BILL IN FAVOUR OF THE LATE LORD BOLINGBROKE.
On the twentieth day of April, a petition was presented to the house by lord Finch in behalf of Henry St. John, late viscount Bolingbroke, praying that the execution of the law with respect to his forfeitures might be suspended, as a pardon had suspended it with respect to his life. Mr. Walpole signified to the house, by his majesty’s command, that, seven years before, the petitioner had made humble application and submission to the king, with assurances of duty, allegiance, and fidelity; that, from his behaviour since that time, his majesty was convinced of his being a fit object of his mercy, and consented to his petitioning the house. The petition being read, Mr. Walpole declared himself fully satisfied that the petitioner had sufficiently atoned for his past offences; and therefore deserved the favour of that house, so far as to enable him to enjoy the family inheritance that was settled upon him, which he could not do by virtue of his majesty’s pardon, without an act of parliament. Lord Finch moved, That a bill might be brought in for this purpose, and was warmly opposed by Mr. Methuen, comptroller of the household, who represented Bolingbroke as a monster of iniquity. His remonstrance was supported by lord William Paulet and Mr. Onslow; nevertheless, the bill was prepared, passed through both houses, and received the royal assent. An act being passed for disarming the highlanders of Scotland, another for regulating elections within the city of London, a third for reducing the interest of several bank annuities, together with some bills of a private nature, the parliament was prorogued in May, after the king had, in the warmest terms of acknowledgment, expressed his approbation of their conduct. Then he appointed lords-justices to govern the nation in his absence; and set out in June for his German dominions.*
* On the fifth day of December the princess of Wales was delivered of a princess, christened by the name of Lotvisa, and afterwards married to the king of Denmark. She died December the nineteenth, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-one.—Immediately after the session of parliament, the king revived the order of the Bath, thirty-eight in number, including the sovereign.—William Bateman was created baron of Calmore in Ireland, and viscount Bateman; and sir Kobert Walpole, who had been one of the revived knights of the Bath, was now honoured with the order of the Garter.
TREATY OF ALLIANCE.
The tide of political interest on the continent had begun to flow in a new channel, so as to render ineffectual the mounds which his Britannic majesty had raised by his multiplicity of negotiations. Louis, the Spanish monarch, dying soon after his elevation to the throne, his father Philip resumed the crown which he had resigned, and gave himself up implicitly to the conduct of his queen, who was a princess of indefatigable intrigue and insatiate ambition. The infanta, who had been married to Louis XV. of France, was so disagreeable to her husband, that the whole French nation began to be apprehensive of a civil war in consequence of his dying without male issue; he therefore determined, with the advice of his council, to send back the infanta, as the nuptials had not been consummated; and she was attended to Madrid by the marquis de. Monteleone. The queen of Spain resented this insult offered to her daughter; and, in revenge, dismissed mademoiselle de Beaujolois, one of the regent’s daughters, who had been betrothed to her son don Carlos. As the congress at Cambray had proved ineffectual, she offered to adjust her differences with the emperor, under the sole mediation of Great Britain. This was an honour which king George declined. He was averse to any undertaking that might interrupt the harmony subsisting between him and the court of Versailles; and he had taken umbrage at the emperor’s refusing to grant the investiture of Bremen and Verden except upon terms which he did not choose to embrace. The peace between the courts of Vienna and Madrid, which he refused to mediate, was effected by a private negotiation, under the management of the duke de Ripperda, a native of the states-general, who had renounced the protestant religion, and entered into the service of his catholic majesty. By two treaties, signed at Vienna in the month of April, the emperor acknowledged Philip as king of Spain and the Indies, promised that he would not molest him in the possession of those dominions that were secured to him by the treaty of Utrecht. Philip renounced all pretensions to the dominions in Italy and the Netherlands, adjudged to the emperor by the treaty of London; Charles granted the investiture of the dukedoms of Tuscany, Parma, and Placentia, to the eldest son of the queen of Spain, in default of heirs in the present possessors, as masculine fiefs of the empire. Spain became guarantee of the Austrian succession, according to the pragmatic sanction, by which the dominions of that house were settled on the emperors’s heirs general, and declared to be a perpetual, indivisible, and inseparable feoffment of the primogeniture. By the commercial treaty of Vienna, the Austrian subjects were entitled to advantages in trade with Spain, which no other nation enjoyed. His catholic majesty guaranteed the Ostend East India company; and agreed to pay an annual subsidy of four millions of piastres to the emperor. Great sums were remitted to Vienna; the Imperial forces were augmented to a formidable number; and other powers were solicited to engage in this alliance, to which the court of Petersburgh actually acceded.
TREATY OF HANOVER.
