Part 304

"The management of public affairs during the six years of George the First's reign in which Walpole was Prime Minister, was easy. … His political fortunes seemed to be ruined by George the First's death [1727]. That King's successor had ransacked a very copious vocabulary of abuse, in order to stigmatise the minister and his associates. Rogue and rascal, scoundrel and fool, were his commonest utterances when Robert Walpole's name was mentioned. … Walpole bowed meekly to the coming storm," and an attempt was made to put Sir Spencer Compton in his place. But Compton himself, as well as the king and his sagacious queen, soon saw the futility of it, and the old ministry was retained. "At first, Walpole was associated with his brother-in-law, Townsend. But they soon disagreed, and the rupture was total after the death of Walpole's sister, Townsend's wife. … After Townsend's dismissal, Walpole reigned alone, if, indeed, he could be said to exercise sole functions while Newcastle was tied to him. Long before he was betrayed by this person, of whom he justly said that his name was perfidy, he knew how dangerous was the association. But Newcastle was the largest proprietor of rotten boroughs in the kingdom, and, fool and knave as he was, he had wit enough to guess at his own importance, and knavery enough to make his market. Walpole's chief business lay in managing the King, the Queen, the Church, the House of Commons, and perhaps the people. I have already said, that before his accession George hated Walpole. But there are hatreds and hatreds, equal in fervency while they last, but different in duration. The King hated Walpole because he had served his father well. But one George was gone, and another George was in possession. Then came before the man in possession the clear vision of Walpole's consummate usefulness. The vision was made clearer by the sagacious hints of the Queen. It became clear as noonday when Walpole contrived to add £115,000 to the civil list. … Besides, Walpole was sincerely determined to support the Hanoverian succession. He constantly insisted to George that the final settlement of his House on the throne would be fought out in England. … Hence he was able to check one of the King's ruling passions, a longing to engage in war. … {921} It is generally understood that Walpole managed the House of Commons by bribery; that the secret service money was thus employed: and that this minister was the father of that corruption which was reported to have disgraced the House during the first half of the last century. I suspect that these influences have been exaggerated. It is a stock story that Walpole said he knew every man's price. It might have been generally true, but the foundation of this apothegm is, in all likelihood, a recorded saying of his about certain members of the opposition. … Walpole has been designated, and with justice, as emphatically a peace minister. He held 'that the most pernicious circumstances in which this country can be, are those of war, as we must be great losers while the war lasts, and cannot be great gainers when it ends.' He kept George the Second at peace, as well as he could, by insisting on it that the safety of his dynasty lay in avoiding foreign embroilments. He strove in vain against the war which broke out in 1739. … I do not intend to disparage Walpole's administrative ability when I say that the country prospered independently of any financial policy which he adopted or carried out. … Walpole let matters take their course, for he understood that the highest merit of a minister consists in his doing no mischief. But Walpole's praise lies in the fact, that, with this evident growth of material prosperity, he steadily set his face against gambling with it. He resolved, as far as lay in his power, to keep the peace of Europe; and he was seconded in his efforts by Cardinal Fleury. He contrived to smooth away the difficulties which arose in 1727; and on January 13, 1730, negotiated the treaty of Seville [see SPAIN: A. D. 1726-1731], the benefits of which lasted through ten years of peace, and under which he reduced the army to 5,000 men." But the opposition to Walpole's peace policy became a growing passion, which overcame him in 1741 and forced him to resign. On his resignation he was raised to the peerage, with the title of Earl of Orford, and defeated, though with great difficulty, the determination of his enemies to impeach him.

