We regard Walpole, then, first and foremost as a man of business, led into the great error with which history reproaches him by his brother men of business. Still, his qualities in that capacity would not have maintained him for years as Prime Minister. They proved him to be a hard-working man with practical knowledge of affairs and strong common sense; a sagacious man who hated extremes. He had besides the highest qualities of a parliamentary leader. Of imagination, unless it may be inferred from his palace and picture gallery, he seems to have been totally destitute. But he had dauntless courage and imperturbable temper.
To his courage George II., who was not profuse of praise, gave ardent testimony. 'He is a brave fellow,' he would cry out vehemently, with a flush and an oath, 'he has more spirit than any man I ever knew;' a compliment ill-requited by Sir Robert, who declared that his master, if he knew anything of him, was, 'with all his personal bravery, as great a political coward as ever wore a crown.' Early in his career as Prime Minister Sir Robert, who had the art, rare among eighteenth century politicians, of inditing pointed and pregnant letters, had written to an Irish Viceroy: 'I have weathered great storms before now, and shall not be lost in an Irish hurricane.'[104] This was no vain boast; it was the spirit in which he habitually conducted affairs. In truth Walpole's courage stands in no need of witness, it speaks for itself; his very defects arose from it or prove it. His jealousy of ability which deprived him of precious allies and compelled him to fight single-handed, his intolerance of independence in his party which had the same effect, all show the dauntless self-confidence of the man. He wanted no competitors, no dubious allies, no assistance but that of unflagging votes or diligent service; for all else he relied on himself alone.
This great Minister had all the defects of his qualities as well as one which seemed curiously alien to them. Part of his strength lay in a coarse and burly, if cynical, geniality. His temper, as we have said, was imperturbable; we shall see this even in the closing scene of his ministry; it was even cordial, and sometimes boisterous. He loved to seem rather a country gentleman than a statesman. He seemed most natural when shooting and carousing at Houghton, or carousing and hunting at Richmond. But his appearance was deceptive; he was what the French would call 'un faux bonhomme,' a spurious good fellow. Good nature perhaps could hardly have survived the desperate battles and intrigues in which this hard-bitten old statesman had been engaged all his life. And so under this bluff and debonair exterior there was concealed a jealousy of power, passing the jealousy of woman, and the ruthless vindictiveness of a Red Indian. To the opposition of his political foes he opposed a stout and unflinching front which shielded a gang of mediocrities; with these enemies he fought a battle in which quarter was neither granted nor expected. But his own forces were kept under martial law; anything like opposition or rivalry within his ranks he crushed in the relentless spirit of Peter the Great. By these methods he had not merely maintained an iron discipline among his own supporters, but had himself constructed by alienation and proscription the opposition to his administration, an opposition which comprised consummate abilities and undying resentments. For he had driven from him and united in a league of implacable revenge almost all the men of power and leading in Parliament. Politics to them were embodied in one controlling idea; how to compass the fall, the ruin, the impeachment of Walpole. The undaunted Minister faced them with confident serenity, though they were not enemies to be disdained. Pulteney, Wyndham, Chesterfield, and Carteret were men of the highest ability and distinction. Barnard and Polwarth, Shippen and Sandys, were from character or intellect scarcely less redoubtable. Behind them lurked Bolingbroke, excluded, indeed, from Parliament by the vigilant detestation of Walpole, but guiding and inspiring from his enforced retirement, the seer and oracle of all the Minister's enemies, for—
'Princely counsel in his face yet shone,
Majestic, though in ruin.'
Prominent among these stately combatants was an anomalous figure with a brain as shallow and futile as St. John's was active and brilliant, but by the nature of things as formidable as Bolingbroke was impotent, Frederick Prince of Wales. For Frederick was soon to add to the second position in the country the leadership of the Opposition. The King's health was supposed to be precarious, though he lived cheerfully and not ingloriously for another quarter of a century. And the Heir Apparent, feeling conscious of his advantages, and determined to assert himself, became the complacent puppet of all the factions opposed to his father's Government. His Court, indeed, resembled that famous cave to which were gathered every one that was discontented and every one that was in distress. All who had been spurned or ousted by Walpole, all who were under the displeasure of the King, all who saw little prospect of advancement under the present reign, hastened to rally round the Heir Apparent. He was soon to employ Pitt about his person. It is well, then, to pause a moment and consider this prominent and formidable figure.
