188

DEATH OF FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES.

[1751. as to the time of finding Easter. There were many minor regulations essential to be provided for in consequence of the great change. The payments of rents, annuities, and salaries for public service were not to be accele rated; and thus the 5th of July, the 10th of October, the 5th of January, and the 5th of April, long held their place as rent days; and the dividends upon stock are still paid at those periods. It may be supposed that such a reform, however valuable, would not be made without some popular discontent. The timid Newcastle told Chesterfield that he hated new-fangled thingsthat he had better not meddle with matters so long established. The witty earl was wiser. He made a speech of which he has given a most ingenuous account in a letter to his son: "I consulted the ablest lawyers and the most skilful astronomers, and we cooked up a Bill for that purpose. But then my difficulty began. I was to bring in this Bill, which was necessarily composed of law-jargon and astronomical calculations, to both which I am an utter stranger. However, it was absolutely necessary to make the House of Lords think that I knew something of the matter; and also make them believe that they knew something of it themselves, which they do not. For my own part, I could just as soon have talked Celtic or Sclavonian to them, as astronomy, and they would have understood me full as well; so I resolved to do better than speak to the purpose, and to please instead of informing them." The peers were amused by Chesterfield; the thinking part of the nation were convinced by Macclesfield, who published his speech. Hogarth has immortalized the vulgar opposition to the reform of the Calendar in his picture of An Election Feast, in which the popular prejudices are flattered by the Whig candidate in his banner inscribed with "Give us our eleven days."

In 1751 an event occurred which, for some time, disturbed all the calculations of the scheming politicians of this intriguing age. Frederick, prince of Wales, died after a short illness on the 20th of March. Leicester House, his town abode, had long been the central point of opposition to the government. We have seen how far the unhappy estrangement of the prince from his parents was carried before the death of queen Caroline. Years had passed over, and yet the animosities between the reigning king and the heir-apparent were never subdued. In 1751 George II., although a hale man, was in his sixty-eighth year. The worshippers of the rising sun grew bolder in their devotion. Bubb Doddington, the treasurer of the navy, resigned his office in March, 1749, having received a message from the prince that the principal direction of his royal highness's affairs should be put in the skilful intriguer's hands. He saw the prince at Kew, and was told that "what he could not do for me in his present situation must be made up to me in futurity." The prince farther said "that he thought a peerage, with the management of the House of Lords, and the seals of secretary of state for the southern provinces, would be a proper station for me, if I approved of

it." Such was the mode in which England was to be governed by favoritism had she endured the misfortune of a king Frederick I. A worthy junto took counsel with the prince as to "the immediate steps to be taken upon the demise of the king, more particularly in relation to the Civil List." The prince directed the movements of the Opposition through the indefatigable borough-monger who had now the chief direction of his affairs; suggesting, amongst other modes of embarrassing his father's ministers, that the business of Dunkirk "was an opportunity to abuse them." This system was broken up by the event of the 20th of March. The king felt the premature death of his son rather keenly; and appeared desirous that the remembrance of their differences should pass away. The managers of state ceremonials otherwise interpreted the sovereign's wishes. Frederick was interred without all the usual honours bestowed upon the remains of the first prince of the blood royal. None of his family followed him to the grave; and, except certain lords appointed to hold the pall, the whole tribe of courtiers studiously kept away :

"No pitying heart, no eye, afford

A tear to grace his obsequies."

He had bid high for popularity; but even the patriots of the City soon forgot their idol. The public sympathy was directed towards the Princess Dowager and her eight children. She conducted herself with great prudence; refusing to enter into any of the cabals of those called her husband's friends; and throwing herself entirely upon the guidance of the king. George, her eldest son, was created Prince of Wales. The Princess had an adequate revenue assigned to her; and the education of the heir-apparent, now twelve years of age, was provided for by the appointment of a governor and subgovernor, a preceptor and sub-preceptor. A Bill of Regency excited great public attention, and produced long and agitating debates in both Houses. The king wished the unpopular duke of Cumberland to be sole regent. The Princess Dowager had the public feeling in favour of her claims. The matter was compromised by the Act of Parliament, which provided that in the event of the demise of the Crown before the prince of Wales attained the age of eighteen, his mother should be guardian of his person; but, as regent of the kingdom, she should act with the advice of a council, composed of the duke of Cumberland and nine principal officers of state.

