 239.
    Parentage, i. 8.
  Sayer, James, caricature of Fox, iii. 233.
  Scarborough, Lord:
    Character, ii. 5.
    On Declaration of War, ii. 178.
  Schaub, Sir Luke, Ambassador at Paris, i. 237.
    Recalled, i. 239.
  Schleswig-Holstein, seized by King of Denmark, i. 161.
  Schomberg, Duke of, opinion of Marlborough, i. 24.
  Scotch Judges at Bar of House of Lords, ii. 66, 67.
  Scotland:
    Condition in 1745, ii. 208.
    Fanaticism in, iii. 194.
    Riots in, i. 249.
  Scott, Captain, commands Scots Royal, ii. 206.
  Scott, Dr., iii. 203.
  Scott, Major, defends Hastings, iii. 274, 276, 282.
  Scott, Sir Walter:
    Interview with George IV., iv. 29.
    Later years and death, iv. 187.
    Sketch of John, Duke of Argyll, i. 44.
  Scottish Highlands and Lowlands, i. 87.
  Scratton, represents Company at Murshidabad, iii. 250.
  "Scriblerus" Club, i. 73.
  Secession from House of Commons, ii. 172, 175.
  Secretary of State, two departments, ii. 192.
  Seeley, Professor, on "Family Compact," ii. 31, 33.
  Selwyn, George, attachment to Fox, iii. 214.
  Senior, Nassau:
    Attitude towards Poor Relief, iv. 223.
    On Poor Law Committee, iv. 225.
  Septennial Act, i. 146, 147.
    Debate on repealing, ii. 10.
  Serres, Olivia Wilmot, sketch of, iv. 286.
  Servants in 1714, i. 77.
  Seven Men of Moidart, ii. 205.
  Seven Years' War, ii. 297; iii. 29.
    Close of, iii. 79.
  Sevigne, Mme. de, ii. 35.
  Seville, Treaty of, i. 297.
    Trade disputes and, ii. 150.
  Shackleton, Richard, schoolmaster of Edmund Burke, iii. 97.
  Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of:
    Factory labor and, iv. 200 _seqq._
    Sketch of, iv. 203.
  Shah Alum, enterprise against Meer Jaffier, ii. 273.
  Sheffield, iv. 99.
  Shelburne, William Petty, Earl of:
    Opposes calling out military, iii. 198.
    Passed over by Pitt, iii. 236.
    Secretary of State, iii. 109.
    Sketch of, iii. 223, 224.
  Shelley, Percy Bysshe, death, iv. 92.
  Sherbrooke, Robert Lowe, Lord, i. 290.
  Sheridan, Charles, iii. 218.
  Sheridan, Mrs., opinion of her boys, iii. 217.
  Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, iii. 211.
    Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 296.
    Begum speech, iii. 280.
    Duel with Matthews, iii. 219.
    Funeral in Westminster Abbey, iii. 346.
    M. P. for Stamford, iii. 221.
    Marriage, iii. 220, 222.
    "School for Scandal," "Critic," iii. 221.
    Sketch of, iii. 216.
    Speeches during Hastings's trial, iii. 280, 286.
    "The Rivals," iii. 221.
    Under-Secretary of State, iii. 224.
  Sheridan (Dr.), Thomas, friend of Swift, iii. 216.
  Sheridan (Sir), Thomas:
    Death, ii. 232.
    Tutor to Charles Stuart, ii. 205.
  Sheriffmuir, battle of, i. 125.
  Shippen:
    Amendment on Supply (1727), i. 280.
    Leader of Jacobites, i. 287.
    Opposes Septennial Bill, i. 146.
    Sketch of, i. 289.
  Shrewsbury, Charles Talbot, Duke of, i. 41.
    Death, i. 179.
    Lord High Treasurer, i. 45.
    Resigns offices, i. 97.
    Sketch of career, i. 41.
  Shrewsbury, Duke of, killed by Duke of Buckingham, i. 41.
