A History of the Four Georges, Volume I

by Justin McCarthy

{249}

CHAPTER XVI.

THE OPPOSITION.

[Sidenote: 1725—Troubles in Scotland]

The trouble had hardly been got rid of in Ireland by Carteret's judicious advice and the withdrawal of Wood's patent when a commotion that at one time threatened to be equally serious broke out in Scotland. English members of Parliament had been for many years complaining that Scotland was exempt from any taxation on malt. Up to that time no Government had attempted to take any steps towards establishing equality in this respect between the two countries. Walpole now strove to deal with the question. It was proposed in the House of Commons that instead of a malt duty in Scotland a duty of sixpence should be levied on every barrel of ale. Walpole at first was not inclined to deal with the difficulty in this way, but as the feeling of the House was very strongly in favor of making some attempt, he consented to adopt the principle suggested, but required that the duty should be threepence instead of sixpence. The moment it became known in Scotland that any tax on malt or ale was to be imposed, rioting began in the principal cities; the spirit of the national motto asserted itself—"nemo me impune lacessit." The ringleaders of various mobs were arrested and sent for trial, but the Scotch juries, following the recent example of the Irish, refused to convict. Brewers all over Scotland entered into a sort of league, by virtue of which they pledged themselves not to give any securities for the new duty and to cease brewing if the Government exacted it. Unluckily for Walpole, the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Duke of Roxburgh, was a great friend of Carteret's, {250} and had joined with Carteret in endeavoring to thwart Walpole in all his undertakings. The success of Walpole's policy in any instance was understood by Carteret and by Roxburgh to mean Walpole's supremacy over all other ministers. The Duke of Roxburgh therefore took advantage of the crisis in Scotland to injure the administration, and especially to injure Walpole. In a subtle and underhand way he contrived to favor and foment the disturbance. He took care that the orders of the Government should not be too quickly carried out, and he gave more than a tacit encouragement to the common rumor that the King in his heart was hostile to the new tax, that the tax was wholly an invention of Walpole's, and that resistance to such a measure would not be unwelcome to the Sovereign, and would lead to the dismissal of the minister. Walpole was not long in finding out the treachery of the Duke of Roxburgh. To adopt a homely phrase, he "took the bull by the horns" at once. Lord Townshend was in Hanover with the King, and Walpole wrote to Lord Townshend, giving him a full account of all that was going on in Scotland, and laying the chief blame for the continuance of the disturbance on the Duke of Roxburgh. "I beg leave to observe," wrote Walpole, "that the present administration is the first that was ever yet known to be answerable for the whole Government, with a Secretary of State for one part of the kingdom who, they are assured, acts counter to all their measures, or at least whom they cannot confide in." His remonstrance had to be pressed again and again upon Townshend before anything was done to satisfy him. Walpole, however, was a man to press where he thought the occasion demanded it, and he was successful in the end. The Duke of Roxburgh had to resign, and Walpole added to his own duties those of the Secretary of State for Scotland. He appointed, however, as his agent or deputy in the administration of Scotland, the Earl of Isla, Lord-keeper of the Privy Seal in that country, and a man on whose allegiance he could entirely rely. Having {251} thus secured a full power to act, Walpole was not long in bringing the disturbances to an end. He displayed both discretion and resolve. He was able to satisfy the most reasonable among the brewers and maltsters that their interests would not really suffer by the proposed resolutions. The natural result was that the combination of brewers began to melt away. The brewers held a meeting, and it was soon found that it would not be possible to secure a general resolution to meet the legislation of the Government by passive resistance and by ceasing to brew. As all would not stand together, every man was left to take his own course, and the result was that what we should now call a strike came quietly to an end.

[Sidenote: 1725—Intrigue and counter-intrigue]

A modern reader is naturally shocked and surprised at the manner in which members of the same Government in Walpole's day intrigued against one another, and strove to thwart each other's policy. No actual defence is to be made for such a practice; but it is only fair to observe that up to Walpole's own entrance into office, and after it, the habit of English sovereigns had been to make up an administration by taking members of different and even of opposing parties and bringing them together, in the hope of securing thereby the co-operation of all parties. Under these circumstances it was natural, it was only to be expected, that the minister who was pledged to one policy would endeavor by all means in his power to counteract the designs of the minister whom he knew to be pledged to a very different kind of policy. Nor, indeed, is the practice of intrigue and counter-intrigue among members of the same cabinet actually unknown in our own days, when there is not the same excuse to be pleaded for it that might have been urged in the time of Walpole. In the case of the Duke of Roxburgh, however, the attempt to counteract the policy of Walpole was made in somewhat bolder and less subtle fashion than was common even in those days, and Walpole was well justified in the course he took. For once his high-handed way of dealing with men was vindicated {252} by its principle and by the unqualified advantage it brought to the interests of the State and to those of the minister as well.

[Sidenote: 1725—Dictatorship overdone]

The student of history derives one satisfaction from the frequent visits of King George to Hanover. The correspondence between Walpole and Townshend which was made necessary by those visits gives us many an interesting glimpse into political affairs in their reality, in their undress, in their secret movement, which no ordinary State papers or diplomatic despatches could be trusted to give. The Secretary of State often communicates to the representative of his country at some foreign court only just that view of a political situation which he wishes to put under the eyes of the foreign sovereign and foreign statesmen. But Walpole writes to Townshend exactly what he himself believes, and what it is important both to Townshend and to him that Townshend shall fully know. "I think," Walpole says to Townshend, in one of his letters, "we have once more got Ireland and Scotland quiet, if we take care to keep them so." Exactly; if only care be taken to keep them so. The same chance had often been given to English statesmen before; Ireland and Scotland quiet, and might have continued in quietness if care had only been taken to keep them so.

The King was much pleased with Walpole's success. He made him one of the thirty-eight Knights of the Bath. The Order of the Bath had gone out of use, out of existence in fact, since the coronation of Charles the Second; George the First revived it in 1725, and bestowed its honors on Walpole. It seems an odd sort of reward for the shrewd, practical, and somewhat coarse-fibred squire-statesman. The close connection between man and the child, civilized man and the savage, is never more clearly illustrated than in the joy and pride which the wisest statesman feels in the wearing of a ribbon or a star. In the next year the King made Walpole a Knight of the Garter; after this honor all other mark of dignity {253} would be but an anti-climax. From the time of his introduction to the Order of the Bath, the great minister ceased to be plain Mr. Walpole, and became Sir Robert Walpole.