THE MODERN PATRIOTS. 79 curing the itch.* Then followed the impetuous Wyndham, Sir John Barnard (whom Pope has commemorated), Heathcote, and Sir Paul Methuen.† Walpole's principal supporters were the great lawyer, Sir Philip Yorke, afterwards Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, and Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, characterised by the poet as one "Who never changed his principle or wig." The weight of argument was on the Minister's side, but *"Mammon. Will nought be sav'd that's good for med'cine, think'st thou? Face. I cannot tell, sir. There will be, perhaps, Something about the scraping of the shards, Will cure the itch."—Alchemist, act iv., sc. 3. Barnard and Methuen are amusingly characterised in the ballad of The Modern Patriots.' "Sir John of the City 's the next on our card, A man of great honour, who damn'd the Excise, That he and his brethren did cry the scheme down The next is a squire of remarkable note, All frauds to prevent, be the first in commission." Barnard, who came of a Quaker family, was born at Reading in 1685. Thriving as a London citizen, he was returned as member for the city in 1721; chosen alderman in 1728; knighted in 1732; and became Lord Mayor in 1737. He joined the Church of England in 1707. His death took place in 1764. 80 THE EXCISE BILL ABANDONED. that of the Opposition was the more popular. This appeared from the clamour of the multitudes who besieged the doors, and to whom in his closing speech Walpole imprudently referred as "sturdy beggars." A phrase which the Opposition immediately caught up, and made good use of! On a division being taken, 266 voted for the bill, and 205 against it,—a minority very much more formidable than any that Walpole had had previously to contend with. As Sir Robert withdrew to his carriage, his cloak was rudely seized by some of the "sturdy beggars," and he would probably have suffered personal injury if Mr. Pelham had not interposed. When the Bill came to a second reading, Walpole's majority had decreased to sixteen. Meantime, the excitement out of doors had assumed alarming proportions; and petitions poured in from all the large towns. It became evident that if the bill passed into law, it could not be carried into execution without the aid of an armed force; and Walpole, in pursuance of his usual policy, resolved on dropping it.* We now know that it was sound in idea and able in detail; but the populace rejoiced at its abandonment as they might have done at a great victory. In London the Monument was illuminated; effigies of the Minister were burnt in many places; and bonfires blazed on all the hills from Dartmoor to Skiddaw. The Minister could not punish the people, or the leaders of the Opposition, but he could *His followers would have had him pass it into law; but he told them, at a private conference, that it would be impossible to carry the Act into execution without an armed force, and that there would be an end to the liberty of England if supplies had to be raised by the sword. WALPOLE'S LOVE OF POWER. 81 make his vengeance felt by those who had played him false on his own side. Accordingly, he dismissed the Earl of Chesterfield, Lord Stewart of the Household, a man of equal ability and influence; Lord Clinton, a Lord of the Bedchamber, the Earl of Burlington, the Duke of Montrose, and Lords Marchmont and Stair; while the Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham were deprived of their colonelcies. These harsh measures bring us to the consideration of another feature of Walpole's administration; his concentration of power in his own hands. Duchess Sarah of Marlborough said of him that he never liked any but fools, and such as had lost all credit. That a Minister should be supreme in his Cabinet is undoubtedly essential to the firmness and solidarity of his Government; but it is obviously disadvantageous that his colleagues should be mere cyphers, without any freedom of will or independence of action. Walpole seldom called Cabinet councils; and he received and answered despatches of great importance without referring them to his fellow ministers. We fear the charge cannot be denied that, though he made a good use of power, he was too fond of engrossing it. From every point of view this was a mistake. "It is not impossible," as Macaulay says, "that, by taking the course which Pelham afterwards took, and reinforcing his Government with the rising talents and ambition of the Whig party, or admitting occasionally a Tory not unfriendly to the House of Brunswick, he might have prevented the formidable struggle in which the last years of his administration VOL. I. 6 82 WILLIAM PULTENEY. were passed, and in which he was finally overthrown. It was his insatiable love of power, which every year seemed to increase in intensity, that created the Opposition, and gave it all its strength." Thus, at the outset of his long ministerial career, he converted one of his warmest and ablest supporters into a determined enemy. This was that William Pulteney, of whom Speaker Onslow said that he knew how to animate every subject of popularity "with the spirit and fire that the orators of the ancient commonwealth governed the people by; was as classical and elegant in the speeches he did not prepare as they were in their most studied compositions, mingling wit and pleasantry, and the application even of little stories, so properly to affect his hearers, that he would overset the best argumentation in the world, and win people to his side often against their own convictions." His eloquence was fresh, clear, incisive; he excelled in classical allusions and epigrammatic illustrations; * and was especially happy in reply. Sprung from an ancient family, he was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford; and after the then customary Continental tour, entered Parliament, at the age of 23, in 1705. Attaching himself to the Whig party he soon rose into notice, and formed a close friendship with Walpole, whom he strenuously defended when committed to the Tower on charge of peculation. On the accession of George the 1st he was made secretary at war, an office which he held * " How many Martials were in Pulteney lost! "-Pope. + He wrote a fresh and fluent style, as may be seen in his pamphlets; and his political songs (such as "The Honest Jury "), were very clever. BREACH WITH WALPOLE. 83 until 1717, when he retired along with Walpole and Townshend. On Walpole's return to power, it might have been expected that he would have recognised the claims of so loyal a supporter and zealous a friend; but impatient of colleagues of such ability and independence, he passed him over, offering him a peerage instead of a seat in the cabinet (1724). The peerage was refused, and soon afterwards Pulteney joined the Opposition, or, as they called themselves, "the Patriots."* Bolingbroke found in him a valuable assistant, and the two conducted with great spirit and success the well-known 'Craftsman.' A slighted friend makes always a bitter foe; and Pulteney pursued Walpole with the patience of a sleuth-hound. His attacks upon the King were scarcely less virulent than those on the Minister, and George the 2nd, with his own hand, struck his name off the list of privy councillors. Not the less did he remain the chief of the Opposition, while his denunciation of * A designation suggested by Bolingbroke, whose theory was, that a Patriot King should upset all factious combinations by a vigorous use of his prerogative, and that all patriotic. politicians should rally round a King who was thus usefully employed. "The King," as Macaulay puts it, "had only to resolve that he would be master, that he would not be held in thraldom by any set of men, that he would take for ministers any persons in whom he had confidence, without distinction of party, and that he would restrain his servants from influencing by immoral means either the constituent bodies or the representative body." Such a theory presupposed in the King, who was to reduce it to practice, a sagacity and an intellectual force which few sovereigns have possessed, while it altogether ignored the rights as well as power of the House of Commons. Notwithstanding the efforts of men like the late Lord Lytton to "write up" Bolingbroke, posterity justly estimates him as a brilliant politician, and an accomplished man of letters, who ignored the true principles of a liberal statesmanship. |