1730 FRICTION WITH FRANCE. 339 XX. Between France and England there had been growing up CHAP. petty causes of friction which only the steady resolution of the two powers to act in harmony had kept in the background. The advantages assigned to English trade by the transfer of the Asiento had naturally roused the jealousy of the French commercial classes. Although the French government had, under the eyes of British commissioners, demolished the fortifications, they displayed unwillingness to ruin Dunkirk as a commercial port in accordance with the terms of the treaty of Utrecht. A constant irritation was kept alive in England and reciprocated in France.1 The opportunity did not escape the watchfulness of Bolingbroke. Wyndham, his mouthpiece, moved that there had occurred a "manifest violation of the treaties". The motion, if carried, threatened the French alli Walpole procured an adjournment for eight days, at the end of which, on February 27, 1730, he produced an order from Louis XV. for the demolition of the works 2 and defeated the motion by 270 to 149 votes, after a debate so brilliant that "Dunkirk Day" became proverbial in whig circles. Another constant sore was the continuance of the persecution of the French protestants. The remonstrances of Queen Anne at the time of the treaty of Utrecht had effected the release of no more than 136 Huguenot galley slaves. The ambassadors of George I. from time to time expostulated in vain with the French government. The torture chamber and the scaffold were unceasingly busy, and the galleys, the jails, and the nunneries were crammed with the victims of priestly ferocity. There were disputes about the construction of forts by the French on the Mississippi,3 and on the Canadian border, and as to the ownership of the West India islands of St. Vincent, Dominica, and St. Lucia. The neutrality of the last was decided in 1730 by arbitration, an early instance of resort to that principle for the settlement of international disputes.* 1 Carlisle MSS., p. 78. 2 Ibid., p. 68. 3 Hardwicke Papers, Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 35,907. ♦ Certain minor causes of friction, overlooked by historians, are disclosed by the Domestic State Papers (R. O., MS., State Papers, Dom.), G. I., bundle 18, no. 84 (1719); ibid., bundle 33 (no number), petition of a watchmaker who had gone to Versailles where he had about seventy English workmen under him and had been bribed to return by the British ambassador (March 13, 1721-22). See also bundle 32 (no number), "An account of the last thousand pounds of his majesty's bounty to the artificers who returned,” etc. (1721). XXI. CHAPTER XXI. THE EXCISE BILL. CHAP. BY 1728 the political alliance between Townshend and Walpole had long shewn signs of drawing to a close. Dissension between them began with Townshend's negotiation of the treaty of Hanover in the summer of 1725. Two years before Walpole had written to Townshend: "My politics are to keep clear of all engagements" (August 3, 1723). Townshend gradually became sensible that his position in the cabinet was being weakened. During the king's absence from May to September, 1729, Caroline's reliance upon Walpole naturally increased. She dined at his house at Chelsea, and after Townshend's return, by her undisguised preference she "blew into a flame," as Horace Walpole expresses it, "the ill-blood between the two". Townshend's last success was the treaty of Seville. He had previously talked of retirement, but he made the mistake common among statesmen of believing himself indispens able and, as Lord Hervey puts it, "would neither act with Walpole nor go out". Walpole's version of his attitude and motives is characteristic: "As long as the firm was Townshend and Walpole, all went well; as soon as it became Walpole and Townshend, things went wrong". Walpole dexterously seized the occasion of one of Townshend's announcements to the king, at the end of 1729, of his approaching resignation to procure the nomination as his successor of Lord Harrington, the negotiator of the treaty of Seville. In the spring of 1730, when the emperor, in response to the treaty of Seville, was threatening hostile action and had secured a declaration of support from Prussia, Townshend pressed for an aggressive policy in concert with France. Walpole and Newcastle, with the support of the queen, were for first exhausting the resources of diplomacy. 1730 RETIREMENT OF TOWNSHEND. 341 XXI. Unable to command a majority in the cabinet Townshend CHAP. resigned on May 15, 1730, to acquire with the nickname of "Turnip Townshend" a fresh reputation as a reformer of agriculture. During the early years of George II., while Walpole exercised control over domestic, and Townshend over foreign affairs, the opposition was reduced to ineffectiveness. Being without a policy it aimed at curtailing the means by which party ties were traditionally strengthened. Corruption was the "cant," as Burke says,1 of all the patriots, though it may be doubted whether under George II. it had been more flagrant than under Anne, and it is certain that more secret service money was expended before the revolution. "The charge of systematic corruption," wrote Burke, "is less applicable to Walpole, perhaps, than to any minister who ever served the crown for so great a length of time." The first of a series of attacks was directed against the expenditure of the secret service fund. Walpole succeeded in satisfying the house that the convention of the Pardo had been the outcome of part of the expenditure of £250,000, to which exception had been taken. The next assault upon the same lines was a bill for the purity of elections which went by the name of the bribery bill. It became law. Nevertheless, Lord Hervey records of the elections of 1734: "Money, though it had been formerly more openly given, was never more plentifully issued than in these "3 The third and most formidable attack was the pension bill. This became what is now known in parliamentary circles as a "hardy annual". It was first introduced into the house of commons by the indefatigable Sandys, February 16, 1730. Inasmuch as by the two statutes of 6 Anne, c. 7, and 1 George I., sess. 2, c. 56, no person having a pension under the crown during pleasure or for any term of years was capable of being elected or sitting, all that the bill sought to exact was a declaration under oath of conformity with the existing law. The policy adopted by Walpole of leaving to the lords the onus of throwing out the bill added another to Townshend's accumulating discontents. What the 1 Works, iv., 436 (ed. 1852). 