CHAPTER XXVI.

PITT.

XXVI.

WHILE affairs in Europe generally wore a tranquil aspect at CHAP. the beginning of 1753, the relations between Great Britain and Prussia were approaching a dangerous state of tension. On November 23, 1752, an announcement was made by Frederick II. of his intention to detain the last instalment of the repayment of the Silesian loan of £250,000 due to English creditors. This money had been borrowed in January, 1735, by the Emperor Charles VI. upon the security of the revenues arising from the duchies of Upper and Lower Silesia, since annexed by Prussia, the capital to be repaid in instalments of which the last was due in 1745. By the treaty of Breslau in 1742, and that of Dresden in 1745, Frederick agreed to take over these obligations, which for some years he continued to discharge. He now stopped £30,000, out of £45,000 due, and applied it as compensation to Prussian shipowners whose vessels had been seized in October, 1745,1 by English cruisers for carrying contraband of war.

The irritation caused in England by Frederick's demands and by his appointment in August, 1751, of the Jacobite Earl Marischal Keith as his ambassador to Paris contributed to bring about the execution of Dr. Archibald Cameron, younger brother of Lochiel, who had escaped after Culloden to France. News reached England from the Austrian minister Kaunitz and from a Jacobite informer, known to the English ministry as "Pickle the Spy," and now proved to have been the exiled "Young

1So Carlyle (Frederick the Great, bk. xxvi., chap. xiii.) from Prussian authorities, but the Duke of Newcastle's letter to the secretary of the Prussian embassy, dated February 8, 1753, declares that no seizures took place till a year after the last payment of the Silesian loan was due, i.e., till 1746. See Gent. Mag., 1753 p. 83 ff.

XXVI.

2

CHAP. Glengarry," that Frederick was tampering with the Jacobites. Between Glengarry and Cameron a feud had long existed, and Glengarry now betrayed to the English ministry that Archibald Cameron was about to return to Scotland as an emissary of Prussia to concert a fresh rising. Two sloops of war were stationed to intercept Cameron. He was arrested on March 20, 1753, arraigned on the act of attainder for his share in the rebellion of 1745, and hanged. His personal qualities stirred public commiseration, but the circumstances which are now known to have led to his death, a renewed attempt against the public peace by an attainted rebel acting in the interest of a foreign power, absolve ministers from the discredit of a "wanton atrocity" imputed to them by Lord Campbell and suggested by Carlyle.

The session of 1753 was proceeding with the languor natural where an opposition is insignificant both in numbers and talent, when two questions of domestic interest were introduced which divided not only society but the ministry itself. For some years the court of chancery and the house of lords had been scandalised by suits to establish or annul the validity of clandestine marriages. "Fleet marriages" had become a by-word, yet 2,954 were proved to have been celebrated in four months. The bill, known as Hardwicke's marriage act, remains, to the credit of the chancellor, the substantive act regulating marriage to the present day. All marriages celebrated irregularly were declared void. It is difficult for later generations which have experienced the salutary working of this wise measure to understand the outburst of hostility provoked by it.

An unsuccessful attempt made in 1751 with Pelham's support to encourage the immigration of foreign protestants was finally dropped, but in the session of 1753 he assented to an analogous measure in favour of the naturalisation of the Jews. Unfortunately for the cause of toleration, the parliament of 1747 was nearing its end, and the opponents of the ministry were casting about for a useful cry for the approaching general election. The Jews' naturalisation act furnished one. The

Chief of the Glengarry branch of the Macdonalds. A. Lang, Pickle the Spy, 1897.

2 Mr. Lang has disposed of Carlyle's view that this was a delusion of the English ministry. Pickle the Spy, pp. 195-97.

1753

THE PELHAMS' DOMESTIC POLICY.

429

XXVI.

whole race of Jews was to be naturalised and would presently CHAP. buy up the fee-simple of the country. The print-shops were full of caricatures of the Jews; anti-Jewish ballads became the vogue. "A man of dark complexion," wrote a member of parliament,1 "is scarce safe in the streets." "No Jews: Christianity and the Constitution" became a popular cry. The affront offered to Christianity furnished texts to the tory clergy. Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, who had been zealous for the bill, was publicly insulted in his diocese. Pelham had no thought of repeating Godolphin's blunder of collision with the pulpit. On November 15, 1753, parliament met, and on the same day the Duke of Newcastle moved to repeal the act "as a point of political policy". In the house of commons the fear of the electors lay heavy on the whigs, and the act of repeal was the first enrolled in the session of 1753-54.

