Читать книгу The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick - Bradlaugh Charles - Страница 7

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On August 1st, 1714, George Lewis, Elector of Hanover, and great-grandson of James I., of England, succeeded to the throne; but being apparently rather doubtful as to the reception he would meet in this country, he delayed visiting his new dominions until the month of October. In April, 1714, there was so little disposition in favor of the newly-chosen dynasty, that the Earl of Oxford entreated George not to bring any of his family into this country without Queen Anne's express consent. It seems strange to read in the correspondence of Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans, her hesitation "to rejoice at the accession of our Prince George, for she had no confidence in the English;" and her fears "that the inconstancy of the English will in the end produce some scheme which may be injurious to the French monarchy." She adds: "If the English were to be trusted, I should say that it is fortunate the Parliaments are in favor of George, but the more one reads the history of English revolutions, the more one is compelled to remark the eternal hatred which the people of that nation have had towards their kings, as well as their fickleness." To-day it is the English who charge the French with fickleness. Thackeray says of George I. that "he showed an uncommon prudence and coolness of behavior when he came into his kingdom, exhibiting no elation; reasonably doubtful whether he should not be turned out some day; looking upon himself only as a lodger, and making the most of his brief tenure of St. James's and Hampton Court, plundering, it is true, somewhat, and dividing amongst his German followers; but what could be expected of a sovereign who at home could sell his subjects at so many ducats per head, and make no scruple in so disposing of them?" At the accession of George I. the national debt of this country, exclusive of annuities, was about £36,000,000; after five Brunswicks have left us, it is £800,000,000 for Great Britain and Ireland, and much more, than £110,000,000 for India. The average annual national expenditure under the rule of George I. was £5,923,079; to-day it is more than £70,000,-000, of which more than £20,000,000 have been added in the last twenty years. During the reign of George I. land paid very nearly one-fourth the whole of the taxes; to-day it pays less than one-seventieth part; and yet, while its proportion of the burden is so much lighter, its exaction from labor in rent is ten times heavier.

George I. came to England without his wife, the Princess of Zelle. Years before, he had arrested her and placed her in close confinement in Ahlden Castle, on account of her intrigue with Philip, Count Konigsmark, whom some say George I. suspected of being the actual father of the Electoral Prince George, afterwards George II. To use the language of a writer patronized by George, Prince of Wales, in 1808, "The coldness between George I. and his son and successor, George II., may be said to have been almost coeval with the existence of the latter." Our King, George I., described by Thackeray as a "cold, selfish libertine," had Konigsmark murdered in the palace of Heranhausen; confined his wife, at twenty-eight years of age, in a dungeon, where she remained until she was sixty; and when George Augustus, Electoral Prince of Hanover, tried to get access to his mother, George Lewis, then Elector of Hanover, arrested Prince George also, and it is said, would have put him to death if the Emperor of Germany had not protected him as a Prince of the German Empire. During the reign of George II., Frederick, Prince of Wales, whom his father denounced as a "changeling," published an account of how George I. had turned Frederick's father out of the palace. These Guelphs have been a loving family. The Edinburgh Review declares that "the terms on which the eldest sons of this family have always lived with their fathers have been those of distrust, opposition, and hostility." Even after George Lewis had ascended the throne of England, his hatred to George Augustus was so bitter, that there was some proposition that James, Earl Berkeley and Lord High Admiral, should carry off the Prince to America and keep him there.

Thackeray says: "When George I. made his first visit to Hanover, his son was appointed regent during the Royal absence. But this honor was never again conferred on the Prince of Wales; he and his father fell out presently. On the occasion of the christening of his second son, a Royal row took place, and the Prince, shaking his fist in the Duke of Newcastle's face, called him a rogue, and provoked his august father. He and his wife were turned out of St. James's, and their princely children taken from them, by order of the Royal head of the family. Father and mother wept piteously at parting from their little ones. The young ones sent some cherries, with their love, to papa and mamma, the parents watered the fruit with their tears. They had no tears thirty-five years afterwards, when Prince Frederick died, their eldest son, their heir, their enemy."

A satirical ballad on the expulsion of Prince George from St. James's Palace, which was followed by the death of the newly-christened baby Prince, is droll enough to here repeat:—

The King then took his gray goose quill,

And dip't it o'er in gall;

And, by Master Vice Chamberlain,

He sent to him this scrawl:

"Take hence yourself, and eke your spouse,

Your maidens and your men;

Your trunks, and all your trumpery,

Except your chil-de-ren."

The Prince secured with nimble haste

The Artillery Commission;

And with him trudged full many a maid,

But not one politician.

Up leapt Lepel, and frisked away,

As though she ran on wheels;

Miss Meadows made a woful face,

Miss Howe took to her heels.

