History of Cabinets. From the Union with Scotland to the acquisition of Canada and Bengal

Chapter I. Dettingen

1742-3- Attempt to Impeach Walpole — Secret Service Money — Pulteney in the Lords — Carteret at Hanover — His Ascendancy in Council — Settling a King's Speech — Disappointment of Opposition — More Troops for Hanover? — Limiting of Public-houses — George II. Secretly Consults Walpole — Carteret and the King at Dettingen — Jealousy of Carteret's Reticenc — Pelham Succeeds Wilmington at the Treasury — First Lesson to a First Lord. WALPOLE being at length driven from power, the demolition of his system of rule, so frequently and loudly promised, was feverishly awaited by the crowd who exulted in his fall. To make a show of redeeming the pledges given to search out corruption and to bring evil-doers to punishment, Lord Limerick moved for a Secret Committee to inquire into the malpractices and abuses of the ten preceding years.

But it was hard to in duce the Commons which had rejected the greater to adopt the lesser charge, confined as it was in scope to the personal conduct of the late Minister, and it took all the arts of Pitt and Pulteney to obtain a majority of seven. The zeal of the Commons for re trenchment speedily cooled. Vows of Executive reform could not be entirely ignored ; yet if the distribution of blame were to be inexorably just, not a few who had shared in the late triumph were in danger of being found aiders and abettors of sin. Proofs jndeed were said to be forthcoming, and the Treasury was ex- VOL. II. B horted to expose purposes which no man who loved his country could think of without indignation— the bribing of votes, the purchase of boroughs, the enlisting of hirelings, the multiplying of dependents, and the corrupting of Parliaments.

The Committee gave their chief attention to the use made of Secret Service money ; but they were baffled at every turn, and made little way. Nicholas Paxton, confidential solicitor to the Treasury, when examined as to election payments, refused to answer questions that might implicate others or criminate him self. He had been brought up under Cracherode, in the previous reign, and received from him when he retired a balance in hand of £5,000, ostensibly for the purpose of carrying on the business of Government at the poll. Under the efficient management of the deposed Minister, the working capital of corruption grew, and it appeared that he had received altogether about £94,000, for the specific application of which he stoutly refused to answer, and he was thereupon committed to Newgate. The Committee reported that from 1731 to 1741 vast sums had been spent as Secret Service money.

They contrasted the amount with that expended from 1707 to 17 17, a period which included a long war, a dangerous rebellion, a disputed succession, and the Union with Scotland. The amounts paid from the time of the Revolution were constantly on the increase. From 1731 to 1741 they amounted to £1,440,128 — upon an average £144,000 a year. John Scrope, M.P. for Lyme Regis, who had been for many years Business Secretary to the Department, when called on to give evidence, refused to take an oath which would have bound him to disclose what had been done with £1,052,211 traced to his hands and those of the Minister, for the purposes of Secret Service. Consideration was shown to his advanced age and personal character, and he was allowed time to reconsider. He told the Committee, when summoned a second time, that he had con suited the most eminent lawyers, and best divines of his acquaint ance, and that they concurred in holding him bound by his official obligation to the late First Lord and to the King.

He had laid the case before his Majesty, who declined to permit his disclosure of the details he might be asked to give as a witness, and, be the consequences what they might, he respectfully refused to be sworn. At his time of life it was not worth while to leave SECRET SERVICE MONEY. 3 it in the power of any man to say that he had betrayed the Sovereign or the Minister who had long trusted him ; and he was therefore prepared to abide the resolution of the Committee, whatever it might be. His scruples were respected, and he was not pressed further. There were still some sanguine enough to hope that out of Cornwall light might be elicited. Mr. Edgcumbe, well known for his practical popularity there, had a hint that he would be expected to attend ; and as his trans actions on behalf of the Ministry had been chiefly with the Duke of Newcastle, he naturally felt that he might enlist the susceptibilities of his Grace in a dexterous proceeding to ward off the blow.

