with Walpole in opposition, there could never have been much doubt as to the continuance of the ministry which George I. had left. Sir Robert also at this crisis fixed her favour by offering to obtain from parliament a jointure for her majesty of £100,000 a-year, while Sir Spencer Compton-who, we suspect, was all along playing into Walpole's hands would only undertake to propose £60,000. Her majesty represented to her husband, at a fitting moment, that Compton was not even able to draw up a declaration; that it would be highly prejudicial to his affairs to prefer to the minister in actual possession a man in whose own judgment his predecessor was the fittest person to execute his office; she dwelt upon the danger of a motley cabinet; and she hinted that Walpole had agreed to carry through the House of Commons an augmentation to the civil list of £130,000. This settled the business; there was no more question of Sir Spencer Compton as prime minister; he got a peerage, the order of the Garter, and the presidency of the council; and the king re-appointed the old ministry.

The Jacobites, whom no series of failures could wholly discourage, had been sanguine in their hopes that the death of the first George would lead to a revolution, and eventually to a restoration; but at the critical moment they saw all these hopes vanish into thin air;

plored the servility, ignorance, and poor spirit of the English nobility and gentry, who, he said, were striving who should sell themselves at the best price to the new court, but were resolved to sell themselves at any price. Lockhart, who had been obliged to flee from Scotland, where some of his plotting had been discovered, declared that the project of himself and his friends returning to their country without a foreign army to back them was a hopeless one, that could only bring down ruin upon the cause and all that adhered to it. At the same moment the little beggared and vagabond court of the pretender was distracted with all kinds of intrigues, jealousies, and animosities; and the pretender himself had behaved so unfaithfully and so savagely to his wife Clementina, that that high-spirited woman

and the Earl of Strafford was obliged to confess to the pretender that the torrent was too strong for his friends to resist.' At the news of George I.'s death the pretender set out from Bologna, where he had been residing, and travelled rapidly across the Alps to Lorraine, whence he despatched a messenger to Bishop Atterbury, who was now residing at Paris, as a regular agent or minister of the Stuarts, and who, indisputably, was holding a correspondence with a desperate faction in England. The bishop, however, had small consolation or encouragement to offer to his master. Nor were the advices received from other Jacobite agents much more encouraging. Lord Orrery, in London, confessed that the number of discontented among the people was small; and he de

› Letters from Strafford to the pretender, dated June 21, 1727, published by Lord Mahon, from Stuart Papers, in Appendix to History of England from Peace of Utrecht.

had run away from him and shut herself up in a convent at Rome. Atterbury had been, and continued to be deeply involved in all the contemptible intrigues of the little Jacobite court, aiming at nothing less than

at that supreme voice in their councils which had once belonged to his friend and ally Bolingbroke. This Protestant prelate caballed with priests, monks, and mistresses; took part with the husband against the injured wife; overthrew the influence of the Earl of Mar and General Diland then, becoming jealous of Hay and Mur

lon;

ray, the pretender's new ministers, he took part with the wife against the husband, and reviled James as a selfish, dangerous, and incurable blockhead. He continued, however, to plot and cabal to the last, and died at Paris early in 1731, in the seventieth year of his age. Every man that joined the pretender became convinced of his woful incapacity, and that he ran a rapid race to misery and ruin. The volatile, debauched, but witty Duke of Wharton went abroad in the year 1726, attached himself to the pretender's party, and embraced, or pretended to embrace the Roman Catholic religion; and Lord North did the same. The latter nobleman soon left the jangling court in disgust, and entered the Spanish service, in which he died seven or eight years after. Wharton was sent to Madrid, in the time of Ripperda's mad schemes, to assist the Duke of Ormond in pressing for an invasion

