A History of the Four Georges, Volume I

by Justin McCarthy

[Sidenote: 1730—Lord Hervey]

One of the incidents in the controversy carried on by the Ministerial penmen and the Craftsman was a duel between Pulteney and Lord Hervey. Pulteney and his friends were apparently under the impression that they had a right to a monopoly of personal abuse, and they resented any effusion of the kind from the other side as a breach of their privilege. Hervey had written a tract called "Sedition and Defamation displayed, in a Letter to the Author of the Craftsman;" and this led to a new outburst of passion on both sides. Pulteney stigmatized Hervey, on account of his effeminate appearance, as a thing that was half man, half woman, and a duel took place in which Hervey was wounded. Hervey was a remarkable man. His physical frame was as feeble as that of Voltaire. He suffered from epilepsy and a variety of other ailments. He had to live mainly on a dietary of ass's milk. His face was so meagre and so pallid, or rather livid, that he used to paint and make up like an actress or a fine lady. Pope, who might have been considerate to the weak of frame, was merciless in his ridicule of Hervey. He ridiculed him as Sporus, who could neither feel satire nor sense, and as Lord Fanny. Yet Hervey could appreciate satire and sense; could write satire and sense. He was a man of very rare capacity. He had already distinguished himself as a debater in the House of Commons, and was afterwards to distinguish himself as a {307} debater in the House of Lords. He wrote pretty verses and clever pamphlets, and he has left to the world a collection of "Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second," which will always be read for its vivacity, its pungency, its bitterness, and its keen, penetrating good-sense. Hervey succeeded in obtaining the hand of one of the most beautiful women of the day, the charming Mary Lepell, whose name has been celebrated in more than one poetical panegyric by Pope, and he captivated the heart of one of the royal princesses. The historical reader must strike a sort of balance for himself in getting at an estimate of Hervey's character. No man has been more bitterly denounced by his enemies or more warmly praised by his friends. Affectation, insincerity, prodigality, selfishness, servility to the great, contempt for the humble, are among the qualities his opponents ascribe to him. According to his friends, his cynicism was a mere affectation to hide a sensitive and generous nature; his bitterness arose from his disappointment at finding so few men or women who came up to a really high standard of nobleness; his homage of the great was but the half-disguised mockery of a scornful philosopher. Probably the picture drawn by the friends is on the whole more near to life than that painted by the enemies. The world owes him some thanks for a really interesting book, the very boldness and bitterness of which enhance to a certain extent its historical value. At this time Hervey was but little over thirty years of age. He was the son of the first Earl of Bristol by a second marriage, had been educated at Westminster School and at Clare Hall, Cambridge; had gone early through the usual round of Continental travels, and became a friend of George the First's grandson, now Prince of Wales, at Hanover. This friendship not merely did not endure, but soon turned into hate. Hervey was an admirer of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and was admired by her; but her own assurances, which may be trusted to, declared that there had been nothing warmer than friendship between them. Lady Mary afterwards {308} maintained that the relationship between Hervey and her established the possibility of "a long and steady friendship subsisting between two persons of different sexes without the least admixture of love." Hervey was in his day a somewhat free and liberal lover of women, and it is not surprising that the world should have regarded his acquaintanceship with Lady Mary as something warmer than mere friendship. We shall have occasion to refer to Hervey's memoirs of the reign of George the Second more than once hereafter, and may perhaps now cite a few words which Hervey himself says in vindication of their sincerity and their historical accuracy; "No one who did not live in these times will, I dare say, believe but some of those I describe in these papers must have had some hard features and deformities exaggerated and heightened by the malice and ill-nature of the painter who drew them. Others, perhaps, will say that at least no painter is obliged to draw every wart or wen or humpback in its full proportions, and that I might have softened these blemishes where I found them. But I am determined to report everything just as it is, or at least just as it appears to me; and those who have a curiosity to see courts and courtiers dissected, must bear with the dirt they find in laying open such minds with as little nicety and as much patience as, in a dissection of their bodies, if they wanted to see that operation, they must submit to the disgust."

