At home the prospect seemed equally bright. Walpole had contrived to ingratiate himself more and more with the Prince of Wales, and had become his confidential adviser. Acting on his counsel, the Prince made his submission to the King; and acting on Stanhope's counsel, the King accepted it. The Sovereign and his heir had a meeting and were reconciled; for the time, at least. Walpole consented to join the administration, content for the present to fill the humble place of paymaster to the forces, without a seat in the Cabinet. He returned, in {182} fact, to the ministerial position which he had first occupied, and from which he had been promoted, and must have seemed to himself somewhat in the position of a boy who, after having got high in his class, has got down very low again, and is well content to mount up a step or two from the humblest position. Walpole knew what he was doing, and must have been quite satisfied in his own mind that he was not likely to remain very long paymaster to the forces, although he could not, by any possibility, have anticipated the strange succession of events by which he was destined soon to be left without a rival. For the present he was in the administration, but he took little part in its actual work. He did not even appear to have any real concern in it. He spent as much of his time as he could at Houghton, his pleasant country-seat in Norfolk. Townshend, too, had been induced to join the administration. To him was assigned the position of president of the council.

Thus there appeared to be a truce to quarrels, and to enmities abroad and at home. There was no dispute with any of the great Continental powers; there was no dread of the Stuarts. Ministerial rivalries had been reduced to concordance and quiet; the traditional quarrel between the Sovereign and the heir-apparent had been composed. It might have been thought that a time of peace and national prosperity had been assured. In the history of nations, however, we commonly find that nothing more certainly bodes unsettlement than a general conviction that everything is settled forever.



{183}

CHAPTER XI.

"THE EARTH HATH BUBBLES."

[Sidenote: 1718-1719—The Mississippi Scheme]

One of the comedies of Ben Jonson gives some vivid and humorous illustrations of the mania for projects, speculations, patents, and monopolies that at his time had taken possession of the minds of Englishmen. There is an enterprising person who declares that he can coin money out of cobwebs, raise wool upon egg-shells, and make grass grow out of marrow-bones. He has a project "for the recovery of drowned land," a scheme for a new patent for the dressing of dog-skins for gloves, a plan for the bottling of ale, a device for making wine out of blackberries, and various other schemes cut and dry for what would now be called floating companies to make money. The civilized world is visited with this epidemic of project and speculation from time to time. In the reign of George the First such a mania attacked England much more fiercely than it had done even in the days of Ben Jonson. It came to us this time from France. The close of a great war is always a tempting and a favorable time for such enterprises. Finances are out of order; a season of spurious commercial activity has come to an end; new resources are to be sought for somehow; and man must change to be other than he is when he wholly ceases to believe in financial miracle-working. There is an air of plausibility about most of the new projects; and, indeed, like the scheme told of in Ben Jonson for the recovery of drowned lands, the enterprise is usually something within human power to accomplish, if only human skill could make it pay. The exchequer of France had been brought into a condition of something very like {184} bankruptcy by the long and wasting war; and a projector was found who promised to supply the deficiency as boldly and as liberally as Mephistopheles does in the second part of "Faust." John Law, a Scotchman, and unquestionably a man of great ability and financial skill, had settled in France in consequence of having fought a duel and killed his man in his own country. [Sidenote: 1710-1720—The South Sea Company] Law set up a company which was to have a monopoly of the trade of the whole Mississippi region in North America, and on condition of the monopoly was to pay off the national debt of France. A scheme of the kind within due limitations would have been reasonable enough, so far as the working of the Mississippi region was concerned; but Law went on extending and extending the scope of its supposed operations, until it might almost as well have attempted to fold in the orb of the earth. The shares in his company went up with a sudden bound. He had the patronage of the Regent and of all the Court circle. Gambling in shares became the fashion, the passion of Paris, and, indeed, of all France. Shares bought one day were sold at an immense advance the next, or even the same day. Men and women nearly bankrupt in purse before, suddenly found themselves in possession of large sums of money, for which they had to all appearance run no risk and made no sacrifice whatever. Princes and tradesmen, duchesses and seamstresses and harlots, clamored, intrigued, and battled for shares. The offices in the Rue Quincampoix, a street then inhabited by bankers, stock-brokers, and exchange agents, were besieged all day long with crowds of eager competitors for shares. The street was choked with fine equipages, until it was found absolutely necessary to close it against all horses and carriages. All the rank and fashion of Paris flung itself into this game of speculation. Every one has heard the story of the hunchback who made a little fortune by the letting of his hump as a desk on which impatient speculators might scribble their applications for shares. A French novelist, M. Paul Feval, has made good use of {185} this story, and London still remembers to what a brilliant dramatic account it was turned by Mr. Fechter. Law was the most powerful and the most courted man of his day. In his youth he had been a gallant and a free liver, a man of dress and fashion and intrigue, who delighted in scandalous entanglements with women. The fashion and beauty of Paris was for the hour at his feet. Think of a brilliant gallant who could make one rich in a moment! The mother of the Regent described in a coarse and pungent sentence the sort of homage which Parisian ladies would have been willing to pay to Law if he had so desired. St. Simon, the mere litterateur and diplomatist, kept his head almost alone, and was not to be dazzled. Since the fable of Midas, he said, he had not heard of any one having the power to turn all he touched into gold, and he did not believe that virtue was given to M. Law. There is no doubt that Law was a man of great ability as a financier, and that his scheme in the beginning had promise in it. It was, as Burke has said of the scheme and its author, the public enthusiasm, and not Law himself, which chose to build on the base of his scheme a structure which it could not bear. It does not seem by any means certain that a project quite as wild might not be launched in London or Paris at the present day, and find almost as great a temporary success, and blaze, like Law's, the comet of a season. While the season lasted the comet blazed with a light that filled the social sky.

Law was for the time the most powerful man in France. A momentary whisper that he was out of health sent the funds down, and eclipsed the gayety of nations. He was admitted into the Regent's privy council, and made Controller-general of the finances of France. The result was inevitable; there was as yet nothing behind the promises and the shares of the Mississippi Company. If finance could have gone on forever promise-crammed, things would have been all right. But you cannot feed capons so, as Hamlet tells us; and you cannot long feed {186} shareholders so. Law's scheme suddenly collapsed one day, and brought ruin on hundreds of thousands in France. While, however, it was still afloat in air, its gaudy colors dazzled the eyes of the South Sea Company in England.

[Sidenote: 1710-1720—The bubble swells]

At the north-west end of Threadneedle Street, within view of the remains of Richard the Third's Palace of Crosby, stands a solid red-brick building, substantial, respectable, business-like, dignified with the dignity of some century and a half of existence. Time has softened and deepened its ruddy hue to a mellow, rich tone, contrasting pleasantly with the white copings and facings of its windows, and suggesting agreeably something of the smooth brown cloth and neat white linen of a well-to-do city gentleman of the last century. Yet that solemn, massive, prosperous-looking building is the enduring monument of one of the most gigantic shams on record—a sham and swindle that was the prolific parent of a whole brood of shams and swindles; for that building, with honesty and credit and mercantile honor written in its every line and angle, is all that remains of the South Sea House. It is a melancholy place—the Hall of the Kings at Karnak is hardly more melancholy or more ghost-haunted. Not that the house has now that "desolation something like Balclutha's" which Charles Lamb attributed to it more than half a century ago. The place has changed greatly since Elia the Italian and Elia the Englishman were fellow-clerks at the South Sea House. Those dusty maps of Mexico, "dim as dreams," have long been taken away. The company itself, having outlived alike its fame and its infamy, lingering inappropriately like some guest that "hath outstayed his welcome time," was wound up at last within the memory of living men. The stately gate-way no longer opens upon the "grave court, with cloisters and pillars," where South Sea stock so often changed hands. The cloisters and pillars have gone; the court has been converted into a hall of a sort of exchange, where merchants daily meet. The days of the desolation of the South Sea House are as much a thing of its past as {187} its earlier splendor. Its corridors are now crowded with offices occupied by merchants of every nationality, from Scotland to Greece, and by companies connected with every portion of the globe. Only at night, on Saturday afternoons, and during the still peace of a City Sabbath, do the noise of men and the stir of business cease in the South Sea House. Yet, nevertheless, when one thinks of all that has happened there, of the dreams and hopes and miseries of which it was the begetter, it remains one of the most melancholy temples to folly that man has yet erected.

The South Sea Company had been established in 1710 by Harley himself, and was going along quietly and soberly enough for the time; but the example of the Mississippi Company was too strong for it. The South Sea Company, too, made to itself waxen wings, and prepared to fly above the clouds. The directors offered to relieve the State of its debt on condition of obtaining a monopoly of the South Sea trade. The nation was to take shares in the company in the first instance, and to deal with the company, for its commercial and other wares, in the second; and by means of the exclusive dealing in shares and in products it was to pay off the National Debt. In other words, three men, all having nothing, and heavily in debt, were to go into exclusive dealings with each other, and were thus to make fortunes, discharge their liabilities, and live in luxury for the rest of their days. Stated thus, the proposition looks marvellously absurd. But it is not, in its essential conditions, more absurd than many a financial project which floats successfully for a time. Money-making, the hardest and most practical of all occupations, the task which can soonest be tested by results, is the business of all others in which men are most easily led astray, most greedy to be led astray. Sydney Smith speaks of a certain French lady whose whole nature cried out for her seduction. There are seasons when the whole nature of man seems to cry out for his financial seduction. The South Sea project expanded and inflated as the {188} Mississippi Scheme had done. Its temporary success turned the heads of the whole population.

