English people. At this moment public credit seemed fully and firmly established, agriculture was improving, and our foreign trade was extending in every direction. In every sea then known was seen the busy flag of England; and her colonies were making prodigious strides from infancy to manhood-and, as a natural consequence, to emancipation from her authority.

A. D. 1732.-To the parliament, which met in January, George expressed his satisfaction at the general tranquillity, the happy effect of their zeal, attachment, and resolution. The courtly Lord Harvey, the Lady Fanny' of Pope, moved an adulatory address, to which the opposition started an amendment. Pulteney, not venturing to condemn what had been done in foreign policy, insisted that it might all have been done a great deal sooner and at infinitely less expense. In the recent treaty with the emperor, England had guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction, which went to secure the inheritance of the House of Austria to Maria Theresa. Pulteney said that this very guarantee had formerly been represented as inconsistent with the interest of England by the very men who were now pluming themselves and demanding the applause of the House for having assented to it. He doubted the policy of our obliging ourselves by a positive guarantee to maintain this Austrian succession at a future and indeterminate period, when England, for reasons impossible to foresee, might find it very incompatible with her interests to engage in a foreign war upon any account whatever. Nothing, he said, would be left in that case but to violate the national faith, which, indeed, he further said, was no new thing with his majesty's present ministers. But Pulteney's cloquence and arguments were thrown away upon a scoffing majority. His next attempt was to reduce the standing army; and he and his party represented, in a very effective manner, that a standing military force in time of peace was not only superfluous but unconstitutional and dangerous; that the internal tranquillity of the country, which ministers had declared to be so perfect, might be maintained by the civil power, aided by the militia. On the other side some good and not a few very bad arguments were used. The scribbling Lord Harvey said that the multiplicity of seditious writings proved that there was a dangerous spirit still abroad; to which Mr. Plumer replied that, if scribblers gave the government uneasiness, they ought to employ other scribblers, and not soldiers against them. It was said by or for ministers, that though the country was tranquil and contented, and had reason to be so under his majesty's wise and paternal government, there were still many men capable of plotting and caballing, there was still a pretender to the crown, and therefore a force was necessary to overawe malcontents and deter invasions from abroad. This force they said was too inconsiderable to excite the jealousy of the people even under an ambitious and arbitrary sovereign, and much less under a prince who could

not be accused or suspected of entertaining the remotest wish of infringing upon the liberties of his subjects. But Pulteney and his party urged that the small standing army was gradually becoming greater and greater; that for almost a century past it had been a progressive army, and that every effort to reduce it or limit its numbers had signally failed. The present attempt was no exception, and the forces were left as they were. The king, who seems to have loved his army above all things, was furious against Pulteney, and, calling for the book, he with his own hand struck his name out of the list of privy counsellors, and ordered that all the commissions of the peace which he held in different counties should be instantly revoked. It is said that the royal indignation was increased by Walpole, whom Pulteney had offended beyond hope of reconciliation by disclosing private conversations which had passed formerly between him and the minister, and in which Sir Robert had said sharp things against the character of George II., then Prince of Wales. On the 1st of June George closed the session, informing the Houses that he had determined to visit his German dominions, and to leave the queen regent as before. During his residence at Hanover the decree of the Pragmatic Sanction was ratified and confirmed by the Diet of the empire, notwithstanding the opposition and protests of the Electors of Saxony, Bavaria, and the Palatinate, who, each and all, pretended to some share of the emperor's inheritance in default of heirs male of his own body. George also took under his protection a considerable number of the Protestant inhabitants of the archbishopric of Saltzburg, who were suffering under religious persecution in contravention of the treaty of Westphalia, which accorded liberty of conscience to all parts of Germany. Many of these poor people, abandoning their homes like the Palatinates in Queen Anne's time, came over to England, where a parliamentary provision was made for them, and whence for the most part they soon crossed the Atlantic to settle in the infant colony of Georgia, founded by the active and benevolent General Oglethorpe.

