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CHARLES WILLIAM WASON COLLECTION

CHINA AND THE CHINESE

THE GIFT OF

CHARLES WILLIAM WASON

CLASS OF 1876

1918

3 1924 070 596 816

Cornell University Library

The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924070596816

THE

CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Uoniion: FETTER LANE, E.G.

C. F. CLAY, Manager

Onjinimtsi): loo, PRINCES STREKT

asnlin: A. ASHER AND CO.

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All Rights reserved

THE

CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY

PLANNED BY

THE LATE LORD ACTON LL.D.

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY

EDITED BY

A. W. WARD LiTT.D.

G. W. PROTHERO LiTT.D.

STANLEY LEATHES M.A.

VOLUME VI

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

CAMBRIDGE

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

1909

y\jxsow

dDambrilige :

PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

PREFACE.

THE present volume covers a section of time falling far short of that implied by the literal meaning of the word. But it seems hardly necessary to defend the use of the term " the Eighteenth Century," as denoting a period of Modern History with characteristics peculiar to itself and exhibiting a more or less self-consistent development of its own. We have accordingly, without doing much violence to ordinary usage, restricted the application of the term to the years reaching from the Peace of Utrecht and the supplementary pacifications to the outbreak of the French Revolution. Moreover, the original design of this work has made it necessary, not only to discuss in the volume dealing with the Revolution itself those earlier aspects of the political and social condition of France and of her administrative and financial system, as well as those new currents of philosophical thought and literary effort, which have to be taken into account in tracing its origin ; but also to devote a large part of another volume, concerned with the history of the United States, to a narrative of the War of Independence and an examination of its causes. It has therefore been our desire to avoid whatever recuiTence to these topics was not needed in order to make clear the course of European history, and of the history of particular States, within the limits deliberately chosen from the outset for the present volume.

Nevertheless, as it seems to us, these limits may be justly designated "natural"; in other words, they are prescribed by the nature of the subject, and not only by our desire to adhere, in essential matters, to the original scheme of this History. In the political annals of Europe, and of those other parts of the world whose progress was directly affected by that of the European States, a new epoch unmistakably begins with the Peace of Utrecht, which is our starting-point, though, strictly

vi Preface.

speaking, that settlement can be called definitive only after the Treaties of 1725 had confirmed those of 171S, 1714 and 1718. A solution had at last been found for the great problem of the partition of the Spanish inheritance between the Houses of Habsburg and Bourbon, and at the same time for that of the Balance of Power which had long been, to all intents and purposes, identical with the question of their historic rivalry. During the whole of this epoch, down to the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, the Utrecht Treaties (if this name may be given to the whole group) remained the established basis of the relations between the European Powers. The Quadruple Alliance of 1718 and the Anglo- Spanish War of 1719 enforced the Utrecht policy with not less rapidity than success ; nor can there be any doubt but that, in its broad results, the foreign policy of Stanhope and Dubois, and the long pacific entente between England and France under Walpole and Fleury, were alike in thorough consonance with the system carried through, notwithstanding so many obstacles, at Utrecht. The eighteenth century witnessed repeated departures from that system, and successive interruptions of the Peace of Europe caused by a series of wars extending from that of the Polish to that of the Bavarian Succession ; but, with certain exceptions, the several Congresses which met in turn to bring about the conclusion of these wars reestablished that Peace without great difficulty on the general basis of the Utrecht arrangements. The most signal exception was the appropriation of Silesia by Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession, and the maintenance of that conquest after the tremendous struggle of the Seven Years' War ; but it should be pointed out that the House of Austria had laid itself open to such a loss when it had sought to settle its succession by means of a series of treaties negotiated separately between itself and the other European Powers, instead of by seeking to bring about a common agreement between them. The escheat of Lorraine to France — an event of even greater moment for the destinies of Europe than the transfer of Silesia to Prussia — was an event stipulated by treaty a generation before it came to pass ; but it was none the less a contravention of the Utrecht settlement, destined to avenge itself bitterly upon both the Powers which were the true principals in the bargain — upon Austria as well as upon France.

In eastern Europe, a new epoch begins after the Moslem advance had been finally driven back at the gates of Vienna. The Turkish Power henceforth virtually stood on the defensive against the European Powers ;

Preface. vii

and the Eastern Question became, what it has since remained, the problem of restricting — perhaps ending — the dominion of the Turks in Europe. The Turkish Wars of the eighteenth century ceased to exercise any direct influence upon the general course of European affairs after the Peace of Passarowitz had reduced the limits of the Turkish empire, even as compared with those assigned to it at Carlowitz. Henceforth, it was no longer in Austria, but in Russia, that the Porte found its most determined foe, against whose advance it had to stand on the defensive both before and after the new ambition of Joseph II had fallen in with the plans inherited by Catharine II from Peter the Great. That the Eastern Question was not solved in this century, was due to the complications and jealousies of Western rather than Eastern politics, and specially to the fact that the Eastern Powers were pre- occupied by their Polish schemes. The intervention of Russia in the concerns of Poland, facilitated by the unpatriotic selfishness of native -pfoisanship, gave Frederick II his chance of pressing on a series of annexations which he regarded as indispensable to the security of the Prussian monarchy. Austria felt herself obliged to follow suit ; and the First Partition of Poland, by which the Republic was shorn of nearly one-third of its territory, proved the first step towards a consummation not less subversive of the paramount authority of public law in Europe than the French Revolutionary propaganda itself. But of the story of the Partitions of Poland only the opening chapter properly apper- tains to our present volume.

Among the principal European Powers, Great Britain is found, at the outset of our period, and during by far the greater part of its course, exercising an influence upon European public affairs such as she was again to exercise, and then for a shorter time, only at the close of the Napoleonic Wars. The primary cause of this influence is to be sought in the leading part which Great Britain had played, through the armed forces which she had sent forth or equipped, and by the way in which they had been led to victory, in the great Spanish Succession War; but that she maintained her political position so long was due to further reasons, which it is part of the task of this volume to discuss. The traditions of a free parliamentary government prevailed in England more potently than ever before ; but they were no longer associated, as they had been during most of the preceding century, with a mutability of political system for which this nation had become proverbial. The

C. M. H. VI. "

viii Preface.

"principles of 1688" as formulated by Locke, to the origins of whose political philosophy a separate section is devoted in this volume, had become, in Sir Leslie Stephen's words, "the political bible of the eighteenth century"; and they remained such till the French Revolution changed both scope and method of modem political thought. To the strength of constitutional, aided by that of dynastic, stability — for Jacobitism had ceased to be a political force even before its final effort — was added the stimulating influence of a well-considered foreign policy far removed from insularity, and already conscious of the demands of a world-empire. The power of Great Britain was already expanding into that of a British empire extending from the East Indies to the New World; and British enterprise was depriving Dutch and French rivals of most of their share of the field, as it had of old aimed at driving out the Spaniards and drove them out again when, after the close of Ferdinand I's prudent reign, they had once more begun to aspire to a revival of their old colonial power. Thus, under Chatham's inspiring guidance, and in alliance with a King after Chatham's own heart. Great Britain's star rose to an unprecedented height. Meanwhile the "sister island" long remained down -trodden; nor was it till the close of our period that Irish loyalty, in a season of danger to the empire, led to a relaxation of some of the disabilities imposed upon the country, and even obtained for it a transitory legislative independence. Before this, Great Britain had to confront the rebellion of her American colonies, the armed intervention of France and Spain, and the armed neutrality of Russia and her allies. Some of the noblest representatives of English parliamentary statesmanship had sought to withstand the coercive legislation which had given rise to the colonial crisis; and its termination was thus made easier. No general view of the history of Great Britain during this period would be complete which should leave out of sight the religious condition of its inhabitants. Without the renewal of its religious life from within, no soundness of mind or muscle could have arrested the decay into which, in the middle of the eighteenth century, factiousness, frivolity, and vice seemed to be hurrying large sections of the population.

While, until towards the close of this period the power and influence of Great Britain steadily progressed, and even in the Peace of Versailles (1783) her losses, with the one great exception of the insurgent colonies, were relatively small and in respect of her colonial cessions to Spain

Preface. ix

were morally more than compensated by her retention of Gibraltar, the European prestige as well as the maritime and colonial power of France no less manifestly declined. Her struggle with Great Britain for naval and colonial supremacy was decided in the course of a stirring series of conflicts, treated partly in the chapter on the Conquest of Canada which finds its proper place in our seventh volume, partly in the portion of the present volume which offers a connected account of Indian history from the days of the Moghul empire to those of the rule of Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India. The failure of the policy of Louis XV (which was far from being always the policy of his Ministers) must be ascribed, partly to the personal shortcomings of the sovereign himself and some of those whom he trusted in Court or camp, partly and chiefly to thp excessive strain put upon the resources of France by the efforts which she made simultaneously in the European conflict and in the struggle for supremacy beyond seas. Whether the "reversal of alliances" in the middle of the century, which on the part of France implied a renunciation of her ancient policy of antagonism to the House of Habsburg, was in itself irrational and inopportune, or whether its breakdown was due to the conduct, rather than the conception, of the new "system," there can at least be no reason for regarding that breakdown as the result of internal rottenness in a State whose administration was in many respects un- surpassed, or a people whose inborn vigour was, under the guidance of genius, to shake the world.

To no Government was the superiority of French administrative methods better known than to that of the great Prussian King, and by none was it more openly acknowledged. To Frederick II his father had bequeathed the sinews of war in the shape of an army incomparably disciplined and a well-filled treasury; and thus he was enabled to put into execution his design, conceived with unexampled audacity and carried out with wonderful determination, of raising his poor and straggling kingdom to the position of a great European Power. The story of this achievement will be found narrated in this, volume without the distortions of either apotheosis or apology; and, where the views of historical scholars differ as to the immediate motives of Frederick the Great's action, room has been found for an expression of this difference. Alike when he first invaded Silesia, and when he fell upon his Saxon neighbour, as when he thwarted the dynastic ambition of Joseph II on behalf of

62

X Preface.

the Princes of the Empire, Frederick the Great's plan of action lay clear before his eyes both in war and in peace ; and it was one from which the State that through him had taken its place among the chief motive forces of European political life could not swerve with impunity. For a time it seemed as if his successor were, without any strain upon the military and financial resources of a State of mettle so proved, to add fresh laurels to those of the great King ; and the politically effete Dutch oligarchy collapsed among its canals and counting-houses, when, in 1787, a Prussian force invaded the Low Countries to vindicate the honour of the House of Orange.

To the history of the Austrian Netherlands — down to the time of their complete alienation from a Government whose intentions with regard to them they with reason suspected, and for whose domestic reforms they had nothing but distaste — attention is directed elsewhere in this volume, in which it has been sought to include some notice of every European State whose progress or decline affected the general course of European history. In that course there has not often been a time when the several members of the European family were less disposed to acknowledge among them any principle of unity or paramount authority ; and the system of a concert of Powers was still in an im- perfectly developed stage of recognition or acceptance. Religious differences had almost (though not quite) ceased to count ; and the diplomacy of each State, or of each dynasty, was single -mindedly confined to the advance of its particular interests. The Austrian dominions had been kept together by the ceaseless anxiety of Charles VI for the maintenance of their cohesion ; nor was it on the accession of Maria Theresa permanently disturbed except by the loss of a single province. Once again, and more seriously, imperilled by the ambition of Joseph II, whose miscalculations of season and method should not be allowed to detract from the honour due to the nobility and humanity of his purpose, the power of the House of Habsburg held out, as it was to hold out for many a generation afterwards, though the Imperial Crown still worn by its chief seemed to have become little more than a highly respectable ornament. Russia, diplomatically speaking a member of the family of European States only from the Treaty of Amsterdam (1717) onwards, virtually decided the issue of the greatest continental struggle of the eighteenth century — the Seven Years' War — and, under the rule of the "most political woman" that

Preface. xi

any century (unless it be that of Semiramis) has produced, appeared ready to arbitrate in the still more critical conflict of the French Revolutionary War. The northern neighbours of Russia had sunk into Powers of the second and third rank — Sweden paralysed by the selfish contests of rival oligarchical factions; Denmark under an absolute monarchy tempered by ministerial wisdom or endangered by ministerial rashness. In the south, Spain under her first Bourbon King, after a passing eifort towards better things, sank back into the condition of misrule and bankruptcy in which she had been left by her last Habsburg sovereign. And though, under the second Bourbon King, a further fraction of her former Italian dominions, which Philip V's ambitious consort had succeeded in recovering as a Spanish appanage, was restored to the dynasty, it was not till the reign of Charles III that Spain seemed for a time about to assume a place among the progressive States of Europe. But neither the reforms of Florida Blanca and his colleagues, nor even the expulsion of the Jesuits, which here and in Portugal seemed more astounding than it did in contemporary France, could change the economic condition of the nation; and the foreign policy of Spain, after finally settling down into a willingness to fulfil the obligations of the Bourbon Family Compact by means of which Choiseul had hoped to revive the political ascendancy of France, ended in a peace which left Gibraltar still in British hands. In Italy, the Papacy passed out of the tenure of an adversary of the Bourbons and a friend of the Jesuits into that of a pontiff pledged to the overthrow of the Order. But neither the Papacy nor any other Italian Government exercised any considerable influence upon the course of European politics; and it was only the mutual jealousy of foreign Powers that stayed the immediate downfall of Venice and Genoa as independent States. Switzerland, though largely dependent upon France through her unhappy foreign-service system, contrived to preserve her so-called neutrality and, amidst an endless succession of "class- wars," her existing political institutions, till the advent of the French Revolution.

The intellectual note of the "eighteenth century" is that of " enlightenment " — in other words, the self-confident revolt of the trained human intellect against tradition for tradition's sake, and against what- ever that intellect holds to be superstition or prejudice. In the great majority of European States, which had passed through the stage of the diminution of oligarchies, based on the rights and liberties of particular

xii Preface.

classes, and were under strong monarchical rule, it was unavoidable that enlightenment, if it asserted itself at all, should prevail through the authority of a benevolent despotism ; but, as the example of English society in the eighteenth century shows, there was no exclusive connexion between. the methods of despotism and the principles of enlightenment. Of the enlightened absolute monarchy of the period examples will be found in many of the chapters succeeding each other in the present volume — from great historical figures like those of Catharine II and Frederick II, and above aU that of Joseph II, the true protagonist of the Aiuf'Mdrung, to lesser potentates or their Ministers — Charles III in Parma and the Two Sicilies, and his reforming Administration in Spain, Leopold II, more especially as Grand Duke of Tuscany, and the BernstorfFs and the unfortunate Struensee in Denmark. But an age of despots, whether it be also an age of enlightenment or not, must always exhibit both sides of the medal ; and thus we find here, on the obverse, a prince whose ambition it is, like that of Frederick the Great, to be nothing more than the first servant of a State upon aU of whose members rests the same duty of self-devotion to the welfare of the whole ; and on the reverse — Sardanapalus in the shape of Louis XV. It was Goethe, born in the middle of the eighteenth century, who drew this latter parallel, while at the same time reverencing no type of humanity so highly as that of conscious beneficence to the world around it. And, as the commentator who recalls these traits in Goethe reminds us, it was he again who with unerring finger pointed to the most signal weaknesses in the century from which he came forth — its contempt for true originality, its lack of compassion for failure, and its impatience at the inevitably slow process of historic growth.

In issuing the present volume at a rather later date than we had, intended, we desire to tender an apology to those of our contributors who had some time ago sent in the chapters written by them, and who may have been inconvenienced by the delay in publication. In no instance had any of the contributions to this volume reached us more punctually, or been prepared for publication with greater care and completeness, than the three chapters written by the late Mr Robert Nisbet Bain, Assistant Librarian at the British Museum, whose lamented death occurred after this Preface was already in type. Mr Bain was one of the contributors selected by Lord Acton at the inception of

Preface. xiii

the present work, as a historical writer who had few rivals in his intimacy with the languages and the historical literature of northern and eastern Europe ; and, as our readers are aware, this Histcyry is deeply indebted to him for the ample share he has taken in its production.

We wish to express our obligations to Mr J. F. Chance, who, besides contributing an important section with its bibliography, has permitted us the free use of a comprehensive Bibliography compiled by him for the political history of Europe during a considerable part of the period covered by this volume. We have also to thank Mr H. G. Aldis, of Peterhouse and the University Libraiy, for the compilation of the Index and for other services rendered in connexion with this volume, Miss A. D. Greenwood for drawing up the Chronological Table, and Mr A. T. Bartholomew, of Peterhouse and the University Library, for aid in the matter of the Bibliographies.

A. W. W.

G. W. P.

S. L. May, 1909.

XV

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

GREAT BRITAIN UNDER GEORGE I.

(1) The Hanoverian Suooession.

By A. W. Ward, Litt.D., F.B.A., Master of Peterhouse.

Characteristics of the Hanoverian Succession The House of Guelf and its Luneburg branch . Rise of the House of Hanover .... Unification and Electorship ..... George William, Ernest Augustus, and the Empire The Electress Sophia and her eldest son The Succession question Tmder William and Mary George Lewis and the English Succession . The Electress Sophia and the Act of Succession.

The Grand Alliance

Bemstorff. Queen Anne and the Succession Waiting policy of the House of Hanover . Marlborough. The High-fliers . . Rivers in Hanover. Bothmer in London . The Succession and the Peace of Utrecht . Intrigues of Oxford and Bolingbroke . Parliament of 1714. The situation grows critical

The Electoral Prince's writ

The Queen's letters. Death of the Electress Sophia

Death of Queen Anne. Accession of George I .

Character and surroundings of George I

George I's Hanoverian counsellors. Significance of his accession

Church affairs

PAOB

1

2

3

ib.

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

ib.

12

13

14

16

16

17

18

19

20

21

(2) The Fobeton Policy of George I. (1714-21.)

By J. F. Chance, M.A., Trinity College.

The foreign policy of this period ... . . Direction of British foreign affairs. Bemstorff .... Relations with France, the United Provinces, and the Emperor The Barrier Treaty. Bremen and Verden

21

22 ib. 23

xvi Contents.

PAGE

The northern treaties. The Baltic commerce .... 24

Treaties with Spain and Austria . 25

Convention with France. Northern affairs. Gortz ... 26

The Triple Alliance. Arrests of Gyllenborg and Gortz . . 27

Hanoverian and Russian negotiations with Sweden ... 28

Spanish invasion of Sardinia. The ''Plan" .... 29

Subsidy to Austria. Progress of the "Plan" .... 30

The Quadruple Alliance 31

Peace of Fassarowitz. Byng's expedition 32

Cape Passaro. Alberoni attacks Great Britain and France . 33

The first Treaty of Vienna ib.

Northern affairs. The War with Spain 34

Death of Charles XII. Submission of Spain. The Prussian Treaties 35

Treaties with Sweden 36

End of the Northern War. Peace of Nystad .... 37

Discord wiljb the Emperor ib.

Strained relations with France 38

Breach with Austria. Treaties of Madrid 89

CHAPTER II.

THE AGE OF WALPOLE AND THE PELHAMS.

By H. W. V. Tempekley, M.A., Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Peterhouse.

(1)

The features of the age 40

The "Bubble." Walpole's rise to power 41

Power of the first two Georges. Position of Walpole . . 42

Influence of Jacobitism 43

Walpole and the country gentry. Dissent. Walpole and finance 44

The Sinking Fund 45

Walpole and the Land Tax 46

His Excise Scheme 47

Failure of the Excise Scheme 48

Walpole's economic policy ii.

Mercantilism. The Balance of Trade 49

Colonial policy ■ • 60

The old Colonial System 51

Navigation Act. "Molasses" Act 52

Pelham's Colonial Manufactures Prohibition Act ... 53

Political and economic conditions in the Colonies . . 54

Walpole's economic policy as a whole .... 65

Adam Smith and the old Colonial System 66

Foreign policy during Walpole's Administration ... 57

Effecte of the Treaties of Vienna 58

Alliance of Hanover. Spain declares war 69

Treaty of Seville 60

Separation of England from France. Newcastle and Stanhope . 61

Contents.

xvii

England's attitude in the War of the Polish Succession The first Facte de famille , . . . . England's disputes with Spain Growing hitterness hetween England and Spain Proposals for an accommodation. The Asiento Reception of the Convention in England . Disputes hetween England and Spain. War declared

Prance temporarily neutral

Development of the English parliamentary system Conditions of party government under Walpole . Bolingbroke and the Opposition .... Walpole's fall. His character .... Rule of the Pelhams. Pitt's early years Character and influence of Henry Pelham . The Coalition Ministry of Pitt and Newcastle The advent of Pitt to power. Pitt and Walpole

(2)

Influence of politics on religion. Queen Caroline Theological controversy. The Establishment General state of the clergy and of religious life Religion and the masses. The individualism of the age The Welsh Revival. William Law Early years of Whitefield and Wesley Their work in Great Britain and America . Characters and achievements of Whitefield and Wesley Wesley and the Establishment . Wesley's separation from the Establishment Political views of Wesley .... Wesley's influence on religious life General results of Methodism

PAGE 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 ib. 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

CHAPTER III.

JACOBITISM AND THE UNION.

By C. Sanford I'eiiiiy, M.A., Clare College, Burnett-Fletcher Professor of History in the University of Aberdeen.

Jacobitism and the permanence of the Union .... 90

Provisions of the Act of Union 91

James' abortive expedition to Scotland 92

General Election, 1708 93

Greenshields' case 94

Toleration and patronage 95

The malt duty 96

James' diplomacy, 1714-6 97

Mar raises the standard. Action of the Government ... 98

Mackintosh enters England 99

Sheriffmuir 100

Porster's surrender at Preston 101

xvm

Contents.

James in Scotland

His departure. Punitive measures

Sweden, Spain, and the Jacobites

Alberoni's Ai-mada

Glenshiel. The malt tax

The Disarming Act

Forfeited estates. The Porteous mob

France and Jacobite intrigue

Maurice de Saze's expeditionary force

Prince Charles sails to Scotland .