[Sidenote: 1720—The bank competes]

Hundreds of schemes, still more wild, sprang into sudden existence. Some of the projects then put forward, and believed in, surpass in senseless extravagance anything satirized by Ben Jonson. So wild was the passion for new enterprises, that it seemed as if, at one time, anybody had only to announce any scheme, however preposterous, in order to find people competing for shares in it. The only condition of things in our own time that could be compared with this epoch of insane speculation is the railway mania of 1846, when, for a brief season, George Hudson was king, and set up his hat in the market-place, and all England bowed down in homage to it. But the epidemic of speculation in the reign of the railway king was comparatively harmless and reasonable when compared with the midsummer madness of the South Sea scheme.

The South Sea scheme was brought before the notice of the House of Commons in 1720. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was Mr. Aislabie. We have already seen Mr. Aislabie as one of the secret committee who recommended the impeachment of Oxford and Bolingbroke. How well he was fitted for his office will appear from the fact that he was altogether taken in by the project, and by the financial arguments of those who brought it forward. Sunderland and Stanhope were taken in likewise—but there was nothing very surprising in that. A statesman of those days did not profess to understand anything about finance or economics, unless these subjects happened to belong to his department; and the statesman was exceptional who could honestly profess to understand them even when they did. Walpole, however, was a minister of a different order. He was the first of the line of statesmen-financiers. He saw through the bubble, and endeavored to make others see as clearly as he did himself. Walpole assailed the project in a pamphlet, and opposed it strenuously in his place in Parliament. He was {189} not at that time a minister of the Crown; perhaps, if he had been, the South Sea Bill might never have been presented to Parliament; but the nation and the Parliament were off their heads just then. The caricaturists and the authors of lampoon verses positively found out the South Sea scheme before the financiers and men of the city.

On January 22, 1720, the House of Commons, sitting in what was then termed a Grand Committee, or what would now be called Committee of the whole House, took into consideration a proposal of the South Sea Company towards the redemption of the public debts. The proposal set forth that, "the Corporation of the Governor and Company of Merchants of Great Britain, trading to the South Sea and other parts of America, and for encouraging the fishery, having under their consideration how they may be most serviceable to his Majesty and his Government, and to show their zeal and readiness to concur in the great and honorable design of reducing the national debts," do "humbly apprehend that if the public debts and annuities mentioned in the annexed estimate were taken into and made part of the capital stock of the said Company, it would greatly contribute to that most desirable end." The Company then set forth the conditions under which they proposed to convert themselves into an agency for paying off the national debt, and making a profit for themselves.

The proposal fell somewhat short of the general expectation, which looked for nothing less than a sort of financial philosopher's stone. Besides, the Bank of England was willing to compete with the South Sea Company. If the Company could coin money out of cobwebs, why should not the Bank be able to accomplish the same feat? The friends of the Bank reminded the House of Commons of the great services which that corporation had rendered to the Government in the most difficult times, and urged, with much show of justice, that if any advantage was to be made by public bargains, the Bank should be preferred before a Company that had never {190} done anything for the nation. Well might Aislabie, the unfortunate Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose shame and ruin we shall soon come to tell of, exclaim in the speech which he made when defending himself for the second time before the House of Lords, that "the spirit of bubbling had prevailed so universally that the very Bank became a bubble—and this not by chance or necessity, or from any engagement to raise money for the public service, but from the same spirit that actuated Temple Mills or Caraway's Fishery." In plain truth, as poor Aislabie pointed out, the Bank started a scheme in imitation of the South Sea Company, and the House of Commons gave time for its proper development. The Bank offered its scheme on February 1st, and by that time the South Sea Company had seen their way to mend their hand and submit more attractive proposals. Then the Bank, not to be out-rivalled, soon made a second proposal as well. The House took the rival propositions into consideration. Walpole was the chief advocate of the Bank. No doubt he had come to the reasonable conclusion that if there could be any hope of success for such a scheme, it would be found in the Bank of England rather than in the South Sea Company. Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made himself the champion of the Company, and assured the House that its propositions were of far greater advantage to the country than those of the Bank. Under his persuasive influence the House agreed to accept the tender, as we may call it, of the Company, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Craggs, and others, were ordered to prepare and bring in a bill to give legislative sanction to the scheme.

[Sidenote: 1720—The Bill passed]

The bill passed the Commons and went up to the House of Lords. To the credit of the Peers it has to be said that they received it more doubtfully, and were slower to admit the certainty of its blessings than the members of the representative chamber had been. Lord North and Gray condemned it as not only making way for, but {191} actually countenancing and authorizing "the fraudulent and pernicious practice of stock-jobbing." The Duke of Wharton declared that "the artificial and prodigious rise of the South Sea stock was a dangerous bait, which might decoy many unwary people to their ruin, and allure them, by a false prospect of gain, to part with what they had got by their labor and industry to purchase imaginary riches." Lord Cowper said that the bill, "like the Trojan horse, was ushered in and received with great pomp and acclamations of joy, but was contrived for treachery and destruction." Lord Sunderland, however, spoke warmly in favor of the bill, and contended that "they who countenanced the scheme of the South Sea Company had nothing in their view but the easing the nation of part of that heavy load of debt it labored under;" and argued that the scheme would enable the directors of the Company at once to pay off the debt, and to secure large dividends to their share-holders. The Lords decided on admitting the South Sea Company's Trojan horse. Eighty-three votes were in favor of the bill, and only seventeen against it. The bill was read a third time on April 7th, and received the Royal assent on June 11th. The King's speech, delivered that day at the close of the session, declared that "the good foundation you have prepared this session for the payment of the national debts, and the discharge of a great part of them without the least violation of the public faith, will, I hope, strengthen more and more the union I desire to see among all my subjects, and make our friendship yet more valuable to all foreign Powers."

The immediate result of the Parliamentary authority thus given to what was purely a bubble scheme was to bring upon the Legislature a perfect deluge of petitions from all manner of projectors. Patents and monopolies were sought for the carrying on of fisheries in Greenland and various other regions; for the growth, manufacture and sale of hemp, flax, and cotton; for the making of sail-cloth; for a general insurance against fire; for the {192} planting and rearing of madder to be used by dyers; for the preparing and curing of Virginia tobacco for snuff, and making it into the same within all his Majesty's dominions. Schemes such as these were comparatively reasonable; but there were others of a different kind. Petitions were gravely submitted to Parliament praying for patents to be granted to the projectors of enterprises for trading in hair; for the universal supply of funerals to all parts of Great Britain; for insuring and increasing children's fortunes; for insuring masters and mistresses against losses from the carelessness or misconduct of servants; for insuring against thefts and robberies; for extracting silver from lead; for the transmutation of silver into malleable fine metal; for buying and fitting out ships to suppress pirates; for a wheel for perpetual motion, and—with which project, perhaps, we may close our list of specimens—"for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is." Of course some of these projects were mere vulgar swindles. Even in that season of marvellous projection it is not to be supposed that the inventors of the last-mentioned scheme had any serious belief in its efficacy. The author of the project for the perpetual-motion wheel was, we take it, a sincere personage and enthusiast. His scheme has been coming up again and again before the world since his time; and we have known good men who would have staked all they held dear in life upon the possibility of its realization. But the would-be patentee of the undertaking of great advantage, nobody to know what it is, was a man of a different order. He understood human nature in certain of its moods. He knew that there are men and women who can be got to believe in anything which holds out the promise of quick and easy gain. If he found a few dozen greedy and selfish fools to help his project with a little money, that would, no doubt, be the full attainment of his ends. Probably he was successful. The very boldness of his avowal of secrecy would have a charm for many. One day would be enough for him—the {193} the day when he sent in his demand for a patent. The bare demand would bring him dupes.

[Sidenote: 1720—The bubble bursts]

The first great blow struck at the South Sea Company came from the South Sea Company itself. Several bubble companies began to imitate the financial system which the more favored institution had set up. The South Sea Company put in motion certain legal proceedings against some of the offenders. The South Sea Company had the support and countenance of the high legal authorities, and found no difficulty in obtaining injunctions against the other associations, directing them not to go beyond the strict legal privileges secured to them by their charters of incorporation. Among the undertakings thus admonished were the English Copper Company and the Welsh Copper and Lead Company. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales happened to be a governor of the English Copper Company, and the Lords-justices were polite enough to send the Prince a message expressing the great regret they felt at having to declare illegal an enterprise with which he was connected. The Prince, not to be outdone in politeness, received the admonition, we are told, "very graciously," and sent on his part a message to the Company requesting them to accept his resignation, and to elect some one else a governor in his place. The proceedings which the South Sea Company had set on foot against their audacious rivals and imitators had, however, the inconvenient effect of directing too much of public attention to the principles upon which they conducted their own business. Confidence began to waver, to be shaken, to give way altogether; and when people ask whether a speculation is a bubble, the bubble, if it is one, is already burst.

