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The circumstance that the Opposition was divided into two parties, diametrically
opposed to each other in political opinions, was long the safety of Walpole. It
was at last his ruin. The leaders of the minority knew that it would be
difficult for them to bring forward any important measure without producing an
immediate schism in their party. It was with very great difficulty that the
Whigs in opposition had been induced to give a sullen and silent vote for the
repeal of the Septennial Act. The Tories, on the other hand, could not be
induced to support Pulteney's motion for an addition to the income of Prince
Frederic. The two parties had cordially joined in calling out for a war with
Spain; but they now had their war. Hatred of Walpole was almost the only feeling
which was common to them. On this one point, therefore, they concentrated their
whole strength. With gross ignorance, or gross dishonesty, they represented the
Minister as the main grievance of the State. His dismissal, his punishment,
would prove the certain cure for all the evils which the nation suffered. What
was to be done after his fall, how misgovernment was to be prevented in future,
were questions to which there were as many answers as there were noisy and
ill-informed members of the Opposition. The only cry in which all could join
was, "Down with Walpole!" So much did they narrow the disputed ground, so purely
personal did they make the question, that they threw out friendly hints to the
other members of the Administration, and declared that they refused quarter to
the Prime Minister alone. His tools might keep their heads, their fortunes, even
their places, if only the great father of corruption were given up to the just
vengeance of the nation.
If the fate of Walpole's colleagues had been inseparably bound up with his, he
probably would, even after the unfavorable elections of 1741, have been able to
weather the storm. But as soon as it was understood that the attack was directed
against him alone, and that, if he were sacrificed, his associates might expect
advantageous and honorable terms, the ministerial ranks began to waver, and the
murmur of sauve qui peut was heard. That Walpole had foul play is almost
certain, but to what extent it is difficult to say. Lord Islay was suspected;
the Duke of Newcastle something more than suspected. It would have been strange,
indeed, if his Grace had been idle when treason was hatching.
"Ch' i' ho de' traditor' sempre sospetto, E Gan fu traditor prima che nato."
"His name," said Sir Robert, "is perfidy."
Never was a battle more manfully fought out than the last struggle of the old
statesman. His clear judgment, his long experience, and his fearless spirit,
enabled him to maintain a defensive war through half the session. To the last
his heart never failed him--and, when at last he yielded, he yielded not to the
threats of his enemies, but to the entreaties of his dispirited and refractory
followers. When he could no longer retain his power, he compounded for honor and
security, and retired to his garden and his paintings, leaving to those who had
overthrown him shame, discord, and ruin.
Everything was in confusion. It has been said that the confusion was produced by
the dexterous policy of Walpole; and, undoubtedly, he did his best to sow
dissension amongst his triumphant enemies. But there was little for him to do.
Victory had completely dissolved the hollow truce, which the two sections of the
Opposition had but imperfectly observed, even while the event of the contest was
still doubtful. A thousand questions were opened in a moment. A thousand
conflicting claims were preferred. It was impossible to follow any line of
policy which would not have been offensive to a large portion of the successful
party. It was impossible to find places for a tenth part of those who thought
that they had a right to office. While the parliamentary leaders were preaching
patience and confidence, while their followers were clamoring for reward, a
still louder voice was heard from without, the terrible cry of a people angry,
they hardly know with whom, and impatient they hardly knew for what. The day of
retribution had arrived. The Opposition reaped that which they had sown.
Inflamed with hatred and cupidity, despairing of success by any ordinary mode of
political warfare, and blind to consequences, which, though remote, were
certain, they had conjured up a devil whom they could not lay. They had made the
public mind drunk with calumny and declamation. They had raised expectations
which it was impossible to satisfy. The downfall of Walpole was to be the
beginning of a political millennium; and every enthusiast had figured to himself
that millennium according to the fashion of his own wishes. The republican
expected that the power of the Crown would be reduced to a mere shadow, the high
Tory that the Stuarts would be restored, the moderate Tory that the golden days
which the Church and the landed interest had enjoyed during the last years of
Queen Anne would immediately return. It would have been impossible to satisfy
everybody. The conquerors satisfied nobody.
We have no reverence for the memory of those who were then called the patriots.
