FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER VII:
[78] A living.
[79] Dean Swift to Mrs. Howard, Dublin, 21st November, 1730. Suffolk Correspondence.
[80] Dr. Arbuthnot to Swift, 19th March, 1729.
[81] In his Memoirs Lord Hervey makes no mention of his quarrel with Pope or his duel with Pulteney, and slips over the years 1730–1733 without a line of comment. This seems to show that he was not proud of either of these achievements.
[82] Sir Richard Steele to Mrs. Clayton, May, 1724.
[83] Dr. Alured Clarke to Mrs. Clayton, Winchester, 18th August, 1730.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE EXCISE SCHEME. 1732–3.
In May, 1732, the King made his second visit to Hanover, and was absent from England four months. He invested the Queen with full powers of Queen-Regent as before. George the Second’s visit to Hanover was again exceedingly unpopular with the nation, but he was determined to go, and it was useless to thwart him. This, Caroline’s second regency, was uneventful, though in it she managed to do something to advance the cause of prison reform. Knowing the injustices and anomalies of the criminal law, the Queen’s influence was all on the side of mercy. She showed a particular distaste to signing death warrants in her capacity as Regent, and whenever she could possibly do so she pardoned the criminals. For instance, we read: “On Tuesday the report of the four criminals who received sentence of death at the late Sessions at the Old Bailey was made to her Majesty in Council by Mr. Sergeant Raby, and her Majesty was graciously pleased to show mercy and pardon them”. In the reform of the prison system the Queen took a direct interest. She was always anxious, when it was in her power, to release prisoners, and to make penalties easier for debtors and other offenders,[84] and she was determined that something should be done to remedy the deplorable condition of the public prisons.[85] She had taken up this question the year after the King’s accession to the throne, and during her regency an inquiry was instituted, which laid bare a frightful system of abuses; gaolers and warders connived at the escape of rich prisoners, and subjected poor ones, who could not pay their extortionate demands, to every sort of cruelty, insult and oppression.
The reports of the Select Committees of the House of Commons teem with such cases. One report stated that “The Committee saw in the women’s sick ward many miserable objects lying, without beds, on the floor, perishing with extreme want; and in the men’s sick ward yet much worse.... On the giving of food to these poor wretches (though it was done with the utmost caution, they being only allowed at first the smallest quantities, and that of liquid nourishment) one died; the vessels of his stomach were so disordered and contracted, for want of use, that they were totally incapable of performing their office, and the unhappy creature perished about the time of digestion. Upon his body a coroner’s inquest sat (a thing which, though required by law to be always done, hath for many years been scandalously omitted in this gaol), and the jury found that he died of want. Those who were not so far gone, on proper nourishment being given them, recovered, so that not above nine have died since the 25th March last, the day the Committee first met there, though, before, a day seldom passed without a death; and upon the advancing of the spring not less than eight or ten usually died every twenty-four hours.”[86] The prison referred to was a London prison, but in the provinces matters were no better. There was, for example, a petition to the House of Commons, 1725, from insolvent debtors in Liverpool gaol, stating that they were “reduced to a starving condition, having only straw and water at the courtesy of the sergeant”.[87] The Queen was horrified and indignant at these revelations, and she repeatedly urged on Walpole the reformation of the prison system, and the revision of the criminal code. But Walpole was averse to any legislation unless it was demanded by political exigencies, and the utmost the Queen achieved was a more vigorous inspection of prisons and the punishment of gaolers detected in cruelty.
In September the King returned from Hanover and took over the reins of government, an easy task, for Walpole and the Queen had managed so well that this was a period of peace abroad and prosperity at home.