  Shrewsbury in 1714, i. 79.
  Siddons, Mrs., death, iv. 285.
  Sidmouth, Viscount, Home Secretary:
    Challenged by Thistlewood, iv. 16.
  Signs in streets, i. 70.
  Sinking Fund, borrowing from, i. 309.
  Slaughter's coffee-house, i. 75.
  Slave Trade, Fox and, iii. 340.
  Slavery, iv. 189 _seqq._
    Crusade against, iv. 93.
    (_See also_ West Indies, slavery in.)
  Smith, Rev. John, sentenced to death, iv. 194.
  Smith, Sydney, on:
    Collection of tithes in Ireland, iv. 208, 210, 211.
    Spencer Perceval, iii. 341.
  "Smock races," i. 72.
  Smollett and _Briton_, iii. 51.
  Smuggling in American colonies, iii. 83.
  Sobieski, Clementine, wife of James Stuart, ii. 199.
    Retires to convent, ii. 200.
  Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge founded, iv. 93.
  Somers, John, Lord, i. 47, 54.
    Accomplishes Union of England and Scotland, i. 84.
    Approves Septennial Bill, i. 147.
    Member of New Council, i. 101.
    Sketch of career, i. 147.
  Somerset, Charles Seymour, Duke of: sketch of, i. 42.
  Somerset, Charlotte, Duchess of, i. 42.
  Somerset, Elizabeth, Duchess of, i. 43.
  Somerville, Dr. Thomas, _History of Reign of Queen Anne_, i. 13.
  Somerville, Lord, house molested, ii. 217.
  Sophia Dorothea, wife of George I., i. 6, 153.
    Banished to Castle of Ahlden, i. 7.
    Death, i. 267.
    Will, i. 269.
  Sophia, Electress of Hanover, i. 4, 5.
  South Sea Bill, i. 189, 190.
  South Sea Company, i. 187, 193; ii. 150.
    Petitions for relief, i. 194.
    Principle of, i. 194.
    Reconstituted, ii. 167.
  South Sea House, i. 186.
  South Sea victims, i. 194, 204.
  Spain:
    Claims Right of Search, ii. 151, 163, 245.
    Complaints against, i. 294.
    Demands constitutional government, iv. 40, 43.
    England and, trade disputes, ii. 150.
    In 1716, i. 154, 155.
    Portugal and, dispute between, ii. 35.
    Treaty of Utrecht and, i. 227.
    War declared against, ii. 178.
  Spean's Bridge, brush at, ii. 206.
  Spencer, John Charles, Earl, iv. 234.
    As Speaker, iv. 133.
    Chancellor of Exchequer, iv. 125.
    Declaration on Reform Bill, iv. 164.
    Motion on speech from Throne, iv. 104.
    On Government measure for Irish Tithe Question, iv. 211.
    On slavery in Colonies, iv. 195.
    Sketch of, iv. 125.
  Spies in Ireland in '98, iii. 314.
  Spithead, mutiny at, iii. 335.
  Stage Censorship, ii. 96 _seqq._
  Stair, John Dalrymple, Earl of:
    Character, i. 120, 225.
    Commands British troops, ii. 182.
    Recalled from French Court, i. 225.
  Stamp Act, iii. 87, 88.
    Repealed, iii. 103.
  Stanhope, Charles, and South Sea Company, i. 197, 200.
  Stanhope, Colonel (_see_ Harrington, Lord).
  Stanhope, James, Earl, iii. 339.
    Attitude towards French Revolution, iii. 302.
    Death, i. 173.
    First Lord of Treasury and Chancellor of Exchequer, i. 165.
    Impeaches Duke of Ormond, i. 109.
    Mission to Vienna, i. 152.
    On funds and Queen Anne's health, i. 2.
    On Irish clergy, ii. 130.
    On Oxford, Earl of, i. 31.
    Recognized religious equality, i. 173.
