A History of the Four Georges, Volume II

by Justin McCarthy

One point in the debate is worthy of notice. The address to the King approving of the convention was moved by Horatio Walpole, the diplomatist, brother of Sir Robert. In the course of his speech Horatio Walpole declared that the outbreak of war between England and any great continental State would be certain to be followed by a new blow struck by the Pretender and his followers. Some of the orators of Opposition spoke with immense scorn of the possibility of a Jacobite movement ever again being heard of in England. The Walpoles both generally understood pretty well what they were talking about. The prediction of Horatio Walpole came true.

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[Sidenote: 1739—The secession]

The address was carried by 260 against 232. The ministerial majority had run down to 28. Next day the battle was renewed. According to parliamentary usage, the report of the address was brought up, and Pulteney seized the opportunity to make another vehement attack on the convention and the ministers. He accused the Prime-minister of meanly stooping to the dictates of a haughty, insolent Court, and of bartering away the lives and liberties of Englishmen for "a sneaking, temporary, disgraceful expedient." But the interest of the day was to come. The address was agreed to by a majority of 262 against 234. This was exactly the same majority as before, only with both sides slightly strengthened. Then the principal leaders of Opposition thought the time had come for them to intervene with a deliberately planned coup de théâtre. Acting, it is understood, under the advice of Bolingbroke, they had been looking out for an opportunity to secede from the House of Commons on the ground that it was vain for patriotic men to try to do their duty to their country in a House of which the majority, narrow though it was, was yet the absolute slave of such a minister as Walpole. They hoped that such a step would have two effects. It would, they believed, create an immense sensation all over England and make them the heroes of the hour; and they fondly hoped that it would scare Walpole, and prevent him from passing in their absence the measures which their presence was unable to prevent. Such, we have no doubt, were the ideas of Bolingbroke and of Pulteney and of others; but we do not say that they were the ideas of the man who was intrusted with the duty of announcing the intentions of his party. This was Sir William Wyndham; and we do not believe that any hope of being one of the heroes of the hour entered for a moment into his mind. He only in a general honest thought, and common good to all, made one of them. Wyndham rose, and in a speech of great solemnity announced that he was about to pay his last duty to his country as a member of that {117} House. What hope, he asked, was there when the eloquence of one man had so great an effect within the walls of the House of Commons, and the unanimous voice of a brave, suffering people without had so little? He implied that the majority of the House must have been determined "by arguments that we have not heard." He bade an adieu to Parliament. "Perhaps," he said, "when another Parliament shall succeed, I may again be at liberty to serve my country in the same capacity." In other words, if the next Parliament should declare war on Spain after having got rid of Walpole, then Wyndham and his friends might be prevailed on to return. "I therefore appeal to a future, free, uninfluenced Parliament. Let it be the judge of my conduct and that of my friends on this occasion. Meantime I shall conclude with doing that duty to my country which I am still at liberty to perform—which is to pray for its preservation. May, therefore, that Power which has so often and so visibly before interposed on behalf of the rights and liberties of this nation continue its care over us at this worst and most dangerous juncture; while the insolence of enemies without, and the influence of corruption within, threaten the ruin of her Constitution."

This speech created, as will readily be imagined, an immense sensation in the House. A member of the Administration, one of the Pelhams, lost his head so completely that he sprang up with the intention of moving that Wyndham be committed to the Tower. Walpole, who was not in the habit of losing his head, prevented the ardent Pelham from carrying out his purpose. Walpole knew quite well that something better could be done than to evoke for any of the Patriots the antiquated terrors of the Tower. Walpole delivered a speech which, for its suppressed passion and its stern severity, was well equal to the occasion. The threat of Wyndham and his friends gave him, he said, no uneasiness. The friends of the Parliament and the nation were obliged to them for pulling off the mask—"We can be upon our guard {174} against open rebellion; it is hard to guard against secret treason." "The faction I speak of never sat in this House, they never joined in any public measure of the Government but with a view to distress it and to serve a Popish interest." Walpole was delighted to have an opportunity of paying off the Opposition for their constant denunciations of his alleged subservience to the throne of France, by flinging in Wyndham's teeth his old devotion to the cause of the Stuarts. "The gentleman," he said, "who is now the mouth of this faction was looked upon as the head of those traitors who, twenty-five years ago, conspired the destruction of their country and of the royal family to set a Popish Pretender on the throne. He was seized by the vigilance of the then Government and pardoned by its clemency, but all the use he has ungratefully made of that clemency has been to qualify himself according to law, that he and his party may some time or other have an opportunity to overthrow all law." For himself, Walpole declared he was only afraid that the gentlemen would not be as good as their word, and that they would return to Parliament. "For I remember," he said, "that in the case of their favorite prelate who was impeached of treason"—Atterbury—"the same gentleman and his faction made the same resolution. They then went off like traitors as they were; but their retreat had not the detestable effect they expected and wished, and therefore they returned. Ever since they have persevered in the same treasonable intention of serving that interest by distressing the Government."

