Читать книгу The History of Constitutional Monarchy in England (1689 to 1837) - James Franck Bright - Страница 13

The Triple Alliance. Jan. 1717.

During this brief reconciliation, the negotiations which had been carried on at the Hague and Hanover were completed, and a Triple Alliance was signed in January 1717, by which the clauses in the Treaty of Utrecht having reference to the Protestant succession in England, to the French succession, and to the renunciation of the Spanish King to his claims on the French throne, were guaranteed.

Changes in the ministry. April.

But Walpole and the other friends of Townshend took an early opportunity of showing their discontent at the treatment of their leader, and it became necessary to dismiss them. The direction of the Government thus fell into the hands of Stanhope, as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sunderland and Addison became Secretaries of State, and James Craggs Secretary at War. The occasion of the final schism was a demand for a supply to oppose the intrigues of the King of Sweden. The lukewarmness of Walpole's support was so marked that his friends and those of Townshend voted against Government, and the supplies were carried by a majority of four only. The fraction of the Whigs who thus left office at once passed into vigorous opposition; yet the crisis was one which should have overpowered party feeling.

Danger to England from Charles XII. and Alberoni.

The state of Europe was such as to threaten difficulty, even danger, to England. Two statesmen of unusual ability were at work in Europe; to both of them the fall of the new Government in England was an object, and when their intrigues for a moment brought them together, there was a brief interval of real danger. These were Charles XII. of Sweden, and Alberoni, the Prime Minister of Spain.

Charles XII.

Charles had found himself thwarted in his schemes for re-establishing his power by the opposition of the English King. The same opposition had checked the Czar in his ambitious schemes on Mecklenburg. In union with his minister, Görtz, an adventurer who had passed into his service from that of the Prince of Gotthorp, Charles determined on a new combination of the North to suit the altered politics of Europe. He allied himself with his old enemy the Czar, and despatched Görtz to Holland, to see what he could do in France and England. In each of those countries he found it possible to enter into communication with a large discontented minority. In France, the Duke of Maine, irritated at the loss of the position which the late King's will would have given him, had put himself at the head of the older and graver statesmen, who clung to the old policy of enmity with England. In England, the Jacobites were still looking out for foreign support. To both countries Görtz sent an agent,—while Spaar was, if possible, to produce a change of government in France, Gyllenborg was instructed in England to promise the Tories the assistance of 12,000 men under the personal command of the King of Sweden. In seeking assistance for his plans, Görtz had come across another intrigue tending in the same direction. He found in Alberoni a man whose views were for the time identical with his own, and Spanish money found its way largely both to the Pretender and to the Swedish agents. Fortunately the English Government obtained information of what was going on. Justly holding that his ambassadorial rights were forfeited by his treason, they apprehended Gyllenborg and seized his papers, and persuaded Holland to act in the same manner with regard to Görtz. The papers thus seized afforded full justification for what they had done. But though thwarted in this scheme, both Charles and the Czar continued to act in unison with Spain against the interests of England. It was to meet this plot that the supply was demanded which caused the final schism in the English ministry. The death of Charles in September 1718, at the siege of Friedrichshalle, whither he had gone in his haste to secure Norway, the possession of which was a part of his bargain with Russia, prevented the Northern branch of the intrigue from bearing fruits, and a revolution in Sweden, which changed it into little more than an oligarchical republic, removed it for more than sixty years from the scene of history.

Alberoni's plots were of more importance. He was one of those statesmen who owe their rise to the democratic character of the Roman Church. The son of a market gardener, of a singularly undignified exterior, he had found means to make himself indispensable Alberoni. to the Duke of Vendome during the war of the Spanish succession, and had subsequently established his position in Spain by bringing about the marriage of Philip with Elizabeth of Parma. His object was entirely patriotic; he desired to replace Spain in the list of great European nations. For this purpose he set to work with remarkable success to revive the industry and wealth of the country. But his views reached further than this; he aimed at the destruction of the Treaty of Utrecht. By that treaty Austria had gained almost all that Spain had lost. It was therefore against Austria that his designs were chiefly directed. Knowing of the irritation which existed between Austria and England with regard to the Barrier Treaty, and believing that France would be unwilling to do anything to the disadvantage of a Bourbon kingdom of its own creation, he supposed that Austria would be without allies. To secure friendship with England, he even granted her great commercial advantages. The defensive alliance between England and Austria, in 1716, was the first blow to his plan. The subsequent conclusion, in 1717, of the Triple Alliance opened his eyes to the probable policy of France. It was then that he threw himself into the intrigues of the Jacobites and the party of the Duke of Maine, and put himself into communication with Charles of Sweden. Alberoni's chief object was to destroy the Austrian power in Italy. Conscious that Spain had gained in strength by the loss of her widespread foreign dependencies, he had no intention of conquering that country. But he wished to restrict the Austrian power there, firstly, by the establishment of younger branches of the Spanish house in Sicily (at the instant belonging by the Treaty of Utrecht to Victor Amadeus of Savoy), and in the duchies of Parma and Tuscany, where the reigning houses were drawing towards extinction, and to which Elizabeth Farnese had claims; and, secondly, by the increase of the territory of Savoy, which he designed to compensate for the loss of Sicily by the cession of a portion of Lombardy. The possession of Sicily was therefore of the first importance to him. But Austria had already been negotiating with the powers of the Triple Alliance for the exchange of that island for Sardinia. Alberoni himself desired to wait till Spain had acquired more power at home, but the apprehension by the Austrians of a newly appointed Spanish inquisitor roused the anger of Philip V., and, against his will, Alberoni was hurried into war. To prevent the exchange of Sicily he at once took possession of Sardinia, and would probably have proceeded to attack Sicily, when the Powers of the Triple Alliance intervened.

