But while inactivity reigned in the Parliament of England, that of Ireland was not idle. Lord Halifax,[178] their new Lord-Lieutenant, was, like most of his predecessors very popular at first. They voted him an additional salary of four thousand pounds a year. He had the decency, though very necessitous, not to accept it for himself, but desired it might be settled on his successors. The House of Commons, however, would not wait till it should take place, to pay themselves, but passed a vote to make their Parliaments, which existed during the life of each King, septennial. The party attached to the Castle[179] voted for it, concluding it would be thrown out by the Lords. The Lords, as provident for their popularity, thinking it would be rejected in England, passed it likewise. It was rejected here, but not without much disposition in some of the Council to have it granted. Lord Hilsborough,[180] who had great weight with Lord Halifax, stayed with him in Dublin, and openly made war on the Primate;[181] while William Gerard Hamilton,[182] the Secretary, gained such applause in that Parliament, that a motion for augmenting the troops was carried by the sole power of his eloquence.
March 19th, the bill for continuing the militia for seven years was passed by the House of Commons in England; and the counties, that had not raised theirs, were ordered to pay five pounds a man. This was settled by a compromise, lest a longer term should be insisted on. Its own friends were sick of it, and had clogged it with many clauses, in hopes it would be rejected by their opponents. But the Ministers would not risk the unpopularity of a negative, and were even afraid to part with so large a body of men.
CHAPTER X.
Conquest of Martinico.—War in Portugal.—Lord Tyrawley.—Count la Lippe.—The Cock-Lane Ghost.—Pacific disposition of the new Czar.—His Popular Measures.—Count Schouvalow.—Meditated War with Denmark by the Czar and the King of Prussia.—Insurrections in Ireland, quelled by the Earl of Hertford.—Lord Bute’s Ambition.—The Duke of Newcastle.—His friends.—The Portuguese War, and the War in Germany.—The Duke of Bedford.—Fox’s Observation to Walpole.—Lords Mansfield, Hardwicke, and Lincoln.—Newcastle’s tenacity of Power.—Creation of seven new Peers.—Private negotiation with the Court of Vienna.—The new Peers.—Buckingham House purchased by the Queen.—Seclusion of the King and Queen.—the King’s younger Brothers.
On the 22nd of March arrived news of the conquest of Martinico by General Monckton[183] and Admiral Rodney:[184] a plan ascribed by the people to Mr. Pitt, though executed under the auspices of the Favourite. In truth, the valour of the nation had taken such a bent, that Lord Bute could not check it: nothing but a peace could chain it up. If the Earl did favour any part of the war, it was that in Portugal. Colonel Burgoyne[185] was ordered thither with five thousand foot and six hundred horse; and there was a plan for regimenting twenty-five thousand papists in Ireland for the same service; but the Irish Government did not approve of giving discipline and arms to such dangerous inmates. For General-in-Chief, it was proposed to send to Lisbon the Prince of Bevern. He had been suspected of infidelity by the King of Prussia,[186]—had been disgraced, and his intellects were not reckoned sound. Lord Tyrawley sent home his aides-de-camp, affecting to wonder that we expected any invasion of Portugal. This was imputed to his disgust at not obtaining the command himself; he who was a brave and old general, and who was perfectly acquainted with the country.[187] The Prince of Bevern declined the offer; and Count la Lippe accepted it. He was born in England, had distinguished himself in every hussar-kind of service, and in his dress and manners copied Charles XII. of Sweden, though with more politeness. He found the Portuguese troops in the most deplorable state of cowardice and want of discipline. The English could not, and did not disguise their contempt of them. The Spanish army might have marched to Lisbon, had they met with no obstruction but from the natives. The English troops saved that country; and Count La Lippe, before he left Portugal, formed a regular army there.[188]