    Second Secretary of State, i. 97, 99.
    Sketch of, i. 100.
  Stanhope, Lady Hester, iii. 339.
  Stanley, Lord (_see_ Derby, Earl of).
  States-General convoked, iii. 293.
  Steele, Sir Richard:
    Career, i. 38.
    Compared with Addison, i. 300.
    Death, i. 299.
    M. P. for Stockbridge, i. 52.
    On Somers, i. 147.
    On Whig and Tory, i. 17.
    Petition in favor of rebels, i. 137, 138.
    Tribute to Atterbury, i. 214.
  Stephen, Sir James, "Story of Nuncomar," iii. 263.
  Sterne, Laurence, "Tristram Shandy," ii. 299, 301.
  Sterne, Roger, ii. 299.
    Death, ii. 300.
  Stevenson, Dr., keeps guard at Netherbow Gate, ii. 212.
  Stewart, Dugald, iv. 93.
  Stoke Pogis church-yard, ii. 289.
  Stow, "Survey of London" quoted on penny post, i. 78.
  Strafford, Lord, charges against, i. 109.
  Stratford de Redcliffe, Viscount, iv. 32.
  Streets of London in 1714, i. 70.
  Strickland, Francis, supports Young Pretender, ii. 205.
  Stuart, Cardinal Henry, death, ii. 234.
  Stuart, Charles Edward, Young Pretender:
    Advantages on his side, ii. 208, 209, 218, 221.
    Adventures after Culloden, ii. 226.
    At siege of Gaeta, ii. 29, 201, 203.
    Birth, ii. 199.
    Education, ii. 201, 202.
    Enters Holyrood, ii. 214.
    Humanity during campaign, ii. 215, 217.
    In London, iii. 14.
    Later career, ii. 233, 234.
    March into England, ii. 217.
    Marches on Edinburgh, ii. 210, 213.
    Proclamation, ii. 206.
    Rebellion of 1745, ii. 204 _seqq._
    Retreats, ii. 223.
    Wishes to advance on London, ii. 222.
  Stuart influence on literature, ii. 234.
  Stuart, James Francis Edward (Old Pretender), i. 4.
    Character, i. 126.
    Dismisses Bolingbroke, i. 131.
    Embarks for Scotland, i. 120.
    Life of exile, ii. 199, 201.
    On South Sea scheme, i. 200.
    Proclaimed in Dundee, i. 123.
    Rebellion in favor of, i. 118.
    Returns to France, i. 128.
    Rumors of, i. 264.
    Sketch of, i. 9 _seqq._
  Stuart standard set up at Braemer, i. 121, 123.
  Sugar Act of 1733, iii. 83.
  Sullivan, iii. 179.
  Sully, advice to Henry IV., i. 13.
  Sumner, Dr., Head-master of Harrow, iii. 217.
  Sunderland, Charles, Earl of, i. 54.
    Accusations against Townshend and Walpole, i. 164.
    Death, i. 206.
    Motion implicating him in South Sea scheme, i. 199.
    Plot against Walpole, i. 207.
    Speech in favor of South Sea Bill, i. 191.
    Viceroy of Ireland, i. 97.
  Suraj ud Dowlah:
    Black Hole of Calcutta, ii. 266.
    Captured and killed, ii. 273.
    Character, ii. 266.
    Death, iii. 250.
    Declares war against English, iii. 249.
  Swetenham, Captain, ii. 207.
  Swift, Jonathan, Dean of St. Patrick's:
    Attitude towards Irish, i. 243.
    Character, ii. 237.
    Death, ii. 236.
    Defends Treaty of Utrecht, i. 96.
    Dialogue between Whig and Tory, i. 219.
    "Drapier's Letters," i. 240, 242, 247.
    "Gulliver's Travels," i. 302.
    Lampoons, ii. 102.
    Letter to Lord Peterborough, i. 36.
    Letter to Sheridan on Walpole, i. 306.
    On Arbuthnot, ii. 21.