The whole basis of Law's system, and of the South Sea Company's schemes as well, was the principle that the prosperity of a nation is increased in proportion to the quantity of money in circulation; and that as no State can have gold enough for all its commercial transactions, paper-money may be issued to an unlimited extent, and {194} its full value maintained without its being convertible at pleasure into hard cash. This supposed principle has been proved again and again to be a mere fallacy and paradox; but it always finds enthusiastic believers who have plausible arguments in its support. It appears, indeed, to have a singular fascination for some persons in all times and communities. It might seem an obvious truism that under no possible conditions can people in general be got to give as much for a promise to pay as for a certain and instant payment; and yet this truism would have to be proved a falsehood in order to establish a basis for such a project as that of Law. Even were the basis to be established, the project would then have to be worked fairly and honestly out, which was not done either in the case of the Mississippi Company or of the South Sea Company. If each had been founded on a true financial principle, each was worked in a false and fraudulent way. At its best the South Sea Company in its later development would have been a bubble. Worked as it actually was, it proved to be a swindle. A committee of secrecy was appointed by the House of Commons to inquire into the condition of the Company. The committee found that false and fictitious entries had been made in the Company's books; that leaves had been torn out; that some books had been destroyed altogether, and that others had been carried off and secreted. The vulgar arts of the card-sharper and the thimble-rigger had been prodigally employed to avert detection and ruin by the directors of a Company which was promoted and protected by ministers of State and by the favorites of the King.

[Sidenote: 1720—Houghton]

Some idea of the wide-spread nature of the disaster which was inflicted by the wreck of the Company may be formed from a rapid glance at some of the petitions for redress and relief which were presented to the House of Commons. We find among them petitions from the counties of Hertford, Dorset, Essex, Buckingham, Derby; the cities of Bristol, Exeter, Lincoln; the boroughs of Oakhampton, Amersham, Bedford, Chipping Wycombe, {195} Abingdon, Sudbury, East Retford, Evesham, Newark-upon-Trent, Newbury, and many other places. We have purposely omitted to take account of any of the London communities. The wildest excitement prevailed; and it is characteristic of the time to note that the national calamity—for it was no less—aroused fresh hopes in the minds of the Jacobites. Such a calamity, such a scandal, it was thought, could not but bring shame and ruin upon the Whig ministers, and through them discredit on the Sovereign and the Court. It was believed, it was hoped, that Sunderland would be found to be implicated in the swindle. Why should not such a crisis, such a humiliation to the Whigs, be the occasion of a new and a more successful attempt on the part of the Jacobites? The King was again in Hanover. He was summoned home in hot haste. On December 8, 1720, the two Houses of Parliament were assembled to hear the reading of the Royal speech proroguing the session; and in the speech the King was made to express his concern "for the unhappy turn of affairs which has so much affected the public credit at home," and to recommend most earnestly to the House of Commons "that you consider of the most effectual and speedy methods to restore the national credit, and fix it upon a lasting foundation." "You will, I doubt not," the speech went on to say, "be assisted in so commendable and necessary a work by every man that loves his country." A week or so before the Royal speech was read, on November 30, 1720, Charles Edward, eldest son of James Stuart, was born at Rome. The undaunted mettle of Atterbury came into fresh and vigorous activity with the birth of the Stuart heir, and the apparently imminent ruin of the Whig ministers.

Robert Walpole had been spending some time peacefully at his country place, Houghton, in Norfolk. Hunting, bull-baiting, and drinking were the principal amusements with which Walpole entertained his guests there. Sometimes the guests were persons of royal rank (Walpole once entertained the Grand Duke of Tuscany); {196} sometimes the throng of his visitors and his neighbors to the hunting-field could only be compared, says a letter written at the time, to an army in its march. Walpole never lost sight, however, of what was going on in the metropolis. He used to send a trusty Norfolk man as his express-messenger to run all the way on foot from Houghton to London, and carry letters for him to confidential friends, and bring him back the answers. When he found how badly things were going in London on the bursting of the South Sea bubble, he hastened up to town. His presence was sadly needed there. It is not without interest to think of James Stuart in Rome, and Walpole in Houghton, both keeping their eyes fixed on the gradual exposure of the South Sea swindle, and both alike hoping to find their account in the national calamity. All the advantage was with the statesman and not with the Prince. The English people of all opinions and creeds were tolerably well assured that if any one could help them out of the difficulty Walpole could; and it required the faith of the most devoted Jacobite to make any man of business believe that the return of the exiled Stuarts could do much to keep off national bankruptcy. Walpole had waited long. His time was now come at last.

[Sidenote: 1720—The Craggses]

Walpole had kept his head cool during the days when the Company was soaring to the skies; he kept his head equally cool when it came down with a crash. "He had never," he said in the House of Commons, "approved of the South Sea scheme, and was sensible it had done a great deal of mischief; but, since it could not be undone, he thought it the duty of all good men to give their helping hand towards retrieving it; and with this view he had already bestowed some thoughts on a proposal to restore public credit, which at the proper time he would submit to the wisdom of the House." Walpole had made money by the South Sea scheme. The sound knowledge of the principles of finance, which enabled him to see that the enterprise thus conducted could not pay, in the end {197} enabled him also to see that it could pay up to a certain point; and when that point had been reached he quietly sold out and saved his gains. The King's mistresses and their relatives also made good profit out of the transactions. The Prince of Wales was a gainer by some of the season's speculations. But when the crash came, the ruin was wide-spread; it amounted to the proportions of a national calamity. The ruling classes raged and stormed against the vile conspirators who had disappointed them in their expectations of coining money out of cobwebs. The Lords and Commons held inquiries, passed resolutions, demanded impeachments. It was soon made manifest beyond all doubt that members of the Government had been scandalously implicated in the worst parts of the fraudulent speculations. Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was only too clearly shown to be one of the leading delinquents. Mr. Craggs, the father, Postmaster-general, and James Craggs, the son, Secretary of State, were likewise involved. Both were remarkable men. The father had begun life as a common barber, and partly by capacity and partly by the thrift that follows fawning, had made his way up in the world until he reached the height from which he was suddenly and so ignominiously to fall. It was hardly worth the trouble thus to toil and push and climb, only to tumble down with such shame and ruin. Craggs the father had had great transfers of South Sea stock made to him for which he never paid. Craggs the son, the Secretary of State, had acted as the go-between in the transactions of the Company with the King's mistresses, whereby the influence of these ladies was purchased for a handsome consideration. Charles Stanhope, one of the Secretaries to the Treasury and cousin of the Minister, was shown to have received large value in the stock of the Company for which he never paid. The most ghastly ruin fell on some of these men. Craggs the younger died suddenly on the very day when the report incriminating him was read in the House of Commons. Craggs the father poisoned himself a few {198} days afterwards. Pope wrote an epitaph on the son, in which he described him as—

"Statesman, yet friend of truth; of soul sincere, In action faithful and in honor clear; Who broke no promise, served no private end, Who gained no title, and who lost no friend."

Epitaphs seem to have been genuine tributes of personal friendship in those days; they had no reference to merit or to truth. One's friend had every virtue because he was one's friend. Secret committees might condemn, Parliament might degrade, juries might convict, impartial history might stigmatize, but one's friend remained one's friend all the same; and if one had the gift of verse, was to be held up to the admiration of time and eternity in a glorifying epitaph. We have fallen on more prosaic days now; the living admirer of a modern Craggs would leave his epitaph unwritten if he could not make facts and feelings fit better in together.

[Sidenote: 1721—Death of Stanhope]

A better and more eminent man than Aislabie or either Craggs lost his life in consequence of the South Sea calamity. No one had accused, or even suspected, Lord Stanhope of any share in the financial swindle. Even the fact that his cousin was one of those accused of guilty complicity with it did not induce any one to believe that the Minister of State had any share in the guilt. Yet Stanhope was one of the first victims of the crisis. The Duke of Wharton, son of the late Minister, had just come of age. He was already renowned as a brilliant, audacious profligate. He was president of the Hell-fire Club; he and some of his comrades were the nightly terror of London streets. Wharton thought fit to make himself the champion of public purity in the debates on the South Sea Company's ruin. He attacked the Ministers fiercely; he attacked Stanhope in especial. Stanhope replied to him with far greater warmth than the weight of any attack from Wharton would seem to have called for. Excited beyond measure, Stanhope burst a blood-vessel in his {199} anger. He was carried home, and he died the next day—February 5, 1721. His life had been pure and noble. He was a sincere lover of his country; a brave and often a successful soldier; a statesman of high purpose if not of the most commanding talents. His career as a soldier was brought to a close when he had to capitulate to that master of war and profligacy, the Duke de Vendome; an encounter of a different kind with another brilliant profligate robbed him of his life.