From Glenfinnan to Edinburgh .

Prestonpans. Negotiations with France

Charles enters England

The retreat from Derby. Falkirk

Cnlloden

Reprisals. Jacobite forfeitures. Scottish episcopacy

Highland dress proscribed. Heritable jurisdictions abolished

Act of Pardon. The Elibank Plot. Jacobitism ceases as an active

force

PAGE

102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

119

CHAPTER IV.

THE BOURBON GOVERNMENTS IN FRANCE AND SPAIN. I.

(1714-26.)

By Edward Abmstrong, M.A., F.B.A., Fellow, Bursar, and Lecturer in Modem History, Queen's College, Oxford.

Death of Louis XIV. The Regency 120

Philip V and the Regent Orleans 121

Italian aims of Elisabeth Farnese ...... 122

Alliance of France and England. Dubois 123

Foreign policy of Alberoni 124

The Quadruple Alliance. Fall of Alberoni .... 125

The Franco-Spanish marriages 126

Constitutional and other changes during the Regency. Depart- mental Councils 127

Financial collapse 128

Quarrel between the Regent and the Parlement .... 129

The Cellamare conspiracy. Suppression of Breton liberties . 130

Ministry of Dubois 131

Death of Orleans 132

Society under the Regency ib.

Progress in Paris and in the provinces 133

Abdication of Philip V 134

Character of Elisabeth 135

The government of Spain. Personality of Philip V . . . 136

Reign of Luis I. His death. Philip V again ascends the throne . 137

Italian claims of Don Carlos 138

Ripperda's mission to Vienna 139

Rupture of the Infanta's engagement 140

Contents.

XIX

Alliance of Hanover. Austro-Spanish alliance . Schemes for a Stewart restoration. Disgrace of Ripperda Marriage of Louis XV. Fall of the Duke of Bourbon

PAGE

141-2 143 144

CHAPTER V.

THE BOURBON GOVERNMENTS IN FRANCE AND SPAIN. II.

(1727-46.)

By Edwaed Aemsteong, M.A., F.B.A.

The designs of Blisaheth Farnese 145

Preliminaries of Paris 146

Congress of Soissons 147

Illness of Philip V and Louis XV 148

Treaties of Seville and Vienna. Death of Antonio Farnese . 149

Don Carlos in Italy 150

Spanish capture of Oran. Don Carlos in Parma . . 151

War of the Polish Succession 152

First Family Compact. Don Carlos conquers Naples . . . 163

Campaigns in Lombard y 154

Preliminaries of Vienna 155

Friction between France and Spain. Marriage of Don Carlos . 156

Trouble in American waters. . Fleury's policy .... 157

War between Spain and England 167-8

Death of Fleury 169

War of the Austrian Succession ib.

Second Family Compact. Campaign of 1745 .... 160

Desertion of Spain by France 161

Death of Philip V ib.

Review of Fleury's Administration 162-3

Character of Louis XV . . 164

French society under Louis XV . 165

The successors of Alberoni 166

The Court of Philip V ib.

Character and career of Elisabeth Farnese ..... 167

CHAPTER VI.

FINANCIAL EXPERIMENTS AND COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT.

By E. A. Benians, M.A., Fellow of St John's College.

The heritage of the War of the Spanish Succession . . . 168

John Law 169

I^w's financial and commercial ideas ...... 170-1

Foundation of the Bank and the Company of the West . . 172

The extension of the Company of the West .... 173

The Company of the Indies. Law's System at its height . . 174

The JJen<e«-holders. Position of Law 176

Collapse of the System 176

XX Contents.

Significance of Law's work 177

The South Sea Company 178

The South Sea scheme. The Bubbles 179

The crisis 180

Punitive measures. Action of Walpole 181

Later history of the Company i&.

Colonial development. The Ostend Company .... 182

Colonisation in America 183

The West Indies. Economic and social conditions . . . 184

European Powers in the West Indies 185

West Africa 186

The Slave Trade. The African Company 187

Abolition of the Slave Trade. Cape Colony. The Boers . . 188

Colonial independence 189

Collapse of the old Colonial System 190

CHAPTER VII,

POLAND UNDER THE SAXON KINGS.

By the late R. Nisbet Bain, Assistant Librarian, British Museum.

Competitors for the throne on the death of John III Sobieski . 191

Election of Augustus II ib.

Lithuania and the Saxon army-corps 192

Augustus II and the Northern War t6.

Last years of Augustus II 193

Candidature of Stanislaus Leszczynsld i6.

The Powers and the Convocation Diet 194

Election of Stanislaus 195

Beginning of the War of the Polish Succession .... 196

Siege of Danzig. Abdication of Stanislaus ..... 197

Accession of Augustus HI 198

Rise and predominance of the Czartoiyskis 198-9

Efforts of the Czartoryskis to depose Augustus III . . . 200

His death ib.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION. (1) The Pbagmatio Sanction.

By C. T. Atkinson, M.A., Fellow of Exeter College, formerly Demy of Magdalen College, Oxford.

Charles VI and the Pragmatic Sanction 201

The Powers and the Pragmatic Sanction 202

State of the Austrian monarchy under Charles VI . . . 203

Death of Charles VI. Maria Theresa and her Ministers . . 204

Inopportuneness of the death of Charles VI ... . 205

Contents.

XXI

(2) Prussia under Frederick WiUjIam: I. By Dr Emil Daniels.

Accession of Frederick William I. His economic reforms Acquisition of Stettin and Treaty of Havelberg . British overtures. The King's testament . Advance of Prussia's position in Europe English marriage negotiations. The ''Tobacco College" Influence of Grumbkow. The Crown Prince Frederick The Crown Prince's escape frustrated .... Frederick William and the Prussian army . The "enrolment" system. Leopold of Dessau . Military drill. The King's republicanism . Compulsory service. The officers' caste

Finance. Immigration.

Fiscalism .........

The royal domains

Condition of the peasantry. Taxation Reorganisation of the Government departments . Power of the revenue officials. Councillors of Taxes . Advancement of trade and industries .... Economical and educational progress ....

Ecclesiastical policy

Importance of the reign

(3) The War. By C. T, Atkinson, M.A.

Maria Theresa and the Powers ......

Frederick II invades Silesia

Belleisle's mission. Battle of Mollwitz ....

Bavarian advance on Vienna

Convention of Klein-Schnellendorf. Charles Albert's mistake

Capture of Prague

Bavaria overrun. Frederick in Moravia ....

Battle of Chotusitz

Peace of Berlin. Maillebois' march and retirement .

Belleisle's retreat. Fall of Prague

Italian aifairs .........

Charles Emmanuel of Savoy

The ''Pragmatic Army" .......

Bavaria evacuated. Battle of Dettingen ....

Treaties of Worms and Fontainebleau ....

The Austrians in Alsace. Union of Frankfort .

Frederick's invasion of Bohemia

Bavaria declares herself neutral. Sohr. Fontenoy Maurice de Saxe in the Netherlands. State of Italy Battle of Kesselsdorf. Treaty of Dresden ....

The end of the War in Italy

Maurice de Saxe's conquests in the Low Countries

Battle of Roucoux. Fall of d'Argenson ....

Battle of Laufieldt. A&irs at sea

Peace of Aix-la^Chapelle

Results of the War

PAOE

206 206

207-8 209 210 211 212

213-4 216 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 226 226 227

228 229 230 231 232

233

234 235 236

ib. 2S7

ib. 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 246 246 247 248 249 250

xxii Contents.

CHAPTER IX,

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR.

By Dr Emil Daniels.

FAOB

Convention of Westminster and Treaty of Versailles . . 261

French and Austrian alliances. Kaunitz 252

Russian armaments. Frederick's preparations .... 253 Austrian precautions and preparations. Prussian invasion of

Saxony ..,.,.,.,.. 254

Capitulation of Pirna. Winter quarters ..... 255

Invasion of Bohemia 256

The armies meet before Prague 257

Battle of Prague 268-9

Siege of Prague 260

Battle of Kolin 261

Prussian evacuation of Bohemia ....... 262

Battle of Hastenbeck. Convention of Klosterzeven . . . 263

The Russians in East Prussia c 264

The "Combined Army" 265

Critical position of Frederick II , 266

Divergent views of Soubise and Hildburghausen . . . 267

Movements of the Prussian army 268

Condition of the French army 269

Battle of Rossbach 270-1

The " Army of Observation." Ferdinand of Brunswick . . 272

The Austrians in Silesia 273

Frederick II and German Protestant feeling .... 274

Battle of Leuthen 276

Preparations for the new campaign 276

Operations against Austrians, Swedes and Russians . . . 277

Siege of Olmutz 278

Russian and Swedish operations 279

Russians and Prussians on the Oder 280

Advance of Frederick II 281

Battle of Zorndorf 282-4

Results of the battle 286

The Russian retreat 286

Fermor's operations in Fomerania 287

Daun near Dresden 288

The Prussians surprised at Hochkirch 289

After Hochkirch 290

The Russians in Posen and the Mark 291

Battle of Kunersdorf 292

Despondency of Frederick 293

Opening of the campaign of 1760 294

Battle of Liegnitz 296

Berlin occupied. The Austrians evacuate Saxony . . . 296

Campaign of 1761. Prussian losses 297

Frederick's hopeless situation. Death of the Tsarina Elizabeth 298

Russo-Prussian alliance. Preliminaries of Fontainebleau . . 299

Peace of Hubertusburg 300

Contents.

xxiii

CHAPTER X.

RUSSIA UNDER ANNE AND ELIZABETH. By the late R. Nisbet Bain.

Osterman

Accession of Anne. Biren .... Russia dominated by Germans Osterman and the Austro-Russian alliance . Beginning of the Russo-Turkish War Miinnich and the first Crimean campaign . Campaigns of 1737 and 1738 Results of the Russo-Turkish War Death of Anne. Accession of Ivan VI Beginning of Wars of the Austrian Succession. The coup d'etat of December 6, 1741 . Character of Elizabeth Petrovna. Dismissal of

Miinnich

The new Russian Chancellor, Alexis BestuzhefP Conclusion of the War with Sweden . The '' Botta-Lopukhina Conspiracy" . Fredierick II intrigues against Bestuzheff Bestuzheflf counsels war against Frederick . Triumph of the Austrian pai-ty at St Petersburg Political duel between Frederick and Bestuzheff Treaties of Westminster and Versailles Accession of Russia to Franco-Austrian Alliance

Fall of Bestuzheflf

Differences between the Allies. Choiseul .

Campaign of Kunersdorf

Elizabeth holds the anti-Prussian alliance together

Campaign of 1760

Elizabeth Insists on the permanent crippling of Prussia Death of Elizabeth Petrovna. Accession of Peter III

Osterman and

PAGE

301 302 303 304 305-6 307 308 309 310 311

312 313 314 313 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328

CHAPTER XI.

THE REVERSAL OF ALLIANCES AND THE FAMILY COMPACT.

By Jean Lemoine.

Significance of Fleury's death

The King's favourites. Madame de Pompadour

Peace of Aix-la^Chapelle

Colonial conflicts. The Boundary Commission . Anglo-French negotiations on American boundaries. Mirepoix Political isolation of England. Mission of Nivernais to Berlin Kaunitz' plan of an Austro-French alliance ...

The " Reversal of Alliances "

Significance and reception of First Treaty of Versaille's Effects of Frederick II's invasion of Saxony

329 330 331 332 333 334 335 '336 337 338

C. M. H. VI.

XXIV

Contents.

of

the

Second Treaty of Versailles .... Russo-Austriau alliance .... Fall of Bernis. Choiseal Chief Minister Third Treaty of Versailles .... Choiseul and the negotiations for peace France and Spain. The " Family Compact " The Family Compact and the peace negotiations England declares war against Spain. Last phase Peace of Huhertusburg ....

Treaty of Paris. The Parlement .... Expulsion of the Jesuits from France . Choiseul's army and navy reforms

His foreign policy

Its results in the Mediterranean .... Choiseul's commercial schemes in the New World Choiseul and the Eastern question The ''King's Secret" and the Eastern question. Poland

Choiseul's Polish policy

Russian fleet in Greek waters. Fall of Choiseul Causes of his fall ......

The "Triumvirate.'' First Partition of Poland . France and the Swedish monarchical revolution . Discredit of Louis XV. His death State of France at the death of Louis XV .

War,

PAGE

339 340 341 342 343 344 345

346 347 348 ib. 349 350 351 352 353 354 855 356 357 358 359 860

CHAPTER XII.

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. (1746-94.)

By the Rev. Geoege Edmundson, M.A., formerly Fellow and Tutor of Brasenose College, Oxford.

(1) Spain vndeb Ferdinand VI and Charles III.

Accession of Ferdinand VI. His policy and advisers .

Ministry of Carvajal and Ensenada

Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. Treaty of Aranjuez . Wall Foreign Minister. Fall of Ensenada. Keene . Services of Ensenada. Minorca and Gibraltar . Deaths of Queen Barbara and King Ferdinand .

Character and policy of Charles III

Renewal of the Family Compact. War with England Portuguese campaign. Loss of Havana and Manila . Peace concluded. Grimaldo and Squillaci Ministers . Rising at Madrid. Squillaci dismissed. Aranda restores order

Expulsion of the Jesuits

O'Reilly in Louisiana. Falkland Islands dispute

Expedition against Algiers

Florida Blanca Minister. North American War

Spain declares war against Great Britain ....

361 362 363 864 365 366 367 368 869 870 371 372 373 374 376 376

Contents.

XXV

Secret negotiations about Gibraltar

Mission of Cumberland. The Armed Neutrality

Capture of Minorca. Siege of Gibraltar

Negotiations for peace. Difficulties about Gibraltar

Peace concluded. Mediterranean piracy suppressed

Last years of Charles. His death

Reforms of Florida Blanca and his colleagues

General progress in Spain .....

PAGE

377 378 379 380 38X 382 383 384

(2) Portugal. (1760-93.)

John V succeeded by Joseph 1 384

Ministry of Pombal (Carvalho) 385

The great earthquake ib.

Proceedings against the Jesuits. Execution of the Tavoras . 386

Expulsion of the Jesuits. Pombal's reforms .... 387

Fall of Pombal. Maria I and Pedro III 388

Dom John Regent . . ib.

(3) Brazil. (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.)

Dutch efforts for the conquest Exploration. Mining .

Brazil in the sixteenth century.

of Brazil Portuguese undisturbed rule. Missions. Boundary disputes in the south . Pombal's reforms. Movement for independence

389 390 391 392

CHAPTER XIII.

GREAT BRITAIN.

(1756-93.)

(1) WiiiiJAM Pitt the Elder.

By Dr Wolfgang Michael, Professor of History in the University of Freiburg-im-Breisgau.

Pitt and the Seven Years' War 393

His beginnings and personality . . .... 394

Walpole and Pitt 395

Walpole, the Pelhams, and Pitt 396

France and Great Britain 397

Changes in the system of European alliances .... 398

The "Reversal of Alliances" 399

Convention of Westminster and Treaty of Versailles . . . 400

Franco-Austrian alliance ........ 401

Critical position of Frederick II 402

Loss of Minorca. Pitt demanded by the nation . . . 403

c2

xxvi Contents.

PAQE

Pitt's first Ministry 404

Execution of Byng. Dismissal of Pitt 405

Pitt resumes office with Newcastle 406

Military and naval undertakings 407

The Army of Observation. Limits of the Anglo-Prussian alliance 408

No English fleet sent into the Baltic 409

The English and French American colonies .... 410

English and French colonial rivalry 411

Imminence of war. The Indian tribes 412

Schemes of colonial federation 413

Colonial difficulties 414

Pitt's colonial policy 415

Accession of George III. Significance of the event . . . 416

Views of the young King and Bute 417

Peace negotiations broken off by Pitt 418

Opposition to Pitt in the Cabinet 419

Resignation of Pitt 420

War with Spain. Negotiations for a separate peace . . . 421

Peace of Paris 422-3

(2) The King's Friends.

By J. M. RiGG, Inspector of Manuscripts under the Historical Manuscripts Commission.

Bute and "the King's Friends" 423

Bedford, Bute, and their followers 424

New policy. Measures and men 426

Fall of Pitt. Rupture with Spain. Conduct of the War . . 426

Desertion of Prussia and overtures for peace. Ministerial changes 427

Peace of Paris 428

Reception of the Peace in England. Unpopularity of the

Government 429

Retirement of Bute ......... ib.

The GrenvUle-Bedford Administration and Wilkes . . . 430

Waiver of privilege and expulsion of Wilkes . . . 431

Further proceedings ......... 432

The American fiscal question ... . . . ib.

Reinforcement of Navigation Laws. Stamp Act . . . 433

Regency Act. The King and the Government. Its fall . . 434

The Rockingham Administration. Stamp Act .... 435

Repeal of Stamp Act. Fall of Rockingham's Government . . 436

Character of Chatham's Administration ..... 437

American port duties. The Crown and India .... 438

Impotence of Grafton's Government 439

Legislation. Wilkes once more ....... 440

Wilkes, Junius, and the Constitution 441

Burke's policy. Rally of the Opposition. Ministerial changes.

North 442

Futile concession to America. The Falkland Isles . . . 443

Corruption in the Admiralty. Freedom of the Press . . 444

Royal Marriage Act. East India Act 446

Exclusion of East Indian tea from American ports . . 446

Contents.

xxvu

PAGE

Prohibitory Act. Commencement of hostilities .... 447 Rockingham and Chatham. Lightheartedness of the British

Government 448

The Anti-British league 449

The Administration virtually reconstructed .... 450

Unsatisfactory state of the navy 451

The War in West Indian and European waters .... 452

In American .......... 453

And in East Indian waters 454

Reforms and projects of Reform 455

Fall of the Administration 456

(3) The Yeabs of Peace, and the Rise op the Youngeb Pitt. (1782-93.)

By Mautin J. GrEiFFiN, LL.D., C.M.G., Parliamentary Librarian of Canada.

The Rockingham Ministry

The Irish Parliament ......

Jealousy between Fox and Shelburne . Financial reforms. Peace negotiations Death of Rockingham. Ministerial changes Provisional Peace with the American Colonies . Resignation of Shelburne .....

Peace concluded with America and the Allies Parliamentary Reform. Indian affairs

Failure of Fox' India Bill

New Administration formed by Pitt .

Pitt's first India BiU

New Parliament. Indian affairs .... Pitt's second India Bill carried. Ireland . Trial of Warren Hastings. The Prince of Wales The Prince's marriage. The Slave Trade . The American loyalists. Regency debates . Regency Bill passed. Irish affairs

Nootka Sound. India

The Whig schism. Breach between Fox and Burke

Imminence of war

Revolutionary propaganda. French declaration of war Beginning of the great struggle with France

467 458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465 466 467 468 469 470 471 472 473 474 475 476 ib. 477 478

CHAPTER XIV.

IRELAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

By RoBEET DuNLOP, M.A., Victoria University.

The new period of Irish history 479

England's claim to legislate for Ireland 480

Opportunity for a legislative Union neglected. The "Irish Interest" 481

Effects of the destruction of the woollen industry . . . 482

XXVIU

Contents.

The population and the cultivation of the soU. Middlemen Periodical famines. Anti-English feeling rises. Monetary system Wood's Halfpence. Swift's Drapiei's Letters Character of the administration of the country . The English Interest. Archhishop Boulter Boulter's policy. Government by the Undertakers Political aims of Archbishop Stone Stone and the Undertakers. Religious toleration Agricultural distress. Whiteboys. Oakboys Steelboys. Political situation at the death of George II Demand for limiting duration of Parliament. Townshend's vice- royalty

Octennial Act. Session of 1769

A parliamentary majority purchased. Viceroyalty of Harcourt

Commercial distress. Buckinghamshire Viceroy .

Non-importation pledges. Rise of the Volunteers

Demand for Free Trade. A short Money Bill .

Free Trade granted. Grattan proposes Legislative Independence

Perpetual Mutiny BiU. Volunteer Convention .

Legislative Independence conceded

Renunciation agitation. Parliamentary Reform . Reform Bill rejected. Protection demanded Corn Laws. Pitt's project of a Commercial Union . . Commercial proposals dropped. Tithes .... King's illness. Regency question. Conclusion ,

VASE

483 484 485

a.

486 487 488 489 490 491

492 493 494 496 496 497 498 499 600 601 602 603 604 605

CHAPTER XV.

INDIA. (1) The Moohul Empire.

By the Right Hon. Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall, K.C.B., G.C.I.E., F.B.A., LL.D., Honorary Fellow of King's College.

Points of contact between the histories of Europe and Asia . 606

East and West in the sixteenth century 607

The Mohammadan dynasties in India 608

Babar's expeditions 609

The Moghul empire founded 610

Reverses at restoration of the Emperor Humfiyun , . . 611

Akbar's accession and successes 612

Akbar at the height of his power 613

Religious policy of Akbar 614

Wars of Jehangir in south-western India 616

Camp and Court of Jehangir 616

Shah Jehan's accession 617

Wars in the Dekhan and in Afghanistan 618

Deposition of Shah Jehan by Aurungzeb 619

State of India under Shah Jehan 620

Sivaji and the Maratha revolt 621

Aurungzeb's wars in southern India 622

Contents.

XXIX

Death of Aurungzeb. Decline of the Moghul empire

Dissolution of the empire

End of the Moghul dynasty

Internal constitution of the empire

Frontier difEculties. Afghanistan

Rise of the British dominion in India

Occupation hy Europeans of the sea-coast

PAGE

623 624 626 526 627 628 629

(2) The Engush and French in India. (1720-63.)

By P. E. RoBEBTs, B.A., late Scholar of Worcester College, Oxford.

