CH. XIV.

PROFLIGACY OF MINISTERS.

41

warfare unparalleled in virulence, any allusion was made to these scandals. The truth is, that the habits and manners of Walpole were congenial to the coarseness and depravity of the times.

nistersin the first

Among a series of ministers, contemporaries and successors of Walpole, who either filled Profligacy of mihigh offices, or played conspicuous parts years of George in public life, there were few who, in these the Third. times, would not have been thought wholly disqualified for such positions. I will refer only to three men who were leading ministers during the early part of the reign of George the Third; but neither of whom would have been tolerated in any responsible posts under either of his successors. The Duke of Grafton, some time at the head of His Majesty's government, was in the habit of appearing in public with his mistress, a common woman of the town. Lord Sandwich and Sir Francis Dashwood, the one successively Secretary of State and First Lord of the Admiralty—the other, Chancellor of the Exchequer, were the most notoriously profligate men of their day. They were the founders of the Franciscan Club, an association of a few audacious men of fashion, for the purpose of celebrating a blasphemous burlesque upon the monastic system and the rites of the Church of Rome. They took a ruinous building in Buckinghamshire, called Medmenham Abbey, which, as its name implies, had once been a religious house. Here they fitted up cells, assumed the habit of the order of St. Francis, and with grave mockery performed the ceremonies and observances of the conventual service. I need not describe the quality of the nuns who were admitted to participation in these solemnities, nor of the choruses which were chanted, nor of the images which represented the Virgin and the saints. Nor was this the passing freak of a few thoughtless young men of wit and fashion. The Franciscan Club was for some time the wonder and

42

MINISTERIAL LEVEES.

CH. XIV.

scandal of the town. It assembled several times; and comprised, besides Sandwich and Dashwood, such men as Wilkes, Potter, and Selwyn, most of whom were men of mature age.

Ministerial levees.

It was a custom of those days, for the principal ministers of state to hold daily levees, which were attended by people who had public business to transact, who had favours to ask, and who sought to keep themselves in the eye of the great man. Bishops and reverend aspirants of every class, members of both Houses who wanted their jobs done, men about town who wanted a place or a borough, mayors and corporations who had boroughs to sell, agents, pamphleteers, coffee-house politicians -ordinarily composed this motley assemblage. And as each principal minister usually stood upon his own credit, independently of, and sometimes in open opposition to, his colleagues, a First Lord of the Treasury, or a Secretary of State, could collect from the daily attendance at his receptions, a pretty accurate opinion as to the stability of his position. After any mark of Court favour had been shown him, or after a successful struggle in Parliament, his saloons were thronged. And it often happened that the first significant intimation a minister received of his declining power, was in the absence of some vigilant and far-sighted jobber or place-hunter, who had gone over to a rival. For many years, the levees of Sir Robert Walpole were always crowded; the attendance diminished after the failure of the Excise scheme, and the death of his firm and faithful patroness, Queen Caroline. But the Duke of Newcastle had the largest number of clients. His well-known mansion in Lincoln's Inn Fields was, during a succession of years, resorted to as the most extensive mart of patronage that had ever been opened in this country; and probably Newcastle gave, or rather bartered away, more places than any minister before

CH. XIV.

POWER OF THE CROWN.

43

or since. It was said, that almost the whole of the bench of bishops had been filled by him; and every department of the public service swarmed with his

creatures.

Crown.