[Sidenote: 1739—The policy of secession]

The House broke up in wild excitement; such excitement as had not been known there since the Excise Bill or the South Sea Bubble. About sixty of the Opposition kept for the time their promise of secession. Sir John Barnard, and two or three other men of mark in the party, had the good-sense to see that they could serve their cause, whatever it might be, better by remaining at their posts than by withdrawing from public life. The secession of a party from the House of Commons can {175} hardly ever be anything but a mistake. We are speaking now, of course, of a secession more serious and prolonged than that which concerns a particular stage of some measure. There have been occasions when the party in Opposition, after having fought their best against some obnoxious measure in all its former stages, and finding that further struggle would be unavailing, consider that they can make their protest more effectively, and draw public attention more directly to the nature of the controversy, by withdrawing in a body from the House of Commons, and leaving the Government alone with their responsibility. Such a course as this has been taken more than once in our own days. It can do no practical harm to the public interest, and it may do some service as a political demonstration. But a genuine secession, a prolonged secession, must, in the nature of things, do harm. It is wrong in principle; for a man is elected to the House of Commons in order that he may represent his constituents and maintain their interests there. To do that is his plain duty and business, which is not to be put away for the sake of indulging in any petulant or romantic impulse to withdraw from an assembly because one cannot have one's way there. No matter how small the minority on one side of the question, we have seen over and over again what work of political education may be done by a resolute few who will not cease to put forward their arguments and to fight for their cause.

In the case with which we are now dealing Wyndham and his friends only gratified Walpole by their unwise course of action. They enabled him to get through some of the work of the session smoothly and easily. A division hardly ever was known, and of some debates on really important questions there is positively no record. There was, for instance, a motion made in the House of Commons on March 30th for leave to bring in a Bill "to repeal so much of an Act passed in the 25th of King Charles the Second, entitled An Act for preventing {176} Dangers which may happen from Popish Recusants, as obligeth all persons who are admitted to any office, civil or military, to receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper within a time limited by the said Act; and for explaining and amending so much of the said Act as relates to the declaration against trans-substantiation." This proposal was supported by some of Walpole's friends; and, of course, Walpole himself was in favor of its principle. But he was not disposed in the least to trouble his master or himself about the repeal of Test Acts, either in the interest of the Roman Catholics or the Non-conformists, and he opposed the motion. There was a long debate, but the record says that "the particulars of it not having been made public, we can give no further account of it, but that many of the members being retired from Parliament, as before mentioned, and most of those concerned in the Administration being against it, the question passed in the negative, 188 noes to 89 yeas."

The Government were also enabled to pass without any resistance in the House of Commons a very ignoble and shabby little treaty with the King of Denmark, by which England undertook to pay to Denmark seventy thousand pounds a year for three years on condition that Denmark should furnish to King George a body of troops, six thousand men in all, these troops to be ready at any time when the King of England should call for them, and he being bound to pay a certain sum "by way of levy-money" for each soldier. This was not really an English measure at all. It had nothing to do with the interests of England, or of George as Sovereign of England. It was merely an arrangement between the King of Denmark and the Elector of Hanover, and was the settlement or composition of a miserable quarrel about a castle and a scrap of ground which George had bought from the Duchy of Holstein, and which Denmark claimed as her own. The dispute led to a military scuffle, in which the Danes got the worst of it, and it might have led to a war but that the timely treaty and the promised annual {177} payment brought the King of Denmark round to George's views. The treaty met with some opposition, or at all events some remonstrance, in the House of Lords. Carteret, however, gave it his support, and declared that he thought the treaty a wise and a just measure. Carteret was always in favor of the Hanoverian policy of King George.

[Sidenote: 1739—Walpole has it his own way]