22 G. II., c. 24. 3 See Basil Williams, "The Duke of Newcastle and the Election of 1734," Engl. Hist. Rev., xii., 474, etc XXI. CHAP. opposition failed to effect in parliament they attempted through the press, and by incessant attacks gradually wore down Walpole's popularity. The circulation of The Craftsman for a time rivalled that of The Spectator at the height of its popularity, as many as ten thousand copies being sold in one day. His brother Horatio Walpole, Lord Hervey and Bishop Hoadly were the most distinguished of Walpole's political pamphleteers. The minister was, as a rule, serenely indifferent to personal attacks, and in the licence accorded to the press contrasted favourably with his predecessors. The arrival of the king's eldest son, Frederick, in December, 1728, and the estrangement known to subsist between him and his father, inspired Pulteney's party with the hope of a figurehead round whom to rally. Frederick, who was created Prince of Wales in the following January, was chafing under the disappointment caused by his father's evasive postponements of his marriage with the Princess Royal of Prussia, the treaty for which, though it had never been signed, had been arranged at Charlottenburg in 1723. Another influence disturbing the serenity of the ministry was the growing restlessness of the dissenters. In the late summer of 1730, it appeared to their leaders that the time had come to petition parliament against the test and corporation acts. After an interview with the principal ministers at the end of 1732, the deputies of the dissenters reported to a "general assembly" that no application to parliament was then likely to be successful, and their leaders resolved, in reliance on the ministers' goodwill, to await a more convenient season. Walpole's chief interest lay in the economic condition of the country. In the administration of his benevolent despotism at Hanover George I. had effected some ameliorations of the practice of imprisonment for debt, and it is possible that a statute "for the relief of insolvent debtors," passed in 1719, was suggested by his experience. In 1729 Townshend in the house of lords moved for a list of persons impris oned for debt, which resulted in another act for clearing the debtors' prisons. The benefit of this measure is alleged by a contemporary news-letter to have been claimed by the astounding number of 97,248 persons. Another consequence followed. Upon an inquiry moved by the philanthropist Oglethorpe, afterwards a general, in the house of commons on February 25, 1721-35 WALPOLE'S DOMESTIC POLICY. 343 XXI. 1729, disclosures were made of the state of the jails which CHAP. almost transcend belief. Starvation and torture were commonly employed by the warders to extort money from their unhappy prisoners. In the practice of these atrocities one Thomas Bambridge, warden of the Fleet prison, enjoyed an infamous preeminence. Yet, though some improvements were effected by new regulations, prisons continued to be what John Howard the philanthropist found them half a century later, a scandal to humanity. There remains to this day a monument of Oglethorpe's benevolence, the State of Georgia, founded by him as a colony in virtue of a charter granted in 1732, to be a place of refuge for debtors on the attainment of their freedom. In the session of 1730 the liberal tendency of Walpole's commercial policy began to be disclosed. It had been a timehonoured tradition, accepted by all nations, that colonies should be administered with exclusive regard to the advantages derivable from them by the mother country. Conformably to this principle colonial rice could be exported only to England. Carolina was now set free, subject to the navigation laws, to export rice directly to the south of Europe on payment in England of an export duty of sevenpence a hundredweight, and the experiment was sufficiently successful to justify its extension to Georgia in 1735-" a unique and remarkable instance of colonial taxation by the mother country at the suggestion of the colony itself". On the other hand, Walpole withstood a specious attempt to loosen the monopoly of the East India Company which was terminable on three years' notice from Lady Day, 1733. The charter of the old company was renewed until 1766, upon payment of £200,000 and acceptance by the company of a reduction of interest from 5 to 4 per cent. on £3,200,000 which had been advanced by it to the government. The comparative tranquillity following the treaty of Seville afforded Walpole leisure to take a survey of the entire system of taxation. He had already, between 1721 and 1724, effected a series of readjustments of the tariff in the direction of encouraging the importation of raw materials, and, with a few exceptions, relieving of export duties such natural and manufactured products as remained subject to them. But his interest 1G. L. Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754-65, New York, 1907, p. 6. 2 See the king's speech on Oct. 19, 1721, Parl. Hist., vii., 914, and A. Brisco, Economic Policy of Robert Walpole (1907), p. 130. |