Kitabı oku: «The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick», sayfa 3
In 1742, under the opposition of Pulteney, the Tories called upon Paxton, the Solicitor to the Treasury, and Scrope, the Secretary to the Treasury, to account for the specific sum of £1,147,211, which it was proved they had received from the minister. No account was ever furnished. George Vaughan, a confidant of Sir Robert Walpole, was examined before the Commons as to a practice charged upon that minister, of obliging the possessor of a place or office to pay a certain sum out of the profits of it to some person or persons recommended by the minister. Vaughan, who does not appear to have ventured any direct denial, managed to avoid giving a categorical reply, and to get excused from answering on the ground that he might criminate himself. Agitation was commenced for the revival of Triennial Parliaments, for the renewal of the clause of the Act of Settlement, by which pensioners and placemen were excluded from the House of Commons, and for the abolition of standing armies in time of peace. The Whigs, however, successfully crushed out the whole of this agitation. Strong language was heard in the House of Commons, where Sir James Dashwood said that "it was no wonder that the people were then unwilling to support the Government, when a weak, narrow-minded prince occupied the throne."
A very amusing squib appeared in 1742, when Sir Robert Walpole's power was giving way, partly under the bold attacks of the Tories, led by Cotton and Shippen; partly before the malcontent Whigs under the guidance of Carteret and Pulteney; partly before the rising power of the young England party led by William Pitt; and somewhat from the jealousy, if not treachery, of his colleague, the Duke of Newcastle. The squib pictures the King's embarrassment and anger at being forced to dismiss Walpole, and to Carteret, whom he has charged to form a ministry: —
"Quoth the King:
'My good lord, perhaps you've been told
That I used to abuse you a little of old,
But now bring whom you will, and eke turn away,
Let but me and my money at Walmoden stay."
Lord Carteret, explaining to the King whom he shall keep of the old ministry, includes the Duke of Newcastle: —
"Though Newcastle's false, as he's silly I know,
By betraying old Robin to me long ago,
As well as all those who employed him before,
Yet I leave him in place, but I leave him no power.
"For granting his heart is as black as his hat,
With no more truth in this than there's sense beneath that,
Yet, as he's a coward, he'll shake when I frown;
You called him a rascal, I'll use him like one.
"For your foreign affairs, howe'er they turn out,
At least I'll take care you shall make a great rout;
Then cock your great hat, strut, bounce, and look bluff,
For, though kick'd and cuff'd here, you shall there kick and cuff
"That Walpole did nothing they all used to say,
So I'll do enough, but I'll make the dogs pay;
Great-fleets I'll provide, and great armies engage,
Whate'er debts we make, or whate'er wars we wage!
"With cordials like these the monarch's new guest
Reviv'd his sunk spirits, and gladdened his breast;
Till in rapture he cried, 'My dear Lord, you shall do
Whatever you will – give me troops to review.'"
In 1743, King George II. actually tried to engage this country, by a private agreement, to pay £300,000 a year to the Queen of Hungary, "as long as war should continue, or the necessity of her affairs should require." #The King, being in Hanover, sent over the treaty to England, with a warrant directing the Lords Justices to "ratify and confirm it," which, however, they refused to do. On hearing that the Lord Chancellor refused to sanction the arrangement, King George H. threatened, through Earl Granvillie, to affix the Great Seal with his own hand. Ultimately the £300,000 per annum was agreed to be paid so long as the war lasted, but this sum was in more than one instance exceeded.
Although George II. had induced the country to vote such large sums to Maria Therese, the Empress-Queen, he nevertheless abandoned her in a most cowardly manner when he thought his Hanoverian dominions in danger, and actually treated with France without the knowledge or consent of his ministry. A rhyming squib, in which the King is termed the "Balancing Captain," from which we present the following extracts, will serve to show the feeling widely manifested in England at that time: —
"I'll tell you a story as strange as 'tis new,
Which all who're concerned will allow to be true,
Of a Balancing Captain, well known hereabouts,
Returned home (God save him) a mere king of clouts.
"This Captain he takes in a gold ballasted ship,
Each summer to terra damnosa a trip,
For which he begs, borrows, scrapes all he can get,
And runs his poor owners most vilely in debt.
