Chapter II…

Chapter II

Remarkable Instance of Suicide..... Affairs of the Continent..... Meeting of the Parliament..... Address to the King touching the Spanish Depredations..... The Excise Scheme proposed by Sir Robert Walpole..... Opposition to the Scheme..... Bill for a Dower to the Princess Royal----Debate in the House of Lords concerning the Estates of the late Directors of the South-Sea Company..... Double Election of a King in Poland..... The Kings of France, Spain, and Sardinia, join against the Emperor..... The Prince of Orange arrives in England..... Altercation in the House of Commons..... Debate about the Removal of the Duke of Bolton and Lord Viscount Cobham from their respective Regiments..... Motion for the Repeal of the Septennial Act..... Conclusion of a remarkable Speech by Sir W. Wyndham...... Message from the King for Powers to augment the Forces in the Intervals between the two Parliaments..... Opposition in the House of Peers..... Parliament dissolved..... Dantzic besieged by the Russians..... Philipsburgh taken by the French..... Don Carlos takes possession of Naples..... Battle of Parma..... The Imperialists are again worsted at Gustalla..... An Edict in France, compelling the British Subjects in that Kingdom to enlist in the French Army..... New Parliament in Great Britain..... Debate on a Subsidy to Denmark..... Petition of some Scottish Noblemen to the House of Peers..... Bill explaining an Act of the Scottish Parliament touching wrongous Imprisonment..... Misunderstanding between the Courts of Spain and Portugal..... Sir John Norris sails with a strong Squadron to Lisbon..... Preliminaries signed by the Emperor and the King of France..... Proceedings in Parliament..... Bill for preventing the Retail of Spiritous Liquors..... Another for the Relief of Quakers in the Article of Tithes..... Mortmain Act..... Remarkable Riot at Edinburgh..... Rupture between the Czarina and the Ottoman Porte..... The Session of Parliament opened by Commission..... Motion in both Houses for a Settlement on the Prince of Wales..... Fierce Debate on this Subject..... Scheme by Sir John Barnard for reducing the Interest of the National Debt..... Bill against the City of Edinburgh..... Play-house Bill.

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REMARKABLE INSTANCE OF SUICIDE.

The most remarkable incident that distinguished this year in England was a very uncommon instance of suicide; an act of despair so frequent among the English, that in other countries it is objected to them as a national reproach. Though it may be generally termed the effect of lunacy proceeding from natural causes operating on the human body, in some few instances it seems to have been the result of cool deliberation. Richard Smith, a bookbinder, and prisoner for debt within the liberties of the king’s bench, persuaded his wife to follow his example in making away with herself, after they had murdered their little infant. This wretched pair were, in the month of April, found hanging in their bed-chamber, at about a yard’s distance from each other; and in a separate apartment the child lay dead in a cradle. They left two papers enclosed in a short letter to their landlord, whose kindness they implored in favour of their dog and cat. They even left money to pay the porter who should carry the enclosed papers to the person for whom they were addressed. In one of these the husband thanked that person for the marks of friendship he had received at his hands; and complained of the ill offices he had undergone from a different quarter. The other paper, subscribed by the husband and wife, contained the reasons which induced them to act such a tragedy on themselves and their offspring. This letter was altogether surprising for the calm resolution, the good humour, and the propriety with which it was written. They declared, that they withdrew themselves from poverty and rags--evils that, through a train of unlucky accidents, were become inevitable. They appealed to their neighbours for the industry with which they had endeavoured to earn a livelihood. They justified the murder of their child, by saying, it was less cruelty to take her with them, than to leave her friendless in the world, exposed to ignorance and misery. They professed their belief and confidence in Almighty God, the fountain of goodness and beneficence, who could not possibly take delight in the misery of his creatures; they therefore resigned up their lives to him without any terrible apprehensions; submitting themselves to those ways which, in his goodness, he should appoint after death. These unfortunate suicides had been always industrious and frugal, invincibly honest, and remarkable for conjugal affection.

AFFAIRS OF THE CONTINENT.

Trustees having been appointed by charter to superintend a new settlement in Georgia, situated to the southward of Carolina in America, Mr. Oglethorpe, as general and governor of the province, embarked at Gravesend, with a number of poor families, to plant that colony. The king of Spain having equipped a very powerful armament, the fleet sailed on the fourth of June from the road of Alicant, under the command of the count de Montemar, and arrived on the coast of Barbary in the neighbourhood of Oran, where a considerable body of troops was landed without much opposition. Next day, however, they were attacked by a numerous army of Moors, over whom they obtained a complete victory. The bey or governor of Oran immediately retired with his garrison, and the Spaniards took possession of the place, from which they had been driven in the year one thousand seven hundred and eight. The strong fort of Mazalaquivir was likewise surrendered to the victors at the first summons; so that this expedition answered all the views with which it had been projected. Victor Amadasus, the abdicated king of Sardinia, having, at the instigation of his wife, engaged in some intrigues in order to reascend the throne, his son, the reigning king, ordered his person to be seized at Montcalier, and conveyed to Rivoli, under a strong escort. His wife, the marchioness de Spigno, was conducted to Seva. The old king’s confessor, his physician, and eight-and-forty persons of distinction, were imprisoned. The citadel of Turin was secured with a strong garrison; and new instructions were given to the governor and senate of Chamberri. The dispute which had long subsisted between the king of Prussia and the young prince of Orange, touching the succession to the estates possessed by king William III. as head of the house of Orange, was at last accommodated by a formal treaty signed at Berlin and Dieren. The Dutch were greatly alarmed about this time with an apprehension of being overwhelmed by an inundation, occasioned by worms, which were said to have consumed the piles and timber-work that supported their dykes. They prayed and fasted with uncommon zeal, in terror of this calamity, which they did not know how to avert in any other manner. At length they were delivered from their fears by a hard frost, which effectually destroyed those dangerous animals. About this time, Mr. Dieden, plenipotentiary from the elector of Hanover, received, in the name of his master, the investiture of Bremen and Verden from the hands of the emperor.

MEETING OF THE PARLIAMENT.

The history of England at this period cannot be very interesting, as it chiefly consists in an annual revolution of debates in parliament,--debates, in which the same arguments perpetually recur on the same subjects. When the session was opened on the sixteenth day of January, the king declared that the situation of affairs, both at home and abroad, rendered it unnecessary for him to lay before the two houses any other reasons for calling them together, but the ordinary dispatch of the public business, and his desire of receiving their advice in such affairs as should require the care and consideration of parliament. The motion made in the house of commons for an address of thanks, implied, that they should express their satisfaction at the present situation of affairs both at home and abroad. The motion was carried, notwithstanding the opposition of those who observed, that the nation had very little reason to be pleased with the present posture of affairs; that the French were employed in fortifying and restoring the harbour of Dunkirk, contrary to the faith of the most solemn treaties; that the British merchants had received no redress for the depredations committed by the Spaniards; that the commerce of England daily decreased; that no sort of trade throve but the traffic of Change-alley, where the most abominable frauds were practised; and that every session of parliament opened a new scene of villany and imposition.

ADDRESS TO THE KING.

The pension-bill was once more revived, and lost again in the house of peers. All the reasons formerly advanced against a standing army were now repeated; and a reduction of the number insisted upon with such warmth, that the ministerial party were obliged to have recourse to the old phantom of the pretender. Sir Archer Croft said, a continuation of the same number of forces was the more necessary, because, to his knowledge, popery was increasing very fast in the country; for in one parish which he knew, there were seven popish priests; and that the danger from the pretender was the more to be feared, because they did not know but he was then breeding his son a protestant. Sir Robert Walpole observed, that a reduction of the army was the chief thing wished for and desired by all the Jacobites in the kingdom; that no reduction had ever been made but what gave fresh hopes to that party, and encouraged them to raise tumults against the government; and he did not doubt but that, if they should resolve to reduce any part of the army, there would be post-horses employed that very night to carry the good news beyond sea to the pretender. His brother Horatio added, that the number of troops then proposed was absolutely necessary to support his majesty’s government, and would be necessary as long as the nation enjoyed the happiness of having the present illustrious family on the throne. The futility, the self-contradiction, and the ridiculous absurdity of these suggestions, were properly exposed; nevertheless, the army was voted without any reduction. Sir Wilfred Lawson having made a motion for an address to the king, to know what satisfaction had been made by Spain for the depredations committed on the British merchants, it was, after a violent debate, approved and the address presented. The king in answer to this remonstrance gave them to understand, that the commissaries of the two crowns had been so long delayed by unforeseen accidents, that the conferences were not opened till the latter end of the preceding February; and that as the courts of London and Madrid had agreed that the term of three years stipulated for finishing the commission should be computed from their first meeting, a perfect account of their proceedings could not as yet be laid before the house of commons. A bill had been long depending for granting encouragement to the sugar colonies in the West Indies; but, as it was founded upon a prohibition that would have put a stop to all commerce between the French islands and the British settlements in North America, it met with a very warm opposition from those who had the prosperity of those northern colonies at heart. But the bill being patronised and supported by the court interest, surmounted all objections, and afterwards passed into a law. While the commons deliberated upon the supply, sir Robert Walpole moved, that five hundred thousand pounds should be issued out of the sinking fund for the service of the ensuing year. Sir William Wyndham, Mr. Pulteney, and sir John Barnard, expatiated upon the iniquity of pillaging a sacred deposit, solemnly appropriated to the discharge of the national debt. They might have demonstrated the egregious folly of a measure, by which the public, for a little temporary ease, lost the advantage of the accumulating interest which would have arisen from the sinking fund, if properly managed and reserved. All objections vanished before the powers of ministerial influence, which nothing now could check but the immediate danger of popular commotion. Such hazardous interposition actually defeated a scheme which had been adopted by the minister, and even before its appearance alarmed all the trading part of the nation.

THE EXCISE SCHEME PROPOSED.

The house having resolved itself into a committee, to deliberate upon the most proper methods for the better security and improvement of the duties and revenues charged upon tobacco and wines, all the papers relating to these duties were submitted to the perusal of the members; the commissioners of the customs and excise were ordered to attend the house, the avenues of which were crowded with multitudes of people; and the members in the opposition waited impatiently for a proposal, in which they thought the liberties of their country so deeply interested. In a word, there had been a call of the house on the preceding day. The session was frequent and full; and both sides appeared ready and eager for the contest when sir Robert Walpole broached his design. He took notice of the arts which had been used to prejudice the people against his plan before it was known. He affirmed that the clamours occasioned by these prejudices had originally risen from smugglers and fradulent dealers, who had enriched themselves by cheating the public; and that these had been strenuously assisted and supported by another set of men, fond of every opportunity to stir up the people of Great Britain to mutiny and sedition. He expatiated on the frauds that were committed in that branch of the revenue arising from the duties on tobacco; upon the hardships to which the American planters were subjected by the heavy duties payable on importation, as well as by the ill usage they had met with from their factors and correspondents in England, who, from being their servants, were now become their masters; upon the injury done to the fair trader; and the loss sustained by the public with respect to the revenue. He asserted that the scheme he was about to propose would remove all these inconveniencies, prevent numberless frauds, perjuries, and false entries, and add two or three hundred thousand pounds per annum to the public revenue. He entered into a long detail of frauds practised by the knavish dealers in those commodities; he recited the several acts of parliament that related to the duties on wine and tobacco; he declared he had no intention to promote a general excise; he endeavoured to obviate some objections that might be made to his plan, the nature of which he at length explained. He proposed to join the laws of excise to those of the customs; that the further subsidy of three farthings per pound charged upon imported tobacco, should be still levied at the custom-house, and payable to his majesty’s civil list as heretofore; that then the tobacco should be lodged in warehouses, to be appointed for that purpose by the commissioners of the excise; that the keeper of each warehouse, appointed likewise hy the commissioners, should have one lock and key, and the merchant-importer have another; and that the tobacco should be thus secured until the merchant should find vent for it, either by exportation or home consumption; that the part designed for exportation should be weighed at the customhouse, discharged of the three farthings per pound which had been paid at its first importation, and then exported without further trouble; that the portion destined for home consumption should, in presence of the warehouse-keeper, be delivered to the purchaser, upon his paying the inland duty of fourpence per pound weight, to the proper officer appointed to receive it; by which means the merchant would be eased of the inconvenience of paying the duty upon importation, or of granting bonds and finding sureties for the payment, before he had found a market for the commodity; that all penalties and forfeitures, so far as they formerly belonged to the crown, should for the future be applied to the use of the public; that appeals in this, as well as in all other cases relating to the excise, should be heard and determined by two or three of the judges, to be named by his majesty; and in the country, by the judge of assize upon the next circuit, who should hear and determine such appeals in the most summary manner, without the formality of proceedings in courts of law or equity.

Such was the substance of the famous excise scheme, in favour of which sir Robert Walpole moved that tha duties and subsidies on tobacco should, from and after the twenty-fourth day of June, cease and determine. The debate which ensued was managed and maintained by all the able speakers on both sides of the question. Sir Robert Walpole was answered by Mr. Perry, member for the city of London. Sir Paul Methuen joined in the opposition. Sir John Barnard, another representative of London, distinguished himself in the same cause.

He was supported by Mr. Pulteney, sir William Wyndham, and other patriots. The scheme was espoused by sir Philip Yorke, appointed lord-chief-justice of the king’s-bench, and ennobled in the course of the ensuing year. Sir Joseph Jekyll approved of the project, which was likewise strenuously defended by lord Hervey, sir Thomas Robinson, sir William Yonge, Mr. Pelham, and Mr. Wilmington, which last excelled all his contemporaries of the ministry in talents and address. Those who argued against the scheme, accused the minister of having misrepresented the frauds and made false calculations. With respect to the supposed hardships under which the planters were said to labour, they affirmed that no planter had ever dreamed of complaining, until instigated by letters and applications from London: that this scheme, far from relieving the planters, would expose the factors to such grievous oppression, that they would not be able to continue the trade, consequently the planters would be entirely ruined; and, after all, it would not prevent those frauds against which it was said to be provided: that from the examination of the commissioners of the customs, it appeared that those frauds did not exceed forty thousand pounds per annum, and might in a great measure be abolished, by a due execution of the laws in being; consequently this scheme was unnecessary, would be ineffectual in augmenting the revenue, destructive to trade, and dangerous to the liberties of the subject, as it tended to promote a general excise, which was in all countries considered as a grievous oppression. They suggested that it would produce an additional swarm of excise officers and warehouse-keepers, appointed and paid by the treasury, so as to multiply the dependents on the crown, and enable it still further to influence the freedom of elections: that the traders would become slaves to excisemen and warehouse-keepers, as they would be debarred all access to their commodities, except at certain hours, when attended by those officers: that the merchant, for every quantity of tobacco he could sell, would be obliged to make a journey, or send a messenger to the office for a permit, which could not be obtained without trouble, expense, and delay: and that should a law be enacted in consequence of this motion, it would in all probability be some time or other used as a precedent for introducing excise laws into every branch of the revenue; in which case the liberty of Great Britain would be no more. In the course of this debate, sir Robert Walpole took notice of the multitudes which had beset all the approaches to the house. He said it would be an easy task for a designing seditious person to raise a tumult and disorder among them: that gentlemen might give them what name they should think fit, and affirm they were come as humble suppliants; but he knew whom the law called sturdy beggars: and those who brought them to that place could not be certain but that they might behave in the same manner. This insinuation was resented by sir John Barnard, who observed that merchants of character had a right to come down to the court of requests, and lobby of the house of commons, in order to solicit their friends and acquaintance against any scheme or project which they might think prejudicial to their commerce: that when he came into the house, he saw none but such as deserved the appellation of sturdy beggars as little as the honourable gentleman himself, or any gentleman whatever.

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After a warm dispute, the motion was carried by a majority of sixty-one voices. Several resolutions were founded on the proposal: and to these the house agreed, though not without another violent contest. The resolutions produced a bill, against which petitions were preferred by the lord-mayor, aldermen, and common-council of London, the city of Coventry and Nottingham. A motion was made that counsel should be heard for the city of London; but it was rejected by the majority, and the petitions were ordered to lie upon the table. Had the minister encountered no opposition but that which appeared within doors, his project would have certainly been carried into execution; but the whole nation was alarmed, and clamoured loudly against the excise-bill. The populace still crowded around Westminster-hall, blocking up all the avenues to the house of commons. They even insulted the persons of those members who had voted for the ministry on this occasion; and sir Robert Walpole began to be in fear of his life. He therefore thought proper to drop the design, by moving that the second reading of the bill might be postponed till the twelfth day of June. Then complaint being made of the insolence of the populace, who had maltreated several members, divers resolutions were taken against those tumultuous crowds and their abettors; these resolves were communicated to the lord-mayor of London, the sheriff of Middlesex, and the high-bailiff of Westminster. Some individuals were apprehended in the court of requests, as having fomented the disturbances; but they were soon released. The miscarriage of the bill was celebrated with public rejoicings in London and Westminster, and the minister was burned in effigy by the populace. After the miscarriage of the excise scheme, the house unanimously resolved to inquire into the frauds and abuses in the customs; and a committee of twenty-one persons was chosen by ballot for this purpose.

{GEORGE II. 1727-1760}

BILL FOR A DOWER TO THE PRINCESS ROYAL.

The subsequent debates of this session were occasioned by a bill to prevent the infamous practice of stock-jobbing, which with great difficulty made its way to the house of lords, who proposed some amendments, in consequence of which it was laid aside; and succeeded by another bill establishing a lottery, to raise five hundred thousand pounds for the relief of those who had suffered by the charitable corporation. After having undergone some alteration, it passed through both houses and obtained the royal assent. The king, by message to parliament, had signified his intention to give the princess royal in marriage to the prince of Orange, promising himself their concurrence and assistance, that he might be enabled to bestow such a portion with his eldest daughter as should be suitable to the occasion. The commons immediately resolved, that but of the monies arising from the sale of lands in the island of St. Christopher’s, his majesty should be empowered to apply fourscore thousand pounds as a marriage dower for his daughter; and a clause for this purpose was inserted in the bill, for enabling his majesty to apply five hundred thousand pounds out of the sinking fund for the service of the current year.

The opposition in the house of lords was still more animated, though ineffectual. The debates chiefly turned upon the pension bill, the number of land forces, and a motion made by lord Bathurst for an account of the produce of the forfeited estates which had belonged to the directors of the South-Sea company. The trustees for these estates had charged themselves with a great sum of money, and the lords in the opposition thought they had a right to know how it had been disposed. The ministry had reasons to stifle this inquiry, and therefore opposed it with all their vigour. Nevertheless, the motion was carried after a warm dispute, and the directors of the South-Sea company were ordered to lay the accounts before the house. From this it appeared that the large sums of money arising from the forfeited estates had been distributed among the proprietors, by way of dividend, even before recourse was had to parliament for directions in what manner that produce should be applied: lord Bathurst, therefore, moved for a resolution of the house that the disposal of this money, by way of dividend, without any order or direction of a general court for that purpose, was a violation of the act of parliament made for the disposal thereof, and a manifest injustice done to the proprietors of that stock. The duke of Newcastle, in order to gain time, moved, that as the account was confused, and almost unintelligible, the present directors of the company might be ordered to lay before the house a further and more distinct account of the manner in which the money had been disposed. A violent contest ensued, in the course of which the house divided, and of fifty-seven peers who voted for the delay, forty-six were such as enjoyed preferment in the church, commissions in the army, or civil employments under the government. At length lord Bathurst waived his motion for that time; then the house ordered that the present and former directors of the South-Sea company, together with the late inspectors of their accounts, should attend and be examined. They were accordingly interrogated, and gave so little satisfaction, that lord Bathurst moved for a committee of inquiry; but the question being put, was carried in the negative: yet a very strong protest was entered by the lords in the opposition. The next subject of altercation was the bill for misapplying part of the produce of the sinking fund. It was attacked with all the force of argument, wit, and declamation, by the earl of Strafford, lords Bathurst and Carteret, and particularly by the earl of Chesterfield, who had by this time resigned his staff of lord-steward of the household, and renounced all connexion with the ministry. Lord Bathurst moved for a resolution, importing that, in the opinion of the house, the sinking fund ought for the future to be applied, in time of peace and public tranquillity, to the redemption of those taxes which were most prejudicial to the trade, most burdensome on the manufactures, and most oppressive on the poor of the nation. This motion was overruled, and the bill adopted by the majority. On the eleventh of June, the king gave the royal assent to the bills that were prepared, and closed the session with a speech, in which he took notice of the wicked endeavours that had been lately used to inflame the minds of the people by the most unjust misrepresentations.