The House of Commons promptly passed a series of resolutions declaring "John Aislabie, Esquire, a Member of this House, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and one of the Commissioners of his Majesty's Treasury," guilty of "most notorious, dangerous, and infamous corruption," and ordering his expulsion from the House and his committal as a prisoner to the Tower. This resolution was carried without a dissentient word. The House of Commons went on next to consider that part of the report which applied to Lord Sunderland, and a motion was made declaring that "after the proposals of the South Sea Company were accepted by this House, and a bill ordered to be brought in thereupon, and before such bill passed, 50,000 pounds of the capital stock of the South Sea Company was taken in by Robert Knight, late cashier of the said Company, for the use and upon the account of diaries, Earl of Sunderland, a Lord of Parliament and First Commissioner of the Treasury, without any valuable consideration paid, or sufficient security given, for payment for or acceptance of the same."

Sunderland had too many friends, however, and too much influence to be dealt with as if he were Aislabie. A fierce debate sprang up. The evidence against him was not by any means so clear as in the case of Aislabie. There was room for a doubt as to Sunderland's personal knowledge of all that had been done in his name. His influence and power secured him the full benefit of the doubt. The motion implicating him was rejected by a majority of 233 votes against 172, "which, however," {200} says a contemporary account, "occasioned various reasonings and reflections." Charles Stanhope, too, was lucky enough to get off, on a division, by a very narrow majority.

[Sidenote: 1721—An interview with James Stuart]

A letter from an English traveller at Rome to his father, bearing date May 6, 1721, and privately printed this year (1884) for the first time, under the auspices of the Clarendon Society of Edinburgh, gives an interesting account of the reception of the writer, an English Protestant, by James Stuart and his wife. That part of the letter which is of present interest to us tells of the remarks made by James on the subject of the South Sea catastrophe. James spoke of the investigations of the secret committee, from which he had no great hopes; for, he said, the authors of the calamity "would find means to be above the common course of justice." "Some may imagine," continued he, "that these calamities are not displeasing to me, because they may in some measure turn to my advantage. I renounce all such unworthy thoughts. The love of my country is the first principle of my worldly wishes, and my heart bleeds to see so brave and honest a people distressed and misled by a few wicked men, and plunged into miseries almost irretrievable." "Thereupon," says the writer of the letter, "he rose briskly from his chair, and expressed his concern with fire in his eyes."

Exiled sovereigns are in the habit of expressing concern for their country with fire in their eyes; they are also in the habit of regarding their own return to power as the one sole means of relieving the country from its distress. The English gentleman who describes this scene represents himself as not to be outdone in patriotism of his own even by the exiled Prince. "I could not disavow much of what he said; yet I own I was piqued at it, for very often compassionate terms from the mouth of an adverse party are grating. It appeared to me so on this occasion; therefore I replied, 'It's true, sir, that our affairs in England lie at present under many hardships by the South Sea's mismanagement; but it is a constant {201} maxim with us Protestants to undergo a great deal for the security of our religion, which we could not depend upon under a Romish Government.'" This speech, not over-polite, the Prince took in good part, and entered upon an argument so skilfully, "that I am apprehensive I should become half a Jacobite if I should continue following these discourses any longer." "Therefore," says the writer, "I will give you my word I will enter no more upon arguments of this kind with him." The Prince and his visitor were perhaps both playing a part to some extent, and the whole discourse was probably a good deal less theatric in style than the English traveller has reported. But there can be no doubt that the letter fairly illustrates the spirit in which the leading Jacobites watched over the financial troubles in England, and the new hopes with which they were inspired—hopes destined to be translated into new action before very long. Nor can it be denied that the speech of the English visitor correctly represented the feeling which was growing stronger day after day in the minds of prudent people at home in England. The time was coming—had almost come—when a political disturbance or a financial panic in these kingdoms was to be accounted sufficient occasion for a change of Ministers, but not for a revolution.



{202}

CHAPTER XII.

AFTER THE STORM.

[Sidenote: 1721—South Sea victims]

Swift wrote more than one poem on the South Sea mania. That which was written in 1721, and is called "South Sea," is a wonder of wit and wisdom. It shows the hollowness of the scheme in some new, odd, and striking light in every metaphor and every verse. "A guinea," Swift reminds his readers, "will not pass at market for a farthing more, shown through a multiplying glass, than what it always did before."

"So cast it in the Southern Seas, And view it through a jobber's bill, Put on what spectacles you please, Your guinea's but a guinea still."

Other poets had not as much prudence and sound sense as Swift. Pope put some of his money, a good deal of it, into South Sea stock, contrary to the earnest advice of Atterbury, and lost it. Swift reflected faithfully the temper of the time in savage verses, which call out for the punishment by death of the fraudulent directors of the Company. Antaeus, Swift tells us, was always restored to fresh strength as often as he touched the earth; Hercules subdued him at last by holding him up in the air and strangling him there. Suspended a while in the air, according to the same principle, our directors, he admonishes the country, will be properly tamed and dealt with. Many public enemies of the directors gave themselves credit for moderation and humanity on the ground that they would not have the culprits tortured to death, but merely executed in the ordinary way.

Walpole set himself first of all to restore public credit. {203} His object was not so much the punishment of fraudulent directors as the tranquillizing of the public mind and the subsidence of national panic. He proposed one measure in the first instance to accomplish this end; but that not being sufficiently comprehensive, he introduced another bill, which was finally adopted by both Houses of Parliament. Briefly described, this scheme so adjusted the financial affairs of the South Sea Company that five millions of the seven which the directors had agreed to pay the public were remitted; the encumbrances to the Company were cleared off to a certain extent by the confiscation of the estates of the fraudulent directors; the credit of the Company's bonds was maintained; thirty-three pounds six shillings and eightpence per cent. were divided among the proprietors, and two millions were reserved towards the liquidation of the national debt. The Company was therefore put into a position to carry out its various public engagements, and the panic was soon over. Many of the proprietors of the Company complained bitterly of the manner in which they had been treated by Walpole. The lobbies of the House of Commons and all the adjacent places were crowded by proprietors of the short annuities and other redeemable popular deeds; men and women who, as the contemporary accounts tell us, "in a rude and insolent manner demanded justice of the members as they went into the House," and put into their hands a paper with the words written on it, "Pray do justice to the annuitants who lent their money on Parliamentary security." "The noisy multitude," we are told, "were particularly rude to Mr. Comptroller, tearing part of his coat as he passed by." The Speaker of the House was informed that a crowd of people had got together in a riotous and tumultuous manner in the lobbies and passages, and he ordered "that the Justices of the Peace for the City of Westminster do immediately attend this House and bring the constables with them." While the justices and the constables were being sent for, Sir John Ward was {204} presenting to the House a petition from the proprietors of the redeemable funds, setting forth that they had lent their money to the South Sea Company on Parliamentary security; that they had been unwarily drawn into subscribing for the shares in the Company by the artifices of the directors; and they prayed that they might be heard by themselves or their counsel against Walpole's measure—the bill "for making several provisions to restore the public credit, which suffers by the frauds and mismanagement of the late South Sea directors and others." Walpole opposed the petition, and said he did not see how the petitioners could be relieved, seeing that the resolutions, in pursuance of which his bill was brought in, had been approved by the King and council, and by a great majority of the House. Walpole, therefore, moved that the debate be adjourned, in order to get rid of the matter. The motion was carried by seventy-eight voices against twenty-nine. By this time four Justices for the City of Westminster had arrived, and were brought to the bar of the House. The Speaker informed them that there was a great crowd of riotous people in the lobbies and passages, and that he was commanded by the House to direct them to go and disperse the crowd, and take care to prevent similar riots in the future. The four justices, attended by five or six constables, desired the petitioners to clear the lobbies, and when they refused to do so, caused a proclamation against rioters to be twice read, warning them at the same time that if they remained until the third reading, they would have to incur the penalties of the Act. What the penalties of the Act were, and what the four justices and five or six constables could have done with the petitioners if the petitioners had refused to listen to reason, do not seem very clear. The petitioners, however, did listen to reason, and dispersed before the fatal third reading of the proclamation. But they did not disperse without giving the House of Commons and the justices a piece of their mind. Many exclaimed that they had come as peaceable citizens and {205} subjects to represent their grievances, and had not expected to be used like a mob and scoundrels; and others, as they went out, shouted to the members of Parliament, "You first pick our pockets, and then send us to jail for complaining."