"The last time he set out for this blessed place,
He met them, and told them a most piteous case,
Of a sister of his, who, though bred up at court,
Was ready to perish for want of support.
"This Hung'ry sister he then did pretend,
Would be to his owners a notable friend,
If they would at that critical juncture supply her;
They did – but, alas! all the fat's in the fire!"
The ballad then suggests that the King, having got all the money possible, made a peace with the enemies of the Queen of Hungary, described in the ballad as the sister: —
"He then turns his sister adrift, and declares
Her most mortal foes were her father's right heirs:
'G – d z – ds!' cries the world, 'such a step was ne'er taken!'
'Oh, oh!' says Moll Bluff, 'I have saved my own bacon.
"'Let France damn the Germans, and undamn the Dutch,
And Spain on old England pish ever so much;
Let Russia bang Sweden, or Sweden bang that,
I care not, by Robert, one kick of my hat!
"'Or should my chous'd owners begin to look sour,
I'll trust to mate Bob to exert his old power,
Regit animos dictis, or numis with ease
So, spite of your growling, I'll act as I please!'"
The British Nation, described as the owners, are cautioned to look into the accounts of their Captain, who is bringing them to insolvency: —
"This secret, however, must out on the day
When he meets his poor owners to ask for his pay;
And I fear, when they come to adjust the account,
A zero for balance will prove their amount."
The final result of all these subsidy votes was to increase our national debt, up to the signing of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, to £76,000,000; while the seven years' war, which came later, brought the debt to £133,000,000, not including in this the capitalized value of the terminable annuities.
On November 22d, 1743, a caricature was published, which had a wide sale, and which represented the King as a fat Hanoverian white horse riding to death a nearly starved British lion.
In 1744, £200,000 was voted, which King George and Lord Carteret, who was called by William Pitt, his "Hanoverian troop minister," had agreed to give the King of Sardinia. £40,000 was also voted for a payment made by the King to the Duke of Arenberg. This payment was denounced by Mr. Lyttelton as a dangerous misapplication of public money.
The votes for foreign subsidies alone, in 1744, were £691,426, while the Hanoverian soldiers cost us £393,773. The King actually tried in addition, in the month of August, to get a further subsidy for his friend, the Elector of Saxony, and another for the King of Poland, and this when Englishmen and Irishmen were lacking bread. Nor was even a pretence made in some instances of earning the money. £150,000 was paid this year to keep Prince Charles in Alsace, and the moment Austria got the money, Prince Charles was withdrawn, and Henry Pelham, writing to the Duke of Newcastle, says, "The same will be the case with every sum of money we advance. The allies will take it, and then act as suits their convenience and security." In the four years from 1744 to 1747, both included, we paid £4,342,683 for foreign troops and subsidies, not including the Dutch and Hessians, whom we hired to put down the rebellion of 1745. In the case of the whole of this war, in which we subsidized all our allies except the Dutch, it is clear that the direct and sole blame rests upon the King, who cared nothing for English interests in the matter. When firmly remonstrated with by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, his reply was what the Duke of Newcastle describes as "almost sullen silence."
For the rebellion of 1745 – which came so near being successful, and which would have thoroughly succeeded had the Pretender's son possessed any sort of ability as a leader – there is little room to spare here. The attempt to suppress it in its early stages is thus described in a Jacobite ballad: —
"Horse, foot, and dragoons, from lost Flanders they call,
With Hessians and Danes, and the devil and all;
And hunters and rangers led by Oglethorpe;
And the Church, at the bum of the Bishop of York.
And pray, who so fit to lead forth this parade,
As the babe of Tangier, my old grandmother Wade?
Whose cunning's so quick, but whose motion's so slow,
That the rebels marched on, while he stuck in the snow."
