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Title: History of England 1688-1815
Author: Wrong, Edward Murray (1889-1928)
Date of first publication: 1927
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Williams & Norgate, 1927
   [first edition]
   [Home University Library of Modern Knowledge, vol. 129]
Date first posted: 1 April 2013
Date last updated: 1 April 2013
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1059

This ebook was produced by Barbara Watson, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net






          HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
          OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
                       VOL. 129


                          HISTORY OF ENGLAND
                              1688-1815

                         BY E. M. WRONG, M.A.


                                LONDON
                       WILLIAMS & NORGATE, LTD.

                      HENRY HOLT & CO., NEW YORK
                    CANADA: RYERSON PRESS, TORONTO
                INDIA: BURNS, OATES & WASHBOURNE, LTD.




          HOME
          UNIVERSITY
          LIBRARY
          OF
          MODERN KNOWLEDGE

                              _Editors_:

                    RT. HON. H. A. L. FISHER, M.A.

                    PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, D.LITT.,
                    LL.D., F.B.A.

                    PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.,
                    LL.D.

                   PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.
                   (Columbia University, U.S.A.)

                               NEW YORK
                        HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY




                              HISTORY OF
                               ENGLAND
                              1688-1815

                                  BY
                             E. M. WRONG
                                 M.A.

                FELLOW AND TUTOR OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE,
                OXFORD; AUTHOR OF "CHARLES BULLER AND
                       RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT."

                                LONDON
                       WILLIAMS & NORGATE, LTD.




                       _First printed_   1927

                       PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN




                               CONTENTS


  CHAP.                                                           PAGE
     I. SETTLEMENT AND WAR                                           7

    II. VICTORY AND PARTIES                                         36

   III. THE CENTURY AND THE COMMONS                                 58

    IV. THE AGE OF WALPOLE                                          81

     V. WESLEY AND PITT                                            101

    VI. GEORGE III                                                 124

   VII. AMERICA                                                    152

  VIII. PITT AND FOX                                               178

    IX. FRANCE AND IRELAND                                         202

     X. BRITAIN IN VICTORY                                         226

        BIBLIOGRAPHY                                               250

        INDEX                                                      252




                          HISTORY OF ENGLAND




                              CHAPTER I

                          SETTLEMENT AND WAR


With the Revolution England entered a period of her history more sober
and continuous, if less inspiring, than the two centuries past. It was
an age of foreign, no longer of civil, war; for over sixty years in
the next century and a quarter France and England fought for
ascendancy in Europe and for dominion beyond the sea. England
generally had Continental allies, but at times she battled alone; of
coalitions she was the surest member and the pivot. In the struggle
she doubled the Empire begun by the Stuarts and Cromwell, lost most of
her early gains, and on the ruins built a second empire wider than the
first. The Industrial Revolution slowly gathered force after the
foundation of a national bank to meet war-time needs, and by the year
of Waterloo was changing the face and mind of the country far faster
than its political sense could realise or regulate. In thought the
age between James's flight and the downfall of Napoleon was more a
time of digestion than of new ideas. The conflicts whose roots lie in
the Reformation found at last, so far as political expression was
concerned, a national settlement, and the fury and brilliance that had
made England the most unstable of European countries faded gradually
into the cold light of accepted compromise. The Constitution, once the
principles of the Revolution had been worked out, saw no cataclysms,
but many adjustments. The ascendancy of Parliament became clearer as
the financial and military necessities of the government grew;
Scotland, and a century later, Ireland, were brought into this
Parliament. There the most ambitious and eloquent members of a
well-educated aristocracy fought for mastery: they shared the
prejudices of their class, but their views differed widely in detail,
and represented more closely than is often allowed the conscious
political desires of the nation, even when they ignored its unspoken
wants. Law and tradition grew in force, until unconstitutional methods
lost nearly all their appeal. We begin the age with an England
embarked on a limited revolution meant to conserve, not to destroy,
but doubtful of its own mind, feeling herself menaced by a
centralised and far stronger neighbour in France, threatened at home
by parties still without the restraint that was to make them a fairly
efficient means of government. We end it with a United Kingdom that is
the firmest state in Europe, burdened with taxes and mutinous, yet
nearer to being the arbiter of Europe than ever before or since.

1688 is small fry as revolutions go, but it marked a change in the
political character of England. She had gained an unsavoury reputation
for swinging between violent extremes, from Tudor despotism based on
popular consent to the autocracy of Charles I, thence to presbyterian
dominance of the House of Commons, from that to the rule of the sword,
and back through a restoration of the monarchy made by Calvinistic
parliamentarians to the twin supremacy in Church and State of parson
and squire. Recently the pendulum had oscillated still more rapidly,
from Whig to Tory reigns of terror. Every party aimed at the
destruction of its enemies, or at least at their permanent exclusion
from Office. There were few events of the last half-century in which
all could take pride, for victories had been won either over part of
the nation or while part was proscribed. Must the pendulum swing
again through a shortening arc? Temporary unity against the
Catholic-absolutist policy of James had brought William to London, but
alliances easy to weld in Opposition break down when something
constructive must be done. Who was to rule and on what conditions?
Even if England, a proud and quarrelsome nation, set the crown on
William's head, could she keep it there, accept a king whom many must
regard as a conqueror, who came from a nation that she had fought
thrice in the last forty years?

The immediate need was for some government. James's second flight
eased the problem: it deprived the Tories, who had mainly acquiesced
in rather than favoured William's adventure, of the keystone of their
creed and the natural head of their party. It made slightly plausible
the idea that he had resigned his rights, not been deprived of them.
The day after James landed in France, William, at the request of an
impromptu assembly, assumed the government. A convention to settle
Crown and Constitution was called for January; it was to be in every
respect a parliament save that no king bade it meet.

When the Convention gathered on January 22 it showed at once that the
apparent unanimity of the autumn had gone. Few wanted James back in
power, but the Church party, led by Nottingham and the bishops, hoped
to keep him as titular King, vesting the government in Mary or William
as regent, and half the Lords upheld this view. Danby proclaimed
Mary's right to be full queen; Halifax and the Whigs argued for
William--Halifax because he thought this the most practical course,
many Whigs hoping by omitting the children of James to slay hereditary
right. The Commons swiftly agreed to a portmanteau resolution that
James had violated the original contract between King and people (an
inaccurate popular version of Whig political theory), had broken the
nation's fundamental laws, and finally had abdicated, so that the
throne was vacant: "abdication" conciliated some Tories who disputed
the nation's right to depose its prince. The Lords debated this
resolution, and the next, who should rule, for a week; barely rejected
a regency, denied a vacancy in the Crown, and finally, when William
let it be known that he would be neither regent nor prince consort,
agreed with the Commons. William and Mary were nominated as joint
rulers, but the government was given to William alone.

Meanwhile the Commons had drawn up a declaration that condemned
various acts of James, and denied the Crown's power to suspend laws
or to keep an army without Parliamentary consent. On February 13,
1689, William and Mary accepted this, and were proclaimed. The
Convention declared itself a parliament, and turned to settle the
nation's problems. But this attempt to legalise revolution did not
make it secure. War with France was certain: Ireland was aflame for
Catholicism and James: none could say how Scotland would go. In
England the Anglican clergy, who since 1660 had preached the duty of
non-resistance to Government in a crescendo, doubted that they could
accept a monarchy based on rebellion. The Whigs hoped to revenge the
last seven years on the Tories, and the Tories, normally the larger
party, might abandon a settlement based on Whig principles.

Nor was William's character a source of political strength. It was
easier to admire than to love him; he was in thought and tastes a
foreigner, who found little in England to his liking. He treated the
frequent disloyalty of English ministers with a cold magnanimity that
sprang more from policy than from kindliness. He was often peevish if
seldom cruel, and it was only to a few friends or in battle that his
manners became frank. His dislike of court gossip, joined to asthma
unbearable in London smoke, made him shut himself off from society at
Hampton Court or in Kensington fields, and alienated those who liked
to flutter in Whitehall. He was the best diplomatist of his time, but
never understood English political ideas. He wished to retain for the
Crown all the powers of Charles II save those forfeited in the
Declaration of Right. But the Whigs, his natural allies, aimed at more
than a change of king; they wanted to define unsettled constitutional
points in a parliamentary sense and to make William a channel for
their exercise of patronage. Tories, though better friends of
monarchy, were reluctant to see him use powers they would have left
unquestioned to a Stuart. The new King had been created in men's sight
by man, not by God, and coronation without birthright could make him
at best a candle that tried to replace a sun. Moreover, the Tories
were very English, and everything Dutch about William jarred them into
opposition; they were soon fighting harder than the Whigs for an
English parliament's supremacy. William felt criticism as a slight,
could not see that constitutional change was in the nature of things,
and thought each new limit on his power another piece of ingratitude
to the nation's liberator. But he had a saving sense of reality that
kept him from resisting to the end: he gave way where Charles I would
have tried evasion, James II force.

The most critical time came swiftly. In March, 1689, James landed in
Ireland; on the same day two Scottish regiments mutinied at Ipswich;
five days later Dundee fled from the Presbyterian Convention at
Edinburgh to raise the Highlands for James. In April James was before
Londonderry, the only place in Ireland save Enniskillen that resisted
his authority. A Grand Alliance of Austria, Spain, Holland, England
and Savoy took arms against the threat of French ascendancy, and a
struggle began that was to last, with a short interlude, for
twenty-four years. Prospects were so uncertain that Danby, who had
rallied the north and many Tories to William, and Halifax who had
helped to crown him, thought the odds were against his triumph.

Protestant dissent needed attention, for James had made the Church bid
for its support, and the Clarendon code was no longer enforceable. The
Lords agreed to widen the establishment and to comprehend in it
moderate Nonconformists. The Commons feared the suggestion, and
chloroformed it by leaving Convocation to take the first step. That
body met in November, and its lower house, more conservative than the
bishops and less political, refused to consider the plan. It was too
late or too early for such a measure: the extreme Dissenters must have
been omitted, and feared that comprehension would strengthen a
persecuting Church; the moderates clung to independence, the clergy to
their monopoly of endowments and authority. But toleration could not
be shelved, and a bill legalising Nonconformist worship under narrow
limitations passed unopposed. It was the only part of James's policy
that the Revolution adopted, though he had offered dissent a share in
government, not bare tolerance only. Its importance lay in the future,
for, narrow as it was, it reversed the policy of twenty-five years,
recognised that uniformity was unattainable, and moved towards the
separation of Church and State.

William was as well inclined to toleration as his father-in-law, and
asked Parliament to modify the Test Act so as not to exclude any
Protestant from the royal service. He found few supporters, and indeed
such a change would have set half the nation's pulpits thundering
denunciation, but the Whigs retaliated on the victorious Church by
enacting that all beneficed clergy and officials must take an oath of
allegiance by August, 1689, on pain of suspension for six months and
deprivation after if they were still recalcitrant. The great majority
swore, though not all happily; but about four hundred, including
Archbishop Sancroft and seven bishops, refused and were eventually
ejected. Thus began the Non-juring schism, which lasted for over a
hundred years. Most of those turned out would have done no mischief,
and neither preached nor intrigued against William, but they would not
vow obedience to an order based on a right of resistance that they
denied.

The war, William's chief care, went badly at first. France devastated
the Rhine palatinate; a French squadron repulsed an English in Bantry
Bay and landed troops in Ireland, where a Parliament that contained
only fifteen Protestants in both houses was busy undoing the
Cromwellian land settlement, attainting some 2500 persons, and
declaring full independence. Kirke failed in June to relieve Derry;
Dundee had swept such clans as hated the Campbells into an army that
could not last, but might overrun half Scotland. Prospects brightened
in July. At Killiecrankie Dundee smashed Mackay's force but fell in
victory, and four weeks later his army dispersed. Derry was relieved
in the same week, and an allied victory eased French pressure in
Flanders.

William found Parliament increasingly troublesome as the year wore on.
It voted him supplies, but not, as was the custom, for life; this was
natural, since the Commons wished to ensure frequent sessions, but
William thought it showed unjustified distrust. In fact, there was no
danger of an attack on Parliament's life; two securities had
unwittingly been created. The Mutiny Act, passed after the Ipswich
mutiny had been crushed by Dutch troops, was one, for it legalised a
standing army for seven months only, and if it expired military law
must cease and soldiers become liable only to a civil court and for
civil offences. The second was the war, certain to make annual votes
necessary whatever permanent supplies were given to the king: the
expense of government was steadily rising, and even peace would not
make the monarchy independent.

Parliament turned the Declaration into the Bill of Rights, but most of
its time went in disputes between the Houses and in party struggles of
increasing bitterness. A Tory reaction had begun. This might seem a
reason for Whig moderation, but the instinct then was to meet rising
opposition by hastening the pace. The nation wanted an indemnity for
those who had connived at James's arbitrary acts; none wanted it more
than William, who wished to be king over both parties, not to see one
harrying the other into extremes. The Whigs admitted that indemnity
there must be, but lingered over exceptions till the bill became a
proscription as well as a pardon. At length to a measure restoring the
corporations packed by James, they added, while Tory members kept
Christmas holiday, a clause making all concerned in the late surrender
of charters incapable of corporation office for seven years. This
would drive all prominent Tories from local councils, making these,
and the seats in Parliament they filled, Whig preserves. The Tories
mustered and removed the clause; the Whigs delayed indemnity still
longer. William dissolved Parliament, and increased the Tory element
in his ministry.

The House of Commons elected in March, 1690, was less Whig than the
Convention; it accepted from the Crown an Act of Grace pardoning all
save a few supporters of James. This Parliament lasted till October,
1695, and during its life the Tory party accepted the Revolution, and
came to represent closely the ideas, prejudices and fears of an
insular countryside. Dislike of moneyed and manufacturing interests
and of dissent, suspicion of the Court's power to bribe members of
Parliament with office, hatred of a standing army, the belief that all
wealth came from the land, love for the Church, fondness for country
sports and rustic paternalism--these were the chief articles in the
Tory creed, at bottom more social than political. In many it was based
mainly on fear and dislike, but in some it rose to genuine passion for
England's past and a love of the ancient order; it was instinctive
more than philosophical. Naturally such a party frequently disobeyed
its leaders.

Against it stood the Whigs, weaker numerically but better drilled.
They saw the world changing, finance growing in importance, they
believed in toleration for Nonconformists, since these were amongst
their strongest supporters, and they were not so distrustful of a
court that they hoped to control. They feared the army less than did
the Tories and admitted its necessity. The Tories often forgot Europe,
the Whigs England; they seldom allowed for the grievances of a landed
interest on whom taxation bore heavily. They disliked democracy, but
at rare intervals party war forced them towards it. When at the end of
William's reign a Tory House of Commons stood against King and
electorate, the Whigs claimed that Parliament was but a trustee of the
people's rights. With a Whig majority this idea vanished, but the
constitutional programme of each party shows the Whigs nearer than
their opponents to modern British ideas of government. The Tories
wanted a Place Act, to prevent any member of the Commons holding
office under the Crown. This would have diminished Government
influence in the Lower House and made more irresponsible the most
powerful body in the country; it would have left members of Parliament
free to criticise the Ministry without the restraint imposed by the
prospect of having to put their views to the test. The Whig demand was
for a Triennial Act--no Parliament to last for more than three years.
Toryism had more sense of the past than Whiggery, and probably the
more genuine religion, but it was blinder to the future. Though one
party shaded into its rival through a centre block of fluctuating
opinion, each was intolerant of the other and aimed at its
destruction, not at temporary victory only. The idea that a country's
oscillation between parties would help to keep politics pure and
ideals fresh had not arisen. Nearly all men thought their opponents a
dangerous faction, and such as belonged to no party held this true of
both.

Prominent men were often vague or neutral in their party views.
Clarendon and Rochester, Mary's uncles, were more Jacobite than Tory,
dissatisfied with the Revolution and distrusted by the Court;
Nottingham was industrious and honest, a consistent defender of the
Church, loyal to William, whose rights he doubted, a Tory but a
Churchman first. Danby, now Marquis of Caermarthen, and soon to be
Duke of Leeds, was too deeply committed to the Revolution to draw
back, too much hated by the Whigs to leave the Tory party that he had
built; he worked himself to the bone when in power, sulked when other
advice prevailed, was unscrupulous but true to William. Seymour, a
violent Tory, carried great weight with the back-benchers: he was more
dangerous in opposition than useful in office. On the Whig side,
Somers had emerged, Montague was rising. Somers gave an impression of
magnanimity and moderation not wholly deserved; he was a fine lawyer
and had few enmities, but often put party above national interest.
Montague was adroit in finance, overbearing with success, and bore ill
the inevitable reversals of political fortune. These two, with Wharton
and Russell, the admiral, were the chiefs of the Whig Junto. Wharton
was dissolute and unscrupulous, a political organiser of ability;
Russell's personal ethics stood higher, his political consistency not
so high, and though his services to the Revolution were great they
were amply rewarded and often grudgingly given.

Halifax, the acutest critic of politics in England, was of no party.
His tendency to rally to the weaker side and his indecision in office
robbed him of the importance that his ability promised. Separated from
him and never wholly of any party stood a group of four men,
Shrewsbury, Godolphin, Marlborough, Sunderland. Shrewsbury was the
most partisan, an accepted Whig, but he hated office, was sensitive to
responsibility, and left his party when it began to plunge. Godolphin
and Marlborough were nominally Tories, but could work with either
side. Godolphin, a skilled financier, proved indispensable to any
Ministry. Marlborough, the ablest man in England, was rightly
suspected of treachery and was known to be grasping; his serenity and
cool judgment were unique, and when the nation's interests and his own
coincided his services were invaluable. But for much of the reign he
was in disgrace, for his patron Anne waged feud with Mary, and
William distrusted him, Sunderland returned from flight abroad in
1690 the best-hated man in England; for he had betrayed every cause in
turn. His cynical insight steadily increased his influence with
William, and though he held it safer to work behind the scenes, his
hand is visible in many temperate readjustments of policy. These four
were ever in close contact, almost a third party by themselves.

Most of these men at one time or another assured James that they
bewailed the Revolution and were secretly working in his interest. The
fact that despite words they seldom or never did anything to restore
the exiled king only palliates their treachery by making it double. In
truth constant revolutions are fatal to political morality. When
system after system falls in ruins every man of note finds almost
overwhelming the temptation to insure life and estates by verbal
treason. He must have a friend in each camp, else another reversal
will mean certain loss of office, probable forfeiture of lands,
perhaps the scaffold. Some stability is necessary for honesty in
business or honour in politics. The men of this generation had not
been bred to heroism; their political lessons had been learnt after
the Restoration.

During 1690 and 1691 England achieved the reconquest of Ireland.
William risked a French invasion by sweeping England of troops, and in
June, 1690, led a powerful force to Ulster. He caught James's smaller
army in retreat and broke it at the Boyne. Dublin fell, and he pressed
westward, but was repulsed at Limerick and had to leave his victory
half won. Marlborough captured Cork and Kinsale in the autumn, cutting
from the Irish the best bases for French support. James hoped to
return to London at the head of a French army, for the French won a
naval victory off Beachy Head, and the Channel was at their mercy, but
they wasted a chance that never recurred. Next year Ginkell stamped
out Irish resistance; he swept into Connaught, took Athlone, crushed
an Irish army at Aghrim, and at Limerick forced a final surrender. The
terms were those of fair amnesty, and William strove to honour them,
but the restored Irish Protestant Parliament threw moderation
overboard. Catholic Ireland lay crushed and powerless but was not won
to loyalty.

From 1690 to the peace the war in Flanders moved in a slow rhythm.
William went to Holland every spring, and spent the summer on
campaign. When the forces had dispersed into winter quarters, he
returned to England. Parliamentary sessions were crowded into the
winter months; he never suffered one when he was abroad. His military
fortunes improved as the war dragged on and France felt the exhaustion
of struggle on four fronts--Flanders, the Rhine, Savoy and Spain. In
1691 the French captured Mons, but failed at Lige. In 1692 they won
their greatest success in the Netherlands by taking Namur, and
followed this by defeating William at Steinkirk. Next year Luxembourg
again beat William at Landen, and late in the year took Charleroi.
Despite these defeats a balance had been reached; 1694 was a year of
stalemate, but with the allies on the offensive. In 1695 William
re-captured Namur and it was clear that the tide had turned; French
finance was breaking under the strain. The allied advantage was not
pressed in 1696 for two reasons: Montague's reform of the English
coinage caused a shortage of cash that paralysed the army, and Savoy
made a separate peace with Louis, which freed thirty thousand French
for service elsewhere. Peace negotiations, desired by all parties save
Spain, the most incapable of the allies, began in May, 1697; in July
France and England agreed on terms and the others followed in a few
weeks.

The ebb and flow of war was less clear outside Flanders. A Jacobite
plan for invasion in 1691 was conditional on Louis offering religious
toleration in France and on James dismissing his Catholic advisers,
and these terms would have wrecked it even had it not been discovered.
In 1692 Louis made ready a full-dress expedition, and James launched a
declaration that came as near to repentance for his acts as anything
he ever penned, but the English and Dutch fleets ruined the French
navy off La Hogue. In 1693 the French scattered a huge convoy destined
for the Eastern Mediterranean and took part of it. England retaliated
in 1694 by effective use of sea-power: she sent her main fleet to the
Mediterranean for the first time, and preserved Barcelona from the
French. But an attack on Brest was decisively beaten and coastal raids
achieved little. The battle fleet remained abroad for nearly two
years, maintaining Spanish resistance and holding Savoy to the
Alliance. Its pressure stung France in 1696 to an attempted invasion
of England, coincident with a Jacobite rising and a plot to murder
William, the last so badly framed that men who condemned assassination
were brought into the secret, and three of them gave information to
the Government.

By the peace of Ryswick of 1697 Louis recognised William as king. It
was a temporary settlement only, for Louis had been held, not beaten,
and he still hoped to dominate Europe. He had lost his English catspaw
in 1688, but a prospect opened of a safer though less vigorous
satellite in Spain. Her king, Charles II, was childless,
feeble-minded, decrepit; when he died Louis could hope to get part of
his empire, perhaps even to seat one of his own family on the empty
throne. It had three claimants, Austrian, Bavarian, Bourbon. All
Europe saw the danger, and William planned to meet it by agreement
with France.

The Partition Treaty of September, 1698, promised Spain and the Indies
to the Bavarian claimant, Naples and Guipuscoa to the French Dauphin,
Milan to the Austrian candidate. Spain heard of it, and to keep her
empire united made the Bavarian prince heir to the whole. But he died
of smallpox in February 1699, and all was to do again with the
claimants reduced to two. A second Partition Treaty in February, 1700,
gave Spain, the Indies and the Netherlands to the Austrian Archduke;
and to France, Lorraine, Naples, Sicily, Guipuscoa and some Tuscan
ports. Austria rejected this, and asked for more. Parliament knew of
neither treaty, and would have denounced the second, which promised
France a Mediterranean predominance thought perilous to English trade.
A dangerous constitutional precedent had been given in the first pact,
when Somers, the Lord Chancellor, sent sealed powers in blank to
William: if ministerial responsibility meant anything, Somers was
responsible for a deed of which he was ignorant. Both treaties were
the work of William himself, not of his ministers.

They brought a storm in 1701, but were not its only cause. Relations
between Government and Commons were growing more difficult. Parliament
was jealous and irresponsible; no man could pledge its action with
certainty. The best remedy for the tendency of any assembly to
increase its powers is responsibility; the nation holds the Commons to
account, and the Commons act through leaders they must follow or
replace. But this can work only under certain conditions. It
presupposes a confident national sense; rules of fair play binding on
all so that a defeated party will not appeal to arms nor a victorious
one make its triumph immortal by legislation; as much agreement on
means as dispute about ends. The rules that keep party politics from
becoming faction had not yet been framed, so when the Commons asserted
themselves it was less to control than to hamper the Government.

Charles II had weakened opposition by patronage. This was now being
systematised but was still incomplete, uncodified, and provoked
spasmodic assault. Attacks were made on place-men that if successful
would have turned the British Constitution into something more like
the American. One Place Bill was beaten in the Lords in 1692, a second
vetoed by the Crown in 1694. William resisted other less dubious
changes. An attempt to make judges independent of the Crown and
dismissable only at Parliament's request failed to get his assent in
1691, for he saw in it an attack on his influence. He vetoed a
Triennial Bill in March 1693, against the wishes of his ministers. But
next year he accepted it, for he wanted Shrewsbury as Secretary of
State, and Shrewsbury made this a condition. At the same time the
censorship of the press, which hung by a temporary act, expired not so
much from belief in free expression, as because no censor pleased both
parties. The result was an increase in pamphlet war and the beginning
of newspapers.

An election in the autumn of 1695, designed to use the popularity won
by William's success at Namur, returned a Parliament less docile than
he had hoped. In 1696 lavish grants of Welsh lands to favourites
raised a storm: for the first time a king's right to give away Crown
property was successfully attacked. Mary had died of smallpox in
December, 1694, and her loss was expected to increase friction between
court and people. The needs of war and the murder plot of 1696
postponed trouble, but it came on the heels of peace. Parliament
wished to cut down drastically forces which had reached nearly 90,000
soldiers and 40,000 seamen. In December, 1697, they fixed the army at
about 10,000, with 10,000 sailors, and 3000 marines; this was an issue
of country against court on which both parties were agreed. William
evaded the full reduction, and kept some 15,000 soldiers in England,
with rather more on the Irish establishment. A general election in the
summer of 1698 strengthened the opposition. Parliament attacked
vigorously, voted an army, besides the Irish establishment (then
12,000 strong), of only 7000 men, none of whom should be foreigners--a
direct attack on William's Dutch guards. Partly because he thought
peace unstable, partly because, king-like, he resented Parliamentary
control of the army, William felt this bitterly, and talked of
retiring to Holland. Twice before he had threatened this, soon after
the Revolution and when he was indispensable, but now the threat was
vain. He asked for his Dutch guards, but his earlier refusal to
suggest a moderate establishment had cost him his chance, and he had
to yield.

A second storm soon followed. In 1690 William had promised to consult
Parliament before he granted away the lands to be forfeited in Ireland
once the rebellion was crushed. The war was over, the debt great, and
Parliament thought the sale of these lands would reduce taxation, but
large tracts had been alienated by the king. By a clause in a money
bill which it was impossible to reject the Commons appointed a
commission of inquiry, and in 1700 it reported that William had
divided a quarter of a million acres between Albemarle (Keppel) and
Portland's son (Bentinck), besides making other large gifts. A Bill
was drawn up to resume the lands, and the Commons forced it through
the Lords by coupling it to the land tax. Another revolution seemed
possible, so high did party feeling run; the Whig Junto was forced
from office, and the Government became more Tory than it had been
since 1688.

Three deaths in a few months altered the situation. In July, 1700, the
Duke of Gloucester, last of Anne's seventeen children, and after her
the only heir to the throne provided by the Bill of Rights, died of
smallpox. In November with Charles II the Spanish Hapsburgs expired.
September, 1701, ended the life of James. Spain had to find an
immediate, England an ultimate royal house. Parliament easily decided
that future kings of England must be Protestant; this ruled out the
Pretender and House of Savoy, and made Sophia of Hanover,
granddaughter of James I, inevitable. She was seventy, wanted the
Crown neither herself nor for her children, and only under pressure
withdrew her suggestion that the Pretender would make a better ruler
than a German prince. Charles II of Spain was found to have bequeathed
his realms to Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis, as the one chance of
holding them together. Louis accepted the bequest and tore up the
Partition Treaty: this meant war with Austria but not necessarily with
England, where public opinion preferred a French king for the whole
Spanish Empire to such direct aggrandisement of France as the treaty
had promised. At this point, with war certain in Europe, William
humiliated in England, Parliament was dissolved, and three thousand
candidates contested the bitterest election yet known. Victory went to
the peace party, the Tories.

French aggressiveness swung the nation back to William. Louis
recognised Philip's conditional claim to the French throne, in
violation of earlier pledges. In February, 1701, French troops
occupied seven of the fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands, which
William hoped to see garrisoned by the Dutch. France claimed a
monopoly of non-Spanish trade with the Spanish colonies, and this
threatened English prosperity. War feeling grew through the spring of
1701. Parliament was prepared to stand by Holland, but its
investigation of diplomatic events since the peace made it rage at the
way England's action had been secretly pledged in the partition
treaties, and at the Whigs who had then been in power. Somers, Orford
(Russell), Halifax (Montague), and Portland, William's chief agent in
foreign affairs, were impeached. At the same time the Act of
Settlement, which gave the crown after Anne's death to Hanover, was
passed by Tory votes. As far as an Act could it slew the former Tory
theory of divine right, by ignoring the nearer Stuarts in favour of a
remote Protestant. As a price for this the Act made any dismissal of
judges depend on Parliament, banished place-men from the Commons,
forbade the monarch to leave England without parliamentary approval,
and closed Privy Council and Parliament to all save Englishmen:
councillors were individually to sign and be responsible for their
decisions.

The Act touched William in several tender places, but he agreed to it
since he lost none of his own powers: it was only to come into force
on Anne's death. Had it done so unamended the constitution would be
different to-day. The Tory theory, as expressed in it, was that
ministerial responsibility was individual, not collective, enforceable
by prosecution of the minister, not by defeat of his party. Coupled
with a prohibition on royal officials being members of the Commons,
this would make a Cabinet as we know it impossible. The years of
Anne's reign gave time for second thoughts, and these clauses were
repealed.

The Commons became bellicose slowly, the nation quicker. A petition
from Kent, in May, 1701, criticising Parliament for spending its time
on prosecuting ex-ministers instead of preparing for war, was treated
as a libel, and its presenters jailed. The Lords stood by the
impeached peers and acquitted them all. During the summer William made
his last effort for peace, but France rejected his proposals. War
began in Lombardy, and in August Marlborough negotiated the Grand
Alliance with Austria and Holland: a few days later James II died,
and Louis made one of his worst blunders. He recognised the Pretender,
James Edward, as King of England, a flat insult to a country that only
a few months before had regulated its succession otherwise, and so
made the Tories as ready for war as the Whigs.

William broke off relations with France, dissolved Parliament and
obtained a House more amenable than the last. In February, 1702, a
fall from his horse broke his collarbone; it was too much for his
worn-out body. He sank rapidly; a fortnight after his fall he assented
to acts that raised the armed forces of the nation to 80,000 men and
attainted the Pretender. Next day, March 8, he died, aged 51, and
Marlborough stepped quietly into the direction of affairs. One of
William's last wishes had been union with Scotland; that and the
defeat of Louis XIV, which had been the chief aim of his life, were to
be the greatest achievements of the next reign. France, the most
powerful state in Europe, its accepted leader in fashion and thought,
seemed likely to become supreme by land, where her chief rival was the
disorganised Empire, now an appendage of Austria. But fruitless
European struggle was to deflect French energies from sea and
colonies, and to leave England dominant in these twin fields.




                              CHAPTER II

                         VICTORY AND PARTIES


Anne sat more firmly on the throne than William. She owed this not to
her brain, but to her sex, family and tastes. She was a devout
Anglican and the last Protestant Stuart; most Jacobites saw in her a
plausible imitation of a legitimist monarch, and since the alternative
was a boy whose claims could wait, they lay quiet. Unlike William,
Anne had no international aims, to her England was an end, not a
means, and it dimly felt the difference. In politics she was incapable
of a judgment that did not turn on her liking or distaste for the
sponsor of a cause, so she left foreign policy, which could not be
determined in this way, to her ministers and kept Church patronage for
her particular sphere. She was stupid, obstinate, lavish with
confidence once given and reluctant to recall it, but never a complete
tool of her favourites--the Duchess of Marlborough at the beginning,
Mrs. Masham at the end of her reign. Her prejudices frequently
coincided with the nation's and increased her popularity. She had
three chief aims, to be Queen, to favour the Church's right wing, to
give her husband, Prince George of Denmark, offices he was incompetent
to fill. More troublesome to her ministers than Anne's wifely devotion
was her refusal, like Elizabeth's, to contemplate her successor; she
would have no Hanoverian visit England nor any Jacobite mention her
half-brother's claims.

The reign saw a succession of victories such as England had never
known, the formation of Great Britain, and a rising party warfare that
reached its climax just before Anne's death. The nation was Tory at
heart, though for a time the Whigs prevailed through their discipline
and whole-hearted support of the war. Behind the Tories stood the rank
and file of the clergy, with enormous though often latent power,
increasingly vocal, intolerant, and hating a Presbyterian even more
than a Roman Catholic. The Whigs drew support from the power of money,
for a time from moderate Tories, also from the slow and un-remarked
tendency of the time, which gradually undermined the extreme Tory
position. With free printing, men of letters became a power no
Government could neglect; Addison and Steele wrote for the Whigs,
Swift for the Tories, Defoe on behalf of moderation. Party coloured
everything, the coffee-houses, literary and dining clubs, commissions
in the forces, theology. But despite its fury a softening of manners
had begun, fallen ministers went less in fear of their lives than
before, and the ablest controversialists found sarcasm a better weapon
than mere abuse.