DOUBLE ELECTION OF A KING OF POLAND.

Europe was now reinvolved in fresh troubles by a vacancy on the throne of Poland. Augustus died at Warsaw in the end of January, and the neighbouring powers were immediately in commotion. The elector of Saxony, son to the late king, and Stanislaus, whose daughter was married to the French monarch, declared themselves candidates for the Polish throne. The emperor, the czarina, and the king of Prussia, espoused the interests of the Saxon: the king of France supported the pretensions of his father-in-law. The foreign ministers at Warsaw forthwith began to form intrigues among the electors: the marquis de Monti, ambassador from France, exerted himself so successfully, that he soon gained over the primate, and a majority of the catholic dietines, to the interests of Stanislaus; while the Imperial and Russian troops hovered on the frontiers of Poland. The French king no sooner understood that a body of the emperor’s forces was encamped at Silesia, than he ordered the duke of Berwick to assemble an army on the Rhine, and take measures for entering Germany in case the Imperialists should march into Poland. A French fleet set sail for Dantzic, while Stanislaus travelled through Germany in disguise to Poland, and concealed himself in the house of the French ambassador at Warsaw. As the day of election approached, the Imperial, Russian, and Prussian ministers delivered in their several declarations, by way of protest, against the contingent election of Stanislaus, as a person proscribed, disqualified, depending upon a foreign power, and connected with the Turks and other infidels. The Russian general Lasci entered Poland at the head of fifty thousand men: the diet of the election was opened with the usual ceremony on the twenty-fifth day of August. Prince Viesazowski, chief of the Saxon interest, retired to the other side of the Vistula, with three thousand men, including some of the nobility who adhered to that party. Nevertheless, the primate proceeded to the election: Stanislaus was unanimously chosen king; and appeared in the electoral field, where he was received with loud acclamations. The opposite party soon increased to ten thousand men; protested against the election, and joined the Russian army, which advanced by speedy marches. King Stanislaus finding himself unable to cope with such adversaries, retired with the primate and French ambassador to Dantzic, leaving the palatine of Kiow at Warsaw. This general attacked the Saxon palace, which was surrendered upon terms: then the soldiers and inhabitants plundered the houses belonging to the grandees who had declared for Augustus, as well as the hotel of the Russian minister. In the meantime, the Poles, who had joined the Muscovites, finding it impracticable to pass the Vistula before the expiration of the time fixed for the session of the diet, erected a kelo at Cracow, where the elector of Saxony was chosen and proclaimed by the bishop of Cracow, king of Poland, under the name of Augustus III., on the sixth day of October. They afterwards passed the river, and the palatine of Kiow retiring towards Cracow, they took possession of Warsaw, where in their turn they plundered the palaces and houses belonging to the opposite party.

CONFEDERACY AGAINST THE EMPEROR.

During these transactions, the French king concluded a treaty with Spain and Sardinia, by which those powers agreed to declare war against the emperor. Manifestoes were published reciprocally by all the contracting powers. The duke of Berwick passed the Rhine in October, and undertook the seige of fort Kehl, which in a few days was surrendered on capitulation: then he repassed the river and returned to Versailles. The king of Sardinia having declared war against the emperor, joined a body of French forces commanded by mareschal de Villars, and drove the Imperialists out of the Milanese. His Imperial majesty, dreading the effects of such a powerful confederacy against him, offered to compromise all differences with the crown of Spain, under the mediation of the king of Great Britain; and Mr. Keene, the British minister at Madrid, proposed an accommodation. Philip expressed his acknowledgments to the king of England, declaring, however, that the emperor’s advances were too late, and that his own resolutions were already taken. Nevertheless, he sent orders to the count de Montijo, his ambassador at London, to communicate to his Britannic majesty the motives which had induced him to take these resolutions. In the meantime he detached a powerful armament to Italy, where they invested the Imperial fortress of Aula, the garrison of which was obliged to surrender themselves prisoners of war. The republic of Venice declared she would take no share in the disputes of Italy; the states-general signed a neutrality with the French king for the Austrian Netherlands, without consulting the emperor or the king of Great Britain; and the English councils seemed to be altogether pacific.

ARRIVAL OF THE PRINCE OF ORANGE.

In November the prince of Orange arrived at Greenwich, in order to espouse the princess royal; but the marriage was postponed on account of his being taken ill: and he repaired to Bath, in Somersetshire, to drink the water for the recovery of his strength. Henrietta, the young duchess of Marlborough, dying about this time, the title devolved to her sister’s son, the earl of Sunderland. Lord King resigning his office of chancellor, it was conferred upon Mr. Talbot, solicitor-general, together with the title of baron; a promotion that reflected honour upon those by whom it was advised. He possessed the spirit of a Roman senator, the elegance of an Atticus, and the integrity of a Cato. At the meeting of the parliament in January, the king told them, in his speech, that though he was no way engaged in the war which had begun to rage in Europe, except by the good offices he had employed among the contending powers, he could not sit regardless of the present events, or be unconcerned for the consequences of a war undertaken and supported by such a powerful alliance. He said, he had thought proper to take time to examine the facts alleged on both sides, and to wait the result of the councils of those powers that were more immediately interested in the consequences of the rupture. He declared he would concert with his allies, more particularly with the states-general of the United Provinces, such measures as should be thought most advisable for their common safety, and for restoring the peace of Europe. In the meantime, he expressed his hope that they would make such provision as should secure his kingdom, rights, and possessions from all dangers and insults, and maintain the respect due to the British nation. He said, that whatever part it might in the end be most reasonable for him to act, it would in all views be necessary, when all Europe was preparing for arms, to put his kingdom in a posture of defence. The motion for an address of thanks produced as usual a debate in both houses, which, it must be owned, appears to have proceeded from a spirit of cavilling, rather than from any reasonable cause of objection.

ALTERCATION IN THE COMMONS.

The house of commons resolved to address his majesty for a copy of the treaty of Vienna. Sir John Rushout moved for another, desiring that the letters and instructions relating to the execution of the treaty of Seville, should be submitted to the inspection of the commons; but, after a hard struggle, it was over-ruled. The next motion was made by Mr. Sandys, a gentleman who had for some time appeared strenuous in the opposition, and wrangled with great perseverance. He proposed that the house should examine the instructions which had been given to the British minister in Poland, some years before the death of king Augustus, that they might be the better able to judge of the causes which produced this new rupture among the powers of Europe. The motion being opposed by all the court members, a contest ensued, in the course of which Mr. Pulteney compared the ministry to an empyric, and the constitution of England to his patient. This pretender in physic, said he, being consulted, tells the distempered person there were but two or three ways of treating his disease; and he was afraid that none of them would succeed. A vomit might throw him into convulsions that would occasion immediate death; a purge might bring on a diarrhoea that would carry him off in a short time; and he had been already bled so much, and so often, that he could bear it no longer. The unfortunate patient, shocked at this declaration, replies, “Sir, you have always pretended to be a regular doctor; but now I find you are an arrant quack. I had an excellent constitution when I first fell into your hands, but you have quite destroyed it; and now I find I have no other chance for saving my life, but by calling for the help of some regular physician.” In the debate, the members on both sides seemed to wander from the question, and indulge themselves in ludicrous personalities. Mr. H. Walpole took occasion to say, that the opposition treated the ministry as he himself was treated by some of his acquaintances with respect to his dress. “If I am in plain clothes,” said he, “then they call me a slovenly dirty fellow; and if by chance I wear a laced suit, they cry, What, shall such an awkward fellow wear fine clothes?” He continued to sport in this kind of idle buffoonery. He compared the present administration to a ship at sea. As long as the wind was fair, and proper for carrying us to our designed port, the word was, “Steady! steady!” but when the wind began to shift and change, the word was necessarily altered to “Thus, thus, and no nearer.” The motion was overpowered by the majority; and this was the fate of several other proposals made by the members in the opposition. Sir John Barnard presented a petition from the druggists, and other dealers in tea, complaining of the insults and oppression to which they were subjected by the excise laws, and imploring relief. Sir John and Mr. Perry, another of the city members, explained the grievous hardships which those traders sustained, and moved that the petition might be referred to the consideration of the whole house. They were opposed by Mr. Winnington, sir W. Yonge, and other partisans of the ministry; and these skirmishes brought on a general engagement of the two parties, in which every weapon of satire, argument, reason, and truth, was wielded against that odious, arbitrary, and oppressive method of collecting the public revenue. Nevertheless, the motion in favour of the sufferers was rejected. When the commons deliberated upon the supply, Mr. Andrews, deputy-paymaster of the army, moved for an addition of eighteen hundred men to the number of land forces which had been continued since the preceding year. The members in the opposition disputed this small augmentation with too much heat and eagerness. It must be acknowledged, they were by this time irritated into such personal animosity against the minister, that they resolved to oppose all his measures, whether they might or might not be necessary for the safety and advantage of the kingdom. Nor indeed were they altogether blameable for acting on this maxim, if their sole aim was to remove from the confidence and councils of their sovereign, a man whose conduct they thought prejudicial to the interests and liberties of their country. They could not, however, prevent the augmentation proposed; but they resolved, if they could not wholly stop the career of the ministry, to throw in such a number of rubs as should at least retard their progress. The duke of Bolton and lord Cobham had been deprived of the regiments they commanded, because they refused to concur in every project of the administration. It was in consequence of their dismission, that lord Morpeth moved for a bill to prevent any commissioned officer, not above the rank of a colonel, from being removed, unless by a court-martial, or by address of either house of parliament. Such an attack on the prerogative might have succeeded in the latter part of the reign of the first Charles; but at this juncture could not fail to miscarry; yet it was sustained with great vigour and address. When the proposal was set aside by the majority, Mr. Sandys moved for an address to the king, desiring to know who advised his majesty to remove the duke of Bolton and lord Cob-ham from their respective regiments. He was seconded by Mr. Pulteney and sir William Wyndham; but the ministry foreseeing another tedious dispute, called for the question, and the motion was carried in the negative. The next source of contention was a bill for securing the freedom of parliament, by limiting the number of officers in the house of commons. It was read a first and second time; but when a motion was made for its being committed, it met with a powerful opposition, and produced a warm debate that issued in a question which, like the former, passed in the negative. A clergyman having insinuated in conversation that sir William Milner, baronet, member for York, received a pension from the ministry, the house took cognizance of this report; the clergyman acknowledged at the bar that he might have dropped such a hint from hearsay. The accused member protested, upon his honour, that he never did nor ever would receive place, pension, gratuity, or reward from the court, either directly or indirectly, for voting in parliament, or upon any other account whatever. The accusation was voted false and scandalous, and the accuser taken into custody; but in a few days he was discharged upon his humble petition, and his begging pardon of the member whom he had calumniated. The duty upon salt was prolonged for eight years; and a bill passed against stock-jobbing.

MOTION FOR THE REPEAL OF THE SEPTENNIAL ACT.

But the subject which of all others employed the eloquence and abilities on both sides to the most vigorous exertion, was a motion made by Mr. Bromley, who proposed that a bill should be brought in for repealing the septenntal act, and for the more frequent meeting and calling of parliaments. The arguments for and against septennial parliaments have already been stated. The ministry now insisted upon the increase of papists and Jacobites, which rendered it dangerous to weaken the hands of the government; they challenged the opposition to produce one instance in which the least encroachment had been made on the liberties of the people since the septennial act took place; and they defied the most ingenious malice to prove that his present majesty had ever endeavoured to extend any branch of the prerogative beyond its legal bounds. Sir John Hinde Cotton affirmed, that in many parts of England the papists had already begun to use all their influence in favour of those candidates who were recommended by the ministers as members in the ensuing parliament. With respect to his majesty’s conduct, he said he would not answer one word; but as to the grievances introduced since the law was enacted for septennial parliaments, he thought himself more at liberty to declare his sentiments. He asserted, that the septennial law itself was an encroachment on the rights of the people; a law passed by a parliament that made itself septennial. He observed, that the laws of treason with regard to trials were altered since that period; that in former times a man was tried by a jury of his neighbours, within the county where the crimes alleged against him were said to be committed; but by an act of a septennial parliament he might be removed and tried in any place where the crown, or rather the ministry, could find a jury proper for their purpose; where the prisoner could not bring any witnesses in his justification, without an expense which perhaps his circumstances would not bear. He asked, if the riot act was not an encroachment on the rights of the people? An act by which a little dirty justice of the peace, the meanest and vilest tool a minister can use, who, perhaps subsists by his being in the commission, and may be deprived of that subsistence at the pleasure of his patron, had it in his power to put twenty or thirty of the best subjects in England to immediate death, without any trial or form but that of reading a proclamation. “Was not the fatal South-Sea scheme,” said he, “established by the act of a septennial parliament? And can any man ask, whether that law was attended with any inconvenience; to the glorious catalogue I might have added the late excise bill, if it had passed into a law; but, thank heaven, the septennial parliament was near expiring before that famous measure was introduced.”

CONCLUSION OF A REMARKABLE SPEECH BY SIR W. WYNDHAM.

Sir William Wyndham concluded an excellent speech, that spoke him the unrivalled orator, the uncorrupted Briton, and the unshaken patriot, in words to this effect:--“Let us suppose a man abandoned to all notions of virtue and honour, of no great family, and but a mean fortune, raised to be chief minister of state, by the concurrence of many whimsical events; afraid or unwilling to trust any but creatures of his own making; lost to all sense of shame and reputation; ignorant of his country’s true interest; pursuing no aim but that of aggrandizing himself and his favourites; in foreign affairs trusting none but those who, from the nature of their education, cannot possibly be qualified for the service of their country, or give weight and credit to their negotiations. Let us suppose the true interest of the nation by such means neglected, or misunderstood, her honour tarnished, her importance lost, her trade insulted, her merchants plundered, and her sailors murdered; and all these circumstances overlooked, lest his administration should be endangered. Suppose him next possessed of immense wealth, the plunder of the nation, with a parliament chiefly composed of members whose seats are purchased, and whose votes are bought at the expense of the public treasure. In such a parliament suppose all attempts made to inquire into his conduct, or to relieve the nation from the distress which has been entailed upon it by his administration. Suppose him screened by a corrupt majority of his creatures, whom he retains in daily pay, or engages in his particular interest, by distributing among them those posts and places which ought never to be bestowed upon any but for the good of the public. Let him plume himself upon his scandalous victory, because he has obtained a parliament like a packed jury ready to acquit him at all adventures. Let us suppose him domineering with insolence over all the men of ancient families, over all the men of sense, figure, or fortune in the nation; as he has no virtue of his own, ridiculing it in others, and endeavouring to destroy and corrupt it in all. With such a minister, and such a parliament, let us suppose a case which I hope will never happen: a prince upon the throne, uninformed, ignorant, and unacquainted with the inclinations and true interest of his people, weak, capricious, transported with unbounded ambition, and possessed with insatiable avarice. I hope such a case will never occur; but, as it possibly may, could any greater curse happen to a nation than such a prince on the throne, advised, and solely advised by such a minister, and that minister supported by such a parliament? The nature of mankind cannot be altered by human laws; the existence of such a prince or such a minister we cannot prevent by act of parliament; but the existence of such a parliament I think we may prevent; as it is much more likely to exist, and may do more mischief, while the septennial law remains in force than if it were repealed; therefore, I am heartily for its being repealed.” Notwithstanding the most warm, the most nervous, the most pathetic remonstrances in favour of the motion, the question was put, and it was suppressed by mere dint of number.

{1734}

The triumph of the ministry was still more complete in the success of a message delivered from the crown in the latter end of the session, when a great many members of the other party had retired to their respective habitations in the country. Sir Robert Wal-pole delivered this commission to the house, importing that his majesty might be enabled to augment his forces, if occasion should require such an augmentation, between the dissolution of this parliament and the election of another. Such an important point, that was said to strike at the foundation of our liberties, was not tamely yielded; but, on the contrary, contested with uncommon ardour. The motion for taking the message into consideration was carried in the affirmative; and an address presented to the king, signifying their compliance with his desire. In consequence of a subsequent message, they prepared and passed a bill, enabling his majesty to settle an annuity of five thousand pounds for life on the princess royal, as a mark of his paternal favour and affection.

PARLIAMENT DISSOLVED.

The opposition in the house of peers kept pace with that in the house of commons, and was supported with equal abilities, under the auspices of the lords Bathurst and Carteret, the earls of Chesterfield and Abingdon. The duke of Marlborough made a motion for a bill to regulate the army, equivalent to that which had been rejected in the lower house; and it met with the same fate after a warm dispute. Then lord Carteret moved for an address to the king, that he would be graciously pleased to acquaint the house who advised his majesty to remove the duke of Bolton and lord viscount Cobham from their respective regiments, and what crimes were laid to their charge. This proposal was likewise rejected, at the end of a debate in which the duke of Argyle observed, that two lords had been removed, but only one soldier lost his commission. Such a great majority of the Scottish representatives had always voted for the ministry since the accession of the late king, and so many of these enjoyed places and preferments in the gift of the crown, that several attempts were made by the lords in the opposition to prevent for the future the ministerial influence from extending itself to the elections of North Britain. Accordingly, two motions for this purpose were made by the earl of Marchmont and the duke of Bedford; and sustained by the earls of Chesterfield, Winchelsea, and Stair, lords Willoughby de Broke, Bathurst, and Carteret. They were opposed by the dukes of Newcastle and Argyle, the earl of Cholmondeley, earl Paulet, lord Hervey, now called up by a writ to the house of peers, and lord Talbot. The question being put on both, they were of course defeated; and the earl of Stair was deprived of his regiment of dragoons, after having performed the most signal services to the royal family, and exhausted his fortune in supporting the interest and dignity of the crown. Strenuous protests were entered against the decision of the majority concerning the king’s message, demanding a power to augment his forces during the recess of parliament; as also against a bill for enabling his majesty to apply the sum of one million two hundred thousand pounds out of the sinking fund for the service of the current year. The business of the session being despatched, the king repaired to the house of lords on the sixteenth day of April, and having passed all the bills that were ready for the royal assent, took leave of this parliament, with the warmest acknowledgment of their zeal, duty, and affection. It was at first prorogued, then dissolved, and another convoked by the same proclamation. On the fourteenth day of March, the nuptials of the prince of Orange and the princess royal were solemnized with great magnificence; and this match was attended with addresses of congratulation to his majesty from different parts of the kingdom.

{GEORGE II. 1727-1760}

DANTZIC BESIEGED BY THE RUSSIANS.

The powers at war upon the continent acted with surprising vigour. The Russian and Saxon army invested the city of Dantzic, in hopes of securing the person of king Stanislaus. The town was strong, the garrison numerous, and animated by the examples of the French and Poles, made a very obstinate defence. For some time they were supplied by sea with recruits, arms, and ammunition. On the eleventh day of May a reinforcement of fifteen hundred men was landed from two French ships of war and some transports, under fort Wechselmunde, which was so much in want of provisions, that they were not admitted; they therefore re-embarked, and sailed back to Copenhagen. But afterwards a larger number was landed in the same place, and attacked the Russian intrenchments, in order to force their way into the city. They were repulsed in this attempt, but retired in good order. At length the Russian fleet arrived, under the command of Admiral Gordon, and now the siege was carried on with great fury. Fort Wechselmunde was surrendered; the French troops capitulated, and were embarked in the Russian ships, to be conveyed to some port in the Baltic. Stanislaus escaped in the disguise of a peasant to Marienwarder in the Prussian territories. The city of Dantzic submitted to the dominion of Augustus III., king of Poland, and was obliged to defray the expense of the war to the Russian general count de Munich, who had assumed the command after the siege was begun. The Polish lords at Dantzic signed an act of submission to king Augustus, who, on the tenth day of July, arrived at the convent of Oliva. There a council was held in his presence. The recusant noblemen took the oath which he proposed. Then a general amnesty was proclaimed; and the king set out on his return to Dresden.

PHILIPSBURGH TAKEN BY THE FRENCH.