[Sidenote: 1721—Relief measures]

The Bill went up to the House of Lords on Monday, August 7th, and the Lords agreed to it without an amendment. On Thursday, August 10th, Parliament was prorogued. The Lord Chancellor read the King's speech. "The common calamity," said his Majesty, "occasioned by the wicked execution of the South Sea scheme, was become so very great before your meeting that the providing proper remedies for it was very difficult. But it is a great comfort to me to observe that public credit now begins to recover, which gives me the greatest hopes that it will be entirely restored when all the provisions you have made for that end shall be duly put in execution." The speech went on to tell of his Majesty's "great compassion for the sufferings of the innocent, and a just indignation against the guilty;" and added that the King had readily given his assent "to such bills as you have presented to me for punishing the authors of our late misfortunes, and for obtaining the restitution and satisfaction due to those who have been injured by them in such manner as you judged proper." Certainly there was no lack of severity in the punishment inflicted on the fraudulent directors. Their estates were confiscated with such rigor that some of them were reduced to miserable poverty. They were disqualified from ever holding any public place or office whatever, and from ever having a seat in Parliament. Yet, severely as they were punished, the outcry of the public at the time was that they had been let off far too easily. Walpole was denounced because he did not carry their punishment much farther. There was even a ridiculous report spread abroad that he had defended Sunderland and screened the directors from the most ignoble and sordid motives, and that he had been handsomely paid for his compromise with crime. {206} Nothing would have satisfied some of the sufferers by the South Sea scheme short of the execution of its principal directors. Even the scaffold, however, could hardly have dealt more stern and summary justice on the criminals—as some of them undoubtedly were—than did the actual course of events. When the storm cleared away, Aislabie was ruined; Craggs, the Postmaster-general, was dead; Craggs, the Secretary of State, was dead; Lord Stanhope, who was really innocent—was really unsuspected of any share in the crimes of the fraudulent directors—was dead also; Sunderland was no longer a Minister of State, and the shadow of death was already on him. It was not merely the bursting of a bubble, it was the bursting of a shell—it mutilated or killed those who stood around and near.

[Sidenote: 1722—Sunderland's antipathy to Walpole]

By the time of the new elections—for Parliament had now nearly run its course—public tranquillity was entirely restored. Parliament was dissolved in March, 1722, and the new elections left Walpole and his friends in power, with an immense majority at their back. Long before the new Parliament had time to assemble, Lord Sunderland suddenly died of heart disease. On April 19, 1722, his death took place, and it was so unexpected that a wild outcry was raised by some of his friends, who insisted that his enemies had poisoned him. The medical examination proved, however, that Sunderland's disease was one which might at any moment of excitement have brought on his death. Nearly all the leading public men who, innocent or guilty, had been mixed up with the evil schemes of the South Sea Company were now in the grave.

The field seemed now clear and open to Walpole. The death of Sunderland, following so soon on that of Stanhope, had left him apparently without a rival. Sunderland had been to the last a political, and even a personal, enemy of Walpole. Although Walpole had gone so far to protect Sunderland against the House of Commons and against public opinion, with regard to his share in {207} the South Sea Company's transactions, Sunderland could not forgive Walpole because Walpole was rising higher in the State—because he was, in fact, the greater man. Though Sunderland was compelled by public opinion to resign office, he had contrived, up to the hour of his death, to maintain his influence over the mind of King George. Fortunately for George, the King had too much clear, robust good-sense not to recognize the priceless worth of Walpole's advice and Walpole's services. Sunderland tried one ingenious artifice to get rid of Walpole. He suggested to George that Walpole's merits required some special and permanent recognition, and he recommended that the King should create Walpole Postmaster-general for life. Such an office, indeed, would have brought Walpole an ample revenue, supposing he stood in need of money, which he did not, but it would have disqualified him forever for a seat in Parliament. Perhaps no better illustration of Sunderland's narrow intellect and utter lack of judgment could be found than the supposition that this shallow trick could succeed, and that the greatest administrator of his time could be thus quietly withdrawn from Parliamentary life and from the higher work of the State, and shelved in perpetuity as a Postmaster-general. King George was not to be taken in after this fashion. He asked Sunderland whether Walpole wished for such an office, or was acquainted with Sunderland's intention to make the suggestion. Sunderland had to answer both questions in the negative. "Then," said the King, "pray do not make him any such offer, or say anything about it to him. I had to part with him once, much against my will, and so long as he is willing to serve me I will never part with him again." This incident shows that, if Sunderland had lived, he would have plotted against Walpole to the end, and would have stood in Walpole's way to the best of his power, and with all the unforgiving hostility of the narrow-minded and selfish man who has had services rendered him for which he ought to feel grateful but cannot.

{208}

[Sidenote: 1721-1722—Marlborough's closing days]

A far greater man than Sunderland was soon to pass away.

"From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow."

These are the famous words in which Johnson depicts the miserable decay of a great spirit, and points anew the melancholy moral of the vanity of human wishes. Hardly a line in the poetry of our language is better known or more often quoted. Where did Johnson get the idea that Marlborough had sunk into dotage before his death? There is not the slightest foundation for such a belief. All that we know of Marlborough's closing days tells us the contrary. Nothing in Marlborough's life, not even his serene disregard of dangers and difficulties, not even his victories, became him like to the leaving of it. No great man ever sank more gracefully, more gently, with a calmer spirit, down to his rest. We get some charming pictures of Marlborough's closing days. Death had given him warning by repeated paralytic strokes. On November 27, 1721, he was seen for the last time in the House of Lords. He was not, however, quite near his death even then. He used to spend his time at Blenheim, or at his lodge in Windsor. To the last he was fond of riding and driving and the fresh country air. In-doors he loved to be surrounded by his granddaughters and their young friends, and to join in games of cards and other amusements with them. They used to get up private theatricals to gratify the gentle old warrior. We hear of a version of Dryden's "All for Love" being thus performed. The Duchess of Marlborough had cut out of the play its unseemly passages, and even its too amorous expressions—the reader will probably think there was not much left of the piece when this work of purification had been accomplished—and she would not allow any embracing to be performed. The gentleman who played Mark Antony wore a sword which had been presented to Marlborough by the Emperor. The part of the high-priest was played by a pretty girl, a friend of Marlborough's granddaughters, and she wore as {209} high-priest's robe what seems to have been a lady's night-dress, gorgeously embroidered with special devices for the occasion. A prologue, written by Dr. Hoadly, was read, in which the glories of the great Duke's career were glowingly recounted. Some painter, it seems to us, might make a pretty picture of this: the great hall in Blenheim turned into a theatre, the handsome young men and pretty girls enacting their chastened parts, the fading old hero looking at the scene with pleased and kindly eyes, and the imperious, loving old Duchess turning her devoted gaze on him.

So fades, so languishes, grows dim, and dies the conqueror of Blenheim, the greatest soldier England ever had since the days when kings ceased to be as a matter of right her chiefs in command. In the early days of June, 1722, Marlborough was stricken by another paralytic seizure, and this was his last. He was in full possession of his senses to the end, perfectly conscious and calm. He knew that he was dying; he had prayers read to him; he conveyed in many tender ways his feelings of affection for his wife, and of hope for his own future. At four in the morning of June 16th his life ebbed quietly away. He was in his seventy-second year when he died. None of the great deeds of his life belong to this history; none of that life's worst offences have much to do with it. Marlborough's career seems to us absolutely faultless in two of its aspects; as a commander and as a husband we can only give him praise. He was probably a greater commander than even the Duke of Wellington. If he never had to encounter a Napoleon, he had to meet and triumph over difficulties which never came in Wellington's way. It was not Wellington's fate to have to strive against political treachery of the basest kind on the part of English Ministers of State. Wellington's enemies were all in the field arrayed against him; Marlborough had to fight the foreign enemy on the battle-field, and to struggle meanwhile against the persistent treachery of the still more formidable enemy {210} at home in the council-chamber of his own sovereign. Perhaps, indeed, Wellington's nature would not have permitted him to succeed under such difficulties. Wellington could hardly have met craft with craft, and, it must be added, falsehood with falsehood, as Marlborough did. We have said in this book already that even for that age of double-dealing Marlborough was a surprising double-dealer, and there were many passages in his career which are evidences of an astounding capacity for deceit. "He was a great man," said his enemy, Lord Peterborough, "and I have forgotten his faults." Historians would gladly do the same if they could; would surely dwell with much more delight on the virtues and the greatness than on the defects. The English people were generous to Marlborough, and in the way which, it has to be confessed, was most welcome to him. But if a very treasure-house of gold could not have satisfied his love of money, let it be added that the national treasure-house itself, were it poured out at his feet, could not have overpaid the services which he had rendered to his country.

Marlborough left no son to inherit his honors and his fortune. His titles and estates descended to his eldest daughter, the Countess of Godolphin. She died without leaving a son, and the titles and estates passed over to the Earl of Sunderland, the son and heir of Marlborough's second daughter, at that time long dead. From the day when the victor of Blenheim died, there has been no Duke of Marlborough distinguished in anything but the name. Not one of the world's great soldiers, it would seem, was destined to have a great soldier for a son. From great statesman fathers sometimes spring great statesman sons; but Alexander, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Charles the Twelfth, Alexander Farnese, Clive, Marlborough, Frederick, Napoleon, Wellington, Washington, left to the world no heir of their greatness.



{211}

CHAPTER XIII.

THE BANISHMENT OF ATTERBURY.

