CHAP. IX. 1718. At this period the Parliament was sitting, it having met on the 11th of November. The addresses in answer to the King's speech, moved in the Upper House by Lord Carteret, and in the Lower by Lord Hinchingbroke, produced a warm debate on Spanish affairs. Lord Stanhope, in answer to Lord Strafford, gave an account of his late negotiations and journeys, stating that it was high time for Great Britain to check the growth of the naval power of Spain, in order to protect and secure the trade of British subjects, which had been violently oppressed by the Spaniards, that he thought it an honour to have been amongst those who advised Sir George Byng's instructions, --and that he was ready to answer for them with his head. On a division the Lords' Address was carried by 83 against 50. In the Commons Walpole declared against the Quadruple Alliance with a vehemence which shortly afterwards proved a little embarrassing to him, when in scarcely more than a year he became a steady supporter of that very system. He observed that the late measures were contrary to the laws of nations, and a breach of solemn treaties, and that the giving sanction to them in the manner proposed could have no other view than to screen Ministers, who were conscious of having done something amiss, and who, having begun a war against Spain, would now make it the Parliament's war. Shippen and Wyndham supported Walpole, but Secretary Craggs replied to him with great spirit; and on putting the IX. 1718. question, the Ministers had 216 votes, and the Op- CHAP. position 155. Subsequently, on the King's declaration of war, there was in the Commons an equally vehement debate, but a still more decisive division. Nor does it appear that the war caused any dissatisfaction in the nation at large; on the contrary, the vast preparations of Spain had excited uneasiness, and their attacks on our trade, indignation; the victory of Byng was highly celebrated, and the opposition of Walpole found but few supporters amongst the friends of the Hanover succession. Besides, with the multitude there are two things which are almost always very popular at the beginning, the first is a war, and the second a peace. The great measure of this session was the Act for the relief of Protestant Dissenters. By the passing of the Bill against Occasional Conformity in 1711, and of the Schism Bill in 1714, they had been reduced to a state of great humiliation and depression, and they found the enmity of the Tories more steady than the friendship of the Whigs. Stanhope, however, had earnestly espoused their cause, and, ever since he came into power, had sought to frame and carry through some measure in their behalf. He wished to repeal not merely the Bill against Occasional Conformity and the Schism Bill, but also the Test Act, thus placing the Dissenters on the footing of perfect political equality. Nor were the views of Stanhope confined to Protestants; he had also formed the plan of repealing, or at least of mitigating the penal IX. 1718. CHAP. laws in force against the Roman Catholics; and there will be found in the Appendix a paper which he wrote to be put into the hands of some leading men of that persuasion, containing some conditions with the Pope, and some clauses of an oath for themselves, as terms of the proposed indulgence. The first negotiations failed, and Stanhope's life was too short to carry that design any farther; nor do I think that he or any other man, at that period, would have been able to effect it against the general tide of public feeling; but still the scheme seems not undeserving of attention, as the earliest germ of Roman Catholic Emancipation. Several conferences passed between Stanhope and some of the principal of the Protestant Nonconformists, and they found Sunderland as friendly in his views, though not so sanguine in his hopes. He seems to have estimated more justly than Stan * Craggs writes to Stanhope, June 30. 1719. "Dr. Strick"land thought that the paper was digested in the properest form "to be shown to the Roman Catholics, and, at his request and persuasion, I carried a copy of that paper, not signed, to a meeting where the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Waldegrave, and "Mr. Charles Howard assisted. . . . . I found the two noblemen " inclinable to come into the proposal therein made." The negotiation was, however, broken off. Craggs says in another letter, of July 24. "I understand since, that these folks have been "misled by the Prince's people, who have given them mighty "assurances that they would destroy the present Ministry with "the King, and so discouraged them from engaging themselves "in a falling house. There is good reason to believe that this " is all owing to Mr. Pulteney." These letters are in the Hardwicke Papers, vol. cxxv.* pro- CHA P. hope the formidable obstacles in the way of the posed concessions; the resistance, not merely of the Tories and High Churchmen, but perhaps of the Whigs in opposition, notwithstanding all their previous pledges. "It would be difficult enough," said Sunderland," to repeal the Schism and occasional Conformity Acts, but any attack upon the Test "Act also would ruin all." Stanhope, after some opposition yielded to these views, and joined Sunderland in advising the Dissenters to forego for the present a part of their pretensions. The Ministers promised that the repeal of the Test Act should be proposed at a future and more favourable opportunity, and the King himself, who had taken a much warmer interest in this than in most English questions, spoke in the same sense to Lord Barrington, one of the dissenting body: the Dissenters acquiesced, and it was determined that only some few of the less important clauses of the Test Act should be comprised in the measure of relief. With this compromise, Lord Stanhope brought forward his measure in the Lords on the 18th of December, under the specious name of an Act for strengthening the Protestant interest. He endeayoured to shew the reason and advantage of restoring Dissenters to their natural rights, and of easing them from these stigmatising and oppressive laws, which, he said, had been made in turbulent times, and obtained by indirect methods; and he argued, that by the union of all true Protestants, the Church of England would still be the head of all IX. 1718. IX. 1718. CHAP. the Protestant churches, and the Archbishop of Canterbury become the patriarch of all the Protestant clergy. Lords Sunderland and Stamford made some observations (of these we have no record) in support of the motion. But a powerful combination immediately appeared against it. The Duke of Devonshire first complained that the House was taken by surprise, and that it was irregular to bring in a bill of so great consequence without previous notice, forgetting, until Stanhope reminded him, that he himself had pursued that very course two years before, in bringing forward a still more important measure, the Septennial Act. The Earl of Nottingham observed, with a sneer, that the Church of England was certainly the happiest church in the world, since even the greatest contradictions, -two acts made for her security, and the repeal of those very acts, were all said to contribute to her support. Earl Cowper declared himself favourable to the repeal of the Schism Act, but apprehensive for the security of the Test and Corporation Acts, "because he looked 66 upon those acts as the main bulwark of our ex"cellent constitution in church and state, and "therefore would have them inviolably preserved "and untouched." The Earl of Isla said that he considered the measure a violation of the Treaty of Union with Scotland. The discussion being postponed till the 18th, was on that day almost entirely confined to the Right Reverend Bench. Both the Archbishops |