By the death of Frederick, prince of Wales, the organization of a parliamentary opposition was broken up. But as long as there were places to be filled-as long as there were rivalries in the struggles for office, and jealousies amongst its possessors, there would be personal contests, which had their interests for their little hour, and may still interest those who believe that in getting hold of the clue to court and ministerial intrigues they are in the road to historical discovery. There was a partial change of ministry in 1751, when the duke of Newcastle desired to be rid of his brother secretary of state, the duke of Bedford. These great peers, from the very nature of their offices, were not likely to act with perfect union, unless they were warm friends. The one held the seals of the Southern department, the other of the Northern department-a division of labour

Doddington's "Diary," July 18, 1749. +Ibid., Nov. 12.

Ibid., Feb. 5, 1750.

190

DISSECTION IN CASES OF MURDER.

[1752.

which involved correspondence of the one Secretary with one half of Europe, and of the other Secretary with the other half. Lord John Russell has described this arrangement somewhat humorously: "It was as if two coachmen were on a box of the mail-coach, one holding the right-hand rein the other the left."* Newcastle wanted a partner on the box who would only pretend to hold the one rein. Bedford was therefore got rid of, and a very tractable successor appointed in his place, who would make no pretence to the management of the rein or the whip. Those who are curious to know how this change was effected, may find it agreeably told by Horace Walpole. We turn to more vulgar matters. We advert to those legislative proceedings which were designed to remedy the grosser immoralities, and to check the atrocious crimes, which were as characteristic of this period as the political corruption and the loose examples of the higher orders of society.

In 1752 an Act was passed "for the better preventing thefts and robberies, and for regulating places of public entertainment, and for punishing people keeping disorderly houses." In the same year an Act was also passed, directing that in cases of wilful murder immediate execution should. take place after the criminal had been sentenced, and that his body should be given to the surgeons to be dissected and anatomized. The Surgeons' Theatre

in the Old Bailey was built for the convenience of this process. Hogarth's print of the Progress of Cruelty shows how the practice was popularly

t

Quoted by Lord Mahon from Note in "Bedford Correspondence."

+ "Memoirs of George II.," vol. i. pp. 185 to 198.

1752]

PLACES OF ENTERTAINMENT-GIN ACT.

191

regarded. The real cruelty to society consisted in causing dissection to be viewed as an infamy, when it was essentially necessary, for that instruction in anatomy which was to make skilful surgeons and competent physicians, that some of the dead should thus benefit the living. These views of a more enlightened age repealed the law which was so short-sighted in its aim. The enactments of 1752 appear to have in some degree been consequent upon the publication in 1750 of Henry Fielding's "Inquiry into the Causes of the late increase of Robbers." In that treatise the first section is devoted to

a view of the consequences "of too frequent and extensive diversions among the lower kind of people." He proposes "to stop the progress of vice by removing the temptation. . . . Now what greater temptation can there be to voluptuousness than a place where every sense and appetite of which it is compounded are fed and delighted; where the eyes are feasted with show, and the ears with music, and where gluttony and drunkenness are allured by every kind of dainty; nay, where the finest women are exposed to view, and where the meanest person who can dress himself clean may in some degree mix with his betters." The places of entertainment, he says, are almost become numberless. There are not only places where the nobleman and his tailor, the lady of quality and her tire-woman, form one common assembly; but others," where the master of the house, the wells, or gardens, catches only the thoughtless and tasteless rabble." When we see written up on a public-house or garden-"Licensed for music under the Act of 25th George II.," we see the relics of this somewhat inadequate provision for the morality of the people. Experience has shown how limited in their usefulness are such restraints upon vice; how, if they were strictly enforced, they would be positively injurious. If allowed to interfere with harmless recreations, such as the intellectual pleasure of cheap music in public places, the gross sensual gratifications, such as drunkenness, would have a stronger hold upon many who now turn aside from that temptation.

