A History of the Four Georges, Volume I

by Justin McCarthy

Walpole was now Prime-minister. The King wished to reward him for his services by conferring a peerage on him, but this honor Walpole steadily declined. One of his biographers says that his refusal "at first appears extraordinary." It ought not to appear extraordinary at first or at last. Walpole knew that the sceptre of government in England had passed to the House of Commons. He would have been unwise and inconsistent indeed if at his time of life he had consented to renounce the influence and the power which a seat in that House gave him for the comparative insignificance and obscurity of a seat in the House of Lords. He accepted a title for his eldest son, who was made Baron Walpole, but for himself he preferred to keep to the field in which he had won his name, and where he could make his influence and power felt all over the land.

We may anticipate the course of events, and say at once that hardly ever before in the history of English political life, and hardly ever since Walpole's time, has a minister had so long a run of power. His long administration, as Mr. Green well says, is almost without a history. It is almost without a history, that is to say, in the ordinary sense of the word. For the most part, the steady movement of England's progress remains, during long years and years, undisturbed by any event of great dramatic interest at home or abroad. But the period of Walpole's long and successful administration was none the less a period of the highest importance in English {225} history. It was a time of almost uninterrupted national development in the right direction, and almost unbroken national prosperity. The foreign policy of Walpole was, on the whole, no less sound and just than his policy at home. His first ambition was to keep England out of wars with foreign Powers. Yet his was not the ambition which some later statesmen, especially, for example, Mr. Bright, have owned—the ambition to keep England free of any foreign policy whatever. Such an ambition was not Walpole's, and such an ambition at Walpole's time it would have been all but impossible to realize. Walpole knew well that there was no way of keeping England out of foreign wars at that season of political growth but by securing for her a commanding influence in Continental affairs. Such influence he set himself to establish, and he succeeded in establishing it by friendly and satisfactory alliances with France and other Powers. Turning back for a moment into the political affairs of a year or two previous, we may remark that one of the consequences of the Mississippi scheme, and the reign of Mr. Law in France, had been the recall of Lord Stair from the French Court, to which he was accredited as English ambassador. Lord Stair quarrelled with Law when Law was all-powerful; and in order to propitiate the financial dictator, it was found convenient to recall Stair from Paris. England had been well served by him as her ambassador at the French Court. We have already said something of Lord Stair—his ability, courage, and dexterity, his winning ways, and his fearless spirit. John Dalrymple, second Earl of Stair, was one of the remarkable men of his time. He was a scholar and an orator, a soldier and a diplomatist. He had fought with conspicuous bravery and skill under William the Third and under Marlborough. He appears to have combined a daring that looked like recklessness with a cool calculation which made it prudence. On Marlborough's fall, Lord Stair fell with him. He was deprived of all his public offices, and was plunged into a condition of {226} something like poverty. When George the First came to the throne, Stair was taken into favor again, and as a special tribute to his diplomatic capacity was sent to represent England at the Court of France. There he displayed consummate sagacity, foresight, and firmness. He contrived to make himself acquainted beforehand with everything the Jacobites were doing. This, as may be seen by Bolingbroke's complaints, was easy enough at one time; but the adherents of James Stuart began after a while to learn prudence, and some of their enterprises were conducted up to a certain point with much craft and caution. Lord Stair, however, always contrived to get the information he wanted. Some of the arts by which he accomplished his purposes were not, perhaps, such as a great diplomatist of our time would have cared to practise. He bribed with liberal hand; he kept persons of all kinds in his pay; he bribed French officials, and even French ministers; he got to know all that was done in the most secret councils of the State. He used to go about the capital in disguise in order to find out what people were saying in the wine-shops and coffee-houses. Often, after he had entertained a brilliant company of guests at a state dinner, he would make some excuse to his friends for quitting them abruptly; say that he had received despatches which required his instant attention, leave the company to be entertained by his wife, withdraw to his study, there quietly change his clothes, and then wander out on one of his nightly visitations of taverns and coffee-houses. He paid court to great ladies, flattered them, allowed them to win money at cards from him, and even made love to them, for the sake of getting some political secrets out of them. He had a noble and stately presence, a handsome face, and charming manners. He is said to have been the most polite and well-bred man of his time. It is of him the story is told about the test of good-breeding which the King of France applied and acknowledged. Louis the Fourteenth had heard it said that Stair was the best-bred man of his day. The {227} King invited Stair to drive out with him. As they were about to enter the carriage the King signed to the English ambassador to go first. Stair bowed and entered the carriage. "The world is right about Lord Stair," said the King; "I never before saw a man who would not have troubled me with excuses and ceremony."

