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No answer.

my Lord, to lay aside our divisions, to unite cor- | design; and I am content to beg the favor upor dially and heartily together in our present cir- my bended knees.10 eumstances, when our all is at stake. HanniDal, my Lord, is at our gates-Hannibal is come within our gates-Hannibal is come the length of this table-he is at the foot of the throne. He will demolish the throne, if we take not notice. He will seize upon these regalia. He will take them as our spolia opima, and whip us out of this house, never to return again.

For the love of God, then, my Lord, for the safety and welfare of our ancient kingdom, whose sad circumstances I hope we shall yet convert into prosperity and happiness! We want no means if we unite. God blessed the peacemakers. We want neither men, nor sufficiency of all manner of things necessary to make a nation happy. All depends upon management. Concordia res parvæ crescunt-small means increase by concord. I fear not these Articles, though they were ten times worse than they are, if we once cordially forgive one another, and that according to our proverb, Bygones be bygones, and fair play for time to come. For my part, in the sight of God, and in the presence of this honorable House, I heartily forgive every man, and beg that they may do the same to me. And I do most humbly propose that his Grace my Lord Commissioner may appoint an Agape, may order a Love-feast for this honorable House, that we may lay aside all self-designs, and after our fasts and humiliations, may have a day of rejoicing and thankfulness; may eat our meat with gladness, and our bread with a merry heart. Then shall we sit each man under his own figtree, and the voice of the turtle shall be heard in our land, a bird famous for constancy and fidelity.

My Lord, I shall pause here, and proceed no further in my discourse, till I see if his Grace my Lord Commissioner [Queensbury] will receive any humble proposals for removing misunderstandings among us, and putting an end to our fatal divisions. Upon my honor, I have no other

of nine months. Hence the legality of its assembling was denied by the Duke of Hamilton the moment it convened; and he, with eighty other members, withdrew before it was constituted. Queensbury, however, proceeded, as High Commissioner, to open Parliament. This, undoubtedly, is the transaction here alluded to. The commission under which be acted was dated back, probably, within the six mcnths prescribed; and hence the sneer about “ an antedated commission." Violent animosities were created by this procedure.

The spolia opima, or "richest spoils" of war among the Romans, consisted, according to Livy, of the armor and trappings which a supreme commander had stripped, on the field of battle, from the leader of the foe. Plutarch says that, down to his time, only three examples of this kind had occurred in Roman history. The image is, therefore, a very striking one, representing Scotland as prostrate, and stripped of her regalia (cbjects of almost superstitious veneration to the people), which would be borne off by England as her spolia opima, to grace ner triumph.

My Lord Chancellor, I am sorry that I must pursue the thread of my sad and melancholy story. What remains is more afflictive than what I have already said. Allow me, then, to make this meditation-that if our posterity, after we are all dead and gone, shall find themselves under an ill-made bargain, and shall have recourse to our records for the names of the managers who made that treaty by which they have suffered so much, they will certainly exclaim, "Our nation must have been reduced to the last extremity at the time of this treaty! All our great chieftains, all our noble peers, who once defended the rights and liberties of the nation, must have been killed, and lying dead on the bed of honor, before the nation could ever condescend to such mean and contemptible terms! Where were the great men of the noble families-the Stewarts, Hamiltons, Grahams, Campbells, Johnstons, Murrays, Homes, Kers? Where were the two great officers of the Crown, the Constable and the Marischal of Scotland? Certainly all were extinguished, and now we are slaves for

ever!"

But the English records-how will they mako their posterity reverence the names of those illustrious men who made that treaty, and forever brought under those fierce, warlike, and troublesome neighbors who had struggled so long for independency, shed the best blood of their nation, and reduced a considerable part of their coun try to become waste and desolate !

