66 ill effect of the late calamity retrieved. Many proprietors, however, of the redeemable annuities were highly dissatisfied; on one occasion they thronged into the lobby, tumultuously calling on each member as he passed, and holding out a paper with the words. Pray do "justice to the Annuitants who lent their money on "Parliamentary security!" It was found necessary to read the Riot Act, and difficult to disperse the crowd, many of them exclaiming as they went, "You first pick "our pockets, and then send us to gaol for complaining!" Nor did the motives and conduct of Walpole escape censure; he was long afterwards accused in the Craftsman of having made a collusive bargain with the Bank, and concerted his public measures with a view to his personal enrichment. Coxe frankly owns that he will not attempt to justify Sir Robert in every particular of these transactions*; but as to the main facts his defence seems quite satisfactory, and the Minister quite innocent; nor should it ever be forgotten, to the honour of Walpole, that he stepped forward at a most perilous and perplexing crisis, and that it was he who stood between the people and bankruptcy, between the King and sedition. Throughout all these transactions there is nothing more remarkable than the national despondency and common forebodings of disasters for the future. For forty years after the accession of the House of Hanover our liberties were constantly pronounced on the very brink of extinction. After the South Sea year the country no less resounded with prophecies of "a sinking state" and "irre"trievable ruin." Yet how little in either case has the event tallied with the expectation! If our Constitution has changed, it has certainly not been from any diminution of popular control. If our Commerce has changed, it has only been by swelling to a size and extent such as our forefathers, in their wildest speculations, never dreamed. Were it not beneath the dignity of History, I might indulge a conjecture, what would have been the feelings of Walpole or of Stanhope, had he some morning, at breakfast perhaps been thus addressed by a projector or a prophet: "With that vapour which you see * Memoirs, vol. i. p. 158. 66 "rising from the tea-urn will I do the work of hundreds "of thousands of men.-I will ride without horses.-I "will sail against wind and tide.—I will carry heavier "burthens than the camel, and yet my speed shall be "swifter than the bird's! With another such vapour "will I fill vast globes, which you shall see arise from "the earth, and bear men up into the bosom of the clouds! "With these and other such discoveries, shall you attain a new era of wealth, prosperity, and knowledge. Cul"tivation shall spread beyond the fruitful valleys, up "into the chalk or clay, and drive sterility to the very "summits of the bleakest fells! The single towns of "Liverpool and Manchester shall engross more trade and "business than now the whole of England. You shall "have a hundred millions of Indians for your subjects. "Your yearly revenue shall be greater than the whole principal of your present, which you call enormous and "intolerable debt." Had any seer thus spoken, would the Minister have withheld his indignation from the audacious impostor, or would not Bedlam have received the poor deluded wretch? Yet have all these things been fulfilled to the letter, and the widest prospect of national wealth, which the South Sea Directors ever held out in the very hey-day of their hopes, has been far -outstripped by the reality! 66 - very far But should these mighty changes afford us unmixed exultation? Have not the tares grown up thickly with the corn? The frightful abuses of the Factory Systemperhaps also the necessary evils of that system under any regulation, have raised up gaunt poverty side by side with overgrown wealth a race of men bound to their superiors by no other tie than wages and hire - with no mutual and hereditary feelings of kindness—too rarely either provident in prosperity or patient in distress. Instead of the healthy and invigorating pursuits of agriculture, their unwholesome labours often tend only to dwarf the body and depress the mind. Behold in the pale and blear-eyed mechanic, in the feverish and stunted factory child, the descendants of the hardy and joyous English yeomen! No longer dwelling on the free hillside, but cooped up in noisome dens and wrapt in the smoke of a thousand manufactories, the sun and air that come to all, come not to them. Ready to sell their skill to the highest bidder, they are transferred without care and reflection from master to master, and from mill to mill. To their ever-growing numbers the religious provision of the Church has proved utterly inadequate, and in some cases their want of spiritual food has been supplied by the rankest poison. Through the kind exertions of agitators they have sometimes been made to read just enough to see objections against all religion and all government, and not enough to see those objections triumphantly refuted. God forbid that this description should apply to all! But does it not apply to more than a few? And is such a state of things free from grievous misery? Is it free from appalling danger? The South Sea Scheme, and the consequent exasperation throughout the country, seemed to render a Dissolution of Parliament a most perilous venture, and yet its septennial period was near at hand. Hence was suggested a remedy far worse than the danger—an idea of obtaining another special prolongation of the term; and it is said that of the King's chief advisers, this idea was opposed by Sunderland, but advised by