Opposition of the Triple Alliance.

Their offer of mediation involved the renunciation on the part of Austria of all claims on the Spanish monarchy, which had never hitherto been dropped,—on the part of Spain of all claims on the Italian provinces. The exchange of Sicily for Sardinia was to be carried out, and Parma and Tuscany to be given to Don Carlos. Enraged at this offer, the work of men, as he said, "who cut and pared countries as they would Dutch cheeses," Alberoni at once set to work all the apparatus his intrigue had prepared. The anger of Savoy was aroused at the loss of Sicily; the Turks, already at war with Austria, were subsidized and urged to further exertions; Ragotski, Prince of Transylvania, was brought forward to demand his hereditary dominions, to hamper Austria on the east; the Spanish envoy in France busily stirred up faction there; Charles XII. and the Czar were urged to immediate action; and an expedition against England, headed by Ormond or the Pretender himself, was set on foot. The whole of Europe seemed involved. The mediating Powers found themselves likely to be drawn into war. Stanhope was removed from his position as First Lord of the Treasury, and made Secretary of State for the Southern Department, which included foreign affairs, and on June 4, 1718, Admiral Byng set sail from England for the Mediterranean.

Formation of the Quadruple Alliance. August 1718.

The crisis was so threatening that the Austrian Emperor, who had refused to accede to the mediation of the Powers, yielded. England procured for him the Treaty of Passowitz, which secured him from the Turks, bought off at the expense of the Venetians, from whom they had conquered the Morea; and a Quadruple Alliance between England, France, Austria, and Holland was formed on the basis of the old project of mediation, with this difference, that Parma and Tuscany were to be held by Don Carlos only as fiefs of the Empire. Without open declaration of war, France and England had virtually joined the Austrian alliance. Alberoni, however, persisted in his schemes, but fortune had turned against him. The Spanish fleet, not knowing whether it was peace or war, was fallen upon and destroyed by Byng off Cape Passaro; Savoy, yielding to the pressure of the Quadruple Alliance, accepted Sardinia in exchange for Sicily; the death of Charles XII. broke up the Northern Alliance; the conspiracy in France was discovered when approaching maturity, the Spanish ambassador and the Duke and Duchess of Maine apprehended; of the Pretender's expedition, scattered in the Bay of Biscay, two frigates only reached Loch Alsh in Scotland. A few hundreds of the Highlanders gathered to their standard, but the appearance of English troops put them to flight; the chiefs escaped to Spain, the Highlanders were allowed to fly Fall of Alberoni. Dec. 1719. unmolested to their hills, the Spanish troops were taken prisoners of war. War having now been regularly declared, the French crossed the Pyrenees, and again and again defeated the Spanish troops; and at length Philip was compelled to dismiss his great minister, and on the 19th of January 1720 acceded to the terms of the Quadruple Alliance.

The affairs in the North of Europe were settled in a similar high-handed fashion. There too a nation, struggling to regain its old preponderance, had to be crushed. The death of Charles XII., and the revolution which followed it, put an end to any chance of Sweden's regaining its position in Europe. The new Government fell back upon the old policy of the country; Bremen and Verden were allowed to remain in the hands of George, and an alliance with England and France was entered into. As a necessary consequence the late allies of Sweden again became its enemies. But the friendship of France and England drove them to peace. Orders were even issued to the English Admiral of the Baltic to fall upon the fleet of the Czar without declaration of war, unless with Denmark, his ally, he consented to a cessation of hostilities. Too weak to resist, Denmark accepted a sum of money and retired from the contest; and the Czar, European peace. 1720. now standing alone, withdrew, though still in arms, to await a better opportunity for action. The foreign policy of Stanhope had thus been successful, and though unjust and domineering, secured for Europe a peace of twelve years.

Stanhope's home policy.