    On Bolingbroke, i. 26, 28.
    On Condition of Church, ii. 129.
    On Marlborough, i. 24.
    On Oxford, Earl of, i. 31, 168.
    On Queen Anne's health, i. 1, 36.
    On Somerset, Duke of, i. 43.
    On William Congreve, i. 299.
    Patron of Berkeley, ii. 293.
    Poems on South Sea mania, i. 202.
    Reception of Carteret, i. 235.
    Sketch of, i. 35.
    Stella and, ii. 236.
  Swinburne, "A Jacobite's Exile," ii. 235.

  Talbot, Charles, Lord Chancellor, ii. 9, 81.
  Talleyrand:
    Dines with William IV., iv. 117.
    On Alexander Hamilton, ii. 248; iv. 281.
  Tea tax introduced by Townshend, iii. 113.
  Telford, Thomas, death, iv. 282.
  Temple, John, iii. 155.
  Temple, Richard Grenville, Earl, iii. 26.
    Action on India Bill, iii. 234.
    Persuades Pitt to refuse office, iii. 73, 93.
    Removed from Lord-Lieutenancy, iii. 64.
    Resigns office, iii. 236.
    Shows King's speech to Wilkes, iii. 57.
    Supports Wilkes, iii. 116.
  Ten-pound franchise, iv. 130.
  Tenterden, Chief Justice, decision in Cobbett prosecution, iv. 157.
  Test Act:
    Debate on proposed repeal, ii. 176.
    Repeal proposed, ii. 110.
    Repealed, iv. 52, 67.
  Thackeray, W. M., iv. 286.
    Description of Hanover, i. 55.
    On George IV., iii. 242.
    On interview of George IV. and Sir Walter Scott, iv. 29.
    On interview of George IV. with Wellington, Lyndhurst,
      and Peel, iv. 78.
    On Laurence Sterne, ii. 302.
    On Swift's character, ii. 237, 238.
  Thames frozen (1716), i. 154.
  Thames Tunnel, iv. 93.
  Thistlewood, plots to assassinate Ministers, iv. 15.
  Thomas, --, iii. 179.
  Thornhill, Sir James, i. 68.
  Thurlow, Lord, iii. 228.
  Thynne, Thomas, Lord, i. 8.
  Tippu, English make treaty with, iii. 266.
  Tithe question, Ireland, iv. 207 _seqq._, 216, 220.
    Government proposal on, iv. 211, 245.
  Tobacco, excise duty on, i. 316.
  Tolbooth fired, ii. 64.
  Tone, Matthew, fights under Humbert, iii. 324.
  Tone, Theobald Wolfe, iv. 206.
    Death, iii. 327.
    Letter to his wife, iii. 324.
    Marriage, iii. 311.
    Project for colony in South Sea island, iii. 310.
    Scheme for French invasion of Ireland, iii. 311.
    Sketch of, iii. 309 _seqq._
  Tonson, Jacob, Secretary to Kit-Kat Club, i. 74.
  Torcy, Marquis de, Secretary of State, France, i. 110.
  Tories:
    Attitude towards restoration of Stuarts, i. 16, 19.
    Doctrines, i. 17 _seqq._
    Jacobitism and, iii. 24.
    Old school of, iv. 241.
    Origin of name, i. 17.
    Peace of Utrecht and, i. 92.
  Toulon:
    Retaken by French, iii. 304.
    Welcomes English fleet, iii. 303.
  Townshend, Alderman, opposes Wilkes, iii. 136.
  Townshend, Audrey, Marchioness of, iii. 110.
  Townshend, Charles ("Weathercock"), i. 99.
    Chancellor of Exchequer, iii. 109.
    Character, iii. 110.
    Death, iii. 113.
    Introduces tea tax for America, iii. 113.
  Townshend, Charles, Viscount:
    Accompanies King to Hanover, i. 237.
    Dismissed, i. 164.