The history of Europeans in India, 1720-44 .... 629

The East India and South Sea Companies 630

Growth of Bombay and Calcutta 631

Growth of Madras 632

Progress of the French Company before the outbreak of war with

England 633

Comparative resources of English and French in 1744 634

Expedition of Labourdonuais 636

Capture of Madras 636

Quarrel of Dupleix and Labourdonuais 637

Siege of Pondicherry. Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle . . . 638

Dynastic wars in southern India 639

Brilliant success of the French 640

Dupleix and Bussy. French progress checked .... 641

Fall of Dupleix. Godeheu's Treaty 642

Godeheu and Dupleix 643

Financial policy of Dupleix 644

Character of Dupleix . 646

Ungenerous treatment of Dupleix. Bussy in the Dekhan. Lally

in southern India ..... ... 646

Operations of Lally ..... 647

Forde's campaign. Clive. Siege of Madras .... 648

End of French dominion in India 649

Reasons for English success and French failure .... 660

(3) Clivb and Warbbn Hastings.

By P. E. RoBEETs.

The English in Bengal. Siraj-ud-daula's march on Calcutta

The Black Hole. Recapture of Calcutta

Surrender of Chandemagore

Conspiracy with Mir Jafar. Battle of Plassey

Plassey and after .....

Defeat of the Dutch

CUve's policy

Presents from native Powers

Deposition of Mir Jafar. Treatment of Mir Kasim

561 662 553 664 655 656 567 558 659

XXX Contents.

PAGE

Inland trade duties. Mir Kasim driven into war . . . 660

Battle of Boxar. Return of Clive 561

Olive's second governorship of Bengal 562

Olive's reforms and foreign policy 563

The "dual system" 664

Mutiny in Bengal. Clive attacked in Parliament . . . 666

Olive's defence. His death. Misgovernment in India . . 566

Warren Hastings Governor of Bengal 667

Administration of Warren Hastings 568

Oudh and Rohillihand 569

The Rohilla War. Hastings Governor-General .... 570

Lord North's Regulating Act 671

Hastings and his Council iJ.

Trial of Nuncomar 572-3

Financial dealings of Hastings 674

War in western India 676

War in southern India. " The Nawab of Arcot's debts " . . 676

War with Haidar Ali and the French 577

Deposition of Chait Singh 578

The Begams of Oudh 579

The Council and the Supreme Court. Hastings leaves India . 680

Fox' India Bill 681

Pitt's India Act 582

Charges against Hastings 683

Impeachment and acquittal of Hastings. His character . . 684

Hastings and Burke 685

CHAPTER XVI.

ITALY AND THE PAPACY.

By Mrs H. M. Vernon.

The papal power, France and the Empire 686

Clement XI and his successors ....... ib.

Anti-papal movements in France 587

And in Naples 688

The Papacy and Sardinia. Benedict XIV 689

Policy of Benedict XIV 690

Troubles in France. The Jesuits 691

Clement XIII and the Jesuits 692-3

Clement XIV and the Jesuits 694

Fall of the Jesuits 596

Naples under Charles III 596

Tanucci. Charles King of Spain 697

Condition of Naples under Charles III 698

Economic and judicial reforms 699

Tuscany under Francis of Lorraine 600

Leopold Grand Duke of Tuscany 601

Reforms in Tuscany under Leopold 602-3

His ecclesiastical policy 604

Contents.

XXXI

His reform schemes. Policy of Venice

Internal condition of Venice

Venetian decadence. Genoa

Genoaj Sardinia^ and Austria

Corsica. King Theodore. General Paoli

Faoli's departure and return

PAGE

605 606 607 608 609 610

CHAPTER XVII.

SWITZERLAND FROM THE TREATY OF AARAU TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

By Professor J. J. Schollenbeegee, University of Zurich.

Characteristics of Swiss eighteenth century history

Switzerland and the French alliance .

The Treaty of Aarau and its effects .

Alliance between France and the Catholic cantous

French efforts for a general Swiss alliance .

Fears of Austria. Swiss general alliance with France

Proposed "Plan of Protection." Foreign service

Development of the foreign service system. Eeislaufe

Increasing evils of the system ....

Motives of foreign service

Final judgment on the system. Neutrality Character of Swiss neutrality .... Complaints of infringements .... Growth of oligarchies in Switzerland . Class revolts and conflicts. The Aufklarung

611

612 613 614 615 616 617 618 610 620 621 622 623 624 625

CHAPTER XVIII.

JOSEPH II.

By Professor Eugene Hubeet, University of Liege.

Character and training of Joseph II. His dominions Joint regency of Maria Theresa and Joseph II .

Education and religion. Poland

Russian aggressions against Turkey. Kaunitz . First Polish Partition Treaty. Joseph's marriage Austrian designs on the Bavarian inheritance

War of the Bavarian Succession

Treaty of Teschen. Joseph IPs meeting with Frederick II

Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji

Joseph II as sole ruler. His "enlightened despotism" Patent of Tolerance. The Religious Orders " Febronian " influence. Seminaries of secular clergy Judicial and penal systems. Condition of peasantry .

626 627 628 629 630 631 632 633 634 635 636 637 638

xxxu

Contents.

Financial views of Joseph II and Kaunitz .

Austria and the " Barrier Fortresses "

Belgium abandoned by the Dutch garrisons

Proposed reopening of the Scheldt

Austro-Dutch quarrel as to the Scheldt

Meaning of Joseph II's ultimatum. French mediation

The Scheldt and the Bavaro-Belgian Exchange .

Treaty of Fontainebleau. The Exchange scheme

The Austrian design and the Furstenbund

Austro-Russian war against Turkey

Revolt of the Austrian Netherlands

Religious and judicial reforms in Belgium

Opposition to the reforms .

Their partial withdrawal. Outbreak of the Belgian

Belgian Republic proclaimed. Hungary

Hungarian disturbances. Death of Joseph II. His

End of the Belgian revolt. Accession of Leopold II

His conciliatory foreign policy ....

His death

revolt character

PAGE

639 640 641 642 643 644 645 646 647 648

ib. 649-50 650 661-2 663 664 665 656

ih.

CHAPTER XIX. CATHARINE II.

By Dr Otto Hotzsch, Professor in the Royal Academy, Posen.

Early life of Catharine .... Her marriage. Value of her Memoirs Married life of Peter and Catharine . Alienation of Peter from Catharine. Bestnzheff

Peter III as Emperor

Murder of Peter III

Catharine II assumes the government Prussia and the Polish question . Antecedents of the Polish question. Courland The Polish crisis on the death of Augustus III Russia secures the election of Stanislaus Poniatowski Intermixture of the Polish and Turkish questions

First Partition of Poland

Responsibility for the First Partition. Its results Reforms under Stanislaus. The ''Delegation Diet" Historic antagonism between Russia and Turkey

First Russo-Turkish War

Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji .... Annexation of the Crimea. Catharine's Tauric tour Austro-Russian War with Turkey. Treaty of Jassy Catharine's policy towards Germany and the West Catharine's foreign policy her own. Potemkin . Court factions. Appeal to national feeling Death of Ivan Antouovich. False claimants Pugachoffs rising. The Succession question

667 658 659 660 661 662 663 664 665 666 667 668 669 670 671 672 673 674 676 676 677 678 679 680 681

Contents.

XXXIU

PAGE

Military and civil administration 682

Provincial administration ........ 683-4

Municipal government. The nobility 685

Codification. The Nakds 686

Representative Legislative Commission 687

End of the Commission. Its effects 688

The question of the Emancipation of the Serfs .... 689

Condition of the peasantry 690

Domestic pressure. Catharine's economic policy . . . 691

Limits of Catharine's Liberalism 692

Her ecclesiastical policy 693

Treatment of particular provinces 694

Little Russia and the Cossacks 695

Grand Duke Paul. The Tsarina's favourites .... 696

Princess Dashkoff. Eminent servants of the Crown . , . 697

Catharine II's relations with literature 608

Personality of Catharine II 699

Significance of her personality and rule 700

Results of the reign 701

CHAPTER XX.

FREDERICK THE GREAT AND HIS SUCCESSOR.

(1) HOUE AND FOBEION PoLIOT.

(1763-97.)

By Dr Emil Daniels.

Position of Frederick II after the Peace of Hubertusburg .

Frederick II's Polish schemes and designs upon Saxony

His Ansbach-Lusatian scheme

War of the Bavarian Succession .

Failure of the Prussian campaign in Bohemia

Peace of Teschen. Hertzberg

Isolation of Prussia. The Fiirstenbund

Intervention in Holland and alliance with England

Reichenbach Convention. Expansion of Prussia

Coinage and revenue .

Distribution and increase of taxation

Treatment of oflicers of the army

Of civU officials and judges Nobility, bourgeoisie, and peasantry Agricultural credit societies. Colonisation Provision for immigrants. Feudal burdens on the peasantry Corn prices regulated. Government monopolies State tutelage and protection ....

Prohibitions and tariff wars

The Prussian Bank. General dread of paper money

Economic policy of Frederick II .

Economic advance under Frederick William II .

702 703 704 705 706 707 708 709

710 711 712 713 714 715 716 717 718 719 720 721-2 723 724

xxxiv Contents.

PAGE

Reaction against the Aufkl&rung. The Rosicrucians . . . 725

The Beligionsedict. Wollner . 726

Resistance to the Beligionsedict. The Allgemeine Landrecht . 727

Death of Frederick William II 728

(2) Poland and Prussia. (1763-91.)

By Professor Dr Otto Hotzsch.

Prussiaj Russia, and the election of Stanislaus .... 729

Confederation of Bar. "Lynar's project" 730

Prusso-Russian alliance renewed. Partition schemes . . . 731

First Partition of Poland 732

The Prussian gains and their significance 733

Futile change in Prussia's Polish policy 734

CHAPTER XXI.

DENMARK UNDER THE BERNSTORFFS AND STRUENSEE.

By W. F. Reddaway, M.A., Fellow of King's College, Censor of Non-Collegiate Students.

Denmark from 1730 to 1784 735

The Danish monarchy at the death of Frederick IV . . . 736

The Danish nation at the death of Frederick IV . . . 737

Christian VI. Economic policy 738

Religion and education. Frederick V 739

Moltke and the Council. The elder Bernstorff .... 740

BernstorfF and foreign affairs. The Holstein-Gottorp question . 741

The Seven Years' War. Death of Frederick V . . . , 742

Christian VII. Provisional Treaty of Exchange .... 743

The King's foreign tour. Struensee 744

Struensee and Queen Caroline Matilda. Clique and Council . 745

Fall of Bernstorff. Ascendancy of Struensee .... 746

His ideas and reforms 747-8

His unpopularity 749

Overthrow and execution of Struensee. The Queen . . . 760

Rule of Guldberg 751

Reaction in Denmark 752

The younger Bernstorff. Russian Exchange Treaty. The Duchies 753

The Russian "system." First Armed Neutrality ... ib.

Dismissal of Bernstorff 754

Fall of Guldberg. Bernstorff recalled 755

Administration of the younger Bernstorff 756

Emancipation of the peasants. The work of the Bemstorffs . 757

Contents. xxxv

CHAPTER XXII.

THE HATS AND CAPS AND GUSTAVUS HI. (1721-92.)

By the late R. Nisbet Bain.

PAGE

Character and effects of the Swedish Constitution of 1720 . . 7S8-9

The Caps and the Hats. Ascendancy of the Hats . . 760

Peace of Abo. The Crown Prince and Princess ... 761

Death of Frederick I. Accession of Adolphus Frederick . . 762

Fersen and Pechlin 763

The "Reduction Riksdag" 764

The "Northern Accord." Resignation of Adolphus Frederick . 765

The Reaction Riksdag. Death of Adolphus Frederick . . 766

Character of Gustavus IH 767

Gustavns' first Riksdag 768

Triumph of the Caps 769

The design of Spreng^porten and Toll, 770

The Revolution of August 19, 1772 771

Constitution of 1772 772

Reforms of Gustavus III 773-6

The Riksdags of 1778 and 1786 775-6

Gradual passage to semi-absolute government .... 777

The Russian War and the Anjala Confederation . . . 778

Gustavus appeals to the Dalesmen 779

Convention of Uddevalla. The Riksdag of 1789 .... 780

Act of Union and Security ........ 781

Peace of Varala 782

Gustavus III and the French Revolution 782-4

CHAPTER XXIII.

ENGLISH POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.

By AuTHua Lionel Smith, M.A., Jowett Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford.

The significance of Hobbes' theory 785

Hobbes' theory of sovereignty 786

Its defects 787

Its importance 788

Its anti-sacerdotal character 789

The influence of Hobbes 790

The opposition to Hobbes 791

The method of Hobbes 792

Its results 793

The idea of Covenant 794

Milton and liberty 795

xxxvi Contents.

PAGE

Harrington's scheme 796

His critics 797

The Restoration reaction. Anti-Puritanism .... 798-9

The Whig ideas 800

Baxter's views 801

Non-Resistance 802

Divine Right. Filmer 803

Sidney 804

Sidney as precursor of Locke 805

Passive Obedience 806

Its real meaning 807

Its practical importance 808

Locke's idea of Contract 809

Government a trustee . 810

The functions of government 811

Locke's influence 812

Locke on Toleration 813

Locke and Reform 814

After Locke 815

Party government and Defoe 816

Leslie. Bolingbroke 817

The Craftsman and the Patriots 818

The patriot King. Hume 819

Hume's scepticism and insight 820

Summary : from Hobbes to Burke 821

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPEAN LITERATURE.

By C. E. Vaughan, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford, Professor of English Literature in the University of Leeds.

The fresh current in European literature 822

Influence of Richardson 823

Influence of Rousseau 824

The First and the Second DUcours .... 825

Reawakening of the religious spirit 826

The "return to nature" 827

The "moralising" of nature . 828

The return towards the medieval spirit 829

Gray. Ossian. Percy's Meliques 830

Influence of Oesian and the Beliques 831

The Supernatural. Revival of humour 832

The realistic strain 833

The reversion to Classicism in Germany, France and England . 834

Hellenism and Romance. Speculation and politics . 835

Burke and his influence on literature 836

Conclusion 837

XXXVIl

LIST OF BIBLIOGRAPHIES.

CHAPS. PASES

I. The Hanoverian Succession .... 839 — 43

n. The Age of Walpole and the Pelhams . . 844—57

in. Jacobitism and the Union .... 858 — 63 IV, V. The Boxu:bon Governments in France and Spain

(1716-46) 864-9

VI. Financial Experiments and Colonial Develop-

ment 870—7

VII. Poland under the Saxon Kings . . . 878 — 80 Vin. The War of the Austrian Succession . . 881—6

IX. The Seven Years' War 887—8

X. Russia under Anne and Elizabeth . . . 889 — 91

XI. The Reversal of Alliances and the Family

Compact 892 — 8

XII. Spain and Portugal (1746-94) . . . 899—901

XIII. Great Britain (1756-93) 902—12

XIV. Ireland from 1700-89 913—24

XV. India 925—32

XVI. Italy and the Papacy 933—40

XVII. Switzerland from the Treaty of Aarau to the

Revolution 941 — 2

XVIII. Joseph II 943—8

XIX. Catharine 11 949—53

XX. Frederick II and his Successor . . 954 — 5

XXI. Denmark under the BernstoriFs and Struensee 956 — 9

XXII. Sweden from 1720-92 960—3

XXIII. Political Philosophy from Hobbes to Burke . 964—7

XXIV. The Romantic Movement in European Litera-

ture 968—70

Cheonological Table of Leading Events . . . 971 — 6

Index 977

xxxvm

CORRIGENDA AND ADDENDUM.

p. 224. Headline. Dele Contest and.

p. 272, 1. 21 from bottom. For which the Prince of Soubise had forced,

against his will, read which had forced the Prince of Soubise, against

his wUl,

p. 314, 1. 18. For Fredrikshamn read Fredrikshamm.

p. 316. For Mardefelt read Mardefeld.

p. 332, 1. 11. For d'Arnonville read d'Amouville.

p. 342. Headline and 1. 12. For Paris read Versailles.

p. 362, 1. 16 from bottom. For Brown read Browne.

p. 766, 1. 11, For Andrei Ivanovich read Ivan Andreivich.

p. 863, 1. 10. Add: Mackenzie, W. C. Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat: his Life and Times. London. 1908.

CHAPTER I, GREAT BRITAIN UNDER GEORGE I.

(1) THE HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION.

Happily for England, the Hanoverian Succession was, so far as the predominant partner in the Union was concerned, accomplished without bloodshed ; and, happily for the continental Powers of Europe, they were not drawn into a direct settlement by arms of the question of the British Succession, as they previously had been in the case of the Spanish, and afterwards were in that of the Austrian. This result was by no means reached as a matter of course, or in accordance with common expecta- tion ; it was due to a combination of causes, among which not the least effective lay in the sagacity and self-control shown by the members of the House of Hanover in the crisis of its fortunes.

Without again going over ground covered as part of English and European history in a previous volume, it may be convenient to note briefly the principal phases through which the question of the Hanoverian — or, as it may from first to last be called with perfect propriety, that of the Protestant — Succession in England passed, before, after long years of incubation, that Succession became, with a suddenness more startling to contemporaries than to later observers, an accomplished fact. This summary may furnish a suitable occasion for recalling the personalities of those members of the Hanoverian dynasty who were immediately concerned in the transactions preceding its actual occupation of the English throne, and of some of the counsellors and agents with whose aid the goal of their labours was attained. And it may be permissible to add a word as to the antecedents of a House about whose earlier history the English people knew little and cared less, but which was never truer to its past than when it assumed the inheritance of a great future.

In the critical year 1688 Sophia, the youngest daughter of the Princess Ehzabeth of England who during the long years of her exile continued to call herself Queen of Bohemia, was fifty-eight years of age; she was thus senior by eight years to Louis XIV, whom accordingly

C. M. H. VI. CH. I. ^

2 The House of Guelf and its Luneburg branch. [i636-88

she was, as she says, always accustomed to regard as "a young man." She had been married for thirty years to Ernest Augustus, the youngest of the four brother Dukes who in their generation repre- sented the Liineburg branch of the House of Brunswick, and whose territories included Liineburg-Celle and Calenberg-Gottingen. In 1662 Ernest Augustus, in accordance with the alternating arrangement made in the Peace of Westphalia, became Bishop of Osnabriick, and in 1679 he succeeded to the rule of the principality of Calenberg (Hanover). His and Sophia's eldest son, George Lewis (afterwards King George I) was in 1688 a man of twenty-eight years of age, to whom a son, George Augustus (afterwards George II) and a daughter (afterwards Queen of Prussia) had already been bom. Besides George Lewis, five younger sons and a daughter (Sophia Charlotte, afterwards the first Queen of Prussia) were living to Sophia and her husband in 1688. Thus her family was numerous ; nor were her husband's prospects of territorial dominion less promising.

The historic grandeur of the House of Guelf dates from a very remote past ; and the laborious investigation of its antiquities which at this very time was being commenced by Leibniz (though, so far as is known, this was the only research conducted by him which ever engaged the attention of the futiure George I) could have possessed only a very academic interest for Englishmen. What had been left of the vast possessions of Henry the Lion, or had been added to the remnant by his descendants, had been partitioned and repartitioned by them on innumerable occasions. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the efforts of the Princes of the House of Guelf had raised it to a position of importance and influence at least equal to that of any other princely family in northern Germany; but the two main, or Brunswick and Liineburg, branches, which had separated in the thirteenth centruy, were never actually reunited, and even the dominions of the Liineburg branch were never united as a single inheritance. Although of the five elder brothers of Duke George, who in the latter part of the Thirty Years' War so signally asserted the position of his House, four in succession held undivided sway over the territories which formed their joint inheritance, on his death in 1641 his will established an exception to the principles of unity of government as well as of indivisibility of territory formerly observed by the Liineburg Dukes. Calenberg (Han- over), where he had ruled independently of his brothers since 1636, was to remain separated from the more important Liineburg-Celle; while the principle of primogeniture was only to be applied so far as to give the eldest brother the right of choice between the two divisions. In obedience to this rule, the eldest of Duke George's four sons. Christian Lewis, after first holding sway at Hanover, succeeded his uncle Frederick at Celle in 1648. On his death, without children, in 1665, the second brother, George William, who had ruled at Hanover, succeeded to Celle,

1676-1708] Rise of the House of Hanover. 3

where he carried on the government till his own death in 1705, having been followed at Hanover by his younger brother John Frederick (Leibniz' Roman Catholic patron), who ruled there till he died, leaving only two daughters, in 1679. In that year came the turn of the youngest brother, Ernest Augustus, the Bishop of Osnabriick, Sophia's husband, who now succeeded at Hanover, from which his line took the name generally used in England.

But before this long-delayed rise took place in the fortunes of the pair, a more important advance had been prepared. Ernest Augustus' elder brother George William (who had himself been at one time aiSanced to Sophia, then a poor Palatine princess at her brother's Court in Heidelberg) had long since gone back from his undertaking to remain unmarried during the lifetime of Ernest Augustus and his consort, and thus to secure to them or their offspring the succession in Celle. In 1676 he married the daughter of a Poitevin nobleman, Eleonora d'Olbreuse, who had already borne to him several children. Only the eldest of these, Sophia Dorothea, who had been legitimised five years before her mother's marriage, survived ; and the right of any issue from that marriage to succeed to George William's inheritance during the siirvival of any descendant of Ernest Augustus was expressly barred. But the marriage of Sophia Dorothea to Ernest Augustus' eldest son, George Lewis, in 1682, followed by the birth in 1683 and 1687 of the two children already mentioned, furnished a final safeguard that the union of Celle-Liineburg and Calenberg-Gottingen would ultimately be carried out. And thus in 1683 the imperial sanction was obtained for the testament " set up " by Ernest Augustus (i.e. promulgated by him in his lifetime), which established in all the dominions of the line the twofold principle of indivisibility and succession by primogeniture.

