CHAPTER XVI. FROM the resignation of Lord Townshend the ascendency of Walpole was absolute and uncontrolled, and confirmed by universal peace abroad, by growing prosperity at home. His system of negotiations was completed by the second treaty of Vienna, signed in March, 1731, and stipulating that the Emperor should abolish the Ostend Company, secure the succession of Don Carlos to Parma and Tuscany, and admit the Spanish troops into the Italian fortresses. England, on her part, was to guarantee the Pragmatic Sanction, on the understanding that the young heiress should not be given in marriage to a Prince of the House of Bourbon, or of any other so powerful as to endanger the balance of power.* At home, various measures of improvement and reform were introduced about this time. An excellent law was passed, that all proceedings of courts of justice should be in the English instead of the Latin language. "Our prayers," said the Duke of Argyle, "are in our native tongue, that 'they may be intelligible; and why should not the "laws wherein our lives and properties are concerned be 66 so for the same reason?" The charter of the East India Company was renewed on prudent and profitable terms. Some infamous malversation was detected in 66 *This treaty was greatly promoted by the influence of Prince Eugene. He said to Lord Waldegrave: - "Je n'ai jamais eu si peu "de plaisir de ma vie dans les apparences d'une guerre. 66 "Il n'y a pas assez de sujet pour faire tuer un poulet!" Lord Waldegrave to Lord Townshend, March 18. 1730. Coxe's House of Austria, vol. iii. † Most of the lawyers were greatly opposed to the change. Lord Raymond, in order to throw difficulties in the way of it, said, that if the Bill passed the law must likewise be translated into Welsh, since many in Wales understood no English. (Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 861.) The great Yorkshire petition on this subject complained that "the "number of attorneys is excessive." (Ib. p. 844.) See Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 326. 66 the Charitable Corporation, which had been formed for the relief of the industrious poor, by assisting them with small sums of money at legal interest; but which, under this colour, sometimes received ten per cent., and advanced large sums on goods bought on credit by fraudulent speculators. Penalties were now inflicted on the criminals, and Sir Robert Sutton, the late ambassador at Paris, being concerned in these practices, was expelled the House. An inquiry into the Public Prisons of London laid bare a frightful system of abuses; we find the Wardens conniving at the escape of rich prisoners, and subjecting the poor ones who could not pay heavy fines to every kind of insult, oppression, and want. The report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons is full of such cases: - thus one Captain Mac Pheadris, having refused to pay some exorbitant fees, "had irons 'put upon his legs, which were too little, so that, in putting them on, his legs were like to have been "broken. He was dragged away to the dungeon, "where he lay, without a bed, loaded with irons, so close “rivetted that they kept him in continual torture, and "mortified his legs." From such usage the prisoner became lame and nearly blind; he had petitioned the judges, who, as we are told, "after several meetings and a full hearing," agreed to reprimand the gaoler, but decided, with infinite wisdom, that "it being out of Term, they could not give the prisoner any relief or satisfac"tion!"* ... Another report declares that "the Com"mittee saw in the women's sick ward many miserable "objects lying, without beds, on the floor, perishing with "extreme want; and in the men's sick ward yet much worse. ... On the giving food to these poor wretches, (though it was done with the utmost caution, they "being only allowed at first the smallest quantities, and "that of liquid nourishment,) one died; the vessels of "his stomach were so disordered and contracted, for "want of use, that they were totally incapable of per"forming their office, and the unhappy creature perished "about the time of digestion. Upon his body a coroner's 66 66 66 * First Report of the Select Committee, presented February 25. 1729. 66 "inquest sat, (a thing which, though required by law to "be always done, has, for many years, been scandal"ously omitted in this gaol,) and the jury found that he "died of want. Those who were not so far gone, on proper nourishment given them, recovered, so that not "above nine have died since the 25th of March last, the day the Committee first met there, though, before, a day "seldom passed without a death; and, upon the advanc"ing of the Spring, not less than eight or ten usually "died every twenty-four hours.” * 66 Such atrocities in a civilised country must fill every mind with horror, and it is still more painful to reflect that for very many years, perhaps, they may have prevailed without redress. Thus, for example, in the Session of 1725 I find a petition from poor insolvent debtors in the gaol of Liverpool, declaring themselves "reduced to a starving condition, having only straw and "water at the courtesy of the sergeant."