Meanwhile the minister had carried out with consistency the politics of his party at home. In acting thus he was met with considerable difficulties. On the one hand he had to manage and repress the meddlesome and rapacious German coterie which surrounded the King, on the other he was met by a strong opposition headed by that party of the Whigs which had left office with Townshend.

Opposition of Walpole.

In all the chief measures of his administration he found an eager and at times a successful antagonist in Walpole. It was chiefly through his instrumentality that the impeachment of Oxford came to an untimely end. The Lords were persuaded to refuse to listen to any evidence in support of the charge of misdemeanour Trial of Oxford. June 1717. before they had heard that on the graver charge of treason. They knew that it was impossible for the Commons to support the more important charge. A quarrel between the Houses ended in the refusal of the Lower House to proceed to the impeachment. The Lords gravely assembled on the appointed day in Westminster Hall, sat there for a quarter of an hour, and then, as no accusers appeared, declared the impeachment at an end. Again, Walpole, regardless of party ties, vehemently upheld the charges of peculation brought against Lord Cadogan by the Jacobites in the House headed by Shippen. And again, with great inconsistency, Repeal of the Schism Act. Jan. 1719. he opposed the repeal of the Schism Act. The Act for restraining Occasional Conformity passed in the last reign, and the Schism Act of 1714, by which it had been followed, pressed very heavily on the Dissenters; and Stanhope, whose views appear in some respects to have been more liberal than those in vogue at the time, went so far in his wish to relieve them as even to dream of mitigating the severity of the Test and Corporation Acts. However, wisely yielding to the advice of Sunderland, he confined himself to an attempt to get the Schism Act repealed, and succeeded, after much opposition, in both Houses; but his narrow majorities show that a more extensive measure would have been useless. The Test Act continued in force, though rendered practically nugatory after the beginning of George II.'s reign by a Bill of Indemnity passed almost every year in favour of those who had evaded it.

The Peerage Bill rejected. Dec. 1719.

On the two last named occasions Walpole's opposition had been useless. On the more important question of the limitation of the power of the Crown to create Peers by the Peerage Bill, he fortunately proved too strong for the minister. Like the Septennial Act, the Peerage Bill was introduced partly on theoretical, partly on party grounds. The Revolution had been an aristocratic rather than a popular movement. The power or rather the influence of the Crown had not been destroyed, but was in abeyance, the Hanoverian monarchs being as it were in a state of tutelage to the Whig party, whose strength was in the Upper House. Popular in language, but aristocratic in feeling, this party regarded political liberty as best secured by its own predominance, rendered permanent by such institutions as a Septennial Parliament and an exclusive hereditary nobility. It feared alike the power of the King and the power of the people, and already the adoption of the Treaty of Utrecht, carried by the popular will and by a large creation of Peers, had shown the possibility of a union between King and people which might sooner or later destroy its influence. To guard against such a danger was the primary object for which Stanhope introduced his Peerage Bill. But temporary party interests had as much weight with him as general theory. Stanhope and his friends, especially Sunderland, were in dread of the conduct which might be pursued by the Prince of Wales when he came to the throne. He was on bad terms with his father, and regarded Sunderland as the chief cause of the royal jealousy. It was generally believed that his accession would be followed by a creation of peers from among his own favourites. Thus both on public and party grounds the ministry thought it desirable to limit the royal prerogative. As was natural, the Tories, in their dislike to restrictions on the royal prerogative, and the party of Walpole, who opposed it because it was a Government measure, made common cause against the Bill. By its enactments the Crown was to be restrained from the creation of more than six beyond the existing number of 178 English peerages (the power of creating a new peerage whenever an old one became extinct being reserved), no new peerage was to be created with remainders except to the original recipient and his heirs male; while, to place the Peerage of Scotland on the same footing, the sixteen representative Peers of that country were to give way to twenty-five hereditary Peers nominated by the Crown. The Bill met with little opposition in the House of Lords, but was thrown out by a large majority in the Lower House, where Walpole pointed out "that one of the most powerful incentives to virtue would be taken away, since there would be no arriving at honour but through the winding-sheet of a decrepit lord, or the grave of an extinct noble family."

Strength of the ministry.

At the present time a defeat on so important a measure must have driven the ministry from office. But the theory of party government was as yet so little perfected, that not only did Stanhope retain his place, but his administration was so strong, that the Whig malcontents thought it better to renew their old connection with it, and both Walpole and Townshend re-entered the Government, the one as Paymaster of the Forces, the other as Lord President. It seemed as if nothing short of some great convulsion could shake so powerful a Government, and, though little apprehended, such a convulsion was near at hand.