I see the English Constitution remaining firm

the same two houses of Parliament; the same taxes, customs, and excise; the same trade in companies; the same municipal laws; while all ours are either subjected to new regulations, or annihilated forever! And for what? Only that we may have the honor to pay their old debts; and may have some few persons present [in Parliament] as witnesses to the validity of the deed, when they are pleased to contract more!

Good God! What? Is this an entire surrender?

My Lord, I find my heart so full of grief and indignation, that I must beg pardon not to finish the last part of my discourse; but pause that I may drop a tear as the prelude to so sad a story!

This fervent appeal had no effect. The Treaty of Union was ratified by a majority of thirty-three out of two hundred and one mem. bers. That it was carried by bribery is now matter of history. Documents have beer brought to light, showing that the sum of £20,000 was sent to Queensbury for this purpose by the En glish ministers; and the names of those to whom the money was paid, belonging chiefly to the Squadroné, are given in full.

10 Lord Brougham, it seems from this passage, was not without precedent, when he sunk on his knees before the House of Lords, in urging the adoption of the Reform Bill.

took place in behalf of the Stuart family, one i 1715, and the other in 1745. It became at length apparent that the worst evils of Scotland arose from her system of clanship; which divid ed most of the country, especially the Highlands

The fate of Belhaven was a melancholy one. He submitted quietly to what he considered the ruin and dishonor of his country. Two years after, a French fleet, with the Pretender on board, appeared off the coast of Scotland, and menaced an invasion of the country. The gov-into numerous small sovereignties, with the right ernment was thrown into the utmost disorder; and though the fleet withdrew without venturing on the proposed descent, numerous arrests were made of suspected persons. Among these were Belhaven and others who had opposed the Union. Without a particle of proof against him, he was dragged to London. At the end of some weeks, however, he was released, but expired almost immediately after, of grief and indignation at this unworthy treatment."

The evils anticipated by Lord Belhaven, and depicted in such glowing colors, never actually occurred. Nor were the benefits of the Union so immediate or great as were anticipated by its friends. The nation remained for a long time in an angry and mutinous state. Two rebellions Laing, iv., 375

of "pit and gallows," or imprisonment and death, under the name of "heritable jurisdictions." The course of justice was thus effectually impeded; and a large part of Scotland vas kept in a state of perpetual disorder by the jeal ousies and contentions of rival clans. Immediately after the rebellion of 1745, the right of "heritable jurisdiction" was abolished by an act of Parliament, and the whole kingdom brought under the control of the same courts. "From the time that this act came into full operation,” says Lord Campbell, "and not from the Union, commences the prosperity of Scotland; which having been the idlest, poorest, and most turbu lent country in Europe, has become one of the most industrious, the most improving, and most orderly."

SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.

THE administration of Walpole was the longest which has occurred since the dayı of Queen Elizabeth. He was probably the most dexterous party leader wich En gland ever had; "equally skilled to win popular favor, to govern the House of Com mons, and to influence and be influenced by public opinion."

Descended from an ancient and respectable family, he was born at Houghton, in Norfolkshire, on the 26th day of August, 1676. Part of his boyhood was spent at Eton, and he was for two years a member of the University of Cambridge; but in neither of these places did he give any indications of superior talents. In early life he was remarkable for nothing but his high spirits and dislike of study. The only benefit he seems to have obtained from his early education, was a facility which he acquired at Eton of conversing in Latin. This became to him afterward an important instrument of power. George I. could speak no English, and Walpole no German: so they compromised the matter when he was made Prime Minister; and all the communications between him and his master, involving the highest interests of the kingdom, were carried on in " very bad Latin."