[Sidenote: 1722—Funeral of Marlborough]

On Thursday, August 9, 1722, the "pompous solemnity" of Marlborough's funeral took place. The great procession went from the Duke's house in St. James's Park, through St. James's and the Upper Park to Hyde Park Corner, and thence through Piccadilly, St. James's Street, Pall Mall, Charing Cross, and King Street to Westminster Abbey. A small army of soldiers guarded the remains of the greatest warrior of his age; a whole heralds' college clustered about the lofty funeral banner on which all the arms of the Churchills were quartered. Marlborough's friends and admirers, his old brothers-in-arms, the companions of his victories, followed his coffin, and listened while Garter King-at-Arms, bending over the open grave, said: "Thus it hath pleased Almighty God to take out of this transitory life unto His mercy the most high, most mighty, and most noble prince, John Churchill, Duke and Earl of Marlborough."

In Applebee's Weekly Journal for Saturday, August 11th, two days after the funeral, we are told that the Duchess of Marlborough, in honor of the memory of her life-long lover, had offered a prize of five hundred pounds for a Latin epitaph to be inscribed upon his tomb, and that "several poets have already taken to their lofty studies to contend for the prize."

At Marlborough's funeral we see for the last time in high public estate one of the few Englishmen of the day who could properly be named in the same breath with Marlborough. This was Francis Atterbury, the eloquent and daring Bishop of Rochester. Atterbury came up to {212} town for the purpose of officiating at the funeral of the great Duke. On July 30, 1722, he wrote from the country to his friend Pope, announcing his visit to London. "I go to-morrow," Atterbury writes, "to the Deanery, and I believe I shall stay there till I have said dust to dust, and shut up this last scene of pompous vanity." Atterbury does not seem to have been profoundly impressed with the religious solemnity of the occasion. His was not a very reverential spirit. There was as little of the temper of pious sanctity in Atterbury as in Swift himself. The allusion to the last scene of pompous vanity might have had another significance, as well as that which Atterbury meant to give to it. Amid the pomp in which Marlborough's career went out, the career of Atterbury went out as well, although in a different way, and not closed sublimely by death. After the funeral, Atterbury went to the Deanery at Westminster—he was Dean of Westminster as well as Bishop of Rochester—and there, on August 24th, the day but one after the scene of pompous vanity, he was arrested by the Under-Secretary of State, accompanied by two officers of justice, and was brought, along with all papers of his which the officers could seize, before the Privy Council. He underwent an examination, as the result of which he was committed to the Tower, on a charge of having been concerned in a treasonable conspiracy to dethrone the King, and to bring back the House of Stuart. In the Tower he was left to languish for many a long day before it was found convenient to bring him to trial.

[Sidenote: 1722—The King's speech]

England was startled by the disclosures which followed Atterbury's arrest. On Tuesday, October 9, 1722, the sixth Parliament of Great Britain—the sixth, that is to say, since the union with Scotland—met at Westminster. The House of Commons, on the motion of Mr. Pulteney, elected Mr. Spencer Compton their Speaker, and on the next day but one, October 11th, the Royal speech was read. The King was present in person, but the speech was read by the Lord Chancellor, for the good reason which we {213} have already mentioned that his Majesty the King of England could not speak the English language. The speech opened with a startling announcement. "My Lords and Gentlemen"—so ran the words of the Sovereign—"I am concerned to find myself obliged, at the opening of this Parliament, to acquaint you that a dangerous conspiracy has been for some time formed, and is still carrying on, against my person and government, in favor of a Popish pretender." "Some of the conspirators," the speech went on to say, "have been taken up and secured, and endeavors are used for the apprehending others." When the speech was read, and the King had left the House, the Duke of Grafton, then Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, brought in a bill for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, and empowering the Government to secure and detain "such persons as his Majesty shall suspect are conspiring against his person and government, for the space of one year." The motion to read the Bill a second time in the same sitting was strenuously resisted by a considerable minority of the Peers. A warm debate took place, and in the end the second reading was carried by a majority of sixty-seven against twenty-four. The debate was renewed upon the other stages of the Bill, which were taken in rapid succession. The proposal of the Government was, of course, carried in the end, but it met with a resistance in the House of Lords which certainly would not have been offered to such a proposal by any member of the hereditary chamber in our day. Some of the recorded protests of dissentient peers read more like the utterances of modern Radicals than those of influential members of the House of Lords. The strongest objection made to the proposal was that the utmost term for which the Constitution had previously been suspended was six months, and that the measure to suspend it for a year would become an authority for suspending it at some future time for two years, or three years, or any term which might please the ministers in power. On Monday, October 15th, the Bill was brought down to the Commons, and was read {214} a first time on the motion of Walpole. The Bill was passed in the Commons, not, indeed, without opposition, but with an opposition much less strenuous and influential than that which had been offered to it in the House of Lords. On October 17th it was announced to Parliament that Dr. Atterbury, the Bishop of Rochester, the Lord North and Grey, and the Earl of Orrery, had been committed to the Tower on a charge of high-treason. A few days after, a similar announcement was made about the arrest and committal of the Duke of Norfolk.

[Sidenote: 1722—Proclamation of James]

By far the most important of the persons committed for trial was the Bishop of Rochester. Francis Atterbury may rank among the most conspicuous public men of his time. He stands only just beneath Marlborough and Bolingbroke and Walpole. Steele, in his sixty-sixth Tatler, pays a high tribute to Atterbury: "He has so much regard to his congregation that he commits to memory what he has to say to them, and has so soft and graceful a behavior that it must attract your attention. His person, it is to be confessed, is no slight recommendation; but he is to be highly commended for not losing that advantage, and adding to a propriety of speech which might pass the criticism of Longinus, an action which would have been approved by Demosthenes. He has a peculiar force in his way, and has many of his audience who could not be intelligent hearers of his discourse were there not explanation as well as grace in his action. This art of his is used with the most exact and honest skill; he never attempts your passions until he has convinced your reason; all the objections which he can form are laid open and dispersed before he uses the least vehemence in his sermon; but when he thinks he has your head he very soon wins your heart, and never pretends to show the beauty of holiness until he hath convinced you of the truth of it."

Atterbury had, however, among his many gifts a dangerous gift of political intrigue. Like Swift and Dubois and Alberoni, he was at least as much statesman as churchman. {215} He had mixed himself up in various intrigues—some of them could hardly be called conspiracies—for the restoration of the Stuarts, and when at last something like a new conspiracy was planned, it was not likely that he would be left out of it. He had courage enough for any such scheme. There was no great difficulty in finding out the new plot which King George mentioned in his speech to Parliament; for James Stuart had revealed it himself by a proclamation which he caused to be circulated among his supposed adherents in England, renewing in the boldest terms his claim to the crown of England. A sort of junto of Jacobites appears to have been established in England to make arrangements for a new attempt on the part of James; the noblemen whom King George had arrested were understood to be among its leading members. Atterbury was charged with having taken a prominent if not, indeed, a foremost part in the conspiracy. The Duke of Norfolk, Lord North and Grey, and Lord Orrery were afterwards discharged for want of evidence to convict them. The arrest of a number of humbler conspirators led to the discovery of a correspondence asserted to have been carried on between Atterbury and the adherents of James Stuart in France and Italy.