A.D. 1733.-On the meeting of parliament complaints were made that Spain had not yet made satisfaction for the depredations which had been committed during the last quarrel upon British merchants; and the king was obliged to confess that the meetings of the commissioners of the two crowns had been delayed, and that he could give no perfect account of their proceedings. The fact was, the Spanish court pretended that all or most of these British merchants had been engaged in an illicit trade to the Spanish Main-and, according to their principle, nearly all trade except that in negroes licensed by the Assiento, was smuggling. Walpole was reviled for not insisting upon imme

On the other side, however, Walpole had made similar disclosures of what Pulteney had formerly said about the king, and had revealed sundry passages of secret history before Pulteney made his revelations.

diate satisfaction, and for not throwing open the trade of the South American continent; but these were things not to be done without a war. The Pension Bill and a standing army were again debated with the same success as before. The sinking fund established by Walpole and Stanhope had been kept sacred for nearly ten years, or during the whole reign of George I.; but since the accession of his son various encroachments had been made upon it; and now Walpole proposed to take half a million from it for the service of the current year. Sir John Barnard, member for London, and a practical economist and financier, represented that such a fund ought never to be turned from its original purpose of paying off debts except in cases of extreme emergency; that to ease ourselves by loading our posterity is a poor, short-sighted expedient, the authors of which must expect the curses of posterity. Walpole, however, declared that, if he were not allowed to take this half million from the sinking fund, he must move for a land tax of two shillings in the pound; and this argument, addressed to the purses of country gentlemen and great landed proprietors had such an effect that his original proposal was presently carried in the Commons by a majority of 110! The practice of alienating the sinking fund having been thus once sanctioned by parliament was afterwards continued without intermission. In the following year (1734) not half a million but 1,200,000l., or the whole produce of the year was taken from it; and in the two years next following (1735-6) it was anticipated and mortgaged. The best excuse pleaded for Walpole is, that in the reign of the two first Georges the national debt was considered as a main pillar of the established government by interesting so many persons in its support. The fund-holders had been led to believe that a revolution would destroy all obligations; that the Pretender would come with a sword in his right hand and a sponge in his left; and it was a dogma of the government that to pay off or reduce considerably the number of the state creditors would be to weaken the Hanoverian succession, by diminishing the number of capitalists bound to them by the strongest of ties, as the purse-string was then universally considered. While the sinking-fund, or the half million to be taken from it, was under discussion, Pulteney exclaimed, "But, sir, there is another thing, a very terrible thing impending! A monstrous project! Yea, more monstrous than has ever yet been represented! . . I mean, sir, that monster the EXCISE! That plan of arbitrary power which is expected to be laid before this House in the present session!" Walpole soon made this expectation a certainty by producing his famous EXCISE SCHEME. The House having resolved itself into a committee to deliberate upon the best methods for securing and improving the duties and revenues charged upon tobacco and wines, all the papers and accounts relating to these duties were called for; and the commissioners of customs and excise were ordered

to attend the House. A system of fraud and evasion was thus laid bare, and the complication, obscurity, and uncertainty of the accounts were made evident. The chief articles subjected to the excise duties were malt, salt, and the materials used in the distilleries, and the duties produced at this time somewhat above three millions per annum. In the midst of a universal storm and a deluge of pamphlets and broadsides, which represented that everything was to be taxed, that the people were to be ground to dust in order that the constitution might be overthrown and a tyranny established, Walpole, on the 14th of March, broached his design in a temperate speech. After alluding to the wild reports which had been spread through the country to prejudice the people against his plan before they knew what it was; and after asserting that many of these prejudices had originally proceeded from smugglers and fraudulent dealers, he said "My thoughts have been confined solely to the duties on wine and tobacco; and it was the frequent advices I had of the shameful frauds committed in these two branches, and the complaints of the merchants themselves, that turned my attention to a remedy for this growing evil. . . . . I shall, for the present, confine myself entirely to the tobacco trade." And pursuing this subject, he said "If there is one article of taxation more obvious than another, more immediately within the direct aim of fiscal imposition than another, it is such an article of luxury as depends for its use on custom or caprice, and is by no means essential to the support of real comfort or human life. If there is a subject of taxation where it is more immediately the province of the legislature to suppress fraud, and strictly to insist on the payment of every import, it must be that where the wrong is felt by every class of persons, and none are benefited except the most dishonest and profligate part of the community. Both these descriptions apply to the subject before us. For though the use of tobacco is perhaps less sanctioned by natural reason than any other luxury, yet so great is the predilection for it in its various forms, that from the palace to the hovel there is no exemption from the duty; and surely it must be considered an intolerable grievance, that, by the frauds which are daily committed, the very poorest of the peasantry are obliged to pay this duty twice; once in the enhanced price of the article-for, though the fraudulent trader contrives to save to himself the amount of the tax imposed by parliament, yet he does not sell it cheaper to the public; and a second time, in the tax that is necessarily substituted to make good the deficiency which has been by these means occasioned." He went on to show that the growers of tobacco, the planters in our American colonies, "were reduced to the utmost extremity, even almost to a state of despair," by the frauds of their factors and correspondents in England, who from being their servants had become their tyrants; that the unfortunate planters had sent home many representations,

