For the support of those expensive treaties, Mr. Scroope, secretary of the treasury, moved in the house of commons, that in the malt-tax bill they should insert a clause of appropriation, empowering the king to apply such sums as should be necessary for defraying the expenses and engagements which had been, or should be made before the twenty-fifth day of September, in concerting such measures as he should think most conducive to the security of trade, and restoring the peace of Europe. To little purpose did the members in the opposition urge that this method of asking and granting supplies was unparliamentary; that such a clause would render ineffectual that appropriation of the public money, which the wisdom of all parliaments had thought a necessary security against misapplication, which was the more to be feared as no provision was made to call any person to account for the money that should be disposed of by virtue of this clause; that great sums had already been granted; that such an unlimited power ought never to be given in a free government; that such confidence in the crown might, through the influence of evil ministers, be attended with the most dangerous consequences; that the constitution could not be preserved, but by a strict adherence to those essential parliamentary forms of granting supplies upon estimates, and of appropriating these supplies to services and occasions publicly avowed and judged necessary; that such clauses, if not seasonably checked, would become so frequent as in time to lodge in the crown and in the ministers an absolute and uncontrollable power of raising money upon the people, which by the constitution is, and with safety can only be, lodged in the whole legislature. The motion was carried, the clause added, and the bill passed through the other house without amendment, though not without opposition. Notwithstanding this vote of credit, sir William Yonge moved, that towards the supply granted to the king, the sum of three hundred and seventy thousand pounds should be raised by loans on exchequer bills, to be charged on the surplus of the duties on coal and culm, which was reserved for the parliament’s disposal. Though this motion was vigorously opposed by sir Joseph Jekyll and Mr. Pulteney, as a dangerous deviation from several votes and acts of parliament, by which the exceed-ings of the public funds were appropriated to the discharge of the national debt, or to the increase of the sinking fund, it was carried by the majority.
SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR
On the fifteenth day of May the parliament was prorogued, after the king had acknowledged their zeal, liberality, and despatch; and given them to understand that the siege of Gibraltar was actually begun. The trenches were opened before this fortress on the eleventh day of February, by the Conde de las Torres, at the head of twenty thousand men. The place was well provided for a defence; and the old earl of Portmore, who was governor, embarked with a reinforcement from England, under convoy of a fleet commanded by sir Charles Wager. He arrived at Gibraltar in the beginning of April, where he landed the troops, with a great quantity of ammunition, warlike stores, and four-and-twenty pieces of cannon. At the same time, five hundred men arrived from Minorca; so that the garrison amounted to six thousand, plentifully supplied with fresh provisions from the coast of Barbary, and treated the efforts of the besiegers with great contempt. The states-general, being apprehensive of an attempt upon their barrier in the Netherlands, desired the king would hold in readiness the ten thousand auxiliaries stipulated in the treaty. These were immediately prepared for embarkation, and the forces of England were augmented with thirty new raised companies. Sir John Norris set sail with a powerful fleet for the Baltic, and was joined by a Danish squadron; but the czarina dying on the seventeenth day of May, he had no occasion to commit hostilities, as the Russian armament was laid aside.
PRELIMINARIES OF PEACE.
Meanwhile the powers at variance, though extremely irritated against each other, were all equally averse to a war that might again embroil all Europe. The king of France interposed his mediation, which was conducted by the duke de Richlieu, his ambassador at Vienna. Plans and counterplans of pacification were proposed between the two crowns and the allies. At length all parties agreed to twelve preliminary articles which were signed in May at Paris, by the ministers of the Hanoverian alliance, and afterwards at Vienna, by the Imperial and Spanish ambassadors. These imported, that hostilities should immediately cease; that the charter of the Ostend company should be suspended for seven years; and that a congress should in four months be opened at Aix-la-Chapelle, for adjusting all differences, and consolidating the peace of Europe. This congress was afterwards transferred to Soissons, for the conveniency of the French minister, whose presence was necessary at court. The siege of Gibraltar was raised, after it had lasted four months, during which the Spaniards lost a great number of men by sickness, while the garrison sustained very little damage. The court of Madrid, however, started some new difficulties, and for some time would not consent to the restitution of the South-Sea ship, which had been detained at La Vera-Cruz, in the West Indies; so that sir Charles Wager continued to cruise on the coast of Spain: but these objections were removed in the sequel.
DEATH AND CHARACTER OF GEORGE I.
King George, having appointed a regency, embarked at Greenwich on the third day of June, and landing in Holland on the seventh, set out on his journey to Hanover. He was suddenly seized with a paralytic disorder on the road: he forthwith lost the faculty of speech, became lethargic, and was conveyed in a state of insensibility to Osnabruck. There he expired on Sunday the eleventh day of June, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and in the thirteenth of his reign.—George I. was plain and simple in his person and address, grave and composed in his deportment, though easy, familiar, and facetious in his hours of relaxation. Before he ascended the throne of Great Britain, he had acquired the character of a circumspect general, a just and merciful prince, a wise politician, who perfectly understood, and steadily pursued, his own interest. With these qualities, it cannot be doubted but that he came to England extremely well disposed to govern his new subjects according to the maxims of the British constitution, and the genius of the people; and if ever he seemed to deviate from these principles, we may take it for granted that he was misled by the venal suggestions of a ministry whose power and influence were founded on corruption. [229] [See note 2 I, at the end of this Vol.]