Both Houses of Parliament began by voting addresses of loyalty and gratitude to the King, and by resolving that the proclamation entitled "Declaration of James the Third, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, to all his loving subjects of the three nations," and signed "James Rex," was "a false, insolent, and traitorous libel," and should be burned by the hands of the common hangman, under the direction of the sheriffs of London. This important ceremonial was duly carried out at the Royal Exchange. Then the House of Commons voted, "that towards raising the supply, and reimbursing to the public the great expenses occasioned by the late rebellions and disorders, the sum of one hundred thousand pounds be raised and levied upon the real and personal estates of {216} all Papists, Popish recusants, or persons educated in the Popish religion, or whose parents are Papists, or who shall profess the Popish religion, in lieu of all forfeitures already incurred for or upon account of their recusancy." This singular method of infusing loyalty into the Roman Catholics of England was not allowed to be adopted without serious and powerful resistance in the House of Commons. The idea was not to devise a new penalty for the Catholics, but to put in actual operation the terms of a former penalty pronounced against them in Elizabeth's time, and not then pressed into execution. This fact was dwelt upon with much emphasis by the advocates of the penal motion. Why talk of religious persecution? they asked. This is not religious persecution; it is only putting in force an edict passed in a former reign to punish Roman Catholics for political rebellion. This way of putting the case seems only to make the character of the policy more clear and less justifiable. The Catholics of King George's time were to be mulcted indiscriminately because the Catholics of Queen Elizabeth's time had been declared liable to such a penalty. The Master of the Rolls, to his great credit, strongly opposed the resolution. Walpole supported it with all the weight of his argument and his influence. The plot was evidently a Popish plot, he contended, and although he was not prepared to accuse any English Catholic in particular of taking part in it, yet there could be no doubt that Papists in general were well-wishers to it, and that some of them had contributed large sums towards it. Why, then, should they not be made to reimburse some part of the expense to which they and the friends of the Pretender had put the nation? The resolution, after it had been reported from committee, was only carried in the whole House by 188 votes against 172. [Sidenote: 1723—Lord Cowper's opposition] The resolution was embodied in a bill, and the Bill, when it went up to the House of Lords, was opposed there by several of the Peers, and especially by Lord Cowper, the "silver-tongued Cowper," who had {217} been so distinguished a Lord Chancellor under Anne, and under George himself. Lord Cowper's was an eloquent and a powerful speech. It tore to pieces the wretched web of flimsy sophistry by which the supporters of the Bill endeavored to make out that it was not a measure of religious persecution. Indeed, there were some of these who insisted that, so far from being a measure of persecution, it was a measure of relief. Our readers will, no doubt, be curious to know how this bold position was sustained. In this wise: the penalties prescribed for the Catholics in Elizabeth's reign were much greater in amount than those which the Bill proposed to inflict on the Catholics of King George's time; therefore the Bill was an indulgence and not a persecution—a mitigation of penalty, not a punishment. Let us reduce the argument to plain figures. A Catholic in the reign of Elizabeth is declared liable to a penalty of twenty pounds, but out of considerations of humanity or justice the penalty is not enforced. The descendant and heir of that same Catholic in the reign of George the First is fined fifteen pounds, and the fine is exacted. He complains, and he is told, "You have no right to complain; you ought to be grateful; the original fine ordained was twenty pounds; you have been let off five pounds—you have been favored by an act of indulgence, not victimized by an act of persecution." Lord Cowper had not much trouble in disposing of arguments of this kind, but his speech took a wider range, and is indeed a masterly exposure of the whole principle on which the measure was founded. On May 22, 1723, sixty-nine peers voted for the third reading of the Bill, and fifty-five opposed it. Lord Cowper, with twenty other peers, entered a protest against the decision of the House, according to a practice then common in the House of Lords, and which has lately fallen into complete disuse. The recorded protests of dissentient peers form, we may observe, very important historical documents, and deserve, some of them, {218} a careful study. Lord Cowper's protest was the last public act of his useful and honorable career. He died on the 10th of October in the same year, 1723. Some of his enemies explained his action on the anti-Papist Bill by the assertion that he was a Jacobite at heart. Even if he had been, the fact would hardly have made his conduct less creditable and spirited. Many a man who was a Jacobite at heart would have supported a measure for the punishment of Roman Catholics if only to save himself from the suspicion of sympathy with the lost cause.

[Sidenote: 1723—Charges against Atterbury]

This, however, was but an episode in the story of the Jacobite plot and the measures taken to punish those who were engaged in it. Committees of secrecy were appointed by Parliament to inquire into the evidence and examine witnesses.

Meantime both Houses of Parliament kept voting address after address to the Crown at each new stage of the proceedings, and as each fresh evidence of the conspiracy was laid before them. The King must have grown rather weary of finding new words of gratitude, and the Houses of Parliament, one would think, must have grown tired of inventing new phrases of loyalty and fresh expressions of horror at the wickedness of the Jacobites. The horror was not quite genuine on the part of some who thus proclaimed it. Many of those who voted the addresses would gladly have welcomed a restoration of the Stuarts. Not the most devoted adherent of King George could really have felt any surprise at the persistent efforts of the Jacobite partisans. Eight years before this it was a mere toss-up whether Stuart or Hanover should succeed, and even still it was not quite certain whether, if the machinery of the modern plebiscite could have been put into operation in England, the majority would not have been found in sympathy with Atterbury. It is almost certain that if the plebiscite could have been taken in Ireland and Scotland also, a majority of voices would have voted James Stuart to the throne.

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It was resolved to proceed against Atterbury by a Bill of Pains and Penalties to be brought into Parliament. The evidence against him was certainly not such as any criminal court would have held to justify a conviction. A young barrister named Christopher Layer was arrested and examined, so were a nonjuring minister named Kelly, an Irish Catholic priest called Neynoe, and a man named Plunkett, also from Ireland. The charge against Atterbury was founded on the statements obtained or extorted from these men. It should be said that Layer gave evidence which actually seemed to impugn Lord Cowper himself as a member of a club of disaffected persons; and when Lord Cowper indignantly repudiated the charge and demanded an inquiry, the Government declared inquiry absolutely unnecessary, as everybody was well assured of his innocence. The Government, however, declined to follow Lord Cowper in his not unreasonable assumption that the whole story was unworthy of explicit credence when it included such a false statement. The case against Atterbury rested on the declaration of some of the arrested men that the bishop had carried on a correspondence with James Stuart, Lord Mar, and General Dillon (an Irish Catholic soldier, who after the capitulation of Limerick, had entered the French service), through the instrumentality of Kelly, who acted as his secretary and amanuensis for that purpose. It was a case of circumstantial evidence altogether. The impartial reader of history now will feel well satisfied on two points: first, that Atterbury was engaged in the plot; and second, that the evidence brought against him was not nearly strong enough to sustain a conviction. It was the case of Bolingbroke and Harley over again. We know now that the men had done the things charged against them, but the evidence then relied upon was utterly inadequate to sustain the charge.

A "Dialogue in Verse between a Whig and a Tory" was written by Swift in the year 1723, "concerning the horrid plot discovered by Harlequin, the Bishop of {220} Rochester's French Dog." The Whig tells the Tory that the dog—

"His name is Harlequin, I wot, And that's a name in every plot"—

was generously

"Resolved to save the British nation, Though French by birth and education; His correspondence plainly dated Was all deciphered and translated; His answers were exceeding pretty, Before the secret wise committee; Confessed as plain as he could bark, Then with his fore-foot set his mark."

[Sidenote: 1723-1731—Atterbury's sentence]

There was more than mere fooling in the lines. The dog Harlequin was made to bear important evidence against the Bishop of Rochester. Atterbury had never resigned himself to the Hanoverian dynasty. He did not believe it would last, and he openly declaimed against it. He did more than this, however: he engaged in conspiracies for the restoration of James Stuart. Horace Walpole says of him that he was simply a Jacobite priest. He was a Jacobite priest who would gladly, if he could, have been a Jacobite soldier, and had given ample evidence of courage equal to such a part. He had been engaged in a long correspondence with Jacobite conspirators at home and abroad. The correspondence was carried on in cipher, and of course under feigned names. Atterbury appears to have been described now as Mr. Illington, and now as Mr. Jones. Atterbury refused to make any defence before the House of Commons, but he appeared before the House of Lords on May 6, 1723, and defended himself, and made strong and eloquent protestation of his innocence. One of the witnesses whom he called in his defence was his friend Pope, who could only give evidence as to the manner in which the bishop had passed his time when staying in the poet's house. Christopher Layer, Atterbury's associate in the general charge of conspiracy, was a young barrister of good family, a remarkably handsome, {221} graceful, and accomplished man. One charge against him was that he had formed a plan to murder the King and carry off the Prince of Wales; but the statements made against Layer must be taken with liberal allowance for the extravagance of loyal passion, panic, and exaggeration. Layer had escaped and was recaptured, was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was hanged at Tyburn on March 15, 1723; he met his death with calm courage. His body was quartered and his head was set on Temple Bar, from which it was presently blown down by the wind. Some one picked up the head and sold it to a surgeon. Neynoe, another of the accused men, contrived to escape from custody, got to the river, endeavored to swim across it, and was drowned in the attempt.

The charges made against Atterbury had therefore sometimes to rest upon inferences drawn from confessions, or portions of confessions, averred to have dropped or been drawn from men whose lips were now closed by death. Those who defended Atterbury dwelt strongly on this fact, as was but natural. It is curious to notice how often in the debates of the Lords on the Bill of Pains and Penalties one noble peer accuses another of secret sympathy with Jacobite schemes. As regards Atterbury, the whole question was whether he was really the person described in the correspondence now as Jones and now as Illington. There might have been no evidence which even a "secret, wise" committee of that day would have cared to accept but for the fact that the bishop's wife had received, or was to have received, from France a present of a dog called Harlequin, and that there was mention in the correspondence about poor Mr. Illington being in grief for the loss of his dog Harlequin. This allusion put the committee of secrecy on the track. The bishop's wife had lately died, and it would seem from the correspondence that Illington's wife had died about the same time. Clearly, if it were once assumed that Illington and Atterbury were one and the same person, there was ample ground for suspicion, and even for a general belief that the story told {222} was true in the main. The evidence was enough for Parliament at that time, and the Bill passed the House of Lords on May 16th by a majority of eighty-three votes to forty-three. Atterbury was deprived of all his offices and dignities, declared to be forever incapable of holding any place or exercising any authority within the King's dominions, and condemned to perpetual banishment. He went to France in the first instance with his daughter and her husband. It so happened that Bolingbroke had just at that time obtained a sort of conditional pardon from the King; obtained it mainly by bribing the Duchess of Kendal. The two Jacobites crossed each other on the way, one going into exile, the other returning from it. "I am exchanged," was Atterbury's remark. "The nation," said Pope afterwards, "is afraid of being overrun with genius, and cannot regain one great man but at the expense of another." So far as this history is concerned we part with Atterbury here. He lived abroad until 1731, and after his death his remains were brought back and privately laid in Westminster Abbey.

