the ruin of families. One of these wretches, named Keith, had gained a kind of pre-eminence of infamy. On being told that there was a scheme on foot to stop his lucrative traffic, he declared, with many oaths, that he would still be revenged of the Bishops; that he would

buy a piece of ground and outbury them!*

One of the crying evils of this system having come prominently before the House of Peers on a case of Appeal, Lord Bath moved that the framing of a legislative remedy should be referred to the twelve Judges. The Bill, however, which they brought in proved to be fraught with difficulties and defects. The Lord Chancellor was compelled to remould it, and then with parental fondness adopted the bantling as his own. It enacted that banns for every marriage should be for three successive Sundays published in the parish church-that licences, dispensing with banns, but still requiring the marriage in the parish church, should not be granted to a minor without the consent of the parent or the guardian-that the power of granting special licences to perform the ceremony at any place or any hour should still be reserved to the Archbishop, but guarded from abuse by his discretion, and from frequency by a heavy payment in each case that any marriage solemnized contrary to the provisions of this law should be null and void-and that the person solemnizing it should be liable to transportation for seven years. Lord Hardwicke's Bill (for so it was now termed) passed the House of Peers after a faint opposition from the Duke of Bedford, but in the Commons encountered a more formidable adversary in Mr. Fox, whose zeal in opposing it was quickened, perhaps, by the recollection of his own clandestine marriage with Lady Caroline Lennox, eldest daughter of the Duke of Richmond.† Many others joined in the outcry without sharing the motive. And, as too often happens in our history, predictions which appear most extravagant after the result were thought most judicious before it. Some members feared lest all the wealth of the country should by constant intermarriages be confined

* Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 295. Keith used to marry on an average 6,000 couples every year (Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 19.). † Coxe's Pelham, vol. ii. p. 269.

1753.

THE MARRIAGE ACT.

27

to a small knot of grasping families. Others declared that the checks and delays imposed upon the marriage ceremony would soon tend to its disuse, and that the bulk of the people would have only an illegitimate posterity. Fox went even further; he seems to have dreaded that they would have no posterity at all! "It will endanger," he said, our very existence, for without a "continual supply of industrious and laborious poor no "nation can long exist, which supply can be got only by promoting marriage among such people."*

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A more lively attack upon the Bill was made in the same debate by Charles Townshend, a young man now first rising into public notice. He was second son of Lord Townshend, a grandson of the Secretary of State under George the First, and a grand-nephew of the Duke of Newcastle. Though at this time but twenty-eight years of age he had already distinguished himself in office at the Board of Trade. "His figure," says Horace Walpole, was tall and advantageous, his action vehe"ment, his voice loud,-his laugh louder." In eloquence he gradually rose to a high and, to the period of his untimely end, still growing renown. His application was great, his ambition unbounded. No man had more quickness of wit, or less reserve in displaying it, whether in familiar conversation or public debate. But it was not free from that drawback by which great wit is so commonly attended, a fickleness and unsteadiness of purpose, as rather attracted by the varying gleams upon the surface than held fast by the settled foundations of truth and conviction.

In this debate upon the Marriage Bill Charles Townshend drew a picture, with more humour than discretion, of himself and his own situation, as the younger son of a capricious father, who had already debarred him from one advantageous match. "Are new shackles to be forged," said he, "to keep young men of abilities from rising to a "level with their elder brothers?"-I may remark, in passing, that the Bill proved no such obstruction in the way of Townshend's own career. Only a year afterwards

*Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 69.

† Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 296.

he espoused a wealthy Dowager from the House of Buccleuch - the Countess of Dalkeith.

The Bill finally passed, but not without much unseemly recrimination between two official colleagues—the Secretary at War and the Lord High Chancellor. Fox had become so far heated by his own opposition to the measure as to declaim once or twice against the chicanery and jargon of lawyers, and against the pride of their Mufti -by which term he hinted at Hardwicke. He afterwards showed a willingness to recall or soften these unguarded expressions. But Hardwicke, haughty with conscious merit, and the long possession of power, disdained such tardy repentance. He seized the opportunity when the Bill returned from the Commons with some amendments to pour forth almost by name- a bitter philippic against Fox. "For my part," he cried, "I despise the invective, I despise the apology, and I reject "the adulation!". Fox was not present, having gone that evening with some ladies to Vauxhall. But he was there informed what had passed, when, breaking from his fair companions, and gathering around him a little circle of young Members of Parliament and others, he told them, with great warmth, that he wished the Session had continued only a fortnight longer, as he would then have made ample returns to the Lord Chancellor's speech.*

