[5] The words of the patent are "to pass and to be received as current money, by such as shall or will, voluntarily and wittingly, and not otherwise, receive the same" (the halfpence and farthings). [T. S.]
[6] Phalaris, the genuineness of whose Letters had occasioned the famous controversy which brought about Swift's first venture into literature with the Battle of the Books.
CHARACTER OF GEORGE II. (1683-1760).
A. By Lord Hervey.
Source.—Memoirs. Vol. i., pp. 145, 146.
His faults were more the blemishes of a private man than of a King. The affection and tenderness he invariably showed to a people over whom he had unbounded rule [in Hanover] forbid our wondering that he used circumscribed power with moderation [in England]. Often situated in humiliating circumstances, his resentments seldom operated when the power of revenge returned. He bore the ascendant of his Ministers, who seldom were his favourites, with more patience than he suffered any encroachment on his will from his mistresses. Content to bargain for the gratification of his two predominant passions, Hanover and money, he was almost indifferent to the rest of his royal authority, provided exterior observance was not wanting; for he comforted himself if he did not perceive the diminution of Majesty, though it was notorious to all the rest of the world. Yet he was not so totally careless of the affection and interests of his country as his father had been. George the First possessed a sounder understanding and a better temper: yet George the Second gained more by being compared with his eldest son, than he lost if paralleled with his father.
B. By Horace Walpole.
Source.—Memoirs of the Reign of George II. (2nd ed.), 1848. Vol. i., pp. 175, 176; vol. iii., pp. 303, 304.
The King had fewer sensations of revenge, or at least knew how to hoard them better, than any man who ever sat upon a Throne. The insults he experienced from his own and those obliged servants, never provoked him enough to make him venture the repose of his people, or his own. If any object of his hate fell in his way, he did not pique himself upon heroic forgiveness, but would indulge it at the expense of his integrity, though not of his safety. He was reckoned strictly honest; but the burning his father's will must be reckoned an indelible blot upon his memory; as a much later instance [1749] of his refusing to pardon a young man who had been condemned at Oxford for a most trifling forgery, contrary to all example when recommended to mercy by the Judge, merely because Welles, who was attached to the Prince of Wales, had tried him and assured him his pardon, will stamp his name with cruelty, though in general his disposition was merciful if the offence was not murder. His avarice was much less equivocal than his courage; he had distinguished the latter early [at Oudenarde]; it grew more doubtful afterwards[7]: the former he distinguished very near as soon, and never deviated from it. His understanding was not near so deficient, as it was imagined; but though his character changed extremely in the world, it was without foundation; for [whether] he deserved to be so much ridiculed as he had been in the former part of his reign, or so respected as in the latter, he was consistent in himself, and uniformly meritorious or absurd.
[7] This is unjust—George II. displayed conspicuous courage at Dettingen.