[Sidenote: 1723—Tom Tempest and Jack Sneaker]

We have directed attention to the freedom and frequency of the accusations of Jacobitism made by one peer against another during the debates on Atterbury's case. The fact is worthy of note, if only to show how uncertain, even still, was the foundation of the throne of Brunswick, and how wide-spread the sympathy with the lost cause was supposed to be. When Bolingbroke was allowed to return to England, some of Swift's friends instantly fancied that he must have purchased his permission by telling some tale against the dean himself, among others, and long after this time we find Swift defending himself against the rumored accusation of a share in Jacobite conspiracy. The condition of the public mind is well pictured in a description of two imaginary politicians in one of the successors to the Tatler. "Tom Tempest" is described as a steady friend to the House of Stuart. He can recount the prodigies that have appeared in the sky, and the calamities that have afflicted the {223} nation every year from the Revolution, and is of opinion that if the exiled family had continued to reign, there would neither have been worms in our ships nor caterpillars in our trees. He firmly believes that King William burned Whitehall that he might steal the furniture, and that Tillotson died an atheist. Of Queen Anne he speaks with more tenderness; owns that she meant well, and can tell by whom she was poisoned. Tom has always some new promise that we shall see in another month the rightful monarch on the throne. "Jack Sneaker," on the other hand, is a devoted adherent to the present establishment. He has known those who saw the bed in which the Pretender was conveyed in a warming-pan. He often rejoices that this nation was not enslaved by the Irish. He believes that King William never lost a battle, and that if he had lived one year longer he would have conquered France. Yet amid all this satisfaction he is hourly disturbed by dread of Popery; wonders that stricter laws are not made against the Papists, and is sometimes afraid that they are busy with French gold among our bishops and judges.



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CHAPTER XIV.

WALPOLE IN POWER AS WELL AS OFFICE.

[Sidenote: 1723—Walpole's Administration]

Walpole was now Prime-minister. The King wished to reward him for his services by conferring a peerage on him, but this honor Walpole steadily declined. One of his biographers says that his refusal "at first appears extraordinary." It ought not to appear extraordinary at first or at last. Walpole knew that the sceptre of government in England had passed to the House of Commons. He would have been unwise and inconsistent indeed if at his time of life he had consented to renounce the influence and the power which a seat in that House gave him for the comparative insignificance and obscurity of a seat in the House of Lords. He accepted a title for his eldest son, who was made Baron Walpole, but for himself he preferred to keep to the field in which he had won his name, and where he could make his influence and power felt all over the land.

We may anticipate the course of events, and say at once that hardly ever before in the history of English political life, and hardly ever since Walpole's time, has a minister had so long a run of power. His long administration, as Mr. Green well says, is almost without a history. It is almost without a history, that is to say, in the ordinary sense of the word. For the most part, the steady movement of England's progress remains, during long years and years, undisturbed by any event of great dramatic interest at home or abroad. But the period of Walpole's long and successful administration was none the less a period of the highest importance in English {225} history. It was a time of almost uninterrupted national development in the right direction, and almost unbroken national prosperity. The foreign policy of Walpole was, on the whole, no less sound and just than his policy at home. His first ambition was to keep England out of wars with foreign Powers. Yet his was not the ambition which some later statesmen, especially, for example, Mr. Bright, have owned—the ambition to keep England free of any foreign policy whatever. Such an ambition was not Walpole's, and such an ambition at Walpole's time it would have been all but impossible to realize. Walpole knew well that there was no way of keeping England out of foreign wars at that season of political growth but by securing for her a commanding influence in Continental affairs. Such influence he set himself to establish, and he succeeded in establishing it by friendly and satisfactory alliances with France and other Powers. Turning back for a moment into the political affairs of a year or two previous, we may remark that one of the consequences of the Mississippi scheme, and the reign of Mr. Law in France, had been the recall of Lord Stair from the French Court, to which he was accredited as English ambassador. Lord Stair quarrelled with Law when Law was all-powerful; and in order to propitiate the financial dictator, it was found convenient to recall Stair from Paris. England had been well served by him as her ambassador at the French Court. We have already said something of Lord Stair—his ability, courage, and dexterity, his winning ways, and his fearless spirit. John Dalrymple, second Earl of Stair, was one of the remarkable men of his time. He was a scholar and an orator, a soldier and a diplomatist. He had fought with conspicuous bravery and skill under William the Third and under Marlborough. He appears to have combined a daring that looked like recklessness with a cool calculation which made it prudence. On Marlborough's fall, Lord Stair fell with him. He was deprived of all his public offices, and was plunged into a condition of {226} something like poverty. When George the First came to the throne, Stair was taken into favor again, and as a special tribute to his diplomatic capacity was sent to represent England at the Court of France. There he displayed consummate sagacity, foresight, and firmness. He contrived to make himself acquainted beforehand with everything the Jacobites were doing. This, as may be seen by Bolingbroke's complaints, was easy enough at one time; but the adherents of James Stuart began after a while to learn prudence, and some of their enterprises were conducted up to a certain point with much craft and caution. Lord Stair, however, always contrived to get the information he wanted. Some of the arts by which he accomplished his purposes were not, perhaps, such as a great diplomatist of our time would have cared to practise. He bribed with liberal hand; he kept persons of all kinds in his pay; he bribed French officials, and even French ministers; he got to know all that was done in the most secret councils of the State. He used to go about the capital in disguise in order to find out what people were saying in the wine-shops and coffee-houses. Often, after he had entertained a brilliant company of guests at a state dinner, he would make some excuse to his friends for quitting them abruptly; say that he had received despatches which required his instant attention, leave the company to be entertained by his wife, withdraw to his study, there quietly change his clothes, and then wander out on one of his nightly visitations of taverns and coffee-houses. He paid court to great ladies, flattered them, allowed them to win money at cards from him, and even made love to them, for the sake of getting some political secrets out of them. He had a noble and stately presence, a handsome face, and charming manners. He is said to have been the most polite and well-bred man of his time. It is of him the story is told about the test of good-breeding which the King of France applied and acknowledged. Louis the Fourteenth had heard it said that Stair was the best-bred man of his day. The {227} King invited Stair to drive out with him. As they were about to enter the carriage the King signed to the English ambassador to go first. Stair bowed and entered the carriage. "The world is right about Lord Stair," said the King; "I never before saw a man who would not have troubled me with excuses and ceremony."

[Sidenote: 1723—Spain]

The French Government naturally feared that the recall of Lord Stair might be marked by a change in the friendly disposition of England. This fear became greater on the death of Stanhope. The English Government, however, took steps to reassure the Regent of France. Townshend himself wrote at once to Cardinal Dubois, promising to maintain as before a cordial friendship with the French Government. Walpole was entirely imbued with the instincts of such a policy. The chief disturbing influence in Continental politics arose from the anxiety of Spain to recover Gibraltar and Minorca, and, in fact, to get back again all that had been taken from her by the Treaty of Utrecht. The territorial and other arrangements which concluded with the Treaty of Utrecht made themselves the central point of all the foreign policy of that time: these States were concerned to maintain the treaty; those were eager to break through its bonds. It holds in the politics of that day the place which was held by the Treaty of Vienna at a later period. There is always much of the hypocritical about the manner in which treaties of that highly artificial nature are made. No State really intends to hold by them any longer than she finds that they serve her own interests. If they are imposed upon a State and are injurious to her, that State never means to submit to them any longer than she is actually under compulsion. New means and impulses to break away from such bonds are given to those inclined that way, in the fact that the arrangements are usually made without the slightest concern for the populations of the countries concerned, but only for dynastic or other political considerations. The pride of the Spanish people was so much hurt by some of the conditions of the Treaty {228} of Utrecht that a Spanish sovereign or minister would always be popular who could point to his people a way to escape from its bonds or to rend them in pieces. Spain, therefore, was always looking out for new alliances. She saw at one time a fresh chance for trying her policy, and she held out every inducement in her power to the Emperor Charles the Sixth and to Russia to enter into a combination against France and England. The Emperor was without a son, and, in consequence, had issued his famous Pragmatic Sanction, providing that his hereditary dominions in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia should descend to his daughter Maria Theresa. The great Powers of Europe had not as yet seen fit to guarantee, or even recognize, this succession. Spain held out the temptation to the Emperor of her own guarantee to the Pragmatic Sanction and of several important concessions in the matter of trade and commerce to Austria, on consideration that the Emperor should assist Spain to recover her lost territory. Catherine, the wife of Peter the Great, was now governing Russia, and was entering into secret negotiations with Spain and with the Emperor. Townshend and Walpole understood all that was going on, and succeeded in making a defensive treaty between England, France, and Prussia. Prussia, to be sure, did not long hold to the treaty, and her withdrawal gave a new stimulus to the machinations of the Emperor and of Philip of Spain, and in 1727 Philip actually ventured to lay siege to Gibraltar. England, France, and Holland, however, held firmly together; the Russian Empress suddenly died, the Emperor Charles was not inclined to risk much, and Spain finally had to come to terms with England and her allies.