Hervey fought with spirit and effect on the side of Walpole, although Lady Hervey strongly disliked the Minister and was disliked by him. Walpole had at one time, it was said, made unsuccessful love to the beautiful and witty Molly Lepell, and he did not forgive her because of her scornful rejection of his ponderous attempts at gallantry. Hervey, nevertheless, took Walpole's side, and proved to be an ally of some importance. A great struggle was approaching, in which the whole strength of Walpole's hold on the Sovereign and the country was to be tested by the severest strain.

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[Sidenote: 1730—The Sinking Fund]

Walpole was, as we have said more than once, the first of the great financier statesmen of England. He was the first statesman who properly appreciated the virtue and the value of mere economy in the disposal of a nation's revenues. He was the first to devise anything like a solid and symmetrical plan for the fair adjustment of taxation. Sometimes he had recourse to rather poor and common-place artifices, as in the case of his proposal to meet a certain financial strain by borrowing half a million from the Sinking Fund. This proposal he carried by a large majority, in spite of the most vehement and even furious opposition on the part of the Patriots. It must be owned that the Patriots were right enough in the principle of their objection to this encroachment on the Sinking Fund, although their predictions as to the ruin it must bring upon the country were preposterous. Borrowing from a sinking fund is always rather a shabby dodge; but it is a trick familiar to all statesmen in difficulties, and Walpole did no worse than many statesmen of later days, who, with the full advantages of a sound and well-developed financial system, have shown that they were not able to do any better.

The Patriots seem to have made up their minds to earn their title. They fought the "Court," or Ministerial, party on a variety of issues. They supported motions for the reduction of the numbers of the army, and they declaimed against the whole principle of a standing army with patriotic passion, which sometimes appeared for the time quite genuine. They brought illustrations of all kinds, applicable and inapplicable, from Greek and Roman, from French and Spanish history, even from Eastern history, to show that a standing army was invariably the instrument of despotism and the forerunner of doom to the liberties of a people. The financial policy of the Government gave them frequent opportunities for using the sword of the partisan behind the fluttering cloak of the patriot. On both sides of the House there was considerable confusion of ideas on the subject of political economy {310} and the incidence of taxation. Walpole was ahead of his own party as well as of his opponents on such subjects; his followers were little more enlightened than his antagonists.

[Sidenote: 1732—The American colonies]

In 1732 there was presented to the House of Commons an interesting report from the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on "the state of his Majesty's colonies and plantations in America, with respect to any laws made, manufactures set up, and trade carried on there, which may affect the trade, navigation, and manufactures of this kingdom." From this report we learn that at the time there were three different systems of government prevailing in the American colonies. Some provinces were immediately under the administration of the Crown: these were Nova Scotia, New Hampshire, the Jerseys, New York, Virginia, the two Carolinas, Bermuda, Bahama Islands, Jamaica, Barbadoes, and the Leeward Islands. Others were vested in proprietors—Pennsylvania, for example, and Maryland—and the Bahamas and the two Carolinas had not long before been in the same condition. There were three Charter Governments, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, in which the power was divided between the Crown and the population, where the people chose their representative assemblies, and the Governor was dependent upon the Assembly for his annual support, "which," as the report observed ingenuously, "has so frequently laid the Governor of such a province under temptations of giving up the prerogative of the Crown and the interest of Great Britain." The report contains a very full account of the state of manufactures in all the provinces. New York, for example, had no manufactures "that deserved mentioning;" the trade there "consisted chiefly in furs, whalebone, oil, pitch, tar, and provisions." In Massachusetts "the inhabitants worked up their wool and flax, and made an ordinary coarse cloth for their own use, but did not export any." In Pennsylvania the "chief trade lay in the exportation of provisions and lumber," and there were {311} "no manufactures established, their clothing and utensils for their houses being all imported from Great Britain." For the object of the whole report was not to discover how far the energy of the colonists was developing the resources of the colonies, in order that the Government and the people of England might be gratified with a knowledge of the progress made, and give their best encouragement to further progress. The inquiry was set on foot in order to find out whether the colonists were presuming to manufacture for themselves any goods which they ought by right to buy from English makers, and to recommend steps by which such audacious enterprises might be rebuked and prevented. This is the avowed object of the report, and we find governor after governor assuring the Commissioners earnestly and plaintively that the population of his province really manufacture nothing, or at all events nothing that could possibly interfere with the sacred privileges of the English monopolists. The report significantly recommends the House of Commons to take into consideration the question "whether it might not be expedient to give these colonies proper encouragements for turning their industry to such manufactures and products as might be of service to Great Britain, and more particularly to the production of all kinds of naval stores." The proper encouragement given to this sort of productiveness would imply, of course, proper discouragement given to anything else. The colonies were to exist merely for the convenience and benefit of the so-called mother country, a phrase surely of sardonic impressiveness. Such, however, was the common feeling of that day in England. It was so with regard to India; it was so with regard to Ireland. The story of the pelican was reversed. The pelican did not in this case feed her young with her blood; the young were expected to give their blood to feed the pelican.

