A History of the Four Georges, Volume I

by Justin McCarthy

[Sidenote: 1728—Pulteney's place in history]

The name and the career of William Pulteney are all but forgotten in English political life. It is doubtful whether Pulteney's name, if pronounced in the course of a debate in the House of Commons just now, would bring with it any manner of idea to the minds of nine-tenths of the listening members. Yet Pulteney played, all unconsciously, a great part in the development of the Parliamentary life of this country. So far as intellectual gifts are concerned, he is not, of course, to be named in the same breath with a man like Burke, for example; one might as well think of comparing Offenbach with Mozart or Handel. But the influence of the career of Pulteney on the English Parliament is nevertheless more distinctly marked than the influence of the career of Burke. We are speaking now not of political thought—no man ever made a greater impression on political thought than Burke has done—but only of the forms and the development of English Parliamentary systems. For Pulteney was, beyond all question, the founder of the modern practice of Parliamentary opposition. Walpole was mainly instrumental in transferring the seat of political power from the House of Lords to the House of Commons. Never, since Walpole's time, has the House of Lords exercised any real influence over the political life of England. This was not Walpole's doing; it was the doing of time and change, of altered conditions and new forces. But Walpole saw the coming change, and bent all the energies of his robust intellect to help and forward it. Pulteney is in the same sense the author of {285} the modern principle of Parliamentary opposition; but there is no reason to believe that Pulteney saw what he was doing as clearly as Walpole did. Until the beginning of Pulteney's brilliant career, the opposition between parties had been mainly a competition for the ear and the favor of the sovereign. Thus Harley strove against Marlborough, and Bolingbroke against Harley, and the Whigs against Harley and Bolingbroke. But the course of action taken by Pulteney against Walpole converted the struggle into one of party against party, inside and outside of the House of Commons. The object sought was the command of a majority in the representative assembly. Pulteney showed how this was to be obtained by the voices of the public out-of-doors as well as by the votes of the elected representatives in Westminster. Walpole had made it clear that in the House of Commons the battle was to be fought; Pulteney showed that in the House of Commons the victory was to be gained, not by the favor of the sovereign, but by the co-operation of the people.

We have said in a former chapter that Pulteney's form of procedure, become now a component part of our whole Parliamentary system, brings with it some serious disadvantages from which, for the present, it is not easy, it is not even possible, to see any way of escape. The principle of government by party will some time or other come to be put to the challenge in English political life. For the present, however, we have only to make the best we can of it; and no one in his senses can doubt that it was an immense advance on the system of back-stairs influence and bedchamber intrigue, the policy, to use the great Condé's expression, "of petticoats and alcoves," which prevailed in the days when Mrs. Masham was competing with Sarah Jennings, and later still, when Walpole was buying his way back to power through the influence of the sovereign's wife, in co-operation with the sovereign's paramour.

The student of English history will have to turn with {286} close attention to the reigns of the First and Second George. In those reigns the transfer of power to the representative chamber began, and the modern system of Parliamentary opposition grew into form. The student will have to remember that the time he is studying was one when there was no such thing known in England as a public meeting. There were "demonstrations," as we call them now; there were crowds; there were processions; there were tumults; there were disturbances, riots, reading of Riot Acts, dispersion of mobs, charges of cavalry, fusillades of infantry; but there were no great public meetings called together for the discussion of momentous political questions. The rapid growth of the popular newspaper, soon to swell up like the prophet's gourd, had hardly begun as yet. We cannot call the Craftsman a newspaper; it was rather a series of pamphlets. It stood Pulteney instead of the more modern newspaper. He worked on public opinion with it outside the House of Commons. Inside the House he made it his business to form a party which should assail the ministry on all points, lie in wait to find occasion for attacking it, attack it rightly or wrongly, attack it even at the risk of exposing national weakness or bringing on national danger, keep attacking it always. In former days a leader of opposition had often been disdainful of the opinion of the vulgar herd out-of-doors; Pulteney and his companions set themselves to appeal especially to the prejudices, passions, and ignorance of the vulgar herd. They made it their business to create a public opinion of their own. They dealt in the manufacture of public opinion. They set up political shops wherein to retail the article which they had thus manufactured. Pulteney was now in his prime—still some years inside fifty. He was full of energy and courage, and he threw his whole soul into his work. Much of what he did was undoubtedly dictated by his spite against Walpole, but much, too, was the mere outcome of his ambition, his energy, and the peculiar character of his intellect. He enjoyed playing a {287} conspicuous part and he liked attacking somebody. People used to think at one time that Mr. Disraeli had a profound personal hatred for Sir Robert Peel when he was flinging off his philippics against that great minister. It afterwards appeared clear enough that Mr. Disraeli had no particular dislike to his opponent, but that he enjoyed attacking an important statesman. Pulteney, of course, did actually begin his career of imbittered opposition because of his quarrel with Walpole; but it is likely enough that even if no quarrel had ever taken place and he never had been Walpole's friend and colleague, he would sooner or later have become the foremost gladiator of opposition all the same.