On William's death Marlborough became generalissimo and virtual Prime
Minister. He and Godolphin, the Lord Treasurer, began one of the most
effective partnerships of history. They put the war above party
triumph, and drew support first from the Tories, their own party, who
gained a majority in the election of 1702, then from the moderates of
either side, finally from the Whigs alone. Marlborough saw to
diplomacy and strategy, Godolphin to finance and control of
Parliament. Their partnership lasted for eight years, in which
Scotland was brought into Union and Bourbon ascendancy over Europe
permanently destroyed.

France seemed a more dangerous enemy than in the last war. Then her
only foreign help came from Turkey, now she had the Spanish dominions
and Bavaria in alliance, with Hungary ready to flare into revolt
behind the Emperor. Flanders, where William and Luxembourg had
manoeuvred indecisively, was in her hands. But her position was weaker
than appeared. Spain was little more helpful as an ally than dangerous
as an enemy, vulnerable and as much a drain as a support. England's
military tradition, begun by the Ironsides, had revived under William,
and her troops were no longer the undisciplined recruits of 1689.
Marlborough and Eugene stood far above their opponents: Marlborough's
chance had come late, for he was fifty-two--Napoleon's age at
death--but he had a triumphant genius for war, where he was a
Shakespeare opposed by mediocrity. Besides commanding the chief allied
army he set the main lines of naval strategy.

His designs were to clear Flanders and make Holland secure, to use
naval pressure on south France, and, with Austria and Savoy furnishing
the army, to encompass and destroy Toulon. The first he achieved
himself; Rooke's capture of Gibraltar in 1704 and Stanhope's of
Minorca in 1708 made the second possible, but the third depended on
allies who failed at the critical moments. Marlborough agreed with the
Whigs, that England was in the war as a principal, and must seek a
joint victory. When Holland and Austria began to weaken under the
strain, England increased her own effort, and was able to do this
because after 1704 her fleets rode the sea unchallenged. But the
heavier burden stimulated Tory opposition, present from the beginning,
and was only made endurable by constant victory. The Tories held more
and more forcibly that England should confine herself to naval and
colonial war, leaving land campaigns to Continental states. They
feared that growth of the army might menace the nation's freedom.

In 1702 Marlborough took Lige, and twice would have wrecked a French
army but that the Dutch vetoed a battle. Next year, though Marlborough
won the valley of the Meuse, things went badly. Austria had to
evacuate Italy, Vienna was threatened by a Franco-Bavarian attack.
English dissensions were growing, the extreme Tories, under Rochester,
Nottingham and Seymour, wished to limit war liability, to expel all
Whigs from county lieutenancies and commissions of the peace, and to
drive Dissenters from public life. Many of these took the sacramental
test but regularly attended their own chapels; high Churchmen thought
impious this natural result of turning a sacrament into a civil
qualification, and pressed a Bill to fine and eject any official who
went to a Nonconformist service. "Occasional Conformity" had been a
cry in the election of 1702, and to destroy it remained a fixed point
in Tory policy through the reign. But to pass the Bill would dry up
dissenting subscriptions to Government loans and paralyse the army, so
Marlborough connived at its defeat in the Lords, and turned for
support to Harley and the moderate Tories. In the spring of 1704 they
replaced the extremists in the Ministry.

That year was the most critical of the war, and the most successful.
Marlborough's design was to lead his army to Bavaria and save Austria,
while Rooke's fleet contained the French forces in Savoy, Catalonia
and Sicily, and threatened Toulon. This proved impossible, but Rooke
turned to a scheme first planned by Cromwell, and took the obsolete
fortress of Gibraltar; to keep an easy conquest he fought an
indecisive naval action off Malaga. Meanwhile Marlborough's own
campaign, secretly prepared for months, moved perfectly. The Dutch
agreed that he might go to the Moselle, from there he struck up the
Rhine, marched two hundred and fifty miles to the Danube, and reached
it with his army in perfect condition. He destroyed the Bavarian
forces at Donauwrth in June, in August, and with Eugene's help, the
French at Blenheim. By October he was back on the Rhine, Austria
safe, Bavaria forced to make peace, the French plans of conquest
shattered.

Blenheim beat the Tories as well as Louis. It made the war popular,
but they again obstinately attacked Occasional Conformity, and to
force the measure through the Lords an extremist section tried to make
it part of a money Bill. This split the party and failed. An election
in 1705 returned a Whig majority, despite the cry, raised by the
clergy, of "the Church in danger." Anne thought this cry a reflection
on her orthodoxy, and became less reluctant to see Whigs in power;
during the next two years they were admitted to office piecemeal.

A coalition Ministry of moderates had now to face a problem important
as the war though less dramatic: the future of Scotland. The
Revolution had given the Scottish Parliament powers it had never
known, while by establishing Presbyterianism it had broken the close
connection between religion and politics on which for over a century
Scottish history had pivoted. The clans gradually ceased active
resistance, the dominant Lowlands turned part of their attention from
politico-theological dispute to material prosperity. Scotland was an
independent nation, sharing a joint king with England; but she had no
colonies, no fleet, little commerce; where her interests clashed with
England's they were ignored. William never visited her, and his
neglect had allowed Stair in 1692 to plan and execute the massacre of
Glencoe. Scotland tried oversea expansion, and in 1698 launched an
expedition to colonise the isthmus of Panama. This meant war with
Spain, England's ally: before Spanish arms and tropical fever the
colony failed. England kept her colonial and Indian trade to herself,
and Scotland, who had been ready to consider full union, lay almost
bankrupt and impotent but for one weapon. The House of Hanover had
been promised the English, but not the Scottish, throne. If her
Parliament set up a different monarch after Anne's death, England
would again have a northern enemy, border war would revive, France
might rebuild her traditional alliance with Scotland, and English
Jacobites find there a refuge and base for revolt.

In 1704 the Scottish Parliament forced royal assent to the Act of
Security, which left the succession in its own hands. England
retaliated with the Aliens Act, a suggestion of union and a threat of
trade war if Scotland had not accepted the Hanover line by the end of
1705. Reasonable men in both countries saw that the union of crowns
was inadequate, there must be political amalgamation or a full breach.
The problem was soluble because Whigs dominated either Parliament:
commissioners were appointed who quickly drafted a treaty. By it
Scotland gained her chief desire, access to English markets, also
forty-five members in the united House of Commons, and guarantees that
her laws and Kirk should continue. Jacobites and Covenanters opposed
union, the first because it made a restoration improbable, the second
because it tied Scotland to an episcopal nation. But they could not
unite, and in 1706 the Bill passed the Scottish Parliament. The chief
opposition in England came from Church hatred of Presbyterianism,
which at the moment was out of favour. On May 1, 1707, the Union came
into force.

This, the greatest piece of statesmanship of the reign, was popular in
neither country. Scottish nationalism was waxing and resented the loss
of its political shell. Much support given to the Jacobite risings of
1715 and 1745 sprang from the feeling that under a Stuart Scotland
might regain her separate status. English dislike was more material in
origin. There were fewer than a million Scots, poorer than as many
Englishmen; they offered no new market, but competed in trade
hitherto jealously guarded. England furnished careers to many Scots,
Scotland almost none to Englishmen, and dislike of the clannish
northerners reached a high pitch in London during the next sixty
years. The forty-five members from the first voted in a block for
whatever Government held power: they gained rewards in office and
preserved Scottish interests by doing so, but their action disturbed
the party balance and made them unpopular with every Opposition.
Gradually the Union gained moral strength. Scottish agriculture,
shipping, manufacture, developed under the spur of new markets, and
nationalism found for itself non-political channels. The proudest
Englishmen came to see in the Union a triumph for their system of
government, and long wars showed that the nation was stronger than
before.

While Union was making, war continued victorious. In 1705 Marlborough
returned to the Meuse and was again robbed of success by the Dutch
commissioners' veto. Next year he won Ramillies, and Flanders from
Ostend to Antwerp fell into his hands. 1707 was a year of
disappointment, for a plan of invading France simultaneously from
north and south failed through Dutch opposition, Austrian
concentration on Naples, and French success near the Rhine. In Spain,
where a joint force was operating, the tide turned against the allies
and the Austrian claimant lost all but Catalonia, which had solidly
declared for him and against French Philip. Incomplete victory helped
to open a split in the Ministry that ended in Whig triumph and in
one-party cabinets, though these ran counter to the preferences of
Anne and of most moderates. Both parties were factious, neither could
be trusted to put the country's obvious interests above its own
immediate success. But party could not be ignored; coalition
ministries replaced open struggle by closet intrigue, nor did they
bring the full sense of responsibility needed for parliamentary
government.

The Whigs thought their support of the war justified a larger share of
office, while Harley with his personal following worked secretly
against them and Godolphin. Early in 1708 the breach came to a head;
Marlborough, still indispensable, stuck by Godolphin, and Harley with
his followers, St. John and Harcourt, was forced to resign. Apparently
it was a victory for "the great twin brethren," actually for the
Whigs, now their only support. The Queen accepted a Government that
she disliked, almost solidly Whig and buttressed by an election held
in the reaction after a Jacobite attempt to invade Scotland.

Marlborough was ill, but he was victorious at Oudenarde, marched into
France and took Lille. No French army could stand against the wizard
of victory, and Louis made ample peace offers. He would abandon his
grandson in Spain, cede fortresses to Emperor and Dutch, expel the
Pretender, renounce any claim to Newfoundland. The original demands of
the allies were fully met, but Austria and the Whigs wanted more:
France must disarm and with her own troops help to put Austrian
Charles on the Spanish throne. Louis refused conditions that would
leave him helpless and called on France for a last effort. In August,
1709, Marlborough won a murderous battle at Malplaquet and took Mons;
he hoped that another campaign would lay France prostrate.

He was tired of politics, uneasy in his dependence on the Whigs, and
Mrs. Masham had replaced his duchess in Anne's affections. He asked to
be made Captain-General for life so as to be above fluctuations. This
annoyed Anne and stirred Tory cries that here was a would-be Cromwell.
The Ministry followed his blunder by one of its own. The clergy were
in growing revolt against a Government that had guaranteed
Presbyterianism in Scotland, welcomed foreign Nonconformists to
England, and prolonged a costly war. Non-resistance, which implicitly
condemned the Revolution, was being cried higher each year. At the end
of 1709 Sacheverell, a noisy parson with small grasp of Christianity
and an itch for the public eye, preached and printed an offensive
sermon. The Commons voted it a libel, the Cabinet decided to give its
author the dignity of impeachment.

On a long view the decision may have been wise, for it gave the Whig
party a chance to record its principles, to justify the Revolution,
and to define the right of resistance to Government. But though
Sacheverell was condemned to three years' silence, the storm his trial
raised brought down the Ministry sooner than was inevitable. There
broke out the first of those ebullitions of mob fervour that came at
intervals through the century, when the populace went mad for an
unworthy martyr or against a fancied oppression. One reason for these
furies was that, feeling themselves vaguely aggrieved and powerless to
control Parliament, even by the ultimate threat of adverse vote, the
people at intervals seized the nearest catch-word and raged against
the Government: now it was "Church and Dr. Sacheverell," later the
name of Walpole's Excise or "Wilkes and Liberty."

Shrewsbury reappeared in politics after years of retirement and joined
Harley, Anne finally broke with the Duchess of Marlborough.
Sunderland, Godolphin, Somers, were got rid of between April and
September, 1710; Marlborough was still indispensable and there were
hopes of winning him. An election, like the others of the reign in
that it did not bring but confirmed ministerial changes, left the
Whigs hopelessly inferior.

The Tory party was now firm in the saddle, to remain there for four
stormy years. Its numerical strength came from Church prejudice,
popular dislike of taxation, instinctive conservatism; its weakness
from indiscipline and division. Extremists made a large part of it,
but could produce no leadership nor read the political barometer; they
were ready to follow any one who offered them strong courses. The
leaders of the party, with one or two exceptions, were quondam Whigs
or, moderates, men who used, but did not like a party system. Its
platform had two main planks; Church and King, and the King should be
legitimist. These cries held together under Anne, but when the choice
had to be Hanoverian Anglican or Catholic Stuart, they broke asunder,
and the party was rent into Whimsicals and Jacobites.

Harley was the admitted head of the Government. He was a moderate,
adroit in managing Court or Parliament, where he had thrice been
Speaker, a lover of books, tolerant and an ex-Whig. His weaknesses
were drink, unnecessary secrecy, and indecision. Defoe's defence of
him states his view of a Ministry's proper tactics, "their business
was to preserve themselves in the Administration where they were," not
to follow a definite policy. St. John, first Harley's lieutenant, then
his rival, had a far different temper. He was thirty-two and the best
debater in Parliament, a dissipated free-thinker of great ability, the
Alcibiades of English history. Bold measures attracted him, for he had
none of that reasoned moderation that was to become during the next
century the hall-mark of English statesmanship. He was, indeed, more
Latin than British in his views, and certain to quarrel with his
leader's inertia.

The first task and greatest achievement of the Ministry was peace.
They invited France to make overtures, in violation of the alliance
which forebade separate negotiations; a necessary step if the war were
to end, for at no time would all the allies agree that their aims had
been won. In April, 1711, Archduke Charles became ruler of Austria;
there was no reason for Britain to insist that he should have Spain
also, and so replace a Bourbon by a Hapsburg danger. Despite peace
negotiations war continued: an ill-found expedition tried to capture
Canada and failed; Marlborough won his last success by penetrating the
French lines, though outnumbered, and taking a fortress in sight of
the enemy.

Peace preliminaries were signed in September, 1711. When Parliament
met in December the Whigs attacked heavily on the ground that no
Bourbon must rule Spain. They gained a majority in the Lords by
allying with Nottingham, and offering to carry, against their
principles, his Bill against Occasional Conformity. The Ministry
replied by dismissing Marlborough, accusing him of peculation, and by
creating twelve Tory peers; a precedent for the threatened creations
of 1832 and 1911.

The peace conference began at Utrecht in January, 1712, and continued
with adjournments for over a year; military operations were not
stopped by its meeting. Ormond, the British General, was ordered by
St. John not to fight, nor to let his allies know that he would not
fight, though the French had already been informed. The British
contingent therefore deserted the allies, who in consequence suffered
a reverse. France spun out negotiations till the spring of 1713, when
peace was made by all save the Empire. Britain received Acadia and
Hudson Bay from the French, from Spain, through her abandonment of
Austria's claim to the kingdom, Gibraltar, Minorca, the right to
supply slaves and a limited commerce to Spanish America. A trade
treaty with France, that would have given Britain a new market, was
rejected in Parliament by an alliance of Whig and Tory protectionists.
The Peace of Utrecht became at once a prime article of party faith,
condemned by all Whigs, but it was a reasonable peace, long overdue,
and marred by two points only. The first was the desertion of the
allies in the field without notice, the second the abandonment of
Catalonia to Philip's vengeance. But the Catalans were a minority for
whose independence Britain could not fight indefinitely, and she
secured them some paper guarantees. Their would-be king, Charles of
Austria, deserted them as completely as did Britain.

The domestic measures of the Government were more partisan than its
foreign policy. A high landed property qualification for English
members of Parliament was imposed in 1711; it lasted till 1858, but
was soon found evadable. Occasional Conformity was forbidden,
newspapers burdened with a stamp tax. In two particulars the terms of
the Scottish Union were somewhat infringed: by restoring private
patronage in the Kirk and by imposing a tax on malt. Scotland in
consequence demanded separation, and the Whigs from party zeal
supported the destruction of their own achievement. Finally, in 1714,
the Schism Act gave promise that Nonconformists would soon again be
persecuted. They had access neither to public schools nor to
universities, so had built an educational system of their own which
the Act tried to destroy: it forbade any one to teach without
episcopal licence. From closing schools to closing chapels was a short
step, but Anne died before it could be taken.

A breach in the Government had opened soon after its formation. All
looked to Harley--Earl of Oxford from May, 1711--Whigs and centre
Tories for moderation, extremists for measures that would crush
Whiggery and Nonconformity together. He satisfied neither and tried to
wed irreconcilables. St. John might have been a moderate had he been
supreme, but moderation would not help to oust Oxford, the Lord
Treasurer, so he turned to the Tory right wing, left leaderless by
Rochester's death in 1711. He had none of their narrow religious
faith, little of their affection for the Stuarts, but they were his
handiest weapon. Vanity led him to blunder: he asked for an earldom so
as to be Harley's equal, instead of relying on his power in the
Commons, and he was aggrieved at becoming only Viscount Bolingbroke.
He considered the peace to be his work, though in fact it was mainly
Oxford's; he won Lady Masham to his side, and fought his leader in
Council and Court. For long each was too strong to be driven out, too
weak to expel the other.

A Ministry paralysed by their dispute and opposed by a disciplined
minority had to face what was then always critical, now trebly so, the
impending death of the monarch. A Tory Parliament had in 1701 made
Sophia the heiress of Anne, but since then legitimism had grown, and
Jacobites had gained strength by abandoning rebellion for politics.
Despite the Act of Settlement the question, Sophia or James Edward,
seemed open, and in 1713 it replaced the peace as the chief issue, a
change which hampered the Government and favoured the Whigs. They were
united for Hanover, and had the law on their side. They hoped for
nothing from Anne save her death, so did not mind raising the subject
to her most distasteful, her successor. The Ministry dared not take
measures on either side, for that would annoy the Queen and break the
party. Oxford was no Jacobite, but his hesitation and reluctance to
make the extreme Tories still more hostile than they were, stopped his
boldly outbidding the Whigs at Hanover, while Bolingbroke's associates
and actions belied any overtures he could make there. Both he and
Oxford were deep in intrigues with the Pretender's court, though they
had emissaries at Hanover as well.

Had the Pretender turned Protestant, most Tories might have declared
for him, but he steadily refused to simulate conversion, and the
Church party could not unite for a papist. So it drifted, paralysed by
the hardening division between Jacobite and Whimsical (or Hanoverian)
Tories, as well as by the disputes of its leaders. An election of 1713
strengthened the Whigs but left them still a minority. At the end of
that year the crisis leapt suddenly nearer, for Anne fell ill, and
though she recovered, her death seemed a question of months.

Bolingbroke redoubled his attacks on Oxford, and in May, 1714,
launched the Schism Bill to win all Tories from their notoriously
tolerant leader, who had himself been bred at a Nonconformist academy.
It passed, Parliament was prorogued, and the struggle shifted to the
Council, where at last Anne turned against Oxford. He was dismissed on
July 27. But Bolingbroke's victory was a Dead Sea apple, for the Queen
sank into lethargy and died early on Sunday, August 1.

Later he claimed that, given six weeks of unquestioned power instead
of three days (for he lost control even before Anne's death), he would
have altered history. His plan, it seems, was not unconditional
restoration: he cared much less for James Edward than for the Tory
party. He would have manned all posts with Tories on whose obedience
he could rely, so that he could swing the nation by a word. A
free-thinker himself, he never understood the Pretender's religious
scruples, and might have baited conversion with a crown. If he chose
Hanover, he would do so on his own terms, exacting a pledge from
George, heir since Sophia's death in May, 1714, that he would keep the
Tory party in office. He might know that a promise would not bind that
prince for long, and yet count on his own charm to win the new King in
a few months to a party he at first must regard as his enemy. Even
given weeks or months Bolingbroke would probably have failed, for the
Tories were too undisciplined to hold the succession in abeyance till
their terms were met. The army would have followed Marlborough, an
unconditional Hanoverian, the Whigs would have risen in support of the
law. Their plans were more complete than Bolingbroke's; on the day
Anne died they proclaimed George, and not a sword was drawn against
him. The struggle had raised fears high, turned many Tories Jacobite,
branded the whole party as enemies of the new dynasty. Now it fell
into permanent ruin, for when under George III a new Tory party again
became important, it had neither the creed nor the personnel of the
old.




                             CHAPTER III

                     THE CENTURY AND THE COMMONS


Till recently it was difficult to appreciate the full sweep and life
of the eighteenth century. Either men lamented a vanished world, or
more commonly, for every age tends to dislike its predecessor, they
revolted against its inequalities, its manners, its restraint of
expression. This was not one of the great leaping times of history,
when the world makes itself anew, when the ideas and aspirations of a
people are crystallised by genius so that we still feel them as we
read or look. No single author will show us the best of the century as
Dante shows us Medivalism, Milton Puritanism, or Shakespeare
Elizabethan England. We must turn to the writings of more ordinary
men, see their pictures, buildings and handicrafts, watch their
political ideas at work, before we can understand the time. Then we
discover an age of contrasts, but with a central theme running through
many of them.

Of abstract political speculation it produced little that was new. The
seventeenth century had seen a surfeit of theory, and much variety of
practice; the eighteenth settled down to the sober task of working a
machine already there, and avoided radical changes. It produced in
Burke a philosopher of historical continuity: one without desire for
change except when convinced that the existing order brought grave
injustice; the greatest political thinker of the age, who gave the
maxim of its greatest political manager, Walpole, "Let sleeping dogs
lie," a solid and reasoned support. Yet if the century brought few new
ideas into politics, it completed something like a revolution in the
form of political thought. The old method of arguing from Scripture
ceased to attract, the modern one of arguing from expediency swept the
board. In Bentham it found its most complete disciple, and he, in a
static and restrained time, prepared a great outburst of reforming
legislation for the next century.

Social contrasts were violent. In the towns there moved, ready to foam
to the top in crises, a drunken, brutal, illiterate mob. Gin was an
increasing scourge during the first half of the century; it offered
the cheapest and quickest oblivion. The crowd, drunk or sober, was
less good-tempered than most English crowds to-day; ready to burn a
house, loot a chapel, or harry a Wesleyan preacher. The law, it felt,
was an instrument of the rich for their protection, and riot and
robbery roused little widespread condemnation. Highwaymen could ply
their business even in London's outskirts, secure in bad roads, the
absence of police, and friendly innkeepers. While the poor killed
themselves with gin, the rich got fuddled on heady Portuguese wines,
cheapened by the terms of alliance of 1703; many politicians died
prematurely old, and their potations made gout the typical disease of
statesmen.

Despite these excesses, it was generally an age of increasing balance,
restraint, criticism. Society could tolerate drunkenness, but it
enforced a code of manners none the less. Religion, prose, conduct,
were all being formalised. Tired of enthusiasm which had proved itself
subversive, and now lingered chiefly among Jacobites, men came to
prize restraint above sincerity, ethics above fervent belief. Deism
grew stronger and flourished openly, while theology shed much of its
dogma. The educated classes arrived at toleration largely by the road
of indifference; the uneducated cherished old animosities against
Catholics and Jews, but more from prejudice than conviction. Until
Wesley's revival stirred the nation once more, its religious sense
cooled rapidly, turning to philosophy among those capable of it, to
torpor in the rest.

Letters flourished, but not in the form perfected earlier, the lyric;
the century's best work was done in prose. The balance and neatness of
the rhymed couplet appealed to the time, and this measure was made to
carry thoughts that before or since would not have been forced into
verse. It was an admirable instrument for satire and epigram, but less
successful in conveying emotion, and the beat of a single metre
conventionalised its epithets. The age left a more enduring mark in
the novel and the essay. It has been held a prosaic time, but it
produced in _Robinson Crusoe_ a plain romance of detail piled on
detail that still bewitches the schoolroom, in Gibbon England's
greatest historian, in Burke perhaps her first writer of prose. Defoe,
Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, started the English novel on its path.
The essayists make less appeal to us now, for their balance and poise
have neither the raciness of the seventeenth century nor the
individuality prized to-day, but they brought their form to
perfection within the limits allowed by their taste.

The savage penal law, the loose morals at both ends of society, the
self-satisfied lassitude of Universities that did little for learning
or education, the increasingly systematic corruption of politics, once
made the century's progress towards softer manners and greater honesty
neglected, now in turn themselves tend to be overlooked. Savage sports
like bull-baiting still drew an audience, but there were more innocent
amusements. Thousands flocked to Handel's Oratorios, as was natural in
a country that less than a century before had been the most musical in
Europe. Gay's _Beggar's Opera_ wedded satire to harmony, and was as
popular when written as now. The public conscience was wakening, if
slowly. Oglethorpe, a politician and soldier, spent the best years of
his life founding a pauper colony in Georgia, and was only the most
prominent of those who devoted themselves to intelligent philanthropy.
A prosperous and restrained middle class grew up from the professions
and trade, and gradually modified the balance of power in the State.
Evidence of their rise is to be seen in the new rush for sun and
health: Weymouth and Scarborough became England's first sea-side
resorts; Bath, Epsom, Tunbridge and Cheltenham rose to fame for their
waters.

The contrasts of the time were more superficial than its unity. Never
since the Reformation had the nation been so agreed on ideals and
principles as now. The political tenets of 1688, codified by Locke,
were accepted as the basis of free government by men of all parties,
and there was little disagreement on fundamentals. In both art and
politics the canons were thought to be universal and binding. This, it
might be thought, makes the age a dull one, but it is not so. Those
epochs when the world is breaking ground in new values, throwing out a
hundred ideas, trying novel forms each of which is left for another
before it has been developed, have their thrill, but so, too, has a
time of digestion. When society, agreed on theories that satisfy its
conscience and brain, devotes itself not to the discovery of new
doctrines, but to applying its maxims to changing facts, there comes
in history a rich pause, a time of leisure that is not vegetable. Men
walk at home in a sane and orderly world; they are free because of
their certainty, unhastening because their views must (they think)
triumph since they are so reasonable. The art of such a period will
be poised and balanced, but not weak. Such a time was the eighteenth
century; its thinking not always profound, but honest, its activity
orderly but intense. The comfortable crafts of architecture,
furniture, painting and china flourished on agreed conventions. In
Wedgwood's pottery, Chippendale's furniture, Reynolds' portraits,
there is the glow of harnessed fire.

None could claim that the age did not produce bad work, and much of
it. Wild tales of horror flourished near its end, flamboyant
decoration throughout. With this, as with other periods, only when its
best themes are built into its arts do these still move us. Then we
find here not the sweeping imagination of the Elizabethans, but
restraint and serenity. If a century is to take pride of place by its
best, this can hold its own in philosophy, painting, architecture, and
is near supremacy in eloquence and the handicrafts. Its achievements
are highest, in fact, as they approach the business of daily life.

It was a time of good talk, from Arbuthnot, the wittiest Tory of
Anne's reign, to Johnson, the sanest subject of George III. He shares
with Pepys the distinction of being the best-known Englishman of all
time, and is probably unrivalled as the best loved. His luminous
honesty and encyclopdic reading made him almost a literary dictator,
but he lives less through his writings than by his actions and words.
From him we derive an impression of the century in one way misleading;
though he went nearly every year into the country, and often far
afield, he had an urban soul and was at his best in or near London.
This was not typical of the period, London was a great city, with near
a million inhabitants when Johnson lived, but the heart of the nation
was still rustic. Not only were the smaller towns--Norwich, Lichfield,
Bristol--real centres of thought and society, but though politics and
fashion drew rich men to the capital, most of them spent much of the
year on their country estates, and many gave their best attention to
sport and agriculture.

To the man of means and position, the century offered a fuller life
than has any time since. He could be moderately secure of a seat in
Parliament, did he desire it ardently, and politics might open any
door. His estates repaid care; he could farm and breed scientifically,
multiplying his own income and at the same time enriching the nation.
If he wanted military glory, wars were frequent enough; if he cared
for art, the spoils of Italy were open to his purse, the first great
English school ready for his commissions. He could game, hunt, read,
talk and write, sure of companionship and audience. It was an intense
life, and most men of note lived intensely. Burgoyne was a good
soldier, a politician and a fashionable playwright; Chatham bred
cattle and planned landscapes in the intervals of politics. Nearly
every admiral save Nelson, and many generals, sat in Parliament, and
when peace ended one activity they turned to another. Country-house
libraries show that the intelligent squires of the day both bought
books and read them.

It is true that only a few knew the best the age could offer. Those
born in the circle, or who made their way into it by trade, political
success, genius in some art--these could taste freedom, choose their
activities, turn from house-building to picture-collecting, from war
to letters; they could fight, enjoy, govern. Men without means or
opportunity could but live, marry and die; march to their superiors'
orders, find in gin or law-breaking a temporary freedom and rapid end.
But this, in some measure, is true of most times and places: social
contrasts were no more pronounced under the Georges than under
Victoria. Despite formal manners, and largely because of the
recognised system of classes, there was much free intercourse between
man and man, for the gulf was so clear that no one, encouraged by
familiarity, would try to cross it. We find a country vicar who goes
rabbiting with his servants and then dines with the squire, a village
tradesman who is made drunk by the parson one day, preached at by him
the next.

In politics a great part of the nation had no direct voice. But even
the unenfranchised took part in elections by processions, cheers and
occasional riots, and followed, more closely than we often think, the
proceedings of Westminster. Their voices had no formal place in the
Constitution, but they could weaken a Government and often stop a
Bill. In all classes there beat a proud and conscious nationality,
that exulted when France, the national enemy, was humbled. Men
accepted the class into which they were born or had risen as a natural
phenomenon, knew their place and were satisfied with it, though ready
to resent any interference from above or below.

It is probably in its politics that the eighteenth century is most
remote from us. Political writers to-day see the essential feature of
the British constitution in its flexibility. Time has shown it
thriving on change, shifting the relative weights of crown, lords,
commons, electorate, but persisting none the less, so that no complete
breach with the past allows one year to be hailed as the start of a
new epoch. It was not in this, but in the opposite constitutional
quality that the men of the eighteenth century took pride. They
toasted their system not because it was Protean, but because it was,
or seemed to be, rigid. It was mixed, not flexible; settled by the
wisdom of ages as it ought always to remain. The King had his sphere,
to select ministers; within reason he must have wide latitude; he
could not keep a Government in power indefinitely, but might give his
preference a chance. The Lords were nearly as essential as the Commons
and represented the same ideas. Blackstone defines them as an assembly
of landowners, the Commons as those landowners who have not seats in
the Lords: between such bodies there was small chance of conflict.
Freedom was to be found not in democracy, then denounced as the
tyranny of the mob, but in balance, and the nation cared more for
individual liberty than for strong government. The face of the country
altered as population grew in the north, as manufacturing caught up
with agriculture, but most people thought it unwise to recognise these
changes in constitutional adjustment: the equipoise might be broken
and the Constitution go with it.

We now consider legislation one chief task of a Government. Every
party demands new laws, and appeals to the people on its past record
of achievement and promises of new change. It was far different in
Hanoverian England, when foreign policy furnished half the problems of
a Ministry, and of home policy there was little. The Cabinet's duty
was to control patronage, to distribute favours to its supporters, to
arouse as little opposition as might be. It was not the State's
business to provide schools, nor to control conditions of work. Its
task was more limited: defence, diplomacy, order, the use of colonies
for British interests, maintenance of such customs duties as seemed to
favour the home merchant. Other matters were best left to private
enterprise and charity. Parliament was not a machine for altering the
nation's life, but for providing the country with government. It had
none of the modern rush of work to cope with, and was a theatre for
displays of debating skill rather than a house for the rapid
transaction of business.

That Parliament made no attempt to represent the people numerically
was admitted, but an age that did not hold democratic dogmas thought
none the worse of it. The House of Commons had 558 members, of whom 45
sat for Scotland and 24 for Welsh constituencies. Of the 489 English
members, 82 represented 41 counties, 4 the two universities, the
remaining 403 were sent by 203 boroughs. The Scottish members
supported every Government; they represented a tiny electorate (in
1815 only 3,625 out of some two million inhabitants of the country),
and were generally mere voting machines. Wales was rather more
liberal, rather less important, its electorate was larger and fairly
honest, but its members had smaller influence than the Scottish,
because they were not a united cohort. It was to the English members
that Government and Opposition appealed, for there only could a
majority of the whole house be found.

In the English counties the franchise was uniform, fixed in 1430 at
freehold land worth forty shillings a year, widened by custom so as to
include schoolmasters, parsons, pew-holders, and owners of
rent-charges or mortgages. This electorate was of fair size, and it
might be thought that here the voice of the people would prevail. But
in most counties some family or alliance of families was too strong to
be challenged, and these divided the representation between
themselves. They could be fought only at ruinous cost, for the poll
could be kept open for fifteen days if one voter an hour were
produced, and the voters' expenses to the county town and back was
often high. In 1803 a contest between three candidates for the two
Yorkshire seats cost nearly half a million pounds, and it was natural
that the powerful local families were seldom opposed.

