From the Painting by J. B. Van Loo in the National Portrait Gallery.
Thus did Caroline and Walpole rule England. The means whereby they ruled were tainted at the source; the end may, or may not, have justified the means, but at this distance of time, when the fierce controversies which gathered around Walpole’s policy have passed into history, it must be admitted that the results were good. England was sick unto death of internal and external strife, what she needed was a strong hand at the helm and a settled government, and under Caroline and Walpole she secured both, and ten years of peace abroad and plenty at home in addition. This long peace enabled England to recover herself within her borders; British credit, which had sunk to zero, rose higher than it had been for years, trade and commerce increased, land went up in value, wheat became cheaper, and everywhere signs of prosperity were manifest. By degrees, and it was here that Caroline’s tact came in, the different classes of the community were reconciled to the Hanoverian dynasty; the Church and the country squires held out the longest, but though they retained a tender sentiment for the exiled Stuarts they came in some vague way to connect their material prosperity with the maintenance of the Hanoverian régime. This result was not achieved without some loss, chiefly to be found in the lowering of the old ideals. The clergy, from causes on which we shall dwell more fully later, became indifferent, and the Church sank into apathy; the country gentry lost, together with their old passionate loyalty to the King, some of their sense of personal responsibility towards their poorer neighbours, and took a lower view of their duties to the State. Much of the grossness and selfishness which disfigured the eighteenth century was due to an excess of material prosperity, and a consequent lowering of ideals in our national life.
Very soon the King, who when Prince of Wales had always posed as English in all his sentiments, began his father’s game of sacrificing English interests to those of Hanover. So subservient was the new House of Commons, and so unscrupulous were Walpole’s tactics, that only eighty-four members were found to vote against a proposal to pay £280,000 to maintain Hessian troops for the benefit of Hanover; and the subsidy of £25,000 a year for four years to the Duke of Wolfenbüttel, in return for his promise to furnish troops for a similar purpose, was passed with very little opposition. The maintenance of the Hessian troops was part of the price Walpole had to pay the King for preferring him to Compton, and the Duke of Wolfenbüttel’s subsidy was hush-money pure and simple, paid for his handing over the late King’s will.
Though the Opposition was weak in numbers, and suffered from a lack of cohesion in its different groups, it was strong in the quality of its individual members. Pulteney headed the opposition to Walpole in the House of Commons, more especially that part of it which included the malcontent Whigs and the more moderate Tories who supported the Hanoverian succession. It was Bolingbroke who built up this party, and he invented for it the name of “Patriots”. Carteret, and later Chesterfield, were among its leading lights, but Pulteney was the chief. This remarkable man was in the prime of life, and endowed with natural and acquired advantages. He was of good birth, and the owner of great wealth; he had a handsome person, a dignified manner and a cultured mind. His wit and scholarship almost rivalled Bolingbroke’s, and as an orator he had few equals, and no superior, in his generation. Pulteney’s abilities as a statesman were of the highest order; he had been a colleague of Walpole in earlier days, and stood by him in many a hard fought fight. He had therefore the strongest claims for place. But Walpole, jealous of Pulteney’s powers, passed him over for Cabinet office and offered him a minor post in the Government, and a peerage. The latter was refused, the former accepted for a time, but Pulteney soon resigned and went into active opposition. He joined forces with Bolingbroke, and the first fruit of their union was the Craftsman, a journal which fiercely attacked Walpole and his policy, the second was the formation of the Patriots’ party. Bolingbroke, though still excluded from the House of Lords, was able through the medium of the Craftsman to address himself to the wider constituency of the nation. His articles against his lifelong enemy were masterpieces of damaging criticism and polished invective. Besides Bolingbroke, the ablest political writers of the day contributed to the Craftsman.
The most remarkable feature of the Opposition was the fact that it included men who, though differing widely among themselves, were united in common hatred of Walpole. There became practically only two parties in the State, those who were for Walpole and those who were against him; and the differences between malcontent Whig and Tory, Jacobite and Hanoverian, sank into comparative insignificance. Thus Pulteney and Carteret were staunch Hanoverians and Whigs, Barnard was a Hanoverian Tory, Wyndham a Tory with Jacobite leanings, and Shippen a Jacobite out and out; Bolingbroke stood among these parties, partaking a little of them all, and concentrating into himself the essence of their hatred of Walpole.
No English Minister has ever been hated more than Walpole and none has had abler foes. The combination of two such master-minds as Bolingbroke and Pulteney would, under ordinary circumstances, have broken down any Minister. But the circumstances were not ordinary, and no statesman was more successful than Walpole in overcoming his enemies. His success was largely due to the steady support he received from the Queen. To her wise counsels was also something due. Walpole now refrained from violent measures against his political opponents, even under intense provocation. Hitherto in English politics the party in power had consistently persecuted the party in the minority. But now a new era set in; it was possible to oppose a powerful Minister and yet not be sent to the Tower or impeached as a traitor. This more generous policy may be directly traced to Queen Caroline, for Walpole in George the First’s reign had been anything but conciliatory, and no Minister had urged more fiercely than he the impeachment, the exile, and even the death of his political opponents. It was he who had clamoured for the execution of the Jacobite peers. But Caroline now exercised a restraining hand. During her ten years of queenship great freedom of speech was allowed in Parliament and outside it, and the widest liberty was given to the press. Impeachment, fining and imprisonment of politicians in opposition to the Government were things unheard of, and Caroline was careful to conciliate, or to endeavour to conciliate, such members of the Opposition as were loyal, or professed themselves to be loyal, to the Hanoverian dynasty. She remained on good terms with John, Duke of Argyll, who had been the King’s favourite when he was Prince of Wales, but who had now gone into the cold shade of Opposition, and resigned all his offices about the court. She even received Pulteney much against Walpole’s wish, and she had a smile and a gracious word for many of the Patriots when they came her way, always excepting Bolingbroke, whom she never would admit to the least atom of her favour. In Caroline’s wise policy may be seen the germs of that strict impartiality which the Sovereign ought to show towards prominent statesmen, whether they are in office or in opposition. This has now become almost an unwritten law of the English Constitution.
In a far lesser degree Caroline’s influence may also be traced in the way in which Walpole, though possessing the power to force through Parliament any measure he would, refrained from running counter to the popular will, when that will was unmistakably declared. True, here his own inherent statesmanship came in, and counselled moderation. But Caroline also had theories about the popular will and civil liberty which she had acquired in her youth from Sophie Charlotte of Prussia, the “Republican Queen,” and this at least may be claimed for her, that she taught Walpole the art of making his concessions gracefully. Her love of liberty in matters of religion showed itself in the zeal with which she urged indulgence to Protestant dissenters; the time was not supposed to be ripe for the repeal of the penal laws against them, but annual Acts of Indemnity were passed which practically gave them the relief they desired, and drew the fangs of the Test and Corporation Acts. Caroline’s power was most noticeable in the dispensing of patronage; it is not too much to say that in all the ten years she was Queen no important appointment, either in Church or State, was made without her having some voice in it. In this transition period the judicious distribution of patronage influenced largely the future of the nation, and the Queen, who saw further ahead than most of her contemporaries, was fully conscious of its importance. Thus this princess, who little more than a decade before was a stranger to the English laws and constitution, was able to shape and guide the destinies of England.
FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER II:
[7] “A particular account of the solemnities used at the Coronation of His Sacred Majesty King George II. and of his Royal Consort Queen Caroline on Wednesday the 11th October, 1727,” London, 1760. From the pamphlet the other particulars of the coronation are taken.
[8] She had been appointed governess to the three eldest princesses by George I., but was dismissed by Queen Caroline.