It was still early in the history of finance. It was only of late years that the moneyed interest had become so important in the country as to admit of the discharge of the public liabilities by means The South Sea Scheme. of large and regular loans. But when once the practice had been begun it had been largely adopted, and during the wars of the reign of Queen Anne the debt had risen from sixteen to fifty-two millions. Ignorant of the resources of the country and of the ease with which such a debt might be supported, the financiers of the day were in constant terror of its rapid increase. A member of the House, a certain Mr. Broderick, was expressing the general feeling when he said, "I agree with the ministers, that until the National Debt is discharged, or in a fair way of being so, we cannot properly call ourselves a nation." But besides the general dread of the amount of the debt, there was a very well-grounded dislike to the high terms on which much of it had been contracted. The money having been borrowed in time of war and difficulty, the terms offered to the lender had been proportionately favourable. A settled Government, the success of the Hanoverian succession, and the continued and rapid increase of wealth which had followed it, had rendered money much cheaper, and Government was paying seven or eight per cent. upon its loans, when private individuals could borrow on good security at four per cent. But the manner in which much of the money had been raised forbad any effort at changing the rate of interest. The loans had been largely contracted in the form of annuities, many of them for ninety-nine years; and of these a considerable portion were irredeemable, that is to say, Government was pledged to the payment of the interest as originally arranged, unless some change could be made with the consent of the creditors.

Financiers had therefore two objects in view,—to lessen the whole amount of debt, and to lower the interest payable on what remained. The establishment of the Bank of England had shown the value, in a mercantile point of view, of the Government credit. It became an understood principle that money lent to Government, and thus secured upon the credit of Government, was an excellent form of capital; and when advances were required, or when it became convenient to substitute a single great creditor for a number of little ones, this principle had been brought into use. Two such attempts had been made, the one by Harley in 1711, the other by Walpole in 1717. Harley, when Lord Treasurer, had found a floating debt (a debt, that is, payable on demand of the creditor) of ten millions, and had got rid of the danger of immediate demand by forming a company of the creditors of this floating debt. The ten millions were funded, that is, the interest and not the capital was paid; the interest was secured upon the customs, and the fund of ten millions became Formation of the South Sea Company. 1711. the capital of the company of creditors, who were induced to allow their claims to be thus funded by the promise of the monopoly in the mercantile advantage which Spain had granted England at Utrecht. This came to but little,—the Assiento, or supply of slaves, and the admission of a yearly ship of 500 tons burden to the American colonies. Even this advantage was lost in the difficulties which arose with Alberoni. The first ship did not sail till 1717, and as far as the South Sea trade went Harley's plan was a failure. But the credit gained by the Company in the transaction was good, other lines of trade were opened up, and the Company became great, flourishing and powerful.

In 1717 Walpole had been very desirous to diminish the National Debt. He established the first sinking fund, borrowing £600,000 at only four per cent., using this money to pay off liabilities bearing a higher interest, and applying the money thus saved to the extinction of the debt. He also, taking advantage of the value of Government credit, induced both the Bank and the South Sea Company to accept a lower rate of interest for the money they had already advanced, and to advance between them nearly £5,000,000 more, for the purpose of paying off as far as possible those holders of redeemable debts The South Sea Scheme. 1720. who refused to accept the lowered rate of interest. The great South Sea Scheme of 1720 was in principle nothing but a repetition of this manœuvre. The South Sea Company, believing devoutly in the power of credit, was anxious to extend itself as far as possible. The Government was so eager for the reduction of the debt that the King had made special mention of it in the speech with which he opened Parliament in the close of 1719. Under these circumstances the proposition of Blunt, director of the South Sea Company, found a ready hearing with the ministers. Between them an arrangement was devised, perfectly justifiable and harmless as far as the principle of it went. The bulk of the Government debt consisted in redeemable and irredeemable annuities, on all of which large interest was paid, and on which that interest must continue to be paid unless the holder of the annuity voluntarily reduced it. There is said to have been about sixteen millions of each class of security. Government wished to bring the whole mass into one general fund, bearing a lower rate of interest, and the South Sea Company was so greedy of the Government credit, that it expressed itself anxious to add the whole of this enormous amount to its capital. It is plain that any transaction of the sort, as far as regarded the irredeemable annuities, must have been entirely voluntary. All that the Government could do was to allow the Company to persuade the holders to exchange their annuities for shares in the Company. With regard to the holders of redeemable annuities, payment in full must be offered, but that payment might be given in shares of the Company. In other words, those who accepted the exchange became proprietors in the Joint-stock South Sea Company to the amount of their claim on the Government. With regard to the Government, the South Sea Company alone became creditor, instead of a multitude of old annuitants, and was contented to receive henceforward, instead of the seven or eight per cent. the annuitants had received, five per cent. till the year 1727, and after that four per cent. till the capital as well as the interest should be returned, for the fund was made a redeemable one. If the transaction were thoroughly successful the capital of the South Sea Company would be increased by about thirty-two millions, advanced to Government at five per cent., and Government would have to pay five per cent. interest instead of seven or eight, besides having the power of redeeming the capital.

