BRITISH LIBERTIES 347 could not.1 Britain, now a united island, traditionally supreme at sea, speaking a language of her own and worshipping in a Church which she shared with no foreign people, differed fundamentally from continental States. The English, thought Voltaire, were the only people upon earth who had been able to prescribe limits to the power of kings by resisting them, and who had established that wise government where the prince was all-powerful to do good, yet restrained from committing evil, the nobles great without insolence, and the people sharers in the government without confusion. In the English population of some 5,000,000, indeed, it was reckoned that besides the 1600 persons of title there were some 15,000 gentry, 30,000 clergy, lawyers and merchants, and more than 300,000 freeholders and farmers, all authorised defenders of their liberty.3 That liberty already included much that nations not so blest as we must gain in later centuries, if at all-the rule of law, judicial independence, ministerial responsibility, popular control of taxation, and the like. Constitutional monarchy or still wider freedoms were already enjoyed, though precariously, by a few States of small consequence, such as the United Netherlands, Switzerland, Venice and Poland. Sweden, oscillating between autocracy and aristocratic anarchy, was on the way to debating whether the king had or had not the right to veto the use of his name-stamp for royal proclamations of which he disapproved. But the prevailing continental type was that made classic by Louis XIV and destined for many decades after his death rather to increase than to decline in influence. "Papa", wrote an Irish girl in 1764, "is as absolute as the king of France", a monarch whose words were actually law, who could impose a peace, suspend a debt, imprison a transgressor, and ruin or create an industry. Short of such brutal violations of purse, family or conscience as made obedience intolerable, a monarch of that type could shape national policy as he or as those moving him might please. British policy, on the other hand, must be national, that is, must be shown by British kings or statesmen to conduce to the safety and en richment of the nation which had given them a temporary and restricted power to rule. Violation of this principle would provoke adverse divisions, refusal of supplies, and loss of elections, with impeachment and even change of dynasty in reserve. In 1714, and for forty years thereafter, such national British policy comprised three main aims: (1) To defend the Protestant Succession was to maintain the foundation of British liberty both in domestic and in foreign 1 Mémoires du Duc de Choiseul, 1719-85, p. 136. 2 Letters concerning the English nation by Mr de Voltaire (London, 1733), p. 53. Robertson, J. M., Bolingbroke and Walpole, p. 223. • Hildebrand, E., Sveriges historia intill tjugonde seklet (Stockholm, 1903), VII, 325. Or is said to have written. Knox, Č., The diary of a young lady of fashion in the year 1764–1765, p. 104. 7 Belloc, H., Marie Antoinette, p. 41. Seeley, Sir J. R., The growth of British policy, passim. affairs. A dynasty selected by the people could hardly claim to dispose of them by right divine, nor could heretic rulers import the interference of the Roman Church. (2) To develop commerce, defending, if need be, the commercial monopolies that Britain had secured, was to strengthen the Crown, both by increasing revenue and by lessening opposition. "Discontent and disaffection", as Walpole phrased it, 'are like wit and madness, they are separated by thin partitions"," and no Chancellor of the Exchequer ever knew better that with the wealthy it is always well. "Trade", he wrote, "is the main riches of the nation and enhances the value of our land."2 "When trade is at stake", echoed Pitt, "you must defend it or perish."3 Trade and its offspring luxury, the novelty of the last century, had become the necessity of the present and were on their way to be the sacred birthright of the next. (3) Both the dominant need of securing the Protestant Succession and the vital interest of commerce to Britain inevitably prevented her colonial ambitions from rising higher than third among her aims. To the elder Horace Walpole, the colonies seemed "the greatest sources of our riches", and the Government sluggish in their defence. "For God's sake think of the West Indies", he wrote to Robert in 1735. "I have hitherto preached in vain; but any misfortune there will hurt you more than any other thing in the world." But although it might be true that the Plantations preserved the balance of trade in our favour, that we gained a million sterling by them, exclusive of the trade for negroes or for dry goods with the Spaniards in the West Indies, and that 18,000 seamen and fishermen were employed there," none the less it was impossible to counter in America that threat to our security that might at any moment render vain all colonies or statistics. Britain could not be easy until the Stuart menace was dissolved, and ten years after Horace Walpole's appeal, the Bank of England was driven to pay in sixpences by the advent of a Stuart prince at Derby. 