The hideously disgusting cruelties and horrible excesses committed by the infamous Duke of Cumberland, and the Hessians and Hanoverians under his command, in suppressing the rebellion after the battle of Culloden, are, alas! too well known. Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Session, and a warm supporter of the Brunswicks, remonstrating with the Duke as to the latter's disregard of the laws of the country, his Royal Highness of Cumberland replied with an oath: "The laws of my country, my lord; I'll make a brigade give laws." Scotland has many reasons for loving the House of Brunswick. Lord Waldegrave, who strove hard to whitewash the Duke of Cumberland, says that "Frederick Prince of Wales gave too much credit to the most malignant and groundless accusations, by showing favor to every man who aspersed his brother's character."
In 1747, £456,733 was voted by Parliament for the payment of the King's debts.
In 1748, considerable difficulty arose in consequence of the King's intrigues to obtain, at the expense of England, the Bishopric of Osnaburg as a princely establishment for his favorite son, the Duke of Cumberland, that pious prince, much esteemed in Scotland as "the butcher." The most open hostility subsisted between the Duke of Cumberland and Prince Frederick, and pamphleteering attacks on the former, for his brutality and excesses, were supposed to be encouraged by the Leicester House party.
Amongst the curious scandals of 1749, it is stated that the King – being present at a masked ball, at which Elizabeth Chudleigh, afterwards Duchess of Kingston, figured as "La Belle Sauvage" in a close-fitting dress of flesh-colored silk, requested permission to place his hand on Miss Chudleigh's breast. The latter replied that she would put the King's hand on a still softer place, and immediately raised it to his own royal forehead.
On the 20th March, 1751, Frederick, Prince of Wales, died. The King, who received the news while playing cards with his mistress, Lady Yarmouth, and who had not spoken to his son for years, merely said, "Freddy is dead." On this subject Thackeray preserves for us the following epitaph: —
"Here lies Fred,
Who was alive, and is dead.
Had it been his father,
I had much rather.
Had it been his brother,
Still better than another.
Had it been his sister,
No one would have missed her.
Had it been the whole generation,
Still better for the nation.
But since 'tis only Fred,
Who was alive, and is dead,
There's no more to be said."
In 1755 there was the second war, estimated to have cost £111,271,996. In this George II. pursued exactly the opposite course of policy to that taken by him in the previous one. The war during the years following 1739 was for the humiliation of the King of Prussia; the policy in the last war was to prevent his humiliation. Mr. Baxter estimates the debt (exclusive of annuities) at £133,000,000; Dr. Colquhoun, adding the value of the annuities, makes it £146,682,843 at the conclusion of this war.
Towards the close of the reign of George II., who died on October 25th, 1760, his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, by an exhibition of great strategy, combined with much discretionary valor, succeeded in making peace on terms which ensured the repose of himself and his Hanoverian forces during the remainder of the war. At home his Royal Highness was much attacked, some venturing to describe his personal conduct as cowardly, and his generalship as contemptible. It is a sufficient refutation of such a calumny to say that the Duke of Cumberland was as brave a soldier and as able a general as our present Commander-in-Chief, his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge.
Lord Waldegrave, who wrote in favor of George II., admits that the King "is accused by his ministers of being hasty and passionate when any measure is proposed which; he does not approve of." That "too great attention to money seems to be his capital failing." And that "his political courage seems somewhat problematical." Philli-more says: "In public life he was altogether indifferent to the welfare of England, except as it affected his Electorate's or his own. Always purchasing concubines, he was always governed by his wife. In private life he was a gross lover, an unreasonable master, a coarsely unfaithful husband, an unnatural parent, and a selfish man."
No more fitting conclusion can be found to this chapter than the following pregnant words from the pen of Lord Macaulay: "At the close of the reign of George II. the feeling of aversion with which the House of Brunswick had long been regarded by half the nation had died away; but no feeling of affection to that house had yet sprung up. There was little, indeed, in the old King's character to inspire esteem or tenderness. He was not our countryman. He never set foot on our soil till he was more than thirty years old. His speech belayed his foreign origin and breeding. His love for his native land, though the most amiable part of his character, was not likely to endear him to his British subjects. He was never so happy as when he could exchange St. James's for Heranhausen. Year after year our fleets were employed to convoy him to the Continent, and the interests of his kingdom were as nothing to him when compared with the interests of his Electorate. As to the rest, he had neither the qualities which make dulness respectable, nor the qualities which make libertinism attractive. He had been a bad son and a worse father, an unfaithful husband and an ungraceful lover. Not one magnanimous or humane action is recorded of him; but many instances of meanness, and of a harshness which, but for the strong constitutional restraints under which he was placed, might have made the misery of his people."