_J. E. T. Rogers, Historical Gleanings, volume 1, chapter 2._

"It is impossible, I think, to consider his [Walpole's] career with adequate attention without recognising in him a great minister, although the merits of his administration were often rather negative than positive, and although it exhibits few of those dramatic incidents, and is but little susceptible of that rhetorical colouring, on which the reputation of statesmen largely depends. … He was eminently true to the character of his countrymen. He discerned with a rare sagacity the lines of policy most suited to their genius and to their needs, and he had a sufficient ascendancy in English politics to form its traditions, to give a character and a bias to its institutions. The Whig party, under his guidance, retained, though with diminished energy, its old love of civil and of religious liberty, but it lost its foreign sympathies, its tendency to extravagance, its military restlessness. The landed gentry, and in a great degree the Church, were reconciled to the new dynasty. The dangerous fissures which divided the English nation were filled up. Parliamentary government lost its old violence, it entered into a period of normal and pacific action, and the habits of compromise, of moderation, and of practical good sense, which are most essential to its success, were greatly strengthened. These were the great merits of Walpole. His faults were very manifest, and are to be attributed in part to his own character, but in a great degree to the moral atmosphere of his time. He was an honest man in the sense of desiring sincerely the welfare of his country and serving his sovereign with fidelity; but he was intensely wedded to power, exceedingly unscrupulous about the means of grasping or retaining it, and entirely destitute of that delicacy of honour which marks a high-minded man. … His estimate of political integrity was very similar to his estimate of female virtue. He governed by means of an assembly which was saturated with corruption, and he fully acquiesced in its conditions and resisted every attempt to improve it. … It is necessary to speak with much caution on this matter, remembering that no statesman can emancipate himself from the conditions of his time. … The systematic corruption of Members of Parliament is said to have begun under Charles II., in whose reign it was practised to the largest extent. It was continued under his successor, and the number of scandals rather increased than diminished after the Revolution. … And if corruption did not begin with Walpole, it is equally certain that it did not end with him. His expenditure of secret service money, large as it was, never equalled in an equal space of time the expenditure of Bute. … The real charge against him is that in a period of profound peace, when he exercised an almost unexampled ascendancy in politics, and when public opinion was strongly in favour of the diminution of corrupt influence in Parliament, he steadily and successfully resisted every attempt at reform. … It was his settled policy to maintain his Parliamentary majority, not by attracting to his ministry great orators, great writers, great financiers, or great statesmen, … but simply by engrossing borough influence and extending the patronage of the Crown."

_W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter. 3 (volume 1)._

"But for Sir Robert Walpole, we should have had the Pretender back again. But for his obstinate love of peace, we should have had wars, which the nation was not strong enough nor united enough to endure. But for his resolute counsels and good-humoured resistance, we might have had German despots attempting a Hanoverian regimen over us: we should have had revolt, commotion, want, and tyrannous misrule, in place of a quarter of a century of peace, freedom and material prosperity, such as the country never enjoyed, until that corrupter of parliaments, that dissolute tipsy cynic, that courageous lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen, patriot and statesman governed it. … In private life the old pagan revelled in the lowest pleasures: he passed his Sundays tippling at Richmond; and his holidays bawling after dogs, or boozing at Houghton with Boors over beef and punch. He cared for letters no more than his master did: he judged human nature so meanly that one is ashamed to have to own that he was right, and that men could be corrupted by means so base. But, with his hireling House of Commons, he defended liberty for us; with his incredulity he kept Church-craft down. … He gave Englishmen no conquests, but he gave them peace, and ease, and freedom; the Three per Cents. nearly at par; and wheat at five and six and twenty shillings a quarter."

_W. M. Thackeray, The Four Georges, chapter 2._

ALSO IN: _W. Coxe, Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole, chapters 31-59 (volume 1)._

_Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapters 15-23 (volumes 2-3)._

_Lord Hervey, Memoirs of the Reign of George II._

{922}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1731-1740. The question of the Austrian Succession. Guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1718-1738, and 1740.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1732. The grant of Georgia to General Oglethorpe.

See GEORGIA: A. D. 1732-1739.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1733. The first Bourbon Family Compact. Its hostility to Great Britain.

See FRANCE, A. D. 1733.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1733-1787 The great inventions which built up the Cotton Manufacture.

See COTTON MANUFACTURE.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1739-1741. The War of Jenkins' Ear.