4 The degree of Britain's peril from the exiled house can never be precisely known, but of its reality there can be no doubt. In 1715 the confidence of their numbers encouraged them to enter into the rebellion upon their own bottom, destitute of all succours from abroad". The French were at that time betting that in the classic country of insurrection the Pretender would be king within a year.3 Two years later, when Jacobite hopes centred in Sweden, the Swedish ambassador to Britain described her as a country where nine out of 1 Coxe, W., Memoirs of the life and administration of Sir Robert Walpole, 1, 562. 2 Walpole, R., Cautions to those who are to chuse members to serve in Parliament (London, 1714), p. 22. 3 Charteris, Hon. E., William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, p. 69. 4 Coxe, W., Walpole, I, 182. 5 Ibid. 243. 6 Cf. Anderson, Origin of Commerce, III, 173. 7 Townshend to Bernstorff, May 1716 in Coxe, Walpole, 11, 52. 8 Wiesener, L., Le Régent, l'abbé Dubois et les Anglais, p. 28. THE STUART MENACE 349 every ten were rebels.1 The public Guelph dissensions, for "it ran a little in the blood of the family to hate the eldest son",2 could not fail to gild the memory of a dignified and kindly royal line. God grant the land may profit reap From all this silly pother, And send these fools may ne'er agree was the sentiment of many-of how many Walpole could never be quite sure. They were enough, however, to make almost the whole art of government consist in the endeavour to reduce their number. As late as 1738, Yorke, the sagacious lawyer, would not have the army reduced lest they should rise.4 The clergy, sneered Lord Hervey, who had been paid for preaching up divine right, were now paid for preaching it down.5 Statesmen who despised clerical prejudices did not dare to interfere. In 1718, indeed, the Occasional Conformity Act and the Schism Act were repealed, but the Test Act was maintained. Every domestic upheaval and every threat of continental war made the Government tremble. Still more alarming was the possibility that a Stuart heir would adopt the national faith and make loyalty irresistible. When the South Sea Bubble burst, the Speaker declared that if the Pretender had then appeared he might have ridden to St James's. For a whole year the Habeas Corpus Act was in suspense. In 1722, the King's departure was prevented by the plot which involved the fall of Bishop Atterbury, and in which Spain was implicated. Almost every year, indeed, some outbreak of opinion or of force reminded George I and his minister of the fissure in the foundations of the throne. Every year, it is true, also did something to cement it over. As more of the people stood to lose by change, as the hot-heads of the 'Fifteen aged into prudent family men, as a generation grew up to which Guelph kings were the natural order and the Stuarts dubious exotics, so the harvest of the "Glorious Revolution" ripened, and Britain developed from a loyalistic into a modern patriotic State. Yet in 1733 the failure of the Excise bill brought many gownsmen into the streets of Oxtord crying, "King Jarnes for ever". After Culloden (1746) the royal victor, leaving a country which to the English seemed as remote as Norway, trembled, as he declared, "for fear that this vile spot may still be the ruin of this island and of our family". Not until France had sacrificed the Pretender at Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) could the Government afford to despise the Stuarts or Pitt approach his task freed from the burden 1 Chance, J. F., George I and the Northern War, p. 169. 2 Walpole, H., Memoirs of the reign of King George II, 1, 72. 3 Wilkins, W. H., Caroline the illustrious, p. 235. Yorke, P. C., Life and Correspondence of Philip Yorke, Earl of Hardwicke, 1, 184. Hervey, John, Lord, Memoirs of the reign of George II, 1, 7. e Charteris, Cumberland, p. 8. 7 Coxe, Walpole, III, 137. 8 Charteris, Cumberland, pp. 288 and 147. which had always crippled Walpole. For a full generation after Utrecht the Stuarts had forced posterity to trace the history of the British Empire rather in the rivalries and intrigues of Europe than across the seas. If during that time British statesmen were ready to surrender the most splendid acquisition in the New World for some mediocre stronghold or concession in the Old it was due to the sound instinct of a builder that without secure foundations the noblest façade will collapse. Through all these years, moreover, and indeed so long as George II remained alive, Britain had borne another burden which often rendered her course incalculable and sometimes perilous-that of her union with Hanover. But for the Act of Settlement, the connection of Britain with this haughty and ambitious North German house would have been but slight. Normally, such commerce as might pass through Stade, perhaps a treaty for the hire of Electoral troops, possibly