The marriage of George Lewis and Sophia ended in infidelity on both sides and in a sentence of divorce (1694) ; and the rest of her life (which lasted thirty-three years longer) was spent by the unhappy Princess in custody at Ahlden. The proclamation of primogeniture was bitterly resented by the younger sons of Duke Ernest Augustus, and one of them, Prince Maximilian, contrived a plot (with some dangerous ramifications), on the discovery of which (1691) he was exiled, and his chief agent put to death. But the unity of the dominions of the Brunswick-Liineburg line was now assured, and, although it was not actually accomplished till the death of George William of Celle in 1705, a sufficient basis had been secured for the protracted efforts of Ernest Augustus to bring about his recognition as an Elector of the Empire. In December, 1692, he actually obtained investiture as such from the Emperor; but his admission into the Electoral College took sixteen more years of negotiation ; so that it was not till 1708 that George Lewis, who had succeeded to his father ten years before, reached this consummation.

OH. I. 1—2

4 George William, Ernest Augustibs, and the Empire. [i648-88

The electoral investiture accorded to the House of Brunswick- Liineburg was the avowed reward of the services which it had rendered to the Empire and the House of Austria during the whole of the period between the Peace of Westphalia and the crisis of 1688. In the early part of this period the foreign policy of that House was chiefly intent upon preventing France and Sweden from breaking through the limits within which the Peace of Westphalia had sought to confine them. The Triple Alliance (1668) in some measure shifted the rela- tions between the leading European Powers ; and, for a time, the goodwill of the Brunswick-Liineburg Dukes was solicited — and not by means of fair words only — by both France and her adversaries. But, in 1672, the policy of George William of Celle was, by the advice of his Minister von Schiitz, definitively emancipated from French influence ; and both he and his brother Ernest Augustus were now gradually gained over to the political system devised by George Frederick of Waldeck and adopted by William of Orange. A loyal adherence to the House of Austria was henceforth the guiding principle of the policy consistently pursued by the two brothers, and by Ernest Augustus' son and grandson, both before and after the accession of the former of these to the English throne, and was handed down by a series of trusted advisers, from the elder Schiitz to his son-in-law Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff, and from Bernstorff to Miinchhausen.

The Treaty of 1674, by which all the Brunswick-Liineburg Dukes except John Frederick of Hanover (whose death, five years later, ended this schism in the politics of the House) joined the coalition against France, bound them to furnish 15,000 men, in addition to 2000 maintained at their own cost, in return for subsidies paid by the States General, Spain and the Emperor ; and in August, 1675, the Brunswick- Liineburgers under their Princes gained the brilliant victory of the Bridge of Conz. They then returned home to protect the dominions of the House against the Swedes ; but of this enemy a sufficient account was given by the Great Elector of Brandenburg, between whose dynasty and its Brunswick-Liineburg kinsmen relations of intimacy and of jealousy alternated in rapid succession. When, after the Peace of Nymegen (1679), the chief anxiety of the House of Austria was the Turkish peril. Prince George Lewis and the Hanoverian Life-guards rendered important service at the siege of Vienna (September, 1683), and he and four of his brothers took an active part in several campaigns against the Turks (the importance of which for the Empire has often been underrated) both in Hungary, where in 1685 George Lewis par- ticularly distinguished himself at the taking of Neuhausel, and in the Morea; two of the Princes laid down their lives in these conflicts. When, partly in consequence of the Imperialist successes in the East, the armies of France invaded the Empire in the West, Celle and Hanover joined in the Magdeburg Conference (October, 1688), and contributed to the forces

1630-88] The JElectress Sophia and her eldest son. 6

which secured the middle Rhine 8000 men under the command of Ernest Augustus, George Lewis taking an active part in the operations.

Such was, in bare outline, what may be called the political record of the House of Hanover at the time of the English Revolutionary settlement of 1688-9. Curiously enough, the House which had rendered and was prepared to render excellent service in the struggle against the pohtical predominance of France— of which struggle the accession of William and Mary might justly be called an incident — was in the persons of its reigning Dukes ardently attached to French modes of life and thought. By a combination of military discipline with an easy- going freedom of thought they had been trained to habits of mind in better accord with the conditions of benevolent despotism than with those of a steady regard for constitutional rights and liberties. These tendencies were united to a love of social dissipations of which Venice, a favourite resort of the Brunswick-Liineburg Dukes, long remained the most fashionable scene ; but George Lewis, though, like his father and uncle before him, a lover of licence, was from first to last as little French in his tastes as he was in his politics ; and his wife's French blood did not tend to soften his antipathy to her nationality. The descendant of the Stewarts, through whom the House of Hanover had become connected with the royal family of England, differed entirely in her intellectual tastes and principles of conduct from her husband and her eldest son, but she was not less alien to the principles than they to the ideals and usages of recent English politics. Accustomed at once to a free view of life and to a frank and cheerful acceptance of its responsibilities, high-spirited and courageous, but in nothing more shrewd than in her self-knowledge, the Electress Sophia (as she was already called) was, like her sister Elizabeth and her brother Charles Lewis, Elector Palatine, the friend of philosophers — and at least in so far herself a philosopher that she could shape her course according to principles transparently clear and definite, and sufficient to enable her to meet with unbroken serenity the varied troubles of more than fourscore years. Inasmuch as through- out her life the question of the form of religious faith professed by princes as well as by peoples was still a very important factor in politics, it seems strange that neither then nor afterwards should the confessional position of the House of Hanover have been very clearly understood in England. The Electress Sophia (though as a child she had been accustomed to attend the services of the Church of England at her mother's Court) had been brought up as a Calvinist, and adhered through life, in no half-hearted way, to that " religion " ; but the Elector and his family were steady Lutherans. Neither in them, nor most certainly in her, was there a trace of bigotry or intolerance ; and, while detestation of Popery was part of her nature as well as of her training, she not only was quite ready to do what was expected of her in the way of Protestant conformity, but sympathised cordially with those schemes of religious

6 The Succession question under William and Mary. [i68i-96

reunion which were among the noblest aspirations of the greatest minds of the age — of Leibniz above all.

As there was a great deal of piety in Sophia's heart, she could not but take as she did a continuous interest both in the dynasty from which her mother sprang and in the country with which its connexion remained unsevered. In her girlhood there had been some passing talk of her becoming the bride of the banished Charles II ; and, in 1681, the design of marrying her eldest son to Princess Anne of England was approved by William of Orange, though it does not seem to have been favoured by Sophia herself. As it came to nothing, George Lewis was not to anticipate Monmouth as a Protestant candidate for the English throne. When the Revolution of 1688 was at hand, Ernest Augustus displayed no eagerness such as was shown by most of the German Protestant Princes, including his own elder brother and notably the Elector of Brandenburg, to associate himself with the English project of William of Orange; and his consort manifested sympathy with her kinsman James II, though the statement that she supported his appeal to the Emperor for mediation cannot be proved. At no time would she listen to the doubts cast upon the genuineness of the birth of the Prince of Wales. But her own position in the matter of the succession to the English throne she neither did nor could ignore. When the Declaration of Right, which settled the Crown, after William and Mary, upon the posterity of Mary, then on Anne and her posterity, and then on the posterity of William was, in 1689, turned into the Bill of Rights, the additional proviso was inserted that no person in connexion with the Church of Rome or married to a member of it should be capable of inheriting or possessing the Crown. By this clause, it has been calculated, the eventual claims to the succession of nearly threescore persons were taken away. In the Lords, Bishop Burnet by the King's desire proposed, and carried without opposition, an amendment naming the Duchess Sophia and her descendants as next in the succession; but it was rejected in the Commons, on the ground of its injustice to claimants nearer in descent who might have become Protestants in the interval. As a matter of fact, the birth of the Duke of Gloucester in the midst of the discussion (July 24, 1689) removed one reason for pressing on the amendment ; but, whatever the reason why the Government gave way, Sophia's name was not mentioned in the Bill or in the Scottish Claim of Rights. The whole transaction had, as she warmly acknowledged, revealed the goodwill of King William towards the Hanoverian Succession, and this goodwill he steadily maintained. He cannot, as has been supposed, have seriously favoured the pretensions of the House of Savoy-Carignan, in the absence of any assurance of a change of religion in that quarter ; and in any case those pretensions would have been relegated into limbo, when, in 1696, Savoy deserted the Grand Alliance.

1689-1707] George Lewis and the English Succession. 7

In general it may be said that the policy of the House of Hanover as to the Succession in the years which ensued was one of waiting — patiently on the part of the Electress Sophia, and with something very like indifference on the part of her son. Her consciousness of the uncertainties of fortune at her time of life suffices to account for her tranquillity; George Lewis never cared to conceal his dislike of the possibilities before him, though he would at any time have made it give way to his sense of duty towards his dynasty. The English throne seemed to many of his contemporaries the most uncertain of royal seats, and the English nation the very exemplar of mutability. Though a British envoy extraordinary was from 1689 accredited to Hanover and Celle among other north German Courts, that of Hanover was during the last decade of the century almost absorbed in its own intimate troubles and immediate ambitions. The electoral dignity, which as has been seen was not acknowledged by the Electors of the Empire at large before two of them — Saxony and Brandenburg — had each compassed a royal crown, had been secured from the Emperor by means of the Kurtractat of 1692, by which the new Elector under- took to furnish a force of 6000 men for service against the Turks, and, should this be no longer required, against the French, as well as to support the Habsburg interest both in coming imperial elections and in the matter of the Spanish Succession. It may be truly said that George Lewis was as cordially interested in what his dynasty gave as in what it took ; and even the additional importance which the prospect of the English Succession gave to his House he would seem to have chiefly valued because it enabled him to take a prominent part in military operations. After he had succeeded his father at Hanover in 1698, not only did he and his uncle at Celle join the Grand Alliance reknit by William III, but they obliged their kinsmen at Wolfenbiittel to throw up their alliance with France. When the War of the Spanish Succession broke out, Hanover and Celle placed under Marlborough's command more than 10,000 troops, which fought with distinction at Blenheim and elsewhere, though (as the Electress Sophia complained) no notice was taken of them in the gazettes; and, after George Lewis had (in 1705) become ruler of the entire dominions of his House, he asserted himself by strongly opposing the first suggestions of a pacification (1706); and his most cherished ambition was fulfilled when (1707) he was appointed to the command of the army of the Rhine. It was his misfortune, not his fault, that in this position he was unable to accomplish any military results of much importance.

Meanwhile, in England the death of Queen Mary (1694) could hardly fail to bring the Succession question forward again. In 1696, the Brandenburg scheme of a marriage between Princess Louisa Dorothea and King William III had come to nothing; and, in 1698, he paid a visit to Celle and its neighbourhood, during which his conversations with

8 The Electress Sophia and the Act of Succession. [i698-i7oi

the (now Dowager) Electress Sophia and her clever sister-in-law at Celle beyond a doubt revived his interest in the Hanoverian Succession. But neither he nor English politicians had just then much time to occupy themselves with the question, which only became one of general interest when the death of the young Duke of Gloucester (August 7, 1700) left no life between the Electress Sophia and the throne but that of Queen Anne herself.

In the course of the autumn the Electress Sophia paid a visit to King William at the Loo, in which she was accompanied by her daughter the Electress of Brandenburg and her grandson the young Electoral Prince (afterwards King Frederick William I of Prussia). Curiously enough, the idea seems to have crossed King William's mind of placing this young Prince (whose father had claims upon the King's own inheritance as Prince of Orange) in the position left vacant by the Duke of Gloucester — though, as is pointed out by Onslow, he never had it in his power to nominate any one to the English throne ; and the Brandenburg (soon to become the Prussian) Court wsis quite awake to what, as it seemed, might happen. So late as 1699 the Elector Frederick Ill's sagacious Minister Fuchs was pressing his master "to aim at the English throne." The episode is curious ; but there is no reason for assuming, either that a letter written by the Electress Sophia to Stepney shortly before her visit to the Loo was really " Jacobite " in intention, or that at their meeting the Electress, by opposing the wishes of WiUiam III, led him to turn his thoughts to the rival electoral House.

Already in January, 1701, it was known that a new Act of Settle- ment would be proposed by the Crown to Parliament, in which the Electress Sophia and her descendants would be named ; and, notwith- standing the rumours of intrigues in which Marlborough was believed to be involved, an excessive display of zeal on the part of the indefatigable Leibniz, and a protest on behalf of Duchess Anna Maria of Savoy, the Act which in default of issue of the Princess Anne or King WiUiam settled the English Crown upon "the most excellent Princess Sophia and the heirs of her body, being Protestants," on June 12, 1701, received the royal assent. On August 14, the Earl of Macclesfield, with the voluble Toland in his train, arrived at Hanover, to present a copy of the Act of Succession to the Electress, and to bring the Garter to the Elector. They were treated with much honour, but more significant is the fact, long concealed, that the Committee of the Calenberg Estates secretly furnished the Hanoverian legation in London with a sum of 300,000 dollars for any unforeseen emergency. At an interview which King William immediately afterwards had at the Loo with George William of Celle, he promised to try to obtain an annual income for the Electress from Parliament, and to invite her and the Electoral Prince to England in the coming spring.

That spring William III never saw, and during the whole of his

1701-3] The Grand Alliance.

successor's reign no part of the obviously appropriate arrangement suggested by him was carried out. In the last days of August, 1701, the new Grand Alliance against France was concluded ; and a few days later, by the deathbed of King James II, his son was recognised by Louis XIV as successor to the English Crown. The " indignity " (the word is Bentley's) filled all England with wrath ; and, beyond all doubt, the magnanimous action of Louis XIV helped to bring about, if it did not actually cause, the insertion in the final form of the instrument of the Grand Alliance a provision binding the contracting Powers not to conclude peace with France until the King of England should have received satisfaction for the grave insult implied in the recognition by the King of France of the " pretended Prince of Wales " as his father's successor on the English throne. The War of the Spanish Succession thus, in a sense, became a war of the English Succession also; and, though during its earlier years the victories of the Allies added, as it has been happily expressed, a guarantee of their own, no sooner were conditions of peace under discussion than this clause could not but again come to the front. Those interested in the Hanoverian Succession could then hardly fail to ask themselves in what way it would be advanced — or peradventure endangered — by the conditions proposed for the peace itself. Meanwhile, in January, 1702, was passed, together with an Act attainting the Pretender, the Abjuration Act, which made it obligatory to abjure him and to swear fidelity to the King and his heirs according to the Act of Settlement. Somewhat ominously, the clause making this oath obligatory was carried in the Commons only by a single vote.

Shortly afterwards (March 8) King William died ; and a period, in some respects obscure, began in the history of the Hanoverian Succession, which extended over thirteen further weary years. But this obscurity was due neither to the conduct of the heiress presumptive of the English throne nor to that of her son. The Electress Sophia continued to remain true to herself and to the line of conduct which her judgment had marked out for her, in her conduct towards the English Crown and Parliament, and in her daily intercourse with friends and well-wishers, sincere or insincere. Occasionally her tranquil interest in a drama of which she scarcely expected to see the denouement was quickened into some measure of precaution, as when (in June, 1703) she signed three forms for the Hanoverian envoy extraordinary in London (Baron Ludwig Justus von Schiitz), authorising him to claim the throne on her behalf in the event of the Queen's death; but, while she at no time concealed her conviction as to what would be the appropriate way of recognising her position, she made no demand, and still less allowed herself to be seduced into manoeuvres or intrigues with any English party or individual politician. Her eldest son only gradually, and never quite completely, suppressed his reluctance to move in the matter ; but, while plainly resolved to do nothing prematurely, he was as a matter of duty

10 Bernstorff. — Queen Anne and the Succession. [1705-20

towards the interests of his House and of the Empire resolved to use all due means of preparing and, when the time came, of asserting a claim not of his own seeking, but now interwoven with the whole political situation of Europe in which he had become an important factor. That he now saw matters in this way was largely due to Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff, since 1705 (on the death of George William of Celle, whose affairs he had directed for more than a quarter of a century) George Lewis' chief political adviser (with the title of Prime Minister from 1709), and his confidential adviser long after the Elector's accession to the English throne, until his own political downfall in 1720. BemstoriTs training was that of a territorial or particularist statesman ; and in the earlier part of his career his jealousy of the Danish and more especially of the Brandenburg Government seemed to be the guiding principle of his policy. These tendencies, and his personal connexion with Mecklenburg, he never forgot or repressed; but he had a great grasp of affairs as well as singular acuteness of insight ; and the charges of venality brought against him were largely if not wholly attributable to spite. Of the policy which he in a great measure inspired more will be said hereafter.

The darkness in which the progress of the Succession question in these years is shrouded is, of course, mainly caused by the insincere and tortuous conduct of Queen Anne, her Ministers and the political parties out of whose jealousies and ambitions the inner history of the reign evolved itself. Their proceedings, and the motives by which they must be concluded to have been actuated, have been discussed, in their relation to the fallen Stewarts and to the general progress of affairs in other passages of this work ; here it only remains to note their direct bearing upon the Succession which according to Act of Parliament was to follow, should the Queen die without leaving any descendants of her own.

Queen Anne — ^no longer hopeful of issue, and from October, 1708, a widow — very naturally felt a certain measure of sympathy for her half-brother as to the genuineness of whose birth she had at first been so demonstratively sceptical. But the really dominant motive of her behaviour (a few unavoidable civilities apart) in the matter of the Hanoverian Succession, was a deep, not to say a superstitious, aversion from the whole topic and its associations. In the earlier years of her reign she did nothing in recognition of the " Princess Sophia's " claims beyond ordering the insertion of her name in the liturgy. She would at no time hear of carrying out King William's intention of inviting the Electress Sophia and the Electoral Prince to England, or grant a specific title to the former ; nor would she approve of an annual income for the heiress to the Crown sanctioned by Parliament. Sophia on the other hand declined to entertain the idea of a private allowance from the Civil List, which would merely oblige her to surround herself with expensive English servants. The Electoral Prince was created Duke of Cambridge, and Knight of the Garter like his father — and that was all. Coolness

1704-10] Waiting policy of' the House of Hanover. 11

thus came to be returned for coolness ; and it was only in the last four years of the Queen's reign that the relations between her and the old Electress assumed a friendlier aspect — till at last the explosion came.

With the English political leaders and factions the Electress and, till nearly the last, her son forbore from entering into intimate relations. To Marlborough they were alike attracted, and he was always ready with judicious advice ; but he was not the man to mortgage his future by identifying himself with either side, more especially so long as he was the first man in the State and controlled the action of the Queen. But on the other side there was equal caution. At what date he offered to the House of Hanover a loan of £20,000, in return for a blank commission signed by the Electress confirming him in the command of both army and navy, is uncertain ; on the other hand, when in 1710 it was expected that the new Ministers proposed to offer the chief command in the field to George Lewis in Marlborough's place, the Elector had, notwithstanding his military ambition, made up his mind to decline it. Godolphin was less accessible ; he was always suspected of partiality for the House of Stewart, with which he is known to have been in communi- cation ; and for the royal assent to the Scottish Act of Security (1704<), which seriously endangered the Hanoverian Succession beyond the Border, he was mainly responsible. The Whigs proper could not but consis- tently maintain the principle of the Hanoverian Succession except in a moment of factious aberration (Sophia said that they would always be for it " so long as it suited their purpose ") ; but it was not tUl a dis- continuance of the War became an integral part of the Ministerial policy that the Elector began to take special thought of securing the support of the party in the matter of the Succession. To the Tories — whether or not of the so-called "Hanover" section which upheld the Succession — the behaviour of both the Electress and the Elector always remained frank and courteous ; and even the duplicity of the game played, first by Oxford and then more persistently and for a time more audaciously by Bolingbroke, though perfectly well known to Sophia and to her son, was met by them with an unrufiled front.

Thus, the main incidents in the history of the Succession in Queen Anne's reign may be very rapidly reviewed. In 1704-5, when party relations in England were much confused, and Buckingham and Rochester were in correspondence with the Electress Sophia, the "High-flier" section of the Tories, headed by Rochester, sought to assert their power by means of an address urging that the Electress should be invited to take up her residence in England. The address was thrown out in the Lords (November, 1705), the Whigs voting against it; but their leaders adroitly seized the occasion to introduce two Bills, which signified a real step forward in the interests of the Hanoverian Succession — the Naturalisation Bill, which made an Englishwoman of the heiress to the throne, and the Regency Bill, which empowered her to appoint twenty-one

12 The parties and the Succession. — Bothmer. [i70»-ii

Lords Justices, who, in addition to the great officers of the Crown, were to carry on the government of the country in the event of her absence from it at the time of the Queen's death. The Earl of Halifax was appointed to announce the passing of these Bills at Hanover ; but it cannot have been very agreeable to his personal feelings that the Electress struck his name with six others out of the list submitted to her, or acceptable to his Whig principles that she insisted to him on the hereditary character of her right to the throne.