He longed not for office, but for a coronet, of which he had been disappointed more than once to make way for bigger men ; but the fulness of time was come, and the dignity prompts gazetted would baffle the curiosity of the Commons. Thus it came to pass, to the wonderment of not a few, that the Member for Plympton was created a Baron.1 Sir John Barnard, who had often wrestled with Walpole on the floor of finance, declared himself so disgusted with the inveteracy shown towards the fallen Minister that he retired from the Committee. They did their best to get secondary evidence of the offences charged, but felt obliged regretfully to own that not more than £1,400,000 of public money remained unaccounted for ; and that little more than £57,000 had gone to pay the writers in the Gazetteer, the defenders of the faith that was dead.

For a show of sincerity in tracking corruption through its official windings, a Bill was passed granting an indemnity to anyone who should criminate himself in his testimony before the Committee. But such a precedent for ex post facto inquisition would have been, it was felt, highly inconvenient. It was denounced in the Peers by Carteret as unconstitutional, and rejected by 109 to 57. In the Commons it was moved that the rejection of the Bill by the Lords was an obstruction of justice, and might prove a fatal blow to the liberties of the nation. The promoters of the Bill, however, did not on this occasion succeed in collectively keeping their countenance, and but 193 to 245 voted censure on the Upper House ; and upon this closing scene of Walpolian rule the historic curtain falls. From time to time a corner is raised by cynical Horace the younger, or little Lord Hervey, and we 1 17th April, 1742.

B catch a glimpse of the doings which the Secret Committee sought in vain to pry into. But the rest of the acts of Sir Robert, all that he did, all the pensions he gave, and all the Members he bought, are not to be found in any of the books of the Kings of England. Baffled in their search for probable details by the refusal of the ex-Minister's agents to peach on their master, the Committee relied on general notoriety as sufficient evidence of the fact ; which it is indeed impossible for anyone to doubt who reads the personal memoirs of the time, reinforced by partial disclosures of half-repentant accomplices willing to float ashore with the turning tide, but not expected to remember too much or too particu larly what might directly compromise former friends. It was one of these indecencies of political life which everyone in public declared to be scandalous, and from which few in private were altogether free.

Hervey and Horace Walpole talk of the mat ter in the same cynical tone of half-banter and half-blame with which they speak of wantonness in old men, or indelicacy in women. Neither could have kept his countenance had he tried to speak gravely of Treasury investments in rural boroughs as morally wrong. Morality was held to have nothing to do with the matter ; but it was always an open question among privileged gamblers, how far it was worth while playing with some few of the lowest cards marked, when everyone knew that no game of office could be won without them. There was, indeed, a certain jealousy whenever there seemed to be an excessive interference by Government in the Seat-market. What at the utmost it actually amounted to does not distinctly appear ; but when the Government was strong and the Exchequer rich, there was always a disposition among the unofficial buyers of boroughs to grumble at their spoiling the market ; and the excessive use of irresponsible power in this as in other respects was condemned as unfair.

The accusation of having surreptitiously shared in Government contracts was endorsed by Lord Limerick's Committee ; but the friends of the accused Minister found it easy to repel this, by a sifting analysis of the vague and unsatisfactory evidence adduced against him. That corruption of this kind was not uncommon we may reasonably infer from the phlegmatic tone in which it was discussed, and the readiness with which the imputation was aVTTEMPT TO IMPEACH WALPOLE. 5 believed. But Walpole had no need to sully his hands with constructive bribery of this sort ; and any appellate tribunal impartially constituted would have reversed this portion of the verdict against him, and returned at least one of not proven. The Session closed without anything having been done to prevent the continuance by the Cabinet of the clandestine prac tices, the name of which had thrown Parliament into such paroxysms of virtue.