[Sidenote: 1728—Materials of opposition]

The materials of opposition consisted of three political groups of men. There were the Jacobites, under Shippen; the Tories who no longer acknowledged themselves Jacobites, and who were led by Sir William Wyndham; and there were the discontented Whigs whom Pulteney led and whose discontent he turned to his own uses. It had long been a scheme of Bolingbroke's—up to this time it should perhaps rather be called a dream than a scheme—to combine these three groups into one distinct party, having its bond of union in a common detestation of Walpole. The dream now seemed likely to become a successful scheme. The conception of this plan of opposition was unquestionably Bolingbroke's and not Pulteney's; but it fell to Pulteney's lot to work it out in the House of Parliament, and he performed his task with consummate ability. Pulteney was probably the greatest leader of Opposition ever known in the House of Commons, with the single exception of Mr. Disraeli. Charles Fox, with all his splendid genius for debate, was not a skilful or a patient leader of Opposition. Perhaps he was too great of heart for such a part; certain it is that as a leader of Opposition he made some fatal mistakes. Pulteney seemed cut out for the part which a strange combination of chances had allowed him to play. He was not merely a debater of inexhaustible resource {288} and a master of all the trick and craft of Parliamentary leadership; but he thoroughly understood the importance of public support out-of-doors, and the means of getting at it and retaining it. Pulteney saw that the time had come when the English people would have their say in every political question.

[Sidenote: 1728—Sir William Wyndam]

By the combined influence of Pulteney and Bolingbroke there was formed a party of ultra-Whigs, who somewhat audaciously called themselves "The Patriots." Perhaps the title was first given to them by Walpole, in contempt; if so, they accepted and adopted it. Again and again in our history this phenomenon presents itself. Some men of ability and unsatisfied ambition belonging to the Liberal party become discontented with the policy of their leaders. When the first opportunity arises they make a public declaration against that policy. In the Conservative ranks there are to be found some other men, also able and also discontented, to whom the general policy of Opposition seems unsatisfactory and feeble. Each of these discontented parties fancies itself to be truly patriotic, public-spirited, and independent. The two factions at length unite for the common good of the country; they tell the world that they are patriots, that they are the only patriots, and the world for a while believes them. This was the condition of things when Pulteney in Parliament joined with Sir William Wyndham, the extreme Jacobite, the Wyndham who is mentioned in Pope's poem about his Twickenham grotto, the Wyndham with whom Bolingbroke corresponded for many years, and to whom he addressed one of his most important political manifestoes. Sir William Wyndham belonged to an old Somersetshire family. He was a staunch Tory. He had powerful connections; his first wife was a daughter of the haughty Duke of Somerset. He entered Parliament and made a considerable figure there. He had been Secretary at War and afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer under the Tories; he had clung to Bolingbroke's fortunes at the time of Bolingbroke's {289} rupture with Harley. He underwent the common fate of Tory statesmen on the accession of George the First; he was deprived of office, was accused of taking part in the Jacobite conspiracy, and was committed to the Tower. There was, however, no evidence against him, and he resumed his political career. His eloquence is described by Speaker Onslow as "strong, full, and without affectation, arising chiefly from his clearness, propriety, and argumentation; in the method of which last, by a sort of induction almost peculiar to himself, he had a force beyond any man I ever heard in public debates." Lord Hervey, who can be trusted not to overdo the praise of any one, says of Wyndham that "he was very far from having first-rate parts, but by a gentleman-like general behavior, a constant attendance in the House of Commons, a close application to the business of it, and frequent speaking, he had got a sort of Parliamentary routine, and without being a bright speaker was a popular one, well heard, and useful to his party." So far as we now can judge, this seems a very correct estimate of Wyndham's Parliamentary capacity and position. He had a noble presence, singularly graceful and charming manners, and a high personal character. A combination between such a man as Pulteney and such a man as Wyndham could not but be formidable even to the most powerful minister.

Shippen, the leader of the Jacobites—"honest Shippen," as Pope calls him—we have often met already. He was a straightforward, unselfish man, absolutely given up to his principles and his party. He was well read and had written clever pamphlets and telling satirical verses. His speeches, or such reports of them as can be got at, are full of striking passages and impressive phrases; they are speeches which even now one cannot read without interest. But it would seem that Shippen often marred the effect of his ideas and his language by a rapid, careless, and imperfect delivery. He appears to have been one of the men who wanted nothing but a clear {290} articulation and effective utterance to be great Parliamentary debaters, and whom that single want condemned to comparative failure. Those who remember the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, or, indeed, those who have heard the best speeches of Lord Sherbrooke, when he was Mr. Robert Lowe, can probably form a good idea of what Shippen was as a Parliamentary debater. Shippen was nothing of a statesman, and his occasional eccentricities of manner and conduct prevented him from obtaining all the influence which would otherwise have been fairly due to his talents and his political and personal integrity.

[Sidenote: 1729—The Hessians]