Walpole was now at the zenith of his power; in the country everything was quiet, in the Cabinet all his colleagues were submissive. He enjoyed the fullest confidence of the King and Queen, and he had apparently complete ascendency in both Houses of Parliament. The Opposition, though able and active, both in Parliament and out of it, were unable to lessen the Ministerial majority. “What can you have done, sir, to God Almighty to make him so much your friend?” exclaimed an old Scottish Secretary of State at this time to Walpole. The Prime Minister’s ascendency might have continued serenely had he not the following year (1733) been so unwise as to depart from his policy of letting sleeping dogs lie. He brought forward his celebrated excise scheme. To explain it briefly, Walpole proposed to bring the tobacco and wine duties under the law of excise, and so ease the land tax. This land tax, ever since the Revolution of 1688, had borne the great burden of taxation, and during the wars of Marlborough had risen to as much as four shillings in the pound. In consequence of the peace and prosperity enjoyed by the nation the last few years it has been reduced to two shillings in the pound, and Walpole’s proposed changes would have the effect of further reducing it or abolishing it altogether. Walpole hoped by this means to conciliate the landowners and country gentlemen, who considered that they had to bear an unfair share of the burdens of the State. Customs had always been levied on wine and tobacco, and the change proposed had regard chiefly to the method of collection. An active system of smuggling was carried on, and connived in and winked at by many people, so that the duties on wine and tobacco fell very far short of the estimates. Under Walpole’s scheme this system of wholesale smuggling would be to a great extent stopped, and he estimated that the excise duties would rise by one-sixth, which would be more than sufficient to meet the deficit caused by easing the land tax. He had the hearty support of the court, for the King’s Civil List depended to some extent on the duties on tobacco and wine, and if they were increased, the royal income would increase also.
Walpole at first was confident that he would be able to carry this scheme through without much opposition, but as soon as its purport became known, even before it was introduced into Parliament, it was evident that the Prime Minister had seriously miscalculated public opinion. Both in and out of Parliament the opposition to any extension of the excise was tremendous; the whole nation rose against it. The people persisted in regarding the proposed extension as the first step in a scheme of general excise, in which every necessary of life would be taxed, and the liberties of the subject interfered with by excise officers coming into private houses whenever they pleased. It was in vain for Walpole to vow that “no such scheme had ever entered his head”; it was in vain to reason or expostulate. Popular indignation burned to a white heat, and there were plenty of able men ready to fan the flame. The Craftsman declared that the Prime Minister’s scheme would ruin trade, destroy the liberties of the people, abrogate Magna Charta, and make the Crown absolute. The Jacobites and the Tories, though largely drawn from the landed classes who were to be benefited by this scheme, rejected with contumely the proffered “bribe” as they called it. Not only every Jacobite and every Tory, but all the discontented Whigs, all the politicians who had wished for office and had not obtained it, all the peers and members of Parliament whom Walpole at different times had insulted and aggrieved, precipitated themselves on this opportunity of attacking him.
The Prime Minister was also betrayed in the house of his friends; there were several great peers holding minor offices under the Crown who were secretly hostile to Walpole, though they had hitherto masked their animosity. They now seized this opportunity to undermine him. Among them were the Dukes of Argyll, Montrose, and Bolton, the Earls of Stair and Marchmont, and Lords Chesterfield and Clinton. These malcontents held a secret meeting, and determined to send Lord Stair to the Queen, to set forth to her the unpopularity of the excise scheme, and the danger which the Crown ran in supporting it. Lord Stair had fought in Marlborough’s campaign, and for many years had served his country with great credit as ambassador to France. Walpole had treated him shabbily in recalling him from Paris when he came into collision with Law, the financier, and for a long time there had been a great deal of ill-feeling. When the Duke of Queensberry resigned, Walpole sought to make amends by giving the ex-ambassador the post of Vice-Admiral of Scotland; this post Lord Stair still held, but he had not forgotten his resentment against Walpole.
The Queen gave Lord Stair an audience one evening in her cabinet in Kensington Palace. He burst forth into violent invective against the Prime Minister, saying: “But, madam, though your Majesty knows nothing of this man but what he tells you himself, or what his creatures and flatterers, prompted by himself, tell you of him, yet give me leave to assure your Majesty that in no age, in no reign, in no country, was ever any Minister so universally odious as the man you support.... That he absolutely governs your Majesty nobody doubts, and very few scruple to say; they own you have the appearance of power, and say you are contented with the appearance, whilst all the reality of power is his, derived from the King, conveyed through you, and vested in him.”