[Sidenote: 1723—Spain]

The French Government naturally feared that the recall of Lord Stair might be marked by a change in the friendly disposition of England. This fear became greater on the death of Stanhope. The English Government, however, took steps to reassure the Regent of France. Townshend himself wrote at once to Cardinal Dubois, promising to maintain as before a cordial friendship with the French Government. Walpole was entirely imbued with the instincts of such a policy. The chief disturbing influence in Continental politics arose from the anxiety of Spain to recover Gibraltar and Minorca, and, in fact, to get back again all that had been taken from her by the Treaty of Utrecht. The territorial and other arrangements which concluded with the Treaty of Utrecht made themselves the central point of all the foreign policy of that time: these States were concerned to maintain the treaty; those were eager to break through its bonds. It holds in the politics of that day the place which was held by the Treaty of Vienna at a later period. There is always much of the hypocritical about the manner in which treaties of that highly artificial nature are made. No State really intends to hold by them any longer than she finds that they serve her own interests. If they are imposed upon a State and are injurious to her, that State never means to submit to them any longer than she is actually under compulsion. New means and impulses to break away from such bonds are given to those inclined that way, in the fact that the arrangements are usually made without the slightest concern for the populations of the countries concerned, but only for dynastic or other political considerations. The pride of the Spanish people was so much hurt by some of the conditions of the Treaty {228} of Utrecht that a Spanish sovereign or minister would always be popular who could point to his people a way to escape from its bonds or to rend them in pieces. Spain, therefore, was always looking out for new alliances. She saw at one time a fresh chance for trying her policy, and she held out every inducement in her power to the Emperor Charles the Sixth and to Russia to enter into a combination against France and England. The Emperor was without a son, and, in consequence, had issued his famous Pragmatic Sanction, providing that his hereditary dominions in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia should descend to his daughter Maria Theresa. The great Powers of Europe had not as yet seen fit to guarantee, or even recognize, this succession. Spain held out the temptation to the Emperor of her own guarantee to the Pragmatic Sanction and of several important concessions in the matter of trade and commerce to Austria, on consideration that the Emperor should assist Spain to recover her lost territory. Catherine, the wife of Peter the Great, was now governing Russia, and was entering into secret negotiations with Spain and with the Emperor. Townshend and Walpole understood all that was going on, and succeeded in making a defensive treaty between England, France, and Prussia. Prussia, to be sure, did not long hold to the treaty, and her withdrawal gave a new stimulus to the machinations of the Emperor and of Philip of Spain, and in 1727 Philip actually ventured to lay siege to Gibraltar. England, France, and Holland, however, held firmly together; the Russian Empress suddenly died, the Emperor Charles was not inclined to risk much, and Spain finally had to come to terms with England and her allies.

[Sidenote: 1721—Anticipations of free-trade]

These troubles might have proved serious but for the determined policy of Townshend and of Walpole. We have not thought it necessary to weary our readers with the details of this little running fire of dispute which was kept up for some years between England and Spain. We saw in an earlier chapter how the quarrel began, and what {229} the elements were which fed it and kept it burning. This latter passage is really only a continuation of the former; both, except for the sake of mere continuity of historic narrative, might have been told as one story, and, indeed, would perhaps not have required many sentences for the telling. Walpole applied himself at home to the work of what has since been called Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform. He was the first great English finance minister; perhaps we may say he was the first English minister who ever sincerely regarded the development of national prosperity, the just and equal distribution of taxation, and the lightening of the load of financial burdens, as the most important business of a statesman. The whole political and social conditions of the country were changing under his wise and beneficent system of administration. Population was steadily increasing; some of the great rising towns had doubled their numbers since Walpole's career began. Agriculture was better in its systems, and was brightening the face of the country everywhere; the farmer had almost ceased for the time to grumble; the laborer was well fed and not too heavily worked. We do not mean to say that Walpole's administration was the one cause of all this improvement in town and country, but most assuredly the peace, and the security of peace, which Walpole's administration conferred was of direct and material influence in the growing prosperity of the nation. His financial systems lightened the burdens of taxation, distributed the load more equally everywhere, and enabled the State to get the best revenue possible at the lowest cost and with the least effort. It might almost be said that Walpole anticipated free-trade. The Royal speech from the Throne at the opening of Parliament, on October 19, 1721, declared it to be "very obvious that nothing would more conduce to the obtaining so public a good"—the extension of our commerce—"than to make the exportation of our own manufactures, and the importation of the commodities used in the manufacturing of them, as practicable and as easy as may be; by this means the balance {230} of trade may be preserved in our favor, our navigation increased, and greater numbers of our poor employed." "I must, therefore," the speech went on, "recommend it to you, gentlemen of the House of Commons, to consider how far the duties upon these branches may be taken off and replaced, without any violation of public faith or laying any new burden upon my people; and I promise myself that, by a due consideration of this matter, the produce of those duties, compared with the infinite advantages that will accrue to the kingdom by their being taken off, will be found so inconsiderable as to leave little room for any difficulties or objections." In furtherance of the policy indicated in these passages of the Royal speech, more than one hundred articles of British manufacture were allowed to be exported free of duty, while some forty articles of raw material were allowed to be imported in the same manner. Walpole was anxious to make a full use of this system of indirect taxation. He desired to levy and collect taxes in such a manner as to avoid the losses imposed upon the revenue by smuggling and by various forms of fraud. His principle was that the necessaries of life and the raw materials from which our manufactures were to be made ought to remain, as far as possible, free of taxation. The whole history of our financial systems since Walpole's time has been a history of the gradual development of his economic principles. There has been, of course, reaction now and then, and sometimes the counsels of statesmen appear for a while to have been under the absolute domination of the policy which he strove to supplant; but the reaction has only been for seasons, while the progress of Walpole's policy has been steady. We have now, in 1884, nearly accomplished the financial task Walpole would, if he could, have accomplished a century and a half earlier.