But Belenden I needs must praise,

Who, as down stairs she jumps,

Sang "O'er the hills and far away,"

Despising doleful dumps.

Then up the street they took their way,

And knockt up good Lord Grant-ham;

Higgledy-piggledy they lay,

And all went rantam scantam. Now sire and son had played their part, What could befall beside? Why, the poor babe took this to heart, Kickt up its heels, and died.

Mahon, despite all his desire to make out the best for the Whig revolution and its consequences, occasionally makes some pregnant admissions: "The jealousy which George I. entertained for his son was no new feeling. It had existed even at Hanover, and had since been inflamed by an insidious motion of the Tories that out of the Civil List £100,-000 should be allotted as a separate revenue for the Prince of Wales. This motion was overruled by the Ministerial party, and its rejection offended the Prince as much as its proposal had the King. … In fact it is remarkable … that since that family has reigned, the heirs-apparent have always been on ill terms with the sovereign. There have been four Princes of Wales since the death of Anne, and all four have gone into bitter opposition." "That family," said Lord Carteret one day in full Council, "always has quarrelled, and always will quarrel, from generation to generation."

"Through the whole of the reign of George I., and through nearly half of the reign of George II.," says Lord Macaulay, "a Tory was regarded as the enemy of the reigning house, and was excluded from all the favors of the Crown. Though most of the country gentlemen were Tories, none but Whigs were appointed deans and bishops. In every County, opulent and well-descended Tory squires complained that their names were left out of the Commission of the Peace, while men of small estate and of mean birth, who were for toleration and excise, septennial parliaments and standing armies, presided at Quarter Sessions, and became deputy-lieutenants."

In attacking the Whigs, my object is certainly not to write in favor of the Tories, but some such work is needful while so many persons labor under the delusion that the Whigs have always been friends to liberty and progress.

Although George I. brought with him no wife to England, he was accompanied by at least two of his mistresses, and our peerage roll was enriched by the addition of Madame Kielmansegge as Countess of Darlington, and Mademoiselle Erangard Melosine de Schulenberg as Duchess of Kendal and Munster, Baroness of Glastonbury, and Countess of Feversham. These peeresses were received with high favor by the Whig aristocracy, although the Tories refused to countenance them, and "they were often hooted by the mob as they passed through the streets." The Edinburgh Review described them as "two big blowsy German women." Here I have no room to deal fairly with Charlotte Sophia, Baroness of Brentford and Countess of Darlington; her title is extinct, and I can write nothing of any good or useful act to revive her memory. Lord Chesterfield says of George I.: "No woman came amiss to him, if she were only very willing and very fat." John Heneage Jesse, in his "Memoirs of the Court of England"—speaking of the Duchess of Kendal, the Countess Platen (the co-partner in the murder of Konigsmark), afterwards Countess of Darlington, and many others less known to infamy—says that George I. "had the folly and wickedness to encumber himself with a seraglio of hideous German prostitutes." The Duchess of Kendal was for many years the chief mistress of George, and being tall and lean was caricatured as the Maypole or the Giraffe. She had a pension of £7,500 a year, the profits of the place of Master of the Horse, and other plunder. The Countess of Darlington's figure may be judged from the name of Elephant or Camel, popularly awarded to her. Horace Walpole says of her: "I remember as a boy being terrified at her enormous figure. The fierce black eyes, large and rolling, between two lofty-arched eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed, and was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part restrained by stays. No wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress." She died 1724. Mahon says: "She was unwieldy in person, and rapacious in character."

Phillimore declares that "George I. brought with him from Hanover mistresses as rapacious, and satellites as ignoble, as those which drew down such deserved obloquy on Charles H., Bothman, Bernstoff, Robethon, and two Turks—Mustapha and Mahomet—meddled more with public affairs, and were to the full as venal as Chiffin, Pepys and Smith." Mahon, who calls Robethon "a prying, impertinent, venomous creature," adds that "coming from a poor electorate, a flight of hungry Hanoverians, like so many famished vultures, fell with keen eyes and bended talons on the fruitful soil of England."