Competition of other companies.

So great were the advantages understood to be gained by this accession of capital in Government hands, that other companies wished to share in them. It was voted by a large majority that these advantages should be put up to public competition. The Bank of England and the South Sea Company set to work outbidding each other, the latter finally proposing terms which were virtually a payment to Government of seven millions and a half. This money was to be devoted to the public service, to pay off debts contracted to the end of the year 1722, and after that as much as possible of the capital of the South Sea Company itself. It is plain that for the success of this scheme two things were requisite. In the first place, a readiness on the part of the public to accept the Company's shares in exchange for their Government annuities; without that Government would not be freed, nor would the Company get its increased capital. But this exchange would of course bring in no ready money. Secondly, therefore, a large number of new shareholders would be required to subscribe, paying for their shares in ready money, in order to meet the demands of those holders of redeemable annuities who refused all exchange, and to cover the heavy premium of £7,000,000. Now both of these objects were dependent on the popularity of the Company's shares; and it was in this that the mistake of the arrangement lay; Government had in fact made too good a bargain. By an extensive system of bribes large sums of fictitious capital were invented and distributed gratis among influential members of the Government, and still more largely among the hungry Hanoverian courtiers, whose influence it was regarded as all important to secure. All fear of the success of the scheme was almost immediately removed. So great was the belief in the vast Company, backed up by this huge accession of Government credit, so well had the directors done their business, that a very large majority of the annuitants pressed with extreme haste to accept the terms offered, though those terms were very low. The public were then invited to subscribe the new capital. Five separate subscriptions of upwards of a million were in succession opened, and all filled, with equal rapidity.

It was however in its secondary effects, rather than in its immediate consequences, that the scheme exerted the most extraordinary influence. There was a great deal of money in the country, and there was no satisfactory way of using it. Much had been hoarded, for there were not then as now numerous industrial investments in the market in which small sums could be employed. The apparent The rage for stock-jobbing. success of the South Sea Company, and the promises which it held out for rapid fortune-making, excited the spirit of speculation to the highest degree, and companies sprang into existence with unexampled rapidity. Some were real and serious—waterworks, paving companies, and companies for the improvement of all branches of manufacture. Some were mere transparent impostures—as a company for the importation of Spanish donkeys, for the fixing of quicksilver, or for wheels of perpetual motion. It did not matter much what they were, for the rage for stock-jobbing was such that any hardy promoter of a company might hope to float it at all events till he had himself realized a handsome fortune. Change Alley became a scene of the wildest excitement—people in all lines of life hurrying to buy and sell as during the railway mania of our own time. But among all the companies the South Sea Company maintained its pre-eminence, and its shares rose, till in August the £100 share was worth £1000. The Company continued to promise largely, even fifty per cent. profits. The absurdity and danger of such reckless proceedings began to become obvious. The nominal value of all the shares in all the companies then existing was held to be £500,000,000, or twice the value of all the land in England. But many of these companies, being unchartered, were illegal, and had no right to issue shares, and the legitimate companies, especially the South Sea, looked with jealousy at their illegal competitors. Apparently unconscious how much their own success depended upon the universal delusion, they Bursting of the bubble. proceeded to prosecute some companies which had acted illegally. The effect was instantaneous. The nation began to return to its senses; the bubble burst, and the stocks of all unchartered companies fell with extreme rapidity. In the universal ruin they carried with them the South Sea Company. The panic was as rapid as the eagerness to purchase had been. Before the end of September South Sea stock was at 175. The difference between that sum and the £1000 which they had touched will give some measure of the loss involved. The ruin among all classes was unspeakable.

So great was the desolation that it was found necessary for Parliament to intervene. Not that the great Company itself was in any way bankrupt, its shares were still at a large premium, they never fell below 175; not that any law of political economy had been broken; Government had never pledged itself to support the credit of the Company, or to force either its shares or its engagements Punishment of the directors. on the public; but simply because private speculation had caused so vast an amount of misery, and because the nation was exasperated at it, interference became absolutely necessary. Examination into all the details of the plan no doubt proved a considerable amount of venality on the part of the ministry, of bribery and fraud on the part of the directors. But even thus it was freely acknowledged that under no old law had any crime been committed, and it required a retrospective Act of Parliament and the creation of a temporary crime to bring the directors within the reach of punishment. As Gibbon said, the steps taken were in fact an act of popular vengeance and contrary to justice. They consisted in the appropriation of the private property of the directors to the amount of £2,000,000 for distribution among the sufferers, the remission of the £7,000,000 due by the Company to Government, the payment of all the just liabilities to the Company, and a division of the capital that then remained, about thirty-three per cent., among the proprietors.

Supremacy of Walpole. 1721.

