the new system; George II. arbitrary exercise of power, and who "seems to have entered struggled in vain against fully, even to the very details," into every important transaction attempted to revive the prestige of the crown by refusing to put his prerogatives absolutely into the hands of his advisers. We have his own words as authority for the statement that his resistance was unavailing. When the chancellor told him, "Your ministers, sire, are your only instruments of government," the king replied with a smile, "Ministers are the kings in this country."1 Under such conditions it was that the kings in the cabinet government made its great advance during the reigns of the first two Georges, whose personal insignificance contributed largely to the result. "Ministers," he said, "are this coun try." At the ac cession of George I. there was for the first taneous change of a whole ministry; Whigs remained in power for more than thirty years; At the accession of the house of Hanover there was, for the first time since the Revolution, a simultaneous change of a whole ministry, and their replacement by another whose memtime simul- bers took charge of all the principal offices of state. The Whig party, which thus came into power under the leadership in the cabinet of Townshend, Stanhope, and Walpole, was able, by virtue of its excellent organization, to perpetuate its rule for more than thirty years, supported as it was by a group of noble families, at whose head stood the Benticks, the Manners, the Cavendishes, the Russells, and the Grenvilles. It had also the sympathy and support of the commercial classes and the larger towns, won over by its maintenance of the public credit and by its interest in all questions of trade and finance. In feebleness the presence of such a force the Tory opposition, weakened by opposition; the Jacobite secession to the cause of the Pretender, dwindled in the first parliament called by the new king to about fifty members. When in 1715 the Jacobites attempted to rise in the north under the earl of Mar, the government promptly crushed the revolt; and in that year it was that the triumphant Oxford, Bo- Whigs impeached Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Ormond, the Tory lingbroke, ministers who had taken part two years before in negotiating Ormond; the Peace of Utrecht. While Bolingbroke and Ormond fled to of Tory impeachment of and 1 Harris, Life of Hardwicke, vol. ii. 2 See Torrens' Hist. of Cabinets, vol. As to the proceedings of the secret committee appointed to inquire into the means whereby the treaty had been brought about, see Torrens' Hist. of Cabinets, vol. i. pp. 100, 101. The pre cise charge was that the Tory peers in negotiating for peace had endeavored to secure the city of Tournay for the king of France, which was claimed to France, and were attainted in their absence, Oxford, who was committed to the Tower, ventured to combat the new theory of ministerial responsibility by pleading in justification of his Oxford's acts, as Danby had before him, the personal commands of his plea; sovereign. After suffering two years' imprisonment, Oxford was set at liberty because the commons, unable to agree with the lords as to the mode of procedure, declined to continue the prosecution. Thus ended the last purely political impeach- the last purely ment. "The last hundred years present but two cases of im- political impeachment, the one against Mr. Warren Hastings, on charges peachment; of misgovernment in India, the other against Lord Melville (in 1804) for alleged malversation in his office. The former was not a minister of the crown, and he was accused of offences beyond the reach of parliamentary control; and the offences charged against the latter had no relation to his political duties as a responsible minister." In that way it is possible to mark ministers the triumph of the new idea that a minister whose political ished by conduct has displeased the house of commons can be suffi- expulsion ciently punished by simply depriving him of power. now pun from office. Septennial While the country was still in a state of unrest by reason of The the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, the Whigs resolved to prevent Act; a general election that might affect the stability of the new dynasty, and at the same time to render more secure their hold upon the house of commons, then the supreme power in the state, by the enactment of a Septennial Act, making possible the duration of a parliament for the period of seven years. Prior to the passage of the Triennial Act, in the reign of William and Mary, a parliament once elected, unless sooner dissolved by the crown, continued to exist until the demise of the reigning sovereign.5 In order to abrogate that act which had Triennial been in force twenty-two years, the Whigs introduced in the repealed; house of lords, and carried through the commons in 1716 the Septennial Act, which not only provided for the future, but also extended the duration of the then existing house of commons for a period of four years beyond the time for which it constitute an adhering to the queen's enemies under the statute of Edward III. 1 Parl. Hist., vol. vii. p. 105. 2 State Trials, vol. xiv. p. 233. 8 May, Const. Hist., vol. iii. p. 93. 4 6 Will. & Mar. c. 2. See above, p. 421. 5 One of the parliaments of Charles II. sat for eighteen years. 6 I Geo. I. c. 38. Act Speaker Onslow's had been elected. The effect of the act was so to strengthen ministers by increasing the stability of the chamber to which they were primarily responsible, that Speaker Onslow declared declaration that its passage marks "the era of the emancipation of the as to effect British house of commons from its former dependence on the of Septennial Act; crown and the house of lords." 