The facility which the Favourite found of mastering so great and victorious a kingdom, and of removing the man who had carried the glory of his country so high, was not the only evidence, that however enlightened an age may be, knavery and folly need never despair. The tares they sow will shoot amidst any harvest. Will it be credited that, while the Romish superstition was crumbling away even in Spain and Portugal, a set of enthusiastic rogues dared to exhibit in the very heart of London, a pantomime of imposture, which would hardly have been swallowed in a paltry village of Castile? The methodists had endeavoured to establish in Warwickshire, not only the belief, but the actual existence of ghosts. Being detected, they struck a bold stroke, and attempted to erect their system in the metropolis itself. A methodist family, at first out of revenge, endeavoured to fasten on one Parsons the imputation of having debauched and murdered his wife’s sister. A young girl was reported to be visited by the deceased, whom she called Fanny, and with whom she established a correspondence of question and answer—not by words, but by scratching. A certain number of scratches signified “yes;” another number, “no.” At first this farce, which was acted in Cock-lane, in the city, was confined to the mob of the neighbourhood. As the rumour spread, persons of all ranks thronged to the house. Two methodist clergymen constantly attended the child, who lay in bed in a wretched chamber, with only a dim rushlight at one end. These worthy divines affected to cast an air of most serious import on the whole transaction, and by their interposition prompted Fanny and the girl on any dilemma. A servant wench commented and explained Fanny’s oracle. The father would accept no money from the various visitants, for which he was promised an adequate recompense by the chiefs of the sect. When the story had gained a requisite footing, Fanny had the indiscreet confidence to declare that her body was not in the vault where it had been interred. Samuel Johnson, author of the Dictionary, was in the number of the deluded, and with some others as wise as himself, visited the vault, where, to the disappointment of their credulity, they found the body.[189] Had the precaution been taken of conveying it away, the fury of the people might have been actuated to strange lengths; for so much credit had the story gained, that Parsons, the accused, fearing a prosecution, began first. A regular trial[190] instantly unravelled the cheat: the girl was detected of performing the scratchings herself, and one of the clergymen proved to be her abettor. Lord Chief Justice Mansfield tried the cause: the divine had the impudence to present a letter to him on the bench from the Archbishop of Canterbury,[191] interceding on his behalf, for Secker had a fellow feeling for hypocritical enthusiasm. The Chief Justice put the letter into his pocket unopened, saying it was impossible it could relate to the cause in question. Yet the punishment of these impostors was very moderate: whereas the same judge inflicted most severe penalties on one Anett, who published weekly papers against the book of Genesis. The methodists did not take shame. They turned informers against profaners of the Sabbath, tried to establish great rigour on Good Friday and the fast-days, and to revive the superstition of holidays, when even the late Pope himself, Benedict XIV.,[192] had struck several out of the calendar. But the ritual of the Church of Rome was too rich in materials not to be copied by new zealots. They introduced into their service hymns sung in parts by children, as very captivating to the multitude; and the Countess of Huntingdon,[193] the patroness of the rising Church, erected a chapel at Bath, and at other places of drinking waters, the sick and diseased being an obvious prey to Reformers. Hogarth exerted his last stroke of genius on the occasion above mentioned: the print he published on the Cock-lane Ghost had a mixture of humorous and sublime satire, that not only surpassed all his other performances, but which would alone immortalize his unequalled talents.