These measures are due exclusively to Walpole, the one man specially fitted from his financial abilities to deal with the present crisis, and in whose favour it was remembered that he had been out of office when the plan was set on foot. The official inquiries into the circumstances of the South Sea Scheme left him indeed in a position of undisputed supremacy in the House. Several members of the Government were implicated in the frauds of the Company; Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was found guilty and expelled the House. The younger Craggs died of smallpox before the inquiry was completed, and his father committed suicide. Charles Stanhope was acquitted by a majority of three only, and although Sunderland was declared innocent by a large majority, public opinion was so strong against him that he had to leave the ministry. In the following year he died. During the angry debates which arose on these matters Lord Stanhope had been attacked with virulence by the Duke of Wharton, and the anger which he had felt had been such as to cause a rush of blood to the head, of which he died shortly before his relative Charles Stanhope was acquitted. There remained no possible rival to Walpole, who with his brother-in-law Townshend returned to power as First Lord of the Treasury. Thus, when the new Parliament assembled, he found himself absolute master of the field, at the head of an unbroken Whig party, supported by an overwhelming majority, and for twenty years maintained his position, to the immense advantage of England and to the lasting security of the reigning house.

Revival of Jacobite hopes.

Not that the Jacobites were as yet extinct, but they were silenced in Parliament, and had to rely upon conspiracy or foreign assistance. Their hopes in fact were at this moment in some respects higher than ever, for the disturbance and discontent caused by the collapse of the South Sea Scheme, together with the birth of an heir to the House of Stuart in the person of Prince Charles Edward, seemed to afford them an opportunity for greater activity. The Stuart papers prove the existence of a well-organized intrigue, under the management of a Committee of five, Lord Orrery, the Earl of Arran Lord Orford's brother, Lord North, Lord Gower, and Atterbury Bishop of Rochester. The letters display in a very curious manner the false hopes with which the party were constantly buoyed up. Atterbury indeed showed signs of considerable Bishop Atterbury's plot. wisdom, the reintroduction of Walpole and Townshend to the ministry seemed to him a great blow to the cause. "The reconciliation," he writes, "is not yet hearty and sincere, but I apprehend it will by degrees become so. The Tories have no good foundation on which to stand. Disaffection and uneasiness will continue everywhere, and probably increase. The bulk of the nation will be ever in the true interest and on the side of justice. The present settlement will perhaps be detested every day more and more, and yet no effectual step will or can be taken to shake it." The great South Sea Scheme also seemed to him a difficulty. "That body of men, who have increased their capital by £40,000,000, begin to look formidable. They cannot but be the governors of the kingdom." He therefore urged instant action before the Whig settlement had time to ripen or the financial plans to be brought to successful conclusion. Even a few years later the Earl of Orrery wrote, "It is not an extravagant computation that four out of five of the whole nation wish well to you." Nevertheless all these Jacobite writers were obliged to confess, even after the failure of the scheme, that the united Whigs were too powerful, and the general prudence of all classes too great, to allow of any successful movement without assistance from abroad. It is plain also that there were numerous sections and much want of discipline in the Jacobite camp. Atterbury's influence was disapproved of by many; Gower had a band of followers of his own; and James was so alive to this source of weakness that he earnestly pressed for the election of a responsible head, naming the Earl of Oxford as the fittest person for the purpose. These divisions, and the want of self-reliance in the face of the powerful Government, constantly prevented the Failure of the conspiracy. Jacobites from obtaining success; their agents were perpetually soliciting foreign countries for help, and the chain of foreign diplomacy which Stanhope had wrought was so close, that such ill-advised requests could scarcely fail to reach the ears of the English ministry. Thus a determination to take advantage of the confusion caused by the South Sea Scheme, by the death of Stanhope, which was supposed to have broken the link with France, and by the new election for Parliament, was brought to Walpole's knowledge. The Regent had been asked to supply 5000 men, but Dubois was not likely to overthrow the diplomatic edifice he had so carefully built up. He at once informed the English minister at Paris. And at the opening of the new Parliament George was able to give a short summary of the conspiracy, involving an expedition headed by James and Ormond from Spain and Italy, the seizure of the Tower, the Bank and the Exchequer, and the declaration in London of King James; and at the same time he could state that some of the chiefs, especially the Bishop of Rochester, were already under arrest.