and erecting works which they trusted would for ever cut off the communications of that glorious fortress with the mainland, if they did not some day enable them to strike the English banner from its pride of place. In short, they were constructing the memorable lines of San Roque, or the Campo, which ran right across the narrow sandy isthmus that connects the rock with the Andalusian main; and no remonstrances on the part of England could make Philip desist. Parliament re-assembled in the A.D. 1730. month of January, when his majesty declared that the peace of Europe was now firmly established by the treaty of Seville. On the 16th of February the opposition proposed their famous pension bill, which went to disable all persons from sitting in parliament who had any pension, or any offices held in trust for them from the crown, directly or indirectly; and which provided that every member on taking his seat should take an oath that he had no pension, gratuity, reward, office, or place; and that in case of his afterwards accepting anything, he should signify it to the house within fourteen days. Walpole, himself knowing how popular the bill was abroad, was prudently silent, and the bill was carried by a majority of 144 to 134. The odium of negativing it rested, therefore, with the lords, who threw it out after a long debate and a protest entered by twenty-six peers. It appears that this business widened a breach which had for some time been open in the friendship of the two brothers-in-law, Walpole and Townshend. Walpole did not hesitate to oppose the motion, or to describe the pension bill as tending to erect the house into a court of inquisition. During the whole of his administration, however, he left the bill, which was the most popularity-gaining measure of the opposition, to be rejected by the lords. As soon as the parliament had risen, Lord Townshend resigned, after a quarrel with Walpole, in which they almost came to blows. Townshend might have planted many a thorn in Walpole's side if he had gone into opposition; but he retired quietly to a country life, devoted himself to farming, and did more good to England by introducing the cultivation of the turnip from Germany than he could ever have done as one of "the patriots." Mr. William Stanhope, who had been created Earl of Harrington as a reward for the treaty of Seville, was now appointed secretary of state; Henry Pelham was made secretary at war, and the privy seal was given to Sir Spencer Compton, now Earl of Wilmington. The ascendency of Walpole was absolute; and in peace abroad and growing prosperity at home, the nation saw little cause to repine at it. The good which Walpole did might certainly in many instances have been done in a higher and nobler manner; but,

again, we must remember the lowness and the baseness of the means he had at his disposal. Regardless of popular prejudices, he cemented our alliance with France; and he wisely overlooked many little squabbles which, under a less pacific minister, might have cost both nations much blood and treasure. He bore with the capricious insolence of the King of Spain, and he concluded an amicable treaty with the emperor. When parliament met again our A.D. 1731. foreign policy was once more severely criticized by Sir William Wyndham and those who acted with him, and the old cry was repeated, somewhat out of season, that we were making ruinous treaties, solely on account of Hanover, that millstone hung to the neck of England to sink her for ever. Pulteney, formerly the bosom friend of Walpole, joined in these attacks; and he not only continued to write in the Craftsman with Bolingbroke, but he also maintained a very questionable correspondence with the ministers of the foreign powers that were not quite pleased with the English cabinet. Parliament was prorogued in the month of May, and little occurred during the remainder of the year worthy of notice, unless it be a visit paid in the autumn to England by the Duke of Lorraine, who was destined to become the consort of Maria Theresa, the emperor's only daughter, and who on this visit was deeply impressed with the wealth and prosperity of the country, and the kindness and courteousness of the English people. At this moment public credit seemed fully and firmly established, agriculture was improving, and our foreign trade was extending in every direction. In every sea then known was seen the busy flag of England, and her colonies were making prodigious strides from infancy to manhood.

A.D. 1732.

To the parliament, which met in January, George expressed his satisfaction at the general tranquillity, the happy effect of their zeal, attachment, and resolution. On the 1st of June George closed the session, informing the houses that he had determined to visit his German states, and to leave the queen regent as before. During his residence at Hanover the decree of the pragmatic sanction was ratified and confirmed by the diet of the empire, notwithstanding the opposition and protests of the Electors of Saxony, Bavaria, and the Palatinate, who each and all pretended to some share of the emperor's inheritance, in default of heirs male of his own body.