That they were punctually and persistently resumed, the correspondence of Ministers with one another and with their respective agents sufficiently shows. For " Ye blessed creatures, we do hear ye, One to another call." Walpole, who had pulled the strings throughout the complicated negotiations and manœuvres that followed his resignation, had succeeded to his heart's content in splitting the Opposition into its primary elements. The secession of Carteret, Sandys, Win chilsea, Gower, and Pulteney and their numerous friends, drove Pitt and Grenville to reorganise their party in alliance with that of Shippen and Sir J. Hynde Cotton, on a new though narrow basis. Loud and deep, incoherent but inveterate, were still the demands for impeachment. Walpole was no coward, and having survived numberless vicissitudes of fortune, he had grown habit ually hard to frighten ; and he used to make open fun of real as well as imaginary danger.

He could laugh without affectation in the very hour of his fall ; and honestly pity the King when he wept for it. Yet there were moments in which his stout heart quailed at the contingency of the power he had lost falling into reckless and vindictive hands. His own persecution of Ox ford, the attainder of Bolingbroke, the beggary and banishment of Atterbury were not yet forgotten. He did not believe in the inveteracy of Carteret, whose chief study was to conciliate Royal favour, and whose nobler and kindlier nature was more to be relied on than the shuffling plausibilities of Newcastle. Of Hardwicke he thought better, though he had not forgotten how he slunk from the side of Lord Macclesfield when his patron's position, credit, and fortune, were in jeopardy. Still, with his never-failing shrewdness in striking the balance of temp tation, he judged rightly that the two best things for him would be that Hardwicke should remain in the Cabinet, and that Pulteney should be allowed to disappoint the hopes he had raised of impersonating unworldly virtue.

His own career in the Com mons being ended, it was a consolation to think that he had left no Pulteney behind him. But no attempt was made after all to formulate measures of impeachment, and, had there been, the assent of too many would have been necessary who for various reasons could not have afforded the practical adoption of such a proceeding. Pulteney was declared Earl of Bath, and Chesterfield affected to lament that he had fallen upstairs ; but he retained his seat in the Cabinet, and ere long repented his self-denying ordinance. He had played a great part as Tribune of the Gentry and leader ofthe untitled aristocracy in Opposition, of whom he was, per haps, as fine and yet as fair a specimen as was ever seen. Valuing highly the wealth which rendered independence easy, he could not be drawn by the lure of official emolument into public inconsistency, whereby he might have doubled his fortune.

Enjoying, as few ever did, the sense of being raised by his own intellect and eloquence above his fellows, he refused repeatedly to ascend halfway the heights of the Executive. Other men had waited and worked long to gain that much-coveted reward — the being called upon in the hour of party triumph to form a Ministry. But each and all of them had either spurned the com mand when coupled with unworthy conditions, or had taken a secondary place in a new combination. Pulteney did neither. He insisted on showing the world that he had led the way over Jordan, although he did not enter the promised land. He remained in the Commons during the Session, and strained every nerve to obtain by degrees better terms for his more than half-disappointed party. His tone regarding the Sovereign was sufficiently imperious ; and the more so, because he found him self, in consequence of the aversion of George II., shut out from all means of personal influence.

He was compelled to act through Carteret when he would persuade, and through the House of Commons when he would command. At the instance of Walpole, the King gave him to understand that as the posi tion he assumed was alike unprecedented and unconstitutional, implying without official responsibility a sort of tribunician power, he ought to put an end to illegitimate suspicions by the accept ance of a peerage. Pulteney instinctively recoiled from the DISMISSAL OF HERVEY. 7 irrevocable step which everybody but his wife saw clearly would break his enchanter's wand ; and he continued during the Session to urge the promotion of faithful friends and the removal of dis trusted adherents. Of the latter none was more persistently desired than that of Hervey, whose bitter wit had left him few friends either amongst new or old courtiers.

He relied on the habitual confidence reposed in him by the King, and the remembrance of the singular l'egard which had always been shown him by Queen Caroline. All suggestions for his dismissal failed for a considerable time. At length, in the beginning of July, Pulteney declared that, unless Hervey were compelled to make room for Gower as Privy Seal, he should con sider all understanding between him and the Court at an end, and that in that case he should certainly decline going to the Lords. Hervey was told he must give way. In appeasement of his remonstrance, his Majesty offered him a pension out of the Civil List which he at first declined, hinting that his father would make good his official loss ; but eventually he was glad to remind the King of his munificent offer, stipulating only that he should be made a Lord of the Bedchamber, as an ostensible reason for his voting with Government.

