The supreme direction of affairs was not yet engrossed by a single minister. Lord Townshend had the reputation of conducting the external transactions relating to treaties and negotiations. He is said to have understood that province, though he did not always follow the dictates of his own understanding. He possessed an extensive fund of knowledge; and was well acquainted with the functions of his office. The duke of Newcastle, his colleague, was not remarkable for any of these qualifications; he owed his promotion to his uncommon zeal for the illustrious house of Hanover, and to the strength of his interest in parliament, rather than to his judgment, precision, or any other intellectual merit. Lord Carteret, who may be counted an auxiliary, though not immediately concerned in the administration, had distinguished himself in the character of envoy at several courts in Europe. He had attained an intimate knowledge of all the different interests and connexions subsisting among the powers of the continent; and he infinitely surpassed all the ministers in learning and capacity. He was indeed the only man of genius employed under this government. He spoke with ease and propriety, his conceptions were just and lively; his inferences bold; his counsels vigorous and warm. Yet he depreciated his talents, by acting in a subordinate character to those whom he despised; and seemed to look upon the pernicious measures of a bad ministry with silent contempt, rather than with avowed detestation. The interior government of Great Britain was chiefly managed by sir Robert Walpole, a man of extraordinary talents, who had from low beginnings raised himself to the head of the treasury. Having obtained a seat in the lower house, he declared himself one of the most forward partisans of the whig faction. He was endued with a species of eloquence, which, though neither nervous nor elegant, flowed with great facility, and was so plausible on all subjects, that even when he misrepresented the truth, whether from ignorance or design, he seldom failed to persuade that part of his audience for whose hearing his harangue was chiefly intended. He was well acquainted with the nature of the public funds, and understood the whole mystery of stock-jobbing. This knowledge produced a connexion between him and the money-corporations, which served to enhance his importance. He perceived the bulk of mankind were actuated by a sordid thirst of lucre; he had sagacity enough to convert the degeneracy of the times to his own advantage; and on this, and this alone, he founded the whole superstructure of his subsequent administration. In the late reign he had by dint of speaking decisively to every question, by boldly impeaching the conduct of the tory ministers, by his activity in elections, and engaging as a projector in the schemes of the monied interest, become a leading member in the house of commons. By his sufferings under the tory parliament, he attained the rank of a martyr to his party. His interest, his reputation, and his presumption daily increased; he opposed Sunderland as his rival in power, and headed a dangerous defection from the ministry, which evinced the greatness of his influence and authority. He had the glory of being principally concerned in effecting a reconciliation between the late king and the prince of Wales; then he was re-associated in the administration with additional credit; and, from the death of the earls of Sunderland and Stanhope, he had been making long strides towards the office of prime minister. He knew the maxims he had adopted would subject him to the hatred, the ridicule, and reproach of some individuals, who had not yet resigned all sentiments of patriotism, nor all views of opposition; but the number of these was inconsiderable, when compared to that which constituted the body of the community; and he would not suffer the consideration of such antagonists to come in competition with his schemes of power, affluence, and authority. Nevertheless, low as he had humbled anti-ministerial association, it required all his artifice to elude, all his patience and natural phlegm to bear, the powerful arguments that were urged, and the keen satire that was exercised against his measures and management, by a few members in the opposition. Sir William Wyndham possessed all the energy of elocution; Mr. Shippen was calm, intrepid, shrewd and sarcastic; Mr. Pulteney inherited from nature a good understanding, which he had studiously cultivated. He was one of the most learned members in the house of commons, extremely well qualified to judge of literary productions; well read in history and politics; deeply skilled in the British constitution, the detail of government, and the nature of the finances. He spoke with freedom, fluency, and uncommon warmth of declamation, which was said to be the effect of personal animosity to sir Robert Walpole, with whom he had been formerly connected.
DEBATES IN PARLIAMENT CONCERNING THE CIVIL LIST.