The first impulse given to the mind of Walpole arose from his being elected a member of Parliament at the age of twenty-four. A vein was now struck which laid open the master principle of his character. It was a spirit of intense ambition. From this moment he laid aside all his sluggishness and love of ease; he threw himself at once into the arena of political strife; and the whole cast of his mind and feelings, as well as the character of the times, went to secure his early ascendency. He had naturally great force and penetration of intellect; a clear judgment; a dauntless spirit; a thorough knowledge of human nature, especially on its weak side; infinite dexterity in carrying on or counteracting political intrigues; a self-possession which never forsook him in the most trying circumstances; and a perfectly unscrupulous freedom in the adoption of every means that seemed necessary to the accomplishment of his designs. The only acquired knowledge which he brought with him inte public life, was a thorough acquaintance with finance. It was precisely the knowl edge that was needed at that juncture; and it laid the foundation, at no distant period, of the long and almost despotic sway which he exercised over English affairs. On taking his seat in Parliament in 1700, he joined himself to the Whig party, and in the year 1708 was brought into office as Secretary at War. Thrown out soon after by a change of ministry, which arose from the silly prosecution of Sacheverell, he was restored to office in 1714, when the Whigs came into power under George I. From this time, for nearly thirty years, he was an active member of the government, during twenty of which he was Prime Minister. To this office he was called, by general consent, in 1721, on the explosion of the South Sea project, which filled the whole island with consternation and ruin. He had opposed the scheme and predicted its failure from the outset, though he had the sagacity to profit largely by speculating in the stock; and now that his predictions were fulfilled, every eye was turned to Walpole, as the only one fitted, by his financial skill, to repair the shattered credit of the country. He was made First Lord of the Treasury, and Chanrellor of the Exchequer, on the second of April, 1721.

Walpole had now reached the summit of his ambition; and if he had only been

just and liberal to his political associates, he might, pernaps, even in that faithles and intriguing age, have gone on to enjoy an undisputed supremacy. But his am bition was domineering and exclusive. He was jealous of every man in his own party, whose growing influence or force of character seemed likely to raise him above the station of a humble dependant. In about two years he quarreled with Carteret, one of the most gifted men of the age, who came in with him as Secretary of State, simply because he would allow of no colleague, but was resolved to rule at the council board as sole master. Within two years more, he endeavored to put Pulteney out of the way by a specious offer of the peerage; and thus made the most eloquent speaker in the House, before the time of Chatham, his enemy for life. Chesterfield was turned out from his station as Lord Steward of the Household, with circumstances of personal insult, because he was against the Excise Bill, which Walpole himself soon after abandoned. Others of the nobility, with a number of military officers, among whom was Lord Chatham, were treated with the same indignity. Thus he alienated from him, by degrees, nearly all the talent of the Whig party.

The Opposition which he had to encounter was, therefore, composed of singularly discordant materials. To his natural opponents, the Jacobites and Tories, was added a large body of disaffected Whigs, who took the name of "Patriots." Bolingbroke, after the pardon of his treasons by George I., and his return to England in 1725, though not restored to his seat in the House of Lords, and therefore unable to share in public debate, was the acknowledged leader of the Tories and Jacobites; and, by a coalition which he soon after made with Pulteney, became for nearly ten years the real head of the Opposition. He was qualified for this station by extraordinary abili ties and matured experience. He was a veteran in the arts of popular delusion. Such was the ascendency of his genius over the strongest minds, that he could units Wyndham and Pulteney in the same measures; and from his station behind the scenes, could move the machinery of Opposition with the greater coolness because he had no share in public measures. Men were thus brought into one body, unler the strictest party discipline, who could never have acted together for a moment on any other subject. They comprised a large part of the talent of the kingdom; and were engaged for years in the struggle to put Walpole down, animated, in most instances, not only by an intense desire for office, but by personal resentment and a spirit of revenge.