Fielding's second section treats of drunkenness. Against gin he directs his strongest reprobation. "The legislature must once more take the matter into their hands." Of the evils of gin, as the parent of crime, he adduces his experience as a magistrate. "Wretches are often brought before me, charged with theft and robbery, whom I am forced to confine before they are in a condition to be examined; and when they have afterwards become sober, I have plainly perceived, from the state of the case, that the gin alone was the cause of the transgression." The consumption of gin had increased to a frightful extent under the prohibitory Act of 1736, which was impossible to be enforced; and the statute of 1743, which reduced the excessive duty, was in operation when Fielding wrote. In 1751, Mr. Potter, a rising member of parliament, "produced several physicians and masters of workhouses, to prove the fatal consequences of spirituous liquors, which laid waste the meaner parts of the town, and were now spreading into the country." proposed an increase of the duty. Mr. Pelham believed no remedy could be found for the evil. Additional duties were imposed from time to time; and the consumption of the liquid fire became gradually diminished, not so much, perhaps, by the operation of the duties, as by the general improvement of all

Walpole-"Memoirs of George II.," vol. i. p. 66.

He

192

INCREASE OF ROBBERIES.

(1752.

classes of society. Drunkenness, in the time of George II., was the vice of the high as well as of the low. When it became a disgrace for a gentleman to be drunk, it might reasonably be expected that the artisan would see that his own character and his own happiness were compromised by drunkenness. It has been most wisely said, with reference to habits of intoxication, by a magistrate than whom no one has more nobly laboured for the repression of crime by prevention rather than by punishment, "From whatever point of view we regard the subject, we shall see that our hopes of improvement have no solid foundation except in the enlightened sentiment of the people."* Gaming amongst the vulgar" is placed by Fielding as one of the causes of robbery. He honestly touches upon the pestilent example of the great, and recommends a more laudable method of employing their time to "the nobility and gentry." He might well do so, when peers went out of town to Richmond, to play at whist on Saturday and Sunday; and lord Sandwich, a minister of state, when he hunted with the duke of Cumberland, carried dice in his pocket, to throw a main under a tree when the hounds were at fault.† Fielding held that the magistrate was armed with sufficient power to destroy all gaming "among the inferior people." This was the creed of that age with regard to every vice; and was one of the chief causes that the inferior people so stoutly rebelled against the Gin Act of 1736.

The Statutes for the farther prevention of thefts and robberies, and for putting a mark of infamy, in addition to the punishment of death, upon the crime of murder, were preceded in 1750 by a royal proclamation, offering a reward of a hundred pounds for the discovery of any offender who had committed a murder, or a robbery with violence, within London and Westminster, or five miles round. Fielding had said, "I make no doubt but that the streets of this town, and the roads leading to it, will shortly be impassable without the utmost hazard; nor are we threatened with seeing less dangerous gangs of rogues among us than those which the Italians call the banditti." But he in the same page declares, "that there are at this time a great gang of rogues, whose number falls little short of a hundred, who are incorporated in one body, have officers and a treasurer, and have reduced theft and robbery into a regular system." This testimony from a Police Magistrate, who made most unusual exertions for the discovery of offenders, shows how completely the metropolis was without a police; how, when the gallows was the only instrument of repression and the great teacher of honesty, crime flourished to an extent which makes us look back upon the polite days of lord Chesterfield, and the glorious days of the first Pitt, as a period not far removed, in some respects, from barbarism. The folly of the public was quite equal to the atrocity of the robbers. M'Lean, a highwayman, who mixed with genteel society, was sentenced to be hanged. "The first Sunday after his condemnation, three thousand people went to see him; he fainted away twice with the heat of his cell. You can't conceive the ridiculous rage there is of going to Newgate; and the prints that are published of the malefactors, and the memoirs of their lives and deaths set forth with as much parade as-asMarshal Turenne's-we have no Generals worth making a parallel." What

* Charge to the Grand Jury of Birmingham, by the Recorder, Mr. M. D. Hill, Jan. 1855. + Horace Walpole to Mann. Ibid. Oct. 18, 1750.