One of the earliest acts of the Whig aristocracy, in the reign of George I., was to pass a measure through Parliament, lengthening the existence of that very Parliament to seven years, and giving to the King the power to continue all subsequent Parliaments to a like period. The Triennial Parliaments were thus lengthened by a corrupt majority. For the committal of the Septennial Bill there was a majority of 72 votes, and it is alleged by the Westminster Review, "that about 82 members of the honorable house had either fingered Walpole's gold, or pocketed the bank-notes which, by the purest accident, were left under their plates. … In the ten years which preceded the Septennial Act, the sum expended in Secret Service money was £337,960. In the ten years which followed the passing of the Septennial Act, the sum expended for Secret Service was £1,453,400." The same writer says: "The friends and framers of the Triennial Bill were for the most part Tories, and its opponents for the most part Whigs. The framers and friends of the Bill for long Parliaments were all Whigs, and its enemies all Tories." When the measure came before the Lords, we find Baron Bernstoff, on the King's behalf, actually canvassing Peers' wives, with promises of places for their relatives, in order to induce them to get their husbands to vote for the Bill. Another of the early infringements of public liberty by the Whig supporters of George I., was the passing (1 George I., c. 5) the Riot Act, which had not existed from the accession of James I. to the death of Queen Anne. Sir John Hinde Cotton, a few years afterwards, described this Act, which is still the law of England, as "An Act by which a little dirty justice of the peace, the meanest and vilest tool a minister can use, had it in his power to put twenty or thirty of the best subjects of England to immediate death, without any trial or form, but that of reading a proclamation." In order to facilitate the King's desire to spend most of his time in Hanover, the third section of the Act of Settlement was repealed. Thackeray says: "Delightful as London city was, King George I. liked to be out of it as much as ever he could, and when there, passed all his time with his Germans. It was with them as with Blucher one hundred years afterwards, when the bold old Reiter looked down from St. Paul's and sighed out, 'Was fur plunder!' The German women plundered, the German secretaries plundered, the German cooks and intendants plundered; even Mustapha and Mahomet, the German negroes, had a share of the booty. Take what you can get, was the old monarch's maxim."

There was considerable discontent expressed in the early years of George's reign. Hallam says: "Much of this disaffection was owing to the cold reserve of George I., ignorant of the language, alien to the prejudices of his people, and continually absent in his electoral dominions, to which he seemed to sacrifice the nation's interest. … The letters in Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole, abundantly show the German nationality, the impolicy and neglect of his duties, the rapacity and petty selfishness of George I. The Whigs were much dissatisfied, but the fear of losing their places made them his slaves." In order to add the duchies of Bremen and Verden to Hanover, in 1716, the King, as Elector, made a treaty with Denmark against Sweden, which treaty proved the source of those Continental wars, and the attendant system of subsidies to European powers, which have, in the main, created our enormous National Debt. Bremen and Verden being actually purchased for George I. as the Elector of Hanover, with English money, Great Britain in addition was pledged by George I. to guarantee Sleswick to Denmark. Sweden and Denmark quarrelling—and George I. as Elector of Hanover having, without the consent of the English Parliament, declared war against Sweden—an English fleet was sent into the Baltic to take up a quarrel with which we had no concern. In addition we were involved in a quarrel with Russia, because that power had interfered to prevent Mecklenburg being added to George's Hanoverian estates. The chief mover in this matter was the notorious Baron Bernstoff, who held some village property in Mecklenburg. In all these complications, Hanover gained, England lost. If Hanover found troops, England paid for them, while the Electorate solely reaped the benefit. Every thoughtful writer admits that English interests were always betrayed to satisfy Hanoverian greed.

The King's fondness for Germany provoked some hostility, and amongst the various squibs issued, one in 1716, from the pen of Samuel Wesley, brother of John Wesley, is not without interest. It represents a conversation between George and the Duchess of Kendal:—

"As soon as the wind it came fairly about, That kept the King in and his enemies out, He determined no longer confinement to bear, And thus to the Duchess his mind did declare:

"Quoth he, 'My dear Kenny, I've been tired along while, With living obscure in this poor little isle, And now Spain and Pretender have no more mines to spring, I'm resolved to go home and live like a King."

The Duchess approves of this, describes and laughs at all the persons nominated for the Council of Regency, and concludes:—

"On the whole, I'll be hanged if all over the realm There are thirteen such fools to be put to the helm; So for this time be easy, nor have jealous thought, They ha'n't sense to sell you, nor are worth being bought."

"'Tis for that (quoth the King, in very bad French), I chose them for my regents, and you for my wench, And neither, I'm sure, will my trust e'er betray, For the devil won't take you if I turn you away."

It was this same Duchess of Kendal who, as the King's mistress, was publicly accused of having received enormous sums of money from the South Sea Company for herself and the King, in order to shield from justice the principal persons connected with those terrible South Sea frauds, by which, in the year 1720, so many families were reduced to misery.

In 1717, Mr. Shippen, a member of the House of Commons, was committed to the Tower, for saying in his place in the House, that it was the "infelicity of his Majesty's reign that he is unacquainted with our language and constitution." Lord Macaulay tells us how Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville, rose into favor. The King could speak no English; Carteret was the only one of the Ministry who could speak German. "All the communication that Walpole had with his master was in very bad Latin." The influence Carteret wielded over the King did not extend to every member of the Royal Family. The Princess of Wales afterwards described the Lords Carteret and Bolingbroke as two she had "long known to be two as worthless men of parts as any in the country, and who I have not only been often told are two of the greatest liars and knaves in any country, but whom my own observation and experience have found so."