The 203 boroughs provided more frequent contests, and were the heart
of the system. In them the franchise varied from place to place, fixed
by accident, precedent, or local struggle for supremacy, and in most
of them crystallised by decision of the House of Commons, who from
1604 to 1770 decided disputed returns. Some forty boroughs had their
members returned by their corporations, generally co-opting bodies;
such towns frequently sold their seats to the Government or to some
magnate, but were not always docile. In about eighty boroughs the
freemen were the electorate, often honorary and non-resident freemen
were included; frequently the corporation could make freemen and so
turn the poll. A freeman franchise varied in width: in 1832 Bristol
had 6000 freemen, the City of London nearly 17,000, Rye but 6. Burgage
boroughs, where the vote was attached to certain lands and buildings,
numbered nearly forty. In a few of them residence was necessary, but
not at Old Sarum, where no houses remained, and the tenants of a few
ploughed fields returned two members. It was seldom that these places
were the absolute property of one owner, for competition to possess
such valuable holdings made family bid for them against family.

There remained over fifty places with a moderately wide franchise,
most of them "scot and lot" boroughs, their voters the rate-payers. In
a dozen any one, not receiving poor relief, who could prove himself
possessed of a hearth by coaxing a kettle to
boil--"pot-walloping"--had the vote. Before an election men could be
seen repairing a doorway--for a door was evidence of
householding--lighting a fire, spreading a table in public, to prove
their electoral qualification. In Preston till 1786, any man who had
slept there the night before was a voter, after 1786 any resident for
six months. Some of these boroughs were entirely rotten: Gatton had
but six houses and at one time one elector. They could be corrupt: at
Stockbridge the 57 electors were known to have asked 60 each for
their suffrages. As voting was open, the result of bribery could be
ascertained. Westminster, with an electorate that finally reached
17,000, was the most important of "scot and lot" boroughs, and became
early in the nineteenth century the home of radicalism.

The cost of elections rose greatly during the eighteenth century and
fell again before the Reform Bill as corruption declined. The large
freeman boroughs were dearest, for voters were often scattered through
England, and had to be gathered by the candidate. Thus to contest
Barnstaple where the freemen were mostly non-resident, might cost
13,000. The big "scot and lot" boroughs were also expensive; in 1788
Townshend spent 50,000 in fighting Westminster, after that the
parties agreed to divide its representation.

Most members returned by wealthy patrons were allowed by them
considerable independence. The absolute sale of seats, regardless of
the constituency's preference, was always rare. Very few individuals
had more than three or four in their gift--Lord Lonsdale with nine was
unique--and they liked to find men of note to represent them, when
their own family could spare a place. An able man with money or
influential friends made his way into Parliament more easily than he
does now. The system secured a house of skilled debaters, representing
the various shades of opinion of a governing class. It could not
produce a chamber anxious to reform and re-organise the nation, but
few men desired such a body. Apologists claimed that it was truly
representative, though not numerically, taking each man as one, but so
that no important section of the country was left dumb. Through
Westminster and Preston democratic views could be heard, trading
interests spoke through many towns, agriculture through others and
through the counties. For a society that held itself complete, for a
country whose constitution needed only minor adjustments, such a house
was well enough.

It could not deal efficiently with a world of large-scale manufacture,
of crowded, growing towns, with a press of change needing constant
detailed regulation. Naturally it was conservative, for its members
lost by change. But this age, though it wished to be static, produced
so many changes that its balance and order began to vanish, its
comfortable paternalism to disappear. What is called the industrial
revolution, a change in the methods of production that in some measure
has gone on since the dawn of history, gathered increasing speed as
the century wore to its end. Beside it moved an agricultural
revolution, changes in the production of food; country and town
altered at the same time. Farming, indeed, was being revolutionised
before England had recognised a future in its factories.

The seventeenth century had brought England new grasses, new roots,
and an interest in science. After Anne's death many landlords took
their vocation seriously, some hoping for greater revenue from their
estates, some seeing no chance of political success, some from innate
energy. Most of England still lay unenclosed: the large fields round a
village divided into quarter and half acre strips, and a number of
these scattered far and wide making a farm. In one field wheat might
grow, in another barley, the third might lie fallow: cattle grazed
together on the common or in the meadow when the hay had been cut.
Under such conditions no one could breed stock scientifically or
cultivate land much better than a sluggish neighbour, whose weeds
spread harm in all directions. A man of enterprise must needs hope to
enclose, to replace his scattered roods by a compact fenced farm,
where he could grow his own choice of crops, rear his own beasts, and
no longer march at the pace of the slowest.

Enclosure, a re-shuffling of holdings to save time and labour, did not
necessarily harm any one. But an Act of Parliament was necessary to
give it full legal sanction, and Acts were costly. Inevitably a House
of Commons composed of landed gentlemen looked first to the needs of
the squire; naturally he gained most by enclosure. Account was taken
only of those with legal right to land: any who had squatted without
title could claim no compensation. The new farms had to be fenced: a
small man could seldom afford this, and must sell his fields for what
the squire would give. The lord of the manor often claimed and
frequently secured the whole or most of the common for himself, and so
a small holder lost his share of pasture. Finally, the new agriculture
paid better when on a fairly large scale. Market-gardening, which now
provides a career to the small-holder, had not yet developed. So in
the process of a century most, though not all, of the small owners in
England disappeared, tenant-farmers increased, for men would pay a
good rent for enclosed land, and the landless labourers became
steadily more.

The change increased enormously England's production of foodstuffs.
She was able to remain a wheat-exporting country till late in the
century, and her breeds of cattle grew renowned through the world.
Some such change there had to be if she was to carry the burden of her
wars, and to maintain her increasing population. But the methods of
change were often harsh and unjust, those who gained most were already
well-to-do, the dignity and independence of the average land worker
were reduced. It has been maintained that no man of enterprise
suffered, for the new farming and the rising towns gave him better
openings than he had before. "Enterprise" is an elastic word; to deny
it to all hard-working labourers, who felt themselves lost as their
world crumbled beneath their feet, is to narrow it unduly.

The revolution in manufacture started more doubtfully than that in
farming but travelled faster at the end. England's chief industry had
for long been wool. It could be spun and woven in the home, where a
farmer's wife and children supplemented the earnings of his fields.
Now inventions increased the rate of production and replaced hand by
water-power; factories set by rivers began to displace home
production. Spinning changed first, then weaving; finally steam
replaced water as the source of power. Gloucestershire and Norfolk,
where wool manufacture had thriven, gave way to Yorkshire. Meanwhile
cotton, for long thought a dangerous enemy to the nation's woollen
riches, made its way through public favour, and passed wool in
importance: it centred itself in Lancashire by Pennine streams.
Coal-mining increased, first for smelting iron, and then to raise
steam. Factories and mines needed labour, and took it where possible:
workhouse children made one source of supply, Irish immigrants
another.

By the time that England was equipping itself with modern roads--that
is, by about 1780--unregulated child labour had become a regular part
of the industrial machine. It was not thought a duty of the State to
prevent children being misused, men underpaid, women worked for hours
incredible to-day. There were many good employers, but the pace was
perforce set largely by their bad competitors. Only after Waterloo, in
the slump following the war, did the evils of the new order become
fully apparent. The nation had won industrial supremacy, its exports
went to all continents, its collective wealth was greater than ever
before. It had bred more mechanical genius than the world had yet
seen, and was on the road to perhaps its greatest material achievement
in the railway. All this had been won at a cost. Health, beauty,
individual workmanship, had suffered, and the seeds of class hatred
were in the ground.

Yet a word of caution is necessary. The idea, which lingers in many
histories, that industrialism had replaced a golden time, is unsound.
Conditions of life in London steadily improved after 1750: it was in
the northern towns where a new population was hived that they lagged
behind. By 1830 the public conscience had awakened sufficiently to
examine and dislike the results of uncontrolled industrialism, though
not enough to prevent them. From its inquiries we know the horrors of
the early nineteenth century, and find it hard to believe the truth,
that they were in many ways no worse, in some much better, than those
which had gone before.

The eighteenth century is not a rigid unit. Many of its chief
characteristics began before it, and lingered after its end.
Politically and socially it can be held to run from 1714 to 1830,
constitutionally from 1688 to 1832. The century was one of growth and
change for all its static ideas, and it was broken in its middle by a
double revolution as decisive as those already described, though less
obvious. Wesley in religion, the elder Pitt in politics, brought a
renewal of enthusiasm and started forces that far outlived them. From
Wesley's revival there sprang modern Nonconformity, an evangelical
stirring inside the Church, and at last, partly in reaction from
evangelicalism in the Church and liberalism in the State, the Oxford
Movement. Pitt was the first politician since 1688 to look beyond
Parliament for support, and to be strong in the Commons mainly because
of his popularity outside. "Walpole," said Dr. Johnson, "was a
minister given by the King to the people: Pitt was a minister given by
the people to the King." His example and his appeal helped to break
down political corruption and to destroy the ascendancy of a class. A
man brought up in the early part of the century would, if moved to the
later half, have felt himself at home in its buildings, its books, its
art, but the spirit that was moving in public and private life might
have seemed to him strange indeed.




                              CHAPTER IV

                          THE AGE OF WALPOLE


Half a century and two reigns had to pass before the Hanoverians won
popularity in England. They were foreigners of bad manners and, for
three generations, of loose morals, obstinate and plain-spoken, with
none of the intermittent grace that gave the feckless Stuarts a
devoted following. By a family tradition that lasted a hundred years
each son of the new house quarrelled in turn with his father: George
II with George I; Frederick, Prince of Wales, with George II; finally
George IV with George III. They retained the throne because Britain
needed them, and because they had certain qualities of survival value.
They shared the nation's religion, they could bow to the times; never
having known the Crown at its height of power, they did not hanker
after lost prerogatives. They had a blunt sort of honesty and the wit
to trust themselves to expert advisers. The first two Georges were
never the puppet kings that legend sometimes makes them, for they had
strong prejudices and no adviser could sway them at will. But their
heart was in Hanover, and they did not seek to control all details of
Britain's government. This was especially true of George I, fifty-four
at his accession, and without personal friends in England. He never
learnt English, and as German was a rare accomplishment of
politicians, he had to carry on business in French or dog Latin: with
such means autocracy is impossible. Like William III he spent his
summers abroad, which favoured the ascendancy of ministers. Another
cause working the same way was that now, for the first time since
1688, the monarch did not aim at a balance of parties in the Cabinet.
He relied only on the Whigs, so party ministries came into fashion,
and proved stronger than the coalitions hitherto favoured.

The policy of the Whigs was simple: to label the Tories Jacobites, to
develop their own electoral machinery so that a defeat at the polls
was impossible, to avoid rousing the latent animosity of the Church,
and abroad to maintain the peace they had condemned until quiet and
prosperity should let the Hanoverian line take root. A new dynasty
can fortify itself by foreign conquest or by sitting still: Henry V
tried the first method, and it broke in his son's hands; Henry VII and
James I took the less showy but safer course. The Whigs were of their
mind, and he of them who saw clearest, Walpole, more strongly than
any. Their power rested on three pillars: Crown, great lords, trading
interests; against them were a majority of the English squires and the
Church. Peace would strengthen trade and weaken the gentry's chief
grievance by lowering the land tax.

Leadership of the Whig party passed rapidly to a young group who had
learnt politics under Anne. Wharton and Halifax died in 1715, Somers
next year, and two paralytic strokes in 1716 left Marlborough only a
name. The new men were Townshend, Sunderland, Walpole and Stanhope.
Stanhope, a soldier, scholar, and diplomatist, was their chief, though
Townshend had nominally the higher position. Walpole, Townshend's
brother-in-law, was not at first in the Cabinet, but became Chancellor
of the Exchequer and first Lord of the Treasury in October, 1715, and
proved supreme in finance. Sunderland, the son of James II's minister,
was older in political experience than his fellows, but less
full-blooded: a theoretical republican and an honest but bitter Whig.

A party is crushed not by defeat but by division, and despite an
election in 1715, when all the powers of Government were extended to
secure Whig victory, Toryism might yet have rebuilt itself. The Whigs
feared this, and planned to ruin its leaders. A party committee
inquired into the negotiations for the Peace of Utrecht, and on its
report, in June, 1715, Oxford, Bolingbroke and Ormond were impeached.
Bolingbroke had already fled, and in July, when he joined the
Pretender, Ormond followed him; they were condemned by Acts of
Attainder. Oxford spent two years in the Tower, till his impeachment
was dropped in 1717. By that time the Tory disruption had been
completed by the Jacobite rising of 1715.

That rebellion might have had a chance of success had the Pretender's
court not been riven by personal jealousies, but it was badly planned,
badly led, and deprived of open French support by the death in
September of Louis XIV. George, with his two German mistresses and a
Hanoverian clique, had been in England long enough to win dislike,
which was increased by the prosecution of the Tory leaders. Jacobite
mobs and attacks on dissenting chapels showed the current of opinion.
But the Government intelligence was good and their action firm.
Stanhope concentrated his forces in the Western counties, where a
rising under Ormond was feared; Mar raised James's standard
prematurely in Scotland, and by inertia threw away a slim chance of
success. The Pretender joined him late in December when all hope was
over, sailed again in February 1716, and once back in France dismissed
Bolingbroke, his only capable adviser. There is small room for regret
that James Edward did not oust the less romantic Georges. He was like
enough to his father in character to disprove the legend of his birth,
and he had a full measure of James II's inability either to learn or
to forget.

The crushing of the rebellion cemented the Whigs in power, and their
reprisals were not immoderate. A few half-pay officers were shot as
deserters, two peers and twenty-six commoners executed, and a large
number of prisoners so lightly guarded that they escaped. Nottingham
and his relations, the only Tories in the Government, were dismissed,
and the life of Parliament altered from three to seven years. This
made for stability at home and in foreign policy, which for long
remained a party issue; it also strengthened the House of Commons
against both the Crown and the peerage, but for Parliament to prolong
its own life by four years savoured of sharp practice against the
electorate.

The next three years brought schism in the Whig party, Swedish and
Spanish attempts to put the Pretender on the throne, and a new system
of alliances to keep peace in Europe. Hanover complicated Britain's
position. Here were two states independent of each other, one
parliamentary, the other autocratic; they were joined only by a single
ruler in whose name the wars of either were fought. England and
Scotland had been in this position, but their kings had perforce gone
the English, not the Scottish road; George I balanced the interests of
Britain and Hanover with remarkable fairness. The Electorate had
assisted in spoiling Sweden of her German lands; now Charles XII was
planning their recovery, and to support the Pretender against the
British King was his readiest way to coerce the Elector. Spain was
learning unaccustomed efficiency from Alberoni, and hoped to recover
her lost possessions in Italy: these were the storm-centres of Europe.

Stanhope's policy was to prevent war by a network of alliances. In
1716 he made a treaty with France, which the Netherlands, and finally
Austria, joined; by this the position in the Mediterranean was
assured. His actions in Northern Europe proved successful, but split
the Whigs. A visit to Hanover in 1716 threw George into Stanhope's and
Sunderland's hands. They were more adventurous than Townshend and
Walpole, and less insular in outlook; Walpole moreover, the guardian
of the Exchequer, had already clashed with Hanoverian favourites, who
wished to dip their hands in Government money. Townshend was dismissed
in 1717, Walpole promptly resigned, and with a strong following they
went into Opposition. Charles XII, a confirmed disturber of Europe,
was killed next year, and with him died the chance of a Swedish
invasion. In 1720 Spain accepted peace, after her fleet had been
destroyed by an English squadron, her army cut off in Sicily, and a
Jacobite expedition from her shores wrecked in a storm. A complicated
system of treaties guaranteed the British succession and trade and the
integrity of Hanover.

Walpole when supreme in office showed more moderation than any
convinced party man before him, but in Opposition at this time he
could be as factious as any. In 1715 he was foremost in impeaching the
Tory leaders, in 1719, contrary to his own convictions, he
fruitlessly opposed the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism
Acts. He had a better case against a Government attempt to standardise
the peerage at its existing size by preventing more than six new
creations: this would have made the Lords independent of both Crown
and people, but Walpole roused the Commons and rejected the Bill. In
1720 a quarrel between George I and the Prince of Wales, round whom
the Opposition had clustered, was patched up, Walpole and Townshend
resumed office, and in a few months were borne to supremacy by the
South Sea Bubble.

The South Sea Company had been formed in 1711 by Harley, to exploit
markets in the new world and to reduce the national debt. It took over
Government obligations with revenues earmarked for their interest, and
issued its own shares in their stead. In 1715 and in 1717 more
liabilities and more income were transferred to it, and in 1719 came a
plan of assigning it the whole remaining debt of fifty-one millions.
The Government was to pay 5% on this till 1727, then 4%; over
7,500,000 of debt was to be cancelled by the Company, which hoped to
borrow more cheaply than could the State. Profits were looked for
from trade, but mainly from a rise in the price of shares, for
Government creditors exchanged at the market quotation, so 100 of
stock might wipe out a far greater amount of national securities. The
capitalisation of the Company was too high, but a craze for
speculation, endemic for twenty-five years, now broke out fiercely. In
August, 1720, South Sea shares rose to 1000%, in September they
slumped, other mushroom companies went down in the storm, and
Parliament met in December raging against directors who had promised
too freely, and ministers who had been bought or deceived.

All looked to Walpole to restore credit. Stanhope died from a burst
blood-vessel in February, 1721; Aislabie, Chancellor of the Exchequer,
had stolen and was broken; Sunderland had lost money and repute. In
April Walpole and Townshend re-made the Ministry, and Sunderland's
death next year left them with but one rival, Carteret, a brilliant
disciple of Stanhope's, and the only minister who could speak German
to the King. He favoured a bolder policy abroad than they wanted, but
in 1724 he was driven from the Secretaryship of State to the
Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland. Walpole concentrated on home matters till
1725, when he extended his interest to foreign affairs. By
parliamentary management, mastery of business, and a sanity that was
almost genius, he became the one indispensable man in the Government.

This Norfolk squire governed England for over twenty years, riveted
the new royal house to the nation, did more than any other to create
the office of Prime Minister (a title deprecated both by him and by
his successors), and kept the nation at peace till near his fall, even
through a European war. His services have been variously estimated,
and are generally placed highest by men who themselves have had
political experience. He is accused of systematising and increasing
the corruption of his day, of rejecting lofty ideals, of being unable
to work for long with any men who showed marked ability. In the last
there is some truth; Pulteney, an able debater, and Carteret were both
driven from the Ministry and organised a Whig schism, and Walpole
forced Townshend to retire (much to the benefit of Norfolk farming) in
1730. Walpole, in fact, was working out the principle of a homogeneous
Cabinet, which should stand for a clear-cut policy at home and abroad,
and he preferred colleagues who would fall in with such a system to
men who refused to sink their own ideas in a humdrum course approved
by the whole. This forced him, in the prevailing views of ministerial
responsibility, to use those who were definitely his inferiors. He did
not improve the political code of his day, and he was sceptical of
acclaimed ideals. He governed through influence in Court and
Parliament, holding the magnates who controlled seats by giving them a
share in office and appointments for their nominees. There is no
evidence that he increased corruption, which was already well known;
he systematised it, but carried it certainly no further than did
George III a generation later. He provided for his own family by
sinecure posts, but took no illicit money himself, and died
comparatively poor.

His aim was to keep peace abroad, and at home to avoid rousing Church
feeling that might turn Jacobite. Stanhope had ceased summoning
Convocation, and Walpole did not revive it. He opposed the repeal of
the Test Act, lest a waning clericalism should break out again, but
from 1727 he helped dissent by annual acts of indemnity which let
Nonconformists hold office without penalty, a practice followed for a
century. In one subject only, finance, did he show real zest for
reform. In 1721 he abolished many export taxes on manufactured goods,
many import duties on raw materials. In 1733 he aimed at sweeping
fiscal improvements, of which the first step was to be the erection of
bonded warehouses for tobacco and spirits. This would have diminished
the frauds consequent on charging high import duties refunded on
export, by which evasions less than a fourth of the gross tobacco
revenue reached the Exchequer. But the name "excise," played on
skilfully and unscrupulously by the Opposition, roused fury, and
Walpole withdrew his plan, for he hated bloodshed more than waste.
Pitt, who was his bitter opponent, later admitted that the scheme had
been unjustly attacked.

Things went placidly for some years. A small Jacobite plot, Irish
disturbances over the supply of copper coin, and the impeachment in
1725 of the Lord Chancellor for stealing money, were the chief
episodes. Abroad, Stanhope's treaties kept the peace, till Spain took
a new tack, allied with her arch-enemy, Austria, and demanded
Gibraltar from Britain. Townshend floated a rival alliance, and though
Spain attacked Gibraltar peace was assured in 1727. Fleury, who was as
pacific as Walpole, governed France from 1726, and the two kept Europe
quiet.

George I died suddenly in 1727, and after a day of doubt Walpole was
confirmed in power. For the next ten years he governed with the help
of Caroline, the ablest Queen of England since Elizabeth. George II
was irascible, petty, and jealous, a smaller man than his father; his
wife had taste and humour, and ruled her husband through suggestions
that he took for his own ideas. From now on Walpole had to face harder
opposition in Parliament than before. About half its strength came
from the Tory remnant, the rest from Whigs in schism; the whole was
animated from outside by Bolingbroke, who had been pardoned and
restored in estate, but was still debarred his seat in the Lords. It
agreed on little save that Walpole should be turned out, and in its
attacks was perhaps the most unscrupulous Opposition of British
history.

For six years more there was quiet. The state of the prisons caused a
scandal, Carteret was ousted from the Cabinet, English replaced Latin
in legal proceedings, Georgia was founded as a refuge for paupers, and
the land tax reduced to a fourth of what it had been: these are the
chief features of an easy time. In 1733 a double storm broke.
Walpole's tobacco excise, skilfully misrepresented, caused one; he
withdrew it, and disciplined his party by dismissing even from
military commands those who had opposed him. The elective kingship of
Poland started a wider convulsion, for France supported one candidate,
whom Russia, with Austrian connivance, expelled. France allied with
Spain, the two attacked Austria, and drove her armies from Italy: she
demanded British help. Walpole, victorious in an election in 1734,
became the peacemaker of Europe. He restrained France by hinting that
Britain might fight, and Austria by asserting that she would not. The
court wanted war but bowed to his judgment, and in 1735 he and Fleury
rebuilt the peace. Walpole had saved British lives and British money,
but his refusal to join either European group left Britain somewhat
dangerously isolated.

The Opposition now centred round Frederick Prince of Wales, who was at
open feud with his father, and inevitably it grew stronger from year
to year, for it was joined by all who had a grievance. Queen Caroline
died in 1737, a loss to both nation and Ministry; next year began the
agitation that was to pull Walpole down. Treaties sanctioned a small
British trade with Spanish America, but smugglers ignored its limits;
Spain searched their ships when she caught them, even outside her
territorial waters, and English sailors maintained that, save when
taken red-handed, they were immune from inquiry or capture. Grievances
arose on both sides and in 1738 came to a head, clustered round an
ancient, and unproved, outrage to an English Captain Jenkins. Walpole
negotiated with Madrid, and nearly reached agreement on financial
claims, but Spain refused, as Britain would have done in her place, to
disclaim the right of search on the high seas. Passion in either
country brought war. It began in 1739, with British enthusiasm, for
Walpole was almost alone in the now accepted opinion that the war was
both unjust and unnecessary.

Nor was it justified by success. The West Indies, its chief sphere,
took their usual toll of life by fever. The Opposition, who a few
years before had demanded a more aggressive foreign policy, coupled
with a reduction in the army, now successfully resisted Walpole's
effort to meet a shortage of sailors by the registration of seamen.
British success at Porto Bello was followed by disastrous failure at
Carthagena. A separate European War broke out and devoured this
limited struggle: the Emperor died, and Frederick, the new ruler of
Prussia, snatched at Silesia. The treaties on which peace rested were
torn up; France joined Prussia, Spain was bound to France, and Austria
appealed to Britain. In the welter of 1741 came a general election, in
which Scotland and Cornwall (equally important in Parliament) turned
against the Government--Scotland because Walpole a few years earlier
had tried to punish Edinburgh for an organised lynching, Cornwall
because he had offended some of its magnates. Parliament met in
December, and after two months of hard fighting Walpole accepted
defeat, resigned, and went to the Lords as Earl of Orford.

With Walpole there vanished for a time a united Cabinet. The idea that
room should be found in that body for most sections of importance, a
kind of proportional representation in ministries, had been one motive
for opposing him, and now in some measure it prevailed. Carteret at
first dominated the Government, but Walpole's supporters, the brothers
Henry Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle, balanced his influence with
the Crown by a growing strength in the Commons, and places were found
for one or two Tories, in the hope of ending what Pulteney called
"these unhappy distinctions of party." Carteret knew Europe better
than any other Englishman, but he was too neglectful of Parliament to
find for his policy the necessary backing, and he roused suspicion
that he put Hanover's interests above England. In 1744 he was forced
to resign, and the Pelhams ruled Britain for the next ten years,
buying off possible leaders of Opposition by subordinate office.

The war of the Austrian Succession is a confused story of
opportunities wasted on either side, of fruitless victories, of
strategy smothered by allied disagreement. Britain drifted into the
war uncertain of purpose and at no clear-cut moment. Her aim was to
support Austria, to whom she was pledged by treaty, but to avoid a
breach with Prussia, Austria's most dangerous enemy. Gradually Britain
and France became principals in a struggle which they had begun as
associates, for Prussia was content with the conquest of Silesia,
while Spain and the Italian states found themselves immobilised by
British naval power. The war shifted from Germany to Flanders, where
France undid the work of Marlborough, won three great victories,
over-ran all that is now Belgium, and stopped only when Holland lay
open to her troops.

The first serious campaign in which Britain was involved was in 1743,
when George II led an allied "Pragmatic" army into Germany with no
definite objective, was cut off by the French, and won the victory of
Dettingen by enemy blunders and hard fighting. Next year the French
planned to invade England, but a naval squadron and a storm scattered
their fleet. In the fruitless campaign that followed, the last chance
of allied victory was thrown away by inertia, for in 1745 the French
attacked in overwhelming strength. At Fontenoy they won a victory that
gave them all Western Flanders.

Fontenoy touched off the '45. Though France had abandoned plans of
invasion, Charles Edward, the son of James, hoping that defeat might
change British sentiment, tried his luck alone. He sailed to Scotland,
and six weeks after his landing was in Edinburgh, for the raw troops
who opposed him broke before a Highland charge. He pushed on south,
and by rapid marching reached Derby without a battle. Beyond that the
Highlanders would not go, for the regiments of Fontenoy were now back
in England, and there was no sign of the mass rising on which alone
success could depend. Some still claim that a swift move on London
might, since the Prince had evaded Cumberland's army, have brought
the Stuarts again to the throne; but the probability is that had the
clans agreed to go on they would have arrived less than five thousand
strong before a hostile capital and double their numbers of raw
levies, with their sole chance victory over both city and army in the
one or two days before Cumberland's veterans took them in the rear.
Not Derby but thirty years of Hanoverian rule settled British history:
the rebellion merely showed that in England Jacobitism was a spent
force.

The Prince made good his retreat, and won another victory at Falkirk
before the inevitable end. It came in April, 1746, at Culloden, the
last battle fought on British soil. By military occupation,
road-making, and Acts of Parliament the Highlands were pacified,
though somewhat brutally, and in a generation the Stuart cause had
become a theme for song instead of an active political creed. In 1750
Charles Edward came to England in disguise, and as a last hope joined
the Anglican Church. Conversion to Protestantism might have helped him
earlier, but by then it was too late.

Meanwhile France used the diversion of this revolt to extend her
conquests. By the end of 1747 she had won two more victories and was
pressing into Holland. She had been defeated in Italy, in India had
taken Madras, in America had lost Louisbourg: Britain could boast of
two small naval victories. At the Peace Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle,
in 1748, the return of conquests was decided, greatly to the advantage
of Britain. Nothing was settled about the right of search which had
started the war, nor about the limits of French and British dominion
in America, over which in a few years a greater and decisive struggle
was to arise.




                              CHAPTER V

                           WESLEY AND PITT


Walpole's mastery over his own following had solidified the Cabinet,
while the resentment stirred by his long rule gave Opposition a
temporary rallying cry. With his fall Cabinet unity diminished and the
party character of politics almost disappeared. The Jacobites had
struck and were broken; Shippen's death in 1743 removed their
parliamentary head, while the rebellion proved that they could not
triumph by unconstitutional means. Toryism had little in the way of
programme or leadership. Some four-fifths of the members in either
House dubbed themselves Whig, which meant that they stood by
Revolution principles, now threatened by no one, that they wished
government to be in the hands of an aristocratic clique, and for no
radical changes in the national organisation. There was room for a
struggle between individuals or over foreign policy, none for a party
programme in the modern sense.

Henry Pelham was a disciple of Walpole, with the same interest in
economy but a less forceful character. He minimised Opposition by
calling its possible leaders to office. William Pitt, though he had a
tiny personal following, was strong in his eloquence and had a rising
reputation for honesty: he became Paymaster of the Forces. Henry Fox,
a master in the arts of patronage, was made Secretary at War. The
Government was a coalition or "broad-bottomed" one, with even a Tory
or two in its minor posts, and it endured until Pelham's death in
1754, giving Britain a quiet time of recovery before the great
struggle with France. Such Opposition as there was clustered round
Leicester House, where Frederick, Prince of Wales, held his court. For
him, the most worthless Hanoverian till George IV, Bolingbroke wrote
the _Patriot King_, and advocacy of non-party government became the
new party's cry. But few trusted Frederick, and his followers made a
habit of piecemeal desertion when they were offered posts in the
Ministry. Frederick's death was celebrated by a jingle:

    Had it been his father, I had much rather;
    Had it been his brother, much better than another;
    Had it been his sister, no one would have missed her,
    Had it been the whole generation, still better for the nation;
    But since 'tis only Fred, who was alive and is dead--there's no more
      to be said.

Pelham's achievements were useful but prosaic. He funded the national
debt on a three per cent. basis, and lowered the land tax, the
country's reserve for war, from four shillings in the pound to two. He
legislated with fair success against the national evil of gin. Halifax
in Nova Scotia, was founded in 1749 to provide a career for discharged
soldiers; a London police force, "the Bow Street foot patrol," was set
up in 1753; and the British Museum was created out of the proceeds of
a public lottery. Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, stiffened the
marriage law of England by an act requiring banns or licences before a
wedding, which discouraged the elopement of persons under age.
Chesterfield, though out of office, introduced the modern calendar.
England had clung to the medival year which began on March 25 and
provided a leap-year at the end of each century, so she was now eleven
days behind most of Europe, where the Gregorian calendar prevailed.
In September, 1752, "the style it was changed to Popery," and the
supervening days were omitted. This gave the people an unanswerable
cry against the Ministry, "give us back our eleven days"; their sense
of humour is still taken for ignorance by many historians.

More important than the politics of these years was a religious
revival that after 1738 proceeded apace. John Wesley, a High
Churchman, had with his brother Charles formed in Oxford a small
society of men with austere principles, nicknamed "Methodists," and
into this Whitefield, an undergraduate, had been received. John Wesley
in 1735 went to Georgia, the new pauper colony, as a missionary. He
was a failure there, too quarrelsome and narrow for success, but the
journey made him acquainted with the Moravians, an evangelical German
sect, and so weakened the exclusiveness of his Church views. He
returned to England in 1738, and after a spiritual struggle became
convinced that the individual's salvation depended on his faith alone.
With Charles and Whitefield he organised inside the Church small
groups of persons who read the Bible together, had no secrets from the
society, and cross-examined each other on their belief and deeds. Some
chapels were built, and in 1739 Whitefield began a campaign of
open-air preaching in and near Bristol.

The tendency both of the Church and of Nonconformity had so far in the
century been towards a relaxation of dogma, and an increase in the
emphasis laid on practical ethics. Christianity seemed to be becoming
a code of behaviour, less doctrinal than ever before, and with a smack
of secular philosophy about it. There was much learning in the Church
of England and much indifference, most of the old controversies were
dead, and even those that sprang up over the Trinity and the divinity
of Christ, left many cold. The age was moving, especially in its upper
ranks, towards more toleration, restraint, comfort; but this tendency
hardly affected the submerged classes, whose emotions were stronger
than their reason, and who found small gratification in chilly
exhortations to live honourably. Part of Puritanism had been absorbed
into the national character, other parts had burned themselves out,
and there was room for something new, to use that side of man which
was now largely ignored. Signs of a revival had come before Wesley,
for mission societies had been founded in 1697 and 1701, and Methodism
succeeded because many individuals were already groping their way in
its direction. But the Wesleys, with Whitefield, led the movement,
organised it, built a new Nonconformity, and gave the Church of
England a different and less easy temper.