The expectations conceived of the new Czar were now verified. He declared to the Empress Queen, to France, and to Sweden, that he was ready to abandon his conquests for peace, and hoped they were in the same disposition—not at the same price. France, indeed, had many losses to regain, few acquisitions to restore—but her hopes were placed on Spain. Sweden had made no conquests, and must obey the dictates of so powerful a mediator; but the Empress Queen was far from being equally tractable. Peter, however, having sacrificed the first moments to decency, gave the next to the gratification of his will; and without stipulating for his allies, whose politics and procrastination were incompatible with his ardour, he not only made peace with his favourite monarch,[194] but promised the same troops, which under the late Czarina had almost crushed him. Nor was this a bare promise, but faithfully executed. Such admiration of a hero was not likely to content itself with merely becoming his ally. Few men idolize heroism but they who feel the passion in their own breasts. Having obliged Sweden to make peace too, the young Czar turned his eye towards military exploits in a new field, and determined to attempt the conquest of the duchy of Sleswick from Denmark. Yet if he was dazzled by the martial talents of the King of Prussia, Peter had a heart susceptible of the most extensive humanity. One of his first acts on his accession was to bestow liberty on the Russian nobility. For the poor he lessened the tax on salt, and for the relief of all, abolished the Inquisition of the State. All the exiles were recalled, or received great mitigation of their punishments. There was one man to whom the Czar, though not so bountiful as he ought to have been, was very kind. This was Count Schouvalow, the favourite and supposed husband of the late Czarina. A man, who in twelve years of absolute power had never made an enemy; and who, had he ambitioned a crown as much as he deserved one, might have reigned. This upright man told the Czar that he had in his possession a very large sum of money, which he believed the Empress, his late mistress, had intended he should take for his own use, but not having been a specific gift, he thought it his duty to surrender it to his Majesty. The Emperor said he was in great want of money, took it, but ordered him to choose two thousand pounds a year in land wherever he pleased. I knew this amiable person afterwards, wandering about Europe,[195] possessed of nothing beyond that revenue, and sighing after a country to which it had been imprudent to return.
The Czar and the King of Prussia wished to engage us in the war with Denmark; but though the Council was divided on the measure, Denmark was too intimately connected with us, and as a maritime power, was too near a neighbour to Scotland. In this exigence the King of Denmark marched with a considerable force to Hamburgh, and obliged that opulent city to furnish him with a million of rix-dollars.
In Ireland seemed approaching a scene of a new kind. The jealousy of commerce had ever swayed England to keep that kingdom in a state of humiliation and restraint; consequently of poverty. The lowest class of people in no country less enjoyed the sweets of being; and in no country sought less to emerge from their state of barbarism. Proud and slothful, they created a kind of dignity to themselves from inactivity. To labour no more than noblemen, was a sort of nobility; and ignorance of a happier fate was happiness. They preserved their ancient poetry and traditional genealogies; hated the English settled amongst them as invaders, and necessarily were bigoted to their old superstitions in opposition to the religion of their masters. In short, they wanted but luxury, to have all the passions and prejudices of great lords. A considerable part of the island was plunged in this dismal darkness and misery. As a spirit of opposition and independence had spread amongst the Protestant inhabitants, a spirit of improvement had gone forth too. Manufactures were established, roads and bridges made, and rivers rendered navigable. Inclosures for cultivation of lands had followed. Occupation of commons seemed usurpation to a race of lazy savages; and the first murmurs were carefully blown up to rage by their priests. A massacre had been the last instance in which the Catholics of Ireland had had any superiority; and Popish priests are historians enough to be ignorant of no such era. It was the cause of property to throw down inclosures; of heaven, to cut the throats of inclosers—and of France and Spain, to promote the good work. The tumults, however, began upon the single foot of their grievances. Great insurrections appeared in Waterford, the chief improvements having been made upon the Burlington estate. The rabble soon distinguished itself by the name of White Boys; and their instructors, to veil one nonsense under a greater, taught them to give out that they were subject to the Queen of the Fairies, whom they called Sieve Oltugh, in whose name their manifestoes were signed. It appeared afterwards on the trials of some of their chiefs, that this fairy sovereign resided at Versailles. French officers were discovered among them; and during the Duke of Bedford’s regency, a rising had actually been made in the same quarter just as Thurot landed. After many outrages, they proceeded to cruelty, and buried three persons up to their chins, who had declared they knew the ringleaders. As their numbers and impunity increased, so did their insolence. They obliged the town of Lismore to hang out lights, and forced a justice of peace to fix up a proclamation by which they regulated the price of provisions, and forbad any cheese to be made till after Lent, that the poor might have the milk—a proof that the devotees of the Queen of the Fairies, and of the Virgin Mary, were equally attached to the observation of the Fast.