Discordant views rendered opposition practically powerless, either to modify Ministerial policy or to exact a participation in office. A malcontent council of nine consisted of Bedford, Chesterfield, Gower, Pitt, Lyttelton, Cobham, Waller, Dodington, and Sir J. Cotton. The latter four had urged the exaction of some legislative concessions before taking office, and they per suaded themselves, if not others, that Pelham had encouraged their ideas of a Place Bill, by which subaltern officers in the Army and Navy might be excluded from Parliament, and collectors of Customs and Excise deprived of their votes. There is no evidence that he ever committed himself to any terms of the kind, and there is no probability that he believed his col leagues would ever consent to them. Waller, indeed, went so far as to ascribe the Place Bill offered by Pelham to his in capacity and pusillanimity, not that he felt any compunction for the public, but merely that he might sit easy in power, and shelter his inability from the force of Waller's experience, Pitt's eloquence, the party strength of Gower and Cotton, the keen and lively parts of Cobham, and the social arts of Dodington, which, if concentrated in support of a patriotic policy, would have proved a serious danger to the Ministry.

The leading members of Opposition saw through the unreality of Treasury professions, and thought they were only losing time by insisting upon terms, letting it be understood, however, that in the grave condition of affairs abroad, they were not averse from a friendly conference with the Triumvirate regarding possible coalition. Carteret accompanied the King to Hanover, and kept his leading colleagues informed of the progress of affairs abroad, which he painted en beau, lamenting the sinister neutrality of the King of Prussia, and exulting in the indomitable resolution of the Empress- Queen. The new Lord Bath amused himself by resuming his old opposition tone of criticism, expatiating on the attenuated confidence of the public in military combinations that, however well planned, resulted in nothing, and endorsing the prevalent demand that every Frenchman should be driven out of the Empire, and the Dutch drawn into giving their support, or else we had better make peace forthwith, and have done with the burthensome war.

He was sorry to remind his Grace of Newcastle that people were not so well satisfied with affairs ; every measure in this country was considered wise or in judicious, according to the success attending it, and not according to the prudence or policy with which it was concerted, and people began already to grudge and grumble at the expenses entered on, so that he found that there would be more difficulty to be met in the next Parliament than once he apprehended. Sir J. H. Cotton bragged much that there would be a full attendance the next Session. He had made a progress through the western parts, and had been at Mr. Dodington's to concert matters for opposition. Great clamours were raised against taking the Hanover troops into our pay, which they said would be of no use whilst the Dutch would not co-operate with us.

He hoped Carteret's journey as Minister in attendance on the King would be successful, but the motive of it must be something more than he cared at present to mention. Lord Stair would probably be offended with it, and as they had had small differences, possibly this might increase them. If Carteret could engage the Dutch to join heartily with us, or if, by going a little further than the Hague, he could draw the King of Prussia GEORGE II. AT HANOVER. 9 from his inglorious neutrality, it would be of infinite conse quence.1 Used to the strain and struggle of pilot in stormy seas, the ex-Tribune hardly knew what to do with himself at anchor in the Lords. In the Cabinet only he could make his power of argument and expression felt, and he was already beginning to see how he could be troublesome.

Nothing had struck the French, he thought, so much as our being able without delay or difficulty to raise over si.x millions at three per cent, for the war, and it might be well without the semblance of boasting to let our allies generally be made aware of the fact. They had all a hankering after English help in the shape of subsidy, and their disposition would be favourably im pressed by a reminder betimes how easily we could afford it. Well might Sandys tremble for financial acts he was unable to control. At a meeting of the Cabinet at Whitehall on the 29th of July, the unanimous advice was given that 16,000 Hanoverians and 6,000 Hessians should be ordered to join the 16,000 British troops already in the field, and advance to the support of the Queen of Hungary.2 Notwithstanding their success in reconstructing the Cabinet, the Pelhams were conscious of their intellectual weakness, and the infirmity of their hold on the humour of the King.