1 And yet so strong and persistent were its adversaries that from 1734 down to 1849 unavailing a series of determined efforts was made to repeal it by such efforts to repeal it. statesmen as Lord Chatham, Mr. Grey, Mr. Brougham, Sir Samuel Romilly, and Mr. Tennyson. But such efforts were all unavailing; and since the last unsuccessful attempt made by Mr. Tennyson D'Eyncourt in 1849, the question of its repeal has passed from the domain of practical politics to that of abstract speculation.2 The Whig ministry and con how the clergy became the general subject to system of taxation; During the year that followed the successful attempt of the Whig ministry to secure by means of the Septennial Act their vocation; hold upon the house of commons, they gave convocation to understand that they would not tolerate for a moment any attempt upon the part of the clergy to promote discussion even indirectly hostile to the house of Hanover. As heretofore explained, the clergy in 1664 gave up their immemorial right of taxing themselves in their own convocation; and thus in becoming subject to the general law of the land in that particular they gained in return the right to vote for members of the house of commons. Thus deprived of its most vital function, convocation lingered on until an attempt was made about the Atterbury's time of the Revolution to revive it, specially by Atterbury,* attempt to afterwards bishop of Rochester, who published a book upon its "Rights and Privileges." When in 1717 the withering ecclesiastical parliament again came into view through the denunciation directed by its lower house against the bishop of Banfor a hun- gor for having preached a sermon in favor of religious liberty, the ministry suddenly prorogued it; and from that time onward, for a period of a hundred and thirty-five years, though regularly summoned, convocation was as regularly prorogued assembling. immediately after its assembling.5 Not until 1850 was it per revive convocation; dred and thirty-five years prorogued immediately after mitted to renew the discussion of church business, from which time its vigor has been feebly increasing. In 1865 it was permitted by royal license, after an interval of two hundred and sixty-two years, to make new canons; and in 1872 it received authority from the same source to frame resolutions concerning public worship which were afterwards incorporated in an act of parliament.2 peers; that end in Not content with silencing convocation and tightening Attempt of the Whigs their hold upon the house of commons, the Whigs resolved in to limit the 1720 to intrench themselves more securely in the house of creation of lords. The creation of twelve Tory peers in 1712, to insure the assent of the upper house to the Peace of Utrecht, had recently demonstrated the power of the crown to swamp a majority of that body. As the Whigs were in control of the hereditary chamber, they resolved to put an end to the new creations that were then exciting its jealousy, and at the same time to perpetuate their political hold upon it by introducing a bill whose ostensible purpose was to secure the liberty a bill with of the upper house by limiting the power of the crown to add view passed to its membership. By this measure the crown was to be the lords; restrained from creating more than six peerages beyond the then existing number of one hundred and seventy-eight, — the power being reserved of course to fill vacancies whenever a peerage became extinct. Twenty-five hereditary Scotch peers were to be substituted for the sixteen elected peers then sitting for that kingdom. This bill, after having passed the lords, rejected was sent down to the commons, where—after the unconstitu- commons tional attempt embodied in it to destroy the new ministerial by a decided majority. system by depriving the crown of the ultimate power to force the upper house to bow to the will of the lower had been fully exposed by Sir Richard Steele and Sir Robert Walpole — it was rejected by a decided majority.1 3. Three years prior to that event both Townshend and 1 New ones were made in the place of the 36th, 37th, 38th, and 40th, every formality as to license and publication prescribed by the "Act of Submission 19 (25 Hen. VIII. c. 19) being strictly observed. Blount, Reform. of the Church of Eng., vol. ii. p. 372. 2 Act of Uniformity Amendment Act, 35 & 36 Vict. c. 35. 8 Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iv. p. 100. 269 against 176. See Parl. Hist., vol. vii. pp. 606-627; Coxe's Life of Walpole, vol. i. pp. 117-125; vol. ii. p. 551; Mahon, Hist. Eng., vol. i. pp. 530546. in the with Town- Walpole, who had refused to go to extremes in carrying out a Hanoverian policy, had been forced to resign office; and in the reconstructed cabinet the chief direction of affairs had passed to Sunderland and Stanhope, who introduced the PeerReturn of age Bill as a ministerial measure. Walpole's defeat of that Walpole to scheme, suggested, as was believed, by Sunderland, forced his power; rivals to permit his return along with Townshend to subordinate places in the government, a condition of things that continued until 1721, when the breaking of the South Sea Bubble, which Walpole had steadily opposed, gave him the assumes the leadership as first lord of the treasury, with Townshend at his leadership side as secretary of state.1 The world was soon made to know, however, that henceforth "the firm should be Walpole and Townshend, and not Townshend and Walpole ; 'Vand during the twenty years that followed, the new leader so dominated the action of the cabinet and so impressed his personal will first prime upon his party as to become the first prime minister, in the modern sense of that term, as distinguished from those royal favorites under the prerogative system of government whose rise and fall depended upon the personal will of the king alone. Walpole's robust common sense, seizing at once upon the fact that peace abroad and prosperity at home were the two conditions necessary for fixing the new dynasty firmly upon the throne, and for maturing the new system of cabinet government then under his control, resolutely refused to meddle with any matter that threatened to disturb either. his one rule As Carlyle 2 has told us, "He had one rule, that stood in stated by place of many: To keep out of every business which it was possible for human wisdom to stave aside. 'What good will you get out of going into that? Parliamentary criticism, argument, and botheration! Leave well alone.'" When for once he attempted to depart from that rule by proposing, in 1733, an Excise Bill, designed to prevent the enormous frauds to which that branch of the revenue was then subject, he was confirmed in his philosophy by popular demonstrations and riots so violent as to force him to drop it. "I will not be minister in sense of that term; of action as Carlyle; his Excise Bill; 1 Torrens, History of Cabinets, vol. i. pp. 298, 299. 2 Life of Frederick of Prussia, vol. iii. pp. 373, 374; Todd, Parl. Government, vol. i. p. 267. 8 Parl. Hist., vol. viii. p. 1306; vol. ix. p. 7; Coxe's Life of Walpole, vol i. p. 372. |