CHAPTER IV. THE REIGN OF GEORGE III
When George II. died, his grandson and successor, George III., was twenty-two years of age. The Civil List of the new King was fixed at £800,000 a year, "a provision," says Phillimore, in his "History of England," "that soon became inadequate to the clandestine purposes of George III., and for the purchase of the mercenary dependents, on the rapport of whom his unconstitutional proceedings obliged him to depend." The Civil List of George III. was not, however, really so large as that of her present Majesty. The Civil List disbursements included such items as Secret Service, now charged separately; pensions and annuities, now charged separately; diplomatic salaries, now forming distinct items; fees and salaries of ministers and judges, now forming no part of the charge against the Civil List. So that though £924,041 was the Civil List of George III. four years after he ascended the throne, in truth to-day the Royal Family alone get much more than all the great offices and machinery of State then cost. The Royal Family at the present time get from the country, avowedly and secretly, about one million sterling a year.
"At the accession of George III.," says Thackeray, "the Patricians were yet at the height of their good fortune. Society recognized their superiority, which they themselves pretty calmly took for granted. They inherited not only titles and estates, and seats in the House of Peers, but seats in the House of Commons. There were a multitude of Government places, and not merely these, but bribes of actual £500 notes, which members of the House took not much shame in assuming.. Fox went into Parliament at twenty, Pitt was just of age, his father not much older. It was the good time for Patricians."
A change of political parties was imminent; Whig rule had lasted seventy years, and England had become tolerably disgusted with the consequences.
"Now that George II. was dead," says Macaulay, "a courtier might venture to ask why England was to become a party in a dispute between two German powers. What was it to her whether the House of Hapsburg or the House of Brandenburg ruled in Silesia? Why were the best English regiments fighting on the Maine? Why were the Prussian battalions paid with English gold? The great minister seemed to think it beneath him to calculate the price of victory. As long as the Tower guns were fired, as the streets were illuminated, as French banners were carried in triumph through London, it was to him matter of indifference to what extent the public burdens were augmented. Nay, he seemed to glory in the magnitude of those sacrifices which the people, fascinated by his eloquence and success, had too readily made, and would long and bitterly regret. There was no check on waste or embezzlement. Our commissaries returned from the camp of Prince Ferdinand, to buy boroughs, to rear palaces, to rival the magnificence, of the old aristocracy of the realm. Already had we borrowed, in four years of war, more than the most skilful and economical government would pay in forty years of peace."
The Church allied itself with the Tories, who assumed the reins of government, and thenceforth totally forgot the views of liberty they had maintained when in opposition. The policy of all their succeeding legislation was that of mischievous retrogression; they sought to excel the old Whigs in their efforts to consolidate the aristocracy at the expense of the people.
"This reactionary movement," says Buckle, "was greatly aided by the personal character of George III.; for he, being despotic as well as superstitious, was equally anxious to extend the prerogative, and strengthen the Church. Every liberal sentiment, everything approaching to reform, nay, even the mere mention of inquiry, was an abomination in the eyes of that narrow and ignorant Prince. Without knowledge, without taste, without even a glimpse of one of the sciences, or a feeling for one of the fine arts, education had done nothing to enlarge a mind which nature had more than usually contracted. Totally ignorant of the history and resources of foreign countries, and barely knowing their geographical position, his information was scarcely more extensive respecting the people over whom he was called to rule. In that immense mass of evidence now extant, and which consists of every description of private correspondence, records of private conversation, and of public acts, there is not to be found the slightest proof that he knew any one of those numerous things which the governor of a country ought to know; or, indeed, that he was acquainted with a single duty of his position, except the mere mechanical routine of ordinary business, which might have been effected by the lowest clerk in the meanest office in his kingdom.