On the Rhine the French arms bore down all resistance. The count de Belleisle besieged and took Traerbach. The duke of Berwick, at the head of sixty thousand men, invested Philipsburgh, while prince Eugene was obliged to remain on the defensive, in the strong camp at Heilbron, waiting for the troops of the empire. On the twelfth day of June, the duke of Berwick, in visiting the trenches, was killed by a cannon-ball, and the command devolved upon the marquis d’Asfeldt who carried on the operations of the siege with equal vigour and capacity. Prince Eugene being joined by the different reinforcements he expected, marched towards the French lines; but found them so strong that he would not hazard an attack; and such precautions taken, that with all his military talents he could not relieve the besieged. At length general Watgenau, the governor, capitulated, after having made a noble defence, and obtained the most honourable conditions. Prince Eugene retired to Heidelberg; and the campaign ended about the beginning of October. The Imperial arms were not more successful in Italy. The infant Don Carlos had received so many invitations from the Neapolitan nobility, that he resolved to take possession of that kingdom. He began his march in February, at the head of the Spanish forces; published a manifesto, declaring he was sent by his father to relieve the kingdom of Naples from the oppression under which it groaned; and entered the capital amidst the acclamations of the people; while the count de Visconti, the German viceroy, finding himself unable to cope with the invaders, thought proper to retire, after having thrown succours into Gaeta and Capua. When he arrived at Nocera, he began to assemble the militia, with intent to form a camp at Barletta. The count de Montemar marched with a body of forces against this general, and obtained over him a complete victory at Bitonto in Apuglia, on the twenty-fifth of May, when the Imperialists were entirely routed, and a great number of principal officers taken prisoners. Don Carlos being proclaimed, and acknowledged king of Naples, created the count de Montemar duke of Bitonto; reduced Gaeta, and all other parts of the kingdom which were garrisoned with Imperial troops; and resolved to subdue the island of Sicily. About twenty thousand troops being destined for this expedition, were landed in the road of Solanto in August, under the command of the new duke of Bitonto, who being favoured by the natives, proceeded in his conquests with great rapidity. The people acknowledged Don Carlos as their sovereign, and took arms in support of his government; so that the Imperial troops were driven before them, and the Spaniards possessed the whole kingdom, except Messina, Syracuse, and Trepani, when the infant determined to visit the island in person.

BATTLE OF PARMA.

While Don Carlos was thus employed in the conquest of Naples and Sicily, the Imperialists were hard pressed in Lombardy by the united forces of France and Piedmont, commanded by the king of Sardinia and the old mareschal duke de Villars. In the month of January they undertook the siege of Tortona, which they reduced; while the troops of the emperor began to pour in great numbers into the Mantuan. In the beginning of May, count Merci, who commanded them, passed the Po in the face of the allies, notwithstanding all the skill of Villars, obliged him to retreat from the banks of that river, and took the castle of Colorno. The old French general being taken ill, quitted the army, and retired to Turin, where in a little time he died; and the king of Sardinia retiring to the same place, the command of the allied forces devolved upon the mareschal de Coigny. The confederates were posted at Sanguina, and the Imperialists at Sorbola, when the count de Merci made a motion to San Prospero, as if he intended either to attack the enemy, or take possession of Parma. The mareschal de Coigny forthwith made a disposition for an engagement; and, on the twenty-ninth day of June, the Imperial general having passed the Parma, began the attack with great impetuosity. He charged in person at the head of his troops, and was killed soon after the battle began. Nevertheless, the prince of Wirtem-berg assuming the command, both armies fought with great obstinacy from eleven in the forenoon till four in the afternoon, when the Imperialists retired towards Monte Cirugalo, leaving five thousand men dead on the field of battle, and among these many officers of distinction. The loss of the allies was very considerable, and they reaped no solid fruits from their victory.

THE IMPERIALISTS ARE AGAIN WORSTED.

The Imperial forces retreated to Reggio, and from thence moved to the plains of Carpi, on the right of the Secchia, where they received some reinforcements; then general count Konigsegg arriving in the camp, took upon himself the command of the army. His first step was to take post at Quingentolo, by which motion he secured Mirandola, that was threatened with a siege. On the fifteenth of February he forded the river Secchia, and surprised the quarters of mareschal de Broglio, who escaped in his shirt with great difficulty. The French retired with such precipitation, that they left all their baggage behind, and above two thousand were taken prisoners. They posted themselves under Gustalla, where, on the nineteenth day of the month, they were vigorously attacked by the Imperialists, and a general engagement ensued. Konigsegg made several desperate efforts to break the French cavalry, upon which, however, he could make no impression. The infantry on both sides fought with uncommon ardour for six hours, and the field was covered with carnage. At length the Imperial general retreated to Lazara, after having lost above five thousand men, including the prince of Wirtemberg, the generals Valpareze and Colminero, with many other officers of distinction; nor was the damage sustained by the French greatly inferior to that of the Germans, who repassed the Po, and took post on the banks of the Oglio. The allies crossed the same river, and the marquis de Maillibois was sent with a detachment to attack Mirandola; but the Imperialists marching to the relief of the place, compelled him to abandon the enterprise; then he rejoined his army, which retired under the walls of Cremona, to wait for succours from Don Carlos. So little respect did the French court pay to the British nation at this juncture, that in the month of November, an edict was published at Paris, commanding all the British subjects in France, who were not actually in employment, from the age of eighteen to fifty, to quit the kingdom in fifteen days, or enlist in some of the Irish regiments, on pain of being treated as vagabonds, and sent to the galleys. This edict was executed with the utmost rigour. The prisons of Paris were crowded with the subjects of Great Britain, who were surprised and cut off from all communication with their friends, and must have perished by cold and hunger, had not they been relieved by the active charity of the Jansenists. The earl of Waldegrave, who then resided at Paris, as ambassador from the king of Great Britain, made such vigorous remonstrances to the French ministry upon this unheard of outrage against a nation with which they had been so long in alliance, that they thought proper to set the prisoners at liberty, and publish another edict, by which the meaning of the former was explained away.

NEW PARLIAMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN.

While these transactions occurred on the continent, the king of Great Britain augmented his land-forces; and warm contests were maintained through the whole united kingdom in electing representatives for the new parliament. But in all these struggles the ministerial power predominated; and the new members appeared with the old complexion. The two houses assembled on the fourteenth day of January, and Mr. Onslow was re-elected speaker. The leaders of both parties in all debates, were the self-same persons who had conducted those of the former parliament; and the same measure were pursued in the same manner. The king in his speech at the opening of the session, gave them to understand, that he had concerted with the states-general of the United Provinces such measures as were thought most advisable for their common safety, and for restoring the peace of Europe; that they had considered on one side the pressing applications made by the Imperial court both in England and Holland, for obtaining succours against the powers at war with the house of Austria; and, on the other side, the repeated professions made by the allies of their sincere disposition to put an end to the present troubles upon honourable and solid terms; that he and the states-general had concurred in a resolution to employ their joint and earnest instances to bring matters to a speedy and happy accommodation; that their good offices were at length accepted; and in a short time a plan would be offered to the consideration of all parties engaged in the war, as a basis for a general negotiation of peace. He told them he had used the power vested in him by the last parliament with great moderation; and concluded a treaty with the crown of Denmark of great importance in the present conjuncture. He observed, that whilst many of the principal powers of Europe were actually engaged in a war, Great Britain must be more or less affected with the consequences; and as the best concerted measures are liable to uncertainty, the nation ought to be prepared against all events. He therefore expressed his hope, that his good subjects would not repine at the necessary means of procuring the blessings of peace and universal tranquillity, or of putting him in a condition to act that part which it might be necessary and incumbent upon him to take. The address of thanks produced a dispute as usual, which ended with an acquiescence in the motion The house, in a grand committee on the supply, resolved, That thirty thousand seamen should be employed for the service of the ensuing year; and that the land-forces should be augmented to the number of twenty-five thousand seven hundred and forty-four effective men. But these resolutions were not taken without dispute and division. The minister’s opponents not only reproduced all the reasons which had been formerly advanced against a standing army, but they opposed this augmentation with extraordinary ardour, as a huge stride towards the establishment of arbitrary power. They refuted those fears of eternal broils on which the ministry pretended to ground the necessity of such an augmentation; and they exposed the weak conduct of the administration, in having contributed to destroy the balance of power, by assisting Spain against the emperor in Italy, so as to aggrandize the house of Bourbon.

DEBATE ON A SUBSIDY TO DENMARK.

Sir William Wyndham moved, that the estimate of the navy for the ensuing year might be referred to a select committee. He expressed his surprise, that notwithstanding the vast sums which had been yearly raised, and the long continuance of the peace, the people had not been quite delivered of any one tax incurred in the preceding war. He said, he could not comprehend how it was possible to find pretences for exposing the nation to such exorbitant charges; and he took notice of some unconsionable articles in the accounts of the navy-debt that lay upon the table. He was seconded by Mr. Sandys, and supported by sir J. Jekyll and Mr. Pulteney; but after some debate, the motion was carried in the negative. When the new treaty with Denmark fell under consideration in a grand committee, Mr. H. Walpole moved, that the sum of fifty-six thousand two hundred and fifty pounds, should be granted to his majesty as a subsidy to the Dane, pursuant to the said treaty, for the service of the ensuing year. The demand did not meet with immediate compliance. All the leaders in the opposition exclaimed against the subsidy as unnecessary and unreasonable. They observed, that as the English had no particular interest of their own for inducing them to engage in the present war, but only the danger to which the balance of power might be exposed by that event; and as all the powers of Europe were as much, if not more, interested than the English in the preservation of that balance, should it ever be really endangered, they would certainly engage in its defence, without receiving any valuable consideration from Great Britain; but should the English be always the first to take the alarm upon any rupture, and offer bribes and pensions to all the princes in Europe, the whole charge of preserving that balance would fall upon Great Britain; every state would expect a gratification from her, for doing that which it would otherwise be obliged to do for its own preservation; even the Dutch might at last refuse to assist in trimming this balance, unless Britain should submit to make the grand pensionary of Holland a pensionary of England, and take a number of their forces into English pay. The debate having had its free course, the question was put, and the motion approved by the majority. The ministry allowed a bill to be brought in for limiting the number of officers in the house of commons; but at the second reading it was rejected upon a division, after a learned debate, in which it appeared that the opposition had gained a valuable auxiliary in the person of lord Pol-worth, son to the earl of Marchmont, a nobleman of elegant parts, keen penetration, and uncommon vivacity, who spoke with all the fluency and fervour of elocution.

PETITION OF SOME SCOTTISH NOBLEMEN.

The minority in the house of lords were not less vigilant and resolute in detecting and opposing every measure which they thought would redound to the prejudice of their country. But the most remarkable object that employed their attention during this session, was a very extraordinary petition subscribed by the dukes of Hamilton, Queensberry, and Montrose, the earls of Dundonald, Marchmont, and Stair, representing that undue influence had been used for carrying on the election of the sixteen peers of Scotland. The duke of Bedford, who delivered their petition to the house, proposed a day for taking it into consideration; and to this they agreed. It was afterwards moved, that the consideration of it should be adjourned to a short day, before which the petitioners should be ordered to declare whether they intended to controvert the last election of all the sixteen peers, or the election of any, and which of them. This affair was of such an unprecedented nature, that the house seemed to be divided in opinion about the manner in which they ought to proceed. The partisans of the ministry would have willingly stifled the inquiry in the beginning; but the petitioners were so strenuously supported in their claim to some notice, by the earls of Chesterfield, Abingdon, and Strafford, the lords Bathurst and Carteret, that they could not dismiss it at once with any regard to decorum. The order of the house, according to the motion explained above, being communicated by the lord-chancellor to the petitioners, they waited on him with a declaration, importing, that they did not intend to controvert the election or return of the sixteen peers for Scotland; but they thought it their duty to lay before their lordships the evidence of such facts and undue methods as appeared to them to be dangerous to the constitution; and might in future elections equally affect the right of the present sixteen peers, as that of the other peers of Scotland, if not prevented by a proper remedy. This declaration being repeated to the house, the duke of Devonshire made a motion, that the petitioners might be ordered to lay before the house in writing, instances of those undue methods and illegal practices upon which they intended to proceed, and the names of the persons they suspected to be guilty. He was warmly opposed by the country party; and a long debate ensued, after which the question was carried in favour of the motion, and the order signified to the petitioners. Next day their answer was read to the house to this effect: That as they had no intention to state themselves accusers, they could not take upon them to name particular persons who might have been concerned in those illegal practices; but who they were would undoubtedly appear to their lordships upon their taking the proper examinations: nevertheless, they did humbly acquaint their lordships, that the petition was laid before them upon information that the list of the sixteen peers for Scotland had been framed previous to the election, by persons in high trust under the crown; that this list was shown to peers, as a list approved by the crown; and was called the king’s list, from which there was to be no variation, unless to make way for one or two particular peers, on condition they should conform to measures; that peers were solicited to vote for this list, without the liberty of making any alteration; that endeavours were used to engage peers to vote for this list by promise of pensions, and offices civil and military to themselves and relations, as well as by offers of money: that sums were given for this purpose; that pensions, offices, and releases of debts owing to the crown, were actually granted to peers who concurred in voting for this list, and to their relations; that on the day of election a battalion of his majesty’s troops were drawn up in the Abbey-court of Edinburgh, contrary to custom, and without any apparent cause but that of over-awing the electors. This answer gave rise to another violent dispute; but the majority voted it unsatisfactory, and the petition was rejected, though the resolution was clogged with a vigorous protest.

{1735}

Notwithstanding this discouragement, the earl of Abingdon moved, that although the petition was dismissed, an inquiry might be set on foot touching an affair of such consequence to the liberties of the kingdom. The earl of Hay declaring his belief that no such illegal methods had been practised, the other produced a pamphlet, intituled, The Protests of a great Number of Noble Lords, entered by them at the last Election of Peers for Scotland. Exceptions being taken to a pamphlet, as an object unworthy of their notice, lord Bathurst exhibited an authentic copy of those protests, extracted from the journal of that election, signed by the two principal clerks, and witnessed by two gentlemen then attending in the lobby. These were accordingly read, and plainly demonstrated the truth of the allegations contained in the petition. Nothing could be more scandalous, arrogant, and shamefully flagrant, than the conduct and deportment of those who acted the part of understrappers to the ministry on this occasion. But all this demonstration, adorned and enforced by the charms and energy of eloquence, was like preaching in a desert. A motion was made for adjourning, and carried in the affirmative: a protest was entered, and the whole affair consigned to oblivion. Divers other motions were made successively by the lords in the opposition, and rejected by the invincible power of a majority. The uninterrupted success of the ministry did not, however, prevent them from renewing the struggle as often as an opportunity offered. They disputed the continuation of the salt-tax, and the bill for enabling the king to apply the sum of one million out of the sinking fund for the service of the current year, though success did not attend their endeavours. They supported with all their might a bill sent up from the commons, explaining and amending an act of the Scottish parliament, for preventing wrongous imprisonment, and against undue delays in trials. This was all the natives of Scotland had in lieu of the habeas-corpus act; though it did not screen them from oppression. Yet the earl of Hay undertook to prove they were on a footing with their neighbours of England in this respect; and the bill was thrown out on a division. The session was closed on the fifteenth of May, when the king in his speech to both houses declared that the plan of pacification, concerted between him and the states-general, had not produced the desired effect. He thanked the commons for the supplies they had granted with such cheerfulness and despatch. He signified his intention to visit his German dominions; and told them he should constitute the queen regent of the realm in his absence. Immediately after the prorogation his majesty embarked for Holland, in his way to Hanover.

MISUNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE COURTS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.

By this time the good understanding between the courts of Madrid and Lisbon was destroyed by a remarkable incident. The Portuguese ambassador at Madrid having allowed his servants to rescue a criminal from the officers of justice, all the servants concerned in that rescue were dragged from his house to prison, by the Spanish king’s order, with circumstances of rigour and disgrace. His Portuguese majesty being informed of this outrage, ordered reprisals to be made upon the servants of the Spanish ambassador in Lisbon. The two ministers withdrew abruptly to their respective courts. The two monarchs expressed their mutual resentment. The king of Spain assembled a body of troops on the frontiers of Portugal; and his Portuguese majesty had recourse to the assistance of king George. Don Marcos Antonio d’Alzeveda was despatched to London with the character of envoy-extraordinary; and succeeded in his commission according to his wish. In a little time after the king’s departure from England, sir John Norris sailed from Spithead with a powerful squadron, in order to protect the Portuguese against the Spaniards; and on the ninth day of June arrived at Lisbon, where he was welcomed as a deliverer. Mr. Keene, the British envoy at the court of Spain, had communicated to his catholic majesty the resolution of his master to send a powerful squadron to Lisbon, with orders to guard that coast from insults, and secure the Brazil fleet, in which the merchants of Great Britain were deeply interested. Don Joseph Patinho, minister of his catholic majesty, delivered a memorial to Mr. Keene, representing that such an expedition would affect the commerce of Spain, by intimidating foreign merchants from embarking their merchandise in the flota. But, in all probability, it prevented a rupture between the two crowns, and disposed the king of Spain to listen to terms of accommodation.

PRELIMINARIES SIGNED BY THE EMPEROR AND THE KING OF FRANCE.

The powers in alliance against the house of Austria having rejected the plan of pacification concerted by the king of Great Britain and the states-general, Mr. Wal-pole, ambassador at the Hague, presented a memorial to their high mightinesses, desiring they would, without loss of time, put themselves in a posture of defence by an augmentation of their forces by sea and land; that they might take such vigorous steps in concert with Great Britain, as the future conjuncture of affairs might require. But before they would subject themselves to such expense, they resolved to make further trial of their influence with the powers in alliance against the emperor; and conferences were renewed with the ministers of those allies. The affairs of Poland became more and more unfavourable to the interest of Stanislaus; for though a great number of the Polish nobility engaged in a confederacy to support his claim, and made repeated efforts in his behalf, the palatine of Kiow submitted to Augustus; and even his brother the primate, after having sustained a long imprisonment, and many extraordinary hardships, was obliged to acknowledge that prince his sovereign. In Italy, the arms of the allies still continued to prosper. Don Carlos landed in Sicily, and reduced the whole island almost without opposition; while the Imperialists were forced to abandon all the territories they possessed in Italy, except the Mantuan. The emperor being equally unable to cope with the French armies on the Rhine, implored succours of the czarina, who sent thirty thousand men to his assistance. This vigorous interposition, and the success of Augustus in Poland, disposed the court of Versailles to a pacification. A secret negotiation was begun between France and the house of Austria; and the preliminaries were signed without the concurrence or knowledge of Spain, Sardinia, and the maritime powers. In these articles it was stipulated that France should restore all the conquests she had made in Germany; that the reversion of the dukedom of Tuscany should be vested in the duke of Lorraine; that Lorraine should be allotted to king Stanislaus, and after his death be united to the crown of France; that the emperor should possess the Milanese, the Mantuan, and Parma; that the king of Sardinia should enjoy Vigevano and Novara; that Don Carlos should be acknowledged king of Naples and Sicily, and retain the island of Elba, with all the Spanish territories on the coast of Tuscany; and that France should guarantee the pragmatic sanction.

PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT.

The king of Great Britain returned from Hanover to England in the month of November; and on the fifteenth day of January opened the session of parliament. On this occasion he congratulated them on the near prospect of a general peace in Europe in consequence of the preliminary articles which the emperor and the king of France had agreed; and of which he had expressed his approbation, as they did not differ in any essential point from the plan of pacification which he and the states-general had offered to the belligerent powers. He told them that he had already ordered a considerable reduction to be made in his forces both by sea and land; but at the same time observed it would be necessary to continue some extraordinary expense, until a more perfect reconciliation should be established among the several powers of Europe. An address of thanks was unanimously voted, presented, and graciously received. After the house had received several petitions from different counties and gentlemen, complaining of undue influence in elections for members of parliament, it proceeded to consider of the supply, and sir Charles Wager moving that fifteen thousand seaman should be employed for the service of the ensuing year, the proposal was approved without opposition. But this was not the case with a motion made by Mr. Pulteney, “That the ordinary estimates of the navy should be referred to a select committee.” The ministry discouraged all such prying measures: a debate was produced, the house divided, and the motion was rejected. Such was the fate of s motion for raising the supplies within the year, made by Mr. Sandys, and supported by sir John Barnard, Mr. Willimot, and other patriots, who demonstrated that this was a speedy and practicable expedient for discharging the national debt, lowering the interest of money, reducing the price of labour, and encouraging a spirit of commerce.

BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF QUAKERS IN THE ARTICLE OF TITHES.

The bill for limiting the number of officers in the house of commons was again revived. The king was empowered to borrow six hundred thousand pounds, chargeable on the sinking fund, for the service of the ensuing year, though this power was not easily granted; and the house resolved to lay a duty of twenty shillings per gallon on all spirituous liquors, after it had appeared to the committee appointed for that purpose, that those spirits were pernicious to the health and morals of the people. To this resolution was added another, which amounted to a total prohibition, namely, that fifty pounds should be yearly paid to his majesty for a license to be annually taken out by every person who should vend, barter, or utter any such spirituous liquors. Mr. Walter Plummer, in a well concerted speech, moved for the repeal of some clauses in the Test act: these he represented as a species of persecution, in which protestant dissenters were confounded with the Roman catholics and enemies to the establishment. He was sustained by lord Polworth and Mr. Heathcote; but sir Robert Walpole was joined by Mr. Shippen against the motion, as dangerous to the established church; and the question being put, it was carried in the negative.

{1736}

When sir Joseph Jekyll presented to the house, according to order, a bill founded on the resolutions they had taken against spirituous liquors, sir Robert Walpole acquainted them, by his majesty’s command, that as the alterations proposed to be made by that bill in the duties charged upon all spirituous liquors might, in a great degree, affect some part of the civil list revenues, his majesty, for the sake of remedying so great an evil as was intended by that bill to be prevented, did consent to accept any other revenue of equal value, to be settled and appropriated in lieu of his interest in the said duties. The bill was read a second time, and consigned to a committee of the whole house; but that for limiting the number of officers in the house of commons was thrown out at the second reading. Petitions against the bill touching the retail of spirituous liquors, were presented by the traders to the British sugar colonies, by the merchants of Bristol and Liverpool, representing the hardships to which they would be exposed by a law which amounted to a prohibition of rum and spirits distilled from molasses. In consequence of these remonstrances, a mitigating clause was inserted, in favour of the composition known by the name of punch, and distillers were permitted to exercise any other employment. The sum of seventy thousand pounds was voted for making good the deficiencies that might happen in the civil list by this bill, which at length passed through the house, though not without reiterated disputes and warm altercation. Violent opposition was likewise made to a bill for the relief the people called quakers, who offered a petition, representing, that though from motives of conscience they refused the payment of tithes, church-rates, oblations, and ecclesiastical dues, they were exposed to grievous sufferings by prosecution in the exchequer, ecclesiastical, and other courts, to the imprisonment of their persons, and the ruin of them and their families. A bill being prepared for their relief, was read and printed; then petitions were preferred against it by the clergy of Middlesex, and of many other parts of the kingdom. Counsel was heard in behalf of those petitioners, and several alterations proposed in the bill, which after long and repeated debates surmounted all opposition, and was sent up to the lords.

{GEORGE II. 1727-1760}

MORTMAIN ACT.

In the month of February the king had sent two members of the privy-council to the prince of Wales, with a message, proposing a marriage between his royal highness and the princess of Saxe-gotha. The proposal being agreeable to the prince, the marriage was celebrated on the twenty-seventh day of April. Upon this occasion Mr. Pulteney moved for an address of congratulation to his majesty, and was supported by Mr. George Lyttleton and Mr. William Pitt, who seized this opportunity of pronouncing elegant panegyrics on the prince of Wales and’ his amiable consort. These two young members soon distinguished themselves in the house by their eloquence and superior talents. The attention of the house was afterwards converted to a bill for the preventing of smuggling; and another for explaining the act for the more effectual preventing bribery and corruption in the election of members to serve in parliament. Both made their way through the lower house, and were sent up to the lords for their concurrence. The number of land forces voted for the service of the current year was reduced to seventeen thousand seven hundred and four effective men. The supplies were raised by the malt-tax and land-tax at two shillings in the pound, additional duties on mum, cider, and perry, stamped vellum, parchment, and paper; and by an act empowering his majesty to borrow six hundred thousand pounds of the sinking fund. In this session the parliament repealed the old statutes of England and Scotland against conjuration, witchcraft, and dealing with evil spirit’s. The commons likewise prepared a bill to restrain the disposition of lands in mortmain, whereby they became unalienable. Against this measure petitions were presented by the two universities, the colleges of Eton, Winchester, and Westminster, and divers hospitals that subsisted by charitable donations. In favour of the universities and colleges a particular exempting clause was inserted. Several other amendments were made in the bill, which passed through both houses, and obtained the royal assent. Among the acts passed in this session, was one for naturalizing her royal highness the princess of Wales; and another for building a bridge across the Thames from New Palace-yard, in the city of Westminster, to the opposite shore in the county of Surrey. The points chiefly debated in the house of lords were the address of thanks for his majesty’s speech, the mortmain bill, the Quakers’ bill, which was thrown out, and that for the prevention of smuggling, which did not pass without division and protest. On the twentieth day of May the king closed the session with a speech, in which he told both houses that a farther convention, touching the execution of the preliminaries, had been made and communicated to him by the emperor and most christian king, and that negotiations were carrying on by the several powers engaged in the late war, in order to settle a general pacification. He expressed great concern at seeing such seeds of dissatisfaction sown among his people; he protested it was his desire, and should be his care, to preserve the present constitution in church and state, as by law established; he recommended harmony and mutual affection among all protestants of the nation, as the great security of that happy establishment; and signified his intention to visit his German dominions. Accordingly, the parliament was no sooner prorogued than he set out for Hanover, after having appointed the queen regent in his absence.

REMARKABLE RIOT AT EDINBURGH.

Such a degree of licentiousness prevailed over the whole nation, that the kingdom was filled with tumult and riots, which might have been prevented by proper regulations of the civil government in a due execution of the laws. The most remarkable of these disturbances happened at Edinburgh, on the seventh day of September. John Porteous, who commanded the guard paid by that city, a man of brutal disposition and abandoned morals, had, at the execution of a smuggler, been provoked by some insults from the populace to order his men, without using the previous formalities of the law, to fire with shot among the crowd; by which precipitate order several innocent persons lost their lives. Porteous was tried for murder, convicted, and received sentence of death; but the queen, as guardian of the realm, thought proper to indulge him with a reprieve. The common people of Edinburgh resented this lenity shown to a criminal, who was the object of their detestation. They remembered that pardons had been granted to divers military delinquents in that country, who had been condemned by legal trial. They seemed to think those were encouragements to oppression; they were fired by a national jealousy; they were stimulated by the relations and friends of those who had been murdered; and they resolved to wreak their vengeance on the author of that tragedy, by depriving him of life on the very day which the judges had fixed for his execution. Thus determined, they assembled in different bodies about ten o’clock at night. They blocked up the gates of the city, to prevent the admission of the troops that were quartered in the suburbs. They surprised and disarmed the town guards; they broke open the prison doors; dragged Porteous from thence to the place of execution; and, leaving him hanging by the neck on a dyer’s pole, quietly dispersed to their several habitations. This exploit was performed with such conduct and deliberation as seemed to be the result of a plan formed by some persons of consequence; it, therefore, became the object of a very severe inquiry.

RUPTURE BETWEEN THE CZARINA AND THE OTTOMAN PORTE.

During this summer a rupture happened between the Turks and the Russians, which last reduced the city of Azoph on the Black Sea, and overrun the greatest part of Crim Tartary. The czarina declared war against the Ottoman Porte, because the Tartars of the Crimea had made incursions upon her frontiers; and, when she complained of these disorders to the vizier, she received no satisfaction; besides, a large body of Tartars had, by order of that minister, marched through the Russian provinces in despite of the empress, and committed terrible havoc in their route. The emperor was obliged to engage as a party in this war, by a treaty offensive and defensive, which he had many years before concluded with the czarina. Yet, before he declared himself, he joined the maritime powers in offering his mediation to the sultan, who was very well disposed to peace; but the czarina insisted upon her retaining Azoph, which her forces had reduced; and this preliminary article being rejected, as dishonourable to the Ottoman empire, the court of Vienna began to make preparations for war. By this time all the belligerent powers in Italy had agreed to the preliminaries of peace concluded between the emperor and France. The duke of Lorraine had espoused the emperor’s eldest daughter, the archduchess Maria Theresa, and ceded Lorraine to France, even before he succeeded to Tuscany. Don Carlos was crowned king of Sicily; Stanislaus abdicated the crown of Poland; and Augustus was universally acknowledged sovereign of that kingdom. The preliminaries were approved and accepted by the diet of the empire; the king of Spain sent orders for his troops to evacuate Tuscany; and the provinces in Italy yielded to the house of Austria. Prince Eugene, who had managed the interest of the emperor on this occasion, did not live to see the happy fruits of this negotiation. He died at Vienna, in April, at the age of seventy-three, leaving behind him the character of an invincible hero and consummate politician. He was not long survived by count Staremberg, another Imperial general who ranked next to the prince in military reputation. About the same time Great Britain sustained a national loss in the death of lord chancellor Talbot, who, by his worth, probity, and acquired accomplishments, had dignified the great office to which he had been raised. He died universally lamented, in the month of February, at the age of fifty-two, and was succeeded on the bench by lord Hardwicke.

THE SESSION OF PARLIAMENT OPENED

The king being indisposed, in consequence of having been fatigued by a very tempestuous passage from Holland, the parliament was prorogued from the twenty-first day of January to the first of February, and then the session was opened by commission. The lord chancellor, as one of the peers authorised by this commission, made a speech in his majesty’s name to both houses. With respect to foreign affairs, he told them that the respective acts of cession being exchanged, and orders given for the evacuation and possession of the several countries and places by the powers concerned, according to the allotment and disposition of the preliminary articles, the great work of re-establishing the general tranquillity was far advanced; that, however, common prudence called upon them to be very attentive to the final conclusion of the new settlement. He said his majesty could not without surprise and concern observe the many contrivances and attempts carried on, in various shapes, and in different parts of the nation, tumultuously to resist and obstruct the execution of the laws, and to violate the peace of the kingdom. He observed, that the consideration of the height to which those audacious practices might rise, if not timely suppressed, afforded a melancholy prospect, and required particular attention, lest they should affect private persons in the quiet enjoyment of their property, as well as the general peace and good order of the whole. After the commons had agreed to an address, and heard counsel on some controverted elections, they proceeded to take the supply into consideration. They voted ten thousand men for the sea-service. They continued for the land-service the same number they had maintained in times of tranquillity, amounting to seventeen thousand seven hundred and four; but this measure was not adopted without opposition; the money was raised by the land and malt-taxes, reinforced with one million granted out of the sinking fund.

MOTION IN BOTH HOUSES FOR A SETTLEMENT ON THE PRINCE OF WALES.

The chief subject of contention that presented itself in the course of this session, was a motion which Mr. Pulteney made for an address to his majesty, that he would be pleased to settle one hundred thousand pounds a year upon the prince of Wales. He represented that such provision was conformable to the practice of ancient times; that what he proposed had been enjoyed by his present majesty in the life-time of his father; and that a settlement of this nature was reasonable and necessary to ascertain the independency of the apparent heir to the crown. The motion was vigorously opposed by sir Robert Walpole, as an encroachment on the prerogative; as an officious intermeddling in the king’s family affairs; and as an effort to set his majesty and the prince at variance. But a misunderstanding, it seems, had already happened in the royal family. The minister, in the midst of his harangue, told the house by his majesty’s command, that on the preceding day the king had sent a message to the prince by several noblemen of the first quality, importing, that his majesty had given orders for settling a jointure upon the princess of Wales, suitable to her high rank and dignity, which he would in a proper time lay before parliament, in order to be rendered more certain and effectual; that, although his royal highness had not thought fit, by any application to his majesty, to desire that his allowance of fifty thousand pounds might be rendered less precarious, the king, to prevent the bad consequences which he apprehended might follow from the undutiful measures which his majesty was informed the prince had been advised to pursue, would grant to his royal highness, for his majesty’s life, the said fifty thousand pounds per annum, to be issued out of the civil list revenues, over and above the prince’s revenues arising from the duchy of Cornwall, which his majesty thought a very competent allowance, considering his own numerous issue, and the great expense which did and must necessarily attend an honourable provision for the whole royal family; that the prince, by a verbal answer, desired their lordships to lay him with all humility at his majesty’s feet; to assure him that he did, and ever should, retain the utmost duty for his royal person; that he was very thankful for any instance of his majesty’s goodness to him or to the princess, and particularly for his majesty’s gracious intention of settling a jointure upon her royal highness; but that, as to the message, the affair was now out of his hands, and therefore he could give no answer to it; that his royal highness afterwards used many dutiful expressions towards his majesty; adding, “Indeed, my lords, it is in other hands, and I am sorry for it;” or words to that effect. Sir Robert Walpole then endeavoured to demonstrate, that the annual sum of fifty thousand pounds was as much as the king could afford to allow for the prince’s maintenance; and he expatiated upon the bad consequences that might ensue, if the son should be rendered altogether independent of the father.

These suggestions did not pass unanswered. Sir Robert Walpole had asserted, that the parliament had no right to interfere in the creation or maintenance of a prince of Wales; and that in the case of Richard II., who, upon the death of his father, the Black Prince, was created prince of Wales, in consequence of an address or petition from parliament, that measure was in all probability directed by the king himself. In answer to this assertion, it was observed, that probably the king would not have been so forward in creating his grandson prince of Wales, if he had not been forced into this step by his parliament; for Edward in his old age fell into a sort of love dotage, and gave himself entirely up to the management of his mistress, Alice Pierce, and his second son, the duke of Lancaster; a circumstance that raised a most reasonable jealousy in the Black Prince, at that time on his death-bed, who could not but be anxious about the safety and right of his only son, whom he found he was soon to leave a child in the hands of a doating grandfather and an ambitious aspiring uncle. The supporters of the motion observed, that the allowance of fifty thousand pounds was not sufficient to defray the prince’s yearly expense, without alloting one shilling for acts of charity and munificence; and that the several deductions for land taxes and fees reduced it to forty-three thousand pounds. They affirmed, that his whole income, including the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall, did not exceed fifty-two thousand pounds a-year, though, by his majesty’s own regulation, the expense of the prince’s household amounted to sixty-three thousand. They proved that the produce of the civil list exceeded nine hundred thousand pounds, a sum above one hundred thousand pounds a-year more than was enjoyed by his late majesty; and that, in the first year of the late king, the whole expense of his household and civil government did not much exceed four hundred and fifty thousand pounds a-year. They observed, that the parliament added one hundred and forty thousand pounds annually for acts of charity and bounty, together with the article of secret-service money; and allowed one hundred thousand pounds for the maintenance of the prince of Wales; that the article of secret-service money had prodigiously increased in the late reign; by an account which happened to be laid before the parliament, it appeared that vast sums of money had been given for purposes which nobody understood, and to persons whom nobody knew. In the beginning of the following session several members proposed that this extraordinary account should be taken into consideration; but the inquiry was warded off by the other party, who declared that the parliament could not examine any account which had been presented to a former session. The debate was fierce and long; and ended in a division, by which the motion was rejected. A motion of the same nature was made by lord Carteret in the house of peers, and gave rise to a very keen dispute, maintained by the same arguments, and issuing in the same termination.

SCHEME FOR REDUCING THE INTEREST OF THE NATIONAL DEBT.

The next remarkable contest was occasioned by a motion of sir Robert Walpole, who proposed the sum of one million should be granted to his majesty, towards redeeming the like sum of the increased capital of the South-Sea company, commonly called the South-Sea annuities. Several members argued for the expediency of applying this sum to the payment of the debt due to the Bank, as part of that incumbrance was saddled with an interest of six per cent., whereas the interest paid for the other sums that constituted the public debt did not exceed four per cent. Many plausible arguments were offered on both sides of the question; and at length the motion was carried in the affirmative. The house having resolved itself into a committee to consider of the national debt, sir John Barnard made a motion, for enabling his majesty to raise money either by the sale of annuities, or by borrowing at an interest not exceeding three per cent., to be applied towards redeeming the South-Sea annuities; and that such of the said annuitants as should be inclined to subscribe their respective annuities, should be preferred to all others. He said, that even those public securities which bore an interest of three per cent, only, were sold at a premium in ‘Change-alley: he was therefore persuaded, that all those who were willing to give a premium for a three per cent, security, would gladly lend their money to the government at the same interest, should books of subscription be opened for that purpose, with an assurance that no part of the principal should be paid off for fourteen years. He expatiated on the national advantages that would accrue from a reduction of interest. From easy and obvious calculations he inferred, that in a very little time the interest upon all the South-Sea annuities would be reduced from four to three per cent., without any danger to public credit, or breach of public faith; that then the produce of the sinking fund would amount to fourteen hundred thousand pounds per annum, to be applied only towards redeeming the capital of the several trading companies; he proved that this measure would bring every one of them so much within the power of parliament, that they would be glad to accept of three per cent, interest on any reasonable terms; in which case the sinking-fund would rise to one million six hundred thousand pounds per annum. Then the parliament might venture to annihilate one half of it, by freeing the people from the taxes upon coals, candles, soap, leather, and other such impositions as lay heavy upon the poor labourers and manufacturers; the remaining part of the sinking-fund might be applied towards the discharge of those annuities and public debts which bore an interest of three per cent, only, and afterwards towards diminishing the capitals of the several trading companies till the term of fourteen years should be expired; then the sinking-fund would again amount to above a million yearly, which would be sufficient for paying them off, and freeing the nation entirely from all its incumbrances. This salutary scheme was violently opposed by alderman Heathcote, and other partisans of the ministry; yet all their objections were refuted; and, in order to defeat the project, they were obliged to have recourse to artifice. Mr. Winnington moved, that all the public creditors, as well as the South-Sea annuitants, should be comprehended. Sir John Barnard demonstrated that it might be easy for the government to borrow money at three per cent, sufficient for paying off such of the proprietors of four-and-twenty millions as were not willing to accept of that interest; but it would be extremely difficult to borrow enough to satisfy the proprietors of four-and-forty millions, who might choose to have their principal rather than such an interest. Nevertheless, resolutions were founded on this and other alterations of the original scheme; and a bill was immediately prepared. It produced many other debates, and was at last postponed by dint of ministerial influence. The same venerable patriot, who projected this scheme, moved that, as soon as the interest of all the national redeemable debt should be reduced to three per cent., the house would take off some of the heavy taxes which oppressed the poor and the manufacturers: but this motion was rejected by the majority.

{1737}

BILL AGAINST THE CITY OF EDINBURGH.