Frederick, Prince of Wales, is one of the idle mysteries of English history. The problem does not lie in his being a political leader, in spite of the general contempt in which he was held by his contemporaries and associates; for an heir-apparent to the Crown can always, if he chooses, be a factor in party politics, though it is scarcely possible that his intervention can be beneficial. But no circumstance known to us can explain the virulence of aversion with which the King and Queen regarded him, which was so intense as to be almost incredible. They were both good haters, and yet they hated no one half so much as their eldest son. His father called him the greatest beast and liar and scoundrel in existence. His mother and his sister wished hourly to hear of his death. This violence of unnatural loathing is not to be accounted for by any known facts. Frederick was a poor creature, no doubt, a vain and fatuous coxcomb. But human beings are constantly the parents of coxcombs without regarding them as vermin. The only conjecture in regard to the matter which seems to furnish adequate ground for these feelings is that the King was bred in the narrow school of a little German State, where, though nothing less than affection was expected between a prince and his heir, discipline was rigidly observed; so that the conduct of Frederick, in assuming a position independent and defiant of his father, and in openly heading an opposition to his Government, was an offence the more unspeakable and unpardonable as it had been absolutely beyond the limits of Hanoverian contemplation. There was, it must be confessed, an hereditary predisposition to this parental relation. The King himself, when Prince of Wales, had been placed under arrest by his father for the somewhat venial offence of insulting the Duke of Newcastle. He had submitted himself to his disgrace, and his opposition had only been passive and inarticulate; he had never dreamed of forming a faction hostile to the Crown. His only real crimes had been his right of succession and a fictitious popularity founded on dislike of his father's mistresses. And yet his father hated him almost as much as father ever hated son. It was reserved for George II. to discover a deeper abhorrence for his own heir. With his views of absolute authority, a peculiar degree of detestation had to be discovered for a Prince of Wales who had not merely the inherent vice of heirship apparent but the gratuitous offence of an active opposition which his father deemed flagrant rebellion. Given violent temper, ill manners, and a sort of family tradition, the cause of wrath can best be thus explained.
Beyond this we know nothing for certain, and presumably shall never know more. There are some facts, but they are insufficient.
It is said that as a mere boy he gamed and drank and kept a mistress. By this last scandal the royal family was enabled to present to the world the unedifying spectacle of grandfather, father, and son simultaneously living under these immoral conditions; and all three, it is said, successively with the same woman. But these facts alone would certainly not have accounted for his father's displeasure. Again, it is narrated that when his tutor complained of him his mother said that these were page's tricks. 'Would to God they were, madam,' replied the tutor, 'but they are rather the tricks of lackeys and knaves.' And tricky Frederick undoubtedly was from the beginning to the end. But trickiness, though it was not among the King's faults, and though it would excite his just contempt, cannot alone have caused the intensity of his hatred.
One if not two of Frederick's escapades were concerned with designs of marriage. He was discovered on the point of concluding a secret alliance with Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia, with whom he professed himself in love, and who afterwards became known to us as Margravine of Bareith; on another occasion it is said that he was lured by a dowry of 100,000l. into a betrothal with Lady Diana Spencer, grand-daughter of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. Both these affairs were interrupted at the last moment. In both cases the King was irritated by the underhand proceedings of his son, and by the total lack of a confidence which, as he probably omitted to remember, he had done nothing to gain. But his crowning outrage was a monkey-trick, both wanton and barbarous. When he had at last married a princess of his father's choice, and his wife was seized with the first pangs of maternity in the King's palace of Hampton Court, he hurried her off, in her agony and in spite of her entreaties, to St. James's. At any moment of the journey a catastrophe might have occurred. What the motive was for this cruel and unmeaning escapade cannot be guessed, for his own explanations were futile. It was said that his father suspected him of an intention to foist a spurious child on his family and that he resented the suspicion. If that were so his action was exactly suited to confirm it. Whatever his purpose may have been, the King and Queen, from whom the imminence of the Princess's situation had been carefully concealed, were naturally and grossly insulted. The King banished him from his palace and presence, and forbade the Court to all who should visit him. Nor was there ever an approach to reconciliation or forgiveness in the fourteen years that the Prince had yet to live. The King would receive him at Court and would express the hope that his wife was in good health; that was the extent of their relations. But though this was the culminating point of his known misconduct, it would almost seem that there was some more occult reason which we do not know. We only guess at its existence from the record of Lord Hardwicke. At the time of this last scandal 'Sir Robert Walpole,' says the Chancellor, 'informed me of certain passages between the King and himself, and between the King and the Prince, of too high and secret a nature even to be trusted to this narrative; but from thence I found great reason to think that this unhappy difference between the King and Queen and His Royal Highness turned upon some points of a more interesting and important nature than have hitherto appeared.'[105] There, then, is the mystery, without a key, with no room even for conjecture. But the cause must have been dire that evoked so deadly a passion of hatred between parents and son.