and had lately deputed a gentleman with a remonstrance praying for some speedy relief; that the state of the tobacco trade at home was ruinous to the fair trader, who found himself forestalled in almost every market within the island by the smuggler and fraudulent dealer; that it gave occasion to an incessant series of perjuries and false entries; that if parliament properly regulated this matter it would acquire the means of exercising one of its most enviable privileges, that of diminishing the burdens of the country; that a proper levy of the duty on tobacco would enable him to alleviate those taxes which fell heaviest on our manufacturers and the labouring poor, as those upon soap and candles; that the existing duties on tobacco amounted to sixpence and one-third of a penny on every pound, and that the gross produce was at a medium 754,000l., whereas the net produce, or what was got by the government, was not more than 161,000l.! He proposed that the tobacco duty should be brought under the laws of excise, and that the excise laws themselves should be re

modeled and improved. He also proposed a reduction in the duty, making it 43. instead of sixpence and one-third of a penny. He suggested that the same rules might be afterwards applied to the duty upon wine, and that a system of bonding or warehousing for re-exportation might be instituted, "which," said Walpole, "will tend to make London a free port, and, by consequence, the market of the world!" By the increase of trade and of money thus levied, the land tax, he said, might eventually be altogether abolished. It had been reported out of the House that one of his principal motives for pressing this measure was to increase his control over elections by immeasurably increasing the number of excise officers and agents in his pay, and who would, it was said, form another standing army. In the course of his speech, which occupied two hours and a quarter, Walpole made more than one reply to these accusations. Those," said he, "who deal in these general declamations stigmatise the scheme in the most unqualified manner, as tending to reduce those subjected to it to a state of slavery. . . . But there are already ten or twelve articles of consumption subjected to the excise laws. . . . . Are the brewers and maltsters slaves, or do they reckon themselves so? Are they not as free in elections, to elect or be elected, as any other?

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standing army of revenue officers, allowing the proposed addition to extend to tobacco and wine, will not, according to the estimate of the commissioners, exceed 126 persons; that number, in addition to those already employed, will do all the duty."

The tempting hope of the total abolition of the land-tax was calculated to dazzle the eyes of the country gentlemen; and the profered system of bonding or warehousing was an immense advantage to the merchant, and, in reality, calculated to make England the great porto franco of the world; yet the vehemence of opposition was not softened.

Wyndham declared that in all countries excises of every kind were looked upon as badges of slavery, and he instituted a comparison between the ministers of the day and the rapacious favourites of Henry VII., Empson and Dudley, who, he said, "had the misfortune to outlive their master, and his son, as soon as he came to the throne, took off both their heads!" George's son, Frederick Prince of Wales, was under the gallery when this speech was delivered. Pulteney, taking a less tragical illustration, compared Walpole to Sir Ephraim Mammon in the Alchemist, who was gulled out of his money by fine promises of the philosopher's stone, but at last only got some little charm for curing the itch. On the other side Walpole was supported by the able Sir Philip York, then attorney-general, and by Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, who declared that he had come down to the House undetermined, but had been convinced by the minister's arguments. At two o'clock in the morning, when the debate had lasted thirteen hours, the House divided on the resolutions, when the minister found 266 for his scheme and 205 against it. He was little accustomed to such

a large minority; and his good humour was not increased on his leaving the House, for a noisy mob, that had beset the doors during the debate, seized him by the cloak, and might have done him some bodily mischief but for the interference of Mr. Pelham. On the 16th of March, when the report of the committee was brought up, the debate was resumed with increased acrimony. But there was truth as well as bitterness in Pulteney's declamation. "It is well known," said that accomplished orator, "that every one of the public officers have already many boroughs or corporations which they look on as their properties. There are some boroughs which may be called treasury boroughs; there are others which may be called admiralty boroughs; in short, it may be said that nearly all the towns upon the sea coast are already seized on, and, in a manner, taken prisoners by the officers of the crown; in most of them they have so great an influence, that none can be chosen members of parliament but such as they are pleased to recommend. But as the customs are confined to our sea-ports, as they cannot travel far from the coast, therefore this scheme seems to be contrived in order to extend the laws of excise, and thereby to extend the influence of the crown over all the inland towns and corporations in England." Upon a division, however, Walpole had still a majority of 60, or 249 to 189. The popular ferment was as great as it had been on the 14th. On the 4th of April the bill founded on the report of the committee was read a first time, and after a long debate, a motion, that it should be read a second time on that day se'nnight, was carried by a majority of only 36: and the next day when Walpole moved that the bill should be printed and distributed to the members of the House, he carried his point by a majority of only 16. The lord mayor of London, however, contrived to obtain

a copy of the bill, and under his direction the common council drew up a violent petition against it.* Similar petitions were sent up from Nottingham, Coventry, and other inland towns; and "the public," says Tindal, "was so heated with papers and pamphlets, that matters rose next to a rebellion."