The last disputes of this session were excited by a bill sent down from the lords for punishing the magistrates and city of Edinburgh, on account of the murder of John Porteous. In the beginning of the session, lord Carteret recapitulated the several tumults and riots which had lately happened in different parts of the kingdom. He particularly insisted upon the atrocious murder of captain Porteous, as a flagrant insult upon the government, and a violation of the public peace, so much the more dangerous, as it seemed to have been concerted and executed with deliberation and decency. He suspected that some citizens of Edinburgh had been concerned in the murder; not only from this circumstance, but likewise because, notwithstanding the reward of two hundred pounds which had been offered by proclamation for the discovery of any person who acted in that tragedy, not one individual had as yet been detected. He seemed to think that the magistrates had encouraged the riot, and that the city had forfeited its charter; and he proposed a minute inquiry into the particulars of the affair. He was seconded by the duke of Newcastle and the earl of Hay; though the last nobleman differed in opinion with him in respect to the charter of the city, which, he said, could not be justly forfeited by the fault of the magistracy. The lords resolved, That the magistrates and other persons from whom they might obtain the necessary information concerning this riot, should be ordered to attend; and that an address should be presented to his majesty, desiring that the different accounts and papers relating to the murder of captain Porteous, might be submitted to the perusal of the house. These documents being accordingly examined, and all the witnesses arrived, including three Scottish judges, a debate arose about the manner in which these last should be interrogated, whether at the bar, at the table, or on the woolsacks. Some Scottish lords asserted, that they had a right to be seated next to the judges of England; but after a long debate this claim was rejected, and the judges of Scotland appeared at the bar in their robes. A bill was brought in to disable Alexander Wilson, esquire, lord-provost of Edinburgh, from enjoying any office or place of magistracy in the city of Edinburgh, or elsewhere in Great Britain; for imprisoning the said Alexander Wilson; for abolishing the guard of that city; and for taking away the gates of the Netherbow-port, so as to open a communication between the city and the suburbs, in which the king’s troops are quartered. The duke of Argyle, in arguing against this bill, said he could not think of a proceeding more harsh or unprecedented than the present, as he believed there was no instance of the whole weight of parliamentary indignation, for such he called a proceeding by a bill ex post facto, falling upon any single person, far less upon any community, for crimes that were within the reach of the inferior courts of justice; for this reason he observed, that if the lord-provost and citizens of Edinburgh should suffer in the terms of the present bill, they would suffer by a cruel, unjust, and fantastical proceeding; a proceeding of which the worst use might be made, if ever the nation should have the misfortune to fall under a partial self-interested administration. He told them he sat in the parliament of Scotland when that part of the treaty of Union relating to the privileges of the royal burghs, was settled on the same footing as religion; that is, they were made unalterable by any subsequent parliament of Great Britain. Notwithstanding the eloquence and warmth of his remonstrance, the bill was sent down to the house of commons, where it produced a violent contest. The commons set on foot a severe scrutiny into the particular circumstances that preceded and attended the murder of Porteous; from the examination of the witnesses, it appeared that no freeman or citizen of Edinburgh was concerned in the riot, which was chiefly composed of country people, excited by the relations of some unhappy persons whom Porteous and his men had slain at the execution of the smuggler; and these were assisted by ‘prentice-boys and the lowest class of vagabonds that happened to be at Edinburgh; that the lord-provost had taken all the precautions to prevent mischief that his reflection suggested; that he even exposed his person to the rage of the multitude, in his endeavour to disperse them; and that, if he had done amiss, he erred from want of judgment rather than from want of inclination to protect the unhappy Porteous. It likewise appeared that Mr. Lindsay, member for the city of Edinburgh, had gone in person to general Moyle, commander of the forces in North Britain, informed him of the riot, implored his immediate assistance, and promised to conduct his troops into the city; and that his suit was rejected, because he could not produce a written order from the magistracy, which he neither could have obtained in such confusion, nor ventured to carry about his person through the midst of an enraged populace. The Scottish members exerted themselves with uncommon vivacity in defence of their capital. They were joined by sir John Barnard, lord Cornbury, Mr. Shippen, and Mr. Oglethorpe. Lord Polworth declared, that if any gentleman would show where one argument in the charge against the lord-provost and the city of Edinburgh had been proved, he would that instant give his vote for the commitment of the bill. He said, if gentlemen would lay their hands upon their hearts, and ask themselves, whether they would have voted in this manner had the case of Edinburgh been that of the cities of Bristol, York, or Norwich, he was persuaded they would have required that every tittle of the charge against them should have been fully and undeniably proved. Some amendments and mitigations being inserted in the bill, it passed the house, was sent back to the lords, who agreed to the alterations, and then received the royal assent.

{GEORGE II. 1727-1760}

PLAY-HOUSE BILL.

The next effort of the minister was obliquely levelled at the liberty of the press, which it was much for his interest to abridge. The errors of his conduct, the mystery of that corruption which he had so successfully reduced to a system, and all the blemishes of his administration, had been exposed and ridiculed, not only in political periodical writings produced by the most eminent hands, but likewise in a succession of theatrical pieces, which met with uncommon success among the people. He either wanted judgment to distinguish men of genius, or could find none that would engage in his service; he therefore employed a set of wretched authors, void of understanding and ingenuity. They undertook the defence of his ministry, and answered the animadversions of his antagonists. The match was so extremely unequal, that, instead of justifying his conduct, they exposed it to additional ridicule and contempt; and he saw himself in danger of being despised by the whole nation. He resolved to seize the first opportunity to choke those canals through which the torrent of censure had flowed upon his character. The manager of a play-house communicated to him a manuscript farce, intituled, The Golden Rump, which was fraught with treason and abuse upon the government, and had been presented to the stage for exhibition. This performance was produced in the house of commons. The minister descanted upon the insolence, the malice, the immorality, and the seditious calumny which had been of late propagated in theatrical pieces. A bill was brought in to limit the number of playhouses; to subject all dramatic writings to the inspection of the lord chamberlain; and to compel them to take out a license for every production before it could appear on the stage. Notwithstanding a vigorous opposition, this bill passed through both houses with extraordinary despatch, and obtained the royal sanction. In this debate the earl of Chesterfield distinguished himself by an excellent speech, that will ever endear his character to all the friends of genius and literature, to all those who are warmed with zeal for the liberties of their country. “Our stage,” said he, “ought certainly to be kept in due bounds; but for this purpose, our laws as they stand at present are sufficient. If our stage-players at any time exceed those bounds, they ought to be prosecuted; they may be punished. We have precedents, we have examples of persons punished for things less criminal than some pieces which have been lately represented; a new law must, therefore unnecessary; and in the present case it cannot be unnecessary without being dangerous. Every unnecessary restraint is a fetter upon the legs, is a shackle upon the hands, of liberty. One of the greatest blessings we enjoy, one of the greatest blessings a people can enjoy, is liberty. But every good in this life has its allay of evil. Licentiousness is the allay of liberty. It is an ebullition, an excrescence; it is a speck upon the eye of the political body, which I can never touch but with a gentle, with a trembling hand; lest I destroy the body, lest I injure the eye, upon which it is apt to appear. If the stage becomes at any time licentious, if a play appears to be a libel upon the government, or upon any particular man, the king’s courts are open; the law is sufficient to punish the offender. If poets and players are to be restrained, let them be restrained as other subjects are, by the known laws of their country; if they offend, let them be tried as every Englishman ought to be, by God and their country. Do not let us subject them to the arbitrary will and pleasure of any one man. A power lodged in the hands of a single man to judge and determine without limitation, control, or appeal, is a sort of power unknown to our laws, inconsistent with our constitution. It is a higher, a more absolute power than we trust even to the king himself; and, therefore, I must think we ought not to vest any such power in his majesty’s lord-chamberlain.” His arguments had no effect, though the house admired his elocution; and the play-house bill passed into a law. On the twenty-first day of June the king made a short speech to both houses, and the lord chancellor prorogued the parliament.

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Chapter III

The Russians take Oczakow..... Death of Gaston de Medeis, Duke of Tuscany..... Death of Caroline, Queen Consort of England..... Dispute in Parliament about the Standing Army..... Spanish Depredations..... Motives of the Minister for avoiding a War..... Address to the King on the Subject of the Depredations..... Bill for Securing the Trade, of his Majesty’s Subjects in America..... Debates in the House of Lords..... Birth of Prince George..... Admiral Haddock sails with a Squadron to the Mediterranean..... Progress of the War against the Turks..... Dispute and Rupture between Hanover and Denmark..... Sir Robert Walpole extols the Convention in the House of Commons---Motion for an Address, that the Representations, Letters, &c, relating to the Spanish Depredations, should be laid before the House..... Petitions against the Convention..... Substance of that Agreement..... Debate in the House of Commons on the Convention..... Secession of the chief Members in the Opposition..... Debate in the House of Lords upon an Address to his Majesty touching the Convention..... Message from the Throne touching a Subsidy to Denmark, and a Power to augment the Forces of the Kingdom..... Parliament prorogued..... The King of Spain publishes a Manifesto..... The Emperor and Czarina conclude a Peace with the Turks..... Preparations for War in England..... Apology in the House of Commons for the seceding Members..... Pension Bill revived, and lost..... Porto Bello taken by Admiral Vernon..... Hard Frost..... Marriage of the Princess Mary to the Prince of Hesse..... Strong Armament sent to the West Indies..... Death of the Emperor and Czarina..... Proceedings in Parliament..... Seamen’s Bill..... Discontents against the Ministry..... Motion for removing Sir Robert Walpole from his Majesty’s Councils and Presence for ever..... Debate on the Mutiny Bill..... Proceedings in the House of Lords..... Close of the last Session of this Parliament

THE RUSSIANS TAKE OCZAKOW.

A congress had been opened at Niemerow in Poland, to compromise the differences between the czarina and the grand seignor; but this proving ineffectual, the emperor declared war against the Turks, and demanded assistance from the diet of the empire. He concerted the operations of the campaign with the empress of Muscovy. It was agreed that the Imperialists, under count Seckendorf, should attack Widdin in Servia; while the Russians, commanded by count de Munich, should penetrate to the Ukraine, and besiege Oczakow, on the Roristhenes. They accordingly advanced against this place, which was garrisoned by twenty thousand men, and on the side of the Roristhenes defended by eighteen galleys. The Muscovites carried on their approaches with such impetuosity and perseverance, that the Turks were terrified at their valour, and in a few days capitulated. Among those who signalized themselves by uncommon marks of prowess in these attacks, was general Keith, now field-marshal in the Prussian service, who was dangerously wounded on this occasion. Meanwhile count Seckendorf, finding it impossible to reduce Widdin without a squadron of ships on the Danube, turned his arms against Nissa, which was surrendered to him on the eight-and-twentieth day of July; but this was the farthest verge of his good fortune. The Turks attacked the post which the Imperialists occupied along the Danube. They took the fort of Padudil, burned the town of Has in Wallachia, and plundered the neighbouring villages. The prince of Saxe-Hilburghausen, who had invested Bagnalack in Bosnia, was defeated, and obliged to repass the Saave. Count Seckendorf was recalled to Vienna; and the command of the army devolved upon count Philippe. Count Kevenhuller was obliged to retreat from Servia; and Nissa was retaken by the Mussulmen. The conferences at Niemerow were broken off; and the Turkish plenipotentiaries returned to Constantinople.

The kingdom of Poland now enjoyed the most perfect repose under the dominion of Augustus. Ferdinand, the old duke of Courland, dying without issue, the succession was disputed by the Teutonic order and the kingdom of Poland, while the states of Courland claimed a right of election, and sent deputies to Petersburgh, imploring the protection of the czarina. A body of Russian troops immediately entered that country; and the states elected the count de Biron, high chamberlain to the empress of Muscovy. The elector of Cologn, as grand-master of the Teutonic order, protested against this election; but the king of Poland agreed to it, on certain conditions settled at Dantzic with the commissiaries of the new duke and those of the czarina. In the month of July, John Gaston de Medicis, great duke of Tuscany, died at Florence; and the prince de Craon took possession of his territories in the name of the duke of Lorraine, to whom the emperor had already granted the eventual investiture of that duchy.

DEATH OF CAROLINE, QUEEN CONSORT.

In England the attention of the public was attracted by an open breach in the royal family. The princess of Wales had advanced to the very last month of her pregnancy before the king and queen were informed of her being with child. She was twice conveyed from Hampton-Court to the palace of St. James’, when her labour-pains were supposed to be approaching; and at length was delivered of a princess in about two hours after her arrival. The king being apprised of this event, sent a message by the earl of Essex to the prince, expressing his displeasure at the conduct of his royal highness, as an indignity offered to himself and the queen. The prince deprecated his majesty’s anger in several submissive letters, and implored the queen’s mediation. The princess joined her entreaties to those of his royal highness; but all their humility and supplication proved ineffectual. The king, in another message sent by the duke of Grafton, observed, that the prince had removed the princess twice in the week immediately preceding the day of her delivery, from the place of his majesty’s residence, in expectation of her labour; and both times, on his return, industriously concealed from the knowledge of the king and queen every circumstance relating to this important affair; that at last, without giving any notice to their majesties, he had precipitately hurried the princess from Hampton-Court in a condition not to be named; that the whole tenor of his conduct, for a considerable time, had been so entirely void of all real duty to the king, that his majesty had reason to be highly offended with him. He gave him to understand, that until he should withdraw his regard and confidence from those by whose instigation and advice he was directed and encouraged in his unwarrantable behaviour to his majesty and the queen, and return to his duty, he should not reside in the palace; he therefore signified his pleasure that he should leave St. James’, with all his family, when it could be done without prejudice or inconvenience to the princess. In obedience to this order the prince retired to Kew, and made other efforts to be readmitted into his majesty’s favour, which, however, he could not retrieve. Whatever might have been his design in concealing so long from the king and queen the pregnancy of the princess, and afterwards hurrying her from place to place in such a condition, to the manifest hazard of her life, his majesty had certainly cause to be offended at this part of his conduct; though the punishment seems to have been severe, if not rigorous; for he was not even admitted into the presence of the queen his mother, to express his duty to her in her last moments, to implore her forgiveness, and receive her last blessing. She died of a mortification in her bowels, on the twentieth day of November, in the fifty-fifth year of her age, regretted as a princess of uncommon sagacity, and as a pattern of conjugal virtue.

DISPUTE IN PARLIAMENT.

The king opened the session of parliament on the twenty-fourth day of January, with a short speech recommending the despatch of the public business with prudence and unanimity. Each house presented a warm address of condolence on the queen’s death, with which he seemed to be extremely affected. Though the house of commons unanimously sympathised with the king in his affliction, the minister still met with contradiction in some of his favourite measures. One would imagine that all the arguments for and against a standing army in time of peace had been already exhausted; but, when it was moved that the same number of land forces which they had voted in the preceding year should be continued in pay for the ensuing year, the dispute was renewed with surprising vivacity, and produced some reasons which had not been suggested before. The adherents of the minister fairly owned, that if the army should be disbanded, or even considerably reduced, they believed the tory interest would prevail; that the present number of forces was absolutely necessary to maintain the peace of the kingdom, which was filled with clamour and discontent, as well as to support the whig interest; and that they would vote for keeping up four times the number, should it be found expedient for that purpose. The members in the opposition replied, that this declaration was a severe satire on the ministry, whose conduct had given birth to such a spirit of discontent. They said it was in effect a tacit acknowledgment, that what they called the whig interest was no more than an inconsiderable party, which had engrossed the administration by indirect methods; which acted contrary to the sense of the nation; and depended for support upon a military power, by which the people in general were overawed, and consequently enslaved. They affirmed, that the discontent of which the ministry complained, was in a great measure owing to that very standing army, which perpetuated their taxes, and hung over their heads as the instruments of arbitrary power and oppression. Lord Polworth explained the nature of whig principles, and demonstrated that the party which distinguished itself by this appellation, no longer retained the maxims by which the whigs were originally characterised. Sir John Hinde Cotton, who spoke with the courage and freedom of an old English baron, declared, he never knew a member of that house who acted on true whig principles, vote for a standing army in time of peace. “I have heard of whigs,” said he, “who opposed all unlimited votes of credit; I have heard of whigs who looked upon corruption as the greatest curse that could befall any nation; I have heard of whigs who esteemed the liberty of the press to be the most valuable privilege of a free people, and triennial parliaments as the greatest bulwark of their liberties; and I have heard of a whig administration which has resented injuries done to the trade of the nation, and revenged insults offered to the British flag.” The ministry triumphed as usual, and the same number of forces was continued.

SPANISH DEPREDATIONS.

Ever since the treaty of Seville, the Spaniards in America had almost incessantly insulted and distressed the commerce of Great Britain. They disputed the right of English traders to cut logwood in the bay of Campeachy, and gather salt in the island of Tortugas; though that right was acknowledged by implication in all the treaties which had been lately concluded between the two nations. The captains of their armed vessels, known by the name of guarda-costas, had made a practice of boarding and plundering British ships, on pretence of searching for contraband commodities, on which occasions they had behaved with the utmost insolence, cruelty, and rapine. Some of their ships of war had actually attacked a fleet of English merchant ships at the island of Tortugas, as if they had been at open enmity with England. They had seized and detained a great number of British vessels, imprisoned their crews, and confiscated their cargoes, in violation of treaties, in defiance of common justice and humanity. Repeated memorials were presented to the court of Spain, by the British ambassador at Madrid. He was amused with evasive answers, vague promises of inquiry, and cedulas of instructions sent to the Spanish governors in America, to which they paid no sort of regard. Not but that the Spaniards had reason to complain in their turn, of the illicit commerce which the English traders from Jamaica and other islands, carried on with their subjects on the continent of South America; though this could not justify the depredations and cruelties which the commanders of the guarda-costas had committed, without provocation or pretence.

MOTIVES FOR AVOIDING A WAR.

The merchants of England loudly complained of these outrages; the nation was fired with resentment, and cried for vengeance; but the minister appeared cold, phlegmatic, and timorous. He knew that a war would involve him in such difficulties as must of necessity endanger his administration. The treasure which he now employed for domestic purposes, must in that case be expended in military armaments; the wheels of that machine on which he had raised his influence would no longer move; the opposition would of consequence gain ground, and the imposition of fresh taxes, necessary for the maintenance of the war, would fill up the measure of popular resentment against his person and ministry. Moved by these considerations, he industriously endeavoured to avoid a rupture, and to obtain some sort of satisfaction by dint of memorials and negotiations, in which he betrayed his own fears to such a degree, as animated the Spaniards to persist in their depredations, and encouraged the court of Madrid to disregard the remonstrances of the British ambassador. But this apprehension of war did not proceed from Spain only; the two branches of the house of Bourbon were now united by politics, as well as by consanguinity; and he did not doubt that in case of a rupture with Spain, they would join their forces against Great Britain. Petitions were delivered to the house by merchants from different parts of the kingdom, explaining the repeated violences to which they had been exposed, and imploring relief of the parliament. These were referred to a committee of the whole house; and an order was made to admit the petitioners, if they should think fit, to be heard by themselves or by counsel. Sir John Barnard moved for an address to the king, that all the memorials and papers relating to the Spanish depredations should be laid before the house; and this, with some alteration proposed by sir Robert Walpole, was actually presented. In compliance with the request, an enormous multitude of letters and memorials was produced.

The house, in a grand committee, proceeded to hear counsel for the merchants, and examine evidence; by which it appeared that amazing acts of wanton cruelty and injustice had been perpetrated by Spaniards on the subjects of Great Britain. Mr. Pulteney expatiated upon these circumstances of barbarity. He demonstrated, from treaties, the right of the British traders to the logwood of Campeachy, and to the salt of Tortugas; he exposed the pusillanimity of the minister, and the futility of his negotiations; he moved for such resolutions as would evince the resentment of an injured nation, and the vigour of a British parliament. These were warmly combated by sir Robert Walpole, who affirmed, that they would cramp the ministers in their endeavours to compromise these differences; that they would frustrate their negotiations, intrench upon the king’s prerogative, and precipitate the nation into an unnecessary and expensive war. Answers produced replies, and a general debate ensued. A resolution was reported; but the question being put for recommitting it, was carried in the negative. The house, however, agreed to an address, beseeching his majesty to use his endeavours to obtain effectual relief for his injured subjects, to convince the court of Spain that his majesty could no longer suffer such constant and repeated insults and injuries to be carried on, to the dishonour of his crown, and to the ruin of his trading subjects; and assuring him, that in case his royal and friendly instances with the catholic king should miscarry, the house would effectually support his majesty in taking such measures as honour and justice should make it necessary for him to pursue. To this address the king made a favourable answer.

{1738}

BILL FOR SECURING THE TRADE IN AMERICA.

The next important subject on which both sides exercised their talents, was a bill prepared and brought in by Mr. Pulteney, for the more effectual securing the trade of his majesty’s subjects in America. This was no other than the revival of part of two acts passed in the reign of queen Anne, by which the property of all prizes taken from the enemy was vested in the captors; while the sovereign was empowered to grant commissions or charters to any persons or societies, for taking any ships, goods, harbours, lands, or fortifications of the nation’s enemies in America, and for holding and enjoying the same as their own property and estate for ever. The ministry endeavoured to evade the discussion of this bill, by amusing the house with other business, until an end should be put to the session. A mean artifice was practised with this view; and some severe altercation passed between sir Robert Walpole and Mr. Pulteney. At length the bill was read, and gave rise to a very long and warm contest, in which the greatest orators of both sides found opportunities to display their eloquence and satire. Mr. Pulteney defended the bill with all the ardour of paternal affection; but, notwithstanding his warmest endeavours, it was rejected upon a division.