By the end of 1741 John Wesley had broken with the Moravians, and
partially with Whitefield. He held by free-will, Whitefield by
predestination, and the two conducted separate, though not yet
antagonistic, campaigns of field preaching. Naturally they found most
churches closed to them, for their followers and even they themselves
accused the clergy of slackness, while every revival left behind it a
parish torn and excited. At first the Wesleyans were suspected of
popery, and this, with their zeal, which the age distrusted, and their
denunciation of popular pleasures, exposed them to attacks from the
crowd. They held on through dislike and torpor till they found
enthusiasm. Their labours were tremendous: Whitefield preached 18,000
times, made seven campaigns in America and twelve in Scotland; Wesley
spoke 40,000 sermons and travelled a quarter of a million miles. They
did more than found a new sect; they made the Church of England rather
less decorous, rather more enthusiastic.

The effects of their work were various. They caused religious
dementia, they preached a personal devil and much hell fire, they
believed in witchcraft and revived a waning intolerance. They
condemned explicitly all dancing and theatres, implicitly all arts
except music, and though they did something for elementary education,
as regards humanistic studies and higher learning, they were more an
obstacle than a help. Catholic Emancipation would have come quicker
without them, and many problems of the nineteenth century would have
been met more scientifically and dispassionately. Against these debits
can be set the vital fact that they brought a personal religion to
hundreds of thousands, a feeling of God's presence that could give a
rare exaltation and an unworldly happiness. Many of their converts
were pathological cases, epileptics and persons inclined to
melancholia, but these were only a small minority of the whole. The
Bible became again what it had been in the seventeenth century, the
nation's chief literature, and Methodism stressed the Old Testament
less heavily than had Puritanism. It had not the same hard core of
theological reasoning, and largely because of that produced different
political results.

It made for conservatism, not for struggle: men looked for happiness
in their inner world, not in externals. Abominable conditions of life
and labour were tolerated either as mysteriously ordained by God, or
as a prelude to heavenly joy. When the French Revolution broke over
Europe, England survived partly through the spread of Evangelicalism
inside and outside the Established Church. Wales, Cornwall, and all
the parts where an increasing mining population toiled in conditions
we can now hardly credit, had learnt to find solace in an inner light
and in hopes of another world, rather than in forceful change on
earth. Revolutionary ideas might win support from the skilled artisans
of a few towns and from some of the aristocracy, but their agnostic
tendency alienated the thousands whose rising would have made the
nation totter.

Prince Frederick died unregretted in 1751, leaving George, a boy of
twelve, heir to the Crown. The stage was clearing for a new troupe of
actors: Walpole had died in 1745, Bolingbroke followed his successful
rival in 1751. When Henry Pelham died in 1754 his brother, the Duke of
Newcastle, gathered the strings of Government into his hands. He
provoked much criticism in his own time, and still draws contempt from
many historians; he had learnt party management, in which he showed
great skill, from Walpole; he was not a man to ride the whirlwind,
nor the fool he is often painted. He had a fussy manner, was timid of
opposition, and said silly things, but he had a shrewd knowledge of
European politics, and in his own line, the control of elections and
Parliament, was unsurpassed. He loved power, thought it the first
business of every department to help maintain his majority, and
reduced his own fortune by three-fourths in buying support, proving
his personal integrity by refusing a pension when he left office in
1762. So secure did he now seem, even with his abler brother gone,
that in the election of 1754 only forty-two places were contested. It
needed a storm to displace him, but a storm was blowing up in America.

There the problem was the old one, undefined boundaries. France had
ceded Acadia to Britain in 1713, but its limits were undetermined. She
claimed the west of the continent, controlled both the St. Lawrence
and the Mississippi, its Eastern and Southern gates, and planned to
bind New Orleans to Montreal by a chain of forts in the Ohio valley;
if she could establish her claim the English colonies would lie pinned
between the Alleghany Mountains and the sea. The French weakness lay
in her scanty American population, for less than 100,000 subjects
other than Indians owned her rule, while the English dominions held
about a million and a half. But the French marched in unison, while
half the English colonies lay to the south or had no backwoods
frontier, and therefore felt little interest in the issue. Even those
open to border war were paralysed by intercolonial jealousies, and by
disputes between their governors and their assemblies. The French
farmer was half a soldier, he held his land on condition of military
service, and followed his seigneur to war; the English farmer was an
individualist who resented discipline. In time the natural increase of
population must burst the French chain, but at the moment it could not
do so without British leadership and British troops.

In 1754 a colonial attempt to build a fort in the disputed territory,
near what is now Pittsburg, was defeated by a French force. A century
later this would have meant war, but then local reprisals were taken
more lightly. Each nation strove to occupy the Ohio country; and
Britain sent Braddock with two battalions, France Dieskau with six, to
America. Braddock marched to defeat and death in July, 1755. War was
brought nearer by British naval action, for a squadron sailed under
orders to stop Dieskau even by force, and failed to do more than
capture two of his ships. Britain seized French shipping and France in
return broke off diplomatic relations.

Newcastle's aim was clear and his main policy sensible. War with
France was almost inevitable, and if it could be confined to the high
seas and to America, Britain must win through her fleet and colonial
strength. Complicated alliances in Europe made such a limited war
difficult but not impossible. The family treaty between France and
Spain was moribund, and unless Britain were openly the aggressor, the
Spanish fleet and ports might be neutral. The British alliance with
Holland was defensive, and could not be invoked unless Britain were
the party assailed; this again indicated American reprisals, and the
occupation of the back country, which might sting France into a
declaration of war. Above all Britain had in Europe two vulnerable
points that only an army could defend: Flanders and Hanover. No
British Government that tolerated French expansion by the Narrow Seas
could retain power, and whatever American victories were won, if
France took Antwerp all must be given back at the peace. The same
applied to Hanover, a royal, not a British possession; elementary
decency forbade that the King should lose it in a purely British
dispute. Newcastle strove to protect these two essentials of colonial
success by diplomacy, and turned to the traditional alliance with
Holland and Austria. But Austria wanted a war of her own, to recover
Silesia, and in this Britain could not help. Frederick, who felt a
coalition gathering against him, offered to guarantee Hanover for a
subsidy, and a treaty in January, 1756, bound Britain and Prussia
together, to fight two wars that began almost simultaneously.

Pitt, though he was one of the Ministry, attacked Newcastle on the
ground that overmuch attention was paid to Hanover, and was naturally
dismissed. France joined a coalition of Austria and Russia against
Prussia, threatened England with invasion, and sprang on Minorca. Its
fall, followed by news from India, that Calcutta had been lost,
brought down Newcastle in November, 1756. Pitt took office in response
to public demand, though he had hardly a party in either house. He
increased the army, reformed the militia, and planned the conquest of
Louisbourg. Three wars had established a traditional strategy against
France, by which a confederate army struck at her frontier, while
minor offensives nibbled oversea. Pitt revolutionised the system.
America was to him the true theatre of war where Britain's great
effort must be made, Louisbourg was to be a prelude to Quebec. Hanover
needed only enough defence to prevent her becoming a French counter at
the peace negotiations; this was provided by a Hessian and Hanoverian
force in British pay, by subsidies to Frederick, by diversions on the
French coast, and finally, when all these proved inadequate, by a
strong British contingent to stiffen a German army. But the
Continental war was always secondary in Pitt's eyes; it was merely an
indispensable condition of success elsewhere.

The Court disliked Pitt, who had attacked a Hanoverian policy
violently, and George, seeing his parliamentary weakness, ventured in
April, 1757, to dismiss him. The result was disastrous. The nation
fell into uproar, war preparations were delayed, Fox and Newcastle,
fearing disaster followed by impeachment, refused to form a Ministry,
while Russia and Austria moved against Prussia. Not till the end of
June did Britain again have a Government. Then Pitt, the country's
choice, joined forces with Newcastle, whom he despised, but who could
provide a safe majority, and a coalition began that was to bring
victory and endure for over four years. Newcastle had civil patronage
and supply for his department; navy, army and diplomacy were swayed
by Pitt. None has ever ruled Parliament and Cabinet as decisively as
he, whose power came from no nice jockeying for support, but from
confidence, willingness to bear the heaviest responsibility, and a
voice that stirred the whole nation.

In India Clive won Plassey and made Britain supreme in Bengal, but
elsewhere this year saw failure. A French naval concentration at
Louisbourg prevented the British attack, while Montcalm, the French
general in Canada, broke over the border, stripped to provide troops
for Cape Breton, and took Fort William Henry. Cumberland's Hanoverian
army was beaten and forced to a partial capitulation, and a raid on
Rochefort, made to divert French energies from Germany, failed through
the indecision of its generals. George II disliked young officers, and
refused to the end of his life to allow Pitt a free hand in selecting
commanders, though he gave less trouble after 1758 than before it. But
though this year did not bring success, it marked the turning point.
In fleet and army there breathed a new spirit of confidence; from
Pitt's study, where he worked himself to the bone co-ordinating plans
of war for two continents, waves of energy spread through the nation.
Pitt's labours were enormous and almost single-handed. Each autumn,
when the results of the previous summer were fully known, he had to
draw instructions for, and arrange action between, military and naval
commanders in America, the West Indies, and at home. All had to be
ready by February, when the troops and ships for the next campaign
must sail, if the next American campaign were to begin in time.

Victory began in 1758. Amherst besieged and took Louisbourg, though
too late in the year for an attack on Quebec to follow. Despite a
French victory at Ticonderoga over a column advancing on Montreal, the
out-works of Canada were reduced. From a camp in the Isle of Wight
raids were launched against St. Malo and Cherbourg, and British troops
reinforced the Hanoverian army under Ferdinand. It was a prelude to
1759, a year of victories whose only British parallel is the hundred
days of 1918. Pitt struck at the West Indies, and Guadeloupe fell. He
launched Wolfe and Saunders against Quebec in the greatest combined
expedition Britain had ever dispatched: perfect harmony between fleet
and army let Wolfe snatch a victory and die with the key to Canada in
his grasp. In Germany, Minden made Hanover secure, and a French
design to cancel defeat by an invasion of England was shattered in a
gale at Quiberon by Hawke's guns. 1760 made the American victory
complete by the surrender at Montreal of all Canada; while in India
the Carnatic fell into British possession.

George II's sudden death in the autumn of 1760 weakened Pitt's
domination, but not immediately. The new King was twenty-two, and had
none of the German leanings that had made Parliament suspicious of his
grandfather, but he had a double dose of Guelph obstinacy, and many
unrelenting prejudices. Spain was becoming uneasy at the changed
balance of power in the new world, and resented British interference
with her shipping. In England the feeling that Britain might overload
herself with conquests, and establish a maritime ascendancy that would
unite Europe against her, was growing vocal, supported by doubt that
her finances could long stand the strain of war. The Duke of Bedford
led a group who thought that there were already too many colonies, and
that to hold Canada would weaken American loyalty. 170,000 soldiers
(60,000 of them Germans) were in British pay, while 80,000 men served
in the navy. So peace negotiations began, though war continued
vigorously. Belleisle was taken in 1761 and also Dominica; then the
Cabinet crisis came to a head. Spain had been drawn by France into an
alliance, and was on the verge of declaring war against Britain, so
Pitt demanded an immediate rupture and an instantaneous blow at
Spanish commerce. His colleagues decided against him and he resigned.
The energy he had inspired remained for a time; Martinique was
captured in 1762, and Spain paid in the same year for her French
alliance by the loss of Havana and Western Cuba.

Pitt in many ways was the greatest statesman of the century,
unsurpassed in the eloquence that was then almost indispensable for
high office, and beyond doubt the greatest war minister England has
ever known. He was scrupulous about public money, and as Paymaster had
made a breach with custom by refusing to treat the balances in his
hand as his own property, with which he could buy depreciated
Government paper and pocket the proceeds on redemption. Henry Fox, who
followed Pitt in that office, made a fortune by reverting to the legal
but corrupt custom: and paid for it in complete loss of national
approval. Pitt always saw clearly the essential points of a situation,
and could not be turned aside by panic in the country or division in
the Cabinet. But by his nature he was sure to split any Government
sooner or later. He considered himself trusted by the nation with
supreme power for making war, and his fellow ministers often found
themselves called to councils that were not expected to deliberate,
but merely to ratify decisions he had already made. Britain had been
marvellously fortunate to find first Walpole, then Pitt, each the
right man for widely different needs. But the Constitution would not
endure many Pitts if it were to grow along the lines already laid
down. "I will be responsible for nothing that I do not direct," Pitt
said, just before he resigned, a claim to dictatorship subject to the
people's will that is incompatible with Cabinet government, for in a
Cabinet each member must be responsible for much beyond his control.
Pitt was a difficult colleague in a second way also. He appealed to
the nation directly, treating Parliament as a public forum and a
machine for voting supplies. He had shattered the organisation that
Newcastle controlled, had weakened such party solidarity as there was,
and, as the event proved, had prepared the way for George III to
destroy the Whig ascendancy.

Bute, one of George's tutors, took Pitt's place. He drew some
parliamentary backing from what was left of the old Leicester House
opposition, was popular at Court, had a handsome presence, fair
courage and small ability. He aimed at a quick peace and discontinued
the annual subsidy to Prussia, at which Newcastle, loyal to the
alliance he had made, followed Pitt out of office. Anxious
negotiations went on through 1762 (Bute remembered how the authors of
the Peace of Utrecht had been impeached), and at last terms were
agreed which gave to Britain Canada, Florida, some small West Indian
islands, and Senegal, while the other British conquests were restored
to France and to Spain. The peace was unpopular, for still better
terms could have been obtained, and the way it was made seemed, though
in fact it was not, a betrayal of Prussia. Pitt denounced it in the
Commons, and the country agreed with him, but Henry Fox, Pitt's old
rival, prepared a majority for Bute. He used all the resources of a
ministry: threats, promises, favours, and carried the treaty through
Parliament.

This peace of Paris, though it abandoned many conquests that could
have been held, yet gave Britain a higher position in Europe than
even Marlborough had won. For the first time in history she had fought
France virtually single-handed and with success; her fleet was supreme
everywhere, her army had won a reputation in two continents. All North
America save New Orleans and the unpeopled country west of the
Mississippi was now British, while the East India Company had supreme
power in Bengal and the Carnatic. British subsidies had enabled
Prussia to survive a triple attack. Spain had ventured to question
British victory, and her army had been hurled back from Portugal, her
richest colonial city taken and despoiled. It was no wonder if
Englishmen were intoxicated, and carried themselves more haughtily
than before. But there were dangers in the position that a few years
would reveal. Europe felt Britain to be, in a different way, nearly as
grave a menace as France had seemed under Louis XIV, and it would need
skilled diplomacy to avoid a coalition against this new sea empire if
Britain fell into difficulties. France had been humiliated but not
crushed, her fleets were destroyed and many colonies lost, but the
peace had left her, against Pitt's wishes, the cradle of a new navy in
the right to fish off Newfoundland. Frederick of Prussia had been
estranged not by the peace, but by Bute's secrecy in making it.
Holland resented British claims in time of war to search her ships and
to confiscate all enemy goods they bore. Britain, in fact, was the
strongest power in Europe, but she had no friends there, and it is
arguable that she had done too much or too little.

In her acquisitions she had to face new problems, for which her past
experience offered her little help. In Canada she had won a country
alien to her in law, creed and tradition; was it to remain French or
be made English by a blending of settlement and coercion? The Company
had now great power in India but no responsibility; it was a
profit-seeking enterprise whose interest was trade, but it soon became
clear that it could not shirk administration. Parliament alone could
control it, but Parliament had for long neither the will nor the
knowledge to do so effectively. In America there was a possibility
that the acquisition of a new empire might weaken the allegiance of
the old. Travellers years before had predicted that a British conquest
of Canada would, by removing the one foreign menace felt by New
England, start her moving towards independence. The American colonies
had bowed to a commercial code which impeded their manufactures in
the interests of British industry, because it was obvious that Britain
gave them some genuine protection from a foreign enemy: would they
accept the code any longer now that there was no enemy to fear? Even
during the war the colonists had murmured when troops for their own
defence were billeted on them, and many had supplied the French West
Indies with necessaries while their own troops were operating against
the French both north and south. Save for Pitt, nearly all Englishmen
whose opinions counted regarded Americans not as fellow citizens but
as their own subjects, while Americans saw in England a claim to
political and social superiority that they might endure but could not
love.

The Empire needed a flexible but strong reorganisation to allow for
its increasing complexity. That could be provided by Parliament only
if it were led by a strong Ministry whose thoughts were not chiefly
concerned in keeping its place. It would involve, sooner or later, the
resignation by Parliament of some of its powers. Assemblies do not
willingly clip their own wings, and the Commons had of recent years
carried their views of privilege higher than ever before, claiming
that to kill Lord Galway's rabbits, to poach Mr. Jolliffe's fish
(both these gentlemen being members), violated the privilege
indispensable to free debate. The new King was not a man to lead in
wise abdication, but was intent on breaking down such party solidarity
as remained. If the political energies of the nation were to be spent
in uneasy struggles for office, if it were to enjoy the advantages
neither of real party government nor of intelligent absolutism, there
was small chance that it would keep the place won by Pitt's labours.




                              CHAPTER VI

                              GEORGE III


George III, who succeeded in October 1760, was twenty-two, and the
first of his line with an English upbringing; as he insisted on
telling Parliament in November, he gloried "in the name of Britain."
That he cared little for Hanover gave him immediate popularity, and
freed British foreign policy from the anxious balancing necessary
before. He had every prospect of a long and successful reign, for the
dynasty was at length firmly established, Jacobitism little more than
a romantic regret, and Britain was riding on the crest of victories
spread wider than any she had ever known.

George had been indifferently educated under the thumb of Augusta his
mother, a domineering German who knew little of English constitutional
rules and conceived that ministers should be in fact as well as in
name the servants of their monarch. She had kept him from mixing with
youths of his own age, had taught him to distrust his grandfather,
his uncle Cumberland, and the Whig magnates, and had drilled into him
her own merely personal view of politics. He emerged from her training
with strict morals, sincere religion, and far more courage than his
grandfather, who had been a political coward despite his military
experience. He was to prove himself good at the details of business,
an ardent farmer, and one whose simple tastes gained middle-class
approval even if they provoked aristocratic scorn. Had George been
born a country gentleman he would have been respected if obscure: in a
king his defects were more noticeable. He was stubborn, uncharitable
to opponents, sullen when displeased, convinced that all who differed
from him had unworthy motives. He lacked the gifts of loyalty which
his predecessors had had in marked degree, and he felt that while he
might confer an obligation on his ministers he incurred none towards
them. His stubborn attempt to realise political aims that were not in
full harmony with the tendency of the last forty years drove him at
times to the methods of a second-class brain, secrecy and deceit.

These aims were simple, and in a strict sense constitutional. George
had none of that passion for scientific and centralised absolutism
that had its votaries on the Continent. He looked back not to
Strafford, but at furthest to William III, who had been his own prime
minister and had selected his own advisers. George sincerely believed
that "connections" were a curse, that they distorted the constitution,
and that a king could do what was possible to no magnate, shake
himself free from the selfish groupings of party. He wished to fill
the position intended for the Crown by the Revolution Settlement, and
he made no attempt to advance a step beyond this. That position had
gradually altered in the last two reigns, though less drastically than
is often claimed: twice only, in dismissing Carteret and accepting
Pitt was George II forced to part with a minister he liked or accept
one of whom he disapproved. He and his father were nearly always
consulted on the minutest details of government and patronage; but
both liked to visit Germany in the intervals between sessions, when
the Government following concerted its tactics at Walpole's Houghton
or Newcastle's Claremont, and this, together with the fact that
neither king cared for the hard work involved by party management, had
diminished the appearance and to some extent the reality of royal
control. The monarchy had vast influence in Parliament, through
titles, offices, pensions, for at times more than two hundred and
fifty members of the Commons held place or pension from the Crown, and
most of the Lords would do much for a further step in the peerage. But
the first Georges opened these resources to ministers whom they
trusted, and so made any united Government safe from attack, except
when a national crisis turned the fear of dismissal into a secondary
consideration.

Possibly George III was influenced by the programme Bolingbroke had
sketched for his father in the _Patriot King_. Bolingbroke preached no
corruption and the break-up of parties: the King was to stand at the
head of the nation, choosing ministers for their efficiency, not for
their influence, and changing them and his policy at the country's
request. George may have been attracted by an ideal which shirked the
chief problems of government, but in practice he made little attempt
to realise it. He did nothing to decrease corruption, and instead of
destroying parties he increased the confusion of the time by building
an additional one of his own. Where law or custom had settled the
constitution, he accepted their decision. He made no attempt to
revise the recently extinct practice of the King's presiding over
Cabinet meetings. His chief demands were that he himself should
control patronage, and through it Parliament, that he could dismiss a
Ministry still supported by the Commons, and that, if forced for a
time to endure a Government he disliked, he could intrigue freely
against it. By the theory of the time he was entitled to each of these
claims. He practised them fully, and acquired great power during the
first half of his reign, but never tried to use it to construct any
permanent system: that would have been contrary to his principles and
beyond his vision. He had in fact the same end as the Duke of
Newcastle, more courage, more obstinacy, and an inferior brain.

Two things played into his hands. The first was that Pitt, as he
himself said, had "contributed to annihilate parties." He had appealed
beyond the Commons to the politically conscious classes of the nation;
Newcastle's organisation had been made for a time unnecessary and his
ascendancy was never fully regained. Before the end of the war,
instead of one strong party behind the Government, opposed by a
fluctuating coalition, which had become the normal state of affairs,
several groups in varying degrees of unity were apparent, each too
weak to maintain a Ministry by itself. There were the scattered
Tories, no longer a party; there was the Leicester House faction,
remnants of Frederick's admirers, and now led by Bute. The more
regular Whigs were atomised into sections. Newcastle, with Cumberland
in the background, led the best organised of these, but the Duke of
Bedford could at times muster a strong following; the Grenvilles had
another, now split between Temple and his brother George, and Pitt had
a few able supporters in either House. Whig solidarity was gone, and
George, to strengthen his influence, had merely to attract some of the
fragments.

The second thing favouring the King was the financial system that
prevailed. It is often assumed that the Commons had complete control
over money; in fact they had nothing of the kind. Army and Navy
estimates were passed annually, but only in the most general form,
with no real information in detail; expenditure on these services was
subject to audit, but only several years after it had been incurred,
and even then the audit was regarded as purely for Exchequer purposes,
and not for the information of the Commons. There were no civil
service estimates at all, they are an invention of the nineteenth
century. The King had a gross income of about a million sterling, out
of which he kept himself and family, and provided most of the cost of
civil government. He was voted the bulk of this as a "civil list" at
his accession, and thereafter no one could question his use of it.
True, most was earmarked, and there was theoretically no unlimited
fund for pensions and bribery, but in fact George could do what
ministers under his three predecessors had been doing, overspend and
then invite the Commons to pay his debts without producing detailed
accounts. Such a request, when the money had already been dispensed,
was almost certain to be granted, and the system gave enormous power
to the Crown. The Whigs might have abolished it on Anne's death, but
had liked financial methods that put a Government's resources above
parliamentary criticism. While they and the monarch agreed they were
secure, but now the royal influence was directed to other ends than
the preservation of a Whig majority.

George's designs have been much canvassed, much exaggerated, and till
recent years generally condemned. Victorian party ideas have been read
back into an age where parties as they came to be hardly existed.
Whig triumph in 1832 over Parliamentary reform, followed by Tory
disruption on the Corn Laws, made Liberalism for half a century the
dominant theme in British politics. Liberal historians cast back
seeking an ancestry for their views, and found in those Whigs who
followed Newcastle and then Rockingham their spiritual progenitors.
These had opposed George more consistently than any other group, they
had condemned the policy of taxing America, they had cut down royal
patronage in 1782, and fifty years later, purged by a split during the
French Revolution, and slightly tinctured with Bentham's radical
views, they had widened the suffrage: obviously they must always have
been Liberals at heart. Against these potential democrats the argument
ran, George prevailed, since snobbery and treachery detached a large
part of their following: he was victorious at home, and on the verge
of destroying British liberties, when he tried to extend his victory
beyond the sea, and to tax America through Acts passed by a corrupt
Parliament. Had he succeeded there personal government would have been
riveted upon the nation, but George Washington saved two countries
from tyranny, for the royal defeat in America made a crushed
Opposition triumph at Westminster.

Admirers of George III should support a legend which makes him a
greater man than he was. Not only had he no desire for absolutism, but
he was quite incapable of attaining it, or of using the royal power he
temporarily increased for any such impersonal end. Even had he
possessed Napoleonic ideas, he was to spend the last years of his life
insane: a bad preliminary to the bequest of despotic powers. Against
the Whig interpretation of the reign has grown up another almost
equally distorted. Its supporters see that the Whigs were struggling
not for democracy but for privilege, using (as all politicians then
did) the catchwords of freedom and Revolution principles, while aiming
at monopoly. Disraeli, who denounced their "Venetian oligarchy,"
discerned this clearly. Since the Whigs were corrupt--that is, since
they, like nearly all others in politics, expected to be rewarded by
place, power or money--it has been held to follow that any attempt to
weaken their dominance was statesmanlike, and George is made a patriot
opposed by faction, the enemy of a narrow clique, the founder of
honest government. It is established that he was business-like, brave,
pious, and chaste: were the verdicts of history allotted by the
family virtues he would stand fairly high. But a King who tries to
leave his own stamp on events demands a different scale than is used
for a country gentleman, and when we weigh George in the balance of
statesmanship he kicks the beam. Judged by results he failed; for
though the policy that made the American war was not his in origin, he
clung to it in all its futility, while later he held back from the
Irish union any chance of success. Judged by methods, he was little
better than Newcastle: if corruption was the great evil of the day, he
did nothing to abate it. Judged by his choice of men, he preferred
Bute to Chatham, found his perfect, because pliant, minister in North,
and gave high office to Lord George Sackville, who had done his best
to lose Minden, and was to do much towards losing America. George had
a general preference for mediocrity, for only over mediocrities could
he rule unchallenged. In his own interest, more than in that of the
nation, he made war on the Whigs, and in their own interest they
resisted. Yet in George's favour two things can be said: that he
restored to the monarchy, and indirectly to politics, some of the
dignity that had been lost under his predecessors, and that he became
increasingly popular as his reign drew on. People felt that the King
had overthrown a narrow, privileged class, and they generally shared
his prejudices--now heavily condemned--against American and Catholic
claims.

The Whig system was government by connection, not government by party
in its modern sense. A party adopts a policy to be realised by
law-making and administration. The business of a connection was
different: to survive, to use patronage so as to assure its majority
in Parliament, to offer careers of dignity and influence to members of
the governing ring. It did not make for efficiency, as politics guided
the appointment of admirals and generals, the placing of contracts,
the allotting of loans; and it was because of this, and partly because
he lacked the qualities needed to control such a system, that Pitt
denounced the connections that were then labelled parties. George
III's aims were those of the Whigs: to build the machine of government
round himself, to substitute for the ruling families of Pelham,
Grenville, Russell, men who had not sufficient independence to stand
on their own feet, but must look to the Court for guidance and career.
That was the result of his purpose, which was better than Newcastle's
in intention, a little better in execution in that it was more
national, yet in one way worse, inasmuch as a King is more immune than
a subject against criticism and public opinion, and however
discredited can be ousted only by a revolution, not by a mere adverse
vote.

George began his campaign by forcing Bute, his ex-tutor, a showy
mediocrity, into the Cabinet, and gradually made him the channel by
which the royal will was conveyed to its other members. The election
of 1761 effected practically no change in the parliamentary balance.
Bute did not try to assume the reins at once: he was only in a small
degree responsible for the Cabinet's rejection of immediate war with
Spain, which led in the autumn to the resignation of Pitt and Temple.
But Pitt once gone he could deal with Newcastle, and in 1762, by
stopping the Prussian subsidy, he forced him to resign. Bute allied
himself with the Duke of Bedford, who wanted to end the war, became
Prime Minister, and made the Peace of Paris, which Henry Fox, a
deserter from Newcastle, carried through Parliament by lavish bribery,
and which was followed by a proscription of all who would not support
it. Then Bute retired, in April, 1763, the most unpopular man in
England, having achieved his double task of finishing the war and
increasing Whig divisions. He selected the Ministry that followed him,
a coalition of George Grenville, Halifax and Egremont, and for a time
tried to control them from outside.

This Government lasted for two years, and started two disturbances
that its successors could not quell. The greater of these was in
America, and brought by Grenville's zeal for economy. The King was
himself mainly responsible for the less, of which John Wilkes was the
storm centre: it lasted intermittently for eleven years, helped to
define the Constitution in several points, and left behind it the
first popular agitation of the century for parliamentary reform.

Wilkes was a witty adventurer who followed Temple, Pitt's
brother-in-law; he sat for Aylesbury, and hoped to be made minister at
Constantinople or Governor of Canada. He attributed his disappointment
to Bute, who controlled a paper, _The Briton_. To attack the favourite
and his Scottish following, Wilkes founded _The North Briton_, and in
April, 1763, published in it a denunciation of the royal speech at
Parliament's prorogation: he treated this speech, quite properly, as
the work of ministers. But George thought his remarks were personal
criticism and ordered a prosecution: a warrant against unnamed
persons was issued, and fifty men, including Wilkes, were arrested.
Wilkes pleaded privilege of Parliament, was released till his trial,
and immediately became a popular hero. With other sufferers he brought
suits for unlawful arrest, and Pratt, who heard the cases, ruled that
general warrants were illegal. With cheerful truculence Wilkes accused
the Secretaries of State of stealing his papers, and reprinted _The
North Briton_. When Parliament met in November it declared that
privilege did not cover seditious libel--a desirable reduction in the
swollen immunities of members. A courtier wounded Wilkes in a duel, a
mad Scot tried to murder him, and he retired abroad; when his trial
came on he was condemned in absence, outlawed, and expelled from the
Commons.

In 1768 Wilkes returned to London, surrendered to the law, stood for
Middlesex and was elected. He spent nearly two years serving his
sentence in prison; from there he denounced the Government's use of
troops during a riot. This led to his second expulsion from
Parliament, repeated when Middlesex re-elected him; finally, when he
had been chosen for the fourth time, the Commons declared Luttrell,
who had a fourth of Wilkes' votes, duly returned. The City took up
Wilkes and made him an alderman, and by his magisterial powers he
protected printers of parliamentary debates from arrest for breach of
privilege. In the election of 1774 he was again chosen for Middlesex,
and took his seat. He had established that a Government servant is
liable to prosecution for obeying illegal orders, that the House of
Commons cannot by resolution disfranchise a constituency, and he had
brought nearer the authorised reporting of parliamentary proceedings.
On the surface his struggle had been with an irresponsible and
autocratic House of Commons, but everyone knew that it was largely the
King who had at last been beaten on all the points at issue. Wilkes
was satisfied with his victory and became a supporter of George III
and the younger Pitt against the Whigs.

The Grenville Ministry was weak from the start. George invited
Newcastle to join it, but he refused unless his whole connection were
brought in. When Egremont died in August, 1763, reconstruction became
urgent, and on Bute's advice Pitt was approached. He insisted to the
King that the chief Whigs, but not Bedford, must be included in any
Government led by him. George, whose practice was to provoke
confidential remarks and then repeat them to others, rejected such
drastic changes, and conveyed Pitt's views to Bedford, who was stung
into a coalition with Grenville. They proved anything but docile
servants of the King; they forced Bute to leave London and chose their
own course. George submitted for eighteen months, till his illness in
1765 made necessary an Act to set up a regency if he died. The
Government mishandled the Bill, and George once more approached Pitt.

A chance offered of forming, under the most popular statesman in
England, a Ministry strong enough to check the King's rising
influence, for George had not yet attained his later mastery in group
management. Newcastle and Rockingham, who was now the accepted leader
of the Pelham connection, were to be in the Government, and its policy
was to be repeal of Grenville's Stamp Act, restoration of the officers
dismissed in 1763 for their politics, an alliance with north European
states, and an Act forbidding general warrants. But this Government
was never formed. Pitt thought Temple necessary to lead it in the
Lords, and Temple had healed a quarrel with his brother Grenville, he
upheld the Stamp Act, and hoping for a mainly Grenville
administration, refused to play second fiddle to Pitt. Pitt thought it
impossible to go on without him, and the King turned to Rockingham,
who in July, 1765, built a weak Government out of his own group and a
few of Pitt's followers. Pitt himself would not join nor cordially
support what he considered a party connection, even though such policy
as it had was of his own creation.