The kind of Great Britain took the alarm. The emperor and he had for some time treated each other with manifest coolness. He had reason to fear some attempts upon his German dominions, and projected a defensive treaty with France and Prussia. This alliance, limited to the term of fifteen years, was negotiated and concluded at Hanover in the month of September. It implied a mutual guarantee of the dominions possessed by the contracting parties, their rights and privileges, those of commerce in particular, and an engagement to procure satisfaction to the protestants of Thorn, who had lately been oppressed by the catholics, contrary to the treaty of Oliva. The king having taken these precautions at Hanover, set out on his return for England; embarked at Helvoetsluys in the middle of December; and after having been exposed to the fury of a dreadful storm, was landed with great difficulty at Rye, from whence he proceeded by land to London. The parliament meeting on the twentieth day of the next month, he gave them to understand that the distressed condition of some of their protestant brethren abroad, and the negotiations and engagements contracted by some foreign powers, which seemed to have laid the foundation of new troubles and disturbances in Europe, and to threaten his subjects with the loss of several of the most advantageous branches of their trade, had obliged him to concert with other powers such measures as might give a check to the ambitious views of those who were endeavouring to render themselves formidable, and put a stop to the further progress of such dangerous designs. He told them that the enemies of his government were already very busy, by their instruments and emissaries in those courts whose measures seemed most to favour their purposes, in soliciting and promoting the cause of the pretender. One sees, at first sight, that the interests of Germany dictated the treaty of Hanover; but, in order to secure the approbation of Great Britain, upon which the support of this alliance chiefly depended, it was judged necessary to insert the articles relating to commerce and the protestant religion, as if the engagement had been contracted purely for the advantage and glory of England. In a word, the ministry began now to ring the changes upon a few words that have been repeated ever since, like cabalistical sounds, by which the nation has been enchanted into a very dangerous connexion with the concerns of the continent. They harangued, they insisted upon the machinations of the disaffected, the designs of a popish pretender, the protestant interest, and the balance of power, until these expressions became absolutely terms of ridicule with every person of common sense and reflection. The people were told that the emperor and the king of Spain, exclusive of the public treaties concluded at Vienna, had entered into private engagements, importing that the Imperialists should join the Spaniards in recovering Gibraltar and Port-Mahon by force of arms, in case the king of England should refuse to restore them amicably, according to a solemn promise he had made: that a double marriage should take place between the two infants of Spain, and the two archduchesses of Austria; and that means should be taken to place the pretender on the throne of Great Britain.
When the treaties of Vienna and Hanover fell under consideration of the house of commons, Horatio Walpole, afterwards termed in derision, “the balance master,” opened the debate with a long unanimated oration, giving a detail of the affairs of Europe since the treaty of Utrecht. He enumerated the barrier-treaty, the convention for executing that treaty, the defensive alliance with the emperor, the other with the most christian king and the states-general, another convention, the quadruple alliance, the congress at Cambray, the treaty of Hanover, and that of Vienna. He explained the nature of each engagement. He said the main design of the treaty of commerce concluded between the emperor and the king of Spain, was to countenance and support the East-India company established at Ostend, which interfered so essentially with the East-India companies of England and Holland, and was directly contrary to several solemn treaties still in force. He enlarged upon the danger to which the balance of power would be exposed, should the issue male of this projected marriage between the houses of Austria and Spain ever possess the imperial dignity and the kingdom of Spain together. The reader will take notice that this very man was one of those who exclaimed against that article of the treaty of Utrecht, which prevented the power of those two houses from being immediately united in the person of the emperor. He did not forget to expatiate upon the pretended secret engagement concerning Gibraltar and Minorca, and the king’s pious concern for the distressed protestants of Thorn in Poland. In vain did Mr. Shippen urge that the treaty of Hanover would engage the British nation in a war for the defence of the king’s German dominions, contrary to an express provision made in the act of limitation. These arguments had lost all weight. The opposition was so inconsiderable, that the ministry had no reason to be in pain about any measure they should propose. An address was voted and delivered to his majesty, approving the alliance he had concluded at Hanover, in order to obviate and disappoint the dangerous views and consequences of the treaty of peace betwixt the emperor and the king of Spain: and promising to support his majesty against all insults and attacks that should be made upon any of his territories, though not belonging to the crown of Great Britain. An address of the same kind was presented by the house of lords in a body. A bill was brought in, empowering the commissioners of the treasury to compound with Mr. Richard Hampden, late treasurer of the navy, for a debt he owed to the crown, amounting to eight-and-forty thousand pounds. This deficiency was occasioned by his embarking in the South-Sea scheme. The king recommended his petition; and the house complied with his request, in consideration of his great-grandfather, the famous John Hampden, who made such a noble stand against the arbitrary measures of the first Charles.