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the Crown.

ASCENDANCY OF THE COMMONS.

CII. XIV.

in dispute between the Crown and the people were now finally determined. The absolute dominion over the public revenue, the power of dismissing the ministers of justice, the royal franchise of erecting new courts of justice, all of which were, in theory, as they had proved by fatal experience, incompatible with any regular system of liberty, were wholly taken away. The new monarchy was the creature of Parliament. Prerogatives of The rights and privileges of the monarch were defined; and all the vague, undefinable, absolute power which had been exercised by former princes was vested in the Parliament, the most important power of all, without which none of the other powers could work-the right of taxation -being claimed exclusively by the representatives of the third estate. It was obvious therefore, that if the Crown was to possess any substantial share of power under the new dispensation, it was to be acquired only by influence in the House of Commors. Nor was this a desperate chance. Circumscribed in authority, and impaired in prerogative, the King still retained one privilege intact, and this was the most valuable of all. He was still the fountain of honour, and still had the distribution of offices and rewards. All the considerable preferments, and a large proportion of the lower stations in the Church; all the lucrative and dignified offices of the magistracy; all political employments, from that of the Lord High Treasurer to that of a tide-waiter, were absolutely at his disposal.

Parliamentary corruption introduced by

This potent engine of patronage, increasing yearly in strength, was brought to bear upon the House of Commons, and soon promised Walpole. to recover back to the Crown all and more than all that it had lost. The process, though a simple one, was not for some time reduced to the regular system which it afterwards became. Sir Robert Walpole was the first minister who carried

CH. XIV.

PARLIAMENTARY CORRUPTION.

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on the King's government by means of parliamentary corruption. He troubled himself little about any niceties or intricacies of management, but went straight to the point. He bought the member with a place; or, if he only wanted a vote, he bought it with money taken from the Secret Service Fund. The Duke of Newcastle extended and organised the system so successfully, that by its operation alone, in the absence of every other qualification for power, he became, for some years, the dictator of the administration. His plan was to buy up the small constituencies; and, at one time, he was said to have farmed, in this manner, one-third of the House of Commons. Government, by means of parliamentary corruption, took its rise soon after the Revolution, and began to decline after the American war. It was

made by a skilful minister subservient to the maintenance of the Protestant succession,* and it enabled George the Third, during the first fifteen years of his reign, to rule with more absolute power than any monarch since Elizabeth; but it brought the country to the verge of ruin.

irreligion.

Without religion, without any sense of public duty, the people of this age were almost equally Evil results of destitute of common morality. Among the higher classes, indeed, the public outrages on decency which had been habitually perpetrated by the Buckinghams, the Rochesters and the Sedleys, were no longer tolerated. The callous impudence of vice, which we find displayed in the comedy of the Restoration, hardly survived the Stuarts; and the glorious gallery of Whitehall exhibited for the last time harlots toying, French boys warbling love-songs, and gamesters crowding round the faro table, on that memorable Sabbath evening † when the merry

* Sir Robert Walpole said that he was obliged to pay members for voting according to their

consciences.

Evelyn's Memoirs, vol. i.

p. 685.

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IMMORALITY OF THE PEOPLE.

CH. XIV.

monarch quitted for ever the vanities of a world which he left more wicked than he found it.

Immorality of the people.

It is not to be inferred, however, because vice was less openly avowed, that manners had undergone any substantial amendment. The depravity was too widely spread, and had penetrated too deep, for a speedy cure. It could only be said that it was a favourable symptom when some regard to outward decency began to be manifested. It was something gained, when the grossest of Wycherly's and Centlivre's comedies were withdrawn from the stage, and when Mrs. Behn's and Mrs. Heywood's novels were no longer generally read. Royal mistresses still occupied a high position at Court; but lord high chancellors and generalissimos no longer thought such a position a desirable preferment for their sisters and daughters. The courtiers of George the First were not expected to accompany him to the levees of the Duchess of Kendal, nor were the manners of the Countess of Suffolk, like the manners of the Countess of Castlemaine, those of the most degraded of her unhappy class. It was true, that a maid of honour would sometimes make a slip; and with so little scandal, that the offspring was openly christened by the name of the heir apparent. But I doubt whether even Frederick Prince of Wales, or his household, would have thought it a morning's amusement to dissect the still-born offspring of a lady of the Court. To this extent, the bad example set by the highest person in the social scale was mitigated, during the reigns of George the First and Second.