The Rockingham Whigs have been posthumously fortunate, for the
greatest political philosopher of the time, Edmund Burke, became their
apologist. They had public spirit and honesty, for years they offered
unsuccessful opposition to an American policy that failed, and so they
left a tradition of statesmanship greater than their deserts. At this
time they showed themselves divided, inert, and too exclusive a
connection to win either popular or royal support. Till his death in
October, 1765, they were dominated by the King's uncle, Cumberland,
and after that their divisions widened. They restored the dismissed
officers and abolished general warrants, but the burning issue of
colonial taxation they left alone till American reports became
alarming; then they took the line that Parliament was omnipotent, but
should not impose a hated tax on colonies which were not represented
in it. They repealed the Stamp Act, and to get this done passed a
Declaratory Act asserting Parliament's sovereignty over the whole
Empire. But everyone knew that the repeal was Pitt's work more than
theirs, and both King and nation felt that the Ministry could not
endure without him. Pitt would not come in save as head of the
Government; Rockingham would have him only as equal in a coalition. In
July, 1766, George cut the knot by dismissing Rockingham and sending
for Pitt.

So began his third, and disastrous, Government. Temple would not join
as a subordinate, some of Rockingham's party took office, others
refused, and the Ministry was later described by Burke as a
"tesselated pavement"--brilliant patches of ability, but the whole
without design or balance. Pitt had been an admirable dictator in
crisis, but he was never an easy colleague. Now he made a serious
mistake: thinking that opposition would be strongest in the Lords, and
that his young lieutenants Grafton and Shelburne were too raw to face
it, he became Earl of Chatham. This shocked the nation, which had
thought him above titles and misread his motive, while it left nominal
leadership in the Commons to Conway, the bravest soldier of his time,
but a nervous and irresolute politician. It weakened Pitt's own
powers: through the Commons he could speak to England, in the Lords he
was caged. His own office, Lord Privy Seal, freed him from
departmental cares, and he made the Duke of Grafton take the post,
which was becoming traditional for the Prime Minister, of first Lord
of the Treasury.

For some months, though most of the Rockingham Whigs seceded in the
autumn, Chatham controlled his Ministry. It had to face a
Franco-Spanish alliance, hoping for a war of revenge; the regulation
of India, where a company aiming at profits was proving itself unable
to furnish good government; and American unwillingness to furnish
quarters for British troops. Before any solutions could be reached its
chances of success vanished with Cabinet unity in 1767, for Chatham
fell desperately ill. The strain of his labours during the war,
diffused gout, and tortured nerves, made him unable to see a colleague
and generally even to write a letter. The diverse elements in the
Cabinet began to break up, and the King, who had loyally supported
Chatham's attack on parties, reasserted gradually his personal
control. Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, saw his
Budget threatened by a Grenville-Rockingham alliance in the Commons,
which insisted on reducing the land tax, and he jumped at the
opportunity of getting a small revenue from American duties. When he
died in the autumn of 1767 Lord North, an able leader of the House and
a pliant tool of the King, succeeded him. The Ministry that had begun
as above "connections" became dominated by the newest connection of
all, that of George, while the Opposition, which was split into three
sections under Rockingham, Bedford and Grenville, could agree neither
on policy nor on the distribution of office should they drive out the
Government. The Bedford group finally allied with the Ministry, and in
1768 Chatham recovered enough to resign from a Cabinet that had ceased
to be his for more than a year.

It was under the leadership of Grafton, once Chatham's disciple, that
Parliament drifted into more and more open dispute with America, and
that the Wilkes affair reached its last folly, the annulment of the
Middlesex election. The Opposition grew steadily weaker, sapped by
individual desertions, for at this time, as Horace Walpole had written
on his fathers fall, "a good majority, like a good sum of money, soon
makes itself bigger." The King improved his technique of parliamentary
and borough management till he was the best electioneer in the
country, and his strong personality gave the law first to Grafton and
then to Grafton's successor, Lord North.

In the election of 1768 the price of boroughs soared higher than
before, for nabobs from India were now competing for seats. As usual,
the Ministry retained its majority, though it seemed threatened for a
time by the Wilkes agitation and by its own blunders. Over the
decision that Luttrell should sit for Middlesex, agitation in London
became greater than ever since Walpole's excise; petitions that it be
reversed poured in from the shires, and a Bill of Rights Society,
advocating annual parliaments and the exclusion of pensioners and
placemen, sprang up, the ancestor of organised radicalism and of
Chartist demands. Abroad there was a small crisis, for Genoa sold
Corsica, where chronic rebellion prevailed, to France, and Grafton,
unwilling either to disclaim all concern or to protest forcibly, sent
arms to the Corsicans and remonstrated feebly at Versailles, but
suffered the French annexation to pass unchallenged. _Junius_ poured
vitriol on King and Cabinet. America had united against Townshend's
duties, and the decision to repeal all of these but that on tea, made
in 1769 and carried out next year, though it lessened American
agitation did not stop it. A war with Spain threatened, for she had
expelled a British garrison from the Falkland Islands, and at first
seemed ready to stand by her action. As a further trouble to the
Ministry, Chatham in 1769 recovered his health and joined forces with
the Opposition.

The Ministry that had to face these troubles owned no real head and
was divided both on American policy and on the treatment of Wilkes.
Its chief, Grafton, was constantly outvoted in his own Cabinet.
Camden, the Lord Chancellor (formerly Pratt), shared his views, as did
Conway. North was becoming the King's mouthpiece: he was an acute
debater and good man of business, with tact and humour such that he
made few personal enemies even among his bitterest opponents, but he
was constitutionally behind the times; he thought it was the function
of a minister to be the King's servant rather than the King's adviser,
and he bowed to the royal judgment on both men and measures. Against
this Government stood, for a time, an Opposition that disagreed on
American taxation, but was united in condemning the annulment of the
Middlesex election. Temple and George Grenville were in harmony,
Chatham joined them, and since Newcastle, whose desertion in 1761 he
had never forgiven, had died in 1768, a personal barrier no longer cut
him off from the Rockinghams. A general attack on the Government was
launched in January, 1770, and revealed the Cabinet dissensions:
Camden turned on his colleagues and was dismissed, Grafton resigned,
and others followed him. North became Prime Minister, but it seemed
doubtful that he could survive an attack led by Chatham and backed by
the popularity of Wilkes.

Yet North was to remain Prime Minister for twelve years. It is often
assumed that his tenure of office depended on the "King's Friends,"
the royal party begun by Bute, now led by Jenkinson, and composed of
men who looked direct to the Court for instructions, and on whose
votes no minister who was opposing George's will could count. But this
party was always a small minority in the House, able, if the
Opposition were already strong, to pull a Government down, but quite
incapable of maintaining one by itself. Wider support came from the
numerous members who belonged to no regular connection, but in tiny
groups of three or four tended to vote for any Ministry that seemed
reasonably permanent, and so to dip for themselves and their friends
into the rich treasury of patronage. With these, the Bedford
following, and the King's Friends, North had a legion, against which
all but the strongest attack must beat in vain. The Opposition scored
one success in 1770, when Grenville carried a bill transferring the
decision on disputed elections from the whole House to committees of
fifteen, who were sworn to decide on the evidence, and to ignore the
affiliations of each candidate. That done, it fell to pieces and the
Government majority steadily increased.

There were several reasons for this unexpected success. Gradually
America took the place of Wilkes as the chief ground for attack on the
Ministry, and the American cause was popular neither in Parliament nor
in the country. Parliament would not admit that it was not sovereign
over the whole Empire, and the colonies seemed to the ordinary man to
be claiming that they should pay nothing towards a war fought largely
in their interest, and nothing towards their own defence; that they
should be entitled to break the law by wholesale smuggling and
organised riot, and to have all the advantages of a British
connection with none of its burdens. But the chief weakness of the
Opposition was internal. On America they could not agree: the
Grenvilles thought taxation both legal and expedient; the Rockinghams
held it legal but inexpedient; Chatham maintained that any taxation
not incidental to the regulation of imperial trade ran counter to the
Constitution. When George Grenville died at the end of 1770 several of
his followers went over to North. Above all, the popular feeling in
the country was never used so as to bring success; the Ministry was
safe against anything but a national outcry, and that never came.

Opposition and Government were both chiefly drawn from an oligarchy
that kept its eyes turned backward to the last two generations, and
could neither understand the present nor guess at the future. A
growing middle class was inventing, building, trading; its economic
power grew stronger year by year, yet in politics it had no regular
place, nor could it be moved to active interest in what it considered
a mere battle of cliques. Brindley had cut a canal, Wedgwood had set
up his pottery, Hargreaves invented his Jenny, and Watt his
steam-engine;--these were to make the struggle between George and the
Whigs seem battles of kites and crows, while the England for which
they fought was changing her shape and taking her own course. George
conned the division lists, Rockingham was earnest that the Government
must be opposed only in Parliament and with moderation and restraint;
neither saw the change that would make victory for either impossible;
neither looked beyond the class that to both seemed the nation. "The
generality of people," wrote Burke, "are fifty years, at least,
behindhand in their politicks," and this was as true of his own party
as of his opponents. Chatham, whom each year was making more radical,
had some feeling of what was coming, and if well supported might have
made the middle classes more vocal, and have marched at their head to
such a reform of the electoral system as would have crippled George's
power. But he was too infirm and too isolated to do this by himself,
and the Rockinghams would have none of it. They were Conservatives,
mistrustful both of popular agitation and of royal influence; they
offered nothing to the nation, and would fight only with weapons
against which the Government was triple-proofed. An agitation for
parliamentary reform that would win the trading and manufacturing
interests in the nation might have succeeded, but the Whigs held to
the principles of 1688, which were not threatened, and discouraged
methods and aims that would lessen the ascendancy of their class.

Save for Chatham, nearly all the figures prominent under George II had
now gone into retirement or the grave. With them had vanished the
strength of the old connections, and a stream of individual desertion
to the Ministry set in. The nation had little reason to believe that a
Government other than North's would show much more ability or much
more vigour than his, and it would almost certainly be less united.
Whatever North's blunders in American policy and in the war that was
drawing nearer, his handling of several other problems showed fair
statesmanship. In 1771 he took a firm line on Spain's action in the
Falklands, and secured its disavowal. In 1773, by his Regulating Act,
ultimate control in India was transferred from the Company to the
Crown, and some of the worst abuses of trading rule were abolished.
Next year the Quebec Act gave Canada a constitution on lines approved
by the majority of those who had studied the problem dispassionately:
freedom of worship, French civil law, and a nominated legislature;
the Whigs denounced a measure that withheld English institutions from
a French population that did not desire them. No further attack was
made on Wilkes, and the Government rode on supreme until an
unsuccessful war brought North down, as it would have brought down any
other Ministry of whatever complexion.




                             CHAPTER VII

                               AMERICA


The American Revolution had deep roots in social, political and
economic facts visible before ever the House of Hanover mounted the
throne. Of the thirteen colonies all but Georgia were
seventeenth-century creations, founded when religion and politics were
in England still closely tangled, and before Parliament's supremacy
had been assured. Though North and South differed widely, both
preserved the ideas of their birth, diverging more and more from
eighteenth-century England, for no great waves of emigration came to
harmonise the axioms of each country. Education in America kept a
legal tinge that it had lost at home, and political argument in New
England wore a theological dress largely discarded, since 1688, by
Britain. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, conducting an
active proselytising campaign, found itself hampered by the lack of an
American Episcopate, which forced all ordinands into a long voyage to
England, but its suggestions for a local bishop were denounced in the
northern colonies as if Laud still ruled the Church. America grew in
men and wealth, but for long retained some characteristics of a
frontier society: great individual enterprise, intense particularism,
a feeling that the public will can legitimately act outside and above
the law. The average colonial was better educated in public affairs
than his English fellow, but he had a different background, for
England thought of politics in terms of parliamentary discussion, and
Massachusetts in terms of direct democracy and town meeting. This made
in New England for intensity, parochialism, simplification of
difficult issues into catchwords, and intolerance of opposition.

The political system of the colonies reproduced English conditions of
the previous century. In Britain the constitution had moved far
towards parliamentary government, but in America, where assemblies
were more democratic than the House of Commons, there had been much
less change in their ideas and position. It was their business, as it
had once been Parliament's, to obstruct the executive rather than to
control it. The Governor, who in most colonies was appointed by
Britain, was theoretically subject to Whitehall, tied by his
instructions, but dependent for his salary on annual votes of an
assembly with much power but little responsibility. With tact he might
get some of his recommendations carried out, but his views were often
suspect as coming from outside, not arising from the colony's own
needs. If he were pliant he might be recalled; if he resisted, he
might be starved into submission. Friction was the normal state of any
colonial Government, for the device of setting up a local cabinet
responsible to the Assembly had not yet been discovered, and would
have involved a partial abdication of parliamentary sovereignty, too
recently established in Britain to be parted with lightly. England
conceived of colonial government as subordinate and municipal in
nature, subject to Parliament's supervision: Americans thought their
assemblies as supreme in their own spheres as the legislature of Great
Britain.

There was no American Government that could speak for or bind America
as a whole. The lack of it had been disastrous in war, enabling 70,000
French in Canada to resist over a million British, and was later, by
throwing on Britain the responsibility for American defence, to ruin a
polity built on the superficial maxim _divide et impera_. In 1754,
when hostilities threatened, the weakness of division became
apparent, and an inter-colonial congress at Albany recommended the
union of eleven provinces in a Grand Council, its members chosen by
the different assemblies. It would have been a loose confederation, it
was supported by the best American opinion of the day, but it proved
too much for the prejudices of the colonies: they rejected the plan
which never reached Parliament. Of American as opposed to Virginian or
Massachusetts patriotism there was little till the Revolutionary War
forged its beginnings. More than once boundary disputes brought open
hostilities between neighbours, and even after 1770 observers
predicted that any shattering of the British connection would be
followed by a struggle for supremacy between state and state.

For England the colonies had some affection, for Englishmen other than
Pitt, who had stirred their imagination, very little. Such personal
contacts as there were did not make for love. Governors, trying to
uphold their waning authority; officials, jobbed by their connections
into posts for which they had no competence; officers, who might be
right in their criticism of poorly disciplined colonial militia, but
who themselves wasted thousands of lives by refusing to try new
methods in forest warfare;--such were the Englishmen oftenest seen.
No British statesman of the first rank had crossed the Atlantic. By
most Englishmen the colonials were considered subordinates rather than
equals, an unconscious attitude that stirred resentment, and that in
many Americans roused an inferiority complex which increased their
assertiveness. When an American visited England, he was genuinely
shocked by the extravagance and corruption of political society, and
he inclined to the belief, always popular in western communities, that
the east was decadent.

These causes for disagreement might have been overcome but for a
system of trade regulation so rooted in British economic theory that
even Adam Smith never abandoned it completely. Mercantilism, as it is
called, sprang from war conditions, and was the natural creed of an
age when war was nearly as common as peace. Its ideas were simple, its
applications various, and every European state with dependent colonies
held its main tenets. The difference, indeed, between the British and
other empires was that Britain gave her settlements a triad of
liberties unknown elsewhere--trial by jury, Habeas Corpus, and
representative institutions--not that she bound them tighter than did
France or Spain. Over commerce she, like they, retained control and
aimed at making her dominions self-contained, and at confining their
internal trade to British subjects. To achieve these simple ends an
elaborate code had been reared, which in one part of the Empire failed
to meet the hard facts of climate and population.

That part was the northern colonies. Britain could draw Oriental
products from India; rum, sugar and chocolate from the West Indies;
cotton and rice from the Carolinas; tobacco from Virginia; she could
give these regions a monopoly of her market and so largely atone for
any restrictions on their commerce. With the middle colonies and New
England things were not so easy. England herself produced articles
like theirs, save for timber and furs. Exports such as these could not
satisfy an agricultural and trading population who were steadily
driving the game further back, and who in clearing their fields were
felling the tall pines that the navy wished to reserve for future
masts. England wanted no farm products from America and dreaded
colonial competition in manufacture. So the idea had grown that she
must give naval protection, necessary and real in the eighteenth
century, should assist in land defence, though the chief burden of
this would remain colonial, and in return might prohibit such local
industries as she thought dangerous to her supremacy. She paid
bounties on some products and forbade others: the export of hats even
from one colony to another was made illegal in 1732, the manufacture
of steel in 1750. One chief weakness in the system was that Britain
was judge in her own cause, and decided which colonial manufactures
must be checked, which encouraged. The age was highly commercial in
spirit--more so than the next century--and British traders had far
more influence in Parliament than any colony.

Under the Navigation Acts no colonial products could be carried to any
part of the Empire save in ships Empire-built, Empire-owned, and
Empire-manned, and certain "enumerated" articles--the list changed
often--must, if carried to Europe, be landed in Great Britain or
Ireland. American shipping grew under the protection of this code, but
neglected the limits set to its activities. A long coast-line with
infrequent customs officers encouraged smuggling, so much that at one
time the revenue collected in America produced only a fourth of the
cost of collection. Even through the Seven Years' War trade with the
French West Indies went on briskly; it retarded victory and made naval
and military officers feel, with many Americans, that the ship-owners
of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania had no thought but for dollars.
Revision of the revenue machinery was overdue, and had been postponed
by the war: when peace came Grenville took it up, and decided to use
the navy, which had been called in against this contraband trade, to
help stop smuggling: he extended the Admiralty Courts in America,
increased the "enumerated articles," and imposed new duties on sugar.

These measures offended a strong American smuggling interest, but they
were in accordance with theories long accepted, and could not be
denounced as a new departure. But Grenville's Stamp Act of 1765 raised
a different question: could Britain levy money from her colonies for
their own military protection? His plan seemed to the ordinary British
politician reasonable and fair. The French war was barely over when
the widest Indian rising ever seen had been organised by Pontiac,
nearly all posts in the back country had fallen, and but for British
troops havoc might have spread far into the settlements. It seemed
that, even with Canada in her hands, Britain must still organise
colonial defence or there would be none worth the name. A standing
army of 10,000 men was planned, at a cost of over 300,000 a year,
and, to provide a little more than one-third of this sum, stamp
duties, long used in Britain, were to be imposed on newspapers and
legal documents; about half their yield would come from the West
Indies, but all and more would be spent in America. A year's warning
of the suggested tax had been given, and no alternative method of
paying for their protection had been suggested by the colonies.

There had been warnings enough in the last half-century that such a
measure would rouse opposition, and now resistance gathered at once.
The American Whigs did not hold, with the Whigs in England, that
Parliament was sovereign; like many seventeenth-century Englishmen
they thought of it as bound by a compact violated by this Act. Many
argued, as Pitt did in England, that Parliament could levy "external"
or indirect taxation, but that it could not tax the colonies
"internally" or directly. Pontiac's war was now over and the standing
army seemed unnecessary. To British eyes the money involved was
trifling, to American large, for colonial budgets were almost
incredibly small, and taxation much lighter than in Europe. The
colonies suspected a conspiracy against their liberties in what was
only a rather pedantic design for economy and organisation. Nine of
them drew together in a Congress at New York, and learnt the
beginnings of co-operation, while crowds tasted the joys of unpunished
riot. The Act could not be enforced, and was repealed next year: since
Parliament in debating it had followed its usual practice of refusing
to hear petitions against revenue Bills from interested parties, and
had rejected American protests, this seemed a victory mainly won by
force. The tax had led to a denial of Parliament's supremacy that
could not permanently stop at the condemnation of "internal" taxation,
and it had forced Parliament and the colonies to consider the nature
of the imperial tie and its defects. If statesmanship is largely the
co-ordination of means to ends, of effort to result, if one of its
aims is to promote reason and discourage passion, Grenville's measure
stands condemned, for it had angered both Parliament and the colonies,
and had raised a storm out of all proportion to any benefits that it
might bring. America had found a weapon in organised boycott of
British goods, and had shown that the colonial executives were
powerless to stop mob outrage.

To strengthen the governors, to meet the objection to "internal"
taxation by Parliament, Townshend in 1767 imposed his customs duties.
They were the smaller part of a general economy design, of which the
more important was thought to be the withdrawal of troops from the
posts in the unsettled west: duties were to be levied at the ports on
glass, paints, paper and tea, and their proceeds devoted to paying the
salaries of judges and governors. This would free these men in part
from assembly control. The purpose of the taxes, and the fact that
they were imposed not for trade regulation but for revenue, set the
fire ablaze again, and started the cry "no taxation without
representation." The boycott of British goods revived, riots impeded
customs officers even from executing laws of long standing, and a few
New Englanders, seeing that there was no logical stopping place
between parliamentary sovereignty and full separation, began secretly
to work for independence. It became impossible to bring a civil action
in a Massachusetts court, and even judges were tarred and feathered
when they found for Crown officials or criticised American claims.
While lynch law grew during the next two years, Townshend's duties
produced less than 16,000 and brought military expenditure of
170,000.

The decision to repeal all the duties save that on tea was made in the
summer of 1769 and carried out in 1770. Repeal did much to lessen
disturbances, but came too late to stop a collision in Boston, where
some troops were stung into firing on a crowd that attacked them. The
tea duty was kept on merely to assert a principle proved barren: to
resist this principle, not because of any real oppression, American
agitation went on. Old arrangements, such as the presence of British
troops, were now denounced. The repeal of the duties quieted New York
and the south, but roused the advanced party in Massachusetts to
further exertions: in December, 1773, a party of disguised Bostonians
destroyed three cargoes of tea. This safe achievement was hailed by
extremists as a great victory for liberty, while to England it seemed
an unpardonable violation of private property.

This "tea-party" gave the British Government a chance of success, for
it made many Americans feel that Boston had gone too far, and must
make good the damage. But the Ministry were more angered than
perturbed; they did not realise how deep lay the resentment of
parliamentary claims, and they thought that strong measures with a
mere show of force would crush opposition. So far British policy had
been foolish, clinging to a threepenny duty on tea as if the empire
hung by it, but no impartial observer could label it tyrannous. Now
in response to organised outrage Parliament struck at American
liberties, passed an Act closing the port of Boston, revised the
charter of Massachusetts, and allowed capital offences to be tried in
Britain if a fair hearing seemed impossible in the colony. It was
these measures that caused the war. American feeling swung back again
on seeing such penalties inflicted for the action of a few citizens.
Twelve colonies met in the Continental Congress during the autumn of
1774 and asked for the restoration of all rights infringed since 1763.

This negative policy, which Burke supported in two famous speeches
during 1774 and 1775, would have eased but not solved the problem.
Congress showed clearly that it would not long rest content under the
existing commercial code, and the colonies, if they were to remain
willingly inside the empire, must have full political and fiscal
autonomy. Even so the troubles of American disunion would remain, and
might again lead Parliament into unpopular courses. Two plans reaching
deeper than Burke's were put forward in America and England. Galloway,
a Pennsylvania loyalist, tried to carry through Congress a scheme for
American federation in a central Council, with powers to tax and
legislate subject to revision by Parliament, the Council itself to be
able to veto any British proposals touching the colonies: Congress
rejected his suggestion by one vote. The second plan was Chatham's,
and was prompted by Benjamin Franklin. In February, 1775, Chatham
introduced a Bill to recognise Congress as an American parliament, to
abandon all British claims to levy taxation that was not incidental to
trade regulation, and to throw on Congress the responsibility of
military defence. He was too radical for British sentiment, and this,
the last chance of peace, and probably already too late, died after a
single reading in the Lords.

A sudden dissolution in the autumn of 1774 had renewed North's
majority. Though war was every day drawing nearer, he and his advisers
rated its chances so low that they reduced naval strength from 20,000
men to 16,000, and fixed the army at 17,547 effectives, besides 15,000
in Ireland and 6,000 to garrison Gibraltar and Minorca. George III,
had he been a Machiavel aiming at the destruction of British
liberties, would have taken the chance of playing off America against
England, Congress against Parliament; but he held the view of an
ordinary Englishman, that the Americans were unruly and unreasonable
but not to be feared. The garrison of Boston was increased, while
elsewhere the patriots, or American Whigs, were busy establishing
their ascendancy, terrorising Loyalists or Tories, driving out
officials, and building a kind of government by revolutionary
committees. Rhode Islanders seized forty guns, New Hampshire a fort,
and for months before the first skirmish a state of war virtually
existed in the northern colonies. American feeling was changing fast
towards the repudiation of all parliamentary control, not merely of
taxation, and to the assertion that the sole bond of Empire was in the
Crown. Once convinced that none rated Parliament's claims higher than
did George III, it was an easy step to the proclamation of
independence.

Bloodshed came in April, 1775, and with it open war. A double American
offensive was made against the British in Boston and into Canada.
Boston was gradually beleaguered till in 1776 it became untenable and
was evacuated by Howe: the Canadian invasion promised well, for
Carleton, who governed there, had sent all his troops but 850 to
Boston, but he held Quebec through the winter, and when reinforced
next year drove the badly disciplined invaders back in ruin. Both
sides learned that victory would not be swift; feeling hardened in
each country, and Congress in 1776 took the inevitable step of
proclaiming the British connection at an end.

Had America been strongly united for independence the war must have
ended quickly with her success. Her population was now between two and
three million, and though England had nearly three times her numbers,
she could not maintain more than some fifty thousand men in a field of
war three thousand miles away, nor could she develop that force at
once. With her fleet she could ruin American sea commerce and raid
small ports, with her army she might hold one or two colonies, but
American life was not so highly organised that the capture of a few
towns would bring it to a standstill, and the country could not be
starved. But America was not unanimous, and in that fact lay any
British chance of success. About a third of her citizens were prepared
by 1775 for active resistance; about a fifth, Loyalists or Tories,
clung to the British connection. It was not that they liked
Parliament's actions, but with Burke they believed them legal though
inexpedient, and they were not prepared to destroy the Empire because
Parliament had been unwise. Since they looked for leadership to the
colonial executives, and these were powerless or inert, most Loyalists
were harried into silence or exile before the war opened, yet they
raised over 30,000 troops for the British cause, and when peace came
40,000 of them migrated north, gave Canada an English-speaking
population and founded the colony of New Brunswick. The rest of the
people in the colonies, nearly half of the whole, took as little share
in the war as they could, and sold their products indiscriminately to
either army, but gradually, as the war became more and more national,
and American feeling rose against the British through their customary
use of German troops, they threw in their lot with their neighbours.

The British attempt to hold Massachusetts had failed against an
insurgent population and it was resolved to move the war south, since
New York and Pennsylvania were more divided in sentiment than New
England. Howe offered peace and pardon on submission, which was
naturally refused; he took New York in September, 1776, and made it
the British base till the end of the war. With energy he might twice
have destroyed Washington's army, but though he won several victories,
he never pursued them hard, hoping, apparently, that his offers of
amnesty would bear fruit.

The design for 1777 was to capture and hold the line of the Hudson
river, Burgoyne marching from Canada, Howe from New York; thus New
England would be severed from the other colonies and the war might be
trampled out in the south. This strategy had been determined in
London, where George III and Lord George Germain (formerly Sackville)
drew the plans; but they allowed Howe to attack Philadelphia first. He
took it, but left Burgoyne unsupported, with the result that his army
was surrounded and forced to surrender at Saratoga in October. So far
nearly every engagement had been a British victory, but this defeat
atoned for all, raised American flagging hopes, and in a few months
brought France, eager for revenge, into the war.

With French intervention in March, 1778, the chance of Britain's
success was almost gone, for her communications were now threatened.
Hopes that Chatham would join the Government and again bring victory
were defeated by George's opposition, and Chatham in any case was too
old: he died in May. North offered the colonies conciliation:
abandonment of all taxes save for the regulation of trade, and
politically anything short of independence. Three years earlier this
would have stopped war; now it was too late. North himself, who had
never liked coercion, tried again and again to resign, but George
would not part with him. The Opposition, where Charles Fox was
becoming prominent, demanded peace, but the unprovoked French attack
had roused public feeling to strong support of the war.

French intervention at once hampered British strategy, and forced the
evacuation of Philadelphia through danger to Howe's communications by
sea. The war became largely maritime: France had built a new navy
since 1763, while the British fleet had been inefficiently maintained
and was rotted by corruption. An attempt was made to reduce the
southern colonies where the Loyalists were believed to be half the
population. It was largely successful, for Georgia and South Carolina
were overrun, but the Loyalists there had been left unaided too long
to be able now to hold these colonies by themselves. Spain joined
France and the revolting colonies in 1779, and put Britain in a
definite minority at sea: the allied fleets rode the Channel
unquestioned in that year and threatened a landing on the south coast.

Despite foreign help, it still seemed possible that America might tire
of the war. Washington's army of regulars fought well but was
ill-found, Congress was riven by personal jealousies, the militia of
the different colonies proved undisciplined and untrustworthy. Even
though British reinforcements had to be deflected to the West Indies,
where France spent her main effort, there was little hope of
Washington capturing New York, and British successes in the south were
for a time continuous. But by 1780 Britain, like America, was growing
weary and coming rapidly to the view that her strength depended on
commerce and fleet, not on oversea possessions. The Opposition gained
strength and demanded an economical reform that would weaken the
Government's power to buy a majority; some even preached annual
elections, manhood suffrage, and redistribution. An Act to repeal some
of the Catholic disabilities in England stirred riots under the cry of
"No popery," and for three days, till the soldiers were called out,
London was in the hands of a mob. France threw 5000 troops into
America, and Holland joined the coalition against Britain. A single
decisive success either way might finish a struggle in which both
sides were weakening.

It was the French fleet that brought the end in sight. Cornwallis
moved up from the south and after hard fighting occupied Yorktown,
where as long as Britain commanded the sea he was secure. Two French
squadrons and a Franco-American army surrounded him and forced his
surrender. There seemed little use in prolonging the struggle. Though
Britain had repelled a Spanish attack on Gibraltar, she had lost
Florida to Spain and would soon lose Minorca, her dominion in India
was threatened, and France and Spain seemed on the verge of capturing
every British possession in the West Indies. Public opinion became
strong for peace; North's majority in Parliament, apparently untouched
by an election in 1780, fell rapidly, and in March, 1782, he resigned.
With him vanished much of George III's power, for he could never again
find a minister who combined North's pliancy with his parliamentary
skill.

A last success came just before peace negotiations were opened, when
Rodney defeated a French fleet that was intended to convoy an army to
the conquest of Jamaica. Britain had been fighting everywhere against
superior numbers for three years, almost entirely on the defensive.
Her leadership had been bad, for she had scattered her forces in an
attempt to cover every part of a vulnerable empire, instead of
concentrating on essentials and there making a vigorous attack. There
had been brilliant feats, but a low sense of public duty and party
animosities had hampered her almost as if Pitt had never breathed a
new spirit into both services. George and his instruments, in fact,
had shown themselves no better than Newcastle at waging war.

The new Government was a coalition under Rockingham, of his party and
Chatham's followers led by Shelburne, and between its two sections
there was little sympathy. The Rockinghams had given up America for
lost early in the war, the Chathamites more reluctantly, and personal
differences separated the two wings. Fox, who had begun parliamentary
life as a follower of North, had been foremost in Opposition since
1774, and had recently joined the Rockingham section, though his own
views never fully tallied with the aristocratic Whig creed. Shelburne,
like him, was more radical than the old Whigs, but was separated from
Fox by a family quarrel, personal dislike and the marked preference
for him of George III.

Fox became Secretary for foreign, Shelburne for home, Irish and
colonial affairs, and a breach between the two opened at once. Peace
had to be made with France, Spain, Holland and America: the first
three were in Fox's department, the last, till American independence
was recognised, in Shelburne's. This prevented the centralisation of
negotiations in one hand, and made the peace less favourable to
Britain than it need have been. In July, 1782, before its details had
been arranged, Rockingham died, Shelburne became head of the
Government, and Fox resigned. Peace was concluded with American
independence and the cession of Minorca and Florida to Spain, Tobago
and some African posts to France. Franklin, the American negotiator,
asked for the surrender of Canada, but at that Shelburne balked, and a
northern frontier for the independent colonies was vaguely drawn.

