A History of the Four Georges, Volume II

by Justin McCarthy

Walpole thought the time had fully come when it would be right for him to show that, while still striving for peace, he was not unprepared for war. He sent a squadron of line-of-battle ships to the Mediterranean and several cruisers to the West Indies, and he allowed letters of marque to be issued. These demonstrations had the effect of making the Spanish Government somewhat lower their tone—at least they had the effect of making that Government seem more willing to come to terms. Long negotiations as to the amount of claim on the one side and of set-off on the other were gone into both in London and Madrid. We need not study the figures, for nothing came of the proposed arrangement. It was impossible that anything could come of it. England and Spain were quarrelling over several great international questions. Even these questions were themselves only symbolical of a still greater one, of a paramount question which was never put into words: the question whether England or Spain was to have the ascendent in the new world across the Atlantic. Walpole and the Spanish Government drew up an arrangement, or rather professed to find a basis of arrangement, for the paying off of certain money claims. A convention was agreed upon, and was signed on January 14, 1739. The convention arranged that a certain sum of money was to be paid by Spain to England within a given time, but that this discharge of claims should not extend to any dispute between the King of Spain and the South Sea Company as holders of the Asiento Contract; and that two plenipotentiaries from each side should meet at Madrid to settle the claims of England and Spain with regard to the rights of trade in the New World and the boundaries of Carolina and Florida. This convention, it will be seen, left the really important subjects of dispute exactly where they were before.

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Such as it was, however, it had hardly been signed before the diplomatists were already squabbling over the extent and interpretation of its terms, and mixing it up with the attempted arrangement of other and older disputes. Parliament opened on February 1, 1739, and the speech from the throne told of the convention arranged with Spain. "It is now," said the Royal speech, "a great satisfaction to me that I am able to acquaint you that the measures I have pursued have had so good an effect that a convention is concluded and ratified between me and the King of Spain, whereby, upon consideration had of the demands on both sides, that prince hath obliged himself to make reparation to my subjects for their losses by a certain stipulated payment; and plenipotentiaries are therein named and appointed for redressing within a limited time all those grievances and abuses which have hitherto interrupted our commerce and navigation in the American seas, and for settling all matters in dispute in such a manner as may for the future prevent and remove all new causes and pretences of complaint by a strict observance of our mutual treaties and a just regard to the rights and privileges belonging to each other." The King promised that the convention should be laid before the House at once.

Before the terms of the convention were fully in the knowledge of Parliament, there was already a strong dissatisfaction felt among the leading men of the Opposition. We need not set this down to the mere determination of implacable partisans not to be content with anything proposed or executed by the Ministers of the Crown. Sir John Barnard was certainly no implacable partisan in that sense. He was really a true-hearted and patriotic Englishman. Yet Sir John Barnard was one of the very first to predict that the convention would be found utterly unsatisfactory. There is nothing surprising in the prediction. The King's own speech, which naturally made the best of things, left it evident that no important and international question had been touched by the convention. {163} Every dispute over which war might have to be made remained in just the same state after the convention as before. Lord Carteret in the House of Lords boldly assumed that the convention must be unsatisfactory, and even degrading, to the English people, and he denounced it with all the eloquence and all the vigor of which he was capable. Lord Hervey vainly appealed to the House to bear in mind that the convention was not yet before them. "Let us read it," he urged, "before we condemn it." Vain, indeed, was the appeal; the convention was already condemned. The very description of it in the speech from the throne had condemned it in advance.

[Sidenote: 1739—Petition against the Convention]

The convention was submitted to Parliament and made known to the country. The reception it got was just what might have been expected. The one general cry was that the agreement gave up or put aside every serious claim made by England. Spain had not renounced her right of search; the boundaries of England's new colonies had not been defined; not a promise was made by Spain that the Spanish officials who had imprisoned and tortured unoffending British subjects should be punished, or even brought to any manner of trial. In the heated temper of the public the whole convention seemed an inappropriate and highly offensive farce. On February 23d the sheriffs of the City of London presented to the House of Commons a petition against the convention. The petition expressed the great concern and surprise of the citizens of London "to find by the convention lately concluded between his Majesty and the King of Spain that the Spaniards are so far from giving up their (as we humbly apprehend) unjust pretension of a right to visit and search our ships on the seas of America that this pretension of theirs is, among others, referred to the future regulation and decision of plenipotentiaries appointed on each side, whereby we apprehend it is in some degree admitted." The petition referred to the "cruel treatment of the English sailors whose hard fate has thrown them into the {164} hands of the Spaniards," and added, with a curious mixture of patriotic sentiment and practical, business-like selfishness, that "if this cruel treatment of English seamen were to be put up with, and no reparation demanded, it might have the effect"—of what, does the reader think?—"of deterring the seamen from undertaking voyages to the seas of America without an advance of wages, which that trade or any other will not be able to support."