When the mutiny bill was sent up to the house of lords, a long debate arose upon the number of troops voted for the ensuing year. Lord Carteret explained the situation of affairs, in almost every nation of Europe, with great conciseness and precision. He demonstrated the improbability of a rupture between Great Britain and any power against which a land army could be of any service. He examined the domestic circumstances of the nation; and proved that whatever discontents there might be in the kingdom, there was little or no disaffection, and no seeming design to overturn or disturb the government. In answer to an argument, that such a number of regular forces were necessary for preventing or quelling tumults, and for enabling the civil magistrate to execute the laws of his country, he expressed his hope that he should never see the nation reduced to such unfortunate circumstances: he said, a law which the civil power was unable to execute, must either be in itself oppressive, or such a one as afforded a handle for oppression. In arguing for a reduction of the forces, he took notice of the great increase of the national expense. He observed, that before the revolution, the people of England did not raise above two millions for the whole of the public charges; but now what was called the current expense, for which the parliament annually provided, exceeded that sum; besides the civil list, the interest due to the public creditors, and the sinking fund, which, added together, composed a burden of six millions yearly. The earl of Chesterfield, on the same subject, affirmed, that slavery and arbitrary power were the certain consequences of keeping up a standing army for any number of years. It is the machine by which the chains of slavery are rivetted upon a free people. They may be secretly prepared by corruption; but, unless a standing army protected those that forged them, the people would break them asunder, and chop off the polluted hands by which they were prepared. By degrees a free people must be accustomed to be governed by an army; by degrees that army must be made strong enough to hold them in subjection. England had for many years been accustomed to a standing army, under the pretence of its being necessary to assist the civil power; and by degrees the number and strength of it have been increasing. At the accession of the late king it did not exceed six thousand; it soon amounted to double that number, which has been since augmented under various pretences. He therefore concluded, that slavery, under the disguise of an army for protecting the liberties of the people, was creeping in upon them by degrees; if no reduction should be made, he declared he should expect in a few years to hear some minister, or favourite of a minister, terrifying the house with imaginary plots and invasions, and making the tour of Europe in search of possible dangers, to show the necessity of keeping up a mercenary standing army, three times as numerous as the present. In spite of those suggestions, the standing army maintained its ground. The same noblemen, assisted by lord Bathurst, distinguished themselves in a debate upon the Spanish depredations, which comprehended the same arguments that were used in the house of commons. They met with the same success in both. Resolutions equivalent to those of the lower house were taken; an address was presented; and his majesty assured them he would repeat, in the most pressing manner, his instances at the court of Spain, in order to obtain satisfaction and security for his subjects trading to America. This assurance was renewed in his speech at the close of the session, on the twentieth of May, when the parliament was prorogued.

BIRTH OF PRINCE GEORGE.

At this period the princess of Wales was delivered of a son, who was baptised by the name of George, now king of Great Britain. His birth was celebrated with uncommon rejoicings: addresses of congratulation were presented to the king by the two universities, and by almost all the cities and communities of the kingdom. But the prince of Wales still laboured under the displeasure of his majesty, who had ordered the lord-chamberlain to signify in the gazette, that no person who visited the prince should be admitted to the court of St. James’. His royal highness was divested of all the external marks of royalty, and lived like a private gentleman, cultivating the virtues of a social life, and enjoying the best fruits of conjugal felicity. In the latter end of this month, rear-admiral Haddock set sail with a strong squadron for the Mediterranean, which it was hoped would give weight to the negotiation of the British minister at the court of Madrid. The act to discourage the retail of spirituous liquors had incensed the populace to such a degree, as occasioned numberless tumults in the cities of London and Westminster. They were so addicted to the use of that pernicious compound, known by the appellation of gin or geneva, that they ran all risks rather than forego it entirely; and so little regard was paid to the law by which it was prohibited, that in less than two years twelve thousand persons within the bills of mortality were convicted of having sold it illegally. Nearly one half of that number were cast in the penalty of one hundred pounds; and three thousand persons paid ten pounds each, for an exemption from the disgrace of being committed to the house of correction.

PROGRESS of the WAR AGAINST the TURKS.

The war maintained by the emperor and the czarina against the Ottoman Porte, had not yet produced any decisive event. Count Seckendorf was disgraced and confined on account of his ill success in the last campaign. General Doxat was tried by a council of war at Belgrade, and condemned to death, for having surrendered to the enemy the town of Nissa, in which he commanded. The diet of the empire granted a subsidy of fifty Roman months to the emperor, who began to make vigorous preparations for the ensuing campaign; but, in the meantime, Ragotski, vaivode of Transylvania, revolted against the house of Austria, and brought a considerable army into the field, under the protection of the grand seignor. He was immediately proclaimed a rebel, and a price set upon his head by the court of Vienna. The Turks taking the field early, reduced the forts of Usitza and Meadia, and undertook the siege of Orsova; which however they abandoned at the approach of the Imperial army, commanded by the grand duke of Tuscany, assisted by count Konigsegg. The Turks, being reinforced, marched back and attacked the Imperialists, by whom they were repulsed after an obstinate engagement. The Germans, notwithstanding this advantage, repassed the Danube; and then the infidels made themselves masters of Orsova, where they found a fine train of artillery, designed for the siege of Widdin. By the conquest of this place, the Turks laid the Danube open to their galleys and vessels; and the Germans retired under the cannon of Belgrade. In the Ukraine, the Russians, under general count Munich, obtained the advantage over the Turks in two engagements; and general Lasci routed the Tartars of the Crimea; but they returned in greater numbers, and harassed the Muscovites in such a manner, by intercepting their provisions, and destroying the country, that they were obliged to abandon the lines of Precops.

DISPUTE BETWEEN HANOVER AND DENMARK.

In the month of October, an affair of very small importance produced a rupture between the king of Denmark and the elector of Hanover. A detachment of Hanoverians took by assault the castle of Steinhurst, belonging to the privy-counsellor Wederkop, and defended by thirty Danish dragoons, who had received orders to repel force by force. Several men were killed on both sides before the Hanoverians could enter the place, when the garrison was disarmed, and conducted to the frontiers. This petty dispute about a small territory, which did not yield the value of one thousand pounds a-year, had well nigh involved Hanover in a war, which, in all probability, Great Britain must have maintained; but this dispute was compromised by a convention between the king of England and Denmark.

The session of parliament was opened on the first day of February, when the king in his speech to both houses, gave them to understand that a convention was concluded and ratified between him and the king of Spain, who had obliged himself to make reparation to the British subjects for their losses, by certain stipulated payments; the plenipotentiaries were named and appointed for regulating, within a limited time, all those grievances and abuses which had hitherto interrupted the commerce of Great Britain in the American seas; and for settling all matters in dispute, in such a manner as might for the future prevent and remove all new causes and pretences of complaint. The motion for an address of approbation was disputed as usual. Though the convention was not vet laid before the house, the nature of it was well known to the leaders of the opposition. I Sir William Wyndham observed, that if the ministry had made the resolutions taken by the parliament in the last session the foundation of their demands; if they had discovered a resolution to break off all treating, rather than depart from the sense of parliament, either a defensive treaty might have been obtained, or by this time the worst would have been known; but, by what appeared from his majesty’s speech, the convention was no other than a preliminary; and, in all probability, a very bad preliminary. He supposed the minister had ventured to clothe some of his creatures with full powers to give up the rights of the nation; for they might do it if they durst. Sir Robert Walpole, in answer to these suggestions, affirmed, that the ministry had on this occasion obtained more than ever on like occasions was known to be obtained; that they had reconciled the peace of their country with her true interest; that this peace was attended with all the advantages that the most successful arms could have procured; that future ages would consider this as the most glorious period of our history, and do justice to the councils that produced the happy event, which every gentleman divested of passion and prejudice was ready to do; and which, he believed, the present age, when rightly informed, would not refuse. In a word, he extolled his own convention with the most extravagant encomiums.

The house resolved to address the king, that copies of all the memorials, representations, letters, and papers, presented to his majesty, or his secretary of state, relating to depredations, should be submitted to the peru sal of the house; but some members in the opposition were not contented with this resolution. Then Mr. Sandys, who may be termed the “motion-maker,” moved for an address, desiring that the house might inspect all letters written, and instructions given by the secretaries of state, or commissioners of the admiralty, to any of the British governors in America, or any commander-in-chief, or captains of his majesty’s ships of war, or his majesty’s minister at the court of Spain, or any of his majesty’s consuls in Europe, since the treaty of Seville, relating to losses which the British subjects had sustained by means of depredations committed by the subjects of Spain in Europe and America. This was an unreasonable proposal, suggested by the spirit of animosity and faction. Mr. H. Walpole justly observed, that a compliance with such an address might lay open the most private transactions of the cabinet, and discover secrets that ought, for the good of the kingdom, to be concealed. It would discover to the court of Spain the ultimatum of the king’s demands and concessions, and the nation would thereby be deprived of many advantages which it might reap, were no such discovery made. He said, that as soon as the differences betwixt the two courts should arrive at such a crisis, and not before, the consuls were instructed to give notice to the merchants that they might retire in time with their effects; but should such instruction come to the knowledge of the Spaniards, it would be a kind of watch-word to put them on their guard, and unavoidably occasion the ruin of many thousands of British subjects. Certain it is, no government could act either in external or domestic affairs with proper influence, dignity, and despatch, if every letter and instruction relating to an unfinished negotiation should be exposed to the view of such a numerous assembly, composed of individuals actuated by motives in themselves diametrically opposite. The motion being rejected by the majority, the same gentleman moved again for an address, that his majesty would give directions for laying before the house copies of such memorials or representations as had been made, either to the king of Spain or to his ministers, since the treaty of Seville, relating to the depredations committed in Europe or America. A debate ensued; and, upon a division, the question passed in the negative.

{GEORGE II. 1727-1760}

PETITIONS AGAINST THE CONVENTION.

The house, in a committee of supply, voted twelve thousand seamen for the service of the ensuing year, and the standing army was continued without reduction, though powerfully attacked by the whole strength of the opposition. The commons likewise ordered an address to his majesty, for the copies of several memorials since the treaty of Seville, touching the rights of Great Britain, or any infraction of treaties which had not been laid before them. These were accordingly submitted to the inspection of the house. By this time the convention itself was not only presented to the commons, but also published for the information of the people. Divers merchants, planters, and others trading to America, the cities of London and Bristol, the merchants of Liverpool, and owners of sundry ships which had been seized by the Spaniards, offered petitions against the convention, by which the subjects of Spain were so far from giving up their groundless and unjustifiable practice of visiting and searching British ships sailing to and from the British plantations, that they appeared to have claimed the power of doing it as a right; for they insisted that the differences which had arisen concerning it should be referred to plenipotentiaries, to be discussed by them without even agreeing to abstain from such visitation and search during the time that the discussion of this affair might last. They therefore prayed that they might have an opportunity of being heard, and allowed to represent the great importance of the British trade to and from the plantations in America; the clear and un disputable right which they had to enjoy it, without being stopped, visited, or searched by the Spaniards, on any pretence whatsoever; and the certain inevitable destruction of all the riches and strength derived to Great Britain from that trade, if a search of British ships sailing to and from their own plantations should be tolerated upon any pretext, or under any restrictions, or even if the freedom of this navigation should continue much longer in a state of uncertainty. These petitions were referred to the committee appointed to consider of the convention. Another remonstrance was likewise presented by the trustees for establishing the colony of Georgia, setting forth that the king of Spain claimed that colony as part of his territories; and that by the convention, the regulation of the limits of Carolina and Florida was referred to the determination of plenipotentiaries; so that the colony of Georgia, which undoubtedly belonged to the crown of Great Britain, was left in dispute, while the settlers remained in the most precarious and dangerous situation. It was moved that the merchants should be heard by their counsel; but the proposal was strenuously opposed by the ministry, and rejected upon a division.

This famous convention, concluded at the Pardo on the fourteenth day of January, imported, that within six weeks to be reckoned from the day on which the ratifications were exchanged, two ministers plenipotentiaries should meet at Madrid, to confer, and finally regulate the respective pretentions of the two crowns, with relation to the trade and navigation in America and Europe, and to the limits of Florida and Carolina, as well as concerning other points which remained likewise to be adjusted, according to the former treaties subsisting between the two nations: that the plenipotentiaries should finish their conferences within the space of eight months: that in the meantime no progress should be made in the fortifications of Florida and Carolina: that his catholic majesty should pay to the king of Great Britain, the sum of ninety-five thousand pounds, for a balance due to the crown and subjects of Great Britain, after deduction made of the demands of the crown and subjects of Spain: that this sum should be employed for the satisfaction, discharge, and payment of the demands of the British subjects upon the crown of Spain: that this reciprocal discharge, however, should not extend or relate to the accounts and differences which subsisted and were to be settled between the crown of Spain and the assiento company, nor to any particular or private contracts that might subsist between either of the two crowns, or their ministers, with the subjects of the other; or between the subjects of each nation respectively: that his catholic majesty should cause the sum of ninety-five thousand pounds to be paid at London within four mouths, to be reckoned from the day on which the ratifications were exchanged. Such was the substance of that convention, which alarmed and provoked the merchants and traders of Great Britain, excited the indignation of all those who retained any regard for the honour of their country, and raised a general cry against the minister who stood at the helm of administration.

DEBATE ON THE CONTENTION.

The eyes of the whole kingdom were now turned upon the house of commons. The two contending parties summoned their whole force for the approaching dispute; on the day appointed for considering the convention, four hundred members had taken their seats by eight in the morning. In a committee of the whole house, certain West India merchants and planters were heard against the convention; so that this and the following day were employed in reading papers, and obtaining information. On the eighth day of March, Mr. H. Walpole having launched out in the praise of that agreement, moved for an address of approbation to his majesty. He was seconded by Mr. Campbell of Pembrokeshire; and the debate began with extraordinary ardour. He who first distinguished himself in the lists was sir Thomas Sanderson, at that time treasurer to the prince of Wales, afterwards earl of Scarborough. All the officers and adherents of his royal highness had joined the opposition; and he himself on this occasion sat in the gallery, to hear the debate on such an important transaction. Sir Thomas Sanderson observed, that the Spaniards by the convention, instead of giving us reparation, had obliged us to give them a general release. They had not allowed the word satisfaction to be so much as once mentioned in the treaty. Even the Spanish pirate who had cut off the ear of captain Jenkins, [260] [See note 2 L at the end of this Vol.] and used the most insulting expression towards the person of the king--an expression which no British subject could decently repeat--an expression which no man that had a regard for his sovereign could ever forgive--even this fellow lived to enjoy the fruits of his rapine, and remained a living testimony of the cowardly tameness and mean submission of Great Britain; of the triumphant haughtiness and stubborn pride of Spain. Lord Gage, one of the most keen spirited and sarcastic orators in the house, stated in this manner the account of the satisfaction obtained from the court of Spain by the convention; the losses sustained by the Spanish depredations amounted to three hundred and forty thousand pounds; the commissary by a stroke of his pen reduced his demand to two hundred thousand pounds; then forty-five thousand were struck off for prompt payment; he next allotted sixty thousand pounds as the remaining part of a debt pretended to be due to Spain, for the destruction of her fleet by sir George Byng, though it appeared by the instructions on the table, that Spain had been already amply satisfied on that head; these deductions reduced the balance to ninety-five thousand pounds; but the king of Spain insisted upon the South-Sea company’s paying immediately the sum of sixty-eight thousand pounds, as a debt due to him on one head of accounts, though in other articles his catholic majesty was indebted to the company a million over and above the demand; the remainder to be paid by Spain did not exceed seven-and-twenty thousand pounds, from which she insisted upon deducting whatever she might have already given in satisfaction for any of the British ships that had been taken; and on being allowed the value of the St. Theresa, a Spanish ship which had been seized in the port of Dublin. Mr. W. Pitt, with an energy of argument and diction peculiar to himself, declaimed against the convention, as insecure, unsatisfactory, and dishonourable to Great Britain. He said the great national objection, the searching of British ships, was not admitted, indeed, in the preamble; but stood there as the reproach of the whole, as the strongest evidence of the fatal submission that followed; on the part of Spain, an usurpation, an inhuman tyranny claimed and exercised over the American seas: on the part of England, an undoubted right by treaties, and from God and nature, declared and asserted in the resolutions of parliament, were now referred to the discussion of plenipotentiaries, upon one and the same equal footing. This undoubted right was to be discussed and regulated; and if to regulate be to prescribe rules, as in all construction it is, that right was, by the express words of the convention, to be given up and sacrificed; for it must cease to be any thing from the moment it is submitted to limitation. Mr. Lyttelton, with equal force and fluency, answered the speech of Mr. H. Walpole. “After he had used many arguments to persuade us to peace,” said he, “to any peace, good or bad, by pointing out the dangers of a war, dangers I by no means allow to be such as he represents them, he crowned all those terrors with the name of the pretender. It would be the cause of the pretender. The pretender would come. Is the honourable gentleman sensible what this language imports? The people of England complain of the greatest wrongs and indignities; they complain of the interruption, the destruction of their trade; they think the peace has left them in a worse condition than before; and in answer to all these complaints, what are they told? Why, that their continuing to suffer all this, is the price they must pay to keep the king and his family on the throne of these realms. If this were true, it ought not to be owned; but it is far from truth; the very reverse is true. Nothing can weaken the family; nothing shake the establishment, but such measures as these, and such language as this.” He affirmed, that if the ministers had proceeded conformably to the intentions of parliament, they would either have acted with vigour, or have obtained a real security in an express acknowledgment of our right not to be searched as a preliminary, sine qua non, to our treating at all. Instead of this, they had referred it to plenipotentiaries. “Would you, sir,” said he, “submit to a reference, whether you may travel unmolested from your house in town to your house in the country? Your right is clear and undeniable, why would you have it discussed? but much less would you refer it, if two of your judges belonged to a gang which has often stopped and robbed you in your way thither before.” The ministers, in vindication of the convention, asserted, that the satisfaction granted by Spain was adequate to the injury received; that it was only the preliminary of a treaty which would remove all causes of complaint; that war was always expensive and detrimental to a trading nation, as well as uncertain in its events; that France and Spain would certainly join their forces in case of a rupture with Great Britain; that there was not one power in Europe upon which the English could depend for effectual assistance; and that war would favour the cause and designs of a popish pretender. The house, upon a division, agreed to the address; but when a motion was made for its being recommitted, the two parties renewed the engagement with redoubled eagerness and impetuosity. Sir William Wyndham and Mr. Pulteney poured all the thunder of their eloquence against the insolence of Spain, and the concessions of the British ministry. Sir Robert Walpole exerted all his fortitude and dexterity in defence of himself and his measures, and the question being put, the resolutions for the address were carried by a small majority.

SECESSION OF THE CHIEF MEMBERS IN THE OPPOSITION.

Then sir William Wyndham, standing up, made a pathetic remonstrance upon this determination. “This address,” said he, “is intended to convince mankind, that the treaty under our consideration is a reasonable and an honourable treaty. But if a majority of twenty-eight in such a full house should fail of that success; if the people should not implicitly resign their reason to a vote of this house, what will be the consequence? Will not the parliament lose its authority? Will it not be thought, that even in the parliament we are governed by a faction? and what the consequence of this may be, I leave to those gentlemen to consider, who are now to give their vote for this address: for my own part, I will trouble you no more, but, with these my last words, I sincerely pray to Almighty God, who has so often wonderfully protected these kingdoms, that he will graciously continue his protection over them, by preserving us from that impending danger which threatens the nation from without, and likewise from that impending danger which threatens our constitution from within.” The minister was on this occasion deserted by his usual temper, and even provoked into personal abuse. He declared, that the gentleman who was now the mouth of his opponents, had been looked upon as the head of those traitors, who, twenty-five years before, conspired the destruction of their country and of the royal family, in order to set a popish pretender upon the throne; that he was seized by the vigilance of the then government, and pardoned by its clemency; but all the use he had ungratefully made of that clemency, was to qualify himself according to law, that he and his party might sometime or other have an opportunity to overthrow all law. He branded them all as traitors, and expressed his hope, that their behaviour would unite all the true friends of the present happy establishment. To such a degree of mutual animosity were both sides inflamed, that the most eminent members of the minority actually retired from parliament; and were by the nation in general revered as martyrs to the liberty of the people.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS DEBATE UPON AN ADDRESS TO HIS MAJESTY.