So England lost the greater part of her first empire, after a hard
struggle of which she had little reason to be proud. But she had
virtually lost it before the war began, and even had she conquered,
any peace must have recognised in Congress the central organ of the
colonies, and must have transferred to it, at latest in a few years,
such powers as Parliament had itself tried to exercise. The
alternative to this was to govern America by force, which North
neither intended nor desired. The best friends of the empire in
America had been driven into exile, scattered, or silenced, before the
end of 1775, and they could never have made their way back into
political control: the cry of independence would probably have been
raised again when Britain found herself next in difficulties. That the
Revolution came as it did is deplorable, for it left behind it
animosity, a legend of British tyranny defeated, and distrust on
either side. But that separation would have come sooner or later is
probable, for its chief cause was an unconscious feeling of American
nationality, that needed political expression, and could hardly be
satisfied within an empire ruled on commercial principles. Peaceful
separation would have been better than war, and might by early
concessions have been postponed for some years, but not indefinitely
unless both countries went through a revolution of opinion. The
analogy of the modern Empire hardly holds, for it is more agreed on
political fundamentals than were America and Britain in the eighteenth
century.

George III and North have been regarded as conspirators against
freedom who were personally responsible for the disaster. Their worst
mistakes were made before 1775, and it is doubtful if any Government,
in the existing state of British opinion, could have avoided all of
them. The Ministry could not resign the claim of British sovereignty
on the first news of American riot, nor could it desert its agents and
supporters in the colonies. The chief weakness of the Government was
that it, like the nation, willed the end but not the means: wished to
maintain parliamentary supremacy without paying for it in money or in
adequate force. The Boston tea-party could have been more tactfully
dealt with, but there had been grave provocation, and once the penal
acts were passed no Government could have repealed them on the mere
threat of resistance, and still endured. Peaceful separation was at
the moment impossible; Britain had to fight for the empire once it
came to a choice between war and surrender.

Those who regret separation should remember two things. First, that
George III and George Washington liberated Britain as well as America.
Inside the Empire the colonies would have grown nearly as fast as they
did outside, the balance of power would have shifted across the
Atlantic, and the elasticity that the constitution was to reveal in
the nineteenth century, which kept Britain from revolution, would have
been harder to discover with America fast becoming a predominant
partner. Secondly, if the old empire had endured, most of the new
could never have been founded. The loss of the American colonies
brought two problems to the front: where to compensate the Loyalists,
and what to do with convicted felons, of whom some 50,000 had been
dumped during the last sixty years in the southern plantations.
Canada offered a home for most of the first, who unless impelled by
defeat would never have left their southern homes to become pioneers
of colonisation, and Cook's discoveries were used in a few years to
house the second. From the settlement of Australia sprang fifty years
later the annexation of New Zealand; both owe their origin to the
American Revolution. There are many things in that Revolution to
regret, but loss of territory is not one of them, for British man
power was insufficient to people both North America and the Antipodes.
The new empire was to be more scattered than the old, and for long
apparently weaker, but it expressed a higher degree of political
agreement; it had no roots in seventeenth-century struggles over
Church and State, and its political development has been flexible
largely because it was built on the thesis resisted by America, the
sovereignty of Parliament.




                             CHAPTER VIII

                             PITT AND FOX


Between 1780 and 1784 British politics passed through a time of
confusion and uncertainty, from which emerged at length two parties,
the ancestors of those that dominated the nineteenth century. Before
the new division was clear five Governments had succeeded each other
in less than two years. There were in 1780 four chief groups in
Parliament: the King's, Lord North's, the old Whigs under Rockingham,
and the Chathamites: North's Ministry was built on the first two. Its
opponents seemed likely to triumph early in the year, for against the
Government they bore through its first stages a bill to exclude state
contractors from the Commons, and another, drafted by Burke, to reduce
the civil establishment and therefore the places in the royal gift;
while in April they carried a resolution "that the influence of the
Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." A
rising cry through the country for shorter Parliaments and
redistribution might, some thought, be organised by a united
Opposition to bring them into power and let them end the war.

Disagreement hampered their attacks. The Rockingham party was
conservative save for one aim; it wished to limit the royal power but
shrank from the most effective way of doing so, parliamentary reform.
With them went Fox, the best debater in the Commons, more radical than
his Whig colleagues but cut from the Chathamites, whose views he
generally shared, by personal dislike. Their leader, Shelburne,
perhaps the ablest practical thinker of the time, believed in free
trade and reform both of the public offices and of the Commons: he was
too advanced for Rockingham, and left an impression of treachery on
all but a few intimates. Defeat in America brought the two sections
into uneasy union, but their quarrels soon drove them apart again, let
the King regain much of his influence, and, since the French
Revolution was in a few years to give new life to the established
order, postponed parliamentary reform till 1832.

North fell, Rockingham died after three months in office, Shelburne
became Prime Minister, and Fox led most of the old Whigs into
secession. Fox linked himself with North in a famous coalition, turned
out Shelburne early in 1783, and was himself turned out next December
by George, and replaced by a combination of the royal party with the
remnants of Chatham's followers under Chatham's son. All these changes
were made during the life of the Parliament elected in 1780. They show
how independent were members, how slack party bonds, for each of the
five Governments in turn had a majority.

The Rockingham Ministry began negotiations for peace, but its chief
achievement was Burke's economic reform. This limited the royal
control of expenditure, set a limit to pensions, and abolished many
offices: its most important part was the order it set for charges on
the Civil List. Salaries, other than those of judges, ambassadors, and
menials, were placed low to stop the creation of rich sinecures, while
those of Treasury officials were put last of all to give their
recipients a personal interest in economy. It was made harder than
before for the King to exceed his income, and the principle of
Commons' control was established. Thus began a reform continued
intermittently until in Victoria's reign complete parliamentary
supervision of expenditure was set up. Burke's Act saved only about
72,000 a year, and left most vested interests untouched, but it
stopped the public service from becoming more and more a milch cow for
men with political influence, and it considerably hampered royal
patronage. At the same time internal reform of the departments was
begun. They were in an abominable state: during the last months of the
war underlings promptly sold Government decisions to the enemy, while
a stockbroker stood by in the Treasury, to make immediate use on the
Exchange of any intelligence that might arrive. Shelburne, first as
Home Secretary, then as Prime Minister, warred on such abuses and so
made for himself many enemies.

Shelburne completed the peace preliminaries, getting good terms from
France and Spain, less good in America than the military situation
made necessary. He fell in February 1783, after trying to draw either
North's followers or Fox to his support. Fox had been loud in his
denunciations of North during the war, though the two remained
friendly in private. Now they joined forces in an ill-starred
coalition that is commonly alleged to have hurt the public conscience
and that made George very angry indeed.

The reasons for their junction were simple. North had held it his
duty to take orders from the King, and to carry on a policy he himself
disliked; that policy had failed and his views changed. "The
appearance of power is all that a King of this country can have," he
wrote to Fox: he wished to show himself more than a mere royal tool,
and since George would have none of him after his resignation, his
only hope of office was to build a party strong enough to defy the
Court. Fox wished above all to oppose royal power; he thought,
mistakenly, that Shelburne might, if given time to strengthen his
Government, prove as pliant and hard to dislodge as North had been; he
knew that he himself was hated by George, who would only employ him if
compelled to do so by a large majority in the Commons: such a majority
he and North possessed between them. Their alliance is said to have
shocked the nation, but it is hard to believe that England had
suddenly become so squeamish. It annoyed some Whigs, such as Richmond,
who had hoped himself to succeed Rockingham, and never forgave Fox for
not pressing his claims; it alienated the Chathamites, who looked for
a union with Fox's party that was impossible after Fox's treatment of
Shelburne, and it deeply angered the Court. If the country thought
that Fox had abandoned his views it was misled, for he had merely
borrowed North's party for his own policy, as the elder Pitt borrowed
Newcastle's in 1757. That coalition succeeded, this failed and is
condemned; it may have been a mistake but was in no way immoral.

For nearly six weeks after Shelburne's resignation George made frantic
attempts to form a Government that should not include Fox, and when he
at last surrendered, he obstructed his new ministers by every possible
means: would make no peers on their advice and let all men know that
he disliked them. Such an attitude taken by a King as stubborn and
unscrupulous as George was certain in time to destroy the Ministry,
and did so in December. The government of British India admittedly
needed reform. Fox and Burke designed a Bill which put the Company
under a Commission of seven men named by Parliament, who were to have
full control of patronage and policy: after four years the Crown was
to appoint these Commissioners; a Council of Directors chosen by
Parliament from the Company's larger shareholders was to manage trade
and property. The theme of the Bill, that the government of India was
Parliament's concern, was later fully adopted, but since the proposed
Commissioners were all supporters of the Ministry, the Opposition saw
in the plan an attempt to set up a huge mass of patronage with which
to buy support. On this ground, and not because the Bill did not meet
the worst abuses of the past, criticism in Parliament fastened. The
Company was thoroughly alarmed and raised a cry of spoliation, while
other corporate bodies took fright at a precedent of state control
that might later on extend to themselves. The Bill passed the Commons
by large majorities, but George let it be known that any peer who
voted for it in the Lords would be his enemy; it was beaten there,
George dismissed the Government and asked Pitt, whom he had already
approached in the spring, to form a Ministry. His action on the Lords
was probably unconstitutional, but on other points he was within his
rights as they were then understood.

For the next ten years British politics were a duel between Pitt and
Fox, two great men whose views were often alike, but whose characters
differed so widely as to make harmony between them impossible. Pitt
was only twenty-four when he took office, but very mature for his
years; he had been carefully trained by Chatham for public life and
had always more poise and restraint than his rival Fox, though Fox
was by ten years the older. Pitt was a consummate tactician in
Parliament, a better economist than nearly any of his contemporaries,
a reformer of administrative details, and at first, till years of
office dulled his zest, prepared for reform on a large scale. He never
shrank from responsibility, and gradually asserted his dominance over
a Cabinet that at the beginning was more the King's than his; he made
himself as indispensable to the nation as any man could, he trained a
school of young politicians who carried on the Government after his
death for more than twenty years, and he re-established the office of
Prime Minister, almost dormant since Walpole's time. He had, in an
even higher degree than his father, a fastidious sense of financial
honour, and under his Government corruption became steadily less. He
seemed almost the statesman incarnate, for he had few interests
outside office, and he could unbend only to two or three intimates or
with children.

Charles Fox was nearly his antithesis. His father, Lord Holland, had
done his best to spoil him as a boy, and had encouraged him to become
a gambler and a rake. Fox had the knack of throwing himself
energetically into whatever he did--racing, gaming, politics,
literature--and a greater capacity for hard work than those could
believe who only saw him at Newmarket or losing money at Brooks's
club. The British habit of judging a man's capacity for statecraft by
his private life was growing, and damaged Fox in the eyes of many,
especially of George III, who had none of Fox's vices and few of his
numerous virtues. In two short terms of office as Foreign Secretary,
Fox showed himself capable and sober, but without immediate
responsibility to steady him he leant to extremes. Till 1774, when he
broke with North's Government, he had been violent in its defence,
later he was equally violent against both North and his master. He was
a greater orator than Pitt and a worse tactician, and was frequently
out-manoeuvred by his rival. Pitt was a solitary soul, while Fox had a
genius for friendship, even with those who, like Dr. Johnson,
disagreed with him on nearly every issue. No man ever inspired warmer
love among his followers. He was less calculating than Pitt and had
wider interests, he could console himself for political failure with
the classics or his garden; as he grew older he shed his early
failings, but not his generosity nor his charm.

Fox was nearly always out of office, Pitt in, and had their positions
been reversed they might have left a different impression on history.
Pitt's defects were those of a minister, readiness to abandon an
unpopular cause, over-eagerness to retain his place, and in 1784, over
Fox's election for Westminster, an ungenerous desire to ruin his
opponent. The faults of Fox were those of Opposition, overstatement
and extravagance. Pitt reorganised the Government, led the nation in
the darkest days of the most desperate war it had ever fought, and
welded a new Tory party from the Court following, from the many Whigs
who joined him, from old Tory families who for seventy years had
shared little in office or titles, and from banking and commercial
interests. Fox guided the Whigs towards Liberalism, carried a remnant
of his party through the reaction of the French wars, and left it
aristocratic still, but no longer as narrow a clique as it had been.
Pitt's achievements can be weighed, Fox's are more imponderable. From
the rivalry of the two, British politics became again an affair of
parties more than of connections: each as a practical statesman stood
high above his followers, and each recognised greatness in the other.

Pitt took office as the leader of a minority, and since he was the
only member of the Cabinet who was not a peer, while the abilities of
the Opposition leaders far exceeded those of his own followers, he had
at the beginning to carry his Government almost single-handed. But he
knew that if he could keep his place for a few weeks a dissolution
would turn the scale. Even before the India Bill's defeat in the Lords
he had interviewed Robinson, manager of the last two elections, and
had learnt from him that Court influence and the expenditure of less
than 200,000 could assure a Ministry, if he formed one, of victory at
the polls. Fox eased his path by not demanding an immediate
dissolution before the Government's influence could be felt in the
boroughs; instead of forcing a prompt appeal to the country (then an
untried novelty), he obstructed the Ministry and relied on his union
with North to eject Pitt. North held firm, but his followers began to
desert, for they were uneasy in opposing a King whose orders they were
accustomed to obey. Before the end of March, 1784, the Opposition
majority had melted, the Government was ready, and a general election
shattered the Whigs. Pitt's name, a reaction in favour of the King,
the influence of the East India Company, and the usual methods of the
time, combined to give Pitt and George in alliance a decisive victory.

Had the political situation in the next years resembled that of 1765,
George might have found Pitt too strong for his liking, and have
worked for his downfall. Pitt kept off the King's strongest prejudices
though he was never a royal puppet, but his chief value in royal eyes
was that he was the only man who could stand against Fox, whom George
loathed both for his qualities and for his defects. The Hanoverian
family tradition had revived: there was again an heir at feud with his
father, and round him clustered a shadow Whig Government. This
accentuated the growing party division and really told against Fox,
for the Prince had all his father's self-will but none of his morals:
he won for the Whigs enmity from the Court, and no popularity in the
country. Pitt was from the beginning supreme in the Government, though
not for some years in Parliament: as late as 1788 the Commons were
said to contain 52 Pittites, 108 "independent or unconnected members,"
185 who would support any Government "not peculiarly unpopular," while
138, the largest party in the House, followed Fox. From the first
three groups there grew in the French Revolution the Tory party of
the nineteenth century, which was swelled beyond its natural strength
by the junction with it of the more conservative Whigs, led by
Portland and Burke, on the issue of war with France. Until this Whig
schism the death or prolonged insanity of George would have brought
Fox into power.

The years between 1784 and 1793 were a time of recovery from the war,
and of administrative and financial reform detailed rather than
sweeping. Manufactures developed apace, canals and good roads crept
through the country, and trade, which had suffered during the last two
years of war, grew so rapidly that the loss of the colonies seemed
almost a bagatelle. Hargreaves, Arkwright and Crompton had made
inventions that now came into general use and ruined the domestic
industry of spinning. Many country labourers, whose spindles had
supplemented their wages, were impoverished by the factories that
spread along Lancashire streams, and made the Irwell the hardest
worked river in the world, even though these factories might increase
the total wealth of the nation. The hand-loom weaver found a
short-lived prosperity as thread fell in price, until power-weaving in
turn drove him the same road as the hand-spinner. England became more
supreme in cotton manufacture than she had ever been in wool, once her
chief economic strength. To feed a growing population the movement to
enclosure accelerated, until open fields became the exception instead
of the practice.

Political change came more slowly than economic. From his father Pitt
had learnt to believe in parliamentary reform, and in 1782 he had
tried for it, supported by Fox, beaten by North and Rockingham. In
1785 he made another attempt His Bill would have disfranchised
thirty-six rotten boroughs, buying out their owners voluntarily for
1,000,000, and giving their members to the counties, to London, and
to Westminster; the county franchise was to be extended to copyholders
and the borough franchise to householders. The nation showed small
interest in his plan and the Commons rejected it by a large majority;
from then on Pitt dropped the subject. He showed more zeal in finance.
The debt had nearly doubled in the American War, for a smaller
proportion of the cost of that struggle than of any ever fought by
Britain had been met by increased taxation, and the country's credit
stood low. Pitt imposed new taxes, funded the floating liabilities,
reduced smuggling by lowering the duties on tea and spirits, and in
two years, helped by growing trade, made revenue equal expenditure. In
1786 he introduced a sinking fund scheme, which gave commissioners
1,000,000 a year with which to buy up Government stock. What they
bought was not to be cancelled, but to go on drawing interest with
which more debt should be purchased, and so the fund would mount up
until the magic of compound interest should put the whole debt, or a
great part of it, in the commissioners' hands. Either Pitt failed to
see that the dividends on stock, whether publicly or privately held,
were paid out of taxation, or he thought that the refusal to cancel
debt as it was acquired would keep the nation from realising how large
was its actual surplus, and so would weaken the demand for lower
taxes. Though it rested on the fallacy that there is a third way,
besides repudiation and saving, of wiping out national indebtedness,
his plan worked smoothly for a time, while peace swelled the revenue,
and before the commissioners had bought so much stock as to raise the
price of the rest against themselves. Pitt's mistake came later, when
to maintain the sinking fund he borrowed dear in war time, to buy in
debt that carried a much lower interest.

Pitt gave less attention to colonial possessions than his father had
shown, but past events forced a development of the imperial remnants.
The American Loyalists were voted money compensation for their losses,
and most of those who had left their homes settled in New Brunswick, a
part of Nova Scotia that was now made for them into a separate colony.
A few thousand migrated thence and from New York to the western parts
of Quebec, and in 1791 Canada was cut in two by an Act of Parliament,
on the idea that Upper Canada should be English-speaking, Lower Canada
mainly French. Each of these provinces received what had already been
given to New Brunswick and to Nova Scotia, a constitution of the
traditional type: three-decker legislatures of Royal Governor,
nominated Council, elected Assembly; but not self-government, for the
lesson that British officials had learnt from the American Revolution
was that colonial assemblies must be restrained in power and the
Governor kept independent of their control, not that they should be
made responsible for administration. Pamphleteers, who thought with
most Americans that Canada must in time merge with the former southern
colonies, urged that the Loyalists should be shipped to Australia,
whose eastern coast had recently been explored by Cook. At length, in
1787, the Government took up the plan of colonising the little-known
continent, not with Loyalists--it was too late for that--but with some
of the convicts who, through a harsh penal law, swarmed in British
prisons and hulks. So at Sydney began the British occupation of what
was later called "the fifth, or pickpocket, quarter of the globe;"
Australia was meant to be a reformatory and safety-valve, but there
were dim ideas that it might in time help British trade.

Pitt adopted a part of Fox's India Bill, in an Act that asserted the
Government's mastery over general policy, while it left patronage to
the Company: a system of divided control that lasted till 1858. The
national conscience was awakening, partly under Burke's guidance,
partly from the spread of Wesleyanism and humanitarian ideas, to the
view that the government of politically backward peoples was a trust
to be used in the interests of the governed. Little attempt was as yet
made to apply this doctrine to the Africans. Though a growing opinion
condemned the slave trade, and though Mansfield had already pronounced
that slavery was so contrary to natural law that any slave landed in
Britain was automatically freed, the shipping and plantation interests
were strong enough to preserve the traffic in black flesh from
parliamentary attack. Indian abuses were more closely felt, and none
could maintain about them, as many did about the slave trade, that
naval supremacy depended on their continuance. Warren Hastings
returned from Bengal in 1785, after an administration troubled by the
Company's demands for revenue, by underpaid officials who had to trade
and take bribes or starve, and by Councillors who thought opposition
to the Governor their chief duty. He had surmounted enormous
difficulties and had done his best for both India and Britain, but his
situation had forced him into some actions more in accordance with the
oriental tradition of government than with English ideas of law. Burke
demanded the prosecution of Hastings; the Whigs followed Burke, some
from conviction, some to embarrass the Government; the case for
Hastings was badly presented, and Pitt turned against him. In 1787 the
Commons resolved on an impeachment, which was begun in February 1788,
and lasted till 1795. It ended in Hastings' acquittal and
impoverishment: he had been made a victim of Parliament's earlier
neglect to reform an impossible system of government; he had
mitigated, but had been unable to destroy the iniquities that it bred.

In his Indian views Pitt was mainly guided by Burke, in his trade
measures he followed Adam Smith and his own earlier leader, Shelburne.
In 1787 he negotiated a commercial treaty with France, that increased
British exports, and that might have weakened a deep national enmity
had it not perished a few years later in the Revolution. In the same
year he simplified the tariff and amalgamated the customs and excise.
The old cumbrous method of voting specific revenues to meet the
interest on each loan was swept away and the Consolidated Fund set up.

Near the end of 1788 George III became insane, and a Government
hitherto successful suddenly tottered. The Prince of Wales must be
made regent. He hated Pitt, who had refused without the King's leave
to ask Parliament to pay his debts, and, though he had lied to Fox
over his secret marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert, a Roman Catholic
widow, he was close friends with the Opposition. Pitt out-generalled
Fox on the question whether Parliament could limit a regent's power,
but whatever bounds might be set to his authority, everyone knew that
the Prince's first act would be to change his Government. Fox once in
office would draw quite as strong support from the Commons as did
Pitt, but before the Regency Bill had passed the Lords, George
recovered and Pitt's ascendancy over him was henceforth stronger than
before.

Foreign relations were comparatively tranquil till 1791. France was
drifting from bankruptcy into revolution, and an attempt to make a
French party dominant in the Netherlands collapsed before British and
Prussian opposition. Joseph II, a reforming doctrinaire, in trying to
unite the Hapsburg dominions, drove them further asunder, and dowered
Austrian influence in Europe. Russia seemed to Pitt a coming danger,
and he was prepared in 1791 to stop her attack on Turkey by
intervention in alliance with Prussia, but the nation would not follow
him, and he was badly rebuffed. The French Revolution in its
beginnings strengthened Pitt's Government doubly, for it paralysed
French foreign policy and split the Opposition in Parliament. Fox
rejoiced at the outbreak, Burke denounced it, and the long friendship
of the two began to dissolve. A war threatened in 1790 with Spain, who
seized British ships off Vancouver Island, and claimed that the
western coast of America was hers by prior discovery, but her family
alliance with France broke down, and realising her impotence she gave
way. Early in 1792 Pitt told the Commons that there had never been a
time when "we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace than
at the present."

It was an unfortunate prediction, when every courier from Paris
brought word of increasing strain, and when Burke was voicing national
horror at "the red fool-fury of the Seine." A year later and a war was
to begin that lasted, with two short intermissions, for over
twenty-three years, and that swung England from moderate reform to
strong conservatism. Already, indeed, that change had begun. A general
election in 1790 had made Pitt rather more independent of the Court
than before: now he might have been able to carry his scheme of five
years earlier, to abolish the rottenest boroughs and to widen the
franchise. But he had come to see merit in a system that ensured his
power during George III's life, and in 1791 he opposed a bill that had
been copied from his own earlier scheme, recanting his views on the
plea that though change was needed, this was not the time. Another,
even more pressing cause, the abolition of the slave trade, suffered
from the alarm that spread outward from Paris. Wilberforce, a devoted
follower of Pitt, had become its spokesman in Parliament, where Pitt,
Fox and Burke supported him. All the great men were for abolition,
most of the little, including the King, against it, and the Government
was sharply divided. Vested interests beat Wilberforce in 1791, and
thereafter the tide ran strongly against any threat to even the worst
kind of property.

It was natural that Britain should recoil at the news of French
outrage and massacre. Not only was France the national enemy, and
suspect in all her doings, but the last fifty years had set England on
an insular path, self-contained, rather self-complacent, and hostile
to foreign ideas. Europe had for some time been moving towards a storm
in which the world of the eighteenth century would vanish. Her
moderately amiable despots prepared revolution by doing what they
could to abolish provincial barriers, to weaken clericalism, to make
subjects equal under a state sovereignty that was personified in
themselves. Centralised autocracy seemed, on the Continent, such a
reasonable form of government that it could afford to be liberal.
French thought, which set the pace for Europe, had taken the tone of
free criticism and the development of first principles to their
logical end, almost unimpeded by a Government which did not realise
that in time criticism would extend to it, and might eventually lead
to action. The English movement had been in the opposite direction:
Johnson and Wesley had both preached authority, Burke the sanctity of
institutions. The dominant ideas in Britain by now were
humanitarianism, which was shocked by the news from France, and a
Christian revival which made for conservatism in politics, for it
turned men's eyes inward to their own sins rather than outward to
current abuses. National prejudice, commercial interests, sectarian
ideas, were too strong to let men think in the abstractions popular in
France. The Church, still privileged and powerful, now combined some
of Wesley's evangelical zeal with its old hatred of Dissent, and was
steadily becoming less latitudinarian than it had been a generation
before. In matters of taste England was moving away from classical
models, and France, full of theoretical admiration for the republics
of the old world, towards them. An ugly revival of Gothic architecture
had begun in Britain, and forms of poetry and art that had for long
been accepted were now questioned. Though a few radicals preached
political and even social equality, they were chiefly evidence of a
growing national instinct to throw up minorities. Whether or no France
violated old treaties, the philosophies of Burke and Rousseau, each
typical of a nation, must some time clash.

So each despatch from Paris confirmed Englishmen in a growing
repulsion, made them feel more friendly towards a fallen system of
government that they had lately denounced, while the French
catch-words of the day left them hostile. Liberty, in the sense of
little Government interference, they understood, but did not see in
France; fraternity seemed a forced and impossible ideal; equality
shocked them in nearly every social and political belief. War was
almost inevitable if France gave any provocation, and when her troops
poured into the Netherlands no Government could have kept the peace.




                              CHAPTER IX

                          FRANCE AND IRELAND


By 1793 the French Revolution had survived its first external danger,
a combined attack from Austria and Prussia, and had itself taken the
offensive against Europe. In November, 1792, the Convention proclaimed
that France would everywhere assist malcontents against existing
Governments, and declared, in violation of Holland's treaty rights,
that the navigation of the Scheldt was free to all nations. Both these
decrees offended Britain, while the execution of Louis XVI in the
following January broke off diplomatic relations between London and
Paris. A French attack on the Netherlands, who appealed to the ancient
alliance with Britain, was the final cause of war. In England three
opinions showed themselves at once, led respectively by Burke, Pitt,
and Fox. Burke wished to crush the Revolution and to restore as much
of the ancient order in France as was possible: the King's execution
and later the Terror gave him a strong following. Pitt disclaimed
concern in French domestic matters, held to the sanctity of treaties
violated by France, and was prepared to fight in the interests of
British security against drastic changes in the balance of Europe. Fox
suspected any alliance with Prussia and Austria, who had already tried
to break the Revolution; he thought these powers selfish and
tyrannical, and held that the underlying reason for war was not
Holland, but a reactionary desire to attack the new liberties of
France. By January, 1793, it had become clear that only some of the
Whigs shared his sympathy with the Revolution, and in July, 1794, the
greater part of the Opposition led by Portland seceded to Pitt.

Some of the Cabinet held Burke's view, some Pitt's, and the difference
between them made for divided strategy. Burke wished to disclaim any
plan of conquest, to fight France till she repented of her errors, but
then to leave her intact. Other powers were not so magnanimous as he
wished Britain to be, and though to renounce territorial gains in
advance might have weakened French resistance, the other half of his
programme, to stand openly by the Bourbons, meant that the British
Government must take sides in French internal politics, assisting
_migr_ attacks and royalist insurrections. To do this heightened
French zeal against foreign interference, and the exiles, since they
showed the usual characteristics of exiles, violent faction and wild
optimism, hampered British strategy more than they helped it. Pitt's
view was more sober and practical, but he did not see as deep as
Burke; he did not perceive that this war was something new, not merely
another eighteenth-century dispute. Pitt thought that by sweeping up
her colonies and taking a few of her towns he would drive France to
accept reasonable terms of peace. He did not realise that this was a
war of nations and ideas, not merely of governments, that France had a
new religion, and that bankruptcy, a potent weapon against courts, who
even when their territories were narrowed had still much to lose,
would not stop an armed and frantic people.

On Pitt lay the chief responsibility during the first eight years of
war. He expected a short contest and framed his early measures on that
assumption, raised taxation but slightly and borrowed to meet the
growing expenses. By 1798 he abandoned this policy, increased taxation
and so lessened the burden thrown on posterity after that year, with
the result that by 1815 nearly half the cost of the war, which came
to nearly 900,000,000, had been met from revenue. He did little to
improve the army organisation or to train reserves so that campaign
after campaign might be fought with undiminished numbers, for he
expected the Continental powers to provide most of the land forces
necessary, and thought that one big effort of a coalition would bring
France to her knees. His belief that the war must end soon was natural
if incorrect. There were ranged in alliance with Britain, Russia,
Prussia, Austria, Sardinia, Spain and Naples, and had these allies
developed half their force and kept their pledges they could have
marched to Paris in 1793 or 1794. But they, still less than Pitt,
thought the war a matter of principle, they lacked his confidence and
determination, they had vulnerable frontiers and private aims: all
except Austria abandoned the cause when they saw immediate profit in
doing so. Prussia and Russia were more intent on carving up Poland
than on fighting the Jacobins, and Prussian manoeuvres eastward drew
off Austrian troops from France in 1794, when a vigorous attack might
have brought victory. Spain was incompetent; in 1795 she and Prussia
made peace, while in 1796 she became France's ally, which so altered
the naval situation that Britain evacuated the Mediterranean. Russia
was too remote to develop her full strength at first, and after 1795
her policy was tortuous. Through the poor cohesion of her enemies
France was given time to turn the welter of revolution into a new
order more efficient than the old, and at length, under Napoleon's
superb organising and military genius, she made half Europe her
vassal. But even at Napoleon's zenith he could have been successfully
resisted had the powers struck together and relied on each other;
their failure to do this prolonged the war from 1793 to 1814.

Pitt, "the pilot who weathered the storm," had two great virtues as a
war minister, courage and determination. Not till just before his
death did he lose hope, and in the darkest year of all, 1797, he kept
the nation firm. In other respects he was for long a bad campaigner.
In peace time his finance had been admirable, but now he clung to
methods that no longer applied, borrowed too much and at too high a
cost, while the strategy that he approved wasted British forces
without material result. He modelled his policy on that of his great
father, which did not fit the new conditions. Chatham had managed a
colonial war, and rightly struck at its main theatre, the colonies,
fighting a defensive action in Europe with the help of a subsidised
ally. Marlborough, not Chatham, was the true model for Pitt, for
Marlborough had fought an unlimited war against French ascendancy, not
like Chatham for a colonial and maritime victory. Now, as in 1702, the
colonies were side-shows; success there would not shorten the war,
while a strong assault on France with the help of allies and her
rebellious provinces might have brought an end. Only some 20,000
British troops were at first available, barely enough for a single
operation, and Pitt scattered them in raids on French colonies, in an
expedition to Belgium, and in an attempt with Spanish aid to hold
Toulon, which had revolted against Paris. From lack of support, which
only Britain could have given, a widespread rising in La Vende was
crushed in 1795, after holding out for two years; Toulon was
inadequately reinforced and fell to Bonaparte late in 1793; and in the
winter of 1794-5 a small British army was driven in ruin through
Holland and nearly destroyed; Holland then became a republican
dependency of France. Had all the force possible been used in
Brittany, in Flanders or in the South, something might have been
achieved, but everywhere detachments were sent too weak or too late,
and they served mainly to goad French enthusiasm to increased
exertions. Pitt scattered subsidies among allies who had not the
motives for loyalty that kept Frederick staunch in the Seven Years'
War: the coalition broke down after sectional defeat, and in 1795 only
three of its members--Russia, Austria, and Britain--remained in
alliance.

Dundas, Pitt's chief lieutenant, was largely responsible for the
military policy of these first years. He was Home and Colonial
Secretary, President of the India Board, and Treasurer of the Navy:
indispensable in Parliament, for his control of Indian patronage kept
the representatives of Scotland faithful to the Ministry. He held too
many offices for efficiency, and in July 1794 Portland became Home
Secretary and Dundas took a new Secretaryship of State for War. Even
after this change he was overworked, and like Pitt he envisaged the
struggle in terms of the past age, as a contest of governments rather
than of nations. Influenced by trading interests, and hoping for a
quick victory, he turned to the West Indies, and before the end of
1793 had begun to pour troops across the Atlantic. Such a war policy
was traditional, and the temptation to revert to it great, for in
1791 the French negroes, inspired by Parisian talk of equality,
revolted against the white planters, and these turned to Britain for
help. Hayti was wealthier than all the British West Indies combined,
and seemed an easy prey. There and in Guadeloupe and Martinique
British troops won some victories, but the negro insurgents kept up a
guerrilla war that made large garrisons necessary, and the climate was
fatal to white troops who had little idea of tropical hygiene.
Guadeloupe was lost again and the battalions in the West Indies rotted
to nothing, till by the end of 1796 about 80,000 men had died there or
been permanently disabled--far more than Wellington's losses in the
Peninsula. In that year France ceded Hayti to Spain, Britain evacuated
the country, and took up the policy of using black regiments to hold
islands that were a graveyard to white troops. This was a step towards
abolition of the slave trade, even to the abolition of slavery, and
was much disliked by the English planters, but it became necessary
when once an army that might have turned the tide in Europe had been
thrown away.