The real strain was to come when Walpole should introduce his famous and long-expected scheme for a reform in the customs and excise laws. Walpole's scheme {312} was inspired by two central ideas. One of these was to diminish the amount of taxation imposed on the land of the country, and make up the deficiency by indirect taxation; the other was to reduce the customs duties by substituting as far as possible an excise duty. Walpole would have desired something like free-trade as regarded the introduction of food and the raw materials of manufacture. Let these be got into the country as easily and freely as possible was his principle, and then let us see afterwards how we can adjust the excise duties so as to produce the largest amount of revenue with the smallest injury to the interest of the consumer, and with the minimum of waste. His design was that the necessaries of life and the raw materials of manufacture should remain as nearly as possible untaxed, and that the revenue of the country should be collected from land and from luxuries. We do not mean to say that the plans which Walpole presented to the country were faithful in all their details to these central ideas. One scheme at least which he laid before Parliament was positively at variance with the main principles which he had long been trying to establish. But in considering the whole controversy between him and his opponents, the reader may take it for granted that such were the principles by which his financial policy was inspired. He had been moving quietly in this direction for some time. He had removed the import duties from tea, coffee, and chocolate, and made them subject to inland or excise duties. In 1732 he revived the salt tax. The Bill which was introduced on February 9, 1732, to accomplish this object, met with a strong opposition in both Houses of Parliament. Walpole's speech in introducing the motion for the revival of the tax contained a very clear statement of his financial creed. "Where every man contributes a small share, a great sum may be raised for the public service without any man's being sensible of what he pays; whereas a small sum raised upon a few, lies heavy upon each particular man, and is the more grievous in that it is unjust; for where {313} the benefit is mutual, the expense ought to be in common." [Sidenote: 1732—Opposition alarm] The general principle is unassailable; but Walpole seems to us to have been quite wrong in his application of it to such an impost as the salt tax. "Of all the taxes I ever could think of," he argued, "there is not one more general, nor one less felt, than that of the duty upon salt." He described it as a "tax that every man in the nation contributes to according to his circumstances and condition in life." This is exactly what every man does not do. The family of the rich man does not by any means consume more salt than the family of the poor man in proportion to their respective incomes. Pulteney knocked Walpole's argument all to pieces in a speech of remarkable force and ingenuity even for him. There was something honestly pathetic in his appeal on behalf of the poor man, whom the duty on salt would touch most nearly. The tax, he said, would be at least one shilling a head for every man or woman able to work; to a man with a family it would average four shillings and sixpence a year. Such a yearly sum "may be looked upon as a trifle by a gentleman of a large estate and easy circumstances, but a poor man feels sometimes severely the want of a shilling; many a poor man has for want of a shilling been obliged to pawn the only whole coat he had to his back, and has never been able to redeem it again. Even a farthing to a poor man is a considerable sum; what shifts do the frugal among them make to save even a farthing!"