    President of Council, i. 182.
    Resigns office, i. 304.
    Secretary of State, i. 97, 278.
    Sketch of, i. 99.
  Trading Guilds, origin of, iv. 255.
  Trafalgar, battle of, iii. 337.
  Traill, H. D., on Laurence Sterne, ii. 302.
  Treaties (_see_ under various titles).
  Trichinopoly:
    Besieged, ii. 262.
    Relieved, ii. 264.
  Triennial Parliament Acts, i. 145.
  Triple Alliance, i. 161, 163.
  Tucker, Dean, on mutinous colonies, iii. 163.
  Tullibardine:
    Dies in Tower, ii. 232.
    Supports Young Pretender, ii. 205, 206.
  Turkey in 1716, i. 154.

  Ulm, capitulation of, iii. 338.
  Union, Scotland's attitude towards, i. 83.
  University College Charter, iv. 261.
  University of London, Charter, iv. 261.
  Upper Ossory, John, Earl of, iii. 36.
  Utrecht, Treaty of, i. 95, 157, 227, 263.
    Campeachy logwood question and, i. 295.
    Tories and, i. 92.
    Trade disputes and, ii. 150.
    Will of Charles II. and, ii. 27.

  Valley Forge, iii. 183.
  Vanhomrigh, Esther (Vanessa), i. 36.
    Alters her will, ii. 294.
  Vansittart, Governor of East India Company, iii. 251.
    Advice on quarrel of Nawab and Ellis, iii. 252.
  Vendome, Duc de, i. 100.
    Character, i. 158.
  Verazani forms settlement in Canada, ii. 283.
  Verden ceded to Hanover, i. 161.
  Verona Congress and Holy Alliance, iv. 39, 42, 45.
  Victoria, Princess Alexandrina:
    Birth, iii. 348.
    Heir-presumptive, iv. 101.
    William IV, and, iv. 117, 118.
  Vienna, Congress of, iv. 38.
  Vienna, Treaty of, i. 295; ii. 30.
  Virginia protests against Stamp Act, iii. 90.
  Voltaire, epigram on Byng, ii. 298.
  Von Steuben in America, iii. 183.
  Vote by ballot proposed, iv. 131.

  Wade, General, clans surrender arms to, ii. 209.
  Wales, Prince of (_see_ Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales,
      and George IV.).
  Walkenshaw, Miss, ii. 233.
  Walmoden, Mme., ii. 48, 76, 304.
  Walpole, Baron, i. 224.
  Walpole, Horace, Earl of Orford:
    Account of his father (1742), ii. 189.
    Acquainted with Paris, iii. 293.
    Contrasts Townshend with Burke, iii. 112.
    Description of George I., i. 58.
    Description of Lord Hillsborough, iii. 148.
    Description of Mme. Kilmansegge, i. 7.
    Eulogy of Queen Charlotte, iii. 12.
    Maiden speech in defence of his father, ii. 195.
    On Bute's Administration, iii. 28.
    On Carteret, i. 235.
    On Chesterfield's speeches, ii. 5.
    On Coronation of George III., iii. 12.
    On dinner hour, iii. 18.
    On James Stuart, i. 11.
    On Lord George Gordon, iii. 193.
    On Whitefield's eloquence, ii. 139.
    On Wilkes's career, iii. 137.
  Walpole, Horatio, Lord:
    Ambassador to Paris, i. 237, 238, 291.
    Moves Address on Convention, ii. 171.
    Recalled from Paris, i. 304.
  Walpole, Sir Robert, Earl of Orford:
    Accepts war policy, ii. 180.
    Administration, i. 224 _seqq._, 305.
    Address to George II., i. 280.
    Advice to Princesses, ii. 126.
    At Houghton, i. 196; ii. 195.
    At Queen Caroline's death-bed, ii. 119.
    Attacks Peerage Bill, i. 176.
    Attempts to get influence of James Stuart, ii. 186.