We are for the principles of good government against Walpole,--and for Walpole
against the Opposition. It was most desirable that a purer system should be
introduced; but, if the old system was to be retained, no man was so fit as
Walpole to be at the head of affairs. There were grievous abuses in the
Government, abuses more than sufficient to justify a strong Opposition. But the
party opposed to Walpole, while they stimulated the popular fury to the highest
point, were at no pains to direct it aright. Indeed they studiously misdirected
it. They misrepresented the evil. They prescribed inefficient and pernicious
remedies. They held up a single man as the sole cause of all the vices of a bad
system which had been in full operation before his entrance into public life,
and which continued to be in full operation when some of these very brawlers had
succeeded to his power. They thwarted his best measures. They drove him into an
unjustifiable war against his will. Constantly talking in magnificent language
about tyranny, corruption, wicked ministers, servile courtiers, the liberty of
Englishmen, the Great Charter, the rights for which our fathers bled, Timoleon,
Brutus, Hampden, Sydney, they had absolutely nothing to propose which would have
been an improvement on our institutions. Instead of directing the public mind to
definite reforms which might have completed the work of the revolution, which
might have brought the legislature into harmony with the nation, and which might
have prevented the Crown from doing by influence what it could no longer do by
prerogative, they excited a vague craving for change, by which they profited for
a single moment, and of which, as they well deserved, they were soon the
victims.
Among the reforms which the State then required, there were two of paramount
importance, two which would alone have remedied almost every gross abuse, and
without which all other remedies would have been unavailing, the publicity of
parliamentary proceedings, and the abolition of the rotten boroughs. Neither of
these was thought of. It seems us clear that, if these were not adopted, all
other measures would have been illusory. Some of the patriots suggested changes
which would, beyond all doubt, have increased the existing evils a hundredfold.
These men wished to transfer the disposal of employments and the command of the
army from the Crown to the Parliament; and this on the very ground that the
Parliament had long been a grossly corrupt body. The security against
malpractices was to be that the members, instead of having a portion of the
public plunder doled out to them by a minister, were to help themselves.
The other schemes of which the public mind was full were less dangerous than
this. Some of them were in themselves harmless. But none of them would have done
much good, and most of them were extravagantly absurd. What they were we may
learn from the instructions which many constituent bodies, immediately after the
change of administration, sent up to their representatives. A more deplorable
collection of follies can hardly be imagined. There is, in the first place, a
general cry for Walpole's head. Then there are better complaints of the decay of
trade, a decay which, in the judgment of these enlightened politicians, was
brought about by Walpole and corruption. They would have been nearer to the
truth if they had attributed their sufferings to the war into which they had
driven Walpole against his better judgment. He had foretold the effects of his
unwilling concession. On the day when hostilities against Spain were proclaimed,
when the heralds were attended into the city by the chiefs of the Opposition,
when the Prince of Wales himself stopped at Temple Bar to drink success to the
English arms, the minister heard all the steeples of the city jingling with a
merry peal, and muttered, "They may ring the bells now; they will be wringing
their hands before long."
Another grievance, for which of course Walpole and corruption were answerable,
was the great exportation of English wool. In the judgment of the sagacious
electors of several large towns, the remedying of this evil was a matter second
only in importance to the hanging of Sir Robert. There were also earnest
injunctions that the members should vote against standing armies in time of
peace, injunctions which were, to say the least, ridiculously unseasonable in
the midst of a war which was likely to last, and which did actually last, as
long as the Parliament. The repeal of the Septennial Act, as was to be expected,
was strongly pressed. Nothing was more natural than that the voters should wish
for a triennial recurrence of their bribes and their ale. We feel firmly
convinced that the repeal of the Septennial Act, unaccompanied by a complete
reform of the constitution of the elective body, would have been an unmixed
curse to the country. The only rational recommendation which we can find in all
these instructions is that the number of placemen in Parliament should be
limited, and that pensioners should not he allowed to sit there. It is plain,
however, that this cure was far from going to the root of the evil, and that, if
it had been adopted without other reforms, secret bribery would probably have
been more practiced than ever.
We will give one more instance of the absurd expectations which the declamations
of the Opposition had raised in the country. Akenside was one of the fiercest
and most uncompromising of the young patriots out of Parliament. When he found
that the change of administration had produced no change of system, he gave vent
to his indignation in the Epistle to Curio, the best poem that he ever wrote, a
poem, indeed, which seems to indicate, that, if he had left lyric composition to
Gray and Collins, and had employed his powers in grave and elevated satire, he
might have disputed the pre-eminence of Dryden. But whatever be the literary
merits of the epistle, we can say nothing in praise of the political doctrines
which it inculcates. The poet, in a rapturous apostrophe to the spirits of the
great men of antiquity, tells us what he expected from Pulteney at the moment of
the fall of the tyrant.
"See private life by wisest arts reclaimed, See ardent youth to noblest manners
framed, See us achieve whate'er was sought by you, If Curio--only Curio--will be
true."
It was Pulteney's business, it seems, to abolish faro, and masquerades, to stint
the young Duke of Marlborough to a bottle of brandy a day, and to prevail on
Lady Vane to be content with three lovers at a time.