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But the business of the Session was already concluded, and on the very next day (June 7th) the Parliament was prorogued by the King in person. It may deserve notice, as a singularity of these times, that no sooner had His Majesty left the Throne than a female Quaker, who was present to see the show, commenced a sermon on the vanity of dress, and was suffered to preach a full half hour.t

It would be unjust, however, to let pass this Session without commemorating the signal service it afforded to Art, Learning, and Science by the foundation of the BRITISH MUSEUM. Three collections already existing were now blended into one - first the COTTONIAN, which

* Rev. Dr. Birch to the Hon. P. Yorke, June 9. 1753. Hardwicke Papers.

Gentleman's Magazine, July 1753.

1753.

THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

29

had been formed by a laborious antiquary, Sir Robert Cotton, in the reign of Charles the First, and been purchased by the Crown in the reign of Anne-secondly the SLOANE, due to the taste and care of Sir Hans Sloane, an eminent physician, and President of the Royal Society, who, dying in January 1753, bequeathed his rarities of every kind to the nation, on the payment, if agreed to, of 20,000l. to his heirs thirdly, the HARLEIAN, which had amused and dignified the leisure of Lord Treasurer Oxford, and which his grand-daughter, the Duchess of Portland, now offered to the public for 10,0007., a sum like that claimed by Sir Hans, far below the real value of the objects. A suitable repository for these combined collections was found in Montagu House, the Duke of Montagu having died in 1749, without male heirs, and his mansion being offered for sale. Pelham, much to his honour, showed himself zealous in promoting the proposal, while another Member of Parliament-a professed friend of letters - Horace Walpole-deemed it too trifling for even the slightest mention in his ponderous Memoirs. The necessary sums were raised by lotteries under an Act of Parliament, and the Museum thus formed has ever since continued to thrive and grow sometimes by accessions liable to censure, as by the Elgin spoils of Athens- more frequently by well-directed private skill and public munificence. Its administration, according to the original Act, was vested in certain Trustees, partly official, partly representing the families of the founders, and partly elected; a system which still continues, and which, provided due care be always shown in the elections, will probably be found, upon the whole, more satisfactory than any other.

In this year another life-but as it proved, the lastfell a sacrifice to the Stuart cause; it was Lochiel's brother, Dr. Archibald Cameron's. His learning, his humanity, the excellence, in all respects, of his private character, were acknowledged even by his enemies. He had come from the Continent in disguise, to recover a sum of money which Prince Charles had left behind in Moidart at his embarkation. But the Government suspected, and not unreasonably, some deeper motive to his journey-a conspiracy among the Jacobites at home-or

a mission from the King of Prussia. Cameron was discovered, seized, and imprisoned in the Tower; then brought to trial, and condemned to death under his previous attainder. On the 7th of June he was hanged at Tyburn. He met his fate as became the brother of Lochiel-with fortitude and courage, blended with a tender concern and affection for his family. For himself, the ignominy of Tyburn, then usually reserved for the lowest malefactors, seemed to be his only pang: he looked with a steady eye on the other cruel appurtenances of a traitor's doom in that age—on the dresser who stood prepared to rip open his body-on the fire ready kindled to burn his bowels.*

The next Session was the seventh, and of course the last, of this Parliament. Its proceedings were few, and these mainly directed to the approaching Dissolution. Sir John Barnard moved, but without success, to repeal the Act requiring electors to take the Bribery Oath, if demanded, before they are admitted to poll; "for," said Sir John, "experience shows that such oaths are of no "avail; in imposing them, we do not check the guilt of corruption; we only superadd the guilt of perjury." A further trial of fourscore years has fully confirmed the truth of these remarks; yet an oath against bribery bears an aspect so fair and plausible that it still retains its hold upon the Legislature and its place in the Statute Book.

This calm and languid course of public business was suddenly broken through by an event equally unexpected and important-the death of the Prime Minister. Mr. Pelham was but sixty years of age, and of a florid healthy constitution. But while his office precluded exercise, his habits wanted temperance. Eating immoderately as he used at dinner, he contracted a scorbutic disorder, for which in the preceding summer he had gone to bathe at Scarborough. But the sea-air had sharpened his appetite, and his friends whom he went to visit by the way pampered it. He returned worse than he went, and suffered from a succession of boils and fevers; nevertheless, in the winter he was thought completely recovered. On the 7th of January he wrote to his brother: "I am

* H. Walpole to Sir H. Mann, June 12. 1758.