In 1708, when the death of Prince George of Denmark had removed the last possibility of further issue from the Queen, the Whigs were fully established in power ; but the Electress was by no means thrown off her balance by the enthusiasm of her Whig visitors at Herrenhausen, and the Elector was much out of humour at the lack of confidence shown to him in connexion with the conduct of the War. But a more critical period soon drew near, and it was not without reason that the Elector went out of his way to remonstrate with Queen Anne on the Ministerial changes reported as imminent in the early part of 1710. After these changes had been actually accomplished. Earl Rivers was sent to Hanover by the Queen to explain her view of them, and made a favourable impression. In December the Electoral Prince was installed Knight of the Garter by proxy — somewhat tardily, as he had been invested with the insignia of the Order some four years earlier. In 1710 — a few months before, in May, 1711, Harley became Lord Treasurer with the title of Earl of Oxford — Hans Caspar von Bothmer, Hanoverian Minister pleni- potentiary at the Hague, arrived at the Court of St James, to take the place of the envoy Schiitz (who had died in the previous February). Bothmer, who was more directly and effectively instrumental than any other man in bringing about the Hanoverian Succession, had, like Bernstorff, been originally in the service of George William of Celle, and had when Minister at the imperial Court been sent as a plenipotentiary to the Peace of Ryswyk. He had acquired the complete confidence of the electoral family and of the Electress Sophia in particular, whose letters show her appreciation of his great ability, except as the executant of feminine commissions. He had been active in the electoral interest already at the Hague whither he returned for part of 1711; and both here and in London, which he again quitted for a time to act as pleni- ■potentiary at Utrecht, he laboured incessantly in the main task of his life. He failed indeed to secure the goodwill of the Queen, to whom his very presence was a memento of the future to which she desired to shut her eyes, or of her Ministers — Bolingbroke declared that, notwithstanding his air of coldness and caution, he was " the most inveterate party-man " of his day — but he was praised by the Electress for being on friendly terms with both parties, without compromising himself with either. His management of the funds placed at his disposal appears to have been discreet and well-proportioned; some peers were to be had cheap. When

ivn-32] The Succession and the Peace. 13

the crisis came, he rose to the full height of the situation, and for a moment commanded it, assuming even such a responsibility as that of the destruction of the Queen's private little packet of papers. When all was happily over, and his services had been acknowledged by his being made a Count of the Empire, he remained for some time in active service, retaining his post of the Elector's Minister to the Cornet where the Elector was now King. But as the influence of BernstorfF rose to its height that of Bothmer, whose views began to diverge from his, waned, and he supported Stanhope against BernstorfF in some of the transactions which preceded the fall of the latter in 1720 — a fact which shows the term "Hanoverian Junta" to be hardly more accurate than the expression "Stanhope's German Ministry." Bothmer died in 1732, leaving large estates in Mecklenburg.

Bothmer had made it clear from the first that in matters of European policy, and in the question of war or peace with France in particular, his master was by no means disposed to fall in tamely with the system of the Queen and her Ministers. Already, when, in the autumn of 1711, Rivers paid a second visit to Hanover, and his customary assurances of the Queen's benevolent intentions were met by the Electress with the observation that it seemed to her quite natural that " the Queen should be more in favour of her brother than of us," the real object of his mission broke down on the Elector's steady refusal to declare himself in favour of the British overtures of peace to France. In November, 1711, Bothmer, who had returned to London with fresh credentials, brought with him a memorandum against the conclusion of peace which in England was ascribed to Whig influence, but which as a matter of fact developed principles of action of far more importance to the Elector than the interests of any English party-principles, and from his point of view dominating the question of the Succession itself. Both sides were now competing for the goodwill of the electoral House. When, in January, 1712, the Whigs through the Duke of Devonshire proposed to give the Duke of Cambridge precedence over other peers, the Ministry at once overbid them by rapidly carrying an Act securing precedence to the entire electoral family. Oxford sent his kinsman Thomas Harley to Hanover to present a copy of this Act, and to utilise the opportunity for laying, if possible, the belligerent spirit which possessed the Elector. But Bothmer still pressed his master's point of view, presenting a letter from him to the Queen on February 14.

At Utrecht, whither Bothmer soon repaired to watch the progress of the peace negotiations, the policy of the Elector was in many respects deliberately calculated to thwart that of the English Ministry. More significant, however, than even his wish to continue the Dutch Barrier Treaty and to promote a good understanding between the Dutch and imperial Governments, was the order given by him to General von Biilow, the commander of his contingent in the Low Countries, to pass

14 Intrigues of Oxford and BoUngbroke. [1712-3

from under the command of Ormond, Marlborough's successor, and to unite with the imperial troops under Prince Eugene, on the day on which Ormond should conclude a truce with the French (July). There was no difference of opinion as to the mention in the Treaty of Peace of the Hanoverian Succession ; but the addition, suggested by Leibniz, of a clause securing to the Elector and one or more members of his family a residence and annual income in England, was never seriously entertained. As an Estate of the Empire the Elector of course withheld his signature from the Peace.

After Bothmer's recall Baron Thomas von Grote, who belonged to a family distinguished in the service of the Elector's House, was sent to London (December, 1712). His instructions were drawn up by Jean de Robethon, a Hanoverian official of French Huguenot descent, who has been justly described as the very soul of George I's diplomatic chancery, and who continued in favour so long as Bemstorff main- tained his ascendancy in the counsels of his Prince. Grote carried with him, besides elaborate instructions from both Elector and Electress, lists of the best friends of the House of Hanover in England, most of whom were Whigs ; but he was also told to make friends with the clergy. He found no opportunity of urging the establishment for the Electress, the provision of which would have furnished the best proof of the sincerity of the Queen's and Oxford's professions, and in February, 1713, sent home to Hanover a very gloomy account of the situation. The hopes of the friends of the Succession in England were, for reasons which it is not very easy to assign, once more sinking. It is idle to ascribe the fact to the "unpopularity" of a House practically unknown to all but a few English men and women. The Electress had offended nobody, and, so long as the War had continued, the Elector had been a faithful and a zealous ally. Bat it was the time when both Oxford and Bolingbroke, whose mutual rivalry was becoming more intense, were seeking to intrigue with Berwick and the Jacobites at Paris, and trying to accommodate their attitude at home to the wishes of the Queen, which seemed by no means to point towards Hanover; Bolingbroke not only going further than Oxford in his overtures to the Jacobites, but occasionally treating the Elector's envoy with insolent brusqueness. In March, 1713, Grote died; and in the same month Oxford, who could never continue long without trimming, appears to have sent his useful kinsman to make the customary meaningless declarations at Hanover. The Whigs were anxious that the Elector should force the situation, and at the same time exercise an influence upon the elections that were to follow on the dissolution of Parliament in July, by sending over a member of his family, preferably the Electoral Prince, who in the new Parliament would as a matter of course take his seat in the Lords. Bothmer favoured the step, but Bernstorfi' was unluckily ill, and in his absence the Elector decided against sending his son — whom for reasons

1713-4] The situation grows critical. 15

which have been guessed but cannot be determined he cordially detested. Thus, though Parliament was duly dissolved in July — the Queen in her closing speech ominously omitting the usual friendly reference to the Hanoverian Succession — nothing was done ; while the Whigs were so enraged at the conduct of the Ministry as to be ready to tamper with the Union with Scotland, provided nothing else could be done to secure the Hanoverian Succession in that kingdom. Thus matters stood, when in September, 1713, Baron Georg Wilhelm Helvig von Schiitz (a nephew of BemstorfiF) arrived in London as Hanoverian envoy. It may be noted that he was expressly instructed to abstain from any sort of interference in British affairs.

The new Parliament assembled (February, 1714) without either any representative of the Hanoverian family, or (as Berwick had suggested) the Pretender, putting in an appearance. But the situation had become more strained than ever, more especially when, in the last days of 171S, the Queen had fallen ill. Had things then come to a crisis, it would, owing to the great age of the Electress, and the unwillingness of the Elector to take a step in advance, have found the Whigs and the friends of the Succession at large ill prepared to meet it. Their best security lay in the fact of Oxford and Bolingbroke's perfectly clear perception that, while it would at any time have been impossible to persuade the Queen to summon the Pretender to London, it woidd have been madness to bring him into England from Scotland; and that, so long as he refused to cease to be a Roman Catholic, he had no chance of the English throne. On the other hand, Bolingbroke was convinced that a German Prince such as George Lewis could never permanently occupy the English throne. But, now that the chance had gone by, Oxford lost himself in renewed duplicities which revealed only too clearly his uncertainty of mind. At one moment, he proposed to alter the Regency Act, so as to give to the Electress Sophia the nomination of the entire body of Regents — ^which would have enabled Parliament, if so disposed, to rescind the Act altogether. At another, he invited Parliament to declare it treasonable to introduce foreign troops into the country — a prohibition which might have been worked either against the Pretender or against the House of Hanover. Thus the feeling that Ministers were allowing things to drift — possibly into disturbance and civil war — operated in favour of the only interest in which there was certainty of purpose ; and in the early months of 1714 Tories as well as Whigs, clergy as well as laity, began to lay themselves at the feet of the electoral House. Though in the new House of Commons the Tories outnumbered the Whigs by at least two to one, a large section of the former party, the so-called " Hanover Tories," had made up their minds in favour of the Protestant Succession. In April, Oxford himself thought it well to make another of his "hedging" movements; and Thomas Harley appeared at Hanover once more, with a bland enquiry on the part of the Queen as to whether anything could be

16 The Electoral Prince's writ. [1714

done to further the Hanover Succession, arid the old offer of a private pension for the Electress ; but without a word as to a member of the electoral family coming to England. Harley brought back with him a reply, dated May 7, pointing out the desirableness of a parliamentary income for the Electress, and of the sojourn in England of a member of the electoral family (the Electoral Prince being probably intended).

In the meantime it became known that the action of the Elector's Minister in London had with quite unexpected suddenness transformed the situation. In the ordinary course of things the Electoral Prince would as Duke of Cambridge have received his writ of summons to attend the House of Lords like any other English peer; but Lord Chancellor Harcourt, being like his Ministerial colleagues afraid of nothing so much as of offending the Queen, had indefinitely delayed its issue. Schiitz had become very uneasy, when he received a letter from the old Electress requesting him to inform the Lord Chancellor of the great astonishment at Hanover caused by the fact that the writ had not yet been sent to the Prince. " As he (the Lord Chancellor) has always been friendly to me. . .1 think that he will not consider it objectionable que vous le lui demandiez et la raison.''^ Schiitz could hardly conclude otherwise than that he was desired to demand the writ as well as the reason for its having been withheld ; and the Whig leaders, to, whom he showed the Electress' letter, took the same view. He therefore asked for the writ from the Lord Chancellor, who replied that it was quite ready, but that, the custom not being for peers to demand their writs except when present in London, he would mention the matter to the Queen.

When, on April 26, Schiitz made it known that he had carried out the instructions of the Electress, the effect was electrical. Marlborough, Townshend, and Cadogan expressed their delight at the envoy's action ; Bothmer wrote from the Hague in the same strain; and at Hanover, where Leibniz' exultation was imbounded, it was thought that the opportunity should be seized, and the Electoral Prince sent to London at once. But the Elector demurred — most fortunately, for Queen Anne was deeply angered at the action of his envoy. At first she was for refusing the writ, and Bolingbroke dared to be of the same opinion. But the Cabinet decided that the demand could not be refused, and on April 27 the writ was handed to Schiitz by the Chancellor. The envoy was, however, speedily advised by Oxford not to show himself at Court, and was soon formally prohibited from appearing there. On May 2 he took his departure, leaving the Resident, Kreyenberg, to carry on diplo- matic business. On Schiitz' arrival at Hanover the Elector, in pretended displeasure, refused to receive him, and told Thomas Harley who was on the eve of returning to London that the envoy had acted without orders from his sovereign.

The Elector and his mother, had they really been afraid of any action on the part of the Queen, would not have despatched to her by

1714] Death of the Electress Sophia. 17

Thomas Harley the very outspoken memorandum of May 7 mentioned above ; and the Electress' account of the whole matter to Leibniz was perfectly cool. But the letters in which Queen Anne — or Bolingbroke, who held her pen — expressed her annoyance to the Electress, the Elector, and the Electoral Prince, were — especially the first-named — couched in terms of intolei-able arrogance and violent menace. When they were, with the exception of the letter to the Elector, surreptitiously published by a Whig scribe (whom Bolingbroke immediately clapped into prison) the mistake made by the Queen was at once patent ; and Oxford seems at once to have ceased intriguing for the Stewart cause and to have begim protesting at Hanover. Bolingbroke could think of nothing better than to seek to implicate his rival in the demand for the writ.

But the Queen's letters had another effect. They arrived at Hanover on June 5, and on the 6th the missive to the Electress Sophia was delivered to her at Herrenhausen. On the evening of the 8th, when walking in her beloved gardens, she was suddenly overtaken by death. Since the arrival of the letters, she had never lost her self-control or even her high spirit; but the shock had been too severe for her aged frame. On her death the !^lector at once took the threads of the conjuncture into his own hands, addressing a conciliatory letter to the Queen and once more sending over Bothmer, furnished with full instruc- tions for the event of her death. Whatever secret orders Bothmer may have had for his dealings with the Whigs, he was told to avoid aU appearance of partisanship and took with him a letter to Oxford, insisting on the advisability of the presence in England of a member of the electoral family. On the part of Queen Anne, however, her relative the Tory Earl of Clarendon was sent over to Hanover with instructions to place a negative upon the proposals of the memorandum of May 7.

The events which now took place in England have already been narrated in this History. No sooner had Oxford been dismissed from office (July 27) than he at once offered Bothmer to keep him confidentially au courant with Bolingbroke's proceedings. Yet the Elector was of covu'se completely in the dark as to whether Bolingbroke, at last in possession of full power, intended in the event of the Queen's death to risk a coup d'itat on his own account or to ask for the aid which Louis XIV had promised to give. The Elector was determined at least not to be taken by surprise. He promptly caused a fresh instrument of Regency, comprising his own nominations, to be prepared (Marlborough's name being left out from thisj whether or not only because he happened not to be in England) ; while at home he received assurances of support from his nephew Frederick William I of Prussia and other German Princes. With the Whig project of an outbreak during the Queen's life the Elector had no concern.

Then came the startling news of Queen Anne's illness, and of her death. The Elector's commission of Regents (in which 13 of his 18

c. M. H. yi. CB. I. 2

18 Death of Queen Anne. — Accession of George I. [1714-5

nominations were Whigs) was opened, and he was proclaimed King on the day of the Queen's death (August 1) in London, and again a few days later there as well as in Edinbiu-gh and Dublin. King George I, who received the news informally on August 6, and formally three' days later, though he kept up a correspondence with Bothmer, gave no sign of his intentions as to English affairs before leaving Hanoven But Bolingbroke was dismissed from office. To wnshend taking his place on the day of the King's departure (August 31). After spending a fort- night at the Hague, George I arrived at Greenwich on September 18, and two days later held his entry into London. It was now made quite manifest that he had elected to break completely with the late Queen's Government. He took no notice of Ormond or Harcourt on landing; and, when next morning Oxford (who during the Queen's fatal illness had been at the pains of sending an express messenger to summon the Elector immediately to London) kissed hands, he was received in silence. Bolingbroke, though as yet he kept a bold front, had absented himself on both occasions. His day was over. The King's action was confirmed by the elections for the new Parliament, which assembled on March 15, 1715, and in which the Whigs commanded a large English majority, while of the Scottish seats the Jacobites, then on the eve of a rising, had only been able to secure an insignificant fraction.

Bothmer's vigilance and the Elector's self-contained but intrepid conduct had triumphed; but Fortune had had her hand in the game. The Queen's illness had taken Bolingbroke by surprise, though not in the sense that he would in any case have joined with the Hotspurs of his party in proclaiming the Pretender. And the rapid close of that illness in death had prevented the Elector from responding to Oxford's summons, as, there is reason to think, he might have done in apprehension of immediate Jacobite action. Had he come while Queen Anne lived, tumult and bloodshed might have followed; and, though resolute in action, George might not have proved the man to conjure the furies of civil discord — perhaps of civil war. For the nation's trust in the new dynasty was still a thing of the future ; and the consensus of all but the extreme factions in Church and State to accept it was no guarantee that this acceptance would prove enduring. Had the Electress Sophia, the heiress presumptive of the British throne during so many years, been called to it in her earlier days, she might conceivably have attained to something of the popularity which has surrounded more than one English female sovereign ; for none of our Queens has surpassed her in intellectual clearness and courage, in geniality of disposition, and in loyalty of soul. But in her son, who mounted the throne in her stead, there was little to attract, though there was much to command respect ; for he was cast in a manly mould, and veracity and trustworthiness were inborn in his nature. He had given abundant proof of military ability and courage, and he was fond of the pastimes which in his day

1714-27] Character and surroimdings of George I, 19

commended themselves to his class. On the other hand, he was too old to shake oiF the absolutist habits of thought and conduct which had long become incompatible with ; the conditions of English political life ; and he was wholly devoid of literary or scientific tastes-^-quite the last man to have considered that the union of Great Britain and Hanover represented in his person was "the union of Leibniz with Newton." Fortunately for the King's fame, he took Handel again into favour (out of which he had fallen for doing honour to the, Peace of Utrecht, or for some other reason) almost immediately after his accession to the English throne. For the rest, it is well known that, while his mother spoke English as well as Dutch with perfect ease, the new King of England never acquired the English tongue; in return it is doubtful whether more than one of the leading English statesmen of his reign could speak to him in his own language. It may have been partly due to George I's ignorance of the English tongue that he dropped the habit of presiding at Cabinet Council meetings (though, of course, continuing to preside at Privy Councils) — and that, as was unavoidable, he resorted instead to private consultations with advisers whom he could uniformly understand, and who could understand him in return.

George I, unhappily, brought no consort to England, and the cloud of scandal which enveloped the story of his past married life did him much harm with many besides his son, with whom he was ostensibly on better terms since the death of the old Electress. The Prince of Wales resembled his father in his military ambition and absolutist convictions ; but to him as a younger man wider hopes attached themselves, and to the intelligence and charm of his Princess prejudice alone could fail to succumb. Instead of a wife, the King brought with him a mistress, in accordance with the almost imperative fashion of the day. The legend that Countess Melusina von der Schulenburg (afterwards Duchess of Kendal) had a rival in Baroness Sophia Charlotte von Kielmannsegge (afterwards Countess of Darlington), the daughter of Countess von Platen, who had been the mistress of King George's father, Ernest Augustus, can be traced back to the malicious pen of the Margi-avine Wilhelmina of Baireuth; as a matter of fact George I acknowledged and honoured his half-sister as such. For the rest, though the style of the Hanoverian Court, magnificent under Ernest Augustus and Sophia, had become less ceremonious and restrained under George Lewis, it had not much to learn in the way of refinement from that of St James.

Of the political counsellors who accompanied George I to England, or whom, like Bothmer, he found awaiting him there, something has already been said ; and of their advice and its effects note will be taken in another section. Possessed as they were of their Prince's well-earned confidence, the continuance of their influence depended on himself alone, and on his and their power of shaping in new conditions the foreign policy of which he would never change the main purposes, and of which

nil. I. 2 — 2

20 George I's Hanoverian counsellors. [1714-27

bis succession to the throne of Great Britain had always seemed nothing more than an important incident. With Bemstorff and Robethon, no other Hanoverian councillors of much mark came to England. Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Schlitz-Gortz, who was in the Elector's suite and bore the reputation of a grand seigneur as well as of a valuable official, returned to Hanover as head of the electoral Chamber of Finance. Jobst Hermann von Ilten, under both Ernest Augustus and George Lewis one of the most capable servants of the electoral Government, remained behind to preside over it at Hanover, where he died in 1730. Among other trusted followers of the King were Baron von Kielmannsegge, whose Mastership of the Horse gave much offence in England ; and Privy Councillor Johann Ludwig von Fabrice (a son of Weipart Ludwig, whoi held a high judicial office at Celle) — it was either in his arms, or, more probably, in those of his brother, Chamberlain Friedrich Ernst, that George I died. In the course of the reign, Philip von Hattorf, a man of great ability and tact, was Hanoverian Minister in attendance — an office which soon became one of high importance.

No account can be given here of the adjustments made on the acces- sion of George I between the administrative systems of his kingdom and his electorate ; but it is worth pointing out that the Hanoverian Chancery in London was at no time a bra,nch of the Foreign Office, but always concerned with purely Hanoverian business. For the rest, the pro- hibitory clause of the Act of Settlement as to the employment of foreigners in civil or military offices, and as to the granting of pensions to them, was observed in the spirit as well as in the letter ; and while it is not easy to find even isolated cases in which Germans were admitted under George I into the service of the British Administration, the very few pensions granted to others than Englishmen or Englishwomen were of a wholly exceptional nature.

The title of the new dynasty was (notwithstanding what the Electress Sophia thought) parliamentary in its essence as well as in its basis, and therefore implied the assurance of a rule which, if only for the sake of the rulers, might be, whatever their own traditions, depended on to respect the principles and the practice of parliamentary government. But the Succession was not merely an incident in the conflict of English political parties. It was something more, and as such of vital import- ance to the national life and history. The Hanoverian was the Protestant Succession, both by Act of Parliament and by the whole history of the process of its accomplishment. The House of Hanover as represented by the Elector had adhered staunchly to the Protestant traditions of both his father's and his mother's line, while many of the members of both had fallen away from them. The attempt made in England both before and after the accession of George I to depreciate, as it were, the quality of Hanoverian Protestantism, by emphasising or exaggerating differences between it and that of the Church of England, had to be met

1714-21] Church affairs. — Foreign policy. 21

by a great deal of unavoidable argument. But, if it took time to convince the beneficiaries of the Schism Act, that the Tories — and the Jacobite Tories in particular — could claim no monopoly in the protec- tion of the rights of the Protestant Church of England, on the other hand the goodwill of the English Nonconformist body was very effectually assured to the Hanoverian dynasty ; and their attachment was won for a sovereign who approved, and with the traditions and principles implanted in him could not but approve, the proposed abrogation of the Test and Corporation Acts. Elsewhere it will be shown that in Scotland the results of the Succession were on this head even more complete; for with the rising of 1715 episcopalian Jacobitism ceased to have any significance as a political force. But in England, without the drawing of a sword from its scabbard, the will of the nation had been vindicated, and a new security gained, as to that which the nation as a whole held most dear.

(2) THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I. (1714-21.)

The first years of the reign of George I form, in the history of European politics, a period of transition from old principles and con- ditions to new. The necessity of combination against France passing out of date, a novel alliance ensues between that Power and Great Britain. Spain is roused to new life. On the conclusion of the long war in the north, the European circle is forced open to admit the new-bom Empire of Russia, while the Swedish yoke is broken. For Prussia her new King marks out the path which is to lead her to dispute ultimately with Austria the hegemony of Germany. Holland and Turkey pass, with Sweden, from the front rank among the Powers. Europe in 1721 is not the Europe of 1714.