An express arriving on the fourteenth day of June, with an account of the king’s death, his late majesty king George II. repaired from Richmond, where he received this intelligence, to Leicester-house; and the members of the privy-council being assembled, were sworn a-new. The king declared his firm purpose to preserve the constitution in church and state, and to cultivate those alliances which his father had made with foreign princes. At the same time, he took and subscribed the oath for the security of the church of Scotland, as required by the act of union. Next day he was proclaimed king of Great Britain. The parliament assembled in pursuance of the act made for that purpose; but was immediately prorogued by commission to the twenty-seventh day of the month. All the great officers of state continued in their places; sir Robert Walpole kept possession of the treasury; and the system of politics which the late king had established underwent no sort of alteration. The king, in his speech to both houses at the opening of the session, professed a fixed resolution to merit the love and affection of his people, by maintaining them in the full enjoyment of their religious and civil rights. He promised to lessen the public expense as soon as the circumstances of affairs would permit: he observed to the commons, that the grant of the greatest part of the civil list revenues was now determined; and that it would be necessary for them to make a new provision for the support of him and his family: lastly, he recommended it to both houses to dispatch the business that should be necessarily brought before them, as the season of the year and the circumstances of time required their presence in the country. Addresses of condolence and congratulation being drawn up and presented, the commons, in a committee of the whole house, took into consideration a motion for a supply to his majesty. Sir Robert Walpole having observed, that the annual sum of seven hundred thousand pounds granted to, and settled on, the late king, had fallen short every year; and that his present majesty’s expenses were likely to increase, by reason of the largeness of his family, moved, that the entire revenues of the civil list, which produced about eight hundred thousand pounds per annum, should be settled on the king during his life. Mr. Shippen opposed this motion, as inconsistent with the trust reposed in them as representatives of the people, who ought to be very frugal in exercising the right of giving away the public money. He said, the sum of seven hundred thousand pounds was not obtained for his late majesty without a long and solemn debate; and every member who contended for it at that time, allowed it to be an ample royal revenue: that, although his majesty’s family should be enlarged, a circumstance which had been urged as one reason for the motion, he presumed the appointments of prince Frederick would not be much inferior to those settled on his present majesty when he was prince of Wales: besides, it was to be hoped that many personal, many particular expenses in the late reign, especially those for frequent journeys to Hanover, would be discontinued, and entirely cease. He observed, that the civil list branches in the queen’s reign did not often exceed the sum of five hundred and fifty thousand pounds; nevertheless, she called upon her parliament but once, in a reign of thirteen years, to pay the debts contracted in her civil government; and these were occasioned by the unparalleled instances of her piety and generosity. She gave the first-fruits and tenths, arising to nineteen thousand pounds a-year, as an augmentation of the maintenance of the poor clergy. She bestowed five thousand pounds per annum, out of the post-office, on the duke of Marlborough: she suffered seven hundred pounds to be charged weekly on the same office, for the service of the public: she expended several hundred thousand pounds in building the castle of Blenheim: she allowed four thousand pounds annually to prince Charles of Denmark: she sustained great loses by the tin contract: she supported the poor Palatines: she exhibited many other proofs of royal bounty: and immediately before her death she had formed a plan of retrenchment, which would have reduced her yearly expenses to four hundred and fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and forty-one pounds. He affirmed, that a million a-year would not be sufficient to carry on the exorbitant expenses, so often and so justly complained of in the house of commons: that over and above the yearly allowance of seven hundred thousand pounds, many occasional taxes, many excessive sums were raised, and all sunk in the bottomless gulf of secret service. Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds were raised in defiance of the ancient parliamentary methods, to secure the kingdom from a Swedish invasion; then the two insurance offices were erected, and paid near three hundred thousand pounds for their charters: our enmity with Sweden being changed into an alliance, a subsidy of seventy-two thousand pounds was implicitly granted, to fulfil some secret engagements with that crown: four and twenty thousand pounds were given for burning merchant ships arrived from infected places, though the goods which ought to have been destroyed for the public safety were afterwards privately sold: a sum of five hundred thousand pounds was demanded, and granted, for paying the debts of the civil list; and his majesty declared by message, he was resolved to retrench his expenses for the future. Notwithstanding this resolution, in less than four years, a new demand of the like sum was made and granted to discharge new incumbrances: the Spanish ships of war which admiral Byng took in the Mediterranean, were sold for a considerable sum of money: one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds were granted in the last session, to be secretly disposed of for the public utility; and there was still a debt in the civil government, amounting to above six hundred thousand pounds. He took notice, that this amazing extravagance happened under the conduct of persons pretending to surpass all their predecessors in the knowledge and care of the public revenue: that as none of these sums had been accounted for, they were, in all probability, employed in services not fit to be owned. He said, he heartily wished that Time, the great discoverer of hidden truths and concealed iniquities, might produce a list of all such as had been perverted from their public duty by private pensions: who had been the hired slaves and the corrupt instruments of a profuse and vain-glorious administration. He proposed, that instead of granting an addition to the civil list, they should restrict that revenue to a certain sum, by concluding the question with these words, “in like manner as they were granted and continued to his late majesty, so as to make up the clear yearly sum of seven hundred thousand pounds.” To these particulars, which were indeed unanswerable, no reply was made. Even this mark of decency was laid aside, as idle and superfluous. The house agreed to the motion; and a bill was brought in for the better support of his majesty’s household. The commons having received a message from the king, desiring they would make further provision for the queen his consort, resolved, That in case she should survive his majesty, the sum of one hundred thousand pounds should be settled upon her for life, charged upon the revenues of the civil list, together with his majesty’s palace of Somerset-house, and Richmond Old-park. A bill was formed on this resolution, which, as well as the other, passed both bouses, and received the royal assent on the seventeenth day of July, when the king, in a speech to both houses, expressed his satisfaction with their conduct, and congratulated them on the wealth and glory of the nation, by which they had acquired such weight in holding the balance of Europe. Then the lord-chancellor prorogued the parliament to the twenty-ninth day of August; but on the seventh day of that month a proclamation was issued for dissolving this, and convoking another.