Whatever the people wanted, they certainly got nothing. Walpole retired in
safety; and the multitude were defrauded of the expected show on Tower Hill. The
Septennial Act was not repealed. The placemen were not turned out of the House
of Commons. Wool, we believe, was still exported. "Private life" afforded as
much scandal as if the reign of Walpole and corruption had continued; and
"ardent youth" fought with watchmen and betted with blacklegs as much as ever.
The colleagues of Walpole had, after his retreat, admitted some of the chiefs of
the Opposition into the Government, and soon found themselves compelled to
submit to the ascendancy of one of their new allies. This was Lord Carteret,
afterwards Earl Granville. No public man of that age had greater courage,
greater ambition, greater activity, greater talents for debate or for
declamation. No public man had such profound and extensive learning. He was
familiar with the ancient writers, and loved to sit up till midnight discussing
philological and metrical questions with Bentley. His knowledge of modern
languages was prodigious. The privy council, when he was present; needed no
interpreter. He spoke and wrote French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German,
even Swedish. He had pushed his researches into the most obscure nooks of
literature. He was as familiar with Canonists and Schoolmen as with orators and
poets. He had read all that the universities of Saxony and Holland had produced
on the most intricate questions of public law. Harte, in the preface to the
second edition of his History of Gustavus Adolphus, bears a remarkable testimony
to the extent and accuracy of Lord Carteret's knowledge. "It was my good fortune
or prudence to keep the main body of my army (or in other words my matters of
fact) safe and entire. The late Earl of Granville was pleased to declare himself
of this opinion; especially when he found that I had made Chemnitius one of my
principal guides; for his Lordship was apprehensive I might not have seen that
valuable and authentic book, which is extremely scarce. I thought myself happy
to have contented his Lordship even in the lowest degree: for he understood the
German and Swedish histories to the highest perfection."
With all this learning, Carteret was far from being a pedant. His was not one of
those cold spirits of which the fire is put out by the fuel. In council, in
debate, in society, he was all life and energy. His measures were strong,
prompt, and daring, his oratory animated and glowing. His spirits were
constantly high. No misfortune, public or private, could depress him. He was at
once the most unlucky and the happiest public man of his time.
He had been Secretary of State in Walpole's Administration, and had acquired
considerable influence over the mind of George the First. The other ministers
could speak no German. The King could speak no English. All the communication
that Walpole held with his master was in very bad Latin. Carteret dismayed his
colleagues by the volubility with which he addressed his Majesty in German. They
listened with envy and terror to the mysterious gutturals which might possibly
convey suggestions very little in unison with their wishes.
Walpole was not a man to endure such a colleague as Carteret. The King was
induced to give up his favorite. Carteret joined the Opposition, and signalized
himself at the head of that party till, after the retirement of his old rival,
he again became Secretary of State.
During some months he was chief Minister, indeed sole Minister. He gained the
confidence and regard of George the Second. He was at the same time in high
favor with the Prince of Wales. As a debater in the House of Lords, he had no
equal among his colleagues. Among his opponents, Chesterfield alone could be
considered as his match. Confident in his talents, and in the royal favor, he
neglected all those means by which the power of Walpole had been created and
maintained. His head was full of treaties and expeditions, of schemes for
supporting the Queen of Hungary and for humbling the House of Bourbon. He
contemptuously abandoned to others all the drudgery, and, with the drudgery, all
the fruits of corruption. The patronage of the Church and of the Bar he left to
the Pelhams as a trifle unworthy of his care. One of the judges, Chief Justice
Willes, if we remember rightly, went to him to beg some ecclesiastical
preferment for a friend. Carteret said, that he was too much occupied with
continental politics to think about the disposal of places and benefices. "You
may rely on it, then," said the Chief Justice, "that people who want places and
benefices will go to those who have more leisure." The prediction was
accomplished. It would have been a busy time indeed in which the Pelhams had
wanted leisure for jobbing; and to the Pelhams the whole cry of place-hunters
and pension-hunters resorted. The parliamentary influence of the two brothers
became stronger every day, till at length they were at the head of a decided
majority in the House of Commons. Their rival, meanwhile, conscious of his
powers, sanguine in his hopes, and proud of the storm which he had conjured up
on the Continent, would brook neither superior nor equal. "His rants," says
Horace Walpole, "are amazing; so are his parts and his spirits." He encountered
the opposition of his colleagues, not with the fierce haughtiness of the first
Pitt, or the cold unbending arrogance of the second, but with a gay vehemence, a
good-humored imperiousness, that bore everything down before it. The period of
his ascendancy was known by the name of the "Drunken Administration"; and the
expression was not altogether figurative. His habits were extremely convivial;
and champagne probably lent its aid to keep him in that state of joyous
excitement in which his life was passed.