Great Britain was first of all concerned to establish firmly the Protestant Succession. But her sovereign had a second preoccupation : to secure for his electorate the Swedish provinces of Bremen and Verden — the former, at the time of his accession, occupied by Denmark. For both these objects the support of the Emperor, while France remained hostile, was absolutely necessary; and, to obtain it, George was willing to connive at Austrian expansion in Italy. But, when the Triple Alliance, as shown below, had secured him in England against " James III," and in Hanover against the Northern Powers, the old principle of the Balance of Power, that principle which aimed at peace and produced constant war, resumed its sway. The danger, however, to Europe was no longer from France, but from Austria and Spain. To settle the affairs of the south, and so to remove that danger. Stanhope devised

22 Direction of foreign affairs -Relations with France. [i7i4-9

the plan which developed into the Quadruple Alliance of 1718. Dis- agreement between Austria and Great Britain marked the negotiation of this compact, and grew greater during the execution of its provisions. One cause of this was the accord reached in 1719 by Great Britain and Hanover with Prussia, the product of French interest and French influence. Alliance with Prussia meant alienation from Austria ; but it was the necessary preliminary to George's pacification of the north.

The circumstances in which George I ascended the throne of Great Britain necessitated the recall of the Whig party to power. There were at this period two Secretaries of State for Foreign Afiairs, charged with the direction of the two " provinces," into which foreign countries were, for convenience, grouped. Their authority was nominally coordinate, but the business of the two departments was always inter- mingled, and in practice the stronger Minister prevailed. The two men chosen by George for the charge had little in common but high principle. Charles, Viscount Townshend, secretary for the Northern province and head of the Ministry, was a moderate Whig of excellent record and suflScient but not dominating importance. He was chosen, probably, for these reasons. His colleague for the Southern province, General (afterwards Earl) Stanhope, imported into state affairs the energy and dash which had marked his conduct in the field. He was an accom- plished diplomatist and linguist, who could undertake embassies to foreign capitals in person; a man of wide views and with a fine conception of the part proper to be played in Europe by Great Britain. During his lifetime he was the real Minister for Foreign Affairs, even while temporarily occupying another office.

But, during the earlier part of the reign, it was not the Whig leaders only who directed foreign policy. George had always with him in London the Hanoverian Ministers previously noticed, whose tried fidelity he repaid with complete confidence. To Bemstorff English Ministers deferred as to a recognised authority on European politics, while foreign representatives resorted to him preferentially. The interests of Hanover were by him consistently placed in the forefront. He appreciated the danger threatening them from the rise of Prussia,^ and insisted upon the necessity of maintaining the old devotion of the House of Brunswick to the Emperor. His influence was strongest after the Whig schism at the beginning of 1717 had removed from the Ministry his principal opponents, Townshend and Robert Walpole.

George himself took the keenest personal interest in European politics, and Whig tradition accorded with his desire that Great Britain should once more take an active part in them. The first consideration determining her action was the renewed hostility of France. For nearly two years a fresh outbreak of war was thought likely and at times even desirable, the principal subjects in dispute being the protection afforded by Louis XIV to the Pretender, and the evasion

1714-5] The Barrier Treaty. — Bremen arid Verden. 23

of that article of the Treaty of Utrecht which stipulated the dis- mantling of Dunkirk, by the preparation of a new war-port at Mardyk, hardby. It appeared to be of the first importance to revive the alliance with the United Provinces and the Emperor, which the Peace of Utrecht had destroyed. To George and his Hanoverian Ministers such views were entirely congenial; their Government had always been the most steadfast in Germany in loyalty to the Emperor and the most zealous in the war with France ; and its close relations with the Hague were unimpaired.

On George's accession the breach with Holland closed, indeed, of itself. But the Emperor could not readily forget the betrayal, as he deemed it, of 1712. And with the Dutch he was at special issue about their so-called Barrier — the line of fortresses in what were now the Austrian Netherlands, which, as has been seen in a previous volume, they had the right to garrison. That right Charles VI obstinately repudiated. George was readily accepted as mediator in the dispute by both sides, and appointed General Cadogan to conduct the mediation at Antwerp ; but all that could be obtained at Vienna in regard to a renewal of alliance with Great Britain, although Stanhope repaired thither in person, was the expression of a desire for it, after the Emperor's demands in regard to the Netherlands should have been satisfied. Cadogan, however, sent to Vienna in February, 1715, had the boldness to represent how, in England, Stanhope's failure had inspired the belief that the Emperor was engaged in negotiations of a wide-reaching character with France ; and Charles thereupon declared himself faithful to the old system, conceding also the three points about the Barrier which it was the object of Cadogan's mission to carry. Yet it was not till the prospect of the Jacobite rebellion reduced the British Govern- ment even to entreaties, that a solution in this matter was reached. A Barrier Treaty was signed at Antwerp by the representatives of the three Powers on November 15, 1715. But its provisions remained inoperative for three years, nor could a reconciliation between Austria and Holland be carried further.

In the north the situation was as follows. The occupation of the Swedish duchy of Bremen and its fortress-capital Stade by the Danes in 1712, following upon the failure of the Neutrality Convention of 1710 and the threats of Charles XII, had finally decided George, though hitherto reckoned the principal ally of Charles in Christian Europe, to turn against him, and he had entered into negotiations with Frederick IV of Denmark and Frederick W^illiam I of Prussia for the division of the Swedish provinces in Germany among themselves, his own share to be the duchy of Bremen and the principality of Verden. But, the Danes refusing to give up what they had won, and the demands of Hanover upon Prussia being too great, the negotiations bore no fruit until it was known that Charles was about to return from Turkey. Then, George

24 The northern treaties. — The Baltic commerce. [1714-5

concluded with Frederick William a "punctation" for a conventidn (November 11, 1714), which appointed the permanent possession of Bremen and Verden to Hanover and that of Stettin and its district, also Swedish property, to Prussia. Negotiations during the winter between Frederick William and Charles, who had returned to Stralsund, having proved fruitless, war broke out between them in April, 1715. And, Denmark now consenting to receive the north-western portion of Swedish Pomerania (Vorpommern), and a sum of money from Hanover, in exchange for Bremen, treaties between the three Powers were shortly concluded, distributing the Swedish provinces in Germany among them. That Hanover should possess Bremen and Verden was agreeable enough to the merchants of Great Britain ; for greater commercial advantages might be expected from the rule of George than from that of either Sweden or Denmark.

The part allotted to George under the treaties was nominal, namely, to prevent aid from coming to Stralsund, while besieged by the Danes and Prussians, from other German States or from France. He did not actually declare war against Sweden till Stade had been given up to him in October. But the real service demanded from and explicitly promised by him was, that the British squadron proceeding to the Baltic for the protection of trade should prevent the relief of Stralsund by sea. It was the commercial interests of Great Britain which made this service possible. After Peter the Great had conquered from Sweden the eastern ports of the Baltic, Charles XII had prohibited all trade to them. This trade was of essential importance to the Maritime Powers, because only from the Baltic could a sufficient supply of materials for ship-building at this time be obtained. The damage done by the Swedish privateers, even while Charles remained in Turkey, was sufficient to provoke the pacific Ministry of Queen Anne to equip a small squadron for the Baltic — a useless demonstration, since the ships dared not pass the Sound, and only by grace of the Swedes were permitted to return home. Charles, when he came back, increased the stringency of his prohibition. In February, 1715, he issued an Ordinance of Privateers, which, in the words of the British resident at Stockholm, rendered it impossible for a merchant-ship to enter the Baltic without being made a prize. Great Britain and the United Provinces thereupon agreed to send a joint fleet thither to convoy the traders. But the instructions given to Sir John Norris, the British Admiral, authorised him, beyond protecting commerce, to make reprisals upon Swedish shipping, if opportunity offered; and George gave his allies to understand that this power would permit an attack upon the Swedish fleet, if it were encountered. Circumstances prevented this consummation, in spite of urgent personal appeals to Norris from the King of Prussia; and vehement complaints came in consequence from Berlin and Copenhagen. As a compromise, Norris was ordered to leave behind him, on his return, eight ships to act in

1715-6] Treaties with Spain and Austria. 25

conjunction with the Danish fleet — the first definite act of hostility towards Sweden on the part of Great Britain. When Stralsund fell, Charles XII escaped miraculously to Sweden, falsifying the hopes which had been placed upon his death. And thus, at the beginning of 1716, King George found himself confronted by rebellion at home, and an unconquerable enemy abroad.

On the other hand there was a prospect of improved relations with France and Spain. Louis XIV had been succeeded in September, 1715, by the boy-king, Louis XV. The next heir, Philip V of Spain, though he had renounced his right to the succession, disclaimed the validity of the renunciation. In defiance of his pretensions his cousin, Philip Duke of Orleans, had seized the Regency. Confronted by powerful opposition at home, Orleans was driven to seek allies abroad. Overtures which he made to the Dutch Government were a principal cause of its resoluteness in resisting the Emperor's demands in the matter of the Barrier. With George, his near relative on their mothers' side, he had exchanged strong assurances of friendship already during the last year of Louis XIV, and though these were suspended on the outbreak of the Jacobite rebellion, they were renewed on its suppression. On the part of Spain, previously not less hostile than France, a new policy was begun by Alberoni, the obscure minister of Parma at Madrid, who was beginning to rule the country through the new Parmesan Queen. With the consent of the sovereigns, and in opposition to the views of the Spanish Ministers, he offered a commercial treaty of the most favourable character. It was signed on December 14, 1715, and was followed in May by a revision of the Asiento, which allowed Great Britain to export negroes to the Spanish Indies. The provisions of the treaty were not, indeed, carried out ; after it was signed, oppression of British trade continued as before. Alberoni's intention would seem to have been to quiet England, in order to get rid of opposition on her part to his Italian schemes ; for his objective was the replacement of Austrian rule in Italy by Spanish.

But the Austrian alliance was far more important to George than any advantages which Spain could offer. And, on his side, the Emperor was realising that he could not carry out his designs upon Sicily without the aid of a British fleet. The Spanish treaty disturbed Vienna for a while, as also did another British treaty with Holland, renewing former treaties of alliance and commerce, concluded on February 6, 1716. But at length the Treaty of Westminster was signed by the two Powers on May 25 (O.S.). The peculiarly phrased second article stipialated the mutual protection and maintenance of the kingdoms, provinces and rights actually enjoyed, and the defence, if either party were attacked, both of these possessions and of such as might be acquired by mutual consent during the continuance of the treaty. The parties to it being Great Britain and the Emperor only, it could not extend, formally, to the new acquisitions of Hanover in the north ; but this subject had been

26 Convention with France. — Northern affairs. [i7i6

brought forward in the negotiations, and much in regard to it was implied.

Definite overtures from the Regent Orleans were again made in March. In June he sent his confidant, the Abbe Dubois, to the Hague, to confer personally with Stanhope, then travelling with the King to Hanover. But George and his advisers were not at this time anxious to come to the proposed understanding; and they insisted upon the demolition of the works at Mardyk, and the expulsion of the Pretender and his adherents from France, as preliminary conditions. The interviews were not, however, without fruit; they were accompanied by negotiations in London, and were followed by a yet more secret visit of Dubois to Hanover in August. As the result, a preliminary convention was signed; and on October 11 Dubois took his departure, in order to complete a treaty with Great Britain and Holland at the Hague.

This outcome was principally due to developments in the north. The plan of war against Sweden in this year (1716) had taken the form of a Russo-Danish invasion from Zealand, while a joint British, Danish and Russian fleet blockaded the Swedish in its harbours. Pending the com- pletion of the Danish preparations, the R.ussian force intended for the attack took up quarters in Mecklenburg. Its doings there, and the support which Peter the Great gave to Duke Charles Leopold of Meck- lenburg-Schwerin, as described in a previous volume, roused the violent resentment of BemstoriF and other Mecklenburgers in the service of Hanover and Denmark ; and the good relations established between Peter and George by their Treaty of Greifswald of October, 1715, were seriously impaired. And when, on September 17, all being at last ready for the invasion, Peter suddenly declared that the season was too late, and showed his intention of quartering his troops again in Mecklenburg for the winter, an all but open hostility supervened ; while in England jealousy of Peter's rising power and the fear of his supremacy in the Baltic increased from day to day. Furthermore, the gravest anxiety was aroused by the doings of Charles XII. The belief obtained that his invasion of Norway was but preliminary to a descent upon Scotland from its ports. He left the remonstrances addressed to him through Sir John Norris simply unanswered. In July, Baron Gortz, whose enthusiasm and resource alone made it possible for Charles to carry on the war, arrived in Holland, the principal object of his mission being to raise money for his master's service, in order to procure for him ships and sailors. He was suspected of secret negotiations with the Jacobites, and his doings confirmed the belief that Charles intended to take revenge upon George in Great Britain — a revenge the justice of which was recognised. Under these circumstances, anxiety to conclude the alliance with France had replaced the former lukewarmness. Orders were sent to the British envoys at the Hague (October 9) to sign a preliminary treaty with France only, if the Dutch were not ready to

1716-7] The Triple Alliance. — The Swedish arrests. 27

join in it. Later, the anxiety was increased. Gortz was found to be approaching the Russian Ministers at the Hague and communicating with Paris. It began to be believed that a great league in the interests of the Pretender was in course of formation. Peter proceeding to Holland in December, Greorge refused to meet him on his way, and rejected the conciliatory proposals of Russian envoys sent to Hanover.

The completion of Dubois' work was delayed by several causes. Full powers for the British envoys, Horatio Walpole and Lord Cadogan, had to be obtained from England; and these were twice objected to by Dubois as not in strict form. The Dutch Ministers were not satisfied with the terms of the convention, and were bound, besides, by a resolution of the States Greneral, not to enter into alliance with France, unless a treaty with the Emperor could be concluded at the same time. Nor could the Pre- tender be expelled from France, because he lay dangerously ill at Avignon. At length, however, a treaty was signed by Great Britain and Prance on November 28, and on January 4, 1717, there was substituted for it one signed by the three Powers. This "Triple Alliance" brought the accord between Great Britain and France designed at Utrecht into real existence. Great Britain need no longer seek to restore the Grand Alliance, nor France encourage the Pretender. The security of the House of Orleans in France and of that of Hanover in England became a mutual interest. France could enjoy the repose of which she stood so urgently in need. Together, George and the Regent could direct the affairs of Europe. The alliance between them was genuine and proved lasting.

For the delays at the Hague Townshend was held responsible, undeservedly. But he had differed from the King and Stanhope in their recent policy, and there were other reasons for the royal disfavour. He was relieved of his office, and shortly, as is detailed elsewhere, the Ministiy was reconstituted, with Stanhope at its head. His ideas on foreign policy agreeing in the main with those of his German colleagues, their influence rose to its height.

George returned to England at the end of January. Immediately was put into execution an act which awaited his coming. The Swedish envoy. Count Gyllenborg, was arrested, and his papers seized. Gortz also was arrested in Holland, and kept in prison till August. The so-called conspiracy was published to the world. It is probable that, but for the Whig schism at home, war with Sweden might have been declared. Charles XII, when the news reached him, retorted by putting the British resident at Stockholm under arrest and forbidding his Dutch colleague the Court. In the course of the summer the quarrel was an-anged by the interposition of the Regent, and though the settlement was little to George's satisfaction, he was obliged to accept it, owing to growing discontent in Holland. But, before its terms could be carried out, Gortz was released by the independent action of the States of Gelderland; and.

28 Hanoverian and Russian negotiations with Sweden. [i7i7-8

instead of being sent back to Sweden, as had been intended, be was left free to pursue his schemes in Holland and Germany.

In May Peter the Great visited Paris. His proposals of alliance with Finance only resulted, as has been seen in a previous volume, in a colour- less treaty of friendship between France, Russia and Prussia, signed on August 15 at Amsterdam, which admitted French mediation in the north and put an end to the payment of French subsidies to Sweden on the expijation of the existing treaty. One consequence of the negotiations was the withdrawal of the-Bassian troops from Mecklenburg.

A British* squadron again visited the Baltic this year. The principal instructions giyen to Sir George Byng, who was in command, were to prevent a Swedish descent on the British coasts. He would, with the Danish fleet, have assaulted Karlskrona, had not the help of a land-force been required. A Swedish frigate was attacked and destroyed. Further- more, trade with Sweden was prohibited, in order that the country might be reduced by famine. This measure, however, recoiled upon its authors ; for the Dutch, whose Baltic trade was twice as great as the British, declined, in spite of all possible "persuasion, to follow suit, and British merchants saw their trade cut off only to benefit their chief rivals. Frederick IV of Denmark also prohibited trade to Sweden, but failed in his attempt to conclude treaties with Great Britain and Hanover for the prosecution of the war.

Final negotiations with Peter the Great took place at Amsterdam in August. They were conducted by his old acquaintances. Sir John Norris and Charles Whitworth, the latter, perhaps, the ablest of British repre- sentatives abroad. But the aim on both sides seems to have been less to arrive at an understanding than to discover intentions. The conferences led to nothing. In fact, both George and Peter were now separately engaged in private peace negotiations with Sweden. These had been opened by George in the spring through Landgrave Charles of Hesse- -Cassel (whose eldest son had married Ulrica Eleonora, sister of Charles XII), and through the Regent's envoy. Count de La Marck. Then, while his British Ministers were busy at Amsterdam, George arranged very secret conferences between his Hanoverian Councillor, Weipart Ludwig von Fabrice (Fabricius), and Count Vellingk, the Swedish governor of Bremen. The negotiations failed, for the cession of Bremen and Verden was refused. But early in 1718 Fabrice's son, Friedrich Ernst, in the service of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, who, after acting as inter- mediary between his father and VeUingk had been summoned to England in great secrecy, was sent on a private mission to Sweden. On Peter's side there were conferences with the Swedish resident at the Hague and others, and with Gortz after his release. In consequence, Gortz was accorded Russian and Prussian passports to return to Sweden through those countries. Evading certain British cruisers on the look-out for him, he arrived safely at Lund, the bearer of proposals which led to the Aland

me-v] Invadon of Sardinia.— The " Plan" 29

conferences of the following year. His doings gave King George special anxiety, on account of events of the first importance, which had happened in the south.

All this time, Alberoni had been quietly but unceasingly at work on the regeneration of Spain. He had succeeded in creating a fleet, and in August, 1717, suddenly put the weapons which he had forged to their trial -stroke. A Spanish expedition sailed from Barcelona for Cagliari; and by the end of November all Sardinia, then belpnging to the Emperor, was in Philip's hands. Austriaj^-having no ^hips, could not retaliate without the aid of a British fleet. But the Empei-ofs demand that a fleet should be sent, in accordance with the Treaty of Westminster, was met by the reply that nothing could be done.while he remained at issue with Holland, the British Government being well aware that the nation would not submit to see its Spanish and West Indian commerce imperilled, unless the Dutch imdertook an equal risk. Friendly expostu- lations were made at Madrid ; but Alberoni, who was supposed to lay value on the friendship of England, unexpectedly proved defiant.

The Treaty of Westminster, indded, and the Triple Alliance were antagonistic to each other. The latter was as little relished at Vienna as the former had been at Paris. But now the two were to be combined in a great scheme which had for its object the settlement of affairs in southern Europe. Charles VI was not only still at war with Philip V of Spain, and claimed his crown, but was bent on depriving the House of Savoy of its recent gains in Sicily and the Milanese, and on succeeding to the dominions of the expiring dynasties of the Medici in Tuscany and the Famesi in Parma and Piacenza. Philip V, besides claiming the suc- cession in France, aimed at the recovery of the old possessions of Spain in Italy. The " Plan," as it was called, confirmed and confined him in Spain, gave Sicily to the Emperor and Sardinia to Savoy in exchange, and settled the succession in Tuscany and Parma and Piacenza upon the Duke of Parma's great-nephews, tiie sons of Philip V by his second- marriage. Such a settlement, it was thought, would at once set limits to Spanish and Austrian ambition, and secure the position of the House of Orleans in France and of that of Brunswick in Great Britain and in Hanover.

The Plan had been opened in November, 1716, at Vienna and pursued in conferences at Hanover with the Austrian envoy, Baron von Penterriedter. On his way back to England, Stanhope communicated it to Dubois at the Hague. But the Emperor refused to renounce either his Spanish claims, or his designs against Savoy ; and negotiations halted until the news arrived of the invasion of Sardinia. Meanwhile, efforts on Alberoni's part to conciliate the Regent, aided by the strong influence of the Spanish party at Paris and by increased jealousy of Austria con- sequent upon Prince Eugene's great victory at Belgrade, all but brought about an alliance between Spain and France. To prevent this, and to

30 Subsidy to Austria. — Progress of the " Plan" [1716-8

keep his master in the right piath, Dubois, who was in London, came back hurriedly to Paris at the end of November. His arguments pre- vailed, and the Regent definitely rejected Alberoni's overtures.

Besides ships for the Mediterranean, the Emperor urgently needed money. In 1716, after the Turks had conquered the Morea from Venice and had advanced into Dalmatia, he was compelled by his treaty engagements and by the danger which threatened Hungary to declare war upon them. Its course brought fresh laurels to Prince Eugene; but it cost much money, and detained on the Turkish frontier armies that were wanted in Italy. Although this War was specially excepted from the Treaty of Westminster, Greorge was ready to provide funds, on condition that the Belgian ports should be forbidden to furnish transport vessels to the Swedes or give protection to their privateers, and that all Jacobites should be expelled from the Emperor's dominions upon request — these demands to be embodied in an additional secret article to the Treaty of Westminster. In return. Great Britain was to find d&130,000, nominally in satisfaction of arrears from the Spanish War. Though the Emperor long held out against the mention of the Pretender by name, in the end the article was signed, in December, 1717. In order that the concessions might not appear to have been bought, it was antedated September 1. The money was paid in January.

Meanwhile, a new project for the Plan had been handed to Penterriedter in London (November 23). Although he expressed doubts as to its being worth while for him to remain in England, he was in February, 1718, ordered to renew the conferences. But the British Government thought it better to transfer them to Vienna, and sent thither the able Swiss diplomatist, Luke Schaub, with a draft for a treaty between Great Britain, France, Austria and Holland — the " Quadruple Alliance."