The dispute occasioned by the convention in the house of lords, was maintained with equal warmth, and perhaps with more abilities. After this famous treaty had been considered, lord Carteret suggested, that possibly one of the contracting powers had presented a protest or declaration, importing that she acceded to such or such a measure, only upon condition that the terms of that protest or declaration should be made good. He said, that until his mind should be free from the most distant suspicion that such a paper might exist in the present case, he could not form a just opinion of the transaction himself, nor communicate to their lordships any light which might be necessary for that purpose. The adherents to the ministry endeavoured to evade his curiosity in this particular, by general assertions; but he insisted on his suspicion with such perseverance, that at length the ministry produced the copy of a declaration made by the king of Spain before he ratified the convention, signifying that his catholic majesty reserved to himself, in its full force, the right of being able to suspend the assiento of negroes, in case the company should not pay within a short time the sum of sixty-eight thousand pounds sterling, owing to Spain on the duty of negroes, or on the profit of the ship Caroline; that under the validity and force of this protest, the signing of the said convention might be proceeded on, and in no other manner. In the debate that ensued, lord Carteret displayed a surprising extent of political knowledge, recommended by all the graces of elocution, chaste, pure, dignified, and delicate. Lord Bathurst argued against the articles of convention with his usual spirit, integrity, and good sense, particularly animated by an honest indignation which the wrongs of his country had inspired. The earl of Chesterfield attacked this inglorious measure with all the weight of argument, and all the poignancy of satire. The duke of Argyle, no longer a partisan of the ministry, inveighed against it as infamous, treacherous, and destructive, with all the fire, impetuosity, and enthusiasm of declamation. It was defended with unequal arms by the duke of Newcastle, the earl of Cholmondeley, lord Hervey, the lord chancellor, the bishop of Salisbury, and in particular by the earl of Hay, a nobleman of extensive capacity and uncommon erudition; remarkable for his knowledge of the civil law, and seemingly formed by nature for a politician; cool, discerning, plausible, artful, and enterprising, staunch to the minister, and invariably true to his own interest. The dispute was learned, long, and obstinate; but ended as usual in the discomfiture of those who had stigmatized the treaty. The house agreed to an address, in which they thanked his majesty for his gracious condescension in laying before them the convention. They acknowledged his great prudence in bringing the demands of his subjects for their past losses, which had been so long depending, to a final adjustment; in procuring an express stipulation for a speedy payment; and in laying a foundation for accomplishing the great and desirable ends of obtaining future security, and preserving the peace between the two nations. They declared their confidence in his royal wisdom, that in the treaty to be concluded in pursuance of the convention, proper provisions would be made for the redress of the grievances of which the nation had so justly complained; they assured his majesty, that in case his just expectations should not be answered, the house would heartily and zealously concur in all such measures as should be necessary to vindicate his majesty’s honour, and to preserve to his subjects the full enjoyment of all those rights to which they were entitled by treaty and the law of nations. This was a hard won victory. At the head of those who voted against the address we find the prince of Wales. His example was followed by six dukes, two-and-twenty earls, four viscounts, eighteen barons, four bishops, and their party was reinforced by sixteen proxies. A spirited protest was entered and subscribed by nine-and-thirty peers, comprehending all the noblemen of the kingdom who were most eminent for their talents, integrity, and virtue.

{1739}

A message having been delivered to the house from his majesty, importing, that he had settled nine-and-thirty thousand pounds per annum on the younger children of the royal family; and desiring their lordships would bring in a bill to enable his majesty to make that provision good out of the hereditary revenues of the crown, some lords in the opposition observed that the next heir to the crown might look upon this settlement as a mortgage of his revenue, which a parliament had no power to make; that formerly no daughter of the royal family was ever provided for by parliament, except the eldest, and that never was by way of annuity, but an express provision of a determinate sum of money paid by way of dowry. These objections were overruled; and the house complied with his majesty’s request. Then the duke of Newcastle produced a subsidy-treaty, by which his majesty obliged himself to pay to the king of Denmark seventy thousand pounds per annum, on condition of the Dane’s furnishing to his Britannic majesty a body of six thousand men, when demanded. At the same time his grace delivered a message from the king, desiring the house would enable him to fulfil this engagement; and also to raise what money and troops the exigency of affairs, during the approaching recess, might require. Another vehement dispute arose from this proposal. With respect to the treaty, lord Carteret observed, that no use could be made of the Danish troops in any expedition undertaken against Spain, because it was stipulated in the treaty that they should not be used either in Italy, or on board of the fleet, or be transported in whole or in part beyond sea, after they should have marched out of the territories of Denmark, except for the defence of the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland; nay, should France join against the English, the Danes could not act against that power or Spain, except as part of an army formed in Germany or Flanders. This body of Danes may be said, therefore, to have been retained for the defence and protection of Hanover; or, if the interest of Britain was at all consulted in the treaty, it must have been in preventing the Danes from joining their fleets to those of France or Spain. Then he argued against the second part of the message with great vivacity. He said nothing could be more dangerous to the constitution than a general and unlimited vote of credit. Such a demand our ancestors would have heard with amazement, and rejected with scorn. He affirmed that the practice was of modern date in England; that it was never heard of before the revolution; and never became frequent until the nation was blessed with the present wise administration. He said, if ever a general vote of credit and confidence should become a customary compliment from the parliament to the crown at the end of every session, or as often as the minister might think fit to desire it, parliaments would grow despicable in the eyes of the people; then a proclamation might be easily substituted in its stead, and happy would it be for the nation if that should be sufficient; for when a parliament ceases to be a check upon ministers, it becomes a useless and unnecessary burden on the people. The representatives must always be paid some way or other; if their wages are not paid openly and surely by their respective constituents, as they were formerly, a majority of them may in future times be always ready to accept of wages from the administration, and these must come out of the pockets of the people. The duke of Argyle and the earl of Chesterfield enlarged upon the same topics. Nevertheless, the house complied with the message; and presented an address, in which they not only approved of the treaty with Denmark, but likewise assured his majesty they would concur with his measures, and support him in fulfilling his engagements, as well as in making such further augmentation of his forces by sea and land, as he should think necessary for the honour, interest, and safety of these kingdoms.

PARLIAMENT PROROGUED.

The same message being communicated to the commons, they voted seventy thousand five hundred and eighty-three pounds for the subsidy to Denmark, and five hundred thousand pounds for augmenting the forces on any emergency. As Great Britain stood engaged by the convention to pay to the crown of Spain the sum of sixty thousand pounds in consideration of the ships taken and destroyed by sir George Byng, which sum was to be applied to the relief of the British merchants who had suffered by the Spanish depredations, the commons inserted in a bill a clause providing for this sum to be paid by the parliament. When the bill was read in the house of lords, a motion was made by lord Bathurst for an address, to know, whether Spain had paid the money stipulated by the convention, as the time limited for the payment of it was now expired. The duke of Newcastle, by his majesty’s permission, acquainted the house that it was not paid, and that Spain had as yet given no reason for the non-payment. Then a day was appointed to consider the state of the nation, when lord Carteret moved for a resolution, that the failure of Spain in this particular was a breach of the convention, a high indignity to his majesty, and an injustice to the nation; but, after a warm debate, this motion was overruled by the majority. The minister, in order to atone in some measure for the unpopular step he had taken in the convention, allowed a salutary law to pass for the encouragement of the woollen manufacture, and two bills in behalf of the sugar colonies; one permitting them, for a limited time, to export their produce directly to foreign parts, under proper restrictions; and the other making more effectual provisions for securing the duties laid upon the importation of foreign sugars, rum, and molasses, into Great Britain, and his majesty’s plantations in America. The supplies being voted, the funds established, and the crown gratified in every particular, the king closed the session with a speech on the fourteenth day of June, when the chancellor in his majesty’s name prorogued the parliament. [262] [See note 2 M, at the end of this Vol.]

THE KING OF SPAIN PUBLISHES A MANIFESTO.

Letters of marque and reprisal were granted against the Spaniards; a promotion was made of general officers; the troops were augmented; a great fleet was assembled at Spithead; a reinforcement sent out to admiral Haddock; and an embargo laid on all merchant ships outward-bound. Notwithstanding these preparations of war, Mr. Keen, the British minister at Madrid, declared to the court of Spain, that his master, although he had permitted his subjects to make reprisals, would not be understood to have broken the peace; and that this permission would be recalled as soon as his catholic majesty should be disposed to make the satisfaction which had been so justly demanded. He was given to understand, that the king of Spain looked upon those reprisals as acts of hostility; and that he hoped, with the assistance of heaven and his allies, he should be able to support a good cause against his adversaries. He published a manifesto in justification of his own conduct, complaining that admiral Haddock had received orders to cruise with his squadron between the capes St. Vincent and St. Mary, in order to surprise the Assogue ships; that letters of reprisal had been published at London in an indecent style, and even carried into execution in different parts of the world. He excused his non-payment of the ninety-five thousand pounds stipulated in the convention, by affirming that the British court had first contravened the articles of that treaty, by the orders sent to Haddock; by continuing to fortify Georgia; by reinforcing the squadron at Jamaica; and by eluding the payment of the sixty-eight thousand pounds due to Spain from the South-Sea company, on the assiento for negroes. The French ambassador at the Hague declared that the king his master was obliged by treaties to assist his catholic majesty by sea and land, in case he should be attacked; he dissuaded the states-general from espousing the quarrel of Great Britain; and they assured him they would observe a strict neutrality, though they could not avoid furnishing his Britannic majesty with such succours as he could demand, by virtue of the treaties subsisting between the two powers. The people of England were inspired with uncommon alacrity at the near prospect of war, for which they had so long clamoured; and the ministry seeing it unavoidable, began to be earnest and effectual in their preparations.

{GEORGE II. 1727-1760}

THE EMPEROR AND CZARINA CONCLUDE A PEACE WITH THE TURKS.

The events of war were still unfavourable to the emperor. He had bestowed the command of his army upon velt-mareschal count Wallis, who assembled his forces in the neighbourhood of Belgrade; and advanced towards Crotska, where he was attacked by the Turks with such impetuosity and perseverance, that he was obliged to give ground, after a long and obstinate engagement, in which he lost above six thousand men. The earl of Crawford, who served as a volunteer in the Imperial army, signalised his courage in an extraordinary manner on this occasion, and received a dangerous wound of which he never perfectly recovered. The Turks were afterwards worsted at Jabouka; nevertheless, their grand army invested Belgrade on the side of Servia, and carried on the operations of the siege with extraordinary vigour. The emperor, dreading the loss of this place, seeing his finances exhausted, and his army considerably diminished, consented to a negotiation for peace, which was transacted under the mediation of the French ambassador at the Ottoman Porte. The count de Neuperg, as Imperial plenipotentiary, signed the preliminaries on the first day of September. They were ratified by the emperor, though he pretended to be dissatisfied with the articles; and declared that his minister had exceeded his powers. By this treaty the house of Austria ceded to the grand seignor, Belgrade, Sabatz, Servia, Austrian Wallachia, the isle and fortress of Orsova, with the fort of St. Elizabeth; and the contracting powers agreed that the Danube and the Saave should serve as boundaries to the two empires. The emperor published a circular letter, addressed to his ministers at all the courts of Europe, blaming count Wallis for the bad success of the last campaign, and disowning the negotiations of count Neuperg; nay, these two officers were actually disgraced, and confined in different castles. This, however, was no other than a sacrifice to the resentment of the czarina, who loudly complained that the emperor had concluded a separate peace, contrary to his engagements with the Russian empire. Her general, count Munich, had obtained a victory over the Turks at Choczim in Moldavia, and made himself master of that place, in which he found two hundred pieces of artillery; but the country was so ruined by the incursions of the Tartars, that the Muscovites could not subsist in it during the winter. The czarina finding herself abandoned by the emperor, and unable to cope with the whole power of the Ottoman empire, took the first opportunity of putting an end to the war upon honourable terms. After a short negotiation, the conferences ended in a treaty, by which she was left in possession of Azoph, on condition that its fortifications should be demolished; and the ancient limits were re-established between the two empires.

PREPARATIONS FOR WAR IN ENGLAND.

A rupture between Great Britain and Spain was now become inevitable. The English squadron in the Mediterranean had already made prize of two rich Caracca ships. The king had issued orders for augmenting his land forces, and raising a body of marines; and a great number of ships of war were put in commission. Admiral Vernon had been sent to the West Indies, to assume the command of the squadron in those seas, and to annoy the trade and settlements of the Spaniards. This gentleman had rendered himself considerable in the house of commons, by loudly condemning all the measures of the ministry, and bluntly speaking his sentiments, whatever they were, without respect of persons, and sometimes without any regard to decorum. He was counted a good officer, and this boisterous manner seemed to enhance his character. As he had once commanded a squadron in Jamaica, he was perfectly well acquainted with those seas; and in a debate upon the Spanish depredations, he chanced to affirm, that Porto Bello on the Spanish main might be easily taken; nay, he even undertook to reduce it with six ships only. This officer was echoed from the mouths of all the members in the opposition. Vernon was extolled as a another Drake or Raleigh; he became the idol of a party, and his praise resounded from all corners of the kingdom. The minister, in order to appease the clamours of the people on this subject, sent him as commander-in-chief to the West Indies. He was pleased with an opportunity to remove such a troublesome censor from the house of commons; and, perhaps, he was not without hope, that Vernon would disgrace himself and his party, by failing in the exploit he had undertaken. His catholic majesty having ordered all the British ships in his harbours to be seized and detained, the king of England would keep measures with him no longer, but denounced war against him on the twenty-third day of October. Many English merchants began to equip privateers, and arm their trading vessels to protect their own commerce, as well as to distress that of the enemy. The session of parliament was opened in November, when the king, in his speech to both houses, declared, that he had augmented his forces by sea and land, pursuant to the power vested in him by parliament for the security of his dominions, the protection of trade, and the annoyance of the enemy; and he expressed his apprehension, that the heats and animosities which had been industriously fomented throughout the kingdom, encouraged Spain to act in such a manner as rendered it necessary for him to have recourse to arms. In answer to this speech, affectionate addresses were presented by both houses, without any considerable opposition.

The seceding members had again resumed their seats in the house of commons; and Mr. Pulteney thought proper to vindicate the extraordinary step which they had taken. He said, they thought that step was necessary, as affairs then stood, for clearing their characters to posterity from the imputation of sitting in an assembly, where a determined majority gave a sanction to measures evidently to the disgrace of his majesty and the nation. He observed, that their conduct was so fully justified by the declaration of war against Spain, that any further vindication would be superfluous; for every assertion contained in it had been almost in the same words insisted upon by those who opposed the convention: “every sentence in it,” added he, “is an echo of what was said in our reasonings against that treaty; every positive truth which the declaration lays down, was denied with the utmost confidence by those who spoke for the convention; and, since that time, there has not one event happened which was not then foreseen and foretold.” He proposed, that in maintaining the war, the Spanish settlements in the West Indies should be attacked; and that the ministry should not have the power to give up the conquests that might be made. He said he heartily wished, for his majesty’s honour and service, that no mention had been made of heats and animosities, in the king’s speech; and gave it as his opinion, that they should take no notice of that clause in their address. He was answered by sir Robert Walpole, who took occasion to say, he was in no great concern lest the service of his majesty or the nation should suffer by the absence of those members who had quitted the house; he affirmed, the nation was generally sensible, that the many useful and popular acts which passed towards the end of the last session, were greatly forwarded and facilitated by the secession of those gentlemen; and, if they were returned only to oppose and perplex, he should not be at all sorry to see them secede again.

PENSION-BILL REVIVED AND LOST.

Mr. Pulteney revived the bill which he had formerly prepared for the encouragement of seamen. After a long dispute, and eager opposition by the ministry, it passed both houses, and obtained the royal assent. Mr. Sandys having observed, that there could be no immediate use for a great number of forces in the kingdom; and explained how little service could be expected from raw and undisciplined men; proposed an address to the king, desiring that the body of marines should be composed of drafts from the old regiments; that as few officers should be appointed as the nature of the case would permit; and he expressed his hope, that the house would recommend this method to his majesty, in tender compassion to his people, already burdened with many heavy and grievous taxes. This scheme was repugnant to the intention of the ministry, whose aim was to increase the number of their dependents, and extend their parliamentary interest, by granting a great number of commissions. The proposal was, therefore, after a long debate, rejected by the majority. Motions wore made for an inquiry into the conduct of those who concluded the convention; but they were overruled. The pension-bill was revived, and so powerfully supported by the eloquence of sir William Wyndham, Mr. Pulteney, and Mr. Lyttelton, that it made its way through the commons to the upper house, where it was again lost, upon a division, after a very long debate. As the seamen of the kingdom expressed uncommon aversion to the service of the government, and the fleet could not be manned without great difficulty, the ministry prepared a bill, which was brought in by sir Charles Wager, for registering all seamen, watermen, fishermen, and lightermen, throughout his majesty’s dominions. Had this bill passed into a law, a British sailor would have been reduced to the most abject degree of slavery; had he removed from a certain district allotted for the place of his residence, he would have been deemed a deserter, and punished accordingly; he must have appeared when summoned, at all hazards, whatever might have been the circumstances of his family, or the state of his private affairs; had he been encumbered with debt, he must have either incurred the penalties of this law, or lain at the mercy of his creditors; had he acquired by industry, or received by inheritance, an ample fortune, he would have been liable to be torn from his possessions, and subjected to hardships which no man would endure but from the sense of fear or indigence. The bill was so vigorously opposed by sir John Barnard and others, as a flagrant encroachment upon the liberties of the people, that the house rejected it on the second reading.

PORTO BELLO TAKEN by ADMIRAL VERNON.

The king having by message communicated to the house his intention of disposing of the princess Mary in marriage to prince Frederick of Hesse; and expressing his hope that the commons would enable him to give a suitable portion to his daughter, they unanimously resolved to grant forty thousand pounds for that purpose; and presented an address of thanks to his majesty for having communicated to the house this intended marriage. On the thirteenth day of March a ship arrived from the West Indies, despatched by admiral Vernon, with an account of his having taken Porto Bello, on the isthmus of Darien, with six ships only, and demolished all the fortifications of the place. The Spaniards acted with such pusillanimity on this occasion, that their forts were taken almost without bloodshed. The two houses of parliament joined in an address of congratulation upon the success of his majesty’s arms; and the nation in general was wonderfully elated by an exploit which was magnified much above its merit. The commons granted every thing the crown thought proper to demand. They provided for eight-and-twenty thousand land-forces, besides six thousand marines. They enabled his majesty to equip a very powerful navy; they voted the subsidy to the king of Denmark; and they empowered their sovereign to defray certain extraordinary expenses not specified in the estimates. To answer these uncommon grants, they imposed a land-tax of four shillings in the pound; and enabled his majesty to deduct twelve hundred thousand pounds from the sinking fund; in a word, the expense of the war, during the course of the ensuing year, amounted to about four millions. The session was closed on the twenty-ninth day of April, when the king thanked the commons for the supplies they had so liberally granted, and recommended union and moderation to both houses.

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During the greatest part of this winter, the poor had been grievously afflicted in consequence of a severe frost, which began at Christmas, and continued till the latter end of February. The river Thames was covered with such a crust of ice, that a multitude of people dwelt upon it in tents, and a great number of booths were erected for the entertainment of the populace. The navigation was entirely stopped; the watermen and fishermen were disabled from earning a livelihood; the fruits of the earth were destroyed by the cold, which was so extreme, that many persons were chilled to death; and this calamity was the more deeply felt, as the poor could not afford to supply themselves with coals and fuel, which were advanced in proportion to the severity and continuance of the frost. The lower class of labourers, who worked in the open air, were now deprived of all means of subsistence; many kinds of manufacture were laid aside, because it was found impracticable to carry them on. The price of all sorts of provisions rose almost to a dearth; even water was sold in the streets of London. In this season of distress, many wretched families must have perished by cold and hunger, had not those of opulent fortunes been inspired with a remarkable spirit of compassion and humanity. Nothing can more redound to the honour of the English nation, than did those instances of benevolence and well-conducted charity which were then exhibited. The liberal hand was not only opened to the professed beggar, and the poor that owned their distress, but uncommon pains were taken to find out and relieve those more unhappy objects, who, from motives of false pride or ingenuous shame, endeavoured to conceal their misery.

These were assisted almost in their own despite. The solitary habitations of the widow, the fatherless, and the unfortunate, were visited by the beneficent, who felt for the woes of their fellow-creatures; and to such as refused to receive a portion of the public charity, the necessaries of life were privately conveyed, in such a manner as could least shock the delicacy of their dispositions.

MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS MARY TO THE PRINCE OF HESSE.