"In spite of Walpole's love of peace, and determined efforts to preserve it, in the year 1739 a war broke out with Spain, which is an illustration of the saying that the occasion of a war may be trifling, though its real cause be very serious. The war is often called the War of Jenkins' Ear. The story ran that eight years before (1731) a certain Captain Jenkins, skipper of the ship 'Rebecca,' of London, had been maltreated by the Spaniards. His ship was sailing from Jamaica, and hanging about the entrance of the Gulf of Florida, when it was boarded by the Spanish coast guard. The Spaniards could find no proof that Jenkins was smuggling, though they searched narrowly, and being angry at their ill-success they hanged him to the yardarm, lowering him just in time to save his life. At length they pulled off his ear and told him to take it to his king. … Seven years later Captain Jenkins was examined by the House of Commons, on which occasion some member asked him how he felt when being maltreated, and Jenkins answered, 'I recommended my soul to God and my cause to my country.' The answer, whether made at the time or prepared for use in the House of Commons, touched a chord of sympathy, and soon was circulated through the country. 'No need of allies now,' said one politician; 'the story of Jenkins will raise us volunteers.' The truth of the matter is that this story from its somewhat ridiculous aspect has remained in the minds of men, but that it is only a specimen of many stories then afloat, all pointing to insolence of Spaniards in insisting upon what was after all strictly within their rights. But the legal treaty rights of Spain were growing intolerable to Englishmen, though not necessarily to the English Government; and traders and sailors were breaking the international laws which practically stopped the expansion of England in the New World. The war arose out of a question of trade, in this as in so many other cases the English being prepared to fight in order to force an entrance for their trade, which the Spaniards wished to shut out from Spanish America. This question found a place amongst the other matters arranged by the treaty of Utrecht, when the English obtained almost as their sole return for their victories what was known as the Assiento. This is a Spanish word meaning contract, but its use had been for some time confined to the disgraceful privilege of providing Spanish America with negroes kidnapped from their homes in Africa. The Flemings, the Genoese, the Portuguese, and the French Guinea Company received in turn from Spanish kings the monopoly in this shameful traffic, which at the treaty of Utrecht was passed on for a period of thirty years to England, now becoming mistress of the seas, and with her numerous merchant ships better able than others to carry on the business. The English Government committed the contract to the South Sea Company, and the number of negroes to be supplied annually was no less than 4,800 'sound, healthy, merchantable negroes, two-thirds to be male, none under ten or over forty years old.' In the Assiento Treaty there was also a provision for the trading of one English ship each year with Spanish America; but in order to prevent too great advantage therefrom it was carefully stipulated that the ship should not exceed 600 tons burden. There is no doubt that this stipulation was regularly violated by the English sending a ship of the required number of tons, but with it numerous tenders and smaller craft. Moreover smuggling, being very profitable, became common; it was of this smuggling that Captain Jenkins was accused. … Walpole, always anxious for peace, by argument, by negotiation, by delays, resisted the growing desire for war; at length he could resist no longer. For the sake of his reputation he should have resigned office, but he had enjoyed power too long to be ready to yield it, and most unwisely he allowed himself to be forced into a declaration of war October 19, 1739. The news was received throughout England with a perfect frenzy of delight. … A year and a day after this declaration of war an event occurred—the death of the Emperor—which helped to swell the volume of this war until it was merged into the European war, called the War of the Austrian Succession, which includes within itself the First and Second Silesian Wars, between Austria and Frederick the Great of Prussia. The European war went on until the general pacification in the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748. Within another ten years war broke out again on somewhat similar grounds, but on a much wider scale and with the combatants differently arranged, under the title 'Seven Years' War.' The events of this year, whilst the war was only between Spain and England, were the attacks on Spanish settlements in America, the capture of Porto Bello, and the failure before Cartagena, which led to Anson's famous voyage."

_E. E. Morris, The Early Hanoverians, book 2, chapter 3._

"Admiral Vernon, setting sail with the English fleet from Jamaica, captured Porto Bello, on the Isthmus of Darien, December 1st—an exploit for which he received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament. His attempt on Carthagena, in the spring of 1741, proved, however, a complete failure through his dissensions, it is said, with General Wentworth, the commander of the land forces. A squadron, under Commodore Anson, despatched to the South Sea for the purpose of annoying the Spanish colonies of Peru and Chili, destroyed the Peruvian town of Paita, and made several prizes; the most important of which was one of the great Spanish galleons trading between Acapulco and Manilla, having a large treasure on board. It was on this occasion that Anson circumnavigated the globe, having sailed from England in 1740 and returned to Spithead in 1744."

_T. H. Dyer, History of Modern Europe, book 6, chapter 3._

{923}

ALSO IN: _R. Walter, Voyage around the World of George Anson._

_Sir J. Barrow, Life of Lord George Anson, chapter 1-2._

_W. Coxe, Memoirs of the Bourbon Kings of Spain, chapter 43 (volume 3)._

See, also, FRANCE, A. D. 1733, and GEORGIA: A. D. 1738-1743.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1740-1741. Beginning of the War of the Austrian Succession.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1740-1741.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1742. Naval operations in the Mediterranean.

See ITALY: A. D. 1741-1743.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1742-1745. Ministries of Carteret and the Pelhams, Pitt's admission to the Cabinet.