In the interim some changes were made in different departments of civil economy. Lord viscount Torrington was placed at the head of the admiralty; the earl of Westmoreland was appointed first lord commissioner of trade and plantations. Philip Dormer Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield, a nobleman remarkable for his wit, eloquence, and polished manners, was nominated ambassador to the Hague. The privy-council being dissolved, another was appointed of the members then present. The duke of Devonshire was dignified with the place of president; and the duke of St. Alban’s was appointed master of the horse. On the eleventh day of October, the coronation of the king and queen was performed at Westminster-Abbey, with the usual solemnity.* By this time the courts of France and Spain were perfectly reconciled; all Europe was freed from the calamities of war; and the peace of Great Britain suffered no interruption, except from some transient tumults among the tinners of Cornwall, who, being provoked by a scarcity of corn, rose in arms and plundered the granaries of that county.
* King George II. ascended the throne in the forty-fourth year of his age. On the second day of September, 1705, he espoused the princess Wilhelmina Charlotte Caroline, daughter to John Frederick, marquis of Brandenburgh Anspach, by whom he had two sons, Frederick Louis, prince of Wales, born at Hanover on the thirty-first day of January, 1707, and William Augustus, born at London on the fifteenth day of April, 1721. She had likewise borne four princesses, namely, Anne, Amelia, Caroline, Mary, and was afterwards delivered of Louisa, married in the sequel to the king of Denmark.
NEW PARLIAMENT.
The elections in England and Scotland for the parliament having succeeded on the new system, according to the wishes of the ministry, the two houses met on the twenty-third day of January, when the commons unanimously chose for their speaker Arthur Onslow, esquire, knight of the shire for Surrey, a gentleman of extensive knowledge, worth, and probity; grave, eloquent, venerable, and every way qualified for the discharge of that honourable and important office. The king, in his speech to this new parliament, declared, that by the last advices from abroad, he had reason to hope the difficulties which had hitherto retarded the execution of the preliminaries, and the opening of the congress, would soon be entirely removed; in the meantime, he represented the absolute necessity of continuing the preparation which had hitherto secured the nation, and prevented an open rupture in Europe. He promised, that his first care should be to reduce, from time to time, the expense of the public, as often, and as soon as the interest and safety of his people would permit such reduction. He expressed an earnest desire of seeing the foundation laid of an effectual scheme for the increase and encouragement of seamen in general, that they might be invited rather than compelled into the service of their country. Finally, he recommended unanimity, zeal, and despatch of the public business. Those speeches, penned by the minister, were composed with a view to soothe the minds of the people into an immediate concurrence with the measures of the government; but without any intention of performing those promises of economy, reformation, and national advantage. The two houses seemed to vie with each other in expressions of applause and affection to his majesty. The lords, in their address, hailed him as the best of kings, and the true father of his country. The commons expressed the warmest sense of gratitude for the blessings they enjoyed in his reign, though it was not yet eight months old. They approved of all his transactions; they promised to support him in all his undertakings; and declared they would cheerfully grant whatever supplies should be wanted for the public service. Having considered the estimates which were laid before them by order of his majesty, they voted two-and-twenty thousand nine hundred and fifty-five men for guards and garrisons; and fifteen thousand seamen for the service of the ensuing year. They granted two hundred and thirty thousand nine hundred and twenty-three pounds, for the maintenance of twelve thousand Hessian troops; a subsidy of fifty thousand pounds to the king of Sweden; and half that sum to the duke of Brunswick Wolfenbuttle.* The expense of the year amounted to four millions, raised by a land-tax of three shillings in the pound, a malt-tax, and by borrowing of the bank one million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, for which annuities to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, to be raised by duties on coals imported into the city of London, were granted to that corporation.
* Nothing could be a greater burlesque upon the negotiation than this treaty of alliance concluded with the petty duke of Wolfenbuttle, who very gravely guarantees to his Britannic majesty the possession of his three kingdoms, and obliges himself to supply his majesty with five thousand men, in consideration of an annual subsidy of five-and- twenty thousand pounds for four years.