The superiority of the Whig party was now shown in the Bills that were passed relative to this conspiracy. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended for a whole year, the longest time on record; sums were granted for an increase of the army; a tax of £100,000, to be collected from all Nonjurors, was enacted; and as the evidence was scarcely sufficient to go before a Court of Law, Bills of Pains and Penalties were introduced against some of the subordinate agents, and against Atterbury himself, who was forced to leave the kingdom. At Calais he met Bolingbroke, who had just received his pardon and was returning to England. He had been dismissed by the Pretender after the failure of 1715, and had vowed never again to serve so ungrateful a master. None the less did he continue for the rest of his life to hamper by his intrigues the Whig party. The chief cause of his irritation was Quarrel between Carteret and Walpole. that his overtures were rejected by Walpole, who already began to show that thirst for power and jealousy of men of great talents which was one of his marked characteristics, and which was the ultimate cause of his fall. Carteret, who with Townshend was now Secretary of State, was his first victim—a man of the most brilliant parts and of unrivalled knowledge of foreign affairs. He had succeeded to much of the influence as well as to the views of Stanhope. Abroad he was inclined to plunge England into the complications of Hanoverian policy. It was in fact natural that with his great knowledge of foreign affairs he should be led to consider them more important than other English statesmen, who then as now were inclined towards a policy of isolation. At home, too, his views were less exclusively those of a Whig partisan than those of his fellow ministers. He feared probably less than the occasion demanded the strength of the Jacobites. He looked upon the sole possession of power by the Whigs on the Hanoverian succession as a necessary but only temporary evil. He was desirous of a far larger admission of the Tory element, and would willingly have admitted Bolingbroke and those Tories who would have accompanied him among the ranks of the ministry, or at all events among the ranks of the ministerial supporters. But to Walpole such views were exceedingly distasteful. He well knew Bolingbroke's ability and feared him as a personal rival. He felt also that if Bolingbroke were instrumental in destroying the Tory opposition, the King could not but feel under considerable obligations to him, and that his own exclusive influence would be shaken. Bolingbroke's overtures were therefore most coldly received, and he withdrew again to Paris, where an intrigue was going on, in which he took a prominent part, and which ended in the fall of his friend Carteret. The intrigue itself was of a very despicable character, and was connected with the marriage of a daughter of Madame de Platen, sister of the King's mistress, the Countess of Darlington. To counteract Carteret, who was employing the English ambassador in the Countess's interest, Townshend sent Horace Walpole as his agent to Paris. The existence of two rival ambassadors, one only properly accredited, brought matters to a crisis. The King, in spite of a strong personal friendship for Carteret, was obliged to yield to the influence of Walpole, and his rival had to withdraw to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland.

Excitement in Ireland.

But although the office given to Carteret was regarded as a retirement, in the present instance it promised to be no sinecure. Ireland was in a state of wild excitement, lashed to fury by the exceedingly able but untrue writings of Swift, who in his Drapier's Letters had by exaggeration and falsehood given an aspect of tyrannical misgovernment to a commonplace and legitimate financial act. There was great need of a new small coinage for Ireland, and Walpole had given a patent in 1722 to a certain William Wood, giving him power to coin farthings and halfpence to the value of £108,000. The contract and quality had been declared satisfactory by Sir Isaac Newton, Master of the Mint. The Irish Parliament declared that the patent would occasion a loss to the nation of one hundred and fifty per cent., an extraordinary assertion based upon the fact that a pound of rough copper in Ireland was worth twelve pence, while a pound of coined fine copper was to be worth thirty pence. But the mint in London gave eighteenpence a pound for its copper. The charge of coinage was fourpence, the duties upon copper imported into Ireland were twenty per cent., and the difference of exchange between England and Ireland rendered a slight diminution of the weight reasonable. Of course, however, it is certain that the patentee made something by the bargain, especially as the voracious Duchess of Kendal had been bribed to obtain it. But all facts and all reasoning were useless against the storm raised by Swift's Letters, and it was not till Walpole had exhibited his usual prudence in accepting inevitable defeat, and cancelling the patent, that Ireland was quieted.

Disturbances in Scotland. 1725.

It was not in Ireland only that the financial measures of Walpole met with opposition. For years the tax upon malt had been with great difficulty collected in Scotland. This tax had been changed into a charge of threepence upon every barrel of ale. Edinburgh was in commotion, and the brewers refused to brew. Lord Isla, the Duke of Argyle's brother, was acting as Walpole's agent in the matter. He prudently declined to interfere, certain that love of profit would speedily break up the combination. A public meeting, Walpole tells us, was held, and the question put by the chairman, "Brew or not brew?" He began by asking the man on his right hand. But he and many who followed him refused to vote, till at last one bolder than the rest refused to be bound by the majority and voted "Brew." The assembly broke up in some confusion, but before morning there were forty brewhouses hard at work in Edinburgh and ten in Leith.

