Men who spend their lives in making money are usually the least competent to understand the abstract principles that govern the accumulation and distribution of wealth. The distant views and ultimate conclusions which make up the science of Political Economy are beyond their vision. All the progress achieved in that most important field of knowledge has been achieved by philosophers, to whose discoveries our merchants and manufacturers were the last to be converted. North, by a most rare gift of nature, combined in his mental constitution the contradictory qualities of the practical trader and the speculative thinker. Together with a large fortune, he had brought from the Levant a large fund of original deductions from his experience.[311] Withal, he possessed a faculty of expressing himself, at once homely and forcible, which arrested attention and carried conviction. As a speaker on financial topics the Member for Banbury had no rival.
How much higher a man of so many gifts and so few scruples might have climbed must remain matter of speculation. The Revolution of 1688 pulled the ladder from under him. The day which witnessed the victory of the Whigs was a day of reckoning for the Tories. Forgetting the wrongs they had inflicted and remembering only the injuries they had suffered, the victors were grimly set on revenge. Parliamentary Committees were appointed to inquire into the late judicial proceedings, to punish all persons concerned in them, and to indemnify the victims out of their estates. Among the rest, Sir Dudley North had to stand his trial. Great sport was expected from his baiting. The galleries and benches of the House of Commons were crowded with spectators; but they got very little satisfaction. To all the questions put to him as to the manner in which he had obtained his Shrievalty and his conduct therein, North gave fearless and, apparently, full and frank answers. This was not well! After much whispering into the Chairman’s ear, one of the members of the Committee moved that the ex-Sheriff should be asked to name the Aldermen who, as he pretended, had assisted at his election. The Chairman nodded. That was Sir Dudley’s supreme moment. He turned quietly round and with his cane pointed to five Aldermen present, who since the Revolution had gone over to the Whigs, naming them one after another with deadly distinctness. This was worse than ever! To prevent further sensations, a cunning Parliamentarian stood up hastily, and “Mr. Foley,” he said, addressing the Chairman, “you had best have a care: you have an honourable gentleman before you: that you do not ask him, etc.” Having thus turned the tables upon his prosecutors, the clever Dudley left the House with colours flying, sped away by the very persons who had dragged him there.
For a time he continued in the Commission of the Customs. But, presently, that and his other offices were taken from him; and Sir Dudley relapsed to his original status of a Turkey Merchant. He went back to the buying and selling of cloth with the resignation of a philosopher and the spirit of a veteran trader. But even there luck had at the last rounded upon him. The War with France just begun (1689) hit North as hard as it did most of the other merchants of England trading into the Levant Seas. Their trade was attacked by the enemy both in Turkey and on the way to it. These calamities abated North’s mettle and affected his health. He decided to give up the perilous business and turn country gentleman—a quiet rural life, he thought, would restore to him the health of body and peace of mind of which the bustle of the world had robbed him: he would beat his clothyard into a ploughshare; he would raise crops with as much pleasure as he had raised dollars or cut off heads. Alas! even here his good fortune failed him. After inspecting several great estates and offering great prices for them in vain, he succeeded at last in finding a home in Norfolk; the date was fixed for him to go down to sign the agreement; but on the day before, he was seized with the disease which killed him. He died on the last day of 1691, at the comparatively early age of fifty.
However his character may be appraised, Dudley North will always be remembered as one of the outstanding figures of his time: the most brilliant of those seventeenth century merchant-adventurers who were the founders of our national prosperity and commercial pre-eminence.
So with all our actors off the stage, we may ring the curtain down. La commedia è finita.
The Hon.ble S.r Dudley North K.t
Commissioner of the Treasury to King Charles the Second.
From an Engraving by G. Vertue, 1743.
To face p. 376.
FOOTNOTES:
[300] As a rule, all petitions to the Sultan had to pass through the Vizir’s hands; but in cases where the Vizir himself was involved a direct appeal was possible through the above formality: which secured to the petitioner access to the throne, but entailed, if his complaint proved false, loss of his head. See Rycaut’s Present State, p. 84; Life of Dudley North, p. 100.