Private and public immorality.
At home the survey of the reign is not so satisfactory. There was deep depravity in both domestic and public life. The licentiousness which had marked the whole Stuart period had lost nothing of its wickedness, but a good deal of its elegance, in its union with the corruption of a small German court. With a king without wit, without taste for the arts, without knowledge of literature, without perception of beauty, and swayed by two ugly, ignorant and rapacious mistresses, we hear with no surprise tales of the coarseness of the time. If possible, the depravity of public life was greater than the private immorality. It is enough to mark the character of the reign that the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Macclesfield, was towards its close convicted of disgracing the seat of justice by receiving bribes, and was removed with ignominy from his office; that three ministers at least, if not more, were compromised in the iniquitous transactions of the South Sea Company, and that the King's mistress amassed an immense fortune from the bribes by which her favour was purchased. But even worse than this shameless venality was the political infidelity which universally prevailed. It is this which is the real danger of a disputed succession. There is an uncertainty as to which party may ultimately be successful, which engenders a spirit of political gambling, while for any fancied insults, or any real loss of power, immediate revenge can be sought by a mere transfer, and frequently a secret transfer of allegiance. To this may be added the tendency of compulsory oaths, which men persuade themselves that they may accept as a matter of form, and which therefore weaken all sense of conscientious engagements. There was hardly a statesman of note who had not more or less tampered with the Jacobite party. Even Walpole is not quite clear of the charge, while the whole body of High Tories were in constant danger of drifting into Jacobitism.
Influence of the Hanoverian courtiers.
Nor was this the only cause leading to low political morality. The reigning King was a foreigner in all his habits and in all his tastes. He was surrounded by a Hanoverian court, who regarded England as an instrument for the aggrandizement of Hanover, and formed a centre for all intrigues to win the royal favour at the expense of patriotism. It is strange, indeed, that their influence was less directly felt in English politics, and it is perhaps owing to those very Hanoverian predilections of the King, which are so often urged against him, that their influence was not greater. He was so thoroughly German in language and in thought, he was so incapable of comprehending the English Constitution and manners, that his real interests were entirely centred on his Hanoverian dominions, and in all matters in which they were not concerned he left England to work out its own revolution, and was compelled, moreover, to throw himself wholly into the hands of that party on whom the revolution rested, and with whom it was a matter of life and death to secure the completion of that revolution, and to maintain the security of the Parliamentary King. It was fortunate that that party was guided by the wisdom of Walpole. That jealousy of power which was his chief weakness was itself an advantage, since it tended to exclude from power the Tory party, and gave a united character to the Government, which proved the hopelessness of success to all who did not accept it.
GEORGE II.
1727-1760.
CONTEMPORARY PRINCES.