Warned by these evil omens and by his decreasing majority, Walpole made up his mind to relinquish the bill. He summoned a meeting of the principal members who had supported it. "He reserved his own opinion till the last but perseverance was the unanimous voice. It was urged that all taxes were obnoxious, and there would be an end of supplies if mobs were to control the legislature in the manner of raising them. When Sir Robert had heard them all he assured them that he was conscious of having meant well; that in the present inflamed temper of the people the act could not be carried into execution without an armed force; that there would be an end of the liberty of England if supplies were to be raised by the sword. If, therefore, the resolution was to proceed with the bill, he would instantly request the king's permission to resign, for he would not be the minister to enforce taxes at the expense of blood. This anecdote is mentioned in Historical Remarks on the Taxation of free States,' on the authority of Mr. White, memher for Retford, who lived in friendship with Sir Robert Walpole. † And accordingly, on the 11th of August, the day appointed for the second reading, Walpole moved that it should be postponed till the 12th of June, before which day it was known that parliament would rise. The opposition were dissatisfied at this quiet mode of dropping the measure, and much wanted a formal rejection with severe animadversion; but the general sense of the House was against them, and they would not hazard a motion. Out of doors there was more noise and rejoicing than had ever been known at our greatest victories: bonfires were lit in the streets, the Monument was illuminated, and the minister Walpole was burnt in effigy. Cockades were worn with the motto, Liberty, Property, and no Excise." The provincial towns followed the example of the capital; but the learned university of Oxford, filled with the fumes of tobacco and Jacobitism, outdid itself: the gownsmen joined the rabble of the town in their noisy rejoicings; curses of Walpole were mingled with Jacobite cries and cant phrases, and these Saturnalia on the banks of the Isis lasted three days and three nights. As Queen Caroline had gone fully into the excise scheme, and partook in the pangs of Walpole's disappointment, it was the more easy for him to chastise certain noblemen and gentlemen, who, though holding office, had criticised or opposed the bill. Thus Lord Chesterfield, who had become lord steward of the household, was very abruptly and unceremoniously deprived of his

This lord mayor was Alderman Barber, who had been printer to Swift and Bolingbroke, and who was a noted Jacobite. + Coxe, Memoirs of Walpole.

VOL. IV.

white staff, and Lord Clinton, a lord of the bedchamber, the Earl of Burlington, captain of his band of pensioners, and the Duke of Montrose and the Earls of Marchmont and Stair, who held lucrative and sinecure offices in Scotland, were all dismissed. Nor did the ministerial vengeance stop here the Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham, who had no offices about the court, were deprived of their regiments for their opposition.* This seemed an unjustifiable stretch of the prerogative, and in the next session led to warm debates in the House of Commons, where 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; and when this was negatived Mr. Sandys moved for an address, desiring to know who advised his majesty to remove the Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham from their respective regiments; and Sandys was supported -of course in vain-by Sir William Wyndham and by Pulteney. After this a bill similar to that which had been produced more than once in the time of William III. was brought in for securing the freedom of parliament by limiting the number of military officers in the House of Commons; but it was rejected after the second reading.

The

In the course of the session of 1733 another bill for preventing the infamous practice of stockjobbing was laid aside, in consequence of some amendments proposed by the Commons. Commons also voted 80,000l. as a marriage portion to the princess royal, who was affianced to the Prince of Orange. The prince arrived in England in the month of November, and, after he had for some time drunk the waters of Bath to improve his health, the nuptials were solemnised in the French chapel at St. James's, on the 14th of February of the following year (1734).

But, though pacific in England, the year 1733 was in other parts of Europe a year of strife and contention. Augustus II., King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, died in the month of February, when the Polish crown became, as usual, the object of a disgraceful struggle, which went by the name of "election." The competitors were Augustus, Elector of Saxony, son of the deceased king, and Stanislaus Leczinski, who had already been King of Poland, but who had been driven from his throne on the downfall of Charles XII. of Sweden, who, rather by force of arms than by any other right, had made him king. By a strange com