When government by the Crown, independently of the great families, was adopted as the prin- Resumption of ciple of the new reign, the first step taken power by the towards the accomplishment of the object was the disgrace of the Duke of Newcastle. This was effected without much difficulty; and the man who for fifteen years had been the dictator of ministries, and whose jealous vigilance had hardly ever suffered any statesman but himself to approach the closet of the Sovereign, was hurled from power by the first vigorous effort of a strong will. None of the great party leaders were thenceforth suffered to acquire any considerable portion of the power and patronage which Walpole and Newcastle and other ministers, in a less degree, had possessed. The King himself, after the ten years' struggle with the Whig houses had terminated in his triumph, assumed the management of that great engine of corruption, the control of which had made a subject more powerful than his sovereign, and now enabled the King to be the real master of his people. After the new system had been adopted, the tribe of time-servers and sycophants ceased to frequent the levees of ministers. The levees of the Sovereign, which had hitherto been attended only by the members of the Court, were now thrown open; and persons who could hardly have hoped for more than a distant glimpse of regal state, were admitted to kiss His Majesty's hand in the royal palace, surrounded by the nobles and dignitaries of the realm. This practice conduced much to the popularity of the King, and served to please many persons who either did not want, or could not have, bribes, places, or titles; while it taught the hungry tribe who sought more substantial gratifications, that

44

GAMING CLUBS.

CH. XIV.

they could only hope for success by conciliating the King's personal favour.

Prevalence of

But the vice which, above all others, infested English society during the greater part of gambling. the eighteenth century, was gaming. Men and women, the old and the young, beaux and statesmen, peers and apprentices, the learned and polite, as well as the ignorant and vulgar, were alike involved in the vortex of play. Horse-racing, cock-fighting, betting of every description, with the ordinary resources of cards and dice, were the chief employment of many, and were tampered with more or less by almost every person in the higher ranks of life. The proprietary clubs - White's, Brookes's, Boodle'swere originally instituted to evade the statute against public gaming-houses. But every fashionable assembly was a gaming-house. Large balls and routs had not yet come into vogue. A ball seldom consisted of more than ten or twelve couples; and the practice of collecting a crowd of people to do nothing, is an invention of recent date.. When a lady received company, card-tables were provided for all the guests; and even where there was dancing, cards formed the principal part of the entertainment. Games of skill were seldom played. Brag, crimp, basset, ombre, hazard, commerce, spadille-the very names of which are hardly known to the present generation-furnished the excitement of play, and enabled people of fashion to win and lose their money without mental effort. Whist was not much in vogue until a later period, and was far too abstruse and slow to suit the depraved taste which required unadulterated stimulants. The ordinary stakes at these mixed assemblies would now be considered high, even at clubs where a rubber is still allowed. The con

sequences of such gaming were often still more lamentable than those which usually attend such practices. It would happen that a lady lost more

CH. XIV.

BALLS AND CARD-PARTIES.

45

than she could venture to confess to a husband or father. Her creditor was probably a fine gentleman, or she became indebted to some rich admirer for the means of discharging her liabilities. In either event, the result may be guessed. In the one case, the debt of honour was liquidated on the old principle of the law-merchant, according to which there was but one alternative to payment in purse. In the other, there was likewise but one mode in which the acknowledgment of obligation by a fine woman would be acceptable to a man of the world. But it was at the proprietary houses above named that the deepest play took place. For some time, White's was the principal resort of fashionable-gamesters; but Brookes's (originally Almack's) was afterwards the most frequented. The lowest stake there was fifty pounds; and it was a common event for a gentleman to lose or win ten thousand pounds in an evening. Sometimes a whole fortune was lost at a single sitting.* Deep play is Isaid to have reached a climax before the American war; † but I find no trace of its decline for many years after that event. On the contrary, before the French Revolution, there were not more than four or five public tables established in defiance of the law; but at a subsequent period, more than thirty gaming-houses were open every night; and the foreign games of roulet and rouge et noir began to supersede faro and hazard.‡

The manners of women were a favourite theme of satirical writers for the first half, at least, of the eighteenth century.

Manners and

The great education of

women.

writers of the age of Anne exhibit the prominent foibles of the sex in those days; but neither the exquisite raillery of Addison, nor the polished couplets of Pope, nor the stern censure of

* Walpole's Correspondence,

passim.

↑ Croker's Boswell, vol. iii.

p. 387.

Colquhoun's Police of the Metropolis, p. 140.