They were no match for Carteret and Pulteney in foreign affairs, or for the undisguised continuance of Walpole's influence at Court. Their chief reliance in Administration was on Hardwicke, who seemed inclined occasionally to take things easy and to be pre occupied with the careful building of his judicial fame, and the expansion of his family importance. The Duke, in one of his intermittent fits of feverish distrust, threw himself at the Chan cellor's feet when he was afraid his indispensable friend was likely to leave town. He had observed less activity in business than formerly, which might arise from an inclination to with draw from the active part of it by degrees, and to confine him self chiefly to his own office. If this were in any measure the case, he must beg of his friend to consider in what situation it would leave him regarding measures started, perhaps in the 1 From Lord Bath, 20th September, 1742. — AIS. 2 Carteret MSS.

Closet, and adopted with precipitation by those who were responsible. His brother had all the prudence, knowledge, ex perience, and good intention that could be wished or hoped for, but it would be difficult for them alone to stem that which, with Hardwicke's weight, authority, and character, would not be twice mentioned. Besides, his brother and he might differ in opinion, in which case he was sure that of their friend would determine both. There had been for many years a unity of thought and action between them, but it would be impossible for him to go on with credit and security to himself, or with advantage to his friends, if the world did not see and understand that the three were one, not in thought only, but in action ; not in action barely, but in the first conception or digestion of things.

This would give them real weight in the Closet and in the Ministry, but this could be done only by the Chancellor him self. If the writer knew his own heart, it was full of all the love, attention, gratitude, and regard that was possible for one man to have for another.1 Lord Gower was regarded as one of the leaders of the Tory party in the Upper House, and though of moderate parts, was much esteemed for his public and private virtues. He declined to be tempted by office until July, 1742, when Wilmington per suaded him to take the Privy Seal, on the assurance that sub stantial reforms were contemplated, the nature of which he felt at liberty to communicate in confidence to his friends, whose chagrin was not disguised. But on Wilmington's death soon after, the promises of improvement were forgotten, and an Earl dom was the only consolation Lord Gower had for the loss of influence he had once enjoyed.2 Argyll's impetuosity and vacillation committed him often to contentions and confidences, neither of which he could thoroughly defend, but his death, in October, relieved his Parliamentary associates from further trouble regarding him, and left Chester field without a rival in the Upper House as a Leader of Op position.

Before the end of October, Hardwicke drafted a Speech from the Throne which he sent to the Duke, " not as complete, but as something to work upon by his brother and himself, and not to 1 To the Chancellor, 3rd August, 1742. 2 "Dr. King's Own Times." HANOVERIAN TROOPS. 11 be hurried into the hands of anyone else, much less of the King, prematurely." l What his Majesty was to say must be settled definitely before he was allowed any opportunity of thinking about it. During the autumn the outcry was renewed for detection and exposure of the waste of public money by the late Board of Treasury, and the Pitts and Grenvilles sought allies in Waller, Shippen, Sir J. H. Cotton, Lord Strange, Dashwood, and Lyttel ton ; and the host of many colours who rallied round them never ceased reviling the turpitude of those who, having had the great delinquent in their grasp, had loosed him and let him go.

The constituencies were urged to make their members feel they must be stern when Parliament came next to judgment. Horace the younger had his own reasons for straining every nerve to catch the rumbling presages of the storm, and spared no opportunity of prejudicing all he knew with the belief of the malice and in justice of his family's accusers. Cobham had not been tempted to take office, and on the Ad dress his friends broke out vehemently against the compromise. Pitt spoke, they said, " like ten thousand angels," and Richard Grenville did his part in the controversy. His younger brother James " was likewise all on fire, but could not get a place." The minority divided 150, but counted their strength all told at 200. " It was inconceivable how colloguing and flattering Ministers were to them, notwithstanding their impertinence." 2 Pitt's speech was not reported.