"He gathered round his throne that great party, who, clinging to the tradition of the past, have always made it their boast to check the progress of their age. During the sixty years of his reign, he, with the sole exception of Pitt, never willingly admitted to his councils a single man of great ability: not one whose name is associated with any measure of value, either in domestic or foreign policy. Even Pitt only maintained his position in the State by forgetting the lessons of his illustrious father, and abandoning those liberal principles in which he had been educated, and with which he entered public life. Because George III. hated the idea of reform, Pitt not only relinquished what he had before declared to be absolutely necessary, but did not hesitate to persecute to death the party with whom he had once associated in order to obtain it. Because George III. looked upon slavery as one of those good old customs which the wisdom of his ancestors had consecrated, Pitt did not dare to use his power for procuring its abolition, but left to his successors the glory of destroying that infamous tracle, on the preservation of which his royal master had set his heart. Because George III. detested the French, of whom he knew as much as he knew of the inhabitants of Kamschatka or Thibet, Pitt, contrary to his own judgment, engaged in a war with France, by which England was seriously imperilled, and the English people burdened with a debt that their remotest posterity will be unable to pay. But, notwithstanding all this, when Pitt, only a few years before his death, showed a determination to concede to the Irish a small share of their undoubted rights, the King dismissed him from office, and the King's friends, as they were called, expressed their indignation at the presumption of a minister who could oppose the wishes of so benign and gracious a master. And when, unhappily for his own fame, this great man determined to return to power, he could only recover office by conceding that very point for which he had relinquished it; thus setting the mischievous example of the minister of a free country sacrificing his own judgment to the personal prejudices of the reigning sovereign. As it was hardly possible to find other ministers who to equal abilities would add equal subservience, it is not surprising that the highest offices were constantly filled with men of notorious incapacity. Indeed, the King seemed to have an instinctive antipathy to everything great and noble. During the reign of George II. the elder Pitt had won for himself a reputation which covered the world, and had carried to an unprecedented height the glories of the English name. He, however, as the avowed friend of popular rights, strenuously opposed the despotic principles of the Court; and for this reason he was hated by George III. with a hatred that seemed barely compatible with a sane mind. Fox was one of the greatest statesmen of the 18th century, and was better acquainted than any-other with the character and resources of those foreign nations with which our interests were intimately connected. To this rare and important knowledge he added a sweetness and amenity of temper which extorted the praises even of his political opponents. But he, too, was the steady supporter of civil and religious liberty; and he, too, was so detested by George III., that the King, with his own hand, struck his name out of the list of Privy Councillors, and declared that he would rather abdicate the throne than admit him to a share in the government.
"While this unfavorable change was taking place in the sovereign and ministers of the country, a change equally unfavorable was being effected in the second branch of the imperial legislature. Until the reign of George III. the House of Lords was decidedly superior to the House of Commons in the liberality and general accomplishments of its members. It is true that in both Houses there prevailed a spirit which must be called narrow and superstitious if tried by the larger standard of the present age.
"The superiority of the Upper House over the Lower was, on the whole, steadily maintained during the reign of George II., the ministers not being anxious to strengthen the High Church party in the Lords, and the King himself so rarely suggesting fresh creations as to cause a belief that he particularly disliked increasing their numbers. It was reserved for George III., by an unsparing use of his prerogative, entirely to change the character of the Upper House, and thus lay the foundation for that disrepute into which, since then, the peers have been constantly falling. The creations he made were numerous beyond all precedent, their object evidently being to neutralize the liberal spirit hitherto prevailing, and thus turn the House of Lords into an engine for resisting the popular wishes, and stopping the progress of reform. How completely this plan succeeded is well known to the readers of our history; indeed, it was sure to be successful considering the character of the men who were promoted. They consisted almost entirely of two classes: of country gentlemen, remarkable for nothing but their wealth, and the number of votes their wealth enabled them to control; and of mere lawyers, who had risen to judicial appointments partly from their professional learning, but chiefly from the zeal with which they repressed the popular liberties, and favored the royal prerogative.
"That this is no exaggerated description may be ascertained by any one who will consult the lists of the new-peers made by George III.