Before the end of the year, the great seal having been resigned by Lord King (who died a few months afterwards), Charles Talbot, the solicitor-general, was made lord-chancellor and (in the month of December) Baron Talbot. Still further to strengthen himself in the Upper House, Walpole made the attorney-general, Philip York, lord chief-justice and Baron Hardwicke. Talbot, one of the best men upon whom promotion could fall, survived only three years. Augustus on re-ascending his throne had thought proper to publish a long manifesto to justify his conduct and his perjury, as in a treaty he had solemnly sworn never more to pretend any right to the sovereignty of Poland. One day he asked a Polish gentleman what he thought of this long manifesto. "Nothing is more ridiculous," said the Pole; "you ought to have said simply, Seeing that the King of Sweden has been beaten at Pultava, I have re-ascended the throne."-Ruthier 3 G

bination of circumstances the daughter of Stanislaus, even when his fortunes were at the lowest ebb, and he was an exile and proscribed, had become the wife of young Louis XV., and was now Queen of France. The French people made it a point of honour to procure for the father of their queen the crown which he had formerly worn, and the government resolved to support and assist Stanislaus. On the other side Augustus was supported by the Emperor Charles and the Czarina Anne of Russia, who, on the death of Peter I.'s widow Catherine, and a revolution which set aside Peter II., had ascended the throne of that country. France had for a long time ceased to have any connexion with Poland, and was at the moment unacquainted with the state of affairs in that country, and unprepared with the means of making any great effort. But Stanislaus, who was residing there, set out for his native country in disguise; and, attended by only one officer, he presented himself to the Poles at Warsaw, and was received with acclamations. The majority of the nation, or of the nobles who exercised the right of king-making by vote, were decidedly in his favour, and 60,000 suffrages recalled him to the throne. But the Czarina had resolved that the question should not be left to the decision of the Poles; three Russian armies hovered on the frontiers, and threatened to inundate the kingdom; and Augustus III. and the minority of the noble electors of Poland were soon in the Russian camp, and inviting the Muscovites into the heart of their country. In a brief space of time the whole of the Lithuanian provinces were occupied by the Muscovites, and Stanislaus was compelled to fly from the capital and shut himself up in Dantzic. There he was soon besieged by a confederate army of Russians, Saxons, and Polish partisans. The defence was heroic and long. Eight thousand of the Czarina's troops are said to have fallen in one assault; and in the fortifications of Dantzic they still point out a place which they call the grave of the Russians; but the end of all was, that Stanislaus was again obliged to disguise himself and to flv.

His rival was then proclaimed King of Poland under the guns and bayonets of Russia, and the adherents of Stanislaus either submitted or carried on a hopeless, desultory, partisan warfare, which contributed to throw the country still farther back into barbarity, and to render it more and more an easy prey to Russia. The Emperor Charles had left the business to be settled by the Czarina; but this was rather through want of ability than any want of inclination to interfere, and he had indirectly aided and assisted Augustus, and injured the cause of the protégé of France. Notwithstanding the pacific intentions of Cardinal Fleury, the French court determined to resent this conduct, and they found the court of Madrid quite ready to join in a war against the emperor; for, besides old scores of animosities, the Queen of Spain, who had secured to her son the dukedom of Parma, aspired to placing him on the

throne of Naples, which was weakly defended for the emperor. Everything depended upon dispatch, and armies, both French and Spanish, were prepared in a wonderfully short space of time. Walpole wisely endeavoured to prevent the firing of the first cannon, but his efforts were unsuccessful; and in the course of the following year some of the fairest parts of Europe were again scourged by the march of hostile forces, and the diplomatic scissors were once more employed to reshape and refashion dominions, principalities, and powers.

A. D. 1734.—The English parliament met on the 17th of January, when the king attended to the war which had begun on the continent, and which he said proved the necessity of increasing our forces at home. The opposition, whose plans of attack had been principally organised by Bolingbroke, were soon found to be more formidable than they had hitherto been. Our foreign policy, and the internal administration, were equally attacked; and, after a variety of minor efforts, a proposal to repeal the Septennial Bill was brought in on the 13th of March by Mr. Bromley, the son of Queen Anne's Tory secretary of state. The disaffected of

ner.

the Whigs, it appears, had long scrupled about voting for the repeal of a bill which they themselves had once thought necessary for the security of the Protestant succession, but they were brought over by the persuasions of Bolingbroke and the determined will of the Tories, with whom they were now acting, and without whom they would have formed a very insignificant minority. Still, however, these Whigs were rather shy of the debate, and Pulteney, their head, delivered only a short speech, and that too in an embarrassed manThe Tory chief, Sir William Wyndham, fought the battle; and in a very remarkable speech, which has been considered as one of the most powerful specimens of the parliamentary eloquence of that day, he hypothetically described Walpole as the most dangerous of all villains "Let us suppose," says Wyndham, "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,