*

* Evelyn's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 685.

† Miss Vane, a maid of honour, was confined in the palace, and the infant was christened Fitz-Frederick Vane; but

the paternity so implied was disputed by Lord Harrington and by Lord Hervey himself.HERVEY'S Memoirs.

This was a freak of Charles the Second.-PEPYS's Memoirs.

CH. XIV.

MEN OF FASHION.

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The man of fashion of this period was a compound of effeminacy and affectation. He painted Effeminacy of and perfumed like a woman. His toilet men of fashion. occupied a great proportion of his time; his dress was of the most costly materials, and the most fantastic patterns. Silks and brocades, embroidery, gold-lace and jewellery, adorned his person, both in morning and evening costume. He seldom stirred abroad on foot, except to take a turn in the Mall; and if he had to cross the street only from his lodging to a tavern, he was conveyed in a chair. Gaming was his chief employment; gallantry occupied the hours. which could be spared from dress and play. He had made the grand tour, and consequently knew the world. Of books he knew little or nothing. Men of education he called 'prigs' and 'pedants.' The only literature which he cultivated was plays, novels, lampoons, or tracts in ridicule of religion.

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Such were the beaux and fribbles of the time of Anne and of the Hanover succession. The Two classes of reader who would know more of the man- men of fashion. ners and conversation of this class, will find their affectation and ignorance, their profligacy, insolence, and inanity, sketched, without exaggeration, in the 'Foppington' of Cibber, the Fellamar' of Fielding, and the Whiffle' of Smollett. But there was then, as there always is, another variety of men of fashion, superior to the light, frivolous creatures that float on the surface of society. These were the men of wit, some of whom pursued ambition as well as pleasure; and some who turned their abilities to account in supplying the deficiencies of fortune. At the head of this class may be placed the great minister, Sir Robert Walpole himself. Since the establishment of representative government in this country, no minister has ever been assailed by such a formidable combination as that which, for a series of years, vainly endeavoured to drag down the great defender of the

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SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.

CH. XIV.

Revolution. Discarded Whigs; orators of shining parts and of the highest promise, whose eager ambition was baffled by his arrogance of power; partisans of the banished family, whose sanguine expectations had been baulked by his vigilance and sagacity; men who could agree on no other point—were firmly united in the one object of destroying Walpole, as the common enemy. Every variety of invective which faction, jealousy, and personal hatred could suggest, was heaped upon his head; but the topics principally relied upon, and which could not be disputed, so far from being a reproach, are the very grounds on which his reputation as a wise and faithful minister must ever rest. That he was not scrupulous in the application of public money is undoubted; but the charge of personal peculation, by which the vindictive rage of his enemies sought his life as well as his honour, not only failed, but is discredited by the fact that he died largely in debt.* The really vulnerable parts of his character were never attacked. The evil example of his private life; his utter contempt of decorum; the proverbial grossness of his conversation, and the periodical debaucheries of Houghton, which were the talk of the whole county -all these passed uncensured. It would have been impossible, indeed, for such men as Bolingbroke, Yonge, Carteret, and Chesterfield, to have vindicated the cause of insulted morality; but there were among the foremost assailants of Walpole, some who might have ventured on such ground, without being hooted for their impudence and hypocrisy. Shippen and Barnard, Pulteney and Pitt, were men whose moral characters were fair; but though the delicacy and forbearance which in modern times mitigate the asperity of political conflict were then unknown, I am not aware that, during twenty years of party

* His debts were fifty thousand pounds. — CoxE's Walpole; H. WALPOLE'S Correspondence.

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