At sea Britain immediately took the offensive, for Pitt had kept her
navy efficient, but, partly because many of the British admirals were
past their best, sea-power was not at first used to the best
advantage. The French marine lost its discipline in the Revolution,
and took some years to recover its energy. On paper Britain was
outnumbered in ships after 1795, for the combined French, Spanish, and
Dutch fleets exceeded hers, but she had the same advantage on water
that France had on land--interior lines and a single command, besides
the tradition of maritime victory. Her nadir was the recall of British
ships from the Mediterranean for eighteen months, which opened the
road to Egypt for Napoleon. A time of grave peril came just before
this British concentration in home waters, for in December 1796 only
bad navigation kept 15,000 French troops from landing in Ireland,
where they might have swept most of the country into revolt.

The Government's domestic measures were less disjointed than its
strategy, but like it were built on misconception. From the beginning
the Ministry was uneasy in facing a war of ideas, and feared to throw
itself wholeheartedly on the nation. There was no police force and the
civil service was inadequate to the growing strain, so some alarm at
French propaganda was natural, but it spread beyond bounds. Though
much discontent showed itself in England, most of it was due to rising
prices, not to Jacobin ideas, and went little further than the
agitation of 1779 and 1780. The Ministry sat on the safety-valve of
public expression. Bad harvests in 1794 and 1795 raised a cry against
the war and for parliamentary reform, which culminated in large
meetings and popular outcry. Parliament passed acts against
Treasonable Practices and Seditious Meetings by which almost any
criticism of the existing order, made outside its walls, became an
offence. Many prosecutions were launched against printers and
advocates of reform, but most of them failed, for juries were less
frightened than judges, and upheld the national habit of violent
speech. In Scotland reaction went far and radical opinions were
treated as a crime. Habeas Corpus was everywhere suspended for a time,
and in 1799 the London Corresponding Society was suppressed and many
of its members arrested, while discussing whether they should
volunteer to resist French invasion. Partly to house the army, partly
to isolate it from the suspected views of the civil population,
barracks were dotted about England. By 1804 over 200 of these had been
built at a cost of 9,000,000, most of them so small as to be
police-stations rather than training centres. Pitt, in fact, was too
aloof and too-self-contained to realise that however the ordinary
Englishman might grumble, he did not draw his political ideas from
across the Channel.

The most dangerous year was 1797. Austria then gave up the struggle;
Britain was isolated; she had poured out subsidies to allies until the
drain caused a shortage of bullion and forced the suspension of cash
payments at the Bank. France was preparing to attack Egypt under a
threat of invading England that looked serious. In March the Channel
fleet mutinied, having failed by less drastic means to get its pay
increased beyond the rates of Charles II, or its rations issued at
their nominal weight. The French Government rejected overtures for
peace, as it had rejected them in 1796, unless Britain gave up all
conquests while France retained all hers. From then prospects
improved. The Ministry granted its moderate demands to the navy and
crushed another mutiny in the North Sea fleet; the Dutch navy was
broken at Camperdown, the Spanish off Cape St. Vincent; and in 1798,
though Ireland broke into revolt, the war went better. Nelson won an
overwhelming victory at Aboukir Bay and pinned a French army in Egypt;
the Duke of York became Commander-in-Chief and began to reorganise
the army, a good harvest improved the nation's temper and Pitt's
Income Tax found a new source of revenue.

Napoleon would have done better had he sailed to Cork, not to
Alexandria. Ireland was the weakest part of the British system, and an
attack there between 1795 and 1799 might have paralysed England. The
roots of Irish discontent lay in absentee landlordism, in the
supremacy of the Anglican Church, in laws against Irish trade, and
where these last had been removed, in the continued government of
Ireland by a small clique who restricted patronage to their own
members.

After the Revolution of 1688, Britain treated Ireland as a conquered
nation to be exploited by the victor, and garrisoned by Church of
England Protestants. Irish exports that competed with English were
forbidden or impeded. About three-fourths of the population were
Catholics with no voice in the Government, and held down by a stern
penal code that was political, not religious, in its aim: built on
class and racial ascendancy, not on hopes of extending Protestantism.
Catholics could not vote, buy land nor inherit it, nor hold long
leases: by confiscation or forced purchase most of the soil had fallen
to Protestants, many of whom were absentees, and the laws were
drafted to maintain their grip. Catholic schools were forbidden, and
marriages between Catholics and Protestants, for it was the intention
of the code to hold the religions separate, and to keep Catholics
illiterate lest they challenge Anglican rule. A meagre Toleration Act
in 1720 gave Ulster Presbyterians some rights, but even they were kept
from office. The administration of the country depended on Britain,
and its exclusively Protestant Parliament could not legislate against
the wishes of the British Government. Irish pensions were used to
reward political service in England, and took about 70,000 a year of
Ireland's scanty revenue.

The Irish Commons had 300 members, of whom 216 were elected by
boroughs most of which were the property of individuals. Yet even in
this unrepresentative Parliament, and even among the Anglican
garrison, a feeling of resentment against England grew. Swift was a
Tory and a Churchman, but he denounced the restrictions on Irish
trade. In 1768 the tendency towards greater freedom for Ireland began,
with an Act that fixed eight years as the maximum life of an Irish
Parliament; till then one House of Commons could span a king's life,
Ulster agitated against the exclusion of Presbyterians from office and
the sacrifice of Irish commerce to British interests, and in the
American Revolution her emigrants gave Washington many of his best
soldiers. That war offered Ireland an opportunity which she took.
Religious animosity was declining fast, and the Protestants led a
demand for freer trade that momentarily united the whole nation. When
the troops in Ireland were reduced to 5000 men, Irish Protestants
volunteered for home defence against a possible French invasion, and
when once under arms, they compelled the British Government to relax
its laws against Irish exports. By the end of 1780 Ireland had been
granted free access to British colonial markets, a concession won by
the show of force, for in 1778 North, who wished to give way, had
yielded to British manufacturing protests, and had reluctantly
declared for the existing restrictions. In 1782 the volunteers went
further, and demanded legislative independence for their own
Parliament; the Rockingham Government at once conceded it. So far
nationalism in Ireland had been almost entirely Protestant, for the
Catholics were still too subdued, too poor, too disorganised, to make
their voices heard.

From 1782 to 1800 the constitutional position of Ireland bristled with
difficulties and, failing radical change, government could be carried
on only by steady corruption. The administration remained in the hands
of those who disapproved of the revolution of 1782, and considered
themselves the tools through which England managed a troublesome
dependency. The Irish Parliament still represented Protestants only:
it could legislate as it chose for the whole island, but the Irish
Government remained subject to the Cabinet of Britain. An
irresponsible Parliament must breed deadlock or bribery. The Dublin
executive had to secure a majority in the local Commons, and did so by
the places and pensions in its gift, till in 1790 it was said that 110
out of 300 members drew emoluments from the State, amounting in all to
200,000, or one-eighth of the national revenue. Without such methods
the administration would have been even more powerless in Ireland than
it had been in an American colony: with them it was nearly supreme, so
that Whitehall continued to decide most disputed points. A unified
executive with separate legislatures was obviously unsound as a
permanent arrangement. Ireland had to gain control of her own
Ministry, or to give up her own Parliament in a union with Great
Britain: either change would have made the system more workable. No
one in England thought seriously of the first possibility, for
colonial self-government had not yet been discovered, and as the
executive was still thought to be primarily the King's business, it
must necessarily be unified.

The difficult arrangement of 1782 lasted for nearly twenty years, and
though under it Ireland never governed herself, she obtained several
reforms of value. The worst anti-Catholic laws had been repealed in
1780, in the vain hope that this would weaken the demand for freer
trade. From 1782 the benefits of England's revolution of 1688 were
extended to Ireland: judges were made independent, a Habeas Corpus Act
passed, a National Bank set up, and the country, with new markets and
improving prices for its exports, became more prosperous than it had
been for a century.

The ideas of the French Revolution roused greater sympathy in Ireland
than in England, as was natural, for thousands of Irishmen had died in
the French service. In 1791 Wolfe Tone founded the United Irishmen,
who were to draw the two religions together, work for parliamentary
reform and overthrow the governing clique: Tone himself wanted full
separation from England. In 1792 mixed marriages were legalised, and
only the opposition of Irish officials stopped the British Cabinet
from encouraging a willing Irish Parliament to give Catholics the
franchise. Next year most religious restrictions were removed. In 1778
Catholics had been allowed to inherit land and to take long leases; in
1793 they obtained the vote on the same terms as Protestants, they
could hold commissions and many offices, and sit on juries, while
wealthy Catholics were permitted to carry arms and to endow colleges.
Parliament and Trinity College, Dublin, were still barred to them, but
after this sweeping repeal of other prohibitions, it seemed that these
last exclusions must soon vanish.

But concession stuck at this point. Reaction had begun in England,
protestant, conservative, timid, and the small impulse that would have
brought the Irish Parliament to give complete citizenship was not
forthcoming. The result was that the wealthy Catholics, who were
moderates, were unable to lead their co-religionists, while the
peasants, holding their few acres on leases for life, and so counting
for the vote as freeholders, came under the guidance of
revolutionaries and Ulster republicans like Tone. By itself
emancipation would not have been enough, without a redistribution of
seats, to make the Parliament truly national, and seeing in it a
prelude to such a reform, which would have destroyed their ascendancy,
the governing set dug in their toes against any further change.
Fitzwilliam, one of the Whigs who joined Pitt in 1794, near the end of
that year was made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. He was known to support
further emancipation, and his appointment was held to mean that the
British Government would make Dublin Castle swing its parliamentary
legions from opposition to support of that measure. In February 1795,
when Fitzwilliam was on the verge of carrying a Catholic Relief Bill,
he was suddenly recalled, partly because Protestant opposition was
rising in England, partly because he had dismissed Beresford, the head
of the most influential family in the Castle set, whose powerful
interest led Pitt to abandon him. Disorder grew, for Catholic hopes
had risen high and were now rudely shattered, revolutionary ideas
spread, there were outrages in many parts, and to these the troops in
Ireland, who were badly disciplined, replied by sporadic reprisals
against men whom they disliked. The British Government reversed its
conciliatory policy of the last fifteen years, and told Fitzwilliam's
successor to rally the Protestant interest and to oppose Catholic
claims.

From 1795 a rising became inevitable, and it broke out in 1798. Its
reasons were disappointed Catholic hopes, doctrinaire republicanism,
despair of ousting the governing ring save by force, resentment at the
fanning of old religious animosities, mob outrage and murders,
conscious nationalism, and poverty. By playing off Protestant against
Catholic, the Government kept Ulster, formerly the most disaffected
part of Ireland, from revolt, but bred murders by both sides there and
elsewhere. When the rebellion came, though many of its organisers were
Protestant, it was predominantly Catholic and tinged with agrarian as
well as with religious bitterness. The land system bore heavily on the
peasantry as better farming and swelling population heightened rents.
Most of the great landowners leased their estates in large blocks for
long periods and on moderate terms to middlemen, who sublet at higher
prices to others who again sublet, so when a peasant got land its cost
was excessive, for he carried on his back the profits of several
intermediaries. He also had to pay tithes to a Protestant Church of
Ireland, and his economic position was enough, in the ferment of
French ideas, to make him actively discontented even without the
stimulus of creed.

The rebellion was not general and was more easily crushed than had
seemed likely, after uncounted outrages on either side. From it came
Parliamentary union. English opinion had for some time been moving
towards this solution of the constitutional problem, but Ireland
disliked the idea, fearing loss of nationality, an increase of
absentee landlords, and a rise of Irish taxes to the English level.
After 1798 some Protestants saw in union with Britain the best chance
of retaining their ascendancy in Ireland, while many Catholics thought
it the only safeguard against oppression by the newly formed Orange
societies, and hoped that the Imperial Parliament could give them the
full emancipation that since 1795 could not be carried through Dublin.
The majority, probably of both religions, certainly of the
Protestants, were against union, and even the venal Irish Parliament
refused in 1799 to commit suicide. The Government bought seats in the
Commons and scattered peerages among their owners, compensated all
office-holders who would lose by the change, and paid 15,000, not as
bribery but merely the market price, for each of 80 close boroughs
that were to lose their members. After a hard struggle the Bill passed
in 1800; Ireland received 100 representatives in the united House of
Commons and 28 in the Lords--less than her proportion were that fixed
by the number of inhabitants, more than her share were it fixed by her
wealth and trade. The priests supported union, for they understood,
though no definite promise was given, that Catholic emancipation would
swiftly follow.

Pitt raised that question at once, and anticipated no difficulty in
carrying it. He was soon undeceived; not only did a strong section of
his party oppose the admission of Catholics to Parliament, but the
King refused point-blank to agree to a Bill which, he asserted, would
violate his coronation oath. He was serious in this absurd view, for
he took his prejudice against Catholics for a scruple of conscience.
When his objections became known, many of the Cabinet revoked their
support of emancipation; Pitt had blundered in not securing the King's
written assent before he carried the union. He had to choose between
coercing the King, which he could only have done by alliance with Fox,
or giving way, or resigning, and he chose the last, which satisfied
his honour but did nothing for the Catholics. Thus, through the
prejudice of a man nearly insane, the union came into force
unaccompanied by the one boon that it was in England's power to grant,
for the English market that it opened to Irish produce was then a
small benefit, and Ireland had already gained access to imperial
trade. The tithe burden and the land system remained unaltered and
both were fertile in grievance. There was nothing to put in the scale
against the hurt done to national feeling by the union; the Catholics
felt themselves betrayed, and when twenty-eight years later they won
emancipation, they did so by the menace of armed resistance, not as a
concession freely granted.

Pitt left office in February, 1801, after being Prime Minister for
over seventeen years. Addington succeeded him, a nonentity who saw no
need for reform anywhere, and was popular with the country gentlemen,
while Pitt promised to support the new Government from outside. From
Nelson's victory at Aboukir in 1798 there had grown a second alliance
against France, with Russia, Austria, Naples, Portugal and Turkey, and
hopes of victory had revived. They collapsed in 1800 mainly through
disputes between Russia and Austria, which Napoleon, who had become
supreme in France before the end of 1799, was able to exploit. France
seemed invulnerable, and Britain grew more inclined for peace.

Napoleon had made overtures at the end of 1799, Pitt rejected them,
and launched an expedition against the French army in Egypt. Its
success and the capture of Malta in 1801, after a long siege,
destroyed French supremacy in the Mediterranean, and made Addington,
who was not pledged as deeply as Pitt to fight for old treaty rights,
willing to negotiate for peace. Austria was forced to a separate
treaty with France in February, 1801; Russia swung to the French side,
carrying with her Prussia and the Baltic States. Britain was left
alone, and though Nelson shattered the Danish fleet at Copenhagen, he
was powerless to damage Napoleon's ascendancy on land. In October 1801
preliminaries were agreed, and in March 1802 a peace was signed at
Amiens. Britain was to keep Ceylon, which she had taken from the
Netherlands, and Trinidad, which she had taken from Spain, while in
return for her restoration of all other conquests, Naples, Portugal
and Turkey were to remain integral. Through eight years of war France
had expanded to the Rhine, had turned the Netherlands, Switzerland,
and most of North Italy into vassal republics, and had resisted any
attempt of Pitt's to restore a balance of power, while Britain had
shown herself even more supreme afloat than was France on the
Continent. Neither could break the other; so they made a peace that
might have established a new system in Europe had not Napoleon
regarded every treaty as a stepping-stone to further triumph.




                              CHAPTER X

                          BRITAIN IN VICTORY


The Peace of Amiens was based on misunderstanding. Britain considered
it a compromise, and surrendered wide colonial conquests, assuming
that France in return gave up aggression in Europe: the treaty did not
guarantee the French satellite republics in the Netherlands and Italy,
and Britain took no responsibility for their continuance, but she
regarded the existing European frontiers as implicitly assured.
Napoleon claimed that Britain had renounced any voice in Continental
matters, for he considered the peace a French victory; even before it
was signed he became head of the Italian republic, and a few months
later he annexed Piedmont and forced a new constitution on
Switzerland. Britain kept her troops in Malta, the naval key to the
eastern Mediterranean, partly in protest, partly because the
conditions agreed for evacuation could not be immediately fulfilled,
and war began again in May 1803.

Now the nation was almost unanimous. This was not a struggle with
revolutionary ideas, but against a centralising despotism more
dangerous, because more efficient, than the old monarchy of Louis XIV.
It was unlike the first war in its higher drama and greater intensity,
and though confused by the gathering and disruption of alliances, in
turn against France and Britain, it was throughout mainly a duel
between the genius of one man and the spirit and tradition of a
people, for Napoleon's conviction that his power and British
independence could not co-exist, made national survival the prize.
From 1803 to 1805 Britain's chief concern was Napoleon's menace of
invasion. He had neither the transports nor the Channel harbours for a
normal attack, so he built flat-bottomed boats by the thousand, to
carry an army that he gathered round Boulogne. Flotillas of British
cruisers hovered off the Picardy coast, ready to destroy his forces if
they put out, while 300,000 raw volunteers drilled in England, and
Martello towers sprouted along the south shore on the chance of their
delaying a French landing. To drive off the British light squadrons
Napoleon manoeuvred to get his French and Spanish battle-fleets (for
Spain was his ally from 1804 to 1808) into the Channel. They lay
scattered in Toulon, Cadiz, Ferrol, Rochefort and Brest, while off
these ports, to prevent a union of hostile navies, hovered Nelson,
Collingwood, and Cornwallis, with forces sometimes outnumbered by
their enemies but always better trained than they. The Admiralty
thought lightly of invasion chances, suspecting that the threat marked
a design on the West Indies or on Egypt, and it is doubtful if
Napoleon himself expected success. His Boulogne army could be turned
against Austria or Prussia without warning: at times he treated that
as its real purpose, at others he claimed that command of the Channel
for a few days would put London in his hands. Neither his troops nor
his flotilla were ever ready, and an attempt at invasion would,
barring countless accidents, have ended in French disaster. At sea
Napoleon was steadily out-generalled; in the summer of 1805 he
abandoned his venture and swung his forces eastward. A few weeks
later, off Cape Trafalgar, Nelson destroyed his main fleets when they
were trying to win command of the Mediterranean.

Eighteen months before Trafalgar Pitt resumed office. He had supported
Addington's feeble Government for three years, and it fell as soon as
he declared against it. Pitt wished to build a strong non-party
ministry to fight the war, but the King, who parted with Addington
reluctantly, proved an obstacle. George flatly refused to accept Fox
as a minister, while Grenville, Pitt's former lieutenant, had allied
with Fox, and refused to serve without him. In Parliament and Court,
for the King never quite forgave his resignation in 1801, Pitt was
weaker than he had been; his earlier supporters were now riven in
three fragments, under Addington, himself, and Grenville, but he
showed greater energy in war and better strategy than in his first
Government.

In 1805 Pitt planned a coalition with Russia, Prussia, Austria and
Naples, that could have checked and might have humbled Napoleon. This
counter to the invasion threat failed through Prussia, who hoped to be
given Hanover, and held aloof until Austerlitz forced Austria out of
the alliance; Prussia was then left isolated to fall a prey to
Napoleon next autumn. In January 1806 Pitt died of overwork and
disappointment. He was succeeded by a coalition of Grenville and Fox,
whom at last necessity forced the King to accept. This Ministry
abolished the slave trade and tried to make a peace of compromise,
but Napoleon would agree to no terms that set a limit to his ambition.
Fox died in September, 1806, and the Government fell next year, when
it tried to open commissions in the forces to Roman Catholics, and
resigned sooner than give George a pledge never again to recommend
that or any other concession to a religion he disliked.

In 1806 the war entered a new phase. France had failed dismally
against the British navy, Pitt's coalitions equally dismally against
France. Napoleon reverted to measures begun under the Directory, and
shifted the fight from the high seas to the counting-house. To ruin
the trade that was the basis of Britain's sea-power he declared her
under blockade, forbade any traffic with her, and by alliance in 1807
with Russia sought to enforce his decrees through all Europe. England
suffered by the closing of Continental ports to her ships, but Europe
suffered more, for Britain retaliated by stopping maritime commerce
that did not pass through her own harbours. In manufacture she had
outstripped all nations and her wares were so necessary that even
Napoleon had to buy smuggled English great-coats for his army. British
cruisers cut off coffee, sugar, tea, tobacco and cotton from France
and her allies, except when carried under Government licence; Germany
and Spain evaded Napoleon's edicts, and these were obeyed only when
his troops were on hand to enforce them. Napoleon tried to stiffen his
prohibitions, interfering more and more in the government of his
allies, and so roused national feeling against the French.

The last stage of the war began in 1808, when Napoleon deposed the
King of Spain, and replaced him by his own brother Joseph, who was to
be, in fact though not in name, a feudatory of France. Spain and
Portugal rose and gave Britain a base where, since the population was
friendly, her few troops could contain two or three times their number
of Frenchmen. The first army sent to the Peninsula won victories at
Vimiero and Corunna, but was forced back into its ships. In 1809
Austria was once more, for the last time, conquered by Napoleon, while
a British stroke at Antwerp failed disastrously; Portugal remained the
one country on the mainland free from French control. Wellesley, who
had won Vimiero, undertook to defend this, the last independent
kingdom, with 80,000 men, and the Peninsular War began its four-year
course. Napoleon had forces enough in Spain to crush resistance there
and to overrun Portugal if they were left undisturbed; but to hold the
Peninsula, even to exist, they must scatter, for the French fed their
troops on the country they occupied, so if an army sat still it
starved. Wellesley (he became Lord Wellington in 1809) forced his
enemy to concentrate, and when this freed a district from the invader
it flamed into revolt. The British built a commissariat service that
made them independent of local crops, and stopped their becoming a
hated burden to the Spanish peasantry. Wellington was always
outnumbered by the French, but as these had also to deal with badly
trained Spanish armies and with bands of guerrillas, they could never
muster in full force to crush him. Napoleon would appoint no supreme
commander for the whole Peninsula, and insisted on himself controlling
his Marshals, each jealous of every other, from Paris. For these
reasons Wellington's genius and toil at last gave him victory in a war
that cost the lives of over 300,000 French troops.

Beyond Europe Britain was supreme. She re-occupied the Cape of Good
Hope, and when Napoleon made the war commercial, she widened her
markets and removed French privateering bases by capturing all the
enemy islands in the West Indies. For lack of a rival the navy
declined in efficiency after Trafalgar, but remained stronger than any
possible combination. Its claim to search alien ships, and to
confiscate any that violated British rules, angered other nations,
though they were still worse treated by Napoleon, and only one, the
United States, could strike at any British dominion by land. It became
clear that if England kept her nerve she must in time win at least a
peace of compromise, for her trade was less destructible than France's
man-power.

Napoleon reached his zenith in 1810, when he forced Sweden to become
his ally, and Austria to give him a bride, and when Massena drove back
Wellington to his Torres Vedras lines covering Lisbon. From then
Napoleon began to decline. He tightened his "Continental system"
against British trade, seized vast quantities of smuggled goods in
Germany, and so produced a financial crisis in England, but Russia
began to revolt from his leadership and to open her ports. Napoleon
made a supreme effort to dragoon her into subjection, and in 1812
flung away half-a-million soldiers between Moscow and the Vistula.
France and her subject states had already been drained of men, French
armies were now loathed as marauders, and in 1813 Germany rose against
Napoleon in retreat. Europe had been schooled by adversity: this time
a coalition, financed as usual by Britain, held together despite some
reverses. Wellington had defeated each French Marshal who opposed him
in the Peninsula, and now he tumbled Joseph Bonaparte from his throne,
while Russia, Prussia and Austria drove the main French armies across
the Rhine. France was invaded from east and south, and Napoleon fell
because he would be content with nothing but supremacy. Again and
again he was offered terms that would have left him master of the
greatest military state in the world; again and again he gambled on
victory and refused assent too long, till the allies had raised their
demands. By the end of March, 1814, he had fallen, the allies were in
Paris, and the Bourbons assured of restoration.

Britain had a second war on her hands from 1812 to 1814. The United
States suffered both from French and from British interference with
trade, and since Britain held the seas, which made her deeds the more
apparent, and since she offered a vulnerable point in Canada, while no
American attack could damage France, anger at the actions of both
antagonists focused on Britain. The Cabinet suspended the
Orders-in-Council that were the chief American grievance, but too
late, for a war party had come to power in Washington, and expected an
easy conquest over the Canadas while Britain's army was busied in the
Peninsula. The United States won some single-ship actions at sea, but
on land, though her troops far outnumbered the few regulars and
militia in Canada, they failed completely. New England disapproved of
the war and took little part, and in 1814, when some British veterans
could be spared from Europe, a small force of them landed in the
Chesapeake and burnt the public buildings of Washington in reprisal
for the destruction of Toronto by an American army. Peace was made at
Ghent in December, 1814, too late to stop a severe British repulse in
the Mississippi early next year.

At the Peace of Paris in 1814 Britain restored most of her conquests,
for it was her cue to hold that not France but Napoleon, who was now
in Elba, was responsible for the war, and she wished to keep France
strong and contented lest Russia in turn prove a menace to the
restored balance of power. Britain kept the Cape of Good Hope,
compensating Holland for it with money, together with Malta, and
several tropical colonies, some of which she would have surrendered
had the nations that once owned them been willing to prohibit the
slave trade: this had now become a cardinal point in British foreign
policy. Both at Paris and at Vienna, where final arrangements for
Germany, Poland, and Italy, were made, Castlereagh, who represented
Britain, stood for moderation; he tried to draw the frontiers of
Europe so that no country would feel threatened, and none be strong
enough to threaten others. He had been forced into an alliance with
Austria and France against Russian and Prussian demands, when Napoleon
landed in France, hoping to be restored by the French people and
tolerated by a divided Europe. Napoleon's old soldiers flocked to him
and the Bourbons fled into Belgium. But the powers had seen too much
of Napoleon to trust him, though he claimed now to be a friend of
peace and liberty, and Wellington ended his military career by winning
Waterloo with Blcher's aid. Even had Napoleon been victorious there
he could not have prevailed; Waterloo was a final and bloody incident,
but it did not alter history.

For twenty years after 1807 Government remained a Tory preserve. The
permanent Opposition, a coalition of Grenville's following with the
Foxites, was too weak in numbers, policy, and leadership to form a
Ministry by itself, and even a personal schism in the Tory party did
not bring them office in 1809, The Whigs' chief strength in Parliament
depended on a handful of great families, the Percies, Cavendishes,
Russells and Howards: for the most part they were as exclusive in
spirit as ever, but none the less they committed themselves gradually
to parliamentary reform, because the Tories were now so deeply
entrenched in the existing boroughs that nothing less drastic would
redress the balance. Long exclusion from office made Whig criticism
amateurish and Whig views rather doctrinaire, while in all matters of
finance the Tories had now an assured supremacy. A Radical group,
contemptuous of both parties, appeared in the election of 1806, and
Jeremy Bentham gave it a programme of tax-payers' suffrage, and
sweeping reforms in law and economics, but it remained too small to
effect politics materially till some years after 1815, when its ideas
began to filter into the advanced sections both of the Whigs and of
the Tories.

Pitt's death had substituted once more group for party government,
since it left the Tories without an obvious head. They had four
leaders, Liverpool, Perceval, Canning, and Castlereagh, all of about
the same standing, and Canning was too ambitious to work harmoniously
with the others. In 1807 these four combined under the Duke of
Portland, once a colleague of Fox, as their nominal head, but in 1809
Canning tried to force Castlereagh from office, brought the Ministry
down, and ruined his own chance of power for the next thirteen years.
Perceval formed a Government that began weak but grew stronger on
Wellington's victories. In 1810 the King went permanently mad and the
Prince of Wales became Regent: he interfered in politics less than had
been expected, and did nothing for his former clients, the Whigs. When
Perceval was murdered by a lunatic in 1812, Liverpool stepped into his
shoes, with Castlereagh as his chief lieutenant and Foreign Secretary.
Castlereagh, more than any other man, brought the coalition to
victory, for he held it together when it seemed likely, like its
forbears, to break up and let Napoleon prevail over disjointed allies.
At Paris and Vienna in 1814 he took a leading position, made Britain
stand for reason and moderation, and did his best to build a durable
peace on lines sketched by Pitt in 1805, and to restore "a just
equilibrium" in Europe. For long his reputation suffered because he
was in office during the blackest years after the war, and because he
was too dumb and too proud to explain his aims to the public: since he
was the strongest man in the Government he was blamed both for the
reaction enthroned in Europe and for a domestic policy that grew
increasingly unpopular.

The Tory Government was highly conservative in its political views,
but little more so than the bulk of the nation. It had to fight
Napoleon with the weapons to its hand, to join with monarchs who drew
their ideas from a past age and feared any kind of constitutional
liberty, but it never tried to apply the doctrines of its allies in
Britain. It attempted not to put the clock back but to prevent its
moving forward. Since the country was changing fast industrially, this
meant that its political framework grew steadily out of date, but the
old liberties of the nation were seldom threatened, and then only when
used for new ends. The policy of the time has been judged by Bentham's
tenets, which became the platitudes of a later age, and has been
condemned because it was built on eighteenth-century conceptions that
coincided less and less with changing facts. The political theory that
still reigned held that it was the state's business to repress
movements that are to-day considered inevitable, and to leave the
citizen free in many things where now his actions are
controlled--education, housing, conditions of work. Toryism grew more
rigid after Pitt's death and opposed nearly all sweeping reforms,
though from time to time it tolerated some administrative
readjustments. It was aristocratic, not absolutist, offered wide
freedom to members of the governing class, and interfered little with
others, provided that they kept the law, and did not menace what were
thought to be the foundations of British society. Such repression as
was used came from fear. Since 1800 one chief issue in politics had
been Catholic emancipation, which was supported by the whole
Opposition and on which the Government disagreed. Canning and
Castlereagh desired emancipation, but the Church, Court and nation
were against them, mainly through alarm at the possible results in
Ireland. The Nonconformist sects by 1811 numbered about a fifth of
England's population, and they were louder than Parliament in
denouncing any concession to Rome.

The chief grievances of the time were more economic than political:
high taxation, uncertain prices, and scanty foreign markets that
easily became glutted. National expenditure had reached levels
hitherto unprecedented. In 1814 the budget estimate for the army was
40,000,000, for the navy 20,000,000, for foreign subsidies
10,000,000, while interest on debt took 37,500,000 and civil
administration cost a trifle over 4,000,000. The figures show how
little the state was expected to provide for the ordinary man. To him
its functions were confined to enlistment, taxation, the provision of
a Post Office and of courts of law: roads, police, schools and the
poor lay outside its scope, and were neglected or controlled by local
or by voluntary bodies. During the war unemployment was eased by the
retention of some 120,000 sailors and more than 30,000 marines in the
navy, and by a regular army that in 1812 numbered over 250,000. When
peace came most of these men were disbanded, and though Continental
markets were then reopened to British wares, the factories could not
absorb all of them, for it became apparent that, however much Europe
needed England's goods, she could not pay their cost. The exchanges
had gone increasingly against Britain, owing to the cost of
maintaining her forces oversea, and to the drain, between 1792 and
1815, of nearly 60,000,000 in subsidies to the allies, while an
inconvertible paper currency had raised prices at home. They
fluctuated so widely as to make all business highly speculative. In
August 1813 wheat stood at 112 shillings a quarter; four months later,
after a good harvest it fell to 75 shillings--a drop that made
farming, which was still by far the largest national industry, cry out
for high protection.