"Walpole resigned in the beginning of February, 1742; but his retirement did not bring Pitt into office. The King had conceived a violent prejudice against him, not only on account of the prominent and effective part he had taken in the general assault upon the late administration, but more especially in consequence of the strong opinions he had expressed on the subject of Hanover, and respecting the public mischiefs arising from George the Second's partiality to the interests of the Electorate. Lord Wilmington was the nominal head of the new administration, which was looked on as little more than a weak continuation of Walpole's. The same character was generally given to Pelham's ministry, (Pelham succeeded Wilmington as Premier, on the death of the latter in 1743,) and Pitt soon appeared in renewed opposition to the Court. It was about this time that he received a creditable and convenient addition to his private fortune, which also attested his celebrity. In 1744, the celebrated Duchess of Marlborough died, leaving him a legacy' of 10,000 l. on account of his merit in the noble defence he has made of the laws of England, to prevent the ruin of his country.' Pitt was now at the head of a small but determined band of Opposition statesmen, with whom he was also connected by intermarriages between members of their respective families and his own. These were Lord Cobham, the Grenvilles, and his schoolfellow Lord Lyttelton. The genius of Pitt had made the opposition of this party so embarrassing to the minister, that Mr. Pelham, the leader of the House of Commons, and his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, found it necessary to get rid of Lord Carteret, who was personally most obnoxious to the attacks of Pitt, on account of his supposed zeal in favour of the King's Hanoverian policy. Pitt's friends, Lyttelton and Grenville, were taken into the ministry [called the Broad-bottomed Administration], and the undoubted wish of the Pelhams was to enlist Pitt also among their colleagues. But 'The great Mr. Pitt,' says old Horace Walpole—using in derision an epithet soon confirmed by the serious voice of the country—'the great Mr. Pitt insisted on being Secretary at War';—but it was found that the King's aversion to him was insurmountable; and after much reluctance and difficulty, his friends were persuaded to accept office without him, under an assurance from the Duke of Newcastle that 'he should at no distant day be able to remove this prejudice from his Majesty's mind.' Pitt concurred in the new arrangement, and promised to give his support to the remodelled administration. … On the breaking out of the rebellion of 1745, Pitt energetically supported the ministry in their measures to protect the established government. George the Second's prejudices against him, were, however, as strong as ever. At last a sort of compromise was effected. Pitt waived for a time his demand of the War Secretaryship, and on the 22nd of February, 1746, he was appointed one of the joint Vice-treasurers for Ireland; and on the 6th of May following he was promoted to the more lucrative office of Paymaster-General of the Forces. … In his office of Paymaster of the Forces Pitt set an example then rare among statesmen, of personal disinterestedness. He held what had hitherto been an exceedingly lucrative situation: for the Paymaster seldom had less than 100,000 l. in his hands, and was allowed to appropriate the interest of what funds he held to his own use. In addition to this it had been customary for foreign princes in the pay of England to allow the Paymaster of the Forces a per-centage on their subsidies. Pitt nobly declined to avail himself of these advantages, and would accept of nothing beyond his legal salary."

_Sir E. Creasy, Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, chapter 4._

"From Walpole's death in 1745, when the star of the Stuarts set for ever among the clouds of Culloden, to 1754, when Henry Pelham followed his old chief, public life in England was singularly calm and languid. The temperate and peaceful disposition of the Minister seemed to pervade Parliament. At his death the King exclaimed: 'Now I shall have no more peace'; and the words proved to be prophetic. Both in Parliament and in the country, as well as beyond its shores, the elements of discord were swiftly at war. Out of conflicting ambitions and widely divergent interests a new type of statesman, very different from Walpole, or from Bolingbroke, or from Pelham, or from the 'hubble-bubble Newcastle,' was destined to arise. And along with the new statesman a new force, of which he was in part the representative, in part the creator, was to be introduced into political life. This new force was the unrepresented voice of the people. The new statesman was an ex-cornet of horse, William Pitt, better known as Lord Chatham. The characteristics of William Pitt which mainly influenced his career were his ambition and his ill-health. Power, and that conspicuous form of egotism called personal glory, were the objects of his life. He pursued them with all the ardour of a strong-willed purpose; but the flesh was in his case painfully weak. Gout had declared itself his foe while he was still an Eton boy. His failures, and prolonged withdrawal at intervals from public affairs, were due to the inroads of this fatal enemy, from whom he was destined to receive his death-blow. Walpole had not been slow to recognise the quality of this 'terrible cornet of horse,' as he called him."

_R. B. Brett, Footprints of Statesmen, chapter 7._

ALSO IN: _Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapters 24-28 (volume 3)._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1743. The British Pragmatic Army. Battle of Dettingen.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1743.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1743 (OCTOBER). The second Bourbon Family Compact.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1743 (OCTOBER).

ENGLAND: A. D. 1743-1752. Struggle of French and English for supremacy in India. The founding of British empire by Clive.

See INDIA: A. D. 1743-1752.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1744-1745. War of the Austrian Succession: Hostilities in America.

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1744: and 1745.

{924}

ENGLAND: A. D. 1745 (MAY). War of the Austrian Succession in the Netherlands. Fontenoy.

See NETHERLANDS (THE AUSTRIAN PROVINCES): A. D. 1745.