He then referred to a personal grievance he had against Walpole, in that Lord Isla, brother of the Duke of Argyll, had been preferred before him, and given important appointments which he (Lord Stair) ought to have filled. He quoted this as a proof of Walpole’s power over the Queen, and said: “For what cannot that man persuade you to, who can make you, madam, love a Campbell? The only two men in this country who ever vainly hoped or dared to attempt to set a mistress’s” (Mrs. Howard’s) “power up in opposition to yours were Lord Isla and his brother, the Duke of Argyll; yet one of the men who strove to dislodge you by this method from the King’s bosom is the man your favourite has thought fit to place the nearest to his.” This, however, was a little too much for the Queen, who was extremely sensitive of any mention of the peculiar relations which existed between Mrs. Howard and the King. She sharply rebuked Lord Stair, and desired him to remember that “he was speaking of the King’s servant, and to the King’s wife”. Lord Stair therefore said no more on that point, but proceeded forthwith to the excise scheme, declaring that it would be impossible to force the measure through the Lords, though corruption might carry it through the Commons. He added that even if it were possible to carry it into law, “yet, madam, I think it so wicked, so dishonest, so slavish a scheme, that my conscience would no more permit me to vote for it than his” (Walpole’s) “ought to have permitted him to project it”. The Queen again interrupted him by crying out: “Oh, my lord, don’t talk to me of your conscience; you make me faint!” This so nettled Lord Stair that he spoke plainer than ever.
When he had quite talked himself out, it was the Queen’s turn to let Lord Stair know her mind, which she did with a vigour and directness that left nothing to be desired.
“You have made so very free with me personally in this conference, my lord,” she said, “that I hope you will think I am entitled to speak my mind with very little reserve to you; and believe me, my lord, I am no more to be imposed upon by your professions than I am to be terrified by your threats.” She then reminded Lord Stair of the part he had played in supporting the Peerage Bill in the last reign, which, she held, was against the interests of the Prince of Wales and the liberties of the people, and went on to say: “To talk therefore in the patriot strain you have done to me on this occasion can move me, my lord, to nothing but laughter. Where you get your lesson I do not want to know. Your system of politics you collect from the Craftsman, your sentiments, or rather your professions, from my Lord Bolingbroke and my Lord Carteret—whom you may tell, if you think fit, that I have long known them to be two as worthless men of parts as any in this country, and whom I have not only been often told are two of the greatest liars and knaves in any country, but whom my own observation and experience have found so.”[88]
All this the Queen said, and much more to the same effect, which convinced Lord Stair that she would do nothing against Walpole, so he took his leave saying: “Madam, you are deceived, and the King is betrayed”. He went back to the malcontent peers to tell them of the interview, from which he was fain to confess he had no results to show; but he boasted that he had at least told the Queen some home truths which she would not be likely to forget.
Finding that Walpole was determined, despite remonstrance, to introduce his excise scheme, and was supported by the King and Queen, the Opposition organised a popular agitation against it. The whole country was flooded with pamphlets, and meetings were everywhere held. Disaffection to the Government ran like wildfire throughout the land, and from all parts of the kingdom the cry was: “No slavery, no excise, no wooden shoes”—this last was aimed at the German tendencies of the court. Public agitation rose to a greater height than it had done since the Jacobite rising of 1715. The city of London and nearly every borough in England held meetings to protest against the scheme, and passed resolutions commanding their representatives to oppose any extension of the excise in any form whatever. The agitation went on for months, increasing in volume and in violence, though the scheme was yet in embryo, and the measure had not been laid before Parliament. The more timid among Walpole’s supporters took alarm and urged him to abandon the contemplated measure. But the Prime Minister, who during these years of almost absolute power had become a dictator, refused to listen. He paid little heed to the press, and declared that the whole agitation was a got-up job. If he yielded to clamour in this matter he would have to do so in others and would be left, he said, with only the shadow of power.
PHILIP STANHOPE, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD.
From the Painting in the National Portrait Gallery.
Walpole introduced his Excise Bill into Parliament on March 14th, 1733, in a speech conspicuous for its moderation. He stoutly denied the report that he intended to propose a general excise. He sketched the details of his measure as one which affected solely the duties on tobacco and wine and sought to put down smuggling. “And this,” he wound up, “is the scheme which has been represented in so dreadful and terrible a light—this the monster which was to devour the people and commit such ravages over the whole nation.” The Prime Minister’s eloquence was of no avail; his denials were not believed, his moderation was regarded as a sign of weakness. The Opposition rose in their wrath and denounced the measure root and branch. Pulteney mocked, Barnard thundered, Wyndham stigmatised excises of every kind as “badges of slavery”. And the cheers which greeted these denunciations within the House were caught up by the multitude outside. The doors of Westminster were besieged by frenzied crowds hostile to the excise who cheered every member of Parliament opposed to the Bill, and hooted and yelled at every one who favoured it. To these Walpole incautiously alluded in his reply, “Gentlemen may give them what name they think fit; it may be said they come hither as humble supplicants, but I know whom the law calls sturdy beggars”. The Opposition seized on this unlucky phrase as showing the arrogant Minister’s indifference to the poverty of the people, and his desire to deny their right of petition. Through the rest of his political career Walpole never heard the last of the “sturdy beggars”. The expression so exasperated the mob that the same night, when, after thirteen hours’ debate, Walpole was leaving the House, some of the “sturdy beggars” made a rush at him and would have torn him to pieces had not his friends interposed and carried him off in safety.