In the beginning of May, the king of Great Britain set out for Hanover, after having appointed a regency, and concerted vigorous measures for distressing the enemy. In a few days after his departure, the spousals of the princess Mary were celebrated by proxy, the duke of Cumberland representing the prince of Hesse, and in June the princess embarked for the continent. About the same time, a sloop arrived in England with despatches from admiral Vernon, who, since his adventure at Porto Bello, had bombarded Carthagena, and taken the fort of San Lorenzo, on the river of Chagre, in the neighbourhood of his former conquest. This month was likewise marked by the death of his Prussian majesty, a prince by no means remarkable for great or amiable qualities. He was succeeded on the throne by Frederick his eldest son, the late king of that realm, who has so eminently distinguished himself as a warrior and legislator. In August, the king of Great Britain concluded a treaty with the landgrave of Hesse, who engaged to furnish him with a body of six thousand men for four years, in consideration of an annual subsidy of two hundred and fifty thousand crowns.

STRONG ARMAMENT SENT TO THE WEST INDIES.

Meanwhile, preparations of war were vigorously carried on by the ministry in England. They had wisely resolved to annoy the Spaniards in their American possessions. Three ships of war, cruising in the bay of Biscay, fell in with a large Spanish ship of the line, strongly manned, and took her after a very obstinate engagement; but the Assogue ships arrived with the treasure in Spain, notwithstanding the vigilance of the English commanders, who were stationed in a certain latitude to intercept that flota. One camp was formed on Hounslow-heath; and six thousand marines lately levied were encamped on the Isle of Wight, in order to be embarked for the West Indies. Intelligence being received that a strong squadron of Spanish ships of war waited at Ferrol for orders to sail to their American settlements, sir John Norris sailed with a powerful fleet from Spithead to dispute their voyage; and the duke of Cumberland served in person as a volunteer in this expedition; but, after divers fruitless efforts, he was, by contrary winds, obliged to lie inactive for the greatest part of the summer in Torbay; and, upon advice that the French and Spanish squadrons had sailed to the West Indies in conjunction, the design against Ferrol was wholly laid aside. In September, a small squadron of ships, commanded by commodore Anson, set sail for the South-Sea, in order to act against the enemy on the coast of Chili and Peru, and co-operate occasionally with admiral Vernon across the isthmus of Darien. The scheme was well laid, but ruined by unnecessary delays and unforeseen accidents. But the hopes of the nation centered chiefly in a formidable armament designed for the northern coast of now Spain, and his catholic majesty’s other settlements on that side of the Atlantic. Commissions had been issued for raising a regiment of four battalions in the English colonies of North America, that they might be transported to Jamaica, and join the forces from England. These, consisting of the marines and detachments from some old regiments, were embarked in October at the Isle of Wight, under the command of lord Cathcart, a nobleman of approved honour, and great experience in the art of war; and they sailed under convoy of sir Chaloner Ogle, with a fleet of seven-and-twenty ships of the line, besides frigates, fire-ships, bomb-ketches, and tenders. They were likewise furnished with hospital ships and store ships, laden with provisions, ammunition, all sorts of warlike implements, and every kind of convenience. Never was an armament more completely equipped, and never had the nation more reason to hope for extraordinary success.

DEATH OF THE EMPEROR AND CZARINA.

On the twentieth day of October, Charles VI., emperor of Germany, the last prince of the house of Austria, died at Vienna, and was succeeded in his hereditary dominions by his eldest daughter’, the archduchess Maria Theresa, married to the grand duke of Tuscany. Though this princess succeeded as queen of Hungary, by virtue of the pragmatic sanction guaranteed by all the powers in Europe, her succession produced such contests as kindled a cruel war in the empire. The young king of Prussia was no sooner informed of the emperor’s death, than he entered Silesia at the head of twenty thousand men; seized certain fiefs to which his family laid claim; and published a manifesto, declaring that he had no intention to contravene the pragmatic sanction. The elector of Bavaria refused to acknowledge the archduchess as queen of Hungary and Bohemia; alleging, that he himself had pretensions to those countries, as the descendant of the emperor Ferdinand I., who was head of the German branch of the house of Austria. Charles VI. was survived but a few days by his ally, the czarina Anne Iwanowna, who died in the forty-fifth year of her age, after having bequeathed her crown to Iwan, or John, the infant son of her niece, the princess Anne of Mecklenburgh, who had been married to Anthony Ulrick, duke of Brunswick Lunenberg-Bevern. She appointed the duke of Courland regent of the empire, and even guardian of the young czar, though his own parents were alive; but this disposition was not long maintained.

PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT.

The king of Great Britain having returned to England from his German dominions, the session of parliament was opened in November. His majesty assured them, on this occasion, that he was determined to prosecute the war vigorously, even though France should espouse the cause of Spain, as her late conduct seemed to favour this supposition. He took notice of the emperor’s death, as an event which in all likelihood would open a new scene of affairs in Europe; he therefore recommended to their consideration the necessary supplies for putting the nation in such a posture that it should have nothing to fear from any emergency. Finally, he desired them to consider of some proper regulations for preventing the exportation of corn, and for more effectual methods to man the fleet at this conjuncture. The commons, after having voted an address of thanks, brought in a bill for prohibiting the exportation of corn and provisions, for a limited time, out of Great Britain, Ireland, and the American plantations. This was a measure calculated to distress the enemy, who were supposed to be in want of these necessaries. The French had contracted for a very large quantity of beef and pork in Ireland, for the use of their own and the Spanish navy; and an embargo had been laid upon the ships of that kingdom. The bill met with a vigorous opposition; yet the house unanimously resolved that his majesty should be addressed to lay an immediate embargo upon all ships laden with corn, grain, starch, rice, beef, pork, and other provisions, to be exported to foreign parts. They likewise resolved that the thanks of the house should be given to vice-admiral Vernon, for the services he had, done to his king and country in the West Indies. One William Cooley was examined at the bar of the house, and committed to prison, after having owned himself author of a paper, intituled, “Considerations upon the Embargo on Provision of Victual.” The performance contained many shrewd and severe animadversions upon the government, for having taken a step which, without answering the purpose of distressing the enemy, would prove a grievous discouragement to trade, and ruin all the graziers of Ireland. Notwithstanding the arguments used in this remonstrance, and several petitions that were presented against the corn-hill, it passed by mere dint of ministerial influence. The other party endeavoured, by various motions, to set on foot an inquiry into the orders, letters, and instructions, which had been sent to admiral Vernon and admiral Haddock; but all such investigations were carefully avoided.

A very hot contest arose from a bill which the ministry brought in, under the specious title of, A bill for the encouragement and increase of seamen, and for the better and speedier manning his majesty’s fleet. This was a revival of the oppressive scheme which had been rejected in the former session; a scheme by which the justices of the peace were empowered to issue warrants to constables and head-boroughs, to search by day or night for such seafaring men as should conceal themselves within their respective jurisdictions. These searchers were vested with authority to force open doors in case of resistance; and encouraged to this violence by a reward for every seaman they should discover; while the unhappy wretches so discovered were dragged into the service, and their names entered in a register to be kept at the navy or the admiralty-office. Such a plan of tyranny did not pass uncensured. Every exceptionable clause produced a warm debate, in which sir John Barnard, Mr. Pulteney, Mr. Sandys, lord Gage, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Lyttelton, signalized themselves nobly in defending the liberties of their fellow-subjects. Mr. Pitt having expressed a laudable indignation at such a large stride towards despotic power, in justification of which nothing could be urged but the plea of necessity, Mr. Horatio Walpole thought proper to attack him with some personal sarcasms. He reflected upon his youth: and observed that the discovery of truth was very little promoted by pompous diction and theatrical emotion. These insinuations exposed him to a severe reply. Mr. Pitt standing up again, said, “He would not undertake to determine whether youth could be justly imputed to any man as a reproach; but he affirmed that the wretch, who, after having seen the consequences of repeated errors, continues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object of either abhorrence or contempt, and deserves not that his grey head should secure him from insults; much more is he to be abhorred, who, as he has advanced in age, has receded from virtue, and becomes more wicked with less temptation; who prostitutes himself for money which he cannot enjoy; and spends the remains of his life in the ruin of his country.”--Petitions were presented from the city of London and county of Gloucester against the bill, as detrimental to the trade and navigation of the kingdom, by discouraging rather than encouraging sailors, and destructive to the liberties of the subject; but they were both rejected as insults upon the house of commons. After very long debates, maintained on both sides with extraordinary ardour and emotion, the severe clauses were dropped, and the bill passed with amendments.

DISCONTENTS AGAINST THE MINISTRY.

But the most remarkable incident of this session was an open and personal attack upon the minister, who was become extremely unpopular all over the kingdom. The people were now, more than ever, sensible of the grievous taxes under which they groaned; and saw their burdens daily increasing. No effectual attempts had as yet been made to annoy the enemy. Expensive squadrons had been equipped; had made excursions, and returned without striking a blow. The Spanish fleet had sailed first from Cadiz, and then from Ferrol, without any interruption from admiral Haddock, who commanded the British squadron in the Mediterranean, and who was supposed to be restricted by the instructions he had received from the ministry, though in fact his want of success was owing to accident. Admiral Vernon had written from the West Indies to his private friends, that he was neglected, and in danger of being sacrificed. Notwithstanding the numerous navy which the nation maintained, the Spanish privateers made prize of the British merchant ships with impunity. In violation of treaties, and in contempt of that intimate connexion which had been so long cultivated between the French and English ministry, the king of France had ordered the harbour and fortifications of Dunkirk to be repaired; his fleet had sailed to the West Indies in conjunction with that of Spain; and the merchants of England began to tremble for Jamaica; finally, commerce was in a manner suspended, by the practice of pressing sailors into the service, and by the embargo which had been laid upon ships in all the ports of Great Britain and Ireland. These causes of popular discontent, added to other complaints which had been so long repeated against the minister, exaggerated and inculcated by his enemies with unwearied industry, at length rendered him so universally odious, that his name was seldom or never mentioned with decency, except by his own dependents.

MOTION FOR REMOVING SIR R. WALPOLE FROM HIS MAJESTY’S COUNCILS.

The country party in parliament seized this opportunity of vengeance. Mr. Sandys went up to sir Robert Walpole in the house, and told him, that on Friday next he should bring a charge against him in public. The minister seemed to be surprised at this unexpected intimation; but, after a short pause, thanked him politely for this previous notice, and said he desired no favour, but fair play.*

* Upon this occasion he misquoted Horace. “As I am not conscious of any crime,” said he, “I do not doubt of being able to make a proper defence, Nil conscire sibi nulli pallescere culpæ.” He was corrected by Mr. Pulteney; but insisted on his being in the right, and actually laid a wager on the justness of the quotation.

Mr. Sandys, at the time which he had appointed for this accusation, stood up, and in a studied speech entered into a long deduction of the minister’s misconduct. He insisted upon the discontents of the nation, in consequence of the measures which had been for many years pursued at home and abroad. He professed his belief that there was not a gentleman in the house who did not know that one single person in the administration was the chief, if not the sole adviser and promoter of all those measures. “This,” added he, “is known without doors, as well as within; therefore, the discontents, the reproaches, and even the curses of the people, are all directed against that single person. They complain of present measures; they have suffered by past measures; they expect no redress; they expect no alteration or amendment, whilst he has a share in directing or advising our future administration. These, sir, are the sentiments of the people in regard to that minister; these sentiments we are in honour and duty bound to represent to his majesty; and the proper method for doing this, as established by our constitution, is to address his majesty to remove him from his councils.” He then proceeded to explain the particulars of the minister’s misconduct in the whole series of his negotiations abroad. He charged him with having endeavoured to support his own interest, and to erect a kind of despotic government, by the practice of corruption; with having betrayed the interest and honour of Great Britain in the late convention; with having neglected to prosecute the war against Spain; and he concluded with a motion for an address to the king, that he would be pleased to remove sir Robert Walpole from his presence and councils for ever. He was answered by Mr. Pelham, who undertook to defend or excuse all the measures which the other had condemned; and acquitted himself as a warm friend and unshaken adherent. Against this champion sir John Barnard entered the lists, and was sustained by Mr. Pulteney, who, with equal spirit and precision, pointed out and exposed all the material errors and malpractices of the administration. Sir Robert Walpole spoke with great temper and deliberation in behalf of himself. With respect to the article of bribery and corruption, he said if any one instance had been mentioned; if it had been shown that he ever offered a reward to any member of either house, or ever threatened to deprive any member of his office or employment, in order to influence his voting in parliament, there might have been some ground for this charge; but when it was so generally laid, he did not know what he could say to it, unless to deny it as generally and as positively as it had been asserted.--Such a declaration as this, in the hearing of so many persons, who not only knew, but subsisted by his wages of corruption, was a strong proof of the minister’s being dead to all sense of shame, and all regard to veracity. The debate was protracted by the court members till three o’clock in the morning, when about sixty of the opposite party having retired, the motion was rejected by a considerable majority.

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DEBATE ON THE MUTINY BILL.

A bill was brought in for prohibiting the practice of insuring ships belonging to the enemies of the nation; but it was vigorously opposed by sir John Barnard and Mr. Willimot, who demonstrated that this kind of traffic was advantageous to the kingdom; and the scheme was dropped. Another warm contest arose upon a clause of the mutiny bill, relating to the quartering of soldiers upon innkeepers and publicans, who complained of their being distressed in furnishing those guests with provisions and necessaries at the rates prescribed by law or custom. There were not wanting advocates to expatiate upon the nature of this grievance, which, however, was not redressed. A new trade was at this time opened with Persia, through the dominions of the czar, and vested with an exclusive privilege in the Russian company, by an act of parliament. The commons voted forty thousand seamen for the service of the ensuing year, and about thirty thousand men for the establishment of land-forces. They provided for the subsidies granted to the king of Denmark and the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel; and took every step which was suggested for the ease and the convenience of the government.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

The parties in the house of lords were influenced by the same motives which actuated the commons. The duke of Argyle, who had by this time resigned all his places, declared open war against the ministry. In the beginning of the session, the king’s speech was no sooner reported by the chancellor, than this nobleman stood up and moved that a general address of thanks should be presented to his majesty, instead of a recapitulation of every paragraph of the king’s speech, re-echoed from the parliament to the throne, with expressions of blind approbation, implying a general concurrence with all the measures of the minister. He spoke on this subject with an astonishing impetuosity of eloquence, that rolled like a river which had overflowed its banks and deluged the whole adjacent country. The motion was supported by lord Bathurst, lord Carteret, the earl of Chesterfield, and lord Gower, who, though they displayed all the talents of oratory, were outvoted by the opposite party, headed by the duke of Newcastle, the earl of Cholmondeley, lord Hervey, and the lord-chancellor. The motion was rejected, and the address composed in the usual strain. The same motions for an inquiry into orders and instructions which had miscarried in the lower house, were here repeated with the same bad success; in the debates which ensued, the young earls of Halifax and Sandwich acquired a considerable share of reputation, for the strength of argument and elocution with which they contended against the adherents of the ministry. When the house took into consideration the state of the army, the duke of Argyle having harangued with equal skill and energy on military affairs, proposed that the forces should be augmented by adding new levies to the old companies, without increasing the number of officers; as such an augmentation served only to debase the dignity of the service, by raising the lowest of mankind to the rank of gentlemen; and to extend the influence of the minister, by multiplying his dependents. He therefore moved for a resolution, that the augmenting the army by raising regiments, as it is the most unnecessary and most expensive method of augmentation, was also the most dangerous to the liberties of the nation. This proposal was likewise overruled, after a short though warm contention. This was the fate of all the other motions made by the lords in the opposition, though the victory of the courtiers was always clogged with a nervous and spirited protest. Two days were expended in the debate produced by lord Carteret’s motion for an address, beseeching his majesty to remove sir Robert Walpole from his presence and councils for ever. The speech that ushered in this memorable motion would not have disgraced a Cicero. It contained a retrospect of all the public measures which had been pursued since the revolution. It explained the nature of every treaty, whether right or wrong, which had been concluded under the present administration. It described the political connexions subsisting between the different powers in Europe. It exposed the weakness, the misconduct, and the iniquity of the minister, both in his foreign and domestic transactions. It was embellished with all the ornaments of rhetoric, and warmed with a noble spirit of patriotic indignation. The duke of Argyle, lord Bathurst, and his other colleagues, seemed to be animated with uncommon fervour, and even inspired by the subject.

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A man of imagination, in reading their speeches, will think himself transported into the Roman senate, before the ruin of that republic. Nevertheless, the minister still triumphed by dint of numbers; though his victory was dearly purchased. Thirty peers entered a vigorous protest, and Walpole’s character sustained such a rude shock from this opposition, that his authority seemed to be drawing near a period. Immediately after this contest was decided, the duke of Marlborough moved for a resolution, that any attempt to inflict any kind of punishment on any person, without allowing him an opportunity to make his defence, or without any proof of any crime or misdemeanor committed by him, is contrary to natural justice, the fundamental laws of the realm, and the ancient established usage of parliament; and is a high infringement of the liberties of the subject. It was seconded by the duke of Devonshire and lord Lovel; and opposed by lord Gower, as an intended censure on the proceedings of the day. This sentiment was so warmly espoused by lord Talbot, who had distinguished himself in the former debate, that he seemed to be transported beyond the bounds of moderation. He was interrupted by the earl of Cholmondeley, who charged him with having violated the order and decorum which ought to be preserved in such an assembly. His passion was inflamed by this rebuke; he declared himself an independent lord; a character which he would not forfeit for the smiles of a court, the profit of an employment, or the reward of a pension; he said, when he was engaged on the side of truth, he would trample on the insolence that should command him to suppress his sentiments.--On a division, however, the motion was carried.

In the beginning of April, the king repairing to the house of peers, passed some acts that were ready for the royal assent. Then, in his speech to both houses, he gave them to understand, that the queen of Hungary had made a requisition of the twelve thousand men stipulated by treaty; and that he had ordered the subsidy troops of Denmark and Hesse-Cassel to be in readiness to march to her assistance. He observed, that in this complicated and uncertain state of affairs, many incidents might arise, and render it necessary for him to incur extraordinary expenses for maintaining the pragmatic sanction, at a time when he could not possibly have recourse to the advice and assistance of his parliament. He therefore demanded of the commons such a supply as might be requisite for these ends; and promised to manage it with all possible frugality. The lower house, in their address, approved of all his measures; declared they would effectually support him against all insults and attacks that might be made upon any of his territories, though not belonging to the crown of Great Britain; and that they would enable him to contribute, in the most effectual manner, to the support of the queen of Hungary. Sir Robert Walpole moved, that an aid of two hundred thousand pounds should be granted to that princess. Mr. Shippen protested against any interposition in the affairs of Germany. He expressed his dislike of the promise which had been made to defend his majesty’s foreign dominions; a promise, in his opinion, inconsistent with that important and inviolable law, the act of settlement; a promise which, could it have been foreknown, would perhaps have for ever precluded from the succession that illustrious family to which the nation owed such numberless blessings, such continued felicity. The motion however passed, though not without further opposition; and the house resolved, that three hundred thousand pounds should be granted to his majesty, to enable him effectually to support the queen of Hungary. Towards the expense of this year, a million was deducted from the sinking fund; and the land-tax continued at four shillings in the pound. The preparations for this war had already cost five millions. The session was closed on the twenty-fifth day of April, when the king took his leave of this parliament with warm expressions of tenderness and satisfaction. Henry Bromley, Stephen Fox, and John Howe, three members of the lower house who had signalized themselves in defence of the minister, were now ennobled, and created barons of Montford, Ilchester, and Chedworth. A camp was formed near Colchester; and the king having appointed a regency, set out in May for his German dominions.*

* Sir William Wyndham died the preceding year, deeply regretted as an orator, a patriot, and a man, the constant assertor of British liberty, and one of the chief ornaments of the English nation.--In the course of the same year, general Oglethorpe, governor of Georgia, had, with some succours obtained from the colony of Carolina, and a small squadron of king’s ships, made an attempt upon Fort Angus- tine, the capital of Spanish Florida; and actually reduced some small forts in the neighbourhood of the place; but the Carolinians withdrawing in disgust, dissensions prevailing among the sea officers, the hurricane months approaching, and the enemy having received a supply and reinforcement, he abandoned the enterprise, and returned to Georgia.

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