[Sidenote: 1723—Parliamentary corruption]

No one can deny that Walpole was an unscrupulous minister. He would gladly have carried out the best policy by the best means; but where this was not practicable or convenient he was perfectly willing to carry {231} out a noble policy by the vilest methods. He was not himself avaricious; he was not open to the temptations of money. He had a fortune large enough for him, and he spent it freely, but he was willing to bribe and corrupt all those of whom he could make any use. Under his rule corruption became a settled Parliamentary system. He had done more than any other man to make the House of Commons the most powerful factor in the government of England; he had therefore made a seat in the House of Commons an object of the highest ambition. To sit in that House made the obscurest country gentleman a power in the State. Naturally, therefore, a seat in the House of Commons was struggled for, scrambled for, fought for—obtained at any cost of money, influence, time, and temper. Naturally, also, a seat thus obtained was a possession through which recompense of some kind was expected. Those who buy their seats naturally expect to sell their votes; at least that was so in the days of Walpole. In times nearer to our own, England has seen a condition of things in which public opinion and the development of a sort of national conscience absolutely prevented members from taking bribes, although it allowed them the most liberal use of bribery and corruption in the obtaining of their seats. The member of Parliament who, twenty or thirty years ago, would have bought his seat by means of the most unblushing and shameless corruption, would no more have thought of selling his vote to a minister for a money payment than he would have thought of selling his wife at Smithfield. But in Walpole's time the man who bought his seat was ready to sell his vote. Walpole, the minister, was willing to buy the vote of any man who would sell it. He was lavish in the gift of lucrative offices, of rich sinecures, of pensions, and even of bribes in a lump sum, money down. He would bribe a member's wife, if that were more convenient than openly to bribe the member himself. He had no particular choice as to whether the bribe should be direct or indirect, open or secret; he {232} wanted to get the vote, he was willing to pay the price, and he cared not who knew of the arrangement. We have already mentioned that the saying ascribed to him about every man having his price was never uttered by him. What he said probably was, that "each of these men," alluding to a certain group or party, had his price. He is reported to have said that he never knew any woman who would not take money, except one noble lady, whom he named, and she, he said, took diamonds. He acted consistently and was not ashamed. He was incorrupt himself; he was even in that sense incorruptible; but in order to gain his own public purposes, wise and just as they were, he was willing to corrupt a whole House of Commons, and would not have shrunk from corrupting a nation.

[Sidenote: 1723—Lord Carteret]

It ought to be pointed out that the very pacific nature of Walpole's policy and the security and steadiness of his administration made it sometimes all the more necessary for him to have recourse to questionable methods. Great controversies of imperial or national interest—controversies which stir the hearts of men, which appeal to their principles and awaken their passions—did not often arise during his long tenure of power. Agitations of this kind, whatever trouble and disturbance they may bring with them, have a purifying effect upon the political atmosphere. Only a very ignoble creature is to be bribed out of his opinions when some interest is at stake, on which his heart, his training, and his associations have already taught him to take sides. Walpole kept the nation out of such controversies for the most part, and one result was that small political combinations of various kinds were free to form themselves around him, beneath him, and against him. The House of Commons sometimes threatened to dissolve itself into a number of little separate sections or factions, none of them representing any real principle or having more than a temporary attraction of cohesion. Walpole was again and again placed in the position of having to encounter {233} some little faction of this kind by open exercise of power or by the process of corruption, and he usually found the latter course more convenient and ready. Nor could such a man at any period of English history have remained long without more or less formidable rivals. Walpole himself must have known well enough that the death of men like Sunderland, or the death or any number of men, could not, so long as England was herself, secure him for long an undisturbed political field, with no head raised against him. A country like this is never so barren of political intellect and courage as to admit of a long dictatorship in political life.