    Attitude towards financial reform, ii. 36.
    Bill to adjust affairs of South Sea Company, i. 203, 205.
    Chairman of Committee of Secrecy, i. 105, 106, 168.
    Character, i. 165; ii. 8, 18, 196.
    Charges against, ii. 187, 195.
    Conduct on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 80.
    Correspondence with Townshend, i. 252.
    Corruption under, i. 231; ii. 13, 19, 90, 195; iii. 25.
    Created Earl of Orford, ii. 190.
    Death, ii. 196.
    First great finance minister, i. 229.
    Fiscal policy, i. 230, 309, 311 _seqq._
    Foreign policy, i. 229, 236, 292, 305; ii. 24, 31, 149.
    Hails George II. King, i. 275.
    Health in 1742, ii. 188.
    Made K. B., i. 252.
    Made K. G., i. 252.
    Masterly inactivity, ii. 24, 31, 36.
    Moves Address (1715), i. 103.
    On Frederick, Prince of Wales, ii. 71.
    On Queen's illness, ii. 115.
    On Royal family, ii. 74.
    On South Sea Company, i. 188, 196.
    Paymaster-General, i. 97, 181.
    Pleads against war with Spain, ii. 155, 159.
    Quarrel with Townshend, i. 304.
    Relations with stage, ii. 95.
    Resigns office, i. 164; ii. 190.
    Restored to office, i. 278.
    Secretary of State for Scotland, i. 250.
    Settles dispute between Spain and Portugal, ii. 35.
    Sketch of career, i. 32; ii. 196.
    Speech on Bolingbroke, ii. 15.
    Speech on Prince of Wales's allowance, ii. 86.
    Speech on secession from Commons, ii. 174.
  War declared against Spain, ii. 178.
    Results of, ii. 183.
  War of Independence, ii. 43.
  War of Polish Succession, ii. 23 _seqq._
  War of the Succession, purpose of, i. 92.
  War passion, ii. 148.
  War with Spain, iii. 29.
  Ward, Artemus, iii. 179.
  Ward, Henry, resolution on Irish State Church, iv. 212, 213, 214.
  Ward, Ned, ballad on Marlborough's return to England, i. 53.
  Ward, Plumer, author of "Tremaine," iv. 213.
  Ward, Sir John, petition on South Sea Company, i. 203.
  Wardle, Colonel, iii. 338.
  Warren, General, iii. 176.
  Washington, George:
    Character, iii. 188.
    Commands Continental army, iii. 181.
    Disapproves of Boston exploit, iii. 161, 163.
    Fires first shot against enemy, ii. 285.
    First President of American Republic, iii. 189.
    Sketch of career, iii. 180.
  Watson, Admiral, commands fleet against Suraj ud Dowlah, ii. 269.
  "Waverers," iv. 173.
  Webster, "Duchess of Malfi" quoted, iv. 11.
  Wedderburn, Alexander, Solicitor-General, iii. 149.
    Denounces Franklin, iii. 156, 157.
    On using military against mob, iii. 207.
    Sketch of, iii. 158.
    Speech on Middlesex election petition, iii. 131.
  "Weekly Political Register," Cobbett's article in, iv. 156, 157.
  Wellesley, Arthur (_see_ Wellington, Duke of).
  Wellesley, Garret, Earl of Mornington, iii. 341.
  Wellesley, Richard C., Marquis of:
    Resigns Vice-royalty of Ireland, iv. 73.
    Sketch of career, iv. 72.
  Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of:
    Accompanies George IV. to Waterloo, iv. 28.
    At opening of Liverpool and Manchester railway, iv. 103.
    Attitude towards Catholic Emancipation, iv. 54, 56, 75, 106.
    Attitude towards Municipal Bill, iv. 260.
    Attitude towards Parliamentary reform, iv. 52.
    Attitude towards Queen Caroline, iv. 7.
    Character, iv. 120.
    Declines to form ministry, iv. 177.