"Here and there we find an eminent man, whose public services were so notorious that it was impossible to avoid rewarding them; but, putting aside those who were in a manner forced upon the sovereign, it would be idle to deny that the remainder, and of course the overwhelming majority, were marked by a narrowness and illiberality of sentiment which, more than anything else, brought the whole order into contempt. No great thinkers, no great writers, no great orators, no great statesmen, none of the true nobility of the land, were to be found among the spurious nobles created by George III."
In the early part of his reign, George III. (whom even the courtly Alison pictures as having "little education and no great acquired information") was very much under the influence of his mother, who had, previously to his being King, often spoken of her son with contempt. The Princess of Wales, in turn, was almost entirely guided by Lord Bute, represented by scandal, says Macaulay, as "her favored lover." "Of this attachment," says Dr. Doran, "the Prince of Wales himself is said to have had full knowledge, and did not object to Lord Bute taking solitary walks with the Princess, while he could do the same with Lady Middlesex." The most infamous stories were circulated in the Whisperer, and other journals of the time, as to the nature of the association between the Scotch Peer and the King's mother, and its results. Phillimore regards the Princess of Wales as "before and after her husband's death the mistress of Lord Bute." The Princess Dowager seems to have been a hard woman. Walpole tells us how, when the Princess Dowager reproved one of her maids of honor for irregular habits, the latter replied, "Madame, chacun a son But." "Seeing," says Thackeray, "the young Duke of Gloucester silent and unhappy once, she sharply asked him the cause of his silence. 'I am thinking,' said the poor child. 'Thinking, sir! and of what?' – 'I am thinking if ever I have a son, I will not make him so unhappy as you make me.'"
John Stuart, Earl of Bute, shared with William Pitt and John Wilkes the bulk of popular attention during the first ten years of the King's reign. Bute had risen rapidly to favor, having attracted the attention of the Princess Dowager at some private theatricals, and he became by her influence Groom of the Stole. His poverty and ambition made him grasp at power, both against the great Commoner and the Pelham faction; and a lady observer described the great question of the day, in 1760, as being whether the King would burn in his chamber Scotch coal, Newcastle coal, or Pitt coal. Macaulay, who seems to have followed Lord Waldegrave's "Memoirs," says of Bute: "A handsome leg was among his chief qualifications for the stage… His understanding was narrow, his manners cold and haughty." His qualifications for the part of a statesman were best described by Prince Frederick, who often indulged in the unprincely luxury of sneering at his dependents. "Bute," said his Royal Highness, "you are the very man to be envoy at some small proud German Court> where there is nothing to do." Phillimore speaks of Lord Bute as "a minion raised by Court favor to a post where his ignorance, mean understanding, and disregard of English honor, became national calamities."
The King's speech on his accession is said to have been drawn up by Bute, who did not then belong to the Council, but the terms being vehemently objected to by Pitt, it was actually altered after delivery, and before it found its way to the printer.
Whatever were the relations between Lord Bute and the Princess Dowager, it is quite certain that on more than one occasion George III. condescended not only to prevaricate, but to lie as to the influence exercised by Lord Bute. It is certain, from the "Memoirs" of Earl Waldegrave, and other trustworthy sources, that the Scotch Earl, after being hissed out of office by the people, was still secretly consulted by the King, who, like a truly Royal Brunswick, did not hesitate to use falsehood on the subject even to his own ministers. Phillimore, in remarkably strong language, describes George III. as "an ignorant, dishonest, obstinate, narrow-minded boy, at that very moment the tool of an adulteress and her paramour." The Duke of Bedford has put upon record, in his correspondence, not only his conviction that the King behaved unfaithfully to his ministers, but asserts that he told him so to his face.
In 1759, George was married to Hannah Lightfoot, a Quakeress, in Curzon Street Chapel, May Fair, in the presence of his brother, Edward, Duke of York. Great doubt has, however, been cast on the legality of this marriage, as it would, if in all respects valid, have rendered null as a bigamous contract the subsequent marriage entered into by the King. Dr. Doran says that the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., when needing money in later years, used this Lightfoot marriage as a threat against his royal parents – that is, that he threatened to expose his mother's shame and his own illegitimacy if the Queen would not use her influence with Pitt. Glorious family, these Brunswicks! Walpole affirms that early in his reign George III. admitted to his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, "that it had not been common in their family to live well together."