But a new complication now appeared. Charles VI had entered into negotiation with the King of Sicily (Victor Amadeus II of Savoy). The Prince of Piedmont was to marry an Austrian Archduchess, and Italian questions were to be settled by a separate agreement. Schaub's proposals were rebuffed, and it seemed as though all would fail. He and his fellow-countryman, St Saphorin, the British Minister at Vienna, were therefore surprised, when on April 4 they were informed that the Emperor would accept the treaty in its main points. Discussions, however, dragged on for seven further weeks before reference could be made to Paris. At the beginning of April Stanhope resumed the office of a Secretary of State, while the very capable James Craggs (the younger) took the place which had been unsuitably filled by Addison.

To endeavour to persuade the Spaniards to accept the Plan, the Regent sent the Marquis de Nancr^ to Madrid in March. But Alberoni had schemes now on foot beyond conquest in Italy : nothing less than to combine Sweden, Russia and Prussia, when they had concluded the peace expected, and France too, if the Regent's Government could be upset, in

1718-9] The Quadruple Alliance. 31

a great league to oust George I from the British throne in favour of James III. Spanish emissaries were busy in Holland trying to buy ships and munitions of war, and in the north. Overtures too were made to the Transylvanian Prince, Francis II Rdkdczy, formerly leader of the insurrection in Hungary, inviting him to raise fresh difficulties for the Emperor there. On the news of naval preparations in England, Alberoni threatened to seize British ships and merchandise in Spain. When the terms proposed were handed to him they were indignantly refused. He declined even to consider the restoration of Gibraltar, offered as the price of commercial concessions and peace.

Schaub was back in Paris on June 18, but found the situation altered ; the French were now unwilling to enter into the treaty. Proceeding to London, he found Dubois, who had returned thither, in despair. It was decided as a last hope to send Stanhope in person to Paris. He arrived there with Schaub on June 29, and learnt that another Spanish armament had sailed from Barcelona.

It was now, after much resistance, resolved to draw up an ultimatum to the Emperor, in the form of a convention between France and Great Britain. But when the convention was ready, the president of the Coimcil of Foreign Affairs, Marshal d'Huxelles, refused to take the responsibility of signing it, or at least its secret articles, which provided for compulsion upon Spain and Savoy, if required. In this emergency Stanhope proposed to submit the convention to the whole Council of Regency, and, due preparatory measures having been taken, the bold stroke succeeded. It was signed on July 18, and Charles VI accepting it, the Quadruple Alliance was at last concluded in London as between Great Britain, France and Austria, on August 2, 1718. In part a treaty of mutual defence and guarantee, it also dictated to Spain and Savoy the terms, in substance, originally proposed. While to Stanhope should be given the chief credit of success both in the conception and execution of the Plan, it must be allowed that he could hardly have achieved it, but for the special influence enjoyed at Vienna by the Court of Hanover.

The Dutch Republic was a party to the Quadruple Alliance in nothing but name. The British Government made the greatest efforts to obtain the accession of the States General ; but there was always a strong party in Holland objecting, in the interests of trade, to war imder any circumstances. Grand Pensionary Heinsius had been able for many years to stem its arguments, upholding the traditions of the Stad- holders ; but he was now old and ailing, and there was no man to take his place., The efforts of the British envoys failed, even when they seemed to be successful. At first the Dutch required from France and Austria conditions extraneous to the Spanish question. When these had with difficulty been obtained for them by King George, they found other pretexts for evasion. A resolution to accede was adopted by the States General at the end of January, 1719 ; but, when the time for signature

32 The Peace of.Passarowitz. — Byng's expedition. [1717^20

came, it was found that the powers provided did not extend to the essential secret artieles. On a like occasion, in June, the cunning insertion of a word or two was held to render the accession valueless. And, though, on December 16, 1719, it was resolved to sign, after an interval of three months for the exertion of good offices, without reserve, the signature was still withheld.

WLUiam III had made the Hague the political centre of Europe. The enforcement of the doctrine of peace at any price by a minority of merchants, enabled to do so by the formalities of the constitution, forfeited that high position. . Perhaps their policy was necessary, for the Republic was almost bankrupt. The United Provinces fell to the second rank among the Powers. The date of the death of Heinsius, August 8, 1720, may be taken to mark this fall.

Shortly before the Quadruple AUiance was signed, the Turkish War ended. George all along had watched its course with anxiety, for it grievously weakened his ally,. The victory of Belgrade (August 16, 1717) was hailed in England as a success of the greatest consequence, affecting both north and south. Immediately thereon George offered his mediation. The Dutch followed suit, and a congress was opened at Passarowitz. The first exorbitant demands of the Emperor were reduced imder the pressure of the Italian crisis, but Austria gained greatly. The prestige of the Peace, sighed July 21, 1718, accrued to George, whose pleni- potentiary, Sir Robert Sutton, had carried it through with little aid from his Dutch colleague, Coimt Colyer. With the Quadruple Alliance and the Turkish mediation, George's European ascendancy reached its zenith. He assumed the position, says Ranke, which William III held after the Peace of Ryswyk, with the French alliance to boot.

The destination of the Spanish armament which sailed from Barcelona in June, 1718, was Sicily. Palermo and the greater part of the island were rapidly conquered with the willing aid of the inhabitants. Here- upon, however, in compliance with the Emperor's demands, a British fleet appeared in the Mediterranean ; and Colonel Stanhope at Madrid was ordered to use firm language to Alberoni, in regard both to the oppression of commerce and to the prosecution of the war.

Admiral Sir George Byng, after changing garrisons in Minorca, sailed straight for Naples. Here he learnt that Messina was partly taken, that the citadel must fall unless assistance could be sent, and, further, that the King of Sicily had expressed his desire to join the Quadruple Alliance, and asked for help. If Messina fell, the Spaniards would have a secure port from which to transfer their army to Calabria. Byng was instructed to prevent a Spanish invasion of Italy, or of Sicily with that object, by force, if negotiation failed. He proceeded, at the request of the Austrian Viceroy, to act accordingly. Arrived at Messina, he found that the Spanish fleet had retreated before him down the Straits. Landing an Austrian force,, which he brought with him, at Reggio, he

1718-9] AlberonVs reply. — The first Treaty of Vienna. 33

sent to request the Marquis de Lede to agree to a suspension of arms, pending receipt of further instructions. This being refused, he started in pursuit of the fleet, and on August 11 utterly destro3'ed it off Cape Passaro. That he had done right, he learnt from instructions received later, ordering him not to content himself with driving the fleet away with the loss of a ship or two, but to annihilate it.

Great Britain was not at war with Spain ; her fleet acted as auxiliary to the Emperor. Diplomatic relations were not broken off for some months. Stanhope himself an-ived at Madrid the day after the battle had been fought. He could effect nothing ; Alberoni curtly intimated that Byng might carry out his instructions. The news of the capture of the town of Messina and the arrival of a large sum of money fi-om America fortified Philip's resolution. When the news of Cape Passaro came, early in September, orders were issued to seize all British ships and merchandise in Spanish ports, as had been threatened. Byng was ordered to make, in return, the severest reprisals.

One result of the attack on Sicily was the submission of Victor Amadeus. After vain efforts on his part to obtain better terms, his plenipotentiaries acceded to the Quadruple Alliance in London on November 8. In exchange for his title of King of Sicily he received that of King of Sardinia.

Alberopi would not submit. His Italian enterprise frustrated, he turned to attack Great Britain and France. Feigning conciliation, he set on foot a plot against the Regent. The Spanish ambassador at Paris, Prince Cellamare, concerted it with the Court of the most active of the malcontents, the Duchess of Maine. Their doings were known, or at least discovered when matured; Cellamare was conducted to the frontier, the other conspirators imprisoned. On Great Britain Alberoni's attack was overt. The Atlantic ports of Spain resounded with the equipment of a second Armada. To meet the danger, the British Government got ready every available ship and arranged for the help of Dutch, French, and other soldiers and sailors. Parliament by a large majority authorised a declaration of war on December 17 (O.S.). And, in consequence of the strong reaction against Spain at Paris, resulting from the Cellamare conspiracy, the Regent was enabled to carry out his promise of like action, although the Quadruple Alliance only obliged France to furnish subsidies. France declared war against Spain on January 9, 1719.

Alberoni's scheme comprised a Swedish descent on Scotland and an attack by Sweden and Russia upon Hanover, in combination with the Spanish invasion of England. It was fully believed that Charles XII had concluded the peace with Peter the Great which would render this possible; indeed, on September 6, l7l8, the latter actually signed a treaty for a joint invasion of Germany. In self-defence George, as Elector, concluded with Austria and Saxony the Treaty of Vienna of January 5, 1719. It engaged the parties to mutual defence and to offensive diversion into

C. M. H. VI.

34 Northern affairs. — The War with Spain. [1718-9

neighbouring countries of the enemy. This provision could, in the case of Hanover, only apply to Brandenburg or Mecklenburg, and, indeed, the treaty was directed against Prussia as well as against the dreaded Tsar, and was so understood at Berlin. Its chief object was to prevent the passage of Russian troops through Poland into Germany.

The year 1718 had in the north been devoted to negotiation. Fabrice arrived at Lund at the end of February, and, when nothing was heard from him, was followed by another emissary, Schrader, conveyed to Sweden on a British man-of-war. Fabrice saw Gortz and Charles himself, and believed that he had obtained acceptable terms. The negotiation was purely Hanoverian; it was kept as secret as possible from the Enghsh Ministers, though confided to Count de La Marck. Nothing came of it; Charles would not cede Bremen and Verden; George was in a sufficiently strong position to be able to await events. Sir John Norris, instructed as Byng had been in the previous year, conducted a squadron to the Baltic to act as he had done. Meanwhile, Peter was occupied with the conferences at the Aland Isles. Four times Gortz repaired thither ; three times he brought back proposals which Charles rejected. On his last return, at the end of November, he learnt that a British envoy was going to St Petersburg. He then decided to support the plan of Chancellor MUUem for peace with Hanover. But on December 11 Charles XII met his fate at Frederikshald, and three months later Gortz perished on the scaffold.

The mission to St Petersburg was the consequence of amicable assurances given by the Russian resident in London. In the place of Sir John Norris, who had been appointed to it, but evaded the task, it was undertaken by Captain James Jefferyes, who had been with Charles XII at Poltawa, and accredited to him at Bender and in Stralsund. Jefferyes found that the Russian professions were illusory ; all that was presented to him was a draft of the defensive treaty proposed and rejected in 1716. Instead of a desire for amity, he could only report extensive armaments by sea and land.

With the death of Charles XII, the hopes of Alberoni and the Jacobites from this quarter vanished into air. So great was the relief in England that Craggs saw in the catastrophe the hand of Providence. But the new Spanish Armada sailed, only to be defeated, even more conclusively than the old, by the elements. Violent storms dispersed it before it ever reached English waters. A separate force, which landed in the Western Highlands, was easily mastered. Later, a French army entered Spain. Philip V could not believe that it would fight against the next heir to the French throne, or the Duke of Berwick conduct it against the interests of his brother. He tried seduction, but failed ; nor had he troops fit to oppose the French; the army iJiat should have defended Spain was locked up in Sicily. Fuenterrabia and San Sebastian fell; Catalonia was then invaded; an English expedition under Lord

1719-20] Submission of Spain. — The Prussian IVeaties. 35

Cobham captured Vigo. These successes did not end the war, but they decided the fate of Alberoni, against whom, rather than against Spain, it was waged.. Philip and his Queen protracted it, but its author had to bear the blame of its failure. In December he was dismissed by a palace intrigue promoted by his own patron, Francis Duke of Parma.

Before submitting to peace, Philip demanded extravagant concessions. His prospects were now brighter : the French army had been obliged to retire from Catalonia; the Marquis de Lede was holding out well iii Sicily; a private settlement with Austria was possible. But Great Britain and France insisted upon accession to the Quadruple Alliance without reserve, before further terms could be discussed. In January, Philip reduced his demands to the restoration of the places taken — including Gibraltar — and the occupation of the Italian duchies by Spanish troops and their complete independence of the Emperor, as conditions for the evacuation of Sicily and Sardinia. But he was still met with firmness ; and at length his ambassador at the Hague signed the Quadruple Alliance on February 17, 1720.

By this time George had almost completed that pacification of the north, which the support of the Regent enabled him to carry out. When, after the death of Charles XII, it became obligatory on Sweden to make peace, and in the first place either with Hanover or Russia, George's plan was that Hanover, Denmark, and Prussia, in return for the cession to them of the Swedish provinces in Germany, should combine with the Emperor and the King of Poland to force the Tsar to restore his conquests on the eastern coast of the Baltic. But the Powers concerned had different views. Sweden was ready to make peace with Russia, if Peter would restore Livonia and the Port of Reval as well as Finland. Denmark was for prosecuting tte war to its extremity, in order to win back provinces in Sweden lost sixty years before. Frederick William of Prussia was closely allied with Peter, and was resolved upon maintaining the alliance. Finally, France insisted that Sweden must preserve a footing in the Empire, in order that her voice might be used, as of old, against the supremacy of Austria. The Regent advocated, as a first step, a reconciliation between Hanover and Prussia.

Bemstorff, ever loyal to the Emperor, threw the whole weight of his authority against this suggestion, but was overruled; the French alliance was indispensable. The Regent's policy was accepted ; Whit- worth was sent back to his old post at Berlin to conduct negotiations for treaties with Great Britain and Hanover. These were protracted for three months by difficulties of Hanoverian origin, and by Frederick William's hatred of the King of Poland, whom George desired to include in the latter treaty. Twice Stanhope and the French ambassador. Count Senneterre, fought pitched battles with Bemstorff at Hanover, and were victorious. In spite of the angry reluctance of Frederick William, continued to the end, the treaties were forced upon him. They were

OB. 1. 3—2

36 Treaties with Sweden. [1719-20

sighed on August 14, 1719. The Hanoverian treaty guaranteed Bremen and Verden to Hanover, and Stettin and its district to Prussia.

In the meantime the young Lord Carteret, ambassador from Great Britain, and Colonel Adolphus Frederick von Bassewitz on the part of Hanover, had been busy at Stockholm. Under the pressure of the simultaneous Russian and Danish invasions, the Swedes signed a con- vention ceding Bremen and Verden (July 22). This was received at Hanover on August 5, but contained nothing about a cession of Stettin, Carteret having been forbidden to make any mention of this. In order that the cession might appear to have been agreed upon at Berlin before the Swedish convention reached Hanover, the Prussian treaties were antedated by ten days. A clause providing for it was sent to Stockholm to be inserted in the British treaty.

The main condition for the cession of Bremen and Verden was that the British squadron, now at Copenhagen, should proceed up the Baltic to protect Sweden from the Russian attack. But the Russian men-of- war were twice as many as the British, and might be reinforced by those of Denmark. Not until Prussia had been secured and other ships had arrived, was Sir John Norris allowed to sail.. Anxiety was expressed that he might meet with the Russian fleet and destroy it, as the best possible service to his country. But it was already safe at Reval, and the galleys could not be reached among the northern shallows. The news of Norris' sailing, however, enabled Carteret to obtain the reluctant cession of Stettin ; the preliminary convention with Great Britain em- bodying it and confirming that with Hanover was signed on August 29. Carteret's success was due less, perhaps, to his great diplomatic talents than to lavish bribery of the Swedish senators. Essential, too, was the promise of British and French subsidies. The first of the latter, obtained by George's influence, was brought to Stockholm by the French envoy, Campredon, at the end of August.

Norris stayed on in Stockholm waters till November. Threatening letters, pressing mediation on the Tsar, were sent to the Aland Isles, but unceremoniously returned. Final treaties with Hanover and Great Britain were signed on November 20, 1719 and February 1, 1720, the latter binding Great Britain to aid Sweden against Russia. On that day also the Swedish plenipotentiaries signed, and Carteret and Cam- predon, as mediators, accepted a treaty between Sweden and Prussia. They adopted this course in order that the Riksdag, about to meet, might not interfere. The Prussian envoy, Knyphausen, could not sign, being bound by orders from home on minor points. But the King of Prussia was persuaded to accept the treaty. A preliminary convention with the King of Poland was signed on January 18.

There remained the peace with Denmark ; but to bring this to a conclusion seemed impossible. The Danes were throughout as insistent on their full demands as the Swedes were determined on yielding nothing.

1719-21] Endof the Northern War. -Discord with Austria. 37

With great difficulty an armistice had been forced upon Denmark as from October 30. When after six months it lapsed, little progress had been made. Frederick IV, in the end, was driven from his position, not by the threats of George, but by the action of the Emperor in taking up the cause of the dispossessed Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. It appeared that, if he persisted, Denmark might even lose Schleswig. By May, 1720, disputes were narrowed down to the amount of money to be paid by Sweden for the restoration of Stralsund and Riigen. On June 14 Carteret accepted, as before, terms signed by the Swedes alone. With these he repaired to Frederiksborg, and persuaded the King of Denmark to accept them (July 3). All that Denmark obtained by her ten years' war was a payment of 600,000 crowns, the abolition of the Swedish exemption from the Sound dues, and British and French guarantees for the retention of her conquest of Gottorpian Schleswig.

Besides George's plan of peace there was his plan of war, and this failed utterly. No Power would join him in offensive action against Peter the Great. British squadrons again entered the Baltic in 1720 and 1721, but they could not attack the Russian ports, or even prevent fresh incursions. The men-of-war could not penetrate among the rocks and islands to the north of Stockholm ; when four Swedish frigates made the attempt, they ran aground and were destroyed. Already in October, 1720, George advised the new King of Sweden (Frederick I) to conclude with the Tsar on what terms he could. He offered ^^20,000 for distribu- tion among the senators, and a subsidy of ^"100,000, if the cost of another expedition to the Baltic could be saved. But the Swedes held him to his engagements, and were consequently forced to accept the Peace of Nystad (September 10, 1721), Peter the Great kept all the coast from Finland to Courland, and Sweden passed finally from her high estate.

While Great Britain was thus working in accord with France both in north and south, her relations with the Emperor were changing for the worse. He resented King George's alliance with Prussia and the disposal of provinces in Germany without reference to himself. In the attacks which were being made upon Protestant liberties in the Palatinate and elsewhere his sympathy was with Rome, while George and Frederick William were strenuous in their defence. It was believed that the Pre- tender's bride, Clementina Sobieska, had escaped from Innsbruck with the connivance of the imperial Court. The Spanish party at Vienna, headed by the "favourite," Count Althan, and supported by the papal Court and by that of Turin, was employing every means to subvert the policy of the Quadruple Alliance. The Piedmont marriage mentioned above was again in contemplation, and Charles was only dissuaded from its accomplishment by George's personal appeals. And, lastly, there was the question of the succession to the Italian duchies. Strictly speaking, Spain not having acceded to the Quadruple Alliance within the allotted term of three months, the Queen of Spain's sons had forfeited those " expectatives," as

38 Strained relations with France. [1719-20

they were termed. Charles VI claimed them, but his allies resisted the claim, demanding an extension of the term of grace. The Dutch insisted on this as a condition of their accession to the Quadruple Alliance. It came to be believed at Vienna that France and Great Britain were prompting these delays for the sake of conciliating the Duke of Parma, who, on the other hand, was looked upon by the Emperor as his principal opponent in Italy. In the end, a convention was signed on November 18, 1719, obliging Spain to accede within three months, or forfeit the expectatives. The Emperor was forced to submit by his inability to expel the Spaniards from Sicily and Sardinia without the aid of a British fleet, and by his want of money.

Spain, as has been seen, acceded within the term. But now Great Britain and France, unanimous during the War, disputed the conditions of the Peace. The principal subject of their quarrel was Gibraltar. The Regent supposed that the offer of the restoration of the fortress, made before the war, still held good, and pledged himself to it. Both George and Stanhope approved, the latter more than once expressing the opinion that possession of the place was a burden to England rather than an advantage. But the suggestion was met in Parliament by so violent an outburst of resentment that he was glad to let the subject fall, fearing a formal resolution to the contrary. Furthermore, the vigilant Lord Stair at Paris, always suspicious of the Regent's good intentions, was sending alarming reports of military and naval preparations, and of favour shown to the Jacobites. George went so far as to fit out a squadron for defence against France, under pretext of danger in the Mediterranean. The strain was increased by the conduct of Law, described elsewhere in this volume. Dubois, his personal antagonist, strove earnestly for the maintenance of good relations, yet so critical was the situation in March, 1720, that Stanhope had to repair to Paris a second time that year. Stair, who had attacked Law violently, had to be recalled. Stanhope's arguments were fortunately supported by the discovery, or belief, of the Regent that Philip V was playing him false. It was agreed to send special envoys to Spain to treat conjointly. Moreover, the unsoundness of Law's System, as it had now been developed, was becoming evident. So greatly had its success been previously feared, that Stanhope wrote that if it took root, as appeared probable, the Emperor, Great Britain and Holland, even with Prussia on their side, would not be able to stand against France ; and Stair's last service at Paris was to demonstrate to the Regent that it must be abandoned. Sir Robert Sutton, who replaced him in June, adopted a different line of conduct. He showed confidence, instead of withholding it. Having investigated the reports of French armaments, he declared his belief that they were unfounded. Yet, in July, Craggs detailed to him a list of grounds of suspicion still entertained, and the French ambassador was informed of the real reason for the equipment of the

1720-1] Breach with Austria. — The Treaties of Madrid. 39

squadron of defence. But at the end of the month George decided that it might be laid up, and the autumn saw a restoration of amity. The case against Law was quietly but firmly pressed ; in December he was dismissed from his employments. Great Britain and France could now pursue amicably the consummation which both desired, reconciliation with Spain. It was decided to refer the question of Gibraltar and other matters in dispute to the Congress appointed to meet at Cambray, though it seemed desirable to arrive at an accord upon them in advance, in order to oblige the Emperor to adhere to his engagements. Stanhope held out to Spain the definite expectation that Gibraltar would be restored, after the Government should have extricated itself from the difficulties due to the failure of the South Sea Company.