That a rash and impetuous man of genius like Carteret should not have been able
to maintain his ground in Parliament against the crafty and selfish Pelhams is
not strange. But it is less easy to understand why he should have been generally
unpopular throughout the country. His brilliant talents, his bold and open
temper, ought, it should seem, to have made him a favorite with the public. But
the people had been bitterly disappointed; and he had to face the first burst of
their rage. His close connection with Pulteney, now the most detested man in the
nation, was an unfortunate circumstance. He had, indeed, only three partisans,
Pulteney, the King, and the Prince of Wales, a most singular assemblage.
He was driven from his office. He shortly after made a bold, indeed a desperate,
attempt to recover power. The attempt failed. From that time he relinquished all
ambitious hopes, and retired laughing to his books and his bottle. No statesman
ever enjoyed success with so exquisite a relish, or submitted to defeat with so
genuine and unforced a cheerfulness. Ill as he had been used, he did not seem,
says Horace Walpole, to have any resentment, or indeed any feeling except
thirst.
These letters contain many good stories, some of them no doubt grossly
exaggerated, about Lord Carteret; how, in the height of his greatness, he fell
in love at first sight on a birthday with Lady Sophia Fermor, the handsome
daughter of Lord Pomfret; how he plagued the Cabinet every day with reading to
them her ladyship's letters; how strangely he brought home his bride; what fine
jewels he gave her; how he fondled her at Ranelagh; and what queen-like state
she kept in Arlington Street. Horace Walpole has spoken less bitterly of
Carteret than of any public man of that time, Fox, perhaps, excepted; and this
is the more remarkable, because Carteret was one of the most inveterate enemies
of Sir Robert. In the Memoirs, Horace Walpole, after passing in review all the
great men whom England had produced within his memory, concludes by saying, that
in genius none of them equaled Lord Granville. Smollett, in Humphrey Clinker,
pronounces a similar judgment in coarser language. "Since Granville was turned
out, there has been no minister in this nation worth the meal that whitened his
periwig."
Carteret fell; and the reign of the Pelhams commenced. It was Carteret's
misfortune to be raised to power when the public mind was still smarting from
recent disappointment. The nation had been duped, and was eager for revenge. A
victim was necessary, and on such occasions the victims of popular rage are
selected like the victim of Jephthah. The first person who comes in the way is
made the sacrifice. The wrath of the people had now spent itself; and the
unnatural excitement was succeeded by an unnatural calm. To an irrational
eagerness for something new, succeeded an equally irrational disposition to
acquiesce in everything established. A few months back the people had been
disposed to impute every crime to men in power, and to lend a ready ear to the
high professions of men in opposition. They were now disposed to surrender
themselves implicitly to the management of Ministers, and to look with suspicion
and contempt on all who pretended to public spirit. The name of patriot had
become a by-word of derision. Horace Walpole scarcely exaggerated when he said
that, in those times, the most popular declaration which a candidate could make
on the hustings was that he had never been and never would be a patriot. At this
conjecture took place the rebellion of the Highland clans. The alarm produced by
that event quieted the strife of internal factions. The suppression of the
insurrection crushed for ever the spirit of the Jacobite party. Room was made in
the Government for a few Tories. Peace was patched up with France and Spain.
Death removed the Prince of Wales, who had contrived to keep together a small
portion of that formidable opposition of which he had been the leader in the
time of Sir Robert Walpole. Almost every man of weight in the House of Commons
was officially connected with the Government The even tenor of the session of
Parliament was ruffled only by an occasional harangue from Lord Egmont on the
army estimates. For the first time since the accession of the Stuarts there was
no opposition. This singular good fortune, denied to the ablest statesmen, to
Salisbury, to Strafford, to Clarendon, to Somers, to Walpole, had been reserved
for the Pelhams.