some co-operation based on common Protestantism, or on common disposition to unite with the Emperor, not inconceivably a relationship arising from the Guelph rivalry with the Hohenzollerns of Berlin-such were the points of contact that might have been expected, had not the mother of Elector George chanced to be the granddaughter of James I and a Lutheran. Hence it came about that, in 1714, a veteran warrior of fifty-four, accustomed for sixteen years to the unquestioning obedience of his Hanoverians, ascended the uneasy throne of Britain.1 Family pride, financial profit, a sense of duty to his dynasty and to Europe forbade him to decline or later to desert his post. He frustrated the hopes of those Hanoverians who thought that their country was annexing England: he left domestic matters in British hands: in his last days he chose an English mistress. But neither he nor his son could fail to be aware that the shepherds of Hanover were in Britain hireling kings. Here their only comfortable hours were those passed punctually with a German mistress, and their unvarying feelings were those of the royal observation to Queen Caroline in 1736, "the devil take the Parliament, and the devil take the whole island, provided I can get out of it and go to Hanover".2 The first Georges could indeed hardly be blamed for their failure to admire, or even to understand, our nascent constitution. Thanks to our party system, the long war in which we had led the Grand Alliance, Elector George included, to victory over France, had left the French dynasty, in the words of a papal legate, "superior to the state in which it had been in the time of Charlemagne". George, as he assured a timid mistress, had all the king-killers in England on his side, and he took care to choose their more moderate men for office and to avoid needless offence to their opponents. To a Han 1 Cf. Ward, Sir A. W., Great Britain and Hanover, p. 81 and passim. Head, F. W., The Fallen Stuarts, p. 159. 4 Wilkins, p. 110. GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER 351 overian, moreover, there was nothing strange in a small band of noble families monopolising the ministry and controlling the Estates.1 But that a particular brand of Whig, a mere temporary majority within a temporary oligarchy, should be able to designate his ministers and to prevent him from governing the country as he pleased, still more, that this should be done by votes in a packed Parliament and by a man who disclaimed the title of Premier and approached him as deferentially as any Hanoverian-all this was as unintelligible as it was unpleasing to a military German prince. Yet, however complete his submission to a system which he could not change, his personality and his kingship were bound to count for something in a still monarchic age. Walpole, a trusty servant who, George I declared, had never had his equal in business, thought that only the King's death had shielded him against Bolingbroke, who had paid the Duchess of Kendal a sufficient sum.3 "While Britain dared France", said Chesterfield, "the monarch trembled for his Hanover", and it was true. Throughout the reigns of the first two Georges, the fact that the same man was King and Elector profoundly and constantly affected Britain. It is true that Bernstorff's attempt to govern her was soon repulsed, and that George II was absent from his kingdom for barely one month in the year. Britain, moreover, could bear the cost of satisfying Hanoverian rapacity; it was convenient to hire Hanoverians for her defence; while it was perhaps not unfortunate that a monarch whose presence she desired without his interference should have Hanoverian matters with which to occupy his mind. But the Hanoverian connection warped the King's choice of British ministers, delayed British business, and far less often helped than hindered British aims. When the ministers of George the King were not on speaking terms with those of George the Elector, when the elector was giving secret verbal promises to foreign Powers for fear of Parliament which would have disapproved,5 when the treaties or wars necessary to Britain were jeopardised by subterranean workings on behalf of Hanover, then the constant disorder of our policy from this cause merely entered upon a phase more than usually acute. In steering her way to safety and riches after Utrecht, Britain, already distracted by her parties, found in Hanover a new and incalculable disturbing force. Her thoughts and energies were drawn thither instead of following their natural course across the ocean. The currents of post-Utrecht politics were baffling enough without such further complication. Although the major wars, those of the Spanish and of the Polish Succession, lay two decades apart, an interval scarcely precedented since the Reformation, the minor wars were so 1 Friis, Aage, Bernstorfferne og Danmark (København, 1903), 1, 299. Coxe, Walpole, 1, 184. 3 Ibid. 11, 344. Imbert-Terry, Sir H. M., A constitutional King, George I, p. 301; Ward, pp. 73 seqq. Ibid. p. 80 and passim. |