Under George I. our standing army was nearly doubled by the Whig Ministry, and this when peace would rather have justified a reduction than an increase. The payments to Hanoverian troops commenced under this king, a payment which William Pitt afterwards earned the enmity of George II. by very sharply denouncing, and which payment was but a step in the system of continental subsidies which have helped to swell our national debt to its present enormous dimensions.

In this reign the enclosure of waste lands was practically commenced, sixteen enclosure Acts being passed, and 17,-660 acres of land enclosed. This example, once furnished, was followed in the next reign with increasing rapidity, 226 enclosure Acts being passed in the reign of George II., and 318,778 acres of land enclosed. As Mr. Fawcett states, up to 1845, more than 7,000,000 acres of land, over which the public possessed invaluable rights, have been gradually absorbed, and individuals wielding legislative influence have been enriched at the expense of the public and the poor.

Within six years from his accession, the King was about £600,000 in debt, and this sum was the first of a long list of debts discharged by the nation for these Brunswicks. When our ministers to-day talk of obligations on the part of the people to endow each additional member of the Royal Family, the memory of these shameful extravagances should have some effect. George I. had a civil list of £700,000 a year; he received £300,000 from the Royal Exchange Assurance Company, and £300,000 from the London Assurance Companies, and had one million voted to him in 1726 towards payment of his debts.

When the "South Sea Bill" was promoted in 1720, wholesale bribery was resorted to. Transfers of stock were proved to have been made to persons high in office. Two members of the Whig Ministry, Lord Sunderland and Mr. Aislabie, were so implicated that they had to resign their offices, and the last-named, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, was ignominiously expelled the House of Commons. Royalty itself, or at least, the King's sultanas, and several of his German household, shared the spoil. £30,000 were traced to the King's mistresses, and a select committee of the House denounced the whole business as "a train of the deepest villany and fraud with which hell ever contrived to ruin a nation." Near the close of the reign, Lord Macclesfied, Lord Chancellor and favorite and tool of the King, was impeached for extortion and abuse of trust in his office, and, being convicted, was sentenced to pay a fine of £30,000. In 1716, Mademoiselle Schulenberg, then Duchess of Munster, received £5,000 as a bribe for procuring the title of Viscount for Sir Henry St. John. In 1724, the same mistress, bribed by Lord Bolingbroke, successfully used her influence to pass an act through Parliament restoring him his forfeited estates. Mr. Chetwynd, says my Lady Cowper, in order to secure his position in the Board of Trade, paid to another of George's mistresses £500 down, agreed to allow her £200 a year as long as he held the place, and gave her also the fine, brilliant ear-rings she wore.

In 1724 there appeared in Dublin, the first of the famous "Drapier Letters," written by Jonathan Swift against Wood's coinage patent. A patent had been granted to a man named Wood for coining half-pence in Ireland. This grant was made under the influence of the Duchess of Kendal, the mistress of the King, and on the stipulation that she should receive a large share of the profits. These "Drapier Letters" were prosecuted by the Government, but Swift followed them with others; the grand juries refused to find true bills, and ultimately the patent was cancelled. Wood, or the Duchess, got as compensation a grant of a pension of £3,000 a year for eight years.

George died at Osnabruck, on his journey Hanover-wards, in June, 1727, having made a will by which he disposed of his money in some fashion displeasing to his son George II.; and as the Edinburgh Review tells us, the latter "evaded the old king's directions, and got his money by burning his will." In this, George II. only followed his royal father's example. When Sophia Dorothea died, she left a will bequeathing her property in a fashion displeasing to Greorge I., who, without scruple, destroyed the testament and appropriated the estate. George I. had also previously burned the will of his father-in-law, the Duke of Zell. At this time the destruction of a will was a capital felony in England.

In concluding this rough sketch of the reign of George I., it must not be forgotten that his accession meant the triumph of the Protestant caste in Ireland, and that under his rule much was done to render permanent the utter hatred manifested by the Irish people to their English conquerors, who had always preferred the policy of extermination to that of conciliation. Things were so sad in Ireland at the end of this reign, that Dean Swift, in bitter mockery, "wrote and published his 'Modest Proposal' for relieving the miseries of the people, by cooking and eating the children of the poor;" "a piece of the fiercest sarcasm," says Mitchell, "steeped in all the concentrated bitterness of his soul." Poor Ireland, she had, at any rate, nothing to endear to her the memory of George I.