    Duel with Lord Winchilsea, iv. 81.
    Interview with King on Catholic emancipation, iv. 77.
    Prime Minister, iv. 67, 100.
    Represents England at Congress of Verona, iv. 41, 42.
    Resigns office, iv. 113.
    Secretary for Foreign Affairs, iv. 238.
    Sketch of, iii. 341 _seqq._
    Speech against Reform Bill, iv. 169.
    Speech on Parliamentary reform, iv. 108.
    Supports Poor Law Bill, iv. 229.
    Unpopular, iv. 153.
  Welsh Copper and Lead Company, and South Sea Company, i. 193.
  Wentworth, Lady, describes house in Golden Square, i. 70.
  Wesley, Charles, ii. 128, 137, 145.
    Accompanies John to Georgia, ii. 134.
    On Revivalist meetings, ii. 139.
  Wesley, John:
    Breaks away from Moravians, ii. 140.
    Breaks from discipline of Church of England, ii. 142.
    Character, ii. 134, 135, 137, 142.
    Dispute with Whitefield, ii. 139.
    Marriage, ii. 137.
    Organization, ii. 140.
    Sketch of, ii. 127 _seqq._
    Visits Georgia, ii. 127.
  Wesleyan Movement, account of, ii. 127 _seqq._
    In United States, ii. 144.
    Revivalist meetings, ii. 138.
  West Indian Planters, grant to, iv. 198, 200.
  West Indies, slavery in, iv. 190 _seqq._
    Abolished, iv. 199, 200.
  Westminster Hall, iv. 268.
    Booths in, i. 64.
    Explosion in, ii. 45.
  Wetherell, Sir Charles, obstructs Reform Bill, iv. 163.
    Rescued from rioters, iv. 197.
  Weymouth, Lord, letter to magistrate in case of riot, iii. 120, 124.
  Wharncliffe, Lord, amendment to Reform Bill, iv. 169.
  Wharton, Duke of:
    Character, i. 264.
    Condemns South Sea Bill, i. 191, 198.
  Whately, --, private secretary to George Grenville, iii. 153.
  Whately, William, iii. 155.
  Wheler, appointed Governor-General, iii. 264.
  Whigs:
    Ascendency, iii. 24.
    Attitude towards Hanoverian Succession, i. 16.
    Doctrines, i. 17 _seqq._
    Foreign policy (1716), i. 157.
    Nobles and Reform Bill, iv. 178.
    Origin of name, i. 17.
  Whitbread, efforts to inquire into troubles in Ireland, iii. 319.
  Whitefield, George, ii. 128, 137, 145.
    Disputes with Wesley, ii. 139.
    Oratory, ii. 139.
  White's chocolate-house, i. 76.
  Widdrington, Lord, a prisoner, i. 137, 138.
  Wilberforce, William:
    Later years, iv. 280.
    Supports Queen Caroline, iv. 6.
    Votes against Dundas, iii. 338.
    West-Indian Slavery and, iv. 191, 193, 194.
  Wilkes, John:
    Arrested, iii. 59.
    At King's Bench, iii. 119.
    Attack on, iii. 64, 66.
    Brings actions against Lord Halifax and Wood, iii. 63.
    Candidate for Parliament, iii. 116, 117, 126, 137.
    Catholic Relief for Scotland and, iii. 195.
    Churchill and, iii. 55.
    Committed to Tower, iii. 60.
    Death, iii. 139.
    Duel with Martin, iii. 66.
    Elected Alderman for Farringdon Without, iii. 134.
    Elected Lord Mayor, iii. 137.
    Elected Sheriff, iii. 136.
    Expelled from House, iii. 130.
    Interview with Johnson, iii. 138.
    Later life, iii. 137.
    Liberated from prison, iii. 135.
    Literary executor to Churchill, iii. 69.
    M. P. for Aylesbury, iii. 49, 51.
    _North Briton_ and, iii. 52, 55, 57.