Politically and economically Britain was a mixture of oligarchy and
anarchy, of aristocratic feudalism and modern industry. The civil
service retained a strong hereditary flavour, for the reforms begun in
1782 preserved vested interests, many of which still survived, and had
not been carried so far as to throw appointments open to competition.
Officials still had something like a freehold in their posts. The sale
of administrative places was stopped in 1809, "reversions" having
ceased to be marketable in 1806, but in 1812 the Lords rejected a Bill
which had passed the Commons to abolish sinecures. The demand for
executive reform grew during the last years of the war, when the
Tories were to be seen defending the system that Bolingbroke had
denounced, and the Whigs attacking a misuse of offices to which they
had lost the key. When new industrial processes threw men out of work,
it was not thought to be the nation's business either to diagnose the
disease or to cure it. The state, in fact, was abdicating functions
that in the seventeenth century it had tried to exercise: near the end
of the war Justices of the Peace lost the powers of fixing wages given
them by Elizabeth and now long dormant, for Parliament had absorbed
much of Adam Smith's doctrine that interference with supply and demand
was in itself an evil. In 1812 an outbreak of machine-wrecking,
produced by the natural feeling that machinery was the enemy of the
working man, was met by the execution of sixteen culprits after their
crime had been added to the hundred others that were capital.
Combinations, both of workers and employers, were made illegal in
1800, on the ground that they were obstacles to trade. This law could
not be enforced against employers, who combined over the dinner table,
and was seldom used against workmen except when a dispute arose, but
it drove nascent trade unionism underground, and turned some innocent
associations into unlawful conspiracies. Nothing effective was done to
limit child labour, nothing at all to control the conditions under
which men and women worked.

It is easy, by concentrating on those features of England in 1815 that
most offend us to-day, to construct a horrible picture that is true
and yet misleading. Miners lived in savagery eased only by Methodism,
the weekly wage of agricultural labour tended to equal the price of a
bushel of wheat, children of six and seven years toiled, stunted and
miserable, for long hours in the dark. There were many acts of
oppression; on the other hand, there was much liberty, more than in
any other country in Europe. The Justices of the Peace had large
powers, both judicial and administrative, and, except when frightened,
they were mainly good-humoured and fairly popular. The Press was free;
editors might be, but seldom were, prosecuted for sedition, and the
250 papers in England could generally print what they liked without
fear of consequences. Enclosure increased rapidly between 1804 and
1814, and this actually raised the country population, though it
stimulated the use of gang labour at harvest. The death-rate was
falling steadily, even though the growing cities had neither sanitary
nor housing by-laws. Factory conditions were often very bad, but the
replacing of water by steam-power tended to cut down overtime, though
a working day of eleven or twelve hours remained normal. Most
industries were privately owned; there were but few companies, and
often a feeling of comradeship bound master to men.

Material progress was evident; the road system had been improved out
of recognition since 1780, and fast coaches made London only
twenty-one hours from Leeds. 2,600 miles of canals, built in the last
fifty years, cheapened traffic with the new northern towns and with
many older boroughs east and south. Spiritual changes had come too,
even if they were less apparent. The Church of England had in great
part been deprived of its exclusive powers, though Oxford remained its
close preserve. The Evangelical movement, which was the Anglican child
of Wesleyanism, was growing fast from a base at Cambridge, and its
political adherents, who clustered about Clapham, were rapidly gaining
in political importance. Foreign missions were energetic and
spreading, soon to overrun the south seas. The temper of society had
become more biblical and less tolerant than it had been in the century
past. Duels were now condemned by public opinion as well as by law.
Voluntary societies took up the education of the poor, in which
England had lagged far behind Scotland, and provided teaching for
nearly 200,000 children at a time, while Sunday schools, begun by
Raikes in 1780, did something for twice as many others. It was the
business, men held, of individuals, and not of the state, to attempt
moral and social reform, and private associations grew up to assume
tasks now undertaken by Government departments. Romilly had begun to
assault the barbarous penal code, and though he had achieved little by
1815, he gained the support of Wilberforce, the leader of the
Evangelicals, and this gave a promise of later success.

One result of the long war was the disappearance of the old prejudice
against the army. No one any longer proposed that Britain should rely
for defence on a badly trained militia, officered by fox-hunters, and
the Duke of York as Commander-in-Chief had changed that ancient force
from being a rival of the regular army into its recruiting ground.
The nation was proud of its military victories, though it did little
for men incapacitated by wounds and tolerated a staff that was, except
for a few individuals, about the worst in Europe. The navy, till the
peace, was partly manned by petty offenders handed over to it by the
Justices, and by the press gang, for without such sources of supply
the competition of merchant shipping would have deprived it of full
crews. Its higher command was less of an aristocratic preserve than
was the army's: its officers tended to be Whig in politics, and both
they and the men were strongly tinged with Evangelical piety; one
complaint of the Nore mutineers in 1797 had been that they could not
keep the Sabbath, and that fiddlers played on that day as on others.
Disciplinary troubles had been endemic in the fleet for some years
from 1797, but there was no recurrence of them after the Fox-Grenville
Government in 1806 increased the sailors' pay.

If there was stagnation in political development there was none in
thought. The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Science was
founded in 1799, it engaged Davy in 1801; he employed Faraday, a still
greater experimenter, in 1812, and these two, with others at work in
similar fields, made Britain pre-eminent in widening the limits of
knowledge. The _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_ catered for a
growing class of serious readers. Poetry was in revolt from the long
reign of the heroic couplet and reverted to older forms now acclaimed
as new. Blake's _Songs of Innocence_ in 1789 marked a departure, and
the _Lyrical Ballads_ of Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798 strengthened
a tendency already clearly shown. Southey, Byron, Scott, were hard at
work. Men of letters looked no more to great patrons for support, nor
even to leisured Government posts, for an increasing public offered to
those of them who could catch its taste, or create it, the hope of
greater rewards than peer or Cabinet could give. Scott's poetry and
Byron's found an immense audience, and Tom Moore was so well thought
of in 1814 that he was paid 3000 for a long poem not yet written. The
writer now prized above all other English novelists, Jane Austen, had
published four books before Waterloo, one of them, _Pride and
Prejudice_, having been rejected unread by a publisher in 1797.
Cobbett, an ex-soldier of strong Conservative views, had turned
radical, and was finding an immense sale for popular journalism.
Nearly all the early and mid-Victorian giants had been born, and some
had reached their nonage, by 1815, and the chief ideas of the
nineteenth century could already be discerned, despite a Tory reaction
that endured long but never ran deep.




                             BIBLIOGRAPHY


The reign of William III is covered in detail by Macaulay, _History of
England_, and with greater impartiality by Ranke, _History of
England_. From 1702 to 1792 the most complete single work is Lecky,
_History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, which is especially
useful in its description of the Wesleyan revival. Robertson, _England
under the Hanoverians_; Leadam, _Political History of England,
1702-1760_, and Hunt, _Political History of England, 1760-1801_, will
all be found of use: the first two tend to the Whig side, the last to
the Tory. The most recent and best book on Great Britain at the
beginning of the nineteenth century is Halvy, _l'Angleterre en 1815_,
of which there is an English translation. It has been freely used in
the last chapter of this book.

Amongst the most important large biographies are Coxe, _Life of
Walpole_; Basil Williams, _Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham_;
Fitzmaurice, _Life of Shelburne_; Holland Rose, _Life of William
Pitt_. Morley, _Walpole_ and _Burke_; Rosebery, _Pitt_, and Wakeman,
_Fox_, are short lives. On other characters the _Dictionary of
National Biography_ should be consulted. G. O. Trevelyan, _Early
History of Charles James Fox_, is very one-sided, but gives an
excellent picture of English society in the first years of George
III's reign. Turberville, _English Men and Manners in the Eighteenth
Century_, is especially valuable for its illustrations.

The Whig theory of politics is to be found in Locke's second _Treatise
on Civil Government_, and in Burke's _Thoughts on the Cause of the
Present Discontents_, and _Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs_. K.
G. Feiling, _History of the Tory Party_, covers the period down to
1714, and Bolingbroke, _Letter to Windham_ and _Dissertation on
Parties_ state the anti-Whig case at and after 1714. An excellent
sketch of British politics immediately after 1760 is in the first
volume of Alvord, _The Mississippi Valley in British Politics_. Anson,
_Memoirs of the 3rd Duke of Grafton_, contains in its introduction an
admirable sketch of political history between 1763 and 1778. Hervey,
_Memoirs of the Reign of George II_, and Horace Walpole, _Letters_,
are amusing and important sources of information, so are Wraxall's
_Memoirs_ for the period after 1780.

For Ireland, Lecky, _History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century_,
and _Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland_, should be consulted.
Corbett, _England in the Mediterranean_, Vol. II, and Atkinson,
_Marlborough and the Rise of the British Army_, cover Marlborough's
War. Mahan, _The Influence of Sea-Power upon History_: Corbett,
_England in the Seven Years' War_, and Mahan, _Influence of Sea-Power
during the Wars of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Epoch_, between
them give the naval side of the wars after 1713. Fortescue, _History
of the Army_, and Oman, _History of the Peninsular War_, deal with
military operations.

On colonial history, Beer, _British Colonial Policy_, 1754-1765, and
Egerton, _Short History of British Colonial Policy_, are succinct
accounts of the most important changes in system and ideas. The
American revolution is well covered by Lecky, _History of England in
the Eighteenth Century_, and by Egerton, _The American Revolution_.




                                INDEX


  Acadia, 52, 109

  Addington, 223, 228-229

  Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace of, 100

  America, 109-116, 120-122, 131, 147, 152-177

  American Revolutionary War, 166-174, 191

  American taxation, 136, 139, 143, 147-148, 159-163

  Amiens, Peace of, 224-226

  Anne, 22, 31, 36-37, 42, 47, 55-57

  Anti-Catholic legislation, 213-214, 217-218

  Augusta, Princess of Wales, 124-125

  Australia, 177, 194

  Austria, 27, 39-41, 47, 51-52, 92, 94, 97, 112-113, 197, 202-205, 208,
    212, 223-224, 228-229, 231-234, 236

  Austrian Succession, War of, 95-100


  Bavaria, 38, 41-42

  Bedford, Duke of, 116, 129, 135, 138-139, 143, 147

  Bentham, 59, 237, 239

  Blenheim, 41-42

  Boroughs, 71-73

  Boston, 163-166

  Burgoyne, 66, 168-169

  Burke, 59, 61, 140-141, 149, 164, 167, 178, 180, 190, 195, 197,
    200-204

  Bute, 119, 135, 138-139, 146


  Cabinet, 90, 96, 101, 117-118, 128, 185

  Canada, 115-116, 121, 150-151, 154, 166-168, 177, 193, 235

  Canning, 238

  Cape of Good Hope, 232, 235

  Caroline, Queen, 93-94

  Carteret, 89-90, 93, 97, 126

  Castlereagh, 236-238

  Catholic Emancipation, 107, 217-223, 230, 240

  Charles XII, 86-87

  Charles Edward, 98-99

  Chathamites, 173, 178-180, 182

  Civil List, 130, 180

  Clive, 114

  Commons, 70-74, 189

  Comprehension Bill, 14-15

  Congress, Continental, 164-165, 170, 174

  Constitution, 68-69

  Continental system, 230-231, 233

  Convention, 10-12, 17-18

  Convocation, 14-15, 91

  Cornwallis, 171

  County Representation, 70-71

  Cumberland, Duke of, 98, 114, 125, 140

  Danby, 11, 14, 21

  Declaration of Rights, 11-13, 17

  Defoe, 38, 50, 61

  Derby, 98-99

  Dettingen, 98

  Dundas, 208

  Dundee, 16


  Egypt, 210, 212, 224, 228

  Enclosures, 75-77, 244

  Estimates, 129-130

  Evangelicalism, 108, 245

  Excise Bill, 92-93


  Falkland Islands, 145, 150

  Fitzwilliam, 219

  Flanders, 25, 38-39, 45, 98, 111, 207

  Fleury, 92, 94

  Florida, 119, 172

  Fontenoy, 98

  Fox, Charles James, 169, 173-174, 179-191, 196-197, 202-203, 222,
    229-230, 247

  Fox, Henry, 102, 117, 119, 135

  France, 12, 27, 33, 35, 50-52, 92, 94, 97, 109-111, 120, 144, 169-174,
 181, 197, 199-207, 209-210, 212, 223, 234-236

  Franchise, 70-73

  Frederick, Prince of Wales, 81, 94, 102-103, 108

  Frederick II, 95-96, 112, 120

  French Revolution, 197-203, 217


  George I, 56-57, 82, 84, 86, 88, 93

  George II, 88, 93, 98, 114, 116, 125

  George III, 91, 116, 123-136, 138-144, 165, 169, 172, 175-176, 178,
    181-184, 188-190, 196-199, 222-223, 229-230, 238

  George IV, 102, 189, 196-197, 238

  George, Prince, 37

  Georgia, 62, 93, 152

  Germany, 98, 231, 233, 236

  Gibraltar, 39, 92, 165, 172

  Godolphin, 22, 38, 46, 49

  Gordon Riots, 171

  Governors, Colonial, 153-154

  Grafton, 141-146

  Grand Alliance, 14, 34-35

  Gregorian Calendar, 103-104

  Grenville, George, 129, 136, 138-139, 143, 146-148, 159

  Grenville, Lord, 229, 237, 247


  Halifax, 11, 14, 22

  Hanover, 86, 97, 111-113, 115

  Hanoverians, 43, 81-82

  Harley, Earl of Oxford, 41, 46, 49, 53-56, 84, 88

  Hastings, Warren, 195-196

  Hayti, 209

  Holland, 14, 33, 39, 97, 100, 111, 121, 173, 202-203, 207, 236

  Howe, 166, 168-169


  India, 112, 114, 116, 120-121, 142, 150, 157, 183-184, 194-196

  Industrial Revolution, 7, 75-79

  Ireland, 12, 14, 24, 210, 212-223

  Irish Parliament, 214-222

  Irish Union, 216, 221-223

  Italy, 97, 224, 226, 236


  Jacobites, 26, 36, 43-44, 60, 84, 99, 101, 124

  James II, 10-11, 14, 24, 26, 32

  Jenkins' Ear, War of, 95-96

  Johnson, 64-65, 80, 186, 200

  Joseph Bonaparte, 231, 234

  Junius, 144-145


  King's Friends, 146-147


  Limerick, peace of, 24

  Liverpool, 238

  Locke, 63

  London, 65, 171, 191

  Louis XIV, 26-27, 32-33, 35, 47, 84

  Louis XVI, 202

  Louisbourg, 100, 112-115

  Loyalists, 164, 167-168, 170, 176-177, 193-194


  Malta, 224, 226, 236

  Marlborough, 22, 24, 34-35, 38-42, 45-49, 51, 57, 83, 207

  Mary, 11, 30

  Masham, Mrs., 36, 47, 54

  Massachusetts, 153, 155, 163-164, 168

  Mercantilism, 156-160

  Methodism, 104-108, 244

  Middlesex election, 137-138, 143-144

  Minorca, 39, 112, 165, 172

  Montague, 21, 25, 33, 83

  Mutiny Act, 17


  Naples, 205, 223, 229

  Napoleon, 206, 210, 213, 224-234, 236

  Naval mutinies, 212, 247

  Navigation Acts, 158-159

  Nelson, 66, 212, 223-224, 228

  Netherlands, 33, 197, 201-202, 224, 226

  New Brunswick, 168, 193

  New England, 152, 157, 162, 169, 235

  New York, 168, 193

  Newcastle, 96, 108-109, 112-113, 118-119, 126, 128-129, 131, 138

  Nonconformists, 14-15, 40, 53, 91, 105

  Nonjurors, 16

  North, 133, 143, 146-148, 150-151, 165, 169, 172-174, 178-179,
    181-183, 186, 188, 191, 215

  _North Briton_, 136-137

  Nottingham, 11, 21, 40, 51, 85

  Nova Scotia, 103, 193


  Occasional Conformity, 40-42, 51, 53, 88

  Ormond, 51, 84


  Paris, Peace of, 1763, 119, 135

  Parliament, 8, 28-31, 65-66, 69

  Parties, 9, 18-20, 38, 46, 126-129, 134

  Partition Treaties, 27

  _Patriot King_, 127

  Peerage Bill, 88

  Pelham, 96-97, 102-103, 108

  Peninsular War, 231-234

  Perceval, 238

  Philadelphia, 169-170

  Pitt, Earl of Chatham, 66, 80, 102, 112-119, 122, 126, 128, 135,
    138-146, 148-150, 155, 165, 169, 172, 206-207

  Pitt, the younger, 180, 184-189, 191-199, 202-209, 212, 219, 222-223,
    228-230, 237

  Place Bill, 20, 29

  Poland, 94, 205, 236

  Portland, Earl of, 31, 33;
    3rd Duke of, 203, 208, 238

  Portugal, 60, 120, 223-224, 231-232

  Pratt, Lord Camden, 137, 145-146

  Presbyterianism, 42, 44

  Preston, 72, 74

  Pretender, 35, 54-56, 84-85

  Privilege of Parliament, 122-123, 137

  Prussia, 96-97, 119-120, 197, 202-203, 205, 228-229, 234, 236

  Pulteney, 90, 96


  Quebec, 115, 166

  Quebec Act, 150-151


  Reaction, 210-211, 239-240, 249

  Rebellion of 1715, 84-85

  Rebellion of 1745, 98-99

  Reform of Parliament, 149, 179, 191, 198, 237

  Regency, 11, 196-197, 238

  Rochester, 21, 40, 54

  Rockingham, 131, 139-141, 143, 149, 173-174, 178-180, 191, 215

  Romilly, 246

  Rooke, 39, 41

  Russell, 21-22, 33

  Russia, 197, 205-206, 208, 223-224, 229-230, 233-236

  Ryswick, Peace of, 25-27


  Sacheverell, 48-49

  Sackville, 133, 169

  St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, 46, 50-57, 84-85, 93, 102, 108, 127

  Savoy, 25, 39

  Schism Act, 53, 55-56, 88

  Scotland, 12, 35, 42-45, 53, 96, 211

  Septennial Act, 85

  Settlement, Act of, 33-34

  Seven Years' War, 109-119, 154-155

  Seymour, 21, 40

  Shelburne, 141, 173-174, 179-183

  Shrewsbury, 22, 29, 49

  Sinking Fund, 192

  Slave trade, 194-195, 199, 209, 229, 236

  Somers, 21, 28, 33, 49, 83

  Sophia of Hanover, 32, 54, 56

  South Sea Company, 88

  Spain, 14, 25, 27, 32, 39, 87, 92, 94, 116-117, 120, 145, 170,
    172-174, 181, 197, 205-206, 227-228, 231-232

  Spanish Succession, War of, 33-35, 38-42, 45-47, 50-51

  Stamp Act, 136, 139-141, 159-161

  Stanhope, 39, 83, 85-87, 89

  Sunderland, first Earl, 22-23;
    second Earl, 83, 87, 89

  Swift, 37, 214

  Switzerland, 224, 226


  Tea duty, 161-163

  Temple, 129, 135-136, 139-141, 146

  Test Act, 15, 91

  Toleration Act, 15

  Tone, Wolfe, 217-218

  Tories, 10, 13, 18-20, 37, 40, 49, 55-57, 93, 101, 129, 187, 189-190,
    237

  Townshend, 83, 87, 89-90

  Townshend, Charles, 142-143, 161-162

  Trafalgar, 228, 233

  Triennial Act, 20, 29

  Turkey, 197, 223-224


  United States, 233-235

  Utrecht, Peace of, 51-52, 84, 119


  Virginia, 155, 157


  Walpole, Horace, 143-144

  Walpole, Robert, 59, 80, 83, 87-96, 101, 108, 126

  Washington, 131, 168, 171, 176

  Waterloo, 236

  Wedgwood, 64, 148

  Wellington, 209, 231-234, 236

  Wesley, 61, 80, 104-108, 200

  West Indies, 95, 115, 117, 119, 122, 157, 160, 171-172, 208-209, 228,
    233

  Westminster, 73, 187, 191

  Wharton, 21-22, 83

  Whigs, 11-12, 18-21, 31, 37, 42, 46, 53-57, 82, 101, 129, 131-132,
    149, 187, 203, 237

  Whimsicals, 50, 55

  Whitefield, 104-107

  Wilberforce, 199, 246

  Wilkes, 136-138, 143-144, 146

  William III, 10-18, 24, 28-34, 126

  Wolfe, 115

  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
  BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.




  THE
  HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
  OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

                    A COMPREHENSIVE SERIES OF NEW
                     AND SPECIALLY WRITTEN BOOKS

                               EDITORS:

             Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A.
          The Rt. Hon. H. A. L. FISHER, M.A., F.B.A., LL.D.
                 Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., LL.D.
                   Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.

                     256 pages. In cloth binding.


                              _HISTORY_

      3. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By HILAIRE BELLOC, M.A. (Maps.)

      4. A SHORT HISTORY OF WAR AND PEACE. By G. H. PERRIS.

     13. MEDIVAL EUROPE. By H. W. C. DAVIS, M.A. (With Maps.)

     14. THE PAPACY AND MODERN TIMES (1303-1870). By WILLIAM BARRY, D.D.

     23. HISTORY OF OUR TIME (1885-1913). By G. P. GOOCH, M.A.

     25. THE CIVILISATION OF CHINA. By H. A. GILES, LL.D., Professor
         of Chinese at Cambridge.

     29. THE DAWN OF HISTORY. By J. L. MYRES, M.A., F.S.A.

     33. THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By Prof. A. F. POLLARD.

     34. CANADA. By A. G. BRADLEY.

     37. PEOPLES AND PROBLEMS OF INDIA. By Sir T. W. HOLDERNESS,
         G.C.B.

     42. ROME. By W. WARDE FOWLER, M.A.

     48. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. By F. L. PAXSON.

     51. WARFARE IN ENGLAND. By HILAIRE BELLOC, M.A.

     55. MASTER MARINERS. By J. R. SPEARS.

     61. NAPOLEON. By the Rt. Hon. H. A. L. FISHER, M.A.

     66. THE NAVY AND SEA POWER. By DAVID HANNAY.

     71. GERMANY OF TO-DAY. By CHARLES TOWER.

     82. PREHISTORIC BRITAIN. By ROBERT MUNRO, M.A., M.D., LL.D.,
         F.R.S.E. (Illustrated.)

     97. THE ANCIENT EAST. By D. G. HOGARTH, M.A. (Maps.)

     98. WARS BETWEEN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. By Prof. T. C. SMITH, M.A.

     100. HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. By Prof. R. S. RAIT.

     101. BELGIUM. By R. C. K. ENSOR. (Maps.)

     105. POLAND. By Prof. W. ALISON PHILLIPS. (With Maps.)

     107. SERBIA. By L. F. WARING.

     108. OUR FORERUNNERS. By M. C. BURKITT, M.A., F.S.A. (Illustrated.)

     113. WALES. By W. WATKIN DAVIES, M.A., F.R.Hist.S.

     114. EGYPT. By Sir E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, M.A., Litt.D., F.S.A.

     118. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. By NORMAN H. BAYNES.

     125. ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS AND STUARTS. By KEITH FEILING, M.A.

     129. HISTORY OF ENGLAND (1688-1815). By E. M. WRONG, M.A.


                      _RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY_

      15. MOHAMMEDANISM. By Prof. D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A., D.Litt.

      40. THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY. By the Hon. BERTRAND RUSSELL,
          F.R.S.

      47. BUDDHISM. By Mrs RHYS DAVIDS, M.A.

      50. NONCONFORMITY: ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS. By Principal W. B.
          SELBIE, M.A.

      54. ETHICS. By G. E. MOORE, M.A.

      56. THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By Prof. B. W. BACON,
          LL.D., D.D.

      60. MISSIONS: THEIR RISE AND DEVELOPMENT. By Mrs CREIGHTON.

      68. COMPARATIVE RELIGION. By Prof. J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, D.Litt.

      74. A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT. By J. B. BURY, Litt.D.,
          LL.D.

      84. LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By Prof. GEORGE MOORE,
          D.D., LL.D.

      90. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. By Canon E. W. WATSON.

      94. RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS.
          By Canon R. H. CHARLES, D.D., D.Litt.

     102. HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. By CLEMENT C. J. WEBB.


                    _POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE_

       1. PARLIAMENT. Its History, Constitution, and Practice. By Sir
          COURTENAY P. ILBERT, G.C.B., K.C.S.I.

       6. IRISH NATIONALITY. By Mrs J. R. GREEN.

      10. THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT. By J. RAMSAY MACDONALD, M.P.

      11. CONSERVATISM. By LORD HUGH CECIL, M.A., M.P.

      21. LIBERALISM. By L. T. HOBHOUSE, M.A.

      30. ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LAW. By W. M. GELDART, M.A., B.C.L.

      38. THE SCHOOL: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF EDUCATION. By
          J. J. FINDLAY, M.A., Ph.D.

      81. PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE. By E. N. BENNETT, M.A.

      83. COMMON-SENSE IN LAW. By Prof. Sir P. VINOGRADOFF, D.C.L.

      96. POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: FROM BACON TO HALIFAX. By G.
          P. GOOCH, M.A.

     104. POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: FROM SPENCER TO THE PRESENT
          DAY. By ERNEST BARKER, M.A.

     106. POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: THE UTILITARIANS FROM
          BENTHAM TO J. S. MILL. By W. L. DAVIDSON, M.A., LL.D.

     121. POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: FROM LOCKE TO BENTHAM. By
          HAROLD J. LASKI.

     131. COMMUNISM. By HAROLD J. LASKI.


                       _ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS_

       5. THE STOCK EXCHANGE. By F. W. HIRST, Editor of _The
          Economist_.

      16. THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH. By J. A. HOBSON, M.A.

      24. THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY. By D. H. MACGREGOR, M.A.

      26. AGRICULTURE. By Prof. W. SOMERVILLE, F.L.S.

      59. POLITICAL ECONOMY. By Sir S. J. CHAPMAN, K.C.B.

      69. THE NEWSPAPER. By G. BINNEY DIBBLEE, M.A. (Illustrated.)
          The best account extant of the organisation of the newspaper
          press, at home and abroad.

      80. CO-PARTNERSHIP AND PROFIT-SHARING. By ANEURIN WILLIAMS.

      85. UNEMPLOYMENT. By Prof. A. C. PIGOU, M.A.

     109. COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY. By MARION I. NEWBIGIN, D.Sc.

     117. ADVERTISING. By Sir CHARLES HIGHAM.

     124. BANKING. By WALTER LEAF, D.Litt.


                             _GEOGRAPHY_

       7. MODERN GEOGRAPHY. By MARION I. NEWBIGIN, D.Sc.

       8. POLAR EXPLORATION. By Dr W. S. BRUCE, F.R.S.E., Leader of
          the _Scotia_ Expedition. (With Maps.)

      12. THE OPENING-UP OF AFRICA. By Sir H. H. JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G.,
          F.Z.S. (With Maps.)

      36. CLIMATE AND WEATHER. By Prof. H. N. DICKSON, D.Sc.Oxon.,
          M.A., F.R.S.E. (With Diagrams.)

      53. THE MAKING OF THE EARTH. By Prof. J. W. GREGORY, F.R.S.
          (With 38 Maps and Figures.)

      88. THE GROWTH OF EUROPE. By Prof. GRENVILLE COLE.
          (Illustrated.)

      91. THE ALPS. By ARNOLD LUNN. (Illustrated.)

      92. CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA. By Prof. W. R. SHEPHERD. (Maps.)

     101. BELGIUM. By R. C. K. ENSOR. (Maps.)

     105. POLAND. By Prof. W. ALISON PHILLIPS. (With Maps.)

     107. SERBIA. By L. F. WARING.

     113. WALES. By W. WATKIN DAVIES, M.A., F.R.Hist.S.

     114. EGYPT. By Sir E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, M.A., Litt.D., F.S.A.

     118. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. By NORMAN H. BAYNES.


                             _LITERATURE_

       2. SHAKESPEARE. By JOHN MASEFIELD.

      25. THE CIVILISATION OF CHINA. By H. A. GILES, LL.D., Professor
          of Chinese at Cambridge.

      27. ENGLISH LITERATURE: MODERN. By G. H. MAIR, M.A.

      35. LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE. By G. L. STRACHEY.

      43. ENGLISH LITERATURE: MEDIVAL. By Prof. W. P. KER, M.A.

      45. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By L. PEARSALL SMITH, M.A.

      52. GREAT WRITERS OF AMERICA. By Prof. J. ERSKINE and Prof. W.
          P. TRENT.

      64. DR JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE. By JOHN BAILEY, M.A.

      65. THE LITERATURE OF GERMANY. By Prof. J. G. ROBERTSON, M.A.,
          Ph.D.

      70. THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE. By G. K. CHESTERTON.

      73. THE WRITING OF ENGLISH. By W. T. BREWSTER, A.M., Professor
          of English in Columbia University.

      76. EURIPIDES AND HIS AGE. By GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D.

      77. SHELLEY, GODWIN, AND THEIR CIRCLE. By H. N. BRAILSFORD.

      87. CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES. By GRACE E. HADOW.

      89. WILLIAM MORRIS: HIS WORK AND INFLUENCE. By A. CLUTTON
          BROCK.

      95. ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. By J. M. ROBERTSON, M.P.

      99. AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE. By Hon. MAURICE BARING.

     143. MILTON. By JOHN BAILEY, M.A.

     171. PATRIOTISM IN LITERATURE. By JOHN DRINKWATER, M.A.


                              _SCIENCE_

       9. THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS. By Dr D. H. SCOTT, M.A., F.R.S.
          (Illustrated.)

      17. HEALTH AND DISEASE. By W. LESLIE MACKENZIE, M.D.

      18. INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS. By A. N. WHITEHEAD, Sc.D.,
          F.R.S. (With Diagrams.)

      19. THE ANIMAL WORLD. By Prof. F. W. GAMBLE, F.R.S. With
          Introduction by Sir OLIVER LODGE. (Many Illustrations.)

      20. EVOLUTION. By Prof. J. A. THOMSON, M.A., and Prof. P.
          GEDDES.

      22. CRIME AND INSANITY. By Dr C. A. MERCIER.

      28. PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. By Sir W. F. BARRETT, F.R.S.

      31. ASTRONOMY. By A. R. HINKS, M.A., Chief Assistant, Cambridge
          Observatory.

      32. INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE. By Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.

      41. ANTHROPOLOGY. By R. R. MARETT, M.A.

      44. PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY. By Prof. J. G. MCKENDRICK, M.D.

      46. MATTER AND ENERGY. By F. SODDY, M.A., F.R.S.

      49. PSYCHOLOGY, THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR. By Prof. W. MCDOUGALL,
      F.R.S., M.B.

      57. THE HUMAN BODY. By Prof. Sir A. KEITH, M.D., LL.D.
          (Illustrated.)

      58. ELECTRICITY. By GISBERT KAPP, D.Eng. (Illustrated.)

      62. THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE. By Dr BENJAMIN MOORE,
          Professor of Bio-Chemistry, University College, Liverpool.

      67. CHEMISTRY. By RAPHAEL MELDOLA, F.R.S.

      72. PLANT LIFE. By Prof. J. B. FARMER, D.Sc., F.R.S.
          (Illustrated.)

      78. THE OCEAN. A General Account of the Science of the Sea. By
          Sir JOHN MURRAY, K.C.B., F.R.S. (Colour Plates and other
          Illustrations.)

      79. NERVES. By Prof. D. FRASER HARRIS, M.D., D.Sc.
          (Illustrated.)

      86. SEX. By Prof. PATRICK GEDDES and Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON,
          LL.D.

     110. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HEREDITY. By Prof. E. W.
          MACBRIDE, M.A., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S. (Illustrated.)

     115. BIOLOGY. By Prof. PATRICK GEDDES and Prof. J. ARTHUR
          THOMSON, M.A., LL.D. (Illustrated.)

     116. BACTERIOLOGY. By Prof. CARL H. BROWNING. (Illustrated.)

     119. MICROSCOPY. By ROBERT M. NEILL. (Illustrated.)

     120. EUGENICS. By A. M. CARR-SAUNDERS.

     122. GAS AND GASES. By Prof. R. M. CAVEN. (Illustrated.)

     126. TREES. By Dr MACGREGOR SKENE.

     127. MOTORS AND MOTORING. By E. T. BROWN. (Illustrated.)

     128. SUNSHINE AND HEALTH. By R. CAMPBELL MACFIE, M.A., LL.D.

     130. BIRDS. By A. LANDSBOROUGH THOMSON, D.Sc.

     132. THE EVOLUTION OF A GARDEN. By E. H. M. COX.


                                _ART_

      39. ARCHITECTURE. By Prof. W. R. LETHABY. (Illustrated.)

      63. PAINTERS AND PAINTING. By Sir FREDERICK WEDMORE. (With 16
          half-tone Illustrations.) From the Primitives to the
          Impressionists.

      75. ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL. By JANE E. HARRISON, LL.D., D.Litt.

      93. THE RENAISSANCE. By EDITH SICHEL.

     112. MUSIC. By Sir W. H. HADOW.

     123. DRAMA. By ASHLEY DUKES.


                 _Many other volumes in preparation._


                  LONDON: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, LTD.

                _And of all Bookshops and Bookstalls._






[End of History of England 1688-1815, by E. M. Wrong]