It was certainly a proof of consummate ability in Walpole, that he was able to stand for a single year against such an Opposition. That he sustained himself, to a considerable extent, by the systematic bribery of the leading members of Parliament, there can be no doubt. Nor is he to be tried by the standard of the present day on that subject. Charles II. commenced the system; it was continued under his successor; and when William III. was placed on the throne by the Revolution of 1688, he found it impossible to carry on the government without resorting to the same means. "It was not, therefore," as remarked by Cooke in his History of Party, "the minister who corrupted the age; his crime was that he pandered to the prevailing depravity." But bribery alone could never have given Walpole so complete an ascendency. A ministerial majority, even when part of its members are bribed, demand of their leader at least plausible reasons for the vote they give Against such an Opposition as he had to encounter, nothing but extraordinary tal ents, and a thorough knowledge of affairs, could have maintained him for a single month at the head of the government. And it is a remarkable fact, as to the lead ing measures for which he was so vehemently assailed, his Excise Bill, Wood's Patent, a Standing Army, Septennial Parliaments, the Hanover Treaty, and the Spanish Convention, that the verdict of posterity has been decidedly in his favor. Ever

Lord Chatham, who in early life was drawn under the influence of the Opposition leaders by their extraordinary talents and specious pretensions to patriotism, publicly declared, at a later period, that he had changed his views of the principal measures of Walpole.

other case,

But while posterity have thus decided for Walpole, on the main questions in d bate between him and the Opposition, they have been far from awarding to him the honors of a great statesman. He undoubtedly rendered a most important service to his country, by the skill and firmness with which he defeated the machinations of the Jacobites, and held the house of Brunswick on the throne. It was not without reason that Queen Caroline, on her dying bed, commended, not Walpole to the favor of the King, but the King to the protection and support of Walpole. Still, it is apparent, from the whole tenor of his conduct, that in this, as in every he was governed by the absorbing passion of his life, the love of office. "He understood," says Lord Campbell, "the material interests of the country, and, so far as was consistent with the retention of power, he was desirous of pursuing them." We have here the key to every measure of his administration-"the retention of power!" It was this that dictated his favorite maxim, ne quieta moveas, because he felt that change, however useful, might weaken his hold on office. Hence his scandalous treatment of the Dissenters, whom he deluded for years with solemn promises of deliverance from the galling yoke of the Test Act, and thus held them as firm supporters of his ministry in the most trying seasons; but when driven at last to say, "When will the time come?" he answered, as he always meant, "Never!" He was afraid of the High Church party; and he chose rather to break his word, than to venture on what he acknowledged to be a simple act of justice. It was so in every thing. He would run no personal risk to secure the most certain and valuable improvements. He would do nothing to provide against remote dangers, if it cost any great and immediate sacrifice. He therefore did nothing for the advancement of English institutions. He was the minister of the Present, not of the Future. His conduct in respect to the Spanish war furnishes a complete exhibition of his character, and has covered his memory with indelible disgrace. He knew it to be unnecessary and unjust—" the most unprovoked and unjustifiable war," as a great writer has observed, "in the English annals." Any other minis ter, rather than be forced into it by the popular clamor, would have instantly resigned. But in the words of Lord Mahon, who was disposed, in general, to judge favorably of Walpole, "He still clung unworthily to his darling office; thus proving that a love of power, and not a love of peace (as has been pretended), was his ruling principle. It was a sin against light. No man had a clearer view of the im pending mischief and misery of the Spanish war. On the very day of the Declaration, when joyful peals were heard from every steeple of the city, the minister muttered, They may ring the bells now; before long they will be wringing their hands. Yet of this mischief and misery he could stoop to be the instrument!"

The selfish and temporizing policy of Walpole, on this occasion, proved his ruin. The war, which he never intended should take place, and for which he had, therefore, made no preparation, proved disastrous to the English; and the Opposition had the art to turn the popular odium with double violence upon the minister, for the failure of a measure which they had themselves forced upon him. The circumstances attending his fall from power will be detailed hereafter, in connection with his speech on a motion for his removal from office. He resigned all his employ ments on the 11th of February, 1742, and died about three years after, just as he was entering his sixty-ninth year.

The age of Walpole was an age rather of keen debate than impassioned eloquence If we except Lord Chatham, whose greatest efforts belong to a later po

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