    On rioters, iii. 209.
    Outlawed, iii. 68.
    Released by Judge Pratt, iii. 60, 63.
    Sketch of, iii. 48 _seqq._
    Summoned before Commons, iii. 135.
  William III., opinion of Duke of Marlborough, i. 24.
  William IV.:
    Accession, iv. 96.
    Assents to Bill for Abolition of Slavery, iv. 199.
    Attitude towards Duke of Wellington, iv. 115.
    Attitude towards Irish State Church, iv. 219.
    Attitude towards Ministry (1831), iv. 151.
    Attitude towards Reform, iv. 172, 173, 175, 179, 181.
    Character, iv. 98, 114, 115, 120, 293.
    Conduct as admiral, iv. 115.
    Conduct to Mrs. Fitzherbert, iv. 88.
    Death, iv. 293.
    Dismisses Whig Government and sends for Sir Robert Peel, iv. 235.
    Illness, iv. 289.
    Lord High Admiral, iv. 60, 96.
    Marries Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, iv. 97.
    Mrs. Jordan and, iv. 97.
    Opens Parliament (1831), iv. 154.
    Orangeism and, iv. 279.
    Popular, iv. 153, 154.
    Prayers for, iv. 292.
    Raises his children to Peerage, iv. 114.
    Sanctions Reform Bill, iv. 132.
    Speech from Throne (1830), iv. 100, 103, 108.
    Speech from Throne (1831), iv. 172.
    Speeches at state dinners, iv. 116, 117.
    Unconventionalities, iv. 118.
    Unpopular, iv. 179.
  Williamson, Dr. Hugh, iii. 154.
  Will's coffee-house, i. 75.
  Wilmington, Lord (_see_ Compton, Sir Spencer).
  Wilmot, Olivia, sketch of, iv. 286.
  Wilmot, Robert, on grievances against Spaniards, ii. 154.
  Wilson, Alexander, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Bill
      against, ii. 66, 68.
  Wilson's execution and Porteous riots, ii. 60, 61.
  Winchilsea, Earl of:
    Duel with Duke of Wellington, iv. 81.
    On Princess Anne's Dowry, ii. 44, 45.
    Letter on Duke of Wellington and Catholic Emancipation, iv. 80.
  Window tax, iii. 239.
  Wine-drinking in Georgian era, iii. 20.
  Wintoun, Earl of, a prisoner, i. 137.
    Escapes, i. 142.
  Witherington, Matilda, wife of Wolfe Tone, iii. 311, 329.
  Wolfe, James:
    At Culloden, ii. 227, 282.
    Character, ii. 282.
    Death, ii. 290.
    Monument, ii. 290.
  Wood, Alderman, supports Queen Caroline, iv. 5.
  Wood, William, patent for copper coins, i. 164, 241, 244.
    Withdrawn, i. 248.
  Wooster, --, iii. 179.
  Wray, Sir Cecil, opponent of Fox at Westminster, iii. 238.
  Writs of Assistance, iii. 84, 86.
  Wyndham, Sir William:
    Announces secession from Commons, ii. 173.
    Death, ii. 179.
    Leader of Tories, i. 287.
    On grievances against Spaniards, ii. 156.
    On Salt Tax, i. 313.
    Sketch of, i. 288; ii. 179.
    Speech on repeal of Septennial Act, ii. 12.
  Wynn, Sir Walter Williams, supports Young Pretender, ii. 221.
  Wynn, Watkin Williams, argument against long Parliaments, ii. 12.

  Yale College, places in lists, iii. 77.
  York, Frederick Augustus, Duke of:
    Death, iv. 60.
    Public career, iv. 60.
  York in 1714, i. 79.
  Yorktown, Cornwallis surrenders at, iii. 184.
  Young, Arthur, travels in France, iii. 293.

  Zinzendorf, Count von, founds Moravian sect, ii. 134.
  Zoological Gardens opened, iv. 93.



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