missioners of the two crowns had been delayed, and that he could give no perfect account of their proceedings. The fact was, the Spanish court pretended that all or most of these British merchants had been engaged in an illicit trade to the Spanish main, and, according to their principle, nearly all trade, except that in negroes licensed by the Assiento, was smuggling. Walpole was reviled for not insisting upon immediate satisfaction, and for not throwing open the trade of the South American continent; but these were things not to be done without a war. The pension bill and a standing army were again debated with the same success as before. The sinkingfund, established by Walpole and Stanhope, had been kept sacred for nearly ten years, or during the whole reign of George I.; but since the accession of his son various encroachments had been made upon it, and now Walpole proposed to take half a million from it for the service of the current year. Sir John Barnard, member for London, and a practical economist and financier, represented that such a fund ought never to be turned from its original purpose of paying off debts, except in cases of extreme emergency; that to ease ourselves by loading our posterity is a poor, short-sighted expedient, the authors of which must expect the curses of posterity. Walpole, however, declared that if he were not allowed to take this half million from the sinking-fund, he must move for a land-tax of two shillings in the pound: and this argument, addressed to the purses of country gentlemen and great landed proprietors, had such an effect that his original proposal was presently carried in the commons by a majority of 110! The practice of alienating the sinking-fund having been thus once sanctioned by parliament, was afterwards continued without intermission. Walpole now produced his famous EXCISE SCHEME. The house having resolved itself into a committee, to deliberate upon the best methods for securing and improving the duties and revenues charged upon tobacco and wines, all the papers and accounts relating to these duties were called for, and the commissioners of customs and excise were ordered to attend the house. A system of fraud and evasion was thus laid bare, and the complication, obscurity, and uncertainty of the accounts were made evident. The chief articles subjected to the excise duties were malt, salt, and the materials used in the distilleries, and the duties produced at this time somewhat above £3,000,000 per In the midst of a universal storm and a deluge of pamphlets and broadsides, which represented that everything was to be taxed, that the people were to be ground to dust in order that the constitution might be overthrown and a tyranny established, Walpole, on the 14th of

annum.

March, broached his design in a temperate speech. He proposed that the tobacco duty should be brought under the laws of excise, and that the excise laws themselves should be remodelled and improved. He also proposed a reduction in the duty, making it 4d., instead of sixpence and one-third of a penny. He suggested that the same rules might be afterwards applied to the duty upon wine, and that a system of bonding or warehousing for re-exportation might be instituted, "which," said Walpole, "will tend to make London a free port, and, by consequence, the market of the world!" By the increase of trade and of money thus levied, the land-tax, he said, might eventually be altogether abolished.

The tempting hope of the total abolition of the land-tax was calculated to dazzle the eyes of the country gentlemen; and the proffered system of bonding or warehousing was an immense advantage to the merchant, and, in reality, calculate to make England the great porto franco of the world; yet the vehemence of opposition was not softened. Wyndham declared, that in all countries excises of every kind were looked upon as badges of slavery, and he instituted a comparison between the ministers of the day and the rapacious favourites of Henry VII., Empson and Dudley, who, he said, "had the misfortune to outlive their master, and his son, as soon as he came to the throne, took off both their heads!" At two o'clock in the morning, when the debate had lasted thirteen hours, the house divided on the resolutions, when the minister found 266 for his scheme, and 205 against it. He was little accustomed to such a large minority; and his good humour was not increased on his leaving the house, for a noisy mob, that had beset the doors during the debate, seized him by the cloak, and might have done him some bodily mischief but for the interference of Mr. Pelham. On the 16th of March, when the report of the committee was brought up, the debate was resumed with increased acrimony. Upon a division, however, Walpole had still a majority of sixty, or 249 to 189. The popular ferment was as great as it had been on the 14th. On the 4th of April the bill founded on the report of the committee was read a first time, and, after a long debate, a motion, that it should be read a second time on that day se'nnight, was carried by a majority of only thirtysix: and the next day, when Walpole moved that the bill should be printed and distributed to the members of the house, he carried his point by a majority of only sixteen. The lord-mayor of London, however, contrived to obtain a copy of the bill, and under his direction the common council drew up a violent petition against it. Similar petitions were sent up from Nottingham, Coventry, and other inland towns; and "the public."