Henry Pelham, it is true, was by no means a contemptible person. His
understanding was that of Walpole on a somewhat smaller scale. Though not a
brilliant orator, he was, like his master, a good debater, a good parliamentary
tactician, a good man of business. Like his master, he distinguished himself by
the neatness and clearness of his financial expositions. Here the resemblance
ceased. Their characters were altogether dissimilar. Walpole was good-humored,
but would have his way: his spirits were high, and his manners frank even to
coarseness. The temper of Pelham was yielding, but peevish: his habits were
regular, and his deportment strictly decorous. Walpole was constitutionally
fearless, Pelharn constitutionally timid. Walpole had to face a strong
opposition; but no man in the Government durst wag a finger against him. Almost
all the opposition which Pelham had to encounter was from members of the
Government of which he was the head. His own pay-master spoke against his
estimates. His own secretary-at-war spoke against his Regency Bill. In one day
Walpole turned Lord Chesterfield, Lord Burlington, and Lord Clinton out of the
royal household, dismissed the highest dignitaries of Scotland from their posts,
and took away the regiments of the Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham, because he
suspected them of having encouraged the resistance to his Excise Bill. He would
far rather have contended with the strongest minority, under the ablest leaders,
than have tolerated mutiny in his own party. It would have gone hard with any of
his colleagues, who had ventured, on a Government question, to divide the House
of Commons against him. Pelham, on the other hand, was disposed to bear anything
rather than drive from office any man round whom a new opposition could form. He
therefore endured with fretful patience the insubordination of Pitt and Fox. He
thought it far better to connive at their occasional infractions of discipline
than to hear them, night after night, thundering against corruption and wicked
ministers from the other side of the House.
We wonder that Sir Walter Scott never tried his hand on the Duke of Newcastle.
An interview between his Grace and Jeanie Deans would have been delightful, and
by no means unnatural. There is scarcely any public man in our history of whose
manners and conversation so many particulars have been preserved. Single stories
may be unfounded or exaggerated. But all the stories about him, whether told by
people who were perpetually seeing him in Parliament and attending his levee in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, or by Grub Street writers who never had more than a
glimpse of his star through the windows of his gilded coach, are of the same
character. Horace Walpole and Smollett differed in their tastes and opinions as
much as two human beings could differ. They kept quite different society.
Walpole played at cards with countesses, and corresponded with ambassadors.
Smollett passed his life surrounded by printers' devils and famished scribblers.
Yet Walpole's Duke and Smollett's Duke are as like as if they were both from one
hand. Smollett's Newcastle runs out of his dressing-room, with his face covered
with soap-suds, to embrace the Moorish envoy. Walpole's Newcastle pushes his way
into the Duke of Grafton's sick-room to kiss the old nobleman's plasters. No man
was so unmercifully satirized. But in truth he was himself a satire ready made.
All that the art of the satirist does for other men, nature had done for him.
Whatever was absurd about him stood out with grotesque prominence from the rest
of the character. He was a living, moving, talking caricature. His gait was a
shuffling trot; his utterance a rapid stutter; he was always in a hurry; he was
never in time; he abounded in fulsome caresses and in hysterical tears. His
oratory resembled that of justice Shallow. It was nonsense--effervescent with
animal spirits and impertinence. Of his ignorance many anecdotes remain, some
well authenticated, some probably invented at coffee-houses, but all exquisitely
characteristic. "Oh--yes--yes--to be sure--Annapolis must he defended--troops
must be sent to Annapolis--Pray where is Annapolis?"--"Cape Breton an island!
Wonderful!--show it me in the map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir, you
always bring us good news. I must go and tell the King that Cape Breton is an
island."
And this man was, during near thirty years, Secretary of State, and, during near
ten years, First Lord of the Treasury! His large fortune, his strong hereditary
connection, his great parliamentary interest, will not alone explain this
extraordinary fact. His success is a signal instance of what may be effected by
a man who devotes his whole heart and soul without reserve to one object. He was
eaten up by ambition. His love of influence and authority resembled the avarice
of the old usurer in the Fortunes of Nigel. It was so intense a passion that it
supplied the place of talents, that it inspired even fatuity with cunning. "Have
no money dealings with my father," says Marth to Lord Glenvarloch; "for, dotard
as he is, he will make an ass of you." It was as dangerous to have any political
connection with Newcastle as to buy and sell with old Trapbois. He was greedy
after power with a greediness all his own. He was jealous of all his colleagues,
and even of his own brother. Under the disguise of levity he was false beyond
all example of political falsehood. All the able men of his time ridiculed him
as a dunce, a driveller, a child who never knew his own mind for an hour
together; and he overreached them all round.
If the country had remained at peace, it is not impossible that this man would
have continued at the head of affairs without admitting any other person to a
share of his authority until the throne was filled by a new Prince, who brought
with him new maxims of government, new favorites, and a strong will. But the
inauspicious commencement of the Seven Years' War brought on a crisis to which
Newcastle was altogether unequal. After a calm of fifteen years the spirit of
the nation was again stirred to its inmost depths. In a few days the whole
aspect of the political world was changed.
But that change is too remarkable an event to be discussed at the end of an
article already more than sufficiently long. It is probable that we may, at no
remote time, resume the subject.
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