The King and Queen were intensely interested in the progress of the measure. Indeed it was said that if their being sent back to Hanover had depended on the fate of this Bill they could not have been more excited. Walpole’s friends fell off one by one, and new enemies declared themselves every day. Yet still the King and Queen stood by their favourite Minister undismayed. Violent personal attacks were made upon Walpole during the debate, to which the Prime Minister vigorously retorted. The King delighted to hear of these retorts, and would rap out vehement oaths and cry with flushed cheeks and tears in his eyes: “He is a brave fellow; he has more spirit than any man I ever knew”. The Queen would join in these acclamations.
Thus matters went on for nearly a month, things going from bad to worse, majorities in Parliament getting smaller and smaller, supporters falling off one by one, and the popular ferment growing higher and higher. Petitions against the Bill poured in from all the large towns, that of the Common Council of London being the most violent of all. And the paper war raged unceasingly. “The public,” says Tindal, “was so heated with papers and pamphlets that matters rose next to a rebellion.”[89] But despite dwindling majorities and popular clamour, Walpole remained stubborn. At last, when the storm was at its worst, it was the Queen who saw the hopelessness of contending against it. In despair she asked Lord Scarborough, who had always been a personal friend of the King and herself, and who now threatened to resign his office, what was to be done. He replied: “The Bill must be dropped, or there will be mutiny in the army. I will answer for my regiment,” he added, “against the Pretender, but not against the excise.” Tears came into the Queen’s eyes. “Then,” said she, “we must drop it.”[90]
The resolution was arrived at none too soon. On April 9th, after a furious debate in the House, Walpole went to St. James’s and had a conference with the King and Queen. It was then agreed to drop the Bill, though it was resolved not to make the intention known for a day or two longer. Walpole then had a private interview with the Queen, and offered to resign. It was necessary, he said, that some one should be sacrificed to appease the fury of the populace, and it was better that he should be the one. The Queen knew well what he meant, for she had so identified herself with Walpole’s policy that half the attacks of the Opposition on the Prime Minister were really veiled attacks upon her. But she refused to listen to such a suggestion and upbraided Walpole for having thought her “so mean, so cowardly, so ungrateful,” as to accept of such an offer, and she assured him that as long as she lived she would not abandon him. Walpole then made a similar proposition to the King, but George the Second replied in much the same words as the Queen had done. Both the King and Queen were greatly distressed at the turn events had taken. The Queen wept bitterly, but put a bright face on the matter in public, and held her evening drawing-room as usual. She was, however, so anxious, that she was forced to pretend a headache and the vapours, and break up the circle earlier than usual.
The next day, April 10th, was the crucial day. The City of London, headed by the Lord Mayor in full state, petitioned Parliament against the Bill, and the citizens attended in such numbers that the string of coaches ran from Westminster all the way to Temple Bar. When the division was taken that night, it was found that the Government had a majority of only sixteen votes, which was a virtual defeat. The Opposition were wildly excited over their victory, which they confidently hoped would involve Walpole’s fall and disgrace. Lord Hervey, who had been sent down to the House to report progress, hastened back to the King and Queen to tell them the bad news. The tears ran down the Queen’s cheeks, and for some time she could not speak. The King cross-questioned Hervey as to who were the members who had seceded from the Government ranks and helped to swell the Opposition figures, and as he heard the names, he commented on them one by one in expressions such as: “A fool!” “An Irish blockhead!” “A booby!” “A whimsical fellow!” and so forth. But though the King might swear and the Queen might weep, it was clear that the game was up, and the sooner they acted upon their intention of abandoning the Bill the better.