By this time the Emperor was looked upon at the English Court almost as an enemy. BernstorfF, still faithful to him, had lost his credit — the result of his opposition to the Prussian alliance and of Court intrigues consequent upon the reconciliation of George with the Prince of Wales, and promoted by Walpole, his determined enemy, whom the South Sea catastrophe called to power. George and Frederick William not only refused to send plenipotentiaries to the Congress of Brunswick — that shadowy Congress which had been sitting in form for the settlement of northern affairs since 1712 — but dissuaded the King of Sweden from doing so. The Emperor persisted in refusing to invest the King of Prussia with Stettin ; and the refusal obliged George to decline for the present the investiture of Bremen and Verden. Protests addressed to Vienna against the impolicy of driving Prussia, possibly, to raise a storm within the Empire, were in vain. Further, the homeless Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, having repaired to Vienna, was favourably received there, and, through him, an approximation ensued between Austria and Russia. In November, 1720, Cadogan was recalled from Vienna in anger, and St Saphorin was ordered to speak no more about northern afiairs.

On March 27, 1721, a treaty was signed at Madrid between Spain and France. It was a treaty of mutual defence and guarantee, the King of France promising his most pressing offices for the restoration of Gibraltar and for the regulation of questions concerning the Italian duchies. Stanhope had died on February 16, but his policy was pursued by his successors under the direction of the King, who wrote to Philip promising to restore Gibraltar, in return for certain concessions, so soon as the consent of Parliament could be obtained. On June 13, the Treaty of Madrid was extended to include Great Britain. There followed the betrothals of the Infanta of Spain to Louis XV, and of the Regent's eldest daughter to the Prince of Asturias. A new system of European politics was set on foot. At the beginning of Walpole's term of power the conduct of foreign policy by Townshend and Carteret was based on a grouping of Great Britain, France, Spain and Prussia against the Emperor and the Tsar.

40

CHAPTER II. THE AGE OF WALPOLE AND THE PELHAMS.

(1)

Chateaubriand once caustically declared that the Revolution of 1688, which Englishmen termed the "glorious," would be more fitly entitled the "useful." This epigram is less applicable to the age of William and Anne than to that of Walpole. Under William and Anne the wars, the conspiracies, the executions, the victories, remind us that we are still, in some sort, in a heroic age ; under Walpole idealism or self-sacrifice is absent, the scene reveals few great events or great figures. His period is one of peace, uneventful, almost undisturbed ; its chief crisis was due to stock -jobbing, its chief disputes are about currency and excise, its chief victories those of commerce, its type, if not its hero, a business man. The age has changed ; the claims of rival merchants, not the sermons of rival preachers, are the incentives to strife ; to the wars for religious or political rights succeed the wars of dynastic or commercial ambition. The tyranny of ideas, which had caused the religious contentions of the seventeenth century, yields to the tyranny of facts and materialism, which causes the political strife of the eighteenth. England, exhausted by two generations of civil strife, at length learns to acquiesce patiently in a dynasty that is foreign, in rulers who are opportunist and uninspiring, and in standards that are low. No one, indeed, will deny that the age of Walpole brought many benefits to England — a long peace which enabled her to recover from effort and overstrain, to gamer the spoils won for her by the diplomacy of William and by the sword of Marlborough, to fill her coffers with gold and to cover the sea with her ships. Few ages have been more useful to England in the narrowest sense, few more materially prosperous ; yet few have been less productive in the nobler and more ideal elements of national life. We are only saved from describing the age in the words which Porson once applied to an individual — as "mercantile and mean beyond merchandise and meanness," by the re- flexion that the age of Sunderland, of the second George, and of Walpole is also that of Berkeley, of Wesley, and of Pitt.

1720-2] The "Bubble." — WalpoWs rise to power. 41

The period opens, perhaps a little too characteristically, with the hideous scandals of the South Sea Bubble, This gigantic crisis of stock -jobbing, which is described elsewhere, was perhaps less serious for England than was the national decadence to which it called attention. The politicians had revealed their widespread corruption, directors and business men their unscrupulous greed, and the public, as a whole, hardly appeared in a better light. The fury which it showed in its pursuit and punishment of the directors, was little less discreditable than its previous avarice and credulity. In the midst of this turmoil, persecuted directors, hard-pressed politicians, and a public thirsting for their blood, alike turned for salvation or counsel to the shrewd and experienced statesman, who had once been First Lord of the Treasury, but who since April, 1720, had held the quite insignificant post of Paymaster of the Forces. Walpole, as the one prominent man in the Ministry responsible for the disaster who had disbelieved in the success of the Bubble, was therefore the only politician to improve his reputation by its failure. As a private individual he had profited largely from the credulity of the public at the time of the Bubble ; he was now to profit yet more from it as a statesman. The universal recognition of his business ability, of his massive common sense, of his political moderation, marked him out as the one man fit to cope with the disaster and to minimise its ill-effects. His plan for restoring the tottering credit of the nation was accepted by Parliament, and its success secured him in power. He had indeed no rivals to fear or to face among the Ministers; Earl Stanhope and the two Craggs were dead; Aislabie was in the Tower; Sunderland and Charles Stanhope, though acquitted by Parliament, had not been absolved by the nation. Feeling his unpopularity to be insuperable, Sunderland resigned in 1722, and Walpole succeeded him in office as First Lord of the Treasury, becoming also Chancellor of the Exchequer (April, 1722). As Townshend — Walpole's brother-in-law — had already (February) become Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Walpole found it easy to grasp the chief power in the State. So long as he agreed with Townshend, he needed only the favour of his sovereign, in order to remain supreme.

In some respects the character of George the First — as of his son — has been wronged, for, though their standard of private conduct may have in some respects been low and their view of human nature not high, they had genuine merits. Each showed a judicious patronage towards learning both in England and in Hanover, and, though they have been accused of despising the arts, few of their English subjects had so genuine a love for music, or showed so good a taste in appreciating it. With regard to their public conduct, it can hardly be denied that they were in many ways superior to the average English politician of the age. Each did his best to stop the infamous traffic and sale of commissions in the army and something to check the prevalent political corruption. With little knowledge of English ways and much innate aversion from

42 The power of the first two Georges. [1714-37

constitutional government, thiey both consented to be directed by their English Ministers, and honestly observed the bargain between themselves and the English people. It is true that their foreign policy sometimes showed an intelligible bias towards Hanoverian interests; but this defect was more than balanced by their avoidance of vexatious interference in domestic policy, and by the zeal with which they laboured to compose diiFerences between rival religious sects and rival political factions. The safe mediocrity of the first two Georges was indeed their salvation, for it induced the English people to avoid pressing further a conflict between Crown and people, which could only have endangered the one and demoralised the other. Great as were the restrictions imposed upon the sovereign's power, his influence was still real, and might have been dangerous, if unscrupulously used. Eighteenth century statesmen were so deeply conscious of this fact that they continually suspect or accuse one another of intriguing in the closet, or of trying to catch the ear of the King; Walpole spent hours daily in the boudoir of Queen Caroline, telling her what policy he desired George II to pursue ; and to the same King's mistress. Lady Yarmouth, Pitt actually submitted his military plans and the proposed list of his administration. Such facts draw the curtain aside, and show but too clearly the influence of court intrigue and of the King's will on the determination of public policy, and on the rise and fall of Ministries.

Though Anne and the third George did not hesitate to make full use of their opportunities, the authority of the two first Georges was exercised with less frequency and efifect by reason of their ignorance of English parliamentary methods. Nevertheless, in his relations with his sovereign Walpole was anything but the autocrat that fancy has often supposed. In 1725, he reluctantly yielded to the royal will and per- mitted the recall of Bolingbroke to England ; in 1728, he only secured his power over the new King, George II, by obtaining for him the substantial gratuity of an additional ,£100,000 yearly for the Civil List. Subsequently, the favour of the able and enlightened Queen Caroline assured Walpole's supremacy over the mind of George II ; but her death in 1787 brought about a visible decline of his influence, which contributed, in some degree, to his subsequent fall.

If Walpole sometimes found it hard to win over his sovereign, still less easy did he find it to prevail on his colleagues in the Cabinet or on his party in the House. More will be said below as to the working of party government in this period. Here it i^ enough to say that, though Walpole ruled long, and though his majority was sometimes large, his tenure of office was never so secure as to enable him to persist in an unpopular course. On many occasions, he bowed before a storm of popular abuse, which was sometimes as fleeting as it was violent, and the usual cause of his surrender was instability, not of conviction, but of position. From a Minister, who felt himself so unsafe during each one

1714-21] Influence of Jacohitism. 43

of his twenty years of rule, bold initiative and far-reaching reform could not come. A careful stewardship of the national resources, an unwearied energy in promoting English industry and commerce, a good-natured tolerance of rival political and religious opinions, so long as they were not too extreme — these were the elements of that Walpolian system, which carried out the Revolution of 1688 to its logical conclusion, by developing the power of Parliament and assuring the Protestant Succession.

Bolingbroke had thought that England would never submit to be governed by a German ; and the quiet acceptance of an uninspiring ruler by a proud and patriotic people, accustomed to kings of marked person- ality, is one of the wonders of English history. The character and policy of George I, the scheme of alliances which he reared to prevent interference from abroad, the errors of the Jacobites which enabled his Ministers to preserve his regime at home — all these have been discussed elsewhere. Here, it is needful to touch upon the difficulties of that energetic clique of Whig oligarchs, who had selected a king for themselves and who had to force their choice on the reluctant masses of the English people. The body of James II lay in state in the Church of the Faubourg St Jacques, imburied and surrounded by flaming tapers, awaiting the day when the Jacobites could lay it to rest in English earth. They had some justification for their hope, for the sentiment for the exiled Stewarts was always strong and often dangerous during the first fifteen years of the new dynasty. Even after the suppression of the Earl of Mar's rising in 1715 and the conclusion of the French Alliance of 1717, contemporaries thought that George I sat, not on a throne, but on a rocking-chair. The Septennial Act (1717), that extraordinary exercise of power by which the existing Parliament extended its term to seven years, can only be justified, as it was obviously prompted, by fear of Jacobite interference. In 1718 the Bishop of Salisbury quarrelled with his Dean and Chapter, on the groiuid that their singing " By the waters of Babylon " as an anthem was a sign of their attachment to the King over the water. In 1721 Floridante, an opera in which a rightful heir is restored to his own after misfortunes, was received in London with thunders of applause, not all intended for the composer, even though he happened to be Handel. More significant perhaps than any ebullitions of popular feeling is the fact that most prominent statesmen, even Walpole himself, deemed it prudent to indulge in secret, if not always sincere, correspondence with the exiled Stewart. That the Hanoverian Succession became infinitely more secure during Walpole's tenure of office was, in no small degree, due to his; policy of cautious temporising, and to his deliberate conviction that, the less he harassed people with new taxes or new laws, the more likely would they be to acquiesce in a new dynasty. Tramquilla non movere was his motto and his policy ; and for the moment it could claim an unusual j^^ustifica- tion. The country gentry — so powerfully represented in Parliament — were the most important class attached to the Stewarts, and the most

44 Walpole and the country gentry. — Dissent. [1721-39

innately conservative section of the community; and they could only be conciliated by the absence of innovation. Hence, though the statute book during this period is barren, its sterility was more productive of genuine result than have been some periods of legislative fertility. Old abuses and a new dynasty alike remained unchanged, and Walpole tolerated the one to secure the other.

Even in religious policy Walpole suffered his personal views to be de- termined by his political necessities. After the discovery of the not very transparent Jacobite treason of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester (1721-2), Walpole exacted a special tax from the Catholics to the extent of ^100,000, on the ground that they had disturbed the country, and must therefore pay an indemnity. Here, the desire of securing a round sum in a manner agreeable to the majority of his countrymen over- powered his love of justice and his notions of policy, for the Exchequer's gain was the dynasty's loss. But there is no more reason to doubt the genuine religious tolerance of Walpole than that of the Georges, and the efforts of King and Minister were mainly instrumental in securing alleviation for the Dissenters. By the Indemnity Acts, passed annually from 1727 onwards, Nonconformists, except Catholics, Jews, and Quakers, were practically relieved from the civil disabilities which a score of oppressive Acts had imposed. But Walpole's zeal for religious tolerance, as might be expected, was more practical than theoretical. When measures were brought forward in Parliament for the more complete relief of Dissenters (1730, 1734, 1739), he wavered and temporised. He received meetings of Dissenters in private, sympathised, held out hopes, and expressed desires ; but he would risk neither his parliamentary majority nor his personal credit in trying to secure measures of full legal tolerance for Dissenters from a house full of country squires, to whom the high church parson was not only a fellow believer but a brother sportsman.

Political considerations and the need of defending the Ministry entered even into Walpole's dealings with the financial world, that world which he best understood and where he was best loved. "No man," all Lombard Street admitted, "had his equal in figures"; and this admission was the more remarkable, since some of his best-known financial schemes were not entirely original. Nevertheless, Walpole was able to kindle in merchants some of that enthusiasm which Carteret was to inspire in diplomatists, and Pitt in the people as a whole. He gauged their wishes with perfect accuracy and knew that the moneyed classes must be reconciled to the new dynasty by administrative activity, just as the country gentry were to be won by legislative sloth. The squire wanted the old laws and the old taxes to remain ; the merchant wanted new trade regulations, new bounties for his exports, and new tariffs against his foreign rivals. Walpole was as ready to comply with the one as with the other, and the most cautious of legislators became the most daring of financiers. England had possessed great finance Ministers

ivie-s?] Walpole and the Sinking Fund. 45

in Burghley, Montagu, and Godolphin; but no man before Walpole had ever so comprehensively grasped the whole economic system of England or had so decisively left his impress upon it. From the very moment of his accession to office we note a thorough change and improvement in every department of national finance. His earliest financial scheme marked the character of future effort, for his plan for the settlement of the South Sea Company (in which he persisted despite great opposition) eventually succeeded. He brought the Bank of England and the East India Company to the rescue of the South Sea Company, and provided eventually for the sale or redemption of about a quarter of its stock. It was impossible to restore the South Sea Company to complete health, but Walpole kept it alive by cordials from the Sinking Fund until it gained convalescence.

In pure finance the Sinking Fund is at once Walpole's chief achieve- ment, and the chief illustration of the political difficulties which hampered his financial reforms. During his first tenure of the Treasury, in the years 1716-7, he had devised a scheme for reducing the National Debt, by the formation of an annual sinking fund for the purpose of paying it off in instalments. There was to be a general reduction of interest on the various types of national securities (averaging six to five per cent.), and the surplus thus gained was to be formed into a sinking fund for the annual reduction of the debt. There is no indication that Walpole intended this surplus to accumulate at compound interest; and the comparison between his sinking fund and that of the younger Pitt is not to Walpole's disadvantage. His sinking fund scheme was actually introduced by him after he had resigned office in 1717. Its principle was extended in 1727, when he further reduced the interest on the various types of national securities (five to four per cent, average), and thereby raised the contribution to the sinking fund to an average of about a million a year. The sinking fund contributed directly to debt reduction, indirectly to the stabihty of public credit. Unfortunately, it formed a convenient fund to be appropriated or raided in case of necessity. Thus, for instance, when in 1728 Walpole granted George II one hundred thousand pounds more for the Civil List than had been allotted to George I, this addition was to be annually charged on the sinking fund. This particular instance of a raid on the sinking fund is not to Walpole's credit, for there can be no doubt that it was connected with his desire to ingratiate himself with the new King. A still worse, though an unim- portant, instance of appropriation, occurred in 1729, when the sum of £4200 (which thieves had stolen from the Exchequer) was made good from the sinking fund. Other arrangements for diverting the sinking fund, between 1733 and 1737, are also not very defensible, and incurred the weighty censure of Adam Smith. Moreover, the genuine fear with which the increase of the debt was then regarded, which pictured it as a vampire sucking away the life of the State, as a fell disease slowly

46 Walpole and the Land Tax. [1716-33

subduing its victim, makes these attacks on the sinking fund even less creditable than they would seem to-day. What was intended to be a cash reserve was treated as if it were a Fortunatus' purse. But the matter cannot be settled wholly on economic grounds, for the annual sinking fund surplus was an almost irresistible temptation to a Minister like Walpole, who was unwilling to risk an insecure position by imposing new taxes. The only other way of getting money except by new taxes was by raising new loans ; but the sinking fund had been intended to prevent national loans, and direct appropriation from it might avoid a loan altogether. Such seems to have been the argument, and it is one which makes Walpole the victim rather than the dupe of circumstance. It should be remembered, however, to his credit that, while he sometimes robbed the sinking fund to avoid raising a loan, he never raised a loan without devoting some part of it to pay ofiF that part of the National Debt, which bore the highest rate of interest.

If Walpole had been asked for his ideal of a golden year in finance, he would probably have answered "a year with the sinking fund at a million and the land tax at a shilling." The land tax was a lucrative direct tax ; but, if he ventured to raise it, Walpole risked the alienation of the country gentry, and, not improbably^ his own overthrow, or even that of the dynasty. All his eiforts could not prevent the land tax from standing at an annual average of two shillings, though he got it down to a shilling in 1732-3. Probably with the same view of not irritating the Stewart-loving squires, Walpole never proposed a reassessment of the land tax, though such a measure was obviously in the interests of the National Exchequer and an act of justice to particular districts. The land tax was borne chiefly by the gentry ; but indirect taxation of the moneyed classes likewise yielded good results. As Walpole said in his coarse, humorous way, the landed gentry resembled the hog, squealing whenever you laid hands on him, while the merchants were like a sheep, yielding its wool silently. Excise and customs were the two blades which shore away the commercial fleece. Walpole recognised that the fleece would be the richer if he could devise effectual checks upon smuggling. The severest laws and penalties were enacted in vain, for reasons which are not far to seek. No one who is acquainted with the traditions of Romney Marsh, or of the Welsh or Cornish coasts, can think that either Revenue officers or regulations availed against old traditions, excellent opportunities, and the cooperation of whole country- sides in the extensive industry of smuggling. The chaos was inde- scribable ; the regulations were waste paper ; the Exchequer must have lost hundreds of thousands yearly. Walpole's only chance of reducing the smuggling was either to lessen the huge customs duties on tea, coifee, and wine, or to replace these duties by excises, which should be chargeable on the commodities sold for home consumption. In 1724, he introduced an excise in the place of customs duties on tea and coflfee ;

1732-3] Walpoles Excise Scheme. 47

but, though the result increased the revenue, he was very cautious about extending the principle. In 1782, he revived the excise on salt, and on March 14, 17S3, he opened his famous Excise Scheme in the House of Commons. It simply consisted in the imposition of an excise on wine and tobacco, which was to be levied on the goods after they had been placed in English warehouses, in order that the chief possibilities of smuggling might be prevented. Besides this, there was a further plan of allowing all raw materials to receive a drawback on reexportation, and thus make London a "free port" and the market of the world. This scheme, he contended, would increase the revenue and benefit the honest trader at the expense of the smuggler.

There had been ominous mutterings already; now there were loud cries of indignation. Pulteney led the opposition in the Commons, denouncing the excise as a monster, as injurious to liberty, as the greatest exercise of arbitrary power ever attempted by a tyrant. A vast mob surged round Westminster Hall, penetrated to the Court of Requests and the Lobby, howled insults at the Ministers, and tried to tear Walpole from his carriage as he left St Stephen's. Pamphlets of the coarsest abuse and the wildest imagination abounded; mobs paraded the streets ; Walpole was burnt in effigy in dozens of bonfires. People saw in imagination the tyrannical excise officers entering the Englishman's castle, and beheld Magna Carta trampled beneath the feet of merciless uniformed bureaucrats. Jacobites openly spoke of the return of the Stewart; Whigs whispered that they would resist excise officers by force of arms. Though the Venetian ambassador wrote that the pension list was increasing, Walpole's majorities diminished, the tables in the Commons were weighed down with petitions. Ministerial speakers were hissed and abused in the lobbies, howled down when they rose to speak in the Commons. Queen Caroline feared for the loyalty of the army and the safety of the dynasty, and gave a tearful consent to the abandon- ment of the Bill. After the session of April 10, Walpole announced this decision in a short speech to a private meeting of his supporters — " This dance, it wiU no further go." The words disguised his emotion, and observers noted that his voice trembled and that his eyes fiUed with tears. The abandonment of a cherished scheme of finance probably meant as much to this coarse-fibred man as the failure of a negotiation to Carteret, or the loss of a regiment to Pitt.

That Walpole, cautious and placable, would not persist in a scheme which threatened him, that he refused to "enforce taxes at the price of blood," is not surprising. The whole course of this movement illustrates the strange and feverish agitations which sometimes suddenly gripped the English people during this century, disorganising policies, changing Ministries, and making England's Governments a proverb for fickleness and an object of pity to foreign diplomats. But the Sacheverell agita- tion, the South Sea Bubble, the putcry against Wood's Halfpence, the

48 Failure of the Exdse Scheme. [1732-3

Jenkins' Ear frenzy, the Porteous riots — all these are, to some extent, more intelligible than the tempest which raged over the excise. It is a commonplace among modem historians that there was nothing in the actual scheme to cause alarm, that the measures proposed were at once just and practicable, and that, half a century later, they were, in large part, adopted by the younger Pitt without protest from anybody and with an enormous resultant gain to the revenue. But the circumstances of the time must be considered — the genuine hatred of unjustifiable state interference that existed among all parties, the real belief in the rights of liberty and property in their narrow and individualistic sense. Moreover Walpole's actions and utterances on the excise question looked somewhat equivocal ; before 1732, he seems to have supported the principle of an excise on salt, because it imposed a small duty on a necessary which all could pay ; in 1733,