The remainder of the reign offers but little of interest in domestic history, but before Walpole could enter unchecked on that course of peaceful policy which is the chief characteristic of his long tenure of office, he had yet one difficulty with Spain to overcome, while at home there was already springing up that opposition of discontented Whigs combined with the Tory party, which, under the fostering influence of Bolingbroke behind the scenes, and led in Parliament by the ability of Pulteney, formed the formidable opposition to Spanish difficulties. 1725. which Walpole ultimately succumbed. Since the adhesion of Spain to the Quadruple Alliance and the fall of Alberoni, a Congress had been sitting at Cambrai to arrange the details of the final settlement of Europe. The chief points at issue were the renunciation of the title of King of Spain, to which the Austrian Empire fondly clung, the Grand Mastership of the Order of the Golden Fleece, which the Emperor also claimed, and the restoration to their owners of certain Italian provinces of which the Emperor had taken possession. To gain these ends, Spain, absolutely renouncing the policy of Alberoni, attached itself closely to France and England, purchased the favour of the latter country by a treaty of commerce, renewing the Assiento and the annual ship to the Spanish colonies, and of the former by a marriage-treaty. This marriage-treaty Orleans was induced to accept in pursuance of his plan for keeping continual hold of the regency; all views of ultimate succession were gradually fading from him as the young King improved in health. It was a threefold arrangement; the Infanta Mary Anne, then only three years old, was to marry Louis XV., the two daughters of the Regent were to marry the Prince of Asturias, heir to the Spanish crown, and Don Carlos, presumptive heir to Parma and Tuscany. Spain had thus done so much that she awaited with confidence the meeting of the Congress at Cambrai. But that Congress was very slow in its operations, and the hasty Queen of Spain and her ambitious husband began to weary of the ill success of their concessions, and to think that perhaps after all matters might be brought to a more speedy termination by direct action, without mediators, at the court of Vienna. The Spanish Government was the more inclined to this step, because it had been persuaded that the Austrian court would lend no unwilling ear to direct negotiations.

Intrigues of Ripperda.

This belief had been forced upon the King and Queen by a strange, adventurous, but very able foreigner, who was rapidly rising into somewhat the same position in Spain that Alberoni had held. This was the Baron Ripperda. A Dutchman by origin, a soldier by profession, he was unusually well versed in the details of business and of political economy. He had taken up all Alberoni's views as to the possible expansion of the resources of Spain, and, thinking there was more room for his ability in that country than in Holland, had had himself naturalized there. He followed the King during his temporary resignation of the Spanish throne, and returned with him on his son's death to the possession of full power. There seems little doubt that throughout Ripperda had been in the pay of the Austrian court, and it was chiefly at his instigation that the Congress at Cambrai was deserted and direct negotiations between the courts opened. He had set before the King and Queen very plausible reasons not only for a negotiation but for a change of policy, no less complete than an entire desertion of the mediating Powers and of the principle of the Quadruple Alliance, and a close friendship with the House of Austria. Spain would thus be freed from the constant encroachments of England upon her trade, and the interference of France, which had been very irksome to the Spaniards since the Bourbon accession, would be avoided. The old question of the Barrier Treaty was exciting the animosity of England and Austria; for Austria, in distinct contravention of the commercial articles of that treaty, which forbade to the Austrian Netherlands the trade of India, had established a great Ostend India Company. And there was another object very dear to the Emperor's heart towards which Spain could lend important aid. It could guarantee the Pragmatic Sanction, pledge itself, that is, to preserve the Austrian succession to the daughter of the Emperor, a pledge which in the case of Spain meant a great deal, as Spain had fair claims to a considerable portion of the succession on the extinction of the direct male line of the Austrian house. With these hopes and with these offers Ripperda set out for Vienna, with the intention of entirely destroying the present arrangements of Europe, of breaking the existing marriage-treaty with the Orleans princesses, of substituting for them the Austrian archduchesses, and of restoring Europe to its ancient attitude by the close alliance of Austria and Spain in opposition to France and England.

The success of Ripperda's scheme, the completion of his great act of treachery, was rapidly secured by an act of a very similar description on the part of the Duke of Bourbon. That prince had an almost insane dread of the possible succession of the Orleans house to the French throne; to preclude its possibility he desired the immediate marriage of the young king. But his betrothed Spanish bride was but a baby; regardless therefore of all treaty obligations, the Duke sent her back almost without explanation to Spain, and married the young King to Maria Leczinska, daughter of the ex-King of Poland. The rage of the Spanish king knew no bounds; he sent peremptory Treaty of Vienna. April 30, 1725. orders to Ripperda to bring the treaty with Austria to a conclusion upon any terms. Under these circumstances the great Treaty of Vienna was made on the 30th of April 1725. It consisted of three separate treaties, two public and one private. By the public treaties the Pragmatic Sanction was guaranteed; the Spanish ports opened to German commerce; the succession of Parma and Tuscany promised to Don Carlos; and Austria pledged herself to use her best influence to secure the restoration of Gibraltar and Minorca. Had this been all it would have been fair enough, somewhat humiliating to the countries left negotiating uselessly at Cambrai, but not otherwise than in accordance with the principles of the Quadruple Alliance.