EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Jean T. Shebanek, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
INTRODUCTION
The two pamphlets reproduced here belong to the fierce heightening in the pamphlet campaign against Robert Walpole that took place at the end of 1740. They represent only two efforts within a brief but furious encounter that gave rise to the publication of no fewer than nine separate poems. On Thursday, 23 October 1740, Thomas Cooper, "one of the most prolific printers and publishers of the pamphlet literature of the eighteenth century,"[ 1 ] published a savage denunciation of Walpole called Are these things so?[ 2 ] This pamphlet, which took the fictional form of an open letter from Alexander Pope, "An Englishman in his Grotto," to Robert Walpole, "A Great Man at Court," set off a round of verse writing among the party hacks of the day that vividly illustrates the close relationship between literature and politics in the first half of the eighteenth century. Within the space of two months eight further pamphlets directly related to this pamphlet and to Walpole's position as First Minister were published. Such a spate of literary activity is only remarkable, however, when compared with other ages. While it is inconceivable that the publication of any poem in our own day, even by a major writer, should arouse such a response, it is reasonably typical of the first half of the eighteenth century that the publication of an occasional poem by a minor, indeed anonymous, writer should do so.
On Saturday, 8 November, two weeks after the opening blast, Cooper delivered a second volley, an equally fierce (although largely repetitive) denunciation of Walpole entitled Yes, they are:.[ 3 ] A week later still, on Saturday, 15 November, the first pro-Government riposte, called What of That!, was published,[ 4 ] followed three days later, on 18 November, by a second reply, The Weather-Menders: A proper Answer to Are these things so?[ 5 ] The second edition of What of That! was published on the following Saturday, 22 November,[ 6 ] and a third pro-Walpole poem entitled They are Not, was also published at about this time.[ 7 ] At the end of November, or early in December, a reply to all three of these defences of Walpole appeared carrying the title, Have at you All.[ 8 ] On Tuesday, 2 December, the pro-Walpole forces returned to the attack again with a poem entitled What Things?[ 9 ] This was followed on Saturday, 6 December, by the second edition, "corrected, with the addition of twenty lines omitted in the former impressions" of Are these things so?,[ 10 ] and on Thursday, 18 December, by yet another anti-Walpole poem, The Great Man's Answer[ 11 ] purporting to be "by the author of Are these things so?." But the pro-Walpole forces were still not silenced and two days later on Saturday, 20 December, published A Supplement to Are these things so?,[ 12 ] an attack on the Patriot opponents of the Ministry. A month later still, on Friday, 23 January 1741,[ 13 ] the third edition of They are Not was published. Hereafter this particular controversy seemed to burn itself out, although an anonymous poem entitled The Art of Poetry, published on 17 March 1741, contains a long attack on Are these things so?.
This confused battle is most easily summarized by saying that four separate pamphlets (not counting second and third editions) were published which attacked Walpole, and five which defended him. The poems attacking Walpole are far more poetically versatile than those defending him and it is the two most interesting of these attacks that are reproduced here. Taken together, this series of nine pamphlets forms a separate battle within that much larger and continuing war waged by Lord Bolingbroke and the various supporters of the Patriot Opposition against Sir Robert Walpole and the defenders of his Whig Ministry. From the first publication of The Craftsman on 5 December 1726 to the final resignation of the "Great Man" on 11 February 1742 it is probably true to say that no English politician has ever been so continuously and so virulently attacked by so eminent an assemblage of literary persons. Gay, Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Chesterfield, Lyttleton, Thomson, Fielding, and Johnson each entered the fray at various stages. The fact that Walpole rode out these attacks for so long is more of a comment on the disorganized nature of the opposition politically and on the astute manoeuvring of Walpole himself, than on the ineffectiveness of the attacks.
During the protracted span of this campaign there were only two periods during which the supporters of the Patriot cause had any real chance of toppling Walpole. The first came in 1733 when sustained opposition forced Walpole to drop his proposed Excise Scheme, while the second occurred five years later in 1738 and sprang from a new deterioration in Anglo-Spanish relations. Although Walpole did not finally resign until 11 February 1742 his fall from power was a direct result of this deterioration. His position in the House of Commons, and in the country at large, was never as assured in the last four years of his "reign" as it had been in the first seventeen.
The pamphlets reproduced here deal with Walpole's declining reputation and especially with his handling of Spanish policy. The causes of the English differences with Spain go back to 1713 and the Treaty of Utrecht in which the South Sea Company had been granted, amongst other privileges, the right to send one trading vessel a year to the Spanish possessions.[ 14 ] This right had been grossly abused by English merchants eager to make large profits and a great number of English trading ships annually smuggled goods to Spanish America. The Spanish governors were only too pleased to accept such contraband trade for by it they avoided payment of duties to the King of Spain. In order to defend themselves against this illegal traffic the Spanish authorities established a fleet of guarda-costas to intercept, search, and, if necessary, punish the English ships. The guarda-costas did this with great effect and, on occasion, with considerable cruelty. The most notorious example concerned the capture, near Jamaica in 1731, of Captain Robert Jenkins' ship, the Rebecca, and the ensuing removal of one of Jenkins' ears. It was with Jenkins' presentation of this ear, which "wrapt up in cotton, he always carried about him,"[ 15 ] before the House of Commons seven years later in March 1738 that Anglo-Spanish differences came to a head.
The Patriots demanded war and revenge: Walpole, however, was committed to a policy of peace. Accordingly, he spent the rest of the year trying to patch things up and the ill-fated Convention of Pardo concluded on 14 January 1739 was the result. The Convention involved compromise on both sides. England claimed that Spain owed her £343,277 by way of reparation for damages done to English vessels, and Spain claimed that England owed her £180,000 by way of arrears on duties due to the King of Spain. This left a balance of £163,277 and England agreed to accept £95,000 as a total discharge in return for payment within four months.[ 16 ]
On 1 February Walpole laid this Convention before Parliament, and, despite vociferous opposition, it was eventually ratified on 9 March by a vote of 244 to 214. As a result of this ratification a considerable section of the opposition, under the leadership of Sir William Wyndham, immediately seceded from Parliament. Feelings had never been higher. On 15 May, one day after the payment had fallen due, Benjamin Keene, the British Minister in Madrid, was officially informed that the £95,000 would only be paid if Admiral Haddock removed his fleet from the Mediterranean. England had no intention of recalling Haddock, for both Gibraltar and Minorca would then remain defenceless, and Spain clearly had no real intention of paying the money. From this point on war became inevitable and on 19 October 1739 the declaration was made "and was received by all ranks and distinctions of men with a degree of enthusiasm and joy, which announced the general frenzy of the nation."[ 17 ] It was on hearing the church bells pealing at the news that Walpole made his famous remark: "They now ring the bells, but they will soon wring their hands.[ 18 ]