Walpole, too, fully realised this at last, and the howls of public execration that pursued him might well have daunted even his stout heart. If there is any truth in Frederick the Great’s story, it was on this eventful night that Walpole escaped from the infuriated crowd around Westminster disguised under an old red cloak, and shouting “Liberty, liberty; no excise!” and made his way to St. James’s to acquaint the King and Queen of the result of the division. He found the King armed at all points; he had donned the hat he wore at Malplaquet and was trying the temper of the sword he had fought with at Oudenarde. He was ready to put himself at the head of his guards and march out upon his rebellious and mutinous subjects. But Walpole besought him to be calm and vowed it was a “choice between abandoning the Excise Bill or losing the crown”. But this story is probably apocryphal. What is certain is that Walpole, the evening of the division, had a small gathering of his staunchest supporters at his house in Arlington Street. After supper he got up and said: “Gentlemen, this dance it will no further go”; and announced his intention of sounding a retreat on the morrow, no doubt to their relief.
On the morrow, April 11th, the House of Commons was crowded from end to end, and the people thronged not only the approaches to Westminster, but forced their way into the lobby. Walpole got up in the House and announced his intention of postponing the measure for two months. This, though a virtual confession of defeat, was not enough for the Opposition, who made a great uproar, and the chamber resounded with hissings, howlings and shouts, which were taken up by the mob outside, and the threatening murmurs of the multitude could be distinctly heard within the House itself, rising and falling like the surge of the sea. So violent and threatening was the mob that at the close of the debate it was suggested to Walpole that he should make good his escape from the House by the back way. But the Prime Minister said he would not shrink from danger, and, surrounded by a body of chosen supporters, he made his way through a lane of constables. In the lobby there was great jostling and hustling, and many blows were struck. Several of Walpole’s supporters were struck and wounded, but the Minister himself managed to get through unhurt, found his coach and got safely home.
The scenes in the streets of London that night were unparalleled; the whole city seemed to be on foot; the guards were called out and put under arms; magistrates were ready to read the Riot Act; and bodies of constables were drafted in all directions. Had the Bill not been dropped it is certain that a fearful riot would have broken out, and London might have presented scenes almost parallel to those witnessed in Paris nearly a century later. But since the excise was abandoned the excitement of the populace found vent in jubilations. The Monument was illuminated, bonfires were lighted in the streets (and within a day or two, as the news travelled, in every town in England), nearly all the houses were lighted up, and at Charing Cross Walpole and a fat woman, representing the Queen, were burnt in effigy, amid the howls and shrieks of the multitude.
Walpole was not a man to do things by halves, and having found that public opinion was dead against him on the excise, he determined to drop the scheme altogether. When, in the next session, Pulteney endeavoured to fan the flame of opposition by insinuating that it would be revived, in some form, Walpole out-manœuvred him by frankly confessing his failure. “As to the wicked scheme,” he said, “as the honourable gentleman was pleased to call it, which he would persuade us is not yet laid aside, I for my own part can assure this House I am not so mad as ever again to engage in anything that looks like an excise, though in my own private opinion I still think it was a scheme that would have tended very much to the interests of the nation.”[91] This frank confession of defeat prevented the Opposition from harping any longer on the iniquity of the excise. But it reasonably gave them hope that a Minister who, by his own confession, had brought forward a scheme which had been rejected with contumely by the nation should constitutionally be compelled to resign. Popular execration had been directed not only against the scheme but against its author, and it was a Pyrrhic victory indeed which routed the host but left the commander in possession of the field. But Queen Caroline was as good as her word; she determined never to part with Walpole as long as she lived, and the King echoed her sentiments. In vain did the Opposition invoke the sacred ark of the Constitution; they only broke themselves against the rock of the Queen’s influence.
The group of peers who held office under the Crown and yet had arrayed themselves against Walpole, in the confident hope that he would be forced to resign, now found themselves in a peculiarly difficult position. The King and Queen were indignant with them, nor did Walpole treat them with magnanimity. He forgave the repugnance of the nation to his scheme; he could not forgive the repugnance of his colleagues. Always domineering and impatient of opposition, he now gave his vengeance full swing. Lord Chesterfield, who held the office of Lord Steward of the Household, was the first to feel his resentment. Chesterfield was going up the great staircase of St. James’s Palace two days after the Excise Bill was dropped, when an attendant stopped him from entering the presence chamber, and handed him a summons requesting him to surrender his white staff. In this might be seen also the hand of the Queen. The same day Lord Clinton, lord of the bedchamber, Lord Burlington, who held another office, the Duke of Montrose and Lord Marchmont, who held sinecures in Scotland, and Lord Stair were dismissed. Other peers were also deprived of their commissions, including the Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham. Thus did Walpole triumph over his enemies.