† How often may not the cry of such unhappy men have gone forth and remained unheeded! How still more frequently may not their sufferings have been borne in constrained or despairing silence! The benevolent exertions of Howard, (whom that family, fertile though it be in honours, might be proud to claim as their kinsman,) and still more the gradual diffusion of compassionate and Christian principles, have, we may hope, utterly rooted out from amongst us any such flagrant abuses at the present time. Yet let us not imagine that there is no longer any tyranny to punish, any thraldom to relieve. Let not the Legislature be weary in well doing! Let them turn a merciful eye not merely to the dungeon but to the factory, not merely to the suffering and perhaps guilty man but to the helpless and certainly unoffending child! For my part I firmly rely on the progressive march of humanity. In a barbarous age it was confined to men of our country. In a half-barbarous age it was confined to men of our religion. Within our own times it extended only to men of our colour. But as time shall roll on, I am persuaded that it will not be limited even to our kind; that we shall feel how much the brute * Second Report, presented May 14. 1729. creation also is entitled to our sympathy and kindness, and that any needless or wanton suffering inflicted upon them will on every occasion arouse and be restrained by the public indignation and disgust. From this digression I return to the government of Walpole. To detect and punish the cruelties of gaolers was undoubtedly a merit in any administration, and a happy consequence of tranquillity and leisure. In financial affairs, also, there was much cause for congratulation; the taxes were light, the trade thriving; the debt at least not increasing, and the predictions of impending ruin rather less common than usual. In vain did Lord Bathurst declare with awful forebodings, that one of our best mathematicians has foretold, that if ever 'England raises above five millions in a year it will "infallibly be exhausted in a few years! For once, 66 66 So the people did not mistake gloom and melancholy for depth of thought. In short, looking to the state of the country, every thing seemed prosperous, looking to the state of the Cabinet, everything submissive. brilliant appeared the fortune of Walpole at this period, that an old Scotch Secretary of State in the time of William, named Johnston, having been on a visit to his native country, and seeing the state of affairs at his return, could not forbear from earnestly asking the Minister, "What can you have done, Sir, to God Almighty "to make him so much your friend?”† The two Secretaries of State were now Lord Harrington and the Duke of Newcastle-men of very opposite characters. Harrington, descended from a brother of the first Lord Chesterfield, was a man of very high diplomatic, but no Parliamentary, talents. He had skill and sagacity to unravel any negotiation, however perplexed, not readiness and eloquence to defend it. The observation of a Portuguese Minister, that "Lord Har"rington was not accustomed to interrupt those who "spoke to him," paints his even and observing temper. *See Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 537. † Mr. Delafaye to Lord Waldegrave, Oct. 15. 1781. 66 Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 332. Thus also Campo Raso says of him:Tenia el talento de unir la mayor actividad con el exterior menos vivo." (Coment. vol. i. p. 35.) 66 An historian, writing shortly after his death, declares that "such was his moderation, good sense, and integrity, "that he was not considered as a party man, and had few 66 or no personal enemies."* Nor, indeed, would it be easy, even from the party libels of the time, to glean any invective against him. By great sagacity he had overcome great obstacles in the way of his advancement. The King disliked him on account of a Memorial written in the hand of his elder brother, Charles Stanhope, presented to George the First by Lord Sunderland, and containing some bitter reflections on the Prince of Wales. On coming to the throne, George the Second absolutely. refused to employ the elder brother, and could only, by degrees, be reconciled to the younger. Walpole had also a prejudice against him, on account of his family; for though Sir Robert had professed a thorough reconciliation and friendship with Lord Stanhope, in 1720, he never forgave any contest for power, and his biographer informs us, that "he had taken an aversion to the very "name." Yet the prudence of Harrington surmounted all these difficulties, and raised him from a narrow fortune to the very highest offices. Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, born in 1694, was a nephew of the last Duke of Newcastle of the Holles family: he inherited its vast estates, of above 30,000l. a year, and the title was revived in his favour by George the First. From a very early age he applied to public life, and attached himself to the Whig party. When that party was rent asunder by the schism of 1717, Newcastle, though brother-in-law of Townshend, took the side of Stanhope, and accepted the office of Lord Chamberlain. But after the deaths of Stanhope and Sunderland he formed the closest connection with Townshend and the Walpoles. Through their influence he became Secretary of State in the place of Carteret; and though no *Tindal's Hist. vol. viii. p. 50. † Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 331. The memorial presented to George the First is distorted and exaggerated by Horace Walpole, more suo, until it becomes an incredible proposal of Lord Berkeley, First Lord of the Admiralty, to kidnap the Prince of Wales and convey him to America! Such fables were too common with this writer in his latter years. See Works, vol. iv. p. 289. |