To lovers of the grandiose, like Granville, or to dilettanti politicians like Horace Walpole, who complained "the house of commons is become a mere quarter sessions, where nothing is transacted but turnpikes and poor rates," the ministerial achievements of Henry Pelham were humdrum and insignificant. His personality was, indeed, not one to inspire enthusiasm, but neither did it excite animosity. Caricatures of him there were, but he was satirised with less virulence than any of his predecessors. Leaving details of diplomacy to his brother Newcastle, by whom, according to Fox, "he was always drawn and generally dragged," he used his influence for peace because his interest lay in economic and domestic reform. A series of measures attests the sedulous solicitude of Pelham as well as of Lord Halifax, the first commissioner for trade, for the commercial advantage of the country. Upon the suggestion of Henry Fielding, the police of London was in 1753 reformed by the establishment of a "Bow Street foot patrol". So effective did this small body prove that by 1757, according to Brown, the author of the Estimate, "the reigning evil of street robberies had been almost totally suppressed," and the "Bow Street runners," as they were commonly called, became celebrated as detectives. This improvement is ascribed by Sir John Fielding, the brother of the novelist and his successor at Bow Street, to the Duke of Newcastle. At the same time

1 Robert Ord to Lord Carlisle, July 17, 1753, Carlisle MSS., p. 207.

XXVI.

CHAP. some check was applied to the increase of criminals by training destitute boys for the navy. The criminal law and its administration however still remained blundering and sanguinary. The most permanent monument of Pelham's administration was the foundation in 1753 of the British Museum. While his success exceeded that of Walpole in managing the house of commons, the circumstances of his ministry rendered his task infinitely easier. Nor did he shrink from Walpole's methods of securing loyalty by a lavish distribution of the spoils of office.

The

Fox

Although Pelham had been for some months ailing, his death on March 6, 1754, plunged the ministry into confusion. "I shall now," exclaimed George, on hearing the news, "have no more peace." The two great offices of first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer fell vacant. treasury Newcastle determined to reserve to himself. was to be offered the secretaryship of the southern province, to! be vacated by the transfer of Holdernesse to the northern. To the chagrin of Fox, when the secretaryship of state with the leadership of the commons was offered him he was told by Newcastle that he would have nothing to do with the secret service money, nor yet with the ministerial nominations to seats, nor with the management of the approaching general election, which were to be reserved to the duke. Fox refused place shorn of power and preferred to remain secretary at war. Sir Thomas Robinson, the real author, as coadjutor to Sandwich, of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, accepted the secretaryship declined by Fox. The temper of Pitt towards the new leader of the commons relieved itself in the exclamation: "The duke might as well have sent us his jackboot to lead us". At the moment of Pelham's death Pitt was at Bath. If Hardwicke may be believed, the king refused to listen to his pleas for the promotion of Pitt. Under cover of offering such compensation as was in his power, but really, it was suspected, to break up the Leicester House party by enlisting its members with the government, Newcastle distributed some places among them. Lyttelton accepted the post of cofferer of the household; George Grenville the treasurership of the navy vacated by the advancement to the chancellorship of the exchequer of Henry Bilson Legge. This was a fresh mortification

1754

GENERAL ELECTION.

431

to Pitt. With a bitterness at heart which the prospect of a CHAP. XXVI. seat from Newcastle at the approaching election compelled him to dissemble, Pitt began to lay his plans for future satisfaction. Newcastle was now, in effect, as Horace Walpole calls him, "universal minister". The chancellor Hardwicke was rewarded for his fidelity with advancement to an earldom; the attorney-general, Sir Dudley Ryder, was promoted chief-justice of the king's bench, and Murray succeeded Ryder. On April 8, the parliament of 1747 was dissolved. If we may believe Horace Walpole, "there never was such established bribery or so profuse," but only forty-two places in England were contested. Upon the first party division in the following November the government majority was 155. The occasion was a petition against the return of two members for the county of Oxford, where a contest had been fought, according to Horace Walpole, of downright "Whiggism and Jacobitism".

The tranquillity prevailing upon the continent of Europe after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle found no counterpart in India, where the rivals for supremacy, the English and French, had, at the moment of the conclusion of the treaty, gathered forces for the continuance of their struggle, not indeed as principals, but as auxiliaries to native princes. Until the end of 1751, the growth of French influence bid fair to absorb the whole of the Carnatic. The succession to this province was in dispute between two rival Nawábs, but Mohammed Ali, the candidate supported by the British, had been reduced to Trichinopoli, which was invested by Chunda Sahib, the French nominee, with a large force. Clive, a young writer in the East India Company's service, who had already displayed military capacity, perceived that Trichinopoli could only be saved by a diversion. His surprise of Arcot on August 31, 1751, and subsequent defence produced an immense revulsion of feeling among the native princes, and marks a turning-point in the history of India. On March 28, 1752, Colonel Stringer Lawrence, "the father of the Indian army," marched to the relief of Trichinopoli, with Clive as second in command. They succeeded in beating off reinforcements sent by Dupleix, and on June 13, the French general, Law, and Chunda Sahib surrendered with 800 French soldiers, 2,000 sepoys, and 3,000 to 4,000 cavalry. So crushing a blow left the British and their candidate, the Nawáb Mohammed Ali, masters of the Carnatic;