Walpole. This is reported by Mr. St. John Brodrick*, nephew to Lord Midleton, who had just, as he tells us, carried his election at Beralston through Walpole's influence, and was not therefore likely to misrepresent his opinions; yet it seems difficult to believe that so cool and cautious a statesman should have supported this violent and unconstitutional scheme. Be this as it may, the scheme, if ever entertained, was soon relinquished; the Parliament met again for a very short and unimportant Session, in the winter of 1721, and was dissolved in the March following. The country was then restored to quiet, and the new elections, like the last, gave a large and overwhelming majority to the party in power. In less than three weeks after the elections, on the 19th of April, died the Earl of Sunderland, so suddenly that poison was rumoured, but his body being opened the surgeons discovered a disease in the heart. His cha *To Lord Midleton, June 10. 1721. Lord Orrery repeats a report to just the contrary effect, Oct. 28. 1721. See Appendix. † See the medical certificate in Boyer's Polit. State, vol. xxiii. p. 453. racter I have elsewhere endeavoured to portray, and it only remains for me to touch upon a charge connected with the last year of his life. He is suspected by a contemporary of having "entered into such correspondence "and designs as would have been fatal to himself or to "the public "* in plain words, intrigues with the Pre tender. Certain it is that at the time the Jacobites had strong hopes of gaining him; but their most secret correspondence, so far as I have seen it, in the Stuart Papers, does not go beyond hopes, rumours, and loose expressionst and finally, when Mr. Lockhart, a leader of their party in Scotland, distinctly applied to James, at the eve of the new elections, to know how far their support should be given to any friend of Sunderland, the Chevalier answers, January 31. 1722, "It is very true "that Sunderland has to some people made of late a "show of wishing me well; but I have never heard directly from him myself, and have been far from "having any particular proof of his sincerity." This, in fact, appears the upshot of the whole affair; and it is far from improbable that the overtures of Sunderland may have been to win over some leading Tories to his party, and not to attach himself to theirs. The hopes of his support were, perhaps, just as groundless as when Atterbury, four years afterwards, drew up an elaborate argument to prove that Walpole intended to restore the Stuarts whenever George the First should die! § 66 But further still, there seems great reason to believe that however Sunderland may have tampered with the Jacobites for the object of obtaining their support, he did not take a single step without the knowledge and approval of his sovereign. After his death the Regent of France, speaking to the English Minister at Paris, expressed his suspicion that Sunderland had intrigued with the Pretender's party, and stated some facts in corroboration of the charge. This was accordingly communicated to Lord Carteret as Secretary of State; but Car * Tindal's Hist. vol. vii. p. 450. James to Mr. Menzies, July 20. 1721. Lord Orrery to James, October 28. 1721. See Appendix. Lockhart's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 74. See this paper in Coxe's Walpole, vol. ii. p. 226. 66 teret's answer was as follows:- "A thousand thanks for your private letter, which affords me the means of obviating any calumny against the memory of a person "who will be always dear to me. I have shown it to the King, who is entirely satisfied with it."* Lord Sunderland, as I have stated, died on the 19th of April. The father very speedily followed the son-in-law; and England lost one of her noblest worthies in John, Duke of Marlborough. A paralytic attack in 1716 had impaired his commanding mind, and he expired on the 16th of June in this year. His achievements do not fall within my limits, and his character seems rather to belong to the historians of another period. Let them endeavour to delineate his vast and various abilities that genius which saw humbled before it the proudest Mareschals of France · that serenity of temper which enabled him patiently to bear, and bearing to overcome, all the obstinacy of the Dutch Deputies, and all the slowness of the German Generals - those powers of combination so provident of failure, and so careful of details that it might almost be said of him that before he gave any battle he had already won it! Let them describe him great in council as in arms, not always righteous in his ends, but ever mighty in his means! The Duke left his widow in possession of enormous wealth, insomuch that she was able in some degree to control the public loans and affect the rate of interest.† This wealth-or, as they declared, her personal charms even at the mature age of sixty-two-soon attracted several suitors around her, especially the Duke of Somerset and Lord Coningsby. Their letters are still preserved at Blenheim. Coningsby writes like a man bewildered with the most passionate love: "To my dearest, dearest "Lady Marlborough alone I could open the inmost thoughts "of my loaded heart, and by her exalted wisdom find re"lief!...... Whither to go or how to dispose of a life * Sir Luke Schaub to Lord Carteret, June 1. 8722. Lord Carteret's answer, June 21. 1722. Coxe's Collections, vol. lii. This volume contains several other proofs to the same effect; but the one I have given above seems decisive. † Robert Walpole to Lord Townshend, August 30. 1723. See also Coxe's Life of Marlborough, vol. vi. p. 387. |