On the vote for pay of Hanoverian troops to be stationed in Belgium,3 Henry Fox, Surveyor-General of Works, ably defended Carteret's policy. Pitt replied with great spirit, and the memorable duel of twenty years may be said to have begun. Pitt was more open than formerly in satire on the Elector of Hanover, whom he refused to identify with the King of Eng land in fulfilling treaties, paying troops, or providing for their employment. If bound by engagements to support the Queen of Hungary in the field, he should have raised his Hano verian troops at the cost of Hanover, and sent them to her aid, instead of dispatching them to a place far from danger to 1 Hardwicke to Newcastle, 18th Oct., 1742. — JUS. - R. Grenville to his brother, 22nd November, 1742. 3 10th December, 1742. eat and sleep ; or, if generosity rather than justice were the im pelling motive, the honourable feeling ought not to be gratified at the expense of England, that had no interest in the quarrel.

When, if ever, will the whole truth of this remarkable period of executive rule be written ? Old Horace, writing two years after his brother's fall to the trusted chaplain Etough, wished that well-informed aid could be given to Tindal, who, he heard, was writing a continuation of Rapin, and who was most likely to tell the truth.1 The Chaplain was, evidently, thought the safest hand through which such communications might be made, as one not likely to be mistaken about facts and motives. And the sug gestion marks him as a witness of especial value on the Walpole side of the controversy. He responded as was to have been ex pected, and urged his old friend and gossip to put together every jot and tittle of contemporary annals tending to vindicate the statesman's claim to honoured recollection. 2 Carteret, after twelve years' exclusion from office, found his hands too full of foreign affairs, bygone, actual, and impending, to find time for the interminable details of patronage on which many of his colleagues lived.

He could hardly, it was said, be induced to lend serious attention to importunities for place or promotion ; and when set upon by Newcastle to desist from some inconsiderate promise, or to adopt in preference some ill-bred or ill-looking candidate, legal or clerical, he was apt to yield with a shrug, or say with a laugh, " Pooh ! let it be so." Banter came so naturally to him, and humour was so essentially part of his nature, that if every casual word dropped at table or in Council were to be registered against him in its literal sense, his best friend must have failed to make a grave and coherent story of it. His enemies, while he lived, and captious critics ever since, have stumbled over whims of phrase and equivoque of interpretation in a manner of which not a few of his successors at the Foreign Office have been made to feel the discomfort.

Chief Justice Willes, who applied to him for an appointment for one of his ad herents in the law, bored him probably with the recital of cre dentials and testimonials, while the Secretary of State, though willing to be civil, felt far away, and at length, out of patience, he broke out with, " What is it to me who is a judge, and who a 1 From Wolterton, 9th September, 1744. — Etough AIS. 2 To Birch, 6th August, 1744. carteret's foreign policy. 13 bishop? It is my business to make kings and emperors, and to maintain the balance of Europe." His ideality in contrivance, vigour in the use of means, eloquence of tongue and pen, and undoubting confidence in himself, carried him over all common difficulties for a time ; and he counted with reason on the sup port of Bath, Sandys, Winchilsea, Tweeddale, and Gower.

But from the first they were outnumbered by the remains of the old Cabinet, who had held on after Walpole and Wager retired. If Newcastle was not already casting into the deep of intrigue for a new draft, he was busy mending his nets ; and while Wal pole lived the minority in the Cabinet could never feel secure that his personal influence might not be exerted effectually against them. Discontent at the employment of Electoral troops in Flanders did not subside, and in the Upper House Lord Stanhope, son of the once popular Minister, but himself inexperienced in affairs, was put forward to move an Address to the Crown, that, con sidering the burthens of the nation, the foreign mercenaries lately taken into pay should be disbanded. The French were too strong to be kept out of the Low Countries by a group of Hessians and Hanoverians in British pay, and, the constitution of the German Empire forbidding them to take such service, they ought not, in fact, to be so employed.