[Sidenote: 1739—Carteret's attack]

The same petition was presented to the House of Lords by the Duke of Bedford. Lord Carteret moved that the petitioners should be heard by themselves, and, if they should desire it, by counsel. It was agreed, after some debate, that the petitioners should be heard by themselves in the first instance, and that if afterwards they desired to be heard by counsel their request should be taken into consideration. Lord Chesterfield in the course of the debate contrived ingeniously to give a keen stroke to the convention while declaring that he did not presume as yet to form any opinion on it, or to anticipate any discussion on its merits. "I cannot help," he said, "saying, however, that to me it is a most unfavorable symptom of its being for the good of the nation when I see so strong an opposition made to it out-of-doors by those who are the most immediately concerned in its effects."

A debate of great interest, animation, and importance took place in the House of Lords when the convention was laid before that assembly. The Earl of Cholmondeley moved that an address be presented to the King to thank him for having concluded the convention. The address was drawn up by a very dexterous hand, a master-hand. Its terms were such as might have conciliated the leaders of the Opposition, if indeed these were to be conciliated by anything short of Walpole's resignation, for, while the address approved of all that had been done thus far, it cleverly assumed that all this was but the preliminary to a real settlement; and by ingenuously expressing the entire reliance of the House on the King's taking care that proper provision should be made for the redress of various {165} specified grievances, it succeeded in making it quite clear that in the opinion of the House such provision had not yet been made. The address concluded most significantly with an assurance to the King that "in case your Majesty's just expectations shall not be answered, this House will heartily and zealously concur in all such measures as shall be necessary to vindicate your Majesty's honor, and to preserve to your subjects the full enjoyment of all those rights to which they are entitled by treaty and the Law of Nations." An address of this kind would seem one that might well have been moved as an amendment to a ministerial address, and understood to be obliquely a vote of censure on the advisers of the Crown. It seems the sort of address that Carteret might have moved and Chesterfield seconded. Carteret and Chesterfield opposed it with spirit and eloquence. "Upon your Lordships' behavior to-day," said Carteret at the close of a bitter and a passionate attack upon the Ministry and the convention, "depends the fate of the British Empire. . . . This nation has hitherto maintained her independence by maintaining her commerce; but if either is weakened the other must fail. It is by her commerce that she has been hitherto enabled to stand her ground against all the open and secret attacks of the enemies to her religion, liberties, and constitution. It is from commerce, my Lords, that I behold your Lordships within these walls, a free, an independent assembly; but, should any considerations influence your Lordships to give so fatal a wound to the interest and honor of this kingdom as your agreeing to this address, it is the last time I shall have occasion to trouble this House. For, my Lords, if we are to meet only to give a sanction to measures that overthrow all our rights, I should look upon it as a misfortune for me to be either accessary or witness to such a compliance. I will not only repeat what the merchants told your Lordships—that their trade is ruined—I will go further; I will say the nobility is ruined, the whole nation is undone. For I can call this treaty nothing else but a mortgage of {166} your honor, a surrender of your liberties." Such language may now seem too overwrought and extravagant to have much effect upon an assembly of practical men. But it was not language likely to be considered overwrought and extravagant at that time and during that crisis. The Opposition had positively worked themselves into the belief that if the convention were accepted the last day of England's strength, prosperity, and glory had come. Carteret, besides, was talking to the English public as well as to the House of Lords. He knew what he meant when he denounced the enemies of England's religion as well as the enemies of England's trade. The imputation was that the Minister himself was a secret confederate of the enemies of the national religion as well as the enemies of the national trade. Men who but a few short years before were secretly engaged in efforts at a Stuart restoration, which certainly would not be an event much in harmony with the spread of the Protestant faith in England, were now denouncing Walpole every day on the ground that he was caballing with Catholic Spain, the Spain of Philip the Second, the Spain of the Armada and the Inquisition, the implacable enemy of England's national religion.

[Sidenote: 1739—Argyle's anecdote]